On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run with a home run off Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth’s record and seizing the greatest individual record in all of sports.
Aaron felt more relief than pride as he rounded the bases. As Aaron’s home runs approached Ruth’s record, the black ballplayer faced death threats in the mail and the derision of sportswriters who dismissed Aaron as an undeserving usurper to the iconic, white “Babe.”
When Aaron reflected on what he had accomplished, his thoughts no doubt returned to his earliest days in professional baseball with the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro Leagues. Few cities were as important to the Negro Leagues as Indianapolis. As we remember Aaron’s historic achievement, it is fitting that we remember the part that Indianapolis played in black baseball.
From 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. April 12, IUPUI will do this at the Hine Hall Auditorium on the school’s campus. Michael Wilbon of ESPN will discuss baseball’s contribution to civil rights. Other speakers include Larry Lester, founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo; Geri Strecker, an English professor at Ball State University, who made a documentary on black baseball in Indianapolis; and Mike Lennox, executive director of Play Ball Indiana, which fosters participation in baseball and softball among the city’s inner-city youth.
Integration provided blacks the opportunity to play in the big leagues, and, in doing so, eventually doomed the Negro Leagues, which existed separate and unequal to white baseball for decades. The Indianapolis ABCs played in the first Negro League game, which was played at Washington Park in Indianapolis in 1920. Oscar Charleston, widely believed the greatest Negro League player and one of the greatest ballplayers in history, grew up in Downtown Indianapolis and later played for the ABCs.
Charleston’s playing career had longed ended before Jackie Robinson broke major league baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947.
No athlete ever received more abuse than Robinson. Pitchers threw at him. Base runners spiked him. Fans directed the ugliest of racial epithets at him. And sportswriters treated him with condescension or worse, indifference.
No athlete ever made as much of a contribution — not just to sports but to society — than Robinson. The integration of baseball was the most important civil rights story in the years immediately after World War II. Baseball, as Michael Wilbon will address, came to represent the possibilities of racial equality for millions of blacks.
This is no longer the case.
The number of blacks in the major leagues falls every year. Only 8.5 percent of major leaguers are black. Blacks now play other sports — primarily baseball and football. Where once baseball represented equal opportunity for blacks, the game now represents opportunity for Latinos.
Major League Baseball has been slow to respond to the national pastime’s potential to improve lives for all boys in the United States. Major League Baseball began Reviving Baseball in the Inner-Cities (RBI) to encourage participation and provide mentors to underserved youth.
Hundreds of boys and girls play baseball and softball in Play Ball Indiana, an affiliate of Major League RBI program. Indianapolis was once one of the most important cities in black baseball. Today, because of Play Ball Indiana, baseball provides inner-city youth opportunities for excellence on and off the field.
Lamb, a professor in the School of Journalism at IUPUI, is the author of “Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball” (2012).