negro leaguers in mexico, 1946-48: informally banned by the majors?

Back in November I posted some work at the Hall of Merit on Negro Leaguers who went to Mexico in the mid-to-late 1940s, at the same time that Jorge Pasquel was raiding the white major leagues.

I’ll rehearse it briefly.  With the help of a Mexican League database compiled by Eric Chalek from Pedro Treto Cisneros’s statistical encyclopedia, I found that of 68 Negro Leaguers who played in Mexico from 1945 to 1948, not a single one (to my knowledge) signed with an organized baseball team before Happy Chandler rescinded the ban on the major league jumpers in June 1949.  Even when a large number of Negro Leaguers did not return to Mexico in the summer of 1948, not one of them signed with a major or minor league club.  Instead, many played in Québec’s outlaw Ligue Provinciale, alongside some of the ineligible major league players. 

There are two reasons for this.  Most importantly, the Negro Leaguers who went to Mexico at this point—Ray Dandridge, Leon Day, Ray Brown, Booker McDaniels, etc.—were, with a couple of exceptions, older players.  Younger black players stayed in the United States as the possibility of desegregation bloomed.  But a second reason, I argue, is that black players in Mexico were, in effect, informally blacklisted by the major leagues. 

I don’t have any direct proof of this.  They were not placed on any formal ineligible list, and it may not have been the result of any kind of concerted action—thus the weasel words, “in effect.”  Executives may just have been generally wary of signing these players.  It might have seemed too provocative, against a backdrop of tension over racial integration, to ban whites for playing in Mexico, then turn around and sign black Americans who had played right alongside them in the outlaw league.  Moreover, blacks who went to Mexico might simply have been regarded as too much trouble.  Branch Rickey in particular was quite outspoken in his anger at the Mexican player raids, and it’s easy to imagine he wouldn’t have been well-disposed towards any player, black or white, who was assertive enough to jump his club and league.

And perhaps most importantly, several of the white players who’d been banned, (including Sal Maglie, Max Lanier, Fred Martin, and Danny Gardella) had taken legal action against the majors, challenging the reserve clause.  There was an ongoing effort to persuade these players to drop their cases.  One of the jumpers, Mickey Owen, became organized baseball’s point man in trying to win them over.  And Owen was, by all accounts, one white player in Mexico who had trouble adjusting to the presence of black players, whether American or not.  Most famously, he was involved in a brawl with the black Cuban outfielder Claro Duany on July 25, 1946.  (It is said that in later years Owen regretted his problems with black players.)

As part of the effort to get the lawsuits dropped, Happy Chandler finally rescinded the ban on major league players on June 5, 1949.  That very week Ray Dandridge became the first of the Negro League Mexican Leaguers to sign with an organized baseball club, Minneapolis of the American Association (I don’t have an exact date, but his signing was reported in the Chicago Defender on June 11, 1949).

As I said, generally speaking the Negro Leaguers who went to Mexico during these years were older.  On the other hand, fully twelve of them, when they did join organized baseball, moved directly to the topmost level of the minors, at pretty advanced ages:

Ray Dandridge – 1949 (36 years old; Minneapolis, AA)
Art Pennington – 1949 (26; Portland, PCL)
Booker McDaniels – 1949 (37; Los Angeles, PCL)
Bus Clarkson – 1950 (35; Milwaukee, AA)
Marvin Williams – 1950 (27; Sacramento, PCL)
Leon Day – 1951 (34; Toronto, IL)
Héctor Rodríguez – 1951 (31; Montreal, IL)
Bonnie Serrell – 1951 (29; San Francisco, PCL)
Pedro Formental – 1952 (39; Havana, IL)
Theolic Smith – 1952 (38; San Diego, PCL)
Lonnie Summers – 1952 (36; San Diego, PCL)
Jesse Williams – 1952 (39; Vancouver, PCL)

As a group, I would tend to think that in their primes, these were major-league quality players.  Certainly they would have been collectively better in 1947-48 than they were when actually signed by these AAA clubs.  Only two ever played in the major leagues: Héctor Rodríguez (a Cuban) and Bus Clarkson, both in 1952.

This is still just a hypothesis, really.  I just wanted to give it another airing to see what people think.  Even if it did happen, it was probably only a minor factor in the failure of some players to make the majors.  I do think it could have been important in the cases of Bus Clarkson (who was scouted by the Dodgers in 1946 along with Doby and Irvin, but skipped to Mexico soon after) and Ray Dandridge, who was famously never called up by the Giants.  In fact, Stew Thornley, an expert on the Minneapolis Millers, has noted that “[t]here was speculation that [Dandridge’s] chances were hurt because of his involvement in the Mexican League.”

