Stuff You Should KnowA decade before the U.S. officially segregated in 1896, baseball banned black players. A decade before the US integrated, baseball broke the color barrier. Between, the Negro Leagues produced some of the finest players to ever take the field. Explore this important piece of American history with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's select and an honor of Black History Month, I've chosen our twenty sixteen episode on the Negro Leagues. It's a story that follows an arc a lot like another episode we did on the Harlem Globetrotters, where we have a group of people who were discriminated against, so they went off and formed their own league, their own thing, showed their greatness, and then were eventually co opted, which left some of the people who'd help build what they had out in the cold. And it's also a story though, of great feats of athleticism and social heroics as well. And even if you're not into baseball, I guarantee you like this episode, so enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and there's the.
Stuff you should No Sportsy addition.
Sportsy, I think really we should err on just the side of history.
Well. I even put a note in here if you don't like sports, listen to this one anyway. Yeah, because this is about much more than baseball. Yeah, this is about history and about.
Overcoming adversity.
Yeah, like it's a very interesting story because and we'll get into this, but I think people tend to think of the negro leagues, and that's what this is about, the baseball negro leagues, which is what they were called. We don't use that word anymore, no, but you call this that because that's what it was, right. You tend to think of it in a certain way, which is only Yeah, well baseball was segregated and they couldn't play in the white leagues, and that's awful, which it is and was, But there's another side to it too.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point where.
These men and these business owners were empowered and the players and yeah, and it's yeah, that's just a tease. I just wanted to whet their appetite word in my appetite.
I'm sitting here, like, keep going.
Yeah.
So I think we should start with a little bit of history, right, So just a brief primer of American history. We'll start with slavery.
It's a good place to start.
The transit Atlantic slave trade. Yeah, built this country. And frankly, I'm just gonna come out and say, I think some of the major issues that the United States faces today comes from a lack of accountability for slavery. Really, it's contributing to a lot of the inequality and a lot of the strife that we still face today and have faced over the decades. So you've got slavery, and then you had the end of slavery. You had the Emancipation Proclamation, which a lot of people say, oh, well, that was great. Abraham Lincoln spoke some magic words and freed the slaves and everything was great.
Yeah, it was just perfectly equal after that.
Right, No, no, So it took the Union to win the Civil War to begin to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation in the South and in Texas. Apparently Texas were among the last holdouts, and there was slavery going on in Texas like years after the Civil War was over.
Oh yeah, yeah.
They were just like, we're just not going to pay attention to that. Sure, So the Civil Wars fought. The part of the Union victory of the Civil War was coming into the South and saying like, all you Confederates, you guys are out of power. And as a matter of fact, this power vacuum is perfectly willing to be filled by freed blacks. So go ahead, run for office, become judges, like, become part of the reconstruction power. And that lasted for a very very short time. The white Southern former power base who were leading the Confederacy, and even once who weren't necessarily part of the actual Confederate government or even the Confederate army, but just the people like in your town who used to own the sawmill or whatever. That guy came back in power within a couple of years, and the white Southerners who'd been supplanted, when they came back into power, they remembered the black people who had tried to take their positions, and so it got ugly. Yeah, and so rather than having actual legal slavery, it came in other different, horrible, pernicious forms which came to be called post reconstruction the Jim Crow South.
Yeah, and boy, we need to do one. I've had it on my list for a while, on Jim Crow period. How about this? First of all, where'd you get this other good, really good article.
It's on the Major League Baseball website.
It in the prehistory section of that one. And this is just to show you the tone of things in eighteen fifty seven. That was a Supreme Court chief justice. Yeah, Roger Tanny, Who it's funny that the way this writer put it, he said he's campaigning hard for a spot in the American Scum Hall of Fame. Like that's pretty funny. Yeah. In his official writing, this is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said negroes were so far inferior to whites that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect. This is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Yeah.
I think I need to say that like four more times. Yeah, before it sinks in.
That was two or three.
This is what was going on despite the Emancipation Proclamation, despite the Fourteenth Amendment.
Well that was actually before it was before that was during the slavey, the time of slavery. Yeah yeah, yeah, just to excuse that guy.
But after after that, despite the amendments to the Constitution, despite all of that, it took to the nineteen sixties to even begin the slightest bit of real progress.
Yeah, that's true.
Not quite true, because the history is littered with people who've made advancements. They I don't want to knock.
That, but in a systemic manner. Yeah, totally, you're right, It wasn't until the sixties.
But part of the problem too was and this is a valid point other courts had said, like those is justice. Henry Billings Brown said legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences. Basically, what he's saying is like, we can create laws, but you're not going to change public's mind by creating laws, and you can't like abolish present prejudice.
Right, And so if white people think that black people are inferior to them, who are we the government to say otherwise?
Yeah, to try maybe and legislate our way out of it, even.
Right, So, in I think eighteen ninety six, there was a court case called Plusy versus Ferguson. Yeah, And in Plusy versus Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld and legitimized and actually made real the segregation that had already been going on ever since reconstruction, or ever since the end of reconstruction, the beginning of Jim Crow laws. Right, So, the United States was officially segregated in eighteen ninety six, but baseball had actually segregated years before that, but not as far back as people think, And a lot of people think that baseball had always been segregated up until nineteen forty six. Yeah, I think Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.
