Selects: How the Negro Leagues Worked
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Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's Select, and in honor of Black History Month, I've chosen our 2016 episode on the Negro Leagues. It's a story that follows an arc a lot like another episode we did on the Harlem Globetrotters, where we have a group of people who were discriminated against, so they went off and formed their own league, their own thing, showed their greatness, and then were eventually co-opted, which left some of the people who'd helped build what they had out in the cold.

And it's also a story, though, of great feats of athleticism and social heroics as well. And even if you're not into baseball, I guarantee you'll like this episode. So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry.

And here's the stuff you should know. Sportsy edition. Sportsy. I think really we should err on just the side of history. Well, I even put a note in here. If you don't like sports, listen to this one anyway. Yeah. Because this is about much more than baseball. Yeah. This is about history and about events.

Overcoming adversity? Yeah, like, it's a very interesting story because, and we'll get into this, but I think people tend to think of the Negro Leagues, and that's what this is about, the baseball Negro Leagues, which is what they were called. We don't use that word anymore. No. But you call this that because that's what it was. Right. Um...

You tend to think of it in a certain way, which is only, yeah, well, baseball was segregated and they couldn't play in the white leagues. And that's awful, which it is and was. But there's another side to it, too. Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. Where these men and these business owners were empowered. And the players. Yeah. And it's, yeah, that's just a tease. I just wanted to whet their appetite. Oh, you did. For people who hate sports. You whetted my appetite. I'm sitting here like, keep going. Yeah. Yeah.

So I think we should start with a little bit of history, right? So just a brief primer of American history. Okay. We'll start with slavery. It's a good place to start. The transatlantic slave trade built this country. Yep. And frankly, I'm just going to come out and say it. I think some of the major issues that the United States faces today...

comes from a lack of accountability for slavery. Really, it's contributing to a lot of the inequality and a lot of the strife that we still face today and have faced over the decades. Yeah. So you've got slavery.

And then you had the end of slavery. You had the Emancipation Proclamation, which a lot of people say, oh, well, that was great. Abraham Lincoln spoke some magic words and freed the slaves and everything was great. Yeah, it was just perfectly equal after that, right? No. No. So it took the Union to win the Civil War to...

begin to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation in the South and in Texas. Apparently, Texas were among the last holdouts, and there was slavery going on in Texas like years after the Civil War was over. Oh, yeah? Yeah. They were just like, we're just not going to pay attention to that. Sure. So the Civil War is fought. Part of the Union victory of the Civil War was coming into the South and

And saying, like, all you Confederates, you guys are out of power. And as a matter of fact, this power vacuum is perfectly willing to be filled by freed blacks. Yeah. So go ahead. Run for office. Become judges. Like, become part of the Reconstruction power group.

And that lasted for a very, very short time. The white Southern former power base who were leading the Confederacy and even ones who weren't necessarily part of like the actual Confederate government or even the Confederate army. But just the people like in your town who used to own the sawmill or whatever. Right. That guy came back in power within a couple of years and the white Southerners who'd been supplanted.

When they came back into power, they remembered the black people who had tried to take their positions. Right. And so it got ugly. Yeah. And so rather than having actual legal slavery, it came in other different horrible pernicious forms, which came to be called post-Reconstruction the Jim Crow South. Yeah. And boy, we need to do one. I've had it on my list for a while on Jim Crow, period. Yeah. How about...

How about this? First of all, where'd you get this other good, really good article? It's on the Major League Baseball website. Was it? Yeah. In the prehistory section of that one. And this is just to show you the tone of things.

In 1857, there was a Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roger Taney, who, it's funny the way this writer put it, he said he's campaigning hard for a spot in the American Scum Hall of Fame. I like that. That's pretty funny. In his official writing, this is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said, Negroes were so far inferior to whites that

That they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect. This is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Yeah, I think I need to say that like four more times. Yeah before it sinks in that was two or three This is what was going on despite the Emancipation Proclamation despite the 14th amendment Well, that was actually before it that was before that was during the slave the time of slavery. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, just to excuse that guy but after

After that, despite the amendments to the Constitution, despite all of that, it took to the 1960s to even begin the slightest bit of real progress. Yeah.

That's true. Not quite true because history is littered with people who've made advancements. And I don't want to knock that. But in a systemic manner, you're right. It wasn't until the 60s. But part of the problem too was, and this is a valid point, other courts had said, like those as Justice Henry Billings Brown, said legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences.

Basically what he's saying is like we can create laws, but you're not going to change public's mind by creating laws. You can't like abolish prejudice. Right. And so if white people think that black people are inferior to them, who are we, the government, to say otherwise? Yeah, we're to try maybe and legislate our way out of it even. Right.

So in, I think, 1896, there was a court case called Plessy v. Ferguson. Yeah. And in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld and legitimized and actually made real the segregation that had already been going on ever since Reconstruction or ever since the end of Reconstruction, the beginning of Jim Crow laws, right? Right.

The United States was officially segregated in 1896, but baseball had actually segregated years before that, but not as far back as people think. And a lot of people think that baseball...

