John Ritchey

As a rookie with the 1947 Chicago American Giants, Johnny Ritchey won the Negro American League batting title. The following year he broke the Pacific Coast League color barrier playing for his hometown San Diego Padres. In 1951, he became the first Black professional baseball player in Vancouver, British Columbia, and won the Western International League batting title. Despite his trailblazing baseball career, Ritchey’s accomplishments went largely unrecognized until the 21st century.

“Because he broke the color barrier that made him an historic figure, but it was a role he never wanted to play,” said San Diego baseball historian and author Bill Swank. “He never sought the spotlight. He was always about the team and how do you make the team better. He didn’t like all the attention that was given to him. It was important to him to just be judged by what he did on field.”1 And what Ritchey did on the field was hit over .300 in his 10 seasons of professional baseball.2

Johnny’s father, William Herman Ritchey, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1878. William was placed in a Catholic charity home when he was young and moved to California sometime around the turn of the century. He may have acquired the surname Ritchey from someone he worked for, according to William’s son, Bert, in a 1985 interview.3 William married a farmer’s daughter, Daisy Victoria DeBose, whose family moved to California from Illinois when she was young. William and Daisy, who were listed as both Black and Mulatto on different census reports, settled in San Diego and had nine children. The youngest, John Franklin, commonly known as Johnny, was born on January 5, 1923. Before John came Matilda, William Jr., Alfred, Mildred, Earl, Dallas, Priscilla, and Luella. According to the 1930 census, the Ritchey family lived in a three-bedroom home at 2877 Webster Avenue; William Sr. worked as a janitor and Daisy labored as a laundress.4 Tragedy struck the Ritcheys twice in the 1930s: Daisy died in 1931 and Matilda, who assumed a motherly role for her younger siblings after Daisy’s death, passed away three years later.5 By 1940, William Sr. had moved the family to a five-bedroom home two blocks away on Franklin Avenue.6

Johnny’s father and oldest brother were accomplished athletes. William Sr. coached and played catcher for an all-Black team called the San Diego Giants and loved to boast about the time his team gave Walter Johnson a “licking.”7 William Jr., known by his middle name Bert, dominated the San Diego prep leagues in track and football and lettered in both at the University of Southern California. He later worked as a sergeant and homicide detective for the San Diego Police Department for 28 years and then earned a law degree.

Johnny Ritchey once said that his earliest memories were of playing baseball “because there wasn’t anything else to do.”8 His heroes growing up were Negro League stars Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard.9 Ritchey played baseball and football on integrated teams at Memorial Junior High School and then San Diego High School, where he played for coach Mike Morrow.  “[Morrow] was colorblind,” said Swank. “The team came first. Morrow wasn’t interested in skin color; he was interested in talent.”10

At age 15 Ritchey played summer baseball for Morrow on San Diego American Legion Post 6, a team that included future major-leaguers Jack Albright, Chet Kehn, and Duane Pillette. Ritchey played right field and carried a .265 batting average.11 Post 6 went undefeated during the regular season and advanced to the national semifinals in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they beat a Detroit squad led by future Hall of Famer Hal Newhouser.12 Because of Jim Crow laws, Ritchey and the team’s other Black player, Nelson Manuel, were prohibited from playing in the semifinals or the best-of-five Little World Series against the host team from Spartanburg, South Carolina. Post 6 won the series in five games.

“Although I’m happy about the kids winning the national title, I’m also a little burned up about the way South Carolina treated my brother and Nelson Manual (sic),” Bert Ritchey told the San Diego Sun. “They’re both good players and I can’t see why they were not allowed to play.”13

In 1940, Post 6 returned to the semifinals against St. Louis in Shelby, North Carolina. In a surprising turn of events, Ritchey and Manuel were allowed to play in what the California Eagle called “a history making epoch.”14 One local scribe wrote that it “was the first sporting event in which Negroes and whites competed that he had ever witnessed or even heard of.”15 Ritchey hit a game-winning double that helped propel San Diego to a series win.16  Post 6 then played Albemarle, North Carolina, on Albemarle’s home field. Local authorities cited Jim Crow laws and prohibited Ritchey and Manuel from playing. In an interview with Swank years later, Ritchey recalled that some locals saw him hitting line drives over the fence in batting practice and decided to enforce Jim Crow.17 Without Ritchey, who led Post 6 with a .389 average, San Diego lost the series and settled for second place.18 Hall of Fame sportswriter Wendell Smith opined on the ordeal in the Pittsburgh Courier: “If that type of thing is what the American Legion calls ‘Americanism,’ … then we had better change that song everybody’s been singin’ around the country from God bless … to God help America.” 19

