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In 1939 both the Baltimore Elite Giants and the Newark Eagles were “resolved to improve on the results”1 of the previous season. The 1938 season had been the maiden campaign for Baltimore in the Negro National League II (NNL2), as the franchise had moved up the road from Washington.2 Under player-manager George Scales, the Elite […]

A teenage Willie Mays with the Birmingham Black Barons. Mays’ father did not allow him to join the Black Barons full-time in 1948 until school was over at the end of May. (Courtesy of Memphis Public Library)   On Saturday, September 11, 1948, Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, hosted Game One of the Negro American […]

“You could see the skyline without the towers. You could see the smoke. Eerie. An eerie feeling,” — Mark Johnson on flying past Manhattan en route to Pittsburgh on September 161   On the morning of September 11, 2001, the early morning calm in western Pennsylvania was shattered when an airplane crashed into the countryside […]

Clarence “Cito” Gaston was a National League outfielder from 1967 to 1978. At his best, he was an All-Star in 1970. He also made a vivid impression on the fans in Venezuela, where he won two batting titles in winter ball. However, Gaston attained much greater fame and respect as a manager. He became the […]

Perhaps Joe Simpson was destined to play and describe a game of pitch and catch and hit. For one thing, the holiday baby was born December 31, 1951, at a time when baseball was the only game in town. Imagining the pastime, hearing it on radio, or watching on television, no one needed slow motion, […]

Steve Bilko was a heavy hitter. Baseball encyclopedias list him at 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, the greatest tonnage that baseball allowed in print in the 1950s until the mammoth Frank Howard came along. When anyone asked Bilko how much he weighed, as so many did, he’d say between 200 and 300. Years later he told […]

When the Detroit Tigers took the field at Yankee Stadium on October 3, 1990, for the final game of the regular season, it didn’t feel like a momentous event. Only 13,380 fans were present on a Wednesday night to watch the home team finish the season in last place. The Tigers, who also had a […]

“The rumors are that [rookie] Allen is not returning with the Phillies to Connie Mack Stadium on Wednesday. He’s going directly to the Hall of Fame.”1   The Philadelphia Phillies’ first black superstar, Dick Allen was one of the most feared hitters in baseball in the 1960s. In an era dominated by pitching, he slugged […]

Eddie Lee Dixon was born on May 16, 1916, in Bonifay, Florida, in the Florida panhandle region, approximately 100 miles northeast of Pensacola, where Dixon spent most of his formative years. Except for his years in the Negro Leagues and while serving in the US Army during World War II, Dixon spent his entire life […]

 Fa’a Samoa – The Samoan Way – is an ethic that embraces a community. Its central tenets are respect for elders, religious faith, and unshakable family loyalty. Aiga, perhaps best translated as clan, guided the life of Samoa’s sole major-leaguer: Tolia “Tony” Solaita. Tolia was born in the village of Nu’uuli, on the main American […]

Shortly after his birth, Fred Lee Valentine’s aunt dubbed him “Squeaky” for the noises he made as a toddler. Since he was too young to argue with her about the name, it stuck and remained with him through high school and college and even into his pro career. It bespeaks the constancy of the man, […]

“Yes sir, it’s great to be a Yankee,” Fred Sanford said.1 Making it even greater, he was traded from the nearly bankrupt St. Louis Browns to the pinstriped promised land. Presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, Sanford flopped. After the right-hander had lost 21 games for the Browns in 1948, the Yankees paid $100,000 […]

Willie Smith is best remembered for his game-winning pinch-homer on Opening Day for the 1969 Chicago Cubs, but he surely deserves to be recalled for a much more enduring achievement: He was the last major leaguer — and the only African-American player ever — to have pitched and played different positions in the field in […]

The inaugural 1966 season of the Atlanta Braves began with Tony Cloninger as the ace of the pitching staff, but it ended with Pat Jarvis as the ace. Jarvis was in the middle of a so-so season with the Braves’ Triple-A Richmond club when Atlanta’s new manager, Billy Hitchcock, needed fresh arms. Assigned to the […]

Catcher Jack Lapp came to the Philadelphia Athletics in 1908 as a late-season gamble recruited from outlaw baseball. He stuck with the team and become part of the “pennant trust” that captured four American League flags from 1910 through 1914.1 Lapp never quite eclipsed Ira Thomas, then Wally Schang, to emerge as the team’s first-string […]

His big brother in college was Martin Luther King Jr. Somehow, it’s appropriate to begin with that fact when discussing Donn Clendenon. During his college years at Morehouse College, one of the most pivotal players in Mets history was mentored by the greatest and most pivotal African American of the 20th century. The big brother […]

During his days with the Baltimore Orioles at the end of the 1970s, Pat Kelly talked a lot with skipper Earl Weaver. While Weaver spoke about baseball strategy, Kelly – who became a born-again Christian in 1975 – persisted in talking about Jesus Christ. In one of those dialogues, Kelly proposed to Weaver, “Why don’t […]

Jim Busby was a speed merchant when teams were buying power. In the station-to-station baseball of the 1950s, sluggers drove Cadillacs and base stealers hitched rides. Busby never stole more than 26 bases, but he was in the American League’s top 5 in steals four times. He used his sprinter’s speed in center field, covering […]

Frank Grant was one of the best second basemen of the nineteenth century. His name may not sound familiar to most because he was African American. Consequently, he toiled for black clubs and briefly in the white minors before the color line was firmly entrenched. He was dubbed the “Black Dunlap,” a reference to his […]

Shibe Park, later known as Connie Mack Stadium, goes back to the Philadelphia Athletics, its original occupant, and their owner Benjamin Franklin Shibe. When Shibe in 1901 took charge of the new team, one of eight clubs in the brand-new American League, he could not have foreseen that the Athletics would become so popular so […]

Set amid concrete parking lots and crisscrossing interstate highway overpasses, Louisville Slugger Field seems a bit out of place. The red brick facade and arched windows overlooking Main Street and Preston Street in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, hark back to a time when railroads, not long-haul trucking, fueled the local economy. In the context of baseball […]

It was built on the site of a former theological seminary (of all places). It is one of the most renowned addresses in baseball history, nestled in a vibrant urban neighborhood that takes on the atmosphere of a block party on game days. It has seen the Babe’s called shot, Gabby’s Homer in the Gloamin’, […]

From its beginning, as a plank in Ivan Allen’s campaign platform for mayor, to its end, hosting the Olympic baseball competition and a World Series in its final year of existence, Atlanta Stadium was a major part of the push to make Atlanta a world-class city.1 The stadium succeeded in attracting teams from major-league baseball, […]

This article was originally published in “The First Negro League Champion: The 1920 Chicago American Giants” (SABR, 2022).   As witnessed during commemorations in 2020 celebrating a century of Negro League baseball, the foundation of the Negro National League in 1920 provides a generally accepted starting point for Black baseball’s league era. Black baseball, through […]