Philadelphia Baseball History

While searing the Internet and browsing through social media to find topics to highlight during African-American History Month, I came across a tweet claiming that the Philadelphia Dolly Vardens, a team of all African-American women, became the first professional baseball team in 1867, a full two years before the formation of the Cincinnati Red Stockings.   Intrigued, but also skeptical, I wanted to find out more about the Dolly Vardens. The first thing I noticed is that the statement that the Dolly Vardens were the first professional baseball team, or the first team to be paid to play baseball, is repeated on numerous websites, tweets, and Instagram posts without any citation or reference to an original source.   One Facebook page, entitled “The Dolly Varden Project,” even posts a photo of an all-female African-American team claiming it to be of the Dolly Vardens.   Further research, however, reveals the photo to be of a team organized by a YMCA in the 1920s. ...

    “Big Bertha” was the nickname given to large German artillery guns used during the First World War.   It was also the nickname given to a 6’ 4” tall, 240 pound navy veteran hailing from Tyler, Texas named Louis Napoleon Santop. Gifted with explosive power both behind the plate and at the plate, Santop was the premiere catcher and power hitter in African-American baseball in the pre- and early negro league era. In pre-game warm-ups, Santop entertained the crowd with an exhibition of his arm strength, throwing a baseball over the centerfield fence, and then randomly throwing to each of the bases, all while in the crouched position behind the plate. At the plate, Santop hit massive line-drives in the dead ball era.   It has been said that he could call his shots long before Babe Ruth did it in the 1932 World Series, and even hit one home run about 500 feet. At age twenty, Santop made-up half of the “kid battery” of the 1910 Philadelphia Giants,...

In the first decade of the 20th Century, a Philadelphia team dominated African-American baseball, claiming the title of World's Colored Champions from1904-1910. The team included such Hall of Famers as Sol White, Rube Foster, Pete Hill, Frank Grant and John Henry "Pop"Lloyd. By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.