An Anniversary and a Plea

Dick Lundy (photo from Baseball Reference.Com)

Today marks the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the first Negro National League. In 1920, Rube Foster led a group of owners in trying to create order out of the chaos that was black baseball prior to 1920. With the help of others like J. L. Wilkinson, owner of the Kansas City Monarchs (originally the All Nations) he formed a viable league that would outlast Foster himself (he died in 1928) and fail only with the depths of the Great Depression in 1931. It is a moment we should all salute, particularly in Black History Month.

But I want to point out one more thing. This year will mark the initial vote of the pre-integration veterans committee (what I call the “Geezer Committee”) of the Hall of Fame. They meet once in 10 years and 2020 is that year. There will be a predetermined ballot handed to 16 voters who will then choose people worthy of enshrinement in Cooperstown. And that ballot (probably of 10 names) should include Negro League players.

In 2006, the Hall of Fame made a major effort to add former Negro Leaguers to the Hall of Fame, and by and large did a good job. But when they were done they closed the door of the Hall to other Negro League players. They never said that, they would probably deny it if asked, but they managed to do it anyway. Ask yourself how many Negro League stars appeared on ballots that covered the period prior to 1947 since 2006. I won’t give it away, but I’ll give you a hint: it’s a number less than one. Effectively, the Hall has said that they are through adding Negro League stars to Cooperstown.

Think about that for a minute. There is no room in the Hall of Fame for “Cannonball” Dick Redding or Dick Lundy or Dick Whitworth (just to stick with the name “Dick”). Maybe you won’t put all of them in (I’d probably leave out Whitworth), but to not consider them at all is just plain silly. And there are others (“Candy” Jim Taylor, Spottswood Poles, Gus Greenlee, Bud Fowler come to mind immediately) who need to be considered; at least considered.

So this is a plea for the Hall of Fame to insure that at least one Negro League stalwart gets on the ballot for the next Hall of Fame election. At least look at them, people.

The Pride of Chicago

Chicago American Giants logo

Although baseball as we know it begins on the East Coast, Chicago has traditional standing as one of the earliest hotbeds of the sport. William Hulbert, founder of the National League lived in Chicago. His team, the White Stockings (now the Cubs) won the first ever National League pennant. But the Windy City was also the home of a number of Black Americans who liked the game as much as their white counterparts. If the Cubs were White Chicago’s team, the American Giants were Black Chicago’s team.

In 1887 the Chicago Unions were formed by Abe Jones, a local catcher and William S. Peters, a local black business owner and first baseman. Peters managed the team. The team was successful, being one of only two black teams to survive the economic downturn in 1893 (the “Panic of ’93” to historians). In 1899, the Unions were joined by the Chicago Columbia Giants. The Columbia Giants were the lineal descendants of the Page Fence Giants (a story for a later time) and included such stars as William Patterson and Sol White (who is now a Hall of Famer). They defeated the Unions in a championship match.

Frank Leland

By 1898, Frank Leland gained control of the Unions, and in 1901 worked a merger of the two clubs which he renamed the Union Giants. They were immediately successful. In 1907, Leland renamed them after himself, the Leland Giants. They were easily the finest black team in the upper Midwest. With the name change, came a bevy of stars from Black Baseball that made the Leland’s even more formidable. Pete Hill took over in center field, “Big” Bill Gatewood was on the mound, but the greatest find was pitcher Andrew “Rube” Foster. To Leland’s dismay, Foster had big plans and wanted to found his own team.

Rube Foster (with the team logo on the uniform behind him)

By 1910, Foster made his move. He claimed control of the team (and the team name) and renamed the team the Chicago American Giants. Leland hung on to a handful of the players and continued games as the Chicago Giants. But Foster had the big names, John Henry Lloyd, Pete Hill, Bruce Petway, and Frank Wickware.

