Is a date that all baseball fans should know, but probably don't.
Let me help you.
Pitcher Don Newcombe
Catcher Roy Campanella
2nd Base Jim "Junior" Gilliam
3rd Base Jackie Robinson
Left Field Sandy Amoros
On that day, for the first time in Major League history, a baseball team took the field with a majority of its players being black. Of course it was the Brooklyn Dodgers, who had broken the color line with Jackie Robinson in 1947.
The opponents were the Milwaukee Braves, in County Stadium, Milwaukee. Oh, and that team also had a Black player of some note, rookie Right Fielder Henry Aaron.
Later that year a second Black pitcher, Joe Black, joined the team.
Jackie Robinson was Rookie of the Year in 1947, MVP in 1949 , and is in the Hall of Fame. His record is well known.
Don Newcombe was Rookie of the Year in 1949, the year in which he became the first Black pitcher to start a World Series game. In 1955 he became the first black to win 20 games. The following year he won both the Cy Young Award and was MVP, the first National Leaguer to do both. He had a lifetime batting average of .271, with 15 homers during his career, and was often used as a pinch hitter.
Roy Campanella received 3 MVP awards, in 1951, 1953,and 1955. In each of those years he batted over 300, hit over 30 homers and drove in over 100 runs, including 142 in 1953, when the season was still only 154 games. Over his career, Campy threw out 57% of those who attempted to steal, still a major league record. His career was cut short by a 1958 auto accident which left him in a wheelchair.
There is more . . .
Junior Gilliam was Rookie of the Year in 1953. He was a long-time leadoff hitter (until Maurie Wills joined the team, scoring over 100 runs in four consecutive seasons, and once finishing fifth for MVP.
Sandy Amoros did not have as distinguished career as his black teammates, although anyone watching Don Larson's 1956 World Series perfect game will remember the shot he hit that was long enough to leave the park, but just foul.
For Dodger fans (which i was not), his most important play was the previous year, 1955, in the 6th inning of the 7th and final game. Amoros had entered the game as a defensive replacement that inning. The first two Yankees reached base. The Dodger outfield shifted towards right field as Yogi Berra (himself a 3-time MVP) came up. Berra hit an opposite field line drive towards the left-field line that seemed sure to be a double, except that Amoros somehow used his speed to catch up with the ball, snaring it as he stuck out his right gloved hand some 300 feet from the plate. He not only caught it, but managed to avoid crashing into the wall, turned and fired a strike to relay man shortstop Pee Wee Reese who fired to Gil Hodges at first to double off Yankee Gil McDougald. The next batter grounded out to end the inning. Johnny Podres got the win, and the Dodgers won their first World Championship.
Amoros was Cuban. Campy had an Italian father and a Black mother. We think nothing of black athletes nowadays.
In the years since then, we saw the Boston Celtics finally put 5 black players on the floor at the same time. While blacks were known on NCAA championship teams - University of San Francisco, Ohio State, Cincinnati - in 1967 Texas Western started five black players and beat the wall-white Rupp's Runts of Kentucky for the title.
But the first time, at a time when American society was still very much segregated, when Blacks were still somewhat rare in the major sports, that a baseball team started a game with a majority of Blacks, was this day in 1954. Full credit should be given to the Dodgers, who not only broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson, but continued to lead the way, opening up baseball to all, and thus helping advance Civil Rights more broadly in American society.
Peace.