“Hi, this is Lou.”

Your friend here almost lost it. It was 1978. I was a neophyte reporter, a lowest-on-the-totem-pole fact checker for Sports Illustrated, my first journalism gig out of college.

My assignment was to verify the facts in a feature on Brock penned by one of our lauded senior baseball writers. There was no Google, of course. The few resources we were allowed to utilize to double-check names, dates, places, stats, and such were newspapers, team and league media guides, encyclopedias, and official record books. When the story included personal details, as SI’s writers were likely to obtain, the most reliable source was usually—the subject of the story.

So, I had to interview Lou Brock.

He was one of the St. Louis Cardinals’ stars, though he was in the waning light of a Hall of Fame career. That year wound up being Brock’s 18th and penultimate season.

The Cardinals gave me the telephone number to the clubhouse. Call at this specific time—a couple of hours before that night’s first pitch—and ask for Brock, I was told. At the designated time, I called the number; a clubhouse attendant answered.

I asked for Lou Brock. “Hold on,” the person said.

I was nervous as hell—as I shared in a column four years ago to honor Brock’s death at the age of 81.

I was nervous because to that little boy from Tulsa on hold, Brock was the closest I had to a sports idol.

I’d even met him. Met him when I was that young boy meandering about in my dad’s sundry store—a Black version of the Arnold’s in “Happy Days”, complete with a juke box—on Greenwood Avenue in Tulsa, in the heart of Black Wall Street.

I met him because the Tulsa Oilers were the Cardinals’ AAA baseball farm team, one step from The Show. Towards the end of each spring training, the Cardinals came to town and played an exhibition against their aspiring brothers. My dad often took me and my younger brother to games at Oiler Park and almost always to that exhibition.

While Cardinals were in town, the Black players almost always stopped by the store, often with Black Oilers—guys like Bobby Tolan and Walt Williams, both of whom had solid big-league careers.

My mind’s eye now faintly recalls seeing Brock in the store. Bob Gibson, too. The players sat and laughed and enjoyed soda fountain fare — ice cream floats, banana splits, or just a Coke — while filling the jukebox with a river of quarters to keep the music flowing.

They did this often before hitting Black Wall Street’s late-night scene.

This was the mid-1960s. Major League Baseball, just like America, was still wrestling with race, nearly two decades after Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. It wasn’t until 1959, 12 years later, that the Boston Red Sox signed its first black player, the last MLB team to do so.

The Cardinals signed their first Black player, Tom Alston, in 1954 after team owner Gussie Busch told his folks to find a Black player. Find one because his brewery, Anheuser Busch, sold more beer to Blacks than any beermaker in the country and he feared a boycott if his team stayed all-white.

In between, MLB teams variously signed players from the Negro Leagues, usually stars. Or young talents, like that kid Willie from Birmingham, who signed with the New York Giants and made his major-league debut in 1951.

By 1964, the Chicago Cubs had five Black players, including a young outfielder whom the team had signed in 1960: Brock. The former Southern University star made his major-league debut in 1962, a year after winning the Northern League Batting title. He did not fare as well initially with the Cubs. Or some of their fans.

I have no memory of the trade that landed Brock in St. Louis in 1964. I was just eight years old. My parents, like many Blacks of their generation, were Dodgers fans, for obvious reasons. Not me. Once each season, my dad drove me and my baby brother the nearly 400 miles to St. Louis for a weekend series at Busch Stadium, with the towering Gateway Arch in the background.

The Cardinals were the sixth MLB team to sign a Black player. Four years earlier, the New York Giants were the fourth MLB team to sign an African American: Hank Thompson, on July 8, 1949.

By the mid-1960s, the years of my youth, the rosters of both teams were stocked with Black players.

Among those with Brock and Gibson in St. Louis: Curt Flood, Bobby Tolan, Al Jackson, Orlando Cepeda, and Julian Javier. (The latter two were from Latin America, of course, but Black fans embraced those brethren as our own.)

The Giants, by then solidly ensconced in San Francisco, possessed their own array of Black players who were admired by that kid in Tulsa: Juan Marichal, Willie McCovey, Ollie Brown, Frank Johnson, Jim Hart, and the youngster Willie.

My parents could have the Dodgers. I was a Cardinals fan. So, I’ll be rooting for St. Louis Thursday evening at Rickwood Field, baseball’s oldest ballpark, when they face the Giants in Major League Baseball’s salute to the Negro Leagues.

And the Giants.

Oh, I don’t remember a thing about my fact-checking telephone conversation with Brock. I’m sure he was cordial (he always was, by all accounts). I may have even asked him if he remembered meeting that kid in Tulsa—the one whom he helped become a lifelong fan.

Roy S. Johnson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame, Edward R. Murrow Award winner, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, as well as the Lede. Tell him what you think at [email protected], and follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj.