Union Tribune

Champions exhibit
in its own league

Paintings depict pride, joy of black baseball circuit

By Jeanette Steele
STAFF WRITER

Neale Henderson presides over his armchair in Skyline Heights, a man of 74 with grandchildren running underfoot. He rises from his seat, old knees slowing him considerably.

In paintings of Henderson's former Negro Leagues baseball comrades, they are all lean young men with faces full of pride.

In the paintings, now on exhibit at the San Diego Hall of Champions, they're playing on famous fields such as Chicago's Comiskey Park, outfitted in baggy-kneed uniforms and bright ball caps. Off the field, they're dressed like swells, in dark suits, suspenders and fashionable fedoras.

Playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1949, earning $75 a week, Henderson felt like a king.
"It was my dream that came true," he said.

The paintings show the dignity and verve of early African-American baseball players who were forced by segregation to play on a separate circuit, the Negro Leagues.

Called "Shades of Greatness," the 35-piece traveling exhibit opened Thursday at the Balboa Park sports museum.

The art was commissioned by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. It recruited a group of artists – black and white, men and women – to portray the spirit of the league, which existed from 1920 to the early 1960s.

One of the artists is San Diego resident Kadir Nelson.

"It's becoming more popular, that era of baseball, but I don't think they have really, really gotten their complete just due," said Nelson, who also is writing and illustrating a book about the Negro Leagues.

"That's what I'm trying to do with these paintings is give them their just due."

The organized Negro Leagues didn't stretch as far as San Diego. The city had its own all-black teams that played against all-white teams in a sandlot amateur circuit, said Bill Swank, a San Diego baseball historian and author.

There were the Coast Giants, which emerged around 1899. Later came the Gibson Tigers, sponsored by an African-American contractor named Gibson.

In the winter, black and white professionals from the Negro and major leagues formed segregated teams and played around the Southwestern states and Mexico. Called "barnstorming," it meant extra money for players in the off-season and brought black superstars such as Satchel Paige to local baseball diamonds.

The Negro Leagues discovered talent here. Walter McCoy was a star of San Diego amateur ball as a youth, then signed with the Chicago American Giants in 1945 at age 21, fresh from the Army.

McCoy's Giants played in Comiskey Park when the White Sox were on the road, packing the stadium and helping bolster the management's bottom line.

McCoy, a pitcher with a poker face, entered the Negro Leagues the same year as baseball icon Jackie Robinson.

In 1947, Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers to become the first player to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball. A year later, San Diegan Johnny Ritchey became the first black player in the triple-A Pacific Coast League when he signed with the Padres.

Still, only a trickle of blacks entered Major League Baseball in the following years. Without the lingering effects of Jim Crow, McCoy said, he knows he could have played in the majors.
"I could have made it," said McCoy, now 81 and living in San Diego's Rolando neighborhood. "I used to get Jackie Robinson out quite a lot."

The difference in pay was like the difference between field-level seats and the bleachers. A major leaguer started at $6,000 a season, McCoy said, while he remembers getting about $2,400.

The Negro Leagues slowly fizzled out when segregation ended, and in the 1950s both Henderson and McCoy retired from baseball. They got jobs in San Diego and worked until their golden years – Henderson as an aircraft factory supervisor, and McCoy in his family's contracting firm.

It was only recently they saw any retirement money from baseball.

In 1997, Major League Baseball started paying pensions to Negro League players who started before 1947, acknowledging that only prejudice kept them out of the big time.

Henderson got his first check last month, after the program was extended to players who started after 1947. The former Monarchs shortstop says he thinks it's only fair.

"We were playing in the same stadiums, and we helped money-wise with those stadiums. We packed them in there," said Henderson, who describes taking the field in ballparks filled with 60,000 to 80,000 fans, both black and white.

The Hall of Champions exhibit shows what a Negro Leagues game might have looked like, with a mock-up of a ticket window, players' bench and outfield wall. The bench features replica jerseys, photos and equipment.