The story begins with Tom Wilson, who established the team in Nashville in 1921. They had been previously known as the Nashville Standard Giants, a semipro team that Wilson founded in 1918. Wilson was a local businessman, transplanted from Atlanta, with a love for baseball. The idea of a competitive Black team in the South around the time that the Negro National League was forming farther north under the aegis of Rube Foster appealed to Wilson. But as much as he was loyal to Nashville, his entrepreneurial instincts and wish for financial success led him to relocate the franchise from time to time in search of greener pastures.

Columbus and Washington, DC, became way stations for Wilson as he moved the team in search of a sizable and stable fan base that Nashville’s Black population did not offer. Eventually, in 1938, after a poor showing in Washington, he found what he was looking for – a receptive environment for his Elites – and moved the team one more time, to Baltimore, less than 50 miles up the road. The following year, 1939, the Baltimore Elite Giants struck pay dirt and won the Negro National League championship in a four-team playoff, besting first the Newark Eagles and then the juggernaut Homestead Grays. They remained in Baltimore for the duration of their existence, until the team folded in 1950.

This book provides a detailed account of the Elite Giants and an array of essays about the players and team officials behind them that resulted in Baltimore’s 1939 crown. A complete season timeline, the story of Oriole Park, where the Elites often played, the historical context of the time, and articles about some of standout games are also included. They offer a backdrop for Tom Wilson’s bio and player narratives ranging from the young Roy Campanella and the likes of Biz Mackey, Burnis “Wild Bill” Wright, Henry Kimbro, and player-manager Felton Snow to those serving as the supporting cast.

In addition to the players with bios published in this book, over a dozen additional players were identified in The Negro Leagues Book, published in 1994 edited by Dick Clark and Larry Lester, as well as in James A. Riley’s extensive work, The Biographical Encyclopedia of The Negro Baseball Leagues, as having appeared at some point with the Elite Giants in 1939. Seamheads has captured few if any details on these players in a 1939 Elite Giants uniform; the transient nature of players led to their ephemeral appearances on the roster or even just the occasional bench warming at best in any given year. To quote the late Rick Bush, “[I]t has been inevitable that we find one or more players who cannot be identified or about whom we can find no evidence of their participation in the year on which the book is focused. The following individuals have been omitted from this book for such reasons.” But while the surmised place of these players in Baltimore in 1939 remains uncertain, they merit brief attention and the hope that a future researcher will unearth more details about their lives and baseball careers.

• V. (“Vet” or “Ed”) Barnes. Seamheads lists Vet (nicknamed Schoolboy or Ed) Barnes as having played for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1937 and 1938. There are no records (yet) for any time with the Elite Giants in 1939. He was born on December 23, 1911, in Silver Creek, Mississippi, and died on May 13, 1974, in Vallejo, California. Alternatively, Ed Barnes is listed by Riley as having played for the Monarchs in 1937-1938 and then for Baltimore in 1939-1940.1
• Charles Green “Wooger” Beverly (a.k.a. Beverie). Beverly ostensibly played some third base for the Elite Giants in 1939.2 His career, ranging from 1925 to 1939, otherwise had him as a left-handed pitcher primarily for the Kansas City Monarchs, but also for the Birmingham Black Barons, Cleveland Stars, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Philadelphia Stars, and Newark Eagles. A so-so record of 17-21 and a career batting average of .179 framed his itinerant career, of which portions of eight seasons are documented. Barnes was born in Walker County, Texas, on May 6, 1900, and died in Sealy, Texas, on March 20, 1981.
• George Britt. Britt had an extensive career in the Negro Leagues, dating from 1917 and lasting into the early 1940s. He played for 10 teams, including the precursor to the Elite Giants in Baltimore, the Baltimore Black Sox, from 1923 to 1926. A pitcher who also caught and served as a utility player, Britt was a serviceable right-hander with a decent curve. According to Riley, he was nicknamed “Chippy” because that is what he called everyone else.3 His longest tenure was with the Homestead Grays; sandwiched on either side of his supposed time with the Elite Giants in 1939, he played for the Washington Black Senators and Grays. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on July 6, 1895, and died in Erie, Pennsylvania, in January 1981 at the age of 85.
• Jimmy Direaux. Pitcher, third baseman, outfielder. Records show Direaux having pitched for Baltimore in 1938, but no carryover is immediately documented for the 1939 season. Luke suggests that Direaux, along with Andy Porter and Schoolboy Griffith, jumped to the Mexican Leagues that season for better pay.4 In fact, Direaux spent most of his career in Mexico, playing stateside only for the Elite Giants both in Washington and Baltimore. Direaux was born in Pasadena, California in 1916, and a record of his death has not yet been found.
• Al Johnson. A brief career for the Washington Black Senators and the Elite Giants in 1939 and 1940,5 with an earlier appearance with the Washington Elite Giants in 1936, Johnson was a pitcher, but nothing else is known about him.
• Francis Matthews. Seamheads identifies first baseman-outfielder Fran Matthews as a Newark Eagles lifer in the late 1930s and early 1940s with time off for military service, but Riley suggests he played for Baltimore, even sparingly, in 1939. Matthews was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on November 2, 1916, attended Boston University before his baseball career began, and died in Los Angeles on August 24, 1999, at the age of 82. He was deemed a promising player in his early years, but his career might have been affected by being hit by Monte Irvin with a throw from third base.6
• John “Lefty” Phillips. Born in Nashville in 1918, death date unknown. Information on Phillips is scarce, although Seamheads shows him appearing in five games over the 1939 and 1940 seasons with Baltimore for a total of 5⅔ innings pitched and an ERA of 12.71.
• Andrew Porter. Andy “Pullman” Porter was considered one of the big three with Baltimore in 1938 alongside Jonas Gaines and Bill Byrd. However, according to Luke, in 1939 he opted to take his talents to Mexico with teammates Jimmy Direaux and Schoolboy Griffith.7 The tall right-hander had a 15-year career split between the Negro Leagues and Mexico, playing in the latter for at least four seasons. He returned to Baltimore in the early 1940s and finished his career with the Indianapolis Clowns. Porter lived to be 100; he was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas, on March 7, 1910, and died in Los Angeles on July 1, 2010.
• Sarah “Mutt” Roberts. Riley lists Roberts as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Stars in 1937-1938 before appearing with the Elite Giants in 1939. No records otherwise have been found.8
• Clarence Williams. Records for Clarence Williams, a pitcher and outfielder, are scarce. Riley suggests he played three seasons, first for the Washington Black Senators in 1938 and in 1939 and 1940 for Baltimore.9 Seamheads found him in one Elite Giants box score in 1939, going 0-for-2. No other information on him is readily available.
• Williams. Shown as a utility player for Baltimore in 1939 by Riley; no other details are readily available.10
• Williams. Not much is known about this right-handed pitcher who ostensibly played for Baltimore briefly in 1939 and then for the Newark Eagles during the World War II years.11
• Woodrow Wilson “Willie” Williams. Seamheads lists a contemporary as “Lilly” but no Willie Williams. Riley’s records show Willie or “Woody,” a left-handed pitcher, as having played from 1933 to 1941 including time with the Elite Giants, in Washington in 1937 and then with the Baltimore club in 1938-1940 before ending his career with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1941.12
• Jim Willis. With the monikers “Cannonball” and “Bullet Jim” to underscore his lethal fastball, Willis played for four iterations of the Elite Giants from Nashville to Columbus to Washington and Baltimore. Seamheads shows him with a career 32-49 record and at least two appearances for Baltimore in 1939. He was born in Sewanee, Tennessee, on February 28, 1908, but had no date of death listed.13
• Zollie Wright. Born on September 17, 1909, in Milford, Texas, Wright, a right-handed-batting right fielder, played for nearly a decade in the 1930s for a handful of teams, including the Elite Giants franchise beginning with the Columbus version and then Washington (where he earned a 1936 selection to the East-West All-Star Game) and Baltimore. He ended his career with stints with the New York Black Yankees (in 1939 and 1940) and the Philadelphia Stars (1941). The Black Yankees and Elite Giants exchanged players from time to time in the late 1930s; perhaps Wright surfaced for a time in Baltimore in 1939. He died in Philadelphia on April 12, 1976.14

This book and those in the series that have preceded it has been made possible by the 30 SABR members who have collaboratively and diligently researched and written each article. A difficult task in compiling a book like this continues to be the collection of photos of as many as possible of those portrayed in it. Some of the more obscure players pose challenges and we are grateful for the efforts of those who have been able to help in finding visual representations.

It is important to take a moment and note the passing of Frederick C. “Rick” Bush, editor of so many of SABR’s baseball compilations. He died in 2023, having already invested much time and effort in planning and organizing this book. He set an example and tone for all who have contributed to books like these, for which we are thankful. He will be missed.

We express our thanks to the tireless efforts of our fact-checker Carl Riechers and copy editor Len Levin. They have served in these capacities in earlier books in the series and are consummate professionals at what they do. Finally, it is fitting to paraphrase how Rick Bush might have concluded this Preface and Acknowledgments, noting that another book in this series is already in the works – the 1945 Cleveland Buckeyes. For now, enjoy yet another window on Black Baseball’s past – the 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants.

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 the mid-1980s. 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.

Notes

1 James A. Riley, Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 58.

2 Riley, 82.

3 Riley, 109-110.

4 Bob Luke, The Baltimore Elite Giants (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 43.

5 Riley, 429.

6 Riley, 521-522.

7 Luke, 43.

8 Riley, 669.

9 Riley, 848.

10 Riley, 849.

11 Riley, 858.

12 Riley, 864.

13 Riley, 865.

14 Riley, 884.

Scales was named manager of the New York Black Yankees for 1939, and Felton Snow was named the new manager. Snow had been the team’s shortstop in 1938, batting .254 with 22 RBIs in 36 league games.

A later report in the Pittsburgh Courier said that Biz Mackey would manage Baltimore.2 That said, the Chicago Defender had cited “Manager Snow” as reporting that all but three players had reported to camp; one of the ones who had not yet reported was Biz Mackey.3 The Baltimore Afro-American cited Snow as manager in an April 22 story emanating from Atlanta.4 

Douglass Smith, “publicity man for the club,” announced that the Elite Giants would have Oriole Park as their home field in 1939.5 Bugle Field had been the home ballpark in 1938.

In 1939, despite having a losing league record (20-24), the Elite Giants repeated as champions. How did this come about? Thomas Kern notes that it was often the case in league play that the first- and second-half champions would meet in a playoff to determine the season champion. The Grays won the first half and Baltimore, reinforced by the acquisition of better players during the season, won the second half. However, in 1939 the Negro National League, according to the Delaware County Daily Times, adopted the Shaughnessy System, by which the top four teams participated in a playoff. The origins of the system date from athlete and executive Frank Shaughnessy, who designed a four-team playoff for Organized Baseball’s International League in the late 1930s. Some argued that the approach should be applied in the American and National Leagues to facilitate a breakup of the New York Yankees dynasty.

Whether or not the Negro National League had the same thing in mind when it came to the dominance of the Homestead Grays, it applied the four-team playoff in 1939. As a consequence of taking the top four teams in the League, the Elite Giants’ composite record for the season, due to a poor first half showing, was below .500. The first-place Grays drew the fourth-place Philadelphia Stars, who had narrowly edged the Black Yankees at the end of the regular season. The second-place Newark Eagles played third-place Baltimore. And Baltimore prevailed.6

One could, in fact, ask the question as well regarding the prior year: “Who were the NNL champions in 1938?” After the 1939 season was over, Afro-American columnist Art Carter did allow that “the Baltimore Elite Giants dethroned the two-time league champions, the Homestead Grays[,]” though he noted that the Grays had been seen as holding the two earlier championships “whether they won them by fair or foul means.”7 Indeed, he had written of the Elite Giants, “Actually, they have as much claim to the 1938 championship as the Homestead Grays, who are recognized as the league titleholders of last year, because last year’s title series ended in a state of confusion. The Elites held the edge in the deciding game, when the Grays walked off the field, and the now-resigned president, Gus Greenlee, never did anything about it.”8

There had been “playoffs” and on Sunday, September 11, the Elites played two games at Oriole Park, beating the Pittsburgh Crawfords, 10-1, in the first game.9 In the second, at some point in the fourth inning, the Grays “were on the short end … when they started to pull the stall act.” The umpire forfeited the game to the Elites, but the Afro-American explained that the win over the Crawfords would count in the playoffs but the forfeit would not.10 No rationale was provided.

Carter continued: “Consequently, the Grays, who held the championship the previous year, continued to parade as titleholders. And the incumbent league prexy, Tom Wilson, never attempted to take the matter into his hands inasmuch as one of the involved clubs (the Elites) is owned by him, and any decision would naturally invite tales of favoritism.”11

They were a team that had relocated from city to city. Bob Luke summarized some of their travels that brought them to Baltimore in 1938:

“Newspapers often referred to Smiling Tom Wilson’s squad as ‘the well-traveled Elite Giants.’ They played their first game in 1921 in Nashville, Tennessee, and joined the Negro National League in 1929. The Great Depression caused the league to disband in 1932. The Elites rejoined the league when it reappeared in 1933. When he discovered that the East Coast teams found getting to and from Nashville a financial hardship, Wilson moved the franchise to Detroit, and they started the 1935 season there. But the Elites left Detroit after several weeks – they could not find a stadium to rent – and went to Columbus, Ohio, for the rest of the ’35 season. There the city’s modest black population (32,774 in 1930) could not muster sufficient support for the team, so Wilson again pulled up stakes, moving the Elites to Washington, D.C., for the 1936 and ’37 season. In May 1938 he moved the team to Baltimore, where he at last found adequate community support.”12

Preseason

A Negro National League meeting was held at the Harlem Chamber of Commerce in New York City on January 2. The six league teams from 1938 were represented, with Tom Wilson and Vunn (Vernon) Green there for the Elite Giants. It was reported that “[l]eague finances were found to be in better shape than at any time since the league was formed.”13 In the only player transaction mentioned in the Courier, Wilson announced that he had traded the team’s 1938 manager, George Scales, along with pitcher Bob Griffith, to the New York Black Yankees for left-handed pitcher Barney Brown. Scales did manage the Black Yankees in 1939, but neither Brown nor Griffith pitched that year for any team in the league. Griffith, with his name spelled as Griffin, signed to play baseball in Mexico for Vera Cruz.14 

The league season was set to begin on May 14 and run until Labor Day.15

Boxing and basketball dominated the sports page of the Baltimore Afro-American. Even cricket got mention, but there was disappointingly little about the Elite Giants through the end of April other than a brief mention of the April 23 game, brief enough that it didn’t even mention the starting pitcher in the first game or anyone on offense.16 The team first played in Baltimore on May 14. Only the day before did the paper accord any significant coverage.

Gus Greenlee resigned as president of the league and at the February 18 league meeting in Philadelphia, Tom Wilson was elected league president.17

April 2, 1939: Memphis Red Sox 4, Baltimore Elite Giants 2, at Martin Park, Memphis

The Elite Giants had been training in Nashville, then traveled to Memphis for a 2:30 Sunday afternoon game in front of a “fair sized crowd” at Martin Park against the Memphis Red Sox.18 Getting in a few innings apiece pitching for Baltimore were “Rogers,” Lefty Phillips, and Emery Adams. The Red Sox scored two runs in the first inning and two in the third, yielding single runs in the fifth and seventh. Roy Campanella caught.19 The Memphis Commercial Appeal had one sentence about the game, reassuringly understanding that the team had relocated to Maryland: “The Memphis Red Sox won their first exhibition game yesterday by defeating the Baltimore Elite Giants, 4 to 2, on the Martin’s Park diamond.”20

April 9, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 13, Atlanta Black Crackers 12, at Booker T. Washington High School field, Atlanta

The game was played in Easter Sunday. With Mackey managing, Baltimore and Atlanta squared off for “nine ding-dong, smash-bang frames” before the Elite Giants came from behind and scored three times in the top of the ninth, and then held the one-run lead. Atlanta outhit Baltimore 19-15 and overall there were 15 extra-base hits. Felix “Chin” Evans of Atlanta and Henry Kimbro of Baltimore each homered. All three triples were by Crackers. Sammy Hughes doubled twice for Baltimore, while West, Walker, Campanella, and Wild Bill Wright each hit a double. Bill Harvey, Lefty Phillips, and Bill Byrd were the three pitchers for the Elite Giants. In the ninth, with Baltimore down by two runs, Byrd led off with a walk. Mackey had himself pinch-hit for Campanella and grounded out. Kimbro hit a two-run inside-the-park home run to deep left-center. That tied the score, 12-12. Snow flied out. (The Atlanta Daily World called him “Mammy” Snow.)21 Hughes hit his second double. Wright walked. James West beat out an infield hit to short. The bases were loaded with two outs. Hoskins came to bat.22 He battled Dixon for 10 pitches, fouling off five and finally earning a base on balls on Dixon’s 11th pitch. That forced in the go-ahead run for the Elite Giants.

April 10, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 11, Atlanta Black Crackers 10, at Booker T. Washington High School field, Atlanta

The Monday afternoon game was another high-scoring game decided by one run, though in this game all the scoring was done in the first six innings and neither team put one across in the seventh, eighth, or ninth. The line score read:

The Atlanta Daily World dubbed it “one of the weirdest exhibitions of professional baseball ever seen here in a number of years.” For Atlanta, it was the second day in a row they had collected precisely 19 base hits. It wasn’t enough. Yet again, they came up one run short of matching the Elite Giants. The “Black Crax” had held a 5-1 lead after three innings, and then came the middle innings, in which Baltimore scored 10 to Atlanta’s five, before Lefty Glover and Chin Evans suddenly got in an “old-fashioned pitcher’s battle” for the final three.23

Some dramatic defensive plays were detailed and some amateurish errors. Mitchell (charged with six runs) had started for Atlanta, relieved by Evans. Evans homered for the second day in a row, as did Kimbro, who also had two doubles. Hoskins, too, homered for the Giants. Willie Hubert (who had two hits) started for the Giants, relieved by Lefty Glover and Bill Harvey.

There may have been one or more other games played in Georgia. Researcher Rich Bogovich found a brief article in a Macon newspaper saying that the local Bibb Fast Blacks expected to play a number of preseason games before their own season opened on April 15, with teams including the Newark Eagles, Atlanta Black Crackers, and the “Washington Elite Giants.”24

April 16, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 6, Atlanta Black Crackers 3, at Engel Stadium, Chattanooga

A reported 500 fans attended the game, but the Chattanooga Daily Times provided no other details than the score and the venue. It gave the team name as the Nashville Elite Giants.25 The designation of the city name was seen as an ongoing matter, noted Randy Dixon in the Pittsburgh Courier when he described “Tom Wilson’s Elite Giants [whose] precise geographical home hovers between Baltimore and Nashville as the whim strikes.”26

The Atlanta Daily World offered a bit more information. Starting for the Black Crax was Eddie “Bullet” Dixon, who shut out the Baltimore Elite Giants (named as such) through the first seven innings, “only to have late rallies, aided by untimely errors, ruin the brilliant early season performance.”27

The team stationery, at least well into May, was headed “Nashville Elite Giants Baseball Club,” located at 84 Claiborne Street in Nashville.28

April 23, 1939: Nashville Elite Giants 5, Chicago American Giants 3 (first game); Nashville Elite Giants 5, Chicago American Giants 0 (second game); at Sulphur Dell Park, Nashville

Young, Hughes, Mackey, and Snow all hit doubles off Willie Cornelius in the first game, for five runs in all.  Right-hander Bill Byrd gave up two runs to Chicago in the top of the first, but the Giants came back with one in the bottom of the first. They added one in the fifth, two in the sixth, and (after Chicago scored its second run) another in the sixth.

The second game was the standout game – “South Paw Harvey” (Bill Harvey) allowed just one base hit, a single by first baseman Ed Young, in the seven-inning game. Lefty Bowe was Chicago’s pitcher. Succeeded by Rogers Pierre, the pair allowed four runs in the first and another in the fourth inning, allowing 10 hits in all. The only extra-base hit was a double by Felton Snow.29

April 24, 1939: Chicago American Giants 10, Baltimore Elite Giants 6, at Sulphur Dell Park, Nashville

The source provided is as presented by the Chicago Tribune. No other source of information has been found.30

April 30, 1939: Homestead Grays 6, Baltimore Elite Giants 2; Homestead Grays 5, Baltimore Elite Giants 2, at Rickwood Field, Birmingham

Details of the game are scarce, but the Atlanta Daily World said about 5,000 turned out, and that Roy Partlow “limited the Giants to four hits” in the first game “although his wildness in the seventh and eighth innings came near wrecking him. The Grays socked three twirlers for 14 hits.”31 The four starters were not named, but Partlow started the first game for Homestead and Lefty Phillips started the second for the Elite Giants. The games were also previewed in the Birmingham News in a fairly lengthy story on April 24 and again on the 29th, the latter article staying that “Willys” (Jim Willis) and Porter (Andy Porter) were expected to be the two pitchers for the Nashville Elite Giants.32

May 7, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 6, Kansas City Monarchs 4; Baltimore Elite Giants 17, Kansas City Monarchs 3, at Sulphur Dell Park, Nashville33

In a story datelined Nashville, the Chicago Defender reported that “the Nashville Elites” handed the Monarchs “a licking.” It noted that the “first game was played in a drizzle of rain” but that 3,000 “braved the weather” to attend.34 Byrd pitched the first game for the Elites. While it’s likely that more than one pitcher worked the second game, there was no box score or other indication who the losing pitchers might have been nor why the second game was so lopsided.

May 13, 1939: The Philadelphia Inquirer listed a game for that afternoon at the 44th and Parkside ballpark – Parkside Athletic Field – between Bolden’s Stars and the Baltimore Elite Giants, but if the game was actually played, no trace of it has been found.35

Regular season

The day before the season got underway, the Baltimore Afro-American devoted more than an inch or two of coverage for the first time, noting that the 1938 NNL championship team would open at Oriole Park (Twenty-Ninth and Greenmount) against the league’s “next best team,” the Homestead Grays.36 

Manager (and third baseman) Felton Snow had “virtually the same combination doing chores for him that worked for Tom Wilson’s crew, last year” – naming catcher Biz Mackey, second baseman Sammy Hughes, shortstop Hoss Walker, first baseman Jim West, center fielder Henry Kimbro, and right fielder Wild Bill Wright. Bill Byrd had held the Monarchs to six hits and was expected as starting pitcher. Bill Hoskins had played a bit at the end of the 1939 season but was seen as a relatively new face, playing left field as the closest the team had to a newcomer (new enough that he was called “Jimmie” Hoskins in the newspaper).

Taking on the Grays would be a challenging way to kick off the new season. Homestead had topped the league in 1937, and then won the “world’s championship” from the Chicago American Giants. In 1938 they had been runners-up to the Elites.

There was to be a pregame “ceremony” in which “sports editors from the local papers, daily and weekly, will engage in a pitch, catch, bat and umpire scene.”37

May 14, 1939: Homestead Grays 7, Baltimore Elite Giants 1; Homestead Grays 11, Baltimore Elite Giants 0 (six innings), at Oriole Park, Baltimore

The first day of championship season play for the Elite Giants got off to a depressing start when they played two home games and managed to score only one run. As the Chicago Defender said, the Elites “took it on the chin twice.”38 They had been scheduled to play the first game of the regular season in Philadelphia against the Stars on May 13, but rain prevented that.

The lone run they scored came in the bottom of the first inning of the first game. They were already facing a two-run deficit, the Grays having scored twice off Byrd. Roy Partlow was pitching for Homestead. Felton Snow doubled off the wall in right field and Wild Bill Wright singled to bring him home. Pitching for Homestead was Ray Partlow. He allowed only five hits. Bill Byrd pitched for Baltimore and was no mystery, giving up 16 hits. First baseman Buck Leonard was 4-for-4 in the first game. Also hitting for the Grays was center fielder Benjamin Gray, 3-for-5 with a single, double, and triple.

Left-hander Edsall Walker pitched for the Grays in the six-inning second game, and threw a two-hit shutout, a single by Hoskins and a single off the bat of pitcher Emery Adams. Walker struck out eight. Leonard started the scoring, homering his first time up, hitting the ball over the wall and “on the housetops adjacent to right-field.”39 Josh Gibson had doubled and scored on Leonard’s home run. In the fourth inning, Gibson hit a two-run homer over the wall in left, driving in Sam Bankhead. The Elites used four pitchers in the six innings – Johnny “Slim” Johnson, Adams, Tom Glover, and Lefty Phillips. 

