Ed Gottlieb

Eddie Gottlieb was primarily known as the organizer of the SPHAS basketball team, an acronym for the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, where the team got its start. The SPHAS were among the premier semiprofessional basketball teams in the country in the 1920s to 1940s – competing with the top teams such as the Harlem Rens and the Original Celtics. The SPHAS were Gottlieb’s first love and central preoccupation. Gottlieb was not only the founder, a player, and the coach of the SPHAS, but was also a founder of the Basketball Association of America (the precursor to the NBA) and subsequently the coach, general manager, and owner of the Philadelphia Warriors. Beginning in 1946, and until 10 days before his death in 1979, he made the entire schedule for the BAA/NBA each year based on his unparalleled math skills and memory, as efficient and effective as the computer that replaced him. His contributions earned him a place in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1972. The outstanding NBA rookie each year is awarded the Eddie Gottlieb trophy.

Although Gottlieb is best known for his role in basketball, he also made important contributions to Black baseball. As the main East Coast booking agent and scheduler, officer of the National Negro League, co-owner with Ed Bolden of the Philadelphia Stars, and a member of the committee that chose the first Negro League athletes for Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Gotty, or the Mogul, or Mr. Basketball as he was known, was a major influence in the professional development and popularity of the Negro Leagues in the 1940s.

Isadore Gottlieb was born in Kyiv, Ukraine (then a part of the tsarist Russian Empire), on September 15, 1898. His family – his father, Morris; his mother, Lena; and his older sister, Bella – migrated in 1902 to New York, where his father ran a candy store. They moved to Philadelphia when Isadore was 10 years old. There his father worked as a presser before he died a few years later. The family spoke Yiddish at home, and Izzy Gottlieb listed Yiddish as his native tongue on census records into early adulthood. As a teenager, Gottlieb, like many children of immigrants, changed his name to the more American sounding Edward.

Ed Gottlieb got involved in sports at a young age. Baseball was his first love. He was quoted in his obituary as saying: “We lived in NYC and I would hitch rides on the back of ice truck to watch the NY Giants play at the Polo Grounds. I was an average player. Two things were wrong with me as a catcher. I couldn’t hit very well and I couldn’t throw very well, but I was an A-1 receiver.”1

He continued with his athletic interests at South Philadelphia “Southern” High School, playing varsity basketball and semiprofessional baseball on the weekends. A historical marker at the site commemorates his importance to his South Philly neighborhood.2

After high school, Gottlieb went to the School of Pedagogy (later affiliated with Temple University) and then briefly taught junior high school physical education while also working as a clerk at a wallpaper store.3 However, his real passion was playing and coaching basketball. Along with teammates and friends from South Philly High, Harry Passon and Hugh Black, he organized a semipro basketball team under the auspices of the local YMHA (Young Men’s Hebrew Association). When the arrangements did not work out, the three attached themselves to a social club, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, after which they named their team the SPHAs. The name stuck even after that arrangement ended as well.

In 1920, in search of better uniforms and equipment for their basketball team, Gottlieb, Passon, and Black opened their own sporting-goods store, PGB Sports, in downtown Philadelphia. It was through the store that Gottlieb first made connections to Negro League baseball. As early as 1921, one of his best customers was Ed Bolden, proprietor of the Hilldale Daisies, the era’s standout Black team in the East.4 Gottlieb also continued to play baseball himself. He was the catcher and manager of the Philadelphia SPHAS – or Hebrews, as they were often called –composed of players who were also on his basketball team of the same name. They frequently played against Black teams in Philadelphia, often against Hilldale, but they also traveled to New York to play Negro League teams like the Lincoln Giants and the New York Black Yankees.5

Gottlieb and Black sold their interest in the sporting-goods business to Passon a few years later.6 Gottlieb then focused on sports promotion and started a booking agency in an office above the store.7 He became the leading booking agent for all Philadelphia sports, Black and White. Gottlieb explained that he became a promoter by accident. On a whim, he got in touch with Nat Strong, who owned the most powerful booking agency on the East Coast, asking him to send the House of David, a popular traveling team of White players from Michigan that wore long beards (as was the custom of the Messianic Christian community that sponsored them), to play another amateur White team Gottlieb managed, the Philadelphia Elks. Strong told Gottlieb he would send the House of David if Gottlieb arranged four games for them in Philadelphia. According to Gottlieb, “I lined up four games and became a promoter.” One of the teams that played against the House of David was Bolden’s Hilldale club.8

