These rosters for the 1920 Negro National League are from an article on the league’s founding in the February 21, 1920, Chicago Defender:
There are only six teams here, with the Cuban Stars and Dayton Marcos missing. “Baro” (Bernardo Baró) is listed with the Monarchs, so apparently it was not yet decided that Tinti Molina would field a team.
Note that “Walter Muir” (presumably Walter “Dobie” Moore) and “Wilbur Rogan” are already listed with the Kansas City Monarchs, nearly five months before they first appeared in the league (on July 3 in St. Louis). The meeting was in Kansas City, and Rogan is known to have been at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis in January. Dave Wyatt wrote in the July 10, 1920, Defender that Wilkinson had signed Rogan “early last spring.”
There are some oddities about this article, which lacks a byline. For one thing, it states that the league, called here (as it was frequently in its early years) the “Western Circuit” of the “National Baseball League,” was not to begin operation until the following year, 1921. Also, it claims that the newspaper men at the meeting (including the Defender’s Cary B. Lewis) were to “select players for the various teams….No manager had aught to say about players.” An odd situation, if true at all; it would be very surprising if Rube Foster ceded control over his team’s roster to a bunch of reporters. And this assertion certainly conflicts with other accounts of the league’s founding and the assignment of players.
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