Had always been segregated up until 1946. Yeah. When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. I think 99% of people think that Jackie Robinson was the first black American to play baseball. Including me until yesterday when we started researching. Oh, did you know this already? Yeah. I mean, I'm a big baseball fan and a bit of a student of its history, so I knew. Okay. So tell them, Chuck. Well, uh...

Who the guys were, specifically? Well, yeah. So in 1867, I think, two years after the Civil War, there was already baseball. Remember, Abner Doubleday created baseball in what, 1839? Oh, in like 1300. But that's a legitimate story, right? That's not... Yeah. Like, he really did. He was the inventor of baseball. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it did happen in Cooperstown, New York, and all that, right? Yeah. Okay. I don't know, but was he in Cooperstown? I believe so. Okay. Well, that makes sense. So within...

just a couple of decades, there was the National Association of Baseball Players. They were the league, right? Yeah, I mean, not within a couple of decades, a couple of years. Oh, really? Yeah, like literally two years after the end of the Civil War, there was an African-American team

Called I actually don't know what their name was but they were out of Philadelphia and they said we want to join your league which was the National Association of baseball players at the time and they were rejected as a team of course at the time and But that didn't mean that there were not players individually, right? That's a huge caveat. Yeah, it was a little bit later in 1886 finally and Not for too long. We had two brothers Moses

Fleetwood Walker and Welday Walker. Who do they play for? The Toledo Blue Stockings. That's right, baby. My hometown integrated baseball team in the 1880s. You are totally right. Moses was older. He played 42 games for the team. Welday only came along and played in six games. Moses hit .263 that season.

And they were the son of a physician, like the first black physician in Toledo. Nice. And went to college, played baseball at Oberlin in Michigan. Yeah. So I know the Wolverines. I didn't know Oberlin even had sports.

Well, this is the 19th century. I think they phased him out. Phased him out in favor of acoustic guitars and debate. I know a lot of people that went to Oberlin, weirdly. Really? Well, my good friend Robert Shahadi from Boston that you met that came to our show. Lucy Wainwright went to Oberlin. Didn't know that. David Reese went to Oberlin. Okay. And I feel like a couple of other people. Yeah. He's got a nice reputation. Yeah.

Great name too. Oberlin? Oberlin. It sounds Ivy League. Yeah. Oberlin. The sound of quality. Oberlin. Sounds Ivy League-ish. Right. That's on their t-shirts. All the way.

Although we do need to give a shout out. There was one guy in 1879, William Edward White, who substituted and played one game. Oh, yeah. Who was officially, and this is a little murky history wise because we don't know much about him or how it happened. But supposedly he played one game as a professional baseball player as a black man. Is that right?

And this was when? 1879. Okay, so the Walker brothers were playing for Toledo in 1886, right? Correct. And actually, this article on HowStuffWorks Gets It Wrong says that they just played for the team for one year before the team went under.

That's not the case, as a matter of fact. Moses Walker, they may have only played together on the team for that one year. But Moses Walker had played for years before them. And actually, Moses Walker and there were several other players at the time. In 1886 and 87, there were at least four black players in the minors. But the Walker brothers were playing for Toledo, which was a major league team. Right. Correct.

But the presence of Moses Walker actually brought to the fore this kind of simmering resentment and kind of the big elephant in the room. There's a black guy on your team. Right. What are you guys doing? And so Toledo actually went to go play the White Sox in Chicago. And the White Sox had this, like, their great,

player of that season, I think in 1884. Who was it? Cap Anson. Great nicknames back then. So Cap Anson said, he said some horrible things and ultimately was like, I'm not playing if that man's on the field. And Moses Walker was actually injured and still was like, oh, well, I'm definitely going on the field today anyway. So he dressed out and I'm not sure if he actually played in the game, but he was like part of the team. And Cap Anson said,

was not indulged. Toledo was like, we're not taking our guy out. He's one of our players. So Cap Anson can go suck an egg. And Cap Anson went and sucked an egg. He was really mad. But the issue that day, that dispute at Comiskey Field brought to the fore that the

the concept of integration and ultimately segregation among major league baseball teams. And it actually increased the pressure among owners and managers to, to get rid of the black players, not just in the majors, but in the minors. Yeah. There was another player too. I read another story about, and we'll, we'll get to Roy Campanella. He was a,

He was better than Jackie Robinson at the time, a catcher who was just amazing, Hall of Famer. And he had a – there was a white pitcher. It was like, you know, he was a great catcher, but I didn't want to play with him. So I would – when I pitched to him, I would just ignore his signs and threw whatever I want. Like to his own detriment and to the team's detriment, he just wouldn't take the signs. What a putz. I know. Yeah.

Career sabotage essentially yeah, I don't think he lasted long either in Campanella's in the Hall of Fame so The other guy who knows I want to give these names all out though the four black men and the miners in 1866 besides Moses Walker we had Bud Fowler Frank Grant and George Stovey and as far as I'm concerned all these dudes are American heroes, so all of a sudden

They succumbed to pressure in 1890 after hate mail and death threats to coaches and managers and umpires and basically everybody, the players themselves. And they said, you know what? We're going to shut it down.