By the early 1930s Ed Gottlieb had become the premier booking agent in Philadelphia. Ed Bolden had relinquished ownership of the Hilldale Daisies but wanted to return to baseball. With Gottlieb’s financial assistance, he organized a new team, the Philadelphia Stars. The Bolden-Gottlieb partnership lasted until Bolden’s death in 1950. Webster McDonald, who pitched for and later managed the Stars, remembered Bolden and Gottlieb as “two partners, one colored, one white.”9 Bolden, who had worked in prior years with Nat Strong, knew very well that Gottlieb’s affiliation with Strong would make it possible to get good dates for games in New York and New England as well as in Philadelphia. With Gottlieb’s financial backing and connections to the Nat Strong Booking Agency and Bolden’s baseball expertise, the Stars quickly became the top Black baseball attraction in Philadelphia.10

In 1933 Gus Greenlee formed a new Negro National League (NNL2) and wanted the Stars to join. Bolden was skeptical. To persuade Gottlieb, Greenlee requested that he book a match between the baseball SPHAS and the Crawfords, whose roster included future Hall of Famers Oscar Charleston, Judy Johnson, Josh Gibson, and Satchel Paige. The SPHAS lineup included several Jewish players from the basketball team and some (White) ringers. The Crawfords won, 5-2, and the Pittsburgh Courier called it an “upset.”11 Bolden was still not persuaded, and the Stars played independently for a year. They joined Gus Greenlee’s league in 1934 and promptly won the NNL2 championship against the Chicago American Giants; it was the only time they won the title.

Gottlieb assiduously avoided calling attention to himself as the owner of the Philadelphia Stars and worked behind the scenes. He practiced the art of skillful scheduling, keeping their travel burdens lighter than those of many other teams. The Stars rarely toured in the South, avoiding many of the horrendous experiences of Jim Crow that other teams endured. He also was responsible for making sure that the Stars got select dates at the ballpark he leased at Penmar Park, and later at Philadelphia’s major-league venue, Shibe Park, when he got the rights to book Black teams there in 1943.12 The players saw him only occasionally at games but regularly when he paid them. They were aware of his power as a promoter on the local scene. “Everybody knew him,” said Stanley Glenn, a catcher with the Stars. “If you wanted a game, you had to go through Eddie. If you didn’t, you didn’t play.”13 Some of the Stars characterized him as fair but not generous. Yet Webster McDonald, who played for the Stars from 1933 to 1940, remembered Gottlieb as more of a “hands on” owner who kept him up late at night talking strategy and who occasionally provided bonuses for good play.14

Gottlieb believed he was providing good work for a number of men who would otherwise be “bell hopping or mopping floors.” He also noted that in the early days the players were paid poorly (often on percentage rather than salary) and worked in bad conditions, but in later years that improved as the owners, like himself, began to make some money and were able to be more generous.15 When Bolden died in 1950, he left the team to his daughter, Dr. Hilda Bolden. Ed Gottlieb continued his business responsibilities with the team until its demise. His efforts to sell the franchise in the winter of 1953 proved futile, and he disbanded the team in April of 1953.16

Gottlieb had already been booking games for the Stars as well as for the other Negro National League teams when they traveled east of Pittsburgh. The new league, like its 1920s predecessor, Rube Foster’s original Negro National League, did not want to deal with Nat Strong’s booking agency, but had no choice if they wanted to play White semipro teams on the East Coast. Nat Strong’s unexpected death in 1935 created an opportunity to improve the conditions for Black baseball in New York, and an opportunity for Ed Gottlieb to extend his reach. Although the owners discussed hiring a new booking agent after Strong’s death, Gottlieb retained the position. He continued to work in affiliation with Strong’s agency and with Strong’s successor, William Leuschner. Together with Max Rosner, the Jewish owner of the popular White semipro Brooklyn Bushwicks, they exercised a great deal of power over bookings in New York and access to ballparks there that would cause conflicts in the years to come.

