While taking a tour of the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City today(something I would recommend every fan of baseball do at some point), I saw a display that suggested that many Cubans were being scouted to play in the US Major Leagues. The display stated that many Cubans were of African decent and were by lineage African.
I asked the staff there if they knew of any African American Cubans who played in the Majors before Jackie Robinson, they were polite, but could not answer my question. (To be honest, the only two people I found to ask were the woman selling admission tickets, and the woman working in the gift shop.) I tried to search for the answer myself, and found several Cubans who began their careers in the Negro Leagues, and then played in the Majors, but I don’t really know if that would make them black, and therefore crossing the color barrier.
That also brings up another question, that I didn’t think of at the museum, could any race play in the Negro Leagues?
Nothing against Jackie Robinson, but I was fascinated to find out that other races played in both the Major Leagues and the Negro Leagues.
There were a few Negro major leaguers in the 19th Century: Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday played in 1884. But the color line clamped down almost immediately after.
There were some Cuban players who played between that point and Robinson, but I don’t think any of them were Negro. John McGraw tried several time to break the color line, most notably with Charlie Grant in in 1901, claiming Grant was an Indian. Any Cuban ballplayer who tried to break into the majors would face strong scrutiny.
Any race could play in the Negro Leagues; Jose Acosta, a white Cuban, took part, and eventually made it into the majors.
Note that the “Negro Leagues” were loosely defined and many all-Black teams were primarily barnstorming teams without a real league.
The brothers Walker played in the American Association, which could only be called “major leagues” by a reasonably generous definition. Which is not to put down their accomplishments, but it’s techincally correct to state Jackie Robinson was the first black major leaguer in the sense the term is normally used.
Some ballplayers might have had some black ancestry, but it would have had to be pretty darned thin.
Thanks for the responses. I had no idea that the racial background would be investigated. I saw Grant’s display at the museum, but no mention of the Tokohama handle.
The AA is considered by all baseball historians as a major league; they played on the same level as the National League at the time and even played a “World Series” against the NL champions. Four current NL teams – the Cincinnati Reds, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the LA Dodgers – trace back to the American Association, and three other AA teams joined the NL when the league collapsed.
Up until about 1900 the National League and American Association teams played a good number of games against non-league teams. The color line in baseball didn’t really develop until the American League formed and teams played formal schedules against a set list of competitors.
I apologize if this seems like a hijack, but, in contrast to baseball, the NFL did have black players and even a black head coach (Fritz Pollard) in the 1920s, then kicked them out and maintained all-white rosters until the Forties, when Paul Brown brought in Marion Motley.
The NL and AA did have formal schedules (though the schedules varied slightly in length since they did not require teams to make up rainouts). They occasionally played against barnstorming teams, but those were exhibitions.
There was no AA in the 1890s; the Players League in 1890 crippled the teams with debt and the AA and NL were forced to merge.
The color line got started in 1883, when HOFer Adrian “Cap” Anson refused to play against the Walker brothers. Anson wasn’t solely responsible (though he was one reason why John McGraw had to give up on signing Charlie Grant), but he was a high-profile star who was opinionated and demanding and was probably articulating the feelings of many other ballplayers. In any case, there were no black ballplayers in the major leagues from that point until Jackie Robinson’s debut.
White players often played against Black players in barnstorming tours, where the players would extend the season (and make additional money) with exhibition games in warm weather venues. But that was separate from the color line, which meant that Blacks could not play on a National League or American League team.
Kenny Washington was the first black player to join the NFL on March 21, 1946. Woody Strode (May 7) and Bill Willis (August 7) were also signed before Motley (August 10).
Yes. Though there were certainly racist ballplayers, the color line was enforced from the top down, especially once Kenesaw Mountain Landis was commissioner. Landis was strongly racist and refused to consider any black ballplayers. It was only when he died and was replaced by Happy Chandler* that Branch Rickey could move forward.
*Who once said, “If they (African-Americans) can fight and die on Okinawa, Guadalcanal (and) in the South Pacific, they can play ball in America.”
As the linked entry on Acosta notes, José played for the Long Branch Cubans, who were in the Negro “minors”. The white man credited with breaking the major Negro Leagues’ color line is Eddie Klep, who pitched in three games for the Cleveland Buckeyes in 1946.
Also, there’s speculation that no less a legend than Babe Ruth may have had some black ancestry.