As officially in 1890, we can no longer have any black men in our league. So here's the thing. They never officially did that. They had the minor league ban black players. Yeah. And the way into the major leagues was through the minors. Well, and it was never on the rule books either. It was an unofficial non-gentleman's agreement. Right. Because eventually when it was broken, it wasn't like a rule was broken. Right, right. It was just an unwritten rule. Right, exactly, which...

the way for Branch Rickey to break that unbroken rule without actually breaking a rule. Yes. Yeah. Good point, Chuck. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's do it. Stuff with Joshua and Charles Stuff you should

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All right, man. So 1890, it's now there are no black players. Resegregated. In Major League Baseball or Minor League Baseball in America, right? Correct.

That's right. That actually paved the way for one of the great unsung chapters in baseball history, which was the creation of the Negro Leagues. Yeah, and a true show of American spirit and determination and courage.

just love of the game, these men got together, they formed their own teams, and they did what's called barnstorming. Yeah, which is pretty awesome. And they would load up in cars or on a bus, and they would go from town to town and take their show on the road, and they would get a game up wherever they could and wherever people would pay a couple of pennies to come watch a baseball game. They were playing white players in these barnstorming games, or black players or Latino players. Yeah.

Yeah, because that's a definite overlooked segment of the early baseball history are Latino players. Oh, totally. And one of the cool things about the Negro Leagues is they were integrated. They had Latino teams like the Cuban Kings out of New York, I believe. Yep, and one white guy. All right, so barnstorming's going on. Like I said, they would roll into town. They would play whatever teams they could play.

And it started to gain some momentum. Like people started to follow these players. Yeah. And they actually got fans. And there was a former player named Andrew Rube Foster who owned one of those teams. And he said, you know what? I think we need our own league. Yeah. They won't let us in their league. Let's start our own. Because besides the fact that people want it, there's money to be made here. Yeah. Yeah.

And as a matter of fact, so this barnstorming thing, I want to talk a little more about that, right? Yeah. One of the reasons barnstorming came about was to make ends meet, but it was also because these teams had to figure out a way to put on games as cheaply as possible. Yeah. All of the stadiums at the time were owned by whites, and the whites apparently were not very friendly to the idea of black teams playing in their fields, right?

So if it were just like black teams playing one another, the white owners of the fields would just charge an exorbitant amount. So these guys were going basically anywhere they could find a place that would stand still long enough for them to play a baseball game on. That's what they would play. And they played like

three games a day. Oh, yeah. Every day. Yeah. And they all traveled together and hung out with one another and spent a lot of time together. So the Negro Leagues came out of this kind of camaraderie of barnstorming together. Yeah. Which is pretty awesome. Yeah, it's very cool. So, yeah, this guy, Rube Foster, he owned the...

Chicago American Giants. And confusingly, there was also another Negro team called the Chicago Giants. And the St. Louis Giants. Yeah, but it could be like St. Louis versus Chicago. But if it was Chicago versus Chicago, well, which one? The Giants. Well, which one? The American Giants. Okay, now I understand. Not just the Giants. But Rube Foster was like this...

this booster of boundless enthusiasm. This guy literally put together the first real Negro League. Yeah. And when he was basically removed from it, the whole thing fell apart. That's how much of a driver this guy was. Yeah, he's in the Hall of Fame too. Yeah. He was a catcher, I think. Uh...

Oh, I don't even think he was in as a player, but he was. Oh, really? Yeah, I think just for his achievement. I gotcha. Although it may have been both. I don't know. But in 1920, he said, all right, here's what we'll do. Let me get these seven team owners of the Midwestern League that are doing these, you know, barnstorming traveling shows, basically. Let's get together in Kansas City. Seven all-black teams. In addition to those two Chicago Giants, we have the Cuban Stars, the Dayton Marcos, and

The Indianapolis ABCs and the very famous Kansas City Monarchs and St. Louis Giants. All, and this is the really great thing about this story, all of these teams except for the Monarchs were black-owned teams. Right. So not only do you have...

black players' careers developing. Yeah. You have, like, black enterprise developing in a time when there were very few avenues of opportunity for black people to advance in business. Yeah. In a sense where they own the business. This is a really good way to do it. Yeah, and not only that, like, the Major League Baseball site points out, like, this was...

It should be embraced in some ways because this at a time was one of the only ways that minorities could fully excel to their fullest potential. Right. Yeah, and that was a point of that article that I thought was pretty cool is that one of the things they lamented about the segregation of baseball during this time is that we'll never know how Babe Ruth would have stood up against Satchel Paige pitching to him.

Because they never got to play each other. So the truly great players are truly great during this time within their own skin color. Yeah. You know, you can't say they were the greatest in baseball because there were two legitimate parallel leagues going on at the time. And yeah, they played each other sometimes. But if you wanted to sit down and put stats against stats, you'd be very hard-pressed to do that. Right. Sure. Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Christy Matheson, like...

We know they were good. Like, we're not knocking their talent, but who knows what it would have been like in a truly integrated league. Yeah, and actually, it's funny you bring up Ty Cobb, because I was like, oh yeah, Ty Cobb was a huge racist. I wonder what he thought about the Negro Leagues. And I looked it up, and I found an article from a guy who argues that Ty Cobb was not the horrible racist that he's made out to be these days. Written by Jimmy Cobb. He found, well, he actually did cite his son, and I think

Sunstein might be Jim. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. But the guy found an article from...

maybe the 50s or something, 1952, where Ty Cobb is quoted at length coming out in favor of integration in baseball. Yeah. Saying, like, of course these guys should play as long as, you know, they conduct themselves like professional baseball players. Like, why would they not be able to play? I'm totally in favor of it. Interesting. I was like, did Ty Cobb say this? I think that bears more research. Yeah. You know?

Because he was supposedly very racist. Yeah, that's not what this guy says. All right, well, I'm going to look into that. That's not what his son says.

I'm not doubting you, of course. I just want to... Sure, no, I'm with you. I understand. So we talked about the integration of the Negro Leagues, which was awesome. Pretty soon, other leagues formed, not just teams. Yeah. There was one right here in the south, the Negro Southern League, with teams from right here in Atlanta. Dude, do you know the Atlanta team played directly across the street? Ponce de Leon Park. Yeah, where there's now a Staples and a Home Depot and a PetSmart. And a Whole Foods. Yeah. How, like...

Funny as that. Yeah. If you walk into Whole Foods and listen, you can hear the ghost of a bat cracking on a ball.

Yeah, I don't think this was the first team in Atlanta that played in the Negro Southern League because they folded that same year. But the Atlanta Black Crackers, we also had the Atlanta Crackers, which was the white team. We had the Atlanta Black Crackers, and it sounds funny that we say Ponce de Leon, not Ponce de Leon, but that's how we say it here. It's the street that fronts our office building. Ponce de Leon himself would have punched you in the stomach if he heard you say his name like that. But that's the street in Atlanta that fronts our office building.

And if you go and look on the internet, you can see these awesome pictures of this cool little baseball stadium right there hundreds of feet from where we sit. Yeah. Really neat. Yeah. And now you have Whole Foods. You just have to listen closely. You'll pay $7 for artisan mayonnaise. If you're lucky, $7. Oh, that's just for the...

Just for one smear? Yeah, just one smear. Did you hear Whole Foods got caught with uncalibrated scales for their hot bar stuff? Like it's not already expensive enough. Right, yeah. Isn't that awful? I expect a lot more from them. Yeah, you know, never get anything with bones at one of those. Oh, never. Or liquid. What a waste. Yeah. You throw half of that chicken leg away. Yeah. You paid for it. Sure. Or just, you know.

grind that chicken bone up and eat it and get your money's worth. Yeah, like peel off with your teeth, spit the meat into your little basket and throw the bone back into the hot bar. Yeah. Oh, I didn't think about that. Sure. That's a great idea. And you can say, I'm no chump. Yeah. Just go around screaming, I'm not paying for that bone.

All right, so where are we? The Negro Southern League folded. The Eastern Colored League opened in 1923. And then finally, in 1928, the American Negro League formed, and that was...

That was when things like they called eventually the American Negro League and the American, I'm sorry, the National Negro League, the majors of the Negro Leagues. Right. Like that was where the creme de la creme played. And everything's going pretty smoothly except two things happen, right? There was even like a Negro League World Series. Yeah. It was a best of nine. The Kansas City Monarchs. Oh, was it really? Yeah. The Kansas City Monarchs narrowly beat the Hilldale team.

They're from Darby, Pennsylvania, which I guess is near Philadelphia, in the first one in 1924. So there's like – these leagues have established themselves. By 1924, they have their own World Series going, right? Yeah. But just within a few years, there are a couple of hits to the league that ultimately led to the Negro majors disbanding. One is that Rube Foster suffered gas poisoning in –

Oh, was that what caused it? Yeah, in a hotel room in Indianapolis. He was found unconscious. Yeah. And there's some theory that, like...

Everyone believed in ghosts and spirits and mediums in the 19th century because they were all being poisoned by the natural gas that was leaking into their kitchens and homes all the time. Well, this guy had an acute poisoning and was found unconscious. And after that, when he regained consciousness and was nursed back to health, he lost his mind. And he just kept getting worse and worse. And by 1925, I think this happened in 1924, right?

1925, he was institutionalized. And by 1930, he died of a heart attack at age 51. And again, his guidance was so integral in this first incarnation of the Negro Leagues that when he was institutionalized, obviously they weren't like, well, what does the league do next? He was in an institution. And the league started to falter and fall apart. And eventually that...

coupled with the depression, the onset of the depression, really kind of led to the unraveling of the first Negro League. Yeah. And this, the Major League Baseball site, you know, these were, they profited on certain days of the week. Sundays were big days because they were played double headers. But the fact is, black Americans didn't have a lot of expendable money to

to throw at going to baseball games. Sure. Even though they're, you know, pretty cheap. It was commiserate with what people made at the time. Unless you were one of the Walker brothers whose dad was a physician. Yeah, they probably had a little money. Sure. But they were playing, so I'm sure their parents got in for free. Probably so. So it's all just a moot point. I wonder if they did get free family tickets back then. I would hope so. That's got to be as old as tickets, right? Probably. We got to do an episode on tickets. Guessless. So,

So they were making a little money on Sundays. They weren't hugely profitable overall, even though they were known as somewhat successful. No, a lot of these guys were still barnstorming on their off days. Yeah, and these are the players trying to make ends meet. The owners themselves were struggling here and there. White people came to see games sometimes, especially when they were exhibition games against white teams because they loved to go out there and see the—

see something they had never seen before, which many times was the black team mopping the floor with the white team. Although it seemed pretty evenly matched. Like from what I gathered, it wasn't like lopsided one way or the other. Yeah. Like they were good competitive games. Yeah. There are plenty of white players who are better than the black players and there are plenty of black players who are better than white players. Yeah. Yeah. I would say evenly matched is a good way to put it. So if you had an integrated league, you would get the best of both. Right. Which is eventually what we got.

