Only the Stars Come Out at Night: J.L. Wilkinson and His Lighting Machine

Star light, star bright,
Black players overcome their forbidden plight.
They wish they may, They wish they might.
That Only the Stars Come Out at Night.

Before 1930, few working baseball fans envisioned their favorite stars showcasing their talents under the darkness of the summer moon.  The first known lighting experiment came on August 27, 1910, when inventor George F. Cahill brought his patented system to Chicago’s new White Sox park.  Unsuccessful at first, he convinced a doubting Charlie Comiskey to showcase his 20 candlelight power — 137,000 watts — for a game between the local teams, the Logan Squares and Rogers Park.  The game drew over 20,000 fans but failed to appeal to the passion of old-fashioned major league owners. The conservative owners followed closely the conviction of poet laureate, Paul Laurence Dunbar:

Night is for Sorrow and Dawn is for Joy
Chasing the Trouble that Fret and Annoy.

In 1930, James Leslie Wilkinson initiated the dawning of a new era in baseball with the first portable lighting system.  He made it possible for sports enthusiasts to see a constellation of ebony stars perform in the illuminated shadows of the night.

Major league fans waited five more springtime’s, until May 24, 1935, to witness the installation of stadium lights.  On this historic day, from his oval office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt flipped a switch that generated close to one million watts of electrical power from 632 fifteen hundred-watt flood lamps in Cincinnati’s Crosley Field.  Chicago Cubs fans waited a half a century before night time baseball arrived at their Wrigley Field. 

The innovator of night baseball was born on May 14, 1878, in the small town of Perry, Iowa, to John Joseph and Myrtie Harper Wilkinson.  His father, known as J.J., was superintendent of the Northern Iowa Normal School in Algona (near Des Moines).  It was a teacher’s college existing in the Kosulth County seat from 1886 through 1897.  Daddy Wilk served six years as county superintendent of schools prior to being named president of the college by a committee.  He applied his trade as far west as Omaha, Nebraska and eastward to Detroit, Michigan.  Meanwhile, young J.L. Wilkinson was attending Highland Park College in Des Moines, Iowa, where he began his brief pitching career with the Hopkins Brothers, the local sporting goods store.

Wilkinson’s semipro career was interrupted when a broken wrist halted his pitching and led him into management.  His experience with the Hopkins Brothers gave him the idea for one of baseball’s most unique and interesting teams, the All-Nations Club.

In 1912, along with local businessman J.E. Gall (or Gaul), Wilkinson formed an alliance of many nationalities, advertising:  “Direct from their native countries, Hawaiians, Japanese, Cubans, Filipinos, Indians and Chinese.”  The All Nations simply ignored Jim Crow sanctions and barnstormed the Chautauqua loops from Wisconsin to Missouri to Nebraska by Pullman coach.  They boasted of travel in their own “Private Hotel Car,” a specially-built Pullman coach equipped with full sleeping and cooking facilities.  “The All-Nations team traveled in a special private car in those days,” said Wilkinson.  “We all ate, slept and played together.  There was never any trouble.  We were a happy family.”

Wilkinson found the proverbial “melting” pot of gold with his rainbow of nationalities.  Despite being labeled as a “recreation” team by other baseball nines, the All-Nations had some of the finest players in the game.  Along with Mendez, Drake and Donaldson, the great Cuban player Cristobal Torriente later graced the roster.  In 1915, they beat a tough Rube Foster team, the Chicago American Giants, two out of three games.  The following year they swept a doubleheader, 9-5 and 5-2, and later tied a game 5-5, before losing to C.I. Taylor’s Indianapolis ABC’s, 5-1, considered by some sportswriters the most dominant Black club before the first World War.

A new horizon came in 1920, when J.L. Wilkinson was elected by team owners as Secretary of the new Negro National League.  J.L. or “Wilkie”, as he was affectionately known by his players, was the only white owner in a league as dark as a country night.  He would retain this notoriety throughout the life of the league until its breakup in 1931.  When the Negro American League organized in 1937, Wilkinson was elected treasurer.  He was with the Monarchs 28 years (1920-1947); six of those years (1931-1936) his teams barnstormed across the nation’s breadbasket, capitalizing on their popularity.

