Owners’ Success Wasn’t Strictly by the Numbers

Two of the special inductees going into the baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday were executives who had enormous impact on the game in the black baseball era. They expanded opportunities for players, broadened the playing field and ran successful, powerful franchises. They also had something else in common.

Both had connections with illegal gambling.

Alejandro Pompez, owner of the Cuban Stars (later the Cuban Giants) of the Negro National League, and Effa Manley, a barrier-breaking female executive with the Newark Eagles, were connected to lucrative “numbers” operations that peaked during the 1920s and ‘30s and were fixtures in black communities across the nation.

Pompez ran one based in Harlem in New York City; Manley was married to a “numbers man” from Jersey City, N.J.

The special committee in charge of judging candidates from the black baseball era for Hall of Fame induction decided that the two made overall contributions to the game that far outweighed their links to illegal businesses.

“Both were worthy as executives,” committee member Raymond Doswell said.

Pompez, a black Cuban American, got involved in baseball during the 1920s, building the Cuban Stars into a force and, in 1924, helping create the first Negro World Series. He also was the first owner to sign Latin players and among the first whose team played home night games.

Manley, the first woman to be voted into the Hall, helped her husband, Abe, make the Eagles into a powerhouse featuring such stars as Larry Doby, Don Newcombe, Monte Irvin, Leon Day, Ray Dandridge and Biz Mackey. She also is credited with pushing through rules requiring major league teams to pay compensation for signing Negro leaguers.

Pompez died in 1974 and Manley in 1981. Neither ever tried to hide the connection to “numbers running,” which worked like a lottery: For as a little as a penny, a gambler picked any three-digit number. Usually, the last numbers of the daily handle at a racetrack or the next day’s volume of the stock exchange determined the winner.

It was big business -- and provided the funding for several Negro league baseball teams.

Bob Kendrick, marketing director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, said the numbers-running owners, who also included the innovative Gus Greenlee of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, “were revered in the community.”

“They did a lot of good for people,” Kendrick added. “They were leaders within the African American community, while the athletes were the heroes.

“Back then, no matter how much money you made you still lived in the same community. So people saw them on a daily basis.”

Abe Manley’s racketeering operation was anything but a well-kept secret, according to his wife.

“He was in a 100% illegal business, but the people loved him,” she said in the 1984 documentary “There Was Always Sun Shining Someplace.”

“He had enough money to throw away, to invest in what he wanted to do, and that was Negro baseball. He ended up actually losing money; he invested $100,000 in Negro baseball, but he enjoyed it and we had a wonderful team.”

Pompez acknowledged his role in gambling when he was indicted in 1937 for his connection to Dutch Schultz’s racketeering organization. He turned states evidence to avoid a long prison sentence, then reportedly gave up his numbers operation for good and moved to Mexico for two years.

In 1939, Pompez returned to New York and his Cuban Stars rejoined the Negro National League, for which he served as vice president. Over the years, Pompez developed a friendship with New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham, and in 1947 he became a Giants scout and the Cuban Stars became the club’s farm team.

In his role as scout, Pompez helped to further integrate the major leagues, signing such Latin stars as Orlando Cepeda, Tony Oliva, Juan Marichal and Camilo Pascual.

He was so well respected that in 1970 he joined the Hall of Fame committee responsible for inducting the first four classes of Negro leaguers into Cooperstown.

Manley was no less influential.

She was in her early 20s when she met Abe, 24 years older, at the 1932 World Series. They were married in 1935 and took over the Eagles a year later, with Abe providing the financing and doing much of the scouting but with Effa running the team on a day-to-day basis.

“She was the person we dealt with,” said Ted Toles, who played for the Crawfords and the Eagles in his career. “She was the person around the team every day.”

Not only around, but directly involved.

Manley often gave advice to Eagles managers, crossing her legs to signal for a hit-and-run play from her seat near the team’s bench.

This practice might have resulted in the invention of the batting helmet.

Legend has it that as her team played the Baltimore Elite Giants in 1942, Manley was responsible for the Eagles’ Willie Wells being hit in the head by a pitch. It seems she hesitated while moving her legs and Wells was beaned as he stared at her.

The next game, Wells wore a construction hard hat when it was his turn at bat.

“I know that she was real nice to look at,” said Benjamin Jones, who played for the New York Black Yankees. “We liked to play games in Newark.”

Indeed, she was so attractive that legendary pitcher Satchel Paige reportedly turned down a lucrative contract offer from the Eagles after Manley rebuffed his suggestion that she become his sideline girlfriend.

Manley grew up with black siblings, even though she was white. Her mother was German and was married twice to black men, having four children with one, then two with her next husband.

In the book “Invisible Men,” Manley said she was the product of an affair between her mother and a white man. “I was this blond, hazel-eyed white girl always with these Negro children,” she said.

Manley’s complexion wasn’t a problem in the Negro leagues. She was a public relations master who fought hard for civil rights, even promoting an “Anti-Lynching Day” game in 1939. She also was the treasurer of the Newark, N.J., chapter of the NAACP and a charter member of Citizens League for Fair Play, which led several movements against department stores in 1934 and promoted the slogan, “Don’t buy where you can’t work.”

In 1947, Manley set a precedent for the Negro leagues when she negotiated the formal sale of Larry Doby to the Cleveland Indians. It was the first time that a major league team paid compensation for signing a player bound by a Negro league contract.

“I didn’t know if she was a light-skinned black woman or white,” Toles said. “All I know is that she was a great lady who did a lot for the game.”

