^[1] A five-tool player can hit for average, hit for power, run, catch, and throw.

 

^[2] Present tense is used for quotes from author interviews.

 

^[3] He told the story to Alfred Duckett, who would later collaborate with Martin Luther King, Jr., on his “I Have a Dream” speech and would ghostwrite Jackie Robinson’s autobiography, I Never Had It Made.

 

^[4] One of his teachers was Angelina Rice, whose daughter, Condoleezza, would be the secretary of state under President George W. Bush. When she first interviewed with President Bush, she impressed him with stories about her mother’s experiences with Mays.

^[5] Yankee manager Casey Stengel, after seeing Howard play, famously commented, “When I finally get a nigger, I get the only one that can’t run.”

 

^[6] In the 1980s, Roger Kahn and his daughter, Alissa, were invited to the White House, and President Reagan recounted that knockdown pitch, with Campanella’s comment. “My daughter was shocked,” Kahn says.

^[7] Ironically, one team, the St. Louis Browns, had two black players in 1947 but cut them after barely a month. One of those players was Hank Thompson.

 

^[8] In August 1955, Ebony also published a cover photograph of Day standing between Durocher and Mays at the Polo Grounds. This time, Day is not touching Mays.

^[9] President Truman’s decision to integrate the armed services in 1948 defied the country’s military leaders, including George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower.

 

^[10] News reports also spelled her name as Wendel and Wendelle.

 

^[11] Major League Baseball played two All-Star games a year from 1959 to 1962.

 

^[12] Allen, in an interview, says he never met Mays “in any coherent way,” but in a celebrity softball game at Dodger Stadium, he caught a pop fly hit by Mays.