Status of Integration in the American League on Opening Day, 1956 (60 Years Ago)

In contrast to the National League, where 29 black players were on the rosters of seven of the eight NL clubs at the start of the 1956 season, there were only 11 blacks who made the opening day roster on just five of the eight teams in the American League. Six were in the starting line-up in the first game on the schedule on April 17—Larry Doby and Minnie Minoso for the White Sox, Al Smith for the Indians, Vic Power and Harry Simpson for the Athletics, and Elston Howard for the Yankees. 

STATE OF INTEGRATION IN THE AMERICAN LEAGUE ON OPENING DAY APRIL 17, 1956 (SIXTY YEAR AGO)

By now it was accepted that there was no going back on the integration of major league baseball. The "great experiment"—to use historian Jules Tygiel's phrase to describe Branch Rickey's signing Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers—had proven a resounding success. Robinson and the first wave of elite black players who followed him demonstrated they were every bit as good as the best white players. Although most clubs in both leagues initially took a let's-wait-and-see attitude, the National League was more proactive in signing and promoting black players. 

Resistance might have been futile, but resistance there was in the AL outside of a handful of ball clubs. The American League had two enduring black stars of its own during the breadth of Jackie Robinson's career—Larry Doby in Cleveland and Minnie Minoso in Chicago—but was much slower to integrate at the big-league level. 

Just three American League clubs started the 1956 season with as many as two black players on their roster and two other clubs began the season with just one black player, which meant that ten years into the Jackie Robinson era, three AL teams were all-white as they took the field for the first time in 1956. In the National League, six of the eight clubs had at least three black players on their opening-day roster—including the Reds with seven, the Dodgers with six, and the Cubs with five. 

And whereas the National League had two high-profile black rookie players who were expected to be—and indeed were—in their team's opening-day starting line-up in 1956, Cincinnati's Frank Robinson and Brooklyn's Charlie Neal, the American League had none who were first-time rookies on their roster, let alone starting the first game of the year. Of the four black players who were September call-ups in the American League in 1955, only Earl Battey went north with his team, and he played in just four games for the White Sox—the last on May 8—before being sent down. And while the National League had more than a handful of dynamic, young black players starring for their teams, several of whom were superstars like Mays, Aaron, and Banks, the American League had . . . none; established veterans Doby and Minoso were both at least 30. 

The two American League teams that had been most enlightened about integration since early in the Jackie Robinson era—the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox—faced off against each other on opening day. The White Sox had the most black players to start the season of any AL team—four, with Doby, whom they acquired in an off-season trade from the Indians; Minoso; Connie Johnson, a pitcher; and Battey. Well-established as elite players, Doby (batting third in center field) and Minoso (batting fifth in left field) were in the starting line-up. Minoso scored the first run of the game after his single started a two-out rally in the fourth and went 1-for-4 in Chicago's 2-1 victory. Doby, hitless in three at bats in his first game against his old team, walked in his first plate appearance in a White Sox uniform.

Having traded Doby, the Indians now had just one black player on their roster—right fielder Al Smith in his fourth year with Cleveland. Batting third in the opening day line-up, Smith got Cleveland's first hit of the season with a first-inning single off Chicago ace Billy Pierce and went 1-for-4 on the day.

The Kansas City Athletics were the only other American League team to start the season with three black players on the roster, two of whom—first baseman Vic Power batting lead-off and center fielder Harry Simpson batting clean-up—started on opening day. Power was beginning his third-big league season, and Simpson had played three years in Cleveland from 1951 to 1953, was demoted to the minor leagues in 1954, and been traded to KC early in the 1955 season. The third black player on KC's opening day roster was their starting third baseman Hector Lopez, who did not play in either of the first two games, but started 144 of the Athletics' 154 games in 1956.

KC's opponent on opening day, who they beat 2-1, were the Detroit Tigers, who along with the Boston Red Sox were the two American League holdouts against integrating at the major league level. The Tigers did not field a black player until 1958 and the Red Sox not until 1959. 

The Red Sox were up against the Baltimore Orioles, who began the season with two black players on their roster—Bob Boyd and David Pope—neither of whom started on opening day, although both pinch hit in the ninth inning. Both had prior major league experience, but not as core regulars. Until an injury sidelined him for almost three months, however, the left-handed Boyd was used in a three-player, two-position platoon at the beginning of the season, alternating at first base with the right-handed Gus Triandos, who was an everyday player platooning with Hal Smith behind the plate; in effect, the left-handed-batting first baseman Boyd was platooned with the right-handed-batting catcher Smith. 

The Washington Senators also opened the 1956 campaign without any black players on their roster. Carlos Paula, who integrated the Senators in September 1954 and played all of the 1955 season with them, rejoined the team in mid-May. He would be the only black to play for the Senators in 1956. After hitting just .188 in 33 games, mostly as a defensive replacement, Paula was back in the minor leagues by July, never again to resurface in the majors, and the 1956 Senators were back to no black players for the rest of the year. 

Of historical note, none of the four blacks who had played so far for the Washington Senators were African American. Paula and Juan Delis, who also spent all of 1955 in Washington but was not invited back, were both from Cuba, and 1955 September call-ups Webbo Clark and Julio Becquer were from Panama and Cuba.

The Senators hosted the New York Yankees on opening day. One of the clubs most staunchly opposed to integration, the Yankees had long taken the so-called principled position of refusing to be pressured into promoting the black players in their stellar minor league season—who had once included Vic Power—just for the sake of appearances. It wasn't until 1955, eight years after Jackie Robinson made his debut over in Brooklyn, that the Yankees finally put a black player on their roster. That was Elston Howard, who stayed all year and played 97 games in his rookie season with 10 home runs, 43 RBIs, and a .290 batting average. The Yankees did not call up another black player all that season.

Nor did they in 1956, when Howard was once again the only black player in New York pinstripes the entire year. Howard was in the starting line-up on opening day and had one hit in five trips to the plate. His lead-off single in the sixth with the Yankees ahead of the Senators, 4-2, started a 4-run rally that was capped by Mickey Mantle's 3-run home run. 

Mantle was 2-for-3 on opening day, with two home runs and four runs batted in. That was nothing. Reigning AL Most Valuable Player Yogi Berra went 4-for-4 with a home run and 5 RBIs as the Yankees clobbered the Senators, 10-4. With one game down and 153 to go, the New York Yankees had set the tone for the American League in 1956.

