Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations
Middle States Baseball League
Established in 1889, the Middle States Baseball League included two African American teams, the New York Gorhams and the Cuban Giants, and white teams from Harrisburg, Norristown, Lebanon, Lancaster, York, and Hazelton (all in Pennsylvania). Each team represented a city, the Gorhams Easton, Pennsylvania, and the Cuban Giants Trenton, New Jersey. The league lasted for one year.
The Gorhams, early rivals of the Cuban Giants as the best black team in the East, were owned by Ambrose Davis, who had been the first black owner of a salaried baseball team. The tenure of the Gorhams in the Middle States League, however, was short lived because the team fared poorly and dropped out early in the season. One of the Gorhams players was Sol White, who, at age nineteen, began to play baseball in 1887. White continued to play professional baseball for twenty-five years and then went on to a career as an officer, manager, and coach of the Negro National League. After his retirement from baseball, White wrote a column for the New York City Amsterdam News newspaper. His greatest contribution to African American baseball, however, was his History of Colored Baseball.
Written in 1907, the book is the most significant source of information about the black teams and players of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Cuban Giants fared much better than the Gorhams, apparently winning the leagues title. They edged out Harrisburg in winning percentage, .780 to .753. A series of rulings, however, resulted in a reversal of the order and the crowning of Harrisburg as the “official” champion. The Cuban Giants included Frank Grant and George Stovey on their roster. Grant played for nineteen years, with various teams, and is recognized as one of the outstanding baseball players of the nineteenth century. He was spiked so often by racist team opponents that he began wearing wooden shinguards and was eventually moved from second base to the outfield for his own protection. Stovey was the best black pitcher in the 1890s and may be best known as the player whom Cap Anson refused to play against in an exhibition game on July 16, 1887—an event that triggered the exclusion of African Americans from the major and minor leagues.
The Middle States League lasted one year and was replaced in 1890 by the Eastern Interstate League in which the Cuban Giants represented York, Pennsylvania, as the York Monarchs.
FURTHER READINGS
Clark, Dick, and Larry Lester. The Negro Leagues Book Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1994.
Dixon, Phil. The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History. Mattituck, N.Y.: Amereon House, 1992.
Malloy, Jerry. Sol White’s History of Colored Baseball, with Other Documents on the Early Black Game, 1886–1936. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Riley, James A. The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994.
Lyle K.Wilson
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