May 17, 1939: Lloyd A.C. 3, Nashville-Baltimore Elite Giants 1, at Lloyd Athletic Field, Chester, Pennsylvania

The Lloyd semipro club’s Johnny Holstein gave up one run in the top of the first. Kimbro hit a slow roller to second and the fielder’s throw went wild, resulting in Kimbro perched at second with nobody out. Felton Snow lined a ball over the right-field wall; it was scored a ground-rule double. There was no further scoring in the game until the bottom of the sixth inning, with Lefty Glover pitching for the Elite Giants. Snow’s triple in the third counted for naught, as the Lloyd men worked their way out of trouble. In the top of the sixth, the Giants got two singles and a double and failed to score. Bill Wright was picked off first after the first single. Sammy Hughes doubled but was thrown out at the plate after a player named Williams singled.40 In the home seventh, Holstein walked. Their center fielder hit one off Glover’s glove for a hit. The next batter walked and the bases were loaded with nobody out. Biz Mackey replaced Glover with right-hander Johnny Johnson. Lloyd’s left fielder grounded out, second to first, and the tying run scored. First baseman Worm Wearshing got his third base hit of the game, singling to center and driving in two more. The local newspaper called it “one of the greatest baseball games ever played in this area.”41

May 20, 1939: Scheduled Sunday 3:00 P.M. game against the Newark Eagles at Dunn Field, Trenton, New Jersey, rained out

One can draw one’s own conclusions about the meaning behind the wording, but the next day’s Trenton Evening Times article noting the rainout advised readers that rainchecks would be “good for any future Negro loop game here.”42

May 21, 1939: Newark Eagles 4, Baltimore Elite Giants 0; Newark Eagles 4, Baltimore Elite Giants 3 (seven innings), at Ruppert Stadium, Newark

The Elites started their season 0-4 by dropping another doubleheader, this one on the road in Newark. Nineteen-year-old Jimmie Hill threw a two-hitter for the Eagles in the first game, and in the second “a late-inning rally upset the dope.”43 The game was scoreless through seven innings. Bill Byrd pitched for the Elite Giants and allowed only seven hits, but the Eagles bunched some together and, in part due to an error by Hughes, scored four runs in the bottom of the eighth. The first run came after Hill singled, was sacrificed to second, then reached third and home on successive errors.44 The lone base hits for Baltimore were by Snow and Hughes. The game drew 5,000 fans. Byrd was said to have been pitching “under the evident pain of a sprained ankle [but] carried on like a Spartan and deserve a better fate.”45

Falling behind 2-0 in the first inning of the second game, Eagles pitcher James Brown took over from Jesse Brown and held the Elites to one more run while Newark scored three times. Johnny Johnson started for Baltimore and Emery Adams took over at some point.46 Newark scored twice in the bottom of the second, adding another run later on. The Giants tied the score in the top of the ninth on a triple by Bright and a single by Hoskins, but pinch-hitter Johnny Hayes doubled for the Eagles and Jesse Brown drove him in with the winning run. It is unclear who “Bright” may have been – presumably Bill Wright.47 

It is interesting to see a breakdown of the attendance at the May 21 game, showing the number of seats sold in each price category, as reported by the Newark Baseball Club.48

The Elite Giants were supposed to play a game on May 22, also at Chester, against the Philadelphia Stars, according to that morning’s edition of the Chester Times. See “League Game at Lloyd Tonight,” on page 15, but the official NNL report indicates that the game was rained out.49

May 26, 1939:  R.D. Wood club 9, Baltimore Elite Giants 8, at Florence Township, New Jersey

The Wood club, known as the Pipemakers, were losing 7-3 in the sixth inning but rallied to beat Phillips. Snow was 3-for-5. The newspaper informed readers that “Williams socked a homer for the Negroes.”50

May 27, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 5, New York Black Yankees 1; Baltimore Elite Giants 2, New York Black Yankees 1, at Parkside Athletic Field, Philadelphia51

One would think it would be possible to find more information about a relatively high-profile doubleheader such as this one, but despite the combined efforts of a number of SABR researchers, we have been unable to do so.

May 28, 1939: New York Black Yankees 10, Baltimore Elite Giants 8; New York Black Yankees 3, Baltimore Elite Giants 1 (second game, five innings), at Oriole Park, Baltimore

The Baltimore Evening Sun had written on May 25 that the Elite Giants team – which it said was being managed by Felton Snow – would be joined by two new pitchers, Sam Woodrow from Nashville and Cliff Johnson from Memphis. Neither is listed on Seamheads.52  

Starting pitchers in the first game were Bill Byrd for Baltimore and Roy K. Williams for the Black Yankees. The first inning saw New York score four times (three of them on a home run over the wall in right-center by left fielder Alex Brooks) and Baltimore score three. New York added two more unmatched runs in the top of the second. Brooks homered again in the fifth, a solo homer that increased their lead to 7-3. Baltimore scored once in the fifth. In the top of the seventh, Brooks doubled and right fielder Zollie Wright homered. The Elites got two more runs in the seventh on solo home runs by Bill Wright and Biz Mackey. Brooks drove in the Black Yankees’ 10th run in the top of the ninth, singling in Goose Curry. The Elites scored twice in the bottom of the ninth, the third out coming with the potential tying runs on base.53 

Alex Brooks was clearly New York’s star in the first game with two homers, a double, and a triple in a 4-for-5 game.54

The second game saw the Elites score first, with one run off New York starter Neck Stanley in the bottom of the second. Campanella (“Campanelli” even in the hometown Afro-American) beat out an infield hit, stole second, and scored when Hoss Walker singled to center field. It was their only run of the game. Jim Holland took over from Stanley and allowed only three hits in the remaining five innings. Emery Adams started for Baltimore and lost, giving up two hits and one run in the third, fourth, and fifth innings. The only extra-base hit of the game was a fourth-inning double by Yankees catcher Bob Clarke.55

May 30, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 11, New York Black Yankees 3; New York Black Yankees 14, Baltimore Elite Giants 5, at Dexter Park, New York

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was still referring to the out-of-towners as the Nashville Elite Giants. Some 7,000 came to the games. Glover started the first game, with Byrd coming in near the end and contributing a home run to the cause.56 Each team scored once in the first. The Elites scored once more in the second and two in the seventh. The Black Yankees made it 4-2 with one run in the bottom of the eighth, but then the Elites exploded for seven runs in the top of the ninth, putting the game pretty much out of sight. New York scored a third run in the bottom of the ninth but that was it.57 At some point during the first game, catcher Roy Campanella of the “Nashville E. Giants” was ejected and a 15-minute argument followed, with the “Nashville Club … almost threatening to leave.”58 Campanella did catch in the second game.

The Black Yankees turned the tables completely in the second game. Though the Elites scored once in the top of the first, the Black Yankees scored six times in their half of the first and added four more in the second. Pitching for the visitors were four men: Lefty Phillips, Johnny Johnson, Willis, and Emery Adams. New York took a 12-1 lead in the fourth. The Giants scored four runs in the top of the fifth, and the Black Yankees answered with two more of their own. Terris McDuffie pitched the full game for New York. Black Yankees first baseman John Washington was the star on offense, going 4-for-4 with three doubles.

June 2, 1939: Nashville-Baltimore Elite Giants 14, Lloyd A.C. 1, at Lloyd Athletic Field, Chester, Pennsylvania

In a sequel to the May 17 game, the Elite Giants (still bearing the two-city name in the Chester paper) exacted revenge on both Holstein and the Lloyd semipros. First up was Kimbro, and Holstein struck him out – but before the inning was over the Giants scored four times. Sammy Hughes led off with a double to center. Wright singled to left, scoring Hughes. West singled past second base, and Wright scored. The scoring had begun.59

After three innings and eight runs, Holstein gave way to a reliever. Three Lloyd pitchers gave up 17 hits and 14 runs. Eight of the hits were doubles, with Hughes doubling three times. Playing with ground rules that a ball hit over the right-field wall was a two-base hit, Hughes had hit two of his doubles out of the park. A ball hit over the wall in right-center, however, was a home run and Hoskins picked up one of each – the first out-of-the-park home run at the field in 1939 (a two-run homer in the fourth, as well as a double in the first and two singles later, finishing with four RBIs.)

Tom Glover pitched the first three innings for the Elites, with both Adams and Phillips getting in some work as well.

The lone Lloyd run came in the first, off Glover, on a single, a stolen base, and a double off the left-field fence by Wearshing.

June 4, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 7, New York Cubans 3, at Yankee Stadium, New York

There was a four-team doubleheader at Yankee Stadium planned at Yankee Stadium, with New York Lieutenant Governor Charles Poletti scheduled to throw out the first pitch.60 The games were meant to be the first of a series of 10 games for the Jake Ruppert Trophy. The doubleheader drew a reported 12,500. 

In the first game. the Elites looked to be letting the game get away from them early on, Byrd giving up one run in the second and two more in the third. Then Byrd clamped down and saw his teammates score one in the fourth, one in the seventh, three in the eighth (a three-run homer by Byrd himself in the eighth, off Luis Tiant), and another two runs in the top of the ninth. Hoskins was 4-for-5 in the game, all doubles.61 The New York Age reporting varied, saying that right fielder “Babe” Hoskins had three doubles and a triple, that “Dick” Byrd and Kimbro had homered for the two runs in the ninth.62 The Pittsburgh Courier provided what might be deemed the most reliable account. It agreed that Byrd and Kimbro had homered in the ninth, both drives into the right-field stands. It ascribed the three-run rally in the eighth to a double by Snow, a single by Wright, a double by Hoskins, and a single by Jim West. It accorded Hoskins two doubles and a 405-foot triple.63

The Baltimore Afro-American shows a score of 7-3 with the box score in agreement. The June 5 Philadelphia Inquirer, in a simple listing of independent game scores on page 18, reported the score as 7-2. The New York Daily News reported the score as 8-4 on page 42 of the June 5 edition, showing an entirely different line score and stating that the pitching matchup was Byrd vs. Diaz (not Tiant). Seamheads shows no Diaz on the 1939 Cubans roster. No one by that name appears in any of the other newspaper accounts. There is a good chance that “Diaz” in the Daily News is a simple mistake for “Tiant” – perhaps a name that was misheard. The line score in the Daily News showed:

The New York Amsterdam News gives the Cubans four runs, but describes only the scoring of three runs – and its account of the scoring gives two runs scored to Casey and one to Vargas, but the box score gives one run scored each to Vargas, Caraballo, Casey, and Rodríguez.64 Dan Burley’s reporting was the most detailed. His game story also agreed that both Byrd and Kimbro had homered in the ninth – but the newspaper’s box score may have come up short. It credited Byrd with a homer but not Kimbro. The box score did credit Hoskins with three doubles and a triple. All in all, the reporting of this game – held in a high-profile ballpark – perhaps provides a lesson in the problem of researching and presenting reliable information on Negro Leagues games of the era.

The second game was to feature the Philadelphia Stars and the New York Black Yankees.

June 5, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants vs. Norristown Pros, at Norristown, Pennsylvania

The morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer announced a 6 P.M. game for that day at Norristown, Pennsylvania between the Elite Giants and the Norristown Pros.65 No subsequent coverage has been found.

June 8, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 12, Philadelphia Stars 9, at Penmar Park, Philadelphia

Both teams used three pitchers in this high-scoring game. If we understand the box score to show the pitchers in sequence, Adams, then Gaines, and finally Byrd pitched for Baltimore while the Stars used Thompson, Ellis, and McDonald. The Elites outhit the Stars by what looks like 16-9. The big inning for Baltimore was the top of the third, in which they overcame the 2-0 lead the Stars had put up in the second. Baltimore scored six runs in the third, adding one in the fifth, three in the sixth, and two in the seventh. Hughes and Mackey both had four-hit games, while Wright got three hits. Hoskins, Rivera, and Adams each got two hits. The number of errors is not shown in the New York Amsterdam News box score nor is the number of walks, but one way or another Snow scored twice without benefit of a base hit.

The newspaper complained that it was unable to even report the scores of some league games “due to the fact that the teams are still dilatory about getting such information to the sports writers.”66

Penmar Park was located at 44th and Parkside Avenue, Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer routinely referred to it as Parkside Athletic Field.

June 10, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 4, Homestead Grays 2; Homestead Grays 5, Baltimore Elite Giants 2 (six innings), at Forbes Field, Pittsburgh

Gaines pitched the first game for the Elites, allowing eight hits but only two runs, one in the second inning and one in the bottom of the ninth. Baltimore had scored first, with one in the top of the first. They added one in the fourth and two more in the top of the ninth – the two runs that made the difference. Felton Snow had three of the Giants’ 10 base hits. Wright homered over the left-field wall for the Elites.

The second game was cut short by a thunderstorm after 5 1/2 innings. Johnson pitched for Baltimore. The Grays scored three runs off Glover in the bottom of the first, and after the Elites scored two in the top of the second, Homestead added a fourth run off reliever Johnny Johnson for good measure in the bottom of the second. Their fifth run scored in the bottom of the fifth. For the Grays, Roy Partlow lost the first game and Specs Roberts won the second.67

June 11, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 4, Homestead Grays 3; Homestead Grays 13, Baltimore Elite Giants 8 (seven innings), at Red Bird Stadium, Columbus, Ohio

The Columbus Evening Dispatch wrote that “Bill Byrd, a Columbus boy, defeated the Grays in the opener, 4-3, and Ray Brown upset the Giants in the nightcap, 13-8.”68 The paper had said of his team, “The Elites formerly represented Columbus in league ball.”69 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette presented line scores showing Byrd and Mackey as the winning battery in the 4-3 first game. Neither team had scored through the first five. The Elites scored once off Homestead’s Edsall Walker in the top of the sixth, but the Grays came right back with two in the bottom of the inning. Baltimore put up two more runs in the seventh, then added a fourth run in the top of the ninth. The Grays scored once in the bottom of the ninth.

The seven-inning second game was pretty much put out of sight right away in the bottom of the first inning as Homestead scored nine runs off pitcher “J. Graves” – perhaps Jonas Gaines. They added a 10th run in the second and two more in the third. The Elites are shown getting two runs in the second and one in the third, then scoring four in the top of the seventh. Ray Brown was pitching for the Grays. The final score would appear to be 13-7 per the line score, but the Post-Gazette’s one-sentence summary of the doubleheader gave the final score as 13-8.70

June 12, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 7, Homestead Grays 3, at Perry Stadium, Indianapolis

 “Like a ship at sea without the stellar services of Josh Gibson, the Grays floundered around in a sea of mud trying to stem the tide.”71 The Grays were without Josh Gibson in the lineup due to a bruised hip, and it may have cost them. Homestead’s battery was left-hander Willie Ferrell pitching to Robert Gaston. Emery Adams pitched solid ball for the Giants, striking out 11. Biz Mackey worked behind the plate.

The weather was chilly and only a few hundred came out to Perry Stadium.

With this win, the New Journal and Guide wrote, “Baltimore came to life and defeated the preseason favorite Grays, 3 out of 5 games.”72

June 13, 1939: The Dayton (Ohio) Herald said that the Homestead Grays and Baltimore Elite Giants would be playing at Wings Park at 8:15 that evening. Ray Brown, Dayton native, was to pitch for the Grays. Wet grounds caused cancellation of the game.

June 14, 1939: The Bluefield (West Virginia) Daily Telegraph on June 11 ran a note that the Homestead Garys would meet the Baltimore Elite Giants in what it said was a “National colored league baseball game” at Welch, West Virginia, on Wednesday the 14th at 8:15 P.M.73 We could find no indication that the game ever occurred.

June 15, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 2, Homestead Grays 1, at Kanawha Park, Charleston, West Virginia

The game was a true pitchers’ duel, with Gaines giving up just one run on three hits while Homestead’s lefty Edsall Walker allowed but five. The Giants scored twice in the top of the first inning, the key hit a triple by Byrd. Campanella (“Campello” in the Charleston Gazette) was Gaines’s catcher.74 Both the Gazette and the Charleston Daily Mail offered line scores showing the Giants scoring two in the first and the Grays scoring one in the bottom of the second and one in the bottom of the third, agreeing that the score was, nevertheless, 2-1. One has to assume that the Grays scored in only one of those two innings, but we don’t know which. Gaines struck out six and only walked one.75

June 18, 1939: Newark Eagles 8, Baltimore Elite Giants 1; Newark Eagles 2, Baltimore Elite Giants 0, at Oriole Park, Baltimore

As he had when the two teams had met in Newark back on May 21, Jim Hill pitched a very solid game for the Eagles, this one a nine-hitter for an 8-1 win. He even collected two hits at the plate, but the batting star was the Eagles’ Monte Irvin, who was 5-for-5 with two doubles and three singles. In his Newark debut, Max Manning shut out the Elites, 2-0, on four hits. The two Newark runs came on a two-run homer over the right-field wall by Mule Suttles.76 For the Elite Giants, swept again, Bill Byrd pitched the first game, and Emery Adams the second.77

June 19, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 17, Newark Eagles 6, at Mayo Island Park, Richmond, Virginia

For the 8:30 P.M. game at Mayo Island Park (also known as Tate Field), there was to be a “special section reserved for white spectators.”78

Lefty Glover pitched for the Elites and had a “masterful” game going until he hit the ninth inning, when he gave up six runs and was relieved by Slim Johnson.79

The next day’s Richmond News-Leader reported the score as 17-6. It said that Glover pitched for Baltimore and that someone named Stone, the Giants shortstop, hit a three-run homer over the left-field fence in the fifth. There were reportedly 37 hits in the game, 21 for Baltimore and 16 for Newark.80

The Baltimore Afro-American reported the score as 17-7 but also said that the Elites had lost two to the Eagles in Baltimore (even though the games were played in Newark).

The Newark Evening News also reported a score of 17-7, in a brief article datelined Baltimore. It said the Giants had 21 base hits and had jumped out to an 8-0 lead in the very first inning. Five of Newark’s runs came in the ninth.81

Lastly, the Norfolk (Virginia) New Journal and Guide reported the score as 17-6. (With the two Virginia newspapers agreeing on that score, it is the one we have used here.) It agreed on the eight runs scored (on six hits) by the Giants in the first inning. The Eagles got one run in the third, but the Giants responded, adding five more runs in the bottom of the third, the last three on a homer by Snow. They added a 14th run on the fourth on a hit, error, walk, and fielder’s choice, and then added two more runs in the fifth inning on three hits and two walks. The 17th run came in the seventh on another walk and three base hits. The Eagles scored one in the eighth, finally putting together six base hits for four runs in the top of the ninth.82

June 20, 1939: The June 20 Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Homestead Grays would play the Baltimore Elite Giants that evening at 9:00 at Parkside Athletic Field. It said that another game featuring a team called the All-Phillies would be rescheduled “to allow the Elites and Grays to play this affair while they are both in the East before the League’s first half schedule is completed on July 4.”83 Three days earlier, the Norfolk New Journal and Guide reported that the Newark Eagles and Elite Giants would be playing in Baltimore on June 20 and 21.84 Did Baltimore actually play either team – or maybe someone else – on June 20? We have been unable to answer the question.

June 21, 1939: Chevrolet Red Sox 3, Elite Giants 2, at Eastside Park, Paterson, New Jersey

On page 24, the June 21 Philadelphia Inquirer listed a 6:00 P.M. game for that evening at Paterson, New Jersey, between the Nashville Elite Giants and Jamieson’s Red Sox. Jack Eelman was the pitcher for the Red Sox (who had a second baseman named Paterson). He held the Elite Giants to eight hits and allowed just one run in the sixth and another in the ninth. Johnny Johnson pitched for the Giants and surrendered two in the bottom of the first inning – on a single, double, infield out, and another single. A walk and a triple by the local center fielder scored the third run. How the Elite Giants scored was not documented in the Paterson Evening News, though it was reported that West and Wright each drove in a run.85

June 22: On page 31, the Philadelphia Inquirer listed a 9:00 P.M. game for that evening between the Baltimore Elite Giants and the Philadelphia Stars, at Parkside Athletic Field. This is, however, another one of the games which we have been unable to determine whether it was ever played. In each such case, we tracked weather reports to see if rain might have been a reason for such an announced game not to have been played. It was not.

June 23, 1939: Nashville Elite Giants 6, Red Bank Pirates 4, at Pirate Park, Red Bank, New Jersey

The June 22 Red Bank Daily Standard reported that the Nashville Elite Giants would be playing the Red Bank Pirates (a team of White semipros) the following evening at Pirate field on Newman Springs Road. The Pirates – apparently also known as the Bay Parkways – were going for their eighth straight win. The Elite Giants was to be their “first colored team of the season.”86

Neither team scored for the first four innings. Pitching for the Elite Giants was “Burd.” They took a 1-0 lead in the fourth when Snow walked, “Revere” (Rivera) sacrificed, and “Capanilla” (Campanella) singled. Three hits in the fifth gave them another run. The Pirates got one back. The visitors scored one more run in the sixth and four in the seventh, then held on to win.87

The team was apparently not hitting that well. The June 24 Michigan Chronicle reported a team batting average of .174, led by Bill Hoskins at .280 and B. Wright at .250. The only other two with averages of over .200 were Byrd at .222 and Snow at .207.88

June 25, 1939: Bushwicks 4, Nashville Elite Giants 3; Bushwicks 9, Nashville Elite Giants 8 (13 innings), at Dexter Park, Brooklyn

The 11,000 fans who came to the Sunday doubleheader at Dexter Park were treated to two very close games. In the first game, the Elite Giants scored all three of their runs in the first inning, and though Big Jim Peterson allowed 14 hits in all, “the powerful Negro hitters were unable to register after the first frame.”89 All the hits were singles except a double by Snow. Gaines started for the Giants, with Adams and Byrd pitching later. It is unclear whom the Bushwicks victimized in the bottom of the sixth when they scored all four of their runs, for a come-from-behind 4-3 victory built on a single, double, three walks, and a single. Notable in the first game was Wright, who singled three times in succession on bunts. 

The second game saw the lead go back and forth a bit. The Bushwicks scored one in the bottom of the first. The Giants scored three in the top of the third. In the fourth, the home team scored seven times, but the Giants scored four runs in the seventh. (A bases-clearing triple by Hughes was the big hit.) There was controversy on a close play during the big inning, disputed by Bushwicks first baseman Mack West, who was ejected for “profane language.” Angered fans spilled onto the field as did “pop bottles, beer bottles and milk bottles.” It was a “near riot” that held up the game for 10 or 15 minutes before police quieted things down.90

The Elites tied it, 8-8, with a run in the top of the ninth. Neither team scored until the bottom of the 13th when a single, sacrifice, and single did the visitors in.91 Pitching for the Elites had been Glover, and then appearances by both Adams and, for the last few innings, Gaines. Gaines actually walked the bases loaded in the bottom of the 10th but bore down. In the 13th, a single, sacrifice, and two-out single won the game.

June 26, 1939: Nashville Elite Giants 6, Springfield Greys 4, at Sherwood Oval, Springfield Gardens, Long Island, New York

A night game saw Springfield starter Freddy Swift hold the Elite Giants (listed as Nashville in both the Mount Vernon Argus and the Long Island Daily Press) to single runs in the second and third innings – and both of those were unearned runs. Greys players committed five errors in all, three by outfielders. Tom Glover started for the Giants. He gave up two runs in the third and the game remained tied 2-2 through six. Though Swift struck out nine, the Giants took a 6-2 lead with three in the seventh and another in the eighth, but the Greys made it close in the bottom of the ninth. A double and an RBI single scored one. A pinch-hit Texas Leaguer put runners on second and third. Emery Adams relieved Glover. He struck out the first batter he faced, then secured a second out on an infield play that allowed another run to score from third. He then walked the next two Greys, loading the bases with two outs and the potential tying run on second. Jonas Gaines took over from Adams – the third Giants pitcher of the inning. A groundout to second base ended the game.92

June 27, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 12, Cleveland Bears 0; Baltimore Elite Giants 6, Cleveland Bears 1, at Oriole Park, Baltimore 

One might think that sweeping a doubleheader at home would prompt at least a mention in the Baltimore Afro-American, there was no mention at all. The paper did, however, print league standings for the first time, showing the Elite Giants in fourth place with a record of 9-11.93 A previous issue of the paper had included American League standings (Negro American League) but not the NNL. The reporting of these results came originally from the Negro League Researchers & Authors Group, but with no sources attached. We could find no source for this doubleheader, nor could Seamheads. It’s possible there was a mixup and it came from some other part of the season or even a different season entirely.

