Richard Berg is a retired commercial jingle writer, producer and was the original voice of the Kool-Aid man. Aside from his creative background, baseball has held a major role in his life. Being a baseball fan and finding out about the league that very few people knew about at the time, The Negro Leagues, Richard’s curiosity drew him to learn more and eventually became a Negro League historian. As the statistics from the Negro Leagues were showing numbers equal or greater to the Major Leaguers stats, the injustice never sat right with him.  With baseball being one of Richard’s biggest passions in life, he saw a need in the early 90’s to help the surviving members of the Negro Leagues achieve the recognition they deserved. With the help of his co-founder and lawyer, Ed Schauder, they accomplished their goal. The organization was called The Negro League Baseball Players Association (NLBPA) 501C3 in 1990. The mission of the organization was to help the surviving Negro League players with their finances, educate the public on their history, and lastly, advocate for the most notable players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

Through the organization, it had been a privilege to get to know the players on deeper levels, blossoming into beautiful friendships, until the very end. It’s been many years since the start of the organization, and they have all passed on. To keep their memory alive, Richard found a new passion, tying both art and baseball together, in the form of painting his friends, to re-share their stories and to keep their histories alive, as he promised them. Richard paints the players as he knew them, elderly gentlemen with their names, histories and personal anecdotes that have endeared them to him, on the canvas.