Baseball

Sign in Modify your search

Narrow Your Choices

Format

Type

Articles containing

Sex

Life event

Date

Subject

Occupation

Era

Availability

 1-20 of 120 Results  for:

  • Format: Primary Source x
  • Format: Article x
  • 1866–1876: Reconstruction x
Clear all

Article

Allen, Newt  

Leslie Heaphy

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

infielder for the Kansas City Monarchs Negro Leagues baseball team, was born Newton Henry Allen in Austin, Texas. The names and occupations of his parents are unknown. Allen attended Lincoln High School, Kansas City, Missouri, and played ball for the Kansas City Tigers while still in school, before leaving to play for the Omaha Federals in 1921. While handling the middle of the infield for the Federals, Monarchs owner J. L. Wilkinson saw the youngster play and signed him to his All-Nations ball club. After only one season with the All-Nations, Allen was promoted to the Monarchs in 1923.

Allen played for twenty-three seasons in the Negro Leagues. Most of his playing time was spent at either second base or shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the original teams in the Negro National League established in 1920 In addition to playing for Kansas City Allen ...

Article

Alou, Felipe  

Adam W. Green

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

baseball player and manager, was born Felipe Rojas Alou, in Haina, Dominican Republic, to Jose Rojas, a carpenter/blacksmith and grandson of a slave, and Virginia Alou, a homemaker and Caucasian daughter of a Spanish migrant. The second Dominican-born player in major league baseball, Alou was one of three baseball-playing brothers and became the first Dominican to manage in the big leagues.

Alou grew up with five younger siblings in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot house his father had built in the village of Haina. For much of his childhood, food came from where Alou and his family could scavenge it: using bamboo poles and construction wire to fish in the Haina River or climbing coconut trees and scouring for other fruit. Baseball equipment was scarce in the poor village, and Alou and his brothers would play with lemons or coconut husks for balls and their hands for bats.

Alou traveled to ...

Article

Alston, Thomas Edison  

Adam W. Green

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2012

baseball player, was one of four sons born to his father, Shube Alston, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Alston went to the all-black Dudley High School in Greensboro. Upon graduating, he joined the United States Navy in April 1944 and trained at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois. He served on a cargo ship for a year and a half before being discharged in March 1946. Alston enrolled in North Carolina A&T State University, where he began to play baseball competitively. At 6 feet 5 inches and over 200 pounds, Alston was physically suited to a number of school sports, and the school's athletic director attempted to entice him into playing basketball and football as well, but Alston balked. He received his degree in physical education in 1951.

Before graduation Alston began his foray into semiprofessional baseball first for the Goshen Greensboro Red Wings and then for ...

Article

Ashford, Emmett Littleton  

Larry R. Gerlach

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

baseball umpire, was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Littleton Ashford, a truck driver, and Adele Bain. Ashford was two or three years old when his father abandoned the family, so he grew up under the strong influence of his mother, a secretary for the California Eagle, an African American newspaper published in Los Angeles. As a youth, Ashford exhibited the traits that marked him in adult life as a gregarious extrovert. At Jefferson High School he was a sprinter on the track team, a member of the scholastic honor society, and the first African American to serve as president of the student body and as editor of the school newspaper. He graduated from Los Angeles City College and attended Chapman College in nearby Orange from 1940 to 1941. From 1944 until 1947 he served in the U.S. Navy.

Ashford began his umpiring career ...

Article

Askin, Luther B.  

Brian Turner

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

the first African American to integrate baseball, was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the second son of Nelson Askin and Sarah Lloyd. In 1844 Nelson Askin moved to Florence, a mill village in Northampton, Massachusetts, to open a livery. Across the road was the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian community whose ideals and practices ensured an integrated membership. Although the association disbanded in 1846, many members stayed in Florence, including Sojourner Truth and David Ruggles; their influence marked the village as a “sanctuary” for all, regardless of religion, class, or race. But in 1849, when Sarah Askin arrived in Florence with her six children, Nelson had already sold off parts of his property, and shortly thereafter the livery was seized by creditors. By 1850 Nelson had abandoned Sarah From then on Sarah took in washing to support her children who at the earliest ...