I think ninety nine percent of people think that Jackie Robinson was the first black American to play.
Baseball, including me until yesterday when we started researching. Oh did you know this already?
Yeah? I mean I'm a big baseball fan and a bit of a student of its history, so I knew. Okay, So tell him, Chuck, Well, who the guys were specifically?
Well, yeah, so in eighteen sixty seven, I think two years after the Civil War, there was already Remember Abner double Day created baseball in what eighteen thirty nine? Oh, in like thirteen hundred and that's but that's a legitimate story, right, that's not like he really did. He was the inventor of the baseball, and it did happen in Cooperstown, New York and all.
That, right, Yeah, Okay, I don't know, but was he in Cooperstown?
I believe?
So, Okay, well that makes sense.
So within just a couple of decades, there was the National Association of Baseball Players.
They were the league, right, yeah, I mean not within a couple of decades, a couple of years. Oh really, yeah, like literally two years after the end of the Civil War. That was an African American team called I actually don't know what their name was, but they were out of Philadelphia and they said, we want to join your league, which was the National Association of Baseball Players at the time. And they were rejected as a team of course at the time. And but that didn't mean that there were not players individually.
Right, that's a huge caveat.
Yeah, it was a little bit later in eighteen eighty six five, and not for too long. We had two brothers, Moses fleetwood Walker and well day Walker and most did they play for the Toledo Bluestock That's.
Right, baby, my hometown integrated baseball team in the eighteen eighties.
You were totally right. Moses was he was older. He played forty two games for the team. Well, they only came along and played in six games. Moses hit to sixty three that season. And they were the son of a physician, like the first black physician in Toledo, nice and went to college played baseball at Oberlin in Michigan, so I know the Wolverines. I didn't know Oberlin even had sports.
Well, this is the nineteenth century. I think they phased him out in.
Favor of debate, acoustic guitars and debate. I know a lot of people that went to Oberlin. Weirdly, really, my good friend Robert Shahati from Boston that you met that came to our show. Lucy Wainwright went to Oberlin.
Didn't know that.
David Reese really went to Oberlin. And I feel like a couple of other people. Yeah, it's got a nice reputation. Yeah, great name too, Oberlin Oberlin. It sounds ivy league.
Yeah, Oberlin, the.
Sound equality Oberlin sounds ivy leaguash right, that's on their t shirts. Although we do need to give a shout out. There was one guy in eighteen seventy nine, William Edward White, who substituted and played one game. Oh yeah, who was officially and this is a little murky history wise, because we don't know much about him or how it happened, but supposedly he played one game as a professional baseball player as a black man.
Is that right?
Yeah? And this is when eighteen seventy nine.
Okay, so the Walker brothers are playing for Toledo in eighteen eighty six, right, correct, And actually this article on how Stuff Works gets it wrong, says that they just played for the team for one year before the team went under. That's not the case. As a matter of fact, Moses Walker, they may have only played together on the team for that one year. Moses Walker had played for years before them. Yeah, And actually Moses Walker and there were several other players at the time in eighteen eighty six and eighty seven, there were at least four black players and the miners, but the Walker brothers were playing for Toledo, which was a major league team. Right, But the presence of Moses Walker actually brought to the four this kind of simmering resentment and kind of the big elephant in the room. There's a black guy on your team. What are you guys doing? And so Toledo actually went to go play the White Sox in Chicago, and the White Sox had this like their great player of that season I think in eighteen eighty four, who was cap Anson.
Great nicknames back then son.
And said he said some horrible things and ultimately was like I'm not playing if that man's on the field, And Moses Walker was actually injured and still was like, oh, well, I'm definitely going on the field today anyway. So he dressed out and I'm not sure if he actually played in the game, but he was like part of the team, and cap Anson was not indulged. Toledo was like, we're not taking our guy out. He's one of our players. So cap Anson can go suck an egg, and camp Anton went and sucked an egg. He was really mad. But the issue that day, that dispute at Camiski Field brought to the four that the concept of integration and ultimately segregation among Major League Baseball teams, and it actually increased the pressure among owners and managers to get rid of the black players, not just in the majors, but in the minors.
Yeah, that was another player too. I read another story about and we'll get to Roy Campanella. He was he was better than Jackie Robinson at the time, a catcher who was just amazing Hall of Famer, and there was a white pitcher. It was like, you know, he was a great catcher, but I didn't want to play with him, so I would when I pitched to him, I would just ignore his signs and through whatever I want, like, to his own detriment and to the team's detriment. He he just wouldn't take the signs. What are putts, I know, career sabotage essentially. Yeah. I don't think he lasted long either. And Campanella's in the Hall of Fame, so he.
Can do it right. The other guy who knows.
I want to give these names all out though, the four black Men and the miners in eighteen sixty six. Besides Moses Walker, we had Bud Fowler, Frank Grant, and George Stovey, And as far as I'm concerned, all these dudes are American heroes. So all of a sudden they succumbed to pressure in eighteen ninety, after hate mail and death threats to the coaches and managers and umpires and you know, basically everybody, the players themselves, and they said, you know what, We're going to shut it down officially in eighteen ninety, we can no longer have any black men in our league.
