Directed by Sam Pollard of the scorching 2020 documentary “MLK/FBI” and produced by among others Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, director of the Academy Award winning “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” “The League” tells the fascinating story of the Negro National League.
The League was both a collection of teams and a phenomenon that helped shape modern-day baseball and modern-day America. As Pollard reveals, using exisitng and new interviews with historians, former players, sportswriters and other experts, a host of other archival footage and still photographs of posters, tickets, programs and other “ephemera,” the “League” was a powerful and unique form of African-American expression at a time when African-Americans were being routinely oppressed, abused and even lynched. As Pollard explains, the migration to the North (and West) was a large part of the phenomenon. In such cities as Chicago, Detroit, New York City, Cleveland, and Newark, N.J., African-Americans found work, stability and a better future than the one they left behind in the South. Combine that with a deep love for the game of baseball and the genius of a man named Andrew “Rube” Foster, a baseball player and owner and manager of the Chicago American Giants.
On Sundays all over the country, African-American families would flock from church to such places as Schorling Stadium in Chicago to cheer local teams. Baseball gave African-Americans a way to be together to celebrate and root for their favorite teams and players It was, as one commentator explains, a way to be together away from the “white gaze” and just be themselves.
When you considered the tickets sold, food consumed and the rental fees and players’ salaries, it was also good business. Black newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender offered sports reporting on the League and other support. Giants manager Foster wrote a series of op-eds about baseball in the Chicago Defender. He also oversaw the establishment of the Negro National League in 1920. Meet Moses Fleetwood Walker, who broke the color barrier in baseball long before Jackie Robinson. This does not detract in any way from Robinson’s courage and accomplishments.
The Negro National League teams would tour the country in buses. But the players could not stay in many hotels or dine in eateries. They often slept on the buses or in bedbug-infested boarding houses and ate peanut butter and bread for dinner. The League produced such players as Satchell Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Jackie Robinson.
But Major League Baseball remained stubbornly segregated, even though managers and many fans and players wanted Black players in Major League Baseball. We hear from Max Manning of the Newark Eagles, a team that was co-owned and managed from 1935 to 1948 by Effa Manley, the first female Baseball Hall of Famer. Notably, Manley helped organize a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” boycott in 1934 Harlem, forcing Blumstein’s Department Store to hire Black clerks for the first time.
Hear the poet, playwright and activist Amiri Baraka rhapsodize about pitching superhero Paige. Maya Angelou recalls the influence of the Pittsburgh Courier and Chicago Defender. People on a baseball field are not Black or white, Pollard suggests. They are athletes. He also makes a sobering case that the Black baseball phenomenon was a precursor of the American Civil Rights Movement. “The League” examines race in America through the lens of baseball, and it is a wonder.
(“The League” contains some violent images and mature themes involving racism)
Rated PG. At AMC Boston Common and suburban theaters. Grade: A
