Another Barrier Broken: Woman to Go Into Hall

Effa Manley, co-owner of the Negro League Newark Eagles, on Monday became the first woman elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Manley and 16 others from the Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues were selected by a 12-person panel and will be inducted July 30 with Bruce Sutter, the only player elected this year by the Baseball Writers Assn. of America.

The class, composed of 12 players and five executives, was narrowed after a five-year study funded by Major League Baseball produced a database of more than 3,000 players and contributors.

From a preliminary list of 39, the special committee selected Negro League players Ray Brown, Willard Brown, Andy Cooper, Biz Mackey, Mule Suttles, Cristobal Torriente and Jud Wilson, pre-Negro League players Frank Grant, Pete Hill, Jose Mendez, Louis Santop and Ben Taylor, and executives Alex Pompez, Cum Posey, J.L. Wilkinson, Sol White and Manley.

Outfielder Monte Irvin played 10 seasons for the Newark Eagles when they were owned by Manley and with or against several of the players elected. Don Newcombe and Larry Doby also played for the Eagles.

“I only wish Jackie Robinson were alive to see the fruits of his wonderful pioneering,” said Irvin, who played eight seasons with the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1973.

Irvin, who turned 87 Saturday, said of Manley: “She was strong, handsome, intelligent. She knew a lot about baseball and tried to improve the lot of Negro Leaguers.”

He recalled Manley’s inviting the likes of Joe Louis, Ella Fitzgerald and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson to throw out ceremonial first pitches in Newark. Manley, who was white, owned the team with her husband, Abe. She died in 1981.

“She was civic-minded,” Irvin said. “She was quite beloved in Newark for years.”

Irvin reached the major leagues in 1949, two years after Robinson broke the color barrier with the Dodgers.

“I wish people could have seen Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Buck Leonard play,” Irvin said of his fellow Hall of Famers. “The players of today are good, but I wish they could have seen these guys. They were marvelous players.”

Noting the dearth of information regarding players from the Negro and pre-Negro leagues, the baseball Hall of Fame, with the help of a $250,000 grant from Major League Baseball, began gathering information and statistics in 2000. Former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent served as nonvoting chairman of the committee that selected the 17 players and contributors, pared from the 39 chosen at a November meeting in Vero Beach, Fla. Buck O’Neil and Minnie Minoso were the only living nominees.

“I’m delighted,” Commissioner Bud Selig said. “It’s long overdue. It’s something that should have been done decades ago. It’s the fair and right thing to do. We’ve taken the first giant step.”