The Port Deposit Black Sox
By Fred Kelso, Web Posted: February 12, 1998
Crack! Went the bat. To the sky went the ball. George McMullen left his post at the third base of Canal Field and started running backwards as fast as he could. His mind was on the runner standing at the bag, his eye was on the ball. George scrambled up the embankment, leapt into the air, and made the out in the middle of the River Road - the runner was stalled at third. Only once the ball was safely in his glove did George shake his head at the realization that he could have been run over by one of the many big trucks heading into or out of Port Deposit. Such was his love of the game, and such was the intensity of play in those days, that the outside world had just faded away. The crowd, made up of black and white friends and neighbors, gave a cheer as George jogged back to the fields which had been carved out of the woods next to the Susquehanna.
The time was the 1930s and George's team was the Port Deposit Black Sox, an all-black team whose members and fans couldn't get enough of the game. What was the history that led up to this precious moment in space and time, this emotional experience which brought a community together? The tradition of baseball in Port Deposit most likely started during the Civil War, which was approximately twenty-five years after the supposed invention of the game in Cooperstown, New York. Prior to the Civil War, baseball was mainly confined to semi-pro teams in cities of the American East and Mid-West. The first recorded time that black men played the game was the Colored Unions - Weeksville match in Brooklyn in 1846. Rural blacks and whites learned the game from the city slickers during service in the War. "Federal troops often relaxed during their precious leisure time by carving out a diamond and striking up a ballgame, and black soldiers were usually welcome to participate in these contests. Several dozen men from the Port Deposit/Conowingo area are known to have enlisted with the United States Colored Troops. They would certainly have been exposed to the soldiers' favorite pastime, as they served on many battlefronts.
After the War, baseball fever abounded, and teams sprang up all over the place. John "Bud" Fowler became the first black man to attain professional status, pitching for the Lynn (Massachusetts) Live Oaks. Black players were fielded by many integrated minor league teams during the early 1880s and in 1884 Moses "Fleet" Walker went pro on a major league team - the Toledo Blue Stockings. As the decade waned, however, the integration trend reversed itself as white players and fans erected a color barrier and forced the segregation of baseball. In response, many all-black teams sprouted up between 1885 and 1920, but most suffered from a lack of funds and were short lived.
At least three teams were playing in Port Deposit by 1876. The March 18, 1876, issue of the Cecil Whig reports "A GAME OF BASEBALL will be played next Saturday, in one of Mrs. Murphy's fields, by the Port Deposit Base Ball club and the Rock Run Club. An exciting game is anticipated, as both clubs have been practicing." I don't know if these two teams were white, black, or integrated, but many blacks did then, and do now, live in Rock Run Hollow. The Port Deposit correspondent to the Whig also covered the outcome of a local game on September 2, 1876: "The 'Dauntless' Base Ball Club from Havre de Grace was here on Saturday and played the Riverside Club. Our boys were too much for them, beating them by a score of 8 to 17." [sic]
On the national scene, the first viable black league wasn't founded until 1920; it was called the Negro National League (NNL) and included mostly Western big-city teams. 1923 saw the advent of the Eastern Colored League (ECL), a rival to challenge the NNL. The original teams in the ECL were the Cuban Stars, the Brooklyn Royal Giants, the Lincoln Giants (of New York City), the Darby (Pa.) Hilldales, the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants, and the Baltimore Black Sox. The NNL and ECL played the first Negro World Series in 1924.
Enter Thomas Fields, Sr. Fields was a black man born in Port Deposit in 1892. Given that Port seems to have had a long-standing love affair with baseball, Fields would certainly have been exposed to the game as a child. It is unlikely, however, that at that point in our history there were any black role models playing on organized teams around Port Deposit. In addition, Fields probably did not get out of Port much as a child - the town was a rather isolated place for all but the wealthy. Thomas' father, James Fields, had come to the area from Fayetteville, North Carolina. He most likely worked in the granite quarry, according to Thomas' daughter, Alethia Griffin. Thomas' limited view of the world was to change drastically on June 19, 1918, when he was inducted into the army along with fellow black men Oscar W. Griffin and Edward Jones of Port Deposit; and Charles H. and Ernest L. Boddy, of Conowingo. They were all sent overseas to serve in the Meuse-Argonne region of France. As evidenced by the large number of black expatriates who went to France in the 1930s, blacks were treated there more as equals than they had been in the U. S. It must have been quite an enlightening and esteem-building experience for these young Cecil County men. When he returned from the War, Fields began working for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and as an employee he was entitled to a free travel pass. According to Mrs. Griffin, "My father simply loved baseball. He frequently traveled to Philadelphia and Baltimore to attend games." Recall that the early 1920s witnessed the birth of the Eastern Colored League and the Baltimore Black Sox.