Greenlee’s Pittsburgh rival, Cum Posey, worried that Gottlieb and Leuschner would soon encroach on his territory in western Pennsylvania and suggested that the league’s problems were directly related to the power that Leuschner and Gottlieb exercised. Posey emerged as a frequent critic of Gottlieb’s power and scheduling activities throughout their years of association in the Negro National League, often accusing Gottlieb of lacking concern for the welfare of the league and being interested only in having teams he booked make money.17 But Posey was also interested in turning a profit, and he and Gottlieb became strategic allies in later years.18

To counter Gottlieb and Bolden’s power in the NNL2, Posey recruited Harry Passon’s Bacharachs to join the league. In 1931 Harry Passon had started his own Black baseball team. He called them the Bacharach Giants to capitalize on the name recognition of the successful and popular team that had played in Ed Bolden’s Eastern Colored League in the 1920s. Passon’s Bacharachs were based in Philadelphia and played at the field he leased, which came to be known as Passon Field. In 1933, as interest in the team grew, Passon made improvements to the field, adding a grandstand, clubhouse, and lights. The Stars also played most of their home games at Passon Field (and often against the Bacharachs) from 1933 to 1935 before relocating to Penmar Park.

Passon was enthusiastic about bringing his team into organized play. He applied for league membership and attended several organizational meetings, but the other owners rejected his application, bowing to the interests of Bolden and Gottlieb, who did not want two league teams in Philadelphia. Passon, who still worked closely with Gottlieb at the sporting-goods store and other promotional activities, was surprised by their opposition. Cum Posey saw this as a personal defeat. He expressed his disappointment with the decision, contending that so long as the clubs did not play in Philadelphia on the same date, the Bacharachs, who could draw on the road, would be an important attraction for the league.19 Posey got his way eventually, and the Bacharachs were accepted. But Passon could not compete with Bolden and Gottlieb. By the time the league owners met in the winter of 1935, Passon had decided to quit.20

Gottlieb’s multiple roles – as owner of the Stars, booking agent for the league, and head of his own booking agency – gave him a lot of power in the NNL2. His relationship to the other owners was complicated. They valued his contributions and believed that he was an asset to the league, and they relied on him to keep proper records. Gottlieb was also given the task of assigning umpires and served with two other owners on an arbitration committee. He even held league office as recording secretary.21 Gottlieb often hosted league meetings at his Philadelphia offices and worked to get the league on firmer financial footing, improve relationships with the press, and raise the standards of umpiring.22

But he was at the same time viewed as a White Jewish outsider who, like his (non-Jewish) predecessor Nat Strong, sought his own financial gain at the expense of the league. Gottlieb became the center of a controversy over power that saw NNL2 owners ultimately divided into pro- and anti-Gottlieb factions. In 1939 Tom Wilson, the NNL2 president and owner of the Baltimore Elite Giants, awarded Gottlieb the task of negotiating with the New York Yankees to use Yankee Stadium for Sunday doubleheaders, replacing Gus Greenlee, who was no longer affiliated with the league. Greenlee’s original plan had called for all the league’s teams to be showcased in New York, and Gottlieb was eager to follow through. He believed that the success of these ventures (especially when Satchel Paige was pitching) encouraged other owners of major-league ballparks to offer reasonable rents, to the benefit of all the NNL2 teams. Gottlieb also believed that showcasing stars like Paige was the key to promoting Black baseball to White audiences.23

Gottlieb put together a deal with Yankees general manager Ed Barrow for five Negro League doubleheaders at Yankee Stadium for 1939. The arrangement saved the league $12,500 in rental fees. For his work, Gottlieb received a 10 percent booking fee. The owners had all agreed to Gottlieb taking the percentage when he took on the Yankee Stadium promotion, and Gus Greenlee had taken 10 percent booking fees when he had negotiated the contract originally. Gottlieb, as promoter, put up all the advance money, and the clubs involved gained over $16,000 in profits. For his work, Gottlieb received a total of $1,100.24

Gottlieb and Leuschner realized profits of less than $2,400 each year, and their contract required that they give a quarter of their earnings back to the league. Their agencies were useful for the league because they had full-time offices that could handle all the work involved in scheduling and booking for all six NNL2 teams, an expense that the other teams could not afford. According to Cum Posey, Gottlieb and Leuschner were “experienced and fair” and their work necessary to the functioning of the league.25

But the New York owners – James Semler of the Black Yankees, Abe and Effa Manley of the Newark Eagles, and Alex Pompez of the New York Cubans – did not like the fact that Gottlieb was awarded the contract. Semler, Pompez, and the Manleys saw Gottlieb’s booking of Yankee Stadium as an incursion into their territory, for which they should have been compensated or brought in as partners. They, not Gottlieb, should get the 10 percent booking fee. Supported by Wilson and Cum Posey, Gottlieb fought back, arguing that the New York owners “were in the same position as a patient who applies for medical aid and then curses out the doctor when he charges him a sum for curing him.”26 At the winter meetings in 1940, they banded together to fight the reelection of Gottlieb’s main supporter, Tom Wilson, as president of the league.