The team was as successful as ever, but Foster dreamed of creating a black league to rival the Major Leagues. In 1920, he created the Negro National League with the American Giants as a founding member. They were, for most of the period of the NNL’s existence, the best team, winning pennants in 1920, 1921, and ’22. In 1926, with Foster’s failing health, and questions of his favoritism as league president toward the American Giants, Dave Malarcher took over the team and led it to pennants in 1926 and 1927. By that point, the NNL had a rival, the Eastern Colored League. The two leagues staged the Negro World Series which the American Giants won in both 1926 and 1927. In 1928, the ECL folded.

Economic crisis once again afflicted Black Baseball in the 1930s as the Great Depression caused the folding of the NNL. The American Giants remained viable and transferred to the Negro Southern League in 1932, winning the pennant before the NSL also collapsed. That began a period of transition for both the American Giants and Black Baseball in general.

A new Negro National League was formed in 1933, which the American Giants joined. They were good, but the Pittsburgh Crawfords were an all-time team and the Giants were unable to capture a pennant. In 1936, they played as an independent team, barnstorming games as they could find them. By 1938, they’d joined the newly formed Negro American League, but were never able to compete with the Kansas City Monarchs as the NAL’s top team.

With the admission of Jackie Robinson and other players to the Major Leagues, the Negro Leagues went into decline. The American Giants hung on through 1956, when they finally folded. By that point they were hiring white players and had lost much of their Negro League identity. But early on, the American Giants were one of Black Baseball’s premier teams.

MIBGs

The Judge

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were watching Ken Burns’ documentary on Jackie Robinson. When we were done she turned to me and the following conversation (more or less) took place:

She: Is he the most important player ever?

Me: Let me think about it.

Ultimately all that led me to thoughts about the Most Important Baseball Guys. And sorry, ladies, but it is all guys, Effa Manley, Helena Robeson, and the All-American Girls baseball ladies not withstanding (not to mention Marge Schott). So I put together, just for my wife, my list of the 10 MIBGs and you know you’re about to be let in on it, don’t you?

First, the usual caveats. This is a list of the MOST IMPORTANT baseball people, not the BEST PLAYERS. There is a difference. I’m looking here for people whose contribution is so important that it cannot be overlooked when detailing the history of the game. Also, I’ve done something like this before years back and I’m cleaning up that list because it included groups (like the Knickerbockers or the Atlantic) and that’s not what I’m looking for. As we really don’t know who “invented” baseball, the origins guy, whoever he is, can’t be on this list and the earliest teams are not a substitute for him.

So here’s my list. I reserve the right to declare, in a week or two, that it is utterly stupid and that this post doesn’t really exist.

Here’s my list of the 10 MIBGs in baseball history. First a list of seven non-playing contributors (in alphabetical order):

1. Ed Barrow invented the Yankees. OK, I know Colonel Ruppert owned the team and coined the name, but when Ruppert brought Barrow to the Yanks, he changed the fortunes of the team. As the team secretary (we’d call him the general manager today), Barrow was a knowledgeable baseball man who’d been instrumental in making the Red Sox a power (he’d managed the 1918 team to World Series title). Barrow went out and collected a number of players like Babe Ruth, Joe Dugan, and added new guys like Lou Gehrig and created a juggernaut that, by the time Barrow retired in 1946 his charges had won 14 pennants and 10 World Series’.

2. Do you like baseball statistics? Do you study them and quote them and use them to bolster your arguments? Then you owe a great debt to Henry Chadwick. A 19th Century sportswriter, Chadwick was the first to systematize baseball statistics. He invented the box score and came up with a number of other statistics that are still in use. New stats may have made some of Chadwick’s work obsolescent, but the guys who came up with them owe a debt to Chadwick.

3. William Hulbert invented the modern league system in 1876 when he founded the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (baseball was two words in 1876). The key word here is “Clubs.” Hulbert’s system put the clubs, not the players, in charge of the league. It created labor problems, it gave us owners who were first-rate jerks (including Hulbert himself), but it worked. It stabilized professional baseball and served as the model for all American team sport leagues (whatever sport) created since.

