Several weeks back Bill Mullins sent me a wonderful 1921 map of Carroll Park (or, as it was better known in 1921, Alexander Park), home of the Alexander Giants, from the Baist Real Estate Atlas of Los Angeles. Here’s a large view of the surrounding neighborhood:
And some close-ups of the park itself on Long Beach Avenue:
Bill Mullins has dug up fire insurance maps from 1920 for the portion of Long Beach Avenue where Carroll/Alexander Park, home of the Alexander Giants of Los Angeles, was built that year. The maps don’t show the park, so must date from very early in the year.
Here’s the east side of Long Beach Avenue, showing the lots where the park was located (basically, the empty space in the middle).
And here’s a detail, showing where 32nd Street intersected with Long Beach Avenue. This, as I’ll show below, is where the grand stand and entrance to the park were located.
Next, the west side of Long Beach Avenue, showing both the north and south sides of 32nd Street:
Now let’s look back at the original Alexander Giants photo, zeroing in on the space between the bleachers (on the left) and the grand stand (on the right).
We’re looking west onto Long Beach Avenue. On the right you can see what I think is an entrance gate to the ballpark. On the left, notice the sign that says “Carpet Cleaning Co.”? It’s for a business on the west side of Long Beach Avenue. Here’s a detail from the map showing it, right there at the corner of 32nd and Long Beach, just across from the ballpark:
UPDATE 4/15/2017 Check out this better map of Carroll/Alexander Park.
A couple of years ago Pete Gorton sent me the following half of a panoramic photograph, dating from the 1910s or early 1920s, showing an unidentified black team in an unknown ballpark.
Pete had gotten a request from Hake’s to identify the black team, and showed images of that part of the photo to me and some other historians. The lettering on their jerseys reads “AG,” so among the possibilities were the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, the Chicago American Giants, and the Peerless American Giants of Philadelphia. The last was a minor 1917 team run by a promoter named George Victory (who, much later, earned some fame as an artist). After complaints from fans that he had just stolen the name of Rube Foster’s team, Victory changed it to Pennsylvania Giants, and continued to operate the club for several years.
The lack of any well-known faces among the players on the mysterious AGs pretty much ruled out the Bacharachs and American Giants—no Rube Foster, Dick Redding, John Henry Lloyd, Pete Hill, Oliver Marcell, etc. Moreover, neither team is known to have sported uniforms anything like the ones shown here.
Pete raised the possibility of the Alexander Giants, a team in Los Angeles in the early 1920s. This seemed to make a lot of sense, especially considering the other half of the photograph, which showed the white team the AG’s were facing. Their jerseys read “S.O. Co. of El Segundo”—that is, the Standard Oil Company of El Segundo, California.
As it happens, the Alexander Giants and the Standard Oils of El Segundo played each other a number of times in 1920 and 1921, so that would seem to confirm the ID of the AG’s as the Alexander Giants, as well as narrow down the possible dates of this game in particular.
Looking at the roster of the 1921 Alexanders, there were several pretty well-known players: Harry Blackmon, the Indianapolis ABCs third baseman, who spent the summer of 1921 in California rather than in the Negro National League; the catcher O’Neal Pullen, who was the Alexander Giants’ captain in 1921; and Jimmy Claxton, the Canadian pitcher who played briefly for the Oakland Oaks of the PCL in 1916. I have photos of all three:
Harry Blackmon:
O’Neal Pullen:
Jimmy Claxton:
Also, a west coast player named Hilary “Bullet” Meaddows was an outfielder for the ’21 Alexander Giants, and I have one photo of him:
Looking at the AGs, I think it’s pretty clear that Pullen, who caught all three of the El Segundo/Alexanders games in 1921 and was a very large man, is NOT the player in catcher’s garb in the photo. Blackmon and Meaddows, on the other hand, are harder to identify; Blackmon, for instance, could be the (rather blurry) player on the far right (in the second picture below), but it’s impossible to say for sure.
