As Jackie Robinson's legacy gets fresh attention with the biopic 42, a lot of attention is rightfully paid to doors he opened and paths he helped lay for successive generations of black major leaguers.

Without question, Robinson's Herculean accomplishments as a trailblazer should be remembered fondly. 

But there's also a sadly ironic flip side to that legacy, one that has seemed too easy to forget amid all the fanfare: Robinson's entry into the majors also marked the beginning of the end for some of the the most lucrative and successful black businesses the nation has seen -- the Negro Leagues. 

Robinson's historic rookie year with the Brooklyn Dodgers forced the all-white major leagues -- and the nation, to a degree -- to grapple seriously with the notion that black stars could be every bit equal to, or even better than, their white counterparts.

But while baseball eventually made its peace with the integration of black players, the MLB never made room for any of the black teams -- and, by extension, black owners, managers, vendors, etc. -- that found success catering to the millions of African-American fans whom the majors had so coldly overlooked.

Despite the fact that many Negro Leagues teams were popular, well-established and run with the same professionalism and efficiency of squads in the American and National Leagues, baseball shut every last one of the black owners out. 

In that sense, the story of Jackie Robinson's integration of baseball is the very story of black integration as a whole: Even as individual blacks benefited, many of the black-run institutions that had served them so faithfully in the shadows of Jim Crow were left to shrivel and die. 

Disintegration Followed Integration

Whether it was historically black colleges and universities, black retailers or black baseball teams -- integration often meant blacks leaving these insitutitions behind.

For black baseball, according to negroleaguebaseball.com, the disintegration that followed integration didn't take long at all:

Robinson's success opened the floodgates for a steady stream of black players into organized baseball. Robinson was shortly joined in Brooklyn by Negro League stars Roy Campanella, Joe Black and Don Newcombe, and Larry Doby became the American League's first black star with the Cleveland Indians. By 1952 there were 150 black players in organized baseball, and the "cream of the crop" had been lured from Negro League rosters to the integrated minors and majors.

During the four years immediately following Robinson's debut with the Dodgers virtually all of the Negro Leagues' best talent had either left the league for opportunities with integrated teams or had grown too old to attract the attention of major league scouts. With this sudden and dramatic departure of talent black team owners witnessed a financially devastating decline in attendance at Negro League games. The attention of black fans had forever turned to the integrated major leagues, and the handwriting was on the wall for the Negro Leagues.

The Negro National League disbanded after the 1949 season, never to return. After a long and successful run black baseball's senior circuit was no longer a viable commercial enterprise. Though the Negro American League continued on throughout the 1950s, it had lost the bulk of its talent and virtually all of its fan appeal. After a decade of operating as a shadow of its former self, the league closed its doors for good in 1962.

Teams like the Homestead/Washington Grays, the New York Black Yankees, the Philadelphia Stars and the Newark Eagles soon faded into oblivion, only to be resurrected decades later as throwback jerseys and inspirations for one-off celebrations by the MLB teams that had once sucked them dry.

This certainly isn't an argument against ending legal segregation, mind you. Nor is it meant to be even a back-handed knock of the gains that Robinson made possible (though he does deserve some criticism for how he allowed himself to be used politically).

Remember the Price Paid

Black people have every right to enjoy the full fruit of American citizenship -- and that includes the offerings of its finest institutions. Negro Leagues stars like Robinson, Satchel Paige, Larry Doby, Hank Aaron absolutely deserved every opportunity they fought for in the majors, not to mention the plenty of chances they didn't receive.

Further, I appreciate that the MLB provides small pensions to some Negro Leagues old-timers.

But every time some ball club trots out a former Negro Leagues star who never got his due in the majors, every time the Tigers dress up like the Detroit Stars or the Pittsburgh Pirates as the Grays, every time some player dons the No. 42 jersey, we need to remember that the price paid for this version of integration wasn't merely the racist slurs men like Robinson and Doby endured on the base paths and in big-league stadiums.

We need to realize that the dearth of black owners in pro sports that persists. Sure, many blacks have minority stakes in various clubs, but Michael Jordan is the only black principal owner of a major team. 

And even as we stream into theaters to watch 42 and pat ourselves on the back for how far we've come socially, we need to remember that, for all Robinson's great successes, the broader promise of sports integration will be fulfilled when there are proportionally as many African-Americans occupying owner's suites as there are in locker rooms.