It can be hard to imagine sports without black players — a good thing, that shows what was once unimaginable has become quotidian.

But it is important that we cast our minds back to a more unjust time, to remember how things were and to understand how our today came to be.

Which is why institutions like the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City are so important.

The museum started off as a one-room collection of artifacts in 1999, and has since expanded to its current 10,000 square foot incarnation.

And Saturday, the space received a boost from Baltimore Orioles center fielder Adam Jones, who, according to The Baltimore Sun, gifted the museum with a $20,000 donation.

The money will go in large part to providing free museum admission to students at Kansas City’s Operation Breakthrough, which provides before- and afterschool enrichment activities for students up to age 13, and daycare to children below the age of five.

“It’s all about giving knowledge,” Jones told the Sun, “Give kids opportunities … I’m just a person who likes to give kids, give humans, give people an opportunity to learn.”

Jones learned a lot when visiting the museum over the weekend, “about the Negro Leagues side of it, their point of view — the things that they didn’t have as much as everybody else, the things they didn’t care about as much as everybody else.”

“When I walk through those walls, I learn. It would be selfish of me not to help other people learn.”

In addition to supporting free admission, Jones’ donation will also be used to build “new augmented reality technology” for the museum, according to its president, Bob Kendrick.

And, in a testament to making a dolla holla, the money will be further used in putting on a show to be called Barrier Breakers that will salute players like Jackie Robinson and Pumpsie Green.

Jones was inspired to become a museum donor he says, because “you walk through those doors, [and there is] such a love for baseball that it’s contagious.”

Thanks to Jones, a lot more people are going to catch that contagious love.

Negro Leagues Baseball Musuem

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