4. Byron Bancroft “Ban” Johnson founded the American League. After a quarter century of leagues coming and going, ultimately destroyed or absorbed by the National League, Johnson created a league that was stable enough to challenge the NL for players and gate receipts. After a short “baseball war,” the American League emerged as the equal and rival of the more established league, an equality and rivalry that remain today.

5. Kennesaw Mountain Landis was the first commissioner of baseball and, arguably the most powerful person in the history of the game. Coming into office with a lifetime contract he was able to clean up the sport in the wake of the Black Sox Scandal and to rule the game with an iron fist. He kept Branch Rickey from cornering the market for new players by opening up the farm system for other teams. That made it possible for teams to be more competitive. At the same time he was a staunch segregationist and almost single-handedly kept baseball from integrating until after his death (I never said these were all nice, enlightened guys).

6. If you are opposed to wage slavery and think people ought to be paid what they’re worth and what the market will bear, you have to tip your ball cap to Marvin Miller. Head of the Player’s Union, Miller revolutionized baseball by destroying the reserve clause (admittedly he had help) and opening up salaries. This led to more movement of players and thus more chances for teams to compete as the best players were no longer locked up forever.

7. Twice Wesley Branch Rickey revolutionized the game. A mediocre catcher and manager, he became team secretary for the St. Louis Browns in 1913, moved to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1919 and invented the farm system. This may have been deadly to a free minor league system, but it bound players to an organization in such a way that the best players were able to hone their skills in a team system, that emphasized working together, melding groups of players into a unit that knew each other and to at least some extent learned how to play together. It assured Major League teams of a constant supply of quality players (provided the scouts, owners, and executives knew what they were doing). In 1942 he moved to Brooklyn where he again revolutionized the game by integrating the Major Leagues in 1947. This action helped truly nationalize the game and was a major step in the civil rights movement of the 1940s through the 1960s.

And now two transcendent players:

8. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was not the first black man to play in the Major Leagues. There is evidence that William Edward White who played one game with Providence in 1879 was black. Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday, both of which played for Toledo (a big league club) in 1884 certainly were black. But none of them stuck. All were out of the major leagues within a year and the so-call “Gentlemen’s Agreement” re-segregated baseball until 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was an excellent player, a leader, and a person who could not be ignored as either a man or a player. His arrival opened up the game for an entire group of players who had been excluded for 60 years.

9. George Herman “Babe” Ruth revolutionized the game by introducing power as a central element of baseball. His feats were legendary, some were even true, but he became a household name unlike any other in the game and arguably in American sport. “Ruthian” still describes a larger than life feat in sports. He didn’t save baseball in the early 1920s (Landis did), but he made it popular again and became the centerpiece of the Yankees Dynasty that has been at the heart of baseball since 1921.

All of which brings me to the tenth guy. I thought about a lot of people, Al Spalding and Happy Chandler, Harry Wright, John Montgomery Ward, and Vin Scully, William Rufus Wheaton and Duncan Curry, Daniel Adams and Jim Creighton. All are important in American baseball history and I sort of hate to leave any of them off, but I’ve only got one place left and it belongs to

10. Andrew “Rube” Foster. Foster was an excellent pitcher in the rough and tumble black leagues of the early 20th century. By 1904 he was in Philadelphia and moved in 1907 to Chicago. Still a terrific pitcher, he became a manager and team owner of the American Giants. In 1920 he moved to form the first stable black league, the Negro National League. It was later joined by the Eastern Colored League. These leagues, led by Foster’s NNL, gave form and order to much of black baseball and made it possible for players to coalesce around specific teams. There was still a lot of barnstorming and player movement, but order was coming to what had been an essentially disorganized group. It made it possible for the black press to more easily highlight the black players and it popularized the game. Foster was confined to a mental institution in 1926 and died in 1930. The Great Depression killed the NNL, but the idea remained and a new NNL was formed in the 1930s. It joined the Negro American League in creating a stable playing system for black baseball until the Major Leagues were willing to integrate.

So that’s my list and my present to you on opening day. Feel free to disagree (I know many of you will). Now “Play Ball.”

