Advice on Researching Negro League history

[Topnotchsy]

Hey all,

I've been hoping to start a project researching a couple of things from the Negro Leagues (Cannonball Redding's life and career, and the barnstorming tours that Jackie Robinson did).

I was hoping to get some advice on the best way to go about research. I assume that the first place would be old newspapers that were for the black community.

I know newspapers.com has a database of scanned newspapers that is searchable, but was wondering if there are other, better places to look?

I was also wondering what other approaches would be helpful in working on this project?

Thanks!

[toledo_mudhen]

If you have never been there - The Negro League Baseball Museum is downtown Kansas City. Awesome way to spend a day.... highly recommend

http://nlbm.com/

[Butch7999]

An enormous amount of effort has already been put into Negro League research, so make sure, first,
that you're not spending time digging up stuff that's already been dug up.

The Complete Book of Baseball's Negro Leagues by John Holway et al is regarded as the best, most thorough,
and most accurate of many books on the subject.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Baseballs-Negro-Leagues/dp/0803820070

That's more than fifteen years old, though, and surely even more information has been unearthed since then.
A scholarly compendium of Negro League data entailing about 5,000 pages was in the works in recent years,
but we're unclear who was behind it or what its status is.

In any case, we'd strongly advise contacting the Negro Leagues Committee of SABR for guidance before you
do more work than might be necessary -- the specific information you want may already be available.

[Topnotchsy]

An enormous amount of effort has already been put into Negro League research, so make sure, first,
that you're not spending time digging up stuff that's already been dug up.

The Complete Book of Baseball's Negro Leagues by John Holway et al is regarded as the best, most thorough,
and most accurate of many books on the subject.
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Baseballs-Negro-Leagues/dp/0803820070

That's more than fifteen years old, though, and surely even more information has been unearthed since then.
A scholarly compendium of Negro League data entailing about 5,000 pages was in the works in recent years,
but we're unclear who was behind it or what its status is.

In any case, we'd strongly advise contacting the Negro Leagues Committee of SABR for guidance before you
do more work than might be necessary -- the specific information you want may already be available.

Thanks! I emailed them.

I haven't seen a project yet that attempts to go to the depth that I am hoping for (my goal is to take a small period of time - 1 season or so) and dig as deep as possible to get as good a feel as possible. My thought process is that the whole of the Negro Leagues seems to be bunched together into big statistics and the like with a few interesting biographies, but the day to day details are often lost. My hope would be to find some of that.





If you have never been there - The Negro League Baseball Museum is downtown Kansas City. Awesome way to spend a day.... highly recommend

http://nlbm.com/

I imagine it is an amazing place. Hopefully one day...

[steve B]

The Library of congress also is scanning newspapers, and has the benefit of being free (Sort of, our tax dollars at work )

From what I've seen, there isn't a lot of overlap with the commercial services.

Steve B

[jerseygary]

The Jackie Robinson tours should be fairly easy to research, especially with all the newspapers archives now online. There's a book by Thomas Barthel about baseball post-season tours so you can start there to get general info. Newspapers at this time would have reported the Robinson tours, especially after Jackie's 1947 rookie season. I found some good stuff on his 1946 tour when I was writing my article on Johnny Wright (https://infinitecardset.blogspot.com/2016/04/216-johnny-wright-more-than-just-other.html) this past winter.

Dick "Cannonball" Redding will be a bit harder to research. He doesn't get the credit his career deserves, and for some reason no book or long articles have been written about him. Luckily, a few really talented researchers have dug up some great stuff on Redding over the past decade, including his death certificate. That was a real find because no one was really sure how or where he died. If you do some digging around the internet you can find some good stuff on him.

Try Gary Ashwill at the Agate Type (http://agatetype.typepad.com/) blog. For my money's worth he's the go to guy for pre-1930's Negro League info. It's primarily Gary's research that is posted on the Seamheads Negro League Database (http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/index.php). This is the most up to date and accurate stat research available, and it is constantly being updated as more box scores are located. This is a labor of love by Gary and a few other historians, doing it solely for the knowledge and at no financial gain to themselves. On the other hand, the Hall of Fame spent a fortune hiring a team of people to do Negro League stats years ago, but they are very incomplete and very out of date. Plus, I do not think it has ever been published in its entirety anyway.

Good luck on your research, it will be fun, frustrating and rewarding!

[Topnotchsy]

The Jackie Robinson tours should be fairly easy to research, especially with all the newspapers archives now online. There's a book by Thomas Barthel about baseball post-season tours so you can start there to get general info. Newspapers at this time would have reported the Robinson tours, especially after Jackie's 1947 rookie season. I found some good stuff on his 1946 tour when I was writing my article on Johnny Wright (https://infinitecardset.blogspot.com/2016/04/216-johnny-wright-more-than-just-other.html) this past winter.