Meanwhile, the umpire for all three Standard Oil/Alexander Giants games in 1921 was Billy Donaldson, a well-known African American arbiter whose picture appeared a number of times in the black press over the years:
(Baltimore Afro-American, May 25, 1923, p. 14)
He is clearly not either of the umpires in the photo:
Given that we can’t find either the Alexanders’ team captain and catcher (Pullen) or the umpire who worked all three of the games in question (Donaldson) in the photo, I’d say it’s pretty clear it was not taken in 1921.
That leaves 1920.
As it happens, on July 4, 1920, the Alexander Giants played the "El Segundo" team. The El Segundo battery was Gipe and Duncan; these same two players were listed as Standard Oil of El Segundo players in January, 1920, so there's a pretty good chance that the El Segundo team from July 4 is the Standard Oil team.
It would make sense that the teams would pose for a photograph before a July 4 game, the stands packed with a holiday crowd. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a box score for the game, or even a line score. I only found a brief item reporting the game in the Los Angeles Times (California Eagle issues for the summer of 1920, as far as I know, have not been preserved).
(Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1920, p. 14)
The Alexander Giants' battery on July 4 consisted of two well-known west coast players who never played back east: the pitcher Johnny “Wizard” Baugh and the catcher/infielder Spencer Butcher. Baugh was said to be “a great favorite at Alexander Park” (California Eagle, May 30, 1924); the Kansas City Monarchs infielder Bob Fagan (who played extensively on the coast too), called Butcher “peppery” and “my ideal for a catcher. He is always ready to try something. In other words he is in the game all of the time and his head is always up” (California Eagle, August 27, 1924).
I don’t think I have any photos of either of them, but if this picture does show the team on July 4, 1920, then this is Spencer Butcher:
Who else was on the 1920 Alexander Giants?
I haven't found too many 1920 Alexander Giants’ box scores in general, but here’s a list of some of the players I’ve found appearing with them that summer (aside from Baugh and Spencer):
Willie Woods, cf
Carlisle Perry, ss
Black Cat Williams, 3b
Goldie Davis, lf
Burns, rf
William Curtis (a.k.a. “Billy Bowlegs”), 1b
William Ross, p
Milton, 2b
Of these players I only have certain images of two, Woods and Ross. Here is Woods:
I don’t see him in the Alexander Giants photo (though it’s hard to say for sure)...
...but I think I see William Ross, an interesting player with a long career in and out of the Negro leagues, and from what I can tell probably the biggest star on the Giants in 1920 and 1921. Check out this guy, the third player from the right in the original photo:
Here are some pictures of Ross (the two on the left) to compare to the AGs man (on the right):
So, of all the Alexander Giants players in this photo, I can only identify (more or less) William Ross and Spencer Butcher (the latter only because he’s wearing catcher’s gear).
These two men…
…seem likely to be the guys who founded and ran the team, William Carroll (the manager in 1920 and builder of the ballpark) and the team’s namesake, Jim Alexander. I don’t know which is which. Alexander had some small fame in Los Angeles as the first black IRS inspector in the city and organizer of the local Texas Club (presumably for emigrants from that state). Here’s an image of him, though you can't tell much from it:
(California Eagle, September 7, 1928, p. 1)
Lastly, let’s consider where this game was played. It was at the Alexander Giants’ grounds, newly built in 1920 and called Carroll Park, after William Carroll. It was one of a spate of small baseball parks built by black teams around the country at this time—Giants Park in St. Louis in 1919, Central Baseball Park in Pittsburgh later in 1920, Tate Field in Cleveland in 1921, Lewis Park in Memphis and Stars Park in St. Louis in 1922.
(Dallas Express, February 14, 1920, p. 1)
Although this article locates the ballpark at 53rd and Long Beach Avenue, virtually every other source I’ve seen locates it at 32nd or 33rd and Long Beach (and at least one source, below, gives the address as 2710 Long Beach). I haven’t been able to check any contemporary maps to be sure, so anybody who has access to them, see what you can find. Called Carroll Park in 1920, it became known more frequently as Alexander Park or Alexander Field in 1921.
