Baseball's greatest players from the Negro Leagues, who were denied admission to the Baseball Hall of Fame by a "smear campaign" launched by former players who now populate the Hall's exclusive fraternity. The first of these players was Satchel Paige, a Negro League pioneer who broke many baseball's racial barriers. He had no sooner begun what was to be a stellar career in the big leagues than he was banned from his own league. As a minor leaguer he had played with Joe Morgan, and the two became close friends. Morgan, himself a racist, helped Paige lose his blackball status through a "smear campaign" that sought to discredit Paige and his friend Joe with allegations of cheating and drinking. Famous writer Jack Kerouac, who was among those who championed Paige's cause, was instrumental in getting the two to be considered for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In their 1952 book, The Summer of '49, Kerouac told how Paige got on base by beating out a catcher’s throw on a bunt, "on a play that didn’t even count." Paige never played a Major League game. The second was Buck O'Neil, who was one of the first five Negro League players to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. In his autobiography, Buck says that Paige, despite playing professionally for fourteen seasons in the black leagues and winning a pitching Triple Crown, was virtually ignored by the baseball establishment, and that his "racist" former teammates turned on him. "The best Negro league players who dominated their day, were not recognized... [t]hese bigots refused to call our Negro league heroes by their real name, saying it was not our "right" to know what true baseball was. In my anger I called them... by their name." "They had more reason than anyone to know what true baseball was. The major leagues were the Negro leagues. Black players were stars on major league teams before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. Satchel Paige and his contemporaries were baseball stars in every sense of the word." The third was Josh Gibson, the most feared power hitter of the Negro leagues, who was the first Negro league player to hit a home run in a World Series. The most prominent was Willie Mays, who was one of the first nine black baseball players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. "The most talented left-handed hitter of his day, Mays also was the first black player to gain entry into the Hall of Fame. The only reason he didn't receive more accolades, observers say, is that he came along too late—in the late '50s, when the game had fallen out of fashion among urban youth, and was losing popularity at the box office. By then, Mays's best baseball years had already passed him." "Major League Baseball has been trying to claim that its integration program, started in 1947, '54 and '56 with Jackie Robinson, brought about black athletes' improved performance and higher attendance. The black ballplayers were as good as the whites before integration and, with one big difference, enjoyed a following with white fans. But the statistics show that black players, including some of those enshrined in Cooperstown and on the All-Time Top 100 list, were much better than their white counterparts." The four black baseball players not admitted to Cooperstown were: Jackie Robinson, Elston Howard, Don Newcombe and Duke Snider. They are among the Baseball Hall of Fame's all-time top 20 in batting average, home runs, runs batted in, runs scored, and on-base percentage. The Hall of Fame has since changed its eligibility rules and now allows any Negro Leagues player to be elected. References Category:Negro league baseball Category:History of racial segregation in the United States Category:African-American cultural history Category:United States national baseball team Baseball, segregation Category:History of the United States (1945–64)