>> Funding for this program was provided in part by the Huizenga Family Foundation... and from viewers like you.

Thank you.

>> Lou is up.

That's Dizzy Dean on the hill.

Gehrig connects.

That's all, ball.

Out of the park, out of this world.

>> It was a white show back in the day, you know, from the owners on down, and that was just the culture.

>> ♪ Take me out to the ballgame ♪ ♪ Take me out with the crowd ♪ >> "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate," they yell.

>> We don't want to integrate!

Two, four, six... >> You know, the one thing that the Negro Leagues done -- they made the game faster.

They made the game more entertaining.

They made it more exciting.

>> The players understood this, that the people came out to be entertained.

>> You see, they dared to dream of playing baseball.

They had no idea that they were making history.

They didn't care about making history.

They just wanted to play ball.

[ Film projector clicking ] [ Lights zap, buzz ] >> Despite what you have heard, black people have always played baseball.

I've been able to find the first box score in 1859.

Think about that -- 1859.

This is two years before the Civil War.

Us playing before the Civil War shows that we have always been in the game.

>> Blacks have been involved in professional baseball at the very beginning, when you look at people like Moses Fleetwood Walker.

>> In 1883, he's playing with this team called the Toledo Blue Stockings.

The next year, the Toledo Blue Stockings joined the American Association, which, at that time, was considered a major league.

So, in essence, in 1884, Moses Fleetwood Walker becomes the first African-American to play Major League Baseball.

>> But Moses Fleetwood Walker was of darker skin.

There was no denying his ethnicity.

Moses Fleetwood Walker was a bare-handed catcher.

Ouch.

Yeah, it didn't last very long before guys like Adrian "Cap" Anson and others would form "a gentleman's agreement" that would ultimately ban black players from playing on white Major League teams until Jackie Robinson re-breaks the color barrier in Major League Baseball.

And what strikes me is that there was no written doctrine, just a verbalized agreement amongst players, managers, and owners that essentially said, "If you allow a black to play with you, you can't play with us."

I guess you could say it would kick black players out of organized baseball, as they would call it, for the next six decades.

>> The Negro League teams, the black teams are a by-product of racism.

"If we're not allowed to play with you, then we will create our own teams and create our own schedules."

So they started to travel.

We called it barnstorming.

>> It's important to know the history of black barnstorming baseball in South Florida as it is anywhere, because, again, these were the trailblazers.

These were the guys that took it on the chin.

All of that led to April 15, 1947 -- Jackie Robinson, first game.

Without a doubt.

>> For those who are hearing the term for the very first time, in this case, what barnstorming means is that they were taking baseball to towns that had really not seen professional baseball.

>> Major League was not an option.

Minor leagues were not an option.

So if you wanted to play ball and you were a black man in America, this was your option.

>> Well, they had great independent teams, like the Philadelphia Giants and the Indianapolis ABCs, the Lincoln Giants, and the Lincoln Stars.

These were all black teams that had quality ballplayers on them, like John Henry "Pop" Lloyd and Oscar Charleston, Rube Foster -- probably the most prominent name.

Great pitcher, threw something like 6 or 7 no-hitters against all-white teams.

>> It was a touring team of Negro Leaguers that, in essence, introduced professional baseball, our brand of professional baseball, to the Japanese, going all the way back to 1927.

Man, that's seven years before Babe Ruth and his All Americans would visit Japan.

They've been commonly credited with having taken this brand of American professional baseball over to Japan, but it's not true.

It was a team called the Philadelphia Royal Giants who would go to Japan in 1927, play a 24-game exhibition series.

They go 23-0-1 on the tour.

The tour was so successful that, seven years later, Babe Ruth and the All Americans would get invited over to Japan.

[ Jazz music playing ] Baseball was the sport.

was the sport.

And so most businesses had baseball teams.

The hotels, railways had their teams.

Most of the manufacturing companies had both black and white baseball teams.

>> The newspapers caught wind of their great triumphs and their wins and they start covering these teams from town to town.

And pretty soon, they got a reputation as being the best in the land.

>> It's interesting.

When Henry Flagler's Royal Palm Hotel -- and they did it with The Breakers in West Palm Beach, as well.

They would hire these black ballplayers to work.

So, technically, they were employees.

>> Blacks would work there, you know, as, you know, cooks and cleaning up and so forth.

>> They recruited some of the top black ballplayers in the country to come south and play against anybody in America, and these were some top-quality ballplayers.

>> Royal Poinciana Hotel, one of the greatest tourist hotels in the country at the time.

Representing that hotel was Rube Foster, the Chicago American Giants, the Negro National League.