So here's the thing. They never officially did that. They had the minor league banned black players. Yeah, that way into the Major suro the miners.
Well, and it was never on the rule books either. It was it was an unofficial, non gentlemen's agreement because which actually when it was broken, it wasn't like a rule was broken. It was just an unwritten rule.
Right exactly, which paved the way for branch Ricky to break that unbroken rule without actually breaking a rule. Yes, yeah, good point, Chuck, you want to take a break, Yeah, let's do it. Stoftly jaws definitely, childs of each ski all right, man, So eighteen ninety, it's now there are there are no.
Black players resegregated.
In Major League baseball or minor league baseball in America, right, that's right. That actually paved the way for one of the great unsung chapters in baseball history, which was the creation of the Negro leagues.
Yeah. And in a true show of American spirit and determination and just love of the game. Uh, these these men got together, they formed their own teams, and they did what's called barnstorming.
Yeah, it's just pretty awesome.
And they would load up in cars on a bus and they would go from town to town and take their show on the road, and they would get a game up wherever they could and wherever people would pay a couple of pennies to come watch a baseball game. They were playing white players in these barnstorming games, yeah, or black players or Latino players.
Yeah. Yeah, because that's a definite overlook segment of the early baseball history. Or Latino players, Oh totally. And one of the cool things about the Negro leagues is they were integrated. They had Latino teams like the Cuban Kings out of New York I believe.
Yep, and one white guy. All right, So barnstorming's going on. Like I said, they would roll into town, they would play whatever teams they could play, and it started to gain some momentum, Like people started to follow these players. Yeah, and they actually got fans. And there was a former player named Andrew Rube Foster who owned one of those teams, and he said, you know what, I think we need our own league. Yeah, they won't let us in their league. Let's start our own because besides the fact that people want it, there's money to be made here.
Yeah. And as a matter of fact, so this barnstorming thing, I want to talk a little more about that, right. Yeah, one of the reasons barnstorming came about was to make ends meet, but it was also because these teams had to figure out a way to put on games as cheaply as possible. All of the stadiums at the time were owned by whites, and the whites apparently were not very friendly to the idea of black teams playing in their fields. So if it were just like black teams playing one another, the white owners of the fields would just charge an exorbitant amount. So these guys were going basically anywhere they could find a place that would stand still long enough for them to play a baseball game on. That's what they would play. And they played like three games a day every day, and they all traveled together and hung out with one another and spent a lot of time together. So like that, the Negro leagues came out of this kind of camaraderie of barnstorming together, which is pretty awesome.
It's very cool.
So, yeah, this guy, Rube Foster, he owned the Chicago American Giants, and confusingly, there was also another Negro team called the Chicago Giants.
Into Saint Louis Giants.
Yeah yeah, but versus Chicago. Yeah, but if it was Chicago versus Chicago. Well, which one of the Giants? Well, which one the American Giants? Okay, now I understand not just the Giants, but Rube Foster was like this, this booster of boundless enthusiasm. This guy literally put together the first real Negro league. Yeah, and when he was basically removed from it, the whole thing fell apart. That's how much of a driver this guy was.
Yeah, he's in the Hall of Fame too.
Yeah, he was a catcher, I think.
Oh, I don't even think he was in as a player, but he was really Yeah, I think just for his achievement, I gotcha, although it may have been both, I don't know. But in nineteen twenty he said, all right, here's what we'll do. Let me get these seven team owners of the Midwestern League that are doing these you know, bar and storming traveling shows. Basically, let's get together in Kansas City seven all black teams. In addition to those two Chicago Giants, we have the Cuban Stars, the Dayton Marcos, the Indianapolis Abcs, and the very famous Kansas City Monarchs and Saint Louis Giants all and this is the really like great thing about the story, All of these teams except for the Monarchs, were black owned teams.
Right, So, not only do you have black players careers developing, yeah, you have like black enterprise developing in a time when there were very few avenues of opportunity for black people to advance in business. Yeah, and in a sense where they own the business. This is a really good way to do it.
Yeah. And not only that, like the Major League Baseball site points out, like this was like it should be embraced in some ways because this at a time was the only one of the only ways that minorities could fully excel to their fullest potential.
Right you know. Yeah, And that was a point of that article that I thought was pretty cool, is that one of the things they lamented about the segregation of baseball during this time is that we'll never know how Babe Ruth would have stood up against Satchel Page pitching to them because they never got to play each other. So the truly great players are truly great at during this time within their own skin color. Yeah, you know, you can't say they were the greatest in baseball because they were too legitimate parallel leagues going on at the time. And yeah, they played each other sometimes, but if you wanted to sit down and put stats against stats, you'd be very hard pressed to do.
That, right, Sure, Taychab, Babe Ruth Christy Mathison, Like we know they were good, Like we're not knocking their talent, but who knows what it would have been like in a truly integrated league.
Yeah, And actually it's funny you bring up Ty Cobb because I was like, oh, yeah, type Cobb was a huge racist. I wonder what he thought about the Negro leagues. And I looked it up and I found an article from a guy who argues that Ty Cobb was not the horrible racist that he's made out to be these days.
Written by Jimmy Cobb.