Anyway—this photograph gives us a wonderful image of the park and its crowd, a very rare (indeed, I think unique) view of a black baseball park in the early 1920s. While I don’t have a full image of the whole panoramic photo, here’s a portion that gives you a pretty good sense of the park and the crowd:
Sadly Carroll/Alexander Park came to a premature end in September, 1921.
(Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1921, p 15)
There was also a report in the Chicago Defender. The Proquest version is nearly unreadable; I have a much better version directly photocopied from the microfilm, but couldn’t find it in time for this post, so here’s a transcription (from the Chicago Defender, October 8, 1921, p. 10):
ALEXANDER GIANTS’ BALL PARK DESTROYED BY FIRE
By Walter Gordon, Jr.
Los Angeles, Cal., Oct. 7 – The Alexander Giants’ baseball park, which occupies the four square blocks beginning at 33d and Long Beach avenue, was completely destroyed by fire on the evening of Sept. 25, at about 6:45 p. m. The fire is supposed to be of incendiary origin, as shortly before the blaze flared up a night watchman in a nearby plant saw a man running from that direction. The fire department answered the call as quickly as possible, but the blaze was beyond control. It is claimed that they also found evidences of incendiarism. The Giants were organized in January, 1919, with the following officers: Fred Lucas, president; James Alexander, vice president; M. W. Alexander, secretary; Dan Russell, manager; James Thomas, treasurer; Dr. J. S. Outlaw, medical director.
The Alexander Giants have won 95 per cent of their games this season and they are great favorites. The motive which prompted the destruction of the park was possibly team jealousy. The park was valued at $15,000, with insurance of $5,000 only. The owners plan to rebuild immediately.
It’s unclear to me whether or not Alexander was trying to blame the Giants’ main rivals, the Los Angeles White Sox, for the arson (“team jealousy”), although the two teams had faced each other as recently as the previous spring, and the Alexander Giants sometimes played in the White Sox ball park.
The Alexander Giants did take the field again in 1922, but two of their best players, Ross and Blackmon, left to join the Negro National League’s Indianapolis ABCs, and the team’s star seems to have dimmed considerably. I found a reference or two to Alexander Park that year, but it may be that the destruction of the grand stand was a blow that the park and team never really recovered from.
***
By the way, this is the 700th post on this blog, which I’ve now been writing for (gulp) almost eleven years. I still feel like I have barely scratched the surface.
UPDATE 3/15/2017 Check out these 1920 maps of the location of Carroll/Alexander Park.
In the comments Kim Agan points out that the last time the Cubs won the World Series, back in 1908, they took spring training at the luxurious West Baden Springs Hotel in Indiana—at Sprudel Park, a ballpark surrounded by an enclosed bicycle track. Under the name Sprudel Park, it would the following year become the home of the West Baden Sprudels, a black professional team.
Here’s a photo of the Cubs in Sprudel Park that spring (from this link provided by Kim), which gives a great view of what the ballpark looked like inside:
You can see the hotel, with its free-standing dome (then reputedly the largest in the western hemisphere), just peeking over the bicycle track that formed the ballpark’s walls. (From what I can tell the enclosed track was also where fans were seated, though maybe they also set up bleachers inside the track.) Check out more photos of Sprudel Park here--they’re worth a look.
The Missouri History Museum has uncovered an astonishing find: a photograph of Stars Park, home of the Negro National League’s St. Louis Stars in the 1920s.
See here for some (limited) views of the park’s interior, and here for a diagram of the lot (after the park was demolished).
Given that Negro league ballparks were often in well-travelled, well-populated sections of large, often-photographed towns and cities, it seems extraordinarily likely that more such images exist, waiting to be found.
(Thanks to Scott Simkus & Kevin Johnson for pointing me to this.)
