 Thank you all for being here and for joining us on Zoom. My name is Sandy Baird, and I am here on behalf of the Vermont Institute of Community and International Involvement. That was the original name of Burlington College, and we are trying to keep some of the traditions alive of Burlington College by having political and social and cultural events which educate the public and encourage them to become civically engaged. And tonight we're going to do a little history of what are called the Negro Leagues, and we have a number of guest speakers to talk about baseball before it became integrated, and it became integrated with Jackie Robinson in the 50s, correct? 1947. 1947, excuse me. With us tonight are Tom Simon, who is an old friend of mine, and he is a lawyer, a Burlington lawyer, but he's also a baseball historian, and he can talk about some of the books that he has written about baseball. With us also tonight is Bill Lee, who was a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, for the Montreal Expos, and now I hear he is a pitcher for the Burlington Cardinals, which I didn't know anything about. That's Tommy's fault. Right, Tom Simon's fault that is. And Carl Lindholm, who will explain himself, because I just happened to meet him, I think he is a Middlebury professor, correct? So we're going to start with Tom Simon, who will tell us a little bit about the Negro Leagues, and in hopes of educating all of us about the integration of baseball many years ago. So here's Tom. Thank you, Sandy. Thanks for having us here. Tonight, this is going to be a crash course on the history of the Negro Leagues, or to be more precise, it's actually going to be a crash course on the history of blacks in professional baseball. I don't consider myself a specialist on the Negro Leagues, but fortunately, we have a true Negro League scholar seated right here to my left, Carl Lindholm, who has taught several courses on the Negro Leagues at Middlebury College, and has written extensively on the subject. So Carl didn't know he was going to be up here with us as a speaker, but as he walked in, we dragged him up to the front where he belongs. And Bill, Bill really embodies the spirit of the Negro Leagues. He's kind of the closest thing we have to a modern day satchel page, and age 74, still pitching just as, almost as well as he ever has. I think so. And so, and also a great student of the history of the game. So we're really fortunate to have these guys with us. Here's my game plan. I'm going to go over four takeaways that I've learned about the Negro Leagues since I've been inundating myself in baseball history over the last 30 years. And actually, a lot of the great scholarship on the Negro Leagues has occurred in the past 30 years. So by going to Saber Conferences and by reading all the new books that come out, I've kind of kept up on developments. So even though I may not be quite as nuanced on the history of the Negro Leagues as Carl might be, I have a pretty good sense of the history. And so I thought we would focus on my four takeaways on Negro League history. And as we address each of them, I'll kind of give an overview of my point. And then I'll let these guys comment before we move on to the next of my four takeaways. Sound good? All right, excellent. So takeaway number one. Jackie Robinson was not the first black man to play in the major leagues. Now the first thing we have to do is define what we mean by the major leagues because there had been a number of blacks who have played professional baseball in the minor leagues. But the first man to play in what we considered to be major league baseball was a fellow by the name of William Edward White. That's awesome. Yeah, he was black. He went to Brown and he played for the Providence Grays. So we have the color spectrum right there. And what's interesting is that prior to the year 2014, nobody in the world would have said that William Edward White was the first black major league baseball player. And that's because back in 1879, when he made his one and only appearance in the major leagues, he did not consider himself to be a black man. He considered himself to be white. And I think if people had known he was black, he probably would not have gotten this opportunity to fill in. What happened was he was at Brown University. He was the star first baseman on their collegiate championship team. And the Providence Grays were a good nationally team. And their regular first baseman, a guy by the name of Joe Starr, broke his finger. They needed a replacement. They needed someone who was local and could jump into the lineup quickly. And there was William Edward White who filled in for that one game and went one for four. What's interesting about William Edward White though, and the reason why nobody was aware that he was actually considered a black man under the laws of the time is because his father was white. His father was a Georgia businessman and his mother was one of his father's mixed race servants. So technically, that made William Edward White a black man. And so in 2014, thanks to the incredible research of Peter Barnes, who's a Sabre member and does incredible research on early baseball, he discovered that William Edward White was under the laws of the time and actually a black man who played Major League Baseball in 1879. So I was actually saying that, what do we mean by Major League Baseball? So the first league that we consider to be Major League. Can I just interrupt for once? Who's that sound like? Anybody know Vermont Racial History? Who does William Edward White sound like? Twilight. He does. Alexander Twilight, the first black college graduate, Middlebury College, 1823, I think. Wow. He, Middlebury is having a period, I'm not gonna go on on it, but it just struck me that there's a period of reevaluation because it would appear that there's nothing outside census records that says that his father was a black man. There's nothing in any contemporaneous literature that identifies Twilight as black. So it happened, he may have been what's called passing. And so we don't know, but Middlebury is having this reevaluation because we had a fellow named Martin Freeman, who was a very prestigious black man from Rutland, who was president of a college and lived in Liberia for once. So anyway, it's, I think, an interesting parallel. I'm sorry, I interrupted, but. Yeah, no, please do, that's what you guys are here for. So the first Major League is. One second, speakers. So the folks online in Zoom can only hear you when you're speaking. When anyone else in the room, including the gentlemen on either side of you, speak. The folks in Zoom can't hear you. Oh, okay. Well, that's too bad. I'll just repeat everything I just said. Left, left, left, left, left, left, left. Red truck to green truck. Okay, you know, I'll just, yeah, I'll pass. If this is the one mic that goes to the Zoom feed, I'll just pass it right away. That was better, thank you. Okay, so the first Major League, the first league that we considered to be Major League was the National Association. That existed from 1871 to 1875. That gave way to the National League, which started in 1876, and of course still exists today. But then in 1882, a league came along called the American Association, which existed only until 1891. Those are the three 19th century major leagues. And so there were a number of black players in minor league baseball, in other words, in leagues outside of those three that I just mentioned. The most prominent of them was a fellow by the name of Bud Fowler, who made his debut in minor league baseball in 1878. And one of the many interesting things about Bud Fowler is that he was