JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — For the first 12 years of her life, Tazena Kennedy did not know that her father was a Philadelphia Phillie. She did not know that he was the first African American Philadelphia Phillie, either, and she didn’t even hear it from him. She heard it from his sister, Edith.

One day, while Tazena was visiting, Edith opened a wooden chest in her spare bedroom. She carefully pulled out a copy of Ebony Magazine, and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. She pointed to a black and white photograph of a man wearing a Phillies cap, and asked, “Do you know who this is?”

“No,” Tazena replied.

“This is your father,” she answered, explaining that on April 22, 1957, John Irvin Kennedy stepped onto big-league grass, becoming the first African American player to do so in a Phillies uniform.

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Tazena couldn’t believe it. She ran out to Edith’s garage, where John was collecting some of his personal belongings. She asked him if it was true. He said it was. And that was that.

John’s time in Philadelphia was short-lived. After establishing himself in the Negro Leagues, his then-team, the Kansas City Monarchs, sold his contract to the Phillies in 1956. The following year, he earned a spot in their big-league spring training camp, where he batted over .300. The Phillies were in desperate need of a shortstop, and Kennedy had good hands and could play multiple positions.

In March of 1957, then-general manager Roy Hamey told reporters that the shortstop job was Kennedy’s to lose, and that’s what happened. A week and a half before opening day, the Phillies traded for Chico Fernandez, naming him their starting shortstop. Kennedy didn’t get into a game until April 22, as a pinch-runner. He appeared in five games, and had just two at-bats before the Phillies sent him down to the minor leagues. They would never call him up again.

Through his 50s, 60s, and even through his 70s, Kennedy played in a men’s 30-and-over baseball league in Jacksonville, refusing to let go of the sport that had let go of him. He rarely talked about those five games, those two at-bats, and when he did, it was brief. But he did wonder how he would have fared if he had made his debut a few years later. Or if the color of his skin were white. Or if he hadn’t been the first African American Phillies player, but rather, the second.

“If I had come up with a team that had an established Black player in place, that could have helped,” he told a reporter in 1997. “Being second is always easier than being first. Sometimes, expectations are just higher than they should be.”

“I still think my dad is a hero. He was recruited to...one of the more racist teams in Major League Baseball.”

It wasn’t just that Kennedy was first; it was that he was first on a team whose manager had viciously jeered Jackie Robinson a decade earlier. It was that he was first on the last National League team to integrate, a team that had been getting public pressure from the NAACP to do so.

“I know he was happy to get the opportunity,” Tazena said, “but he felt disappointment that his career didn’t last longer, like Jackie Robinson’s. I still think my dad is a hero. He was recruited to a team that was considered one of the more racist teams in Major League Baseball. That in itself — the fact that he made it — is an accomplishment. You couldn’t have been a mediocre player for them to put you on their team. You had to be outstanding.”

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The Phillies never told Kennedy why they sent him down, or why they released him in 1960. Some historians believe it was over a discrepancy about his real age, which Tazena disputes. Others believe it had to do with a shoulder injury that he suffered late in spring training. The real reason matters less now than it did when Kennedy was still alive. His time with the Phillies didn’t define him, and it didn’t weigh on him, and yet, for the last 41 years of his life, one lingering question went unanswered: How could he have gone from being a player with so much promise, to a player whose promise was overlooked?

Tazena remembers her father talking about a recurring dream. John is driving to Connie Mack Stadium. He arrives, and he can see his teammates on the field, but he can’t figure out how to get inside the ballpark. Once inside, he can’t find the locker room. An usher walks him over, and just as he’s about to open the doors, he wakes up.

“It’s strange, huh?” Kennedy said in 1997. “I have that dream all the time. I can never quite get there.”

He died of a heart attack a year later.

When Tazena cleaned out her father’s house, she found a box of newspaper clippings. There were clippings from Canada, where he played semi-pro baseball, clippings from Birmingham and Kansas City, where he played in the Negro Leagues. There were clippings from Philadelphia, of course, and box scores, lists of minor league batting leaders, recaps from spring training games. Her father carefully cut them out, one by one.