Ritchey, who threw right and batted left, converted to catcher as a high school senior in 1941 and earned All-Southern California second team honors. “Watching Ritchey when he was a teen age star was an inspiration,” recalled San Diegan Jim Gleason, who was four years younger than Ritchey. “Johnny had a great talent for the game which he enhanced by his enthusiastic attitude. He played with a big, happy smile on his face. His enthusiasm and spirit were contagious, not only to his fellow players, but to people in the stands … he was ‘Johnny Baseball.’”20

Ritchey turned down offers to play professionally in the Negro Leagues out of high school and enrolled at San Diego State College as a pre-law student.21 He won the starting catcher job for the Aztecs as a freshman and played quarterback for the football team as a sophomore in 1942.

During World War II Ritchey left college to serve in the Army’s engineer corps. He landed on Normandy and was part of the Red Ball Express, a convoy of Black troops that delivered supplies to the front lines.22 He also fought in the Battle of the Bulge and later served seven months in the South Pacific, earning multiple battle stars and achieving the rank of staff sergeant.23

After the war Ritchey re-enrolled at San Diego State and met his future bride, Lydia Martina Quinn, a Los Angeles native and daughter of an African Methodist Episcopal Church minister. He also picked up where he left off on the baseball diamond, leading the Aztecs with a .356 batting average in 1946.24 “He was a phenomenal athlete, but he was also a student of the game,” recalled Gleason, who was teammates with Ritchey on the ’46 Aztecs. “Johnny was with you all the time,” said Gleason. “He’d concentrate and make you concentrate. He was the first guy who taught me intensity. He’d say, ‘We can work together.’ He gave you confidence.”25

Because of Ritchey’s skin color, major-league ivory hunters who scouted the Aztecs did not offer him a contract, though they did sign some of his teammates.26 In at least once instance, Ritchey and San Diego native Walter McCoy, a pitcher with the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League, played for a barnstorming team called the San Diego Tigers—a spin-off of a team by the same name that played in the short-lived West Coast Negro Baseball Association in 1946.27 McCoy persuaded Ritchey to try out for the American Giants and even promised to buy Ritchey’s bus ticket home if he got cut from the team. Ritchey made the team and signed a contract in early 1947.28 Even while playing on an all-Black team he was not completely accepted. Some of his teammates from the south shunned him because of his light skin, green eyes, and West Coast upbringing.29 But Ritchey proved himself on the field. He was named to the West All-Star team, serving as backup catcher to Quincy Trouppe in the East-West All-Star Game. And according to the Howe News Bureau and the Afro-American, Ritchey’s season batting average of .381 (68-for-167 in 58 games) edged out Artie Wilson and Sam Hairston for the league’s batting title.30

Five months after Jackie Robinson broke major-league baseball’s color barrier, Ritchey, who was 5-foot-9½ and 170 pounds, attended a Chicago Cubs tryout at Wrigley Field.31 According to the Chicago Defender, the Cubs scouts who ran the tryout assessed Ritchey as having “major league possibilities despite his smallness for a major league backstop and approved him for play with a farm club in Class B or A.”32 However, Ritchey was turned off by the prospect of being sent to the minor leagues and instead returned home and signed with the Padres.

