Two Black Giants teams Play ball
One hundred years ago today … Two Black baseball teams, the Bacharach Giants and the Chicago American Giants, played a doubleheader at Dyckman Oval, whose home plate was just at the intersection of Academy and Nagle in Inwood.
[Please see NY1920s director Jonathan Goldman’s Atlas Obscura.article about Dyckman Oval and this very day, October 2nd, 1921.]
1924 aerial view of Dyckman Ovall. Planning and Land Use Map. NYC.gov
The Bacharachs, technically based in Atlantic City, were led by player-manager Dick Redding, now in the official Baseball Hall of Fame. The American Giants, hailing from Chicago, were owned by Rube Foster, Negro Leagues pioneer.
New York Age, 8 October 1921, p. 6. Newspapers.com
These two teams had squared off almost exactly a year earlier, as we wrote in our October 9, 1920 post.
– Jonathan Goldman, October 2, 2021
TAGS: baseball, sports, stadiums, Black history, African American athlete, business, segregation