Emmett Ashford Notable

He was authorized to work as a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League in February 1952, the first Black man to umpire in organized professional baseball. Fourteen more years passed before a major league hired him. He was fifty-one when the American League did, older than every player on either field.

His first major-league game was at Baltimore on April 17, 1966, the Yankees visiting. The game logs name him behind the plate 205 times over five seasons, thirty-nine to forty-three a year, through Milwaukee at Oakland on September 30, 1970. That count is games worked at the plate, which is a floor: it does not include the days he worked the bases.

He never played professionally, so the statistical record this archive keeps has nothing else of him, which is true of every umpire and is its own kind of silence. He was known for hustling to make his calls and for a showmanship the job had not seen, and both were held against him by people who had not wanted him there. He died in 1980.