The following is a link to the status of integration in the American League in 1955:

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2015/04/opening-day-60-years-ago-status-report.html

   

Status of Integration in the National League on Opening Day 1956

Exactly nine years and two days after his major league debut in 1947, Jackie Robinson made the first play of the 1956 season for the Brooklyn Dodgers on opening day, April 17, fielding a ground ball hit to third by the Phillies' Richie Ashburn and throwing him out at first. At the beginning of the 10th year of the Jackie Robinson era of integration in major league baseball, 65 blacks—almost all African-American—had so far played in the big leagues. All five rookies on opening day rosters who had yet to play a major league game were on National League teams, including Frank Robinson. 

The 1956 season began with 29 black players on the opening day rosters of seven of the eight National League teams; only the Philadelphia Phillies had still not integrated their roster. Fourteen black players were in their team's opening day starting line-up. All eight clubs played their first game on April 17.

STATUS OF INTEGRATION IN THE NATIONAL LEAGUE ON OPENING DAY APRIL 17, 1956 (SIXTY YEAR AGO)

With seven players, the Cincinnati Reds had more black players on their roster than any other major league team to open the 1956 season. The most talked about were right-hander Brooks Lawrence, acquired in an off-season trade with the Cardinals, and highly-touted rookie outfielder Frank Robinson. Questions about Lawrence focused on whether he could recapture what he had going for him in his impressive 15-6 debut for the Cardinals in 1954 after being a bust in 1955 and being sent to the minor leagues in August. Questions about Robinson were about whether he would really be as good as he gave every indication of being.

On opening day, Frank Robinson made a very strong case that indeed he would be. Robinson was the only one of the Reds' seven black players to start on opening day, batting seventh in left field. Facing the Cardinals' Vinegar Bend Mizell, Robinson hit a ground-rule double in his first major league at bat in the second and singled in his next at bat in the fourth. After hitting into a force-out in the sixth, Robinson was intentionally walked with runners on second and third with two outs to load the bases in a tie game in the eighth; the Cardinals, it seemed, preferred to pitch to veteran, light-hitting shortstop Roy McMillan, who had doubled to tie the game after Robinson's single in the fourth, rather than have to deal with the rookie who was now 2-for-3 in his big-league career. Good move. McMillan fouled out to end the threat and Stan Musial hit a two-run home-run in the ninth that decided the game.

Of historical note, not only was Frank Robinson back in the line-up for the second game of the season—he would start in 150 of the Reds' 155 games in 1956—but Cincinnati started a black pitcher in their next game, rookie southpaw Pat Scantlebury, who gave up 4 runs in 5 innings. He was relieved by Joe Black, an African-American pitcher who was NL Rookie of the Year in 1952 as a stellar relief pitcher for the Dodgers, and Lawrence, called in to pitch in the tenth, got the win when Cincinnati scored in the bottom of the inning. Scantlebury pitched poorly in his next start, however, appeared in four games in relief, and spent the rest of the year with the Reds' Triple-A club in Havana. 

With Lawrence no longer on the team, the St. Louis Cardinals had just one black player on their opening day roster—back-up first baseman Tom Alston. Alston integrated the Cardinals in 1954, was their starting first baseman the first two months of that season, spent the rest of his rookie season with Triple-A Rochester, and virtually all of 1955 in the minor leagues. He would do the same in 1956, playing just three games as a late-inning defensive replacement before being demoted at the end of April. That left St. Louis without any blacks on their roster until outfielder Charlie Peete was called up in mid-July after having hit .350 in 116 games for the Cardinals' Double-A team in Omaha.

The Chicago Cubs started the 1956 season with five black players on their roster. Second baseman Gene Baker batting second, shortstop Ernie Banks batting clean-up, and veteran Monte Irvin, acquired from the Giants, batting sixth in left field were in their starting line-up for the first game of the season.

The Cubs' opening day opponents were the Milwaukee Braves, starting the season with five black players in their dugout. Hank Aaron, batting fourth, in right field and Billy Bruton, the center fielder batting seventh, started on opening day. In the the Braves' 6-0 home victory over the Cubs, Aaron went 2-for-3, driving in the first run of the game with a single and adding a home run. Bruton went 1-for-4 with a triple that finished off Cubs' starter Bob Rush in the seventh.

The Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Giants, who met at the Polo Grounds on opening day, both had three black players on their rosters. Roberto Clemente, after hitting .255 for the Pirates in his rookie season the year before, batted third and was 0-for-4 in the game. Willie Mays in center field batting third and third baseman Hank Thompson, batting fifth, played key roles in the Giants' game-winning eighth-inning rally to break a 2-2 tie. Mays doubled with a runner on first for his only hit of the day, putting runners on second and third to start the inning. After an intentional walk to load the bases, Thompson's flyout to center drove in the tie-breaking run, the throw to the plate on which Mays moved up to third. 

More dramatically, with now one out, Willie Mays being Willie Mays took off for the plate on the next play—a grounder to short—as soon as the throw was released to first base. He was ruled safe when the catcher, in his haste to make the tag, dropped the relay from first baseman Dale Long. Mays's aggressive pursuit of the run providing the Giants with a 4-2 lead was crucial because Long hit a home run in the ninth to make the final score 4-3.

Finally, the Philadelphia Phillies, whose vicious verbal assaults on Jackie Robinson in his rookie season live on in infamy, including in popular culture (see the movie, 42), were in Ebbets Field for opening day. The Phillies were the only National League team—and one of just three big leagues teams, along with the Tigers and Red Sox—that had refused to integrate, even though it was clear by now that there was no going back to segregated major league baseball. 

While the Phillies had no blacks in their dugout—and would not all season—the Brooklyn Dodgers opened with five of their six black players in the starting line-up. Their ace, Don Newcombe, took the mound, against Philadelphia ace Robin Roberts; Jim Gilliam was in left field batting first; catcher Roy Campanella was the clean-up hitter; Jackie Robinson was at third base batting sixth; and Charlie Neal was at second base batting eighth in his major league debut. Sandy Amoros, a left-handed hitter who had platooned in left field the previous year—and who made the catch that saved Game 7 for the 1955 World Champion Dodgers—was on the bench. It looked likely that Amoros would spend most of the season coming off the bench because the Dodgers had decided to move the switch-hitting Gilliam from second base to play left field every day so that rookie prospect Neal could play second.

The Dodgers lost their first game in defense of their 1955 championship. But Gilliam went 1-for-2 with an inside-the-park home run into the left-center field gap off Roberts; Campanella went 2-for-4 and also tagged Roberts for a home run; Neal went 0-for-4 in his first game; and Jackie went 0-for-3 in what would be the last opening day of his career, with a sacrifice fly. Newcombe's second-inning double gave the Dodgers a brief lead, but while his bat was willing, his pitching stuff proved weak as he gave up 5 runs on 5 hits in 4.2 innings and took the loss. He would lose only six more times all year.
  
One game down with 153 to go, the Dodgers were not in first place—after having been there all year in 1955.