Over at The Breakers Hotel, another big tourist hotel, over there was C.I.

Taylor, Indianapolis ABCs.

They would play Thursday.

We called Thursday "maid's day off."

They had a half day off on Thursday.

That was for the help.

The waiters, the porters, the chauffeurs, and all would come to that ballgame.

This is to -- and entertain the tourists.

>> Flagler built the first 18-hole golf course in Florida, here in Palm Beach -- not because he played golf.

He didn't.

He had tennis courts here at Whitehall not because he played tennis.

He didn't.

He had, you know, casinos built and swimming pools, and not because he swam.

He didn't.

Because he understood the importance of entertainment and leisure time.

And one aspect of that was baseball, which was becoming a very popular sport in America.

And so he brought in workers here to the hotels to give them a job, really so they could be here to play baseball.

>> They could entertain the guests by putting on some Negro League baseball, which, in fact, they did.

And you had this happening all over the place.

>> The Miami Giants is fascinating.

The late 1920s, Dorsey Park -- that seems to be the generally accepted time frame.

I just learned a couple years ago, through research, randomly, that they were actually born in 1913.

There was a park called Payne's Park There was a gentleman, Scott Payne.

He was one of the pioneers of Miami, in Overtown, what was known as Colored Town.

And that's really where -- The Giants name was born there.

So, they played there from 1914 through 1917.

What happens?

World War I hits.

3/4 of the team gets drafted.

There's no team in 1918 or '19.

1920, they come back.

Where do they play then?

There's a park over in Little Havana that was known as Tatum Park, later became Miami Field.

It is currently the first-base parking garage at Marlins Park.

That was the first time in history -- in Miami history -- that a black team played in the white part of town.

And by the late '20s, as they got to Dorsey Park, that's where it really kind of formed as far as the league.

Several teams, West Palm Beach and so forth, and they really started road-dogging, you know, barnstorming around 1928, '29, into the '30s.

You know, Dorsey -- that patch of dirt is special.

Dana Dorsey, true pioneer.

He sold that park -- that land, I should say, to the city in 1917 where you had the first games, some of the greatest players ever, from Josh Gibson to Oscar Charleston, step foot on that little patch of dirt.

The Miami Ethiopian Clowns were born there.

So it's just an insane amount of history and it's still there.

And culturally speaking and how they would hype these games, and, you know, Overtown was Harlem of the South.

>> Overtown was a thriving community with its own businesses.

You know, it had its own hotels, the Mary Elizabeth, the Sir John.

Those hotels become well-known to anyone in the entertainment field, because Nat King Cole stayed there.

Sammy Davis Jr. stayed there.

Ella Fitzgerald stayed there.

You know, you could go on and on.

>> So, these guys would parade the cars, you know, down Second Ave. or whatever by the Lyric and hype these games.

And people would wear their -- you know, the Sunday best and all that, and it was a show.

It was a big deal.

>> It's so easy to romanticize about these incredibly courageous athletes who overcame tremendous social adversity to play the game that they love that we do oftentimes lose sight that Negro Leagues baseball was the third-largest black-owned business in this country during that era of American segregation.

As Buck O'Neil would so eloquently say, black-owned insurance companies were first -- North Carolina Mutual, Atlanta Life.

These companies would insure black folks more than the 5-to-10-cent policies that the white insurance companies would insure us.

Essentially, the white insurance companies would insure me just enough to bury me.

Next was Madam C.J.

Walker, who, in essence, would become this country's first self-made businesswoman millionaire of any skin color.

And, of course, she did it doing black hair.

Next was Negro Leagues baseball, and, as Buck would say, all you needed was a bus, two sets of uniforms.

You'd have 20 of the greatest athletes to ever play.

Wherever you had successful Black Baseball, you had thriving black economies, typically.

♪♪ >> The Miami Clowns were never in the official Negro Leagues, but they were a quality team, had a lot of great ballplayers.

Owned by Syd Pollock, and he eventually wanted to join the league.

He renamed the Miami Giants the Ethiopian Clowns, which the league owners did not like.

They felt like he was trying to capitalize on the demise of Haile Selassie, the former emperor of Ethiopia.

He was ran out of Ethiopia by the Italian army, and he went into exile.

Haile Selassie appeared on the cover of Time magazine, so he was a well-known public figure.

Many of the Negro League team owners felt like until he changed that team name, they would not allow him into the league.

So in 1943, he changed the name to Indianapolis Clowns.

>> Their clowning is what they become really known for.

>> When they started, they literally dressed like clowns, actually, with wigs and clown suits, and then they would take them off.

