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The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin 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".
James Thomas "Cool Papa" Bell was an American center fielder in Negro league baseball from 1922 to 1946. He is considered to have been one of the fastest men ever to play the game. Stories demonstrating Bell's speed are still widely circulated. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. He ranked 66th on a list of the greatest baseball players published by The Sporting News in 1999.
Oscar McKinley Charleston was an American center fielder and manager in Negro league baseball. In 1915, after serving three years in the U.S. Army, the Indianapolis, Indiana, native continued his baseball career as a professional with the Indianapolis ABCs; his career ended in 1954 as a player-manager for the Indianapolis Clowns. In addition to a forty-three-year career with more than a dozen teams, including the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Negro league baseball's leading teams in the 1930s, he played nine winter seasons in Cuba and in numerous exhibition games against white major leaguers. Charleston was known for his strengths as a hitter and center fielder. 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 to be among the very 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.
Joseph Williams, nicknamed "Cyclone Joe" and "Smokey Joe", was an American right-handed pitcher in the Negro leagues. He is widely recognized as one of the game's greatest pitchers, even though he never played a game in the major leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999.
William Hendrick Foster was an American left-handed pitcher in baseball's Negro leagues in the 1920s and 1930s, and had a career record of 143–69. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. Foster was the much-younger half-brother of Rube Foster, a Negro league player, pioneer, and fellow Hall of Famer.
The Kansas City Monarchs were the longest-running franchise in the history of baseball's Negro leagues. Operating in Kansas City, Missouri and owned by J. L. Wilkinson, they were charter members of the Negro National League from 1920 to 1930. J. L. Wilkinson was the first Caucasian owner at the time of the establishment of the team. In 1930, the Monarchs became the first professional baseball team to use a portable lighting system which was transported from game to game in trucks to play games at night, five years before any major league team did. The Monarchs won ten league championships before integration, and triumphed in the first Negro League World Series in 1924. The Monarchs had only one season in which they did not have a winning record. The team produced more major league players than any other Negro league franchise. It was disbanded in 1965.
The Newark Eagles were a professional Negro league baseball team which played in the Negro National League from 1936 to 1948. They were owned by Abe and Effa Manley.
Norman Thomas "Turkey" Stearnes was an American baseball outfielder in the Negro leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000.
Martín Magdaleno Dihigo Llanos called The Immortal, was a Cuban professional baseball player. He played in Negro league baseball and Latin American leagues from 1923 to 1936 as a two-way player, both as a pitcher and a second baseman, although he excelled at several positions.
Walter Fenner "Buck" Leonard was an American first baseman in Negro league baseball and in the Mexican League. After growing up in North Carolina, he played for the Homestead Grays between 1934 and 1950, batting fourth behind Josh Gibson for many years. The Grays teams of the 1930s and 1940s were considered some of the best teams in Negro league history.
Willie James Wells, nicknamed "The Devil," was an American baseball player. He was a shortstop who played from 1924-1948 for various teams in the Negro leagues and in Latin America.
Willard Jessie Brown, nicknamed "Home Run" Brown, was an American baseball player who played outfielder in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball (MLB). He is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ernest Judson Wilson, nicknamed "Boojum", was an American third baseman, first baseman, and manager in Negro league baseball. He played for the Baltimore Black Sox, the Homestead Grays, and the Philadelphia Stars between 1922 and 1945. Wilson was known for possessing a unique physique, a quick temper, and outstanding hitting skills. One of the Negro leagues' most powerful hitters, his career batting average of .351 ranks him among the top five players.
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 team ended in 1956.
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".
Alejandro "Alex" Pompez was an American executive in Negro league baseball who owned the Cuban Stars (East) and New York Cubans franchises from 1916 to 1950. His family had emigrated from Cuba, where his father was a lawyer. Outside baseball and numbers, he owned and operated a cigar shop in downtown Manhattan. He later served as a scout and director of international scouting for the Giants franchise in Major League Baseball. He was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
The Indianapolis Clowns were a professional baseball team in the Negro American League. Tracing their origins back to the 1930s, the Clowns were the last of the Negro league teams to disband, continuing to play exhibition games into the 1980s. They began play as the independent Ethiopian Clowns, joined the Negro American League as the Cincinnati Clowns and, after a couple of years, relocated to Indianapolis. Hank Aaron was a Clown for a short period, and the Clowns were also one of the first professional baseball teams to hire a female player.
References
- ↑ Riley, James A. (1994). The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues . New York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-0959-6.
