Graphic By: Julie Brennan

When former Notre Dame University and Green Bay Packer legend Paul Hornung made comments implying that black athletes were intellectually inferior to white athletes and that Notre Dame should lower its academic standards with that in mind, the reaction from the sporting would was universally disgust. Hornung clarified shortly thereafter, saying he should have said it was true only about some black athletes, and the sporting world basically chalked it up to someone being out of touch with the modern world.

When Jimmy the Greek talked about black athletes as being naturally superior to white athletes because of selective breeding during days of slavery, he was unceremoniously fired. Apologists for the man noted at the time that he was just a colorful guy, not racist, just a guy who thought certain things about certain people (paraphrased).

When Al Campanis, former Brooklyn Dodger, made comments about black people being naturally less buoyant than white people, and asserted in the same television segment that black people "may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager," he was fired two days later. A year later, he attempted to clarify his remarks with something similar to what Hornung played; not all black people lack those abilities, but the ones in baseball might.

Those four men represent years of professional experience and significant contributions to the sporting world. That same sporting world turned its back on three of them (Krueger is probably not important enough for there to be a need to make a big show of firing him).

Campanis' remarks came in 1987. Forty years before that, it was commonly accepted that black people didn't have the mental capacity to manage; sure, they could run, hit, field, all that physical stuff, but the mental aspect of the game was what they just couldn't do as well.

Baseball has been hurt by racism in the past, and its reaction to people like Campanis and Jimmy the Greek shows evidence of significant guilt and a still-healing wound. Josh Gibson, cited by many as the best black ballplayer who never made it to the majors, died three months before Jackie Robinson debuted with the Dodgers. Satchel Paige was in his 40s before he got his chance. Cool Papa Bell was coaching by the time Robinson made it.

Before Robinson, there were black ballplayers in MLB, but they were usually playing as anything but. Players asserted that they were Indian, Mexican, Creole, whatever—anything to be allowed to play. This was because of an unwritten ban on black ballplayers made most evident by the revocation of a contract Josh Gibson had signed to play in the major leagues.

The ban effectively started around the end of Moses Walker's career. Walker, who had two run-ins with Cap Anson during his professional baseball career, won out in the first interaction but was benched when Anson again refused to play if Walker was allowed on the field. Mere months later, the American Association and National League began an unofficial ban on black players.

Hack Wilson holds the mark for most RBI in a season with 191. It's pretty much accepted in the baseball world that Wilson was a low-ball hitter and a high-ball drinker. It's also pretty much accepted in the baseball world that a lot of players smoked, drank and generally carried on when they weren't on the field. That was still pretty common when Mickey Mantle was playing.

What wasn't common, at least as far as anyone has dared to look, was using performance-enhancing drugs.

Skip ahead to the 1980s, which Jose Canseco claims as the start of the era when it became acceptable for one ballplayer to mess with another ballplayer's ass. No, I'm not talking about a game of hide the salami; I'm talking about injecting steroids to produce forehead muscles bigger than some African nations.

Arguments abound regarding why MLB didn't step in and stop this when it became pretty obvious what was happening. I prefer to think that MLB knew a good thing (more longballs) when it saw one and tried to ride the trend out, oblivious to the fact that what the big kids do is sure to catch on with the younger ones. Did these guys not have younger siblings, like, ever?

Eventually, though, it got so bad that Congress stepped in, and we all know the rest of that ugly story; from Sammy Sosa spontaneously losing the ability to answer questions to Mark McGwire crying about how he was afraid of endangering his family (but not so afraid that he knowingly took dangerous substances for what some claim was over a decade), it was a day of "Hello, MLB? You made your bed. Now lie in it."

Most people think about gambling in baseball and come up with the 1919 Chicago White Sox and Pete Rose as the major offending parties.

Most people need to get a bloody clue, because the 1919 Sox were acquitted, and everyone and their dog (Marge Schott's, for one) knew what Rose was doing, making it all the more comical to various people when Rose maintained his innocence for half a generation before trying to upstage the 2004 MLB Hall of Fame by releasing a book in which he made the rather shocking (to at least three people) revelation that he did, in fact, gamble, and that he doesn't see it as a big deal.

The story about the 1919 White Sox is really pretty complicated. There are multiple views on what's important and what isn't, but here's a pretty basic breakdown:

First, gambling on baseball was ridiculously common back in the day. There are pretty substantial records of it happening back as far as 1877, if that gives you any indication of how pervasive it was. There was an investigation of Ty Cobb for gambling, for crying out loud. (Some historians take issue with the way the investigation was run, asserting that MLB basically swept evidence under the table.)

Second, Charlie Comiskey was tighter with money than Howard Hughes was when it came to eating peas.

Third, Joe Jackson didn't start to push for his own innocence until years after the fact. He was never implored, "Say it ain't so, Joe."

Fourth, the story only became a big deal after the fact. During the series, there was no specific worry that anyone had agreed to throw the series.

Up until that point, gambling in baseball had largely been ignored by the powers that be. A large part of this had to do with the fact that MLB had no strong central authority; MLB commissioners date to 1920, the year Kenesaw Mountain Landis was recruited for the position. Landis was sought out partly because of MLB's desire to push the issue with the White Sox.

As many people know, eight members of the White Sox were put on trial. All were acquitted. This was hugely negative for MLB, which was seen as an impotent entity unable to keep sport's biggest spectacle clean. In response, Landis banned for life all eight of the charged members of the White Sox.

Subsequent actions by prominent members of MLB received stringent penalties. At one point, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were shilling for casinos. Each received a year's suspension for being seen as connected to gambling institutions; those suspensions contributed to each leaving the association with those businesses.

Skip 20 or so years to, of course, Rose, and let us count our blessings inasfar as nobody in MLB is currently being investigated for gambling.

The question I want to ask is this: Which of those evils has had the worst effect on MLB? This is a question rife with political and passionate thought, and that's exactly why I think it's important to consider with the above evidence in mind.

To me, the answer must come from the people involved in the game. Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, Satchel Paige and Buck O'Neil are living veterans who played in the Negro Leagues. All but O'Neil, of course, went on to prominent MLB careers, while O'Neil worked as a coach and scout for the Chicago Cubs, too old by the time the chance came.

Negro Leaguers who had the chance to play in MLB are easily outstripped by those who had extended careers before 1946 and didn't get their chance. It's a significant stain on MLB history and a ridiculous thing that players were ever denied based on something as irrelevant to sports as skin color.

There were a lot of people who gambled on baseball, but nobody ever got assaulted for being a gambler. When you have men threatening to beat a man up for playing in a baseball game, and the threat is due to his skin color, you have a patently revolting situation.

It is a very happy situation that people who write about the Negro Leagues are fundamentally writing about things that happened in the past. Let us not pretend, though, that all the experiences Aaron and Mays and Banks had are things everyone has forgotten about. ESPN's Outside the Lines, in fact, detailed a situation regarding an unfortunate crowd at one baseball game. The fans were less than charitable then, and many of them, as depicted by the show, seemed every bit as bitter about being called out as Mays was about the situation still not being resolved some 50 years later.

Whatever else you take from this article, remember this: that overt racism in baseball is largely nonexistent now (aside from rubbish cast Frank Robinson's way regarding his competency as a manager and his race having anything to do with that) means absolutely nothing about how things were or how open we all need to be about reexamining what was previously thought to be the case.