actually born in Cooperstown. So, you know, it's funny, Cooperstown, the so-called home of baseball, which really wasn't the home of baseball, but one of the first prominent black baseball players actually did come from Cooperstown. And a few years ago, I was at the dedication ceremony in Cooperstown when they renamed one of the streets outside of the ballpark, Double Day Field, after Bud Fowler. So anyway, prior to 2014, people would have considered the first black major league baseball player to be a fellow by the name of Moses Fleetwood Walker, who played in the American Association for the 1884 Toledo Blue Stockings. And later in that 1884 season, he was joined on that team by his brother Weldy. So those were the two first black major league baseball players until we discovered William Ever-White's one game in 1879. So what's interesting about Fleet Walker, he was with the Toledo team the year before they became a major league team. It was essentially the same team, but they were playing and it was before they joined the American Association. So he was playing for the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings. And in those days, it was common for major league teams as they would travel around the country to fill in on off dates with exhibition games against minor league teams. And on one occasion, the Chicago White Stockings, now known as the Chicago Cubs, were coming through Toledo and they were gonna be playing an exhibition game against the Toledo Blue Stockings. And the White Stockings were captained by a fellow by the name of Cap Anson. And Cap Anson, one of the things that I think is kind of funny about Cap Anson is that he, if any of you are Simpsons fans, he's Mr. Burns, the cold-hearted nuclear power plant owner. He said in one episode that Cap Anson was his favorite baseball player. I did not know that. Yeah, very appropriate. That is amazing. Cap was the number one racist of his day. Yes, and so in 1883, when his White Stockings were coming to play Toledo and Cap Anson knew that they had a black man on the team, he said, if you play that black player, we're not gonna play this exhibition game. And the manager of the Toledo team said, wasn't even planning on playing Fleet Walker. Fleet Walker was a catcher. And in those days, it was common for catchers not to play every day, alternate. And this was gonna be Fleet Walker's day off. But when Cap Anson made that edict, he said, oh yeah, well, we're gonna put Fleet Walker in the outfield and either you suck it up and play the game or you're not gonna get your share of the gate receipts. So Cap Anson, yep, he ended up going with the money and they ended up playing that exhibition game that year, 1883. Then the following year, 1884, Toledo is now in the American Association and along comes the Chicago White Stockings to fill in a date, an open date on their travel schedule and they're gonna play another exhibition game against Toledo. Different manager in 1884 for Toledo. Anson again says, look, if you're gonna play those black guys, we're not gonna play. And this time Toledo went along with that. What's interesting about it though is that at the time Fleet Walker was hurt anyway. He had not played for two weeks. So curious to know whether he would have played that day regardless. I mean, it looks like he probably wouldn't have. But they ended up playing the exhibition game without Fleet Walker and so Cap Anson had his way in that particular circumstance. Now, that was considered to be the beginning of the so-called gentlemen's agreement where the teams in organized baseball all agreed that they would not allow black players to play majorly baseball. But Walker may not have been the last black major leader before Jackie Robinson. And that's because there was a fella by the name of George Treadway who was an outfielder for Baltimore and some other teams in the National League from 1893 to 1896. Treadway claimed he was Native American but it was rumored that he was actually black. In fact, it was in the newspapers that George Treadway was a black man and passing himself off as a Native American. So he lasted for three or four years. There were rumors that when he was finally released it was because of these rumors that he was black. But even after the so-called gentlemen's agreement the International League which was a minor league at the time and still is continued to openly employ black players. In fact, there's a hall of famer by the name of Frank Grant who played for Buffalo and the International League from 1886 to 1888. But in 1887 the International League ended up grandfathering the blacks who were already in the league but saying that they wouldn't allow no additional black players to join the league. And once again it was Cap Anson who played a role in the segregation of the International League. The white stockings once again had an open date in their calendar and they were gonna be playing Syracuse of the International League which employed two black players at the time. A pitcher by the name of George Stovey and Fleet Walker had moved along to the Syracuse team by this point. And Anson made his usual request that none of the black players be in the lineup and once again Syracuse went along with it and later that same day the International League issued its edict that it would now allow any additional black players. Was it just coincidence that that day was the day they decided to put a stop to that practice? Probably not, it would appear that Cap Anson had something to do with that. So that's why Cap Anson I guess is Mr. Burns' favorite baseball player and is kind of reviled to this day. But in his era he was really baseball's first superstar. He was just a phenomenal baseball player and just not much of a human being. All right, any comments from you fellas on that? Of course. All right, let's hear them. I bet it. Very quickly, Frank Grant was a great player. He's in the Hall of Fame. He still has the highest batting average ever in the International League. He's born around Williamstown Mass too, I believe they're down there. Yeah, he's a New Englander. The only other thing I'd mention there is the parallel. I consider the study of baseball to be parallel with American history in many, many ways. And you'll note that during Reconstruction we had black congressmen. We had, you know, the country was integrated in significant ways, albeit unharmoniously. Baseball was the same. For the first 15 years after the Civil War, baseball was an integrated sport. Again, it was not a great life for black folks. The only other thing I'd mention is the very first all black professional team was a hotel team made up of great players called the Cuban Giants. We're gonna get to that. Okay, whoa, okay. Don't worry. You didn't have a chance to get to that. I just saw Grant's Ricky down there. I said, okay. Don't worry, we're gonna get to that. Okay, so that was the point. And then I consider Moses Fleetwood Walker the first black Major League player. I think William White is a footnote. Yes. Wasn't there a guy in Philadelphia that got killed? He was a black ball player back even before that. Yeah, I think you might be thinking about the guy who founded the Pythian Club in the 1860s. So that was not, they were not a professional. They kind of predated the professional era. In fact, the first professional team is considered the 1869 Cincinnati Reds. So in the 1860s, the Pythian Club was a great powerhouse black team out of Philadelphia. Actually, maybe, yeah, yeah, all black. Actually, were they from Camden, New Jersey or were they from Philly? There was a number of those teams. They tried to organize into a league and it didn't