In today's Friday Know-It-All, AV Expert Davis introduces a new segment called “Make a Name for Yourself (And Your Trivia Team),” exploring the names and branding of Minor League Baseball teams and beyond.
So, you’ve come to a trivia night at one of our fine locations. The first thing you’ve got to do, after ordering your food and drinks, of course, is create a team name — honestly, one of the hardest parts of any trivia night, and one that can cause more anxiety than ever intended. While I can’t tell you what to name your team, I can give you inspiration in the best way I know how: through baseball team branding and the stories behind the names. While we will spend a majority of our future editions in the wacky world of Minor League Baseball branding, we start this journey with the Negro Leagues.
The Negro Leagues had many iterations, all of which were borne out of the necessity for non-white players to enjoy, and often times dominate, the American pastime. Let’s explore these teams and their names in order to better understand the history of America, baseball as it is today, and to give inspiration to your next team name. We start with the Kansas City Monarchs.
Kansas City Monarchs
The Kansas City Monarchs are one of the more prolific teams in the Negro Leagues. They had players with some of the most recognizable names, like Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson. It seems obvious that they named themselves after royalty, much like the current Kansas City team. That’s not the case. They are named after a line from a 1782 poem by poet William Cowper (pronounced “Cooper”). The poem itself is about a castaway's life on a deserted island. The castaway is forced to have sovereignty of that place and is out of humanity’s reach. The line goes: “I am the monarch of all I purvey.”
The owner at the time, J.L. Wilkinson, who was the first white owner of a Negro Leagues team, something that was not uncommon after him, understood the importance of Black baseball and what it could become. He created a relationship with The Call, an African-American Kansas City newspaper that is still in service to this day, and gave them a stream of articles about the team. The writer C.A. Franklin recognized the role that Wilkinson and the Monarchs were playing in improving racial harmony in Kansas City. He noted, “From a sociological point of view, the Monarchs have done more than any other single agent to break the damnable outrage of prejudice that exists in this city.”
Poetry isn’t often used in the naming of a team, but let the Monarchs be inspirational to you whilst you read your next poem. A stanza could give you your next team name.
Birmingham Black Barons
Looking at a list of team names in the Negro Leagues, one naming convention really sticks out: the use of the word “Black” before an already existing team name. A list of a few, but not all, are:
And many more!
These team names, a lot of times, were brought about simply because it was the only jersey they had. The Atlanta Black Crackers were originally called the Atlanta Cubs. They played on the same field as the white team, the Atlanta Crackers, so the name was changed after one year, simply because that was what everyone called them.
Often these teams changed ownership multiple times and the leagues were always going in and out, so if they could save money by not changing uniforms, they would. They would get uniforms from a defunct team or the ones they weren’t using from the year prior. The San Francisco Sea Lions famously had a bear on their jersey, because a San Francisco Cubs team had folded and the owner bought the jerseys on the cheap.
Documented by a lot of the newspapers of the time, the Black versions of teams would outperform their non-Major League counterparts, both on the field and in the stands. There were two teams for the longest time in Birmingham, Alabama, the Birmingham Barons and the Birmingham Black Barons. They both played on the same field, but the crowds for the Black Barons would often equal or outnumber the Barons, despite the white team having a longer history. They even got equal press coverage.
These naming conventions have gone by the wayside, but to remember these teams and what they did to survive is paramount in understanding the Negro Leagues.
New York Cubans
While the first Latino player preceded Jackie Robinson by more than 45 years — Lou Castro appeared for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1902 — only a few were allowed into the Majors, most of them required to be white or “light-skinned.” The players that weren’t accepted into the league created these “Cubans” teams, despite not all being from Cuba. The most iconic of the teams was the New York Cubans.
There were two Cuban Stars teams that preceded the New York Cubans. One was in New York, and one was in the Midwest. They would often barnstorm, which was a tactic many Negro League teams employed by going to different cities, putting on a show, and challenging the local team to a game that they would often handily win.
This team name shows how deep the roots of segregation ran in baseball. It also shows the resiliency in the naming of their teams as a nationality that wasn’t largely accepted in the Bigs. The name was more of a message that these players were staying true to who they were and where they came from, even if the Major League didn’t want them around.
Homestead Grays
Long considered to be the most dominant team in all of the Negro Leagues, the Homestead Grays were formed in 1912 and disbanded in 1950, changing leagues and locations all throughout. The 1931 Homestead Grays are considered to be the best team in all of baseball, just four years after the all-white 1927 Yankees, known as “Murderers' Row,” took that designation for the Majors. The 1927 Yankees had six future Hall of Famers. The Grays had seven.
The interesting part of their name isn’t so much the Grays; they were just named for their jersey color (which is better than your sock color, Boston and Chicago). The interesting part is the location. Homestead, Pennsylvania, a borough of Pittsburgh, is where the team started, but was only partially the team’s home. They played a majority of their games in Pittsburgh proper and Washington, D.C.
The Negro Leagues were borne out of the unfair practice of segregation in more than just baseball, but in America, as a whole. Because of this, these teams couldn’t play everywhere. Parks were often closed to them. So, these teams did what they knew best — and that was to play baseball. They played wherever they could.
While we will never know how the ’31 Grays would have fared against the ’27 Yankees, we do know that the Yankees had much better commodities than the Grays. They played in the nicest of ballparks and had the best of care. The Grays entered the “best team ever” conversation while not fully having a home field. So, if you can’t find inspiration from the earlier team brands, naming your team after one of the best in all of baseball is never a bad choice and pays homage to, likely, the best franchise in the Negro Leagues.
So, have you made a name for yourself yet?
The color barrier in baseball was broken by Jackie Robinson in 1947, and the last formal Negro League disbanded in 1948. That doesn’t mean their history doesn’t last; in fact, MLB recently added the Negro Leagues stats to the official stats for all of baseball. You can find inspiration for your team name anywhere, and the Negro Leagues is not a bad place to look.
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