History of baseball in the United States

Part of the History of baseball series.

The Negro leagues

A history within a history

The saddest fact of American baseball is that it has, until July 5, 1947, two histories. One fills libraries, while the other is just beginning to be chronicled well.

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African Americans have played baseball as long as white Americans. Players of color, both African-American and Hispanic, played for white baseball clubs throughout the early days of the organizing amateur sport.

Related Topics:
African-American - Hispanic

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As early as 1867, the racism of America showed up in its national pastime: The National Association of Baseball Players, an amateur association, voted to exclude any club that had black players from playing with them.

Related Topics:
1867 - National Association of Baseball Players

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In 1871 the first professional white league formed. Bud Fowler became their first professional black baseball player, with a non-league pro team in 1872. Fleet Walker a catcher, appeared in 42 games with the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association in 1884.

Related Topics:
1871 - Bud Fowler - 1872 - Fleet Walker - Toledo Blue Stockings - American Association - 1884

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Yet the racial tensions between white and black people that were present in society showed up on baseball fields. Cap Anson refused to play in a game with a negro pitcher, George Stovey at a game in 1887. This was a famous, but hardly isolated incident.

Related Topics:
Cap Anson - George Stovey - 1887

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In that same year, the International League's Board of Directors voted against approving any further contracts with black baseball players. While black players continued to find a few jobs in other leagues, the move set into motion racist tendencies that led to the unwritten "gentleman's agreement" a bar on black players in both major league and independent baseball clubs affiliated with the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues.

Related Topics:
International League - Bar on black players - National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues

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Black baseball developed its own network of formal, semi-formal and informal pro and semi-pro leagues. The progress of the leagues' development was much slower, because they lacked both the economic resources and the political clout to evolve as rapidly.

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The first professional black baseball club, the Cuban Giants, was organized in 1885. More teams sprang up. Sometimes they played in their own small parks. Some major league owners, smelling additional revenue, made deals with black clubs to play in the major league parks on away game days.

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By the early 1890s professional black baseball was foundering, with only one ballclub in operation. Closer to the turn of the 20th century, though, that turned around and leagues began to emerge in two power centers: Chicago and the Midwest and the New York-Pennsylvania corridor.

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In the dead ball era, black clubs were independent, without a real league. They played each other. They played semi-pro teams and barnstorm clubs. Some attempts at formal leagues formed and failed. Generally, each team booked its own schedule.

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Rube Foster, a former ballplayer with a gift for organization, founded the Negro National League in 1920. A second league, the Eastern Colored League was established in 1923. These became known as the "Negro Leagues." The Negro Southern League formed around the same time, but because of its distance from the East-Midwest power centers, and its poor finances, it remained independent and out of the loop from the other leagues.

Related Topics:
Rube Foster - Negro National League - 1920 - Eastern Colored League - 1923 - Negro Leagues - Negro Southern League

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From 1924 to 1927, these two black 'major' leagues held four Negro World Series.

Related Topics:
1924 - 1927 - Negro World Series

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The ECL was relatively prosperous but always unstable due to almost perpetual in-fighting amongst its owners. It folded in 1928. In its wake the American Negro League formed in 1929, but disbanded after one season. The surviving Eastern teams went back to the old system of booking games.

Related Topics:
American Negro League - 1929

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The Negro National League did well until 1930, when Rube Foster suffered a debilitating illness and died. Without a strong leader, the league entered into the Great Depression and folded, with its surviving franchises returning back to independent team operation.

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By 1932, the Depression had hit new lows. Unemployment, particularly in the African-American communities, was sky-high. Without money to buy tickets, and without the patronage of white major league baseball, whose contract purchases kept many independent league ballclubs afloat, most of the teams closed, sending players scattering anywhere to find work. Barnstorming tours kept a few employed. The East-West League folded mid-season of their first year. The Negro Southern League used to working with less, became the defacto 'major' negro league that year because it could keep major league players playing. Many more players went to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and other Latin American nations to find work in places where their skin color would not be an issue.