last. Yeah, oh, we'll talk about that too. All right, so anyway. So guys, let me jump in one more second. I think maybe it's the microphone on the computer itself that's picking you up because when you move that mic stand, it's not making it better. Oh, okay, all right. Well, then we won't even worry about that then. We'll just have to all We'll do the sideline. Beak up and do sideline, which yeah. Which I don't know. All right, so takeaway number two. One's a fastball, twos a curve, wiggles a change. The holy sideline, which I know, that's funny. Yeah, that's good. Take away number two. Branch Ricky was not the first white man with the idea of reintegrating the major leagues. Now, of course I say reintegrating because as we've just discussed, Fleet Walker played in the major leagues back in the 19th century. In 1901, John McGraw, who was then managing the American League's Baltimore Orioles, brought a black player by the name of Charlie Grant to spring training and tried to pass him off as a Cherokee Indian by the name of Chief Tokohama. Only problem was, Charlie Grant played for a very prominent team in Chicago and was well known in Chicago and Charlie Kamisky of the Chicago White Sox knew exactly who he was and put the kibosh on passing him off as a Native American. So that was the Chief Tokohama experiment. Now, one of these guys who could have been Jackie Robinson many decades before Jackie Robinson has a local connection. In 1905, it was reported that the National League's Boston Doves were interested in signing a fellow by the name of William Clarence Matthews, a Harvard student who was then playing in the Northern League for the Burlington team right here at Athletic Park on Riverside Avenue spinning distance from where we sit right now. And you've probably seen the historical marker, at least I hope you have, on Riverside Avenue, right by the turnoff that goes down to the Interveil and Gardner Supply that talks about Athletic Park. And I'm not gonna say much about William Clarence Matthews because we happen to have the world's leading expert on William Clarence Matthews seated right here next to me. So I'm sure he'll comment on that once we move on, once I finish my kind of overview of this subject. Now, Bill Vec, the legendary owner of several major league teams, he's kind of, he's known as being quite a character. He was the guy who hired Eddie Gadel to make a pin, he was the midget who made the pinch hitting appearance. And he was the guy who came up with the exploding scoreboard at Kamiski Park and all kinds of innovative ideas to try to make baseball more fun. Well, he claimed in his autobiography that back in 1943, he had a plan to purchase those perennial losers, the Philadelphia Phillies, cut all their players one week before the season was to begin and restock the team with the Negro League All-Star team that almost certainly would have brought the Phillies the first pennant since 1915. Unfortunately, at least according to Vec's story, he gave word of his plan to Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, another notorious racist. And the next day, the National League took over ownership of the Phillies and later sold them for less than half of what Vec had offered for the team. So that put the kibosh on Bill Vec's plan, but just think about what the 1943 Philadelphia Phillies would have looked like if he had been allowed to do that. He told... He told Landis. He told Mountain Landis that he was going to do this. Yeah, well, so he kind of needed Mountain, he needed Landis' permission to purchase the team. Well, he must have known he was a racist. Well, yeah, I don't know, he must have been... I think there's some real question about whether any of this ever really happened. This was Bill Vec writing his autobiography in the 1960s, I think. To be an owner, you have to have two thirds of the owners vote for you. That's why Ernie DeBartolo couldn't have the Cleveland Indians ended up with the 49ers, because if you had a racetrack, it was illegal, but if you were John Kenneth Galbraith and owned race horses, it was okay. So that's the difference. Well, Vec. Yeah. He said in his autobiography, and it got into many black baseball histories, that he attempted to buy the Philadelphia Phillies in 1943. What's in doubt was how extensive that attempt was. I think, given Vec's history, 10 weeks after Jackie Robinson, he introduced Larry Doby into the major leagues, the first black player, second black player, overall first black player. So Vec was clearly, and he was the patron of Satchel Page. So I checked his face value that he would have done it, had been able to. And what Vec did was he allowed another person to take over the ownership of the Phillies from the fellow who was willing to negotiate with Vec. But it's an important moment, because the other thing is, Branch Ricci decided to bring in players one at a time. None of the Negro league players or teams ever thought it would be that deliberate, one at a time, throughout, for 12 years till the Red Sox had a black player. They always thought a team would come in, the Kansas City Monarchs. That's the way leagues are expanded. Final team? Sure. So they thought a number would come in. So that's a little controversial. Vec wanted to bring in a dozen at one time, again, according to Vec. And Ricci has this elaborate plan with sociologists and identifies a particular individual, Jackie Robinson, to integrate the game. Meanwhile, he's got Roy Campanella in the minor leagues for two years. Yeah. In the Red Sox, Pumpsy Green was not the first black signed by the Red Sox. Did you know that? Earl Wilson. But he was in the minor leagues and they brought Pumpsy up first. And then Earl got banned supposedly for nothing and people don't realize that Earl Wilson was one of the greatest hitting pitchers of all time. And he was first president of BAP, baseball assistants team, which spread money around to players that were having trouble, you know? And he was a great man. Played about 10 years, right? He was great. I mean, wow. People in New England might be interested to know that Jackie Robinson actually had a tryout with the Red Sox in 1945. Oh, that ended poorly. He wasn't good enough. The Red Sox determined he wasn't good enough. They didn't get back to him. Sam Jethro is on that. Yeah, he also had the same tryout, right? And Clemente. They wanted Clemente, too, but they were... He was Cuban also, right? No, Clemente was born in... All right, so any further comments on this particular subject? Well, yeah, William Clarence Matthews. William Clarence Matthews, it's been a real interest of mine and he was the best college baseball player in the country in 1905. I think I'd say that without, I think, fear of contradiction. Black player playing for Harvard, Harvard had a very, for the time, had a very open attitude about black athletes. Certainly wasn't true of Yale and Princeton, et cetera. Yeah, but it was true of UVM. And he was born in Selma, Alabama and went to Tuskegee Institute and was sent north by Booker T. Washington to study in order to come back south to teach. So he went to Phillips Andover Academy and then studied at Harvard. And the reason you won't know much about him playing for a black team is because he had a Harvard education and he went to law school and the black teams, like the Cuban giants, they led a hand to mouth existence. They were itinerant ball players and he had a better future. This was true in white baseball for a long time, too. If you had a good job, you didn't play baseball. That's right. Matthews is a fascinating figure. If you'd like, I'll talk to you for three or four hours. Yeah, someday, hopefully, we'll