To say that basketball “must still acknowledge baseball’s contribution to their diversity” is not even in the ballpark. If anything it’s the other way around.
Major League Baseball is doing something very innovative and special at their annual First Year Player Draft on June 5. This is from an article that appeared on MLB.com yesterday:
At the First-Year Player Draft on June 5 in Orlando, Fla., each team will make a special selection of one of those former players whose professional careers began and ended in the Negro Leagues.
The Draft will be a symbolic link between baseball’s past and its present — a present that speaks to a sport with a global perspective that might be second to none. And even if other pro sports might boast a more diverse workforce today, they must still acknowledge baseball’s contribution to their diversity.
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This is M.L.B. doing something big to make history now! It’s got to be one of the most innovative promotions ever done with a history-related brand. How cool would it be if the National Basketball Association did something similar at their annual draft?
But to say that basketball “must still acknowledge baseball’s contribution to their diversity” is not even in the ballpark.
If anything it’s the other way around.
MLB.com’s article claims baseball was the leader in racial integration, and that acceptance of black players on the diamond led to their acceptance in other sports.
But the summer of ’47 ushered in a change that would soon sweep away nearly a half-century of segregation in professional sports.
According to Negro Leagues Baseball Museum marketing director Bob Kendrick, Major League Baseball was at the epicenter of that socio-political revolution. Baseball, thanks to Jackie Robinson, laid the groundwork for the progress that led to professional sports emerging as a force for equal rights in America.
“I don’t think you can help but feel that if the Robinson experiment failed, it would have pushed the notion of integrating sports — but also integrating other aspects of business life in our society — probably back,” Kendrick said. “That’s why this thing is so relevant, because failure was not an option.”
I have high respect for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and Bob Kendrick, for what they’ve done and continue to do. I visited there with my kids last April on the occasion of the Jackie Robinson anniversary.
But these statements just aren’t true. At least not for basketball.
Robinson himself played for a racially integrated professional basketball team prior to his first at-bat with the Brooklyn Dodgers
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MLB.com quotes historian Adrian Burgos, who may be an authority on baseball but apparently isn’t clear about what was going on in basketball at the time:
“If integration of baseball had failed, it would not have put pressure on any other sport to pursue it,” said Adrian Burgos, a history professor at the University of Illinois and an authority on baseball. “It relaxed society’s resistance to integration as a cause, because people would have had to reflect, ‘Why didn’t it succeed in Brooklyn?’”
Just not true.
Basketball was driven by a completely different dynamic. That’s why 12 black players integrated the National Basketball League in 1942. Other professional basketball teams like the Toledo White Huts, the Sheboygan Art Imigs, and the Syracuse Reds were racially integrated even earlier.
Their names may be obscure today, but these were top level teams. The White Huts, for example, beat the Sheboygan Redskins and the Chicago Bruins in the 1941 World Pro Basketball Tournament, finishing 4th overall in a field of 16. The Redskins eventually joined the N.B.A. So, it’s not like the N.B.A. or the basketball world didn’t know about racial integration.
The racially inclusive annual invitation-only World Professional Basketball Tournament began in 1939. The inaugural event featured the 12 best pro basketball teams in American, including 2 all-black teams — the New York Rens and Harlem Globetrotters — and teams from the major pro basketball leagues. Black teams won the 1939, 1940, and 1943 tournaments.
Since when did baseball invite Negro League teams to participate in a professional series that included the best teams in the Major Leagues? Well, never. In baseball, black teams weren’t even allowed to play white teams from the majors unless it was done outside of the country and even then it was under risk of banishment.
["They Cleared The Lane" author Ron] Thomas pointed out that baseball, despite its trend-setting in the ’40s, had played the lead role in first putting up barriers to integration when it banned ballplayers of color in the 1890s. For periods throughout U.S. history, sports and entertainment had proved the two races could mix, Thomas said.
True.
