Mayor LaGuardia and the Fight to Desegregate Baseball — NYC Department of Records & Information Services

Although still reluctant in 1947, the New York Giants did catch up, adding their first black player, Monte Irvin, in 1949 and three more in 1951 including Willie Mays. Irvin was, at the time of his death in 2016, 96-years-old, the oldest living member of the Negro Leagues. Bill Greason, now 101, and Ron Teasley, 98, are now older and the last surviving pre-1949 Negro League players.

The Dodgers won the National League Pennant in 1947 but lost the World Series to the Yankees. The 1949, 1952, and 1953 seasons ended similarly, but in 1955 they won it all. The New York Yankees resisted integration until the 1955 season, when Elston Howard played his first game on April 14th.The records don’t show what Mayor LaGuardia thought about being upstaged by Branch Rickey, and although he was very ill in 1947 with the pancreatic cancer that would kill him, he lived long enough that he may have listened to that first April 15, 1947, Dodgers game when Jackie Robinson took the field.