 

 

Words Mean Things

Rube Foster’s Hall of Fame Plaque

Back when I was growing up there were, even in my small town, a handful of public accommodations. These included the waiting rooms at the local Greyhound Bus Station, the train station, a couple of town water fountains; things like that. There were, of course two of each. One said “Whites Only” the other said either “Colored” or “Colored Only.” It was normal where I lived.

“Colored” was an interesting word. It never specified which color, but we all knew. In the society my grandparents lived it was the polite word to use when discussing Black Americans. The impolite word began with an “N” and ended with an “R” and I’ll let each of you figure it out on your own. Even my Grandmother, who knew how to use it, let me know that “you don’t say that in town and you never say it to them.” The “them” was understood.

As I grew older the word changed. First there was Negro, then black, then African-American. I don’t use the latter much because I know a Joseph Mohammed whose parents are from Tunisia. He was born in the US and likes to remind a lot of us that Tunisia is in Africa and that he is, therefore, also African-American. Whatever is currently in vogue is probably better than the “colored” of my youth.

In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP) was formed. It used the word “Colored” proudly. It was a way to announce that “Colored” was not a word of shame.

All of which brings me to that noted revolutionary, Rube Foster. Did you ever think just how revolutionary Foster’s naming his league the NEGRO National League really was? No “Colored” for him. That was the word the white world used to describe Foster and his people. He would have none of it. He would choose the word to describe both himself and his league. The word Negro was around and in some circles coming into fashion. Foster stepped up to the plate (hey, this is a baseball blog after all) and slammed “colored” away in favor of a word that didn’t have the same stigma as “colored.”

He was somewhat alone in this. The other league that was formed to challenge the NNL was called the Eastern COLORED League. Foster hated the ECL because it challenged his control over black baseball, but he also didn’t like the name. None of this colored nonsense for Foster.

Today, baseball fans who think about the Negro Leagues (and there’s that word again, and it’s thanks to Foster) consider Rube Foster a great player, a fine manager, a league pioneer. He is all of those, but he should also be remembered as something of a revolutionary.

Big Whitworth

Richard Whitworth about 1916

Baseball is full of pitchers with short careers. Some are short because the guy wasn’t very good. Others are short, but have very intense periods of greatness. Hall of Fame pitchers like Dizzy Dean and Sandy Koufax fall into this category. For a handful of years they were truly outstanding then something went wrong. In Dean’s case it was an injury, in Koufax’s it was arthritis. Negro League baseball was no different from its Major League counterpart. One of the more prominent Negro League pitchers with a short, spectacular career that ended much too early was “Big” Richard Whitworth.

Born in St. Louis in 1895, Richard “Dick” Whitworth topped out at 6.5″ and 215 pounds, gaining him the nickname of “Big”. A right-handed pitcher he got to the Negro Leagues in 1914 with the Union Giants, one of the top teams in Chicago. He was famous for his fastball and almost, immediately drew the attention of Rube Foster of the American Giants, another major black team in Chicago. In either 1915 or 1916 Whitworth moved over to the American Giants (sources differ) and became, along with Frank Wickware, one of the team aces. For the rest of the teens he joined Wickware to dominate black baseball in the Midwest.

He was a strikeout pitcher who is one of several hurlers who are given credit as the predominant strikeout artist of the era. If his “stuff” was overpowering, and it seems to have been, he could also be wild, racking up a lot of walks to go with the strikeouts. But he was good enough that Rube Foster let Wickware head to the Detroit Stars while holding on to Whitworth. With Wickware gone, Whitworth understood his value was unmatched on the mound. He held out for a raise in 1919 and seems to have gotten at least a small one.

In 1920 he moved to Hilldale (a team that played in Philadelphia), where he helped found the Eastern Colored League. He remained there through 1921, then, his skills eroding, moved back to Chicago, where he had a couple more good, certainly not great seasons. He was through after 1925.

For Dean the problem was an injury, for Koufax, arthritis. For “Big” Whitworth it was a fondness for the bottle. From early in his career he was known to drink heavily. By the early 1920’s it was effecting his game. He was infamous for stepping under the stands before a game to take a few drinks before heading to the mound. There were rumors he drank between innings, but that was never substantiated (as far as I can tell).