One man who might have something to say about the whole issue is Art Pennington, one of the younger players who would have been affected by this (possible) informal ban (though he has probably got his mind on other matters at the moment).

UPDATE 3:19 p.m. John Virtue’s recent book, South of the Color Barrier: How Jorge Pasquel and the Mexican League Pushed Baseball Toward Racial Integration, doesn’t mention the possibility of Mexican League involvement actually hurting the careers of specific Negro Leaguers in organized baseball.

UPDATE 7/10/2008 Three additional points/clarifications: 1)  I’m only talking about Negro Leaguers who played in the Mexican League in 1946-48, alongside or against the players who jumped from the majors. (I also extended the study back a year, to 1945.)  2)  The Negro Leagues themselves also slapped five-year bans on players who jumped to Mexico, though this appears to have been unevenly enforced.  At any rate I’m certain it played no role in the decisions of major league teams about signing or not signing these players.  3) Branch Rickey, it should be noted, both deplored the actions of Pasquel and the Mexican League in raiding the majors and refused to compensate Negro League teams for their players.

Comments

[Caleb Hardwick]

Something to note is that Dandridge was reportedly bought by Minneapolis on 6/4/49, the day before Chandler made his amnesty announcement. It's possible that they had gotten whiff of Chandler's decision by then, or were simply anticipating it. Otherwise, this might put a small hole in the blacklist theory?

[Gary Ashwill]

Rod, sorry I missed your comment when you first posted it. Thanks for writing. Lonnie is finally in the Seamheads Negro Leagues Database--we've added his rookie season, 1938.

[Rod Summers]

My cousin Lonnie Summers played in the Negro Leagues for years and fathered a son named Jesus Sommers while playing in the Mexican leagues at the tail end of his career. There is no question that many of the Negro League players would have been great MLB players. I would like to meet Jesus Sommers if he ever reads this because he is the All-Time hits leader in Mexico.

[Larry]

I have a postcard on eBay item # 290450583575 of Irvin and Dandridge dated 1942 in Mexico City. From Monte Irvin's personall collection. I posted it 7/2/10, take a look. Thanks Larry tampabay-cards

[Cesar Gonzalez Gómez]

To my belief, there was a blacklist.
In the winter 1946-47 there was a fracture in the Cuban League. Two leagues were formed, the Liga de la Federación with the "clean" players, mostly Major Leaguers or aspiring Major Leaguers (american and cuban blacks, and white cubans) who didnt want any relationship with Pasquel and Mexico, and the other one, the Liga Cubana, with the more than 45 Cuban players that played in Mexico, the majority of Negro Leaguers, and all the Major League jumpers.
This was because of the blacklist. There was a common belief that if you played in Mexico or against "contaminated" players, you were not eligible for Organized Baseball.
There were other examples of black talented players, young enough to play in the Majore Leagues who evaded Mexico to keep themselves clean. Silvio Garcia, was a super star in Mexico for 6 seasons, but in 1946 he didnt return, he preferred to stay in the Negro Leagues and in Cuba he played for the "clean" leagues. Claro Duany, black Cuban, won 2 batting titles in the Mexican League in 45 and 46, then dissappeared from Mexico to play in the Negro Leagues and Canada. In Cuba he played for the "clean" leagues in those years. He wouldn't return to Mexico until 1950.
The blacklist became an effective way to asphyxiate Jorge Pasquel. The Cuban League signed an agreement with Organized Baseball in 1947 and banned all the players, Cuban or American, who were playing in Mexico, while the young Negro Leaguers whose normal course of action was to come to Mexico in earlier years, where then staying in the Negro Leagues with a Major League aspiration. Examples like Larry Doby, Sam Jethroe, Don Newcombe or Hank Thompson.
I don't know if there was an official blacklist, but all the information points that way.
An interesting fact on this topic is that Bobby Avila, the best Mexican player of that era, signed with Organized Baseball in 1948 and appeared with the Cleveland Indians in 1949. There was no punishment for him, even though he played in the Mexican League and the "contaminated" leagues in Cuba.

I wrote something about this interesting topic for the Mexican Hall of Fame some years ago. You can read it (in Spanish) here:
http://www.salondelafama.com.mx/salondelafama/beisbol/articulo.asp?n=63