OUR JOURNEY

Baseball in Living Color presents “Legends of the Negro Leagues.” This program, whose roots date back to 1998, has been built around a core group of our 59 Negro Leagues Baseball Living Legends.

In the summer of 1998, I was a part owner and operator of Trading Faces, a small company that designed and manufactured trading cards for kids and community heroes. One afternoon we had the good fortune to meet Pedro Sierra, a former Negro Leagues Baseball Player. He had visited our office to have a personalized trading card created to highlight his Negro Leagues Baseball (NLB) experience. I have to admit… at that time those of us that met Pedro knew very little about this era of segregated baseball. After several hours of interesting discussion, we came to the general consensus that many men, just like Pedro, would be interested in and be benefited by a collaborated effort to tell their stories and the opportunity to share this amazing Negro Leagues Baseball history. So, the program was borne… and with little more than a small to do list our journey began.

First we would have to share our plans with as many NLB Veterans around the country as we could. We set out, driving across the country to meet with each veteran personally. We invited each one to join us; to be a team player in a larger group of players (turned out to be 59), and to be represented as the “NLB Living Legends”. Once we had the team assembled, we got down to the business of providing each of our worthy aging baseball veterans a form of recognition that had for so long evaded them… having their own personal baseball trading card!

Now that our “NLB Living Legends” team was assembled, we took to the road again, another barnstorming adventure, filming personal interviews that would preserve each of the men’s historical journeys. Original photographs were also taken and were later used to fill the face of our trading card templates. Many more photos were taken as well and are now being used to tell another story; how this program came to exist and how this amazing collection was assembled. So, the Signature Series trading card, now digitally complete was delivered to PBM Graphics in Durham, North Carolina to be printed.

The trading cards were completed in late December of 2001 and delivered in early January of 2002. Each and every card was inventoried and packed for another adventure. On the second of February 2002, we were on the road again – this time we were collecting the autographs across the face of the trading cards (and also on several pieces of special memorabilia – each of which will be made available in upcoming auctions).

Behind the scenes, we have been building a website that would promote these very special men. We’ve utilized new technologies to prepare an educational message to the masses via the internet and we remain on track to unveil an educational Negro Leagues Baseball trading card program that will make its appearance in the very near future. We have also developed a portal through which we could market and sell our finished product and by establishing an account with Paypal, we have made it easy for most people across the internet to purchase a piece of this national treasure! It is our goal to sell the entire inventory of memorabilia and to generate financial returns to share with our loyal and faithful participants (our 59 NLB Veterans).