Philadelphia Baseball History

Beginning with Octavius Catto and Jacob White of the Philadelphia Pythians, the City of Brotherly Love played a large role in the development of African-American baseball. The origins of several talented African-American teams include ties to the Philadelphia area, such as the Cuban Giants, and the Philadelphia Giants. One such team that played in the early 20 th Century was the Hilldale Club. Hilldale played in a city just southwest of Philadelphia, Darby, PA.   The team had its roots in an athletic association for young men, called the Hilldale Athletic Club, formed in 1910. Ed Bolden, who worked in the main branch of the Philadelphia Post Office, founded the club, and had Hilldale Park built in 1914 at Chester and Cedar Avenues in Darby.   Bolden eventually incorporated the team in 1916 as the “Hilldale Baseball and Exhibition Company,” and began recruiting top African-American baseball players. Hilldale had no official nickname, and was mostly referred to as H...

    “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 1869, two years after Octavius Catto and the Philadelphia Pythians were denied entry into the National Association Base Ball Players because of the color of their skin, fully professional teams emerged. Disappointingly, in the age of professionalism, segregation continued to plague the sport. As professional baseball grew, Philadelphia played a key role in the development of African-American teams.  The Athletic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia captured the first pennant of a fully professional league in 1871, and then played the first game of the National League in 1876.  But the professional major leagues were an exclusive club of all-white teams. In 1884, brothers Moses Fleetwood Walker and Weldy Walker discovered just how exclusive that club was.  The Walker brothers were African-Americans who played for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association, a major league that rivaled the National League in the 19th Century. Teams from the American Associ...

Those who have seen Ken Burns' documentary, Baseball, are familiar with the Philadelphia Pythians. Led by prominent educators Octavius Catto and Jacobs White,  the Pythians were a team of African-American players who pushed for greater racial equality. They frequently spoke about civil rights with the other African-American teams they played when socializing after the game. In 1867, the Pythians first applied for entrance in the Pennsylvania Association of Base Ball Players, but were asked to withdraw their request because of race. They went on to apply for membership in the National Association of Base Ball Players.  They were denied entrance based on the shameful view that by keeping the races separate, there could be no hard feelings. The Pythians faded after their star shortstop, Catto, was murdered on election day by an Irish Democrat who wanted to prevent Catto from encouraging more African-Americans to go to the polls and vote for the more progressive Republican Part...