Honoring the Legendry Stars of the Negro Leagues and Pre-Negro Leagues Baseball
HONORING THE LEGENDARY STARS OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES AND PRE-NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in the last few moments, we adopted a resolution which is historic in nature. It relates to the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues baseball in America. Anyone who loves baseball as I do and followed the great documentary prepared by Ken Burns on the history of baseball must have been struck by how much the history of baseball is associated with the resolution of the issue of race in America.
For too long, baseball, similar to much of America, was segregated. Now that it has become an integrated sport, we have seen some tremendous athletes--Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, White Americans, those from other countries--coming together to make it a more exciting sport than it has ever been.
I think we realize now what was lost for so many decades, while those who labored in Black baseball, the Negro Leagues, were relegated to second-class status despite the fact their talents were as good or sometimes better than those who played on all White baseball teams.
Jerry Izenberg, a sports writer for the Newark Star Ledger, wrote of the stars of Negro Leagues Baseball:
They took America's game and weaved a kind of magic with it that most of America never bothered to see--not for lack of talent and surely not because of the way they played it--with a fire in the belly and joy in the skills that motivated them.
America loved baseball, but segregation turned America blind. The psyche of the White men who owned Major League Baseball and most of those who played the game couldn't get past the matter of skin color.
One of the greatest players ever, the legendary Satchel Paige, spent most of his career in the Negro Leagues. In his Hall of Fame induction speech in 1971 he said:
Oh, we had men by the hundreds who could have made the big leagues, by the hundreds, not by the fours, twos or threes.
`` ..... Ain't no maybe so about it,'' Satchel Paige said.
I did have the honor to meet him one day. He was in Springfield watching a baseball game. I still remember it. He was seated next to Minnie Minoso, whom I will refer to a little later in these remarks.
Most of those players never got that chance. But now, 17 more players and 5 executives from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues baseball are getting some long overdue recognition.
This week, a special commission appointed by Major League Baseball acted to heal another of segregation's scars by voting to induct the 17 into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I am pleased to join baseball fans around the world in congratulating these new Hall of Famers:
Negro Leagues baseball players Ray Brown, Willard Brown, Andy Cooper, Biz Mackey, Mule Suttles, Cristobal Torriente, and Jud Wilson;
Pre-Negro Leagues players Frank Grant, Pete Hill, Jose Mendez, Louis Santop, and Ben Taylor;
Negro Leagues club owners Alex Pompez, Cum Posey, and J.L. Wilkinson;
And pre-Negro Leagues team owner and baseball writer Sol White.
Also among the new Hall of Famers is Effa Manley, co-owner with her husband of the Newark Eagles and the first woman to join the Hall of Fame. Effa Manly was White, but she married a Black man and chose to pass herself off as Black. She was active in the civil rights movement and promoted Anti-Lynching Day at Eagles games in the 1940s.
Similar to many, I am surprised--I am really disappointed--that two names were not on the list I just read. Of the 39 Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues stars considered for inclusion in the Hall of Fame this week, only two are still living: Mini Minoso and Buck O'Neil. I can't explain why neither one was selected.
No matter how the committee voted, Minnie Minoso and Buck O'Neil will always be Hall of Famers to baseball fans in Chicago and around the world. Let me tell you about them.
Saturnino Orestes Armas ``Minnie'' Minoso is one of the most popular players in Chicago White Sox history--a seven-time All-Star and three-time Golden Glove winner.
He was nicknamed ``the Cuban comet,'' the first Black Latino in the major leagues starting in 1949 with the Cleveland Indians. Two years later, he became the first White Sox to break the color line.
He hit a home run in his first at-bat with the White Sox and went on to be named American League Rookie of the Year in 1951, leading the league in stolen bases and triples. Over his career, he led the league in being hit by pitches 10 different times--an indication, I am afraid, of how difficult it was to break the racial lines.
In the words of Orlando Cepeda, who once played for the St. Louis Baseball Cardinals:
Minnie Minoso is to Latin ballplayers what Jackie Robinson is to Black ballplayers.
He paved the way for generations of Latin superstars, from Roberto Clemente to Juan Marichal to Sammy Sosa.
In 1983, the White Sox retired Minnie Minoso's No. 9 uniform, and in 2004, he was honored with a life-sized sculpture at U.S. Cellular Field, home of the world champion Chicago White Sox. At the unveiling ceremony, he said:
If God takes me tomorrow, I'm happy because my statue is here. How many people in the Hall of Fame have statues in the ball parks?
John ``Buck'' O'Neil should be a familiar name to those who remember the Ken Burns documentary. Buck O'Neil was the Black baseball player they went to time and time again to talk about life in the Negro Leagues. He was the unofficial ambassador for Negro Leagues baseball in the Ken Burns documentaries.
He was a standout first baseman and successful manager for the Kansas City Monarchs from 1937 to 1955. Years later, as a scout for the Chicago Cubs, Buck O'Neil signed future Hall of Famers Ernie Banks and Lou Brock to their first major league contracts.
Think about that. Buck O'Neil from the Negro Leagues signed Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub, to the Chicago Cubs.
My message to the Tribune publishing company, which owns the Chicago Cubs, is: Can you think of a better batter to throw out a pitch for a game in Wrigley Field than Buck O'Neil, the only surviving baseball player from the Negro Leagues, and his man that he scouted for that team, Ernie Banks? It just doesn't get any better.
With the Cubs, Buck O'Neil also became the first African-American coach in the Major Leagues. At age 94, he is the driving force in preserving Negro League history--94 years old. He is the cofounder and chairman of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, which he and a handful of other Negro Leaguers started in a $200-a-month room in 1990.
