A few years back when Major League Baseball was feeling a little guilty about its pre-1947 history, it paid a group of ex-Negro League players to tour its parks. The players would be introduced ? wearing the jersey of their old Negro League team ? and would be saluted on the field before games.
Among the group of gentlemen who participated in that tour was Martinez Jackson, the father of Hall of Fame slugger Reggie Jackson. Jackson the elder was introduced as a former Newark Eagle, and he took his place with the others in pre-game ceremony.
I never heard that Reggie?s dad had played in the Negro Leagues, and no one else had either. It turned out that Martinez Jackson had, once upon a time, driven the Eagles’ bus, and his being included on the tour was “a misunderstanding.” Reggie?s brother, at the time, was an executive with the Negro League Baseball Players Association, which may explain it.
That the Negro Leagues had to exist at all remains an embarrassment, and for many years, their records and statistics were more legend than fact. That ceased to be the case, however, 13 years ago, when the Society for American Baseball Research published “The Negro Leagues Book,” the most comprehensive collection of information ever published on the Negro Leagues. Researchers spent more than 20 years combing every conceivable resource, until a reasonably accurate picture of the leagues emerged.
We know for sure that what baseball historians consider the Negro Leagues began in 1920 and ended in 1955. There was, at one time, a Negro American League and a Negro National League, although the NNL folded after the 1948 season. Technically, the NAL continued until 1960, though after 1955 it was little more than a barnstorming circuit.
John Holway of Springfield, Va., generally recognized as the nation’s go-to guy for Negro League history, told me that a lot of elderly African-American men who played baseball in some kind of league, amateur or semiprofessional, have convinced themselves they were Negro Leaguers.
“It’s an easy connection to make, thinking ‘well, I played in a league and all of the other players looked like me, so it must’ve been the Negro Leagues,’ ” he said. “But it’s really not the same thing.”
The aforementioned book ? to which Holway contributed ? contains an all-time registry of Negro Leagues players. The list includes some former Orioles, such as Jehosie Heard, the club’s first black player, and Joe Durham, the first black player to homer for the O’s. Durham, who played for the Chicago American Giants in 1952, admits he’s met a few self-proclaimed ex-Negro Leaguers whose stories don’t always add up.
“I think I’d remember the guys who were in the league when I played,” Durham said, “but some of these guys are a mystery to me.”
Many clubs in organized baseball seem more than willing to take someone else’s word for who really played and who didn’t, which leads to stadium promotions where these gentlemen are paid to sit and sign autographs. It’s fun for the fans, I guess, and maybe that’s all that matters. Sometimes when you tell a particular story enough times, you start to believe it yourself.
Contact Phil Wood at [email protected].