He returned to St. Louis after his career was over and died in 1966.

As usual the question of how good was he cannot be adequately answered. His Seamheads numbers read 72 wins, 35 losses, a 2.56 ERA (133 ERA+), 461 strikeouts, 346 walks, and 249 earned runs given up in 877 innings pitched over 136 games. All that gives him 10.5 WAR.

As with the other Negro Leaguers I’ve looked at this month (Wickware and Barber) Whitworth had a drinking problem. Considering the problems facing black Americans in the 19-teens and early 1920s it’s frankly not surprising. What is a little surprising is how easy they were able to get booze after the Prohibition Amendment was passed. It seems that widespread ignoring of the amendment occurred in both the black and white communities. For a long time liquor was the drug of choice in baseball (both the Major Leagues and the Negro Leagues) because a lot of good players like the three I’ve featured this month (and others like Jimmie Foxx and Hack Wilson in the Major Leagues) lost a lot of time to “demon rum.”

 

Barber, Berber, Barbour?

Jesse Barber, middle of the back row.

One of the better, but more unknown players in Negro League history was Jesse Barber. He was a fine outfielder who spent time playing, as was usual for a lot of Negro Leaguers, a lot of positions. Considering how much time I’m taking looking at various aspects of the Detroit Stars, it shouldn’t surprise you that he wandered through Detroit.

Jesse Bernard Barber was born in 1888 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Before starting this post I looked at The Baseball Bloggess blog. She has a Virginia-born project there that is worth reading over. It tracks players, both white and black, who were born in Virginia. Had she done Barber, there would have been no need for this post, but she hadn’t. It’s still worth it to go check her out.

By 1909 he was playing ball in Philadelphia. He started as a shortstop with foot speed and a decent glove for the era. He got the attention of the Chicago American Giants, who lured him away from Philly. He played a little at short, a little all over the infield, and finally settled in the outfield. As the Giants lead off hitter he set the table for such Negro League stalwarts as John Henry Lloyd (who replaced him at short) and Pete Hill. He remained with the American Giants through 1919, then moved on the Bacharach Giants (Atlantic City), Hilldale (Philadelphia), and the Stars before finally finishing up in 1925 back with the Philadelphia Giants.

The career was basically successful, but beginning in the late 19-teens he developed a “fondness for the bottle.” As one writer put it “he lost his batting eye” to drink. It plagued him throughout the latter part of his career and is partially responsible for his frequent movement in his later career. As with the post on Frank Wickware, I’ll point out that drinking was a significant problem for both Negro League and Major League players in the period.

Again, you have to ask “how good was he?” And again the answer is incomplete. Seamheads lists his triple slash line as .296/.349/.387/.735 over 549 documented games. He has 683 hits, 143 for extra bases (11 home runs), and 239 RBIs with 57 stolen bases. All that gets him 6.8 WAR (and again remember that WAR is calculated over only 549 games).

“So,” you ask, “what’s with the title to this little rambling?” Well, it has to do with the frequent disagreement with how he spelled his last name. Newspapers of the era tend to drift between “Barber” and “Barbour” seemingly at will. One census form gives it as “Berber.” Considering we have no idea how Barber/Barbour pronounced it, have no idea how literate the census taker was, how much he was paying attention, it’s not a bad garble of the name. But it still doesn’t solve the problem. But we do have his World War I draft card.

Barber’s World War I draft card from Ancestry

There it is written “Barber.” Solves the problem, right? Well, not exactly. He later signed up for the draft in World War II:

Barbour’s draft card for World War II (same source)

And whattaya know, he spells it “Barbour” here. Maybe he didn’t know which was right and started with Barber, then changed to Barbour when he kept seeing it in the papers. I don’t know, but it makes for an interesting sidelight into his life. It’s, in fact, this sort of thing that helps make the study of the Negro Leagues fascinating.

Whether it was “Barber” or “Barbour,” Jesse died in Connecticut in 1959. And for what it’s worth I couldn’t find a picture of his headstone to see how it was spelled.

