The Loss of Martin Luther King

The 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King directly impacted major league baseball, in particular the Pittsburgh Pirates, the most integrated team at the time. With 11 black players on the Opening Day roster, no team seemed more emblematic of the work of King than the Pirates. The Pirates’ black players held two team meetings to discuss their response to the tragedy. Maury Wills, the team’s player representative, announced that the Pirates preferred not to play Sunday’s final exhibition game or the Opening Day game against the Houston Astros on Monday out of respect for the slain activist. When the players learned that King would be buried on Tuesday, and not Monday as originally scheduled, they requested Pirate management to postpone the season’s second game, as well.
Pirates general manager Joe Brown agreed to cancel the final spring training game against the New York Yankees, scheduled to be played in Richmond, Virginia, but said he could not postpone the first two regular games against Houston without the permission of Astros’ management. Two other teams, the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Senators, quickly announced the postponement of their Opening Day games, but the Astros hesitated.

The Pirates’ players did not like the noncommittal response, and once again voted to hold firm on their decision not to play the first two games on Monday and Tuesday. After discussions with Astros’ officials, Brown offered a compromise: the team would not have to play on either Monday or Tuesday, but would play on Wednesday, which had originally been scheduled as a travel date. At a clubhouse meeting, the players voted to accept Brown’s plan. Roberto Clemente, representing the team’s black and Latin players, and Dave Wickersham, one of the team’s white players, released a joint statement to the media. “We are doing this because we white and black players respect what Dr. King has done for mankind.”