March 29, 2024

Negro Leagues DB Update: 1908 & 1909 Negro Leagues

May 18, 2012 by · Leave a Comment 

The 1908 season saw the emergence of a national scene in black professional baseball.  Two important eastern teams, the Philadelphia Giants and the Cuban Giants of New York, made trips to the Midwest, their most notable opponent being Rube Foster‘s new powerhouse, the Chicago Leland Giants.  The Cuban Stars of Havana spent significant time in […]

Negro Leagues DB Update: Cuban Summer League

December 15, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

The historical Cuban League everyone knows about was played in the fall and winter months, and so is often referred to as the Cuban Winter League.  Almost nobody remembers that, in the first decade of the 20th century at least, there was a Cuban Summer League, too, the Premio de Verano, or Summer Championship.  The […]

Gambling on the 1917 White Sox-Giants World Series

May 19, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

The recent New York Times article about speculation that the Cubs threw the 1918 World Series to the Red Sox brings up the broader issue of how deeply major league baseball was corrupted by gambling and a money culture in the 1910s. A while ago I looked up how the Chicago Tribune covered the end […]

Lena Blackburne’s Playing Days

December 7, 2009 by · 3 Comments 

I first remember hearing of Lena Blackburne several years ago, when Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs went over to New Jersey to gather some river mud with Jim Bintliff, the head of Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud. But his name only stuck in my mind last year, when I saw his name on a list of […]