As a quick aside, one of the early governors of Virginia was James Barbour of Orange County (which isn’t far from Charlottesville) and in 1974 Charles Barbour became the first black mayor of Charlottesville. Roosevelt Barbour was city assessor for Charlottesville, and there is a Barbour Street in the town. All that leads me to believe that “Barbour” was probably the original spelling. But don’t bet the farm on that.

Power Play

John Tenny Blount

Being head of a league has to be difficult. You have to make sure of scheduling, of player contracts, of all sorts of things. It was also true of the fledgling Negro National League. In 1925 something like a power play occurred that attempted to topple Rube Foster as head of the league.

As mentioned in the post on the Detroit Stars, ownership of the team belonged to John Tenny Blount, which is true, sort of. Blount was born about 1871 in Montgomery, Alabama and migrated north to Detroit. By 1919 he ran a major gambling establishment in Detroit and was heavily involved in the numbers racket. Some sources claim he ran it in the black neighborhoods of the city, others don’t want to go that far. In either case, he was fairly wealthy, a major player in the black community, and knew Rube Foster. Desperate to have a functioning team in Detroit, Foster approached Blount about running the team. He offered a set of his own American Giants (of Chicago) players, albeit older players, to help “seed” the team. Blount accepted and became “owner” of the Detroit Stars.

Here’s where it gets a bit murky and complicated. My wife assures me I can complicate even the simplest things (It’s a gift). It seems that Blount didn’t actually own the team, at least not in its entirety. Foster, having more money than Blount, seems to have held a controlling interest in the team while Blount acted as more of a general manager than owner. He ran the team locally, scheduled games, took care of paying players, looked for talent, but Foster would ultimately call the shots. By 1920, this arrangement was part of the newly formed Negro National League, which had a rule against one man owning two teams (“syndicate baseball”) so it had to remain under the table (or at least be winked at by other owners).

On top of this issue, the Stars played in Mack Park, which wasn’t owned by either Blount or Foster. John Roesink, who happened to be white, owned the stadium and charged rent, thus adding to the influence Foster had on the team (someone had to pay the rent). But that meant also that Foster could control the scheduling of games at Mack Park, not Blount. Further, Foster got, as booking agent, 10% of the gate. The contract also established 20% of the gate as the rent, leaving Blount with only 70% of the revenue for team expenses (like paying players). As something of a quick aside, Mack Park burned in 1930 and the Stars had to find a new stadium. By that point the ownership issue in Detroit had boiled over.

The complicated ownership issue in Detroit was bound to create riffs within the upper management. By 1925 Blount was openly complaining that Foster was slighting the Stars in favor of his (openly owned) Chicago American Giants. They were getting the best venues, the best dates, the best players, and the Stars were suffering. Blount, by now league vice president, complained openly to the other owners that Foster was playing fast and loose with the league money. He argued Foster was drawing more money than his salary allowed and should be forced to resign. Foster responded by offering to open his book for the other owners to look over and further offered to resign. A league meeting in Chicago renominated Foster for NNL president and the vote was unanimous. Then the owners stripped Blount of the vice presidential job. By this point even Blount knew he was beaten. One source calls the episode a power play on Blount’s part. It failed and the upshot was, as you should have guessed by now, that Blount lost any control he had over the Stars.

It was, other than the decline in Foster’s health, the greatest crisis the Negro National League faced prior to the Great Depression. Foster weathered it easily, but it did point out to the other owners the continued risk of any like syndicate baseball in the league. Blount went back to his other businesses and died in 1934.

The Stars

Stars logo

It’s February and that makes it Black History Month in the US so it’s time for my monthly look at the Negro Leagues. This time I want to begin by looking at one of the better, but more obscure teams, the Detroit Stars.

With the major migration of American black citizens to the North just before and during World War I, the American Midwest black population boomed, mostly in the major towns of the area. Detroit was one of them. There had been baseball, and black baseball in the area for years, but the city was never a noted hotbed of “colored” baseball. Chicago and Indianapolis were leaders  with the American Giants and Leland Giants (both of Chicago) and the ABCs in Indianapolis.

