Chattanooga Baseball — Negro League Baseball

Chattanooga Baseball — Negro League Baseball. . , Chattanooga was home to several Negro League baseball teams between 1920 and 1951, including the Tigers, White Sox, Black Lookouts, Black Cats, Choo Choos, Black Choo Choos, and Stars. Though these African American teams sometimes played at the racially segregated Andrews Field and Engel Stadium, the field at nearby Lincoln Park regularly hosted black players and fans. When not engaged in Negro Southern League action, Chattanooga's black professional and semi-professional squads barnstormed throughout the South, Midwest, and Northeast playing scores of exhibition games., The Chattanooga White Sox won the Negro Southern League in 1927 with a 22-8 record. This championship team included future pitching legend Leroy “Satchel” Paige (1906-1982), who arrived in Chattanooga in 1926 from Mobile, Alabama, and departed in 1927 to play for the Birmingham Black Barons. After a well-traveled four-decade career, Paige became the first former Negro League player to be elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971., Satchel Paige was not the only African American baseball phenom who passed through Chattanooga. Before he was known as the “Say Hey Kid,” teenager Willie Mays (1931-) spent the summers of 1945 and 1946 playing for the Choo Choos. Amid the team's financial struggles and poor conditions on the road, Mays left Chattanooga and returned to Alabama to finish high school and join the Birmingham Black Barons. Willie Mays was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1979 after a long and record-breaking career predominantly with the New York and San Francisco Giants., Negro League baseball in Chattanooga contended with economic depression, world war, racism, and inconstant rosters and ownership. Limited media coverage at the time and a relative lack of available documents today present challenges to those researching black baseball in Chattanooga and beyond. But the recovery and recollection of this history is imperative given the central role of sport, entertainment, leisure, and community to African Americans seeking refuge from the harsh realities of Jim Crow in the early-to-mid twentieth-century South., Newspaper clipping ,

Chattanooga, , Nashville , Face Twin Bill , The Nashville Cubs and the Chattanooga Choo Choos, second and third teams of the Negro Southern League, will clash in a double-header at Parkway Field this afternoon. The twin bill will complete a series of three at Parkway, the first game of the three going to Nashville 8-7 Friday night., The Cubs won the title last year in the Southern League and Manager Felton Snow is expected to use his strongest lineup to capture both tilts today from the fighting Choo Choos., Bob Lily, Chattanooga's ace right-hander, who went the route Friday, will pitch the first game. Ellison will do the receiving. , source: The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) July 18, 1948

, [Captions:] , Left: Chattanooga Choo Choos in 1946. Willie Mays is kneeling fourth from the left, and team owner Beck Shepherd is standing second from the left. source: Negro Southern League Museum Research Center, Right: Chattanooga Stars in 1951. source: Negro Southern League Museum Research Center, This series is funded by a UC Foundation community engagement grant and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga , and prepared by faculty and students of the UTC Department of History.