be able to read your book, your biography of late, that's Matthews. Oh yeah, finished it. Was that the extended? The other thing, John McGraw was the greatest manager in the history of the sport, many argue. A real winner around the turn of the century. He was just an Irish immigrant kid, no education. His great player was Christie Matheson, of course, who was very educated. But McGraw was an avowed opponent of the color line. He tried to sneak this Indian Charlie Grant on the team and he took his team to Cuba and he had Matheson learn his famous fadeaway from a Hall of Famer black guy Cuban named Jose Mendez. So McGraw's kind of an interesting complicated figure. Yes, he is, yep. Okay. Further comments, Bill? Yeah, it's like blazing saddles. We'll take the blacks and the Puerto Ricans, but we won't take the Irish. That's why Mel Brooks is a genius. That's true. That's right, that's right. All right, my third takeaway from my last 30 years of interest in the Negro Leagues is that even before the Negro Leagues, blacks had their own leagues and even their own professional teams. So I think it's fair to assume that black people have been playing baseball probably as long as white people have. The first game we know of between two black teams took place in New York City on November 15th, 1859. Keep in mind that the Nickerbockers were supposedly inventing the baseball in the 1840s. So, you know, this was fairly early on. In 1887, and I think this is what you were alluding to before, Carl, the Minor League National Colored Baseball League was formed. This was within the bounds of organized baseball. This was a real professional Minor League, but it lasted only two weeks because there just wasn't much public support for it. They weren't able to make ends meet. But two years later, 1889, the independent outlaw Middle States League had two all-black teams in their league, the Trenton Giants and the New York Gothins. And even though there were no successful attempts to form an all-black professional league until 1920, there were plenty of great black professional baseball teams. The first was the 1885 Cuban Giants. Now, their players weren't actually Cuban, but they barnstormed around the country and advertised themselves as Cubans and even spoke gibberish on the field to make themselves more attractive to prospective white customers. This was the beginning of the great barnstorming tradition in black baseball. And that's a tradition that continued all the way up until the 1980s and was the subject of the movie, The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings back in the 70s. Now, because the Cuban Giants were at least marginally successful, in other words, they made enough money to continue to exist, they had many imitators. The Cuban X Giants, which were a break off of the Cuban Giants, the Trenton Cuban Giants, the Philadelphia Giants, the Brooklyn Royal Giants, the New York Lincoln Giants, the Atlantic City Backer Act Giants, the Chicago Columbia Giants, and the Chicago American Giants just to name a few. Now, what's up with naming all their teams Giants? That seems a little strange. And I learned at a Saber conference that the reason they would do this is because as these teams would barnstorm around the country, they would take out advertisements in the local newspapers, and Giants was code for, this is a black team. So people who were reading the newspaper would see that this was the so-and-so Giants and they would be like, oh, okay, this is a black barnstorming team. Unless of course it was the New York Giants, which was the most prominent major league baseball team at the time. Louis Tion's father was a left-hander, a star in that league and played for that Cuban New York. Yeah, no, he was Louis Tion, and his father was left-handed. And that's why Louis loved me because he thought I was his father. Is he a left-handed? Yeah, oh yeah. So what was the audience like for the black teams? You've done an league quite early on. Oh, so let's talk about the audience though for these black barnstorming teams, back in the turn of the century. So these guys used to come to Athletic Park. The Cuban Giants used to play there a couple of times every season and they were the biggest draw in Burlington. And it was, I think, probably predominantly and maybe uniformly a white crowd that came to see them play. In Biddlebury there's the Sheldon Museum of Local History Museum. In their vault, there are seven broadsides, three by four feet. New York, I mean, it's our Cuban Giants this is in the 1890s versus Middlebury College. Really? Yeah, they played at Middlebury seven times in the 1890s. Against the white team, man. Against Middlebury College team. And then where did they go? From Middlebury. To Burlington, right. They played UVM. Yeah. The Cuban Giants. And who was on the Cuban Giants? This fellow, Frank Grant, was on the Cuban Giants. This pitcher, Stovey, who was- Who we've already talked about. Yes. Professional ball. And then there was a third Hall of Famer, Stovey's not on it. Another Hall of Famer, in addition to Frank Grant, named Saul White, who came up here and played on the Cuban Giants. These were the very best black flares immediately after the color line was drawn. And then barnstorming all along the east coast, playing Middlebury College, playing UVM. So when was the color line drawn? 1887. After reconstruction? 1887. Okay. We agree on that. Yep. It was at the same time as Jim Crow. Yes. In the south. That's the parallel. And Jim Crow was primarily to the north, as the south was integrated. The Jim Crow laws were as prominent in the north as the south. Except de facto. They weren't written into the law, but it was, but yes, the law had the same meaning. Does anyone have any knowledge of any resistance? Like when they went to Middlebury or here? This was the biggest crowd of the season, every year. I wonder if it was, if there was, I've done a lot of, I've done a lot of reading. Two things, real quick. In all that I've read accounts of the games in the papers, they're very small. Condescension. Like? Well, here's a poster. Here, Demdarki's singing. Oh. Right. That's how it was. Everyone watched them play and listened to them clown. Clowning was a tradition, even then. Then with William Clarence Matthews, when he played in 1905 up here, there was a player on the Montpelier team who had gone to Georgetown and boycotted games when Matthews played for Harvard. And he continued to boycott games up here. And there was some support of him in Montpelier-Barry. But the Vermont press was very much in support of Matthews. So I'm sure there was, but it didn't get reported much. So when the Cuban Giants would come to Burlington, they'd play a series of games, usually like three games. And they almost always managed to lose at least one game to the home team. And, you know, this is a team composed of major league quality baseball players, but they always managed to lose at least one out of those three games to the locals. So, you know, I don't know. Brilliant. Yeah, it was good business, I'm sure. Marketing. Marketing. Yes, yes. Now, while we're on the subject of the Cuban Giants who weren't actually Cuban, I think it's worth mentioning that there were Cuban barnstorming teams during this era. But instead of calling themselves the Cuban Giants, they always called themselves the Cuban Stars or some variation on that name, such as the All Cubans, the Havana Cuban Stars, the New York Cubans or the Cincinnati Cubans. And these again were, you know, loaded with guys who, you know, were some hall of fame caliber players like Cristobal Torriente and, oh, well. Mendez. He's, Mini Monoso is several decades later. And not in line. We played for the Cubans. Yes, he did. He played for the New York Cubans in the Negro leagues, in the Negro Ligera that we're almost. I wonder if our audience can see that, that painting by Lance Richberg who's also here. Yeah, so it's worth, I think, pointing out that Graham brought this beautiful watercolor of Mini Monoso taking a swing at a spring training park in the 1950s with the Chicago White Sox. And it was done by our friend Lance Richberg. Very famous baseball player. The great baseball pointer, yes. That's Miami. Oh, yeah. I played in one of them parks there with the dome. It is Miami. You recognize that tree? I recognize the stands how they went back. There was a big dome over the top of it to protect it from the rain behind it. It looked like a, like where they put the blimps, you know, underneath it. It's all like stainless steel or something. And just because Lance is very humble, it's worth noting that his father played in Havana, Cuba in 1921, 28, when it was the first game ever of their magnificent new baseball stadium. 