Plus also in some of these cities, Chuck, there were not just baseball was segregated, but just within the city you had a white team and you had a black team. Right. And that's evidence to the names of some of the black teams, like the Black Crackers or the Black Yankees. Yeah, yeah. There were the Yankees and then there were the Crackers, right? So if you were a white player or a white person, you're probably a fan of the white team and you weren't going and watching the black teams play. Right. Right.

So they list out four things here on the site. They say the two leagues, the American and National Negro Leagues, were northern leagues.

And basically city dwelling teams. Right. Couple that with, um, there weren't a lot of black people living in Northern cities at the time. Uh, the South was, you know, was way more, uh, well, I want to say integrated, but it wasn't integrated, uh, way more black people living in the South at the time. Yeah. Which is, I wonder why the Southern Negro league didn't take off like a rocket then. Yeah. I mean, probably for the other reasons, like you couldn't afford to go to the games and all that stuff. Yeah. That's a good point. Uh,

Black people that were in the North didn't have a whole lot of money. And so basically all that adds up to not a lot of audience buying tickets. And the only way to keep a league afloat is to sell tickets and to sell concessions. Same as it is today. So all those things coupled with Rube Foster. And the Depression. Their greatest champion and probably sharpest mind, sadly, succumbing to mental illness. And then the Depression, and that was the end of...

of the Negro Leagues, right? Yeah, that was the end of the first one. Yes. And there were more to come, and we'll talk about it right after this. Stuff with Joshua and Charles Stuff you should know

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All right, so it didn't take long. The old saying, you can't keep a good man down. People wanted to play baseball. They were good at it. They thought there was more money to be made in leagues. And so

What happens is these numbers guys get involved. And a numbers man is... The numbers game was basically like an illegal, unsanctioned street lottery. Right. So numbers guys had a lot of money. And some of them said, you know what? Let's put money into starting baseball teams and leagues. Yeah. And one guy in particular in Pittsburgh...

Gus Greenlee. Great name. He was a bar owner in Pittsburgh. He bought the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1931. He said, well, I've got a team, but I don't have a league. So two years later, he formed the second Negro National League, and other numbers guys bought in, and all of a sudden they had another league going. Yeah. And this...

Basically kicked off what's known as the golden age of the Negro Leagues. Yeah. Starting about 1931, 32, 33 when these other teams came about. And Greenlee's team himself, was it his? No, I'm sorry. It would have been right across the river, the Homestead Grays. Yeah, they eventually migrated back to Pittsburgh. Did they? Over to Pittsburgh, yeah. So they were the same team that went from one town to another? They weren't rivals? No.

No, I think there was still the other Pittsburgh team, but from what I understand, the Homestead Grays eventually...

became part of Pittsburgh. Or maybe there was another team, I'm not sure. But I do know they eventually went to Pittsburgh. Because you know Homestead, we've been there. We did a show there. Yeah. Yeah, okay. And I was like, are we going to the right place? When the car was taking me? So Homestead used to have not just a team, they used to have the best Negro League team possibly ever. Oh yeah, easy. For nine consecutive years, they won the pennant.

Right? Yeah, nine years in a row. Josh Gibson, cool Papa Bell, and Buck Leonard, some of their stars. Yeah, just some of them. In 1935, they had no less than five future Hall of Famers on the team. Five. That's amazing. Point to a team that has five future Hall of Famers on it now, or ever did. Well, some of the Yankees teams did over the years, but I don't think anything right now. Oh, yeah?

Now, like, even the best team right now doesn't have five future Hall of Famers. Certainly not the Braves. No, we don't have one. I don't know. I could see Freddie Freeman hitting the Hall of Fame one day. Oh, really? I haven't been watching the last couple seasons. I mean, he's our best player, but... Come on, Freddie. The best player on the worst team in baseball? Not very good. Casey at the bat. Uh-huh.

All right, so we did mention that there were exhibition games going on, and things really picked up with exhibition games now because they were a little well-funded, and this is when...

White players would come and see the teams playing. I mean, it was basically more popular than ever in both communities. Yes. And we said that they had the Negro League World Series going on, right? Yeah. There was actually another game that came out of this. I think it was...

It might have been Gus Greenlee. I think it was. Who came up with the East versus West All-Stars game. Yeah. And that became bigger than the World Series in whatever it was in the Negro League. Yeah, it was huge. Yeah. So that became kind of like the de facto big game of the year rather than the World Series for them. And they played it every year, I think, in Comiskey Field. Oh, really? Yeah, in Chicago. Because, you know, East meets West in Chicago. That's right. That's what it says on the t-shirts, at least.

