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".
The Harlem Globetrotters are an American exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, entertainment, and comedy in their style of play. Over the years, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 countries and territories, mostly against deliberately ineffective opponents, such as the Washington Generals and the New York Nationals (1995–2015). The team's signature song is Brother Bones' whistled version of "Sweet Georgia Brown", and their mascot is an anthropomorphized globe named "Globie". The team is owned by Herschend Family Entertainment.
Abraham Michael Saperstein was the founder, owner and earliest coach of the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was a leading figure in black basketball and baseball from the 1920s through the 1950s, primarily before those sports were racially integrated.
The Philadelphia Sphas, also stylized SPHAs or SPHAS, were an American basketball franchise that existed in professional, semi-professional, and exhibition forms. They played their home games in the ballroom of Philadelphia's Broadwood Hotel. The team's name is an acronym, derived from South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, and the team's players, at least in its earlier years, were primarily Jewish. Future Philadelphia Warriors owner Eddie Gottlieb founded the team as an amateur group shortly after he and some close friends graduated from high school, and it later became a professional team. The Sphas played in many leagues around the Philadelphia area and the East Coast, most notably the Eastern Basketball League and the American Basketball League (ABL), between which the Sphas won 10 championships. The Sphas won a total of 12 championships, their first two coming from the early Philadelphia League and Philadelphia Basket Ball League.
Reece "Goose" Tatum was an American Negro league baseball and basketball player. In 1942, he was signed to the Harlem Globetrotters and had an 11-year career with the team. He later formed his own team known as the Harlem Magicians with former Globetrotters player Marques Haynes. He is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. Tatum's number 50 is retired by the Globetrotters.
Marques Haynes was an American professional basketball player and member of the Harlem Globetrotters, notable for his ability to dribble the ball and keep it away from defenders. According to the 1988 film Harlem Globetrotters: Six Decades of Magic, Haynes could dribble the ball as many as 348 times a minute.
Vaughn Street Park was a baseball park in the northwest United States, located in Portland, Oregon. Opened in 1901, it lasted for over a half century and was torn down in 1956. Its primary tenant was the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League (PCL). During a stretch when the club was tagged as the "Lucky Beavers", the ballpark was also sometimes called Lucky Beavers Stadium.
The Seattle Steelheads were a Negro league baseball team from Seattle, Washington. Owned by Abe Saperstein, they were also known as the Harlem Globetrotters and Cincinnati Crescents, though occasionally the teams split and played each other.
The Portland Beavers was the name of separate minor league baseball teams, which represented Portland, Oregon, in the Pacific Coast League (PCL). The team was established in 1903, the first year of the PCL.
The West Coast Negro Baseball Association (WCNBA) was one of the several Negro baseball leagues created during the time organized baseball was segregated. The WCNBA was organized as a minor league in 1946 by Abe Saperstein and Jesse Owens as a means to provide the west coast with a platform for African-American players. The league lasted about three months.
The Oakland Larks were a Negro league baseball team in the West Coast Negro Baseball League, based in Oakland, California, in 1946.
The Cuban House of David were a traveling Negro league baseball team that played from about 1927 to 1936 featuring players primarily from Cuba.
Sherwood Brewer was an American baseball player who was a member of the Negro leagues.
The 1948 Globetrotters–Lakers game was a dramatic match-up between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Minneapolis Lakers. Played in Chicago Stadium, the game took place two years before professional basketball was desegregated. The Globetrotters' 61–59 victory – by two points at the buzzer – challenged prevailing racial stereotypes about the abilities of black athletes.
Fred Thomas was a Canadian multi-sport professional athlete. He played on semi-professional or professional teams in basketball, baseball, and Canadian football. He was a standout on his college basketball team and is known as one of Canada's finest basketball players. A 2019 profile by TVOntario described Thomas as "the greatest Canadian athlete you've never heard of". He would likely have been more well-known had blacks not been denied opportunities to compete in major professional sports leagues in the 1940s and 1950s.
Napoleon Gulley was an American Negro league pitcher in the 1940s.
Winfield Scott Welch, nicknamed "Gus" and "Moe", was an American Negro league outfielder and manager. Welch spent most of his playing career with minor Negro teams. He is best known as a successful manager, lauded by some as "the Connie Mack of Negro baseball"
Wesley "Big Train" Barrow was an American Negro league player and manager in the 1940s who was once regarded as "one of the best developers of Negro talent in the South."
Timothy Mike "Cannonball" Berry, also nicknamed "Showboat Mike", was an American baseball pitcher in the Negro leagues.
The Wild Wild West League is a collegiate summer baseball wooden bat league based out of Portland, Oregon. It serves as a developmental minor league and is owned and operated by the Portland Pickles collegiate baseball club of the West Coast League. The league features four teams and all games are played at Charles B. Walker Stadium at Lents Park in southeast Portland, home of the Pickles.
