Anything a person might want to know about Negro League Baseball can be found in the mind of Tweed Webb. Negro League Baseball is this man's specialty thanks to his father, a semi pro player and manager. If not for his father, Normal Tweed Webb might never have played shortstop with the St. Louis Black Sox while attending high school and continuing on even while he went to business college where he took a two year business course taking up bookkeeping and typing. Tweed played ball until 1934.
When he was attending a St. Louis school, dressed head to toe in tweed, one of his classmates decided there and then to give him the moniker Tweed. He started playing baseball, creating his own team named “Tweed's Blacksox” from kids around Garfield and Compton Street when he was ten. He managed that team until 1921, when his father took over and renamed them “St. Louis Blacksox”. That baseball team finally received a sponsor in 1924 from tailor Mr. Bloomer making the team “Bloomer's Tailors”. Eventually the team played for the Pullman Shock Company. By this time, Webb was considered one of the best defensive shortstops in the Tandy League. Tweed had a life-time batting average of .350 and while he was with the “Bloomer's Tailors” he hit .402.
The Tandy League
When he played in the old Negro League for the Fort Wayne Pirates he received about $30 per week . He soon realized that it wasn't enough money to support a family, especially when the bloomed to eight. While there were many opportunities for him to turn pro, he turned them down due to Jim Crow and he went back to being a sign painter. Webb painted signs from 1930 until 1971. He had many supporters encouraging him to return to playing ball as good as he was. As official scorer he found a paying job, though his column in the St. Louis Argus paid him nothing at
“In 1946, there were sixteen Major League Baseball teams, with a total of 400 players on their rosters, every one of the players was white. But when opening day came in 1947, that number dropped to 399, and one man stood apart. (42 2:30)” Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson made his Major League Baseball debut on April 15, 1947, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Making Jackie Robinson the first African-American to play Major League Baseball (MLB). Jackie’s transition from the Negro Leagues to MLB was not an easy one. As a player, he transitioned very well, but it was Robinson’s teammates, Dodgers fans, the opposing teams and their fans that tested Jackie every chance they got, some hotels even prohibited the Dodgers to stay in their establishments
The players involved were first baseman Chick Gandil, Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, “Shoeless Joe Jackson,” Fred McMullen, Swede Risberg, Happy Felsch, and Buck Weaver. Bankston, Carl. A.
America’s pastime has been complicated in the last couple centuries, and integration has been a really big key in the game of baseball. Like most of America in the 1940’s, baseball was segregated, whites playing in the Major League system and African-Americans playing in the Negro Leagues. There were many factors that made whites and blacks come together including World War II. Integration caused many downs in the time period but as baseball grew and grew it was one of the greatest accomplishments in the history. It was hard to find the right black man do start this, they needed a man with baseball abilities and a man who didn’t need to fight back.
Branch Rickey was the club president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and had the secret goal of signing the Negro Leagues' top players to the team. Although there was no official ban on blacks in organized baseball, previous attempts at signing black ballplayers had been thwarted by league officials and rival clubs in the past, and so Rickey operated undercover. His scouts were told that they were seeking players for a new all-black league Rickey was forming; not even the scouts knew his true objective.
After his departure from the Army he joined the Kansas City Monarchs, an all African-American baseball team, of the Negro League. Due to low pay and constant traveling, he decided he did not want to make baseball a career although he was one of the top players. Until 1947 only white players were allowed in Major League Baseball but in 1945 Clyde Sukeforth, a scout for Branch Rickey who was the Brooklyn Dodgers club president, had been looking for an African-American player and was watching Jackie for a while.
"Over the decades, African American teams played 445-recorded games against white teams, winning sixty-one percent of them." (Conrads, pg.8) The Negro Leagues were an alternative baseball group for African American baseball player that were denied the right to play with the white baseball payers in the Major League Baseball Association. In 1920, the first African American League was formed, and that paved the way for numerous African American innovation and movements. Fences, and Jackie Robinson: The Biography, raises consciousness about the baseball players that have been overlooked, and the struggle they had to endure simply because of their color.
Rader states that baseball was founded by Abner Doubleday in 1839 at Cooperstown, New York. In the next couple decades, the game developed the simple concept of bases. After having bases introduced into the game, the kids in bigger cities started club based teams which played each other. These teams started to develop a personal passion and respect for baseball which led them to adopt written rules. He conveys the idea of fellowship within the team and how the players celebrated all aspects of the game. He gives an example of a club team called the New York Knickerbockers and how they celebrated with their opponents and teammates whether they won or l...
As a 20 year old youth in 1883, Billy played baseball in the lots of his neighborhood in Marshalltown, Iowa. One day the captain for the Chicago White Sox, A.C. Anson, was in the lots watching all the teenagers, young adults, and Billy Sunday playing baseball. Anson was so impressed with what he had seen in Billy’s baseball performance that Billy was signed unto the White Sox soon after.
their idols and role models could be bought with $5,000? After that season in 1920 baseball
team of the American League. Ruth was paid a salary of $600 to play in the
Satchel Paige started his Negro League career at the Chattanooga White Sox. He played with them for about three to four years. He moved from several other ball clubs in the Negro Leagues and also played with some of the greatest players in the Negro Leagues that never had the chance in the Majors. Such players as Jud Wilson, Josh Gi...
In 1947 Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers desperately wanted Robinson to play for him and his team. He would become the first black MLB player since 1889 when baseball became discriminated. In his first year he was the Rookie of the Year. He debuted in the International League with the Montreal Royals. This the led to Branch’s interest in Robinson since he was considered one of the best players in the International League and considering it was his first time playing with white men.
In 1946, he was selected as the best person to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball. For a long time, it was assumed that blacks were not allowed to play in the Major Leagues simply because they had not for so long. When Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of baseball at the time, declared that there was no rule preventing integration of the Major Leagues, the idea of an African-American joining the league was realized for the first time by a lot of people. In 1943, Branch Rickey, general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers at the time, had an idea thought to be outrageous by many during that period. He considered signing some black players to make up for the wartime shortage of talent.
John W. Fowler was the first black professional baseball player. He was born a free man in 1854. Fowler played for a team in New Castle Pennsylvania. He was the first of more than thirty black players in the white leagues before 1900. He was recognized by the white media as one of the best second basemen of his day, but he never got the chance to play in the Major Leagues. The first black major league player was named Moses Fleetwood Walker. Walker was in Ohio in 1857. He played two years of baseball for Oberlin College, and two years playing with Michigan at Ann Arbor. In 1983, he joined the Toledo club of the North Western league. Toledo entered the American Association a year later and Walker become the first black Major Leaguer. Walker was actually well received in most of his games. He was even applauded in some places. However, in two southern cities, Richmond and Louisville he was harasse...
Lanctot, Neil. 2004. Negro league baseball :The rise and ruin of a black institution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.