Padres owner Bill Starr said that Ritchey’s signing was purely a baseball decision. “We aren’t sponsoring any cause,” said Starr at the time. “Our only interest in Ritchey is that he can swing a bat like few others can. We believe we have signed one of the finest prospects in the country. We scouted him all last season … His record at San Diego high, state college, and with the Chicago Negro team has been singularly outstanding. He is major league material and has a way better than even chance of doing the Padres some good.”33

Negro American League president J.B. Martin protested the Padres’ poaching of Ritchey, but the Chicago American Giants could not produce a signed contract.34 “Proof that most Negro baseball clubs are operated on a slip-shod basis is clearly evident in the case of John Ritchey,” wrote Smith.35

Ritchey began the 1948 season as the Padres’ third-string catcher. It was rumored in The Sporting News that he would eventually be farmed out to Class-B Tacoma for seasoning.36 Ritchey made his Padres debut as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning of the March 30 season opener against the Los Angeles Angels at Lane Field in front of numerous family and friends, becoming the Pacific Coast League’s first Black player since Jimmy Claxton pitched two games for the 1916 Oakland Oaks under the assumption that he was Native American. Ritchey received a boisterous ovation before grounding out to first base. “The fans cheered, and my feeling was it was because I was a San Diego boy making good,” Ritchey said later. “It had nothing to do with race.”37

The next night, he received another pinch-hitting opportunity and singled off the leg of former St. Louis Cardinal Freddy Schmidt for his first PCL hit.38 Because of injuries to the Padres’ top two catchers—Len Rice and Hank Camelli—Ritchey started the final three games of the five-game set and recorded six hits in nine at-bats, including a three-run home run off Bill Fleming in the Padres’ 7-3 victory on April 2. Despite his offensive outburst, Ritchey, a line-drive hitter who sprayed the ball to all fields, was relegated to pinch-hitting and bullpen-catcher duties when the veteran receivers returned from their respective injuries. The July 10 edition of the Pittsburgh Courier reported that Ritchey was hitting .333 but had only 54 at-bats in 45 games played.39 As the season wore on, Ritchey played more regularly and finished with a .323 batting average, four home runs, and 44 RBIs in 217 at-bats.

“He has proven himself to be a brilliant prospect, a gentleman both on and off the field, popular with his teammates and a great competitor,” wrote journalist and civil rights activist Herman Hill after the 1948 season.40

While Ritchey was well-liked by fans and accepted by most teammates, he endured treatment similar to what Robinson experienced during his groundbreaking season with the Dodgers. On road trips Ritchey roomed alone in segregated hotels, and during games he encountered forms of racism both overt and subtle. He later recalled numerous ugly incidents involving the Los Angeles Angels. In one of Ritchey’s first games against the Angels, Billy Schuster slid spikes-high into Ritchey’s hand on a play at the plate in which Schuster was out by a mile.41 Ritchey later referred to Schuster as “a terrible guy.”42

“There was an Angel who threw four balls at my head,” Ritchey remembered decades later. “Another time against the Angels, I got a double. The pitcher came to second base. He was spitting and yelling all kinds of bad language in my face.”43 In both instances, none of his teammates said a word in Ritchey’s defense, nor did his pitchers retaliate on his behalf.

“Johnny was a very sensitive guy, a real team player and when some of his teammates treated him differently, Johnny felt this intensely,” remembered Gleason. “I never observed hostility, but I did observe a coolness, distancing that was very apparent to Johnny.”44

The Padres became an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians before the 1949 season. San Diego’s new manager, former Yankees skipper Bucky Harris, said during spring training that Ritchey threw better than any catcher he had in New York and predicted Ritchey would be catching for Cleveland within two years.45 Ritchey had a trio of Black teammates in his second season with the Padres: former Negro League stars Luke Easter, Artie Wilson, and Minnie Miñoso. Ritchey got off to a slow start at the plate and lost his starting role in June. He finished the season with a .257 average, three home runs, and 35 RBIs in 112 games and then spent his second consecutive offseason playing for Magallanes in the Venezuelan Winter League.

Before the 1950 season the Padres traded Ritchey to the Portland Beavers for catcher Joe Burgher. Ritchey was relegated to backup duties behind Jim Gladd for the fourth-place Beavers and expressed his displeasure at sitting on the bench. “He protested and was hastily regarded as a vociferous dissenter,” described the Vancouver Sun.46 In 107 games (the Beavers played a 200-game schedule), Ritchey hit .270 with two home runs and 34 runs batted in. That winter, he spent time playing in Mexico.