Thomas, who’s written extensively about race and professional basketball, argued that had Robinson not succeeded, the National Basketball Association would not have explored signing Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, Chuck Cooper and Earl Lloyd in 1950.
The NBA, which integrated before the National Football League did, watched closely what kind of reception black and Latino players like Robinson, Doby, Willard Brown, Don Newcombe, Satchel Paige and Minnie Minoso got from white fans and white teammates, Thomas said.
White fans slowly warmed to them, and other ballplayers of color began a steady stream of talent into the Majors.
None of these players proved more influential than Robinson in disproving the notion that whites wouldn’t root for a black ballplayer.
I admire and appreciate Ron Thomas as a friend and fellow basketball historian, but I disagree. Or, at least, some explanation and clarification by him and by MLB.com is required.
By the time Jackie Robinson graduated from U.C.L.A., it was already long since established and commonly known that all-black teams like the New York Rens routinely sold out arenas, field houses, armories, and gymnasiums in even the most rural white communities. This wasn’t the case in baseball.
And what would that failure in baseball have done for society as a whole?
According to Burgos, it would have delayed integration across the spectrum.
I’m just not so sure. This sounds hopeful and revisionist. Even naive.
No one doubts the important role that Jackie Robinson played in moving forward the pace of racial integration in American society. But I don’t agree that baseball can take such vast credit for something that was already happening and inevitable.
As is the case today, it was all about the money back then. The economic pressure was too great. The reason that the N.B.L., the B.A.A. (Basketball Association of America) and eventually the N.B.A. delayed introducing black players wasn’t because they were waiting to see how baseball’s “experiment” would go. It was because they feared losing their alliance with Harlem Globetrotters owner Abe Saperstein. Those financially vulnerable leagues scheduled doubleheaders with the Trotters because whenever they did their attendance would skyrocket.
Saperstein threatened to shut down these doubleheaders if any league ever signed African American players. They needed Saperstein in order to stay solvent. The rest was history. Until 1950 when New York Knicks owner Ned Irish threatened to pull out of the N.B.A. if the other owners couldn’t get over their fear of Saperstein and allow the Knicks to sign black basketball star Nat Clifton.
Here’s a brief clip about that back story, from an MSG Network film that aired earlier this year (for much more detail, please see Ron Thomas’ book):
I appreciate the nostalgia, the ingenious marketing to bring back important history and players, and the shout out to Jackie Robinson. Robinson did have a tremendous impact on society and in baseball.
But Major League Baseball is going too far by claiming that its courageous actions influenced basketball and the N.B.A. This is more than a stretch. It’s historical revision and self-aggrandizing at a time when M.L.B. ought to just focus on baseball and getting it’s own act together.
Jack Mann (center) played with the Sheboygan
Jackie Robinson, whose pro basketball debut on an integrated team
Hockey beat basketball by 20 years.
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You have a point but I believe MLB is making their claims based upon baseball’s popularity >>>>>> basketball’s popularity, thus, they provided the overall momentum necessary for the overall sports integration to occur across the land. I still don’t agree with MLB, but that’s probably what they were going for there. If MLB included “except basketball” everywhere it would have defeated the pomp and circumstance of it all.
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Very important corrections Claude. Maybe this will push Commish Stern and Zelda Spoelstra to acknowledge NBL integration and leagues prior.
Dag- Jackie had crazy hops!
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Nova Scotia, can you elaborate for everyone’s education?
jack, thanks for that and you’re probably right in terms of how they “meant it” but it came out as being, as you say, “pomp” …
… and Bijan, yes, well, remember that he held the United States broad jump record for a while. He was just a sick athlete and as I’ve said before, in my opinion Jackie was far better at basketball than at baseball. It’s just that he knew he would have a far bigger social impact if he chose baseball.
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USC football lead the charge.
First all American.
Brice Taylor 1925 He had one hand and was black.
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Claude
Yes and no. :)
I will forward this to Adrian. Did you send it to him already? I assume Michael Everett has gotten it?
