Bijan C. Bayne

You never know. Yeah you never know man people are the worst possible. OK. OK. Some perspective OK. Right. Yes me. OK. Sure is on C-Band. B i j n c b a y n e freelance sportswriter. OK. You're. OK after the Civil War baseball went pro. eight hundred sixty

nine in the first organized national white leagues which were segregated where the first was the National League in the first organized professional team on record is the Cincinnati Red Legs or was the Cincinnati Red Legs so that's only four years after the end of the Civil War and it's during Reconstruction very shortly thereafter. Blacks in primarily eastern cities and major metropolitan cities the size of Philadelphia New York cities like Baltimore Washington formed their own independent leagues much smaller. I'm traveling up and down the Eastern Seaboard playing organized baseball against each other. Most of these leagues did not last very long for various reasons. Like a fan support sport was very new. People's lack of discretionary income again we're talking 15 years after slavery some of these families just moving first generation to the north. But in 1890 there was a small professional league on the eastern seaboard with a team in Boston

a team in Philadelphia a team in New York and a team in D.C. and Frederick Douglass's son in fact played on the Washington team for the brief time that the team existed. Well baseball had taken a foothold as the most popular national sport. Boxing was big at the time. Horse racing was big. And as those know who've read some of the history even before Bill Rhodes book that some of the first very successful professional jockeys were black until they were shut out of that sport when it became more lucrative

in baseball when it became a national pastime people sought to form more organized Negro Baseball Leagues even if they were small regional leagues. And Ruth Foster's dream around 1919 20 he was an ex pitcher himself he was a star pitcher from Texas. It pits the new United States and Cuba and he was a business man at heart. And after his playing days he wanted to have something very much closely aligned with the structure and format of the major leagues. Real contracts an organized schedule not just touring around the country playing impromptu games which are called barnstorming games. And have the players be beholden to one team and not jumping from team to team wherever they could pick up a little revenue playing after work or on weekends and that was something that he started and did very well for a few years before the Great Depression.

Oh yeah. Where you're taking. What you get. Well in that era with a lot of people look at it as the golden age of sport in America in general because they are of the Ty Cobb Babe Ruth Jack Dempsey. It's a little after Jack Johnson Bobby Jones and golf Bill Tilden in tennis. Black Americans of course were seeking to emulate a lot of the successes of white America and in the contemporary time with the Harlem literary

renaissance arts literature stage sculpture. Things of this nature that there was an athletic Renaissance still segregated for the most part although some of these teams did tour in the north. They did play against white teams for instance and in New York they would play against industrial teams amateur teams semi professional teams that were white on days when they couldn't schedule games with other black teams and then the 1920s sport became more popular. You had the five day work week a lot of people had two days off not necessarily African-Americans who were largely in Northeast domestics or laborers. Again only now two generations removed from slavery and working on the jobs that they could get at that time. But there was a renaissance in sport and it was seen in boxing it was seen in baseball largely due to the efforts of Rube Foster and the newspapers that covered

the sport were black the white press virtually ignored this renaissance. But every aspect was black the Empire's were black. The players were black. The managers were black. The. Most of the people who were involved in the game were black with the exception this is an important exception of some of the people who booked the games. And the reason being the largest stadiums where the teams could earn the most income were major league stadiums like Kaminski Park in Chicago and Yankee Stadium in New York. The people that had the connections to book those stadiums were people like Matt strong in a sapper Steen and Eddie Gottlieb especially on the East Coast and they were the only ones they could ask the Major League owners Can we were at your ballpark when the Yankees are on the road or when the Chicago White Sox on the road. So some of the booking was done by white promoters not because

we saw. Landis drug deal. Green Bay was like frost bite down. So. Well what happened was every year there would be independent teams of all stars and bonds storming major leaguers who normally didn't play together who would play in the United States. And in some cases have Vana places like that against black teams. Sometimes they would play against black organized

