Page 14 - Florida Sentinel 2-2-18

The History Of Baseball
History Of The Negro Baseball League
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball play- ers comprising teams that were of predominantly African American and some Latin players.
The term may be used broadly to include professional Black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are some- times referred to as “Negro Major Leagues.”
In 1885 the Cuban Giants formed the first Black professional baseball team. The first league, the National Colored Baseball League, was organized strictly as a minor league, but failed in 1887, after only two weeks because of low at- tendance.
The league came into exis- tence because Blacks were not ac- cepted into the major and minor baseball leagues. They formed
their own teams in the United States because of racism, and had created professional teams by the 1880s.
The first known baseball game between two Black teams was held on November 15, 1859, in New York City. The Henson Baseball Club of Jamaica, Queens, defeated the Unknowns of Weeksville, Brooklyn, 54 to 43.
After the end of the Civil War, and during the Reconstruc- tion period that followed, a Black baseball team formed in the East and Mid-Atlantic states.
Comprised mainly of ex- s o l diers and promoted by some well-known Black officers, teams such as the Jamaica Monitor Club, Albany Bachelors, Philadelphia Excelsiors and Chicago Uniques started playing each other and any other teams that would play against them.
By the end of the 1860s, Philadelphia was known as the Black baseball mecca. The city had an African American population of 22,000.
James H. Francis and Francis Wood, two former cricket players, formed the Pythian Baseball Club.
They played in Camden, New Jersey at the landing of the Fed- eral Street Ferry, because it was difficult to get permits for Black baseball games in the city.
Additionally, the National As- sociation of Baseball Players voted to exclude Black teams after Oc- tavius Catto, promoter of the Pythians, applied for membership.
Still, in many ways Black baseball thrived with the teams playing each other and some white teams as well. In fact, Black teams earned the majority of their in- come playing independent white teams.
By the 1870s, baseball fea- turing African American players became professionalized. Bud Fowler is known as the first pro- fessional Black baseball player. Fowler appeared in a handful of games with a Chelsea, Massachu- setts club in April 1878, and then pitched for the Lynn Massachu-
setts team in the International As- sociation.
Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother, Welday Wilberforce Walker, were the first two Black players in the major leagues. They both played for the 1884 Toledo Blue Stockings in the American Association.
Two years later, Frank Grant joined the Buffalo Bisons, of the International League, the strongest minor league, and hit .340, third highest in the league. Several other Black players joined the International League the fol- lowing season, including pitchers George Stovey and Robert Higgins, but 1888 was the last season Blacks were permitted in that or any other high minor league.
The first nationally known Black professional baseball team was founded in 1885 when three clubs, the Keystone Athletics of Philadelphia, the Orions of Philadelphia, and the Manhattans, of Washington, D.C., merged to form the Cuban Giants.
The success of the Cubans led to the creation of the first recog- nized Negro League, the National Colored Baseball League Negro League, in 1887. It was organized strictly as a minor league and founded with six teams: the Balti- more Lord Baltimores, Boston Resolutes, the Louisville Falls Citys, the New York Gorhams, the Philadelphia Pythians, and the Pittsburgh Keystones. Two more joined before the season, but never played a game.
On April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I. Man- power needed by the defense plants and industry accelerated the migration of Blacks from the South to the North.
On May 2, 1920, the Indi- anapolis ABCs beat the Chicago American Giants (4–2) in the first game played in the inaugural sea- son of the Negro National League, played at Washington Park in In- dianapolis.
On March 26, 1932, the Chicago Defender announced the end of the Negro National League.
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