Philadelphia played an important role in the development of Black baseball

This article originally published in The Inquirer on April 15, 2005.

Another April and another baseball season has begun. Local fans, hoping that this will finally be The Year, will trek down to Citizens Bank Park to see the Phillies in action under new manager Charlie Manuel.

The year-old ballpark features many reminders of Philadelphia’s long and colorful baseball history. Memory Lane, located in Ashburn Alley, not only highlights the Phillies’ many ups and downs over the years but also honors the long-departed Athletics.

To its credit, the Phillies organization also included the often-forgotten Negro Leagues in the display. Few fans today recognize the undeniably important role that Philadelphia played in the history of Black baseball.

» READ MORE: The 1905 Philadelphia Giants are mostly forgotten, but they were one of baseball’s great teams

From baseball’s earliest days, Black Philadelphians embraced the game enthusiastically. Formed in the 1860s, the amateur Pythian Club enjoyed success and by some reports was the first Black team ever to play white competition.

The Pythians’ application to the major-league baseball organization of the time, the National Association of Base Ball Players, was rejected in 1867 on racial grounds. Four years later, Octavius V. Catto, a key member of the Pythians and a local Black leader, was killed in the race riots in Philadelphia.

Although a handful of Black players would briefly participate in the newly formed major and minor leagues, the color line would not be broken again until Jackie Robinson’s signing by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1945.

In 1885, Frank Thompson, a hotel worker, merged a Black Philadelphia amateur club with two other teams to create the Cuban Giants, the first Black professional team. (Members of the team spoke with a mock Spanish dialect in attempting to pass as Cubans.) The team traveled widely, taking on a variety of Black and white opponents.

Not until 1902 did a Black professional team make its home in Philadelphia. Formed by white sportswriter H. Walter Schlichter, noted player and writer Sol White, and Harry Smith of the Philadelphia Tribune, the Philadelphia Giants were an immediate success. As one contemporary newspaper observed, the team was “composed of some of the best players in America to-day, and were it not for the fact that their skin is Black, some of them would to-day be drawing fancy salaries in one or the other of the big leagues.”

Like many Black professional teams, the Giants had a short life span, collapsing in 1911. Yet its two local successors - the Hilldale Club (1910-1932) and the Philadelphia Stars (1933-1952) - lasted much longer and are still remembered by old-time baseball fans.

The driving force behind both clubs was Ed Bolden, a local Black postal employee whose continued absence from the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame is inexplicable.

The quiet and unassuming Bolden took the Hilldale Club, a Darby-based boys team (also known as the Daisies) and transformed them into a professional powerhouse in the 1920s. Hilldale’s most impressive achievement may have come when the club crushed a barnstorming group of Philadelphia Athletics in five of six games in 1923.

Although the Depression forced Hilldale to fold, Bolden bounced back in 1933 with the Philadelphia Stars. Partnering with basketball’s Eddie Gottlieb (who coached the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association team and later owned the Warriors), Bolden initially placed the club in West Philadelphia at Passon Field at 48th and Spruce but eventually moved most of the home games to Parkside Field at 44th and Parkside.

Philadelphians eagerly supported the Stars, who captured their only Negro League championship in 1934. Local talent on the Stars included infielder Mahlon Duckett and catcher Bill Cash, who had attended Overbrook High School, while catcher Stanley Glenn had starred at John Bartram.

During the early 1940s, a booming war economy enabled the Stars and other Negro League teams to generate unprecedented profits. Beginning in 1943, the Stars even scheduled weekly night games at Shibe Park (later known as Connie Mack Stadium) at 21st and Lehigh, often outdrawing the A’s and Phillies.

Postwar integration spelled the end of the Negro Leagues. Parkside Field was abandoned after the 1947 season, Bolden died in 1950, and the Stars folded two years later. African American fans focused their attention on Black major leaguers, while pressuring the Phillies and A’s to integrate.

Today, the Negro Leagues are a recognized part of not only baseball history but also American history. The Philadelphia Stars Negro Leagues Memorial Park, to be dedicated today at the site of the team’s old ballpark at 44th and Parkside, will give local fans an opportunity to honor their substantial, yet still often overlooked, contributions.

Neil Lanctot (nlanctot@juno.com) teaches American history at the University of Pennsylvania and University of Delaware. His latest book, “Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution,” was published in 2004.