There he found, well, he actually did cite his son, and I think his son's name.
Might be jim Really yeah, oh wow.
But the guy found an article from maybe the fifties or something, nineteen fifty two where Ty Cobb is quoted at length coming out in favor of integration in Aralia baseball, Yeah, saying like, of course these guys should play as long as you know, they conduct themselves like professional baseball players, Like why would they not be able to play. I'm totally in favor of it.
Interesting, like, did Ty Cobb say this? I think that bears more research. Yeah, you know, because he was supposedly very racist.
Yeah, that's not what this guy says. All right, well I'm going to look into That's not what it is, so says.
I'm not doubting you, of course, I just wanted.
Sure know I'm with you. I understand.
So we talked about the integration of the Negro leagues, which is awesome. Pretty soon other leagues form, not just teams. Yeah, there was one right here in the South, the Negro Southern League, with teams from right here in Atlanta.
Dude, do you know the Atlanta team played directly.
Across the street ponstan Lyon Park.
Yeah, where there's now a Staples and a home depot in a pet Smart.
At a Whole Foods.
Yeah.
How like funny is that?
Yeah, if you walk into Whole Foods and listen, you can hear the ghost of a back cracking on a ball.
Yeah. This. I don't think this was the first team in Atlanta that played in the Negro Southern League because they folded that same year. But the Atlanta Black Crackers we also had the Atlanta Crackers, which was the white team. We had the Atlanta Black Crackers. And it sounds funny that we say Ponce de Leon not pontste Lyon, but that's how we say it here. It's the street that fronts our office building.
Ponce de Leon himself with a punch you in the stomach if you heard you say his name like that though.
But that's the street in Atlanta that fronts our office And if you go and look on the internet, you can see these awesome pictures of this cool little baseball stadium right there, hundreds of feet from where we sit. Yeah, really neat.
Yeah, but now you.
Have Whole Foods.
Yeah, now you can just have to listen close.
Seven dollars for artists and mayonnaise.
If you're lucky. Seven dollars.
Oh that's just for the the just for one smear, Yeah, just one smear.
Did you hear? Whole Foods got caught like with uncalibrated scales for their hot bar stuff.
Like it's not already expensive night, Yeah, that's that crazy.
I expect a lot more from them.
Yeah, you know, never get anything with bones at one of those oh never?
Or liquid?
What a waste. Yeah, you throw half of that chicken leg away? Yeah you paid for it? Sure, or just you know, grind that chicken bone up and eat it and get your money's.
Yeah, like peel off with your teeth, spit the meat into your little basket, and throw the bone back into the hot bar.
Yeah, oh I didn't think about that. Sure, that's great idea.
Then you can say I'm no chump.
Yeah, I'm just go around screaming not paying for that bone. All right, So where are we? Where the Negro Southern League folded? The Eastern Colored League opened in nineteen twenty three, and then finally in nineteen twenty eight, the American Negro League formed, And that was, uh, that was when things like they called eventually the American Negro League and the American I'm sorry, the National Negro League, the majors of the Negro leagues. Right like that was where the krim Dela crime played.
And everything's going pretty smoothly except two things happen. Right there was even like a Negro League World Series. It has a best of nine. The Kansas City was really Yeah, the Kansas the City Monarchs narrowly beat the Hilldale team they're from Darby, Pennsylvania, which I guess is near Philadelphia, in the first one in nineteen twenty four, So there's like there's a there's these leagues have established themselves by nineteen twenty four, they have their own world series going, right, But just within a few years there are a couple of hits to the league that ultimately led to the Negro Majors disbanding. One is that Rube Foster suffered a gas poisoning in a hotel room. Yeah, in a hotel room in Indianapolis. He was found unconscious. And there's some theory that like everyone believed in ghosts and spirits and mediums in the nineteenth century because they were all being poisoned by the natural gas that was like leaking into their kitchens and homes all the time. Right, Well, this guy had like an acute poisoning and was found unconscious. And after that, when he regained consciousness and his nurse back to health, he lost his mind and he just kept getting worse and worse. And by nineteen twenty five, I think has happened in nineteen twenty four, nineteen twenty five, he was institutionalized. Yeah, and by nineteen thirty he died of a heart attack at age fifty one. And again, his guidance was so integral in this first incarnation of the Negro leagues that you know, when he was institutionalized, obviously they weren't like, well, what does the league do next? Yeah, he was in an institution, and the league started to falter and fall apart, and eventually that coupled with the depression and the on side of the depression, Yeah, really kind of led to the unraveling of the first Negro League.
Yeah, and this the Major League Baseball site. You know, these were they profited on certain days of the week. Sundays were big days because they were played double headers. But the fact is Black Americans didn't have a lot of expendable money to throw at going to baseball, even though they're you know, pretty cheap. That was commiserate with what people made at the time.
Unless you were one of the Walker brothers whose dad was a physician.
Yeah, they probably a little money.
Sure, they were playing, so I'm sure their parents got him for free. Probably, So so it's all just a moot point.
I wonder if they did get free family tickets back then, I would hope.
So that's got to be as old as tickets, right, probably we got to do an episode on tickets guess lists.
Yeah, so they were making a little money on Sundays. They weren't hugely profitable overall, even though they were known as somewhat successful.
