‘We may wake up some morning with no ball club’: Integration assured demise of Negro league baseball
In February for Black History Month, USA TODAY Sports is publishing the series “28 Black Stories in 28 Days.” We examine the issues, challenges and opportunities Black athletes and sports officials continue to face after the nation’s reckoning on race following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. This is the third installment of the series.
Effa Manley wasn’t happy about losing Don Newcombe, so she wrote the Brooklyn Dodgers to complain.
The Newark Eagles owner had expected to renew Newcombe’s contract until Branch Rickey swooped in to sign the Negro league pitcher in 1946 as part of his effort to integrate Major League Baseball.
Manley opened her April 9, 1946 letter saying she was “elated” Newcombe has been selected as “one of the pioneers” and praised Rickey as a “crusader” but quickly turned to her concerns.
Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, told USA TODAY Sports. “As much as the Negro league owners saw her as this mettlesome know-it-all, when it was time to send somebody to fight with Branch Rickey, they sent her.”
But Rickey never responded to Manley’s letter.
“Rickey had very little respect for Negro league contracts,” Kendrick said. “He was not going to pay. Rickey’s idea was to come into the Negro leagues and essentially raid it of its star talent without compensation.”
So, Manley took her concerns directly to baseball commissioner Happy Chandler, writing on April 24, 1946 that it was “most important that some plan be discussed whereby possible litigation and ill-feeling can be avoided.”
fending off the efforts of the Mexican League, which had been raiding the majors, enticing players to jump their contracts to play South of the Border.
Rickey was all too willing to raid the Negro leagues of players under contract, much as the Mexican League had done to MLB.
“That’s exactly what’s going on,” Kendrick said. “They (Mexican League teams) were starting to bring all this talent to Mexico, and they essentially do the same thing to the Negro leagues.”
Manley fought for the Negro leagues to be compensated when players left for the majors and her efforts paid off when Cleveland owner Bill Veeck paid the Eagles for signing Larry Doby, who became the first African American to play in the American League on July 5, 1947.
“That opens the door for Negro league owners to start selling their star players to the major leagues,” Kendrick said, “but it also signals the demise of those Negro leagues.”
The demise of the Negro leagues
In the years following Robinson’s MLB debut, the talent drain from the Negro leagues was immediately obvious as former Negro league stars began winning MLB’s yearly awards.