One of the strongest and most stable clubs in black baseball, the Monarchs were the white major leagues’ equivalent of the New York Yankees; the winning team that everyone wanted to beat.  During Wilkinson’s tenure, the Monarchs won 11 league championships, a feat surpassed only by the perennial champion Yankees.  During the same period, the Yankees won 15 championships under the managerial direction of Miller Huggins (1918-29) and Joe McCarthy (931-1946).  While the Bronx Bombers were fortunate to have played in the World Series each year they captured the league championship, the Monarch were not so lucky, appearing in only four Colored World Series:  1924,1925, 1942 and 1946.  The Monarchs could have appeared in more if the Series had not been discontinued from 1927 to 1941.  During the twenties, thirties and forties, the Monarchs dominated the teams of Negro League baseball.

While many of the New York pinstripers can be identified by a single name — from the Babe to Lou, from the Clipper to Mick to Maris, Yogi, Dickey, Lefty, Red and Whitey — only a few dedicated fans of the game can recognize their Monarch counterparts.  Slowly emerging fromt he shadows of anonymity are box office stars, Donaldson, Mendez, Bullet, Newt, Dobie, Brewer, Torrienti, Duncan, Foster, Turkey, Wells, Buck, Willard, Hilton, Jesse, Mr. Cub, Elston, Connie, Satch, Cool Papa, and, of course, Jackie.

On July 28, 1923, the Monarchs moved to Muehlebach Field,  the future home of the American League’s Kansas City Athletics. The Field, named after brew master George Muehlebach, became Ruppert Field in 1937, when Jacob Ruppert purchased the park for his New York Yankee minor-league franchise.  Normally, seating for the Blues games was segregated, however Wilkinson removed the twisted divider ropes and the crooked segregation signs when the Monarchs played. Fans, regardless of skin color, were allowed to sit wherever they liked at Monarchs games.  A 1931 article in the Kansas City Call, a local African-American newspaper,  reported,  “there  they were, the humble Negroes and the superior whites, all losing their relative social position in the interest of a very good game of ball.”

The aura of the new steel and concrete stadium, seating over 18,000 fans with the state-of-the-art electric scoreboard, propelled Wilkie’s Monarchs to their first league championship of the new decade. They captured 57 games and lost 33.

Although always a popular team, Wilkinson’s Monarchs competed for the entertainment dollar against the more established major-league baseball teams, It was always a struggle to pay salaries and traveling expenses.  In 1929, the midnight hour struck with the Great Depression. The league’s rise to credibility came to a crashing halt. This situation forced Wilkinson to search for innovative ideas to keep his team intact arid survive the country’s financial crisis. Could night baseball be the solution?

To finance this dream, Wilkinson and Tom Y. Baird, owner of a bowling alley and billiard parlor, put up collateral to secure a $50,000 loan. The loan enabled them to purchase a Sterling Marine 100 kilowatt generator with a 250 horse power, six-cylinder, triple-carburetor, gasoline-driven engine. The new power plant consumed more than 15 gallons of gasoline an hour, and required 12 men to install 44 giant non-glare floodlights on telescopic steel poles, mounted on the beds of Ford trucks.  The innovative power plant had an estimated illumination of 198,000 watts.

Soon minor league teams discovered that the lighting systemic helped ease the Financial difficulties caused by the Great Depression. The fog of resistance had been lifted.  In one of the darkest moments in baseball history, Wilkinson became a tower of strength. Club owners found that baseball under the artificial sun often doubled or tripled attendance figures.  The Kansas City Star hailed the event by stating:

“Night baseball will be a lifesaver, it will revolutionize the old game, restoring small town baseball on a paying basis.  It gives recreation for the business and workingman who can’t afford day games.  The Monarchs will probably do to baseball this year, what the talkies have done to the movies.”