After a couple years of that, they had nice, like, kind of, like, black uniforms, and they'd wear the war paint.

So, you'd put on a show, entertain.

They had skits, the dentist skit, like they're taking out a tooth, or, you know, fishing or things like that.

They had skirts.

>> They were known to play what they call shadow ball.

They would move the ball really fast around the infield, so fast that nobody could see it.

That's because there was no ball.

But they would hit their gloves.

And Goose Tatum would play.

He played on that team.

He was a great first baseman.

He would slap the mitt like the ball was coming, and with them long arms and big feet, he was just comical in how he received this invisible ball.

And, so, they put their names out there, and a lot of people came to see that entertainment.

>> So, here, you have a team, in war paint, playing a really solid brand of baseball.

Like, there was a few guys in there that were Major League talent, like a Buck O'Neil, who just was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Rest in peace.

He played for us for one year and then he went off.

>> Buck's experience along the barnstorming circuits, particularly with teams like the Ethiopian Clowns, was one that I think he had mixed emotions about.

It gave him an opportunity to play professional baseball and make some money, but Buck O'Neil, like so many of these African-American ballplayers, were very proud men, and some of the antics that those teams did was insulting in many regards.

>> He didn't want to talk too much about the Miami Giants because they were more minstrel-type teams, and he didn't want to be associated with that comedy and slapstick and buffoonery.

>> Because it was so demeaning.

It was demeaning to him.

It was demeaning to our culture to be represented in that way just to make a buck.

>> These racial stereotypes are reinforced, and sometimes, it's hard to knock them down.

>> Now, later on, the Indianapolis Clowns, love them or hate them -- and a lot of people loved them, because they were wildly entertaining -- were a little bit more reminiscent of the Harlem Globetrotters, because you had the same people involved with the Globetrotters who were involved in owning and promoting the Indianapolis Clowns -- Abe Saperstein and Syd Pollock.

>> So, when someone like Syd Pollock comes in, who's from up north, in New York, who had experience already, he was the one that was calling ahead to the different towns, scheduling the games, as well as the press, which was a huge part of it, because, obviously, there's no Internet or anything back in the day.

So newspapers was everything.

So he was a genius as far as calling ahead and promoting and sending articles that they could print up to hype, you know, "The Ethiopian Clowns are coming.

This is the greatest show, greatest team you'll ever see.

They do the shadow ball."

And to really kind of hype and draw crowds.

So booking agents were huge, if you were lucky to have someone like Syd Pollock.

>> The issue that a lot of people had were these -- were white businessmen who were getting these black players to play in this manner.

You kind of felt like they were out of line, perhaps, in what they were doing.

But the reality of it is, the Clowns were drawing huge crowds, and even to this day, people will walk into this museum and they will vividly recall seeing the Indianapolis Clowns play and seeing guys like "Goose" Tatum, Richard "King Tut," and some of the others who put on a show.

And they were filling up the ballparks, and people were delighted in this entertainment, this entertainment level that they were getting.

Where some would frown on it, others absolutely enjoyed it.

Kansas City is the birthplace of the Negro Leagues.

It was in the Paseo YMCA that Andrew "Rube" Foster would lead a contingent of eight independent black baseball team owners.

They meet there at the Paseo YMCA, and on February 13, 1920, they had organized a league of their own, the Negro National League, the first successful organized black baseball league.

>> Well, Rube Foster was a genius in his own right and one of a kind.

Brilliant pitcher, brilliant entrepreneur, outstanding manager.

And we had all these great teams, great ballplayers, so Rube said, "Let's have a league."

So, you have to look at where we are in America at this time.

Uniformed soldiers are coming off trains that are -- they're being beaten or killed.

America is letting these soldiers know, "Yeah, you fought for freedom, but you're not free.

Nothing has changed.

You're still a second-class citizen.

Yeah, we welcome you as heroes, but not as Negroes.

Don't get confused.

Nothing has changed here."

And so with that mind-set and with race riots across the country in major cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., Rube Fosters and others said, "We need to create our own institution and own what we do."

We became a nation within a nation, just a smaller one.

And so this was the perfect time, in the 1920s, known as the Harlem Renaissance.

>> Rube Foster felt like, you know, the old saying, if we can't join them, let's beat them.

To be able to come up with a plan to say, "Okay, guys, you know what?

We know we have the talent.

We know we have the players.

We know we have the resources.

Why not just create our own league and show these other people that we can play the game just as well or even better than them?"

>> But when Rube Foster chartered his new league, he stood there triumphantly at the Paseo YMCA and he uttered this prophetic statement.

He says, "We are the ship, all else the sea."

