Reflections on Baseball, the Negro Leagues, Segregation and Racism
Guest Column
By Gerry Chidiac
My earliest memories of baseball revolve around the 1969 Chicago Cubs. Enthusiasm just resonated off Wrigley Field as the great Ernie Banks chimed, “Let’s play two!”
Regardless of the disastrous finish to that season for the Cubbies, a love for the game was planted in my soul as a seven-year-old. Those heroes were larger than life.
I knew little of the impact segregation had on the game I grew up loving, or the impact it had on my heroes. I knew almost nothing about the courage of the men on the field, whose character extended far beyond the baseball diamond.
After Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby joined the National and American Leagues respectively in 1948, the writing was on the wall for the Negro Leagues. They still signed players and played games, but the number of fans began to dwindle. By the 1950s, the calibre of play had diminished, and soon the great teams of the past were no more.
Many of the greats of my childhood were veterans of the Negro Leagues. Banks had played for the Kansas City Monarchs. Henry Aaron, who broke the home run record in 1974, had played for the Indianapolis Clowns. The unforgettable Willie Mays had started his career with The Birmingham Black Barons. And there were many others.
America was deeply divided in the early 20th century, and Major League Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was determined to keep baseball segregated until his death in 1944. He failed on several counts. While the top baseball leagues were segregated, the players were not. Athletes naturally want to go up against the best competition, and they found ways to do so. Winter leagues in Latin American countries, for example, saw no point in segregating players. There were also forces beyond baseball which recognized our common humanity and the obscenity of segregation. One also has to recognize that despite the efforts of Landis and others to keep Black players out of the National and American Leagues, Major League Baseball was indeed being played in the Negro Leagues.
It seems rather odd that it has taken Major League Baseball until 2020 to officially recognize statistics from the Negro Leagues as the equivalent of National and American League statistics. The caliber of play was well known to the athletes and true fans. There has arguably been no greater pitcher than Satchel Paige, who joined Larry Doby in Cleveland in 1948 and humiliated American League batters as a man in his 40s, normally well past the prime of a baseball player.
Racism is pointless and it will inevitably fail, but it is part of our history. Today there are only two known Negro League stadiums still standing, Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey, where Doby grew up, and Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, where Mays once played. These living monuments need to be preserved.
It is important to note that racism did not end once the American and National Leagues were integrated. In many ways it became worse. Young black players like Banks’ teammate Billy Williams and Dick Allen, who played for the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox, were harassed and threatened while playing minor league baseball. Even the great Henry Aaron received hundreds of thousands of letters threatening violence as he neared Babe Ruth’s homerun record.
There are several important lessons to take away from studying segregation in baseball. The most obvious is that there will be small-minded people who are not able to see the richness of human diversity. However, though they may do their best to create conditions which keep us apart, there is a greatness in the human spirit which will always find a way to bring us back together and help us to ultimately become better people.
Gerry Chidiac is a Canadian educator and a columnist for Troy Media.

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Episode #28 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: A Chat With Mano Watsa, a Leading Basketball and Life Educator – Watsa is President of PGC Basketball, the largest education basketball camp in the world. We discuss problems in youth sports today.
Episode #27 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: Kids’ Sports: How We Can Take Back the Game and Restore Quality Family Time In the Process – Linda Flanagan is author of “Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids’ Sports and Why It Matters.” We discuss how commercialized and professionalized youth sports are hurting kids and their families.
Episode #26 – League of Fans’ Sports Forum podcast: How Can We Fix Youth Sports? – John O’Sullivan is Founder and CEO of Changing the Game Project and author of “Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes and Giving Youth Sports Back to Our Kids.”
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"How We Can Save Sports" author Ken Reed appears on Fox & Friends to explain how there's "too much adult in youth sports."
Ken Reed appears on Mornings with Gail from KFKA Radio in Colorado to discuss bad parenting in youth athletics.
“Should College Athletes Be Paid?” Ken Reed on The Morning Show from Wisconsin Public Radio
Ken Reed appears on KGNU Community Radio in Colorado (at 02:30) to discuss equality in sports and Title IX.
Ken Reed appears on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour (at 38:35) to discuss his book The Sports Reformers: Working to Make the World of Sports a Better Place, and to talk about some current sports issues.
- Reed Appears on Ralph Nader Radio Hour League of Fans’ sports policy director, Ken Reed, Ralph Nader and the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner discussed a variety of sports issues on Nader’s radio show as well as Reed’s updated book, How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan. Reed's book was released in paperback in February, and has a new introduction and several updated sections.
League of Fans is a sports reform project founded by Ralph Nader to fight for the higher principles of justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports; and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in sports industry and culture.
Vanderbilt Sport & Society - On The Ball with Andrew Maraniss with guest Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director for League of Fans and author of How We Can Save Sports: A Game Plan
Sports & Torts – Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans – at the American Museum of Tort Law
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