The owners’ issues with making sure Negro League baseball was a Black business and not run by White men simmered under the surface of some of the accusations against Gottlieb. Gottlieb was a carpetbagger, “bringing his white staff over to Harlem every time a league promotion is held at Yankee Stadium, packing his Black bags full of coin and scooting back to Philly.”27 He was charged with paternalism; “pulling the strings” and turning Posey, Wilson, and Bolden into his puppets. It was common knowledge that Gottlieb exercised power in the league because of his position as team owner, league booking agent, and proprietor of one of the most powerful sports promotion agencies in the country, but there was one additional factor that explained his dominance: Gottlieb gained leverage over the owners by lending money to them and providing credit for equipment purchased from Passon’s Sporting Goods store. Cum Posey assumed that was the basis of Gottlieb’s support and advised him “Don’t lend in 1941, then see the friends you will be able to keep.”28 Jewish economic power, always suspect, interjected into a struggling Black business would make a simple quarrel over money into an issue of race.29

For some sportswriters, this was also an opportunity to air their problems with Gottlieb as the owner of the Stars. Sportswriter Ed Harris lamented in the Philadelphia Tribune that Gottlieb’s ownership was hurting the local team because the other owners did not want to do business with him. Gottlieb was also responsible for the poor conditions at the Stars’ home field, Penmar Park, which he leased and ran.30 The former home field of the Pennsylvania Railroad team, the park was in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, but convenient to public transportation. But it was also close to the train tracks, and therefore noisy and often covered with soot from the trains. Press box accommodations were poor, and Gottlieb employed White staff there, including young Jewish boys from the neighborhood. Concerns were also raised about the power Gottlieb wielded over promotions in Philadelphia. Gottlieb, “genial and suave,” had, over the years, put himself in the position of booking so many facilities in the area that a team could not play without going through his agency. His connections with Strong’s agency in New York strengthened his hold on any team that wanted to play in lucrative venues in the Northeast.31

Ultimately, the problem was settled by compromise. At the next league meeting, Wilson was confirmed as president, as Pompez abstained from voting, giving Wilson’s side a majority. Gottlieb was reprimanded and removed as recording secretary but allowed to keep the Yankee Stadium promotions for one more year. For the sake of harmony, Gottlieb agreed to relinquish the Yankee Stadium promotions after 1940 to New York Black Yankees owner Jim Semler, who was also granted permission to book one game for the Black Yankees and New York Cubans in that venue in the coming season. With Gottlieb doing the booking, the Manleys chose not to play in Yankee Stadium in 1940 in protest. Peace was declared. Effa Manley, when asked whether she opposed White ownership, replied, “Certainly not. Some white owners are the best of men. I even admire Gottlieb’s business ability. He would be all right if the chairman [Wilson] could handle him. He needs to be whipped into line.” Gottlieb, the talented businessman, was welcome to help, and the Black owners were ready to take advantage of his skills, but Manley believed that Gottlieb had too much power and did not want him to control the league. What on the surface was a small matter over a small amount of money became a symbolic question of Gottlieb’s place as a White man as the most powerful force in the NNL2.32

While Gottlieb was a major force in Negro League baseball and spent much of his time booking venues for every sport (and some well-known entertainers), his central preoccupation remained basketball. According to Doug Stark, Gottlieb’s focus as a manager and coach was always teamwork, fundamentals, and winning. He was known as a great analyst of the game with a steel-trap memory and a head for numbers.33 Gottlieb’s first major involvement in professional (and semipro) basketball was the Philadelphia SPHAs. Between 1917 and 1946 the SPHAs won 12 championships in different leagues. Gottlieb founded the team with Passon and Black in 1917. Though he played in the early years, his real talents were managerial and organizational. He handled all the scheduling and coaching until 1946 and remained the owner until 1949, when he sold the franchise to a group in Utica, New York. Since they weren’t interested in fielding the team itself, Gottlieb worked with his friend Abe Saperstein, owner of the Harlem Globetrotters, to make the SPHAs one of the regular touring teams that played in exhibition games against the Globetrotters. They traveled around the world, and Gottlieb often joined them on those trips. They played to vast audiences around the United States, often as a warm-up to NBA games where the Globetrotters were the main draw.34

