‘The League’ Joyfully Reframes the Heyday of Black Baseball

Everybody knows that baseball — the dominant sport in America for two-thirds of the 20th century — excluded Black players from its major leagues for decades, from the turn of the century until Jackie Robinson broke through in 1947. In most tellings, Negro League stars like Buck O’Neill, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige are tragic figures: They were robbed of the opportunity to compete against Joe DiMaggio, et al, and to join the firmament of household names on the sports pages, in the record books and at Cooperstown.

A parallel history of baseball from a Black point of view, Sam Pollard’s fleet-footed, feature-length The League offers a perspective that acknowledges segregation and racism — yet is closer to a house party than a lament. Meshing the recollections of numerous players and Negro League umpire Bob Motley (who died in 2017), a wealth of splendid vintage footage and interviews with young Black historians, it’s a solid double in the gap that fans of the game will enjoy even more than devotees of American social history.

The League is not as kinetic and enthralling as the prolific Pollard’s recent Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me (2017) or last year’s Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power. But that likely comes down to the episodic, pass-the-baton nature of the Negro Leagues’ evolution.

In the leadoff spot is Andrew “Rube” Foster, a crafty Black pitcher whom New York Giants manager John McGraw reportedly hired to secretly teach future Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson the fadeaway (a.k.a. screwball). Foster became an innovative manager and owner of the Chicago American Giants, where he pioneered an aggressive style of play built on speed, base-running and squeeze bunts (in contrast to the Major Leagues’ love affair with Babe Ruth’s home run jogs).

Foster’s biggest contribution, though, was persuading fellow Midwest team owners to form the Negro National League in 1920. Another group formed the Eastern Colored League in 1923, and the winners of the two leagues met in the first “colored” World Series the following year.

Organized Black baseball created rivalries and birthed stars. Off the field, the effects were even more significant: Black communities proudly embraced their teams to such a degree that churches moved their Sunday services up an hour in deference to highly anticipated games. Meanwhile, the teams hired hundreds of ticket-takers, vendors and ushers, fueling the local economy.

Foster was disabled by gas poisoning in a hotel accident. His 1930 death, combined with the Great Depression, doomed the Negro National League. Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee launched the second iteration in 1933, the same year he signed the likable catcher Joshua Gibson.

Pittsburgh, which was on the main train line connecting East Coast cities as well as points west, was able to support another terrific Black team: The Homestead Grays, who signed away Gibson after four seasons with the Crawfords. (A career .365 hitter, Gibson’s mental health issues and premature death robbed him of a shot at the Major Leagues.)

As one would expect, The League weaves important Black social movements into the narrative. The great migration of Southern Black Americans to northern cities after World War I was key to the success of the Negro National Leagues. During World War II, the Pittsburgh Courier spearheaded the Double Victory campaign, which highlighted the contributions and bravery of Black soldiers fighting to free people overseas and lobbied for expanded freedoms at home — less discrimination and segregation — for Black Americans.

Batting cleanup in The League is executive Effa Manley. She made her first mark leading a 1934 boycott of a Harlem department store until it hired Black salesgirls, and became co-owner of the Newark Eagles upon marrying its owner, Abe Manley, the following year. Effa excelled at managing the club’s business operations and advocating for all Negro League players.

If you harbor the notion that Branch Rickey is a hero for integrating Major League Baseball when he signed Jackie Robinson from the Kansas City Monarchs for his Brooklyn Dodgers, listen to Effa Manley. She was outspoken about Rickey’s crass failure to pay the team that developed him. (In contrast, Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck paid Manley a small sum for Larry Doby, who was the first Black player in the American League.)

Manley is perhaps the most fascinating figure in The League. She is among the roughly three dozen Negro League greats inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame since 1971, and is still the only woman in the Hall.

Bay Area baseball fans will encounter surprisingly few local connections in The League. Willie Mays played 13 games in 1948 for the Negro League’s Birmingham Black Barons — when he was 17 — and he makes a cameo appearance via a couple-decades-old videotaped interview and his unforgettable catch of Vic Wertz’s blast to deep centerfield in the opening game of the 1954 World Series. The Negro League will take a turn in the spotlight at the Black Barons’ ballpark, Rickwood Field, on June 20, 2024, when the Giants and Cardinals play a nationally televised regular season game.

While neither the filmmaker nor his cohort of learned interviewees express any regrets about the integration of Major League Baseball, it obviously led to the demise of the Negro Baseball League. Black fans preferred to see Robinson, or Doby, or Paige, or Monte Irvin, or Roy Campanella playing against and alongside white players rather than all-Black teams in all-Black leagues. Against the backdrop of a nascent civil rights movement, integrated Major League Baseball represented the future, while the Negro League was a holdover of the past. By the 1950s, it was game over.

Seventy years later, baseball fans lament the dearth of Black players in the game as so many athletes gravitate to football and basketball. But that’s another story. The League transports us to a time when baseball was boss and every professional player was special. That includes the Negro Leagues, as well.

‘The League’ screens July 9, 10 and 12 at the AMC Metreon 16 San Francisco, AMC Bay Street 16 Emeryville and AMC Eastridge 15 San Jose.