The National Baseball Hall of Fame is home to legendary and legendary feats of heroism, such as Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, Ted Williams’ .406 batting average, and Hank Aaron’s 715th home run. and in museums, the influence of Octavius Catto is little known. Babe Ruth’s records.
Born a free black man, Catto turned to baseball in the shadow of the Civil War. He was the founder of Philadelphia’s all-black Pythian base ball club, which included Frederick Douglass’ son, Charles. (They lost their first game, 70-15, but improved quickly.) The Pythians applied for membership in the Pennsylvania Amateur Baseball Association and the National Baseball Players Association, but were rejected.
The story of Catto, who was also a civil rights activist before his assassination in 1871, is one of many the museum is presenting in its new exhibit, “The Soul of the Game: Voices of Black Baseball.”
“It’s been documented that we’ve been playing baseball since we were slaves,” said Bob Kendrick, director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, and advisory board member for the exhibit. “Baseball has always been an important part of the African American experience in this country. It’s just that it’s not recorded in the pages of American history books.”
The exhibition comes at a time when the percentage of American-born black players in Major League Baseball is historically low. About 40% of Major League Baseball players last season were players of color, but only about 6% identified as black or African-American, compared to 1991, according to a report from the Institute for Diversity and Ethics. It’s the lowest figure since tracking began. The World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros featured no American-born black players for the first time in 72 years.
“It’s really good to keep the conversation going,” three-time All-Star Curtis Granderson said of the exhibition. “And that’s what you want to have. “We want the conversation to continue from one generation to the next.”
In recent years, baseball has sought to correct previous omissions and oversights regarding its history. None is more significant than the recent incorporation of statistics from several Negro leagues into official Major League Baseball statistics. For example, Josh Gibson replaced Ty Cobb for the highest batting average of all time. The Hall of Fame, which is not funded by Major League Baseball, has also acknowledged in recent years that the legacy of shrines such as Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Cap Anson includes maintaining a color barrier that remained in place until 1947.
One of the players the Hall of Fame recently recruited for its advisory committee was Dave Stewart, a standout starting pitcher and World Series Most Valuable Player for the Oakland A’s. He discussed his entire experience to inform the exhibition. Early in his career, he experienced isolation as the team’s only black player while traveling by bus through small minor league towns. Once, he said, a racist tried to run him over in a parking lot in Mississippi. But he was eventually able to meet and find camaraderie with heroes of an earlier generation, such as Bob Gibson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe.
“We talked about that experience and how it felt to be in that situation, how I was treated, how we were treated,” Stewart said. “We talked about the style of play. Look at players like Rickey Henderson and Reggie Jackson, their style of play, their brand, and what they did. If Cal Ripken had done something like that, would it have been more acceptable or less acceptable because Rickey Henderson had done it?”
As part of the exhibition’s opening ceremony, there was an exhibition game featuring more than two dozen former black big leaguers, including Granderson, Matt Kemp and Prince Fielder.
“The reason I said yes was to get a chance to be with all those guys again,” said Granderson, who played in the major leagues from 2004 to 2019. “This is the first time I’ve played with so many black players. We opposed each other, played together, and watched them grow.”
We’ve also been reminded recently that black representations are more common on big league diamonds. Among the items in the new exhibition section on the modern era is a T-shirt worn by Mookie Betts in the 2022 All-Star Game emblazoned with the phrase “We need more black people on the field.”
Tom Shieber, Chief Curator of the Hall of Fame I read “De Witt’s 1868 Guide to Baseball” during a recent exhibition tour. The document states that the National Association of Base Ball Players’ rejection of Octavius Catto’s team, the Pythians, was “likely to result in some degree of division of feeling if colored clubs were permitted.” , On the other hand, no one can be injured except them.”
“It was like, ‘What?’” Shieber asked. “It’s really strange to connect the dots that way, but it was. One thing we’re saying here is that color lines aren’t just drawn at that moment. All kinds of things happen, and it gets heavier, bolder, bolder, stronger.”
A new exhibition explores Jackie Robinson’s life of breaking through those barriers and other lesser-known limitations. One of the items on display is the championship ring 19-year-old Hank Aaron received when he integrated the South Atlantic League in 1953.
Robinson’s story is widely known as a story of triumph and preservation. But reintegration, as Shieber likes to call it, coincided with the collapse of the Negro Leagues. The exhibition doesn’t shy away from exploring those ramifications.
“It’s such a bittersweet story,” Kendrick said. “Those owners and the older players in the Negro Leagues essentially took one for the team. This reminds us that what is considered progress always comes at a cost. And the black economy has paid a huge price for this progress.”
After reintegration, major league executives established an unwritten quota system that limited the number of black players on rosters, Shieber said.
He added, “This resulted in a one-sided transaction.” “It’s not just a one-for-one transaction. It’s, ‘We have enough black player deals.’”
Near the end of the exhibit, Shieber pointed out that the locker once used by Willie Mays was acquired by Barry Bonds as a San Francisco Giants player.
One of Stewart’s fondest early memories is meeting his favorite player, Mays, at the age of five. But Stewart may also look up to Gibson, Aaron, Frank Robinson and many other black stars.
Kids today probably emulate Betts, he said. He currently struggles to name another American-born black star.
On the surface, the numbers are improving. The league established several programs to encourage, identify, and develop young black players. In recent years, the number of black players selected at the top of the draft has been increasing. 12 in the top 100 from three years ago, 13 in the top 100 in 2022, and 10 in the top 50 in last year’s draft.
“But we’re going to have to be patient,” Kendrick said, “but as a society, we’re not very patient.” “This trend did not happen overnight. “A solution will not come overnight.”
Kendrick believes that telling stories like Catto’s from 150 years ago will help in that effort. “It will be a wake-up call,” he said.