teams in tech teams but many times they would play against an exhibition black team that was just put together for the purposes of that tour that series of games and in effect an all star black team and more often than not the black teams defeated the white teams. And Commissioner L.A. His predecessor. Gentleman name ironically Ban Johnson prohibited them from going on after a series in Cuba with the Detroit Tigers lost more games than they won to a team of Cuban All Stars most of whom were black American some of whom were Afro-Cuban. After that Landis pretty much followed in the same footsteps he discouraged play between black and white teams in the offseason. He did not accept the idea of Rube Foster and other Negro League promoters and owners to take black teams intact and integrate the major leagues with a few black teams or integrate the major leagues by having black

players on otherwise white teams. And the reason that the owners would always give is that the commissioner forbids it. The reason that the managers would always give when asked by say the black media was that my owner won't let me sign anyone black and the reason that the commissioner would always give is that the owners are against it. And then the owners would always say if asked or if pressured and there was more more pressure after you know the formation of the NAACP and things of that nature in the 1910s in one thousand twenty. Our fans would not be interested in seeing integrated play so there was all this passing of the buck as to whose fault it was that there was not an integrated presence in the national pastime of the national pastime to not look like the rest of the country. I guess I'm just really on the wayside. You know I guess

what is right but then also why why why. Because because. WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY MUST YOU HAVE TO LET ME LIVE. Between one thousand twenty one roof Oster formed pretty much single handedly organized wrote all the paperwork and did all the planning and hired all the umpires and did most of the booking for the Negro National League in 1933 which is the height of the the Great Depression here.

There were other owners who share Foster's vision but they did not have his skills. Many of them baseball was not their primary interest. Ruth Foster was a baseball man and he knew how to find talent and he had connections in baseball. The most of the owners of the Black teams especially up and down the Eastern Seaboard like the Newark Eagles the Pittsburgh Crawford's the homestead Grays were not baseball men. Just like in sport now most of the owners are not primarily sport. People or former players they're people who own other businesses and decide to buy sports teams. And because of that they didn't have the knowledge in the business Ackman in that area and athletics and the ability to judge players to schedule training camps and things of that nature that Foster had. And as he became more frustrated because of the lack of competence that he saw amongst his. Other owners and

amongst the people whom he was working with in the different cities he became a person that might have suffered from what we call depression today. And the league's floundered during those years which would be the later 900 20s and early 1930s. And there was really nobody to sort of pick up the proverbial ball because the Although they share the dream it was his vision. He really had. He was an architect and people just weren't capable of following following through in that way. Also because the. Every Every team was basically an independent entity although they were playing in organized leagues for a while in sort of a heyday before 1933 but the owners were not really on the same page philosophically about a lot of things concerning sports and business like how players contracts should be worded what type of penalties should we levy on players who go off and play in

the winter leagues in Latin America and things of that nature or jump teams. So because they weren't all of one accord and didn't have a man like Foster to kind of be the the iron fist like the major leagues had Mr. Landis good good or bad. The things just started to fall apart. It's the same story but. Very. Short in my book Sky Kings Black Pine is a professional basketball. The book focuses on people who were sort of the basketball parallels of Rube Foster especially the owner of the Harlem Renaissance team which is actually named after the Renaissance Casino which is a ballroom where they played most of their games

when they were playing in the hall at home in Harlem. And that gentleman's name was Robert Douglas Oh Bob Douglas he's actually West Indian he came to the United States as a young man. And there were West Indian athletic clubs in New York and in Harlem and Brooklyn and places like this these athletic clubs of play cricket. They would schedule track meets and they would play the sports that they grew up playing in the West Indies. But Robert Douglas took a liking to basketball. He saw his first basketball game when he's working as a doorman in one of the fancy apartment buildings in New York. So he started off a small athletic basketball club which eventually became a professional team in the very early 1980s. And he's sort of the Rube Foster not in the sense that he formed a league but because it becomes one of the most powerful teams of that era playing white and black teams the Harlem Rens or the Renaissance big five. He is the man who many of the basketball coaches and the great players the foot the follow in the

1930s 40s and 50s owe a great debt to Bob Douglas. And because basketball did not have the following of baseball because it was invented much later and it didn't didn't take hold it's played indoors it's only played in the winter. Again you're talking about something is only covered by what they called in the Negro press. They never had a larger national organizer league similar to the Negro National League in baseball. What mainly took place was independent and barnstorming play or what people call touring basketball. But some of the stronger touring teams like the Harlem Rens and later apes and Christine's team in Chicago which he renamed the Harlem Globetrotters although they're an Illinois teen became two of the strongest national touring basketball teams in America and they didn't play clown basketball and for us they play conventional basketball. Because of the great thing.