Gottlieb moved on from the SPHAs in 1946 because he became a founding member of the Basketball Association of America. He was a key player in the BAA merger with the National Basketball League to become the National Basketball Association in 1949. Along with the owner, Pete Tyrell, he started the Philadelphia Warriors, adopting the name that the SPHAs used from 1926 to 1929. In the 1946-47 season the Warriors won their only championship with Gottlieb as coach. He purchased the club in 1952, remained the coach through the 1953 season, and continued to serve as general manager until he sold the team in 1962. As coach he came under attack from the Black press for his failure to draft African American players, which NBA teams began to do in 1950, while the Warriors remained all-White. The Pittsburgh Courier had this to say about Gottlieb:

Local fans have bitterly criticized Gottlieb for never having signed any Negro stars to play with the Warriors. They have felt, and justly, that since he had long been connected with Negro baseball he would realize the advantage and good-will to be obtained by such an act. Eddie, however, remained callous to all criticism.35

Although he claimed that he was waiting to find the right talent, it is likely that Gottlieb did not want to break up the monopoly the Harlem Globetrotters had on premier Black players, since they continued to be the main gate attraction when they played before select NBA games; for Gottlieb, the gate mattered above all. Jackie Moore was the first African American to play for the Warriors, in 1955, before the Philadelphia Phillies integrated in 1957, but Gottlieb also had bigger plans.

As an influential member of the NBA rules committee, he came up with the idea of the territorial draft, and it benefited the Warriors greatly. It was a rule designed to give a team the opportunity to claim a local high-school or college player. That was how the Warriors were able to sign Overbrook High School talent Wilt Chamberlain in 1959. Although they had to wait for him for three years, including time at the University of Kansas and a tour with the Harlem Globetrotters before he became a Warrior, he was the superstar Gottlieb was waiting for, who changed the game of basketball with his extraordinary skills and magnificent style and made the Warriors highly competitive.

In 1962 Gottlieb sold the Warriors to a company in San Francisco, though he continued to work for the team as general manager until 1964. He remained involved in the business side of the NBA, primarily as schedule maker and as a major influence on the Rules Committee, up until his death in December 1979.

Gottlieb’s whole life was sports, and his closest friends were basketball associates, including Harvey Pollack and Dave Zinkoff. He never married and left no descendants. He lived most of his life with his mother and his developmentally disabled sister and cared for both until their deaths. The family was active in the Jewish community, and Gottlieb contributed generously to Jewish institutions. He is buried in Har Nebo cemetery in northeast Philadelphia.36

Sources 

Rich Westcott wrote the definitive biography of Eddie Gottlieb, The Mogul: Eddie Gottlieb, Philadelphia Sports Legend and Pro Basketball Pioneer (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008).

Also see Douglas Stark, The SPHAs: The Life and Times of Basketball’s Greatest Jewish Team (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), which details Gottlieb’s role with his team, and Rebecca Alpert, Out of Left Field: Jews and Black Baseball (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), which describes Gottlieb’s role in the Negro Leagues. This article is adapted from that work.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Gary Ashwill.

Notes 

1 Frank Deford, “Eddie Is the Mogul,” Sports Illustrated, January 22, 1968. Original quotation from Deford paraphrased in “Eddie Gottlieb Dies; A Pioneer in the N.B.A.,” New York Times, December 8, 1979.

2 Jeff Gamage, “Mr. Basketball Eddie Gottlieb Memorialized,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 2014, written when the state erected a historical marker in his memory.

3 Deford.

4 Rich Westcott, The Mogul: Eddie Gottlieb, Philadelphia Sports Legend and Pro Basketball Pioneer (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 26; Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, June 1, 1929, from Ed Gottlieb Files, Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), Temple University.

5 “Giants Defeat Then Tie the Philly Hebrews,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 16, 1925: 8; Sam Leaden Bernstein, telephone interview with author, October 15, 2008; New York Age, August 1, 1925; Jim Goldfarb, “Harlem’s Team: The New York Lincoln Giants,” in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 26.2 (2002).