June 27, 1939: Philadelphia Stars 11, Baltimore Elite Giants 4, at Forty-fourth and Parkside, Philadelphia

Three games in one day? The Chicago Defender said the Elites had played another game that same night, Tuesday June 27, at Forty-fourth and Parkside in Philadelphia, that “Byrd was on the mound for the losers and allowed 14 hits. Wellmark, Ellis and Thompson hurled for the Stars.”94

The starters were left-hander Roy Welmaker for the Stars and Bill Byrd for the Elites. Baltimore scored one in the first inning and once in the second, then saw the Stars tie it, 2-2, in the bottom of the second. Neither team scored in the third or fourth but the Elites got two more in the fifth, the Stars responding with just one. After a scoreless sixth, it was the seventh inning when Baltimore blew the game open with six runs. Relieving for the Stars were both Rocky Ellis and Sam Thompson. The Elites added an 11th run in the top of the ninth, and the Stars got their fourth and final run off Byrd in the bottom of the ninth. Baltimore outhit Philadelphia, but only by 14 to 9. It looked as though Byrd was keeping the ball in the infield. First baseman Wright recorded 11 putouts, with catcher Mackey only three. Elites outfielders recorded only five putouts total. Wright was 3-for-5 and Hughes 3-for-5. Kimbro, Rivera, and Byrd each had a pair of base hits.95 Both Mackey and West appeared in the game, in what was perhaps the last appearance for both with the team. (See July 9 entry.)

June 28, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 4, Manheim Barons 3, at Fruitville Pike diamond, Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Johnson pitched for the Elites. A three-run third inning gave Manheim a one-run lead, but the Elites’ Hughes got on and Jim West drove him in with a double to left-center, then scored himself on a single by Rivera, giving them back the lead, which they held. The game drew about 900.96

June 29, 1939: Alcyon All-Stars, at Alcyon Park, Pitman, New Jersey

A planned game was announced in the Bridgeton (New Jersey) Evening News but neither the Gloucester County Historical Society, the Pitman Memorabilia Museum, nor two local libraries were able to find any trace of the game being played.

June 30, 1939: An announced night game to be held at Queens Park between the Nashville Elite Giants and the Queens Club was washed out by rain.97

July 1, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 8, Newark Eagles 4, at Newark, New Jersey

The New Jersey Herald News reported that the Elites had come to town on Saturday and knocked Newark out of first place with an 8-4 win. They had held a 4-0 lead until two homers by Eagles Monte Irvin and Ed Stone evened the score at 4-4, but the Elites scored three in the seventh and another in the eighth, and earned the win. The papers provided no further information, such as the venue and who pitched for either team.98

July 2, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 4, New York Black Yankees 0, at Yankee Stadium, New York

Some 15,000 fans turned out for another doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. The league’s first-place Newark Eagles easily beat the Philadelphia Stars, 8-1, in the first game. Jonas “Slim” Gaines shut out the New York Black Yankees in the second game, 4-0. He was in trouble a few times, with Black Yankees runners on the basepaths in five different innings, but held the line and kept them scoreless. Sammy Hughes doubled twice in the game and Felton Snow tripled.99

In the same day’s Afro-American, skipper Felton Snow predicted that his team, which placed third in the first-half standings, had started to “hit its stride” – with the batters showing better at the plate – and looked to get off to a fast start in the second half.100 There was no mention at all of splitting the doubleheader with the Homestead Grays four days before the publication date. Just to confuse matters, there was another Black baseball team called the Baltimore Giants (without the Elite moniker), a semipro team.101

July 3, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 9, Belmar Braves 5, at Memorial Field, Asbury Park, New Jersey

The July 3 Asbury Park Press reported on page 10 that the Belmar Braves would host the “Nashville Elite Giants” at 9:00 P.M. at Memorial Field with Byrd pitching for the Elites.102 Two days later, the paper described them as “the Elite Giants, formerly of Nashville but now representing Baltimore.”103 The Giants collected 14 hits; their pitcher was actually Johnny Johnson, who surrendered nine. Byrd played right field. They scored one run in the first, two in the second, and three in the third, but then the progression stopped. They scored only one in the fourth.

Kimbro led off with a double off the right-field fence, then scored on Byrd’s single. In the second inning, West and Snow both walked. Johnson singled, loading the bases. Two more walks, to Kimbro and Hughes, each forced in a run. With two down in the third, Snow singled. Rivera walked. Campanella “scorched” one off the third baseman’s glove, driving in Snow. Johnson walked. Kimbro hit a two-run Texas Leaguer. The Braves came back with three in the bottom of the third. The Giants scored once in the fourth (Hoskins singled and Snow doubled), and then twice more in the top of the seventh – Snow singled, Campanella hit a ground-rule double, Johnson walked to load the bases, and Hughes singled in two. Campanella was 3-for-4 with two doubles.

July 4, 1939: Philadelphia Stars 6, Baltimore Elite Giants 1; Philadelphia Stars 6, Baltimore Elite Giants 3, at Parkside Athletic Field, Philadelphia

This was a 1:30 P.M. doubleheader at Parkside Athletic Field. The next day’s Philadelphia Inquirer reported the Stars winning 6-1 and then 6-3 in the second game.104

The Chicago Defender reported a July 4 doubleheader but in reverse order, with the Stars beating the Elite Giants 6-3 and 6-1, with the winning pitchers being Henry McHenry and Jim Missouri over Emery Adams and Willie Hubert.105

The season’s halfway point

July 4 was the end of the NNL’s first half. The Elites were in third place with a 12-13 record, despite losing seven consecutive games at one point. The standings were:106

1. Homestead Grays, 23-7
2. Newark Eagles, 18-6
3. Baltimore Elite Giants, 12-13
4. New York Black Yankees, 9-11
5. Philadelphia Stars, 15-20
6. Toledo Crawfords, 3-11
7. New York Cubans, 3-15

July 5, 1939: game at Chester, Pennsylvania, postponed

The visitors returned to play Lloyd a third time. With 1,500 fans present, impending threatening weather resulted in cancellation at the game at 5:00, only for the weather to suddenly become sunny half an hour after it was called off.107

July 7, 1939: Nashville Elite Giants 6, Red Bank Pirates 0, at Pirate Park, Red Bank, New Jersey

It was back to Red Bank once more for a 9:00 P.M. game on Friday, July 7. The semipro Pirates suffered their first shutout of the season. Johnny Johnson went the distance for the “strong colored team,” allowing just six hits.108 “Burd” played right field. The Elites scored two in the first and two in the second, then two more in the seventh. Kimbro walked leading off both the first and the second. Hoskins singled in the first run, and West’s fly out produced the second run. Bird drove in both second-inning runs with a double. The Elites got only five hits. The runs in the seventh scored on an error, a hit-by-pitch, a passed ball, a walk, and a run-scoring double play. It was a rough day for Hughes, who was hit twice by pitches and also was spiked while fielding at second base. One of the players for the Pirates was one-armed outfielder Pete Gray, who played for the 1945 St. Louis Browns. Mal Allen notes, “Not only did Pete Gray play, he was the only opponent with an extra-base hit or more than one hit. Batting second and playing CF, he went 2-for-4 with a double. His third-inning drive hit the CF fence and he was thrown out trying for a triple. The Red Bank Pirates played in the Metropolitan League.”109

July 8, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 10, Philadelphia Stars 2; Baltimore Elite Giants 5, Philadelphia Stars 4, at Penmar Park, Philadelphia

The visitors won the first game with ease. The Stars scored first with one run in the bottom of the first. In the top of the fourth, however, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Buzz Mackery” hit a three-run homer. The Stars made it 3-2 with a second run in the bottom of the fourth, but the Giants kept scoring, with two in the sixth, another in the seventh, and then four runs (largely due to a three-run homer by West) in the top of the ninth. It was not indicated in the Inquirer who pitched for either team.110 Fortunately, the Chicago Defender offered a box score and one can see that the pitchers were Byrd for the Giants and Jim Missouri for the Stars.111 The  Norfolk New Journal and Guide of July 15 says the scores were 6-2 and 5-4 – but a guess is that they were simply just wrong as to the first-game score.

In the second game, again the Stars scored once in the first. Glover and Willie Hubert both pitched for the Giants. They tied it in the third, but the Stars took a 3-1 lead in the fourth. In the sixth, the Giants scored twice, tying the game. It was a seven-inning second game. In the top of the final inning, the Giants scored twice, first on an RBI single by West (Kimbro and Hoskins had apparently both singled before him), and then on a fly ball by third baseman “Don Riberia” – who we can safely guess was Charlie Rivera. The Stars got one run back in the bottom of the inning, but still came up one run short.112

July 9, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 24, Philadelphia Stars 6; Baltimore Elite Giants 9, Philadelphia Stars 0 (forfeit), at Oriole Park, Baltimore

The Elite Giants had executed a major trade before this twin bill, and four of five new players took part in this doubleheader win. The team had shed (or was reported in the process of shedding) Biz Mackey, Hoss Walker, and Jim West. They thought they were picking up Chester Williams from the Stars, though that didn’t happen. West did wind up with the Stars. Mackey was said to be becoming a free agent (the following week’s paper said he was traded to the Newark Eagles). What would happen to Walker was a “matter of conjecture … as no club had indicated a willingness to purchase the infielder.”113 Two players were coming from the Atlanta Black Crackers: James “Red” Moore to play first base and Tommy “Pee Wee” Butts to play shortstop. Snow played shortstop until Butts was ready.

Hughes had been out with a spike wound, was expected back in the second half, and Snow himself was going to resume playing third base in place of Charlie Rivera at third base. Replacing Mackey as catcher was young Leroy Campanella with Oscar Boone as backup catcher.114 Two new pitchers were said to be joining the team: Ed Dixon and Felix Evans.115

The first game was something of a slaughter, with the Giants banging out 30 base hits off seven Philadelphia pitchers: Henry McHenry, Rocky Ellis, Webster McDonald, Purnell Mincy, Henry Miller, Jim Missouri, and first baseman Curtis “Popeye” Harris. Jonas Gaines pitched for Baltimore, holding the Stars to “eight well scattered blows.”116 Both Mackey and Wild Bill Wright homered for the Elites. West was 3-for-3 with two doubles. Kimbro and Wright were both said to have five hits apiece.

The score in the second game was 7-4 in favor of the Elite Giants when halted. Pitcher Felix Evans (“another newcomer to the Elite roster”) was said to have started but been “shelled from the mound” by the Stars in the first inning, replaced by Emery Adams (called “Jimmie Adams” in the Defender).117 Evans, Red Moore, and Pee Wee Butts were said to have all come over from the Atlanta Black Crackers. This may have been Evans’s only appearance for the team. One sees Dixon pitching in a July 17 exhibition game.

In the game, the Elites scored four runs in the second inning. Felton Snow hit a solo homer in the third inning, and three singles combined led to two more runs in the fourth inning.118

There had apparently been a lot of complaining by the Stars regarding the ball-and-strike calls of umpire Fred McCrary in the first game. At the beginning of the fifth inning in the second game, with the Stars down 7-4, manager Jake Dunn “refused to permit his players to continue the fray, and injected every stalling ruse possible to delay the game.” Dunn was hoping not to see the game become official (five innings), but McCrary “ruled the nightcap a forfeit.”119

July 10, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 10, Trenton Senators 4, at Dunn Field, Trenton 

The 9:00 P.M. exhibition game was played against the Class-C Inter-State League Trenton Senators (managed by Goose Goslin). It kicked off with an inside-the-park home run by Giants right fielder Bill Wright in the top of the first inning, giving Baltimore a 2-0 lead. Wright had three RBIs in the game. Someone named Davis (perhaps a local player, in order to spare the Giants the use of a starter in a nonchampionship game) pitched for Baltimore, which fell behind 3-2 in the bottom of the fifth inning, but rallied for five runs in the top of the sixth. They added one in the seventh and two more in the eighth. Snow, Hoskins, and Campanella all had doubles.120

July 12, 1939: Nashville Elite Giants 7, Poughkeepsie All-Stars 1, at Riverview Park, Poughkeepsie, New York

“Stars to Play Negroes Tonight” – so read a headline in the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News.121 The game was to be a night game at Riverview Park between the Nashville Elite Giants. In the prior two years, they had beaten the local Poughkeepsie All-Stars 12-3 and 8-5. After beating the New York Black Yankees twice, the Elite Giants had “climbed into the position of being the top colored outfit in the country.” The newspaper apparently did not figure out that the team was now from Baltimore.

It was an efficient 1 hour 27-minute game, remarked upon for its brevity, that in part due to Lefty Glover’s three-hit pitching.122 Boone caught Glover. The Elites scored three runs in the top of the first and two each in the sixth and seventh. Kimbro homered in the game.

July 13, 1939: Nashville Elite Giants 3, Farmers 2, at Freeport, Long Island

Emery Adams pitched most of the game, Gaines coming in near the end. All the scoring was done early – one in the second and two in the third by the Elites and single runs in the third and fifth by the Farmers. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle rendered Campanella as “Campbell.”123 One wonders if anyone remembered this when he was a three-time MVP with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951-55.

July 14, 1939: Springfield Greys 11, Baltimore Elite Giants 10, at Sherwood Oval, Springfield Gardens, New York

The New York Times said there would be a night game at the Oval on Merrick Road in Springfield Gardens, Long Island, between the Nashville Giants and the Springfield Greys.124 The box score in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the Elite Giants as “Nashville.” The Elites scored first, with one run in the top of the second. The Greys responded with two off starter Johnny Johnson. “Nashville” took the lead with two runs in the third, but the Greys promptly tied it with one. The Elites again scored two in the fourth, the Greys coming back with one. Down 5-4, the Greys took a 6-5 lead in the sixth. The Elites used a number of pitchers; Johnson walked four and hit a batter, Greys catcher Duay. After 4 2/3 innings, someone named Barry Dixon relieved Johnson. Glover took over from Dixon for the eighth and Jonas Gaines pitched the ninth.

The Elites tied the game 6-6 in the eighth, then scored four runs in the top of the ninth. Springfield, however – with their backs to the wall – came back with five runs and walked off with an 11-10 victory.125

Gaines gave up a single to the first batter he faced, Eddie Boland, then walked the next two. He struck out the Greys’ shortstop, but then hit catcher Duay, which produced the first run. Gaines then struck out a pinch-hitter, but walked the next batter, forcing in a second run. A single to right scored two more and tied the game. Another base on balls loaded the bases again. This brought up Boland for the second time in the inning. He walked, too, which forced in the winning run.126

The nine runs in the ninth were ascribed by one newspaper reader to “the rawest kind of umpiring ever perpetrated on any diamond.”127 The letter to the editor noted that the Giants didn’t commit even one error and simply excoriated the pitch calling of plate umpire Bill Heck.

There had apparently been quite an uproar as “everything from pop bottles to seat cushions came flying onto the field. … At one time a number of fans took to the field, but when they saw the police, they were back to their seats. Some stayed and abused the umpires and several Greys ballplayers.”128

July 15. 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 12, New York Cubans 2, at Pennsy Field, Wilmington, Delaware

 “The Nashville Elite Giants representing Baltimore in the National Negro Baseball League, scored a 12-2 win over the Cuban Stars in their loop game played at Pennsy Field on Saturday afternoon.”129 Thus read the complete coverage of the game in the Wilmington Morning News. It had been a 3:30 P.M. start, according to the previous day’s paper, which said, “If today’s game is well attended, several National Negro League games will be played here the remainder of the season.”130 One more Elite Giants game was played the following week.  

A letter sent by Edward Gottlieb on August 5 under what passed for Negro National League stationery (the league name as typed at the top of the page) said that this game was – at least temporarily – taken out of league standings, per a protest by Alex Pompez of the Cubans that the two teams had agreed beforehand it was to be an exhibition game.131

July 16, 1939: New York Cubans 5, Baltimore Elite Giants 1; Baltimore Elite Giants 8, New York Cubans 3 (seven innings), at Oriole Park, Baltimore

Though the scores weren’t particularly close, the two games in this Sunday doubleheader were described as “bitterly fought contests.”132 Though the visiting Cubans had won the opener, 5-1, they perhaps lost a chance to win the second game when their second baseman, Antonio Rodriguez, was ejected from the game during the third inning. Baltimore’s Bill Wright had been hit by a pitch thrown by Luis Tiant and knocked “groaning to the ground with a painful injury” but recovered and took first base. After Hosking flied out to the catcher, Red Moore hit a “looping grounder” to second. Rodriguez leapt for the ball, snagged it, and believed he had tagged Wright, who was running toward second. Umpire Charles Cromwell ruled Wright safe. Rodriguez “lost his head and rushed straight to the arbiter with outstretched hands.” Teammate Fermin Valdez, the shortstop, blocked Rodriguez and protected Cromwell, but umpire Pops Turner ejected Rodriguez.

Pitcher Bill Byrd drove in five runs and scored two in the game, in which he homered, doubled, and singled, going 3-for-3. In the third the Cubans had been ahead 2-0 when Moore and Snow singled and Byrd doubled to center to drove them both in and tie the score. In the fourth, his RBI single to left drove in Campanella with the go-ahead run. In the sixth, he homered over the wall in right field, scoring Rivera ahead of him. The ball cleared the bleachers and the wall behind by about four feet. Kimbro followed with a single and scored on a triple over third base by Hughes, who scored on an infield out by Adams.

The doubleheader drew 2,000. The visitors won the first game behind the six-hit pitching (all singles) of Luis Ruiz. Jonas Gaines started for the Giants. Hughes – back for his first game after a spike wound – misplayed a grounder from the Cubans’ leadoff batter, Valdez. Four singles followed and the “islanders” had a quick 4-1 lead. Willie Hubert – called “Hank” by the Baltimore Afro-American, took over from Gaines and pitched scoreless ball until the eighth inning, when the Cubans got their fifth run on a home run into the right-field stands by third baseman Ramon Heredia. The only run the Elites got off Ruiz came in the bottom of the first. Hughes walked. Wright reached on a force play that retired Hughes, and then scored when Heredia committed an error on a ball hit by Hoskins. 

In the fifth inning. Kimbro was caught off base on “the old hidden ball trick.”133 In the eighth, Kimbro hit a ball to deep center but was out trying to get two bases out of it.

July 17, 1939: Norristown Profs 10, Baltimore Elite Giants 3, at Roosevelt Field, Norristown, Pennsylvania

The Philadelphia Inquirer said that the Elite Giants would play the Norristown Pros that evening.134 The team, though, was called the Profs, according to a lengthy game summary in the Norristown Times Herald. The Elites scored one run in the top of the first, but surrendered two in the bottom of the inning. In the second, they scored one more run, but this time gave up four. Said to have started for the Elites was Eddie Dixon, who was chased from the game in the second – as was Lefty Gaines.135 They were both gone before the second inning was over, replaced by Johnny Johnson. The bombardment in all resulted in 19 base hits for the Profs – and the embarrassment of the Elites pitchers was suggested to have been so great that the Times Herald reported that Johnson “tried to enter the game under the fancy nom de plume of Joe Dunk so he could escape the shame.”136 Every batter in the Profs lineup had at least one base hit; all but two of them had multiple hits. They scored three more runs in the seventh.

The Elites got seven hits in all, two by Hughes. Snow singled and Hoskins doubled, and thus scored their first run. Charlie Rivera hit a “freak homer” in the second, “which cut over third base and then went behind the foul line.”137

July 18, 1939: Belmar Braves 10, Nashville Elite Giants 3, at Memorial Field, Asbury Park, New Jersey

Belmar got off to a strong start, scoring once in the first inning, six in the second inning, and two in the third. Emery Adams had been the starter for the Elite Giants but was gone after 1 1/3 innings, charged with three walks, six hits, and six runs. Hubert pitched the rest of the game. Already down 7-0 after just two innings. Kimbro doubled and Hughes singled in the top of the third, but it was for just one run. They scored twice more in the sixth, then had not a hit in the final three innings.138

July 19, 1939: Easton 9, Baltimore Elite Giants 7, at Easton, Pennsylvania

Adams was given another start the very next evening but gave way in midgame to Johnny Johnson. (They each had two at-bats, Johnson getting one hit.) Easton scored twice in the first inning, but the Elite Giants tied it in the top of the second and took a 5-2 lead in the third. Easton then scored four runs in the bottom of the third. The Giants tied it in the top of the fourth, but Easton came right back with two more to take an 8-6 lead. Neither team scored again until Baltimore put across one run in the top of the ninth, falling just short. Wright had three of Baltimore’s nine hits.139

July 20, 1939: The Philadelphia Inquirer’s daily listing said the Elite Giants would play Bolden’s Philadelphia Stars at Parkside and 44th.140  It was to be a 9:00 P.M. makeup of a rained-out game from the last week of June.141 Did it happen? We are unable to pin down whether this game and that of July 21 ever occurred.

July 21, 1939: “Newark Eagles, first-half champions of the Negro National League” were to play the Baltimore Elite Giants at 8:30 P.M. on Mayo’s Island per the Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 21, 1939: 14.

July 22, 1939: Newark Eagles 8, Baltimore Elite Giants 5, at Pennsy Field, Wilmington, Delaware

Clower (presumably Tom Glover) pitched for the Elite Giants, Boone catching. For Newark, it was left fielder Fred Wilson, in his only pitching start of the season. Wilson gave up 15 base hits to Glover’s 10 but won the game. In the top of the first, the Eagles scored four runs and never looked back. Baltimore got one. After Newark scored two more in the top of the third, Baltimore got another one. The three runs the Elites scored in the fifth still left them one short, and Newark added two more insurance runs in the seventh. Kimbro, Moore, Wright, and Hoskins all had three-hit games.142

July 23, 1939: Newark Eagles 4, Baltimore Elite Giants 2 (first game); Baltimore Elite Giants 4, Newark Eagles 1 (second game, six innings), at Griffith Stadium, Washington

General admission was 55 cents, but box seats set back those who splurged an extra 30 cents per ticket. Before some 3,700 fans at Griffith Stadium, Newark scored single runs off Jonas Gaines in the second, fourth, sixth, and ninth innings. The only two runs achieved off Eagles pitcher Leon Day (“masterly pitching,” wrote the Washington Post) in the first game were in the bottom of the ninth.143 One of the two runs was driven in by Bill Byrd, pinch-hitting for shortstop Pee Wee Butts. Hoskins and Snow were both on base. Byrd singled to right field and drove in Hoskins. Another pinch-hitter followed; Oscar Boone drove in Snow. Day retired Kimbro on a fly ball, though, ending the game. Leon Day was the star of the game. He not only struck out 10 batters but also hit two triples.144

In the second game, a six-inning affair, Willie Hubert threw two wild pitches in the game and gave up one run in the first inning but “held Newark to two hits in the final, and never was in trouble after the first inning.”145 One of the two hits was by Biz Mackey, who had started the season with the Elites. The Elites scored once in the third, twice in the fourth, and once in the fifth. Wright and Hughes both doubled; the team had eight hits in all. Pitching for Newark was Max Manning, charged with six of the hits and with five bases on balls, and then James Brown, Manning taking the loss.

July 24, 1939: Newark Eagles 12, Baltimore Elite Giants 3, at Pennsy Field, Wilmington, Delaware

A 6 o’clock game was deemed an exhibition game, even though both teams were in the same league. The batteries were Bob Evans and Biz Mackey for Newark and Henry Kimbro and Oscar Boone for Baltimore. It’s not clear how long Kimbro pitched; even though he had been given a one-run lead, the Eagles scored six runs in the bottom of the first inning and six more runs in the bottom of the second inning. At some point, Glover took over. The Elites scored two more runs in the top of the third, but that was it. It was a seven-inning game.146 Kimbro is not shown as pitching any other game throughout his career.

