Queen of the Negro Leagues by James Overmyer

Author:James Overmyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Like all reformers [the Manleys, Semler, and Pompez] fell into the common error of trying to accomplish all their reforms at one swoop. A long time ago, one of our Broadway Balzacs wrote: “A chump is a guy who just can’t wait.” The reforming league owners couldn’t wait, and now they are likely to lose their fight.[17]

Having fought and lost on principle, the Manleys then proceeded to lose money because of their stand. The Eagles were shut out of Yankee Stadium promotions completely in 1940, not returning there to play until Memorial Day, 1941. The agents would withhold playing dates from the Manleys to inconvenience the Eagles, as well as keep them from the most profitable venues. Outfielder Bob Harvey recalled, “they would have us travelling 300 or 400 miles at night for a game, when they could do better than that.” Dick Powell, of the Elite Giants, definitely recalls that “the Manleys were not in Gottlieb and Leuschner’s good graces” but eventually were let back into important dates because the other club owners demanded the Eagles’ presence. “Someone like [Douglas] Green [of the Elites] or Pompez would say to Gottlieb or Leuschner, ‘hey, look now, we need so and so, to have a balanced league.’”

Publicly, relations between the Manleys and the booking agents and their supporters eventually returned to a state of civility, to such an extent that Randy Dixon reported in the Pittsburgh Courier before the start of the 1941 season that the “feuding Manleys and Gottlieb have figuratively kissed and made up.”[18] But throughout her career as an owner of the Eagles, Effa never abandoned the position that Negro league baseball would be a stronger institution if it were not beholden to whites.

In 1944, she completely identified with the black race in commiserating with B. B. Martin, owner of the Memphis Black Sox in the Negro American League (and a brother of Negro American League president J. B. Martin), about one of his league’s teams, the white-run Indianapolis Clowns. The Clowns, who often burlesqued black baseball by dressing in grass skirts and painting their faces to look like “cannibals,” were regarded in many circles as a disgrace to Negro baseball. But their owner, Syd Pollock, had close ties to Abe Saperstein and so was immune to the criticism. Effa told Martin that problems with the Clowns did not surprise her, “as those people never did want baseball to get too high class, and all these sort of things help to keep it down.”

Although the idea of a permanent home for the Eagles in Brooklyn was in the past, the Manleys continued to try to showcase their team there. They still ran afoul of the agents, who not only booked teams into Dexter Park to play the Bushwicks but were also trying to monopolize Ebbets Field when the Dodgers were not playing there. In 1944, Effa secured Ebbets for a July 4 game with the New York Cubans, only to find that Leuschner’s Nat C. Strong Baseball Enterprises had rented the park two days before, for a Cubans–Kansas City Monarchs contest.

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