Buck O'Neil has probably done more than anyone to see that the stories of great Black ball players before Jackie Robinson are not forgotten. Without his tireless efforts, it is unlikely a special committee would have ever started to right the wrong of segregated baseball. So it strikes many of us as ironic that Buck wasn't chosen to enter Cooperstown. He greeted the news with typical Buck O'Neil grace and optimism when he said:
Before I wouldn't even have had a chance but this time I had that chance. ..... I was on the ballot, man.
Isn't that a great quote, from a man 94 years of age, who could have been given that moment in history to be the only surviving member of the Negro Leagues to actually physically be there as he was admitted to the Cooperstown Hall of Fame?
He added something. He said:
You think about this. Here I am, the grandson of a slave. And here the whole world was excited about whether I was going in the Hall of Fame or not. We've come a long, long ways. Before, we never even thought about anything like that. America, you've really grown, and you're still growing.
The story of Black baseball is amazing. During its golden years, Negro Leagues Baseball was the Nation's third-largest Black-owned business.
The leagues included such storied franchises as the Chicago American Giants, the Kansas City Monarchs, the Homestead Grays, the Atlanta Black Crackers, the Newark Eagles, and the New York Black Yankees.
Among its stars were the legendary Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, called ``the black Babe Ruth'', William ``Buck'' Leonard, the ``black Lou Gehrig,'' the acrobatic William ``Judy'' Johnson, and James ``Cool Papa'' Bell. Cool Papa Bell was so fast, it was said that he could turn off the light and be in bed before the room got dark. Even Jesse Owens declined to race against him.
The roots of black baseball stretch back to 1867. That year--2 years after the Civil War ended--the National Baseball Players Association was created. The new league banned any team that included even one Black player.
In 1887, the first Black baseball team, the Cuban Giants, was formed to give talented black players in New York a chance to play ball. Their success inspired other Black teams to form.
Many of the teams were hugely popular. One Sunday in 1911, the Chicago Cubs drew 6,000 paying fans, the White Sox had 9,000 fans, while the black team, the Chicago American Giants, drew 11,000 fans.
In 1920, the owner of the Chicago American Giants, Rube Foster, and other team owners met in Kansas City to form the Negro National League.
Foster hoped that the victor in the Negro championship would one day play the major league winner and that the color line in baseball would eventually be erased entirely.
That dream was crushed in 1919, with the appointment of Major League Baseball's first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who forbade White ball clubs from playing against Black clubs, even in exhibition games.
Negro Leagues players were paid little. They suffered long bus rides, exhausting schedules, and second-and third-rate motels. Other times, they relied or Black churches and fans' homes for a place to sleep. They played year round. When it got cold in the states, they headed south to play in Cuba or the Dominican Republic.
The color line was nearly broken in 1943 when Chicago Cubs owner Bill Veeck planned to buy the Philadelphia Phillies and hire Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and other Negro League stars, but Landis learned of the plan first and sold the team to someone else.
The following year, Landis died. The new commissioner, former Kentucky Governor Happy Chandler, famously declared: ``I'm for the Four Freedoms. If a Black ..... can make it on Okinawa and Guadalcanal ..... he can make it in baseball.'' But the Major League owners disagreed and voted against integration 15-to-1.
In 1945, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branche Rickey signed a shortstop from the Kansas City Monarchs to play for the Dodgers' farm club. As a lieutenant in the Army, Jack Roosevelt Robinson risked a court-martial by refusing to sit in the back of a military bus. In 1947, he was called up to play for the Dodgers. Baseball's color line was finally erased.
Soon after, the Negro Leagues began to falter financially as they lost more and more of their best players to the majors. The league folded in 1960.
Before the vote this week, only 18 of the Negro League's more than 2,600 players had been voted into the Hall of Fame.
Among those pushing for recognition of other deserving Negro Leaguers was former Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent. Vincent's interest in Negro Leagues ball was heightened after he met Alfred ``Slick'' Surratt, a Negro Leaguer who served in World War II and was wounded at the Battle of Guadalcanal, and then barred from playing Major League baseball when he returned home.
In 1991, at the urging of former St. Louis Cardinals catcher and baseball broadcaster Joe Garagiola, Vincent arranged a trip to Cooperstown for 75 Negro League players. At a formal dinner, he apologized to the players for the way baseball had snubbed them. He later told a reporter from USA Today: ``I really thought I was repeating an old line, but it turned out that it was the first time that someone--from Major League Baseball--had done that.'' When he handed out a commemorative medallion of the event, he said, ``about a third of [the players] were crying.''
In 2000, Major League Baseball commissioned a $250,000 study of African- American players from 1860 to 1960. The result is the most thorough statistical record of the Negro Leagues ever compiled. It includes statistics culled from Black-owned newspapers as well as stats from games that matched barnstorming White players--including Babe Ruth and Dizzy Dean--against Negro Leaguers.
The league then appointed a special commission of 12 historians and scholars to sift through the record and select players who should be considered for the Hall of Fame. The first list included 39 names. From those 39 players, the committee this week selected the 17 new Hall of Famers.
It wasn't just on the field that Negro Leagues Baseball differed from White baseball. At Major League games Black and White fans were separated by chicken-wire fences--``one of the powerful symbols of racism,'' in Buck O'Neil's words. But during Negro League games, Blacks and Whites sat side by side.
In July, when the Hall of Fame's class of 2006 is formally inducted, more of the legends of Black baseball will finally take their rightful place at Cooperstown, to be honored side by side with the rest of the best who ever played America's game. As Buck O'Neil said, ``America is growing.''
We congratulate the families of all of the new Hall of Famers, and we remain hopeful that Buck O'Neil and Minnie Minoso will soon join them in Cooperstown.
I yield the floor.
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