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:
“If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of his own comfort,—who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summon’d am to a tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end:
Methinks it is no journey.”
—Unknown. Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song (l. 57–60)