When it came to integrating baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals fell behind in the count.
Seven years after Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers crashed the color barrier, a Black ballplayer finally cracked the Cardinals' major-league lineup. To be fair, the Cardinals were the ninth of the 16 major league teams to integrate. It took the Boston Red Sox 12 years to follow the Dodgers' lead.
But the Cardinals didn't exactly beat a basepath to integration.
When word leaked in 1945 that the Dodgers were grooming Robinson for a big-league debut, the Cardinals' president at the time, Sam Breadon, didn't seem eager to wade into the racial waters.