The Negro Leagues: Celebrating Baseball's Unsung Heroes
Many great players of the Negro Leagues such as Buck Leonard left of the Homestead Grays are not well known to modern fans because they were not allowed to play Major League Baseball
BASEBALL’S UNTOLD STORY BASEBALL’S UNTOLD STORY BASEBALL’S UNTOLD STORY INTRODUCTION Imagine Major League Baseball MLB without home run champion Hank Aaron No over-the-shoulder game-saving catches from the great Willie Mays No towering home runs off the bats of Ken Griffey Jr or Reggie Jackson No diving stops by Frank Robinson No blazing Bob Gibson fastballs No Rickey Henderson racing around the base paths To a baseball fan it’s almost unthinkable Baseball more than any other major American sport treasures its history The modern game was built on the shoulders of these legendary players and others Imagining baseball without them feels a little like imagining the game without third base And yet just 70 years ago less than a lifetime you wouldn’t have had to imagine Then many of the game’s greatest players those who didn’t have white skin weren’t allowed to play in the big leagues But that doesn’t mean they didn’t play For decades baseball’s Negro Leagues offered fans a thrilling alternative to Major League Baseball The history of black baseball is steeped in tall tales and legend The lines between fact and fiction are often blurred the truth lost to history Most Negro League stars remain unrecognizable to all but die-hard baseball history buffs Yet for students of America’s pastime the true story of baseball can never be complete without the tales of these heroes 5
Bud Fowler back row middle poses for a photo with his teammates in 1885 Teams such as this one which was based in Keokuk Iowa often had a mix of white and black players
1 THE SEGREGATION OF PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL Baseball's modern era began in 1901 That year the American League emerged joining the National League as one of the game's two major professional leagues It's the point from which most of the game's all time records are kept Many modern fans pore over every statistic and bit of data that comes after 1901 while all but disregarding that which came before Yet pro baseball didn't begin in 1901 For decades before the advent of the modern era the game was taking shape both on and off the field And that's where the story of baseball's 60 year segregation begins After America's Civil War 1861 1865 the earliest seeds of professional baseball began to sprout And while racism was rampant overtly in the South less openly in the North some early teams featured black and white players competing side by side Not all early pro leagues embraced integrated baseball In 1867 the National Association of Base Ball Players voted to exclude any team that had black players Their reasoning was particularly telling of racial views of the period The association claimed that by including blacks there would in all probability be division of feeling whereas by excluding them no injury could result to anybody
