The Pittsburgh Crawfords, popularly known as the Craws, were a professional Negro league baseball team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The team, previously known as the Crawford Colored Giants,[1] was named after the Crawford Bath House, a recreation center in the Crawford neighborhood of Pittsburgh's Hill District.[2]
In 1931 Gus Greenlee, an African-American businessman in Pittsburgh, bought the Crawfords. In 1933 he founded what is known as the second Negro National League, and built Greenlee Field as a ball park for his team. During the mid-1930s, the Crawfords were one of the strongest Negro league teams ever assembled.
As Richard L. Gilmore recounts in a 1996 article on the history of the team, the Crawfords began as an interracial team of local Hill District youth who played ball together in neighborhood sandlots. Resident families included black migrants from the South and European immigrants, all of whom were attracted to industrial jobs in the city.
As the Hill District teams became more competitive and professionalized, lines of color were drawn. The teams became formalized initially through the efforts of Bill Harris (originally of Calhoun, Alabama) and Teenie Harris (no relation), who managed teams that emerged from local Hill schools. Bill Harris played with a team, which he later managed, from McKelvey High School, while Teenie's team formed from the Watt School. Twice the teams faced off resulting in a marginal win for Teenie's team in both games, prompting the two managers to join forces and create a predominantly black team.[3]
Greenlee bought the team in 1931. It was a time of an organizational vacuum, as the major African-American leagues of the 1920s, the Negro National League and the Eastern Colored League, had fallen apart under pressures of the Great Depression. By late that year, Greenlee signed many of the top African-American stars to his team, most notably Satchel Paige. The next year, in 1932, Greenlee hired Hall of Famer Oscar Charleston as playing manager, and added Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, and Cool Papa Bell, along with other notable players such as William Bell, Jimmie Crutchfield, Rap Dixon, Sam Bankhead, and Ted Radcliffe. Playing as an independent club, the Crawfords immediately established themselves as perhaps the best black team in the United States.[3]
The Crawfords played in the new Greenlee Field, named after the owner and builder; this was one of the few parks to be built and owned by a Negro League team.[4] Paige and Gibson often unwound at the Crawford Grill, one of black Pittsburgh's favorite night spots, where the likes of singers Lena Horne and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson entertained.
League play
1932 Crawfords
In 1933, Greenlee founded a new Negro National League, acting as president; his Crawfords were charter members. The club narrowly lost the first-half title to the Chicago American Giants; both teams claimed the second-half title, and Greenlee as league president awarded it to his Crawfords. The matter of the overall pennant was apparently never decided. The next season, as Gibson led the league with 16 home runs and Paige won 20 games, the Crawfords were near the top of the overall standings, but won neither half. Records of all games against league opponents, not just those considered official league games, show the Crawfords with far and away the best record for 1934.[3]
In 1935, Paige skipped most of the NNL season to play for a semipro team in North Dakota. Despite his absence, the Crawfords took the first-half title with a 26–6 record, then defeated the New York Cubans in a close seven-game series for their only undisputed NNL pennant. In retrospect, many historians consider this edition of the Crawfords to be the greatest Negro league team of all time, featuring the four Hall of Famers, plus left-handed pitcher Leroy Matlock, who won 18 games without a defeat.[3] After a mediocre first half (16–15) in 1936, the Crawfords rallied to win the NNL's second half with a 20–9 record. Paige had returned, and contributed an 11–3 record. The playoff with the first-half winners, the Washington Elite Giants, apparently only lasted one game (the Elite Giants winning, 2–0) before it was called off for unknown reasons. Greenlee awarded the pennant to the Crawfords, over Washington's protests.[3]
Player defections
In 1937, Paige led several Crawfords players, including Gibson, Bell, and Bankhead to the Dominican Republic to play for the dictator Rafael Trujillo's team. The Crawfords plunged to fifth place out of six teams with a 12–16 record. They partly recovered the next season, finishing third with a 24–16 record, but, with the exception of the 41-year-old Charleston, whose playing career was nearly over, the heart of the old Crawfords' team—Paige, Gibson, Bell—had all moved on to other teams.
Demise
The Craws might have survived these losses, but their attendance flatlined after the white members of the team's board forced Greenlee to shut out blacks from jobs at Greenlee Field (ushers, ticket-takers, etc.).[4] Greenlee sold the club, Greenlee Field was demolished and the Crawfords moved to Toledo and the Negro American League, becoming the Toledo Crawfords, for the 1939 season. For the 1940 season, the team split their home games between Toledo and Indianapolis, becoming the Toledo–Indianapolis Crawfords, before folding after season.[5]
Later revival
In 1945, Greenlee formed a new, unrelated, Pittsburgh Crawfords in Branch Rickey's new United States League. The league and the new Crawfords lasted two seasons.
On July 5, 2008, during the Pittsburgh Pirates game against the Milwaukee Brewers, the Pirates wore Pittsburgh Crawford uniforms while the Brewers wore the respective Negro league uniforms of the Milwaukee Bears.
On June 12, 2010, in Detroit, during an interleague game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Detroit Tigers, the Pirates wore Pittsburgh Crawford uniforms while the Tigers wore the respective Negro league uniforms of the Detroit Stars. They wore their respective uniforms again on May 19, 2012.