July 25, 1939: Newark Eagles 8, Baltimore Elite Giants 5, at Federal Park, Easton, Pennsylvania

The star of this game was outfielder Ed Stone of the Newark Eagles, who hit for the cycle, 5-for-5 with two singles, a double, a triple, and a home run. His first-inning double drove in the first run and his two-run homer drove in the final two in the eighth inning. Newark’s Big Train Cozart gave up 12 hits, but the Eagles collected 15 off an unnamed Elite Giants pitcher.147

July 26, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 9, Newark Eagles 6, at Gordy Park, Salisbury, Maryland

The Newark Evening News devoted three sentences to this game, while managing to misspell the city as Salisburg in the dateline. The Giants outhit the Eagles, 16 to 12. There was no indication who pitched for Baltimore or how they scored their runs, but it was said to have been a five-run rally in the eighth that made the difference in the game.148

July 27, 1939: Once again, the Inquirer announced a scheduled game, which we have yet to locate. It was to be at 44th and Parkside on July 27 against the Newark Eagles.149

July 30, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 2, New York Black Yankees 1; New York Black Yankees 5, Baltimore Elite Giants 2, at Victory Field, Indianapolis

The team headed out on what was dubbed a “barnstorming tour” planned to take them to Indianapolis, Nashville, Birmingham, and Louisville.150 The Elites and Black Yankees split a doubleheader on Sunday the 30th, at a venue known as both Perry Field and Victory Field. Seamheads calls it Victory Field; the Baltimore Afro-American says Perry Field. Byrd allowed a scattered seven hits. Terris McDuffie allowed only six, “but the Elites’ blows were bunched.”151 New York scored its one run in the first inning; Baltimore scored both of its runs in the eighth inning. Adams and Hubert pitched in the second game.

July 31, 1939: The Nashville Banner of July 26 said there would be an 8:15 game at Sulphur Dell against the New York Black Yankees on this date. The July 31 paper said there would be a game that night. Did a game ever happen? Researchers were unable to find one. 

August 1, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 4, New York Black Yankees 3, at Rickwood Field, Birmingham

There had been an article in the Sunday Birmingham News-Age-Herald two days earlier, advancing the 8:15 P.M. game at Rickwood and another the following evening. This time it identified the Elites as from Baltimore and noted that it was their second 1939 visit to Birmingham, having lost to Homestead the time before. “Since that time, however, the Baltimore management unleashed the purse strings from the bankroll, purchased new players, and at the moment they are the talk of the Negro National League.”152 It said they had won eight consecutive games. Lefty Gaines was said to have “tamed the Black Yankees” on this date.153

An accompanying story offered more detail. Baltimore won the first visit to “Dixie” of the “Dark Yankees” and helped draw 2,000 fans “to the Wood.” Baltimore pitching held the New Yorkers to six hits, while the batters got eight, committing just one error to New York’s two. Confusingly, after a sentence in which the News praised Gaines, the following sentence mentioned Glover: “Lefty Gaines, of the Elite Giants, certainly gave them an eyeful as he went about the business of hooking and fast-balling the fast-stepping Yankees to death. Glover was never in finer fettle than when he tamed the idols of Harlem in their initial battle on Southern soil.”154

The New York team was not used to playing under the lights, said manager George Scales. “The lights are something new to us as we don’t have any night baseball in New York. I think my boys became accustomed to the floods last night, however, and we are going gunning for the Elites with a real artillery attack tonight.”155

For Baltimore, the August 1 game was said to be their 10th consecutive win. The Birmingham News article also noted that both right fielders were named Wright – though not named in the article, they were Wild Bill Wright for Baltimore and Zollie Wright for New York.

August 2, 1939: There were to have been two games at between the Black Yankees and the Elite Giants at Rickwood, the second one on Wednesday, August 2. Despite all the advance attention and the coverage of the first game in the News, there is no indication that the second one occurred.

August 3, 1939: New York Black Yankees 4, Baltimore Elite Giants 2, at Cramton Bowl, Montgomery, Alabama

The Montgomery Advertiser had announced games on August 3 and 4 the week before and suggested they would present “a chance to see some real baseball as much of the diamond’s game talents lies in the negro field.”156 The first game drew 2,000 and was dubbed “thrilling” with “sensational plays and great running catches … numerous on both sides.” Both Adams for Baltimore and McDuffie for New York pitched complete games. If he saw the August 4 Advertiser, catcher Oscar Boone may have been amused – or not. He was listed as “Goon.” There was little detail other than to say that “George” Washington (the paper used the quotation marks) – first baseman Johnny Washington – had three base hits. New York was the home team and scored once in the second, gave up two runs in the fourth, tied it with one in the fifth, and took the lead with two more in the sixth.157

Standings as of August 5, 1939

Per Ed Gottlieb’s letter to the owners of this date, the NNL standings at the time were:

1. Baltimore Elite Giants, 12-4
2. Homestead Grays, 6-6
3. Newark Eagles, 7-7
4. New York Black Yanks, 3-5
5. Philadelphia Stars, 6-10          
6. Cuban Stars, 1-3                       

August 6, 1939: Memphis Red Sox 7, Baltimore Elite Giants 3 (first game); Baltimore Elite Giants 14, Memphis Red Sox 1 (second game, seven innings), at Rickwood Field, Birmingham 

The Frisco Railroad was to bring Red Sox fans on a special excursion train from Memphis for a 2:15 P.M. doubleheader at Rickwood Field.158 The game drew 3,000 to see the Negro American League Memphis Red Sox play the Elite Giants. The first inning of each game spelled the difference in the two games. Roosevelt Davis pitched for Memphis in the first game and held Baltimore to three runs, benefiting from five runs his team scored in the top of the first. It was an inning that apparently featured the novelty of an umpire being ejected. The Birmingham News wrote that the first inning had taken half an hour to play, in part because of “a prolonged argument that ended only after Umpire Putnom had been ejected. The Giants claimed Umpire Putnom missed a strike. It was probably the first time an umpire ever got the worst of an argument with the players at Rickwood.”159 Baltimore actually outhit Memphis, 14 to 9, in the first game, but came up short in runs scored. Jonas Gaines bore the loss.

The seven-inning second game was sparked by a nine-run first inning by Baltimore. Memphis starter Porter Moss was gone after a third of an inning in which the Giants sent 14 men to the plate and collected nine hits and a walk with one batter hit by a pitch. They added five more runs in the second. Hubert held Memphis to six hits, scoreless through six, allowing just one run in the top of the seventh.160 The fans were spirited as well, the News reporting that “several fights enlivened the evening for both ballplayers and fans. The game was halted for a few minutes once when fans began fighting back of the dugout used by the Birmingham Barons.”161 Hubert won the game for Baltimore.

On this same date, August 6, the East-West Game was played at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

Three Baltimore players were among the top vote-getters for the East team: pitcher Bill Byrd, second baseman Sammy Hughes, and outfielder Bill Wright all placed first in the voting at their respective positions.162 Wright led off and played center for the East, and had two of his team’s five hits. (One of his hits was a double.) Byrd pitched three innings. The West won, 4-2.  

August 7, 1939: the Greenville (Mississippi) Delta Democrat-Times of August 6 ran an ad for an 8:15 P.M. game at Recreation Park between the Baltimore Elite Giants and the Memphis Red Sox. The ticket prices were 44 cents for men and 33 cents for women. The advertisement indicated that even ticket sale venues were different by race. Black fans could buy tickets at Red’s Place on Nelson, Lawrence Barber Shop, and at Cook’s Service Station, adding “Reserve Seats for Whites Sold by Winn Johnson at Nelms and Blum.”163

August 9, 1939: Memphis Red Sox 5, Baltimore Elite Giants 4, at Martin Park, Memphis

Memphis scored twice in the first, saw Baltimore tie it in the third and take a 4-2 lead in the fourth, but came back with one in the first and two in the seventh. Lefty Howard and Double Duty Radcliffe limited the Giants to six hits. The account does not say who pitched for the Elite Giants.164

August 10, 1939: The Nashville Banner of August 5 said the Elite Giants would play the Memphis Red Sox at Sulphur Dell on this date. The August 9 issue had said the same. Was there a game? As with the announced July 31 game, there is no indication we could find that the game ever occurred, but that does mean it did not. Skip Nipper, SABR’s leading authority on Sulphur Dell, was unable to find either game. The weather doesn’t seem to have been adverse. Skip noted, “It was not unusual for Nashville newspapers to omit reports of Negro League games. It appears, at least to me, that information was published only if the team(s) provided it; if someone from the ball club did not call the report in, it was left out.”165

SABR member Keith Wood reported that in the Memphis Press-Scimitar, “the more progressive afternoon paper,” there is nothing on games that may have involved the Red Sox and Elite Giants during this time span, nor had there been for April 3. The Black newspaper, the Memphis World, does not include 1939 “because of a fire in the archive at the newspaper, and neither the Memphis Public Library nor the Library of Congress has microfilm from 1939.”166

August 13, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 11, Cuban All-Stars 1, at Yankee Stadium, New York

In the first game of a four-team doubleheader at Yankee Stadium, the Giants’ Hubert held the All-Stars to six base hits, while a combination of Silvino Ruiz, Luis Tiant, and Connie Rector gave up 11 runs on 15 hits – hampered by six Cubans errors. Sammy Hughes was 4-for-6 with two singles, a double, and a triple. Hoskins also had a triple and scored three times.167 The Homestead Grays beat the New York Black Yankees in the second game. The Elite Giants’ win in this game earned them the coveted Jacob Ruppert Cup.

Keeping busy, the Elites also had scheduled a game against the local ballclub at Municipal Stadium in Cedarhurst for the evening of August 13, but that game was rained out.168

August 14, 1939: Schwartz A.A. 3, Baltimore Elite Giants 2, at Yorston Field, New Brunswick, New Jersey

The victory was said to be the third of the season in which the Schwartz club had triumphed over “outstanding Negro ball clubs.”169 A month earlier, they had beaten the Philadelphia Stars and two weeks before this contact, they had beaten the Brooklyn Royal Giants.

Jonas Gaines pitched for the Elites, and Leon Revolinsky for Schwartz. Gaines was done in by a three-run third inning. Baltimore had scored first, in the top of the inning, on three straight singles by Oscar Boone, Gaines, and Sammy Hughes and a fly ball by Red Moore.

In the bottom of the inning, there was a Schwartz single, a sacrifice, and a bunt single. The next batter grounded to Felton Snow at third base, who threw home to catch the runner off third base. A rundown began, but Snow dropped the ball and the runner was able to score as the other two runners moved up to second and third. A single scored one of them. Gaines struck out the next batter, but the one after that hit the ball back to Gaines “who leaped high to stop the apple, but was off balance and could not complete the play to first base” as the third run scored.170

In the top of the seventh, Kimbro hit a two-out double and Hughes hit a ball off the second baseman’s glove. The eight-inning game was played in front of just 200 or 300 spectators.

August 15, 1939: Belmar Braves 6, Baltimore Elite Giants 2, at Memorial Field, Asbury Park, New Jersey

In their third matchup, the Belmar Braves beat the Elite Giants 6-2. They had lost the first of the three, 9-5, but then beat Baltimore, 10-3, on July 18. Pitching for Belmar was left-hander Jim McCloskey, who had pitched in four games for the Boston Braves (without a win or loss but an 11.25 earned-run average). McCloskey gave up five hits and a pair of runs over the first two innings, but then allowed just “three scattered hits” for the duration.171 In the fourth inning, and again in the fifth, he struck out the side.

The two Baltimore runs came in the second. Tom Butts walked on four pitches but was picked off first. Snow singled to left. So did Campanella, Snow going to third. Pitcher Johnny Johnson (“the string-bean Elite flinger”) reached first on a fielder’s choice, the throw going to the plate but Snow safely scoring. Kimbro hit into a force play at second base, Campanella scoring. McCloskey doubled and drove in Belmar’s first run, in the bottom of the second, then scored himself on a subsequent double. The Braves scored one run in the third, one in the fourth, one more in the fifth, and yet one more in the sixth.

August 17, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 4, Alcyon Park 3, at Camden, New Jersey

Lefty Glover, pitching for Baltimore, yielded seven hits – just half the 14 his teammates made. He and batterymate Campanella were the only Elite Giants held hitless. Moore and Wright each had three hits, one of Wright’s being a home run.  The game was scoreless through three, then the Giants scored two, saw Alcyon Park come back with three. They tied the game, 3-3, in the top of the fifth. In the top of the ninth, Kimbro walked, was sacrificed to second by Hughes, and scored the go-ahead run on a single up the middle by Moore.172 

August 18, 1939: Nashville Elite Giants 9, Bushwicks 0, at Dexter Park, Brooklyn

The Elites were to play the Bushwicks, according to the August 14 Daily Eagle. The paper was still calling them the Nashville Elite Giants, as did the Brooklyn Citizen, though the Citizen did say they “are now representing Baltimore in the colored circuit.”173 The Citizen story and box score, however, called them Nashville.

Gaines threw a three-hit shutout. The Elites had 16 hits, including a double and a triple by “Campinello,” who was 4-for-5, and they scored in every inning but the third, seventh, and eighth.174 Both Wright and Hughes had three base hits.

August 19, 1939: Per the Philadelphia Inquirer that morning, there was a 1:30 P.M. doubleheader scheduled at Philadelphia’s Parkside Athletic Field (44th and Parkside) between the Elite Giants and the Philadelphia Stars. Did these games get played? Inquiring minds want to know, but no trace of them has yet been uncovered.

August 20, 1939: New York Black Yankees 4, Baltimore Elite Giants 3; New York Black Yankees 2, Baltimore Elite Giants 1, at Oriole Park, Baltimore

It had been tough to win games at home. Even though the team was in the league lead, it lost two more home games on the 20th. We have been unable to find any details on these games.

August 22, 1939: The Philadelphia Inquirer announced a game that evening between the Newark Eagles and the Baltimore Elite Giants. This proved to be another announced game that may not have been played, or wasn’t reported, despite seemingly being a game of potential real interest.

August 23, 1939: Lloyd A.C. 4, Baltimore Elite Giants 1, at Lloyd Athletic Field, Chester, Pennsylvania

In the third matchup between the two teams, Bill Martini pitched for the Lloyd Athletic Club. Johnny Johnson worked for the “Nashville-Baltimore Elite Giants.”175 On May 17 Lloyd prevailed, 3-1. On June 2, the Elite Giants slaughtered Lloyd, 14-1. Johnson worked the first five innings, giving up four runs, all in the bottom of the third. Byrd took over and pitched the final three. The one run scored by the Elites was in the top of the sixth.176 Sammy Hughes reached and pulled up at second base on a throwing error by the shortstop. Red Moore singled to short, Hughes advancing to third. Bill Wright singled off Martini’s glove, Hughes scoring.

Bill Byrd threw three hitless innings, the sixth through the eighth. Moore led off the eighth with a base hit and Hoskins led off the ninth with another, but both times a double play squelched any threat.177 

Uniform numbers

Players come and go throughout a season and the Baltimore Elite Giants were no exception. Just after mid-August, the Warren (Pennsylvania) Times-Mirror published a list of the players who were on the team before the August 24 game against the Homestead Grays.178

The players, with their names spelled as printed in the newspaper, are listed here as presented:

Were the Giants giant?

The Chester Times dubbed them “the well-named Giants” and declared that they had “proved popular in two previous appearances here, with the local fans being amazed at their size.” It cited Kimbro, Wright, Hoskins, and Snow, but particularly called out Sammy Hughes, 6-feet-4 and over 200 pounds, as “one of the greatest baseball players in the game,” adding, “This second sacker is a symphony of grace on the field and is as fast as light as lean sprinter [sic]. Pairing as the keystone combination with Hughes is the even larger Jessie Walker, who is an inch taller than Sammy.”179

August 24, 1939:  Homestead Grays 7, Baltimore Elite Giants 4, at Russell Field, Warren, Pennsylvania

This 5:30 P.M. regular-season game featured the first-half champion Homestead Grays against the Elite Giants, who were leading in the season’s second half, and foreshadowed the NNL championship series, which began on September 16. The game was sponsored by the North Warren Civic Club and drew 1,000 fans.180

Baltimore’s Jonas “Curley” Gaines came into the contest riding an eight-game winning streak. Pitching for the Grays was right-hander Ray Brown, in his eighth season for the team. Baltimore scored first with single runs (both unearned) in the first and third innings, and was bailed out in one three-hit inning from a possible worse fate by a double play. In between, Homestead put up a pair of runs in the second. Baltimore added a third run in the top of the sixth and a fourth in the top of the eighth, giving the Elite Giants a 4-2 lead. But Homestead struck back with five runs in the bottom of the eighth. Snow, playing third base, booted a ball hit his way and Grays left fielder Vic Harris reached. Bankhead singled. Josh Gibson singled to right, scoring Harris. Buck Leonard sacrificed both baserunners into scoring position so Gaines intentionally walked Henry Spearman (who already had three hits in the game), loading the bases. Country Davis singled, driving in two runs. Jelly Jackson sacrificed to advance the runners. Brown walked, loading the bases once more. Campanella let a pitch get by him – a passed ball – and another run scored. Right fielder David Whatley singled in the fifth run of the inning. Baltimore was held scoreless in the ninth.

August 27, 1939: New York Cubans 5, Baltimore Elite Giants 1; Baltimore Elite Giants 8, New York Cubans 4 (seven innings), at Oriole Park, Baltimore

The Elite Giants were missing three regulars – Bill Wright, Sammy Hughes, and Bill Byrd, but nonetheless managed a split in a doubleheader at Oriole Park against the visiting Cuban Stars. Willie Hubert pitched the first game, opposing the Cubans’ Silvino Ruiz. The Cubans scored unearned runs in the first and in the second, the Giants scoring their lone run in the bottom of the second. The game remained a tight one until the top of the eighth, when Hubert was hit for a double, single, walk, and double, producing three runs which went unanswered.

In the second game, the Giants jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning. Kimbro singled to lead off, then stole second. Snow singled to drive him in, then took second on a sacrifice by Red Moore. Hoskins walked. Pee Wee Butts singled to left, driving in Snow. Holloway flied out to deep center field, around 400 feet, in a ball caught by Jose Vargas with “one of the most sensational catches seen in the park.”181 Walker then doubled “off the top of the left-field wall” to drive in both Hoskins and Butts. They added a fifth run in the second inning, then saw the Cubans get three in the top of the third. In the fourth inning, the Giants got one more. Snow walked, stole second, and came home on Moore’s double to in front of the right-field bleachers.

Snow got another base hit in the sixth and Moore sacrificed him again. Jim Hoskins then homered over the wall in left field. Emery Adams was the winning pitcher in seven innings.

August 28, 1939: The Philadelphia Inquirer listed a game for 9:00 P.M. to be played at Parkside Athletic Field between Bolden’s Philadelphia Stars and the Baltimore Elite Giants. No subsequent coverage has been found.

August 30, 1939: The Camden (New Jersey) Morning Post announced a 6:00 P.M. game against the R.D. Wood club to be held at the local park (R.D. Wood Park) in Florence, New Jersey. We could find no trace of the game having been played.  

August 31, 1939: The Baltimore Elite Giants were to play an opposing team that was not named at 6 P.M. at Rutherford, New Jersey.182 The Bergen (New Jersey) Evening Record said the opponent was to be the Laird-Johnson club of Rutherford.183 There had been an article – albeit one dated 17 days earlier – in the New York Amsterdam News – saying that the Newark Eagles and the Elites were scheduled to play this day at an unnamed location; those plans, of course, may well have changed.184 And the August 30 Nassau Daily Review-Star (Freeport, New York) had previewed “an arc-light struggle” against the Cedarhurst ballclub to be played at Cedarhurst Municipal Stadium.185 Whatever games may have been planned, apparently rain prevented the contest.

September 1, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 6, Cedarhurst Baseball Club 3, at Municipal Stadium, Cedarhurst, New York

Tom Glover pitched for the Elites; Wally Holborrow and Eddie Baratta pitched for the Long Island club. The Elites scored one run in each of six different innings – the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth. Cedarhurst got all three of its runs in the bottom of the sixth, tying the game at the time, but then the Elites pulled away a run at a time. Readers of the Long Island Daily Press (Jamaica, New York) were informed that “a feature of the fracas was a home run by Barney Wright of the invading team,” but not whether it might have been the run in the top of the seventh that won the game.186

September 2, 1939: a game that did not happen

Lloyd Field was to host an afternoon game between the “Nashville-Baltimore Elite Giants” and the Philadelphia Stars, per the September 1 Chester Times, but the next day’s edition reported that the “Homestead Grays, instead of the Nashville-Baltimore Elite Giants, will provide the opposition for Bolden’s Philadelphia Stars.”187

September 3, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 10, Philadelphia Stars 2, at Ruppert Stadium, Newark, New Jersey

The “Second Annual Four Team Doubleheader” was held at Ruppert Stadium. In the first game, the Elite Giants beat the Philadelphia Stars, 10-2. In the second, the Homestead Grays beat the Newark Eagles, 7-4. Hughes and Butts both doubled in the sixth inning, and Snow followed with a homer. Wright tripled and doubled in the game, and Walker doubled as well. Byrd pitched and got the win.188

September 4, 1939: Homestead Grays 5, Nashville Elite Giants 3, at Dexter Park, New York

In the second inning of the second game of a four-team doubleheader that drew 6,000 (Brooklyn Citizen) to 10,000 (Brooklyn Eagle), Homestead Grays pitcher Roy Partlow hit a Jonas Gaines pitch over the right-field fence for a grand slam as part of a five-run rally that won the game. The Elite Giants scored one in the second and two in the fifth.189

Final season standings190

SECOND HALF

1. Elites, 13-8
2. Grays, 10-7
3. Stars, 16-12
4. Eagles, 11-14
5. Black Yankees, 6-10

OVERALL

1. Grays, 33-14
2. Eagles, 29-20
3. Elites, 25-21
4. Stars, 31-32
5. Black Yankees, 15-21
6. Toledo, 3-11 (only played first half)
7. Cuban Stars, 5-22

Looking ahead to the playoffs, columnist Art Carter of the Baltimore Afro-American lamented how Baltimoreans had not turned out in bigger numbers to support their “hustling, never-say-die team.” He acknowledged, “At the outset of the season, it is true that the Elites failed to live up to early expectations – losing the first four contests played at home and returning a few weeks later to drop another game.” There followed, though, “a brilliant spurt … in the later stages of the first half race which saw the hustling aggregation move from fifth to second place in the loop standings, and the heads-up ball that has kept them on top from start to finish during the second half campaign.”191 

Baltimore fans, however, had not been turning out the way one might have expected. “It is no weak team,” he continued, “that Owner Tom Wilson and Road Secretary Vernon Green have given Baltimore fans, either. Only a few names, Bill Wright, Bill Byrd, Sammy Hughes and Manager Felton Snow, which smack of long-time experience and brilliance, dot the line-up, but Wilson has given Snow a hustling bunch of youngsters who balance the club with the right amount of spirit and clever performances. This combination, along with a well-balanced hurling staff, has put the Elites in the running for the championship.”192 It was the second year in a row the Elites had “been on the brink” of the title.

Playoffs

September 6, 1939: Newark Eagles 8, Baltimore Elite Giants 6, at Ruppert Stadium, Newark

In the first game of the best-of-five league playoffs, the Elites scored one in the third inning and four in the fourth inning to build up a nice 5-0 lead for starter Adams. The Eagles, though, chipped away by scoring two runs in the bottom of the fourth on a Mule Suttles home run, four more in the fifth (one on a solo homer by Suttles), and two more runs in the sixth. Byrd relieved Adams. Bob Evans had started for Newark, relieved by Max Manning. Coverage in the Newark newspaper did not report who did what for the opposing team.193

September 8, 1939: game postponed

It wasn’t a playoff game, but the Elite Giants attempted to stay in shape (and rake in some more money) by taking on the Bushwicks at Dexter Park. The game, however, was not held due to the field being too soggy.194

September 9, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 11, Newark Eagles 3, at Penmar Park, Philadelphia

In the second playoff game, the Elite Giants evened things up with an 11-3 win. Leon Day started for Newark, relieved by Bob Evans. Gaines pitched for the Giants and allowed just seven base hits. Baltimore jumped off to an early start and just kept scoring. They got two runs in the top of the first, on back-to-back leadoff walks, a sacrifice, another walk, and then a two-run double by Felton Snow. They added one run per inning in the second, third, and fourth. They were held scoreless in the fifth, but then added four more runs in the sixth (in part due to three Eagles errors) and a final two in the top of the eighth. Hughes homered for the Giants – a solo homer to center field accounting for their run in the second inning – and joined four others in hitting a double: Snow, Moore, Kimbro, and Hoskins.