Basketball is different than baseball in some ways that people might find interesting. Baseball is more of a small town and southern sport especially in the major leagues. Basketball was invented the north so a lot of the people that first played it in their YMCA is churches boys clubs Hebrew settlement houses black churches the black YMCA here the 12th Street Y in Washington D.C. which the team was organized by Dr. Henderson who was a another great figure in early basketball. Those teens played in the north or at least the mid-Atlantic in cities that were legally segregated. And also some of the players or the young men and young women. Played on their own in schoolyard games in integrated environments especially in the York City Philadelphia. Because of that basketball never had the same mindset

regarding race as baseball and as early as the nineteen 10s and 1000 20s teams like the Rands the Harlem Rens are playing in some games. All white teams in Jersey and Delaware and Pennsylvania where you wouldn't see that necessarily that early in baseball. Again the baseball commissioner for bade major league teams or made all star teams made up of major league players from playing Black teams because they would get showed up and they had nothing to gain from it. But basketball didn't have that southern tie cop country boy element of the tobacco chewing archetype of the baseball player who doesn't want to run with black players doesn't want to travel with them doesn't want to eat with them doesn't want to share the same hotel with them. And you have the Southern segregated hotels and also baseball spring training as it does now takes place in the warmer climates in the southern cities and since they were segregated there was it would have been very hard to organize a baseball team and have black players and have spring training take place because all the cities where most of them were in

Florida and all the facilities were segregated. Thank you. So. From. That. Basketball was more urban much more northern and on some of the teams the players were a little bit more exposed than educated than in baseball where you're getting primarily most of your players who in the 1920s and 30s hadn't even finished high school so they don't have any exposure or very little to blacks and they do have exposure to blacks back then. Most of the blacks they came in contact with when they were growing up were working in servitude. One second. So you don't know where to go. This is about me.

Well the intriguing thing about when the Major Leagues did slowly begin to integrate is that the owners did not for the most part except for Bill Vick and Cleveland compensate the black owners who previously had signed the players. So for instance when Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson and Johnny Wright he didn't pay the owners of the teams to transfer their contracts. He went on record as saying the black lesen are really organized. They don't have anything that I recognize as contracts. And most of the teams own by number bankers. So we're doing them a favor by integrating our sport in the black press. There were two schools of thought. One

school of thought was if you're a black owner like Effa Manley of the Eagles it was a woman like say a white woman but she passed as black because she grew up in a in an M home with a mixed marriage so she identify more with the black side of her family. If your FMLA don't rock the boat. Integration is happening albeit slowly. We need to be able to show him baseball as in other areas of American life are worth an r.e quality. And if you protest that these people in are compensating you they're rating your players. That would just give them one more reason not to integrate. And the call is difficult to get along with the other school of thought was if Branch Rickey signed a player from the Chicago White Sox or the New York Yankees or the St. Louis Cardinals in some type of trade or swap he'd either have to provide another player or some cash. He couldn't just sign Dizzy Dean off the St. Louis Cardinals the cardinals would have to get something in return.

So why are these people raiding black baseballs of black baseball is a non entity. Most of the journalists of that time actually were of the school of thought don't rock the boat. Be happy for the few guys that are getting a chance. The reality is that none of these Major League owners who integrated had totally altruistic or human rights purposes even Branch Rickey who you may read any number of things about from he was an opportunist to he was a race man to anything in between knew that in Brooklyn the Dodgers would draw better if he could. By having players from the black talent pool which is virtually untapped draw fan base in Brooklyn that previously had very little reason to root for the Dodgers. People in Chicago and other cities thought the same thing that in act as soon as Ricky because nobody wanted to be the first. But once the commissioner who was a man they may be happy Chandler was a former Kentucky governor a Southerner said that

