PATERSON, N.J. — When Bob Kendrick visited Hinchliffe Stadium in 2014, all he could do was hope. Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., had journeyed east for a ceremony that recognized Hinchliffe as a National Historic Landmark. The stadium is one of the last of the Negro leagues ballparks still standing, but it was almost impossible to tell at the time. So had local products like Monte Irvin and Larry Doby, who followed Jackie Robinson in the first wave of integrating the American and National Leagues on their own paths to Cooperstown. Two other teams, the New York Black Yankees and the New York Cubans, called the stadium home as well.

---