Agate Type

sol white, wilberforce 1897?

Courtesy of Jay Sokol of Black College Nines comes this photograph of the 1897 Wilberforce University baseball team. This print belongs to Ray Lucas, whose great uncle William A. Wallace is seated in the middle row on the far left. There are names written at the bottom, but these are mostly illegible now (with a couple of exceptions).

Aside from its intrinsic interest, this photograph also piques one’s curiosity because none other than Sol White was a student at Wilberforce University in the late 1890s, splitting his time between the Cuban X-Giants in the summer and college in the winters.  (Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia incorrectly has White attending Wilberforce ten years earlier, from 1886 to 1890; in fact he went to college in his late twenties, after nearly a decade as a professional ballplayer.)

With this in mind, Jay draws our attention to the player in the back row, standing second from right. Let’s compare him to a photo of Sol White from 1909:


The Wilberforce photograph isn’t of the same quality as the later Sol White image, so I don’t think you can say with 100 percent certainty that it’s the same person. Nevertheless they match in every feature that can be compared—shape of face and jawline, ears, nose, eyes and eyebrows, distances between all these features. Nothing rules out the idea that this is Sol White.

Sol White was specifically confirmed by Jerry Malloy to have been a third-year student in the 1896/97 school year, which puts him at Wilberforce at exactly the time this photograph was taken (presumably spring 1897). Malloy mentions that White was a military cadet, but says nothing about him playing ball at Wilberforce.

White did, however, serve as an athletic instructor at Wilberforce during the 1899/1900 off-season, so he can be linked to the school’s sports program:

(Chicago Daily Tribune, March 11, 1900, p. 18)

Based on what we know so far I’d say there’s a more than excellent chance that Sol White does indeed appear in the photo with the ’97 Wilberforce baseball team. There might be some additional information coming, though, so we’ll see if our identification of Sol White holds.

UPDATE 10:50 pm I should point out, in case anybody is wondering, that there were essentially no eligibility problems with players for black college teams spending summers with professional clubs, even as late as the 1930s. It was just not an issue.

a grave marker for sol white

I was interviewed by Ryan Whirty for an article in the Staten Island Advance on the upcoming placement of a marker on the grave of Sol White in Frederick Douglass Memorial Park. It will happen on May 10, thanks to Jeremy Krock and the Negro League Grave Marker Project as well as the Friends of Frederick Douglass Memorial Park.

Ryan, by the way, is looking into White’s final years, his commitment to the Central Islip Psychiatric Center on Long Island and his death there in 1955 (and also the 1948 death of Cannonball Dick Redding at the nearby Pilgrim State Hospital).

sol white’s official base ball guide

I’m pleased to announce the publication of a new edition of Sol White’s Official Base Ball Guide, with an introduction and notes by yours truly. This pamphlet, packed with photos and tiny print, was originally published in 1907 and sold at Philadelphia Giants games. It was the first book devoted solely to black professional baseball, and remained the only one for more than 60 years. To this day it’s one of only a handful of books on nineteenth-century black baseball.

My introduction goes over Sol White’s life and career, adding some to what’s been published about him. I’ve also written some brief notes on the players, managers, and owners who are pictured in the book’s photos, and identified the players in several of the team photos.

The publisher is Summer Game Books. It's currently available through them directly, as well as Amazon.com and Smashwords, and should be on several other platforms eventually. You will also be able to order a print copy by April 25.

the negro league you’ve never heard of: the national association 1907-1909

The first “Negro league,” which I would define as a professional circuit explicitly dedicated to clubs staffed by black players, was the League of Colored Base Ball Clubs, or the National Colored League, of 1887. The NCL was as national in its range as the major leagues of the time, its six clubs including Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Lousville, and Baltimore. This proved to be way too ambitious, considering the limited resources available; the league collapsed within a couple of weeks, leaving players stranded in faraway cities.  It was fully twenty years before another “Negro league” would emerge, with a very different scope and somewhat reduced ambition: the National Association of Colored Base Ball Clubs of the United States and Cuba.  Virtually nothing has ever been written about this league, which seems to have lasted no fewer than three seasons, from 1907 to 1909.