So players are starting to make some, like the top players are starting to make some pretty good money at the time. You can't go any further without talking about Satchel Paige, Leroy Satchel Paige. Dude. He was a pitcher. Very interesting dude. Maybe the greatest pitcher of all time in the sport of baseball. Maybe. He was eccentric. He was an entertainer. Yeah. He was like the Usain Bolt of his day. Yeah.

People loved him. Oh, okay. Except he didn't like to run. That's true. That would make him a little different. He even said he didn't like to run. Yeah. What was his quote? He said that training for me is rising gently from the bench. Back onto the bench. Yeah.

So have you ever seen video or, I guess, film of him pitching? Yeah, with those old-timey baggy baseball pants. Yeah, that was the style. But he had a weird wind-up. He had this sort of double windmill that he would do with his pitching arm. And then...

When he was younger, he had a great fastball, and he was noted for his control, like Greg Maddox-like in his pinpoint control. Yeah. Like, supposedly, he could just put a baseball within a half inch of where he wanted it to be, which is a big, big deal for a pitcher. Sure. As he lost his fastball over the years, he learned basically every pitch under the sun. Like, he pitched until he was...

59 years old. Yeah. He first signed in the majors, white majors, at 42. Yeah, 42-year-old rookie, technically. He's the oldest rookie ever in Major League Baseball. And I think the oldest pitcher ever as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was even older than Gaylord Perry. Yeah.

How old was he? He was in his 40s. Oh, was he? Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry. Gaylord. A few pitchers. Nolan Ryan made it to 50? No, not 50, but. He came close. Pitchers notably have been a little older. Which is crazy because like. Their arms, yeah. But they're not, you know, they're not like running around and batting like other players. Yeah.

But you're right. Like Freddie Freeman. Like the stress on the arm is amazing. So one thing...

That was problematic or is problematic when you're going back and looking at the Negro Leagues is that a lot of teams were allowed to, depending on the league, were allowed to set their own schedules. Yeah. Stats weren't kept quite as well as they were in the white leagues. Yeah, we don't know Satchel Paige's real lifetime stats. No, but... In full. There are some estimates. Yeah. And they are high. Oh, yeah. So, one that I saw...

That Satchel Paige had, I think it was in this article on MLB.com, which eventually will say the author's name, right? Yeah. They said that he had 300 career shutouts.

300 career shutouts. And this guy says in italics, not wins. Yeah. Shutouts, right? Yeah. If you don't know baseball, shutout means you have pitched a game where no one scored a run. Right. And back then, they were probably complete game shutouts, meaning he never came out and was relieved by another pitcher. Right. He would have pitched like all nine innings. Back in the day, they used to do that way more than they do now. Okay. So he had 300 career shutouts.

1,500 wins is the estimate that's on MLB.com. Yeah, to put that into perspective for non-baseball fans again, if you have 300 wins... Wins, not shutouts, wins. Then you're a Hall of Famer. Yeah. And in fact, they don't think there will ever be another 300-game winner again because of...

They are more pitchers in the rotation. Now they usually have five guys instead of four. They don't pitch as deep into games. They rest them a lot more. So it's just... We may not ever see that happen again just because of the way it's built. To also put it in perspective, Cy Young is...

regarded as one of the best pitchers ever in Major League Baseball. Sure, they named the top award after him. Exactly. He had 76 shutouts. Which is amazing. He had the most wins ever still in Major League Baseball at 5'11".

So Satchel Paige had conceivably three times more wins than the highest win count ever in Major League Baseball. And that's counting his entire career, I assume. Which, again, was very, very long. Sure. It was a very long career, but that just makes it all the more amazing, especially as he gets older. Yeah, like...

Let's say that people don't count the Negro Leagues as being in the top league at the time. Cut it in half, and he's still way ahead of everybody else. If you subtract 50% of everything he did. And the fact that he sat in a rocking chair in the dugout and had a huge personality, it's just awesome. Yeah, so he learned all sorts of pitches. By the end of his career, he was pitching knuckleballs, and he was famous for the hesitation pitch, which he invented, which was...

when he got to the white major leagues, they were like, that's illegal. You can't do that. It's called a balk. And he was like, all right. No, he's like, no, it's called a hesitation pitch. Don't you know? It was very sneaky. You know, it's like you act like you're pitching, then you stop. Because he was like, you know, I've got guys up there that are starting to swing more

Because I'm so fast, like when they see me winding up, they're starting to swing. Yeah. So if I just put a little slight pause there, then they're swinging and then the ball comes. So it was a very, very tricky little pitch. And he was making between 30 and 40 grand a year in the Negro. And this is also with appearances and stuff like that. Right. But in the Negro Leagues, which is about half a million dollars today. Yeah. Amazing amount of money.

At the time, you know. And those appearances, if you were a team owner that had Satchel Paige on your team, you might let him go make some scratch and probably take a cut yourself by lending him to another team whose attendance was struggling. Yeah. And all you had to do was advertise for a week that Satchel Paige was going to be pitching one day and you would sell out.

