Although many aspects of the early days of baseball have been well
documented, historians are just beginning to chronicle the major role that
Black athletes played in making professional baseball popular. Black ball
players have played the game for about as many years as White players.
Players of color, both Black and Hispanic, were on mostly White ball clubs in
the first days of amateur ball, but when the majors started to become
popular in the early 1900¡¯s, an unwritten barbaric rule went into effect that
kept players of color out of professional baseball.
At that time, segregation was the poison that had drained our society of its
full potential. In baseball, it robbed us of the opportunity to witness some
of the greatest athletes of all time on an even playing field. It was a time
when legends such as Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Cy Young came
to light. What would be our perception of those legends if segregation had
not skewed our vision?
Minority players who might have achieved greatness in the majors were
relegated to the minor leagues or, as they were called, the Negro Leagues.
Life was tough for the Black ball player in those days. There were many
sordid incidents, including clashes with the Klan, spitting on players from
the stands, and the throwing of rocks at team buses. Yes there was
definitely a "color barrier," not only for baseball but for America.
Many of the statistics and numbers from the Negro Leagues are unknown,
and the talking points about greatness in the league cannot be verified
because the games, events and incidents were not documented properly.
Until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, much of the history of
players of color was forgotten and lost. Mostly, all we have as a resource
are the stories of the players that played in the Negro Leagues.
Walter "Dirk" Gibbons, a pitcher with the Indianapolis Clowns, said,
"Nobody wants to believe we were as good as they say we were, but I can
vouch for it, I was there. I know these guys were really that good. All we
wanted was a chance to prove we could play the game. I knew sooner or
later it would happen, but we had to go through so much before it really
did happen." Walter Gibbons should know what good is; by his own
account, he was a 19-game winner with 229 strikeouts in one season. The
Indianapolis Clowns were also the team that produced Hank Aaron. In
considering what happened, Gibbons succinctly noted, "It was segregation,
and that is just the way it was."
At one time, much of what went on in the Negro Leagues was ignored. In
fact, Gibbons claimed that Jackie Robinson wasn¡¯t the best player in the
leagues. "He was good, but he wasn¡¯t the best," said Gibbons. Other
players, like Satchel Paige and Larry Doby have a place in the history of
baseball once they entered the majors, but what about their
accomplishments when they were locked out of the all-White leagues?
At the end of the Civil War, the Negro Leagues started to develop with the
creation of unofficial and unorganized teams. The first Black professional
team took the field in 1885 in Babylon, New York. White reporters named
the team the "Cuban Giants" in an attempt to attract White teams to play
them. By the end of the 1860¡¯s, there were a number of Black baseball
teams in the Philadelphia area that would play against any other team,
professional or not.
By 1885, Black baseball started to organize with the official formation of the
Southern League of Base Ballists. In 1888, the Middle States League
appeared and admitted two all-Black teams, the Cuban Giants and the New
York Gorhams. After a long and blurry history of organizational forming,
dissolving and reforming, Bill Veeck attempted to buy the Philadelphia
Phillies, announcing that he would recruit Black players for his club. The
National League stepped in and bought the Phillies, handing the club over
to William Cox, who had no such intentions.
Finally in 1945, Branch Rickey, a member of the Major League Committee on
Baseball Integration, searched the national and international baseball
scene. He was looking for the best player candidate to break the color line
in Major League Baseball. His perfect candidate turned out to be Jackie
Robinson. It has been suggested that Robinson wasn¡¯t the first player to
break through the color barrier; that there were others before him. While
there may be some truth to that, Jackie Robinson will always be
remembered as the player who started to change the public¡¯s attitude
toward segregation.
Today, there¡¯s a concerted effort to remember the past. In February 2006,
a special 12-member panel was convened to start the electoral process of
inducting players from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues into
Baseball¡¯s Hall of Fame. Although so many players of color never
participated in Major League Baseball, the greats are starting to be
officially recognized for their athletic achievements.