Article

Ball George, “Walter”  

John Herschel Barnhill

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2012

right-handed baseball pitcher and occasional outfielder, was born in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Details of his parents’ names and occupations, and his own experiences before baseball, are not known.

Nicknamed the Black Diamond and the Georgia Rabbit, Ball was 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighed 170 pounds. He ranked with Rube Foster, Harry Buckner, and Dan McClellan as one of the outstanding pitchers in black baseball. He was a shrewd, control pitcher, not overpowering but adept with the spitball. In many seasons, he won over twenty games, averaged more than one strikeout per inning, and held his earned run average below 2.00.

At first he played for otherwise all-white amateur or semipro teams in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. His first win was in 1896 by a score of 26 to 25 In his first North Dakota season he won 25 of 28 ...

Article

Bankhead, Daniel Robert  

Adam W. Green

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
28 February 2013

baseball player, was born in Empire, Alabama, the third of five sons of Garnett Bankhead Sr., a coal miner, and Arie (Armstrong) Bankhead. Baseball was in the family blood: Garnett Bankhead was a power‐hitting first baseman in an Alabama industrial league, and all five Bankhead brothers played in the Negro Leagues, though Dan was the only one to play in the major leagues, becoming the first black pitcher in modern baseball history.

After attending various public schools in Birmingham, Alabama, Bankhead followed his two brothers Sam and Fred into the Negro Leagues, when he signed as a shortstop with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1940. He soon moved to the pitching mound, establishing himself with a dominant fastball and effective breaking ball; in 1941 he was named to the East West All Star Game hurling a pair of shutout innings That winter he played in the Puerto ...

Article

Bankhead, Sam  

Byron Motley

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

baseball player-manager, was the eldest of five Negro Baseball League playing brothers born to Garnett Bankhead, a coal miner, and Ara Armstrong, a housewife, in Empire, Alabama. Before becoming one of the Negro Leagues' most popular players, Samuel “Sam” Howard Bankhead spent his youth playing in sandlots around his hometown when he wasn't working the coal mines. In 1929, his professional baseball-playing days began with the Birmingham Black Barons, but he would move from team to team.

A five tool ballplayer Bankhead s Negro League Baseball career spanned two decades The five foot eight inch 175 pound dynamo consistently hit for average hit with power possessed a rifle like throwing arm excelled at fielding and was a leading base stealer throughout the 1930s and 1940s His lifetime batting average of 318 and versatile abilities earned him seven East West All Star berths at five different positions ...

Article

Banks, Ernie  

Richard Sobel

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

Major League Baseball player and sports marketing executive, was born Ernest Banks in Dallas, Texas, to Eddie, a semiprofessional baseball player, WPA worker, and wholesale grocery employee, and Essie Banks, a homemaker. Raised in Dallas as the second child and first boy of twelve children, his mother said he “was a blessing to us all” (Contemporary Black Biography, 2002, 17). Ernie graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas in 1950 and later took courses at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and other colleges.

At Washington High, Banks excelled in baseball, basketball, and track and field (high jumping 5‘11'’, broad jumping 19 feet). Once batboy for his dad's semipro team and on the Washington softball team, during high school summers he played in a barnstorming “summer time baseball troupe,” the Amarillo Colts, earning $15 a game (Current Biography, 1959 After graduating from ...

Article

Barnhill, David  

Byron Motley

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

baseball player, was born in Greenville, North Carolina. As a teenager working in the tobacco fields he honed his skills as a pitcher. His first exposure to professional baseball came in 1936 when the manager of the visiting Wilson Stars from Wilson, North Carolina, spotted his burgeoning talent. After the team manager promised Barnhill's mother a dollar a day for her son's pitching duties, she consented to let her son join the team.

Barnhill barnstormed for two years with several independent teams. In 1938 he began his first of twelve Negro League seasons by joining the Jacksonville Red Caps. The following year, with the Ethiopian Clowns, Barnhill took part in the team's minstrel sideshows. Earning the nickname “Impo,” Barnhill cut up with his teammates in clown makeup and wild wigs while performing comic displays to delighted fans.

