The Case for Throwback Baseball Uniforms By CHUCK KLOSTERMANJAN. 9, 2015

Some Major League Baseball teams wear retro uniforms as alternates, allowing for increased opportunities to market jerseys to fans. I’ve seen some teams wearing Negro league jerseys as retro alternates. Ostensibly, they’re celebrating the tradition of Negro league baseball — but it’s an odd premise, given that Major League Baseball is the same organization that didn’t allow black players until after World War II. Is it ethical for M.L.B. teams to wear Negro league uniforms and potentially reap profits by selling them? PETE TOSIELLO, NEW YORK

Your argument misinterprets one important detail: Major League Baseball is not the same exact organization that once barred black players from the game (at least not in any meaningful sense). It’s a continuation of the same brand, but every individual involved with baseball before integration — every player, every manager and every owner — has been replaced, in most cases, multiple times. The institution has been entirely reinvented, as institutions must be allowed to do. The modern game has a historical relationship to segregation-era baseball but not a working relationship. Given that fact, the most important thing Major League Baseball can do — at least in terms of its racial history — is continually remind people that this kind of segregation once occurred and that many of the greatest players of all time were forced to play in alternate leagues for purely racist reasons. These throwback uniforms advance that goal.
The second part of your question is a little more difficult. In 1995, M.L.B. donated $143,248 to surviving Negro league players and to various organizations supporting their legacy. This revenue was raised by selling Negro league merchandise through M.L.B. channels. The rights to many Negro league logos are now owned by the Negro League Baseball Museum, and royalties from the sale of items featuring those logos (regardless of who sells them) continue to support the museum’s existence. Legally, everything here is fine. But when you buy a throwback sports jersey, you’re usually paying for a fabricated artifact of that league’s history.

What makes this instance complicated is not just the specter of race but also the fact that M.L.B. doesn’t have any institutional continuity with the Negro leagues. It would be different if the National League had merged with the Negro Southern League or if the American League had annexed the Kansas City Monarchs franchise. But that’s not what happened; instead, the various clubs simply folded, and the players moved on. So when Major League Baseball celebrates the Negro leagues, it’s celebrating a past that technically doesn’t belong to it and that exists only because of its past prejudice. Does that make the celebration unethical? Considering the league’s espoused motives, I would say no. But it is a little strange. Your discomfort is not without merit.