MECCA OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES
Black baseball legacy runs much deeper than numbers
Richard Alsberry was barely old enough to turn a double play when he remembers gazing out of the Beltzhoover Elementary School windows to see Willie Mays and Hank Aaron arriving at his uncle’s house on the other side of Cedarhurst Street.
Mays and Aaron, Alsberry said, would often be waiting for his uncle, Vic Harris, who was a custodian at the school. The Major League Baseball greats were actually family friends, and once, when Alsberry was in third grade, he swears he brought a baby-faced Mays for show and tell.
“I was the hero of the school,” Alsberry joked.
While Mays and Aaron gained admittance into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, their role in Alsberry’s life actually exemplifies Pittsburgh’s deep roots and rich tradition as the one-time epicenter of the Negro Leagues, home to the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Homestead Grays and some of the best players from that era.
Alsberry’s Uncle Vic was a Negro Leagues player and manager who guided the Grays during a run of dominance from the late 1930s into the early 1940s. Mays and Aaron, who began their careers in the Negro Leagues, knew Vic because he played with their fathers and would look after them as kids.
Whenever they came to Pittsburgh to play the Pirates, Mays and Aaron would often venture to Beltzhoover to see Uncle Vic, occasionally bringing with them other MLB legends such as Frank Robinson, Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda.
“Me and my friends in the neighborhood were all baseball players,” Alsberry said. “And we grew up with some of the greatest baseball players who ever lived, all because of what my uncle did with the Homestead Grays.”
An important, long-overdue moment for baseball — and society — occurred Thursday, when MLB announced it would recognize the Negro Leagues as “major league,” officially counting stats and giving some of the sport’s most iconic players and teams the respect they deserve.
The move resonated with Alsberry and others attached to Pittsburgh’s legacy as a “mecca” for the Negro Leagues. But that history also runs much deeper and carries a far greater significance than Satchel Paige’s ERA or Josh Gibson’s towering home runs.
“There’s no question that Pittsburgh was central to the history of Black baseball,” said Pitt history professor and sports historian Rob Ruck. “During the time that baseball was marred by a color line, Pittsburgh was the crossroads.”
Sense of pride
Pittsburgh creating a cradle of talent within the Negro Leagues has predictable roots in the steel industry. Companies back then would often put together teams to compete for money, pride or both.
Black players arriving here via the Great Migration found work and an outlet for their talents.
The Grays began as an industrial team called the Germantown Blue Ribbons and later rose to prominence under Homestead native Cumberland Posey, the only member of both the National Baseball and Naismith Memorial Basketball Halls of Fame.
The Crawfords can be traced to an Edgar Thomson Steel Works team run by Harold Tinker, who would later discover Gibson. Once Tinker left organized baseball, Gus Greenlee purchased the team in 1931 with money from his popular night spot, the Crawford Grill.
As the Grays won nine consecutive league pennants and three Negro League World Series titles between 1937 and 1945, Greenlee’s Crawfords — named after the Crawford Bath House in the Hill District — became a worthy challenger, the two waging perennial battles for Negro League and city supremacy.
The Crawfords are known for their championship season in 1935, when they fielded a lineup featuring future Hall of Famers Gibson,
Oscar Charleston, James “Cool Papa” Bell and Judy Johnson. They had five the next year when Satchel Paige returned from a year of playing semipro ball.
The Grays, meanwhile, had future Hall of Famers such as Buck Leonard, Ray Brown and Jud Wilson, who along with Gibson contributed to their dominance and helped solidify Pittsburgh as a bellwether city for Black baseball.
“People talk a lot about Kansas City [where the Negro National League was established on Feb. 13, 1920], but when it comes to the mecca of Negro League baseball, it’s right here,” said Sean Gibson, Josh’s great-grandson.
The Negro Leagues also helped to form what Ruck described as a “vibrant” Black community during segregation.
“Baseball was part of Black history in this town,” said Kirk Bruce, whose father, Clarence, played second base on the Grays’ Negro League World Series-winning team in 1948. “When Black baseball was thriving, Black communities
thrived.”
Bruce has enjoyed hearing more people talk about the Negro Leagues, especially teenagers who may not know what a prominent role Pittsburgh played in Black baseball. He also wasn’t terribly swayed by Thursday’s news.
“It’s great that people are interested in the Negro Leagues,” Bruce said. “I think there’s more information out there than there’s ever been. But to the relatives of those who played, this isn’t anything new to us. We always thought this was Major League Baseball.”
Carrying the torch
As soon as Major League Baseball made its announcement, Sean Gibson’s phone began ringing with text messages and interview requests. But a couple of the most important conversations he had were with a group of women who have basically become his second family.
“I think of him like my son,”
said one of Satchel Paige’s daughters, Linda Shelby Paige.
“We look at life pretty much the same way,” added Buck Leonard’s daughter, Rose Hunter, talking about the 52-year-old Oakdale resident.
Although this part probably isn’t unique to Pittsburgh, what happened here with the Crawfords and Grays — 15 players from the two clubs are currently enshrined in Cooperstown — has created a closeness among their survivors.
They chat several times a week about their loved ones. They try to promote charity efforts or nonprofits, such as the Josh Gibson Foundation, for which Sean serves as executive director. They share stories and coordinate efforts to make sure the younger generation knows who these guys were and what they’ve done for the sport.
“I know I can count on Sean or Rose to give me the support I need,” Linda said.