Dick "Cannonball" Redding will be a bit harder to research. He doesn't get the credit his career deserves, and for some reason no book or long articles have been written about him. Luckily, a few really talented researchers have dug up some great stuff on Redding over the past decade, including his death certificate. That was a real find because no one was really sure how or where he died. If you do some digging around the internet you can find some good stuff on him.

Try Gary Ashwill at the Agate Type (http://agatetype.typepad.com/) blog. For my money's worth he's the go to guy for pre-1930's Negro League info. It's primarily Gary's research that is posted on the Seamheads Negro League Database (http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/index.php). This is the most up to date and accurate stat research available, and it is constantly being updated as more box scores are located. This is a labor of love by Gary and a few other historians, doing it solely for the knowledge and at no financial gain to themselves. On the other hand, the Hall of Fame spent a fortune hiring a team of people to do Negro League stats years ago, but they are very incomplete and very out of date. Plus, I do not think it has ever been published in its entirety anyway.

Good luck on your research, it will be fun, frustrating and rewarding!

Thanks!

I have the book on the barnstorming tours which you mention, but am hoping to get a closer picture (game by game for the tour) if possible.

On Redding I had a question. I see the stats listed on seamhead.com and have seen similar numbers elsewhere. But at the same time I see in book that Redding pitched 30 no-hitters (against all levels of competition). The stats on the website are much less impressive.

Is this generally because the stats only include elite competition, or is it more likely that the stats are incomplete? (It indicates Redding won 133 games in 19 seasons, which seems really low...)

[bengineno9]

If you have never been there - The Negro League Baseball Museum is downtown Kansas City. Awesome way to spend a day.... highly recommend

http://nlbm.com/

Very much agree. Visited a couple weeks ago. Incredible Museum. There was a nice gentleman who I think was the owner answering questions and visiting with people. Didn't get to meet him but im sure he would be very helpful if you made a call.

[Topnotchsy]

I started with newspapers.com and searched "Cannonball Redding" and have been clipping and printing the relevant sections.

Definitely some info here that I have not seen anywhere else yet, so should be fun. I'll post interesting tidbits as I go along (if anyone is interested.)

[jerseygary]

The Seamheads stats are compiled from verified box scores and game accounts against Negro league (loose term for other top-level Black baseball teams). You have to remember that top Blackball teams back in Redding's day played most of their games against white semi-pro and town teams. In Redding's day, games against other top Black teams were usually only scheduled once or twice a week, simply because there weren't that many of them, and the games against the white teams were more lucrative.

Plus, you have to remember that although all pre-Jackie Robinson Black baseball teams are called "The Negro Leagues", There were gaps in which there was no established league, and some teams like many of the ones Cannonball Redding played for were non-league teams, preferring to stay independent because there was more money playing white semi-pro teams.

So when someone writes that Redding pitched 30 no-hitters, you have to think that he was probably pitching against a town team from Wallington, NJ, a shoe company sponsored team or other semi-pro club. To really see how Redding or any of his contemporaries matched up against top-drawer talent, look how he did against teams of barnstorming major minor leaguers or a really good semi-pro team loaded with ex or future big leaguers like the Brooklyn Bushwicks or Paterson Silk Sox.

Because of lack of comprehensive newspaper coverage at the time, the exploits of those old Blackball guys became more and more distorted through oral re-telling. All the recent research kind of knocks them back to size again, dispelling long held myths like Josh Gibson hit 72 home runs in a year and all that. Does it diminish their level of play - no, not at all - but it puts them in better focus.

Negro League research and trying to figure out how good they really were gets really murky, but if you try hard enough, it starts to get at least a little clearer. You might want to pick up a copy of Scott Simkus' book "Outsider Baseball". He really gets into the statistical analysis of the Negro Leagues and comparing them against white players of the era. Personally I think Simkus' book is the most important baseball history book to come along in a decade and I highly recommend it.

To get back to Redding, his Seamhead stats might not match up to the hype published about him in older books, but you have to understand how the teams he played for operated, which was completely different than white major and minor league play. You'll never have a clear line of stats that can compare to Walter Johnson's entry in the Baseball Encyclopedia, but with creative research, contemporary accounts and some hard work you can get an idea of how those guys match up.

[Topnotchsy]

The Seamheads stats are compiled from verified box scores and game accounts against Negro league (loose term for other top-level Black baseball teams). You have to remember that top Blackball teams back in Redding's day played most of their games against white semi-pro and town teams. In Redding's day, games against other top Black teams were usually only scheduled once or twice a week, simply because there weren't that many of them, and the games against the white teams were more lucrative.

Plus, you have to remember that although all pre-Jackie Robinson Black baseball teams are called "The Negro Leagues", There were gaps in which there was no established league, and some teams like many of the ones Cannonball Redding played for were non-league teams, preferring to stay independent because there was more money playing white semi-pro teams.