The following are links to my posts on the status of integration in the National League on opening day in 1955:

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2015/04/60-years-ago-opening-day-1955mr-cub.html

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2015/04/opening-day-60-years-ago-status-report_12.html

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2015/04/opening-day-60-years-ago-status-report_12.html

60 Years Ago (April 14, 1955): Enough With Four is Enough

When Don Newcombe took the mound to start the second game of the 1955 season for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the defending-champion New York Giants at the Polo Grounds on April 14, 1955, he had four black teammates on the field with him—Jim Gilliam at second, Jackie Robinson at third, Sandy Amoros in left, and Roy Campanella calling the game behind the plate—giving the Dodgers five black players in their starting line-up. Although this was not the first time the Dodgers had done so, having a majority of players in the starting line-up who were minorities was a significant milestone in major league baseball's consolidation of integration because it meant a team's manager was starting the best players he thought could win the game without regard to racial considerations.

Enough With Four is Enough

It was not until 1952, six years into the Jackie Robinson era, that a major league team had more than four black players on their roster at any one time. The Dodgers had been the first with four when they opened the 1950 season with Robinson, Campanella, Newcombe, and right-hander Dan Bankhead on their roster. In 1951, the Dodgers, Giants, and Indians all had four black players on their rosters at the same time. Twice in 1951 the Giants could have been the first major league team with five blacks on their roster, but chose not to be: they sent down reserve infielder Artie Wilson two days before calling up Willie Mays on May 23, and with outfielders Mays and Monte Irvin, third baseman Hank Thompson, and back-up catcher Ray Noble already on the club, the Giants decided against bringing up Ray Dandridge when Thompson badly injured his ankle on July 18 but remained with the team. Instead the Giants decided to shift Bobby Thomson to third base from the platoon-role he had been playing in the outfield since the arrival of Mays, in no small part because Thomson was struggling at the plate.

Perhaps Wilson earned his demotion with a batting average of only .182 in 22 at bats as a bench player, but Dandridge, one of the all-time greats in the Negro Leagues, was having a terrific season for the Giants' Triple-A affiliate in Minneapolis (from where Mays was also promoted), hitting .324 on the season as a 37-year-old. The decision to move Thomson to third rather than call for Dandridge certainly did not hurt the Giants, as Thomson finished the season on a tear, ultimately culminating in his "Giants win the pennant! Giants win the pennant!" home run. As for Thompson with a "p," he pinch hit in seven games in August and another seven in September. Ready to play when the World Series began, courtesy of the Thomson (without a "p") home run, Irvin, Mays, and Hank Thompson became the first all-black outfield in major league history—and in the Fall Classic, no less.

The decision not to bring up Dandridge may have been motivated by the color of his skin, but probably not, in the case of the Giants, because of prejudice as much as by practical considerations to limit the number of blacks on big league rosters in the first years of integration, to avoid pushing the envelope of acceptance too far too fast. 

According to Roger Kahn, the elegant baseball writer who covered the Dodgers at the time and later wrote The Boys of Summer, it was understood in the beginning years of integration that teams should refrain from a majority of players on the field at any one time being blacks. He wrote that when Jim Gilliam made the club in the spring of 1953, the Dodgers sent outfielder Sandy Amoros back to the minor leagues despite his having had an outstanding spring training that followed a terrific season at Triple-A in 1952. Amoros had another terrific year in the minors in 1953 before being promoted to the Dodgers in 1954. 

Because 1954 was also the year that Dodgers' ace Don Newcombe returned from two years as a US Army draft pick during the Korean War, it was inevitable that sooner or later, Brooklyn manager Walt Alston would have a decision to make about exceeding the unofficial "quota"—if Kahn's account is correct—of no more than four black players on the field at any one time. July 17, 1954, in a game in Milwaukee, was the first time in history that five black players—Gilliam, Robinson, Amoros, Campanella, and Newcombe—were in a major league starting line-up. Newcombe pitched nine strong innings, giving up only one run, in a game the Dodgers ultimately won, 2-1, in eleven innings. 

These five players were also in Alston's starting line-up in three other games in 1954—on August 24 in Cincinnati, a 12-4 Dodger victory; September 6 at home against the Pirates, a 9-7 loss in which Newcombe failed to get out of the first inning; and September 15 at home against the Reds, a 10-4 Dodger win—meaning April 14, 1955, was only the fifth time that a major league starting line-up included five black players. 

Carl Erskine had started for the Dodgers on opening day and pitched a complete game victory against the Pirates, and Johnny Antonelli started for the Giants and lost in Philadelphia. Each had been their team's best pitcher in 1954, so their starting assignments were deserved. But when it came to Dodgers-Giants, a rivalry with real venom, the veteran masters in combat were Don Newcombe and Sal Maglie, and they both had the honor of going at it in the second game for both teams in the 1955 season. 

Both pitchers had much to prove. Maglie was 14-6 for the Giants in 1954, but that was after an 8-9 season and he was about to turn 38 years old later in the month. Newcombe had struggled in 1954 with a 9-8 record and 4.55 earned run average, raising questions about whether he would recover his excellence from before he was drafted into the Army.

The marquee match-up turned out to be anything but stellar. Maglie lasted only four innings, giving up four runs. Newcombe pitched 7-1/3 innings and gave up eight runs, five earned, on 12 hits. Newcombe got the win—and he earned it himself, because however ugly his pitching performance was, Newcombe could hit. Channeling his inner Babe Ruth, Newcombe tagged Maglie for a home run in the fourth, immediately after Campanella had put the Dodgers ahead with a three-run blast. And in the seventh, Newcombe hit a second home run, this time with Campy on base, to give the Dodgers a 10-3 lead. Hank Thompson hit a three-run home run off Newcombe in the bottom of the seventh to make it interesting, and a two-run home run by pinch hitter Bobby Hofman—whose name is largely lost in history—sent Newcombe to the Polo Grounds showers.

For both the Dodgers, now 2-0, and the Giants, 0-2, it was two games down and 152 to go in the 1955 season.

Opening Day 60 Years Ago: Status Report on Integration--The American League

Sixty year ago, when the 1955 season opened on April 11, there were 36 blacks on the opening day rosters of the sixteen major league teams, but only nine on five American League teams. This is the second of four articles on the status of integration in the major leagues nine long years into the Jackie Robinson era—"long" because baseball careers are so short. Nine years is virtually akin to a full generation of players.

Opening Day 60 Years Ago: Status Report on Integration—The American League

Notwithstanding that by now black players had certainly proven they could play at the major league level, American League teams for the most part remained stubborn holdouts when it came to integration, although they all had blacks playing in their minor league systems. Going into the 1955 season, Larry Doby, Cleveland's center fielder since 1948, and Cuban-born Minnie Minoso, an outfielder for the Chicago White Sox since 1951, were the only black players with any longevity in the AL. Doby and Minoso were two of only four black players written by their managers into the line-up card for the the first game of the season, along with 68 white players. 