Lets talk. We will be honoring the Globetrotters at this year’s Pop Lloyd programming. Trying to get Bob Gibson to join us, with local AC Gene Hudgins and Red Klotz featured.
Best
Larry
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Claude: Thanks for the post and the respect you showed the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. While there may have been other episodes of integration in other team sports, none of them compare with the tidal wave of change triggered by Robinson’s breaking of the color barrier. I do believe that is point that writer Justice Hill and those of us who were interviewed for the piece.
Negro League or Black baseball teams competed against intact Major League teams going back to the 1800s and the record books indicate that Black teams won nearly 75% of those games. They were winning so frequently that Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis banned intact Major League teams from playing Negro League teams because he was embarrassed by the Major Leaguers losing to Black teams. Legendary Negro League pitcher Smokey Joe Williams dominated white Major League teams and All-Star teams compiling a 20-7 record in those games. Among his victims were Grover Alexander, Walter Johnson, Chief Bender, Rube Marquard, and Waite Hoyt, all Hall of Famers. Three different times, he faced the eventual National League champions. He won two of those games and lost the third, 1-0 to the 1917 New York Giants despite throwing a no-hitter.
While I’m a huge baseketball fan, there’s simply no comparsion when it comes to the impact that baseball had in sparking social change. Robinson’s breaking of the color barrier changed the game and America too.
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Hey Bob,
Thanks and it’s an honor to have your comment.
There’s no doubt that there’s “simply no comparison.” But that wasn’t really my point. I wasn’t looking to diminish the impact of Jackie, nor to have basketball somehow elbow in on the credit for big social changes that happened after he broke the color barrier in the Major Leagues.
I was just getting the facts straight, especially about the impact that Jackie as a major leaguer had, or didn’t necessarily have, on basketball. As you know, once something is in print, people tend to take it as historical fact.
From the basketball perspective, I believe that the way this piece was written was too sweeping and absolute. Maybe if it had used more open ended language here and there, rather than definitives, then it could have been less historically questionable.
Beyond that, I think it’s great to have an open discussion about any aspect of African American history that brings more information and perspectives and nuances to light.
Shifting gears, I think it’s worth repeating that this marketing promotion you’ve created is a historic breakthrough in and of itself. I give M.L.B. big time credit too. Someone over there gets what’s going on. And obviously you do too. It may be seen by some as “only” symbolic, and it is, but symbols stand for things, so if M.L.B. had opted not to do this, that would have been symbolic too.
Congratulations because I know it wasn’t easy to pull this off! I’m eager to follow how the Draft goes tomorrow and I can’t wait to see the results.
Meanwhile, I look forward to being in touch with you.
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Claude:Your piece, provoked by Justice Hill’s article, has indeed opened an interesting conversation about integration in sports. I must differ with you on the presentation of your facts in a manner that suggest the points I and Bob were wrong in our assessments of the impact of baseball integration in US society. While indeed there were a number of Black players in professional basketball during WWII years, the sport did not capture the main focus of the national press or of the cultural imagination of Americans. Indeed, I would contend that MLB drew much more inspiration from the success of the Mexican (summer) League as a racially integrated league with African American, Latinos of all hues, and eventually white Americans from 1938 through the end of WWII than it did from the inclusion of Black players in the professional basketball leagues.
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Another point: to say that racial integration was “already happening [in basketball] and inevitable” does minimize the struggle and outright hatred hoisted onto Jackie Robinson and the entire generation of integration pioneers in baseball. As I point out in my class lectures and in my book talks, the success of Robinson with the Dodgers gave hope to others, but they still had to bear the burden of being the first on their team and in their respective towns. Similarly, just because integration succeeded in one place did not guarantee immediate success and a lack of resistance in other. Integration was a process composed of a series of localized struggles and with a wide set of actors.