Kevin Johnson has found aerial images of the 44th & Parkside Ballpark, also known as Penmar Park or the PRR-YMCA Athletic Field, home of the Philadelphia Stars for most of their existence. It was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad adjacent to that company’s main yard in Philadelphia. The images date from 1942.
Check out this photo of Henry “Flick” Williams, a solid journeyman Negro league catcher in the 1920s.
Brian Campf, who sent this photo along, identified Williams by comparing the photo with this shot of the 1928 St. Louis Stars—Williams is in the back row, second from right (it’s the same shot used for Williams in the Seamheads DB, by the way).
But what’s interesting here is not so much Flick himself, though it’s a fine photo of him. It’s what’s in the background. Williams is wearing the uniform of the St. Louis Stars. From 1922 through 1931 the Stars played in Stars Park, where left field was cut off by a city trolley car barn. It was only 250 feet down the left field foul line.
As Brian points out, if Williams is pictured in Stars Park, then we’re looking at the left field line, with third base to the right of Williams (where a player is standing with hands on knees), and home plate would be either behind or slightly to the left of Williams. And down the left field line, after the grand stand and taking the place of a left field wall, is certainly what looks like a building to me, rather than an outfield wall in a ballpark. Could this be the famous trolley car barn?
If so, this would be the only real image of Stars Park I know of (aside from backgrounds to team photos such as the one of the ’28 Stars above).
UPDATE 7/24/2014 Scott Simkus pointed out that these photographs, of St. Louis Stars Willie Wells and Cool Papa Bell, also show the same structure in the background, which he has always assumed was the trolley barn.
Back in August, it was announced that the baseball historian Bernard McKenna had discovered the first known aerial photograph of Maryland Baseball Park, home of the Baltimore Black Sox from about 1921 through 1931. The photograph was taken in 1927. Before McKenna found this, the precise location of the park had been unknown.
Courtesy of Kevin Johnson, here are some “very rough” dimensions for Maryland Park, calculated by Ron Selter:
LF 390
LC 440
CF 440
RC 390
RF 250
Backstop 80
The same photograph also revealed, two blocks south of Maryland Park, the location of Westport Park, the original home field of the Black Sox in the 1910s.
There was good news and bad news this year about historical markers for Negro league ballparks.
First, the good news. The Detroit Stars’ Hamtramck Stadium, the 1930s successor to Mack Park and one of the surprisingly large number* of Negro league parks still standing, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, thanks to the efforts of Gary Gillette and others.
(*-See Kevin Johnson’s great article in the latest Outsider Baseball Bulletin on Negro league ballparks, drawn from his research on the upcoming Negro League Ballparks Database.)
Photo by Paul Healey, from Project Ballpark.
And the bad news. Unfortunately, Central Baseball Park, the home of the Pittsburgh Keystones and other teams from 1920 to 1925, was denied an historical marker by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. According to the Commission, the application did not meet the following guidelines:
1) The person, place, or event to be marked is of statewide or national historical significance rather than that of local or regional interest.
2) People, places, and events already marked with existing monuments or markers receive less favorable consideration for a PHMC historical marker.
In other words, the Keystones weren’t that big a deal, and the state’s already got some markers commemorating the Negro leagues.
In reality, I think the problems are:
1) The information Dr. McDonald Williams and I gave the Commission directly contradicts the Greenlee Field marker and might be seen as somewhat diminishing that landmark’s significance.
2) They’re having trouble seeing past Pittsburgh’s many Negro league heavyweights like Josh Gibson and the Homestead Grays, and figure that any team or player that doesn’t measure up to them isn’t worth commemorating.
It’s their commission, and they obviously have constraints on the number of markers they can manufacture and place. But as far as current scholarship knows, Central Park, and not Greenlee Field, was the first black-owned and black-built major league baseball park in the country. Giants Park in St. Louis was built in 1919 at the behest of the team’s African American owners, but we don’t know what architect or contractor was responsible. Unlike Central Park, Giants Park was not built in a black neighborhood, so it would seem less likely that a black-owned firm was involved. Mohawk Park was built in 1914 in Schenectady, New York, by the Mohawk Giants’ white ownership. Hilldale Park in Darby, Pennsylvania, was built as an amateur park, not originally for a professional team.