In the winter of 1940–1941 Barnhill pitched in the Puerto Rican ...

Article

Baseball in Latin America and the Caribbean  

Kurt Mullen

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

In June 1866 sailors from the United States who were importing Sugar from Cuba invited local Cuban dockworkers to play baseball. Thus began the Caribbean's initiation to the game, less than thirty years after its North American inception. In the few years that followed, baseball was pushed to the fore of Cuban consciousness by visiting North American businessmen, U.S. Marines, and wealthy Cuban students who had played at schools in the United States. By decade's end the development of a local talent pool was under way, and with the emerging political turmoil in the Caribbean around the turn of the century, both migrating Cubans and occupying Marines took the new pastime across the Caribbean basin.

At first baseball was played by Cuba s wealthy class lending it the exclusivity of polo cycling cricket soccer and other European sports that had taken root in the clubs of the Caribbean s urban ...

Article

Baseball in the United States  

Gerard Gryski

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Question: “Just tell me, why do you think there is still that much prejudice in baseball today?”

Answer: “No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.”

Guess the year those words were uttered. 1930?1950?1970?1987. The further irony is that the context was a late-night talk show commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the day Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier in Major League Baseball (MLB). On top of that, the interviewee was Al Campanis who at the time was vice president of the Los Angeles Dodgers Campanis was interviewed because he had played and roomed with Robinson and on many occasions actually defended him against racial onslaughts Campanis was fired the next day The event was a stunning reminder of the perhaps more subtle ...

Article

Baseball.  

Paul S. Boyer and Ronald Story

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
04 July 2001
Published online:
01 December 2006

Americans had played bat-and-ball games for decades when, in 1845, Alexander Cartwright of New York devised the rules—foul lines, nine innings, three outs, ninety-foot basepaths—that created modern baseball. Cartwright's game quickly became popular with young clerks and urban craftsmen. By 1860, baseball had spread throughout the Northeast, and by 1870 to the rest of the nation.

The first teams were amateur, organized by men's clubs, the games ending with dinner and drinks. Some players earned good money from ambitious clubs, which charged admission in order to pay the players. The first wholly professional team was the Cincinnati (Ohio) Red Stockings of 1869, whose manager, Harry Wright, hired every player. Taking advantage of the burgeoning railroad system to tour the country, they challenged and defeated all teams they faced that year. In 1876, entrepreneurs formed the National League (NL), with salaried players and profit-seeking owners.

Baseball ...

Article

Battey, Earl  

Christopher Devine

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

baseball player, was born Earl Jesse Battey Jr. in Los Angeles, California, to Esther (maiden name unknown) and Earl Battey Sr. His parents—particularly Esther who, from 1938 to 1948 was a catcher on women s softball teams such as the Watts All Stars the Ebonettes and the MacAfee All Stars encouraged him to play baseball as a youngster As a freshman at Los Angeles s Jordan High School Battey made the team only to sit the bench for the first six games of the season as a backup outfielder When the starting catcher split his finger during a game however coach Norm Forester looked to Battey his only nonpitcher left on the twelve man roster to fill in Battey turned out to be so good as catcher that he kept the position even after the previous catcher recovered At six feet one inch tall and 205 pounds the thick ...

Article

Brock, Lou  

Glenn Allen Knoblock

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

baseball player, was born Louis Clark Brock in El Dorado, Arkansas, the son of a sharecropping family. When Lou was a child, his mother relocated to Collinston, Louisiana, where he grew up on a cotton plantation. A quiet and shy youth, Brock attended Union High School in Mer Rouge. Upon graduation he accepted an academic scholarship to Southern University in Baton Rouge. He chose to major in math for one simple reason: he had seen his family “duped” by plantation owners year in and year out, leaving the family deep in debt (Halberstam, 151). Despite hard work Brock lost his academic scholarship and turned to sports to stay in school, making the baseball team as a walk-on. He earned an athletic scholarship on the spot when he was given five practice swings in a batting session, three of which went for home runs.

