Orlando Little League game broke barriers in 1955
“Two squads of bubblegum chewing kids who like their baseball made history here yesterday,” the Sentinel’s front page reported on Aug. 10, 1955. It was the height of Jim Crow segregation, and yet a Black Little League team from Pensacola played a white team from Orlando before a crowd at Lake Lorna Doone Park. It’s now considered the first integrated Little League game in the South.
All but forgotten for 63 years except by the participants, the story of the game was brought to light in the 2018 documentary film, “Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story,” produced by Ted Haddock of Orlando.
This month, the Orange County Regional History Center will present the film in two showings on Feb. 13 and 17 with opportunities for discussion.
‘We wanted to play’
For the 12-year-old boys involved, the game was first and foremost about playing the sport they loved. “We wanted to play baseball,” Admiral “Spider” LeRoy of the Pensacola team has said. “We weren’t concerned about history.”
But if both teams loved baseball, it had a special meaning for young Black players. “As little Black kids, we didn’t have a lot of things to do,” a Pensacola teammate recalls in “Long Time Coming,” more than 60 years later. Jim Crow laws placed harsh limits on where the boys could go and when. On the baseball diamond, they could be themselves — free of the
constraints of segregation.
Born in 1934, Major League Baseball great Hank Aaron echoes the same idea in the film. “Born in the South and raised in the South, I never was in control of anything other
than baseball,” Aaron says.
In contrast, some white players on the 1955 Orlando Kiwanis team interviewed in the film recall growing up in the 1950s as an idyllic time of freedom and security. Their limits were as
far as their bicycles could take them, as they roamed Orlando’s brick streets.
A tough journey
According to the Sentinel’s report of the game in 1955, plenty of good sportsmanship and good feeling was on view. When the Pensacola team took the field for batting practice, they were met with spontaneous applause that “must have surprised them,” the story said. Besides their coach and manager, there probably wasn’t a single person in the crowd who had ever seen them play.
Their journey to the game from Pensacola had not been easy. No other team in the Northwest Florida district would play against them, so they reached their championship status through other teams’ forfeits. “The manager of the Orlando team didn’t want to play
against them either, so he quit,” the Sentinel’s George Diaz wrote in 2018.
“But then good things happened,” Diaz added. “Another coach stepped up for the Orlando team. And parents of the Orlando players allowed them to be the adults in the room: They let the kids vote.” And so the game took place.
The two teams played at what was then called Optimist Park, which opened in 1925 near Lake Lorna Doone — a name that goes back to Orlando’s early days in the 19th century and was probably inspired by a popular English novel.
Lake Lorna Doone Park is now home to the City of Orlando’s first inclusive playground for use by children of all abilities, according to Orlando.gov.
The diamond where the Pensacola and Orlando teams made history in 1955 stood where the park’s football field is now, on the lake’s east side, says Gino Smith, Lake Lorna Doone park ranger, who’s sure of the location because he used to play baseball there himself.
During a recent visit, Smith also pointed out a concrete platform near the field. Later this month, if all goes as planned, a memorial statue honoring the 1955 game will be added to the park — another way to tell an important story from years ago that resonates today.
If you go
The Orange County Regional History Center presents free screenings of “Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story” on Sunday, Feb. 13 at 1 p.m. and Thursday, Feb. 17 at 6 p.m. Registration is suggested at TheHistoryCenter.org (click on events, and you’ll see both screenings listed). The History Center is at 65 E. Central Blvd. in downtown Orlando. Questions? Write Mary “Katie” Kelley at Mary.Kelley@ocfl.net or call her at 407-836-8556.
The 87-minute film features appearances by Hank Aaron, Andrew Young, Cal Ripken Jr. and Davey Johnson, in addition to members of the 1955 Pensacola team (Will Preyer, Cleveland Dailey, Admiral “Spider” LeRoy, Willie V. Robinson, Willie Stromas and Rev. Freddie Augustine), and the 1955 Orlando team (Stewart Hall, Jerry Cowart, Gary Fleming, Ron Homan, Bill Hudson, John Lane and Danny Rivenbark). Jon Strong directed; producers included John King and Tighe Arnold in addition to Haddock.