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When he reaches his 90th birthday on February 25, 36 days after the inauguration of a person of color as the 44th president of the United States of America, Monte Irvin can truly say he has seen it all.

Born in Haleburg, Alabama, in 1919, the third youngest of 11 children of Cupid Alexander (C.A.) and Mary Eliza Henderson Irvin — his father a cotton, pecan, peanut and sugarcane farmer, his mother a schoolteacher — Monte Irvin felt the stings of segregation as a boy. For years, he refused to acknowledge Haleburg as his birthplace, his silent protest against the shabby treatment in Haleburg that prompted C.A. to move his family to New Jersey when Monte was eight.

He became a four-sport star at Orange High School, all-state in baseball, basketball and football and broke the New Jersey state record in the javelin, and he made occasional visits to Yankee Stadium and cheered mightily for Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio. But a young Monte could not help noticing that when the Yankees played the Red Sox or Tigers or Indians, there was no person of color on either team.

Later, Irvin would encounter bigotry when he spent three years in the United States Army with the General Service Engineers, an all-black outfit, and racism would rear its ugly head when he was a member of the Newark Eagles in the Negro National League, playing for little money and traveling by rickety bus throughout the country, forced to live in ramshackle segregated hotels and to eat in dingy segregated restaurants.

When he was discharged from the Army in 1945, the Dodgers offered Irvin a contract. Had he signed, he might have changed the history of baseball. Instead of Jackie Robinson, Monte Irvin might have been the pioneer, the trailblazer, the first black in professional baseball. But he declined the Dodgers' offer.

"I hadn't played baseball in three years," he said. "I had a rough time in the army, and I didn't think I was ready. I told the Dodgers I needed to get the old feeling again. I didn't want to fail."

He returned to the Newark Eagles, to the Negro Leagues, to little pay and rigorous travel and inferior conditions, and to segregation.

On October 23, 1945, Monte Irvin's world, and the world of many like him, changed when the Dodgers announced they had signed Jack Roosevelt Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs to a professional baseball contract.

"I remember feeling joy, and sadness too," Irvin said. "I remember mixed emotions of hope and despair — hope because it meant that black men finally would have the opportunity to show their baseball ability on the game's greatest stage, the Major Leagues. I knew what it was going to mean to hundreds of young African American baseball players in the future, and I was rooting hard for Jackie to succeed.

"I was happy for Jackie and for myself and for my contemporaries in the Negro Leagues, and for those that would come after us because now we had a chance that we thought would never come.

"At the same time, I was saddened for men like Biz Mackey, John Beckwith, Judy Johnson and Pop Lloyd, whose time had come and gone, and for Josh Gibson, Willie Wells, Ray Dandridge, Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell, whose best years were behind them."

Monte Irvin got his chance. So did Roy Campanella, Sam Jethroe, Ernie Banks, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, and we are all the richer for it.

All of these thoughts, these emotions, this joy, came rushing back to Monte Irvin on November 4, when he watched with pride and a sense of fulfillment as Barack Obama, a young African American, was elected the 44th president of the United States.

"I never thought I'd live to see this day," Monte Irvin said. "I'm grateful that I did."