Related Topics:
East-West League - Negro Southern League

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Gus Greenlee and several others revived the Negro National League in 1933, piecing together teams from both the old NNL and the ECL leagues. As it was one league, the only rivalry between the two sides of it became the East-West All-Star game.

Related Topics:
Gus Greenlee - East-West All-Star

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In 1937 the Negro American League formed with teams from the Eastern part of the country and survivors of the Negro Southern League as its core. The Negro National League realigned as a more Eastern league as well. The composition of the two began to mirror the white major leagues' structure. From 1942 to 1948 the Negro League World Series was revived. This was the golden era of Negro League baseball, a time when it produced some of its greatest stars, and when it did so well financially that white baseball sat up and took notice.

Related Topics:
1937 - Negro American League - Negro League World Series

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Usual references to Branch Rickey's breaking of the color-line make it seem like some sort of Ghandian exercise in liberation. Certainly, from Rickey's Methodist Midwestern roots, the racism of the sport could not have sat well. More importantly though, the Brooklyn Dodgers' General Manager was a fierce competitor, a shrewd businessman and an apt showman. He watched the full stadiums at Negro League games. He saw the powerful talents on the field. WWII had been a drain on baseball's coffers, as many of their star players went to fight overseas. While post-war enthusiasm for the national pastime was good, Rickey believed that it could be better. Paying customers all had one color: The green of money.

Related Topics:
Methodist - Brooklyn Dodgers - WWII

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So, with the stroke of his pen Jackie Robinson signed the deal that on July 5, 1947, signaled the end of the Negro Leagues. The full effect was not felt until 1948, when stars like Satchel Paige were signed out from under the black clubs by white baseball clubs. The Negro National League folded again in 1948. Survivors moved to the Negro American League, which continued to play, in one form or another, until 1960. Effectively though, the Negro Leagues ceased to be of 'major' quality after 1948.

Related Topics:
1948 - Satchel Paige

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Heroes or ghosts? - Negro league players in history

The Negro Leagues produced scores of players as good, if not better than their white contemporaries. Most notable to the white baseball history world have been pitcher Satchel Paige, by records both official and ill-kept the greatest and most durable pitcher in the game; and catcher Josh Gibson, considered by some observers to be the most skilled hitter of all time, even better than the much-vaunted Babe Ruth.

Related Topics:
Satchel Paige - Josh Gibson - Babe Ruth

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A few of the other great names from the Negro Leagues that may be missed are Hank Aaron, Newt Allen, Walter Ball ("The Georgia Rabbit"), Sam Bankhead, Chet Brewer, Ray Brown, Williard Brown, Sam Crawford, John Donaldson,Lucious Luke Easter, Vic Harris, Monte Irvin, Chappie Johnson, Cecil Kaiser ("Minute Man"), Buck Leonard, John Henry Lloyd, Oliver Marcelle ("Ghost") and hundreds of others. These men, whose histories lay in the hands of poorly run clubs and poorly kept statistics and historical records, did not have the benefit of a powerful press machine made up of decades of adoring sports writers lavishing praise upon them. Most have become ghosts in the history of a great game which they were as instrumental in shaping as the white players of their days.

Related Topics:
Hank Aaron - Newt Allen - Walter Ball - Sam Bankhead - Chet Brewer - Ray Brown - Williard Brown - Sam Crawford - John Donaldson - Luke Easter - Vic Harris - Monte Irvin - Chappie Johnson - Cecil Kaiser - Buck Leonard - John Henry Lloyd - Oliver Marcelle

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Many of the Negro League players could give the white players in the Baseball Hall of Fame a run for their money. Had the leagues and teams kept more accurate records, some of these milestones would have buried the records of many of their contemporaries in white baseball. While many Negro league players were finally admitted for their achievements, many records still receive 'separate-but-equal' treatment from Hall historians, who maintain the god-like myths of the white titans of the game of that day.

