April 12, 1925: Homestead Grays open season by defeating McConkey Macks

It wasn’t easy being an independent team in 1925. These teams barnstormed from city to city, relying on their manager to arrange each month’s schedule,1 hoping they’d make enough money to pay the bills.

If you were a Black team operating outside of the Negro National League, which was now in its sixth season, or the Eastern Colored League, now in its third, there was the additional challenge of segregation, which meant many White teams would not play against yours. In Pittsburgh, home to a number of barnstorming Black clubs, not all of them were doing well. By summer, the Pittsburgh Giants, managed by Sell Hall, and the Pittsburgh Keystones, managed by Fred D. Downer, were on the verge of going out of business.2

But one independent team was not only surviving – it was thriving. The Homestead Grays had debuted in 1912, and by 1922 they were competing with the professional, league-affiliated Black clubs for talent.3 The Grays were among the few independent teams doing well financially, and they were a big draw everywhere they played.

The Grays were exciting to watch: they had speed, they hit for power, and they won a lot of games, even when facing some very tough competition. During the 1924 season, for example, they distinguished themselves as “the only independent team … in western Pennsylvania to win over 100 games … playing some of the best white teams in the [region].”4

And it wasn’t just fans of semipro ball who supported them. Many fans of the National League’s Pittsburgh Pirates also came out to see the Grays compete; both teams played their home games at Forbes Field, and whenever the Pirates weren’t playing well, fans would shout, “Bring on the Homestead Grays!”5    

Grays manager Cumberland “Cum” Posey had added some new players for the start of the 1925 season, including shortstop Gerald Williams, pitcher Smokey Joe Williams, and outfielder Vic Harris. Gerald Williams had been signed to replace the flashy Malcolm “Scrappy” Brown, who had signed with the Pittsburgh Giants,6 which would turn out to be a bad move, given the team’s financial problems. Vic Harris had played in Cleveland, first with the Tate Stars and then the Cleveland Browns; he then moved to Chicago to join the Negro National League’s American Giants before signing with the Grays.

Smokey Joe Williams, known as one of Negro baseball’s best pitchers,7 had spent much of his career as a mainstay for New York’s Lincoln Giants. He was 39 years old when Posey signed him, and while he no longer had the “blinding speed” of his youth, he was still very effective, able to rely on “excellent command of his pitches.”8 Because of Posey’s acquisitions, some watching as the Grays prepared for the new season believed that this year’s team was “the strongest in the history of the club.”9   

The Grays opened the 1925 season with a road game, traveling 60 miles southwest to Bauers Park in Wheeling, West Virginia, on Easter Sunday, April 12, to play the McConkey Club. The owner and manager of the hometown team was Hugh E. McConkey, a local merchant and a longtime patron of semipro baseball in Wheeling. He was so influential that the newspapers often called him the Dean of Ohio Valley Baseball.10 McConkey owned a cigar shop, and as might be expected, one of his earliest teams was called the Stogies,11 but by the 1920s, most people knew his club as the Macks.12

The Grays were no strangers to Wheeling; they had played against another Wheeling semipro team, the Bauers Baseball Club, since 1920,13 and they always drew big crowds. The McConkey club had not played the Grays before, but they had played a popular Black semipro team from Wheeling, the Clark Athletics, as far back in 1918.14 Interestingly, although Wheeling was a segregated city and both the Bauers and the McConkeys were White teams, neither club seemed to have any concerns about playing against a Black team, especially one as well known as the Homestead Grays. And other than referring to the Grays as a “colored team,” common terminology in that era, the local press did not report the Grays games any differently than the games of the local white teams.

Meanwhile, days before the opener, some confusion arose about whether the McConkeys would be playing the Grays after all. The Grains of Health team, from nearby Bellaire, Ohio, thought they were supposed to be the Grays’ first opponent, but the McConkeys were certain that their team had been scheduled.15 Reporters tracked down manager Posey, who sent a telegram to reiterate that the Grays would be opening the 1925 season against the McConkey team, and Grains of Health would be on the schedule a week after that.  

The Macks believed they were ready. Although the Grays were a formidable team, manager McConkey had been holding tryouts and adding some new young players to go along with veterans like Louis “Lefty” Honecker and Eddie Burkhart, the workhorses of the pitching staff; catcher Johnny Weith; and outfielders Joe Mackin and Louie Crock. He even added Bernie McGannon, regarded locally as one of the region’s best shortstops.16

Wheeling sportswriters agreed that the Macks seemed like a much stronger team this year;17 one writer called the team the best of all the semipro clubs in the Wheeling area.18 In other words, while the Homestead Grays were a tough team to beat, the McConkey Macks would give them a battle.

It was a fair and cool afternoon in Wheeling on Opening Day; the game began at 3 P.M., and a crowd of about 2,000 packed Bauers Park to see it. Both teams sent southpaws to the mound: Charles “Lefty” Williams, regarded in Pittsburgh as one of the “most reliable pitchers in semi-pro baseball,”19 got the start for the Homestead Grays, while Lefty Honecker was the starter for the Macks.

Honecker was known for his versatility – he was not only a talented pitcher who could start or relieve, but a capable outfielder, as well as a good hitter.20 As a member of the Bauers club, he had shut out the Homestead Grays four seasons earlier,21 and manager McConkey was hoping for a repeat performance.  

The first inning was uneventful, with neither team scoring, and the same was true in the second. In the third, the Grays broke the ice, scoring one run on a homer by Oscar Owens over the center-field fence that a local reporter called “one of the longest ever witnessed at Bauer Park.”22

The game then returned to a pitching duel until the fifth inning, when the Macks turned an error and a hit into the tying run. The Grays went ahead 2-1 in the sixth, but once again, the Macks came back in the bottom of the inning, when slugging left fielder Louie Crock drove home catcher Johnny Weithe.

