AU 1938 Pittsburgh Pirates: Paige starts, wins game 2

On this clear April day in St. Louis, the boos rained down on the Pittsburgh Pirates – first in a torrent, then in waves – all the while with Satchel Paige at the maelstrom’s center.

The novelty of seeing these new-look Pirates with their Negro League additions had worn off by opening day game’s end, and the vitriol of tens of thousands was not assayed by the presence of those segregated in the leftfield seats who’d come out to see the legend again, only this time in a Pittsburgh uniform.

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The 1938 Pittsburgh Pirates that never were – until now

Jackie Robinson, as we all know, broke the so-called “color barrier” established within professional baseball by taking the field for first the Montreal Royals, then the Brooklyn Dodgers both therefore clubs with all-white rosters playing in all-white leagues – though it’s hardly as though Dodgers club president Branch Rickey invented the idea of pioneering baseball’s integration when no one had dreamt so audaciously before.

For more than a decade, sportswriter (and later sportswriter/editor)  Chester Washington was one of the most strident voices for the sport’s racial integration. Washington worked for the Pittsburgh Courier, at one time the highest-circulated newspaper among those for African-American readership. The paper’s location in Pittsburgh meant that not only did Washington cover the Pirates, he also had the beats of two of the Negro National League’s more successful franchises, the Crawfords and the Homestead Grays.

This gave Washington an idea in late 1937, prompting him to send a telegram to Pirates manager/president Pie Traynor with an offer he figured Traynor couldn’t refuse (or at very least seriously consider)…

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the GOATs Hall of Fame

The Truly the GOATs Sports Hall of Fame is certainly among the world’s most exclusive. Nominees are drawn from over 4,000 years of history and the annals of every organized sport humans play/played.

Inductees must meet the following criteria:

  1. Excellence in two or more sports at top levels of competition or complete domination of a single sport at once-in-a-century proportions;
  2. Achievement of international or at least national fame through sports achievement; and
  3. Lasting historical status.

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