Like, no, a lot of these guys were still barnstorming on their off days.
Yeah. And these are the players, you know, trying to make ends meet, like the owners themselves were struggling here and there. White people came to see games sometimes, especially when they were exhibition games against white teams, right, because they love to go out there and see the see something they had never seen before. Yeah, which many times was the black team mopping the floor with the white team. Although it seemed pretty evenly matched, like from what I gathered, it wasn't like lopsided one way or the other. Yeah, Like they were good competitive games.
Yeah. There are plenty of white players who are better than the black players, and there are plenty of black players who are better than white players. Yeah. Yeah, I would say evenly match is a good way to put so if you had an integrated league, you would get the best of both.
Right, which is eventually what we got.
Plus also in some of these cities, Chuck, These there were not just baseball was segregated, but just within the city you had a white team and you had a black team.
Right.
And that's that's evidence in the names of some of the black teams, like the Black Crackers, the Black Yankees. There were the Yankees and then there were the Crackers.
Right.
So if you were a white player or a white person, you're probably a fan of the white team and you weren't going and watching the black teams play.
Right. So they list out four things here on the site. They say the two leagues, the American and National Negro Leagues were northern and basically city dwelling teams. Couple that with there weren't a lot of black people living in northern cities at the time. The South was, you know, was way more well I want to say integrated, but it wasn't integrated. Way more black people living in the South at the time.
Yeah, which is I wonder why the Southern Negro League didn't take off like a rocket then.
Yeah, I mean probably for the other reasons, like you couldn't afford to go to the games and all that stuff.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Black people that were in the North didn't have a whole lot of money, and so basically all that adds up to not a lot of audience buying tickets, and the only way to keep a league afloat is to sell tickets and to sell concessions, same as it is today. So all those things couple with Rube Foster and the depression, their greatest champion and probably sharpest mind sadly succumbing to mental illness and then the depression, and that was the end of the beginning of the negro leagues, right.
Yeah, that was the end of the first one. Yes, and there were more to come, and we'll talk about it right after this stoff, We Josh shop definitely should drop large holds of each other. Y s k.
All right, So, uh it didn't take long. Uh the old saying you can't keep a good man down. People wanted to play baseball, they were good at it. They thought there was more money to be made in leagues. And so what happens is these numbers guys get involved, and a numbers man is the numbers game was basically like an illegal, unsanctioned street lottery, right, So numbers guys had a lot of money and some of them said, you know what, let's put money into starting baseballs and leagues.
Yeah.
And one guy in particular in Pittsburgh, Gus Greenley, great name. He was a bar owner in Pittsburgh. He bought the Pittsburgh Crawfords in nineteen thirty one. He said, all got a team, but I don't have a league. So two years later he formed the second Negro National League, and other numbers guys bought in, and all of a sudden they had another league going.
Yeah, and this basically kicked off what's known as the Golden Age of the Negro leagues. Yeah, starting about nineteen thirty one, thirty two, thirty three, when these other teams came about, and Greenley's team himself, was it his? No, I'm sorry, it would have been right across the river, the Homestead Grays.
Yeah. They eventually migrated back to Pittsburgh. Over to Pittsburgh.
Yeah, so they were the same team that went from one town to another. They weren't rivals.
No, I think there was still the other Pittsburgh team, But from what I understand, the Homestead Grays eventually became part of Pittsburgh. Okay, or maybe there was another team I'm not sure, but I do know they eventually went to.
Pittsburgh because you know Homestead, We've been there. We did a show there. Yeah yeah, okay, and I was like.
Are we going to the right place when the car was taking me.
So Homestead used to have not just a team, they used to have the best Negro League team possibly ever.
Oh yeah, wait easy.
For nine consecutive years they won the Pennant, right.
Yeah, nine years in a row. Josh gibbson Cool, Papa Bell, and Buck Leonard some of their stars.
Yeah, just some of them. In nineteen thirty five, they had no less than five future Hall of famers on it on the team. Five.
That's amazing.
Point to a team that has five future Hall of famers on it now or ever?
Did well? So some of the Yankees teams did over the years. But like, I don't think anything right now. Oh yeah, now, like even the best team right now doesn't have five future Hall of Famers.
Certainly not the Braves, we don't have one.
I don't know.
I could see Freddy Freeman hitting the Hall of Fame one day. Oh really, I haven't been watching the last couple of seasons.
I mean, he's our best player, but because Fred the best player on the worst team in baseball, not very good casey at the bat. All right, So we did mention that there were exhibition games going on, and things really picked up with the exhibition games now because they were a little well funded, and this is when white players would come and see the teams playing. I mean, it was basically more popular than ever in both communities.
Yes, and we said that they had the Negro League World Series going on, right, Yeah, there was actually another game that came out of this. I think it was it might have been Gus Greenley, I think it was who came up with this is the East versus West All Stars game. Yeah, and that became bigger than the World Series and whatever was in the Negro League.
It was huge.
Yeah, So that became kind of like the de facto big game of the year rather than the World Series for Yeah, and they played it every year I think in Kamiski Field. Oh really, yeah, in Chicago, because you know East East West in Chicago. That's right, that's what it says on the T shirts.