With a sense of pride as a black man, a love of baseball, a commitment to his community, and a close camaraderie with his fellow WWI veterans, Fields set out to create a legacy.
He borrowed the name of his favorite Baltimore ball club and united a team of his black friend and neighbors as the Port Deposit Black Sox's in the late 1920s. The early players included Griffins, Stewarts, Boddys, Joneses, Henrys, and McMullens. James Griffin, Thomas Fields' son-in-law, told me that "many of the guys on the original team worked at the granite quarries, including my brothers." Undoubtedly those were strong young men.He borrowed the name of his favorite Baltimore ball club and united a team of his black friend and neighbors as the Port Deposit Black Soxs in the late 1920s.
George McMullen started with the Black Sox at third base in 1931. The first field that the team used was at the wharf where Wiley Manufacturing later stood, and where the Tome's Landing development is today. McMullen recalls that left-handed batters often knocked the ball into the Susquehanna River. Early opponents included both black and white teams. They played, and beat, all of the local high school teams, including Elkton, Perryville, and Havre de Grace. They started looking further afield for better competition. Oxford was one Pennsylvania team that McMullen remembers. Practice was in the evenings, after work. Games were on Saturdays and Sundays, with Sundays being more likely because everyone was sure to be off from work. They didn't dress very uniformly in those days, since everyone paid for his own gear, and there were some pretty raggedy gloves," according to McMullen. The Great Depression was on, and to help cover expenses, they passed a hat amongst the spectators at the games.
The Black Sox were an important local institution by 1934, and the community pitched in to help clear trees and build a new field where the "Log Pond" of the old Maryland Canal had been. Rachel Cason, whose father Bobby Jones was a member of the team recalls a concession stand with sodas and 25 cent hot dogs. Cason fondly recalls that a Mr. Brooks was the team's bat man at the time. Local businesses began to make contributions towards uniforms and equipment - their names appeared on the uniforms and on signs around the field.
Transportation to and from games meant standing in the back of a truck for games close by, and taking the bus from the garage at Main Street and Rock Run Road for games further away. As the Black Sox began to draw competition from a large area, gasoline expenses increased. Some teams in those days helped to defray the travel costs of the away teams. While at the Canal Field, McMullen recalls, they played teams from Lancaster and Philadelphia, as well as the Baltimore Elite Giants. The Elite Giants were members of the Negro National League beginning in 1937, and like other professional teams, they "barnstormed" to make extra money. "Negro clubs kept promoters around big cities busy booking them for their days off from league play . . . the barnstormers brought good baseball to isolated farm towns and small cities. Their arrival in a small town generated a holiday atmosphere, a welcome respite from the narrow, daily routines of the burgers who, in the days before almost every family had an automobile, seldom ventured more than a few miles from home . . . in Negro baseball barnstorming was necessary for survival. McMullen also remembers playing teams from the all-white Susquehanna League - teams Elk, Perryville and Havre de Grace. 'A white teams survived the same way black teams did," he says, "they passed the hat at games."
Two out of three of McMullen's brothers also played for the Black Sox - Wallace Brooks played outfield and James McMullen played second base. "James was left-handed and I don't know why but they let him play second base. Eventually they had to move him to first," McMullen laughs.
Horace Boddy, Jr. was a member of the "new" Port Deposit Black Sox, which was largely made up of sons of the original players. He started around 1946, along with Hemy "Sonny" Carey, Ernest Burke, Rayfield Brown, Lewis Boddy, Clarence Stewart, Clyde Boddy, Thomas "Juney" Fields Jr., and Bill Stewart. In Boddy's day, the team played opponents from North East, Oxford, Baltimore, Havre de Grace, and Hickory (Mr. Lee's team). He recalls that as a child, if he helped to sell tickets, he could ride on the back of the truck to away games.
