EPISODE 202: The Hilldale Club - With Neil Lanctot

We continue our dogged pursuit of the history of baseball's Negro Leagues with a stop this week in the suburban Philadelphia borough of Darby, PA - for a look at the famed Hilldale Club with SABR Seymour Medal-winning historian Neil Lanctot ("Fair Dealing and Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and the Development of Black Professional Baseball").

Established as an amateur boys team in 1910 by a moonlighting civil servant named Ed Bolden, the club incorporated in November 1916, as the Hilldale Baseball & Exhibition Company - and developing into a professional Negro League powerhouse in the 1920s.

Along with Atlantic City's Bacharach Giants, Hilldale played as eastern "associates" of the predominantly midwestern Negro National League in 1920-21 - before becoming charter members of a full-fledged Bolden-founded rival Eastern Colored League in 1923.

Immediately, Hilldale's "Darby Daisies" became the team to beat - winning the ECL's first three league pennants, and earning two trips to the first-ever Colored World Series against the NNL's powerhouse Kansas City Monarchs - barely losing a best-of-nine series in 1924, but dominating in a five games-to-one title in 1925.

Darby lineups were frequently stocked with some of the top players of the era - including six eventual baseball National Baseball Hall of Famers: Oscar Charleston, "The Immortal" Martin Dihigo, "Pop" Lloyd, "Judy" Johnson, "Biz" Mackey, and Louis Santop.

​Hilldale also made waning appearances in 1929's one-year American Negro League and 1932's East-West League ​as the economic strains of the Great Depression ultimately pushed the club into extinction.

     

Fair Dealing and Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and the Development of Black Professional Baseball - buy book here

Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution - buy book here

EPISODE 164: Negro League Baseball’s Atlantic City Bacharach Giants – With Jim Overmyer

The curious story of baseball’s Atlantic City (NJ) Bacharach Giants originates from a unique intersection of racism, tourism, and politics.

In 1915, an independent semi-pro “Atlantic City Colored League” was formed to provide an entertainment outlet for the city’s 11,000+ black residents – with the hope being they would attend the games and stay off the boardwalk, a then-booming summer haven for white tourists.  

Two black businessmen active in the local Republican political machine asked an existing area team to join the league and promotionally rename itself after politician Harry Bacharach, the once-and-future mayor of Atlantic City.  When the team refused, the duo travelled south and convinced eight members of the Duval Giants, a black amateur team in Jacksonville, Florida, to venture north and create the foundation for a new independent club instead.

The “Bacharach Giants” largely dominated whatever opponents came their way during the late 1910s, despite persistent financial wobbliness.  In 1920, the team began a three-year stint as an associate member of Rube Foster’s new Negro National League (NNL) – allowing them to retain official independence, but also to coordinate non-league games with the teams from Foster’s largely Midwest-based circuit. 

In 1923, Atlantic City broke from the NNL to help start the rival Eastern Colored League (ECL), where they achieved their greatest success – including winning two league pennants in 1926 and 1927 – though losing both times in subsequent Negro League World Series play to the NNL’s Chicago American Giants.

Beset by rancorous squabbles over player contracts, the ECL folded in 1928.  Five of its clubs – including the Bacharach Giants – formed the bulk of a new American Negro League for 1929, only to see both the league and its team from Atlantic City fold by the end of the season. 

Author/historian Jim Overmyer (Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City) joins to discuss the history of the club, and some of the legends that emanated from it, including Negro League standouts Dick Lundy, Oliver Marcell, Dick Redding, “Nip” Winters, Chanel White, “Rats” Henderson, Claude Grier, and Luther Farrell – and National Baseball Hall of Famer John Henry "Pop" Lloyd.

Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City - buy book here