At least, so players are starting to make some like the top players are starting to make some pretty good money at the time. You can't go any further without talking about Satchel Page Leroy, Statchel Paige. Dude, he was a pitcher, very interesting dude.
Maybe the greatest picture of all time in the sport of baseball.
Maybe he was eccentric, he was an entertainer.
Yeah, he was like the Usain Bolt of his day. People loved him. Oh okay, except he didn't like to run. That would makes it a little different.
Even said he didn't like to run.
Yeah, well was his quote. He said that training for me is rising gently from the bench.
Back onto the bench.
Right.
So he had have you ever seen video or I guess you know film of him pitching.
Yeah, with those old timy baggy baseball pants.
Yeah, that was the style. But his he had a weird wind up. He had this sort of double windmill that he would do with his pitching arm. And then when he was younger, he had a great fastball, and he had he was noted for his control like Greg Maddox, like in his pinpoint control. Yeah, like supposedly could just put a baseball within a half inch of where he wanted it to be, which is a big big deal for a pitcher. Sure, as he lost his fastball. Over the years, he learned basically every pitch under the sun. Like, he pitched until he was fifty nine years old.
Yeah, he first signed in the majors, White majors at forty two.
Yeah, forty two, forty two year old rookie.
He was. He's the oldest rookie ever in the in Major League Baseball. And I think the oldest pitcher ever oh as well.
Yeah, yeah, he was even older than Gaylord Perry.
How old was he?
He was in his forties. Oh, like Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry a few pres Nolan Ryan made it to fifty. No, not fifty, but he came close. Like pitchers notably have been a little older, which is crazy because like they're arms. Yeah, but they're not you know, they're not like running around and batting like other players. Yeah, but you're right, like Freddie Freeman, like the stress on the stress on the arm is amazing.
So one thing that that was problematic or is problematic when you're going back and looking at the negro leagues is that a lot of teams were allowed to, depending on the league, were allowed to set their own schedules. Yeah, stats weren't kept quite as well. As they were in the white leagues.
Yeah, we don't know Satchel Page's real lifetime stats, no, but in full.
There are some estimates.
Yeah, and they are high. Oh yeah.
So the one that I saw is that Satchel Page had I think it was in this article on MLB dot com, which eventually will say the author's name.
Right.
Yeah, they said that he had three hundred career shutouts. Three hundred career shutouts, and this guy says in italics, not wins, Yeah, shutouts, right.
Yeah. If you don't know baseball, shutout means you have pitched a game where no one scored a run. Right, And back then there were probably complete game shutouts, meaning he never came out and was relieved by another pitcher.
Right, he would have pitched like all nine innings.
Back at in the day. They used to do that way more than they do now.
Okay, so he had three hundred career shutouts, fifteen hundred wins is the estimate that that's on MLB dot com.
Yeah, to put that into perspective for non baseball fans, again, if you have three hundred wins wins, not shutouts, win, then you're a Hall of Famer. Yeah, And In fact, they don't think there will ever be another three hundred game winner again because of there are more pitchers in the rotation now. They usually have five guys instead of four. They don't pitches deep into games, they wrest them a lot more. So it's just we may not ever see that happen again, just because of the way it's built to.
Also put in perspective, cy Young is regarded as one of the best pitchers ever in Major League Baseball, named the Top Award after him exactly. He had seventy six shutouts, which is amazing. He had the most wins ever still in Major League Baseball at five to eleven, So Satchel Page had conceivably three times more wins, yeah, than the highest win count ever in Major League.
And that's counting his entire career, I assume, which again was very very long.
Sure it was a very long career, but that just makes it all the more amazing, especially as he gets older.
Yeah, Like let's say that people don't say, don't count the negro leagues as being in the top league at the time, Like cut it in half, and he's still way ahead of everybody else. Yeah, if you subtract fifty percent of everything he did, and.
The fact that he sat in a rocking chair in the dugout and I had like a huge personality. It's just awesome.
Yeah. So he learned all sorts of pitches. By the end of his career, he was pitching knuckleballs, and he was famous for the hesitation pitch, which he invented, which was when he got to the White major leagues, they were like, that's illegal. You can't do that. It's called the bulk yeah, and he was like, all right, well.
No, He's like, no, it's called the hesitation pitch, don't you know.
It was very sneaky. You know, it's like you act like you're pitching, then you stop. Because he was like, you know, I got guys up there that are starting to swing because I'm so fast, Like when they see me winding up, they're starting to swing. Yeah, So if I just put a little slight pause there, then they're swinging and then the ball comes. So it was a very very tricky little pitch. And he was making between thirty and fi forty grand a year and the Negro and this is also with appearances and stuff like that, but in the Negro leagues, which is about half a million dollars today. Yeah, amazing amount of money at the time.
You know, and those appearances. If you were a team owner that had Satchel Page on your team, you might let him go make some scratch and probably take a cut yourself by lending him to another team whose attendance was struggling. Yeah, And all you had to do was advertise for a week that Satchel Paige was going to be pitching one day, and you would sell out so he would help other Negro League teams that were right that were struggling.
Yeah, it could to be a draw.
Yeah.
And here's one little cool thing about our own Atlanta Braves and nineteen sixty eight, Satchel Page was lacking one more season to get his Major League Baseball pension and was out of the league and retired, and the Atlanta Braves signed him as a player coach.
