Ray Dandridge, third baseman for the Minneapolis Millers, broke the color barrier in professional baseball at Tinker Field and became the first person to integrate any significant public event in Orlando. Since its construction in 1923, Tinker Field had been a segregated ball field, but when Dandridge took the field on March 31, 1950, he ended Orlando’s unwritten ban against mixed competition in professional baseball and weakened a prevailing system of segregation in the city. Playing third base, he turned one of the game’s two double plays for the Millers, though Washington’s pitching was strong and the hometown Senators won 6-0. Dandridge had played in the Negro Leagues and the Mexican Leagues from 1933 to 1948, then received a call from the New York Giants to their minor league affiliate, the Millers, in 1949. That same year he won American Association Rookie of the Year honors, batting .362 with a .981 fielding percentage. In 1950, after his appearance at Tinker Field, he batted .311 with 11 home runs, 80 RBIs, and 106 runs scored to win the league’s MVP honors. He was a mentor to Willie Mays, was considered one of the best third basemen of all time, and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987.
