TBO.com Sports

Black Baseball Finally Has Its Laurels

By CARTER GADDIS igaddis@tampatrib.com

Published: Feb 28, 2006

TAMPA - What began five years ago as an attempt to compile a comprehensive record of black-American baseball ended Monday with the election of 17 new members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, including the first woman to be elected in the organization's 70-year history.

A 12-member panel of historians, authors and professors, chaired by former baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent, nearly doubled the number of Hall of Famers whose careers were spent primarily in the Negro Leagues during the age of segregation.

"We were not here to rewrite American history," Vincent said. "We were not here to do social good. We were not here to be correctors of things that are beyond our capacity. We were here to elect individuals for very high performance to the Hall of Fame."

The candidacies of 39 finalists were debated during the weekend at the Grand Hyatt hotel by the surviving 11 members of the panel. One panel member, author Robert Peterson ("Only the Ball Was White"), submitted his ballot two days before he died of lung cancer on Feb. 11.

Effa Manley, co-owner with her husband of the Newark Eagles in the 1930s and '40s, was the only woman among the 39 finalists.

"She was a pioneer in so many ways in terms of integrating the team with the community, in terms of using her opportunities with baseball to push forward a civil rights agenda," said panel member Leslie Heaphy, an associate professor of history at Kent State University in Ohio.

Also among the five executives elected was Alejandro "Alex" Pompez, whose father, Jose Pompez, owned a cigar factory in West Tampa early in the 20th century. From 1916 into the 1950s, Pompez helped create opportunities for Latin-American players in the United States.

After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the majors with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Pompez became a scout for the New York Giants and was responsible for starting the careers of Hall of Famers Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal.

"He successfully transitioned from the segregated era into the integrated era," said panel member Adrian Burgos, a University of Illinois history professor who is writing a biography of Pompez.

According to Burgos, Pompez ran one of New York's top "numbers" games in the 1920s and '30s and was associated for a time with organized crime figure Dutch Schultz. Pompez was indicted and fled to Mexico in 1937, but returned to the United States in 1938 to serve as a state witness in a trial of Tammany Hall officials.

Former Cardinals and Cubs relief pitcher Bruce Sutter, who was elected last month by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, will be the only living member of the largest class in the history of the Hall of Fame. The 18-member class easily eclipses the 11-member Class of 1946.

Neither of the two living Negro Leagues candidates, Buck O'Neil and Minnie Minoso, was elected Monday.

The number of Negro Leagues Hall of Famers reached 18 in 2001.

That year, the Hall of Fame received a $250,000 grant from Major League Baseball to conduct a study of African-Americans in baseball from 1860 to 1960. More than 50 historians and authors were enlisted to contribute to the study.

"We view this as a one-time vote, in which players who are worthy of the Hall of Fame would not have to wait another day for acceptance into Cooperstown," said Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey. "That said, we're also a serious research institution, and as more information comes to light down the road, the door is always open to the possibility, perhaps, of further consideration."

Hall of Fame Chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark said family members of the 17 Negro League inductees will read their plaques at the ceremony on July 30 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The others elected were Negro Leagues players Ray Brown, Willard Brown, Andy Cooper, Raleigh "Biz" Mackey, George "Mule" Suttles, Cristobal Torriente and Jud Wilson; pre-Negro Leagues players Frank Grant, Pete Hill, Jose Mendez, Louis Santop and Ben Taylor; and executives Cumberland Posey, J.L. Wilkinson and Sol White.