Like Terry Pendleton.
Yeah, he was never a player coach, was he?
No? But here's a player and then a coach.
Oh oh, yeah, Pete Rose was a player coach, was he really?
Like?
He managed the Reds and played for them. I did not and bet on them. Yeah, but they signed him to a one year deal so he could get his major league Baseball pension. That is awesome, which is really cool. Clot What year was that, nineteen sixty eight, that's really cool.
Yeah, go brave.
So if you see a picture. When I saw a picture of him in the Braves uniform, I was like, wait a minute, he never played for the Braves and he really didn't. It was it was sort of, you know, just a little sneaky way to get him in there. That's cool, which is great. All right, So Satchel Page is killing it. Other players are killing it. It would not be long before somebody in the white leagues, somebody said the talent is too good. Somebody has to be the first to make this move and break the color barrier.
Yeah right, you know that was the thing like this. The Negro leagues were, ultimately, as we'll find out, victims of their own success. The players that they supported and brought into the game were of obvious major league caliber. Oh yeah, in any major league. They were the best in the world. They were just playing on segregated teams. And so finally a group of people, but especially it usually comes in the form of one guy named branch Rickey. Yeah, did Tom Hanks play him. No, Harrison Ford.
No, Maybe, well, I didn't see the most recent jacket Robinson was Arison Ford. Maybe I've seen him portrayed in other movies.
I can't tell if it was him or not because the actor didn't have a diamond studded earring in, but Harrison Ford could have taken it out for the role. This guy named branch Ricky. It was an exact get ever a manager for the Dodgers.
He was he was with he was an executive Dodgers and he said, and this was when they were in Brooklyn, right, Yeah, he said, this is ridiculous.
There we need to break this color barrier. There's plenty of great players out there that I want to sign. I'm going to break this unspoken rule. And he looked around to find a player who was not only good, but who he felt could withstand this horrendous reception that whoever the first black player would be would definitely receive and who did receive and he found it in the in the person of Jackie Robinson.
Yeah, that's that's a huge point because, like I said, Roy Campanella was probably better player at the time than Jackie Robinson. But if you see the Jackie Robinson story. I didn't see the recent one, like I said, but I just know a lot about his story. He was the right guy. He had the temperament, he had the leadership.
Roy Campanello take your head off, Well yeah he did.
He was a tough guy. But Jackie Robinson was the man in every way. And we should also shout out to the road being paved by people like Joe Louis and Jesse Owens before Jackie Robinson. Yeah, as far as just white America accepting mainstream black athletes into their lives.
Yeah, And I don't know if it was on this or on there's a site called Negro League Baseball dot com that has a really good article called the Negro League Baseball one oh one or something like that. Yeah, it's the basics. There's a definite story to the whole thing, right.
Yeah.
But they point out that probably more than anything that helped break the color barrier was blacks serving in World War Two, oh yeah, serving alongside white soldiers and stories coming back from the front of like, hey, these guys are killing Germans just as fast as any any white guy.
Yeah, And.
At the time America was like, well, we that people exactly. So when they returned, the black soldiers came home to a different America that they helped change by fighting in World War Two.
That's pretty cool.
And I mean that the timing of this apparently is not coincidental that Jackie Robinson was signed in nineteen forty six, a year after World War Two went for sure.
Yeah, uh so, branch Ricky was. He was a very puritanical guy. He would often lecture players on sex and drinking and stuff, and he was he wasn't just some benevolent, benevolent champion of the black man.
Yeah, that's that's a good point, man, because a lot of times stories like this end up being about the guy who took the giants and paved the way for the black player. But he did, he did, but he was an ideal emphasis. It's just too easy sometimes for the emphasis to go on to that where it's like, well, the black player like came. He was one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
Exactly. Let's let's put it this way. If branch Rickey hadn't wanted to sell tickets by fielding a good team, he would have never signed Jackie Robinson. He was a businessman. The Dodgers sucked at the time, but he was an idealist. I mean he was very much like, no, like this is wrong and they should be allowed to play.
Yeah, so okay, So he was a complex human being like all other human beings. Yeah, yeah, he can't just be shoehorned into an easy caricature. No, that's great. So branch Ricky complicated human being. He selected Jackie Robinson and it was a great selection.
Yeah. Jackie Robinson played one year in the Miners, which was ridiculous. They should have just like he spent his entire life playing in the miners, they should have just promoted him right away. But I think they just wanted to ease that transition. He won the batting title in the Miners his only year there, and then one Rookie of the Year in his very first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Yeah, and that was April fifteenth, nineteen forty seven, was when he made his DAB, which was very, very historic day. Yeah, an amazing day that Major League Baseball is really like honored Jackie Robinson to the fullest.
Now, yeah, they should great, but Jackie Robinson definitely threw up in the floodgates within four months of Jackie Robinson being signed or no, I guess actually being called up to the majors. Yeah, two other guys were signed, both in July, and I think that year there were a number of other black players suddenly playing for white Major League Baseball, which is suddenly not now just major League Baseball, not white major League Baseball, that's right.
