Saturday diversion / 50 years ago today at Yankee Stadium

not with a bang, certainly
With a h/t to Hall of Famer @DWinfield_ESPN, here is a story about the final game played by the Negro Leagues, an All-Star game the year after the last season ended.

On a related note, I have never understood why Larry Doby does not get more props. Cleveland and the American League towns were hardly less racist than Brooklyn and the National League towns, and the Dodgers built a bigger support system around Jackie than Bill Veeck was able to do in Cleveland, with the National League much quicker to sign other black players.

Note this from a Sports Illustrated retrospective about Doby’s debut (with some MLG emphasis added):

after Doby spent six innings on the bench under the watch of two black Chicago detectives sent to guard him, he went in to pinch-hit against righthander Earl Harrist.

On another related note, you might know that Jackie Robinson was not the first African American to play in baseball’s major leagues. If so, you may remember that “Fleet” Walker went to Oberlin College before playing in the majors in 1884. His brother Welday also played (briefly) that year.

Sorry about the formatting of this bio, but it is worth it for this opening line:

For sixty years, Fleet Walker was the answer to two trivia questions: who was the first black player in the majors, and who was the last?

A bright (dark) color line infected baseball after the 1884 season, bringing us back to Doby and Robinson, Veeck and Rickey. You probably also know that it was not until 1959 that every American League team had at least one black player, 12 years after Doby and Robinson, when Pumpsie Green got into a game for the Red Sox.

© Sandy Mattingly 2011