Like Pompez, she did enough to make ties to any illegal activity a footnote in the eyes of Hall of Fame voters. So while hit leader Pete Rose remains suspended from baseball and ineligible for induction because of his gambling transgressions, Manley and Pompez are in. To the committee, the situations are apples and oranges. Different cultures. Different times.

“Everyone knew what the owners did to make money, at least I always did,” Toles said. “That’s just the way it was. There wasn’t any hiding of what the owners really did, but that was fine because we were just playing baseball.”

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The other series

The highlights of the baseball careers of Newark’s Effa Manley and Alejandro Pompez of the New York Cubans were championships in the Negro World Series. The results of the Negro leagues series, originally between the Negro National League and the Eastern Colored League, and later between the second Negro National League and the Negro American League:

* 1924 -- Kansas City Monarchs (NNL) d. Philadelphia Hilldale Daisies (ECL), 5-4-1.

* 1925 -- Philadelphia Hilldale Daisies (ECL) d. Kansas City Monarchs (NNL), 5-1.

* 1926 -- Chicago American Giants (NNL) d. Atlantic City Bacharach Giants (ECL), 5-4-2.

* 1927 -- Chicago American Giants (NNL) d. Atlantic City Bacharach Giants (ECL), 5-3-1.

* 1942 -- Kansas City Monarchs (NAL) d. Homestead Grays (NNL), 4-0.

* 1943 -- Homestead Grays (NNL) d. Birmingham Black Barons (NAL), 4-3-1.

* 1944 -- Homestead Grays (NNL) d. Birmingham Black Barons (NAL), 4-1.

* 1945 -- Cleveland Buckeyes (NAL) d. Homestead Grays (NNL), 4-0.

* 1946 -- Newark Eagles (NNL) d. Kansas City Monarchs (NAL), 4-3.

* 1947 -- New York Cubans (NNL) d. Cleveland Buckeyes (NAL), 4-1-1.

* 1948 -- Homestead Grays (NNL) d. Birmingham Black Barons (NAL), 4-1.

Source: The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues

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The owners

Some of the top executives of black baseball:

* Frank Leland -- A former outfielder, Leland was a pioneering organizer as owner and manager of the Chicago Union Giants, who eventually became known as the Leland Giants and dominated black baseball in the Midwest in the first decade of the 20th century.

* Andrew “Rube” Foster -- Perhaps no man had as wide an array of accomplishments in baseball as this 6-foot-2, 200-pound Texan. He was black baseball’s best pitcher at the start of the 20th century, credited with winning 51 games in 1902. He became the most respected manager in the game, turning the Chicago American Giants into a dynasty as owner and manager with his style of “small ball.” And in 1920, he was the force behind the organization of the first Negro National League. A nervous breakdown led to his death at 51 in 1930. Elected to the Hall of Fame in 1981.

* J.L. Wilkinson -- The lone white owner in the original Negro National League, “Wilkie” had run the touring All Nations team, featuring players of a variety of nationalities and ethnicities, before establishing the Kansas City Monarchs in 1920. In contrast to the white booking agents who were seen as unduly profiting off of black teams, Wilkinson was respected by his players and fellow owners, and made the Monarchs an integral part of Kansas City’s black society for nearly three decades. He’ll be inducted into the Hall on Sunday.

* Eddie Bolden -- A shy Philadelphian, Bolden was a thorn in the side of the Midwestern powers, leading player raids to help build his Hilldale club into an Eastern power. He founded the Eastern Colored League in 1923, with Hilldale winning the first three championships. Like Foster, he suffered a nervous breakdown; without his leadership, the league folded in 1928. He returned to found the Philadelphia Stars five years later.

* Cumberland Posey -- One of the dominant voices in Eastern black baseball for more than 30 years, Posey was the force behind the Homestead Grays, one of the most successful Negro league teams. Posey developed such talent as Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard, began night baseball years before lights were used in the major leagues and wrote a column for the Pittsburgh Courier. He stretched the Grays’ presence from Pittsburgh to Washington, staging games at both Forbes Field and Griffith Stadium. Will be inducted into the Hall on Sunday.

* Gus Greenlee -- A politician and a numbers banker, Greenlee was Posey’s nemesis in Pittsburgh, buying the Crawfords in 1931 and stocking the roster with the likes of Gibson, Satchel Paige and Cool Papa Bell. The Crawfords’ meteoric rise was short and sweet, but before having to sell the club in 1938 because of a financial downturn, Greenlee founded the second Negro National League and built the only stadium specifically made for a black baseball team.

* Abe and Effa Manley -- With Abe, a sportsman and numbers banker, supplying the capital, and Effa handling the business end, the Manleys ran the Newark Eagles for more than a decade. Their team won a Negro World Series and produced the likes of Larry Doby and Monte Irvin, but their legacy also includes social activism, often using Eagles games to promote civic causes. Effa Manley will be inducted into the Hall on Sunday.

* Alejandro Pompez -- A sports promoter and a numbers banker, Pompez was a longtime leader in Eastern black baseball, first with the Cuban Stars from 1922 to ’29 and then the New York Cubans from 1935 to ’50. He was a member of the Dutch Schultz mob and was indicted in a 1936 crackdown of New York racketeers but rehabilitated himself enough later in life to serve as a member of the Hall of Fame’s special committee for the Negro leagues. Will be inducted into the Hall on Sunday.

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Sources: The Biographical Encyclopedia of The Negro Baseball Leagues, The Kansas City Monarchs, aaregistry.com

Van Nightingale Los Angeles Times