For almost 50 years, Swayne Field was the home of baseball in Toledo.

From 1909 until 1955, Swayne Field served as the home of Toledo's minor league baseball team - usually called the Mud Hens. Recognized as one of the best minor league parks in the country, it was demolished in 1956, one year after the team left town.

But while the Mud Hens may have been the park's best-known tenants, that team was far from the only club to call Swayne Field home.

Major league exhibitions were played there, as were amateur games. Swayne also hosted football games, golf exhibitions, automobile daredevil shows and other forms of non-baseball entertainment.

But perhaps the most famous events that took place at Swayne Field were Negro League baseball games, exhibitions and regular-season contests featuring teams that called Toledo home.

Negro League baseball arose in response to a “gentleman's agreement,” for much of the first half of the 20th century, to bar black baseball players from the American and National leagues, the two top baseball leagues, then and now. As a result, many of the most-skilled players of the 1920s, '30s and early '40s were forced to display their skills in near-anonymity.

Record-keeping was sketchy, and information on the topic is incomplete, but the first Negro League team to play in Toledo is believed to be the Toledo Tigers. That team was formed in 1923 but survived just three months before it became one of four teams in the Negro National League to fold that season.

The Tigers posted an 11-15 record under manager and third baseman “Candy” Jim Taylor.

The second Negro League team based in Toledo had one of the most famous names in Negro baseball: the Crawfords.

In their heyday in Pittsburgh, the Crawfords' lineup included such Hall of Famers as pitcher Leroy “Satchel” Paige, catcher Josh Gibson, outfielder James “Cool Papa” Bell, third baseman Julius “Judy” Johnson and first baseman Oscar Charleston.

The team won Negro National League titles in 1935 and '36, but in 1937 Paige led a contingent of Crawfords to a larger payday in the Dominican Republic.

In 1938 the team's owner, William A. “Gus” Greenlee, began selling his best players to recover a profit. That season he also hired Jesse Owens, who had won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics, to run in pre-game exhibitions against racehorses.

By the end of that season Owens was a part-owner of the club, and before the next season began the club was sold to a group of white businessmen in Toledo.

“My dad (Hank Rigney) was the president and Jesse was the vice president,” said Helyn Rigney Carr, still a Toledo-area resident. “They probably each had $50 invested (in the team). They ran on a shoestring; they did everything they had to do to make money.”

Charleston followed the team to Toledo and served as a player-manager, but the Crawfords survived just half a season before folding.

“We didn't have many big names,” said Tom Rigney, Hank Rigney's son and Helyn's brother. “I think one of the reasons it didn't go was because it was just before a war time.”

While the Crawfords didn't stick, Swayne Field became a home for numerous baseball exhibitions. Dizzy Dean and Paige were among the individuals who brought teams into Toledo, with almost all the famous names in Negro baseball making appearances at one time or another.

“The teams came in busses all painted up with `Kansas City Monarchs' or `Indianapolis Clowns' in big letters,” said Helyn Rigney Carr. “They would drive down the avenue so people would see them and know they were in town. That brought more people to the ballpark.”

Both Rigney children remember a variety of events that went along with the games: Match races featuring Owens and a horse named Chocolate Spot, jitterbug contests, and bathing beauty contests.

But Tom Rigney remembers there was more to the promotion of the games than just “extra” events. “The dugouts (at Swayne Field) were right along the stands, and at that time a ballplayer would stand up and be talking among the people, he wouldn't be hidden or protected. So the players used to (give) autographs while the game was going on. That was part of the game.”

There would be one more Negro League team in Toledo before Jackie Robinson's entry into the major leagues in 1947, with Brooklyn, signaled the beginning of the end for Negro baseball. In 1945 Toledo fielded a team in the United States League that was known either as the Rays or the Cubs. While that team - and its league - was hard-pressed to survive a season, it did feature a Hall of Famer: Norman “Turkey” Stearnes, an outfielder from Detroit who had a 25-year career in Negro baseball.

And those teams combined with the exhibition games to give Toledoans a first-hand look at some of the greatest baseball players of the era, including Paige, Robinson and Hank Aaron.

Helyn Rigney Carr remembers that Aaron was only 16 years old when he played at Swayne Field in 1950 as a member of the Indianapolis Clowns.

Aaron went on to a long major league career that included setting baseball's career record for home runs, with 755.

First Published October 5, 2001, 10:52 a.m.