Kansas City Monarchs: King of Teams “From a sociological point of view the Monarchs have done more than any other single agent in Kansas City to break the damnable outrage of prejudice that exists in this city.” Kansas City Call i
Kansas City, often called the Heart of America, was a cultural melting pot, the breadbasket of the Midwest, and at one time was home of the Monarchs, the “King of Teams.”
In hearty Kansas City, barbecue is a religion. Meat is blessed with juicy spices and baptized in smoke. Note, barbecue and baseball have a lot in common - heat, smoke and sweat. Both arts use hard woods, hickory for cooking and ash for hitting. There are pit masters and there are mound masters; one with slow heat and the other with fast heat.
Let us not forget Jazz and Blues, with their own KC styles, and distinctiveness. Similar to a saxophone solo by Charlie Parker or Lester Young, black baseball was pulsative, innovative and syncopative, and provided a palate of fun. Modestly speaking, Kansas City is the home of the best black baseball, blues and “Q” in the nation. Here baseball is as black as the blues.
Black baseball begins in Kansas City around 1890 with the semi-pro, semi-organized Kansas City Maroons, who played at Exposition Park. Around 1897 the Wall’s Laundry Grays, sponsored by Chinese businessman Quong Fond, came on the scene. That same year, J.W. Jenkins of Jenkins Music Company organized a black team.
In 1920, Algona, Iowa native J.L. “Wilkie” Wilkinson revitalized the popular Monarch name, and brought together his top stars from the multi-racial All-Nations team with some soldiers from Arizona’s army Camp Stephen D. Little.
The first interracial contest played for Kansas City fans came about in 1921. Wilkie challenged the American Association League’s Kansas City Blues to a post season exhibition series at Association Park (19th-21st & Olive). The park, owned by George Tebeau, allowed blacks to attend but restricted their seating to the top fourteen rows of seats, even when black teams used the field. In the best-of-nine series, the Blues prevailed by winning five of eight games.
The next year the fifth-place Blues met the Monarchs for a rematch. The Blues had led the American Association in team batting with a .313 average and had finished second in the home run derby with 112 homers. Eleven Blues had batted over .300 that season. During the series, the Monarchs’ pitching staff hurled six complete games and held the Blues to a .278 batting average. The Monarchs’ slugger Oscar “Heavy” Johnson hit three homers in the series, batting .368, with a slugging percentage of .842. The Monarchs bested the Blues in five of six games.
That was the last interracial matchup between the Kansas City teams. The Kansas City Call, one of the city’s black newspapers, spoke proudly of the Monarchs’ triumph:
“The series has done more to boost Negro-organized baseball in this town with the white fans than anything else could have done. While they have always attended in large numbers, still the games they saw were regular league games and they have generally believed that it was an inferior grade of ball. But their eyes are open now to the fact that it isn’t lack of ability that keeps the Negro ball players off the big time – it’s color.” ii
The Kansas City Star crowned the Monarchs “The New City Champions.”iii Confronting the social attitudes of the period, this prolific headline appeared to be detrimental to America’s favorite pastime. The Star’s provocative statement incited Thomas J. Hickey, president of the American Association, to ban interleague, rather than interracial, play between the two teams.
The ban did not discourage the Monarchs from reaching a higher plateau. Going forward, the Monarchs would produce several championship teams, future major league players and become black baseball’s longest running and most stable franchise. The club sent more players into Major League baseball than any other Negro League team. The roll-call of 21 players included: Hank Thompson, Quincy Trouppe, Connie Johnson, Gene Baker, Curt Roberts, Elston Howard, Bob Thurman, John Kennedy, Frank Barnes, Pancho Herrera, Hank Mason, George Altman, Sweet Lou Johnson, Walt Bond, J.C. Hartman, George Spriggs, Ike Brown and future Hall of Famers; Jackie Robinson, Willard Brown, Leroy “Satchel” Paige, and Ernie Banks. Many were managed by John “Buck” O’Neil who in 1962 became the first African- American coach in Major League Baseball with the Chicago Cubs.
Overall, the Monarchs won 17 divisional or league pennants and World Series in 1924 and 1942. In 1924, the Hilldale Club (Darby, Pennsylvania) of the Eastern Colored League met the Monarchs in the best-of-nine series for the colored championship. However, a 13-inning tie (6-6) in game four, would force a tenth and deciding game, making it the longest World Series – black or white – on record in modern times. It was arguably the most dramatic as well, as each team reeled off three consecutive wins, four games were decided by a single run, and five were won in the final inning.
Statistically, their winning percentage of .785, in 1929, is the highest in Negro League history. In seven seasons the Monarchs won more than 70 percent of their games. Fittingly, from 1920 to 1955 they were the winningest team in black baseball.
In 1942, they captured their second World Series crown by defeating the Homestead Grays’ slugging duo of Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard in a four-game sweep of Pittsburgh’s best. The champions were managed by Frank Duncan, Jr., the husband of Blues singer Julia Lee, known as the “Princess of the Boogie Woogie” on Vine Street. Baseball and Blues were first cousins in Kansas City.
These crown winners produced a Cooperstown Hall of Fame register that included; Banks, Cool Papa Bell, Brown, Willie Foster, John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, Jose Mendez, Paige, Robinson, Cristobal Torriente, Norman “Turkey” Stearnes, Hilton Smith, Willie “Devil” Wells, Andy Cooper, their highly respected white owner, Wilkinson and Wilber “Bullet” Rogan. Rogan’s signed baseball is one of the jewels in the Kansas City Museum’s collection, and is widely coveted by autograph collectors.
For more than 35 years, the Monarchs were the class of the Kansas City community, and had become a national sporting institution before the team was sold to Grand Rapids businessman Ted Rasberry in 1955. Although the team relocated to Michigan, they retained the “Kansas City Monarchs” moniker and its stellar reputation as the “King of Teams” in black baseball.
REFERENCES i Bruce, Janet. “Beyond the Box Score: The Kansas City Monarchs.” History News, Volume 47, Number 2 (1992): 11. ii Kansas City Call, 20 October 1922 iii Kansas City Star, 19 October 1922
Biography: LESTER IS ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL MUSEUM (NLBM) in Kansas City, Missouri, serving as their research director and treasurer for five years (1991-1995). He was instrumental in development of the Museum’s business plan and licensing program. He also served as senior editor for the Museum’s quarterly newsletter Silhouettes, and its annual yearbook Discover Greatness!
Lester developed the traveling Negro League exhibit that has been showcased each year since 1993 at Major League Baseball’s FanFest during All-Star Week. A similar exhibit “Discover Greatness” owned by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum has toured at various museums nationally since 1999. He left the NLBM in 1995.
From 2000 to 2004, Lester worked with the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in Cooperstown in New York on a comprehensive study of African American baseball, from the Civil War up through the mid-fifties. The exhibit was appropriately titled “Out of the Shadows.” The project findings are expected be released in the near future, with several publications expected from this academic study. In 2006, Lester served on the special Negro Leagues committee for the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, which selected a record 17 Negro League players, executives and managers to join the Hall.
He lives in Raytown with his wife Valcinia and their three daughters.
The Community Curator program of Kansas City Museum invites historians and history educators from the Kansas City community to share their perspectives on artifacts they choose from the Museum collection. Lectures are presented with the actual artifact accompanying the observations of the Community Curator, so that audience members may examine them first-hand. |
