2/02/2007

Negro Minor League History

MILB.com has the following interesting story up at their site:

The little-known 'Minors' of the Negro Leagues
History shows proof of a farm system in black baseball

1920 was a very significant year for black baseball.

After three-and-a-half decades of false starts and premature endings, the first successful baseball league featuring black players was established. This circuit, the brainchild of former pitching star Rube Foster, was called the Negro National League and it was the first of several "Major" Negro Leagues that would exist at various points over the next four decades (including a second Negro National League, which came into existence two years after the original disbanded in 1931).
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Within this reality, it is not surprising that the Negro Leagues never developed anything remotely resembling a coherent Minor League system. It was often difficult for these leagues to stay afloat from season to season, let alone assemble an organized hierarchical player development system.

Yet black professional baseball at the time of the Negro National League's founding in 1920 was hardly a new phenomenon. From semi-pro collectives and company teams to established city squads and elite barnstorming teams, black players had become commonplace on the United States' burgeoning baseball landscape. Therefore, the NNL and its various rivals and successors had an established talent pool from which to draw from, haphazardly organized as it was.

In fact, the NNL's official motto of "We Are the Ship ... All Else the Sea" brazenly acknowledged the reality of black baseball at the time of its inception. This proverbial "sea" was an exceedingly loose network of teams and players that served as a sort of de facto "Negro Minor Leagues."


Read it all.

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