Baseball continues losing important piece of Negro Leagues history

The recent death of Joseph "J.B." Spencer Jr., a Negro League star, is a poignant reminder that an important part of baseball history is slowly passing away.

"They're leaving us so fast, it's frightening," said Don Motley, executive director of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. "And their history is getting buried with them."

Motley estimates that there are about 225 surviving Negro League players, but only about 50 from the seminal era before Jackie Robinson broke the major-league color barrier in 1947. Motley hopes to get a sponsorship to start a Buck O'Neil Education and Research Center in honor of the 91-year-old Negro Leagues legend.

"This history has never been told, and they're leaving us," Motley said. "Really, baseball changed America. This was before Brown v. The Board of Education. Martin Luther King was a sophomore when Jackie went in."

The local angle is that Spencer, 83 at the time of his death in Gretna, La., played in 1946 for the Seattle Steelheads, a member of the short-lived West Coast Baseball Association. The six-team league, formed by Harlem Globetrotters mogul Abe Saperstein as a West Coast adjunct to the more established Negro Leagues of the East Coast, lasted just two months in '46 before disbanding.

Spencer's Seattle days are merely a footnote to his impressive résumé, which included 14 years of barnstorming with a number of Negro League teams. Appearing at every position except pitcher, Spencer was a teammate of Josh Gibson on the Homestead Grays when they won the championship in 1943 and 1944, and with the Birmingham Barons when they won in 1945.

The Steelheads played at Sicks' Stadium while the Seattle Rainiers were on the road. Other teams in the league included the Portland Rosebuds (owned by Jesse Owens), Oakland Larks, San Francisco Sea Lions, Los Angeles White Sox and San Diego Tigers.

According to Seattle baseball historian Dave Eskenazi, the Steelheads featured prominent names from the Negro Leagues, including Sherwood Brewer and Nap Gully, in addition to Spencer.

"The Steelheads, for the most part, were the Harlem Globetrotters traveling baseball team," Eskenazi said. "They changed the name and location to Seattle, and continued to play after the league folded."

In 1995, when the Mariners honored the Steelheads as part of the observance of the Negro Leagues' 75th anniversary, not one surviving image could be found that depicted the Steelheads' uniform.

More information on the Steelheads can be found at: www.historylink.org.