But in the eighth, the Grays put the game away, scoring two runs, led by Moe Harris’s triple. The McConkey team was unable to answer, and the final score was 4-2.

Although it was a “well played and interesting game,”23 local reporters noted that the Macks had had their chances but failed to capitalize – only Louie Crock had a productive day, getting three hits and an RBI. But the rest of the team was unable to come up with timely hitting. Grays pitcher Lefty Williams gave up nine hits but “kept them well scattered,”24 and the Macks left six men on base. Lefty Honecker didn’t pitch that badly: he allowed eight hits, but he was facing a team that knew how to drive in runs and seldom wasted an opportunity.

The Grays were undoubtedly pleased to open their season with a win, and as the 1925 season unfolded, they continued their dominance. They won an astounding 130 games and lost only 23.25 And included in those wins was a rematch against the McConkey club in early May. This time, the score wasn’t nearly as close: The Grays walloped the McConkeys, 18-1.26

Acknowledgments

The author is very grateful to the Ohio County Public Library for digitizing many of the local newspapers from Wheeling, West Virginia. She is especially grateful to local history expert Seán P. Duffy for his invaluable input. In addition to the Wheeling newspapers and other sources listed in the Notes, the author consulted Newspapers.com, Seamheads.com, Baseball-Reference.com, and Retrosheet.org.

This game was fact-checked by Russ Walsh and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Notes

1 “Homestead Grays Have Many Games,” Wheeling (West Virginia) Intelligencer, April 9, 1925: 11.

2 William G. Nunn, “Lean Days Are Upon Us,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 27, 1925: 12.

3 “Homestead Grays Play Here July 4,”  New Castle (Pennsylvania) Herald, June 29, 1922: 13.

4 “Homestead Grays Plan to Have Big Season,” Chicago Broad Ax, March 28, 1925: 3.

5 “Homestead Grays and Bellevue Club Meet at Forbes Field Saturday,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 14, 1924: 6.

6 “Giants Are Booking Games,” Pittsburgh Press, April 4, 1925: 11.

7 “Homestead Grays to Open Up Tomorrow,” Pittsburgh Press, April 11, 1925: 18.

8 Larry Lester and Sammy J. Miller, Black Baseball in Pittsburgh (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Press, 2001), 12.

9 “Five New Colored Stars Will Be Found in Homestead Gray Line-Up Next Sunday,” Wheeling Intelligencer, April 9, 1925: 11.

10 “Sandlot Baseball Mourns Sudden Death of its Dean,” Wheeling News Register, July 6, 1939: 12. Hugh E. McConkey sponsored his first sandlot clubs as far back as 1907-1909. This iteration of the McConkey Club lasted from 1918 through 1939, when McConkey died suddenly of a heart attack. After his death, the team, now managed by Louie Crock, continued to play till the end of the 1940 season.       

11 “Amateur Baseball,” Wheeling Daily Register, April 16, 1909: 11.

12 “Long-Haired House of David Team Here,” Wheeling Register, July 12, 1923: 8. 

13 “Homestead Grays Here Next Sunday,” Wheeling Register, May 22, 1924: 11.

14 “2200 Fans See McConkeys Win,” Wheeling Daily Register, July 15, 1918: 7.

15 “Homestead Grays Settle Local Argument by Playing the M’Conkeys Next Sunday,” Wheeling Intelligencer, April 6, 1925: 10.

16 “M’Gannon, One of the Best Shortstops in Valley, Is Signed with M’Conkeys,” Wheeling Intelligencer, April 7, 1925: 10.

17 “M’Conkeys to Open Season at Bauers Park with Homestead Greys [sic] on April 12,” Wheeling Intelligencer, March 25, 1925: 10.

18 “Southpaws to Battle in M’Conkey-Grays Clash,” Wheeling Sunday Register, April 12, 1925: Section 2, 7.

19 “Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Giants to Have Strong Clubs,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 5, 1924: 10.

20 “Three Games for the Macs,” Wheeling Intelligencer, July 27, 1922: 5.

21 “Bauers Split with Homestead,” Wheeling Intelligencer, August 29, 1921: 7.

22 “Homestead Grays Beat M’Conkeys 4-2,” Wheeling Intelligencer, April 13, 1925: 8.

23 Homestead Grays Beat M’Conkeys.”

24 “Homestead Grays Open Year; Beat McConkeys 4-2,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, April 13, 1925: 10.

25 “The Sportive Realm,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 14, 1925: 13. 

26 “Homestead Grays Rattle Fences at Bauers Park,” Wheeling Register, May 4, 1925: 9. The Grays continued as an independent team until 1929, when they joined the short-lived Negro American League. They resumed being an independent in 1930-1932; a 2018 SABR article observed, “[T]he 1931 Grays won at an .846 clip over the greatest teams of all time. This is enough to enter the 1931 Homestead Grays into the discussion of the greatest teams in history.” After briefly being part of Cum Posey’s East-West League in 1932, the Grays subsequently joined the Negro National League, where they became a powerhouse, winning 12 straight league titles from 1937 to 1948 and three Negro World Series championships in that span. Charlie Fouché, “The 1931 Homestead Grays: The Greatest Baseball Team of All Time,” in The National Pastime: Steel City Stories (Pittsburgh: SABR, 2018), 42, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-1931-homestead-grays-the-greatest-baseball-team-of-all-time/; “Homestead Grays,” MLB.com, Accessed February 28, 2023, https://www.mlb.com/history/negro-leagues/teams/homestead-grays. https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-1931-homestead-grays-the-greatest-baseball-team-of-all-time/.