So when someone writes that Redding pitched 30 no-hitters, you have to think that he was probably pitching against a town team from Wallington, NJ, a shoe company sponsored team or other semi-pro club. To really see how Redding or any of his contemporaries matched up against top-drawer talent, look how he did against teams of barnstorming major minor leaguers or a really good semi-pro team loaded with ex or future big leaguers like the Brooklyn Bushwicks or Paterson Silk Sox.

Because of lack of comprehensive newspaper coverage at the time, the exploits of those old Blackball guys became more and more distorted through oral re-telling. All the recent research kind of knocks them back to size again, dispelling long held myths like Josh Gibson hit 72 home runs in a year and all that. Does it diminish their level of play - no, not at all - but it puts them in better focus.

Negro League research and trying to figure out how good they really were gets really murky, but if you try hard enough, it starts to get at least a little clearer. You might want to pick up a copy of Scott Simkus' book "Outsider Baseball". He really gets into the statistical analysis of the Negro Leagues and comparing them against white players of the era. Personally I think Simkus' book is the most important baseball history book to come along in a decade and I highly recommend it.

To get back to Redding, his Seamhead stats might not match up to the hype published about him in older books, but you have to understand how the teams he played for operated, which was completely different than white major and minor league play. You'll never have a clear line of stats that can compare to Walter Johnson's entry in the Baseball Encyclopedia, but with creative research, contemporary accounts and some hard work you can get an idea of how those guys match up.

Thanks for the response! I was actually looking at Simkus's book last night after posting because I had recalled that this was a topic he grappled with extensively.

Part of what I am trying hoping to be able to do is to recreate what a "season" might have looked like beyond the games that a place like Seamhead would have included to get a feel for what that really would have looked and felt like. So for Redding for example, I've been able to find that he was frequently lent out to Pittsburgh Colored Stars because of a relationship the owners had where he would at times pitch both games of a double-header and in one article it indicates it was his "second of ten visits" so it was clearly something they had planned on being an ongoing thing.

Thanks!

[jerseygary]

Are you trying to recreate the 1929 season to go along with that contract? If so, you know Redding played primarily for the Brooklyn Royal Giants that year. The BRG's were based out of NYC and did not do the crazy amount of traveling team suchs such as the KC Monarchs or Homestead Grays did, since they had tons of great competition just in NY, NJ and PA. Because of this it may be easier to get a good grasp of what their schedule was like since you don't have to check hundreds of small newspapers in dozens of states.

It'll still be like chasing needles in a haystack, but that's the fun part!

[earlywynnfan]

You need to find Dr. Layton Revel.

[Topnotchsy]

Are you trying to recreate the 1929 season to go along with that contract? If so, you know Redding played primarily for the Brooklyn Royal Giants that year. The BRG's were based out of NYC and did not do the crazy amount of traveling team suchs such as the KC Monarchs or Homestead Grays did, since they had tons of great competition just in NY, NJ and PA. Because of this it may be easier to get a good grasp of what their schedule was like since you don't have to check hundreds of small newspapers in dozens of states.

It'll still be like chasing needles in a haystack, but that's the fun part!

I hadn't started with a specific plan, but that seems like it could be fun (although 1929 is after his prime, so depending on what I find I may end up looking back to earlier in his career but it does give things a good focus.)

One interesting thing I found, in the Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Leagues it lists a Sam Redding who played in 1929 who was a brother of Dick Redding and played the Outfield, but in the papers from 1929 I'm reading about a Sam Redding who was the son of Dick Redding, and was a pitcher.

[Taxman]

If you find one of these pins during your research please contact me. PSA was not able to locate any info thus would not encapsulate.

[bwbc917]

newspapers.com has the Pittsburgh Courier and many local papers to help you out. Check your local library to see if they have ProQuest. This has the Chicago Defender which will add to your first account stories.
If you are a SABR member then you get access to Paper of Records which leads you the the Baltimore Afro-American papers.
GenealogyBank.com is also a good source for newspapers. I have found Chester, Pennsylvania and Monessen, Pa. to be excellent sources for barnstorming game boxscores.

[Topnotchsy]

newspapers.com has the Pittsburgh Courier and many local papers to help you out. Check your local library to see if they have ProQuest. This has the Chicago Defender which will add to your first account stories.
If you are a SABR member then you get access to Paper of Records which leads you the the Baltimore Afro-American papers.
GenealogyBank.com is also a good source for newspapers. I have found Chester, Pennsylvania and Monessen, Pa. to be excellent sources for barnstorming game boxscores.

Thanks! I've started with newspapers.com and it's definitely given me quite a bit to work with. (At the moment the detail that has caught my attention is the fact that a Sam Redding is described as either Dick Redding's brother, or young son. Not sure if there were 2 Sam Redding's on the team (the son is described as a pitcher and the description of the brother is as an outfielder, but it just seems hard to believe there were 2 players with the same name) but for each I only have 1 newspaper as a source, so still working on it.

Will have to check GenealogyBank and really appreciate the mention of specific papers that are helpful for box scores!