Baseball Strikes Out With Black Fans

By: Daniel CattauTo celebrate the 80th and final season of old Comiskey Park at 35th and Shields, the White Sox on July 11 "turned back the clock" to 1917, the last time a Chicago team won the World Series. Coaches, players and ushers wore period costumes, popcorn was 5 cents, outfield grandstand tickets were 50 cents, megaphones replaced loudspeakers, and a crowd of about 40,000 had a ball--and a ball game.

But there was something wrong with the picture: For historical accuracy, the current black players should not have been on the field, but they could have been in the stands.

Until 1947, black baseball players were barred from playing in the major leagues. Yet black fans cheered on the White Sox and the black Chicago American Giants. Black fans made the annual East-West Negro League all-star game at Comiskey Park the major black sports event in the country.

But on the eve of the opening of the new, state-of-the-art Comiskey Park April 18, The Chicago Reporter interviewed dozens of black fans, Negro League experts, baseball officials and former players, and found that the black fan soon may face the same fate as the old park: extinction.

"Black fans have a high interest in the ballplayers, but they've lost interest in the game itself," said Jim "Mudcat" Grant, 55, a black pitcher who played for the Cleveland Indians and the Minnesota Twins.

Nationally, the Simmons Market Research Bureau found that 6.8 percent of the fans attending major league baseball games are black, according to a 1987 New York Times article. A 1990 Simmons survey showed that 5.3 percent of 2,435 black adults said they attended baseball games occasionally or frequently.

About this same percentage of blacks can be found in the stands at Comiskey Park, and perhaps an even smaller number at Wrigley Field, according to black fans who regularly attend baseball games. Yet Chicago's population is 39 percent black and 69 percent of black Chicagoans live on the South Side, according to the 1990 U.S. Census.

What happened to the black fan? For many, it's a mystery. There are many theories: rising ticket prices (which most observers said is more related to class than race), competition for the black spectator--and athlete--from other sports (especially basketball), baseball's indifference to the black community, and racism.

When old Comiskey's last brick is carried away later this year, many baseball memories will go with it, but none so bittersweet as those of black baseball. "Chicago will be losing an irreplaceable shrine to black baseball in America," said Jerry Malloy, 44, a Negro League historian in Mundelein. "Black baseball was once invisible to white society, and now the black fan has made himself invisible to baseball."


Baseball Palace
To the thousands of blacks who came to Chicago from the South during World War I, the city looked like paradise compared to Alabama or Mississippi: There were jobs, access to beaches and entertainment--including baseball at Comiskey, then known as the "baseball palace of the world."

When blacks wrote letters home about going to a White Sox game, "that was some heavy-duty bragging," said James Grossman, a Newberry Library historian.

Ted "Double-Duty" Radcliffe, 88, who starred as a pitcher and catcher for 26 years in the Negro Leagues and still lives near Comiskey Park, came from Mobile, Ala., to Chicago in 1919. "Black fans used to adore the White Sox. Comiskey was right in the colored neighborhood," he said.

The Chicago American Giants, a Negro League team founded in 1910 by Hall of Fame pitcher Rube Foster, drew between 10,000 to 20,000 black fans to their games at the old White Sox park at 39th Street and Wentworth Avenue, experts said. The Giants also played occasionally at Comiskey.

In 1920, Foster organized six black baseball teams into the Negro League, and the league's East-West Game attracted black fans to Comiskey from across the country. Crowds of up to 50,000 were awed by Josh Gibson's mammoth home runs and went crazy as Satchel Paige sauntered in from the bullpen to meet his first strikeout victim.

After Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in 1947, the Negro Leagues died out, but not before they helped start the careers of Willie Mays, the Cubs' Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron and the White Sox's Minnie Minoso.

In the early years of integration, black fan interest continued, especially when Paige came to town. An overflow crowd of 51,013 at Comiskey saw Paige pitch for the Indians against the White Sox on Aug. 13, 1948. Another 20,000 to 40,000 people had to be turned away, as Paige pitched a 5-0 shutout.

Several years after Paige's American League debut, Judy Early, 46, a black White Sox fan, was taken by her parents to see Paige pitch. "It was impressed upon me that it was a historic occasion," she said. While Early's father was an avid Sox fan, but he was proud to see Paige pitch for the Indians, said Early, secretary of the ChiSox Club, Inc., a not-for-profit group that supports the team and raises money for charity.


'Something's Wrong'
The lack of black fans is so troubling to major league baseball that it has hired the Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California at Los Angeles to study the problem, the Reporter has learned.

"It's a concern for us," said Jim Small, a spokesman for Major League Baseball in New York. "A number of stars are black, but there's not the same proportion of blacks and minorities in the stands. Something's wrong."

Rob Gallas, the White Sox senior vice president for marketing and broadcasting (which includes Spanish-language radio and television) said his team had no statistics on the number of black fans. "We market to all races, religions and creeds."

