 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(September 2023) |
| Cleveland Giants | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| League | |
| Location | Cleveland, Ohio |
| Ballpark | |
| Established | 1933 |
| Disbanded | 1933 |
| Nickname(s) |
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The Cleveland Giants were a Negro league baseball team. The team played for one year, 1933. Their home games were contested at Cleveland's Luna Bowl in Luna Park.
In 1933, the struggling Columbus Blue Birds of the Negro National League dropped out and were replaced by the Cleveland Giants. The club went 22-28 in their first and only year. Bingo DeMoss managed the team, which included Bill Byrd (5-6), Wilson Redus (.325), SS Leroy Morney (.467) and OF Jabbo Andrews. Andrews was third in the NNL with 13 homers and third with a .412 average. Morney split the year with the Baltimore Black Sox and led the circuit in batting average.
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans. 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 sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues".
Oscar McKinley Charleston was an American center fielder and manager in Negro league baseball. Over his 43-year baseball career, Charleston played or managed with more than a dozen teams, including the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Negro league baseball's leading teams in the 1930s. He also played nine winter seasons in Cuba and in numerous exhibition games against white major leaguers. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.
Joshua Gibson was an American baseball catcher primarily in the Negro leagues. Baseball historians consider Gibson among the best power hitters and catchers in baseball history. In 1972, he became the second Negro league player to be inducted in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Monford Merrill "Monte" Irvin was an American left fielder and right fielder in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball (MLB) who played with the Newark Eagles, New York Giants (1949–1955) and Chicago Cubs (1956). He grew up in New Jersey and was a standout football player at Lincoln University. Irvin left Lincoln to spend several seasons in Negro league baseball. His career was interrupted by military service from 1943 to 1945.
The second Negro National League was one of the several Negro leagues that were established during the period in the United States when organized baseball was segregated. The league was founded in 1933 by businessman Gus Greenlee of Pittsburgh.
The Chicago American Giants were a Chicago-based Negro league baseball team. From 1910 until the mid-1930s, the American Giants were the most dominant team in black baseball. Owned and managed from 1911 to 1926 by player-manager Andrew "Rube" Foster, they were charter members of Foster's Negro National League. The American Giants won five pennants in that league, along with another pennant in the 1932 Negro Southern League and a second-half championship in Gus Greenlee's Negro National League in 1934.
The Baltimore Elite Giants were a professional baseball team that played in the Negro leagues from 1920 to 1950. The team was established by Thomas T. Wilson, in Nashville, Tennessee as the semi-pro Nashville Standard Giants on March 26, 1920. The team was renamed the Elite Giants in 1921, and moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1938, where the team remained for the duration of their existence. The team and its fans pronounced the word "Elite" as "ee-light".
The Columbus Blue Birds were a professional Negro league baseball team based in Columbus, Ohio in 1931 and 1933.
James Raleigh "Biz" Mackey was an American catcher and manager in Negro league baseball. He played for the Indianapolis ABCs (1920–1922), New York Lincoln Giants (1920), Hilldale Daisies (1923–1931), Philadelphia Royal Giants (1925), Philadelphia Stars (1933–1935), Washington / Baltimore Elite Giants (1936–1939), and Newark Dodgers/Eagles.
The Philadelphia Stars were a Negro league baseball team from Philadelphia. The Stars were founded in 1933 when Ed Bolden returned to professional black baseball after being idle since early 1930. The Stars were an independent ball club in 1933, a member of the Negro National League from 1934 until the League's collapse following the 1948 season, and affiliated with the Negro American League from 1949 to 1952.
The Indianapolis ABCs were a Negro league baseball team that played both as an independent club and as a charter member of the first Negro National League (NNL). They claimed the western championship of black baseball in 1915 and 1916, and finished second in the 1922 NNL. Among their best players were Baseball Hall of Fame members Oscar Charleston, Biz Mackey, and Ben Taylor.
The Harrisburg Giants were a U.S. professional Negro league baseball team based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Luna Park was a trolley park in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1905 to 1929.
The Cleveland Panthers were a professional American football team. They were an independent team founded in 1919 from the remains of the Youngstown Patricians. The Panthers played, with various degrees of success, continuously from 1919 and eventually, as fewer opponents played them each year after 1926, sputtered to a quiet folding in 1933.
The Jacksonville Red Caps were a Negro league baseball team based primarily in Jacksonville, Florida. They played the Negro American League from 1938 until 1942.
Oscar "Heavy" Johnson (1895–1960) was a baseball player in the Negro leagues. He played catcher and outfielder. Johnson was one of the Negro league's foremost power hitters in the 1920s, reportedly weighing 250 pounds, and known for hitting home runs. Longtime MLB umpire Jocko Conlan once said that Johnson "could hit a ball out of any park."
Leroy Morney was an American baseball shortstop in the Negro leagues. He played from 1929 to 1944 with several teams. He was selected to three East-West All-Star Games.
The Memphis Red Sox were an American Negro league baseball team that was active from 1920 to 1959. Originally named the Barber College Baseball Club, the team was initially owned and operated by Arthur P. Martin, a local Memphis barber. In the late 1920s the Martin brothers, all three Memphis doctors and businessmen, purchased the Red Sox. J. B. Martin, W. S. Martin, and B. B. Martin, would retain control of the club till its dissolution in 1959. The Red Sox played as members, at various times, of the Negro Southern League, Negro National League, and Negro American League. The team was never a titan of the Negro leagues like wealthier teams in northern cities of the United States, but sound management lead to a continuous thirty-nine years of operation, a span that was exceeded by very few other teams. Following integration the team had five players that would eventually make the rosters of Major League Baseball teams and two players that were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The Cleveland Green Sox were a baseball club based in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1913, the Green Sox were charter members of the Federal League. The Cleveland Green Sox were managed by Baseball Hall of Fame member Cy Young and played just the 1913 season before the franchise was folded. Finishing in second place, the Green Sox hosted home games at Luna Park. The Green Sox franchise was ultimately forced out in Cleveland when the major league Cleveland Naps relocated the Toledo Mud Hens to Cleveland for the 1914 season.
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