As the Negro Leagues celebrates its centenary, a look at how Denver was integral in erasing baseball’s color line

In 1934, Negro Leagues great Oliver “The Ghost” Marcelle, a Denver resident, lobbied the sports editor of The Denver Post to let the Kansas City Monarchs play in the newspaper’s annual semi-pro tournament.

Granted his request, the competition became the first major integrated baseball tournament in the United States, with the Monarchs advancing to the championship game before losing 2-1 to the predominantly white House of David team, which had contracted out legendary Black pitcher Satchel Paige.

The rest is a story of how Denver — with a long history of Black semi-pro baseball and Negro League greats such as Paige barnstorming throughout the state — foreshadowed erasing the color line in Major League Baseball.

“Denver was the beginning of the integration of baseball because Jackie Robinson certainly would have not have integrated the league in 1947, had The Denver Post Tournament not done so in 1934,” local baseball historian Jay Sanford said. “After 1934, these teams that were all-white teams started playing against Black competition, and went home and began integrating in Texas, Florida, California, and back east. It was a grassroots integration movement that began right here.”

The Negro Leagues are celebrating their 100th anniversary this year, and while Colorado did not officially have a team, its Black semi-pro baseball roots date back to the late 19th century. Teams such as the Black Diamonds and the Colorado Champions paved the way for what Sanford called “the best team in the Rocky Mountain west” — the Denver White Elephants.

The White Elephants played exhibitions against white teams in the area, which was unique for the time period, and featured stars such as pitcher Tom “Pistol Pete” Albright and infielder Theodore “Bubbles” Anderson, the only native Coloradan to play in the Negro Leagues. Anderson, who was the White Elephants’ bat boy as a kid and played for them as young as 15, was also likely the youngest Negro Leagues player ever at 17 years old.

“Even though they weren’t a part of the official Negro Leagues, there was nothing semi-pro about that team,” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick said. “That area has seen great Black baseball through the years (leading up to MLB’s integration), with the Denver White Elephants being one of those great Black teams that went all over Colorado playing whomever they could play and beating virtually everybody that they faced.”

But the greatest team to ever take the field in the state of Colorado wasn’t the White Elephants. And Sanford argues it hasn’t been the Rockies, or any of their opponents, since Denver was awarded an MLB franchise in 1993.

He gives that distinction to the Negro League All-Stars, who played in, and won, The Denver Post Tournament, often called the “Western World Series”, in 1936.

“Now, there were former major league players playing semi-pro baseball all along here. Denver saw about 15 Hall of Fame players in that Denver Post Tournament, including Rogers Hornsby,” Sanford said. “But six guys went on to be in Cooperstown from that 1936 Negro League All-Stars team. A truly great team and I don’t know how they could be topped.”

The White Elephants broke up following the 1935 season, as the integration of semi-pro baseball enabled many of the team’s players to join white teams. Meanwhile, the Negro Leagues lasted as a premier professional league until about 1950, after MLB teams signed much of their top talent by the turn of the decade.

Fast forward to the present day, and despite the coronavirus pandemic postponing the start of the baseball season, MLB still plans to honor the Negro Leagues’ centenary with what Kendrick called “an unprecedented show of solidarity” by all 30 teams.

The league-wide commemoration of the Negro Leagues and the legacy of Black baseball was supposed to be June 27. A new date will be included when the schedule is released next week. All teams will wear a commemorative Negro Leagues logo patch, and some teams in cities that had Negro League clubs will be wearing jersey designs from the era.

“We’ve always had a select few major league teams that have done things in recognition of the Negro Leagues — there’s annual salutes here in Kansas City, and in Detroit, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee,” Kendrick said. “But this will be the first time all 30 MLB teams, on one day, recognize the Negro Leagues.”

While Kendrick and his museum had initially planned to incorporate a “hat tip” to the Negro Leagues with fans as part of the June 27 celebration, that idea has now taken root digitally. Over the last several weeks, the #TipYourCap2020 movement has caught fire on social media. The list of people who have virtually tipped their cap includes all four living former U.S. presidents; baseball greats from past and present such as Hank Aaron, Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Trout and Nolan Arenado; as well as a litany of other athletic and entertainment stars.

“The timing of this couldn’t be better with the social unrest that we’re seeing in our country right now,” Kendrick said.

That’s because people view the Negro Leagues and Black baseball overall as a civil rights movement, through the lens of the sport in Denver, Kansas City and beyond.

“The movement has created a groundswell of goodwill that has united us with a simple call to action,” Kendrick said. “What you’re seeing now is a multitude of people, of varying backgrounds and ethnicities, who have been moved and called to action because of their respect and honor for the Negro Leagues… The winning spirit of the Negro Leagues and of Black baseball is galvanizing us at a time where we really need this.”