I was in Detroit last year for a Sox-Tigers game that happened to fall on Negro League Weekend, each team donning their respective Stars and Grays attire for the evening. The uniforms, like most throwbacks, were of course cool but it got me thinking about the whole idea of retro nights in general, but also about the Negro League commemoration in particular.

Negro League weekend is now in its fifth year, and the MLB Civil Rights game enters its third, the latter for once happening during the regular season (Sox! Reds! Buck Weaver’s revenge!), but it’s odd to have to say this is the first year it actually counts, because acknowledging a highly shameful period of any institution’s past always counts. To some it may seem trite to engage in such ritual, as though old-timey uniforms could ever make up for decades upon centuries of misinformation and misguided fear, but that’s missing the point. Everyone knows a baseball uniform never resolved anything and it’s doubtful Bug Selig dreamed this all up thinking he was going to right a whole lot of wrongs with a weekend of third-place baseball by a pair of mid-market teams.

At the same time, events like this are absolutely necessary, not just as a look back in time but for a chance to look at ourselves in the here and now and ask how far some of us have really come since organized baseball decided it no longer needed the services of Fleetwood Walker.

Because there are those who inexplicably choose to keep racism alive and profitable. Because there are still those who don’t understand that one person’s skin color is not really cause for concern, that the world around us faces incomprehensibly larger problems than other people’s genetics. Because in some parts of the world, even some parts of our own country and even our own fair city, racism still prospers, and as long as the ugly side of human interaction carries on it only makes sense to counter it with reverence. And dignity. And yes, even a weekend of Sox-Reds baseball.

By confronting the awful roads down which certain lines of thinking lead and by acknowledging the achievements so many made in spite of everything that worked against them, events like the Civil Rights game don’t necessarily force us to confront anything, but might at least give someone a little nudge in the right direction.

Is it a superficial gesture? Sure. Is it still an important one? Absolutely.