Sports History
Field of Dreams
By Anne Madarasz

Perhaps no city in America meant more to black baseball during the 1930s and 40s than Pittsburgh. During the half-century that sport in America was divided by race, African Americans created a baseball world of their own. With Cool Papa Bell flying around the base-paths, Josh Gibson hitting balls farther than anyone had before, and Satchel Paige striking out the side, Pittsburgh became the center of black baseball in the Americas.

Only Pittsburgh had two Negro League franchises. In 1900, steelworkers in Homestead formed a club that became known as the Homestead Grays. Native son Cumberland Posey, Jr. joined them as a player in 1911 and made them the best black club in the region and ultimately one of the greatest anywhere. In 1925, youth in the Hill District formed a rival team, sponsored by the Crawford Bath House. The Crawfords were the sons of migrants from the deep South. Founded by Bill Harris and Teenie Harris, the team featured black players from the Watt and McKelvey schools. City league champs, they became known on the Hill as the little Homestead Grays. After Josh Gibson and several players from the Edgar Thomson Steel Works team joined them, the Crawfords rivaled the Grays.

In 1930, businessman Gus Greenlee took on the team and signed Oscar Charleston, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell and other stars. He re-formed the Negro National League and on April 30, 1932, he opened Greenlee Field, the first and finest black-owned ballpark in the nation. Sited on Bedford Avenue on the Hill, Greenlee Field could seat thousands and featured lights for night games, still a rarity in baseball.

The Crawfords were black baseball's answer to the 1927 Yankees and might have been baseball's best team ever. Between the two, the Crawfords and Grays won more than a dozen Negro League championships, with the Grays winning nine straight from 1937 and-1945. Most of the Negro Leaguers in the Hall of Fame played for one or both of them.

The Crawfords fell apart after many of its players jumped to teams in the Dominican Republic in 1937. Just two years later Greenlee Field also fell, to the wrecking ball. Public housing, the Bedford Dwellings, rose in its place. But 75 years ago, when the field opened, there was no other place in America like it and few teams that featured the talent of Pittsburgh's Negro League champion Crawfords.

Anne Madarasz is Director of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum where you can "tour" a virtual Greenlee Field in the Negro League baseball section.