Although many aspects of the early days of baseball have been well



documented, historians are just beginning to chronicle the major role that

Black athletes played in making professional baseball popular. Black ball

players have played the game for about as many years as White players.

Players of color, both Black and Hispanic, were on mostly White ball clubs in

the first days of amateur ball, but when the majors started to become

popular in the early 1900??s, an unwritten barbaric rule went into effect that

kept players of color out of professional baseball.

At that time, segregation was the poison that had drained our society of its

full potential. In baseball, it robbed us of the opportunity to witness some

of the greatest athletes of all time on an even playing field. It was a time

when legends such as Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Cy Young came

to light. What would be our perception of those legends if segregation had

not skewed our vision?

Minority players who might have achieved greatness in the majors were

relegated to the minor leagues or, as they were called, the Negro Leagues.

Life was tough for the Black ball player in those days. There were many

sordid incidents, including clashes with the Klan, spitting on players from

the stands, and the throwing of rocks at team buses. Yes there was

definitely a "color barrier," not only for baseball but for America.

Many of the statistics and numbers from the Negro Leagues are unknown,

and the talking points about greatness in the league cannot be verified

because the games, events and incidents were not documented properly.

Until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, much of the history of

players of color was forgotten and lost. Mostly, all we have as a resource

are the stories of the players that played in the Negro Leagues.

Walter "Dirk" Gibbons, a pitcher with the Indianapolis Clowns, said,

"Nobody wants to believe we were as good as they say we were, but I can

vouch for it, I was there. I know these guys were really that good. All we

wanted was a chance to prove we could play the game. I knew sooner or

later it would happen, but we had to go through so much before it really

did happen." Walter Gibbons should know what good is; by his own

account, he was a 19-game winner with 229 strikeouts in one season. The

Indianapolis Clowns were also the team that produced Hank Aaron. In

considering what happened, Gibbons succinctly noted, "It was segregation,

and that is just the way it was."

At one time, much of what went on in the Negro Leagues was ignored. In

fact, Gibbons claimed that Jackie Robinson wasn??t the best player in the

leagues. "He was good, but he wasn??t the best," said Gibbons. Other

players, like Satchel Paige and Larry Doby have a place in the history of

baseball once they entered the majors, but what about their

accomplishments when they were locked out of the all-White leagues?

At the end of the Civil War, the Negro Leagues started to develop with the

creation of unofficial and unorganized teams. The first Black professional

team took the field in 1885 in Babylon, New York. White reporters named

the team the "Cuban Giants" in an attempt to attract White teams to play

them. By the end of the 1860??s, there were a number of Black baseball

teams in the Philadelphia area that would play against any other team,

professional or not.

By 1885, Black baseball started to organize with the official formation of the

Southern League of Base Ballists. In 1888, the Middle States League

appeared and admitted two all-Black teams, the Cuban Giants and the New

York Gorhams. After a long and blurry history of organizational forming,

dissolving and reforming, Bill Veeck attempted to buy the Philadelphia

Phillies, announcing that he would recruit Black players for his club. The

National League stepped in and bought the Phillies, handing the club over

to William Cox, who had no such intentions.

Finally in 1945, Branch Rickey, a member of the Major League Committee on

Baseball Integration, searched the national and international baseball

scene. He was looking for the best player candidate to break the color line

in Major League Baseball. His perfect candidate turned out to be Jackie

Robinson. It has been suggested that Robinson wasn??t the first player to

break through the color barrier; that there were others before him. While

there may be some truth to that, Jackie Robinson will always be

remembered as the player who started to change the public??s attitude

toward segregation.

Today, there??s a concerted effort to remember the past. In February 2006,

a special 12-member panel was convened to start the electoral process of

inducting players from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues into

Baseball??s Hall of Fame. Although so many players of color never

participated in Major League Baseball, the greats are starting to be

officially recognized for their athletic achievements.