28. Yeah. In Havana. In Havana. Yeah. He has pictures. Lance's dad was a Lifetime 300 hitter with the Boston Braves and Chicago Cubs, Washington Senators. And his portrait hangs in Cooperstown, sliding in the third. And I sit underneath it every time I go there. And I sit next to my Aunt Annabelle's shoes. And just so the audience at home can see, there's Lance. Lance is the best baseball artist in the country. With maybe the exception of Kajir Nelson, who did the New Yorker, George Floyd. He's much more representation. You know who did my portrait? Tommy McDonald. The football player? The football player. The smallest Hall of Fame football player had the single bar and he's a portrait artist. Didn't know that, did ya? I had no idea. Let me get it. All right, so we've now covered three of my four takeaways. My fourth is when we talk about the Negro Leagues, what we're really talking about are the Negro major leagues that existed from 1920 to 1948. In fact, as of December 2020, Major League Baseball has now officially recognized seven of the Negro Leagues as Major League. And their statistics are now a part of the official record of Major League Baseball. Now, the first of these major Negro Leagues was organized by a fellow by the name of Rube Foster. In 1920, Rube Foster was the owner of the Chicago American Giants, one of those great barnstorming teams. He finally came up with the plan to pull together some of these teams in a league format and was fairly successful with what he called the Negro National League, which was based mostly in the Midwest, actually exclusively in the Midwest, and it lasted until 1931. Its dominant teams were, of course, his own, the Chicago American Giants, but they also had the Kansas City Monarchs and the St. Louis Stars, which had many great ballplayers during this era. Cool Papa Bell. Butco Neal. He came a little bit later. Did he? But Bullitt Rogan played for Kansas City in that era. So these were top-notch teams. So around that same period in 1923, because these teams were all located in the Midwest, the same thing happened in the East. In 1923, the Eastern Color League sprang up and it lasted until 1928. Its dominant teams were the Hilldale Club, which was based just outside of Philadelphia, the Harrisburg Grays, which had the great ballplayer, Oscar Charleston, and the Atlantic Sea Back-Rack Giants, who had the great shortstop Pop Lloyd for a while, and then later Dick Lundy, another great shortstop. And throughout the 1920s, this period of the first Negro National League and the Eastern Color League, most, well, I don't know about most, but a lot of the Negro League ballplayers would spend their winners playing professionally down in Cuba. That was a very common thing. And Puerto Rico? No, just pretty much Cuba at this point. Now, there were some players from Puerto Rico and the Dominican who came and played in that same league in Cuba. But there was only four teams in that league. They were all kind of right outside of Havana, but they had a very successful, it lasted for decades, that Cuban Winter League. So we've got a league in the West, or really the Midwest now, but considered the West back then, and a team, a league in the East, so it was natural for them to come together and hold a Negro World Series, which they did in the 1920s. And when you look at the Negro League World Series, it was a little different than the World Series in white baseball. In white baseball, for the most part, it's been a best of seven series where the teams play half the games in the American League Park and half the games in the National League Park, and whoever gets the seventh game, I mean, that depends on... Can't divide seven and a half. Right. But anyway, the Negro League World Series was a little different. They would play wherever the money was. So it doesn't matter who the best team was from the Negro National League or who the best team was in the Eastern Colorado League, they would play at Baltimore, and they would play in Pittsburgh, and they would play in Chicago, and they'd play down in St. Louis, and they'd just move around wherever they could get the game. Yeah, yeah. Great. Well, I also, you have to understand, these teams do it all in their own parks. Only one team, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, in the 1930s, owned their own park. So they played where they could play. And most of the time, these teams played in the white Major League parks when the white team was away. So... Did they play in the South? Birmingham, and Atlanta, the Atlanta Black Crackers. Black Crackers. In Birmingham, Black Barons were in one or two of these major leagues. Yeah. But generally, they avoided this one. They avoided this one. Okay. So it's also worth mentioning that the owners of many of the teams were, they got their money from the numbers racket, which was essentially an illegal lottery. That's where these magnates who had enough money to own the teams made their money, kind of illegal, well, was illegal. And so, there was always this kind of interesting relationship between baseball players and organized crime, and entertainers, like the great jazz musicians. They all hung out in the same bars. They all went to the same nightclubs. And there's a kind of this romantic image of all these groups coming together. And we'll get to, so what ended up causing these leagues, these first attempts to form organized leagues, to disband? Lack of competition. There was a lot of jumping back and forth. And of course, whenever a team had money, they would get all the stars, and they'd run away with the league, and nobody else had a chance. And then people would stop going to the games because it was just a route. And it's too bad they didn't have a salary cap or something, although I'm sure they would have found ways to work around that. But that's really one of the things about professional sports, or sports in general, that if you don't have good competition, nobody wants to go see it. You gotta have some semblance of parity, or at least hope for the other teams. And towards the end of the 1920s, St. Louis Stars were 40 games ahead by July, and some of the teams would just end up saying, oh, the heck were they were gonna pack it in, or there was a lot of, the Negro leagues were kind of loosey-goosey. Players would jump from team to team, they didn't worry about contracts. Teams would disband, and then they'd form in another city, and there was not as much stability as in the white major leagues. There's irony in the fact that the best team in the American League East is played in St. Petersburg in a terrible ballpark, and they don't draw. They only draw Yankee fans and Red Sox fans. It's because you're not allowed out of your house unless your age matches the temperature. I just made that up. Okay, so the... But it's interesting because they were talking about moving that team up back to Montreal. 