Notable among Boddy's memories is a one-armed pitcher from the North East team "He kept his glove under his arm while he pitched - he could get it on and off like you wouldn't believe. And he was good, too, many a player he struck out."
The Port team was good enough that the Elite Giants scouted up here for new recruits. According to Boddy, Ernest Burke and Wallace Brooks were both picked up by the Baltimore team but neither stuck with it long. (Burke pitched for them from 1947 to 1948. Roy Campanella had pitched for them from 1937 to 1945, then went to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946, shortly after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier [Peterson, p. 157]). In one memorable match-up, Ernie Burke, for the Elite Giants, pitched against his brother Willie in Havre de Grace. "Ernie got mad when Willie won," Boddy recalls with a chuckle.
The score keeper for the Port Deposit team was Kenneth Boyer. Boddy says "He loved to keep score - he did it like he was getting paid for it." Other players that Boddy remembers, who are not pictured above, include Tommy 'Moose" Lee, of Havre de Grace (SS and 3B), John Bowser (P), and Lawrence Cooper (a lefty who later went with a Montreal team) He also recalls that the truck the team used for transportation was owned by a Mr. Marshal Jenifer.
After some thirty years in existence, the Port Deposit Black Soxs drifted apart in the 1950s. McMullen and Boddy both attribute the team's demise to the dying off of the original members and the "other interests" of the younger players. Boddy resurrected the Black Sox for about two years when he fielded a team by the same name at the Perry Point Veteran's Hospital. where he worked. In 1964 Boddy became the first black police chief in Cecil County, filling that post in Port Deposit for twenty years. Boddy has expressed an interest in organizing a new Port Deposit community baseball team and believes that it would be a great outlet for the local kids.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (New York, 1992), pp 146, 157.
Negro Leagues in History: We Were There From the Beginning (1996)Mark Ribowsky,
A Complete History of the Negro Leagues: 1884-1955 (1995) p. 41.
Crack! Went the bat. To the sky went the ball. George McMullen left his post at the third base of Canal Field and started running backwards as fast as he could. His mind was on the runner standing at the bag, his eye was on the ball. George scrambled up the embankment, leapt into the air, and made the out in the middle of the River Road - the runner was stalled at third. Only once the ball was safely in his glove did George shake his head at the realization that he could have been run over by one of the many big trucks heading into or out of Port Deposit. Such was his love of the game, and such was the intensity of play in those days, that the outside world had just faded away. The crowd, made up of black and white friends and neighbors, gave a cheer as George jogged back to the fields which had been carved out of the woods next to the Susquehanna.
The time was the 1930s and George's team was the Port Deposit Black Sox, an all-black team whose members and fans couldn't get enough of the game. What was the history that led up to this precious moment in space and time, this emotional experience which brought a community together? The tradition of baseball in Port Deposit most likely started during the Civil War, which was approximately twenty-five years after the supposed invention of the game in Cooperstown, New York. Prior to the Civil War, baseball was mainly confined to semi-pro teams in cities of the American East and Mid-West. The first recorded time that black men played the game was the Colored Unions - Weeksville match in Brooklyn in 1846. Rural blacks and whites learned the game from the city slickers during service in the War. "Federal troops often relaxed during their precious leisure time by carving out a diamond and striking up a ballgame, and black soldiers were usually welcome to participate in these contests. Several dozen men from the Port Deposit/Conowingo area are known to have enlisted with the United States Colored Troops. They would certainly have been exposed to the soldiers' favorite pastime, as they served on many battlefronts.
After the War, baseball fever abounded, and teams sprang up all over the place. John "Bud" Fowler became the first black man to attain professional status, pitching for the Lynn (Massachusetts) Live Oaks. Black players were fielded by many integrated minor league teams during the early 1880s and in 1884 Moses "Fleet" Walker went pro on a major league team - the Toledo Blue Stockings. As the decade waned, however, the integration trend reversed itself as white players and fans erected a color barrier and forced the segregation of baseball. In response, many all-black teams sprouted up between 1885 and 1920, but most suffered from a lack of funds and were short lived.
