History of the Negro Leagues and the Role Played by Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh was to black baseball what Harlem was to black literature and the arts. Just about every star played for either the Homestead Grays or the Pittsburgh Crawfords.

EARLY BASEBALL

Baseball in the 1800’s was barely a sport, let alone organized. It was mostly deemed a recreation around social gatherings. Pitchers threw the ball slowly so that it could be hit. As a consequence, scores in the 30s were common, even in well played games.

Most teams at the turn of the century were not professionals, but rather, "sandlot teams." The sandlots encompassed a range of semi-pro and company teams. Examples of such teams and names you may be familiar with include, WEMCO (Westinghouse Manufacturing Company), and the Edgar Thompson Steelworkers team, During their heyday between WWI and WWII, between 200 and 500 teams played in western Pennsylvania. The Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords were but two of the sandlot scene of self-organized, interracial, independent clubs. Admission was usually governed by whatever the spectator tossed into the hat that was passed around. Players wagered one another on the outcome.

As professional teams began to form, black and white players played alongside one another. While Jackie Robinson is credited with breaking the color barrier, he is not the first black player to play in what are today the major leagues. In 1883, Moses Fleetwood Walker joined the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings as a catcher. When the Blue Stockings joined the American Association in 1884, Walker became the first black player to play in the major leagues.

The foundation of racially segregated baseball was poured shortly after the end of the civil war. The first organized professional baseball league was the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP). Teams applied to join the league. In 1867, Octavius Catto, a civil rights activist and promoter of the powerhouse black baseball team the Philadelphia Pythians, applied for official recognition by the National Association of Base Ball Players during the league’s annual convention.

The league rejected the Pythians application because other members had passed a rule barring "the admission of any club which may be composed of one or more colored persons," explaining with full sincerity that, "if colored clubs were admitted there would in all probability be some division of feeling, whereas by excluding them, no injury could result to anyone."

When President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the Compromise of 1877, all of the legal obstacles were removed from the South’s enacting the Jim Crow laws. The effect was felt on July 14, 1887, when Cap Anson’s Chicago White Stockings were scheduled to play the Newark Giants of the International League, which had two black players on its roster. After Anson marched his team onto the field, military style as was his custom, he demanded that the Black players not play. Newark capitulated, and later that same day, league owners voted to refuse future contracts to Black players, citing the "hazards" imposed by such athletes. The American Association and National League quickly followed suit. Although black players and teams made appearances in predominately white leagues, by the turn of the century baseball’s color barriers had hardened.

While most of the Negro league baseball teams came and went, there were two from Pittsburgh that will never be forgotten. One team was owned by Cumberland "Cum" Willis Posey, Jr. and that team was the Homestead Grays. Posey played for the Grays then captained the team and eventually became the Grays scheduler. The Grays offered young Negro-leaguers something other teams could not, financial stability. The Grays were solid financially and as a result, had the market on regional baseball talent.

Almost all of the Negro league stars played for the Homestead Grays. Catcher - Josh Gibson, 1b - Buck Leonard, CF - James, "Cool Papa" Bell, OF-Oscar Charleston, P-2b - Martin Dihigo, P - Ray Brown, P - Bill Foster, 3b - Judy Johnson, SS - Willie Wells, P - Smokey Joe Williams, 3b - Jud Wilson and outfielder/manager/owner, Cumberland Posey, are all in the Hall of Fame.

As players were playing for their share of a portion of the gate, team success and attendance were of utmost importance. By 1927, the Grays were playing 150 games a season and winning 80-90 percent of them. Other teams came to Posey to book strings of lucrative weekend contests. Players were not under contract so the decision to play for the Grays and the money, was an easy one.

