Negro Leagues
In 1933 Greenlee organized the annual East-West Classic, an all-star baseball game in Chicago between Negro League stars, which became the centerpiece of the baseball season. That same year he was the primary founder of the second Negro National League, which he served as president for five seasons.
For a while the Crawfords were the best-financed team in black baseball. Revenue generated from his gambling and bootlegging operations allowed Greenlee to sign black baseball's biggest names. The 1935 squad may be the best ever to play in the Negro Leagues, as it fielded five Baseball Hall of Fame players. Money also enabled Greenlee to build his own ballpark. When he bought the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1930, he was insulted that his players were not allowed to use the dressing rooms at white-owned or -controlled venues like Forbes Field, Ammon Field, and others. In 1932 he opened Greenlee Field, the first black-owned and black-built baseball park in America.
Read more about this topic: Gus Greenlee
Famous quotes containing the words negro and/or leagues:
“the negro Babo took by succession each Spaniard forward, and asked him whose skeleton that was, and whether, from its whiteness, he should not think it a white’s.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Struck in the wet mire
Four thousand leagues from the ninth buried city
I thought of Troy, what we had built her for.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)