We’ve posted two more Negro league seasons, 1912 and 1913. The number of games between the best black professionals gets a little sparser with each year you go backward. It’s not that they were playing fewer games overall, it’s just that their opponents were much more likely to be white semipro or amateur teams.
Important teams operated in smaller cities and unusual locations. Paterson, New Jersey, enjoyed its sole entry into the blackball sweepstakes with the Smart Set, run by former major league pitcher Dick Cogan. Schenectady saw the arrival of the Mohawk Giants in 1913, complete with plaid warmup jackets:
Schenectady Mohawk Giants, 1913
Two major resort hotels in Springs Valley, Indiana, founded rival black teams, the West Baden Sprudels and French Lick Plutos. They were named after (and probably intended to promote) the brands of mineral water sold by each hotel, Pluto Water and Sprudel Water. The teams themselves were serious operations—the West Baden club was managed from 1910 to 1913 by none other than C. I. Taylor. In 1911 they defeated a second-string Pittsburgh Pirates squad 2 to 1.
Postcard showing the West Baden Springs Hotel, ca. 1910
The major black teams the Midwest did travel to the east coast occasionally, and vice versa, most notably in the big event of 1913: a 14-game series between the Chicago American Giants and New York Lincoln Giants for the “colored world championship.” Led by Cyclone Joe Williams, the Lincolns dominated, winning 9 games to 4 (with one tie). Williams went 5-2 with a save in the series, with one shutout. (The loss would motivate Rube Foster to raid the Lincolns for John Henry Lloyd in 1914.)
In coming weeks, look for 1908-1911 Negro leagues, plus more Cuban seasons.
New to the DB this week are the 1914 and 1915 Negro leagues. The 1914 season in particular marks a turning point in black baseball history, as Charles Isham Taylor, former manager of the Birmingham Giants and West Baden Sprudels, arrived in Indianapolis to take over the A.B.C.s, bringing along with him his three ballplaying brothers: Ben, Steel Arm Johnny, and Candy Jim. Starting from this season, the market for professional black baseball in the Midwest mushroomed, as these two teams, the traveling Cuban Stars, and the St. Louis Giants played more and more games against each other. A league seemed the inevitable outcome, though this wouldn’t actually come about until 1920. Rube Foster seemed to be thinking in these terms, as he spent the latter part of 1914 shuttling between Chicago and Louisville, where he was managing the Louisville White Sox in an apparent attempt to build up a potential franchise there. In 1915 two of the Taylor brothers, Jim and John, would take over the White Sox, though in the end the venture failed, and they finished the season with a traveling team they called the Chicago Black Sox.
The American Giants enjoyed a typically dominant (42-13) 1914 season, but lost one of their star pitchers, the 23-year-old Bill Lindsay, to tuberculosis on September 1. He was still playing only a month before his death, putting up a 4-0 record and a .500 batting average (10 for 20) against black teams. The following spring saw another blow to Foster’s team, as longtime star Bill Monroe, a brilliant infielder, flamboyant entertainer, and crowd favorite, died in Chattanooga, Tennessee, again of tuberculosis. The Giants also lost the great shortstop John Henry Lloyd to the Lincoln Stars. Despite adding young pitcher Dick Whitworth, among others, and eventually getting Lloyd back, the Giants slumped in 1915. They actually lost their season series with Indianapolis, 6 games to 3, and finished behind the A.B.C.s’ overall record against black teams (37-25-1 vs. Chicago’s 29-25-3).
Bill Monroe and Bill Lindsay
Among the top players of 1914 were Cuban Stars’ centerfielder Cristóbal Torriente (.395/.485/.605), the A.B.C.s’ first baseman/pitcher Ben Taylor(.366/.452/.602; 4-0, 1.53), and Cuban Stars’ ace Pastor Pareda (10-3, 1.79). The 1915 A.B.C.s were led by the submarining righthander Dizzy Dismukes, enjoying his greatest season at 14-5, 1.24, but he was surely no better than Cannonball Dick Redding (8-4, 1.06, mostly with the Lincoln Stars) or Cyclone Joe Williams of the Lincoln Giants (6-1, 2.10).
The east was much more chaotic than the midwest. The McMahon brothers lost control of the Lincoln Giants, but founded a new team, the Lincoln Stars, based at Harlem’s Lenox Oval. Promoter Nat Strong sent his Brooklyn Royal Giants to tour the west in 1914, but the team was unsuccessful both on the diamond and at the box office, and no Royal Giants team was fielded in 1915 (though they would return the next year). The veteran catcher/manager William T. Smith, better known as Big Bill, put together a team he called the Brooklyn All Stars (they also played as the New York Stars), and took them to Indianapolis and Chicago. The Schenectady Mohawk Giants’ owners had built a new park specifically for them, Mohawk Park, but the only black professional team to visit Schenectady was the second-tier New York Colored Giants.
As always, we’ve added and corrected a great deal of biographical information, thanks in no small part to Brian McKenna, who has been researching a number of important figures in this era of black baseball history.
Ben Taylor, Dizzy Dismukes, Big Bill Smith, Dick Redding
The historical Cuban League everyone knows about was played in the fall and winter months, and so is often referred to as the Cuban Winter League. Almost nobody remembers that, in the first decade of the 20th century at least, there was a Cuban Summer League, too, the Premio de Verano, or Summer Championship. The three major clubs of the Cuban Winter League—Almendares, Habana, and Fe—fielded teams in the Summer League, though they went by different names—Azul, Rojo, and Carmelita, respectively. (Habana also went by the names Punzó, a shade of dark red, and Eminencia, a cigar company that evidently sponsored the team in the summer of 1905, while Fe went by the name of Alerta for a couple of years.)
The quality of play in the Summer League was nearly the same as that in the Winter League, with most of the Winter League stars (Julián Castillo, Regino García, Carlos Morán, Luis González) turning out. The major exceptions were the players who spent the summers touring in the U.S. as the All-Cubans, and even these often returned to Cuba in time to take part in the latter stages of the Premio de Verano.
This update also includes the 1902/03 and 1903/04 Cuban Winter League, seasons in which Habana, managed by Alberto Azoy and led by their great pitcher Carlos Royer, were dominant. The 1902/03 season was divided into three series, the first two functioning in essentially the same way as a split season; the third series was a championship showdown between Fe, which had won the first series, and Habana, winner of the second series. Here we’ve combined the two regular season series, but kept the championship separate.
We’ve also added four new games for 1918, all victories by Hilldale and Phil Cockrell, and made a variety of additions to our biographical database. Most notably we’ve fully identified several obscure Indianapolis-based players of the 1910s, such as Jack Hannibal, an outfielder & welterweight boxer whose real name was Porter Lee Floyd; Arthur Coleman, a lefthanded pitcher who has sometimes been confused with the catcher Clarence Coleman; and McKinley Brewer, another pitcher for Jewell’s A.B.C.s and the Chicago Giants.
Thanks to Alan Fuchs, who provided a better image of Harry Salmon (pictures of Salmon are very rare). Alan is also responsible for several other good player photos, especially Hilldale and Kansas City Monarchs players.
Any questions, comments, suggestions? Please contact the webmaster at BaseballGauge@gmail.com
Statistical and biographical data for the The Negro Leagues Database, except the 1923 Negro National League, were compiled by Gary Ashwill. Copyright 2011 Gary Ashwill. All rights reserved. Playing statistics for the 1923 Negro National League were compiled by Patrick Rock. Copyright 2011 Patrick Rock. All rights reserved.
Win Shares are calculated using the formula in the book Win Shares by Bill James