But White Sox officials knew where their fans were when they were making a pitch for a new stadium in west suburban Addison. A promotional brochure offered a question: "Who attends White Sox games?" The answer: "Demographics of White Sox fans reveal they are the same people who comprise the majority of (suburban) DuPage County. Approximately 50 percent of White Sox season ticket holders and 75 percent of all fans who attend games at Comiskey Park live in the suburbs."

The racial makeup of the fans at Comiskey Park may be reflected by the membership of ChiSox Club, which provided the Reporter with a list of members by zip code. An analysis of the list shows that few club members are black.

Of the 2,600 club members in Illinois, 860, or 33 percent, live in Chicago zip codes, club records show.

Of those 860 Chicago members, only 10 percent live in zip codes that are more than 50 percent black, according to 1990 population estimates by the National Planning Data Corp., a Palatine-based market research firm. The 8-year-old ChiSox Club has no members in the predominantly black suburban zip codes 60153, which includes Maywood, or 60426, which includes Markham.

"Our black membership is a lot lower than what I think it should be," ChiSox President Sam F. Cannizzaro said. But the racial composition of the club reflects the fans who go to the park, he said.

Cubs officials would not discuss black fans, but a voluminous survey for the Cubs in 1985 by Market Facts, Inc., a local market research firm, showed that out of 200 season ticket holders, 97.3 percent were white, 1.8 percent Asian and none black.

A recent baseball card show at the Rosemont Exposition Center was attended by more than 1,500 people. But the 15 former Negro League stars, including Radcliffe, Jimmie Crutchfield and Lester Lockett, all of Chicago--easily outnumbered the black autograph buyers there.

But there is still a remnant of faithful black fans. As a kid, Odell Tanner, now 78, used to slip into Comiskey in the 1920s. "I didn't always know who I was looking at--all I knew it was baseball," he said. A retired laborer who lives in Grand Boulevard, Tanner goes to Sox games about once a month. He has noticed that not only are the number of black fans decreasing, those who do come to the park are older.

Chicago Lutheran Bishop Sherman Hicks' childhood baseball memories are of the Brooklyn Dodgers' Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe. While he frequents Wrigley Field now, he has seen "very few" black fans there. "Maybe 5 percent, maybe not that much," he said.

And Monte Irvin, 72, a star in the 1940s and '50s, first with the Negro League Newark Eagles and then with the National League New York Giants, said "there used to be a lot of black fans" at the games when he played. When asked about the absence of black fans, Irvin said, "It's a mystery. They're still great fans, but (now) they watch on television."

Some people blame basketball for the lack of black baseball fans.

"Basketball is killing track and baseball," said Bob Simon, varsity baseball coach at Corliss High School, 821 E. 103d St., as he watched his team take batting practice.

As Simon spoke, some of his players stood outside the batting cage, taking imaginary jump shots with baseballs. Basketball has become more glamorous to city kids, he said, and because it has become a year-round sport, athletes do not have time for other games.

"On the West Side, black kids didn't play Little League baseball," said Richard W. Williams, 44, who grew up on the West Side. Williams has been to a major league baseball game only four times. His 13-year-old twin boys play in the Kenwood-Hyde Park Little League.

Chicago Park District records show that blacks on both the West and South Sides are interested in baseball.

Last season, 55 parks participated in the Chicago Park District's citywide tournament. Seventeen, or 31 percent, of those 55 parks are located in community areas that are more than 62 percent black, according to census figures. Three of those 17 parks are on the West Side; the others are on the South Side.

A team from Fernwood Park, 10438 S. Wallace St. in predominantly black Roseland, won last year's Pee Wee championship for 9 and 10-year-olds, beating a team from Homer Park, 2741 W. Montrose Ave., 9-8 in extra innings.

While every park with a diamond should have Little League baseball, whether a park has baseball frequently depends upon parents, said Tom Foley, last season's Citywide Chairperson for Baseball. "The majority of leagues are parent-organized."

Former pitcher Mudcat Grant said that to reach black fans, baseball teams need to work with the kids who need equipment, uniforms, ball fields and playgrounds, and organized Little League baseball.

Instead, major league baseball has ignored the black community, said Grant, now president of the Los Angeles-based Black Golfers' Association Tournament. There are few promotions aimed at black churches and community organizations, he said.

"There's a conventional way of doing it (marketing), but it's not being done in the black community," he said. "If you never do anything, you're going to lose that fan."


Hiring Push
In 1987, Al Campanis, then vice president for player personnel of the Los Angeles Dodgers, said on national television that blacks may not have the "necessities" in baseball management. The furor generated by his comments helped push baseball to increase minority hirings--from 2 to 15 percent between 1988 and 1990, according to Major League Baseball officials.

"Campanis got the press to look at something they should have looked at a long time ago," said Clifford L. Alexander, president of a consulting firm in Washington, D.C., that works with baseball to increase minority hirings. But Alexander declined to disclose minority hiring figures for individual teams.

