Joe Black

Joe Black

Joseph Black (February 8, 1924 – May 17, 2002) was an American right-handed pitcher in Negro League and Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Cincinnati Redlegs, and Washington Senators who became the first black pitcher to win a World Series game, in 1952. Black died of prostate cancer at age 78.

A native of Plainfield, New Jersey, he starred at Plainfield High School. Black attended on a baseball scholarship and graduated from Morgan State University in 1950 and later received an honorary doctorate from Shaw University. He was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He appears prominently in Roger Kahn's classic book, The Boys of Summer.

Read more about Joe Black:  Negro and Minor Leagues, Call Up To Brooklyn, Black's Decline, After Baseball, Comments On Black, Honors and Awards

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    While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.
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