Baseball was thoroughly segregated by skin color until 1944, when the first Major League Baseball commissioner (who was highly opposed to integration) died.
You're largely right, but in 1886 there were several black players in the minor leagues, one of them having spent 1884 in the MLB. The total segregation didn't begin until 1888.
Ah, thanks. My knowledge of baseball history mostly stops at “I read an article about the Negro League in Smithsonian Magazine once and it stuck in my head well enough to let me dig it out of Wikipedia for this conversation”. :)