Why didn't the white ballplayers demand to have blackball players allowed in their "water down" league?

Question

The white ball players knew that there were countless black ball players who could not only play in their self imposed watered down league - but could dominate it - and put many of them back into the minors or out of baseball! It was in fact in the 'hands of the white ball players" concerning them playing the best possible competition to test their skills! If Ruth, Cobb,
Dimaggio, or any superstar of that water downed league would of had made a stand - demanding to face the best talent in the country - baseball would of have had been a "real" major league long before 1947! Apparently, they were scared to make such a stand. To bad for them! History will forever place an asterisk next to each of those players who coward away from Gibson, Paige, Bell, and the like who were waiting for them! Like my father, blacks played one sport then - baseball! One can only imagine the talent pool available (check current b-ball & f-ball ratios) between 1900 and 1940 in black baseball! So foolish!!!!

Answer 1

A lot of them had no other choice. Ruth was all for letting blacks play. He liked the competition.

Answer 2

The short answer to the question you asked: If a white player had gone to the owner and demanded that blacks be allowed to play major league baseball, he would have been cut the next day, and no team would have picked him up. There was no union, salaries were terrible, and no player had any bargaining power.

Even Branch Rickey pointed out how ashamed he was of segregation when he was in college, and it took him 30 years to do something about it -- when he had the opportunity to do so.

Such were the times then. Everyone was afraid to speak up about it, and separate but equal was just accepted as part of life by most. You could ask the same thing about people who didn't allow blacks to ride in the back of the bus, or use the same water fountains in the South. It's a part of history that's pretty shameful, but we can't go back and rewrite it. That's the way baseball was before 1947.

It took a lot of courage to fight those civil rights battles. Let's look back and remember the way Jackie Robinson fought ignorance with his skills, and the way Robinson was accepted by many existing major leaguers who just wanted to play ball.

Answer 3

Cap Anson was the first star racist who wanted nothing to do with black players. Remember pro baseball started in 1869, just four years after the end of the Civil War. Too many still remembered blacks as property rather than properly embracing them as equivalent human beings. Louis Sockalexis faced Jackie Robinson bigotry in the 1890's when he played professional ball. Star Ty Cobb wouldn't take the field with a man of color. Eventually, it was just the way things were. No average players wanted to let excellent black players into their 16 team league and lose their jobs. Until Branch Rickey wanted the best players, to win more games, blacks didn't have a fair chance.

Answer 4

Reggie Miller actually called Babe Ruth's home runs "affirmative action home runs." Jokingly, of course. I thought that was pretty funny. Anyhoo, I do vaguely remember hearing what someone above said, that Ruth was one that wanted integration. Ty Cobb was a racist so I doubt he wanted it. I do think it had to do with the controversy and the cultural climate of the time more than fear of the competition... at least in most cases. It is a real shame that people actually thought things like that were proper at a point in time. I really can't wrap my brain around people not grasping equality among all people, then again there are a lot of things I don't understand about people.

Answer 5

i'm torn between Barry Bonds and Pete Rose. If i might desire to sparkling Bonds then i could be at peace with each and every of the records he owns. Then there is Rose on the different hand and he's the best-ever hit king and he's no longer in the HOF. i'm able to't %. between the two adult adult males.

Answer 6

Blacks can't dominate anything but crime statistics!. Those Negroe League guys played circus ball not baseball. They only had one good pitcher - Satch Paige. The rest of those guys threw up gopher balls so they could put the ball in play and clown around.

Ty Cobb was a real jerk, but not a KKK member. Why do epole lie like that?

Answer 7

Before the Players' Association and Free Agency ballplayers had ZERO say in the affairs of MLB... or even which team they played for. The owners held all the power.

Answer 8

Actually, Babe Ruth and Dizzy Dean both begged their owners to play Satchel Paige. It was the owners, not the players, who drew and enforced the color line. It began with Cap Anson in the 1880s.

Answer 9

Gerald, were there any white players in the Negro Leagues? Less fortunate white players may have had more exposure if the whites were allowed to play in the Negro Leagues!

Answer 10

LS, I don't know why you would put Honus Wagner in that group. Wagner specifically considered himself the "White John Henry Lloyd". Lloyd and Wagner were even best friends! Lloyd was an extremely good ballplayer back then, but couldn't play in the bigs because he was black.