Unknown Player

Unknown Player - Negro Leagues Legends #128 - PSA Mint 9 - Art by Graig Kreindler On the Player and Card: The Unknown Player card is among the most significant Negro Leagues baseball cards. The card portrays the 1914 season for the Tennessee Rats.  Based in Holden, MO, Brown’s “Tennessee Rats” were an independent Negro team. The popular team barnstormed as a Black Baseball team & Minstrel Show, traveling across the Midwest. Their success may have spawned a similar venture in basketball, the Harlem Globetrotters, founded in 1926. A great sadness from the history of the Negro Leagues flows from the hundreds of anonymous players who toiled in relative obscurity, unable to play in organized white baseball.  This card is a tribute to all such players.  This specific unknown player stands in unity with all of his brethren who loved baseball, but whose skin color prevented them from playing in the Major Leagues. Artist Graig Kreindler created this card using a photograph of the 1914 Tennessee Rats, copied in the card listing. The specific unknown player is found in the back row of the photograph, the third player from the left. Set Information - 2020 Dreams Fulfilled Negro Leagues Legends: Segregation prevented some of the greatest baseball players of all time from competing against their white brethren on the baseball field.  This injustice did not prevent these players from playing the game they loved.  Rather, on February 13, 1920, the Negro National League was created by baseball Hall of Famer Andrew “Rube” Foster and his fellow team owners.  In recognition of this historic event, Dreams Fulfilled was authorized by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and the players’ families to promote the Negro National League Centennial with the most compelling Negro Leagues baseball cards ever created - the 2020 Dreams Fulfilled Negro Leagues Legends. Only 5,000 Dreams Fulfilled Negro Leagues Legends sets were made. All card art was done by Graig Kreindler, the leading baseball and portrait artist in the world today. Graig’s artwork is in great demand and very difficult to purchase. On the card backs are found player biographies with history including the Civil Rights movement. The backs were created by Jay Caldwell, from the website Negro Leagues History.