Homestead Grays
|
|
The Homestead Grays were a professional baseball team that played in the Negro Leagues in the United States. The team was formed in 1912 by Cumberland Posey, and would remain in continuous operation for 38 seasons. The team was based in Homestead, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.
The Grays did join the American Negro League in 1929, but that league lasted only one season. The team operated independently again until 1932, when Posey organized the ill-fated East-West League; that league also collapsed before completing its first and only season.
Posey entered his Grays in the Negro National League in 1935. With the near-collapse of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Josh Gibson returned to the Grays in 1937, combining with slugger Buck Leonard to power the Grays to nine consecutive Negro National League Championships and three Negro League World Series titles.
Following the collapse of the Negro National League after the 1948 season, the Grays struggled to continue as an independent club, but ultimately disbanded at the close of the 1950 season.
From the late 1930s through the 1940s, the Grays played their home games at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. However, during this same period the club adopted the Washington, D.C. area as its "home away from home" and scheduled many of its "home" games at Washington's Griffith Stadium, the home park of the Washington Senators.
External links
- Beyond the Shadow of the Senators (http://www.beyondtheshadow.com/) — the website is a companion to the book of the same name, a comprehensive history of the Grays, written by Brad Snyder. The site contains information on the individuals featured in the book and the first chapter of the book.