You see, he was sending notification to Major League Baseball that a new player had arrived on the scene to be reckoned with.

I guess you could say that it was the Negro League's Declaration of Independence.

Yeah, again, you won't let me play with you, I'll create my own.

And I remind folks, that is the American way.

So while America was trying to prevent them from sharing in the joys of her so-called national pastime, it was the American spirit that allowed them to persevere and prevail.

>> You'd have black teens before this barnstorming around and playing around, but it really get them as organized baseball, a National League, an American League, imitating the white leagues, to be sure.

I mean, that is no question about it.

Blacks are developing their own leagues.

>> The Negro Leagues would then go on to operate amazingly for 40 years, from 1920 through 1960.

>> Come spring and the old refrain, "Take me out to the ballgame."

It's a game where the Negro athlete of today and yesteryear has left a bright mark.

>> I think Black Ball develops as a very unique form of baseball.

The game is played faster.

It's more daring.

There's some clowning around, to be sure.

>> They took an intelligent approach to the game on how to run the bases and how to stretch extra-base hits.

They maximize every rule to their advantage.

That's the beauty of watching Black Baseball.

This is why they drew so many fans to the game, because you would see something that you never saw before in white baseball, which was more station to station.

>> Baseball was at the heart and soul of the black experience, whether you were in the South or whether you were in the North.

>> You see, back then, the Negro Leagues had essentially been relegated to playing on Sundays.

Major League Baseball really didn't play on Sundays a lot.

So the Negro Leagues would rent the ballpark, play that Sunday doubleheader.

Black folks left church dressed to the nines, as they would say, looking good, going right to the ballpark.

>> And the players understood this, that the people came out to be entertained.

This was entertainment.

Black ballplayers were superstars.

I mean, Satchel Paige made the point.

You think, "Why would you just throw a person out at first base like this, when you can throw it between your legs or around, behind your back?"

I remember there was one time a ball was hit directly to him.

He was pitching.

So he's got to throw it to first.

He bent down and took his glove and dusted off his shoes before he threw the person out.

I mean, that kind of -- People say that's showboating, but it's entertaining to the crowds.

The crowds loved it.

>> Satchel named his pitches, so he didn't have fastball, curveball, change-up, slider.

Not Satchel.

Satchel had what he called his Midnight Creeper.

He had the Two Hopper.

He had the Bat Dodger.

He had the Hesitation Pitch.

He had the Long Tom, the Short Tom, the Jump Ball, the Trouble Ball, the Radio Ball, the Wobbly Ball, the Dipsy-Do.

>> What's this next one called?

>> It's my old original.

This is what I live by.

This is my fastball.

>> I'll see you folks later.

[ Laughter ] Alright, easy on me, now.

>> I will.

I will, now.

I got an... >> Whoa!

[ Laughter ] [ Applause ] >> The rosters of a Negro League team was probably between 14 and 15 players, not 25, like they have on the Major League roster.

>> So if you played in Negro Leagues, you were going to play multiple positions.

And so the pitchers in the Negro Leagues were oftentimes great athletes.

♪♪ The great Martin Dihigo.

Nicknamed him "El Maestro," "The Master," because he could do it all.

Played all nine positions, played all nine of them well.

He is the only baseball player in the history of the sport to be enshrined into five different countries' baseball halls of fame.

He's in the Mexican, Cuban, Venezuelan, Dominican, and in Cooperstown.

How in the world could we not know about a ballplayer the magnitude of Martin Dihigo?

One year in the Mexican League, he wins the pitching title.

I believe he goes 18-, 19-2 with a ridiculous 0.90 ERA.

Ha!

It gets better.

The sucker hits .387 that same season and won the batting title.

The rarest of double-doubles.

He won the pitching title and the batting title in the same season.

That is virtually unheard of.

That Martin Dihigo might be the greatest baseball player of all time.

He, without question, is the most versatile baseball player of all time.

That's hands down.

>> Statistically speaking, Josh Gibson is probably the greatest home-run hitter of all time.

He may not be the career leader, because he spent two years in Mexico, in 1940 and '41.

Josh Gibson is a great, great ballplayer.

He didn't strike out a lot, like, say, Babe Ruth.

He hit to all fields.

He was not a poor hitter.

Very dangerous.

Probably the complete prototype for what you would want a home-run hitter to be like.

Some people say that he hit the only home run out of Yankee Stadium.

Or was it Grand Canyon?

I don't know.

But if they say Yankee Stadium was the house that Ruth built, then Josh Gibson was the landlord.

>> The greatest baseball player I ever saw was Oscar Charleston.