A White Sox official who asked not to be identified said the team has six full-time black front office personnel, plus one Hispanic--about 10 percent of the total number of executives--but he wouldn't provide their names or titles.

The Cubs also declined to discuss their minority hiring, but Wendy Lewis, a black woman who is director of human resources, said, "We're making an effort to improve things, and we have."

Neither the White Sox nor the Cubs has a black coach on its major league team, though the White Sox have two full-time coaches in the minors and the Cubs have one. Currently baseball has two black managers--Frank Robinson of Baltimore and Cito Gaston of Toronto. While there are no black general managers (who are responsible for trades, contracts), there are two black assistant general managers: Elaine Weddington of the Boston Red Sox and Bob Watson of Houston. And the president of the National League, Bill White, is black.

Whatever the cause of the minority hiring problem--explanations include a low turnover rate for most jobs, the strong oldboy network and endemic racism--qualified former black and Hispanic players are looking for work.

Bill Madlock, 40, was the National League batting champion with a .354 average in 1975 and .339 in 1976. After a salary dispute, the Cubs traded Madlock to San Francisco. A lifetime .305 hitter in 15 seasons, Madlock pointed to what he called one of the main problems minority former players face--racism--without ever saying the word. "Everybody knows what the problem is," he said, "but nobody wants to talk about it."

He once inquired about a coaching position, only to be told to submit a resume, he said. "I told him, 'Get a bubble-gum card.'"

Baseball is also losing the black athlete to basketball and football. There are fewer blacks playing professional baseball (17 percent) than basketball (75 percent) or football (60 percent), according to a 1990 study by Boston's Northeastern University Center for the Study of Sport in Society. "It's obvious what's going on in baseball," said Madlock. "The good black athlete is going into other sports."

Another frontier for major league baseball is the expansion of the number of minority and female-owned businesses used by the clubs, including printers, painters, concessionaires and others, baseball consultant Alexander said. Ultimately, he said, "what we really need is a black owner."

As president of Grand Slam Enterprises in Chicago, Gary "Serge" Matthews, 40, a Cub from 1984-87, uses the competitiveness he showed on the field to sell hats, T-shirts, premium gifts and other specialty items to businesses across the country for giveaway days--including the Cubs. "The Cubs gave me two days out of 40 this year," he said. "It's up to me to try to get more."

Matthews said his "main goal" is to get into radio and television broadcasting. But blacks have had a difficult time getting a foot in the broadcasting booth. "When there are jobs available, they (baseball teams) have a way of keeping them quiet," he said.


Hot Tickets
While old Comiskey is reduced to a parking lot, the White Sox are draping the new, 44,000 seat park in a traditional look, ranging from new silver-and-black uniforms to the new $120 million park's burnished precast concrete exterior--intended to resemble the original red-brick exterior of the old Comiskey. The new park will also have an exploding scoreboard.

While the home run shots may be heard by South Siders, the ticket prices may insure those volleys won't be seen by many of them.

Sox tickets range from $13 for box seats to $6 for the bleachers. There already have been more than 1.5 million tickets sold, making the White Sox less accessible to the general public. Many tickets are geared for the corporate set--84 two-tiered, glass-encased skybox suites are expected to cost $50,000 and up for the season--so the average fan has about as much chance of winning the lottery as getting into a skybox.

Dan Fabian, White Sox manager of community relations, maintained, however, that there "still are going to be plenty of opportunities for people to see a game." He added that the White Sox have "adopted" Abbott Elementary, 3630 S. Wells St. "We'd like to become more involved" in the community, he said. "We'd like to expand the programs."

And marketing official Rob Gallas, said "every bit of the profit" from the sale of the seats and bricks from old Comiskey will go to the newly formed White Sox Charities, which will fund undetermined community projects.

At the end of the last season of old Comiskey, Gallas said, the White Sox donated the outfield grass to the Park District. The sod, more than 7,000 yards, was put down in McGuane Park and Donovan Playground in Bridgeport.

Gallas also said new Comiskey will open the season with a White Sox Hall of Fame. While some Negro League memorabilia will be displayed, the museum's focus will be on the White Sox, Gallas said. "This is the Chicago White sox Hall of Fame," he said.

That may be part of the problem, some people say. On Nov. 18, 1989, Malloy, the Negro League expert, wrote White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf a letter suggesting that the team should organize a tribute to the Negro League players during old Comiskey's last season.

"I'm convinced that if the White Sox were to honor Negro League baseball," Malloy wrote, "not only would some small measure of justice be done in terms of historical significance (a noble end in itself), but it just might help in bringing {black] fans back to 35th and Shields."

Gallas wrote back that the team would consider the idea, but nothing ever came of it. He did, however, address the issue of the black fan. "I do think it would take much more than this (event), however, to bring black fans back."

Dan Cattau is a Chicago free lance writer who has written frequently on blacks in baseball.
Tom Corfman contributed to this article.
Interns Muriel Whetstone and Doug Zartman provided research assistance.