50% of the games, yeah, but... But it would be the same deal. Oh, it'd be tough. How does your wife, your down there, your kids are in school? Well, actually it would be if they gave you a camp on a lake for your ballplayer and brought him to Montreal and stayed in St. Severe, or St. Anne, you know, and then you came down together to the ballpark. We can work this out. That's a great idea. And think, who wants to be in St. Petersburg when it rains at four o'clock? Batting practice is a... I mean, it doesn't happen. It rains at four o'clock every afternoon down there, and they have to cover their stadium. I bet you the teams in Florida do not draw. Well, that's for darn sure. That's documented at this point. Yeah, but Miami is both terrible. The only stadium worse than that was Olympics. Well, Olympic. It was built for the Olympics. You know, it wasn't covered. And who was the guy that hit the home run that went out of the ballpark? And the Kingman. And then they had to put the lines up there. And when you look up, you got Vertigo because it was an ellipse. And I like pitching there because the shadow would come down and you could actually throw the ball out of the shadow being a left-hander because the hyperbola that came down that way. And I like Montreal, but... It's a great city. Great city, and they took it away. Why did they take it away? Baseball? Why did they take baseball away from Montreal? I don't know. Yeah, so, you know, this is kind of, we haven't gotten to this point. Did they have to return home? No, I know why they took it away. I think Charles Brofman's... His... What was his... What was his name? He was the second in command. And Charles gave it up because Gary Carter, on a contract dispute, bit the hand of Brofman. And Brofman severed all ties and gave it to his second in command. And his second in command took all the extra money after they got rid of Carter to the Mets. And he didn't reinvest it in the baseball program. And that's why the league took it away from him. So, getting back to Negro League history and kind of jumping ahead in chronology, I think it's worth mentioning at this point that Montreal played a very prominent role in the history of blacks integrating major league baseball. It wasn't coincidence that when the Brooklyn Dodgers first signed Jackie Robinson in 1946, they sent him to play for the Montreal Royals, where they knew he would be better treated by the Canadian fans up there. The Montreal Royals were part of the Brooklyn Dodgers? They were the highest quality. Tommy Lasorda was the number one left-hander there. And they did bring him up. They brought Colfax up, and then Lasorda became just scruttled, but he became a great manager. So that's when... Okay, I'm sorry, Tom. No, that's the history. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that since we were talking about Montreal. But getting back to the Negro, the first organized Negro leagues in the 1920s. So I mentioned that they'd gone out of business. One of the Eastern one in 1928, the Western one in 31. But in 1933, the Negro National League comes back again into existence. Historians call it the Negro National League II, but nobody called it that at the time. And it ended up lasting until 1948. It was dominated, at first by a team called the Pittsburgh Crawfords, which Carl referred to, and later by the legendary Homestead Grays, who were also based just outside of Pittsburgh. Although later in their history, they started playing games down in Washington, D.C. as well. They had kind of had two home teams, or two home parks, one in Pittsburgh and one down in D.C. And then in 1937, the Negro American League comes into existence. That was the league that had a couple of teams that Carl mentioned. Oh, the Memphis Red Sox, the Birmingham Black Matters, the Atlanta Black Crackers. And that league also lasted until 1948. And its dominant team was the Kansas City Monarchs, who of course, by that point, had the great Satchel Page. Now, Satchel Page, you can't talk about the history of the Negro Leagues without talking about Satchel Page. He pitched for just about every team in the Negro Leagues. He just bounced around wherever the money was. And he'd pitch a day game in Kansas City, and he'd drive to Chicago and pitch a night game in his Buick. And he was caught by an officer outside of Kamisky going, Satchel, this is a one-way street. He goes, officer, I'm only going one way. Yeah. All right, so in the 1930s, which is really kind of like the heyday of the Negro Leagues, you've got the Negro American League, you've got the Negro National League, and the Major League Baseball has now started the institution of the All-Star Game. And so the Negro Leagues followed suit. They started holding an annual All-Star Game, and actually sometimes a series of games in Chicago, and the Negro League All-Star Game became kind of like the place to be seen for the who's who of Black America. All the great Black movie stars and musicians and entertainers, and they all would come to Chicago for these baseball games, and boy, wouldn't it be fun to go back in history and see what that was like. So the Negro League All-Star Game became a very prominent event in the 1930s. Then in 1940, the richest man in Mexico, a guy by the name of Jorge Pascual, who was also dating Mexico's biggest movie star, a woman by the name of Maria Felix, funded an integrated Mexican League in an attempt to compete with Major League Baseball. He was getting all of the best Black baseball players from the Negro Leagues and lowering them down to Mexico with big contracts for big money. He'd supply them with nice apartments. It was a great deal. And on top of everything else, Mexico had a much better attitude towards Black athletes than the United States did, and actually probably similar to Montreal in Canada. He went out and got white ball players too. Yeah, he did. It was an integrated league. He wouldn't have gotten Max Lanier from the St. Louis Cardinals. Right. Sal Magli. Sal Magli, and all of them got banned when they came back and they wouldn't play. So they went to Canada and played in the summer up in Canada and made their money in the H&D League in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Dick Gernet, whole bunch of guys, a lot of Red Sox players. They all came back though. Yeah, they all came back. Well, they... Eventually, Major League Baseball allowed them to come back and so they did. But the Mexican League, again, it must have been incredible to see all these fantastic Black players playing down there. They had Satchel Page, Josh Gibson, Willie Wells, Roy Campanella, Monte Irvin, everyone was down there. And Pasquale always stocked his hometown team, the Veracruz Blues, with the best of them. So they won the pennant almost every year because he pretty much dictated where the players went. And if they were losing, he'd move them onto his own team, wow. Yeah, so I had mentioned that the Negro Nationally and the Negro American League eventually folded in 1948. Of course, what caused their demise was the integration of White Major League Baseball. After Jackie Robinson came a number of other, the best of the Negro Leagues, left the Negro Leagues to play in White Organized Baseball where they could make more money. Yeah, minimum no show. Yeah, so that ended up pretty much being the death of the Negro Leagues. However, a few of these Negro