Oscar Charleston played with the Indianapolis ABCs.

And we old-timers say the closest thing to Oscar Charleston was Babe Ruth.

>> Just because Oscar could run.

He could hit.

He could field.

He could do it all.

A very muscular-type guy.

Just had a passion to win, you know, had the will and the skill, the grit and spit, the fire and desire, and a refuse-to-lose attitude.

That's how he would describe Oscar Charleston.

>> ♪ Yeah ♪ >> Moving around this country was, as you could well imagine, extraordinarily challenging.

They loved the game so much that they were willing to endure whatever social adversity confronted them as they traveled the highways and byways of this country just to play baseball.

Their passion would not only change our sport, but ultimately change this country for the better.

And even when I have my young Major League athletes that come here, I want them to try to visualize and imagine what this was like, where you could ride into a town, fill up the ballpark, but, yet, not be able to get a meal from the same fans, a man who had just cheered you, or not have a place to stay.

So, yes, they would sleep on the bus and they'd eat their peanut butter and crackers until they could get to a place that would offer them basic services.

>> But racism was well and alive back then.

You know what I mean?

My grandfather used to always say there was no Martin Luther King back then protesting for those guys.

You know, these guys was on their own.

And so, you know, Martin Luther King ain't come in till the '60s.

You know what I mean?

So back then, it was just Negro League baseball players up against the KKK or whoever they may run across.

And I think the most important thing that people should know is that no matter how tough times were, they still kept moving.

And they could eventually gave up and said, "You know what?

We're not dealing with this.

Enough is enough."

We'll go back and get a regular job, go back to our own cities and do this.

But they didn't do that.

>> You know, I think there's a romanticized kind of thing of all these guys were, you know, on the road, playing ball.

But what you dealt with, again, especially in the South -- I always say these guys really had to love the game, because there were no other options, and they were out there just road-dogging.

It wasn't easy.

I think probably the game was the easiest part of it, actually, when they got between the lines.

>> And this wasn't just isolated to the South, again, contrary to popular belief.

While the North didn't have the blatant Jim Crow that we saw in the South, as my friend Buck O'Neil would say, there were lots of times when they would get a hotel reservation, pull up to the hotel, and the sign on the hotel says, "Vacancies"... until they walked in.

And then, all of a sudden, there were no rooms available.

Yeah, so it was a very subtle kind of Jim Crow, and sometimes, I think that is the most dangerous kind of racism.

I would much rather deal with the overt than the covert.

>> They knew where they could go.

They knew what hotels would accommodate them beforehand.

They knew where the black-owned hotels were or white-owned hotels that would accept them, what restaurants they could eat.

If they got into a small town that they were unaware of the accommodations, they asked around.

Probably go to a black church and find out if there was any parishioners that would accommodate them.

So they would stay at the homes of black church members.

Last resort was to stay at a funeral parlor.

Sometimes, they would sleep there.

We have to remember, back then, even in death, we were separated.

>> That was what they had to encounter as they were playing this game and taking it all over the country.

And, interestingly enough, they would go to those Spanish-speaking countries and be treated much better than they were treated here at home.

Buck O'Neil talks about going to Havana, as he would say, and his eyes would light up.

He was in Havana when Havana was Havana.

And he felt so free in another country.

My dear friend, the late, great Hall of Famer Monte Irvin would say the exact same thing about his first time going to Mexico.

He said it was the first time that he ever felt like his natural self, that he could actually be himself, and it took going out of the country.

I think we have a poster here that says that these players found freedom and democracy in 1936, in Mexico.

You know, you couldn't get it here.

>> They told me constantly, "You never had this problem when you played in Cuba.

You didn't have this problem when you played in Venezuela.

You didn't have this problem when you played in the Dominican Republic, you played in Mexico, you played in Canada.

You didn't have the problem that you have in the good ol' U.S. of 'A.'"

>> If you were going to make money playing baseball, you were gonna play year round, and so most of the players in the Negro Leagues did just that.

They would play that Negro League season.

Then they would, indeed, go out to California, play California Winter League ball.

They would go to Latin America and play in the winter leagues in those countries.

And, honestly, they could make more money in some of those Spanish-speaking countries than they were actually making here in the States, playing in the professional Negro Leagues.

And so that is how they subsidized their income.

And, so, you could make a great living playing baseball, and the superstars of the Negro Leagues did just that, but they had to play year round in order to do it.

>> I mean, Josh would play in, you know, the spring and the summer months here with the Negro Leagues, but, of course, right after that, he would go over to the Latin countries to play winter ball.

>> Those guys played everywhere from Mexico to Marianao in Cuba.

