02/10/2012

What does the color of your skin have to do with your ability to catch, throw or hit a baseball?

The answer:  nothing.

But until 65 years ago, the people who ran Major League Baseball seemed to think it did. For approximately half a century, no one who was recognizably African-American was allowed to play Major League Baseball.

That came as a surprise to 10-year-old Lilliana Young.

"I never knew they were separated then," she said last month, in an interview with the Gloucester County Times, the local newspaper in East Greenwich Township, N.J.

Lilliana and other kids at Samuel Mickle School have been learning about that era of separation — an era when the best African-American players were forced to play in leagues of their own.

They were called the Negro Leagues. And some of the best players of all time played in them — players with cool nicknames such as Cool Papa Bell, Satchel Paige and Double Duty Radcliffe, to name a few. They played on teams such as the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Birmingham Black Barons and the Homestead Grays, the Cuban Giants, the Indianapolis ABCs and the Kansas City Monarchs.

But they could have played for the Yankees, the Red Sox or any other major league team.

The Negro Leagues didn't exist until the 1920s because in the earliest days of professional baseball, racial segregation was not so strict. And a handful of black ballplayers actually made it onto white teams.

According to the Negro League Baseball website, the first African-American player ever to play in the major leagues was Moses "Fleetwood" Walker — a catcher with the old Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884. A number of white players refused to play on the same field as Walker. And by the mid-1890s, that sort of racism had left black players locked out of the big leagues and even the minor leagues.

So they created their own teams. They traveled across the country, playing an unorganized schedule against anyone who'd take them on.

In 1920, a Chicago businessman and former pitcher named Andrew "Rube" Foster organized the Negro National League. Another African-American businessman, Thomas T. Wilson, organized the Negro Southern League that same year. And in 1923, a third Negro League formed — the Eastern Colored League.

(At the time, "negro" and "colored" were considered acceptable terms for African-Americans.)

Both the Negro National League and the Eastern Colored League folded in the early 1930s because of the Great Depression. Most fans just didn't have enough money to spend on baseball games — especially African-American fans. So there was little or no money to operate teams.

But as the economy slowly got better, the leagues returned. A new Negro National League formed in 1933. And a Negro American League formed in 1937.

How good were the Negro Leagues? Consider this:  the 1936 Pittsburgh Crawfords roster included six future Hall of Famers:  center fielder James "Cool Papa" Bell, pitchers Leroy "Satchel" Paige and Bill Foster, catcher Josh Gibson, third baseman William "Judy" Johnson, and player-manager Oscar Charleston.

"Cool Papa Bell was so fast he could get out of bed, turn out the lights across the room and be back in bed under the covers before the lights went out," teammate Gibson once said.

And "Paige was the best pitcher I ever saw," fellow Hall-of-Famer pitcher Bob Feller said.

That's high praise, considering Feller is considered one of the best pitchers of all time. According to historians, Gibson once hit 75 home runs in a season. That would be the all-time Major League record. But Gibson never got a chance to play in the majors.

Unfortunately, he and many of the other top Negro League players were already past their peak by the time baseball started integrating. When Jackie Robinson broke through the "color barrier" with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, it was the beginning of the end for the Negro Leagues. More and more of the younger black players followed in his footsteps, including Larry Doby, Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Monte Irvin — all of them future Hall of Famers.

By the mid-1950s, most Major League teams had at least one African-American player on their rosters. And without the best talent, the Negro Leagues could no longer survive. By the early 1960s, they were gone completely. But they are not forgotten.

And as today's big leaguers head down to spring training this month, the African-American athletes who helped pave the way for racial integration are well worth remembering.

For decades, Major League Baseball cheated itself and its fans out of seeing some of the best ballplayers ever. But those players made a name for themselves anyway. And in doing that, they made history.