Color barrier no more

Hey you're welcome, Darnell!

While we may appear to be forward thinking...we weren't until 2000. The league was a racist beast until then, wagging their finger and shaking their head at any one of those "colored folks" who thought they had enough skill to compete with us. No no no...you're not pristine enough to play with us, we'd say. And we'd continue to put up stats and consider ourselves the greatest athletes in the human race. Not just the white race, the HUMAN RACE. It's not like those "other guys" were better than we were, so letting them play would only lower our gene pool in our own metaphorical way.

Then Darnell Uhland came along. It was a cold and balmy day in May of 2000. The 7th, to be exact. The sky was overcast, but not as dark as the man who stepped out of a blue Toyota Tercel and made his debut. Sick of seeing guys like Mickey Kendall come relatviely close to holding their own, Commish Creighton finally relented. Sure, Darnell's numbers from Interracial Game #1 are nothing of note (0-4, 3 Ks), but it wasn't about stats that day. And sure, he found himself on the embarassing end of a Nate Stuempfig curveball that wound up being Play of the Year, but it wasn't about mistakes that day. It was about mending them. And on May 7th, 2000, this league mended the mistake of being a white-bread country-boy game. And surprisingly enough, not everyone in this league is better than Darnell Uhland. Just ask Mickey.