6 Rebecca Alpert, “Harry Passon: Philadelphia Baseball Entrepreneur,” in Morris Levine, ed., The National Pastime: From Swampoodle to South Philly (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2013), 68 n.4.

7 Gottlieb kept his offices above Passon’s store at 507 Market until 1944 when he moved the office to 1537 Chestnut Street. Letter from Ed Gottlieb to Effa Manley, January 24, 1944, Newark Eagles Papers.

8 Westcott, Mogul, 67; Philadelphia Record, September 24, 1939, in Gottlieb Files, SCRC. A news report describes the annual pilgrimage of the House of David to Philadelphia. “House of David Nine Loses to Hilldale 10-4,” Chicago Defender, July 7, 1928: 8.

9 Interview with Webster McDonald in John Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues. rev. ed. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 82.

10 Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 30.

11 “Pittsburgh Crawfords Top Eddie Gottlieb’s SPHAS in Close Tilt on P.R.R Field,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 8, 1933: A5.

12 Neil Lanctot, “Baseball: Negro Leagues” in The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/baseball-negro-leagues,  accessed July 22, 2022.

13 Westcott, Mogul, 94.

14 Holway, 84-85.

15Interview with Ed Gottlieb in Art Rust, “Get that N*** Off the Field!”: A Sparkling, Informal History of the Black Man in Baseball (New York: Delacorte Press, 1976), 54.

16 Courtney M. Smith, Ed Bolden and Black Baseball in Philadelphia (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2017), 155-156.

17 Cum Posey, “Cum Posey Reviews Ups and Downs,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 30, 1933: 15; “Cum Posey’s Pointed Paragraphs,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 2, 1935: A4.

18 Lanctot, Negro League Baseball, 111.

19 “Blacksox, Grays Not Included,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 17, 1934: A4; Cum Posey, “Posey’s Pointed Paragraphs,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 3, 1934: A5.

20 William Jones, “Sidelights on League Meeting,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 16, 1935: 21.  

21 Courtney M. Smith, 108.

22 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 22, 1938: 16; letter from Effa Manley to Ed Gottlieb, May 23,1939, NEP; 1938 memo to “All Owners of NNL Clubs” from Tom Wilson, n.d., Newark Eagles Papers.

23 Gottlieb recalled in the interview with Frank Deford in Sports Illustrated 34 years later, regarding his first effort to showcase Paige in 1934: “That was the first four-team doubleheader in Yankee Stadium. We came in with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the first game against the Philadelphia Stars, and in the second game it was the New York Black Yankees against the Chicago American Giants. It rained the whole night before the game and really didn’t stop until just before the first game started, but we had 25,000 there, and the concessions were treemendous [sic]. Slim Jones – he died of pneumonia when he was still very young – he was pitching for the Stars. Oh, he was fast! And we had Satchel pitching for the Crawfords. It was a 1-1 tie, so we called it in the 10th inning with the idea in mind that we could repeat the whole damn game a few weeks later, which we did. And you know, we got just about the same gate all over, even though, just like the first time, it rained right up until the game started.” https://vault.si.com/vault/1968/01/22/eddie-is-the-mogul,  accessed July 30, 2022.

24 “Nat’l Amerik Loops Seek Peace,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 4, 1939: 17; Rust, Get That N*** Off the Field!, 54.

25 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 24, 1940: 16.

26 “N.N.L. Meeting Ends in Deadlock,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 10, 1940: 16.

27 “Reports on Sports by Daniel,” New York Amsterdam News, February 24, 1940: 18.

28 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 4, 1941: 16.

29 Rebecca T. Alpert, “Racial Attitudes Towards Jews in the ‘Negro Leagues’: The Case of Effa Manley,” in Annual Review of the USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in America Life volume 12 (2014), 9-42.

30 Ed Harris, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 15, 1940: 11.

31 Ed Harris, “How Did He Get In?” Philadelphia Tribune, April 11,1940: 11.

32 Harry Webber, “Strife Breaks Out Again in NNL Baseball Ranks,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 27, 1940: 19.

33 Douglas Stark, The SPHAs: The Life and Times of Basketball’s Greatest Jewish Team (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 16-19.

34 Stark, SPHAs, 207-211.

35 “Saperstein Buys Stock in Warriors,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 24, 1952: 26.

36 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13720851/edward-gottlieb, accessed July 21, 2022.