As was then the tradition, so the President could throw out the first ball (which President Eisenhower dutifully did), the American League season opened in Washington's Griffith Stadium, where the Senators played host to the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles started the season without any black player in their dugout until they obtained outfielder David Pope from the Indians in a trade in mid-June. 

After becoming the twelfth major league team to introduce a black player in a September call-up the previous year, the Senators opened a season for the first time with blacks on their roster—outfielder Carlos Paula, who was the September 1954 call-up, and Juan Delis, who could play both third and the outfield. Neither was African American. Both were born in Cuba, where the Senators had an advantage because they were the only major league team to have been scouting players there, white Hispanics to be sure, since the 1930s.

Neither Paula nor Delis were in manager Charlie Dressen's starting line-up, and neither got into the game. After appearing in seven games as a pinch hitter or pinch runner, Delis made the first of his 29 starts in Washington's 15th game of the year. He appeared in only 54 games for the Senators, batting .189 in what would be his only major league season. Paula played in 115 games for the Senators in 1955, getting only 374 plate appearances, and did not make his first start in the outfield until their 23rd game of the season. 

The following day, April 12, the Orioles played their home opener in Baltimore against the Boston Red Sox—major league baseball's most notorious team when it came to holding out against integration. It would be another four years, three months, and nine days—July 21, 1959, to be exact—before a black player, Pumpsie Green, would take the field for Boston. 

Also on April 12, the Detroit Tigers opened the 1955 season against the Athletics, playing their first season in Kansas City. The Tigers were as staunchly opposed to integration at the big league level as the Red Sox, and it would be another three years before they did so with Ozzie Virgil taking the field at third base on June 6, 1958, making Detroit the next-to-last major league team to integrate


For the second year in a row, the Athletics had one black—and one black only—on their opening day roster. He was Vic Power, who started in center field in 1954 and hit .255 in his rookie season. Power played first base and batted lead-off on this opening day, but manager Lou Boudreau pinch hit for him in the sixth inning, the A's up by 3-2, and the bases loaded. Power had been hitless in three at bats. Power went on to hit .319 for the season—second in the American League, although far behind Al Kaline's .340 average.

The third AL opening-day game on April 12 was Chicago at Cleveland. The Indians and White Sox were the only two American League teams that had an early commitment to integration. Minnie Minoso, however, was the only black player on the White Sox opening day roster, coming off a terrific season in which he was the best player in the league based on the wins above replacement metric, with a league-leading 304 total bases, 116 runs batted in, and a .320 batting average in 1954. Batting third and playing left field, Minoso drove in the only run in Chicago's 5-1 loss to the Indians with a sixth-inning single. 

The Indians started the year with four black players on their roster. Lead-off batter Al Smith went 2-for-4 and Larry Doby went 1-for-3. Smith was Cleveland's batting star for the day; he reached base on an infield hit leading off the Indians' first and scored their first run of the year, then crashed a two-run home run off Chicago starter Virgil Trucks to give Cleveland a 4-0 lead in the second. Both Harry Simpson and David Pope, who were outfield reserves, were traded soon after the season began.

The New York Yankees did not open their season until the next day, April 13, at home against Washington. If there was any team as notorious as the Red Sox and Tigers for their opposition to integration, it was the Yankees, whose excuse was that they were looking for a black player who could play up to their standard of excellence, and whose line was that they would not be pressured into integrating their dugout at Yankee Stadium. 

Vic Power somehow failed to meet that standard of excellence, despite batting .331 and .349 (winning the batting title) for their Kansas City Triple-A affiliate in 1952 and 1953, and notwithstanding that first base was a position of weakness those years for the Big Club in New York. Power played with a certain amount of flair that was anything but Yankee-regal; rather than keep him down on the farm, the Yankees traded Power to the Athletics, with whom he began his big league career in 1954.

On opening day in 1955, however, the Yankees finally did have a black on their major league roster. Casey Stengel may have jokingly complained that he had the only African American player who couldn't run, but Elston Howard was nothing if not versatile—a catcher who could also play the outfield, and even corner infield positions. Despite the Yankees' 19-1 drubbing of the Senators on opening day, Stengel did not find an opportunity to put Howard into the game. 

Howard got into his first big league game in the sixth inning the next day in Boston and singled in his first at bat with two on to drive in Mickey Mantle with the first RBI of his career. He would not make his first start (catching) until the Yankees played their 14th game of the season in Kansas City on April 28, and was not in the starting line-up of a game at Yankee Stadium until May 14 (in left field)—the Yankees' 26th game of the year and their 10th at home.

The next article will examine the state of integration in the National League on opening day in 1955.

The Minnie Minoso Dossier--Remembered

Chicago lost a second baseball icon when Minnie Minoso passed away on Sunday, just 36 days after Ernie Banks, and only a week into spring training with a new baseball season on the horizon. Like Banks, he faced the challenge of being one of the first black players to integrate major league baseball, but Minoso also faced the challenge of being a native Cuban having to adapt to American culture. When it was announced in December that he was being considered for the second time in recent years by the Veterans "Golden Era" Committee for inclusion into baseball's Hall of Fame, I wrote the following "dossier" (slightly edited) on this site for why Minoso should be remembered--and indeed so honored--as one of the game's best players in the 1950s.  

The Minnie Minoso Dossier--Remembered

Minnie Minoso was one of only five black players making their major league debut before Jackie Robinson retired in 1956 to become a core regular on an American League team for as many as five years as of 1960, which was indicative of the AL's go-slow approach when it came to integration. Originally signed by Cleveland  in 1948 out of the Negro Leagues, Minoso played a handful of games for the Indians in 1949, excelled in the Pacific Coast League in 1950, had an exceptional rookie season in 1951, and was one of the AL's premier players for the rest of the decade. According to similarity scores developed by Bill James to compare players, the player to whom Minnie Minoso was most similar from when he was 28 through the age of 36 was Hall of Fame outfielder Enos Slaughter.

After being acquired from Cleveland in a multi-player three-team round-robin of trading on the last day of April in 1951, Minoso immediately made his impact felt in helping to turn around the fortunes of the Chicago White Sox. Still haunted by the 1919 Black Sox scandal that sent the American League team in Chicago to purgatory for decades in mostly the nether regions of the league, the White Sox had finished a dismal sixth the previous year, 34 games below .500. 

After changing uniforms, Minoso's batting average of .359 in his first two months with Chicago was instrumental in the White Sox reaching and staying in first place for virtually all of June and remaining competitive until August. The White Sox finished the season in fourth place, out of the running, but with a winning record for the first time in eight years.