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Negro league milestone - women in men's baseball

Perhaps the only class of people more discriminated against than black men in the national pastime were women. The Negro Leagues contributed one other milestone to professional baseball not seen before or since: Women playing in the men's game. was discovered by Bish Tyson, a former Negro League player. Dubbed 'peanut' by a batter because of her diminuitive stature, there was little else small about this right-handed pitcher for the Indianapolis Clowns from 1953 to 1955, whose career record was 33-8 as a pitcher who also possessed a batting average that ranged .262 to .284, against some of the toughest male players of the day of any color. The legendary Satchel Paige, whose Monarchs played the Clowns frequently, befriended Johnson and taught her a wicked curve ball. She was one of a handful of women ever to play with men in the men's game. She did it with great success. Were it not for Jackie Robinson breaking the color line, she would have probably continued to pitch with great success for years longer. Women of color would not cross over into the major leagues.

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Character and greatness in adversity

Black baseball was unique in many ways. It had a character and flavor that distinguished it from the white version of the game. The black version of the sport was populated by characters who talked trash and played to the crowd, and phenomenal players who made next-to-nothing and played with a power, passion, and intensity that was second to none. All of these fine black athletes layers would not let the dream die. They would prove that they were the best at what they did. They would survive and thrive in spite of white baseball's ban on them for the color of their skin. In the few instances of games played between major white and major black teams, the black teams usually won. One such game was worth a dozen Negro World Series to show that they could be the best at their sport.

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Black teams combined the best of great baseball, church, Vaudeville and the side-show to pay the bills and keep playing. Teams scraped by on very little. A few, like the Kansas City Monarchs, the equivalent of the Yankees in the Negro National League, did very well. Some stayed afloat barely from game to game. To cover the cost of traveling great distances, some teams would have to barnstorm, picking up games with semi-pro teams, company leagues, amateurs and even prison teams to make enough food and gas money to get to the next scheduled game.

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The road was hard for black baseball players. Many towns had whites-only hotels and restaurants. Players slept in the homes of fans on good days, on the bus, in a barn, or the booth of a tonk or bar on not-so-good ones, and out in open fields on bad ones. Sometimes they had to keep moving rather than stop for a meal, where none could be found. Usually though, once a team had established its "route," it also established a network of resources that would keep it running on the road that it would use in following years.

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Teams from the different Negro leagues learned that they played for cash in those transit stops, and for keeps in games with other black clubs. It would not be uncommon for a great black ballclub to lose a game to much inferior semi-pro or town team to keep the peace. Black athletes had far more to consider every time they took the plate, or appeared in public, than did their white contemporaries.

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With all of the hardships, though, the games in black baseball were just more fun. Satchel Paige would taunt batters by telling them to pick where on the plate they wanted him to throw it. He would drop it right where they liked it, but they still couldn't touch it. He had numerous names for his pitches, including the famed "Bee Ball," so-named because it could "...be where I want it to be." Pitchers would invoke the crowd into chants and taunts. One story without attribution recounts the tale of a batter who used to seat well-dressed, great looking women behind home plate to distract a particularly tough pitcher. Truth or myth, it is a fair representation of the colorful nature of the game.

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Negro league ball has also been characterized as being much quicker in pace. This would be in part due to the excellence of the athletes, but in larger part also due to their schedules, which often had them playing over greater distances traveling by car or bus between daily games without breaks, or up to three games in a single day.

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The first international leagues

While many of the players that made up the black baseball teams were African-Americans, many more were Latin Americans from nations that deliver some of the greatest talents that make up the major league rosters of today. Black players moved freely through the rest of baseball, playing in Canadian Baseball, Mexican Baseball, Caribbean Baseball, and Central America and South America where more than a few found that level of fame that they were unable to attain in the country of their birth.

Related Topics:
Latin American - Canadian Baseball - Mexican Baseball - Caribbean Baseball - Central America - South America

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