At least three teams were playing in Port Deposit by 1876. The March 18, 1876, issue of the Cecil Whig reports "A GAME OF BASEBALL will be played next Saturday, in one of Mrs. Murphy's fields, by the Port Deposit Base Ball club and the Rock Run Club. An exciting game is anticipated, as both clubs have been practicing." I don't know if these two teams were white, black, or integrated, but many blacks did then, and do now, live in Rock Run Hollow. The Port Deposit correspondent to the Whig also covered the outcome of a local game on September 2, 1876: "The 'Dauntless' Base Ball Club from Havre de Grace was here on Saturday and played the Riverside Club. Our boys were too much for them, beating them by a score of 8 to 17." [sic]
On the national scene, the first viable black league wasn't founded until 1920; it was called the Negro National League (NNL) and included mostly Western big-city teams. 1923 saw the advent of the Eastern Colored League (ECL), a rival to challenge the NNL. The original teams in the ECL were the Cuban Stars, the Brooklyn Royal Giants, the Lincoln Giants (of New York City), the Darby (Pa.) Hilldales, the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants, and the Baltimore Black Sox. The NNL and ECL played the first Negro World Series in 1924.
Enter Thomas Fields, Sr. Fields was a black man born in Port Deposit in 1892. Given that Port seems to have had a long-standing love affair with baseball, Fields would certainly have been exposed to the game as a child. It is unlikely, however, that at that point in our history there were any black role models playing on organized teams around Port Deposit. In addition, Fields probably did not get out of Port much as a child - the town was a rather isolated place for all but the wealthy. Thomas' father, James Fields, had come to the area from Fayetteville, North Carolina. He most likely worked in the granite quarry, according to Thomas' daughter, Alethia Griffin. Thomas' limited view of the world was to change drastically on June 19, 1918, when he was inducted into the army along with fellow black men Oscar W. Griffin and Edward Jones of Port Deposit; and Charles H. and Ernest L. Boddy, of Conowingo. They were all sent overseas to serve in the Meuse-Argonne region of France. As evidenced by the large number of black expatriates who went to France in the 1930s, blacks were treated there more as equals than they had been in the U. S. It must have been quite an enlightening and esteem-building experience for these young Cecil County men. When he returned from the War, Fields began working for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and as an employee he was entitled to a free travel pass. According to Mrs. Griffin, "My father simply loved baseball. He frequently traveled to Philadelphia and Baltimore to attend games." Recall that the early 1920s witnessed the birth of the Eastern Colored League and the Baltimore Black Sox.
With a sense of pride as a black man, a love of baseball, a commitment to his community, and a close camaraderie with his fellow WWI veterans, Fields set out to create a legacy.
He borrowed the name of his favorite Baltimore ball club and united a team of his black friend and neighbors as the Port Deposit Black Sox's in the late 1920s. The early players included Griffins, Stewarts, Boddys, Joneses, Henrys, and McMullens. James Griffin, Thomas Fields' son-in-law, told me that "many of the guys on the original team worked at the granite quarries, including my brothers." Undoubtedly those were strong young men.He borrowed the name of his favorite Baltimore ball club and united a team of his black friend and neighbors as the Port Deposit Black Soxs in the late 1920s.
George McMullen started with the Black Sox at third base in 1931. The first field that the team used was at the wharf where Wiley Manufacturing later stood, and where the Tome's Landing development is today. McMullen recalls that left-handed batters often knocked the ball into the Susquehanna River. Early opponents included both black and white teams. They played, and beat, all of the local high school teams, including Elkton, Perryville, and Havre de Grace. They started looking further afield for better competition. Oxford was one Pennsylvania team that McMullen remembers. Practice was in the evenings, after work. Games were on Saturdays and Sundays, with Sundays being more likely because everyone was sure to be off from work. They didn't dress very uniformly in those days, since everyone paid for his own gear, and there were some pretty raggedy gloves," according to McMullen. The Great Depression was on, and to help cover expenses, they passed a hat amongst the spectators at the games.