During spring training in 1951, the Beavers added former Pirates/Braves catcher Bill Salkeld and sold Ritchey’s contract to the Class B Vancouver Capilanos, a team managed by former nemesis Billy Schuster. Ritchey, according to the Vancouver Sun, was “wholly disgusted” by his situation with the Beavers and considered giving up baseball.47 He reported to the Capilanos, a member of the Western International League, after a persuasive phone call from general manager Bob Brown. Ritchey, the first Black player to play for a Vancouver professional team, caught 136 of the Capilanos’ 145 games. “By that time, Schuster had learned the error of his ways, and the two men got along,” wrote Gary Sarnoff in a 2019 article for The National Pastime.48 “I’ve never had so much fun playing in my life because I asked for plenty of work and I’m getting it here,” Ritchey said that summer. He finished the season with league highs in batting average (.346), walks (126), and on-base percentage (.492), a ledger that earned him a spot on the WIL All-Star Team. He was also voted by Vancouver fans as the team’s most popular player.49

In December 1951, the Vancouver Daily Province reported that the St. Louis Browns were interested in Ritchey. Browns chief scout Tony Robello considered Ritchey a major-league prospect and said the Browns were waiting until after the January army draft to make their move.50 No deal came to fruition, and Ritchey returned to Vancouver in 1952. He posted numbers nearly identical to the year before (.343 BA, .504 OBP), finishing nine points behind Wenatchee’s Walt Pocekay in the WIL batting race. Ritchey, who possessed excellent speed for a catcher, hit two home runs—an extra-inning grand slam versus the Lewiston Broncs on May 30 and an inside-the-park homer on July 2 against the Yakima Bears—and stole a career-high 27 bases.

In January 1953 the independent Sacramento Solons of the Pacific Coast League purchased Ritchey from the Capilanos at the recommendation of Hall of Famer infielder and former Solons player-manager Joe Gordon, who saw Ritchey play in the Mexican Winter League while on a hunting trip.51 “He’s not a power hitter … because he isn’t that big and strong,” assessed Solons manager Gene Desautels during spring training, “but he swings smoothly and cleanly and if the ball is over the plate then Johnny will get the good wood on it. He’s hard to pitch to.”52 The 30-year-old Ritchey served as the Solons’ primary catcher, hitting .291 with five home runs and 55 RBIs. A highlight of his season came on June 26 when he recorded five hits, including a pair of home runs, in a doubleheader versus the Portland Beavers with his father in attendance.53

Ritchey’s second season with Sacramento was interrupted in early April by a fractured finger, suffered from a foul tip. The injury kept him out of action for five weeks. When Ritchey returned from his injury, Solons manager Tony Freitas (who’d replaced Desautels) encouraged him to be more aggressive at the plate. Sportswriter Tom Kane of the Sacramento Bee wrote, “Opposing pitchers are positive Ritchey will not swing at the first pitch and possibly the second and almost always slip two throws past him quickly.54 In 94 games Ritchey .272 with zero home runs and 23 RBIs.

In January 1955 the Solons traded Ritchey and cash to the Seattle Rainiers for Jackie Tobin, Leo Thomas, and Earl Harrist.55 Ritchey spent spring training with the Rainiers and then was sold outright to the San Francisco Seals on April 5. Two days later he homered in his Seals debut in San Diego against the Padres. Seals manager Tommy Heath took advantage of Ritchey’s patient approach at the plate by hitting him leadoff. In 130 games, Ritchey produced a slash line of .285/.388/.379 with six home runs and 41 RBIs.

The Seals became an affiliate of the Boston Red Sox after the 1955 season and Ritchey was not offered a contract.56 He signed with the Class B Yakima Bears of the Northwest League in early April 1956 and went to spring training in Petaluma, California.57 A few weeks later he was sold to the Class A Syracuse Chiefs of the Eastern League. In 19 games he hit only .185 and complained of a sore arm.58 On May 26 the Chiefs gave Ritchey his unconditional release, marking the end of his professional baseball career.

Ritchey played 10 seasons of professional baseball. Statistics from his one major-league season with the 1947 Chicago American Giants are incomplete. As of 2024, Baseball-Reference listed his average as .324, but newspapers in 1947 reported his average in the .369 to .381 range. In nine minor-league seasons, he hit .300 (853 hits in 2,845 at-bats) and walked nearly three times more than he struck out.

