Whirty: Portland and the Hubbard Giants

From SABR member Ryan Whirty at Home Plate Don’t Move on November 12, 2015:

One of biggest and most important lessons my buddy Ron Auther — West Coast Negro Leagues guru extraordinaire — has taught me about blackball out West, it’s that in the first couple decades of the 20th century, the African-American baseball scene frequently intersected with boxing culture. Fisticuffs frequently accompanied — or, in the case of the subject of this blog, supported — hardball on the Left Coast.

And the topic of this modest treatise is one Lew Hubbard of Portland, Ore. (Shout out to my brother, Nathan, who’s lived and thrived in that city for nigh a decade). Hubbard was a sporting magnate on the African-American sports landscape in and around Portland in the 1910s.

For most of that decade, Hubbard managed/owned/played for a semipro, barnstorming baseball team called the Colored Giants. The formal name of the aggregation seems to have varied from year to year — alternately the Hubbard Giants, the Golden West Giants or just the Colored Giants. The team frequently played at McKenna Park.

Read the full article here: https://homeplatedontmove.wordpress.com/2015/11/12/portland-and-the-hubbard-giants/



Originally published: November 13, 2015. Last Updated: November 13, 2015.