So, yeah, these countries were like, "Oh, if you're good --" And oftentimes, they got more money.

So they would hold out, just like you see a player now.

There would be negotiations with the team, and it's like, "Well, if, you know, the Pittsburgh Crawfords aren't going to pay me this, then the guys in Mexico got -- you know, got some good cash waiting for me and good ball."

>> Well, I know when he went to Mexico, he played with Veracruz, and they won a championship there.

Josh is in the Hall of Fame in Mexico.

He is also MVP in Puerto Rico.

He was with the Santurce Crabbers.

He was a player-manager.

So he had a great career overseas.

>> You go there and you're treated like heroes.

They're staying in the finest hotels.

They're eating in the finest restaurants that money could buy.

And then you come home and you're treated like a second-class citizen, which is part of the reason why so many of those Negro League players would eventually call those Spanish-speaking countries home, because in those countries, they weren't black baseball players.

Man, they were just baseball players.

That's all they ever wanted to be.

[ "The Star-Spangled Banner" plays ] >> The East-West All-Star Game was probably the biggest event in Black America, in my opinion, the largest-attended event ever, except for perhaps a radio-broadcast Joe Louis fight.

Boxing was big back then.

Probably the second-most-popular sport next to Black Baseball.

And this is a mega-event.

We look at 1941 and 1943, they drew over 50,000 people for a baseball game.

They were outdrawing the white Major Leagues.

is the major game >> This in Negro League baseball since '34 onward.

It igame --ajor not the World Series, the Negro League World Series, but the East-West All-Star.

>> One of the greatest sporting events in American sports history, and it's like no one ever knew it happened.

It's like it never happened.

And you don't just put 50,000 people in Comiskey under any circumstances.

>> They had to put on special train lines to bring people in.

>> Buck O'Neil would say black folks would come from as far west as Los Angeles by train, as far south as New Orleans by train, as far east as New York, converging on Chicago for this showcase event.

I'm not sure there is another sporting event that comes close to the star power that was generated by the East-West All-Star Game.

Perhaps an NBA All-Star Game today would be the closest thing.

But back then, everybody was getting dressed up.

You're looking good going to those games.

It was a proverbial who's who in those stands watching the crème de la crème of the Negro Leagues.

>> The game was more up-tempo.

Teams were not hesitating to steal a base.

Might have a double steal or a suicide-squeeze play at home plate.

The game was just more exciting and more dynamic to watch, and that's why they had this fan base that was continuing to build to the point that some of these white owners were starting to say, "Uh, maybe we should entertain signing some black ballplayers, because they are putting a great show on the field.

Money talks.

And maybe we need to revisit this segregated policy that we have."

But the East-West game put Black Baseball on the map.

>> You think the white owners don't notice this, that blacks are filling these stadiums, right?

Ticket-paying, -buying individuals filling these stadiums and outdrawing -- outdrawing constantly -- the white Major Leagues.

>> My visitors are shocked to learn about the advents that came out of Negro Leagues baseball.

The shin guards, batting helmet.

These things originated in the Negro Leagues.

>> Willie Wells was beaned in a game in 1936, came back with a modified miner's helmet, and thus created the batting helmet for other players in the Negro Leagues.

This is years before the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1941, put inserts in their caps.

They didn't want to use batting helmets because they didn't want to appear to be "sissies."

Eventually, all the teams start wearing the hard helmets.

The Negro League teams started wearing numbers on the back of their uniforms before the Yankees and the Indians did, in 1929.

>> Plays like the bunt-and-run, hit-and-run perfected in the Negro Leagues as an offensive weapon.

But the most noted advent of them all -- night baseball.

Night baseball originated in the Negro Leagues five years before they ever played a night game in the Major Leagues, although our history book is going to tell us that the first professional night baseball game was 1935 -- Crosley Field, Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Reds versus the Philadelphia Phillies.

Well, the history book is wrong.

>> When you talk about innovation, you talk about what the Negro Leagues bring to baseball, that's it right there.

You know, yes, probably years down the road, Major League Baseball would have thought of a concept to do night games, but Negro League baseball started that.

And probably the reason why, they were playing so many games.

You know what I mean?

You can't play three games in daylight.

You know, if you're playing three games, eventually, that third game is going to go into the night.

>> The first professional baseball game, 1930, and it featured our very own Kansas City Monarchs -- James Leslie Wilkinson, J.L.

Wilkinson, or "Wilkie," as he was affectionately known by his Monarch teammates, literally mortgaged everything he had to pioneer night baseball.

Portable generated light towers.

