Negro Leagues and Puerto Rico League
Wilson played for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League from 1942 to 1948, where he was considered the league's best shortstop, and was named the starting shortstop of the league All-Star team four times from 1944 to 1948 (missing out only in 1945, when he was beat out by Jackie Robinson, shortly before he broke the baseball color line in 1947). During his time with the Black Barons, the team won the league championship in 1943, 1944 and 1948, advancing to, but never winning, the Negro League World Series.
In the 1948 regular season, Wilson, who was known as an opposite field hitter, batted .402, and is sometimes credited as the last player in a top-level league to bat over .400 (Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941). In 1948, Wilson mentored a young Willie Mays, who was just breaking into baseball.
Following the 1948 Negro World Series, Wilson played for the Mayaguez Indians of the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League, leading them to their first championship title in 1949. Wilson is credited for giving future Puerto Rican comedic actor Shorty Castro his nickname while playing in Mayagüez.
Read more about this topic: Artie Wilson
Famous quotes containing the words negro, leagues and/or league:
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)
“Good news about someone never gets past the door, but bad news will travel a thousand leagues away.”
—Chinese proverb.
“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money—provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don’t need it.”
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)