Baseball in the United States

By: Gerard Gryski

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Baseball in the United States

Question: “Just tell me, why do you think there is still that much prejudice in baseball today?”

Answer: “No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.”

Guess the year those words were uttered. 1930? 1950? 1970? 1987. The further irony is that the context was a late-night talk show commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the day Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier in Major League Baseball (MLB). On top of that, the interviewee was Al Campanis, who at the time was vice president of the Los Angeles Dodgers; Campanis was interviewed because he had played and roomed with Robinson and on many occasions actually defended him against racial onslaughts. Campanis was fired the next day. The event was a stunning reminder of the perhaps more subtle yet still pernicious underbelly of discrimination in the national pastime. In the contemporary era the issue switched from opportunities for African Americans as players to their inclusion as managers and executives.

Early Years and the Negro Leagues

In the middle of the nineteenth century, an impermeable wall separated the races in virtually all areas of American society, yet there were a number of rather remarkable parallels in the maturation of baseball for both races. The first baseball governing board (white), the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP), was formed in 1858, foundered during the Civil War and its aftermath, and was resuscitated in 1867. While there are unconfirmed reports that two African American teams played each other as early as 1861, in Brooklyn, the first officially recorded occurrence was “the championship of colored baseball” between the Uniques of Brooklyn and the Excelsiors of Philadelphia in 1867. A few months later the Philadelphia Pythians applied for membership to the NABBP but were rejected on the grounds that: “If colored clubs were admitted there would be in all probability some division of feeling, whereas, by excluding them no injury could result to anyone.” From that emanated a “gentleman's agreement” among white owners that would bar African Americans from major league baseball for decades. In a rather ironic historical footnote, major league baseball was almost integrated—albeit surreptitiously—in 1902, when legendary Baltimore Orioles manager John J. McGraw signed Charlie Grant. Grant had a light complexion, straight hair, and high cheekbones, so McGraw claimed that he was a Native American, Charlie Tokohama. Grant played all spring, but was banned from the major leagues before the start of the season when the plot was discovered by Chicago White Sox owner Charlie Comiskey.

While denied the chance to play major league baseball, African Americans could still play baseball, and so emerged the illustrious Negro Leagues. The first all-black professional team, comprised of employees of the Argyle Hotel in New York and organized by headwaiter Frank Thompson, was formed in 1885, bought later in the year by a New Jersey businessman, and officially named the Cuban Giants. In 1886 the Southern League of Colored Base Ballists became the first Negro league. Various Negro leagues foundered during the early years—primarily for financial reasons—and it was not until 1920 that an organized African American league (the Negro National League) survived a full season. With the exception of the Great Depression era, from that point on the Negro leagues flourished. The second league formed in 1923 (Eastern Colored League), and the following year the Kansas City Monarchs defeated the Philadelphia Hilldales in the first “colored” World Series.

An African American Baseball Player.  African Americans began playing baseball shortly after the game's creation in the middle of the nineteenth century. By the late part of the century black baseball leagues began to form, the popularity of which would spread throughout much of the country for decades to come.

(Library of Congress.)

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Many great teams played in the Negro Leagues, with perhaps the Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, and Kansas City Monarchs being the most remembered. So, too, did many superstars grace the playing field. Some students of baseball, for example, consider James “Cool Papa” Bell the smoothest and fleetest outfielder ever to play the game. Others would argue that Josh Gibson, who batted .362 over his sixteen-year career, was the best hitter of all time. In fact during his career he had over sixty at-bats against major league pitchers—including Dizzy Dean and Johnny Vander Meer—and hit .426, with five home runs. Of course no list could be complete without the legendary pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige, unquestionably the greatest pitcher of the Negro Leagues. His career spanned five decades, and some of his many accomplishments include: 64 consecutive scoreless innings, 21 straight wins, and a 31-4 record in 1933. No one knows how many games he pitched, but including winter ball in the Caribbean it is estimated that he pitched in over 2,000 games in the 1930s and 1940s alone, not counting numerous exhibition games. He was also the ultimate showman. According to legend, he would have his outfielders sit behind the mound while he struck out the side, intentionally walk the bases full so that he could pitch to Josh Gibson, and throw twenty straight pitches across a chewing gum wrapper that was used for home plate. In 1948 he realized his dream when he signed to play with the major league Cleveland Indians, at fifty-nine he became the oldest player to pitch in a major league game, and in 1971 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame—the first player elected from the Negro Leagues. Joe DiMaggio called him “the best and fastest pitcher I've ever faced.” Other former Negro League players who went on to star in the major leagues include Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Roy Campanella, Ernie Banks, Junior Gilliam, Don Newcombe, and Joe Black.