The rookie outfielder's .326 batting average was second in the league to Philadelphia's Ferris Fain (.344). Batting third in the line-up, he was second in runs scored with 112, one behind Boston's Dom DiMaggio. Fifth in both on-base and slugging percentages, Minoso had the third highest overall combined on-base-plus-slugging percentage in the American League. Showing off his speed, he led the league in triples with 14 and in stolen bases with 31. Third in total extra-base hits, his 34 doubles were two short of the league-leaders (three players had 36). 

His player value of 5.5 wins above replacement (WAR) was sixth in the league, and fourth-best among position players. Minnie Minoso was better in all of these categories than any other rookie in baseball, including Willie Mays, but it was the pennant-winning Yankees' versatile infielder Gil McDougald who spent the winter polishing the AL's Rookie of the Year award. Mays won in the NL.

The White Sox were still a work in progress, but with Minoso and second baseman Nellie Fox as two of the American League's best position players, and southpaw Billy Pierce one of the best pitchers, they were increasingly competitive as the decade advanced. In 1954 Minoso, with a .320 batting average and the most total bases, was the best player in the league based on his 8.2 WAR as the White Sox won 94 games. Perhaps because his team finished third in the standings, however, Minoso finished fourth in the Most Valuable Player voting; 'twas Yogi Berra on the second-place Yankees got to spend the winter admiring the AL's MVP award.

Minoso was at his best between 1954 and 1959 with a six-year average annual player value of 5.7 wins above replacement. Among American League players, only Mickey Mantle and Al Kaline had more wins above replacement during those years. When the White Sox finally did escape from under the weight of the Yankees and Indians--who were first and second in the standings every year between 1951 and 1956 (with Cleveland first and New York second only once in 1954)--Minnie Minoso was no longer in Chicago to enjoy the American League pennant they finally won in 1959.

Despite having another strong year in 1957 with the fifth of his eight .300 batting averages and the fifth time his on-based percentage exceeded .400, Minoso was traded back to Cleveland for outfielder Al Smith and future Hall of Fame pitcher Early Wynn. After a pair of .302 seasons in Cleveland, Minoso returned to Chicago in yet another trade and, at 34 years old in 1960, led the AL in hits with 189 while batting .311. 

The 1960 White Sox fought valiantly in defense of their American League crown before slipping out of the pennant race in mid-September, thus ending Minoso's last chance to play in a World Series. The following year was the last that Minoso was a regular. He missed most of the 1962 season, now playing for St. Louis, with a broken wrist and never recovered to play close to the level he had. Age will do that to you, if you're a baseball player and on the other side of 35.

With a .298 lifetime batting average, Minnie Minoso never got more than 21 percent of the vote when he was on the Cooperstown ballot of the Baseball Writers Association of America. That was in his fourth year of eligibility. Among the 16 voters on this year's Golden Era Committee were Al Kaline and Jim Bunning, both of whom played in the American League in the last half of the 1950s.

Perhaps Bunning remembered that Minoso touched him up for a .333 average, six home runs, and 18 runs batted in. The only other pitcher who Minoso tagged for that many home runs (also six) was Early Wynn, except Minoso had 85 more plate appearances against him than Bunning. And maybe Kaline remembered that Minoso hit more home runs in his career against the Detroit Tigers--37--than any other team, along with 159 RBI and a .308 average, and 24 of those home runs Minoso knocked out at Tiger Stadium.

Minoso needed the votes of 12 committee members. He got eight. That doesn't mean he wasn't one of the best of his era.

The Minnie Minoso Dossier

Minnie Minoso, who turned 89 on November 29, is being considered for the second time in recent years by the Veteran's Committee for inclusion into baseball's Hall of Fame. Although often remembered for the sideshow of playing three games as a designated hitter for the White Sox in 1976 at the age of 50 and pinch hitting in two games four years later (so it could be said he played in five decades), Minoso should be remembered--and indeed honored--as one of the game's best players in the 1950s, when he faced the twin challenges of being one of the first black players in major league baseball and of being a native Cuban having to adapt to American culture.

The Minnie Minoso Dossier

Minnie Minoso was one of only five black players making their major league debut before Jackie Robinson retired in 1956 to become a core regular on an American League team for as many as five years as of 1960, which was indicative of that league's go-slow approach when it came to integration. Originally signed by Cleveland  in 1948 out of the Negro Leagues, Minoso played a handful of games for the Indians in 1949, excelled in the Pacific Coast League in 1950, had an exceptional rookie season in 1951, and was one of the AL's premier players for the rest of the decade. According to similarity scores developed by Bill James to compare players, the player to whom Minnie Minoso was most similar from when he was 28 through the age of 36 was Hall of Fame outfielder Enos Slaughter.

After being acquired from Cleveland in a multi-player three-team round-robin of trading on the last day of April in 1951, Minoso immediately made his impact felt in helping to turn around the fortunes of the Chicago White Sox. Still haunted by the 1919 Black Sox scandal that sent the American League team in Chicago to purgatory for decades in mostly the nether regions of the league, the White Sox had finished a dismal sixth the previous year, 34 games below .500. After changing uniforms, Minoso's batting average of .359 in his first two months with Chicago was instrumental in the White Sox reaching and staying in first place for virtually all of June and remaining competitive until August. The White Sox finished the season in fourth place, out of the running, but with a winning record for the first time in eight years.

The rookie outfielder's .326 batting average was second in the league to Philadelphia's Ferris Fain (.344). Batting third in the line-up, he was second in runs scored with 112, one behind Boston's Dom DiMaggio. Fifth in both on-base and slugging percentages, Minoso had the third highest overall combined on-base-plus-slugging percentage in the American League. Showing off his speed, he led the league in triples with 14 and in stolen bases with 31. Third in total extra-base hits, his 34 doubles were two short of the league-leaders (three players had 36). His player value of 5.5 wins above replacement (WAR) was sixth in the league, and fourth-best among position players. Minnie Minoso was better in all of these categories than any other rookie in baseball, including Willie Mays, but it was the pennant-winning Yankees' versatile infielder Gil McDougald who spent the winter polishing the AL's Rookie of the Year award.

The White Sox were still a work in progress, but with Minoso and second baseman Nellie Fox as two of the American League's best position players, and southpaw Billy Pierce one of the best pitchers, they were increasingly competitive as the decade advanced. In 1954 Minoso, with a .320 batting average and the most total bases, was the best player in the league based on his 8.2 WAR as the White Sox won 94 games. Perhaps because his team finished third in the standings, however, Minoso finished fourth in the Most Valuable Player voting; 'twas Yogi Berra on the second-place Yankees got to spend the winter admiring the AL's MVP award.