if these young men can go overseas the Second World War had just ended and spill their blood for our country. I don't see any reason why not which is very different than commissioner Landis. They can't play our American sport. He didn't he couldn't do anything about he couldn't make the owners sign black people. But he took the unwritten mission off of it. The gentleman's agreement out of the picture and said you know these guys have sacrificed and liberated France and defeated the Germans and the Japanese. Why are they good enough to come back here and play baseball and Ricky for whatever his motives and whatever you know they I'm sure they were mixed. What was the person who took that that risk that that leap the great experiment but in the black media and in black households it was viewed with with with mixed emotions because. Not that people

were signing players willy nilly and not that the Major Leagues just open the floodgates and sign black talent especially in cities like St. Louis and Cincinnati that kind of bordered on the south. But some people especially journalists knew that it would spell eventually the decline of black baseball. You move your. Way. There. Because you are with me. Well as you know sport is a microcosm of society and in every area of society where there have been black institutions once there was no more or there was less legal segregation.

It did weaken many of our black institutions. Athletics is is a prime example is easy to look at and cite you know the fact that Grambling and Florida A&M and South Carolina State football is not what it was before the Louisiana State and the University of South Carolina and the University of Florida could sign black players. One of the. Things about segregation and integration that is complicated is that when an institution integrates. That there's a there are pros and cons as to how it's going to affect the residual effect it's going to have on the black community. There are very few institutions they haven't done so maybe funeral homes and barber shops haven't totally gone that way the black church and some communities. But again when something becomes open and people have this other option that was not available to them before

it's difficult to make strong judgments about whether or not everybody should try to walk through the gate or whether people should try to preserve what they had because part of the fight was to be able to participate with everyone in sport particularly to participate with everyone. And when you have an opportunity to see what you could do against a Bob Feller what you could do against a Stan Musial. Players have these tremendous egos and the talent in that that they've developed and it is very hard to put yourself in the shoes of somebody to say you know I know that Josh Gibson was recognized and everyone knew what he could do and even white players and media had seen him play in exhibition games. But in his heart of hearts and he never played integrated He never played in the integrated major leagues. He was right on that cusp of getting too old and starting to become an alcoholic when integration happened. In his heart of hearts he has to be curious about what he would do on a regular basis. I don't

hope full season not just these exhibition games every now and then against white pitching not that why pitching is always the best pitching. I mean he played in Cuba he played in Latin America played in Puerto Rico and he played against all star teams that were that were white teams. But he knew that he was not going to go down in the record books as having done the things that a Babe Ruth did. If the white press didn't pick up on it. No hard figures. Yes and some more than others. If you look at someone like Jackie Robinson he had played football in a conference out on the Pacific Coast that almost had no black players in it other than him. UCLA had a few His teammates Kenny Washington and what he strode but he had already played in an integrated environment. He

played basketball at UCLA he had been on the track team at UCLA. He was a baseball player which may not have been one of his best three sports a person like him play for the Kansas City Monarchs. And he was not a stellar player on the Kansas City Monarchs he was just a guy on the team primarily a football player running back and a long jumper. Robinson wants to know what he can do against the premier baseball players that are being covered by the media and that are being looked up to by the fans. He wants to know what it's like to go out there and play on a field where Hank Greenberg is out on the field or Lou Gehrig is out on the field that day. Ted Williams is out on the field that day. So for a person like him who didn't grow up in the Jim Crow environment his family moved from the south when he was very young out to Pasadena. He wants to continue what he was doing when he was playing football against Oregon and Stanford a person like just Gibson who grew up in segregated neighborhoods and things of that nature. Baseball would be his only avenue to really have much

interaction with whites so he may not have the same feeling about it and he hasn't really done it as much as Jackie Robinson and Jackie Robinson is a perfect example of somebody and that may be one of the reasons why branch Branch Rickey decided to try this experiment with Jackie Robinson is that if I'm good enough to go to college with people at UCLA that are white I want to play baseball against everybody. It's not a repudiation of the Negro Leagues. But just Gibson and other people like Seto page they got such recognition in black baseball. Often people like Buck O'Neil said they didn't even feel shortchanged not playing against whites because they traveled they stayed in the best black hotels they were segregated hotels and they mingled with the people that would.