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Speaker talks about Negro Leagues
Photo
Heaphy
By Ed Runyan
CHAMPION
Ohio has an interesting history among the states that fielded teams that played in the Negro Leagues, though not necessarily the most heart-warming.
Dr. Leslie Heaphy, a Kent State University professor speaking Monday at a Black History Month event at the Trumbull campus, gave special mention to Moses Fleetwood Walker, who was from Mount Pleasant, near Steubenville, and who was one of the first blacks, along with his brother Weldy, to play professional baseball.
A member of the Toledo White Stockings in 1884, “Fleet” Walker was a catcher with an impressive arm and bat, but he lasted only one year in professional baseball because the managers of the league decided in a “gentlemen’s agreement” to prevent blacks from playing again after the 1884 season, Heaphy said.
Fleet Walker attended the “forward-thinking” Oberlin College and studied law as a young man, but as he encountered prejudice, he left baseball and the legal profession and became a barber, Heaphy said.
In 1908, Fleet Walker wrote a book calling for blacks to return to Africa.
It would be 63 years after Fleet Walker and his brother last played professional baseball before the next black player — Jackie Robinson in 1947 — would be able to suit up for a Major League team.
Independent black baseball teams operated in the years after Fleet Walker, but 1920 is considered the start of the Negro Leagues, and Ohio had numerous — though not necessarily successful — Negro League teams in the 1920s.
Among them were the Dayton Marcos, Cincinnati Cuban Stars, Cincinnati Giants, Columbus Buckeyes, Columbus Keystones, Cleveland Tate Stars, Toledo Tigers, Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Elites and Cleveland Hornets.
Most of those teams lasted only a year or two under one name, then changed names hoping the change would improve attendance, Heaphy said.
Most of the more successful Negro League teams played in the East and Midwest, and Ohio didn’t have many successful teams largely, Heaphy said, because its cities didn’t have large black populations and successful black newspapers.
That changed in 1945, when the Cleveland Buckeyes won the Negro League World Series. The team played at League Park — part of which still exists in the Hough neighborhood. Talk of restoring the park has been ongoing for decades.
The team had stars such as Quincy Trouppe and Sam Jethroe, who later played in the major leagues. The Buckeyes made it back to the Negro League World Series again in 1947, with Warren native Ted Toles on the team, but lost to the New York Cubans.
The Buckeyes moved out of Cleveland in 1948.
Warren native Joe Caffie also played for the Buckeyes in 1949 after they moved to Louisville.