Minoso was at his best between 1954 and 1959 with a six-year average annual player value of 5.7 wins above replacement. Among American League players, only Mickey Mantle and Al Kaline had more wins above replacement during those years. When the White Sox finally did escape from under the weight of the Yankees and Indians--who were first and second in the standings every year between 1951 and 1956 (with Cleveland first and New York second only the one time in 1954)--Minnie Minoso was no longer in Chicago to enjoy the American League championship they finally won in 1959.

Despite having another strong year in 1957 with the fifth of his eight .300 batting averages and the fifth time his on-based percentage exceeded .400, Minoso was traded back to Cleveland for outfielder Al Smith and future Hall of Famer pitcher Early Wynn. After a pair of .302 seasons in Cleveland, Minoso returned to Chicago in yet another trade and, at 34 years old in 1960, led the AL in hits with 189 while batting .311. The 1960 White Sox fought valiantly in defense of their American League crown before slipping out of the pennant race in mid-September, thus ending Minoso's last chance to play in a World Series. The following year was the last that Minoso was a regular. He missed most of the 1962 season, now playing for St. Louis, with a broken wrist and never recovered to play close to the level he had. Age will do that to you, if you're a baseball player and on the other side of 35.

With a .298 lifetime batting average, Minnie Minoso never got more than 21 percent of the vote when he was on the Cooperstown ballot of the Baseball Writers Association of America. That was in his fourth year of eligibility. Among the 16 voters on this year's Veteran's Committee are Al Kaline and Jim Bunning, both of whom played in the American League in the last half of the 1950s. Bunning might remember that Minoso touched him up for a .333 average, six home runs and 18 runs batted in. The only other pitcher who Minoso tagged for that many home runs (also six) was Early Wynn, except Minoso had 85 more plate appearances against him than Bunning. And Kaline might remember that Minoso hit more home runs in his career against the Detroit Tigers--37--than any other team, along with 159 RBI and a .308 average, and 24 of those home runs Minoso knocked out at Tiger Stadium.

The Veteran's Committee Hall of Fame selections, if any this year, will be announced on December 8. Should Minnie Minoso be elected, it would be hard to argue with that.

Alvin Dark and the Persistence of Racial Stereotypes

It was inevitable that Alvin Dark obituaries after he passed away on November 13 would include the controversy provoked by a pair of Long Island (New York) Newsday columns in the midst of the 1964 pennant race in which, as manager of the competing San Francisco Giants, he was quoted as saying that "Negro and Spanish-speaking players on this team ... are just not able to perform up to the white players when it comes to mental alertness." Coming at a time when black and Latin players were among the very best in the game, and as integration was being consolidated in the major leagues with increasing numbers of minority players making big league rosters as core regulars on their teams, Dark's comments were a reminder that major league baseball was still grappling with the race issue.

Alvin Dark and the Persistence of Racial Stereotypes

Dark's ill-fated remarks were made to Stan Isaacs, a respected sports columnist who was out West on assignment (meaning he was not there to cover the Mets), on July 22 after the Giants had lost seven of nine games. The Giants were playing badly and Dark clearly felt his team could have been, indeed should have been, maybe two or three games up in the standings instead of in second place, one game behind the Phillies. He specifically singled out Puerto Rican-born Orlando Cepeda and Dominican-born Jesus Alou for "dumb" base-running mistakes. Giants regulars who were "Negro and Spanish-speaking players on this team" also included shortstop Jose Pagan from Puerto Rico and pitching ace Juan Marichal from the Dominican Republic, not to mention Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and 1964 rookie sensation Jim Ray Hart (who missed out on NL Rookie of the Year honors only because Philadelphia's Dick--then known as "Richie"--Allen was even more sensational).

Aside from the public relations firestorm Dark, as quoted by Isaacs, created for the Giants, the team's Latin players in particular were incensed by their manager's opinions of them, which primarily concerned their baseball work ethic. Said Dark: "You can't get Negro and Spanish players to have the pride in their team that you can get from white players." ... "You can't make them subordinate themselves to the best interests of the team." ... "They [their mistakes] are not the kind of things a manager can correct--missed signs and such--but they are inabilities to cope with game situations when they come up." And he topped it off by saying, "I only know what I've seen on this team and other baseball teams."

Dark's remarks were disturbing on several levels. As the manager, and one who emphasized the importance of the team over the individual, he singled out a particular subset of players for criticism, which was not only inappropriate but foolish because the Giants' best players were blacks and Latinos and now he seriously undermined their faith in his leadership. Dark quickly tried to backtrack, claiming he was misquoted and that his remarks were presented out of context by Isaacs.

Even if Dark had not really meant what he said, but rather was venting because his whole team was playing below their collective potential, he nonetheless betrayed prejudices that, at their most benign, were reflected in persistent casual racial and ethnic stereotypes that were not unusual in America at the time. While certainly insensitive and ill-informed, the racial and ethnic stereotypes held by many in America's overwhelmingly majority-white population were not necessarily mean spirited (it was not, for example, unusual for stereotypes to be played for comic effect on television shows during the 1960s), but they were revealing of widely-held perceptions in a still largely-segregated society about specific minorities that many quite likely believed contained seeds of truth. In the absence of a more integrated society than there was at the time, and when it was still popular to see the United States as a great "melting pot" where all citizens of whatever background assimilate into the dominant culture (although this concept was beginning to unravel in the 1960s), there was little understanding of cultural differences and the perspectives of minorities, and little effort was made to understand them. Nor was there much doubt that the dominant white-majority culture offered the best that was possible in America.

In major league baseball, despite their no longer being any doubt that blacks could play--and star--at the major league level, black players continued to be dogged by racial stereotypes whose characteristics were rarely impugned on white players who failed to meet expectations. What was particularly insidious about these stereotypes was that they repeated the same arguments about the "personal characteristics" (if you will) attributed to blacks that major league owners had used nearly twenty years before to justify their opposition to the integration of organized (white) baseball. And these stereotypes were brought into the cultural realm when it came to Latin players from Caribbean basin nations as they became more prevalent on big league rosters.

According to James S. Hirsch in his 2010 authorized biography of Willie Mays, it was Mays who quelled a clubhouse rebellion by convincing his black and Latin teammates not to give up on Dark because they were in the heat of a pennant race. Mays forcefully argued that regardless of what they thought about Al Dark, a managerial change in mid-season would derail their pennant prospects. As it was, Isaacs' columns hit the news in the San Francisco area in early August, when the Giants were hanging on to second place, close behind the front-running Phillies. Whether Dark's opinion of them depressed the pennant-chase drive of the Giants' black and Latin players is unknowable, particularly because of the month-long loss of Marichal--who was 15-5 through July--with back problems, but the team lost six in a row in mid-August, after which they were in third place, 8-1/2 games behind and fading fast.

