17. March 2025
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Museums & Exhibitions

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (Kansas City)

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum
4.8

Rating

 4.8/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Very well made exhibition
  • Nice focus on social and historic topics
  • Wide range of items

The so-called Negro Leagues were an episode in US-American baseball. Based on the separate but equal principle, these leagues were for black people only and not part of the Major Leagues. Nonetheless, the Negro Leagues had quite some popularity. In Kansas City, home of the longest-running franchise Kansas City Monarchs, a museum is reminding of this episode of North American sports. Here is my review of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

 

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum – Location & Admission

The museum is located in East 18th St, East of the city center of Kansas City. It is located in the same building as the American Jazz Museum in a really nice neighborhood. There is a public bus connection (line 18, 19, On 18th at Vine Westbound stop), which is connecting to Downtown Kansas City. Behind the museums, there is also a major car park, so that you easily can access the place by car as well.

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is closed on Mondays. From Tuesday to Saturday, it is opening from 10:00 to 17:00. On Sundays, the museum opens at noon. Adult admission is 10 USD. You can also buy a combined ticket for both museums, which leads to a discount.

 

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum – The Visit

The museum gives an overview about the Negro Leagues, which started in 1887 with the National Colored Base Ball League and finished in the early 1960’s. There is a focus on the period from 1920 onward, when multiple leagues were founded and closed. You first get an overview about the negro leagues, which you can deepen in a video in the theater. The key eye-catcher is a baseball field which is honoring the greatest (colored) players of the sports. The museum is coming with a lot of information, presenting the teams and the history of the very special league. Especially for me as an European visitor and sports fan, who is not that exposed to the impacts of segregation, it was really interesting to visit the sports museum.

The museum is not holding a lot of pictures, information and illustration – there are also a lot of original items. The range of items ranges from balls, bats and jerseys to complete replicas of team owners’ offices. The museum also has a brief look on how segregation impacted other North American major sports. I also liked the very critical way they dealt with the topic. One statement was roughly We went into war to fight racism – and we had it in our very own country. The museum, however, is also showing a lot of pride about the leagues and especially their local heroes Monarchs. As I am not that much into baseball and rather was interested into the social impact, my some one hour visit was rather on the fast side.

 

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum – Services

The museum drives a very nice gift shop. It does not only feature museum merchandise, but also some replica jerseys and quite a lot of media items.

 

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum – My View

Especially from my foreign country visitor perspective, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was an absolutely interesting and stunning visit. The museum is really well made and comes with good presentation. Their focus on the social aspects of segregation from a sports perspective was very educative to me. If you are around Kansas City, you should definitely have this place on your bucket list.

 

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