By 1919, Rube Foster was beginning to form the Negro National League. He had the teams in Chicago and Indianapolis willing to join. Kansas City was available. But there was no team in Detroit that was capable of playing at NNL level. Noted Detroit numbers man John Tenny Blount (known almost universally as “Tenny”) had the money, the clout in the black community, and the willingness to join Foster in creating a team that could compete in a major black league. Blount founded the Stars in 1919 and Foster was more than happy to help him.

With the American Giants stocked with talent, Foster agreed to “loan” Blount a number of good players including future Hall of Famers Pete Hill and Jose Mendez to form a talented team. The addition of players like Frank Wickware and Edgar Wesley made the Stars a formidable team.

Twice the team came in second, and once dropped below .500, but were never quite good enough to win. During the 1920s they added Hall of Famers Turkey Stearnes, Andy Cooper, and John Donaldson to their roster (Stearnes essentially replaced Hill, although it wasn’t exactly a one-for-one replacement).  Much of their problem was the inability to put all these greats on the field at the same time.

By 1931 the NNL was in trouble. Foster was gone, finances were drying up, the Great Depression, was killing attendance. The league folded after that season. Several of the teams hung on by barnstorming, but the Stars, despite being good, had never grabbed the attention of the town in such a way as to overcome all the problems. When the NNL failed, so did the Stars.

There were attempts to revive the Stars. In 1933 a new Negro National League was formed. The ABCs from Indianapolis moved to Detroit, adopted the old name, and failed after one season. They tried again when the Negro American League was formed in 1937, but the results were the same as 1933, one year and disbandment.

The Stars today, if they are remembered at all, are known for the great players that moved through their roster during their short existence. Never a top-tier team, they were competitive but that was all. It would take integrating the Tigers in the 1950s to reintroduce black baseball to the Motor City at the highest level.

“Smokey Joe”

Smokey Joe Williams

Failure to integrate the Major Leagues prior to 1947 cost a lot of white fans the pleasure of seeking some of the better baseball players before that year. I’ve spent a lot of time this month dealing with the Lincoln Giants, so I thought it might be a good idea to spend a few words on their best pitcher, “Smokey Joe” Williams.

Williams came out of Texas in 1905. As an aside, Texas, in the first decade of the 20th Century produced some great Negro League players. Not only did Williams and Foster come from Texas, but so did Louis Santop who showed up in 1909. All three made the Hall of Fame.

His career was pretty typical for a Negro League player in the Deadball Era. He did a lot of barnstorming with independent teams and eventually hooked on with a team that got him recognition at the highest level of black baseball. Of course he also spent several years playing in the winter league in Cuba. By 1911 he was in New York with the Lincoln Giants and was an immediate sensation as a hurler. His nickname at the time was “Cyclone” but in the 1920s he became known by his more common nickname of “Smokey.”

He hung on through 1932 playing for a variety of teams in the era: the Grays, the American Giants, the Bacharachs, the Detroit Wolves. He did a little managing, usually of the player-manager variety. He died in 1951 and made the Hall of Fame in 1999.

As with other black players, especially those prior to the 1930s, the statistical information on Williams’ career is spotty. BaseballReference.com gives him numbers for about 111 games, but shows him starting 131 (got me about the odd 20 games there). It gives him a total record (including the Cuban League ) of 84-52 (which adds up to 136). He has a 1.152 WHIP, 726 strikeouts, and 303 walks. BR.com does show him as a decent hitter (he played some first base when not pitching). They give him a .311 average with nine home runs and 70 RBIs over 539 at bats. Seamheads gives us the following numbers: 123 wins to 76 losses over 243 games. There are 450 walks, 1135 strikeouts, and a 1.17 WHIP.