That was my point in talking in what I shared with Justice. It is not “hopeful and revisionist” or “even naive.” My claim is rooted in a historical understanding of baseball’s place as the US national pastime at that time and in understanding that the racial integration of baseball had become the focus of the campaigns for civil rights and social justice by the African American press, Civil Rights organizations, labor unions, the Communists Party, and others. If they had witnessed a failure in this publicly declared project of integration and in a “liberal” setting such as Brooklyn, questions would have been raised–as there were when the experiment ‘failed” (for a variety of factors) with the St. Louis Browns in 1947.
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Adrian, thank you and it’s an honor as well to have your comments.
Again, I’m not attempting to minimize the impact of Jackie’s breakthrough on society in America. I’m also not saying that basketball captured more of a focus or imagination than baseball. I get that. There’s no comparison, as Bob pointed out earlier. I just differ on the suggestion that the success of integration in baseball had a sweeping affect on basketball. It didn’t. Therefore, it’s not entirely true that it “led to other sports’ acceptance.”
I don’t at all believe that making this point in any way minimizes the struggle for baseball’s integration or the racial hatred endured by Jackie Robinson. That breakthrough changed America.
But those pioneers, including Branch Rickey, while harboring some doubts, knew and were confident they’d succeed in Brooklyn precisely because of some of the progress (especially financial) they’d seen happen in basketball, although of course on a much smaller scale. Black people already knew integration in baseball would succeed; that was the argument all along. White folks did too … that was exactly what they were so worried about. It’s just that Rickey was the one courageous enough (a.k.a. business-focused enough) to make the obvious happen despite the fears of some, but not all, Americans. In a strict business equation, this move meant weighing the inevitable loss of jobs for some white major leaguers vs. more (much more) revenue for owners, including, obviously, Branch Rickey. The same equation had already long since been tested in basketball.
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Before the NBA’s ballyhooed Russell/Chamberlain rivalry, the nation’s first classic rival Black Centers of attention on integrated ballclubs were Big Jack Mann, pictured in Claude’s blogpiece, & the woefully ignored Big Dave DeJernett, who squared off in the 1930 Indiana state championship Final. Reporters black & white adjudged DeJernett the better player, & his outjumping the taller Mann for the tips helped him become the first Afro-American to lead an integrated club to a major championship, making newspapers from New York to China in the process. To his credit, Mann got the better of Big Dave (fouled out) the following year before 15,000 screaming fans in the state finals en route to his own ring.
DeJernett not only played on famous integrated amateur clubs before the NY Rens capitalized on mixed-game excitement in the MidWest, he shrugged aside offers from Smiling Bob Douglas to form his own integrated professional team in 1935, ahead of Hank Williams who started at Center later for the Buffalo Bisons (today’s Atlanta Hawks) of the MBC (eventually NBL & NBA). Of course Big Dave also starred for the Rens & Chicago Crusaders, on both teams w/ Fats Jenkins & other great Black teammates.
When the writer Burgos labels Brooklyn a “liberal” setting & opines that people would have had to reflect, ‘Why didn’t it succeed in Brooklyn?’” he shows how unaware many Americans are that sports integration DID succeed pre-1947 in America, just not in the small section of America Brooklynites are familiar with. Like history, Geography matters.
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My company does video news stories on great people with awesome attitudes — they don’t get much better than some of the Negro League players who broke barriers in baseball!
You can see a video we did at MLB’s recent symbolic draft of Negro League players, which includes Millito Navarro, Peanut Johnson, Charley Pride and Bill Blair as well as Ken Griffey and Dave Winfield.
I hope you enjoy it!
http://growingbolder.com/media/Sports/Baseball/Righting-a-Wrong-155775.html
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It’s true that long before baseball even settled with the fact that segregating leagues wasn’t going to work, basketball was already in full swing with a lot of teams being half black already. Basketball should do something at their annual draft and not even think twice about it, no sport has been transformed as much by blacks than basketball. But Robinson is a great symbol for desegregation and he does represent baseball. Baseball will always remember players like Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente; forever.
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[...] isn’t this fascinating? How many years before Jackie Robinson was this? Somebody, please do the [...]
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