Let me begin, though, the year before this Negro league got started, with a different league that was in important ways its predecessor.  In 1906 William Freihofer, who owned a chain of bakeries in the Philadelphia area as well as a white semi-pro club called the Philadelphia Professionals, organized the International League of Independent Professional Base Ball Clubs, which in its original form consisted of two black clubs, two Cuban clubs, and one white team:

(Sporting Life, April 14, 1906, p. 17)

A quick rundown on the International League’s original teams:

•Cuban X Giants, owned/managed by E. B. Lamar;
•Philadelphia Quaker Giants, owned by Jess and Eddie McMahon, managers of Olympic Field in Manhattan;
•Cuban Stars of Havana (originally called the Cuban Stars of Santiago, though this was quickly dropped), owned by Manuel Camps, a Cuban immigrant and Brooklyn cigar manufacturer, and booked by E. B. Lamar;
•Havana Stars (also called the Havana Club or just the Havanas), owned/managed by Alfredo Pastor, a Cuban baseball official, and booked by E. B. Lamar;
•Philadelphia Professionals, owned by Freihofer himself and managed by John A. O’Rourke, the league’s secretary/treasurer.

Freihofer also provided a “handsome silver cup” to be awarded to the league champions at season’s end:

(Sol White’s Official Base Ball Guide, p. 114)

In some ways, the International League looks to us more like a tournament than what we would consider a league. The original plans were for a five-team league to play an 8-game “season,” with every club playing every other club twice.  Needless to say, the league clubs played a number of games against each other that didn’t count officially in the standings, and played many, many games against non-league opponents.  The Philadelphia Giants, for example, played a total of 145 games in 1906, but would only play five official International League contests.

The race for the Freihofer Cup claimed several casualties.  The Havana Stars were the first to succumb, falling apart in early June, with several of the players being poached by other International clubs.  Their place in the league was at first to be taken by the Wilmington (Del.) Giants, a team led by the old Cuban Giants veteran George L. Williams, but league secretary John A. O’Rourke eventually decided to admit the Riverton-Palmyra (N.J.) Athletic Club, another white team, instead (Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1906, Sports, p. 2).

In July the Quaker Giants and the Cuban Stars both failed to make scheduled appearances and were dropped from the league (though they continued to exist), and their places (and records) were taken over by the Philadelphia Giants and the Wilmington Giants (“New Teams in International League,” Trenton Evening Times, July 24, 1906, p. 11). The Philly Giants, inheriting the Quakers’ 3-0 record, were immediately installed as favorites to win the Freihofer Cup (“What the Future Greats Are Doing,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 5, 1906, Sports, p. 2).

On Labor Day, September 3, playing in the Philadelphia Athletics’ Columbia Park, the Philadelphia Giants, behind Rube Foster, defeated the Cuban X-Giants and Harry Buckner 3 to 2, clinching the International League championship.  Here are the final standings:

(Philadelphia Inquirer, September 10, 1906, p. 10)

The Inquirer was pretty optimistic about the circuit’s future prospects: “The league despite, several drawbacks, weathered all the storms of the first year and the prospects of a bigger and stronger circuit next summer are indeed encouraging” (ibid.).

As I said, I wouldn’t consider the 1906 International to be a “Negro league,” strictly speaking, due to the presence of the two white teams. But it was the predecessor to a genuine Negro league.

 

(Trenton Evening Times, October 29, 1906, p. 11)

I used to think that the National Association was an outright continuation of the International League, just with the white clubs dropped; but I no longer think that was the case, given the name change, the absence of Freihofer and his Cup, and the fact that the new league had little to do with Philadelphia (nearly all of the 1907 games between its clubs were played in New York and New Jersey).  The key alliance was now between Walter Schlichter of the Philadelphia Giants and Nat C. Strong of New York, who was consolidating his control of independent baseball on the east coast.

Some of the men behind the National Association: Walter Schlichter, John Connor, Nat Strong, John Bright.

Standings for the 1907 National Association were published somewhat more erratically than for the 1906 International League, though they did appear every so often. In the end the Philadelphia Giants were again the champions.

 

(Trenton Evening Times, October 14, 1907, p. 11)

I haven’t found final published standings for the 1907 National Association, but here’s how each club fared against the other teams in the league:

              Philadelphia Giants: 13-7-0
              Cuban Giants:         5-5-1
              Royal Giants:        10-14-1
              Cuban Stars:          2-4-0

The league still existed in 1908, its membership unchanged:

(Indianapolis Freeman, March 21, 1908, p. 6)

It’s unclear exactly when they clinched it, but on September 28 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle asserted that the Royal Giants had already won “the championship for 1908 of the colored League of the United States.”