After his baseball career Ritchey returned to San Diego, where he and Lydia raised their three children: Johnaa, John Jr. (Barry), and Toni. Ritchey worked as a milkman—often giving away milk to underprivileged kids on his route—and drove a delivery truck for Continental Baking Company.59

“As children growing in the early fifties, we were too young to understand the hoopla surrounding our father,” remembered Toni in 2017. “What we do remember was that we grew up with a wonderful father and mother as role models. They provided the nurturing environment that allowed us to grow up as children who knew they were loved.”60

Ritchey remained in San Diego throughout his life and maintained a low profile. When he was in his sixties, he suffered a stroke that affected his speech. Johnny Ritchey died from complications of heart and kidney failure on January 14, 2003, at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Chula Vista, California, nine days after his 80th birthday.61 He was buried in Greenwood Memorial Park in San Diego.

Before Ritchey died, family and friends began efforts to create a bronze bust in his honor. The Padres initially declined to accept the bust, which was created by sculptor Jon Richetti, but acquiesced through media attention spearheaded by Swank. The bust was unveiled in Petco Park’s PCL Bar & Grill on March 30, 2005.

Ritchey, known around San Diego as “Johnny Baseball,” was inducted into the PCL Padres Hall of Fame in 2004. The Breitbard Hall of Fame, which recognizes native San Diegans and athletes who excelled in San Diego, followed in 2017.

In 2020, the Padres, under the ownership of chairman Peter Seidler, began to recognize Ritchey’s contributions to San Diego and the game of baseball by establishing the Johnny Ritchey Breaking Barriers Scholarship. In 2023, on what would have been Ritchey’s 100th birthday, the Padres announced the expansion of the scholarship program to include up to 10 college scholarships “for students who have overcome significant adversities in their pursuit of higher education.”62 The Padres also commissioned a mural of Ritchey, which was painted by artist Andrea Rushing at San Diego High School near the entrance of the baseball field. On April 17, 2023, the Padres wore their Pacific Coast League uniforms to honor the 75th anniversary of Ritchey breaking the PCL color barrier. The bust of Ritchey was moved to a more prominent location—the Breitbard Hall of Fame in the Western Metal building at Petco Park.

“All of the trials and tribulations that he had to go through. It’s amazing when you think about it,” said his daughter Johnaa in 2017. “My dad paving the way for so many other Black athletes.”63 “I think my dad would want to be remembered as a great baseball player because he loved playing the game. But also, he was a good person at heart. I think he would just like to be remembered as a person who loved playing for the people of San Diego because he was a native San Diegan.”64

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to SABR member Tom Larwin for research assistance and to San Diego baseball historian Bill Swank for providing valuable feedback.

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Bill Lamb and fact-checked by Paul Proia.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author relied on Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 Kirk Kenney, “Breitbard Hall of Fame: Johnny Ritchey Broke PCL Color Barrier With the 1948 Padres,” San Diego Union-Tribune, February 19, 2017, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2017/02/19/breitbard-hall-of-fame-johnny-ritchey-broke-pcl-color-barrier-with-the-1948-padres/, accessed September 26, 2024.

2 Records of Ritchey’s 1947 season in the Negro American League vary. As of 2024, Baseball-Reference listed his average as .324, but newspapers in 1947 reported his average in the .369 to .381 range. In his nine minor-league seasons, Ritchey hit an even .300.

3 Bert Ritchey interview with Leonard Knight, “A Talk with Bert Ritchey,” The Journal of San Diego History, Spring 1996, Volume 42, Number 2, https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/1996/april/ritchey/, accessed December 17, 2024.

4 1930 United States Federal Census, https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/92080207:6224, accessed May 24, 2024.

5 (Los Angeles) California Eagle, October 26, 1934: 7.

6 1940 United States Federal Census, https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/74866868:2442, accessed May 24, 2024.

7 Leon H. Washington Jr., “Johnny Ritchey Interviewed by Sentinel Editor,” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 27, 1947: 1.