The Eagles committed four errors to just one by Baltimore. Suttles hit another home run for Newark, a two-run shot over the left-field wall in the seventh – the first runs off Gaines in the game.195

September 10, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 7, Newark Eagles 3; Baltimore Elite Giants 5, Newark Eagles 2 (six innings), at Oriole Park, Baltimore

The Elites finally earned a full-page headline in the Afro-American by taking two from the Eagles in a home doubleheader at Oriole Park, winning the first round of the playoffs: “Elites Whip Eagles to Gain Championship Series.”196 They were thus due to face the winner of the Homestead Grays-Philadelphia Stars series for the ultimate Negro National League championship.

Bill Byrd pitched the first game, a 7-3 victory. Though he allowed 13 hits, he gave up only three runs. The Elites scored twice in the third and twice again in the fourth. The first of the third-inning runs was on Byrd’s “tremendous drive over the right centerfield wall.” Kimbro doubled down the left-field line and scored on Hughes’s hit over third base. In the top of the fifth, the Eagles scored once and, by adding two more in the sixth, came within a run.

Hubert pitched the second game, called after six innings due to a 6:00 P.M. curfew. Hubert allowed just two base hits. One was a fifth-inning home run by right fielder Ed Stone of the Eagles, who had also homered in the first game. Newark had scored its other run in the first on a walk and two Baltimore errors. The Elites scored twice in the top of the first on a single by Hughes, a double by Wright, and a single by Snow. Wright was 3-for-7 in the doubleheader and was credited with several defensive gems.197

League Championship Games

September 16, 1939: Homestead Grays 2, Baltimore Elite Giants 1, at Penmar Park, Philadelphia

Roy Partlow pitched for the Pittsburghers and Bill Byrd for the Giants. The Grays got to Byrd right away in the first inning, with singles by David Whatley and Vic Harris, and an RBI single by Sam Bankhead. Harris took third base when Josh Gibson grounded into a force play. Buck Leonard then “knocked an easy one to [shortstop] Butts who juggled the ball long enough for Harris to bring in the Grays’ second run.”198 Byrd shut them out the rest of the way, but Partlow allowed only one run, when Hughes doubled to right in the fourth inning, advanced to third on Moore’s out, and scored on a “slow roller” hit by Bill Wright to third baseman Henry Spearman.

September 17, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 7, Homestead Grays 5; Baltimore Elite Giants 1, Homestead Grays 1 (tie, five innings), at Oriole Park, Baltimore

Some 3,000 fans turned out at Oriole Park to see a Sunday doubleheader in the best-of-seven championship series. The Homestead Grays had won the first game, 2-1, in Philadelphia the day before. Jonas Gaines started for the Elites. He retired the first two batters, but Sam Bankhead singled and Josh Gibson followed with a home run over the wall in left field. A great catch by Kimbro prevented at least one more run from scoring later in the inning. Baltimore got one back in the bottom of the second. Wright’s liner off Tom Parker eluded Harris in left field and wright wound up on second. Snow singled and drove in Wright. The Eagles made it 3-1 in the top of the fourth. The Elites’ Moore led off the bottom of the fourth by drawing a base on balls. Wright doubled, then Snow doubled. Hoskins singled, scoring Snow. There was still nobody out, but no further runs scored that frame. It was 4-3, Elites.

The Grays promptly retied the game with another run in the fifth. In the bottom of the sixth, Snow singled – his third hit of the game. There was an error by the shortstop, and then a passed ball as Campanella struck out followed by a wild throw to second base by Gibson that was wild enough to allow Snow to score. The Elites took the lead, then added a sixth run in the seventh on Kimbro’s single, sacrifices by Hughes and then Moore, and a single by Wright. And another run in the eighth on a Hoskins single, a bunt by Butts, an infield out by Campanella, and a fielding error by Bankhead. Newark got a runner on in the ninth but a double play and a strikeout by Gaines ended the game.

Lefty Glover pitched the second game for the Elites and held the Eagles to just three hits and one run. The one run they scored was in the second inning due to a baserunner going from first to third on a stolen base and a throwing error by Campanella, and then a passed ball also charged to the Baltimore catcher. The Elites scored their lone run in the bottom of the third. Edsall Walker was pitching for Newark. Campanella reached on an error by the left fielder. Glover sacrificed him to second and Hughes singled him home. They loaded the bases, but Snow struck out. The Elites almost scored in the fifth, as it was the clear the 6:00 P.M. curfew was impending. With one out, Hughes walked. A strikeout followed and then Wright hit the ball to right field, which could have been a game-winning double, but trying to go from first to home, Hughes was – just barely – out at the plate.199

September 20, 1939: Bushwicks 3, Elite Giants 1, at Dexter Park, Brooklyn

Two titleholders were to meet in the final games under the lights at Dexter Park. The Bushwicks had won the Metropolitan Baseball Association crown and the Elite Giants were the second-half winners in the Negro National League. The Brooklyn Citizen wrote, “For several seasons the Nashvilles have attempted to gain a place in the colored league playoff but were unsuccessful. They changed their home city representation in moving to Baltimore and the new scenery has worked wonders with the outfit.”200

The game had Adams (the first six innings) and Hubert pitching for the visitors. Someone named Childress served as catcher. The Bushwicks outhit the Elites, six hits to five, and played errorless ball while the Elites committed three errors.201 The only run they scored was by bunching three singles in the fourth inning.

September 23, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 10, Homestead Grays 5, at Penmar Park, Philadelphia

Roy Campanella – still being called Leroy by the Baltimore Afro-American – was the star of the game, going 4-for-5 with a home run, a double, and two singles, and accounting for five of the 10 runs the Elites scored. Baltimore scored two in the second inning, but the Grays – playing as the home team –tied it with one in the second and one in the third. They then scored two in the fourth to take a 4-2 lead. With single runs in the fifth and sixth, the Elites tied it again, 4-4, heading into the seventh.

It was Specs Roberts for Homestead and Bill Byrd for Baltimore. Hughes singled, moving to second on Moore’s sacrifice. Wright received an intentional walk. Snow hit the ball to shortstop, fielded by Bankhead who had taken over after Jelly Jackson had been thrown out of the game for fighting with Kimbro. Bankhead “juggled” the ball, and everyone was safe. Hoskins singled to center field, driving in two runs. Butts singled, loading the bases again. Campanella singled and two more runs scored. Byrd hit a fly ball to right for the fifth run of the inning. It was 9-4, Baltimore. Each team scored one run in the ninth; there remained a five-run spread and the Elite Giants had won the game.202

September 24, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 2, Homestead Grays 0, at Yankee Stadium, New York

This was the game that won the Elite Giants the Negro National League championship, held at Yankee Stadium and drawing perhaps 15,000 patrons.203 Baltimore had to play without star second baseman Sammy Hughes, who was stricken with a stomach ailment so severe he was taken to Harlem Hospital. (He was released after the game.204) Felton Snow played second.

It was an exceptionally well-pitched game, with left-hander Jonas Gaines pitching three-hit ball for the Elite Giants and Roy Partlow pitching for the Grays. There were no runs scored at all for the first seven innings.

In the top of the eighth, Bill Wright doubled. Hoskins then singled to right field, Wright scoring. After an out, Walker beat out a single on a dribbler to third base. Hoskins held at second, but scored when Campanella shot a single up the middle. It was 2-0, a thin lead that the Grays threatened when they loaded the bases in the bottom of the eighth on three consecutive two-out walks by Gaines, who had already lost his control. Snow called on Hubert to relieve Gaines. Third baseman Henry Spearman was due up. He hit three foul balls and then flied out to Snow at second base. Threat over. Neither Partlow nor Hubert allowed a run in the ninth.

In ceremonies after the game, Tom Wilson was presented the Jacob Ruppert Trophy.

In a moment that may have seemed one of anticlimax, there was a second, seven-inning exhibition game in which “a picked team from the Elites and Grays played a 1-1 tie with a combination of minor league players.”205 The minor leaguers were from the Piedmont League. That game lasted seven innings and was called on account of darkness.206

After the season

After winning the championship, the Elites gathered at the York Hotel in Baltimore and then headed to Nashville, home to owner Tom Wilson. Wright, Walker, and Glover were joined by several other NNL stars to play at a North-South game in New Orleans on Sunday, October 1.207

Art Carter of the Baltimore Afro-American offered a postscript to the season: “The Elites’ win should serve as a shot in the arm to the National League popularity, which fortunately took an upward turn this year, despite the continued shortcomings of the loop’s operation, because except for a few isolated periods, the Pittsburgh crowd had begun to dominate the championships – whether they won them by fair or foul means. First it was the Grays, then the Pittsburgh Crawfords, now defunct, and again the Grays. 

“And yet, the Pittsburgh hometown crowd gave the teams little support. But with the title dangling from the shoulders of a club in the seaboard sector, where the attendance at the loop games is high, support for the organization should go up by leaps and bounds.”208

Regarding the future prospects of the Elite Giants, Carter continued, “the roster of the victorious Elite Club is by no means dotted with a galaxy of aging veterans, who totter around solely on experience. Manager Felton Snow, who deserves plenty of praise for piloting the Elites to the crown, Bill Wright, and Sammy Hughes, perhaps qualify as seasoned veterans, but otherwise, the roster of the Elites is made up of hustling, ambitious youngsters.” He added, “Owner Tom Wilson, his club secretary, Vernon Green, and Manager Snow have been equally fair in giving the youngsters a chance, and the winning of the championship is doubtless the reward.”209

In the October 17 Pittsburgh Courier, columnist Randy Dixon praised both Felton Snow and the Elite Giants. After Snow had been badly beaned a couple of years earlier it was thought he might never play again. But he had shown “guts and gusto plus a generous portion of acumen as manager of the Elites.”210

The Detroit Tribune wrote that the 1939 season was “the best financial season ever enjoyed by the Negro National League.” Among the reasons were better weather and receipts from all-star games, “but mainly from the desire of the owners to pull together instead of against one another.” The paper added, “Not since 1934 [citing that year’s Homestead Grays] has so many raw newcomers showed on a team, as the Baltimore Elites flashed during the second half of the 1939 season. It was the inspired work of these newcomers which captured the Ruppert Cup for the Elites.” The paper cited the addition of the left-handed Gaines and Wright in particular and declared that Bill Wright “hitting almost .500 in league games, had the best season ever enjoyed by any player of any league. Bill is one player who is a major leaguer.”211

After the season, the Elite Giants were to make their “annual trek to the Pacific coast.”212

October 8, 1939: Major and Minor League All-Stars 3, Negro National League All-Stars 1, at Oriole Park, Baltimore

Of note, there was a game played at Oriole Park on October 8. The game featured a number of major-league and minor-league ballplayers against a strong team of Negro Leaguers. The two teams were described in the Afro-American box score as the “White All-Stars” and the “Colored All-Stars.” The text described them as they are listed above – the “white Major and Minor League All-Stars and the Negro National League All-Stars.”213 The NNL players featured four from the Elite Giants: Webster McDonald, Biz Mackey, Roy Campanella, and Mickey Casey. The team of White ballplayers were all from the American League, five from the Philadelphia Athletics, with starting pitcher Pete Appleton and Mickey Vernon from the Washington Senators, and one player each from the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Browns.

The 2,000 fans who turned out saw the White players score twice in the first inning (Dee Miles homered after Doc Cramer reached base) and once in the second, off pitcher Cain. In the second, Cain gave up three successive singles and then misplayed a ball hit to him by Appleton.214 With nobody out, McDonald – the team’s manager – took over and threw seven innings of no-hit ball. The only run the NNL All-Stars scored came in the fifth when Jelly Jackson singled, stole second, reached third on an error by Appleton, and scored on a passed ball charged to catcher Hal Wagner.

October 11, 1939: Baltimore Elite Giants 5, Pirrone’s Major League All-Stars 2, at Gilmore Field, Hollywood  

The team – or much of it – had headed west and on Wednesday night, October 11, beat Pirrone’s Major League All-Stars, 5-2, in Los Angeles despite Bob Feller striking out 14. Elite Giants in the game included Bill Harvey pitching, Hoskins, Wright, and West. Hoskins doubled off Feller and Wright and Harvey both hit triples.215 The Atlanta Daily World printed an Associated Negro Press dispatch reporting the score as 5-3, with Feller striking out 15 in front of an audience of 5,000 which included “many movie stars.” It said that Feller’s team had been ahead 3-0 but the Giants tied the game in the seventh on hits by Dunn, Wright, and Hoskins. Feller departed the game (“perhaps to save his face, the announcement was made that Feller would have to leave to catch a plane back east”), but from the dugout saw West and Walker drive in two more.216

In his SABR biography of Marlin Carter, Mal Allen provides information about the Baltimore Elite Giants’ trip to the West Coast:

In late 1939, Carter was part of the Baltimore Elite Giants club that competed against major and minor-leaguers in the integrated California Winter League. “The team we had … was really an all-star team,” he explained. “We had Pepper Bassett, Bill Wright, Jesse Walker, William Harvey, Mule Suttles, James West.”217 In their first league action, the Elite Giants were swept in a doubleheader by the [Joe] Pirrone’s All-Stars squad, but Carter went 3-for-9 against Lee Stine and Julio Bonetti.218 When the Elites hosted the same team on October 18 at Gilmore Field in Los Angeles, they faced a soon-to-be 21-year-old who’d won 24 games for the Cleveland Indians that season while leading the majors in strikeouts. “Despite the opposition of two major previews – “The Roaring Twenties” and “Disputed Passage” – Cleveland pitcher Bob Feller attracted a huge turnout of movie celebrities,” reported Ed Sullivan.219 Feller whiffed 14 in his seven innings, but the Elite Giants scored three times against the bullpen to prevail, 5-2.220 On November 19, Carter tripled in the victory that mathematically eliminated Pirrone’s team.221 He was at shortstop two weeks later when the Elite Giants clinched the championship.”222

November 5, 1939: Elite Giants 4, White Kings 0; Elite Giants 3, White Kings 1 (five innings), at Gilmore Field, Hollywood

There was a particularly notable game on the trip – a no-hitter thrown by Lefty Glover in the first game of a doubleheader on Sunday, November 5. Only three of the White Kings reached base. Glover walked one. The other two reached on errors – one by Pepper Bassett and one by Glover himself, dropping the ball while taking a feed from first baseman West. The Giants had only six hits but made them count. Glover struck out four and faced a total of just 29 batters.

In the second game, Wright hit a two-run homer over the right-field fence in the third inning.223

The final day’s games on the trip were won by the “Royal Giants” taking two from Pirrone’s All-Stars, 5-3 and 4-0. Bill Harvey threw the second of the two games, a one-hitter with only one other batter reaching first base, on a walk. Players on the Royal Giants included Carter, Dunn, Wright, Hoskins, West, Summers, Walker, Bassett, and first-game winner McDuffie.224

BILL NOWLIN is from Cambridge, Massachusetts, born in Boston not far from Fenway Park. He is a co-founder of the Rounder Records music label and a former professor of political science. A lifelong Ted Williams fan, he has written or edited more than 100 books – mostly on baseball – and written more than 1,000 articles for SABR.

Sources

Thanks to Mal Allen, Gary Ashwill, Rich Bogovich, Rick Bush, Thomas Kern, Bob Luke, and Tom Thress, with additional assistance from Joe DeLeonard, Bob Golon, Marc Magee, Brian Michaels, and Jeb Stewart. Thanks as well to Jennifer Knisley, Warren (Pennsylvania) Public Library; Barry Rauhauser, Historical Society of Montgomery County, Norristown, Pennsylvania; Bruce Bardarik, Paterson Free Public Library, Paterson, New Jersey.

Notes

1 Bob Luke, The Baltimore Elite Giants (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 42. Luke notes, however, that “records for the second-half standings are non-existent.” League President Gus Greenlee and Grays owner Cum Posey “filed a report” declaring that the Grays had finished first in the second half, but “[h]ow they arrived at the standings is not known. They did not provide a won-lost record for any of the teams in their report.” Indeed, the two executives acknowledged, “sports writers of our weekly papers … did not receive league news and standings regularly because the various club secretaries did not send in the scores to the secretary of the league.” See “NNL Turns in Report,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 10, 1938: 23. This was further clarified as quoted in the text, per an email Bob Luke to author dated July 18, 2023.

2 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 25, 1939: 14. The April 1 Atlanta Daily World also reported Mackey as manager.

3 “Elites Train in Nashville,” Chicago Defender, April 15, 1939: 9.

4 “Elite Giants to Have Many New Players,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 22, 1939: 22.

5 “Elite Giants at Oriole Park for Home Games,” Baltimore Afro-American, January 7, 1939: 19.

6 See Luke, 49, and “Negro League Game Tomorrow,” Delaware County Daily Times (Chester, Pennsylvania), September 1, 1939: 14.

7 Art Carter, “From the Bench,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 7, 1939: 21.

8 Art Carter, “From the Bench,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 16, 1939: 23.

9 Among the newspapers declaring these as playoffs were the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier. See John L. Clark, “League Playoffs Start in Baltimore Sunday,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 10, 1938: 16. Clark, in a different article, referred to the games as the “official playoff.” John L. Clark, “Crawfords, Elites, Grays in 3-Game Twin Bill Sunday,” Chicago Defender, September 10, 1938: 9.

10 “Elites Trounce Crawfords, 10-1,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 17, 1938: 22. 

11 Art Carter, “From the Bench,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 16, 1939: 23.

12 Luke, 16. 

13 “Protect Players Is Plea at Pow-Wow,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 4, 1939: 17.

14 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 18, 1939: 14.

15 “Baseball League to Be Headed by Wilson; Greenlee Absent,” New York Age, February 25, 1939: 8.

16 “Elites Win 2 from Giants,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 29, 1939: 14. The Elites were the Baltimore team; the Giants were the Chicago American Giants.

17 “Wilson Elected Prexy; Cubans to Get Franchise,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 25, 1939: 17.

18 Sam R. Brown, “Red Sox Chatter,” Atlanta Daily World, April 4,1939: 5.

19 “Red Sox in 4-2 Victory over Elites,” Chicago Defender, April 8, 1939: 8.

20 “Red Sox Register,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 3, 1939: 13.

21 The Atlanta Daily World presented a detailed game story. “Melancholy” Jones, “Felix ‘Chin’ Evans, Donald Reeves Star as Atlanta Nine Loses 13-12,” Atlanta Daily World, April 10, 1939: 5. 

22 For reasons unknown, the Daily World dubbed him Erskine Hoskins.

23 “Melancholy” Jones, “Black Crax Again Nosed Out by Baltimore, 11-10,” Atlanta Daily World, April 11, 1939: 5.

24 “Baseball News,” Macon (Georgia) Telegraph, March 25,1939: 13. Rich was unable to find other coverage of the Fast Black from April 10 into early May.

25 “Elite Giants Win,” Chattanooga Daily Times, April 17, 1939: 11.

26 Randy Dixon, The Sports B-U-G-L-E,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 13, 1939: 17. Dixon added, “In truth, the entire league is sorta whimsical.” Foreshadowing an announced May 17 game at Chester, Pennsylvania, the Chester Times called the team “the Nashville-Baltimore Elite Giants, headed by the famous Biz Mackey.” “Lloyd Tackles Elite Giants,” Chester Times, May 16, 1939: 11. One doubts that league business records were unclear as to the name of the team. An article in the Omaha Guide newspaper said that three of the teams in the Negro Southern League that year (Memphis, Atlanta, and Jacksonville) “are operating on a plan of a twin home city. They have a Dixie home and a northern home. This follows the pattern of the Baltimore Elite Giants who also claim the title of the Nashville Elite Giants.” See “Talk Revival of Negro Southern League,” Omaha Guide, May 27, 1939: 6.

27 Lucius “Melancholy” Jones, “Slants on Sports,” Atlanta Daily World, April 18, 1939: 5.

28 https://archive.org/details/NewarkEagles1101005. Accessed December 5,1939.

29 “Nashville Wins Two Games from Chicago,” Chicago Defender, April 29, 1939: 10. The Defender shows a shortstop named Robinson playing shortstop in the second game. This may have been “Skin Down” Robinson – if so, perhaps appearing in his only Negro Leagues game in 1939. The Nashville Banner likewise presented the team as the Elite Giants (with no city name designated) in the two sentences it accorded the event. “Series Finale,” Nashville Banner, April 24, 1939: 10. Two days later it briefly mentioned them as the Nashville Elite Giants as did the Brooklyn Eagle in a very brief mention. On May 6, the Pittsburgh Courier had them as the Baltimore Elite Giants.

30 “American Giants Win,” Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1929: 25. No other source has been found regarding this game.

31 “Homestead Grays Win Couple from Elite Giants,” Atlanta Daily World, May 2, 1939: 5.

32 “Elite Giants Battle Grays Here April 30,” Birmingham News, April 24, 1939: 11; “Nashville Elites Meet Homestead Grays at Rickwood,” Birmingham News, April 29, 1939: 9. See also “Negro Teams Meet Sunday at Rickwood; Homestead Grays Will Battle Nashville Elites in Double-Header,” Birmingham News-Age-Herald, April 30, 1939: 7, which had a lengthy story naming the same two pitchers for the Elites on the morning of the game – but again, no coverage of the actual games.

33 “Elites Down K.C. Twice,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 13, 1939: 16.

34 “Elites Beat Monarchs,” Chicago Defender, May 13, 1939: 10. 

35 “Today’s Sport Card,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 13, 1939: 19.

36 “Elites to Open Against Grays,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 13, 1939: 18.

37 “Elites to Open Against Grays.”

38 “Homestead Grays Hand Double Beating to Baltimore,” Chicago Defender, May 20, 1939: 9.

39 “Homestead Grays Grab 2 from Elite Giants,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 20, 1939: 14.

40 This was probably Clarence “Geechie” Williams, who is listed on Seamheads as playing left field in one league game for the 1930 Elite Giants. The Williams who played against Lloyd was the team’s left fielder in this exhibition game. The local newspaper called him Tom Williams.

41 “Wearshing Hits Two-Run Single for Lloyd Win,” Chester Times, May 19, 1939: 26.

42 “Eagles Rained Out for Second Time,” Trenton Evening News, May 21, 1939: 20.

43 “Elites on Edge for Black Yanks,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 27, 1939: 21.

44 “Eagles Make It Four Straight,” Newark Evening News, May 22, 1939.

45 “Eagles Snare Doubleheader,” New Jersey Herald News (Newark), May 27, 1939: 8.

46 “Newark Wins Four Straights on Home Lot,” New York Amsterdam News, June 3, 1939: 19.

47 “Newark Wins Four Straights on Home Lot.” Wright did play center field in the first game; there was no box score provided for the second.

48 “Daily Statement of Attendance and Receipts,” Newark International Base Ball Club, Inc., May 21, 1939.  https://archive.org/details/NewarkEagles1101005. Accessed December 5, 2023.

49 See https://archive.org/details/NewarkEagles0809021. Accessed December 5, 2023.

50 “Baltimore Giants Lose to R.D. Wood,” Camden (New Jersey) Courier-Post, May 27, 1939: 14.

51 “Elites Win Two and Lose Two,” New Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Virginia), June 3, 1939: 18. See also “Yesterday’s School, College, Independent Sports Results,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 28, 1939: S3.

52 “Elite Giants Sign Two New Pitchers for Yankee Jousts,” Baltimore Evening Sun, May 25,1939: 44.

53 “3 Homers Help Yankees Even Series with Elites,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 3, 1939: 18.

54 “Elites Win Two and Lose Two.”

55 “3 Homers Help Yankees Even Series with Elites.”

56 The home run was mentioned in “Elite Giants Split with B. Yankees,” New York Daily News, May 31, 1939: 57. 

57 “Black Yankees in Even Break,” Brooklyn Eagle, May 31, 1939: 18.

58 “Elite Giants Split with B. Yankees.”

59 Full details are provided in the game writeup. See “Visitors Wreck Lloyd Hurlers in Revenge Tilt,” Chester Times, June 3, 1939: 14. 

60 “Poletti to Throw Out First Ball for Series,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 31, 1939: 16.

61 Peter Jackson, “Elites, Yankees Win in New York Doubleheader,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 10, 1939: 22.

