The Pittsburgh Crawfords were once baseball royalty.
Named for the Crawford Bar and Grill in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the Crawfords boasted future Hall of Famers in pitcher Satchel Paige, catcher Josh Gibson, and third baseman Julius "Judy" Johnson, among others.
The team won Negro National League titles in 1935 and '36, before Paige led a contingent of players to a larger payday in the Dominican Republic. Then the team of owner William Augustus "Gus" Greenlee's dream faltered -- and moved to Toledo in 1939.
The history of Negro League baseball in the United States has many links to Toledo.
Whether it is Moses "Fleetwood" Walker, the first African-American to play in the major leagues, the Crawfords, one of the more famous teams in Negro League history, or the numerous Negro League stars whose barnstorming tours included stops at Swayne Field, Toledo will forever be linked with Negro League baseball.
Hank Rigney and Olympian Jesse Owens thought the Crawfords could turn a profit in Toledo.
"My dad [Rigney] was the team president, and Jesse [Owens] was the vice president," Helyn Rigney Carr said in a 2001 Blade interview. "They probably each had $50 invested. They ran on a shoestring; they did everything they had to do to make money."
The team's manager and star player was Oscar Charleston, who was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976 and was compared to Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth.
Although most of the Crawfords' top players from their Pittsburgh days had scattered, Toledo still had some talented players, including pitchers Johnny "Schoolboy" Taylor and Ernie "Spoon" Carter, who struck out 17 in a shutout win over the Dayton Semi-Pros.
The catcher was Lloyd "Pepper" Bassett, who was named to several all-star teams. Outfielder Jimmy Crutchfield, who suffered a fractured shoulder in a May, 1939, exhibition game and was lost for the season, and infielder James "Bus" Clarkson also were on the team.
One of the most fascinating facets of the Crawfords' time in Toledo was their reliance on "exhibition" games to attract crowds to Swayne Field, which was at Monroe Street and Detroit Avenue. More newspaper space was devoted to promoting these exhibitions -- against top amateur teams such as the Kennedy Bears from Flint, Mich., the Altes Lagers of Detroit, the Lima Pandas of the Ohio State League, and the House of David squad from Benton Harbor, Mich. -- than was given to regular-season Negro National League games.
Holding their own
The Crawfords were able to hold their own against the competition, winning nearly all their exhibitions.
They also were willing to play teams from other Negro leagues, most notably a late June, 1939, series against the Kansas City Monarchs, the eventual league champions of the Negro American League, and the Homestead Grays, the Crawfords' former Pittsburgh rivals. That meant more Negro League greats such as Walter "Buck" Leonard and Josh Gibson visited Toledo during that period.
"The teams came in buses all painted up with 'Kansas City Monarchs' or 'Indianapolis Clowns' in big letters," Ms. Carr said. "They would drive down the avenue so people would see them and know they were in town."
Owens, fresh off winning four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, ran an exhibition race before the Crawfords played a local team called the Toledo Scales.
Although the 1939 season didn't go well for the Crawfords on the financial ledger or standings -- the team tied for fifth in the seven-team league with an 8-11 mark -- it ended with a bang when Paige brought his all-star team to Swayne Field Sept.11-12, 1939. The Crawfords moved to Indianapolis for the 1940 season and oblivion.
Games involving Negro League teams were played in Toledo on occasion after the Crawfords left. For example, The Complete Book of Baseball's Negro Leagues indicates that the first game of the 1943 Negro American League playoffs between Birmingham and Chicago was played at Swayne Field.
Few records
The links have become clouded over time, because there are few detailed records from that era. In fact, some of the names and many of the games have been lost to the ravages of time.
"When I researched [Negro League baseball in Toledo], the answers I was looking for -- the standings and the rosters and the statistics and such -- just weren't there," said John Husman, a noted local baseball historian and author. "More was written about the games before they happened than the results.
"I was only able to find one box score from three years of games played in Toledo, and that was more of a line score."
Still, the sketchy information of bygone baseball eras hasn't kept Fleet Walker from receiving notice as the first black major-league player, seeing action in the "big leagues" of his time, which was more than 60 years before Jackie Robinson first played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The son of an ordained Methodist minister who played at Oberlin College and later at the University of Michigan, Walker joined Toledo's team in the Northwestern League in 1883. When the American Association, one of two "major" leagues at the time, expanded to include a Toledo club in 1884, Walker played in 42 of that squad's contests.
Walker faced difficulties in playing, even from his teammates. The book Shades of Glory includes a story of how white pitcher Tony Mullane treated his teammate.
"I had it in for him," Mullane admitted in a New York Evening World article quoted in the book. "He was the best catcher I ever worked with, but I disliked a Negro catcher and whenever I had to pitch to him, I used to pitch anything I wanted without looking at his signals."
That was an especially dangerous practice at a time when catchers didn't use gloves or any of the protective gear of today's games. The result was swollen hands, broken fingers -- or worse.
One day, Mullane admitted that he threw a fastball when Walker had signaled for a curve, prompting Walker to visit the mound. "Mullane," Walker is reported to have said, "I'll catch you without signals, but I won't catch you if you are going to cross me when I give you a signal."
Mullane said Walker caught him the rest of the season without trouble. But new trouble was starting to form for Walker and his brother, Weldy Walker, whose five-game stint with Toledo that season made him the second African-American major leaguer.
In 1883, the Chicago White Stockings threatened to cancel an exhibition game against Toledo if Walker was allowed to play, but the Toledo team supported Walker and the White Stockings were shamed into playing. The White Stockings' best player, Cap Anson, helped fuel public sentiment against African-Americans, and by the end of the 1890s those players were banned from the major leagues.