The promotion of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 not only opened the doors for other African American players, but also signaled the beginning of the end of the Negro Leagues. More than in any other sport, baseball fans and mavens relish an argument over who was the best hitter, pitcher, fielder of all time. Comparisons across historical periods are obviously tenuous. Perhaps the biggest tragedy for Negro League players is that segregation made it impossible for their greatest to play against the greatest in the major leagues. As a consequence, Negro Leagues stars do not get enough consideration in those baseball arguments over who was the best.

The Modern Era

The Dodgers were the first to integrate, and the Boston Red Sox were the last, twelve years later, with infielder “Pumpsie” Green. Ironically, Robinson had a tryout with the Red Sox at Fenway Park in April 1945, arranged by a black sportswriter. While Robinson demonstrated his skills, a man reportedly affiliated with the Red Sox yelled: “Get those niggers off the field.” Four years later the Red Sox passed on an eighteen-year-old outfield prospect playing with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues—Willie Mays.

Robinson was born in Cairo, Georgia, on January 31, 1919. He was a three-sport star at UCLA (football, track, and baseball), and in 1945 he signed a minor league contract to play for the Montreal Royals for $600 per month. Robinson was a man possessed of extraordinary athletic ability and incomparable inner strength. Branch Rickey, the Dodger executive who brought Robinson to the major leagues, once remarked that he chose Robinson for the historic breakthrough because, even though there were a few better African American ballplayers at the time, it was Robinson who had the heart of a lion. He would need it for all that he had to endure: not being able to eat or sleep with his team in certain cities, vicious verbal barrages from fans and opposing players (and more than once even from players on his own team), and cheap physical assaults from opposing players on the field. He persevered through it all, suffering along with his family the enormous emotional wounds that left scars years after his departure from baseball. After retiring from baseball, Robinson was a successful business executive. He died prematurely in 1972, at the age of fifty-three. Over his ten-year career he batted .311, was named National League Rookie of the Year in 1947 and Most Valuable Player in 1949, played in six consecutive All Star games, six World Series, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962.

A Chicago American Giant.  For as long as Major League baseball maintained its discriminatory color line, African Americans created their own teams and leagues. Here, in this photograph from 1905, a pitcher from the popular Chicago Union Giants takes the mound.

(Library of Congress.)

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The next milestone occurred in 1975, when the Cleveland Indians appointed Frank Robinson as the first African American manager in baseball history. Frank Robinson had been Rookie of the Year with the Cincinnati Reds in 1956, winner of the Triple Crown (most home runs, runs-batted-in, and highest batting average) in 1966, the only player to win the Most Valuable Player Award in both the American and National Leagues, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1982. Before his first game as player-manager Robinson said, “My feelings are that this is the end of a long road, but the sacrifices were worthwhile to get here. My only regret is that Jackie couldn't be alive to see this happen.”

The last piece of the integration puzzle in major league baseball is that of including African Americans in the front office. Here, of course, the focus shifts from the ability to play baseball to business acumen. In the weeks following the Al Campanis debacle, Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth hired African American consultants to devise a plan to increase minority recruitment. Within four years African Americans held 9 percent of front office jobs, up from almost zero. Bill White, a thirteen-year veteran with a solid but not distinguished career, was appointed president of the National League, and the number of African American managers rose to four. Diversification in the front office remains a muffled concern of Major League Baseball in the early years of the twenty-first century. The fact persists that while there are thirty major league teams, representation in the front office remains low for African Americans—even lower for Latinos, who now are the second-largest block of players in the major leagues, after whites—and every team is owned by whites.

Records and Distinctions

Baseball is a team game, but individual achievements are meticulously chronicled. In this regard, Henry Louis “Hammerin' Hank” Aaron is the beacon of African American major leaguers. Born in 1934 in Mobile, Alabama, he had a singular twenty-three-year career. On April 8, 1974, he hit his 715th home run, which shattered the record established by Babe Ruth. Aaron ended his career with 755. After retiring as a player, he became an executive with the Atlanta Braves, and in that position was able to address the nagging racial injustices in baseball. He once said that “Jackie Robinson gave all of us—not only black athletes, but every black person in this country—a sense of our own strength. I think my style in the early days was similar to Jackie's. In order for people to listen to you, you have to have done something.”

In the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, only two players are honored by having exclusive rooms dedicated to displaying their extraordinary contributions to baseball—Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron. Aaron was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1982. He holds the following lifetime records: most home runs, most runs-batted-in, most total bases, and most extra-base hits, and he stands second in at-bats and third in hits.

The individual achievements of African American major leaguers abound. Here is a listing of just a few of them (and keep in mind that the clock began running only in the second half of the twentieth century, in 1947):

See also Baseball in the Caribbean.

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