From 'late bloomer' to Hall of Famer, Monte Irvin dead at 96

They are called "older rookies" or "late bloomers," these young men who today arrive well into their twenties or beyond, who grow into their bodies or their lives after most. We applaud a spirit that kept them plodding ahead through the bus rides and the 50-50 raffles and host families' pullout sofas, and then who see something better through all that haze. That right there is determination, we say. That's why this game is great, because it'll wait 'til you're ready, within reason, long as you can hit or throw. Long as you believed. And it's true. Today, it's mostly true.

Then Monte Irvin dies and you look and, damn, he arrived four months after his 30th birthday, and that's a helluva thing, and it reminds us again that not so long ago it didn't matter if you could hit or throw or believe.

Irvin wasn't a regular big leaguer until 1951, two years after his debut and four years after Jackie Robinson, who'd arrived 74 days after his 28th birthday. Irvin turned professional at 19 with the Newark Eagles of the Negro National League. At 32 and in his first full season as a major leaguer he was third – to Roy Campanella and Stan Musial – in the National League MVP voting. Musial was 30, in his 10th major league season. Campanella was 29, in his fourth.

This at a time when baseball seemed out ahead of most, too.

Irvin, 96, died Tuesday in Houston, and so we recall a good ballplayer, a graceful man and a shameful period when some were required by the rules to be late bloomers. We nod to the distance we've come, regret it had to be traveled, do it some justice to remember, and hope the game is self aware enough to know there is plenty more ground to cover.

The Hall of Fame, into which Irvin was received in 1973 through a special committee on the Negro Leagues, on Tuesday afternoon released a statement with a quote attributed to Irvin. It read: "Early in life I learned, just through observation, that right always wins out over wrong. If a person has good intentions in his heart and wants to do the right thing, then there are certain ways that any obstacle can be overcome."

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday called Irvin, "… [A] true leader during a transformational era in our game. … Monte loved our game dearly, bridged eras of its history and touched many lives. Major League Baseball will be forever grateful to courageous individuals like Monte Irvin."

Another from Irvin, passed along by MLB historian John Thorn: "Baseball has done more to move America in the right direction than all the professional patriots with their billions of cheap words."

It doesn't happen without men such as Irvin, though. Not without those who believed, through the haze.