On August 21, 2010, during the Pittsburgh Pirates game against the New York Mets, the Pirates wore Pittsburgh Crawford uniforms while the Mets wore the respective Negro league uniforms of the New York Cubans.
On July 18, 2015, during the Pittsburgh Pirates game at the Milwaukee Brewers, the Pirates wore Pittsburgh Crawford uniforms while the Brewers wore the respective Negro league uniforms of the Milwaukee Bears.
On July 13, 2018, during the Milwaukee Brewers game at the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Brewers wore the Negro league uniforms of the Milwaukee Bears while the Pirates wore their respective Pittsburgh Crawford uniforms.
On June 1, 2019, during the Milwaukee Brewers game at the Pittsburgh Pirates PNC Park, the Brewers wore the Negro league uniforms of the Milwaukee Bears while the Pirates wore their respective Pittsburgh Crawford uniforms.
On September 9, 2022, during the St. Louis Cardinals game at the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cardinals wore the Negro league uniforms of the St. Louis Stars while the Pirates wore their respective Pittsburgh Crawford uniforms.
Related Research Articles
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige was an American professional baseball pitcher who played in Negro league baseball and Major League Baseball (MLB). His career spanned five decades and culminated with his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
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".
James Thomas "Cool Papa" Bell was an American center fielder and pitcher in Negro league baseball and the Mexican League from 1922 to 1946. He is considered to have been one of the fastest men ever to play the game. 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.
The first Negro National League was one of the several Negro leagues that were established during the period in the United States when organized baseball was segregated. The league was formed in 1920 with former player Rube Foster as its president.
The second Negro National League was one of the several Negro leagues that were established during the period in the United States when organized baseball was segregated. The league was founded in 1933 by businessman Gus Greenlee of Pittsburgh.
The Homestead Grays were a professional baseball team that played in the Negro leagues in the United States.
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.
William Julius "Judy" Johnson was an American professional baseball third baseman, shortstop, manager and scout whose career in Negro league baseball spanned 17 seasons, from 1921 to 1937. He also played in the Cuban League. 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.
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 East–West All-Star Game was an annual all-star game for Negro league baseball players. The game was the brainchild of Gus Greenlee, owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords. In 1933 he decided to emulate the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, using Negro league players. Newspaper balloting was set up to allow the fans to choose the starting lineups for that first game, a tradition that continued through the series' end in 1962. Unlike the MLB All-Star game which is played near the middle of the season, the Negro All-Star game was held toward the end of the season.
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.
The Milwaukee Bears were a Negro National League team that operated during the 1923 season, its only season in the league representing Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The St. Louis Stars, originally the St. Louis Giants, were a Negro league baseball team that competed independently from as early as 1906 to 1919, and then joined the Negro National League (NNL) for the duration of their existence. After the 1921 season, the Giants were sold by African-American promoter Charlie Mills to Dick Kent and Dr. Sam Sheppard, who built a new park and renamed the club the Stars. As the Stars, they eventually built one of the great dynasties in Negro league history, winning three pennants in four years from 1928 to 1931.
The 1971 Major League Baseball season was the final season for the Senators in Washington, D.C., before the team's relocation to the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb Arlington for the following season, as the Texas Rangers, leaving the nation's capital without a baseball team of its own until 2005.
The following is a timeline of franchise evolution in Major League Baseball.
The 2010 Major League Baseball season began April 4, with the regular season ending on October 3. The 2010 All-Star Game was played on July 13 at Angel Stadium of Anaheim in Anaheim, California. The National League ended a 13-game winless streak with a 3–1 victory. Due to this result, the World Series began October 27 in the city of the National League Champion, the San Francisco Giants, and ended November 1 when the Giants defeated the American League Champion Texas Rangers, four games to one.
Theodore Roosevelt Page, nicknamed "Terrible Ted", was an American baseball player. From 1923 to 1937, Page played for numerous Negro league teams, including the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords. On a 1986 Larry Fritsch baseball card, “…Page is regarded as one of the best outfielders ever to play the game.” He is a member of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
The following is a timeline of the evolution of major-league-caliber franchises in Negro league baseball. The franchises included are those of high-caliber independent teams prior to the organization of formal league play in 1920 and concludes with the dissolution of the remnant of the last major Negro league team, the Kansas City Monarchs then based out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, in about 1966. All teams who played a season while a member of a major Negro league are included. The major leagues are the original Negro National League, the Eastern Colored League, the American Negro League, the East–West League, the second Negro National League and the Negro American League. Teams from the 1932 original Negro Southern League are also included which allows for the inclusion of the few high caliber minor Negro league teams.
The 1936 Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball team competed in Negro National League (NNL) during the 1936 baseball season. The team compiled a 48–33–2 (.590) record and won the NNL pennant.
The 1933 Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball team competed in Negro National League (NNL) during the 1933 baseball season. The team compiled a 51–36–2 (.584) record and won the NNL pennant.
1 2 3 4 5 Gilmore Jr., Richard L. (1996). "A Historical Look at the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Impact of Black Baseball on American Society". The Sloping Halls Review: 65.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