Moreover, Central Park was the African American architect Louis Bellinger’s first major commission. In fact, as I understand it, the ballpark was his first known building, period.
It’s just my opinion, but I think that all this firmly establishes Central Park’s state and national significance.
There was more to the Negro Leagues than a few big stars and teams from the 1930s and 1940s. Black professional baseball was a broad-based cultural and economic phenomenon; it represented the strivings of whole communities, a whole people. Josh Gibson, the Grays and Crawfords, and Gus Greenlee could only accomplish what they did because of those who came before them. A marker commemorating Central Park would acknowledge that Greenlee Field was not a lone, heroic effort, but rather the culmination of the desires and efforts of fans, players, and promoters over several decades.
Map prepared by the G.M. Hopkins Company in 1923 (from Historic Pittsburgh).
A while back I called the Catholic Protectory Oval, the Bronx home of the New York Lincoln Giants, “one of the most remarkable settings for Negro league baseball.” Now I’d like to introduce what’s unquestionably the most remarkable setting for Negro league baseball: Sprudel Park in West Baden Springs, Indiana, birthplace of Larry Bird and home of the West Baden Sprudels in the 1900s and 1910s.
The Sprudels were organized and run by black employees of the palatial West Baden Springs Hotel, which boasted of the largest free-standing dome in the Americas, and advertised itself as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Both the Baden hotel and its great rival in the adjacent community of French Lick existed because of the mineral springs of the region, and both hotels marketed brands of mineral water—the West Baden hotel called its brand “Sprudel Water,” while French Lick sold the eventually much more famous “Pluto Water.” The hotels’ black professional baseball teams named themselves after the mineral water brands. By 1910 both clubs had gotten pretty serious—the Sprudels had hired Charles Isham Taylor, famous manager of the Birmingham Giants, to run the club, and he brought along his ballplaying brothers, including eventual Hall of Famer Ben Taylor. The Plutos, meanwhile, had built their own ballpark, Pluto Baseball Park (more on this another time).
The Sprudels had no need to build a park, because a venue already existed. The Indianapolis Freeman described it in 1911: “The park is the prettiest in the West and very much different from all other ball parks, the fans having an opportunity to see the games from an elevated bicycle track, fifteen feet high” (March 18, 1911, p. 7). This does not quite capture the reality of the park, as you can see from this 1911 postcard:
And here’s an amazing aerial view on another postcard, this one from John Martin Smith’s book of photographs and postcards, French Lick and West Baden Springs:
There’s also a Sanborn fire insurance map from 1913, which unfortunately cuts off in the middle of the velodrome/baseball park:
And here, also from Smith’s book, is a look at the upper level of the bicycle track, where fans could sit in deck chairs and watch C. I. Taylor’s Sprudels, or the major league clubs that took spring training here.
The odd shape, the bicycle track/grandstand with vacationers looking on from their deck chairs, the tennis courts in center field, the hotel’s great dome, possibly visible over the top of the structure if you looked back toward home plate, the ambience of the surrounding gardens…all of this combined to make the West Baden Base Ball Park, or Sprudel Park as it was usually called by the newspapers reporting on games, one of the weirdest settings for professional baseball you can imagine.
The Sprudels and Plutos began to fade away as baseball powers in the mid-1910s, and Sprudel Park burnt down in 1928. But today, to judge from Google Maps, it looks like a baseball field of some sort, with a backstop and outfield fence, lies directly on the former site of Sprudel Park. Even though the angles are a little different and the course of the creek seems to have been altered since 1913, you can orient yourself by the gray cross of the little bridge and walkway across the creek, which remains.
Thanks!
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