62 “10,000 See Black Yankees and Elite Giants Win in Four-team Doubleheader,” New York Age, June 10, 1939: 8.

63 Randy Dixon, “15,000 See Four-Team Twin Bill in Yankee Stadium,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 10, 1939: 16. One notes that the Courier added 5,000 to the attendance total proclaimed by the Age. Dixon also rendered Byrd’s first name as Sam, not Bill.

64 Dan Burley, “Black Yankees Nose out Philadelphia, 5 to 4, in NNL Feature at Yankee Stadium; Cubans Bow to Baltimore,” New York Amsterdam News, June 10, 1939: 14.

65 “Sports Card,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 5, 1939: 18.

66 “NNL League Dope,” New York Amsterdam News, June 24, 1939: 15.

67 “Grays Divide with Baltimore,” Pittsburgh Press, June 11, 1939: 22. See also “Homestead Grays and Baltimore Elite Giants Divide Double-Header at Forbes Field,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 17, 1939: 17.

68 “Grays, Elites Even,” Columbus Evening Dispatch, June 12, 1939: B-5. The Dispatch had described Gray as a “product of Columbus sandlots and a former East High student.” See “Columbus Product is with Elite Giants,” Columbus (Ohio) Evening Dispatch, June 10, 1939: 8.

69 “Hilton Snow at Helm of Baltimore Elites,” Columbus Evening Dispatch, June 7, 1939: B-7.

70 “Grays, Elites Split,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 12, 1939: 17.

71 “Grays Bow 7-3 to Baltimore With Gibson Out of Line-up,” Indianapolis Recorder, June 17, 1939: 14.

72 “Royal Giants Take Doubleheader from Grays,” New Journal and Guide, June 24, 1939: 17.

73 “Homestead Grays to play Baltimore team,” Bluefield (West Virginia) Daily Telegraph, June 11, 1939: 10.

74 “Baltimore Elites Beat Grays, 2 to 1,” Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette, June 16, 1939.

75 The Daily Mail article was “Elite Giants Beat Homestead Grays,” Charleston (West Virginia) Daily Mail, June 16, 1939.

76 The New Jersey paper described the Eagles batter as Monte Irving. “Eagles Continue to Set Pace with Double Win over Elites,” New Jersey Herald News (Passaic), June 24, 1939: 8. See also “Newark Eagles Take Twin Bill,” Newark Evening News, June 19, 1939.

77 “Newark Eagles Take Twin Bill,” Newark Evening News, June 19, 1939.

78 “Negro Nines Play Here Tonight,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 19, 1939: 13.

79 “Elites Beat Eagles at Richmond, 17-7,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 24, 1939: 23.

80 “Newark Eagles Lose to Elite Giants; Play Yankees Next,” Richmond News-Leader, June 20, 1939: 20. Newark did have a player named Stone, but he was an outfielder.

81 “Newark Eagles Defeated by Baltimore Elties,17-7,” Newark Evening News, June 20, 1939.

82 “Elite Giants Hammer Eagles In 17-6 Win,” New Journal and Guide, July 1, 1939: 18.

83 “Postponed Game Carded Tonight,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 20, 1939: 20.

84 “Eagles Still Hold Lead in League Race,” New Journal and Guide, June 17, 1939: 17.

85 “Elite Giants Bow to Eelman by 3-2 Decision,” Paterson (New Jersey) Evening News, June 22, 1939: 29.

86 “Pirates Will Meet Elite Giants Tomorrow Night,” Red Bank (New Jersey) Daily Standard, June 22, 1939: 19.

87 “Elite Giants Break Pirate Win Streak; Down Red Bank, 6-4,” Red Bank Daily Standard, June 24, 1939: 16.

88 The newspaper declared, “Baltimore Elites have always been noted for their batting are hitting as a club only .174, which accounts for their failure to be further up in the standing.” See “Newark Batting .500; 3 Regulars Hit .400,” Michigan Chronicle (Detroit), June 24, 1939: 9.

89 “Bushwicks Show Power Nosing Out Nashville Elite Giants Twice,” Brooklyn Eagle, June 26, 1939: 16.

90 John G. Palmer, “Bushwicks Twice Beat Nashvilles as Bottle Fly at Dexter Park,” Brooklyn Citizen, June 26, 1939: 6.

91 “Bushwicks Show Power Nosing Out Nashville Elite Giants Twice.”

92 “Greys Halted by Giants, 6-4,” Long Island Daily Press (Jamaica, New York), June 27, 1939: 12.

93 “Baseball Standings,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 1, 1939: 22.

94 “Phillies 11, Elites 4,” Chicago Defender, July 8, 1939: 17.

95 “Philly Stars Win 2 Out of Three,” New York Amsterdam News, July 15, 1939: 15.

96 “Manheim Lads Drop 4-3 Tilt to Baltimore,” Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Intelligencer Journal June 29, 1939: 16. The Barons were described as “the dark horse of the Lebanon Valley league.” See “Baltimore Elite Giants Play Manheim Tonight.” Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, June 28, 1939: 10.

97 “Baseball and Tennis Postponed by Rain,” Long Island City (New York) Star-Journal, July 1, 1939: 10.

98 “Elite Giants Upset Eagles,” New Jersey Herald News, July 8, 1939: 8.

99 Peter Jackson, “Elites Blank Yanks, Eagles Trounce Stars in Twin Bill,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 8, 1939: 21.

100 “Elites to Play Philly Stars,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 8, 1939: 21.

101 See, for instance, “Strong All-Star Team to Play Balto. Giants,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 15, 1939: 21.

102 “Braves, Elites Clash Tonight,” Asbury Park (New Jersey) Press, July 3, 1939: 10.

103 “Belmar Braves Drop Second Straight, Losing to Elites, 9 to 5,” Asbury Park Press, July 5, 1939: 10. All game play detail comes from this account.

104 Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 1939: 31.

105 “Philadelphia Wins Two from Baltimore Elites,” Chicago Defender, July 15, 1939: 8.

106 “Homestead Grays Win First Half,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 15, 1939: 23. 

107 “Famous Clowns Tackle Locals in Big Battle,” Chester Times, July 6, 1939: 21.

108 “Red Bank Shut Out, 6-0,” Daily Standard, July 6, 1939: 16.

109 Email from Mal Allen on March 8, 2023, citing “Pirates Trounced Again,” Red Bank Register, July 13, 1939: 25.

110 “Giants Beat Stars Twice,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 9, 1939: 5.

111 “Elites Win a Doubleheader,” Chicago Defender, July 15, 1939: 8.

112 “Giants Beat Stars Twice,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 9, 1939: 5. The Defender box score suggests that another batter after West must have reached base one way or another.

113 “Elites Bolster Team for Cuban Series Here,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 15, 1939: 21. The following week’s paper said he was the one made a free agent. See “Elites Clash with Eagles,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 22, 1939: 23.

114 Roy Campanella was reported to be 18 in the July 15 edition, and 20 in the July 22 edition, apparently having aged two years in the course of one week. In fact, he was 17 years old at the time.

115 “Elites Bolster Team for Cuban Series Here.”

116 “Elites Take Lead in Second Half,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 15,1939: 21. 

117 The “shelled from the mound” phrase comes from “Elite Giants Win Four as Second Half Opens,” New Journal and Guide, July 15, 1939: 17.

118  “Elite Giants Win Four as Second Half Opens.”

119 “Elites Take Lead in Second Half.” The Chicago Defender agreed on the forfeit, pointing out that there was a 6:00 P.M. curfew and that the stalling had begun at 5:45 with the forfeit declared at 5:55. It said that McCrary had forfeited the game after instructing Stars manager Jake Dunn “to have the players begin the inning and watching the Philly outfit refuse.” “Baltimore Elites Win Three from Philadelphia,” Chicago Defender, July 15, 1939: 10.

120 “Senators Play Allentown Tonight; ‘American Legion Night’ Tomorrow,” Trenton (New Jersey) Evening Times, July 11, 1939: 11. Likely a typo, the Philadelphia Inquirer said that the game began at 9:00 A.M. “Other Games,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10, 1939: 18.

121 “Stars to Play Negroes Tonight,” Poughkeepsie (New York) Eagle-News, July 12, 1939: 8.

122 If he was really pitching right-handed as the article said, his accomplishment would have been even more remarkable. It talked about his “fast, right-handed toss.” “All-Stars Drop Hot Game to Elite Giants Team 7-1,” Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, July 13, 1939: 8.

123 “Bushwick Club to Use Signer in Box Tonight,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 14, 1939: 8.

124 “Games This Week,” New York Times, July 10, 1939: 16.

125 “Bushwicks to Pitch ‘No-Hit’ Jim Tomorrow,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 15, 1939: 11.

126 John Staudt, “Greys Win, 11-10, on 5 in 9th,” Long Island Daily Press, July 15, 1939: 8.

127 Charles A. Pichard, of Bellaire, New York, letter to the editor, Long Island Daily Press, July 20, 1939: 21.  

128 Staudt.

129 “Nashville Giants Win,” Wilmington (Delaware) Morning News, July 17, 1939: 15.

130 “Cubans to Meet Giants at Pennsy,” Wilmington Morning News, July 15, 1939: 12.

131 Newark Eagles Records, MG Nwk Eagles. Charles F. Cummings New Jersey Information Center, Newark Public Library. https://archive.org/details/NewarkEagles0809021 Accessed December 5, 2023.

132 Art Carter, “Player Ejected as Elites Split with Cubans,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 22, 1939: 23.

133 “Player Ejected as Elites Split with Cubans.”

134 “Sports Card,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 17, 1939: 18.

135 There was an Eddie Dixon listed by Seamheads as on the Indianapolis ABCs/Atlanta Black Crackers team in 1939. As noted, a week earlier he was said to have been joining the team and in late August a pitcher named Dixon was said to have been assigned uniform number 14.

136 Sheriff (no other name provided), “Norristown Sluggers Blast Three Hurlers for 19 Hits; Smith Gives Up Seven Blows,” Norristown (Pennsylvania) Times Herald, July 17, 1939: 7.

137 Sheriff.

138 “Braves Shake Slump, Rout Nashville Elites, 10 to 3,” Asbury Park Press, July 19, 1939: 10.

139 “Easton East Penn Club Beats Colored Team, 8-7,” Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, July 20, 1939: 16.

140 “Sports Events for Today,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 20, 1939: 22.

141 Woodbury (New Jersey) Daily Times, July 11, 1939. 

142 “Newark Eagles Defeat Baltimore Giants, 8-5,” Wilmington Morning News, July 24, 1939: 16.

143 “Giants Split with Eagles in Twin Bill,” Washington Post, July 24, 1939: 14.

144 The Newark Evening News said that Day had struck out eight. “Leon Day Stars as Eagle Split,” Newark Evening News, July 24, 1939.

145 “Baltimore and Newark Split Double-Header,” Washington Evening Star, July 24, 1939: A-12. The Newark Evening News account said the second game was a seven-inning game.

146 “Newark Eagles Swamp Baltimore Elite Giants,” Wilmington Morning Call, July 25, 1939: 20.

147 “Fancy Clouting,” Newark Evening News, July 26, 1939.

148 “Rally Beats Eagles,” Newark Evening News, July 27, 1939.

149 “Today’s Sports,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 1939: 27.

150 “Elites Barnstorming with N.Y. Black Yanks,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 29, 1939: 22.

151 “Yanks, Elites Divide Bill in Indianapolis,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 5, 1939: 22.

152 “Black Yanks Meet Giants, Tuesday, 8:15; Crack Negro Teams to Clash in Pair of Games at Rickwood Field,” Birmingham News-Age-Herald, July 30, 1939: 4. See also “Dark Yankees and Giants to Meet Tuesday,” Birmingham News, July 31, 1939: 11, and “Baltimore to Play Yankees Here Tonight; Big League Clubs to Perform at Rickwood for Two Nights,” Birmingham News, August 1, 1939: 10.

153 “Negro Teams to Play Pair Tilts Here on Sunday,” Birmingham News, August 5, 1939: 8.

154 “Baltimore Is Winner from Dark Yankees,” Birmingham News, August 2, 1939: 15. A one-run, 4-3 victory seemed like hardly the mastery indicated.

155 “Baltimore Is Winner from Dark Yankees.”

156 “Black Yankees to Meet Elite Giants Here Soon,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 28, 1939: 16.

157 “Black Yankees Top Giants Here, 4 To 2,” Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser, August 4, 1939: 14.

158 “Red Sox Meet Black Giants in Pair Games,” Birmingham News, August 4, 1939: 13.

159 “Memphis Splits Pair of Battles With Baltimore,” Birmingham News, August 7, 1939: 9.

160 SNS, “Red Sox and Giants Divide Twin Bill,” Phoenix (Arizona) Index, August 12, 1939: 4.

161 “Memphis Splits Pair of Battles With Baltimore.”

162 “Sluggers Dominate All-Star Teams,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 5, 1939: 21.

163 Advertisement, Delta (Mississippi) Democrat-Times, August 6, 1939: 5.

164 “Negro Red Sox Ahead,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 10, 1939: 14.

165 Email to author from Skip Nipper, June 8, 2023.

166 Email to author from Keith Wood, June 7, 2023.

167 SNS, “Homestead Grays Take Black Yankee Team,” Phoenix Index, August 19, 1939: 5.

168 “M.B.A. Lead; Point for Cedarhurst,” Nassau Daily Review-Star, August 14, 1939: 10.

169 “Schwartz Repulses Elite Giants, 3-2,” Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick), August 15, 1939: 10.

170 “Schwartz Repulses Elite Giants, 3-2.”

171 “Belmar Braves Conquer Elites, 6-2, With McCloskey on Mound,” Asbury Park Press, August 16, 1939: 8.

172 “Baltimore Giants Beat Alcyon Park,” Camden Morning Post, August 18, 1939: 29.

173 John G. Palmer, “Bushwicks and Nashville Will Play Tonight,” Brooklyn Citizen, August 18, 1939: 6.

174 John G. Palmer, “New Bushwick Twirler Is Given Poor Support and Nashvilles Win, 9-0,” Brooklyn Citizen, August 19, 1939: 6.

175 “Martini Again Pitches Great Ball to Win, 4-1,” Chester Times, August 24, 1939: 20.

176 “Lloyd A.C. Beats Elite Giants,” Delaware County Daily Times, August 24, 1939: 20. 

177 “Martini Again Pitches Great Ball to Win, 4-1.”

178 “So You’ll Know Them,” Warren (Pennsylvania) Times-Mirror, August 23, 1939: 8.

179 “Lloyd A.C. Meets League Leaders,” Chester Times, September 2, 1939: 11.

180 “Homestead Grays Rally in Eighth to Defeat Baltimore,” Warren Times-Mirror, August 25, 1939: 9. 

181 Ralph F. Boyd, “Elites and Cubans Split Twin Bill,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 2, 1939: 23.

182 “Today’s Sports,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 31, 1939: 23.

183 “Little Ferry A.A. Ready for Series with Laird-Johnson,” Bergen (New Jersey) Evening Record, August 29, 1939: 13.

184 “Newark and Grays Play,” New York Amsterdam News, August 12, 1939: 15.

185 “Baltimore Team at Cedarhurst,” Nassau Daily Review-Star, August 30, 1939: 12.

186 “Elites Win, 6-3, At Cedarhurst,” Long Island Daily Press, September 2, 1939: 7. Wright was the right fielder, Burnis “Wild Bill” Wright.

187 “Sports Shorts,” Chester Times, September 2, 1939: 12.

188 “Elites and Giants Win N.Y. Twin Bill,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 9, 1939: 22.

189 “Partlow Steals Show as Grays Top Nashville,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 5, 1939: 15. See also “Cuban Stars and Homestead Grays Victors,” Brooklyn Citizen, September 5, 1939: 6.

190 “National League,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 9, 1939: 23.

191 Art Carter, “From the Bench,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 16, 1939: 23.

192 “From the Bench.”

193 “Mule Suttles Slugs Hard,” Newark Evening News, September 7, 1939.

194 John G. Palmer, “Bushwicks to Play Two Star Teams of Met,” Brooklyn Citizen, September 9, 1939: 6.

195 “Red Moore Hits Three for Four,” Atlanta Daily World, September 16, 1939: 5. See also “Newark Eagles and Elite Giants Even,” Newark Evening News, September 10, 1939. The newspaper assigned Hughes the first name of Jack.

196 Ralph Boyd, “Elites Whip Eagles to Gain Championship Series,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 16, 1939: 22.

197 “Elites Whip Eagles to Gain Championship Series.”

198 “Partlow Bests Byrd as Grays Win Opener, 2-1,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 23, 1939: 21.

199 Art Carter, “Elites, Grays Tied in National League Title Series,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 23, 1939: 19.

200 John G. Palmer, “Champions Are to Clash at Dexter Park,” Brooklyn Citizen, September 19, 1939: 6.

201 “Bushwicks Nip Elites in Arclight Finale,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 21, 1939: 20.

202 “Campanella in Star’s Role as Elites Score,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 30, 1939: 21.

203 The Chicago Defender reported “nearly 10,000” but a typesetting error also declared the score to be 20-0.  Fortunately, the game story and accompany box score were in agreement with the Baltimore Afro-American that it was a 2-0 game. “Baltimore Whips Homestead Grays for Title,” Chicago Defender, September 30, 1939: 9.

204 “Elite Giants Win National League Championship,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 30, 1939: 21. The Defender wrote that Hughes “collapsed on the bench” but “returned to the park near the end of the game.” See also “Baltimore Whips Homestead Grays for Title.”

205 “Elites Win Title,” Jersey Journal (Jersey City), September 25, 1929: 11.

206 “Elites Drub Grays for Jacob Ruppert Trophy,” New Journal and Guide, September 30, 1939: 17.

207 “Elite Stars to Play in Game,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 30, 1939: 20.

208 Art Carter, “From the Bench,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 7, 1939: 21.

209 Carter, “From the Bench,” October 7, 1939: 21.

210 Randy Dixon, “The Sports Bugle,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 7, 1939: 17.

211 “Owners of Teams in Negro National League Enjoyed Best Year in Campaign Just Closed,” Detroit Tribune, October 21, 1939: 7.

212 “Owners of Teams in Negro National League Enjoyed Best Year in Campaign Just Closed.”

213 “McDonald Hurls Shutout Ball, but All-Stars Lose,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 14, 1939: 21.  

214 Marion “Sugar” Cain is shown on Seamheads as 25 years old and having pitched for the Crawfords in 1937 and 1938. The Baltimore Afro-American said the pitcher was Robert Cain, age 23, from Philly. “McDonald Hurls Shutout Ball, but All-Stars Lose.”  

215 James Newton, “Bob Feller Fans 14, but Elites Win, 5-2,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 21, 1939: 21.

216 “Negro Aces Defeat Bob Feller 5-3,” Atlanta Daily World, October 23, 1939: 5.

217 Prentice Mills, Black Ball News Revisited (Middletown, Delaware: Red Opel Books, 2019), 109.

218 “Pirrone’s All-Stars Stifle Giants Twice,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1939: A12.

219 Ed Sullivan, “Hollywood,” New York Daily News, October 22, 1939: 30.

220 James Newton, “Bob Feller Fans 14, But Elites Win, 5-2,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 21, 1939: 21.

221 James Newton, “McDuffie, Harvey Hurl Winning Ball on Coast,” Chicago Defender, November 25, 1939: 22.

222 James Newton, “Giants Win Winter League Title,” Chicago Defender, December 9, 1939: 24.

223 James Newton, “Glover Hurls No-Hit, No-Run Game on Coast,” Chicago Defender, November 19, 1939: 24. See also “Glover Twirls No-Hitter as Royal Giants Win,” Los Angeles Times, November 6, 1939: A12.

224 Newton, “Giants Win Winter League Title.”

Although the Yankees won their fourth straight World Series, it would be a mistake to think that little had changed for the champions in pinstripes, or baseball itself, in 1939. Lou Gehrig’s streak of 2,130 consecutive games played ended on May 2. Seven weeks later Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). On the Fourth of July at Yankee Stadium, the player nicknamed the Iron Horse delivered his iconic “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech.

On June 12, 1939, the National Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, New York. Ten of the original 13 inductees were introduced to the crowd (Ty Cobb arrived late; Willie Keeler and Christy Mathewson had already died) and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis remarked, “I should like to dedicate this museum to all America, to lovers of good sportsmanship, healthy bodies and keen minds. For those are the principles of baseball.”3

A New York Times headline the next day read, “Baseball Pageant Thrills 10,000 at Game’s 100th Birthday Party.”4 The US Post Office issued a 3-cent “Centennial of Baseball” stamp.5 The truth expressed in Harrington “Kit” Crissey’s 1976 Baseball Research Journal piece – “Serious baseball research has refuted the earlier contention that Abner Doubleday laid out the first baseball diamond at Cooperstown, N.Y. in 1839 while a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy” – had not yet taken root.6

The inaugural Little League game was played on June 6, 1939, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. (Lundy Lumber defeated Lycoming Dairy, 23-8.)7 On May 17 baseball was broadcast on TV for the first time, with Princeton defeating Columbia University, 2-1, in an “Ivy League” (the title did not become official until 1954) clash. “The players were best described by observers as appearing ‘like white fliers’ running across the screen,” the Times reported. “It was impossible for the single camera to include both the pitcher’s box and home plate at the same time. When the ball flashed across the grass it was a comet-like white pinpoint. The umpires in the dark uniforms stood out more vividly than did the players in white suits.”8

Television sets had been available to American consumers only since May 1, the day after RCA introduced them at the opening of the World’s Fair in New York City. By the end of the year, only a few hundred US homes had TVs.9

The first major-league games were televised on August 26, 1939, a Brooklyn Dodgers-Cincinnati Reds doubleheader. Empire State Building-based station W2XBS (later WNBC) sent two cameras to capture the action at Ebbets Field, and viewers up to 50 miles away could tune in. Contrasting the telecast to the springtime Princeton-Columbia contest, the Times observed, “It was apparent that considerable progress had been made in the technical requirements and apparatus for this sort of outdoor pick up, where the action is fast. At times it was possible to grasp a fleeting glimpse of the ball as it sped from the pitcher’s hand toward home plate.”10

The NCAA basketball tournament also debuted in 1939. Eight teams competed in the first edition of what eventually came to be called March Madness, with contests in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Evanston, Illinois. The University of Oregon prevailed by defeating Ohio State, 46-33. Future major-league second baseman Ford “Moon” Mullen was a reserve for the victorious Webfoots.

In college football, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M) went undefeated, and 20-year-old Jackie Robinson more than lived up to the hype that accompanied his arrival at the University of California, Los Angeles.11 But the Heisman Trophy went to University of Iowa quarterback Nile Kinnick, who shared Associated Press Athlete of the Year recognition with Alice Marble, the winner of tennis’s singles, doubles, and mixed doubles competitions at both Wimbledon and the US National Championships. (Bobby Riggs, 21, won the men’s singles events at each tournament).

In the National Football League, the Green Bay Packers shut out the New York Giants, 27-0, to secure their fifth championship in 11 years under coach Curly Lambeau. Arguably no athlete was more popular than the Brown Bomber, boxing’s Joe Louis. The Detroit resident defended his heavyweight championship four times, including an 11th-round knockout of Bob Pastor at Briggs Stadium on September 20 that The Ring magazine proclaimed the “Fight of the Year.”