Brock s career in baseball started slowly ...

Article

Brown, Earl  

Stephen Eschenbach

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

politician, journalist, and Negro League professional baseball pitcher, was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, one of four children. His father was a Baptist minister and his mother was a nurse. His mother wanted him to pursue medicine, but Brown was interested in sports and studying social problems. After preparing at Howard Academy in Washington, D.C., Brown went to Harvard.

Brown majored in economics but also played baseball, lettering as a left-handed pitcher. He worked his way through Harvard as a janitor and waiter. During summer breaks he was a Red Cap at Grand Central Station in New York, and also played in the Negro Leagues. In 1923 and 1924 he pitched for the New York Lincoln Giants Interestingly Harvard usually aggressive about enforcing early NCAA rules barring athletes from playing professional sports apparently did not punish Brown when he played in the professional ranks before returning to the Harvard baseball ...

Article

Brown, Larry  

Byron Motley

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

baseball player-manager, was the youngest of two children born to Charlie Brown and Viola Brannon in Pratt City, Alabama. Little is known about Larry's father, a man of mixed race with whom he had little to no relationship. His mother, a domestic worker, was his rock. Upon her death in 1918 thirteen-year-old Brown was left to raise himself and found employment with a local meat-packing company. The youngster began playing with the company's all-black team and soon found the baseball diamond to be his refuge.

At age seventeen Brown began barnstorming with the Knoxville Giants and later with the Pittsburgh Keystones. His official rookie season in the Negro Leagues was in 1923 when he joined the Indianapolis ABCs. On 28 May 1923 after only nine games he was released because of poor performance A few weeks later Brown found himself in a Memphis Red Sox uniform and although ...

Article

Brown, Willard  

Ronald Young

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2018

baseball player known as Willard “Home Run” Brown, was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the son of Manuel and Allie Brown.

As a youngster, Brown sometimes worked as a batboy for the Kansas City Monarchs, the renowned Negro League baseball team that held its spring training in Shreveport. In 1934, Brown signed his first professional contract to pitch and play shortstop with the Monroe Monarchs of the Negro Southern League. Brown earned $8 per week.

After one season with Monroe, Brown joined the Kansas City Monarchs for the 1935 season. The Monarchs, one of the leading black ball clubs of the era, paid him a $250 signing bonus, a $125 per month salary, and $1 per day for meals. He soon developed into one of the team's star players. During the 1936 season Brown was selected to play in the East West All Star game an honor he ...

Article

Butler, Sol  

Adam R. Hornbuckle

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
29 February 2016

track and field athlete and professional football and baseball player was born Edward Solomon Butler on 3 March 1895, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Sol Butler was the youngest of three known children of Ben and Mary Butler. His father, born a slave in Georgia in 1842, took the last name of Butler after a Union officer with whom he served in the Civil War. His mother, originally from Georgia, was born a freewoman in 1867. The Butlers, as did many African Americans in the late nineteenth century, moved to the nation's Midwest to escape the rise of racial discrimination and violence in the South following the end of Reconstruction in 1877. After a brief period in the Oklahoma territory, the Butlers moved to Wichita, Kansas in 1904, before finally settling in Hutchinson, Kansas in 1909.

In Hutchinson Butler began to participate in football and track ...

Article

Campanella, Roy  

Rob Ruck

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

baseball player, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of John Campanella, an Italian American fruit-stand owner, and Ida Mercer, an African American. Campanella grew up in the Germantown and Nicetown neighborhoods of Philadelphia. There he played catcher briefly for the Simon Gratz High School team before joining a black semiprofessional team, the Bachrach Giants, at the age of fifteen. A year later he quit high school and joined the Baltimore Elite Giants in the Negro National League (NNL). There Biz Mackey, one of the greatest catchers in the Negro Leagues and player-manager for the Elite Giants, schooled Campanella in the art of catching.

Soon the Elite Giants’ starting catcher, Campanella played eight years in the NNL (1937–1942 and 1944–1945), where he was an adept defensive receiver and a powerful hitter. He appeared in the Negro League all-star game, known as the East-West Classic, in 1941 ...