Major League Officials on Integration

 We want no makeshift club calling themselves the Athletics to go to Cuba to be beaten by colored teams.

Beyond the fundamental Requirement that a major league player must have unique ability and good character and habits, I do not recall one instance where baseball has allowed either race, creed, or color to enter into its selection of players.  The particular hypothetical question which you submit, however, indirectly involves all of the clubs of the League and is not within the province of the authority of the National League president to express an offical opinion on the matter.

Negroes are not barred from organized baseball by the commissioner and never have been during the twenty-one years that I have served.  There is no rule, formal or informal, or any understanding--unwritten, subterranean, or sub-anything--against the hiring of Negro League players  by the teams of organized baseball and never has been to my knowledge. If Durocher or any other manager, or all of the, want to sign one or twenty-five, Negro players, it is all right with me. That is the business of the managers and the club owners.  The business of the commissioner is to interpret the rules of baseball and enforce them.