The Black Sox were an important local institution by 1934, and the community pitched in to help clear trees and build a new field where the "Log Pond" of the old Maryland Canal had been. Rachel Cason, whose father Bobby Jones was a member of the team recalls a concession stand with sodas and 25 cent hot dogs. Cason fondly recalls that a Mr. Brooks was the team's bat man at the time. Local businesses began to make contributions towards uniforms and equipment - their names appeared on the uniforms and on signs around the field.
Transportation to and from games meant standing in the back of a truck for games close by, and taking the bus from the garage at Main Street and Rock Run Road for games further away. As the Black Sox began to draw competition from a large area, gasoline expenses increased. Some teams in those days helped to defray the travel costs of the away teams. While at the Canal Field, McMullen recalls, they played teams from Lancaster and Philadelphia, as well as the Baltimore Elite Giants. The Elite Giants were members of the Negro National League beginning in 1937, and like other professional teams, they "barnstormed" to make extra money. "Negro clubs kept promoters around big cities busy booking them for their days off from league play . . . the barnstormers brought good baseball to isolated farm towns and small cities. Their arrival in a small town generated a holiday atmosphere, a welcome respite from the narrow, daily routines of the burgers who, in the days before almost every family had an automobile, seldom ventured more than a few miles from home . . . in Negro baseball barnstorming was necessary for survival. McMullen also remembers playing teams from the all-white Susquehanna League - teams Elk, Perryville and Havre de Grace. 'A white teams survived the same way black teams did," he says, "they passed the hat at games."
Two out of three of McMullen's brothers also played for the Black Sox - Wallace Brooks played outfield and James McMullen played second base. "James was left-handed and I don't know why but they let him play second base. Eventually they had to move him to first," McMullen laughs.
Horace Boddy, Jr. was a member of the "new" Port Deposit Black Sox, which was largely made up of sons of the original players. He started around 1946, along with Hemy "Sonny" Carey, Ernest Burke, Rayfield Brown, Lewis Boddy, Clarence Stewart, Clyde Boddy, Thomas "Juney" Fields Jr., and Bill Stewart. In Boddy's day, the team played opponents from North East, Oxford, Baltimore, Havre de Grace, and Hickory (Mr. Lee's team). He recalls that as a child, if he helped to sell tickets, he could ride on the back of the truck to away games.
Notable among Boddy's memories is a one-armed pitcher from the North East team "He kept his glove under his arm while he pitched - he could get it on and off like you wouldn't believe. And he was good, too, many a player he struck out."
The Port team was good enough that the Elite Giants scouted up here for new recruits. According to Boddy, Ernest Burke and Wallace Brooks were both picked up by the Baltimore team but neither stuck with it long. (Burke pitched for them from 1947 to 1948. Roy Campanella had pitched for them from 1937 to 1945, then went to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946, shortly after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier [Peterson, p. 157]). In one memorable match-up, Ernie Burke, for the Elite Giants, pitched against his brother Willie in Havre de Grace. "Ernie got mad when Willie won," Boddy recalls with a chuckle.
The score keeper for the Port Deposit team was Kenneth Boyer. Boddy says "He loved to keep score - he did it like he was getting paid for it." Other players that Boddy remembers, who are not pictured above, include Tommy 'Moose" Lee, of Havre de Grace (SS and 3B), John Bowser (P), and Lawrence Cooper (a lefty who later went with a Montreal team) He also recalls that the truck the team used for transportation was owned by a Mr. Marshal Jenifer.
After some thirty years in existence, the Port Deposit Black Soxs drifted apart in the 1950s. McMullen and Boddy both attribute the team's demise to the dying off of the original members and the "other interests" of the younger players. Boddy resurrected the Black Sox for about two years when he fielded a team by the same name at the Perry Point Veteran's Hospital. where he worked. In 1964 Boddy became the first black police chief in Cecil County, filling that post in Port Deposit for twenty years. Boddy has expressed an interest in organizing a new Port Deposit community baseball team and believes that it would be a great outlet for the local kids.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (New York, 1992), pp 146, 157.
Negro Leagues in History: We Were There From the Beginning (1996)Mark Ribowsky,
A Complete History of the Negro Leagues: 1884-1955 (1995) p. 41.