Many Americans, black and white alike, have since found Asia to be a place to extend their playing careers, or to try their hand at coaching, and former Negro Leaguers helped pave the path across the Pacific. Don Newcombe and Larry Doby, both of whom kicked off their professional careers with the Negro Leagues Newark Eagles, topped off their professional careers in 1962 playing one season for the Chunichi Dragons.

Newcombe and Doby were perhaps the first major league star to wind up in Japan and two of just a few to play in the Negro Leagues, the major leagues, and in Japan’s professional leagues. George Altman, a great Negro Leaguer himself, went to Japan in 1968 after a stellar 9-year career in the big leagues and enjoyed it so much he stayed for 8 more years.

Many Americans have been grateful to play the game in Japan. Darnell Coles, Jesse Barfield, Warren Cromartie, Alvin Davis, Mike Easler, Cecil Fielder, Rupert Jones, Kevin Mitchell, Lloyd Moseby, Reggie Smith and Roy White are a few of the most recognizable names of African American major leaguers who played in Japan. Playing in a foreign culture might give a bit of insight into what Negro Leaguers felt.

“It gives you a true perspective on differences, whether they’re cultural or language differences or whatever,” said Coles. “It helps me understand the game from a true ‘world’ perspective. It’s part of who I am as a person and a coach is having that experience and that perspective. So from that standpoint, it helps you feel a little of how Negro Leaguers might have felt, being treated like outsiders and foreigners in a sense.

…President Obama has an appreciation of the men who battled for the integration of baseball. And in fact, Obama said of two Negro League veterans at a fundraising event in 2010: “I would not be here if it were not for Jackie (Robinson) and it were not for Don Newcombe.”

Obama went out of his way at the event to meet Newcombe, who followed closely behind Robinson when blacks broke into the major leagues. After two seasons with the Newark Eagles, Newcombe signed a minor league contract with the Dodgers in 1946, before Robinson had played a game in Brooklyn. Showing his gratitude for the groundbreaking pitcher, the president called the former MVP “my hall of famer,” even though Newcombe is not in fact enshrined in Cooperstown.

But Obama was not the only groundbreaking African American in the public sector to pay the ultimate compliment to Newcombe.

“In 1968, Martin (Luther King) had dinner at my house with my family,” Newcombe told Cal Fussman in After Jackie. “This was 28 days before he was assassinated. He said to me, ‘Don, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you guys setting up the minds of people for change. You, Jackie and Roy (Campanella) will never know how easy you made it for me to do my job.’”