So he would help other Negro League teams that were struggling. Yeah, to be a draw. Yeah. And here's one little cool thing about our own Atlanta Braves. In 1968, Satchel Paige was lacking one more season to get his Major League Baseball pension and was out of the league and retired. And the Atlanta Braves signed him as a player coach. Like Terry Pendleton. Yeah.

He was never a player coach, was he? No, but he was a player and then a coach. Oh, yeah. Pete Rose was a player coach. Was he really? He managed the Reds and played for them. I did not. And bet on them. Yeah. But they signed him to a one-year deal so he could get his Major League Baseball pension. That is awesome. Which is a really cool class. What year was that? 1968. That's really cool. Yeah. Go Braves. So if you see a picture, when I saw a picture of him in the Braves uniform, I was like, wait a minute. He never played for the Braves. And he really didn't.

It was sort of, you know, just a little sneaky way to get him in there. That's cool. Which is great. All right, so Satchel Paige is killing it. Other players are killing it. It would not be long before somebody in the white leagues, somebody said the talent is too good. Somebody has to be the first to make this move and break the color barrier.

Yeah, right. That was the thing. The Negro Leagues were ultimately, as we'll find out, victims of their own success. The players that they supported and brought into the game were...

Of obvious major league caliber. Oh, yeah. In any major league. They were the best in the world. They were just playing on segregated teams. And so, finally, a group of people, but especially, it usually comes in the form of one guy named Branch Rickey. Yeah. Did Tom Hanks play him? No. Harrison Ford? No.

No. Maybe. Well, I didn't see the most recent Jackie Robinson movie. What's Harrison Ford? Maybe. I've seen him portrayed in other movies before.

I can't tell if it was him or not because the actor didn't have a diamond studded earring in, but Harrison Ford could have taken it out for the role. This guy named Branch Rickey, was he an executive or a manager for the Dodgers? He was an executive for the Dodgers. And he said, and this was when they were in Brooklyn, right? Yeah. He said...

this is ridiculous. We need to break this color barrier. There's plenty of great players out there that I want to sign. I'm going to break this unspoken rule. And he looked around to find a player who was not only good, but who he felt could withstand this horrendous... Yeah.

reception that whoever the first black player would be would definitely receive. For sure. And who did receive. And he found it in the person of Jackie Robinson. Yeah, that's a huge point. Because like I said, Roy Campanella was probably a better player at the time than Jackie Robinson. But if you see the Jackie Robinson story, I didn't see the recent one, like I said, but I just know a lot about his story. He

was the right guy. He had the temperament. He had the leadership. Roy Campanella would take your head off. Yeah, he did. He was a tough guy. But Jackie Robinson was the man in every way. And we should also shout out to The Road Being Paved.

by people like Joe Lewis and Jesse Owens before Jackie Robinson. As far as just white America accepting mainstream black athletes into their lives. Yeah, and I don't know if it was on this or on, there's a site called negroleaguebaseball.com that has a really good article called Negro League Baseball 101 or something like

that. It's just the basics. There's a definite story to the whole thing, right? Yeah. But they point out that probably more than anything that helped break the color barrier was blacks serving in World War II. Oh, yeah. Serving alongside white soldiers and stories coming back from the front of like, hey, these guys are killing Germans just as fast as any white guy. Yeah. And...

At the time, America was like, well, we love that about people. So when they returned, the black soldiers came home to a different America that they helped change by fighting in World War II. That's pretty cool. And, I mean, the timing of this apparently is not coincidental that Jackie Robinson was signed in 1946, a year after World War II ended. For sure. Yeah. So Branch Rickey was...

He was a very puritanical guy. He would often lecture players on sex and drinking and stuff. And he was...

He wasn't just some benevolent champion of the black man. Yeah, that's a good point, man, because a lot of times stories like this end up being about the guy who took the chance and paved the way for the black player. But he did. He did. Like he was an idealist. The emphasis, it's just too easy sometimes for the emphasis to go on to that.

Where it's like, well, the black player was one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Exactly. Let's put it this way. If Branch Rickey...

wanted to sell tickets by fielding a good team, he would have never signed Jackie Robinson. He was a businessman. That's a good point. The Dodgers sucked at the time. Did they? But he was an idealist. I mean, he was very much like, no, this is wrong and they should be allowed to play. Yeah. So, okay. So he was a complex human being like all other human beings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He can't just be shoehorned into an easy caricature.

No. That's great. So Branch Rickey, complicated human being. He selected Jackie Robinson, and it was a great selection. Yeah, Jackie Robinson played one year in the minors, which was ridiculous. They should have just, like, he spent his entire life playing in the minors. They should have just promoted him right away. But I think they just wanted to ease that transition. He won the batting title in the minors, his only year there.

And then won Rookie of the Year in his very first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Yeah. And that was April 15th, 1947 was when he made his debut, which was a very, very historic day. Yeah.

