Philadelphia Stars

Bleacher Report has this story on the Philadelphia Stars of the Negro Leagues. It starts with some pictures and a little history.

Decades before Jackie Robinson crossed the infamous color barrier in Major League Baseball, black baseball players were making names for themselves on the diamond in another way. African Americans had been playing the game of baseball since the mid to late 1800's, forming teams after the Civil War days and traveling on their own around the country to play anybody that would challenge them.

It was not until 1920 that a meeting was held between owners of these independent teams that the Negro National League was formed. The first organized Negro league consisted of teams from the midwest. With the organization of the league came more upstart leagues along the east coast, and in the south. The game of baseball was quickly spreading to communities in more urban and rural regions.

Ed Bolden owned the Hilldale Daisies, founded in 1910 and located in Darby, Pennsylvania. The Daisies were one of the early powerhouses of the Negro Leagues in the Eastern Colored League. The Daisies won the ECL's first pennant in 1923. The following year the Daisies won the pennant again and lost to the Kansas City Monarchs, the team Robinson would later play for, in ten games of a best of nine series (there was one tie). The Daisies won the rematch in 1925 in six games.

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