That the Giants got back into the pennant race was only because the Phillies' monumental collapse in September breathed unexpected life into their prospects. Notwithstanding that in 1962 he had led the Giants to their first pennant since moving to San Francisco in only his second year as manager, Alvin Dark was unable to recover from his controversial remarks, not to mention an outside-of-baseball lifestyle that was equally controversial as far as Giants' owner Horace Stoneham was concerned, and was fired when the season was over. Dark went on to manage the Kansas City Athletics, Cleveland Indians, Oakland Athletics--who he skippered to two division titles in 1974 and 1975 and one World Series championship (1974) in his two years there--and finally the San Diego Padres before the sands of time ran out on his dugout years. (He later served in the front offices of both Chicago teams.)

Although he might best be remembered today for his career as a manager, let's not forget that from the late 1940s into the mid-1950s, Alvin Dark was one of baseball's premier shortstops--along with Phil Rizzuto of the Yankees and Pee Wee Reese of the Dodgers. He was an indispensable player on three pennant-winning teams: the 1948 Boston Braves in his rookie season, in which his .322 batting average helped earn him Rookie of the Year honors; the 1951 New York Giants, the team that Bobby Thomson made famous; and the 1954 Giants that Willie Mays made famous with arguably the catch of the century that helped spark a four-game sweep in the World Series of the favored 111-win Cleveland Indians.

The following is a link to The New York Times obituary on Alvin Dark: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/sports/baseball/alvin-dark-giants-shortstop-and-manager-dies-at-92.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A8%22%7D

How Major League Owners Justified Opposition to Integration in 1946

Sixty-eight years ago, even as Jackie Robinson was clearly demonstrating he belonged in the major leagues while playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers' Triple-A affiliate in Montreal, major league owners marshaled the same argument expressed in an internal e-mail by the owner of the NBA Atlanta Hawks--that black fans at his arena were hurting his team's bottom line--to oppose the integration of major league baseball. 

How Major League Owners Justified Opposition to Integration in 1946

The owner of the Atlanta Hawks has decided to sell his controlling stake of the NBA team because of the terrible optic from an e-mail to his general manager in which he complained that the Hawks were drawing an "overwhelmingly black audience" and that black crowds "scared away whites" from buying ticket-packages, to the financial detriment of the franchise. The same sentiment was expressed as the primary reason for opposing integration  in a consensus report delivered to Commissioner Albert "Happy" Chandler in August 1946 by major league club owners, who were universally against Branch Rickey's decision to integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers, although there may have been one or two who were privately open-minded but not willing to take any lead in bucking the segregationist history of the major league game.

The junior Senator from Kentucky, who would have been up for re-election to his Senate seat in 1946, Chandler had been elected Baseball Commissioner as a dark horse candidate in a contentious vote of owners in April 1945, five months after the death of Kenesaw Mountain Landis (who most assuredly did not support the idea of integrating the major leagues, even if there was supposedly no official policy). Chandler did not, however, assume full-time the burdens of being Commissioner until finally resigning from the Senate in November 1945, meaning he was still quite new on the job when a subcommittee of owners that included the presidents and two franchise owners in each league presented him with their report addressing the fundamental issues facing Major League Baseball.

Best known as "The MacPhail Report" for its principal author, Larry MacPhail, who was part of the new ownership group of the New York Yankees, the committee tackled head-on the "people who charge that baseball is flying a Jim Crow flag at its masthead--or think that racial discrimination is the basic reason for failure of the major leagues to give employment to Negroes" by accusing them of "simply talking through their collective hats." In addressing the "Race Question" the report set as its foundation premise that "professional baseball is a private business enterprise [that] depends on profits for its existence, just like any other business."

Written in the same summer that Jackie Robinson was tearing up the International League with 40 stolen bases, 113 runs scored and an ultimately league-leading .349 batting average, the report observed that there was a tremendous increase in black attendance at all the games in which he played, and that in two Triple-A cities--Newark and Baltimore--blacks accounted for more than half the attendance when Robinson's team, the Montreal Royals, came to town. As paying customers, they were surely contributing to club coffers, but the MacPhail Report warned that such levels of black attendance in ballparks such as Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds in New York City and Comiskey Park in Chicago "could conceivably threaten the value of the Major League franchises owned by these Clubs." The report did not specify Ebbets Field, which all concerned certainly knew was Jackie's ultimate destination.

Once that very pregnant point was made--and it was certainly one that motivated the Yankees well into the integration era--the MacPhail Report went on to assert that if the best black players left to play in the major leagues, then the "Negro leagues will eventually fold up" and, back to the issue of money, major league teams would lose out on substantial revenue from renting out their stadiums to Negro League teams featuring star players. All of this, the drafting committee concluded, "is not racial discrimination." Instead, "it's simply respecting the contractual relationship between the Negro leagues and their players."

The MacPhail Report made no specific recommendations, but went "on record" asserting that the problem "vitally affects each and every one of us" and that any "fair and just solution" should be compatible "with good business judgment and the principles of good sportsmanship." Notwithstanding his fellow owners' concerns about the presumed negative financial impact on "each and every one of us," Branch Rickey did not hesitate to promote Jackie Robinson to the major leagues the next year.

The rest is history, and history certainly bears out not only that Branch Rickey was on the right side of a fundamentally moral issue, but that the "bad for business" argument that was the centerpiece justification for opposing integration was not just wrong, it was cynical and bogus. Attendance did not suffer as more teams began to integrate, except insofar as competitiveness--or lack thereof--was concerned. From the end of World War II until 1952, the American League attracted more fans to their ballparks than the National League every year except for in Jackie's rookie season of 1947. But beginning in 1953, with its greater preponderance of black stars, the National League outpaced the junior circuit in attendance every year until 1977 with the exceptions of only 1955 and 1961 (when the AL expanded to ten teams while the NL remained at eight).

The MacPhail Report singled out the Giants, Yankees and White Sox as franchises whose value might decline if integration resulted in a boost of blacks in attendance at their stadiums, presumably causing many white fans to stay away. The Giants and White Sox were both early to integrate, became much better teams on the field of play and did not suffer at the gate. The figures show that the cardinal determinant in attendance fluctuations was competitiveness, as well as the increasing physical deterioration of stadiums approaching fifty years old and with limited parking options at a time when Americans were falling in love with their cars and suburban lifestyles. Similarly, the Yankees' attendance did not suffer after they integrated with Elston Howard in 1955 or because they had Howard, Hector Lopez and Al Downing as key players when they were winning pennants in the early 1960s. Not until the Yankees plunged into the depths of the second division in the second half of the 1960s did their attendance plunge as well.