League teams continued to exist and they returned back to kind of what goes around, comes around. They go back to barnstorming. Just like back at the 19th century and the early 20th century, some of the teams continued to exist like the Indianapolis Clowns which is the team that Hank Aaron played for briefly. They continued to barnstorm around the country and they would, they're called the Indianapolis Clowns because they would put on kind of a comedy routine. It was like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball. The bingo long movie is about that period. Yeah, yeah, that's right. It is about that period. What is it? The bingo long, yeah. The irony is I had a barnstorming team because I was black bald. I was black bald by Major League Baseball. Oh, I have, let me count the ways. Let me, but the thing is I found out that I was the last barnstormer in New England after Bernie Tebbets who was born right down here by Handys Grill. Go figure. See, it is written. I got a letter once from Bernie Tebbets saying I was born and raised in Winnowsky and my wife is a secretary of the same life as me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Born on King Street. Yeah, he was actually born on King Street. There you go. Yeah. But he didn't want to be a associate. So he chose to be a senior. He was a great guy. He took his old team and they had a bunch of black guys on the bus and they stopped at this place. They wouldn't let him eat. You know that story. Where's my uncle? Huh? Where'd he come from? I didn't know that. It was Dave Harvick, I would say. I know that story. He was with Frank Robinson. Yeah. They were traveling on a bus. Yeah. Across to their next game. They stopped at a local die on the side of the road to get to team dinner. Yeah. And they walked in and of course, you know, the black part was on the bus with Bernie and Frank and the owner of the restaurants that you're allowed in. But the black part there. What restaurant was that? Some die on the side of the road but they were traveling. In the south, yeah. They were traveling somewhere and Bernie said they're not allowed in. And he said, okay, no problem. He said, I'll still take, you know, 380 hand per square meter of the order was, right? So they prepared the whole meal and called Bernie back in and they told him to come pick it up. And Bernie said, we're all set. We're leaving. Just took right off. That's the right story. I believe he took off before them sandwiches were done. Yes. It was truly brilliant. I would have been outside of Clayton County. I would have been on the other side of the line. I wonder if anybody from our Zoom audience has any questions? Yeah, well, it's exactly seven o'clock. So that's the end of my comments. So let's just kind of open it up to general discussion. I'd like to make just a couple of quick ones. Cuba is especially interesting. Cuba's baseball history goes back almost as far as ours. And it's almost as glorious. The point is that from 19 early aughts to the 50s, Cuba had the most prominent winter league. And major league, white major league baseball players were not making so much money that they didn't have to have a job in the winter. And if they could go down to Cuba and play baseball in baseball, yes. But we have to understand the color line had many holes in it. And in Cuba, white guys and black guys played against each other and even played on the same teams. And the Cubans had such a wealth of talent that they came up and played in the United States during the summer. Now, about 40 white Cubans, and there are white Cubans descended from Spanish people. Jose Canseco, for example, is Cuba's. Castellano, the lighter your skin, the more Castilian you are. Yes, and so any number of Rafael Palmero would be qualified to play as a white guy. And over 200 black Cubans played in the Negro Leagues. And Bill has alluded to Louis Tien's dad played for the New York Cubans. So Cuba is a fascinating history of race, of race. The other thing I mentioned is it's interesting that this east-west game, if I could travel in time and do one thing, I'd go to an east-west game. They were always played in Chicago. They were always played in Comiskey Park. And in the 40s and late thirties, they had over 40,000, 40,000 to 50,000 fans there. So that was the all-star game? The all-star game was in August. And they'd put on trains from all over the country. It was a week-long party. And these players in the game were really something. And the Negro Leagues hadn't been started. It certainly must have jumped-started the timeline for the integration of the blocks to be applied to the baseball, right? I mean, it had to put pressure, right? But the biggest issue integrating the game was World War II. The logic of having people go fight against the South Pacific and against people of color and not allowing the color barrier was coming down. You're going to tell me a major league team two years after Jackie Robinson wasn't going to try to pick up Willie Mays. So it was coming down. Ricky got there first and had all credit to Ricky and Robinson. And he reaped the benefits of it. And Roy Campanella, he played in the Negro Leagues at 15 for Baltimore. He was only 24 when the Dodgers signed him. They were coming. They were coming. And there was no doubt about it. Quick other things is, in the 1920s, Chicago was the center of black baseball. In the 1930s, Pittsburgh was the center of black baseball. These two great teams that Tom wrote about. And in the 1940s, Kansas City was the center of black baseball. The Negro Leagues Museum is in Kansas City. So that decade of the 30s was the damn depression. So you want to know why these teams went out of business is they were never well-financed. And the heyday of the Negro Leagues was during the Depression. So you can just imagine what the lifestyle was. Quick other thing is, Jackie Robinson takes all the air out of the room. Everybody thinks they understand baseball's integration because they know Jackie Robinson played in Montreal. They know that baseball's integration is fascinating. It lasts all throughout the 50s as well as these teams brought them on one team at a time or one player at a time. Kurt Flood. Kurt Flood. And imagine being a minor league player in the 1950s in the Salah League, the South Atlantic League. They used to pick, yeah, they used to pick Kurt Flood's uniform out of the pile with a stick and wash it separately because they didn't want to wash it with the white ball players. So Jackie Robinson's in Montreal in 1946 because Ricky thinks he needs a year of beating. He led the league in hitting and everything else. But he also got acclimated to playing in white baseball. So it's hard to know that. Bill Beck brought his players on the next day because they were qualified. But there were two other fronts of the integration of baseball by the Dodgers. And the one that fascinates me is Nashua, New Hampshire. Because when Jackie's in Montreal, Campy and Don Newcomb are in Nashua. And Newcomb was there another year. It was 19 and four. He was ready, too. And then there was a third front that I'm going to be interested in doing next year when I can cross the border, which was in, I grew up in Luton, Maine. And my best friend's parents were from Tree River. Tree River. It was from Tree River. Tree River was the third front of integrated baseball because the two Dodger pitchers that played for Montreal and then were demoted in 1946 played in Tree River. And Tree River and there's a stadium that they played and it's still up there. They had four home runs in that stadium. And a double header. Stoned out of my gourd. OK. Thank you. Thanks. Why don't you get a