8 Bill Swank, Echoes from Lane Field: A History of the San Diego Padres 1936-1957, (Paducah: Turner Publishing Company, 1999), 87.

9 Swank, Echoes from Lane Field, 87.

10 Bill Swank, email to the author, September 23, 2024.

11 “San Diego and K-R’s Both Unbeaten,” Stockton Evening and Sunday Record, August 5, 1938: 16.

12 Newhouser outdueled Kehn in the first game, but San Diego evened the series the next day with a 3-2 victory. Newhouser and Kehn each came back on two days’ rest to pitch in the third and decisive game. Post 6 scratched two runs across against Newhouser, breaking his streak of 65 consecutive scoreless innings. Sam Miller, “Errors Fatal to Losing Pitcher,” Charlotte Observer, August 30, 1938: 18.

13 “Brother of Bert Ritchie (sic) Jim Crowed on Baseball Tour,” California Eagle, September 15, 1938: 8.

14 “Ritchy (sic) and Manuel Make History,” California Eagle, September 5, 1940: 7.

15 J. Cullen Fentress, “Down in Front,” California Eagle, September 12, 1940: 11.

16 “Ritchy (sic) and Manuel Make History.”

17 Swank, Echoes from Lane Field, 87.

18 A. T. White, Jr., “Coast Team is Defeated: Finals in Carolina Played Without Two Race Stars,” New Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Virginia), September 14, 1940: 1.

19 Wendell Smith, “Smitty’s Sport Spurt: Cuff Notes,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 21, 1940: 16.

20 Swank, Echoes from Lane Field, 86.

21 Bulldog Tossers Will Face Stiff Test in Aztecs,” Fresno Bee, March 26, 1942: 18.

22 AJ Cassavell, “Ritchey Broke PCL’s Color Barrier with Padres,” https://www.mlb.com/news/johnny-ritchey-the-jackie-robinson-of-pcl, accessed September 28, 2024.

23 Bill Swank, “‘Johnny Baseball’ Broke Barriers, Made San Diegans Proud as a Trailblazing Member of PCL Padres,” San Diego Union-Tribune, April 18, 2023, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/04/16/johnny-baseball-broke-barriers-made-san-diegans-proud-as-a-trailblazing-member-of-pcl-padres/, accessed September 28, 2024. 

24 “Bordertown Sports: Ritchey Gets Linn Platner Trophy,” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 13, 1946: 13.

25 Swank, Echoes from Lane Field, 86.

26 Swank, “‘Johnny Baseball’ Broke Barriers, Made San Diegans Proud as a Trailblazing Member of PCL Padres.”

27 Bill Swank, “Tigers’ Tale: Nearly 80 Years Ago, San Diego Fielded an All-Black Baseball Team in a Pioneering League,” San Diego Union-Tribune, February 17, 2024, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/02/16/tigers-tale-nearly-80-years-ago-san-diego-fielded-an-all-black-baseball-team-in-a-pioneering-league/, accessed September 26, 2024. Ritchey and McCoy both appeared in the San Diego Tigers box score in “Rockets Score Shutout Triumph Over Tigers,” Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA), February 24, 1947.

28 Helen E. Ross, “Chicago American Giants Add John Ritchey, Catcher, to 1947 Roster,” The Call (Kansas City, Missouri), January 31, 1947: 8.

29 Dick Dobbins, The Grand Minor League: An Oral History of the Old Pacific Coast League (Woodford Publishing, 1999), 214.

30 “John Ritchey Top Hitter in NAL as Season Comes to End,” New Journal and Guide, September 20, 1947: 10. Afro-American (Baltimore, MD), September 20, 1947: 14. Ritchey’s average varied in different sources, ranging from .369 to better than .400. Wendell Smith credited Ritchey with a .386 average. Bill Swank, “Nine Baseball Scrapbooks,” The National Pastime (Volume 22, 2002), https://sabr.org/journal/article/nine-baseball-scrapbooks/, accessed September 28, 2024.

31 Baseball-Reference lists Ritchey’s height as 5-foot-10, though multiple sources, including Ritchey’s WWII draft card (https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/18484571:2238) and his player contract card from The Sporting News (https://digital.la84.org/digital/collection/p17103coll3/id/90357/rec/4), list his height at 5-foot-9½.