Here are the records of each club against other league members in 1908.  The Royal Giants seemed to have deserved that championship:

                Royal Giants:        19-10-1
                Philadelphia Giants: 16-15-0
                Cuban Giants:         6-12-1
                Cuban Stars:          3-7-0

The National Association lasted through the 1909 season:

(Sporting Life, December 19, 1908, p. 8)

There was very little coverage of the 1909 pennant race. According to Nat Strong, the Cuban Stars and Royal Giants were engaged in a series that would decide the championship in late September and early October, and the Royal Giants had won the first two games:

(Indianapolis Freeman, December 18, 1909, p. 7)

I’ve been able to find three games between the Cuban Stars and Royal Giants in September.  The Royal Giants beat the Cubans 5 to 3 on September 6 at the Bronx Oval, then won again 2 to 1 on September 12 at Meyerrose Park in Brooklyn.  The Cuban Stars turned the tables for a 4 to 2 win at the Bronx Oval on September 21. In a later letter to the Freeman (December 18, 1909), Strong said the Royal Giants had won the championship, and maintained that “the usual colored championship series will be played during the season of 1910.”

Again, the records of each club against the other National Association clubs for 1909:

                   Royal Giants:        9-3
                Cuban Stars:         8-5
                Philadelphia Giants: 6-12
                Cuban Giants:        0-3

Despite Strong’s confident assertions, in 1910 there’s no hint of the National Association of Colored Base Ball Clubs of the United States and Cuba.  If I had to guess I’d say that it was done in by 1) the decline of the Genuine Cuban Giants; 2) the Cuban Stars’ increasing involvement in the Midwestern game as they spent more and more time in and around Chicago and less on the east coast; and 3) Nat Strong’s realization of the money he could make pitting his Royal Giants against white semipro and town teams in both New York City and upstate New York.  

In fact, Strong would remain for years the biggest obstacle to organizing the eastern blackball teams, and there would be no eastern league until he was persuaded to lend his (half-hearted) support to the ECL in 1923. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Giants, the first truly great African American baseball team, were strangled by the lack of good opponents in the east, which caused them to take long, expensive, and ultimately unsustainable western jaunts in pursuit of better paydays.

As far as I can tell two players appeared in both the first Negro league (the National Colored League of 1887) and the second one (the National Association of 1907-1909): Sol White, 19-year-old third baseman for the 1887 Pittsburg Keystones, and veteran player-manager for the champion 1907 Philadelphia Giants; and John Nelson, who pitched for both the 1887 New York Gorhams and the 1908 Genuine Cuban Giants.

Old school: John Nelson and Sol White

 

UPDATE 2/6/2014 Just realized I forgot the 1886 Southern League of Colored Base Ballists, which certainly qualifies as a Negro league per the above definition.

the georgia rabbit

I’ve long been puzzled by two facts of Walter Ball’s biography: he’s commonly listed in reference books as “George Walter Ball,” and given the nickname “The Georgia Rabbit.”  Both are problematic:

1) I have never seen a contemporary reference to Walter Ball as anything but Walter Ball, and the few official documents I’ve been able to find (passenger lists, census records, draft cards, death certificate) give his name as…Walter Ball.  His World War I draft card gives him a middle name, Thomas.   So, as far as I can tell, his name was Walter Thomas Ball—no George involved.

2) And all sources agree that he was born in Detroit, Michigan, had moved to Minnesota by the time he was 14, and played his entire professional career for Northern teams—so why would he have been called “The Georgia Rabbit”?

After looking into it a little, I found a single reference that I believe explains both of these problems.  It’s a passage from Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball, originally published in 1907, toward the very end of the original text (p. 118 in the Jerry Malloy edition):

Here White appears to be calling Ball “George Washington Ball” and giving him the nickname “Georgia Rabbit.”  Okay, fair enough—Sol White, after all, was there, and has to be considered the leading authority on this era, plus the book was published right in the middle of Ball’s career. 

Except for one curious fact: White calls him George Washington Ball, but historians have apparently chosen to interpret “Washington” as a mistake for “Walter.”

Many years later, in 1931, White wrote a piece for the New York Age about the Philadelphia Giants in which he discussed roster changes forced in 1907 by the defection of the team’s biggest star, Rube Foster:

(New York Age, January 3, 1931, p. 6)

So White is saying here that he signed “the Georgia Rabbit” for the Philadelphia Giants.  There’s only one problem with this: Walter Ball never pitched for the Philadelphia Giants.  He did suit up for the 1906 Philadelphia Quaker Giants, a team organized by the McMahon brothers to try to cut in on the Philly Giants’ market, but he never did play for Sol White & Walter Schlichter’s club.  As for 1907, Ball split the year between two Midwestern teams, the new St. Paul Gophers and the Chicago Leland Giants, and spent 1908 with the Lelands and the Minneapolis Keystones.

