Philadelphia Stars | |||||
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Location | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | ||||
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Year established | 1933 | ||||
Year disbanded | 1952 | ||||
League titles | 1934 |
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.
In 1934, led by 20-year-old left-hander Slim Jones, the Stars defeated the Chicago American Giants in a controversial playoff series, four games to three, for the Negro National League pennant. At their high point in mid-1930s, the team starred such greats as Biz Mackey, Jud Wilson, and Dick Lundy. Following his release by Cleveland, Satchel Paige signed with the Stars in July 1950, before returning to the Majors with Bill Veeck and the St. Louis Browns.
The club disbanded after the 1952 season.
The Stars were founded and organized by Ed Bolden. Bolden had owned the Hilldale Club that won the Eastern Colored League pennant in 1923, 1924, and 1925, and which beat the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro League World Series in 1925. Bolden was also a founder of the ECL. Bolden was instrumental in building the Stars' 1934 championship club and ran the team until his death in 1950. [1]
After Bolden's death, his ownership passed to his daughter, Hilda Bolden Shorter. Shorter ran the club through 1952. [2]
The team was financed, and owned in part by sports promoter Eddie Gottlieb who also owned the Philadelphia Sphas and Philadelphia Warriors basketball teams. Gottlieb leased Penmar Park from the Pennsylvania Railroad for use by the Stars. In addition to the Stars, Gottlieb was the booking agent for all the Negro league teams in the Northeast, taking 10-percent of gate receipts for his work. [3]
Ed Bolden organized the Philadelphia Stars who played their first season in 1933. The Negro National League was composed primarily of mid-western teams in 1933 and many east-coast clubs were independent. The Stars were originally one such unaffiliated club and primarily played against local white semi-professional and professional teams. For example, by June 1933, the Stars' only games against black teams had been against the Philadelphia Bacharach Giants and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. [4]
The Negro National League used a split-season playoff system in 1934 with the season's first-half winner playing the second-half winner for the championship. The Chicago American Giants won the first-half. The Stars won the second-half with a record of 11-4.
The Stars won the 1934 Negro National League Championship by beating the Chicago American Giants 4-3-1 in a best of seven game series. The championship series, however, was beset by problems.
The first four games of the best-of-seven series were played in Chicago. The games went smoothly and Chicago won three of four. [5] But game 5 was delayed by 10 days for unexplained reasons. When the Series resumed in Philadelphia, the Stars won game 6 to tie the series but did so amidst controversy.
Early in game 6, Stars’ third-baseman Jud Wilson seemed to hit umpire Bert Gholston which should have meant immediate ejection. Over the protest of Chicago manager Dave Malarcher, Gholston refused to eject Wilson. Later in the game, Stars catcher Ameal Brooks pushed another of the umpires who also refused to eject the Stars player.
Prior to game 7, Malarcher filed a protest with NNL Commissioner Rollo Wilson over Jud Wilson's actions. The Commissioner met with the team owners and umpires. Gholston claimed he had wanted to eject Wilson but was threatened by Stars players and intimidated into allowing Wilson to play. Stars owner Bolden threatened not to play game 7 if Jud Wilson was suspended and the Commissioner buckled under the pressure.
The teams played game 7 on October 1 at Passon Field. The game ended in a 4-4 tie due to darkness. Game 8 was played the following day and Slim Jones pitched the Stars to a 2-0 victory and the championship.
Both the Stars and Giants filed protests over games 7 and 8. Giants player Turkey Stearnes hit an umpire and controversy hung over the series. The Stars claimed the Giants had used ineligible players. The Giants protested that two games should not have been played at night. Nevertheless, the Stars championship was upheld by the league. [4]
The Stars finished in fourth place in 1945 and 1946, fifth in 1947, and finished in fourth place again in 1948 with a 27–29 record. [6]
After integration and the collapse of the Negro National League, the Stars popularity and impact declined dramatically before folding at the end of 1952 season.
The team played at Passon Field during the 1934 and 1935 seasons. Passon Field was located at the current site of West Philadelphia High School's athletic field (baseball and football) now called Pollock Field and was the former home of the Philadelphia Bacharach Giants. In 1936, the Stars moved to 44th and Parkside Ballpark where they played the majority of their home games through 1947 when they lost their lease. [7] The Stars often played on Monday nights at Shibe Park which had a higher seating capacity and which was located in North Philadelphia. [3] The New York Times reported that the Stars had their largest crowd at Shibe Park in June 1943 when they beat the Kansas City Monarchs in front of 24,165. [8]
After 1947, the Stars played home games at area ballparks including Wilmington Park in Delaware, home of the Wilmington Blue Rocks minor-league team. [9]
The Stars did not have an official team logo as professional and collegiate teams have today. It was not common practice for teams to have such standardized team symbols in the 1930s and 1940s. The Stars wore uniforms with red and navy blue decoration. The cap most commonly associated today with the Stars is their 1938 cap, seen above, which has a navy crown, red brim, and white star with a red sans-serif P. For most of their history, they wore a white cap with a red brim, and red sans-serif P as seen to the left. [10] Another style cap worn by the Stars was an all navy cap with a red P.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) created a series of team logos in the 1990s for the well-known Negro league teams so that the NLBM could license such logos and collect royalties for their use on merchandise. Such revenue helps sustain the museum. The Stars were one such team for which a contemporary logo was created. It is seen on NLBM-licensed Stars merchandise and while it supports the educational efforts of the Museum, it is not a historical logo. [11]
The Negro League Baseball All-Star Game was called the East-West Game. Players were not divided by league, but by geographical location; Stars players played for the East. Players were voted to the teams by the fans with votes tallied by the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier newspapers. These Philadelphia Stars appeared in the All-Star game for the East team.
