Kansas City, the heart of America, a cultural melting pot, the breadbasket of the Midwest, and at one time, home of the Monarchs, the king of teams.

In Kansas City, barbecue is a religion. Meat is blessed with juicy spices and baptized in smoke. Barbecue and baseball have a lot in common -- heat, smoke, and sweat. Both arts use hard woods, hickory for cooking, and ash for hitting. There are pit-masters and there are mound-masters; one with slow heat and the other with fast heat.

Let's not forget Jazz or Blues, with its own KC style and uniqueness. Similar to a Charlie Parker or Lester Young saxophone solo, black baseball was pulsative, syncopative, creative, and tons of fun to watch.

Modestly speaking, Kansas City is the home of the best black baseball, blues, and "Q" in the nation.

Black baseball began in Kansas City around 1890 with the semi-pro, semi-organized Kansas City Maroons, who played at Exposition Park. Later, around 1897, came the Wall's Laundry Grays, who were sponsored by Chinese laundryman Quong Fond. That same year, J.W. Jenkins of Jenkins Music Company also organized a black team.

In 1920, J.L. Wilkinson from Des Moines, Iowa, revitalized the popular Monarch name, bringing his top stars from the All-Nations while adding some players from the Fort Huachuca army team in Arizona.

The first interracial contest for Kansas City fans came about in 1921. Wilkie challenged the Kansas City Blues of the American Association League to a post season exhibition series at Association Park. The park, owned by George Tebeau, restricted blacks in attendance to the top 14 rows of seats -- even when black teams were using the field. It was the best of nine, with the Blues prevailing, winning five of eight games.

The next year the fifth-place Blues met the Monarchs for a rematch. The Blues had led the American Association in team batting with a .313 average and had finished second in the home run derby with 112 homers. Eleven Blues had batted over .300 that season. The Monarchs' pitching staff hurled six complete games, and held the Blues to a .278 batting average. The slugging Oscar "Heavy" Johnson, of the Monarchs, hit three homers in the series, batting .368, with a slugging percentage of .842. The Monarchs beat the Blues in five of six games.

This was to be the last interracial matchup between the Kansas City teams. The Kansas City Star, the city's white newspaper, spoke proudly of the Monarchs' triumph:

The series has done more to boost Negro-organized baseball in this town with the white fans than anything else could have done. While they have always attended in large numbers, still the games they saw were regular league games and they have generally believed that it was an inferior grade of ball. But their eyes are open now to the fact that it isn't lack of ability that keeps the Negro ball players off the big time -- its color.