In 1948, Wilkinson sold his 50% of the mighty Monarchs to co-owner and close friend, Tom Y. Baird.  The contract called for the exclusive rights by Baird to market the name “THE KANSAS CITY MONARCHS BASEBALL CLUB” and a sale price of $27,000. the Wilkinson family, J.L. and his son Richard, were allowed to operate another team under the name “KANSAS CITY MONARCHS TRAVELING CLUB” with restrictions against tampering with any player currently under contract with the original club, except for Leroy “Satchel” Paige.  Because of his popularity, Paige was available for pitching duty with either club.  He was eventually sold to the Cleveland Indians for $5,000.

In 1955, Kansas City baseball underwent a major change.  Blues Stadium was purchased by the city and became Municipal Stadium, and the minor league Blues were replaced by the hapless Philadelphia Athletics of the American League.  As the Monarchs played their last home game, they entered the era of burlesque baseball in the remaining years.  The Monarchs, once the brightest-burning comet of all, were now falling to earth.

Fans, both black and white, flocked to see the big league A’s, which had not won a pennant since 1931, setting an attendance record of 1,393,054.  The rippling effect caused the Monarchs a loss of over $10,000.  They were sold to Ted Rasberry, a businessman from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Under the Rasberry management, the Monarchs never regained the masterful level of play that once dominated the black diamond of the twenties, thirties and forties.  Many of the Monarchs finest stars had been seized by major league clubs, leaving Rasberry with only a shell of a once-great team.  Now, the Grand Rapids based club was only a shadowy remembrance of the Kansas City powerhouse team.  The Call observed, “From a sociological point of view the Monarchs have done more than any other single agent in Kansas City to break the damnable outrage of prejudice that exists in this city.”

Wilkinson’s remaining years were spent at the University Nursing home in Kansas City, Kansas.  He brought baseball out of the aberrant light into the spotlight.  He gave sight to night baseball, only to lose his own vision late in life.  On August 21, 1964, at the age of eighty-six, he passed away during the night.  Earlier, on June 9, 1945, prominent sportswriter Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier wrote:

“One of those who has made a definite contribution to black baseball is J.L. Wilkinson, the silver-thatched, soft-spoken owner of the fabulous Kansas City Monarchs.  Wilkinson has been in Negro baseball for more than twenty years, and during that time he has not only invested his money, but his very heart and soul.  He has stayed in the game through storm and strife because he has loved it, not because he had to.  There is no owner in the country — white or Negro — who has operated more honestly, sincerely or painstakingly.  His baseball history is an epic as thrilling and fascinating as any sports story ever written.”

Like all great men, Wilkinson was not without imitators.  Long before Finley’s follies and the days of Harvey the mechanical home-plate and promotions like “Farmer’s Night” and “Hot Pants Night”, Wilkinson was baseball’s original drum major.  In the mid-20s, he had introduced “Kids’ Day” or “Knothole Day’ (kids 15 and under, admitted free) and “Ladies Day” or “Fannettes Day” (all ladies free) at the ball park.  Earlier, in 1922, Wilkinson hired attractive lady ushers as an added attraction and an incentive for men to use less profanity.  In 1939, he initiated one of his most popular promotions with the Monarchs’ annual bathing beauty contest, initially won by Mrs. Muriel Hawkins.

J.L. Wilkinson was an innovator, a promoter, a beneficiary and personal confidant to his players.  He presented our national pastime with a formula for racial harmony and a quality product.  Though not given the honor, Wilkinson — not Branch Rickey — was the forerunner of interracial baseball.  He produced champions of black teams, who lived outside the glow of the national pastime, away from the brightest of white lights.

Wilkie presented a new science to the game, long before televised baseball games, radar guns, lap-top computers, pronto replays, plastic grass, faxed scouting reports, caged stadiums and carnival scorecards, maybe even before aluminum bats and Teflon baseballs.

Star light, star bright, J.L. Wilkinson was a shining light in baseball’s dark pastime.