There was another team in Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Crawfords. In the beginning, their players also came from the local steel mills and other industrial employers. In 1927, the Crawford’s captain made a find. He recruited a young ball player who one day would be called the "Black Babe Ruth." The ball player’s father, Mark Gibson, had come north in 1921 for a job at a Pittsburgh steel mill. His son Josh, was thirteen. Leaving school after the ninth grade, Josh Gibson worked at Westinghouse Airbrake and Gimbel Brothers. One day the young man was seen playing ball on the Northside. According to the scout, Gibson "hit the ball out of existence." After the game, Gibson was asked to join the Crawfords. The rest they say, is history, as Josh Gibson went on to be one of the greats.

In 1930, several players on the Crawfords went to see a Pittsburgh businessman by the name of William Augustus ’Gus’ Greenlee and asked if he would buy the team. While two of Greenlee’s brothers were doctors and another, a lawyer, Greenlee had chosen a different course. Greenlee was rumored to be a bootlegger and operated a Speakeasy called the Paramount Club, on Wylie Avenue in Pittsburgh. He also ran an illegal numbers racket. Often forgotten though, is that Greenlee was also known as a philanthropist, who helped fellow blacks in his community with scholarships for schooling and with grants to buy homes

The best known of Greenlee’s establishments was the Crawford Grill. The Crawford Grill was a Mecca for jazz aficionados and drew huge crowds to watch the likes of Leona Horne, John Coltrane and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. According to former players, they went upstairs at the Crawford Grill to get paid, in cash, from one of a room full of men with piles of cash in front of them.

Gus Greenlee became obsessed with the sport of baseball and his Crawfords. In 1931, Greenlee signed LeRoy Robert "Satchel" Paige. With Paige on his team, Greenlee took a huge risk by investing $100,000 in a new ballpark called Greenlee Field. Greenlee ballpark was located on Bedford Avenue, a few blocks from the Crawford Grill. Most of the Negro league teams had to lease a ballpark from the major league team or the community and as a result were at the mercy of the stadium owner, but not the Crawfords. He also bought his own custom MAC bus for road trips.

By 1932, Greenlee had revamped the Crawfords. He signed baseball greats Oscar Charleston, Judy Johnson, James "Cool Papa" Bell, Rev Cannady, Ted Paige, Ted "Double Duty" Radcliffe and Judy Wilson. He also signed Josh Gibson back from the Grays. On opening day, April 29, 1932, the pitcher-catcher battery was made up of the two most marketable icons in all of baseball: Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson.

Greenlee Field drew large crowds through May 1932. However, once temperatures began to rise, gate receipts began to decline. It was too expensive to cover the grandstands so Greenlee decided to go another direction. He had lights installed at Greenlee Field. On September 16, 1932, the Crawfords played the Grays, under the lights. This was two years before the first major league night game and more than seven years before the Pittsburgh Pirates played their first night game. Greenlee is also credited with creating the first season ticket. For $8, the holder could attend any game played at Greenlee Field by his Crawfords.

After putting together a powerhouse in the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Gus Greenlee next sought to create a strong Negro League. In February 1933, Greenlee and delegates from six other teams met at the Crawford Grill to ratify the constitution of the National Organization of Professional Baseball Clubs. The name of the new league was the same as the old league that had largely failed, the "Negro National League" or "NNL." The members of the new league were the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Columbus Blue Birds, Indianapolis ABCs, Baltimore Black Sox, Brooklyn Royal Giants, Cole’s American Giants (formerly the Chicago American Giants and Nashville Elite Giants), while the Grays remained independent. Greenlee also came up with the idea to duplicate the Major League Baseball’s All-star game, except, unlike the big league method, in which the sportswriters chose the players, the fans voted on the participants. The Negro League’s East-West All-star game drew 50,000 to Comiskey Field in 1933.

Greenlee served as the leagues president with absolute power, awarding the first pennant to his own Crawfords. This claim was disputed by the Chicago American Giants, since the schedule had not been completed! Gus Greenlee was eventually thrown out by the other teams in the league. Greenlee sold the Crawfords in 1939 and the club subsequently relocated to Toledo.

