Tom Alston

Thomas Edison Alston (January 31, 1926 – December 30, 1993) was an American Major League Baseball first baseman who played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1954 to 1957, the first African-American to do so. A native of Greensboro, North Carolina, he stood 6'5" and weighed .

Alston was acquired by St. Louis via a trade with the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League, where he played in 180 games in 1953, on January 26, 1954, after team president Gussie Busch told manager Eddie Stanky to find a black player. Not only did Busch think excluding blacks from baseball was morally wrong, his company Anheuser–Busch, which had bought the team a year earlier to keep them from moving to Milwaukee, sold more beer to African-Americans than any other brewery, leading him to fear the effect of a boycott.

However, Busch was somewhat disappointed by Alston. When he reported to the Cardinals, the team learned he was two years older than the Padres had claimed. Busch demanded they return $20,000 the Cardinals had included with the trade to account for two seasons that Busch believed the team could not get from Alston.