If you’ve been paying close attention to the February posts, you’ll note a couple of themes. One of the more important is the knowledge that what information we have on the Negro Leagues, particularly the earlier ones, is skimpy. Complete statistics are as rare as an honest politician. Notice that the two sites I referenced above (Seamheads and Baseball Reference) give very difference numbers. Without knowing for certain, it appears they have found different sources and different sets of games to document. There is probably much overlap, but nothing like completeness. And before I go on, I want you to understand that the above is in no away a disparaging of either site. Both have done excellent jobs in finding and documenting what they can. It is, rather, the nature of the information available that makes it difficult to determine specifics. As I pointed out in my first post for the 2017 February Black History Month ramble, what we are left with is a mere glimpse of what we missed by segregating the Negro League players from the Major Leagues. Hopefully, these short glimpses have helped you understand the nature of the problem and the kind and quality of what was going on in the black leagues.

And to finish off, here’s a picture of Smokey Joe Williams’ grave from the Find A Grave website. To show you just how incomplete the information is, I have no idea why there are three names of people seemingly unrelated on the same headstone. If anyone knows, let me know.

Smokey Joe Williams grave from Find A Grave

 

 

The Lincolns

Lincoln Giants jersey from 1910

When we think of Negro League teams, most think of the later Negro League teams such as the Crawfords, the Grays, or the Eagles. But way back before the founding of the first of the famous Negro Leagues, the Negro National League of the 1920s, there were other leagues and other teams. One of the more dominant of the early 20th Century teams was the Lincoln Giants of New York.

There is a bit of question about their origins. Their Wikipedia page indicates that an ancestry can be traced back to Nebraska in the 1890s, but doesn’t indicate how they got to New York. More conventional sources indicate that Jess McMahon (of the current WWE wrestling McMahon’s) was a prominent sports promoter in New York with extensive interests in Harlem. In 1911 he joined with Sol White to form the Lincoln Giants. It was a formidable team that immediately began to dominate black baseball in New York. With Hall of Famers John Henry Lloyd, Louis Santop, Smokey Joe Williams, and the likes of Spottswood Poles, Bill Pettus, and Cannonball Dick Redding (God, I love old-time nicknames) they dominated Eastern black baseball into 1914. In 1913 they played an unofficial black championship against the pride of the Midwestern black leagues, the Chicago American Giants, led by Rube Foster. The exact number of games and wins in the series is in some question, but there is agreement that the Lincolns won the series.

the 1911 Lincoln Giants

By 1914, McMahon was in financial trouble. He sold the Lincoln Giants, but retained the contracts of several of the big stars. He formed a new team, the Lincoln Stars, and competed directly with his old team. The Stars lasted to 1917, folded, and most of the remaining former Giants went back to their old club.

According to the Seamheads website, the Lincoln Giants were still doing well in the 1914-17 period, but fell off some due to the loss of many of their stars. By this point Smokey Joe Williams was doubling as ace pitcher and manager. It was the height of his Hall of Fame career. But the team ran up against a formidable foe off the diamond. Nat Strong (see my post “The Schedule Man” of 20 August 2015) controlled scheduling for black baseball in New York at the time and the Lincolns wanted to play more games than Strong was willing to schedule. They attempted to schedule some games without going through Strong, and were thrown out of the existing league structure in New York. Barnstorming followed.

With the founding Foster’s Negro National League, the eastern teams found it to their advantage to form their own league, the Eastern Colored League, in 1923. The Lincolns were a significant member of the league. They never won a league championship, finishing as high as third in 1924. By 1928 the ECL was on life support. A changing economy, weak teams, chaos at the top of the league (again another story for another time), and the dominance of Foster’s NNL, caused it to collapse.

The remnants of the ECL formed a new league, the American Negro League in 1929. It lasted one year. The Lincoln Giants held on one more year in a declining economy and finally folded after the 1930 season.

During their existence, the New York Lincoln Giants were dominant in the East. They won unofficial championships most of the decade of the 19-teens and led Strong’s New York league most years (which is why they thought they could challenge him). They provided Eastern black baseball with some of the greatest players of the era in Lloyd, Wood, Santop, Redding, and later Hall of Famer Turkey Stearnes. Not a bad legacy.

the 1911 version of the Lincoln Giants cap