Although Walker's baseball career was over, Mr. Husman said Walker still led a colorful life after baseball
"For a time he worked for the post office and was convicted of mail fraud," Mr. Husman said. "He was tried for murder but eventually acquitted. He also received several patents, owned a motion picture theater in Cadiz in eastern Ohio, and even wrote a book that said the only solution to race problems in the United States would be if the African-American population returned to Africa.
"He lived a very interesting life."
Games go on
While that color barrier erected to keep Walker out of the game remained in place until 1947, that didn't mean African-Americans stopped playing baseball. During that period the Negro Leagues were formed to showcase top talent -- and that talent often passed through Swayne Field to give the Glass City a taste of its abilities.
Negro League historians have confirmed the existence of a team in Toledo as early as 1923, although that squad may not have been the first attempt to bring a Negro League baseball squad to Toledo. A Toledo News-Bee article on May 1, 1923, mentions "one venture two years ago" but also condemns that attempt, saying the players were, "of the class of second-rate amateurs."
In February, 1920, Andrew "Rube" Foster, one of the great pitchers in the early days of Negro baseball, led the formation of the Negro National League. In 1923, the league planted a franchise in Toledo.
"Toledo is known far and wide as a great baseball city," Foster said in an April, 1923, Blade story. "I expect the quality of ball our teams play will win the support of the Toledo fans."
Foster planned to use players from defunct clubs in Pittsburgh and Cleveland to stock the Toledo entry. One of the players who was supposed to play for the team, which was nicknamed the Tigers, was Oscar Charleston. Louis "Dicta" Johnson, a pitcher for championship teams in Indianapolis, was named Toledo's manager.
After practicing in Youngstown and playing some games in Chicago, the team came to Swayne Field on May 1, 1923, to prepare for its inaugural home game against the Indianapolis ABCs.
The team that ran onto the grass of Swayne Field bore little comparison to the team that was promised to Toledo. The starting pitcher was Frank Stevens, not Johnson or highly regarded "Big Bill" Gatewood, who would mentor "Cool Papa" Bell and Paige during his long career.
The centerfielder was not Charleston but Jimmy Reel, who played only one season of Negro League ball. The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues said that Reel was better known as "a professional singer with a beautiful voice and style that were similar to those of Billy Eckstine," a popular balladeer and big-band leader of the era.
Local fans quickly wised up to the "bait and switch." The Toledo Times reported that only 1,200 fans came to Swayne Field, which at the time seated 11,800, to see the Tigers lose to Indianapolis. By the third contest in the five-game series, a 14-1 loss, The Bladereported that the stands were empty and that the team needed immediate improvement.
"The public was led to believe that the Toledo team would be a bang-up aggregation," The Bladesaid in its May 8 edition. "Foster was told when he first broached the subject of entering Toledo with his league that this city would support a winner but would drop a poor team like a hot potato. Whether he was unable to sign the calibre of players necessary or not is not known, but certainly the sort of school-boy baseball all save two or three players have shown will not interest Toledo."
More clubs
Foster promised to bring a better club to the Glass City, even promising to transfer the Cleveland club to Toledo. Instead he folded the Toledo Tigers, transferring the club to Cleveland.
Outside of the Tigers and Crawfords, only one other team called Toledo home. That was in 1945 when the U.S. Negro Baseball League placed a team in Toledo called the Cubs. The league was formed by Mr. Greenlee, the former Crawfords owner who placed the league offices at the Crawford Grille.
A crowd estimated at 2,000 came to Swayne Field on May 20, 1945, to see the Cubs claim a 10-4 victory over the Hilldales of Philadelphia, a club that was first formed in 1910.
The Cubs' star player was outfielder Norman "Turkey" Stearnes, whose 20-year career eventually earned him a berth in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But the Cubs -- and the league -- didn't last long, clearing the way for other teams to play at Swayne Field. One of those teams was the Cleveland Buckeyes and outfielder Sam Jethroe, who eventually played a starring role for the Toledo Sox squad that won the American Association crown in 1953.
When the Kansas City Monarchs played at Swayne Field, they featured shortstop Jackie Robinson, who at the time was best known as an All-American football player at UCLA.
There also were "carnival" baseball acts, similar to basketball's Harlem Globetrotters, that visited Toledo. The best-known of those was a group called the Ethiopian Clowns, featuring "Circus" Ed Hammon and a performer known simply as "King Tut." Hammon wore a clown's white-face makeup while playing, and "King Tut," who was billed as "The Crown Clown," would entertain while dressed as an Egyptian pharaoh or wearing a top hat and tails.
In an August, 1945, appearance at Swayne Field, the Clowns promoted the return of "Goose" Tatum from military duties. Tatum, one of the team's most popular players, later became known as the "Clown Prince of Basketball" while playing for the Globetrotters.
Often these teams played an amateur team from Detroit that featured Billy Ball, a one-armed outfielder.
But soon Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, the color barrier was broken, and the Negro Leagues vanished. Major league audiences began to watch stars such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Larry Doby, and Ernie Banks -- all of whom got their start in the Negro Leagues.
Over the years, those players and other African-American stars such as Reggie Jackson, Kirby Puckett, and Ozzie Smith were elected to the Hall of Fame. What's more, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Barry Bonds have produced Hall of Fame worthy-careers, and modern stars such as Prince Fielder, Curtis Granderson, and CC Sabathia captivate baseball audiences.
All of those players continue a rich baseball tradition that began with Fleet Walker, the Crawfords, and Negro League baseball in Toledo.
Contact John Wagner at: jwagner@theblade.com, or 419-724-6481.
First Published February 19, 2012, 6:13 a.m.