The Crawfords and the Grays claimed the league championship for an amazing eleven of fourteen seasons. The Crawfords won the NNL in both 1935 and 1936. The top talent was then lured away from Pittsburgh to the team of Dominican Republic Dictator Rafael Trujillo. This was a blow to the Crawfords, but spelled a quick turn around for the Grays. After the 1937 season, players returned and were promptly signed by the Grays. From 1938 to 1948, the Grays won an unprecedented nine championships.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR THE NEGRO LEAGUES

Greenlee returned to black baseball in 1945, when he formed the United States League. That league would play a pivotal role in breaking the major league color barrier.

In March 1945, the white majors created the Major League Committee on Baseball Integration. Its members included Joseph P. Rainey, Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey. Because MacPhail, an outspoken critic of integration, kept stalling, the committee never met. To throw off the press and keep his intentions hidden, Rickey had gotten heavily involved in Gus Greenlee’s United States League. Rickey told people that he was interested in cleaning up blackball, not integrating it. Under the guise of starting an all-black league, Rickey, along with Gus Greenlee, sent scouts all around the United States, Mexico and Puerto Rico. They sought the perfect candidate to break the color line. The list narrowed to three, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Jackie Robinson.

In 1945, Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a unique contract setting a precedent that would raze the Negro leagues as a functional commercial enterprise. Robinson’s contract stipulated that from then on, he had no "written or moral obligations" to any other club. To those on the outside, it looked like Rickey was raiding Negro National League teams to sign players to teams in the United States League. In fact, he was stashing talent for future use.

In midsummer of 1945, Branch Rickey pulled out of the United States League. As the 1946 baseball season approached, the relationship between black and white professional baseball remained unresolved. In 1946, pitcher Jon Wright became the second African American to sign with the Dodgers. Due to his wartime service, his status as a property of the Grays was ambiguous. Rickey signed him with no reimbursement to Cum Posey or the Grays, even though the Grays paid him $250 monthly while in the Navy. While major league fans viewed Rickey as some kind of hero, NNL owners would disagree. He took the best from their teams and gave them no compensation. In April of 1946 Rickey signed catcher Roy Campanella, previously of the Baltimore Elite Giants and Don Newcombe who played for the Newark Eagles and assigned them to minor league affiliates. Neither team received compensation as neither was under contract.

Pressured by civil rights groups, the Fair Employment Practices Act was passed by the New York State Legislature in 1945. This followed the passing of the Quinn-Ives Act banning discrimination in hiring. At the same time, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia formed the Mayor’s Commission on Baseball to study integration of the major leagues. This all led to Rickey announcing the signing of Robinson much earlier than he would have liked. On October 23, 1945, president of the Montreal Royals, a Dodger farm team, Hector Racine announced that, "We are signing this boy."

There are no records that the United States League ever played any games. After the 1948 season the Negro National league folded. The Grays ended up folding after the 1949 season. In an interview with the Washington Post (December 2, 1948), Grays President Rufus Jackson said he expected the Grays to soon fold due to declining attendance, increasing travel expense, the major leagues outbidding the Negro leagues for young talent, taking the big name drawing cards and the televising of major league games. The Negro American League played its last game in 1958.

Negro-league players generally accepted their fate and did not speak out about the injustice of baseball’s color barrier. That doesn’t mean they didn’t realize that they were being treated unfairly because of their skin pigment. Jackie Robinson refused to allow the team bus to be gassed up unless players could use the bathrooms. Satchel Paige summed it up best. "The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second class citizen to a second class immortal. "They said I was the greatest pitcher they ever saw . . . I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t give me no justice."

You will find many stories about Pittsburgh’s role in the Negro leagues, some true, some fantasy, but all deserve your time and investigative skills.

¹http://www.joshgibson.org/
²http://www.satchelpaige.com/quote2.html. Paige had some other words to live by. "Mother always told me, if you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don’t sound good to you, it won’t sound good to no one else."