Rose Hunter remembered hearing plenty about the Crawford Grill’s bread pudding, which was one of her father’s favorite dishes, and how the Negro League stars would mingle with jazz musicians at the popular postgame destination.
Linda said her father had an affinity for Pittsburgh that actually rivaled how he felt about Kansas City, where he spent most of his life.
“Pittsburgh meant a lot to him,” Linda said. “Those cities were their second home because when they went there, the Black community was like one big family. It was more than a team. It was a brotherhood.”
That brotherhood continued into reunions after the Negro Leagues disbanded, a few years after Jackie Robinson broke the MLB color barrier.
“We have a closeness that’s very unique, and it’s all because of our loved ones playing baseball together,” said Linda.
That closeness seems to trace back to one person, Sean Gibson. With a greatgrandfather who became one of the Negro Leagues’ premier players, Gibson has become the glue of the group.
“Sean has shown me a window into his greatgrandfather,” Rose Hunter said. “Everything that Buck talked about him being — strong but gentle, kind, caring — I’m seeing that in Sean.”
“Sean’s the nucleus,” said Kent Davis, one of Tinker’s twin grandsons.
Gibson, of course, downplays his role as the glue binding Pittsburghers with ties to the Negro Leagues.
“To be honest with you, I think it’s because I’m the youngest,” Sean said. “A lot of them lean on me for advice and guidance. I just try to help the family members, tell them what they need to do and what they shouldn’t do. We’re all a pretty closeknit
group.”
An important one, too. Like Gibson, Hunter and others feel a sense of responsibility to “keep the stories alive because a lot of people don’t have an idea or clue about what it was about. You have to remind people constantly.
“My kids used to tell me, ‘Mom, it’s Thanksgiving, we don’t want to hear about the Negro Leagues.’
“I said, ‘Well, you’re going to hear about it. Because I’m never going to stop talking about it.’ ”
Lasting legacy
Ron Baraff doesn’t have direct ties to the Negro Leagues, but since 1998, he has been director of historic resources and facilities for Homestead-based Rivers of Steel, a National Heritage Area that essentially acknowledges, celebrates and promotes the area’s steelmaking heritage.
“The legacy of Negro Leagues baseball in this region is incredible,” Baraff said. “This was really the apex. You had some of the greatest players ever coming through here.”
And they were playing on fields that still stand today.
Greenlee Field — the first Black-owned and operated baseball field in the United States — has been demolished, giving way to Bedford Dwellings in the Hill District.
But West Field is Munhall is very much operational. The home of the Grays when they couldn’t play at Forbes Field, it is one of the last surviving Negro League ballparks, tucked behind the borough police station on West Street.
Thanks to a $6 million grant from Homestead native William V. Campbell Jr., the field received some important upgrades in 2016.
“Like the legacy of a lot of this, I don’t think enough people know and really understand how important that field is,” Baraff said.
Those with family ties to the Negro Leagues do, though. The same as McKinley Park in Beltzhoover, where Alsberry said his mom would often hold Gibson’s wallet during games. Or Ammon Field — now Josh Gibson Field — located a short walk from Greenlee.
Pittsburgh’s power
Alsberry heard and saw plenty about the difficulties of being a Black baseball player during the early and middle part of the 20th century. One of the reasons Mays, Aaron and others would visit his uncle’s house was that it was one of the few places where they knew they could safely get something good to eat.
Alsberry also remembers tagging along with his aunt when she picked up Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson from their team hotel.
“They were sharp,” Alsberry said. “Those guys made an impression on us.”
Negro League baseball worked in Pittsburgh for a variety of reasons, Ruck said. The biggest might have been simple geography, with Pittsburgh’s central location on the east-west rail lines, as well as the steel industry and its jobs.
“If you were a barnstorming team, performer, band, political leader or intellectual doing speaking tours, you would pass through Pittsburgh,” Ruck said. “So you’d stop and play.”
The Pitt professor also credited Posey and Greenlee for the way they built and maintained the Grays and Crawfords, respectively. Both were obviously good at recognizing talent and also drumming up the funds to obtain it.
Greenlee made much of his money through numbers games — essentially a lottery that predates the current iteration — and the Crawford Grill. Posey had to get creative. Art Rooney, the Steelers founder, would occasionally help Posey, who eventually added a numbers-based co-owner in Rufus “Sonny man” Jackson.
Although Greenlee and Posey got along, there was a fierce competition for the Negro Leagues’ best players.
“[Posey] actually made an alliance with Jackson, who was the numbers person in the south suburbs like Homestead and other areas,” said Dr. Evan Baker, Posey’s great nephew. “That gave him some extra capital to compete with them. But even within the city of Pittsburgh, you had a free agency battle going on for the best players.”
“These guys built teams that everybody else measured themselves against,” Ruck said of Posey and Greenlee.
The Grays played most of their games at Forbes Field until World War II, when they began splitting their seasons between Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C, often outdrawing the Senators at Griffith Stadium.
After the Grays won that World Series title in 1948 and MLB clubs began to allow Black players, the competitive level of the Negro Leagues dropped; great Black players such as Mays and Aaron were welcomed into MLB, starting arun where nine of the next 11 National League MVP awards went to Black players, beginning with Robinson in 1949.
But it’s impossible to ignore the role that Pittsburgh played when it came to the Negro Leagues.
“I never really thought about Pittsburgh as a Negro Leagues power until Sean and I became friends,” Alsberry said. “He made me realize how lucky we were.
“Now, I look back on the things that they accomplished with a sense of pride. What they went through to do what they did was truly amazing.”