Chattanooga Choo-Choos | |
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Information | |
League |
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Location | Chattanooga, Tennessee |
Established | 1940 |
Disbanded | 1946 |
The Chattanooga Choo-Choos were a minor league Negro league baseball team based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The team was a member of the Negro Southern League, which was considered a minor league for the duration of the Choo-Choos' affiliation, and fielded a team from 1940 until 1946. The Choo-Choos played their home games at Engel Stadium. [1] The team is noted as the first professional baseball organization for which Hall of Famer Willie Mays played. [2]
The Chattanooga chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research is named in honor of the team. [3]
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.
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.
Willie James Wells, nicknamed "the Devil", was an American baseball player. He was a shortstop who played from 1924 to 1948 for various teams in the Negro leagues and in Latin America.
Rickwood Field, located in Birmingham, Alabama, is the oldest existing professional baseball park in the United States. It was built for the Birmingham Barons in 1910 by industrialist and team-owner Rick Woodward and has served as the home park for the Birmingham Barons and the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro leagues.
The Chattanooga Black Lookouts were a minor league Negro league baseball team based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. They were established in 1920, only to play for one season. They were reestablished in 1926 to play for two seasons, serving as a farm team of the Homestead Grays of the Negro Northern League.
The Austin Black Senators were a minor league Negro league baseball team based in Austin, Texas. The earliest known published reference to them came in April 1908, adopting the name of their white, Texas League counterparts. The team started as an independent, then joined the Texas Colored League in 1923 until 1926, continuing at least into the early 1940s and reportedly into the 1950s. The team "appeared in many exhibition games against nonleague competition and often played south of the border, where the players were treated as first-class citizens."
Chattanooga is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee.
Otha WilliamBillBailey was an American Negro league baseball player. He was a catcher for many teams. He played for the Birmingham Black Barons, Chattanooga Choo-Choos, Cleveland Buckeyes, Houston Eagles, and the New Orleans Eagles from 1949 to 1959. Throughout his career, his nickname was "Little Catch".
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.
Arthur Lee Wilson was an American professional baseball player. He was an all-star for the Birmingham Black Barons of Negro league baseball before playing part of one season in Major League Baseball for the New York Giants in 1951. He was born in Springville, Alabama. Wilson is recognized as the last player in the Negro leagues to hit .400, having batted .435 in 1948, albeit in only 28 games played that season.
James Robert "Red" Moore was an American professional baseball first baseman. Moore was a player in the Negro leagues, appearing with several different teams including his hometown Atlanta Black Crackers. He also served with three different All-Star teams and, in 1938, played with the Southern News Services All-American Negro League Baseball Team. In 2006, he was inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame. Listed at 5 feet 11 inches (1.80 m) and 180 pounds (82 kg), he batted and threw left-handed.
The Negro Southern League (NSL) was one of the several Negro baseball leagues created during the time organized baseball was segregated. The NSL was organized as a minor league in 1920 and lasted until 1936. It was considered a major league for the 1932 season and it was also the only organized league to finish its full schedule that season. Prior to the season, several established teams joined the NSL, mainly from the collapsed Negro National League.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to baseball:
James Lee Newberry, nicknamed "Schoolboy", was an American pitcher in the Negro leagues and in the Japanese Pacific League.
"Chattanooga Choo Choo" is a 1941 song. The title may also refer to:
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 led 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.
William Henry Hubert, nicknamed "Bubber", was an American Negro league pitcher between 1939 and 1946.