I’m going to assume those who visit this blog on a semi-regular basis don’t require an extended introduction about Josh Gibson. Real quick: He was a catcher, played in the Negro Leagues, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame during the Nixon administration. He was the so-called “Black Babe Ruth,” in large part [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Negro League Baseball’
August 2, 2009
Meet Joe Black
I wanted to say something clever about the Brad Pitt movie, where he plays a cold, monosyllabic prince of darkness, kills Anthony Hopkins, marries Angelina Jolie, and starts adopting bus loads of poor kids from third world countries, but I haven’t seen the flick in a few years…
When I think of “Joe Black,” it’s not Pitt’s [...]
July 27, 2009
Strat-O-Matic Set Coming Soon…
Some of you know I’ve spent the past couple years helping the Strat-O-Matic Game Company research the Negro Leagues for a computer game and card set. Finally, after a long wait (and a lot of work), the product is getting very, very close to being released. For those Strat fans wanting more information, last Fall I [...]
March 9, 2009
Gilkerson’s Union Giants
Robert Gilkerson’s Union Giants were one of the best “minor league” black teams during the era of segregated baseball. Based out of Spring Valley, IL, a small coal-mining town 100 miles southwest of Chicago, the Union Giants played over 100 games per season, traveling through the Midwest and Canada each summer.
They were similar to the [...]
March 6, 2009
A Good Movie Could be Made About…
the infamous Dave “Lefty” Brown.
Gary Ashwill has uncovered some very interesting information about the Negro League pitcher, posted over at agatetype. For the uninitiated, Brown was an outstanding left-hander in the early 1920s. Hall of Famer Rube Foster had supposedly posted bail for the troubled young man and gave him an opportunity in professional baseball.
After [...]
March 2, 2009
Good Wood?
February gristle…or, John Holmes: Eat your heart out.
According to Louisville’s local Fox-TV affiliate (Fox 41), Hall of Famer George “Mule” Suttles, veteran of the now-defunct Negro Leagues, had a 37-inch pole. Okay, not that pole. Talking about the big lumber one waggles back and forth across the plate, in an effort to redirect 90-mile-an-hour fastballs and [...]
February 22, 2009
The Research Manifesto
Gary Ashwill has posted a nice little essay regarding the mission of today’s Negro League researcher. Here’s a small excerpt:
“This pretty much presents, in a nutshell, the conventional wisdom that all our research is dedicated to overthrowing—the notion that the Negro Leagues exist in some hazy netherworld of unverifiable myth, tall tales, gut feelings, subjective judgments. There [...]
February 22, 2009
What Did Greenlee Field Look Like?
Does anybody know what Greenlee Field looked like?
I’ve been trying to figure that out for awhile now.
Greenlee Field was the ballpark financed by Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee. It was used by both the Craws and Homestead Grays for many home games during the mid-1930s, but there are very few photographs of the venue in [...]
February 19, 2009
Bushwicks Bottle Barrage
In the comments section of a previous post, the issue of officiating in games where Negro League teams were pitted against semi-pros arose. I mentioned coming across a number of stories about Rube Foster threatening to pull his team off the field because of what he believed was biased umpiring. Here’s a clip from the New York Times, 1940, [...]
February 18, 2009
Oh, no: More Stats!
Digging a little bit deeper into the strength of the semi-pro numbers: One reader wanted to know if there was any correlation between the quality of the Negro League team and their particular success against the semi-pro teams. In other words, did a great team such as the Homestead Grays fare better than, say, a [...]