So not only could they play a night game here in Kansas City, they could load them up and put them on a truck and play a night game virtually anywhere.

>> The first night game in Miami ever played was in December 2, 1934, at Dorsey Park, the Miami Giants against the New York Red Sox.

And the Red Sox literally hauled floodlights with them.

Yeah, so, again, a bit ahead of the curve, you know?

>> Truth of the matter is, by the time they play that game in Cincinnati in 1935, the Kansas City Monarchs and the team called the House of David had taken night baseball all the way out to Seattle.

Wilkie wasn't doing this to be innovative.

He was doing it for survival.

He was looking for a way to get the working-class fan into the ballpark.

Night baseball became the answer.

Night baseball became even more popular than Sunday games, and Sunday games were so popular that black churches would move their service time up an hour so fans could go to the game.

And as I oftentimes say, if you know anything about the Black Church, you don't mess with service time.

No, no.

11:00 Sunday, go to meeting.

Well, when the Monarchs were home, service started at 10:00, and everybody filed out, going to that Sunday doubleheader, looking good.

Night baseball was even bigger than that.

>> You know, this is a business, and they're out there to make money.

And if they can provide a way with generating the lighting system, that helps bring in money.

>> Here's where the fallacy occurs.

American historians never viewed Negro Leagues baseball as having been professional.

Thus, the Major Leagues could get credited with something that had happened five years before.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the next mayor of the City of New York, Fiorello H. La Guardia!

[ Cheers and applause ] >> ♪ By God, he'll make it happen ♪ >> ♪ Let's go ♪ >> Mayor La Guardia and others at that time were really putting pressure on Major League Baseball to reconsider its hiring practices and open its doors to players from the Negro Leagues.

So Mayor La Guardia commissions this group to examine the integration of baseball.

MacPhail is part of this commission.

In 1945, he pens what is called the MacPhail Memorandum.

And in the letter, MacPhail essentially outlines why integration is such a horrible idea.

And, honestly, he would say some things that really offered some level of validity.

For instance, he would say, "If we sign players from the Negro Leagues, we will put the Negro Leagues out of business."

It's absolutely right.

That was going to be the by-product of integration.

He would also go on to say, "Well, you know we can't just go in and take those players away from their Negro League teams.

They are bound, legally, by contract."

Again, he's right.

Now, Branch Rickey didn't think that.

But the rest of the guys were right.

They were bound, contractually, to their Negro League franchises.

But then he'd go on to say something completely asinine.

He would say, "You know they lack the faculties to play in our league."

>> You look at Jackie Robinson.

He spent a couple years at UCLA and Pasadena Junior College.

He was a lieutenant in the military.

We had many examples of black ballplayers with degrees.

Some of them had PhDs.

>> Less than 5% of those who played in the Major Leagues at the same time had any college education, for the simple reason that the Major Leagues then didn't want you to go to college.

They got you right out of high school, put you into their farm system, and then you work your way to the Big Leagues.

The Negro Leagues didn't have that sophisticated kind of farm system.

So what happened?

We trained on the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

>> At least 40%, we can document, were college graduates.

They're going to college.

What a high percentage.

We often forget that, that many of the Negro League players were college-educated.

Yeah.

>> So they had a disproportionate number of college-educated athletes in comparison to the Major Leagues, yet the fundamental belief was they weren't smart enough to play in that league.

Then he finally gets to the crux of the matter.

This letter was written in 1945, and by the time this letter was written, MacPhail basically reveals the fact that the New York Yankees, that year, had netted nearly $100,000 off the Negro Leagues.

They were renting Yankee Stadium.

They were renting Ruppert Stadium across the river in Newark.

They were renting Blues Stadium here in Kansas City.

They're getting a percentage of the gate and, in most cases, all of the concession.

$100,000 is pretty good money now, but $100,000 in 1945?

That's a lot of money.

So, no, they were in no hurry to potentially give up that source of revenue.

And as I tell my guests all the time, anytime they say it ain't about the money, it's always about the money.

>> Well, now, here's Robinson coming into the picture.

You see the first colored fella that ever came in, belatedly.

The very first move I made when I came into Brooklyn was to investigate the first problem of the six that faced me in the employment of the Negro, and that was the approval, the support of ownership.

I was convinced then that there was a timeliness about it.

After waiting 100 years, these people legally free, not spiritually free, never morally free.

There was a need for it, and I felt that if the right man -- not to exploit a sociological problem, but if the right man in ability on the field and with control of himself off the field, if I could find that kind of a man, the American public would accept him.

>> Now, Jackie wasn't the best ballplayer in the Negro League.

No, no.