When Time magazine named its Best Song of the [Twentieth] Century in 1999, the choice was Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” which was recorded on April 20, 1939. In Manhattan’s Sheridan Square that spring, Holiday performed the song nightly at Café Society. “The music is very beautiful and Miss Holiday sings this piece with extraordinary power,” remarked NAACP executive secretary Walter White.12 After Holiday’s recording was released, Variety described it as “Anti-Lynch Propaganda in Swingtime, on a Disc.”13

Originally a 1937 poem by New York City English teacher Abel Meeropol (under his pseudonym Lewis Allan), “Strange Fruit” was inspired by a photograph of two African American teens hanging from a tree after they were lynched in Indiana. “I wrote Strange Fruit because I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who perpetuate it,” Meeropol explained.14

The number of lynchings in the United States had declined steadily, and sharply, over the previous half-century.15 Yet, as the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper noted on January 6, 1940, “Tuskegee reports three lynchings in 1939, and the NAACP records five. … The main thing we want to point out is that three lynchings are three too many. Even one unpunished lynching is a horror from which civilized people should shrink.”16

In Arlington, Tennessee – the same state where the Negro National League’s Elite Giants had gathered for spring training – an African American sharecropper lost his life because he asked for a receipt on April 28, 1939.17 When a record number of Blacks voted in Miami’s mayoral primary in May, they were met by 50 carloads of Ku Klux Klan members that burned 25 crosses.18

In Baltimore, Mayor Howard W. Jackson was reelected to his third consecutive (and fourth overall) term without incident. However, when the African American associate pastor of Orchard Street Methodist Church attempted to move his family into a home on Baker Street in April, the Sun reported, “A crowd of boys brushed past the police guard stationed there and dragged out several pieces of furniture to the street and smashed them. A crowd of almost 1,000 people participated in the melee and fists were swung freely.”19 Later that spring, the Sun described a new technique that Baltimore’s police commissioner approved for the city’s predominantly Black Western district: “A flying squad of five policemen surrounds a tavern catering to Negro trade, orders all the patrons to line up and then ‘frisks’ them for concealed weapons.”20

In Washington, DC, African American singer Marian Anderson attracted a crowd estimated at 75,000 on Easter Sunday.21 Although the 52-year-old contralto had entertained audiences across Europe and the United States for years, her concert took place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial because the Daughters of the American Revolution had denied her permission to sing at the DAR’s historic Constitution Hall, citing an unwritten “Whites only” policy. One of the thousands of DAR members who resigned in protest was Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. That summer, the first lady appeared at the NAACP convention to present Anderson the Spingarn Medal.22

In retrospect, many historians cite 1939 as the end of the decade-long Great Depression, though it was hardly a smooth transition.23 On the first day of 1940, the Associated Press reported, “The Stock Market underwent the shock of tremendous and confusing events in 1939 – events, perhaps, eventually of more far-reaching import than the economic collapse of 1929. The price wheel turned the full circle, from boom to bust and back to boom again.”24

On December 31, 1939, the Sun published an Institute of Public Opinion piece that noted, “First and foremost in the minds of Americans at the year’s end is the outbreak of war last September between England and France on one side and Germany on the other – an event which has been foreseen and dreaded by the average American for the last several years.”25 Although the United States remained officially neutral in the conflict that later escalated into World War II, Germany’s September 1 invasion of Poland was overwhelmingly opposed by most US citizens, who supported the French and British 84 percent to 2 percent, according to a Gallup poll that appeared on the same page of the newspaper. (The Soviet Union’s incursion into Finland at the end of November – ordered by Josef Stalin, Time’s Man of the Year for 1939 – was even less popular, with Americans backing the Finns, 88 percent to 1 percent.)26

Yet, the United States was one of three countries (along with Cuba and Canada) that had refused to allow entry to more than 900 passengers – most of them Jews fleeing persecution in Führer Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany – aboard the M.S. St. Louis that spring.27 Instead, they were forced to return to Europe, where more than a quarter of them were likely murdered in the Holocaust.28 Their story became the subject of the 1976 feature film Voyage of the Damned (based on a 1974 book with the same title).

As for the movies released during the Elite Giants’ Negro National League championship year, Michael Glitz opined in a 2008 Huffington Post article, “Film buffs have declared 1939 as the greatest year for movies so many times that it’s seen as historical fact, rather than just a widely accepted opinion.”29 (Hollywood’s Golden Year, 1939, and 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year are each titles of books.) Although Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and one of the most successful films of all time, Gone with the Wind, were released after the baseball season, another future cinema classic had its Baltimore premiere about three miles south of Oriole Park in August 1939. “The strangest thing about ‘the Wizard of Oz,’ now at the Century, is that it resembles a color cartoon by Walt Disney,” reported Sun reviewer Donald Kirkley. “It seems at times to have been drawn, rather than enacted on solid stages by living people. One of the greatest technical achievements in screen history, the film is something for grownups, as well as children, to marvel at.”30

The film version of John Steinbeck’s 1937 book Of Mice and Men was also released in 1939 while the new novel that would earn him the Pulitzer Prize, The Grapes of Wrath, topped the New York Times Best Seller List throughout the Elite Giants’ campaign.31

Those who preferred comic books were introduced to Batman in the spring of 1939.32 Shortly after, another Action Comics sensation from the previous year gained his own series with the publication of the inaugural Superman issue.33

Although the Sun and The Sporting News ignored the 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants’ heroics, that fall, Ric Roberts of the Atlanta Daily World proclaimed the Elites “the greatest race baseball team in the business.”34 Their triumph was chronicled by Black newspapers like the Baltimore Afro-American, the New Journal and Guide of Norfolk, Virginia, the New York Amsterdam News, the Chicago Defender, and the Kansas City Call. The Pittsburgh Courier’s Bandy Dixon – conceding that coverage of the Elite Giants’ September 24 championship clincher had been “pushed to the background by the hysteria encircling” Louis’s knockout of Pastor four days earlier – penned a 300-word column on October 7 headlined, “Belated Plaudits for the Title Coup of the Elite Giants.”35 Now, for their success during a year dominated by transformative events, enduring icons, and memorable feats, it is fitting that the members of the 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants receive further overdue recognition.

Born in Baltimore, MALCOLM ALLEN grew up about five miles north of the former site of Oriole Park, where the 1939 Elite Giants played their home games. Now based in Brooklyn, New York, he manages an event production warehouse and enjoys spending time with his wife, Sara, and their two daughters.

Notes

1 Although the dearth of Elite Giants’ coverage was not mentioned specifically, in 2022 the Baltimore Sun Editorial Board published a lengthy apology for news coverage and editorial opinions that “sharpened, preserved and furthered the structural racism that still subjugates Black Marylanders” throughout the first 185 years of the newspaper’s history. Baltimore Sun Editorial Board, “We are Deeply and Profoundly Sorry: For Decades, the Baltimore Sun Promoted Policies that Oppressed Black Marylanders; We are Working to Make Amends,” Baltimore Sun, February 18, 2022, https://www.baltimoresun.com/2022/02/18/we-are-deeply-and-profoundly-sorry-for-decades-the-baltimore-sun-promoted-policies-that-oppressed-black-marylanders-we-are-working-to-make-amends/ (accessed January 28, 2024).

2 “Keller and Challedon Bring Fame to State for Sports Feats in 1939,” Baltimore Sun, December 31, 1939: S3.

3 Arthur J. Daley, “Baseball Pageant Thrills 10,000 at Game’s 100th Birthday Party,” New York Times, June 13, 1939: 1.

4 Daley.

5 Gordon T. Trotter, “Centennial of Baseball,” https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/about-us-stamps-bureau-period-1894-1939-commemorative-issues-1938-1939/baseball (accessed January 20, 2024).

6 Harrington “Kit” Crissey, “Abner Doubleday Would Have Been Proud,” 1976 Baseball Research Journal), https://sabr.org/journal/article/abner-doubleday-would-have-been-proud/ (accessed January 20, 2024).

7 “History of Little League,” https://www.littleleague.org/who-we-are/history/ (accessed January 20, 2024).

8 “First Television of Baseball Seen,” New York Times, May 18, 1939: 29.

9 “The History of Television (Or, How Did This Get So Big?),” https://www.cs.cornell.edu/~pjs54/Teaching/AutomaticLifestyle-S02/Projects/Vlku/history.html (accessed January 20, 2024).

10 “Games Are Televised,” New York Times, August 27, 1939: S4.

11 Andy Wittry, “Jackie Robinson’s Football Career at UCLA Hinted at Greatness to Come,” NCAA.com, April 14, 2023, https://www.ncaa.com/news/football/article/2022-04-14/jackie-robinsons-football-career-ucla-hinted-greatness-come (accessed January 20, 2024).

12 “Night Club Singer Waxes First Song About Lynching,” New Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Virginia), June 17, 1939: 16.

13 “Anti-Lynch Propaganda in Swingtime, on a Disc,” Variety (Los Angeles), May 10, 1939: (Volume 134, Issue 9): 40.

14 Aida Amoako, “Strange Fruit: The Most Shocking Song of All Time?” BBC.com, April 17, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190415-strange-fruit-the-most-shocking-song-of-all-time (accessed January 14, 2024).

15 From 1882 to 1968, the Tuskegee Institute recorded 4,742 lynchings in the United States, with 72.6 percent of the victims African Americans. The average number of annual lynchings by decade declined from 154 in the 1890s, to 88.8 in the 1900s, 62.2 in the 1910s, 31.5 in the 1920s, and 12.8 in the 1930s. The last year in which a double-digit number of victims was counted was 1935. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html (accessed January 14, 2024).

16 “Three Too Many Lynchings” Baltimore Afro-American, January 6, 1940: 4.

17 “Jesse Lee Bond,” Lynching Sites Project, Memphis, https://lynchingsitesmem.org/lynching/jesse-lee-bond# (accessed January 20, 2024).

18 Associated Press, “Miami Negroes Ignore Klan Threat and Cast Record Vote,” Baltimore Sun, May 3, 1939: 2.

19 “Fists Fly Freely in Racial Clash,” Baltimore Sun, April 16, 1939: 3.

20 “Police Flying Squad Seeks to Reduce Cutting Affrays,” Baltimore Sun, June 5, 1939: 18.

21 Edward T. Folliard, “Ickes Introduces Contralto at Lincoln Memorial,” Washington Post, April 10, 1939: 1.

22 Since 1914 the NAACP has presented the Spingarn Medal in most years to an African American for outstanding achievements. As of 2023, Jackie Robinson (1956) and Henry Aaron (1976) were the only baseball players to receive it. Obie S. McCollum, “5,000 See Mrs. Roosevelt Present NAACP Medal to Marian Anderson,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 8, 1939: 1.

23 In 2021 the Harvard Business School published Alberto Cavallo, Sophus A. Reinert, and Federica Gabrieli’s “The Global Great Depression, 1929-1939,” https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=61531 (accessed January 21, 2024). Other examples of 1939 being cited as the end of the Great Depression include Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression 1929-1939 (University of California Press, 2013) and “The Great Depression and New Deal, 1929-1939,” PBS Learning Media, https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/us-history-collection/era/the-great-depression-and-new-deal-19291939/ (accessed January 21, 2024).

24 Associated Press, “Stocks Confined Throughout Year,” Baltimore Sun, January 1, 1940: 10.

25 Institute of Public Opinion, “Foreign Affairs Crowd Domestic Issues Out of National Limelight,” Baltimore Sun, December 31, 1939: 8.

26 George Gallup, “Gallup Poll: – Reds Anger U.S.,” Baltimore Sun, December 31, 1939: 8.

27 “Voyage of the St. Louis,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis (accessed January 21, 2024).

28 Scott Miller and Sarah Oglivie, Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), 174-175.

29 Michael Glitz, “DVDs: 1939 – The Best Year for Movies … Ever!” Huffington Post, February 15, 2008, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dvds-1939-the-best-year-f_b_86897 (accessed January 27, 2024).

30 Donald Kirkley, “A Film Version, with Music, of L. Frank Baum’s ‘The Wizard of Oz’ Shown Here,” Baltimore Sun, August 18, 1939: 10.

31 “Adult New York Times Best Seller Lists for 1939,” Hawes Publications, https://www.hawes.com/1939/1939.htm (accessed January 27, 2024).

32 Alex Zalban, “When ‘Is’ Batman’s Birthday, Actually?” MTV.com, March 28, 2014, https://www.mtv.com/news/xxfa1g/batman-75th-anniversary-birthday-date (last accessed January 27, 2024).

33 “Superman (1939 first series) Comic Books,” https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=22601073 (accessed January 27, 2024).

34 Ric Roberts, “Atlanta Is the No. 1 Ungrateful Sports Town of the Nation,” Atlanta Daily World, October 1, 1939: 8.

35 Bandy Dixon, “Belated Plaudits for the Title Coup of the Elite Giants,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 7, 1939: 17.

Nashville and the Negro Southern League

The team was one of 10 teams in the Negro Southern League in 1921. Teams returning from 1920, the league’s first season, were the Birmingham Black Barons, Knoxville Giants, Montgomery Grey Sox, and New Orleans Caulfield Ads. New teams, in addition to the Elites, were the Memphis Red Sox, Mobile Braves, Chattanooga Tigers, Atlanta Black Crackers, Bessemer Alabama Stars, and Gadsden Alabama Giants.3

Opening Day on April 25, 1921, began with a festive occasion that Wilson continued to invoke at opening days in the years to come. The club’s directors led a parade consisting of a brass band and automobiles carrying members of both teams – the Elites and the Memphis Red Sox. A community leader threw out the ceremonial first pitch.4 The highlight of the Elites’ maiden season was a 17-game winning streak in July and August on their way to copping the pennant in the newly organized 1921 version of the NSL, which was considered a “minor league” of the African American leagues. Rube Foster’s recently created Negro National League was the preeminent Black league of the day.

Pitching led the way. Three no-hitters, one by Wild Bill Nesbitt and two by rookie Darltie Cooper, brother of Hall of Fame pitcher Andy Cooper, highlighted the team’s inaugural season. Cooper finished the season with a 14-8 record, while Frenchy Gibson led all Elite moundsmen with a 15-6 record. Full of confidence and bravado after receiving the championship silver cup, Wilson announced, “The Nashville club will play any team anywhere.”5

While it is unknown if any team accepted Wilson’s challenge, the Elites started the 1922 season in fine fettle. They swept five straight games from the Louisville Cardinals, a new addition to the NSL. Wilson expanded a strong pitching staff with the addition of Ralph “Square” Moore from the New Orleans Crescents and two outfielders, Will Holt and George “Jew Baby” Bennett. Wilson named third baseman Felton Leroy Stratton as manager. Stratton could also play any position and wielded a decent bat as was evidenced by his six hits in a doubleheader win over the Birmingham Black Barons. Newly acquired shortstop Hooty Phillips, a baserunner extraordinaire, beat many a catcher’s throw to second and third base.6 By early June, Nashville led the NSL with a 20-15 record.7 By July 30, they led the pack by three games and finished in first place for the first half of the season. However, Wilson’s men did not have a chance to defend their previous season’s championship, since the entire NSL folded in early August due in part to mismanagement and lack of baseball experience on the part of some team owners. The Elites and several other teams continued as independent ballclubs.8

The ensuing three seasons (1923-1925) saw fragmentation again characterizing the NSL. Team owners had decided to split the 1923 season into a first and second half, but the league once again dissolved, this time before the second half began. Several teams went under for financial reasons. Two teams, the Birmingham Black Barons and the Memphis Red Sox, cast their lots with the Negro National League. The Nashville Elite Giants survived by barnstorming through the 1924 and ’25 seasons.

The 1926 season saw another resurrection of the NSL. Wilson’s Nashville Elite Giants joined seven other teams, each of which put up a $500 franchise fee and $70 “for promotional purposes.”9 Always on the lookout for capable players, Wilson dispatched his right-hand man and club secretary, Vernon “Fat Baby” Green, on a tour of several Northern states in early June. Green had been a catcher on the 1921 Elites but found his talent lay more in administration than playing, and he served as Wilson’s aide-de-camp for more than 20 years.10 He returned with four players – pitcher Clarence White, catcher Russell Bailey, outfielder William Mc Neal, and shortstop Joe Cates.11 The new players did little to improve the Giants’ performance, and the team languished in sixth place as the season ended. In two games of note, the renamed Chattanooga White Sox beat the Elites behind the pitching of a 20-year-old rookie named Satchel Paige.12

In 1927 the Elites started on a more promising note. Wilson had again revamped the roster, and only four players remained from the 1926 team. Wilson acquired Joe Hewitt from the Chicago American Giants in the NNL “at great expense” to replace Felton Stratton as manager.13 Stratton remained with the team as a player and returned to the hot corner. Hewitt turned to managing as his 17-year career as a stellar infielder was coming to an end. Wilson acquired several players from other NSL teams, notably pitcher Jim “Cannonball” Willis and catcher Red Charleston. The Nashville Banner predicted that the team would be “strong.”14

The paper’s prediction proved true for the first half of the season, in which the Elites were “generally declared to be the winner” amid conflicting newspaper accounts of games won and lost. Results for the second half of the season were not published. The Elites, however, won a championship that year, capturing the Negro Dixie Series title. Their first-half win entitled the Elites to represent the NSL against the Dallas Black Sox, champions of the Black Texas League.  The Elites beat the Texans, 5-4, in the series’ final game before a wildly cheering crowd at Sulphur Dell. The Negro Dixie Series mirrored that of the annual postseason matchup between the champions of the White Southern Association and the Texas League (also White).15

A Move to the Negro National League

Eager to improve his team’s performance and prestige, Wilson attended the1928 annual NNL winter meetings, held as usual in January in Chicago, in hopes of joining the league, which was deemed to be the “major league” of Black baseball. He came away with a promise that the Elites would be considered an associate member of the league and that full membership would be granted should the Memphis Red Sox drop out. Games with associate members did not count in the standings, and associate members could not compete for the pennant. Memphis stayed in the NNL, and Wilson returned to Nashville only to see the NSL disintegrate once again.16 The Elites, as an associate member of the NNL, played independent ball that year, and they continued to do so during the 1929 and ’30 seasons.17

One of the 1930 games, played on May 14 in Nashville’s Wilson Park against the NNL’s Kansas City Monarchs, was notable for two reasons: 1) It drew one of the largest crowds in recent memory, and 2) it was the first night game ever played in Nashville. Floodlights at first and third base and two in the outfield provided the illumination. The Monarchs prevailed, 4-3. Wilson Park, built by Tom Wilson in 1928, had a capacity of 8,000 spectators and afforded the team the ability to schedule games independent of the White minor leagues’ Nashville Vols’ schedule. Games for which the crowd was expected to exceed 8,000 continued to be played at Sulphur Dell.18

The year 1930 also marked Wilson’s first foray to California. The California Winter League accepted his application to field a team he called the Elite Giants. This was not the Nashville Elite Giants but rather a handpicked aggregation of the top “colored” players. They included St. Louis Stars shortstop Willie Wells and first baseman-outfielder Mule Suttles, “The Race Babe Ruth”; pitcher Satchel Paige; outfielder Norman “Turkey” Stearnes from the Detroit Stars; and third baseman Judy Johnson from Pittsburgh’s Homestead Grays – all eventual Hall of Famers. Wilson claimed the Elites “will be the most popular on the Coast.” Whether or not the team was the most popular, it was certainly the best. They won the 1930-31 CWL championship. It would not be their last.19

The Moves Begin

At the same time, the Elites were finally granted full membership in the NNL for the 1931 season. Wilson’s NNL membership, however, was for Cleveland, not Nashville. He moved the Elites franchise to the City by the lake, where the team played as the Cleveland Cubs. Notable Cubs players included Satchel Paige and a 19-year-old rookie infielder named Ray Dandridge, who had quit the floundering Detroit Stars due to that team’s financial difficulties. After a short stint with the Cubs, Dandridge starred in the Negro Leagues for 16 seasons and gained induction into the Hall of Fame in 1987.20

Wilson rarely left Nashville, where he had a number of business interests, so he relied on Vernon Green to oversee all games. One game, however, brought Wilson to Cleveland. In a July game against Louisville, Paige, in a fit of pique, threw a ball at umpire Baby King and cussed him out. King ejected Paige, prompting Cubs manager Joe Hewitt to call the Cubs off the field. Green and Louisville manager Columbus Ewing managed to quell tempers so the game could continue. The incident added fuel to the criticism that Black baseball had descended into a state of rowdyism brought on by a lack of interest on the part of managers and owners. Hearing about the fracas, Wilson arrived in Louisville, where he fined Hewitt and suspended him for five games. The Chicago Defender complimented Wilson’s actions as “the right step in the direction of restoring the game to its former high plane.”21

While no standings were published, incomplete records show the Cubs were credited with a 24-22 record for the portion of the season during which the team was in business. The Great Depression was in full swing and practically all of Black baseball felt its sting. The NNL disbanded, the Cubs folded, Paige signed with the Pittsburgh Crawfords, and Wilson took the remaining Elites back to Nashville for play in the NSL for the rest of the 1931 season.22

While many of the Elites’ best players had migrated to Cleveland, fortune smiled on those left behind and perhaps others who made up the ’31 Nashville Elite Giants based in Nashville. Wilson now presided over two teams; one in the NNL II and one in the NSL. The two teams faced each other at least once in late April for a doubleheader. The Cubs easily took both games, 7-1 and 5-0.23 By the end of June, the Nashville team led the NSL, and its resurgence was highlighted by an 11-game winning streak. By July, however, its lead had been cut to one game over the once-again-renamed Chattanooga Lookouts. In the end, the Nashville Elites squeaked by the Memphis Red Sox to take the first-half pennant by a mere 3 percentage points.24 The Elites went on to win the second-half flag as well, thus earning the right to play the Monroe Monarchs, champions of the Texas-Louisiana League. The Elite Giants lost the series in seven games. The Chicago Defender called the series “one of the most heated battles that has ever been played in the South.”25

A New Negro Southern League

While the Elite Giants were tearing up the CWL out West, a new Negro Southern League consisting of six teams was organized, with Wilson’s Nashville Elite Giants among the member franchises. Wilson was elected league treasurer. Reuben B. Jackson, his friend, physician, fellow frequent NSL officer, and Nashville resident, was elected vice president. To contain costs, the NSL limited the number of teams to six, with each team carrying 13 players (including the manager).26

As the Depression continued to take its toll, teams that once belonged to the defunct Negro National League either folded or sought new affiliations. Wilson consolidated the Elite Giants into one team in the NSL for the 1932 season. That season the powerhouse Chicago American Giants joined the NSL. Chicago and Nashville finished the season as the top two NSL teams and faced off in the Dixie Series, which was broadcast over the radio by both NBC and CBS. The American Giants, behind the likes of future Hall of Famers Willie Foster (half-brother of Rube Foster) and Turkey Stearnes, a Nashville native best known for his play with the Detroit Stars, won the seventh and deciding game at Wilson Park, 3-2. Shortly thereafter, Wilson took an all-star Black team to the West Coast for another championship season in the CWL.27

While the Elite Giants continued their mastery of the CWL, six of Black baseball’s most prominent moguls met in January 1933 in Chicago to reconstitute the Negro National League, known initially as The National Association of Baseball Clubs but later renamed the Negro National League II (NNL2). The Elite Giants, based in Nashville at the time, finally achieved full membership.28

In their first season as full NNL2 members, Wilson’s Nashville nine finished third in the first-half standings but picked up their play and claimed the second-half title. This qualified the Elite Giants to face the Crescent Stars of New Orleans in the Negro Dixie Series. Considerable prestige was at stake as the winner of the series was to be crowned the best team in the South. The honor went to the Crescents but not without controversy sparked by faulty newspaper reporting.

