Talk:Negro league baseball/Archive 1

Proposed move
To Negro League


 * Support Logical, article should be named after official name. American League, NHL all follow same convention. EdwinHJ | Talk 00:22, 11 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Oppose The parallel to American League, NHL, etc., is false; There wasn't a Negro League, there were multiple Negro leagues. The parallel should be with Minor league baseball, and if you're going to change/more the name it should be to Negro league baseball, not Negro League. Carter 18:09, 11 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Oppose Many of the teams and players now considered to have played in the "Negro Leagues" played on a variety of teams, not all of which were in a league. There were also a variety of leagues now grouped under the blanket term "Negro leagues"; it is more a historical term than it is an official title of a specific organization. --Xinoph 21:51, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Oppose Major League baseball, Minor League baseball, Negro League baseball. Consistency. Wahkeenah 06:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. violet/riga (t) 11:40, 15 May 2005 (UTC)


 * The 'l' in Negro League or Negro Leagues is usually capitalized --maybe only because Negro is a proper noun,  'Negro Leagues' being a proper noun by association.  In my experience the plural is common and the singular uncommon, as an adjective.
 * On the other hand, I don't believe major league or minor league should be capitalized except in proper nouns such as Major League Baseball (uppercase 'b'). --P64 17:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

National Colored Base Ball League - when folded? Article in conflict
The header paragragh says this league folded after 2 weeks in 1887, but further down the article it lists champions for 1888. Which is it? Sorry, I don't know the correct tag to mark this article as having conflicting information. CPAScott 15:33, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
 * And it specifies "one month later" for the first team to fold, and so on. --P64 23:52, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This makes no sense in context so I have moved it here.
 * The Giants and the Keystones took first and second place in the first two years, with the Giants crowned as inaugural champions in 1888.
 * Beside the league folding(true), the list of league members does not include the Giants(?).
 * The article will be improved by some specific references, perhaps for the 1860s and 1880s. --P64 17:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Alleged Ties to Organized Crime
I was doing some reading on Jackie Robinson and the president of the Dodgers, Branch Rickey implied that Negro League teams had mafia connections, or were being used as a way for criminals to commit money laundering. Is there any truth to these allegations? If so, it should be added to the article.--Jsonitsac 00:27, 30 November 2005 (UTC)


 * True - I don't know. This is part of the history of the color line insofar as it was an excuse for signing rather than purchasing Negro Leagues players; dealing only with the players rather than with the clubs.  Of course that isn't the only reason why it may belong in the article. --P64 17:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Several owners of eastern Negro League teams (notably Gus Greenlee and Alex Pompez) were involved local "numbers running" (which, as Negro League historian John Holway has pointed out, is now run by the states and is called "The Lottery") as a means of financial survival; Greenlee's team, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, were founded with numbers money. While is was indeed illegal and was frequently run by organized crime, none of the men were mobsters.  Pompez was strong-armed into giving some of his profits to the Mob (IIRC, the Dutch Schultz mob), but he was not an inside member.  The recent Hall of Fame committee addressed this, and still considered him worthy of admission.  Branch Rickey's allegations against the Negro Leagues were a way of deflecting the accusations being made against him for stealing Negro League players without compensation to their teams.--Couillaud 16:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Sections
The nine chronologically ordered sections are now subsections of History, ten in number after splitting Integration from End of the Negro Leagues.

Content from the paragraph "During World War II" (the latter paragraph of the old introduction) is now written into subsections World War II and End of the Negro Leagues.

Several sections reveal the probable method of writing: multiple people inserting sentences or paragraphs one by one. --P64 20:06, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

heyday, plateau
Here is content deleted from the old Introduction and not written into any section. "The Negro Leagues probably reached their heyday in 1926. Players were making good money, they had a league of their own and some of the best ball players ever to swing a bat were entertaining in front of packed stands. Newspapers around the country carried stories on favorite hometown teams and their rivals. The success of the Negro Leagues continued into the 1930s and early 1940s." Reaching the heyday in 1926 conflicts with reaching the (highest) plateau in WWII. This may be boilerplate or cruft. Maybe it should be written into the history. (I can't assess either version of the history, only recognize the platey-crufty writing.) --P64 20:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Images
No matter where I move the images, they cover up some text. Anybody else have any luck? Specifically the Octavius Catto picture. --AW (talk) 16:54, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a common browser-specific problem. I have no problem with Internet Explorer 7.  You may want to enquire at WP:VPT.  —Wknight94 (talk) 17:29, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

"Barnstorming" - please define
This article makes numberous references to barnstorming - could someone please define this in the article just for clarity. The wikipedia article on barnstorming would give the impression that these baseball teams were offering flights in their bi-planes...! R-T-C (talk) 12:00, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I've added a wikilink to barnstorm (sports). BRMo (talk) 16:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protect this article?
Looking over the edit history, a very large percentage of the edits to this article have been vandalism by IP addresses. After looking at the guidelines in WP:SEMI and Rough guide to semi-protection, I think the article may qualify for semi-protection. If other editors of this page agree, I suggest that we request semi-protection on WP:RFPP. BRMo (talk) 23:19, 11 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and requested semi-protection at WP:RFPP. We'll see what happens. BRMo (talk) 23:20, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Omit or reword killing of Cato?
The mention of the death of Octavius Catto sticks out, with the uncontexted assertion that he was "murdered by a white man" making it sound like the death had something to do with his activities in baseball. My understanding is that he was killed on Election Day, during a period of generalized political-racial violence, and that his murderer didn't know who he was. His was not the only violent death in Philadelphia that day. So, given that the article covering the man's whole life story--and prominently discussing his murder--is already linked to through his name, is it specifically useful to have the death mentioned here again? I appreciate that he is (at some level) a martyr for civil rights and that remembering the circumstances of his death will be important and sensitive for many (thus I haven't gone ahead and just made the change). But is it appropriate and relevant HERE, in the baseball article, given that baseball was a minority of Catto's overall activities and not the cause of his death? Spark240 (talk) 19:22, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You make a good point—while Catto's murder is indicative of the racial violence that accompanied the imposition of Jim Crow, it seems somewhat tangential to the overall history of Negro league baseball. The murder is covered in the article on Catto, so I've gone ahead and dropped the sentence in this article. BRMo (talk) 03:08, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * My only objection to the removal of the information is that Cato's murder did have a strong impact on Negro baseball; Cato had been a strong proponent of black baseball, and still harbored hopes of integration in the sport, and his death was seen by some baseball historians as a major setback to that cause.
 * As best I know, he was not assassinated, as in his was not a targeted murder for political purposes, but his murder was a turning point. Perhaps it should be reworded for its importance to the article instead of being left as a non sequitur. -- Couillaud (talk) 17:54, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

A couple of points
While the article is very comprehensive, the history section is toooooooo long. It really needs to move to its own article and be summarised properly within this article. Also, there is a tendency to use what I'm sure is valid baseball jargon - "high minor league", "caught on with a team", "raiding parties" and "factor in his ouster". None of tese terms are wikilinked, but are a mystery to non baseball aficionados. 46.208.48.172 (talk) 06:40, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Southern League of Base Ballists
I have removed the following claim: It has been unsourced since 2005 and tagged as such since 2010. I perused a few sources but could not find anything. If someone can reference it, feel free to reinsert it. Otherwise, I'll leave it here only. Rgrds. --64.85.220.22 (talk) 05:40, 8 March 2012 (UTC)


 * What sources did you check? I'll take a look through my library this week, but I'd appreciate not duplicating effort and wasting the time.  It might be referenced in Sol White's History of Colored Baseball, which I have at home.  --  Couillaud 19:59, 12 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Holway's 2001 Complete Book of Negro Leagues mainly, but there was no reference to it in Total Baseball's (6 ed.) Black Ball chapter, nor any reference to it in Ball James' 2001 Historical Abstract chapter on Negro leagues, nor any reference to it in Lowry's 2006 Green Cathedrals (which does contain the League of Colored Baseball Clubs ballparks, so I would expect him to at least mention this league). Those were the only ones I had easy access to.  I did find this just now from SABR: http://research.sabr.org/journals/southern-league. But since it is the only reference I've been able to find, I'm not so sure what to make of it. --64.85.214.118 (talk) 15:50, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The league is genuine. I suppose this par overstates the role of Jacksonville Leader. I have newspaper coverage from New Orleans including August(?) games at(?) Memphis when the league was long defunct. IIRC it did play more games than the more famous 1887 (northern) Colored League. Vaguely I think eight teams which may mean that eight played opening games --as six of the commonly listed eight northern teams played opening games in 1887.
 * Probably I am responsible for the closing |!--comment--|, meaning that some constituent team(s) played much longer than did the league (which is the rule for short-lived leagues). Now I know those teams to be N.O. and Memphis at least. --P64 (talk) 15:10, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Report on the use of self-published sources
Many wikiprojects have been notified of a first draft "Report on the use of self-published sources". See the standard notice to WP:Baseball.

According to the draft data, this is one of three WP:Baseball articles that cite two "self-publishers". Yes, it does: I suppose that many articles use these Dixon books as sources but cite them incompletely, such as author, title, date without naming Xlibris.
 * Authorhouse (Phil Dixon, Buck O'Neil)
 * Xlibris (Phil Dixon, A.B.C. I and III).

To participate or passively read more, begin at the standard notice to WP:Baseball. --P64 (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Why the "N" is capitalized
I came across this as to why it is "Negro" and not "negro": "The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in 1909 and, despite its own choice of name, soon launched a campaign to have negro given the dignity of a capital letter and accepted as the standard designation for black people. By 1930, Negro had been adopted by almost every large disseminator of information in the United States with the single notable exception of the U.S. Government Printing Office."

He lists his source as H.L. Mencken The American Language (abridged) p. 743. He goes on to say "Black made a resurgence during the early 1960s, almost entirely displacing Negro by about 1970...." Just thought I'd throw that out there since there have been debates elsewhere about the capitalization of various Negro league topics. The dates correlate nicely with the timeline of the Negro leagues. Anyway, that is why we call it "Negro league baseball". Rgrds. --64.85.214.141 (talk) 08:22, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

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