See, because Jackie only played in that one year.

He played professionally one year.

But we had guys that played 10 years.

You understand, better ballplayers than Jackie at the time, but he was the right man.

We were acclimated to segregation, but not Jackie.

That's why Jackie went to the Major Leagues.

Jackie was the right guy.

>> Many players believe that they should have kept on and developed the Negro Leagues even more, rather than following what was happening with the integration of baseball, because the integration of baseball put blacks out of business.

>> Once Jackie came in and then Larry Doby followed in the American League, and that was it.

You know, that really marked the beginning of the end for Negro League baseball.

>> In fact, after '47, you see the decline, the rapid decline, in Negro League baseball because they're going out to see any of these integrated teams, what they call "integrated."

One black on there meant that it was integrated, and everyone could see what it meant to Brooklyn.

>> These fans paid over $325,000 to see Jackie Robinson make his World Series debut.

"Jackie's nimble, Jackie's quick.

Jackie's making the turnstiles click."

>> The idea of racial hatred for many is a drawing card.

For others who are much more liberal-minded than that kind of nonsense, they want to come to the games and so forth, but the winner is the owner.

>> All the support he can get and generate from the African-American community, and they went over and supported Jackie.

You know, one thing I will say is this, is that people don't realize -- what if Jackie would have failed?

You know, what if Jackie would have failed?

>> And I do believe that the assumption is or the consensus is, if Jackie breaks the color barrier in 1947, if there was a Negro Leagues, surely, it must have ended in and around that time.

Well, the leagues would operate for another 13 years.

Why?

Because it took Major League Baseball 12 years before every Major League team had at least one black baseball player.

Because by then, the best young black stars had moved into the Major Leagues or into the Major League's minor-league system, and there was simply no replenishing system.

They didn't need the Negro Leagues any longer.

And so now, if you are an aspiring young black ballplayer, you didn't need the Negro Leagues, because you could go straight into the minor leagues and chase that dream of trying to get to the Major Leagues.

When we look at our game today from a global perspective, there are so many ethnicities that make up a Major League roster on any given day.

At the heart of it was the Negro Leagues.

They helped make the game the global game that it is today.

They just never got credit for it.

>> If we look at today's game, it's represented by at least 25 countries.

>> And I think now you're seeing such an influx of talent from the Caribbean into the game of baseball, where the stat is staggering, the amount of Latin American players that are now playing in the Major Leagues, especially on our team -- I think on the Marlins, were almost probably 65%, 70% of our players were born outside of the United States.

♪♪ >> The Classic is just the cream of the crop.

Now we have the best ballplayers in the world playing against each other.

>> The atmosphere was incredible here for the World Baseball Classic.

I've never experienced anything like that before.

It was truly special to see the passion the fans had for the players that were on the field and their countries and the pride and the number of flags that flew here from all over.

You've got, you know, 37,000 people in here cheering for either Venezuela or D.R.

or D.R.

or P.R.

It was something else.

>> For me, it is very much reminiscent of the Negro Leagues and the impact that the Negro Leagues had on many of those countries who are now participating in the World Baseball Classic.

And I can't say that I was disappointed that Japan won it, because, again, I understand the connection that the Negro Leagues have with Japanese professional baseball.

>> I feel like the Negro Leagues today, being around over 100 years, has touched on -- Every single country can take a little bit of piece of the Negro Leagues experience and incorporate that into their country and into their teams.

>> There was an interview where they asked five or six guys about what was more important, winning the World Baseball Classic or winning the World Series, and all of them chose the World Baseball Classic because that pride that they have for representing their flag on their chest just stands out above everything else.

>> The social-change agents in this country were black ballplayers.

They integrated an institution called baseball before this country was legally integrated.

That's the impact that they had.

>> Our story is not about the adversity, but rather what they did to overcome the adversity.

It strikes me that a league born out of segregation would become the driving force for social change in this country.

A league born out of exclusion would become perhaps this nation's most inclusive entity.

They didn't care what color you were and they didn't care what gender you were.

Can you play?

Do you have something to offer?

That's the way it is supposed to be.

So what's not to love about the story of the Negro Leagues?

It's just the fact that people didn't know the story of the Negro Leagues.

Or, as Buck O'Neil would say, we want to make sure that they are remembered, that they are never forgotten for what they did for this game, but, more importantly, for what they did for this country.

♪♪ >> Funding for this program was provided in part by the Huizenga Family Foundation.

>> You can find out more information about this topic at negroleaguebaseball.org.

"Never Drop the Ball" is available on DVD for $25 plus shipping and handling.

To order, please visit shop.wlrn.org.