The Cleveland Buckeyes and the Wider Orbit of Organized Baseball

This article was published in From Setbacks to Success: The 1945 Cleveland Buckeyes (SABR, 2025), edited by Vince Guerrieri, Thomas Kern, and Bill Nowlin.

The Cleveland Buckeyes had their share of decent, even very good players. They were not a juggernaut like the Homestead Grays or Kansas City Monarchs, teams that annually reloaded to maintain their excellence. But they were good, and in that brief time – the mid-1940s – they won two Negro American League pennants and a World Series crown in 1945.

Buckeyes in the East-West All-Star Games

One measure of excellence was the number of Buckeyes who played in the East-West All-Star Game. Research identifies 12 who played, including seven starters. Four Buckeyes appeared in more than one All-Star Game: Eugene Bremer, Sam Jethroe, Quincy Trouppe, and Archie Ware. Sam Jethroe, arguably the greatest Buckeye ever, led the way with four appearances.1

Only appearances as Buckeyes are listed; (*) = Starter

Buckeyes in the Mexican League

The Mexican League, founded in 1925, was a viable competitive setting for Negro League ballplayers, motivated by the additional cash and more equitable treatment by Mexican baseball officials and fans alike. According to John Virtue, “Under Mexican League regulations, the [Mexican] teams could have imported any players, but they chose to recruit African Americans.”2

Player movement to Mexico increased in the 1940s, thanks to businessman Jorge Pasquel investing money to raise the profile of the Mexican League by attracting both White and Black baseball players from north of the border. Researcher Bill Young noted, “[I]n 1946, 22 major leaguers [American and National Leaguers] – 11 of whom were under contract to either the New York Giants or the Brooklyn Dodgers – bolted to Mexico in search of greener (baseball) fields.”3

In the 1940s, each of the six to eight teams in the league played between 75 and 100 scheduled games per season, beginning early in the calendar year and overlapping with league seasons in the United States. Five Buckeyes took advantage of the league with some making their presence south of the border a fixture. By the early 1950s, movement to the Mexican Leagues by American players diminished, although nowadays the Mexican League has again become a magnet for ballplayers unable to compete at a major-league level.

Buckeyes in the American and National Leagues

Finally, there are the seven Buckeyes who made it to the American or National League as part of the slow trickle of Black ballplayers welcomed to those circuits. Five of the players, led by Sam Jethroe, who debuted with the Boston Braves on April 18, 1950, and was named Rookie of the Year that season, originated with the team. Information is not currently available regarding any players who might have made it to the previously White minor leagues, whether affiliated with an American or National League team or not. Sam Jones, who did not play on the Buckeyes’ 1945 World Series champion team, had the longest tenure in the American or National League – 12 years.4

(*) = Began career with Buckeyes

THOMAS KERN was born and raised in Southwest Pennsylvania. Listening to the mellifluous voices of Bob Prince and Jim Woods in his youth, how could one not become a lifelong Pirates fan? He now lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, and sees the Pirates, Nationals, and Orioles as often as possible. He is a SABR member dating back to 1984. With a love and appreciation for Negro League Baseball in addition to the Pirates, he has written SABR bios for the 1979 Pirates and Clemente books and has completed bios for Leon Day, John Henry Lloyd, Willie Foster, Judy Johnson, Turkey Stearnes, Hilton Smith, Louis Santop, Andy Cooper, Double Duty Radcliffe, and others.

Sources

The author wishes to acknowledge the important contribution of Merl Kleinknecht in assembling these charts. Mr. Kleinknecht originally joined SABR in 1971, was a founding member of SABR’s Negro Leagues Research Committee, and served two terms as committee chair in the 1970s.

Notes

1 In 1942, 1946, 1947, and 1948, two Negro League All-Star Games were played.

2 John Virtue, South of the Color Barrier: How Jorge Pasquel and the Mexican League Pushed Baseball Toward Racial Integration (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008): 61.

3 Bill Young, “From Mexico to Quebec: Baseball’s Forgotten Giants,’ The National Pastime: Baseball in the Big Apple (Phoenix: SABR, 2017). 

4 Joseph L. Reichler, ed., The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Official Record of Major League Baseball, 9th Edition (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993).