New Orleans won the first three games before an appreciative home crowd of over 11,000 spectators who cheered Nashville’s star pitcher Cannonball Willis’s offerings and those of his relievers “being swatted to all corners of the lot.”29 The teams then traveled to Nashville for the final four games. A Chicago Defender article of September 23, 1933, credited the Elites with winning both ends of the opening doubleheader, thereby narrowing the Crescents’ lead to 3-2.  H.D. English, secretary of the Stars club, took issue with the account. He accused the sportswriter for the Elites of being asleep during the doubleheader and asserted that the Crescents had won the double bill, 2-1 and 7-4, making them victorious in the series, five games to two. “I am wondering,” English continued, “just what the Nashville fans will say as they sat there and saw the Giants lose.”30

As the Dixie Series was underway, Wilson once again assembled a team of Negro League stars to take to California. His latest squad, now named the Royal Elite Giants, once more came out on top of the CWL, giving Wilson’s teams four pennants in four seasons. The pitching of Satchel Paige and Cannonball Willis foiled the bats of many opponents. Willis had been a mainstay of the Nashville team from 1927 to 1934 and was one of the few Nashville Elites to travel west in the winters. The bats of sluggers Mule Suttles, Turkey Stearnes, and Wild Bill Wright complemented the slick fielding of shortstop Willie Wells and Elite infielders Sammy T. Hughes at second base and Felton Snow at third as the Royal Elite Giants rolled to another CWL pennant to the tune of a 34-5 record.31

Elites Back in the Negro National League

As the Depression continued, owners expressed more interest in minimizing travel costs by placing teams in Eastern cities, which were closer to one another than those in the Midwest and South. In January 1934, the NNL2 owners met in Philadelphia rather than Chicago and emerged with a few new member teams that gave the league a decidedly Eastern flavor. The league comprised the Philadelphia Stars, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Chicago American Giants, Newark Dodgers (soon to become the Newark Eagles), Nashville Elite Giants, Baltimore Black Sox, Philadelphia Bacharach Giants, and Cleveland Red Sox. The Elite Giants, heavy preseason favorites “to be among the big threats,” were strengthened by the addition of pitcher Walter “Steel Arm” Davis and manager Candy Jim Taylor, recognized as one of the game’s smartest managers. The Elites ended up being less than the big threat envisioned by Wilson to claim the NNL2 pennant; Seamheads shows the team finishing in fifth place.32

Yet another change was in store for the Elites in 1935. No longer the Nashville Elite Giants, they were slated to become the Detroit Elite Giants, a location that would put them closer to other teams in the league. A White Detroit businessman, John Roesing, who was assumed to be the owner of a lease for Roesing Stadium in the nearby village of Hamtramck, welcomed the team and promised to make all necessary repairs to bring the park up to date. “Well, I’m glad that’s over,” a relieved Wilson sighed once the negotiations had concluded. The trouble was that Roesing had unknowingly lost his lease on the park by nonpayment of taxes. By an action of the Hamtramck City Council, the lease was now in the hands of the Detroit Lumber Company and the city of Hamtramck, and a full schedule of semipro games in the ballpark for a local White team already had been arranged. Upon hearing the news, just a week before Opening Day, a not-so-relieved Wilson quickly relocated the team to Columbus, Ohio, in time for Opening Day against the New York Cubans on May 16, 1935. The Columbus Elite Giants finished third in the NNL2 standings, just .003 percentage point ahead of the Philadelphia Stars.33

Dissatisfied with Columbus, Wilson again sought greener pastures. The nation’s capital caught his eye. Washington was only 40 miles from Baltimore, and both cities had large and growing Black populations. In an effort to tap both markets, Wilson decided that the now Washington Elite Giants would play their day games in DC and split their night games between the two cities. The team boasted an impressive roster.34 Jim “Shifty” West at first base had proved to be a consistent .300-plus hitter the last two seasons and delighted fans with his fancy glove work. Sammy T. Hughes was considered the league’s premier second baseman and was a solid hitter with speed on the bases. Team captain and sometimes manager Felton “Skipper” Snow, who held down the hot corner, owned a rifle of an arm, respectable batting averages, and a knack for stealing bases. Snow managed the team through most of the 1940s.

Bowlegged Leroy Morney, who had been with the Elites for two seasons, was seen “as a master shortstop” and completed the infield. The outfield consisted of Wild Bill Wright, who hit the long ball from both sides of the plate, had a strong if not always accurate arm, and was considered the fastest Negro League player; Zollie Wright, who was no relation to Wild Bill, usually batted cleanup and manned right field; and Homer “Goose” Curry, an adequate outfielder who played four season for the Elites, started in left. The Elites featured a strong pitching rotation of Schoolboy Bob Griffith, Andy Porter, Jim Willis, and Tom Glover, a hard-throwing sophomore.

Of particular note was the addition of Biz Mackey, a 2006 inductee into the Hall of Fame, to the lineup at the catcher’s spot. The “old man” of the team at age 38, Mackey, acquired in a trade with the Philadelphia Stars, kept runners hugging their bases, hit with power, and would mentor

a 15-year-old rookie catcher named Roy Campanella when he joined the team in 1937. Campanella, a native of Philadelphia, was the only player on the ’37 team born north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The rookie learned well but didn’t find the mentoring easy. “Biz,” he said, “didn’t want me to do just one or two things good. He wanted me to do everything good. … There were times when Biz made me cry with his constant dogging. But nobody ever had a better teacher.”35

With this lineup, manager Candy Jim Taylor, who had been an exceptional third baseman before embarking on a successful managerial career, including the past two seasons with the Elite Giants, predicted that the team “will be a first division club.”36

Taylor’s prediction proved true for the 1936 season’s first half but not until a decisive game with the Philadelphia Stars, postponed in June, was finally played in September. The Giants won and were belatedly recognized as the league’s first-half winner. They fared less well in the second half by losing the title to the Pittsburgh Crawfords.37 Often the winners of the first half and second half faced off in a NNL2 championship series, but for unknown reasons no such series was played this season. William Augustus “Gus” Greenlee, a Pittsburgh tavern owner and Black community leader, in his capacity as NNL president and, not incidentally, owner of the Crawfords, ruled that the title belonged to the Craws as they had best record for the entire season; a .593 winning percentage against .460 for the second-place Elites.38

The bus that carried the Elites south for spring training in March of 1937 held essentially the same roster as the year before with two notable additions. 20-year-old Jimmy Direaux, a right-handed pitcher and a Los Angeles native, came to Wilson’s attention by striking out 108 batters in a six-game stretch for the semipro Arizona Broncos, an accomplishment featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not. He ended up spending two unremarkable seasons with the Elites before jumping to the Mexican League. Henry “Kimmie” Kimbro, a 25-year-old outfielder, was the second acquisition. An all-around exceptional player, he remained with the Elites for 11 seasons, an unusually long tenure with a single team in the Negro Leagues. Biz Mackey replaced Taylor as manager while Campanella, still in high school, played occasionally. Douglass O. Smith, a booking agent with the power to arrange Negro League games at certain ballparks in return for a fee, put a dent in Baltimore’s segregation policies by securing the city’s best stadium, Oriole Park, for Elites’ night games. The ballpark had been closed to “colored” teams for years.39

The 1937 Washington Elites came out of the gate in fine fashion. By the end of May they were in first place in the six-team league. By the end of July, they maintained their lead by downing the New York Black Yankees in a doubleheader. But it was downhill for the rest of the season. Wilson’s nine fell to fifth place at season’s end with a 23-36-3 record, thereby dashing early-season hopes for a pennant.40

Baltimore

Not only was Washington’s record a disappointment, but its finances were as well. Wilson once again searched for a city that would adequately support the Elites. He decided on Baltimore.  “Last year,” he lamented at the 1938 annual owners’ winter meeting, “we lost money with the club operating from Washington. I sincerely feel Baltimore is far superior to Washington as a baseball town.” But there was a hitch. Wilson wanted to play in Oriole Park, home park of the Independent League Baltimore Orioles, but to do so he’d have to again go through Smith, which would cut into the team’s finances.41 Wilson’s reluctance to work with Smith, together with the objections that White citizens voiced to Oriole Park officials about the “noise and fanfare” generated by night games the previous season, resulted in Bugle Field becoming the Elites’ home park for the 1938 season.42

Wilson’s optimism about Baltimore was buoyed by the efforts of Richard Powell who had many contacts in the city. He talked up the Elites to Black leaders and community groups. Powell gained the backing of Baltimore’s chapter of the Frontiers Club of America, composed of leading businessmen, which supported minority group leaders striving to ameliorate racial, social, and civic issues. He also gained the support of Leon Hardwick, the Baltimore Afro-American’s sports editor. Hardwick promised to run frequent articles about the team, many of which Powell wrote on his second-hand typewriter. Powell also arranged for some players to stay in private homes, including his own, where they could enjoy home-cooked meals. Others stayed at the Clark Boarding House and ate at segregated restaurants. His biggest financial contribution was to lease Bugle Field for the Elites from its owner, the Gallagher Realty Company, saving Wilson the usual 10 to 15 percent fee charged by booking agents.43

Baseball was the main attraction at Bugle Field, but it was not the only one. The ballpark was a haven where people could relax and have a good time without the stress generated by Baltimore’s culture of segregation and discrimination. Frederick Lonesome, a frequent spectator, recalled, “You didn’t have to have a lot of money to enjoy yourself, and you didn’t have to be afraid.” Gambling was enjoyed by many. Lonesome recalled “seeing coins and dollar bills change hands as people bet on what the batter would do, like make a hit or get an out.” Home-brewed whiskey, either gin or rye, sold for $3.00 a pint; a beer cost 20 cents. Candy, hot dogs, peanuts, and ice cream were plentiful. Many dressed to the nines and brought picnic baskets.44

The now Baltimore Elite Giants, the youngest team in the league the previous year, started 5-6 but began to find their footing. The Pittsburgh Courier lauded their “speedy pace” in the second half by trouncing the Homestead Grays 8-4 in a late July game,45 They finished in fifth place, but a writer for the Courier hailed the soon to be Baltimore Elite Giants as pennant contenders for the coming 1938 season.46         

Such hopes were dashed early. By the second week of June 1938, the Elites found themselves in fourth place in the NNL2 with a 5-6 record. By the end of the first half, on July 4, the team had slipped a notch to fifth place. Second-half standings were muddled because of inconsistent scorekeeping and some teams not reporting the outcomes of their games. Greenlee and Cum Posey, owners of the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays respectively, filled the void by listing the second-half order of finish as follows: the Grays in first place followed by the Philadelphia Stars, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Baltimore Elite Giants, Newark Eagles, and New York Black Yankees. How the two men arrived at their findings is not known, but they gave the league championship to the Grays, who had won the first half with a 26-6 record.47 In spite of the Elites’ disappointing record, Wilson saw enough bright spots to keep the team in Baltimore. For one thing, the box office had been good to him. In addition to that, Hughes, Wright, and Mackey had been elected to the East squad for the East-West All-Star Game, held at Comiskey Park on August 21.

The Elites fared better in 1939 despite the fact that three starting pitchers, Andy Porter, Schoolboy Griffith, and Jimmy Direaux, had cast their lots with the Mexican League before spring training had started in Nashville. A bit of good news was that booking agents Ed Gottlieb and Smith persuaded the owners of Oriole Park, with 2,000 more seats than Bugle Field, to allow the Giants to play several doubleheaders there. Wilson paid their fee, banking on the possibility of more spectators than Bugle Field could accommodate. The first game at Oriole Park was an Opening Day doubleheader on Sunday, May 19, against the Grays. The Elites took a double drubbing, 7-1 and 11-0. Wilson’s roster shook off their inglorious start and managed to place third in the first half of the season while the Grays again easily took first place.48

As the second half got underway, a second competition – the Jacob Ruppert Memorial Cup Tournament – was introduced in late June. In a rare acknowledgement of the Negro leagues by a major-league organization, Ed Barrow, former general manager and recently appointed president of the New York Yankees, selected five NNL2 four-team doubleheaders to be played in Yankee Stadium as Ruppert Cup games. The winner of the most games would be awarded a trophy and $500. The games honored Col. Jacob Ruppert, the Yankees’ owner and president from 1915 until his death on January 13, 1939, a four-term congressman, and the owner of Ruppert Brewery. Ruppert had opened Yankee Stadium to Negro League teams on July 5,1930, when the New York Lincoln Giants and the Baltimore Black Sox played a doubleheader. As Barrow introduced the Ruppert Cup, he said, “Negro baseball can build its own structure right alongside the majors. Given sufficient opportunity to show their ability, the colored stars will undoubtedly attract thousands of fans and supporters who will help them in their fight to reach the pinnacle of organized baseball.”49

Whether the prospect of winning the Ruppert Cup built a fire under the Elites is not known, but their second-half performance showed marked improvement. They took three straight from the Philadelphia Stars to start the second half. Wilson again changed personnel as he acquired five players from the Atlanta Black Crackers, a move the Chicago Defender described as “the biggest switch in players to be heralded in many seasons.” To make room for the new men, Wilson sold Mackey to the Newark Eagles and West to the Philadelphia Stars. The new Elites were James “Red” Moore, a fancy fielding and good hitting first baseman; two pitchers, Ed Dixon and Felix Evans; catcher Oscar Boone, who could back up Campanella now that he was the starting backstop; and the pick of the litter, shortstop Tommy “Pee Wee” Butts, who stayed with the Elites until 1951 (save for jumping to the Mexican League for the 1943 season).50 Lennie Pearson, the longtime first baseman of the Newark Eagles, said of him, “Butts was a tremendous shortstop and pesky hitter. He could go behind second better than any man I ever saw.” Pearson said that Butts’s “love of life” kept him out of the majors: “[H]e loved life, and when I say he loved life, I mean he loved life, especially women. After a game, Butts had a tendency to go off on the town, while Gilliam would stay around and listen to the old-timers talk and soak up that knowledge of baseball.”51

The “switch” in personnel helped. The Elites played above .500 ball for the rest of the season to edge the Grays for the second-half NNL2 championship. This year, instead of pairing the winners of the first and second halves for the NNL2 championship, the owners decided on two five-game series to determine which teams would contend for the title. Perhaps the additional revenue that would come from the extra games influenced their decision. Based on total wins for the season, the first-place Homestead Grays were paired against the fourth-place Philadelphia Stars, while the second-place Newark Eagles took on the third-place Elites. The Grays and Elites each won their series to advance to the five-game championship series. Campanella provided the best performance by a hitter in a single game. In Game Four of the championship series, played at Philadelphia’s Parkside Field, Campanella, a Philly native, thrilled the home crowd by leading his mates to 10-5 win with a home run, a double, and two singles.52 The final and deciding game was scheduled for September 24 in Yankee Stadium.

Two Championships and Controversy

Not only would the NNL2 championship be up for grabs on the 24th, but the winner of that game would also claim the Ruppert Cup trophy. Nearly 10,000 spectators saw southpaw Elite pitcher Jonas “Lefty” Gaines shut out the power-laden Grays for seven innings before loading the bases in the eighth with consecutive two-out walks to Grays power hitters Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, and Vic Harris. Gaines gave way to Bubber Hubert, a journeyman right-hander, who retired Grays pitcher Thomas “Big Train” Parker on a popout to protect the Elites’ 2-0 lead. Hubert held the Grays scoreless in the ninth inning.

The Giants had scored both of their runs in the seventh. Bill Hoskins, an outfielder in his second year with the Elites, drove in Wild Bill Wright, who had doubled, with a line-drive single to left field. Campanella soon followed with a single through the box that brought Hoskins, known for his speed on the bases, across the plate for the team’s second tally.53

Gaines had shut down some of the league’s leading hitters. In a list published by Cum Posey at the end of the 1939 season, five of the top 16 batters were Grays. Josh Gibson finished the season banging the ball at a .402 clip, while Sam Bankhead hit .378, Buck Leonard batted .363, Ray Brown finished at .316, and Henry Spearman hit .315. The Elites’ Bill Wright ranked 10th with a .365 average. Amid postgame speeches by several dignitaries, Tom Wilson, with a broad smile across his face, celebrated winning the NNL2 championship and hoisted the Ruppert Cup trophy for all to see.54

The press had no question about who the champions were. “Climaxing an uphill campaign in a blaze of glory, the … Giants won the Negro National League baseball championship and the Jacob Ruppert Trophy,” wrote the Baltimore Afro-American in a September 30, 1939, article. A July 6, 1940, Chicago Defender article referred to the Elites as “champions of 1939.”

The Grays had no problem with the Elites winning the Ruppert Cup, but they did hotly contest the Elites winning the NNL2 championship. Buck Leonard spoke for many when he claimed the Grays should wear the crown because they had won the most games during the season.55 In later years, Grays ownership still seemed unsure about how to present their team’s 1939 season: The team’s stationery for 1947 did not include 1939 as one of their many championship years, but their envelopes for 1949 did.56 Playoff results show that in 1939 the itinerant Elite Giants had two championships to savor.

BOB LUKE took up writing baseball books after a 40-year career in human resource development. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland. His most recent book is Pete Hill: Baseball’s First Black Superstar, published by McFarland. Others include The Most Famous Woman in Baseball: Effa Manley and the Negro Leagues (Potomac Books), The Baltimore Elite Giants: Sport and Society in the Age of Negro League Baseball (John Hopkins University), Integrating the Baltimore Orioles and Race in Baltimore (McFarland), and Willie Wells: “El Diablo” of the Negro Leagues (University of Texas). He lives in Garrett Park, Maryland, with his wife, Judy.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author is thankful for interviews with Frederick Lonesome, Barbara Powell Golden, and Gary Ashwill, and for access to the Art Carter Papers, Box 170-16, Folder 1, Manuscript Division, at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC.

Notes

1 An exception was the New York Giants, which were founded in 1883 and renamed from the Gothams to the Giants in 1885.

2 “Organize Nashville Elite Giants,” Chicago Defender, January 8, 1921. Thomas Aiello, “The Southern Against the South: The Chicago Conspiracy in the 1932 Negro Southern Baseball League,” Journal of Illinois State Historical Society, 1989, Vol. 102, No. 1, Spring, 2009, 10.

3 “Organize Nashville Elite Giants,” Chicago Defender, January 8, 1921.

4 William J. Plott, The Negro Southern League: A Baseball History, 1920-1951 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2015), 25.

5 Richard Schweid, “Club Built Against All odds,” Nashville Tennessean, September 2, 1987; “Elite Giants Win Seventeen Straight,” Nashville Banner, August 15, 1921; “Elite Giants Win Southern Championship,” Chicago Defender, October 1, 1921; www.negrosouthernleagueMuseumresearchcenter.org. Accessed March 21, 2023; James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Negro Baseball Leagues, (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1994), 192.

6 Plott, 25, 36.

7 “The Southern League,” Chicago Defender, June 3, 1922.

8 Plott, 41; Riley, 247.

9 Plott, 49.

10 Riley, 336.

11 “Elite Giants Obtain Four New Players” Nashville Banner, June 9, 1926.

12 “White Sox Outfit at Top Negro Loop,” Chattanooga Daily Times, July 7, 1926; “Elite Giants Defeated by Chattanooga,” Nashville Banner, September 6, 1926.

13 “Elite Giants to Be Strong This Season,” Nashville Banner, April 8, 1927.

14 “Elite Giants to be Strong This Season”; Riley, 166.

15 Plott, 74-75; Riley, 379; “Elites Capture Negro Dixie Title,” Nashville Banner, September 12, 1927.

16 Plott, 76.

17 “Elites Opener Is May 4 With Black Barons,” Chicago Defender, April 12, 1929; Plott, 76-80. Gary Ashwill email to author.

18 “Large Crowd Sees First Night Game,” Nashville Banner, May 15, 1930.

19 “Tom Wilson to Enter Strong Club in Coast Winter League,” Chicago Defender, September 13, 1930; James

Newton, “Nashville Elites Win Coast Baseball Flag,” Chicago Defender, March 7, 1931.

20 https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=dandr01ray, accessed May 9, 2023; Riley, 209; Bill Gibson, “Hear Me Talkin’ to You,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 9, 1933.

21 Seamheads.com – Cleveland Cubs 1931; “Thomas Wilson, Owner of Cleveland Cubs, Fines and Suspends Mgr. Joe Hewitt,” Chicago Defender, August 1, 1931.

22 Riley, 179.

23 “Elite Giants Drop 2 Games to Cleveland,” Chicago Defender, April 25, 1931.

24 “Around the Diamond,” Chicago Defender, June 13, 1931; “Elites Lead Dixie League,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 18, 1931.

25 “Monroe Holds Record for Ball Titles,” Chicago Defender, August 29, 1931; “The Southern League Meets January 23rd,” Chicago Defender, January 16, 1932.

26 “Negro Southern League Organized,” Nashville Banner, March 15, 1931; Aiello, 12.

27 R.R. Jackson, “Giants, Elites Prep for Dixie Title Series,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 27, 1932; Luther Carmichael, “Chicago Giants Swamp Nashville in Dixie Championship Game,” Atlanta Daily World, September 23, 1932; “Chicago Drubs Elite Giants,” Nashville Banner, October 3, 1932.

28 Al Monroe, “Six Clubs in New League,” Chicago Defender, January 14, 1933.

29 “New Orleans Leads Title Series,” Chicago Defender, September 16, 1933.

30 “Nashville Wins 2, Cops Third Place,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 15, 1933; “Nashville Giants in Negro Dixie Series,” Nashville Banner, September 9, 1933; “Dispute Halts Southern Play-Off,” Chicago Defender, September 23, 1933; H.D. English, “Here’s More About Southern Playoff,” Chicago Defender, September 30, 1933. English simply said the unsigned article the Defender had run on September 23 was incorrect, and that all those present at the game saw the second game played to its conclusion, editorializing further that “[a]rticles going to papers that have tried to help baseball, such as The Chicago Defender, should be exact and correct.”

31 Riley, 865; James Newton, “Nashville 9 Enters West Coast League,” Chicago Defender, September 23, 1933; James Newton, “Nashville Again Winner on Coast,” Chicago Defender, February 10, 1934; Jim Taylor, “Elite Giants Victor in Winter Loop Race,” Chicago Defender, February 16, 1935.

32 “League Season to Open Here May 12,” Chicago Defender, May 17, 1934; “Baseball Men Meet in Philly,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 10, 1934; “Elite Giants Have Roesink Stadium for Detroit Park,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 25, 1935. For final standings, see https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1934&lgID=NN2&tab=standings.

33 “Elite Giants Have Roesink Stadium”; “Detroit Has Team, But No Place to Play,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 11, 1935; Dan Burley, “The Sports Round-Up, “Philadelphia Tribune, May 16, 1935; John Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House Publishers, 2001), 316. The final standings are per Seamheads.com as of August 2023.

34 “Lewis Wins From Ed Simms,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 14, 1936.

35 Roy Campanella, It’s Good to Be Alive (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1959), 58-59 as cited in Luke, 34.

36 Candy Jim Taylor, “Nashville Elites Play as Washington’s Home Team,” Chicago Defender, April 18, 1936.

37 Seamheads has Pittsburgh as first-half champions and the Elites as second-half champs.

38 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 26, 1936; “Nashville Seeks Title in Belated Ball Finale,” Chicago Defender, May 1, 1937; Riley, 764-765, 628-629.

39 “Tom Wilson Signs Young Pitching Star,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 27, 1937; “Elites to Use Oriole Park,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 10, 1937; Riley, 462-463.

40 https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/team.php?yearID=1937&teamID=WEG&LGOrd=1, accessed May 16, 2023. “Washington Sweeps Yank Series: Leads Loop,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 24, 1937; “Standings,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 29, 1937.

41 “May Transfer Elite Giants From Washington to Balto,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 5, 1938.

42 “Baltimore Elites Down to Work,” Baltimore Afro-American, April2, 1938.

43 “Vernon Green Succumbs to Heart Attack in Baltimore,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 4, 1949; Riley, 639; Barbara Powell Golden (daughter of Richard Powell) interview, April 27, 2006 as cited in Bob Luke, The Baltimore Elite Giants: Sport and Society in the Age of Negro League Baseball (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 160.

44 Interview with Frederick Lonesome, October 10, 2006. As cited in Luke, 30.

45 “Washington Wins from Grays: Keeps League Lead,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 31, 1937.

46 “Baltimore Elites to Be Real Pennant Contenders,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 2, 1938. Final season standings are as reported by Seamheads in 2023. “Posey’s Points,”  September 26, 1936, and “Nashville Seeks Title in Belated Ball Finale,” May 1, 1937, both cite the Elites winning the first half and the Crawfords the second.

47 Gus Greenlee and Cum Posey, “NNL Turns in Report,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 10, 1938, 23 as cited in Luke, 41.

48 “Homestead Grays Hand Double Beating to Baltimore,” Chicago Defender, May 20, 1919, as cited in Luke, 41-47.

49 https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/ruppert-jacob, Accessed May 27, 2023. “Ed Barrow, President of N.Y. Yankees, Donates Trophy to Negro Nat’l League,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 3, 1939.

50 “Five Atlanta Players Signed by Baltimore,” Chicago Defender, July 22, 1939; Riley, 139. Neither Dixon nor Evans appears on the roster as presented by Seamheads.

51 Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues (New York: Dodd Mead & Co., 1975), 328.

52 https://retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1939/B09230HOM1939.htm.

53 “Elite Giants Win National League Championship,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 30, 1939; Riley, 394.

54 “Baltimore Whips Homestead Grays for Title,” Chicago Defender, September 30, 1939. “Elite Giants Win National League Championship, Baltimore Afro-American, September 30, 1939; “Wright Gains NNL Batting Crown,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 30, 1939; Riley, 299, 398, 603.

55 Buck Leonard and James A. Riley, Buck Leonard: The Black Lou Gehrig (New York: Carroll Publishers, 1995), 112, as cited in Luke, 51.

56 Art Carter Papers, Box 170-16, Folder 1, Manuscript Division, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, DC, as cited in Luke, 50.