An amazing day. Major League Baseball has really honored Jackie Robinson to the fullest now. Yeah, and they should. Great. But Jackie Robinson definitely threw open the floodgates. Within four months of Jackie Robinson being signed...

or no, I guess actually being called up to the majors. Yeah. Two other guys, um, were signed both in July. And I think that year there were a number of other, um, black players suddenly playing for, uh, white major league baseball, which is suddenly not you now just major league baseball, not white major league baseball. That's right. Yeah. Uh,

Larry Doby, Cleveland Indians, Willard Brown, the St. Louis Browns, Henry Hank Thompson, the St. Louis Browns, Dan Bankhead, Leroy Satchel Paige made it finally, and of course Roy Campanella, among others. These were the first African Americans in Major League Baseball, and by 1952, just a few years later, there were 150 black players. And by 1954, all but four Major League teams had black players.

There were a few holdouts. Yeah, the Boston Red Sox notably were the last. They waited until 1959, 13 years after Jackie Robinson's debut season in the minors. So with the signing of Jackie Robinson and all the players to follow, like you hinted at earlier, and like this article plainly says, it was a very bittersweet end for

In one way, it was great. The color barrier was smashed. The league was being integrated and they were getting their due, although it was a struggle. But in another way, it was also sad that this league that had so much gumption and such a great, like,

We'll do it ourselves then attitude right and empower these men to play and these people to own these teams and start their own leagues So it was definitely like a weird time in history. It is like I think nowadays There's much more of a reverence and a bit of mourning for the disappearance of that league But you know in another way like I said it was smashing the color barrier was way more sure and

Way more better? I just went into Hulk speak. So, yeah, it would have been a much more satisfying end to the whole thing if the Negro Leagues had poached the best players in the white Major League Baseball. Oh, actually, you know what the best possible thing could have been was if...

the white major leagues absorbed those teams and owners and ownership as part of one big league. Nice. But they were like, no, we're just going to take your players. Yeah. Give them to us. So that is Negro League baseball, the history of it. Yep. Officially disbanded in 1948. Yeah.

And this article says into the 1950s, there were still a few teams playing here and there. And in the early 1960s, even, there was like one final team or I guess one final pair of teams. I guess they had to play somebody. Mm-hmm.

Still playing. Or they could scrimmage themselves. Yeah, it says the Negro American League was the last to throw in the town in the early 60s. Yeah. So, yeah, more than one team. And this article makes a point today, or at least in 2012, Major League Baseball was 40% non-white, which I was like, what? I would have guessed it was the opposite of that. That it was 60% non-white? I would not have guessed 60% of Major League Baseball players are white.

Yeah, and you know, there's a big push. I think like the one of the least represented demographics now in pro baseball or african-americans really yeah partially because of the rise of Latino players and then partially because They there's not a big a push to play baseball these days his kids in America and so there there's a lot of concerted efforts to try and get baseball going again in black communities and

Which is awesome. Sure. You know? Yeah. I know I was pushed. My dad was like, get out there and get hit in the head with the ball. See, I wasn't allowed. I had to play church softball. So lame. So then the color barrier is broken. And now the last vestige of any sort of color issue is the Native American slurs that are rampant in all sports as far as teams go. Yeah. Atlanta Braves. Once we get past that.

Maybe it'll be finally totally legitimate. If you want to know more about the Negro Leagues, you can type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. You can also go check out this amazing article called Negro Leagues, a Kaleidoscopic Review. It's on MLB.com. And check out NegroLeagueBaseball.com. They have all sorts of great profiles on the players and all that stuff. Oh, we never said the nicknames.

Oh, yeah. Should we rattle off a few of those? Sure. All right. Boy, these are some good nicknames. How about Jelly Gardener or Spoonie Palm? Turkey Stearns. Turkey Stearns. He's a Hall of Famer. Copper Knee Thompson or Steel Arm Davis? I think you mentioned Cool Papa Bell.

Yeah, Cool Papa Bell. That is the greatest name ever. Possum Poles, Ace Adams, King Tut. Smokey Joe Williams. Bullet Joe Rogan. Yeah, Joe Rogan. Did you know that? Rats Henderson. Boy, Turkey Stearns. That might be the best. That might be my new hotel pseudonym. Cool Papa Joe. Yeah, but no one would buy that at a hotel registry. Oh, yeah. Turkey Stearns, they definitely go for it. Those are great nicknames. All right.

Oh, yeah. Okay. So now that we said turkey stirrings, it's time for listener mail. This one I'm going to call short and sweet. What do you call it when you remember something with a pneumatic device? No. Pneumonic. Pneumonic. Pneumatic is when you remember it while you're pumping air up and down. Was it nomadic? You remember it while you're wandering around? Pneumonic, of course. Nice. I feel like a dummy.

There you go. Categories. Boy, I'm going to have trouble in this next show. Categories? During Wooly Mammoth's, not Wooly Mammoth's,

As our typo originally said. Yeah, it was my fault. That's all right. You just forgot to know. Wally. Here's an easy memory trick we learned in high school biology.

Kings play chess on fine green silk. Kingdom phylum class order family genus species. I love that stuff because I will never forget it now. That's not a mnemonic device, is it? It's pneumatic. I have no idea why this is still in my head over 10 years later. Well, that's exactly why. Sure. Katie. So hope that helps. And that is Katie from West Texas.

Thanks a lot, Katie from West Texas. We appreciate that. Kings play chess on green silk. Fine green silk. I'll never remember the fine part. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

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