Adam Jones appreciates the history of black baseball players and what they went through. If not for them, he may not have gotten the chance to be where he is now: playing centerfield for the Baltimore Orioles. To offer his thanks, Jones donated $20,000 to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City during a visit last weekend. 

“It’s about the game of baseball, about the Negro Leagues side of it, their point of view — the things that they didn’t have as much as everybody else, the things that they didn’t care about as much as everybody else,” Jones told The Baltimore Sun. “Just the sheer game of baseball. You walk through those doors, such a love for baseball that it’s contagious.”

Jones was a fixture in sports and political news headlines recently after publicly chastising Boston Red Sox fans for throwing peanuts and racial epithets at him during a recent game. The issue put both the city, fanbase and Major League Baseball under a microscope in regards to their handling of diversity and racism.

Once the discussion was sparked, fellow Black players spoke out against the racism they’ve also felt, particularly in Boston. Red Sox fans attempted to show solidarity by giving Jones a standing ovation during his first at-bat the next day. [Note: Only about half of the stadium complied.]

There’s a chance Jones was planning to donate to the museum regardless of what happened recently. However, putting it all in context provides a great close to the chapter Jones and baseball have been in recently.