An underrated part of the single most significant story in the history of professional baseball, Jackie Robinson’s integration of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the National League on April 15, 1947, is that the man who broke baseball’s color barrier was also a transcendent talent. The headline is not that Jackie Robinson was a Hall of Fame player beyond his broader social significance, but he was. That Robinson proved what few truly doubted–that African-Americans were capable of competing with and excelling against the greatest white players in the world–turned the Black player from an anomaly to an inevitability.

Willie Mays was an even greater player than Jackie Robinson. He is arguably the greatest player in recorded baseball history and almost certainly the most well-rounded, a defensive wizard who just so happened to be among the greatest hitters who ever lived. Willie Mays was already one of the biggest stories in the sport this week, as his San Francisco Giants will travel on Thursday to Rickman Field in Birmingham, Alabama, his hometown and his first professional home field. The Giants’ matchup against the St. Louis Cardinals was already going to be a celebration of the Negro Leagues and, in many regards, a celebration of Willie Mays. And with the news on Tuesday night of Willie Mays’s death at the age of 93, the game will suddenly feel like an even more profound celebration of life.

Willie Mays debuted in 1948 with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. Mays was just 17 at the time, playing in a league that was no longer the only high-level option for African-American players, with the American and National Leagues having been integrated the year before, but it was still a notable accomplishment for such a young player. And, profoundly and notably, Willie Mays wasn’t all that good–he finished 1948 with an OPS+ of just 71, 29% below league average. This may read as a minor dig at a bona fide legend in the wake of his passing, but from my perspective, this just demonstrates how good his competition was. The recent migration of major Negro League statistics into the Major League Baseball official records was not simply a gesture of goodwill to atone for the past sins of the sport’s white power structure; it is a sincere reflection of the strength of these oft-ignored leagues.

One of Willie’s teammates in 1948 was a fellow rookie by the name of Bill Greason. Like Mays, Greason hailed from the deep South–specifically, Atlanta. Greason was young, albeit not quite as young as Mays–he was 23 years old during the 1948 season. But unlike Willie Mays, who would become a player who could be credibly proclaimed the greatest baseball player who ever lived, Bill Greason would never come anywhere close to that level.

In some ways, Bill Greason epitomized the largest project of baseball desegregation more pointedly than Willie Mays did. Although the prejudice of white Major League Baseball owners certainly played a major role in the continuation of the color barrier, hence why obvious superstars like Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston couldn’t sniff the white big leagues while Satchel Paige had to wait until well past his prime, it makes plenty of intuitive sense that the likes of Jackie Robinson or Willie Mays would be among the first permitted into clubs like the Brooklyn Dodgers or New York Giants. But setting the barrier for entry at Hall of Famers barely qualifies as progress. For true equal opportunity to exist, something that arguably was never achieved in full, journeymen Black players deserved a chance. Much is made in the legend of Jackie Robinson that Branch Rickey communicated with him a need to be exceptional–credit to Robinson for being so, but it is shameful that this was ever asked of him.

Bill Greason was not exceptional by the traditional standards by which we judge baseball players, but he was a good enough baseball player to warrant an opportunity. If he were white, he would have deserved a chance, and as a Black man, he deserved one as well.

And on May 31, 1954, Bill Greason became the first African-American pitcher in the history of the St. Louis Cardinals. Unlike Jackie Robinson, Greason did not have to take the field alone as a Black man–Cardinals first baseman Tom Alston, who had become the first African-American player in team history earlier that season, and Cubs shortstop Ernie Banks were there as well. And Greason was unexceptional on the mound–he inherited a two-run lead entering the bottom of the first inning at Wrigley Field but allowed a game-tying two-run home run to Hank Sauer. In the third inning, Greason allowed a second two-run home run to Sauer and then surrendered a solo shot to Banks. In the top of the fourth inning, the Cardinals pinch-hit for him. Bill Greason took the loss. Six days later, Bill Greason allowed a leadoff home run against Willie Jones of the Philadelphia Phillies and then proceeded to walk two more batters before being removed from the game. Two weeks later, 70 years to the day prior to Cardinals vs. Giants at Rickman Field, Greason pitched the ninth inning at the Polo Grounds against the New York Giants. He allowed a single and a walk, but Greason escaped the inning, for the first time in his Cardinals career, without allowing a run. This would mark Greason’s final appearance in the Major Leagues.

Bill Greason would continue to play in the Cardinals’ minor league system, but he never came especially close again to pitching at the sport’s highest level. He was, at the end of the day, an unexceptional professional baseball player. But he is a deeply fascinating man whose life was continuously interconnected with some of the most important people and events of the 20th century. Greason grew up across the street from Martin Luther King Jr. (he was four and a half years older than King). He fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima. Post-retirement, he was a member of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, where four children were killed in a bombing initiated by Ku Klux Klan terrorists. This event inspired Greason to become a pastor; he has served for over fifty years at Bethel Baptist Church.

With the passing of Willie Mays, who entered professional baseball in Birmingham before joining the Giants, Bill Greason, who entered professional baseball in Birmingham before joining the Cardinals, is now the last living player to have played in both the Negro Leagues recognized as major leagues by Major League Baseball as well as in the American or National League. On the night that Mays, who had been invited to Birmingham but declined to attend due to health concerns, passed, Greason threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the night’s festivities at Rickwood Field. Bill Greason, by the box score, was not a significant baseball player. By any standard that actually matters in the real world, he is a profoundly important person.

It may be too late to arrange at this point, but if the Giants and Cardinals took the field on Thursday with San Francisco all donning Mays’s #24 while the Cardinals took the field wearing Greason’s #34, I believe that it would be a profound reflection on the spectrum of Black trailblazers. The integration of the sport is great because it gave the Willie Mays and Bill Greason types a chance–regardless of which one was the better player, a matter which is beyond dispute, they both deserved an opportunity to play the game.