Yeah, Larry Dobie, Cleveland Indians, Willard Brown, the Saint Louis Browns, Henry Hank Thompson, the Saint Louis Browns, Dan Bankhead, Leroy Satchel Page made it finally, and of course Rore Campanella, among others. These were the first African Americans in Major League baseball, and by nineteen fifty two, just a few years later, there were one hundred and fifty black players, and by nineteen fifty four, all but four major league teams had black players. There were a few holdouts.
Yeah, the Boston Red Sox notably were the last. They waited until nineteen fifty nine, thirteen years after Jackie Robinson's debut season. Yeah, in the miners.
So with the signing of Jackie Robinson and all the players to follow like you hinted at earlier, and like this article plainly says, it was a very bittersweet end. And one way, it was great. The color barrier was smashed, the league was being integrated, and they were getting their due, although it was a struggle. But in another way, it was also sad that this league that had so much gumption and such a great like we'll do it ourselves then attitude and empower these men to play in, these people to own these teams and start their own leagues. So it was definitely like a weird time in history. It is, like I think nowadays there's much more of a reverence and a bit of mourning for the disappearance of that league. But you know, in another way, like I said, it was smashing, the color barrier was way more sure, way more better. I just went into hulk speak.
So yeah, it would have been a much more satisfying end of the whole thing if the Negro leagues had poached the best players in the White Major League Baseball.
Oh. Actually, you know what the best possible thing could have been was if the White major leagues absorbed those teams and owners and ownership. It's part of one big league. Nice but they're like, no, we're just going to take your players.
Yeah, give them to us.
Yeah.
So that is Negro League Baseball, the history of it.
YEP officially disbanded in nineteen forty eight, and article says into the nineteen fifties there were still a few teams playing here and there, and in the early nineteen sixties even that was like one final team or I guess one final pair of teams. I guess they had to play somebody still playing.
Or they could scrimmage themselves.
Yeah. It says the Negro American League was the last to throw in the town in the early sixties.
Yeah.
So yeah, more than one team.
And this article makes a point today, or at least in twenty twelve, major League Baseball was forty percent non white, which I was like, what I would have guessed It was the opposite of that that I would have guessed. Six percent of Major League Baseball players are white.
Yeah, and you know, there's a big push I think, like the one of the least represented demographics now in pro baseball or African Americans really, Yeah, partially because of the rise of Latino players and then partially because they there's not a big a push to play baseball these days as kids in America, and so there's a lot of concerted efforts to try and get baseball going again in black communities, which is awesome.
Sure you know, yeah, I know. I was pushed by Dad's like get out there and get hitting the head with the ball.
See, I wouldn't allowed. I had to play church softball, so lamb.
So then the color bearers broken. And now the last vestige of any sort of color issue is the Native American slurs that are rampant in all sports as far as teams go.
Yeah, Atlanta brave.
Once we get past that, maybe it'll be finally totally legitimate. If you want to know more about the Negro Leagues, you can type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also go check out this amazing article called Negro Leagues a Kaleidoscopic Review. It's on MLB dot and check out negro League Baseball dot com. They have like all sorts of great profiles on the players and all that stuff.
Oh we never said the nicknames. Oh yeah, so we rattle off a few of those. Sure, all right, boy, these are some good nicknames. How about Jelly Gardner or Spoony.
Palm, Turkey Sterns.
Turkey Sterns, he's the Hall of Famer Coppernie Thompson or steel Arm Davis.
I think you mentioned cool Papa Bell.
Yeah, Cool Papa Bell.
That is the greatest name ever.
Uh, Possum Polls, Ace Adams, King, Tutt, Smoky Joe Williams, Bullet Joe Rogan, not yeah Joe Rogan. Did you know that Rats Henderson boy Turkey Sterns. That might be the best. That might be my new hotel pseudonym, Cool Papa Joe. Yeah, but no one to buy that at the hotel registry.
Oh yeah, if you go up and Tray Sterns, they definitely.
Go for Those are great nicknames, all right?
Oh yeah, okay, So now that we said Turkey Stearns, it's time for listener mail.
This one I'm gonna call short and sweet. What do you call it when you remember something with a pneumatic device?
Uh? No, mnemonic. Pneumatic is when you remember it while you're pumping air up and down?
Was it nomadic? You remember it while you're wandering around? Mnemonic? Of course? I feel like a dummy. Howdy Josh and Chuck. Friend recommended your show to me recently, and I love it. You satisfy all my nerdy entertainment requirements. While I'm at work. You seem to have a bit of trouble recalling the order of h taxonomic taxonomic categories. Boy, I'm gonna have trouble in this next show during Wooly Mammos, not wooly Mammas, as our typo originally said.
Yeah, it was my fault.
That's right, you just forgot to know, Wally. Here's an easy memory trick we learned in high school biology. Kings play chess on fine green silk. Kingdom phylum, class, order, family, genus species. I love that stuff because I will never forget it.
Now. That's not an mnemonic device, is it.
It's pneumatic. I have no idea why this is still in my head over ten years later. Well that's exactly why. Sure, Katie, So hope that helps. And that is Katie from West Texas.
Thanks a lot, Katie from West Texas. We appreciate that Kings play chess on green.
Silk, fine green silk.
I'll never remember the fine party. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email. The Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot com.
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