See the following related post from last year: "More Reflections on '42': The Moral Failure of AL Patriarchs.
http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2013/04/more-reflections-on-42-moral-failure-of.html

Revisiting Major League Integration: Meaningful Numbers

The relatively small number of black players who were regulars on major league teams even as late as 1960--fourteen years into the integration era and four years after Jackie Robinson hung up his spikes--and the high percentage of elite players among black regulars during those years illuminates the reality that major league baseball was slow to integrate even though the exceptional performances of the first black trailblazers proved proved black players could compete at the major league level and there was no going back to segregated baseball.  

Revisiting Major League Integration:  Meaningful Numbers

I mentioned in a footnote to my last post that I gave a presentation at the annual conference of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), in Philadelphia from 1-4 August, entitled, "Consolidating Major League Integration: A Different Perspective."  The presentation was derived from my earlier series of posts riffing off the movie 42.  This post summarizes four principal points and includes tables with substantiating data.

First:  The historical narrative that rightfully celebrates Jackie Robinson and the great black players who followed in his immediate footsteps does not change with this analysis.  For blacks of more ordinary major league ability to get the opportunity to compete for big league starting jobs, it was absolutely necessary for the first generation of blacks in the major leagues, beginning with Robinson, to be exceptional players; the best of the black players had to prove they could play with the best of the established white stars to pave the way for broader acceptance of integration in major league baseball.  Not surprisingly, therefore, of the first eight black players to emerge as regulars in starting line-ups for at least five seasons--in order of appearance as starting players they were Robinson (Dodgers) in 1947, Larry Doby (Indians) and Roy Campanella (Dodgers) in 1948, Don Newcombe (Dodgers) and Hank Thompson (Giants) in 1949, Monty Irvin (Giants) in 1950, and Minnie Minoso (White Sox) and Willie Mays (Giants) in 1951--Thompson alone was not an elite player. Two others who made their big league debut within the first five years of integration were regulars for three years--Sam Jethroe of the Braves and Luke Easter of the Indians, both from 1950 to 1952--but neither was given much opportunity to have a long career because they were in their thirties when they got their big league shot, and each suffered ailments or injuries that caused their teams to give up on them relatively quickly.  And then there was Satchel Paige, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, who did not get his major league chance until he was at least 42 years old in 1948 and pitched a total of only five big league seasons, mostly in relief for the Indians (1948-49) and Browns (1951-53).  (This, of course, does not include Satchel's three innings in 1965 in a Charlie Finley publicity stunt.)

Second:  Notwithstanding the success of integration's trailblazers, in 1952--six long years into the Jackie Robinson era ("long," because big league careers are typically short)--only 11 blacks were among the 175 players who were regulars on the sixteen major league clubs based on 100 games in the starting line-up as a position player or pitchers qualifying for the ERA title with 154 innings pitched or otherwise appearing in 40 games.  (This included Paige and the Dodgers' Joe Black as ace relievers for their teams).  Of course, it would have been 13 were it not for Newcombe and Mays being missing from action in 1952 as draft picks for the US Army during the Korean War.  Four years later, when Jackie Robinson played in his tenth and final season in the big leagues in 1956, the number of black players had increased to only 21 of 183 major league regulars based on those criteria.  And as late as 1960, fourteen years into the integration era and four years after Jackie had played in his last game, only 27 of 180 major league regulars were black players, accounting for only 15 percent of the total, barely an improvement over 11 percent of total big league regulars four years earlier.  And nine of those 27--one-third--played on just two teams; Jim Gilliam, Charlie Neal, John Roseboro, Maury Wills, and Tommy Davis with the Dodgers, and Mays, Toothpick Sam Jones, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie Kirkland with the Giants.

Blacks as Regulars on Major League Teams, 1952-1960

	1952	1956	1960	1964
Position Players (100 games started)	96 9 blacks	98 17 blacks	90 25 blacks	126 47 blacks
Pitchers (ERA qualifiers)	62 0 blacks	58 4 blacks	61 2 blacks	72 11 blacks
Pitchers non-ERA qualify (40 games)	17 2 blacks	27 0 blacks	31 0 blacks	49 2 blacks
Total Number of Major League Regulars	175 11 blacks	183 21 blacks	180 27 blacks	247 60 blacks
Black % of Regulars	6 %	11 %	15 %	24 %

Third:  By 1960, of 125 position players who had been in major league starting line-ups for at least five years since Jackie Robinson's 1947 debut, only 16 (a mere 13 %) were blacks. But the more significant number is that 10 of those 16 were "elite" players whose cumulative wins above replacement (WAR) for their five best years put them among the 10 best position players in their league between 1947 and 1960 or whose career arc wound them up in the Hall of Fame.  See the following earlier post: http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2013/04/continuing-reflections-on-42-great.html.  That means nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of black position players who were regulars for at least five years were elite players, compared to 18 percent of white position players.  Robinson, Doby, Campanella, Irvin, Minoso, Mays, Aaron, Banks, Clemente, and Frank Robinson were all exceptional players proving they could indeed play with the best players in major league baseball, but integration could not be considered consolidated until black players of more modest abilities were given the opportunity to realistically compete for starting big league jobs.

Finally, by 1964, as shown in the table above, blacks accounted for nearly a quarter of the 247 players who were regulars on (now) 20 major league teams by the criteria mentioned earlier.  Indicative of there no longer being any doubt about blacks in major league baseball, nearly 35 percent of the total number of position players who were regulars in starting line-ups for at least five years between 1961 and 1970 were African American or black Latinos.  However, while only 13 percent of the white position players were elite players as defined above, more than one-third (35 percent) of the black players were elite in that context.  And that does not even include the likes of Reggie Jackson and Rod Carew, whose careers started in the late 1960s but did not reach the five-years-as-a-regular threshold until the early 1970s. While it was now a certainty that black players with superior ability would find a place in major league starting line-ups, it appears that even in the 1960s when it came to players of more average major league ability competing for big league jobs, which is the majority of players, the odds still favored the white player.

Starting Position Players, Comparative Summary

1947-1960 STARTING POSITION PLAYERS (5 years)
	White Players			Black Players
	Regulars	Elite	% Elite	Regulars	Elite	% Elite
NL	53	9	17 %	11	8	73 %
AL	56	11	20 %	5	2	40 %
MLB	109	20	18 %	16	10	63 %
1961-1970 STARTING POSITION PLAYERS (5 years)
	White Players			Black Players
	Regulars	Elite	% Elite	Regulars	Elite	% Elite
NL	40	4	10 %	32	14	44 %
AL	53	8	15 %	17	3	18 %
MLB	93	12	13 %	49	17	35 %