Baseball is always fundamentally about different aspects of American identity, and today is the anniversary of several key moments:

In 1921,

At Crosley Field, Pirates right-hander Chief Yellow Horse makes his major league debut against the Reds. The Pittsburgh hurler, a member of a North American Plains Indian tribe call the Pawnees, is believed by many baseball historians to be the first full-blooded American Indian to play in the big leagues.

Note: almost all Native American players in baseball, until the recent emergence of Jacoby Ellsbury with the Red Sox, were nicknamed Chief.

In 1947

A year before President Truman desegregated the military, Jackie Robinson debuts for the Dodgers becoming the first black player to participate in a major league game this century. In front of 25,623 Ebbets Field fans, the 28-year old first baseman is hitless in three at-bats, but scores a run in the 5-3 Opening Day victory over the Braves.

Note: the threat of African-American MEN in baseball was discursively defused by infantilizing them: Jack Robinson becomes “Jackie,” Willie Mays is “the Say Hey Kid.”

And perhaps most interestingly for Seattle baseball fans, in 1958

On Opening Day, the transplanted New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers play the first major league game on the West Coast. The Californian contest sees Ruben Gomez blanking Los Angeles and Don Drysdale at San Francisco’s Seals Stadium, 8-0.

Everyone usually attributes the relocation of the Dodgers and Giants to pure greed on the part of the teams’ owners, but it was also an inevitable result of the huge post-World War II demographic shift of population to the West Coast (driven at first by war industries, and then GI Bill veterans relocating). The Pacific Coast League was drawing crowds, and putting talent on the field, that was very close to making it a third major league. The AL and the NL had to prevent that from happening, and so colonization of the West by the old powers of the East was inevitable. (And the first team to move West—the first ML team to relocated in generations—wasn’t the Dodgers: it was the Boston Braves, who became the Milwaukee Braves in 1951 and were the first team to draw 3 million fans, before relocating to Atlanta in 1966 and annoying America and Native Americans with that tomahawk chop chant).

But it’s a great thought experiment to consider what might have happened had the PCL become the third major league. The AL and NL would have had to acknowledge the league’s status and add it to the National Commission, and then you’d’ve had the Seattle Rainiers all along, so no heartbreak of losing the Pilots and then getting the Mariners. How might the post-season have worked? Probably the PCL pennant winner would play the NL’s to see who gets the Yankees, who’d get a bye every year. . .

Bonus trivia question: name the one player to play for the Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves.

22 replies on “Big Day in Baseball History”

  1. god damn fucking baseball racists with their racist infantilizing of African Americans!

    That would never happen to a white man.

  3. Heh, good one, troll.

    My mom was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and has a mail-order autographed baseball from the mid-50s. (She saved cereal boxtops to get it.) We don’t think the autographs are genuine, but it’s still a neat little keepsake. I always loved looking for Jackie Robinson’s signature when I was younger.

  4. @1 Lots of other players thought Ruth was black. He was heckled–called “nigger lips” among other things. And when a member of a dominant group is called a name, it’s about him as an individual: when a member of a marginal group is called a name, it’s about his group identity.

  6. I’m perfectly ready to believe that it was in whites’ interest to infantilize black men–there are probably entire books written on the use of “boy.” That said, baseball is ALL ABOUT the juvenile/kid-sounding nicknames. For EVERYONE.

  7. Not only was it OK for Native Americans to play in the bigs, it was OK for Latinos as well.

    Early black major leaguers were routinely referred to as “boy.” When Lou Brock came up to the majors with the Cardinals in the late 60’s, the local sports writers dubbed him “St. Louis’s Joy Boy” because of his positive attitude. One day Brock took one of the sportswriters aside and said, basically, “uh, do you think you could give me a different nickname? The ‘boy’ thing isn’t really OK anymore.” And the local media complied.

  9. This post was such a welcome departure from your previous whining about Milton Bradley that I have forgiven you for same. And it includes a good trivia question! Warren Spahn was the first name that came to mind, but I don’t think he ever played for Atlanta. Is it Eddie Mathews? I’m not sure if he played on the Boston team.

    On a side note, I would like to have seen anyone refer to Bob Gibson as “Bobby” or Boy.”

  12. @ 6
    Stan “The Man” Musial. Don “Big D” Drysdale. Joe “the Yankee Clipper” DiMaggio. Lou “the Iron Horse” Gehrig.Walter “Big Train” Johnson. Harmon “Killer” Killebrew. Johnny “Big Cat” Mize. “Prince Hal” Newhauser. Just to name a few. But when you claim ALL, I only have to point out a few exceptions. . .

  13. Willie “Big Mac” McCovey. Reggie “Mr. October” Jackson. Ozzie “The Wizard” Smith. Willie “Pops” Stargell. Hank “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron.

    This is really more for fun… like I said, I don’t doubt there were plenty of people looking to diminish early black MLB players.

  15. Wait. Chief Bender pitched for the Athletics in the 00s and into the teens. He was, I believe, a member of the Ojibwa tribe. Was he not full blood?

  16. Huh? The first indian in the big leagues was Lou Sockalexis in 1897 (erroneously believed to be the inspiration behind the name change of the Cleveland Spiders to the Cleveland Indians).

    The concept of “full-blooded” is rather nebulous, especially in light of American racial politics over the years. Indian schmindian; Sockalexis identified as an Indian and came from Indian culture. He was an Indian (Penobscot, actually, born and raised on their reservation).

    The first black player in the majors was of course Moses Fleetwood Walker, debuting in 1884. Several others had previously played in various minor leagues, which back then were much less “minor” than they are today. The first was probably John Fowler in 1878.

    Blacks often played under assumed racial identities, being passed off as “Latin” or “Spanish” or “Arab”. Obviously this wouldn’t work with very dark black men, but for many their presence was tolerated with a wink in that permissive time.

    Many people don’t realize that Jim Crow did not follow on from the aftermath of Empancipation, but was imposed long after, as long as the early 1900s. Blacks were allowed to ride in the front of streetcars throughout the South in the 1880s, but by 1900 they were relegated to the back, or off entirely. Baseball similarly didn’t impose a hard and fast color line until the 20th century, though people of suspect racial backgrounds might be subject to catcalls, thrown objects, or worse.

    Part of the problem with acknowledging the early history of baseball is the stupid fact that for many years organized baseball pretended that the game didn’t exist before 1901. Many official records still don’t acknowledge 19th-century achievements. And until the Baseball Encyclopedia was first released in 1969, few historians paid any attention either.

  18. @ 16 is right about Jim Crow; those laws did not start being passed until the 1890s, after Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) made the concept of separate but equal the law.

  22. It’s a few days after this last post, but M’s win again!! And Miltie goes 1-4 raising his average to a robust .147!!

    But uhoh, Silva gets a win, giving up 2 runs in 7 innings. I don’t like that.

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