black ball, Phil? Huh? I crossed the line. It was amazing. For Bill, if you actually played in the 70s, without getting into individual stories or anything, how prevalent was racism in that era when you played and what you witnessed when you saw it. I think it would be fascinating to just get your perspective on what you actually witnessed. The KKK was in Auburn Dale, Florida, which is just outside of Winterhaven, Florida. And they had the Elks Club. And at the Elks Club, they served steak and everything on Saturday nights to the ball players, except George Scott and Tommy Harper. And they both complained to the Red Sox. And they're in the clubhouse and I told them, you know, Tommy and George was there. I said, George, I said, the only way you'll ever be served at the Elks Club is if you're on the menu. You can't say that. I go, oh, yeah, I can. Boom, case dismissed. Here I am. I'm down there in Auburn Dale. And I'm rowing around Bob Ville in a phosphate pit in a John boat. He weighs 260 pounds. He's at the back of the boat. I'm all tipped up in front. I'm rowing him around. And all these crackers are out there bat fishing. I'm going, I used to put it in their face all the time down in the South. But I was player rep. So I had to, you know. You've been in some, it was more of a hunt down. Down in the spring training. Hey, I'm in Montreal. I'm on the back of the plane. And John Milner, the hammer goes, you know, Bill, you're the only white guy allowed on the back of the plane. And I go, John, I'm not white. I'm from California. You just have more melanin in your skin than I do. I wanted to say something about Cuba before we have to close. And that is that Tom Simon was in charge and did a whole program where the Cuban American Friendship Society worked with Tom to bring a little lead team, although that was his official name, right? We had some trouble with that. To Cuba, where our kids from this area of the country played a Cuban team in Cuba. And it was the only second time since 1959 that they played the Star-Spangled Banner. I guess I don't know the stadium. Did you know that? I don't think I knew that. And the first time they played the Star-Spangled Banner because, you know, the relations between Cuba and the United States have been fractured since Fidel Castro took over the leadership of Cuba and the Communist Party in 1959. It was the first time that I think that this exchange of teams had happened since 1959. And Tom Simon was key in bringing that team to Cuba. And I hope you had a good experience. Oh my gosh. They were so great to us. I know, but I have to say one other thing. So that was the second time they played this Star-Spangled Banner. The first time was when Obama went. Which was only a week or two before us. It was only a month before our arrival. Tia was at that game. Louis Tia. Louis Tia was at that game. And. So that's how important Cuba is. But we, when we played there two weeks after the, I think it was the Baltimore Orioles were there. The Cuban Baseball Federation had the same groundskeepers and umpires and announcers come do our youth games that had done the Major League game, the Orioles game like a couple of weeks earlier. It was an amazing experience. Oh my gosh. It was unbelievable. After the game and before the game, they didn't throw too many games. Oh yeah, no, they did not allow us to come even close to winning a single game. I thought they mixed it up at the end. At the end we did. We mixed the teams together. Cause we were supposed to play the Cuban, the Havana province team, you know, like the Provincial All-Star team of all these clubs that have been beating us so badly. You know, this is going to be their All-Star team and we were going to play them on the last day and they said, well, let's just like put the two teams together. We'll mix them up and, and that was actually the best, that was the best game that we had. It was really fun. Sandy, they came here afterwards. Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt. Can you all take a question from the chat? Oh, we've got a, we've got a question from the chat room. Can you? I can read it to you. Okay. So I would like to know why there are so few African-Americans playing in the major leagues today. Ooh. Well, they play a basket ball. I can tell you why. Michael Jordan. One, two words. One word, Michael Jordan. Why? Cause they, they, they get more money in the inner city. They all play basketball. Baseball is a game of failure. It's a game where if you get three hits in 10 at bats, you failed seven times and you got the chance to go to the Hall of Fame. Kids can't handle failure. That's why Little League is so well. More people play Little League than any other sport on the world. Yet they don't make the transition at 13 years of age because it's a difficult game and it's a game of tolerating failure. In basketball, you know, you shoot 50% and everything else and they all high five you now and everything and baseball is difficult. I think also, I think. What about football also? The reasons I think are cultural. They're not racial. The game has more people, more players of color than it ever has. Now black has become a word that's capitalized and it's an ethnicity now. It's African-American. So there are only seven, between seven and eight percent African-Americans in the major league. But the game is more diverse by color than it's ever been. So it's cultural. And basketball and football are called scholarships and there are a dozen other reasons. It's economic. Economic, too. I think David Ortiz wouldn't be considered 90 or 70 percent of the time. Red Sox have no black players. None now? No, but they got six or seven who couldn't have played in the major leagues when it was segregated. They got six or seven players of dark skin players. But no African-Americans and that's true throughout the game. It's complicated. It's just that Latin-Americans play in baseball, right? A lot of Latin players play. Not a lot of Latin, well, who knows? That's the only way to get out of the Dominican Republic. They have the schools down there. They make their gloves out of paper mache. They don't even have leather. Tony, what's the guy for? Tony Fernandez. They called him El Cabeza because he had a big head but his first glove was all made out of paper mache. Milk cartons. Exactly, milk cartons and stuff that he would blend together. It's economics. Every problem you can look at. I don't look at it in terms of race. I don't look at it in terms of anything else. It all goes back to Eugene Debs. The fact that he was in jail and he ran for president and he was a pacifist and... And a socialist. And a... Well, exactly. In the fact that we took a guy who was a racist president named Wilson and we went to Europe and if we don't go to Europe and fight World War I, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. All right, so any other questions from our... That's a good point. I'll grab something. Hey, Lord. Let me grow a piece of this track. How did we get? Because it's economics, stupid. It's all about money. Any other questions in the chat? It doesn't look like it. I think we've scared him away. All right, so I think we've also run out of time if anybody has any. I wanted to commend, though, this whole team of baseball historians and I really wanna emphasize what great work Tom Simon has always done in terms of writing books about baseball. And also getting that scene to Cuba. I can't tell you how moving it was for anybody who loves Cuba. It was really great. So, thank you. One of the highlights of my life. Thank you, Bill Lee, for being here. Workers of the world, unite. All right. Thanks, thanks, everyone, at home.