 | This biographical article is written like a résumé .(September 2023) |
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George Lawrence Lester (born 1949 in Charleston, Arkansas) is a Negro league baseball author, historian, statistical researcher, and lecturer. [1] [2] [3]
Larry Lester is the former chairman of the Society for American Baseball Research's Negro League Committee, [4] which hosts the annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference, a symposium dedicated exclusively to the examination and promotion of black baseball history. [5] He co-founded the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) in Kansas City, Missouri, and served as its Research Director, Senior Editor, and Treasurer from 1991 to 1995. He was described as "a driving force in the NLBM's licensing program" that generated $1.4 million in its start-up years. Through using available black and white photographs as guides, doing research of archival newspapers, and conducting interviews of former players, Lester discovered the authentic Negro league colors and designs, allowing apparel manufacturers to reproduce retro-vintage caps, jerseys, and jackets. The NLBM licenses generated approximately $6,000,000 in sales in 1992, with Major League Baseball Properties producing $2.4 billion. [6]
Lester founded NoirTech Research, an internet-based company, in 1995. It provides sports scholarships to the news media, professional sports teams, educational institutions, museums, corporations, libraries, and churches. He co-chaired the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum's Out of the Shadows Negro Leagues Baseball Research program and served on the Hall of Fame's Special Negro Leagues Committee which inducted a record 17 Negro leaguers in 2006. He is listed as a contributing researcher to more than 220 publications on African American history. [7]
Lester has authored, co-authored, or edited several books about Negro Baseball League history.
Andrew "Rube" Foster was an American baseball player, manager, and executive in the Negro leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.
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 Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is a membership organization dedicated to fostering the research and dissemination of the history and record of baseball, primarily through the use of statistics. The organization was founded in Cooperstown, New York, on August 10, 1971, at a meeting of 16 “statistorians” coordinated by sportswriter Bob Davids. The organization now reports a membership of over 7,500 and is based in Phoenix, Arizona.
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.
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. Wilkinson was the first white 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 Baseball team did. The Monarchs won ten league championships before integration, and triumphed in the first Negro World Series in 1924. The Monarchs had only one season in which they did not have a winning record and produced more major league players than any other Negro league franchise. It was disbanded in 1965.
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.
Hilton Lee Smith was an American right-handed pitcher in Negro league baseball. He pitched alongside Satchel Paige for the Kansas City Monarchs and Bismarck Churchills between 1932 and 1948. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.
John Abraham Thorn is a German-born American sports historian, author, and publisher. Since 2011, he has served as the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball.
John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil Jr. was an American first baseman and manager in the Negro American League, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. After his playing days, he worked as a scout and became the first African American coach in Major League Baseball. In his later years he became a popular and renowned speaker and interview subject, helping to renew widespread interest in the Negro leagues, and played a major role in establishing the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022 as an executive.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) is a privately funded museum dedicated to preserving the history of Negro league baseball in America. It was founded in 1990 in Kansas City, Missouri, in the historic 18th & Vine District, the hub of African-American cultural activity in Kansas City during the first half of the 20th century. The NLBM shares its building with the American Jazz Museum.
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2006 proceeded in keeping with rules enacted in 2001, augmented by a special election; the result was the largest class of inductees (18) in the Hall's history, including the first woman elected, Effa Manley.
Effa Louise Manley was an American sports executive. She co-owned the Newark Eagles baseball franchise in the Negro leagues with her husband Abe Manley from 1935 to 1948. Throughout that time, she served as the team's business manager and fulfilled many of her husband's duties as treasurer of the Negro National League. In 2006, she posthumously became the first woman inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, chosen by the Special Committee on Negro Leagues for her work as an executive.
The Hilldale Athletic Club were an American professional Negro league baseball team based in Darby, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia.
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."
The Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference (JMNLC) is an annual conference sponsored by Negro leagues Committee (NLC), a standing committee of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. As of 2016, the NLC has held nineteen conferences in various cities known for their history in hosting Negro league baseball teams. The JMNLC is the first and remains the only such event dedicated exclusively to the examination of black baseball history.
The Legacy Awards are presented annually by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM), headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. The "Hall of Game Award"—established in 2014 and honoring players who personify "the spirit of the way the game was played in the Negro Leagues"—is the only such award actively presented since 2018.
Peter Morris is an American baseball researcher and author. A lifelong love of baseball led him to membership in the Society for American Baseball Research, where he became an active member of the Biographical Committee, researching the lives of early major league baseball players.
Peter C. Bjarkman was an American historian, freelance author, and commentator on the baseball played in Cuba after the 1959 Communist revolution. He provided regular internet commentary on Cuban League baseball as a contributing writer for LaVidaBaseball.com and as Senior Writer for the U.S.-based internet website BaseballdeCuba.com and appeared frequently on radio and television sports talk shows as an observer and analyst of the Cuban national sport. He also published more than three dozen books ranging in scope from Major League Baseball history and college and professional basketball history to sports biographies for young adult readers. In spring 2017 Bjarkman was honored with a SABR Henry Chadwick Award, the society's highest research recognition established in 2009, "to honor baseball's great researchers – historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists – for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America's present with its past".
Benjamin Franklin Adams was an American Negro league pitcher in the 1950s and 1960s.
John Wendell Smith was an American sportswriter and civil rights activist who was influential in the choice of Jackie Robinson's career as the first African American Major League Baseball player. Similarly, Smith was one of the first African American sport-writers to be a member of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, and was posthumously awarded the J. G. Taylor Spink Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993.
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