Also reprinted in Malloy’s edition of the History of Colored Base Ball is an interview of Sol White by Floyd Calvin, which was originally published in the Pittsburgh Courier, March 12, 1927.  Much of it consists of a chronological account of White’s career.  Here’s the entry for 1907 (from the original version in the Courier), again about new players on the Philadelphia Giants that year:

(Pittsburgh Courier, March 12, 1927, p. A4)

Taken literally, this seems to imply that White signed a pitcher named George Washington (not “George Washington Ball”) along with someone else called “G. A. Rabbit.” 

No one named “Rabbit” ever appeared in a Philadelphia Giants’ box score, to my knowledge.  There was, on the other hand, a pitcher named George Washington on Sol White’s team in 1907 and 1908.  He didn’t pitch against any black professional teams in 1907, so he doesn’t appear in the Seamheads DB for that year, but he was with the Giants—for example:

(Philadelphia Inquirer, June 14, 1907)

It’s my opinion that “George Walter Ball, the Georgia Rabbit” was born as a result of a lost comma in Sol White’s book. 

White was listing pitchers by last name until he got to George Washington, not as well-known as the others.  What he meant to write was “McClellan, Bowman, Foster, Holland, Merritt, George Washington (Georgia Rabbit), Ball, Wilson, Davis and Buckner,” but by some mishap the comma after “(Georgia Rabbit)” was omitted, making it look like he was talking about somebody named George Washington Ball, nicknamed Georgia Rabbit.  This was, by pure coincidence, compounded by another punctuation mishap 20 years later, the next time (as far as I know) White talked publicly about Washington.  Floyd Calvin misread White’s or his own notes, and where White meant to say “George Washington (pitcher, Georgia Rabbit),” Calvin misunderstood it as a separate player named “G. A. Rabbit.”

I don’t know very much about George Washington, but what little I do know includes two facts that seem very relevant here.  1) Unlike Walter Ball, George Washington was from Georgia—he was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1874.  And 2), Washington may also have played for the baseball team organized by the Rabbit’s Foot Company, a famous minstrel troupe.

So in the end there’s no reason to think that Walter Ball’s first name was George or that he was ever called “the Georgia Rabbit,” and several good reasons to think that another player’s first name and nickname have been accidentally attached to Ball.

UPDATE See also this 1926 interview with Rube Foster where he confirms the separate existence of a Philadelphia Giants player named “Georgia Rabbit Washington.”

black ballplayers in 1900

Check out these charts prepared by the sociology students of W. E. B. Du Bois at Atlanta University for the “American Negro” exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition:

I’m not sure under what category professional ballplayer would be listed (not the “professions,” which I think would mean mostly medicine, law, education, and the pulpit).  Most likely there weren’t any black professional ballplayers in Georgia at the turn of the century.  There weren’t that many in the county at large, at best a few dozen, probably—though there would have been many, many semi-professional or amateur players, of course.

In the 1900 U.S. Census, I’ve located a total of nine.  I wouldn’t claim that this is anything like a comprehensive accounting, since my research mostly focuses on later eras, and it’s not actually that easy to search my notes for exactly this information.  But here are the black men I’ve found in the 1900 census whose occupation is listed as ballplayer:

Sherman Barton (listed as a “Base Ballist,” a phrase that would have sounded antique even in 1900)
John Bingey (sic; could be the same as William Binga)
Harry Buckner
Peter Burns, a key figure in the Tokohama affair
Charles Grant, “Tokohama” himself
William Holland
Grant Johnson
John Patterson
Solomon White

For whatever reason, all lived in Chicago as of June, 1900, when the census was enumerated, except for Barton, who lived in Normal, Illinois, and Johnson, who appeared in his hometown, Findlay, Ohio.  All played for the Columbia Giants or Chicago Unions around this time.

Occupations of Charles Grant and Solomon White as listed in the 1900 U.S. Census.

Walter Ball can be found living in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he was playing professional ball, but in the census he is listed as a “R. R. Porter.”  A couple of guys who might be Bill Monroe can be found in Chicago, but aren’t listed as ballplayers.  The 17-year-old Pete Hill, who by some accounts started playing professionally in 1899, is listed as a “day laborer” in Pittsburgh.  Many others who were definitely professionals at the time, especially in the East, can’t be found for certain in the census, including nearly the whole roster of the Cuban X Giants (Frank Grant, Clarence Williams, etc.).  It seems likely that the Cubans were on the road and were missed by the census takers.

