Scraps of History from Negro League Baseball’s Heyday

Carole Boston Weatherford

   The Poet Professor

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​In the foreword to A Negro League Scrapbook, Buck O’Neil, former player/manager for the Kansas City Monarchs and the first black major league coach, says “Segregation was the only reason the Negro Leagues existed. Negro League baseball was outstanding.”
 
The players—most of whom never donned major league uniforms—were equal to, and sometimes better than, their white counterparts. Negro League and Major League players faced off in numerous exhibition games. Negro League teams usually won those contests, O’Neil explains, because the African-American players had something to prove.
 
From 1919 to 1963, Negro League teams crisscrossed the country, thrilling fans with crafty pitches, frequent bunts, hit-and-run plays, and stolen bases—all without big salaries or a level playing field.

• Slugger Josh Gibson, a catcher for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, once hit a homer 580 feet, among the longest ever at Yankee Stadium. The Negro League’s home run leader for 10 consecutive years, Gibson hit 75 home runs in 1931.
• Pitcher Leon Day, a no-windup right-hander who played for the Baltimore Elite Giants, hurled a 95-mile-an-hour fastball. 
• Satchel Paige, the Negro League’s most popular and highest paid player, struck out 24 batters in one game and pitched 64 consecutive scoreless innings and 21 straight wins. Paige coined such colorful names for his pitches as bat dodger, four-day creeper and whipsy-dipsy-do. 
• James “Cool Papa” Bell, one of the fastest runners in baseball, stole an estimated 175 bases one season.
• During the 1932 Negro League World Series, all-star Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe caught in the first game of a doubleheader and then pitched a shutout in the nightcap. The Negro League boasted several so-called utility players who could play more than one position.

 
Jackie Robinson, who began his career with the all-black Kansas City Monarchs, took the Negro League’s fast-paced brand of play with him to the Brooklyn Dodgers, stealing home during the 1955 World Series. Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947—a milestone that O’Neil considers the first pitch of the Civil Rights Movement.
 
Since 1971, more than twenty Negro League players have been inducted—some posthumously—into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
 

A Philadelphia baseball park used primarily by the Negro League

Look Magazine profiled Jackie Robinson in 1946.

in 1921 the Elite (pronounced eee-light)Giants won a four game championship series against the Montgomery Grey Sox, making them the Southern Colored Champions.

1924 Negro League World Series

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Carole Boston Weatherford’s A Negro League Scrapbook recreates what life was like on and off the field for African American baseball players before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier. With lively verse, fascinating facts, and archival photographs, this is a celebration of the Negro Leagues and the stellar athletes who went unrecognized in their time.