Only players from the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Washington Elite Giants played for the East in the 1936 game.
Two games were played in 1939, 1942, and 1946–1948. [12]
No player has been enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame with a Stars cap and the following inductees were with the Philadelphia Stars in their career.
Philadelphia Stars Hall of Famers | |||
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Inductee | Position | Tenure | Inducted |
Oscar Charleston | CF Manager | 1941 1942–1944 1946–1950 | 1976 |
Biz Mackey | C | 1933–1935 | 2006 |
Satchel Paige | P | 1946, 1950 | 1971 |
Turkey Stearnes | OF | 1936 | 2000 |
Jud Wilson | 3B Manager | 1933–1939 1937 | 2006 |
Stars co-owner Eddie Gottlieb was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1972 for his pioneering work as a team owner, promoter, and league official. [13]
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 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".
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. Alongside Josh Gibson, he has the record for most league batting titles among players of the Negro leagues with three, and he is the only one among all nine players who won multiple titles to win batting titles in multiple leagues. He was the second player to win consecutive Triple Crowns in either batting or pitching, a feat matched just one time by a batter. Retroactively, he is credited with having won the Triple Crown three times, which is the most for any player in Major League Baseball. To this day, he holds the record for the second-highest batting average of all-time among major league players. He also has the fourth-highest career OPS. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.
William Julius "Judy" Johnson was an American professional third baseman and manager whose career in Negro league baseball spanned 17 seasons, from 1921 to 1937. Slight of build, Johnson never developed as a power threat but achieved his greatest success as a contact hitter and an intuitive defenseman. Johnson is regarded as one of the greatest third basemen of the Negro leagues. In 1975, he was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame after being nominated by the Negro Leagues Committee.
National League Park, commonly referred to as the Baker Bowl after 1923, was a baseball stadium and home to the Philadelphia Phillies from 1887 until 1938, and first home field of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1933 to 1935. It opened in 1887 with a capacity of 12,500, burned down in 1894, and was rebuilt in 1895 as the first ballpark constructed primarily of steel and brick, and first with a cantilevered upper deck. The ballpark's first base line ran parallel to Huntingdon Street; right field to center field parallel to N Broad Street; center field to left field parallel to Lehigh Avenue; and the third base line parallel to 15th Street. The stadium was demolished in 1950.
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 City Series was the name of a series of intracity baseball games played between Major League Baseball's Philadelphia Athletics of the American League and Philadelphia Phillies of the National League that ran from 1883 through 1954. While the games were officially exhibitions, they were a matter of prestige in Philadelphia and a long rivalry existed between the players, management, and fans.
The Hilldale Athletic Club were an American professional Negro league baseball team based in Darby, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia.
The All Cubans were a team of Cuban professional baseball players that toured the United States during 1899 and 1902–05, playing against white semiprofessional and Negro league teams. The team was the first Latin American professional baseball team to tour the United States. As a racially integrated team, future major league players Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida got their start in the United States on the team. The team was also a forerunner for later Negro league teams staffed by Latin American players, such as the Cuban Stars (West), the Cuban Stars (East), and the New York Cubans. Negro league stars Luis Bustamante and Carlos Morán started their American careers with the All Cubans.
West Philadelphia High School is a secondary school located in the West Philadelphia section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the intersection of 49th Street and Chestnut Street.
The 1984 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was the 55th midseason exhibition between the all-stars of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL), the two leagues comprising Major League Baseball. The game was played on July 10, 1984, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, home of the San Francisco Giants of the National League. The game resulted in a 3-1 victory for the NL.
The P.R.R. YMCA Athletic Field, also known as Penmar Park and commonly referred to in the 1930s and 1940s as the 44th and Parkside ballpark, was an athletic field and ballpark in West Philadelphia from as early as the 1890s to the early 1950s. It was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad YMCA for use by its employees. Behind the right-field fence stood the roundhouse of the main yard of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Negro league baseball Philadelphia Stars played home games at the park from 1936 until 1952.
Hilldale Park was a ballpark in Darby, Pennsylvania at the northeast corner of Chester and Cedar Avenues. It was the home field of the Hilldale Club professional baseball team which played in the Negro leagues between 1910 and 1932. The ballpark opened in 1914. It had a well-manicured field with a large tree in center-field, whose branches overlooked the field and were considered in play.
Wilmington Park was a ballpark in Wilmington, Delaware that was located at the corner of 30th Street and Governor Printz Boulevard. It was home to the University of Delaware football team from 1940 to 1952 and the Wilmington Blue Rocks of the Class B Interstate League from 1940 to 1952. The Blue Rocks were an affiliate of the Philadelphia Athletics from 1940 to 1943 and the Philadelphia Phillies from 1944 to 1952.
The Greatest Baseball Game Never Played was a 1982 simulated broadcast of a hypothetical baseball game between all-time Major League Baseball greats. The broadcast was aired on 200 radio stations in the United States and Canada and also released as a record album.
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.
Otto "Mirror" Briggs was an American baseball outfielder, manager and team owner in the Negro leagues.
Harold Lorenzo Gould, Sr. was a baseball pitcher with the Philadelphia Stars in the Negro leagues from 1947 to 1948. The right-hander won 19 games over the two seasons including an impressive rookie campaign with 14 victories.
The 1934 Philadelphia Stars baseball team represented the Philadelphia Stars in the Negro National League during the 1934 baseball season. The Stars compiled a 46–24–3 (.651) record and won the Negro National League championship. The team played its home games at Passon Field in Philadelphia.