32 “John Ritchey Ready to Join Cubs’ Farm in Des Moines,” Chicago Defender, September 27, 1947: 20.

33 No High-Blown Purpose in Mind—Padres Make it Clear,” Los Angeles Tribune, November 29, 1947: 14.

34 Chi. Giants ‘Slipped Up’ on Ritchey Contract, Philadelphia Tribune, January 20, 1948: 11.

35 Wendell Smith, “Wendell Smith’s Sports Bear: So, there was No Contract!” Pittsburgh Courier, January 24, 1948: 16.

36 Earl Keller, “Ritchey, Padre Negro, Wrapping Up Regular Mask Job with Steady Raps,” The Sporting News, April 14, 1948: 21.

37 Swank, Echoes from Lane Field, 87.

38 Keller, “Ritchey, Padre Negro, Wrapping Up Regular Mask Job with Steady Raps.”

39 “What They are Doing,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 10, 1948: 10.

40 Herman Hill, “Hits Hard in Clutch During First Season,” New Pittsburgh Courier, March 19, 1949: 11.

41 “Ritchey Learned the Hard Way,” Vancouver News-Herald, April 11, 1950: 7.

42 Swank, Echoes from Lane Field, 88.

43 Swank, Echoes from Lane Field, 88.

44 Swank, Echoes from Lane Field, 87.

45 “Bucky Harris Says Padres’ John Ritchey Will be Cleveland’s No. 1 Catcher by 1951,” The Call, April 8, 1949: B22.

46 Hal Malone, “He Loves Ball, but Portland Experience Almost Stopped Ritchey,” Vancouver Sun, April 28, 1951: 16.

47 Malone.

48 Gary Sarnoff, “Bill Starr: The San Diego Padre Who Battled for Ted Williams and Integrated the PCL,” The National Pastime: Pacific Ghosts (San. Diego, 2019), https://sabr.org/journal/article/bill-starr-the-san-diego-padre-who-batted-for-ted-williams-and-integrated-the-pcl/, accessed February 4, 2024.

49 “Color of Skin Means Nothing at Vancouver,” Expositor (Branford, BC), November 9, 1951: 18.

50 Perry Covent, “Browns Seek John Ritchey; Hallgren Gets Six Offers,” Vancouver Daily Province, December 29, 1951: 10.

51 Tom Kane, “Hot Stove League,” Sacramento Bee, December 17, 1952: 40.

52 “Johnny Ritchey Figures to Head Solon Maskmen,” Sacramento Union, March 6, 1953: 8.

53 “Ritchey Homes Twice as Solons Split, 1-5, 12-0,” Sacramento Union, July 27, 1953: 4.

54 Tom Kane, “Between the Sport Lines,” Sacramento Bee, July 23, 1954: 28.

55 Tom Kane, “Hot Stove League,” Sacramento Bee, January 10, 1955: 21.

56 The Red Sox were slow to integrate their minor-league system and did not have a Black player at the Triple-A level until 1957.

57 “Ritchey with Yakima,” Sacramento Union, April 9, 1956: 6.

58 “Chiefs Drop Ritchey, Play Here Monday,” Post-Standard, May 27, 1956: 83.

59 Josh Jackson, “The Year After Jackie, Ritchey Integrated PCL,” https://www.milb.com/news/john-ritchey-broke-pcl-color-barrier-with-hometown-san-diego-padres-265897724, accessed September 28, 2024.

60 Toni Ritchey-Addison’s speech at the 2017 Breitbard Hall of Fame induction ceremony for Johnny Ritchey, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgmctU3NhsU&t=1s, accessed October 1, 2024.

61 “J. Ritchey, 80; Catcher Broke Color Barrier in Pacific Coast League,” Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2003: 104.

62 Jeff Sanders, “Padres Expanding Johnny Ritchey Scholarship Program,” San Diego Union-Tribune, January 5, 2023, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/01/05/padres-expanding-johnny-ritchey-scholarship-program/, accessed September 26, 2024.

63 Kenney.

64 Kenney.