Anson certainly played a role for refusing to play a game against a black player, but the some of the claims made in this thread (such as 3 and 49) are highly dubious. The 'gentleman's agreement' predated Anson with rare exception and continued without any exemptions for decades after he left baseball (and a quarter century after the man was dead). Even if one insists on treating the past as if it is the present and a vehicle in which to expect 2023 values and castigate those in whom we do not find them, Anson's responsibility for 80 years of baseball history seems to be overstated beyond what the ascertainable facts support.
I have a very hard time seeing an evidentiary based argument as to how he cracks the list for this.
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