Going beyond the census, I’ve found one official document that lists a black man’s occupation as ballplayer in 1900: the death certificate of Andrew Jackson, who had been for several years the third baseman and captain of the Cuban X Giants.  Jackson, who had led his team on a Cuban tour a few months earlier, died of heart failure at the age of 34 in New York City on May 15, 1900.  (Apologies for the poor quality of the image.)

In the sideways portion of the form at the bottom we are given Jackson’s profession:

I have to say I know virtually nothing about Andrew Jackson, or for that matter about the Cuban X Giants, which seem to be one of the least written about great teams in African-American baseball history.

the wrong philadelphia giants

I recently ran across this photo, supposedly of the 1906 Philadelphia Giants, which was auctioned off back in 2006:


Here’s the conclusion of the catalog description:

“As for the detailing of the pictured elements, we identify [white sportswriter and Giants owner Walter] Schlichter, and Sol White likely sits to his immediate left. Rube Foster, we believe is the tallest player standing in the back row. The caption, ‘Season 1906’, was not applied to this print but, instead, to the original. This photo is a splendid rendering of a highly successful independent, Black baseball team that only anticipated the coming of the Negro Leagues - and one showcasing the Hall of Famer, Rube Foster, at the peak of his playing career.”

Despite the authoritative prose, nearly everything said here is completely wrong.  True, it is the Philadelphia Giants, and that is Schlichter at the center of the photo.  But neither Rube Foster nor Sol White is in the photo, which is readily apparent if you’ve ever seen any photos of them.  Another star of the ’06 Giants, Pete Hill, is missing, too. 

It’s not, however, a photo of complete nobodies.  Standing at the far right is Danny McClellan, who played with the Giants through the 1910 season.  Standing at the far left is Spottswood Poles, which tells us something.  Poles joined the Philadelphia Giants in mid-season 1909, and played the 1910 season with the club, before jumping to the Lincoln Giants in 1911.  So we’ve narrowed down the possible years to 1909 and 1910, when McClellan and Poles were on the Philadelphia Giants.

As it happens, I’ve located another photograph that shows a Giants team of a very similar vintage, this time with most of the players identified.

Poles and McClellan are seated to the right of Schlichter.  Standing second from left is Bill “Bonehead” Pierce, who played for the Philadelphia Giants only in 1910.  Next to him, standing in the center, is Jesse Barber, who played with the Giants in 1909 and 1910 before defecting to the American Giants in 1911.  Next is Lee Wade and then Fisher (no first name known), both of whom pitched for the Giants in 1909 and 1910 only.

I can’t match everybody in the two photos for certain, with the exception of Schlichter, Poles,  McClellan, Fisher (standing second from left in the first photo), and the two guys in front, who I believe are the same in both pictures: on the left Bill Francis and on the right William “Knucks” James, both of whom left the Giants after the 1910 season.

But there are a couple of interesting differences I’ve left for last.  Consider first the guy sitting to the left of Schlichter in the original photo. 

I believe he’s Bruce Petway:

Petway played for the Philadelphia Giants in 1908 and 1909.

Next consider the guy standing second from right (between the false Rube Foster and Danny McClellan).

Look anything like this guy?

 

The regular shortstop on the 1909 Philadelphia Giants was none other than John Henry Lloyd.  In 1910 he was signed away by Rube Foster for his Leland Giants, and I don’t believe he is in the second photo.

So my conclusion is that the original photo above was mistakenly identified as the 1906 Philadelphia Giants.  In fact, it’s really the 1909 Philadelphia Giants.  The second photo, meanwhile, shows the 1910 Giants (note that Knucks James is still wearing his uniform from the previous year).

The first photo absolutely does not include Rube Foster, who was touted by the seller as the photograph’s main selling feature, or Sol White, who at the time of the auction (October 19, 2006) had been Foster’s companion in the Hall of Fame for only a few months.  But the photo does show the Hall of Famer John Henry Lloyd, plus noted players Spot Poles and Bruce Petway. So maybe it was worth the price it went for.

Incidentally, here are the actual 1906 Philadelphia Giants, from their manager Sol White’s book:

 

UPDATE 1/13/2013 Bill Mullins has found the 1909 Philadelphia Giants photo published in the New York Press (September 12, 1909), with a caption identifying all the players.