Black Baseball’s Rich Legacy

Once Yankee Stadium is demolished at the end of this season, Hinchliffe will be the last place left in the metropolitan region where Negro League baseball was played. Hinchliffe was host to the "Colored Championship of the Nation" in 1933 and was the home field for the New York Black Yankees from 1934 to 1937 and 1939 to 1945. In 1936, it was also home to the New York Cubans.

"They bought a lot of peanuts," said Dan Oliff, 86, of Glen Rock, who made a dime for each dollar’s worth he sold to the baseball fans, black and white alike, as a vendor at Hinchliffe in the 1930s.

He grew up on Carrol Street in Paterson and still remembers the day a skinny-legged new kid on the block asked to join the neighborhood stickball game. "He picked up the broomstick, and I think he hit it 10 blocks," Mr. Oliff said of Larry Doby, who, in 1947, nearly 12 weeks after Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, joined the Cleveland Indians, becoming the first black player in the American League.

2 months ago BubbaFan Comment 2 comments 0 recs |

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Made me think of this song...

They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan
And they discovered a slave cemetery there
May their souls rest easy now that lynching is frowned upon
And we’ve moved on to the electric chair
And I wonder who’s gonna be president
Tweedle Dumb or Tweedle Dumber?
And who’s gonna have the big
Blockbuster box office
This summer
How ‘bout we put up a wall
Between the houses and the highway
And then you can go your way
And I can go my way

Except all the radios agree with all the TV’s
And all the magazines agree with all the radios
And I keep hearing that same damn song
Everywhere I go
Maybe I should put a bucket over my head
And a marshmallow in each ear
And stumble around for another dumb numb week
For another hum drum hit song to appear

People used to make records
As in a record of an event
The event of people
Playing music in a room
Now everything is cross-marketing
It’s about sunglasses and shoes
Or guns or drugs
You choose
We got it rehashed
We got it half-assed
We’re digging up all the graves
And we’re spitting on the past
And we can choose between the colors
Of the lipstick on the whores
Cuz we know the difference
Between the font of twenty percent more
And the font of teriyaki
You tell me
How does that make you feel?
You tell me what’s real

They say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
Even when they’re dry as my lips for years
Even when they’re stranded on a small desert island
With no place in two thousand miles to buy beer
And I wonder is he different
Is he different
Has he changed
What he’s about
Or is he just a liar
With nothing to lie about

Am I headed for the same brick wall
Is there anything I can do
About anything at all
Except go back to that corner in Manhattan
And dig deeper
Dig deeper this time
Down beneath the impossible pain of our history
Beneath unknown bones
Beneath the bedrock of the mystery
Beneath the sewage system and the path train
Beneath the cobblestones and the water main
Beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals
Beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels
Beneath everything I can think of to think about
Beneath it all
Beneath all get out
Beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel
Ther’es a fire that’s just waiting for fuel