ABSTRACT
Determining when Negro league baseball ended is every bit as difficult as pinpointing when it began.2 For Wendell Smith in early 1950 the Negro leagues were “on the ropes and ready for the killing,” a description that preceded “probably the worst [season] in the history of Negro baseball.”34 Black baseball historian Larry Lester ends his timeline of the East-West Classic in 1953, even though the all-star game continued in some form until 1963.5 The 1953 Classic drew only 10,000 people, underwhelming the big league scouts who were on hand to evaluate the fast-shrinking pool of talent.6 Lester justifies his endpoint with the fact that the 1953 edition was the last to showcase a Negro leaguer on his way to the major leagues-Ernie Banks of the Kansas
City Monarchs and Chicago Cubs. Lester’s judgment is supported by coverage in the black press, which ended routine, weekly game coverage of the black leagues also after the 1953 season and cast the once-great Classic that year as an also-ran. The Courier’s William G. Nunn wrote that year that the midsummer contest and crown jewel of the Negro leagues for twenty years needed nothing short of “an overhauling.” The “names” were gone, he wrote, and with them the big crowds, fanfare, celebrities, and high-profile politicians.7
