High School Essay Contest

SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee awarded $1,000 scholarships to five high school seniors in its eighth annual Thomas R. Garrett Scholarship essay contest in 2016: Kevin Vernan Crosby, Jansen Rouillard, Josephine Riedell, Grace Rootes, and Grant Heindselman; click here to learn more about the winners. Students had to write a 1,000-word essay answering a question related to one of the Negro League figures who are the namesakes of the scholarships. The students will be recognized at the Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference on July 7-9, 2016, in Kansas City. The selection committee was comprised of educators Leslie Heaphy, Stephanie Liscio, Mel May, Shawn Morris, and Charles Crutchfield.

Dick Clark Memorial Library Grants

SABR’s Negro Leagues Research Committee awarded a $500 Dick Clark Memorial Library Grant for 2015-16 to the Geneseo Public Library in Geneseo, Illinois. School and community libraries from across the country are invited to submit grant proposals centering on educating students and the community about black baseball and American history. Click here to download the PDF application for eligibility requirements, submission criteria, and style guidelines. Questions can be directed to Leslie Heaphy (lheaphy@kent.edu), Mark Moore (mmoore@cpl.org), or Tim Bottorff (tbottorf@mail.ucf.edu).

Art Contest

SABR’s Negro Leagues Committee’s will hold its seventh annual Art Contest in 2016. The theme is “Black Baseball Life.” For professionals and amateurs: Click here to download the PDF application for eligibility requirements, submission criteria, and style guidelines. The entry fee is $30 and the deadline for submission is May 9, 2016. For the youth contest: Click here to download the youth art contest PDF application. The entry fee is $10 (per three entries) and the deadline for submission is May 23, 2016. To pay for your entry fee online, click here.

Art from the winners and runners-up will be on display in a special area at the 2016 Malloy Conference; photos of winning entries and runners up will also be included in an upcoming issue of McFarland Publishers’ Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal. The winning entries in the professional and amateur categories will receive a $300 prize. The individual student winner will receive a $150 prize and the winning schools will each receive $250 worth of age-appropriate books about Negro League baseball for their libraries. For more information, contact Leslie Heaphy or Larry Lester.

One of our newest publications from the SABR Digital Library focuses on the end of an era in black baseball. Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series, edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin, was inspired by the last Negro League World Series ever played and presents biographies of the players on the two contending teams in 1948 — the Birmingham Black Barons and the Homestead Grays — as well as the managers, the owners, and articles on the ballparks the teams called home.

Also included are articles that recap the season’s two East-West All-Star Games, the Negro National League and Negro American League playoff series, and the World Series itself. Additional context is provided in essays about the effects of Organized Baseball’s integration on the Negro Leagues, the exodus of Negro League players to Canada, and the signing away of top Negro League players, specifically Willie Mays.

Click here to learn more or download the e-book. SABR members can download the e-book edition for free or get 50% off the paperback edition.

Who was Jerry Malloy?

Click a link below for highlights from past Jerry Malloy Conferences: