Happy Birthday, Jackie

The Sporting News - November 1, 1945

No Baseball Color Line at Grenier Field

The Afro American - June 12, 1943

In the middle of WWII Grenier Field was an Army Air Corps training site. As at many other service bases the game of baseball was played. I'm not sure when teams became integrated for service teams, but in 1943 we can see that there was no color line in New Hampshire.

1918 Fort Myer Quartermaster Team

The Washington Times - June 11, 1918

Naval musician killed while playing baseball

According to ancestry.com George Dewey Sinks was born on March 29, 1898.  He died not quite 20 years later as part of the Navy.   I have found nothing else to tell the rest of the story.

New York Tribune - March 14, 1918

The Washington Times - March 13, 1918

The Washington Herald - March 14, 1918

Baseball in Nicodemus, Kansas

I recently came across an interesting town in Kansas. Nicodemus is the name.

The National Park Service says this about the town:

Former enslaved African Americans left Kentucky in organized colonies at the end of the of post-Civil War Reconstruction period to experience freedom on the free soils of Kansas. Nicodemus represents the involvement of African Americans in the western expansion and settlement of the Great Plains. It is the oldest and only remaining all Black Town west of the Mississippi River. 

I have culled some names out of an index that I found at the Family Search site.  The actual document that I used is The Indexes to three newspapers of  Nicodemus, Graham County, Kansas 1886-1888 compiled by Robert A. Hodge of Emporia, Kansas.

The following men were listed as members of the Nicodemus Baseball Club in the August 24, 1887 edition of the Nicodemus Enterprise (page 4, column 1).

• Boylan, Bert 
• Craig, S. 
• Duncon, George 
• Evens, T. 
• Hawkins, H.C. 
• Hays, S.E. 
• Lowrey, J.C. 
• McPherson, E. 
• Stewart, P. 
• Vanduvall, A.G. 

The following men were listed as members of the Western Cyclone Baseball Club in the February 10, 1887 edition of the Western Cyclone (page 2, column 3).

• Burnsides, R.M 
• Cotton, William H.
• Craig, Sonfold
• Duncan, George
• Garland, Samuel
• Hawkins, H.C.
• Hays, S.E.
• Henrie, H.S.
• Lightfoot, H.K.
• Logan, J.A.
• McPherson, Ed
• Moreland, B.D.
• Patterson, Ed
• Stewart, D.P.
• Turner, F.G.
• VanDuvall, A.G.
• Watt, David

There was also a mention of a pitcher with an unnamed Ball Club, a Logan, J.W.? in the February 24, 1887 edition of the Western Cyclone (page 3, column 1).



I've clipped a few pages from a document, Promised Land on the Solomon: Black Settlement at Nicodemus, Kansas, found on the National Park Service site.

1907 Nicodemus Blues baseball team

For more info on the town, visit the Kansas Historical Society's kansapedia entry on Nicodemus.

Mr. Q. J. Gilmore reports on the 1920 Conference of (Colored) Baseball Magnates

The Kansas City Sun - December 4, 1920

The Kansas City Sun - December 11, 1920