Now, they’re laminated, and kept in the back of Tazena’s house. On a hot Monday night in Jacksonville, she pushes open a screen door to reveal an entire wall dedicated to John Irvin Kennedy. The centerpiece is his glove, which is kept in a glass case. Alongside it are medals from his time in the military; a key to the city of Birmingham; letters from the former governor of Florida, Lawton Chiles; and from former President Bill Clinton, commending Kennedy for his time spent in the Negro Leagues.

There is no letter from the Phillies. Rob Holiday, the Phillies director of amateur scouting administration, joined the club in 1987. He said the Phillies tried to contact Kennedy and his family, but weren’t able to reach them.

“I don’t know why they haven’t recognized him,” Tazena said. “It might be that they feel shame for not giving him an extended look. I’m not sure. But we’re not waiting for it. It would be nice, even if it were something small, but we’re not waiting for it.”

In 2008, when a granite marker was placed on Kennedy’s unmarked grave, Phil Myers, father of former Phillies pitcher and Jacksonville native Brett Myers, attended the ceremony. He presented Tazena with a jersey that had Kennedy’s No. 8 stitched on the back, and told her she is “a Phillie for life.”

She appreciated the sentiment, but would have appreciated it more if the club itself had somehow recognized her father with a plaque at the ballpark, a letter from the team, a short dedication on Jackie Robinson Day. For Tazena, it is not about validating her father’s career. It’s about introducing a new generation of fans to John Irvin Kennedy so he doesn’t become a footnote in the story of this franchise.

“I don’t know why [the Phillies] haven’t recognized him. It might be that they feel shame... But we’re not waiting for it.”

But for now, that’s what it feels like. Kennedy can’t be found in Citizens Bank Park, to Holiday’s knowledge. Kennedy is briefly mentioned on the Phillies website, but you have to dig to find him there. Holiday would mention Kennedy’s name to youth baseball groups, but he isn’t aware of any celebration or commemoration beyond that. Tazena, who has a full-time job as a mental health professional, and five young grandchildren to help take care of, is the one who is keeping his story alive.

It’s a role she’s used to. When Tazena first learned about her father’s history with the Phillies, she excitedly told her friends at school. None of them believed her. So she returned with a newspaper article, complete with a photo of John in Phillies gear, tangible proof that he’d crossed those thick white lines, even if it was just for five games and two at-bats.

Since then, she has been ready to tell her father’s story to anybody who will listen. But few fans are even aware of who John Irvin Kennedy was, and without the Phillies’ help in promoting him, it seems that is unlikely to change. Until it does, his story will stay kept within the family.

Tazena grew up watching her father’s men’s league baseball games, and later in life, John brought her children to watch them, too.

They knew their grandfather for his home-cooked meals, for making the best tubs of bubble bath water, and for driving them to school, but they also knew him for his career. They knew he was a ballplayer so skilled that he played until he was 71. They knew that he’d been combatting racism long before and after his debut with the Phillies. For years, Kennedy’s teams were prohibited from playing in white neighborhoods. If they wanted to play an all-white men’s team, that team would have to drive out to his part of Jacksonville.

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In the 1990s, he played most of his games at a local high school field just off Firestone Road. The field was named after Nathan B. Forrest, a former Confederate general and a founding leader of the Klu Klux Klan. But that didn’t deter Kennedy. He was going to keep playing the sport he loved, even if it didn’t love him back.

A few years before Kennedy died, a local Jacksonville television station aired a segment about him, which Tazena taped and showed to her grandson, Elijah. She said when Elijah was about 4 years old, he’d ask her to play it over and over again.

“Tutu,” he’d say, “can I watch great grandaddy slide?”

Now, Elijah is 11 years old, and on a youth baseball team of his own. He’s well aware of his great grandfather’s legacy, and is proud of it. He says he plays baseball because his great grandfather played it.

When Tazena reflects on her father’s greatest impact, she needs only to look at Elijah: a young boy, watching a man, the grandson of slaves, play baseball at the highest level. It sends his mind soaring. He thinks to himself, “Maybe I can do that, too.”