The Beginnings of Diversity in Baseball

As an innovation professor, author and consultant I consistently promote diversity as a key ingredient for successful generation of new and breakthrough ideas.

The more diverse a group you have contributing and building onto ideas the more chance you have of coming up with ideas that will change the world.

There's a simple reasoning behind why this works. When one person has the beginnings of an idea, they often are limited in their ability to fully develop the idea by their own knowledge and experiences. But when you bring together a diverse group, then you have the tremendous advantage of a vastly broader base of knowledge and experiences.

What happens is often magical, in which one person floats an idea and someone else adds to it in a way that the first person would have never thought of. And suddenly you have the beginnings of something big.

Here's a diversity story from The Sports Time Traveler? about the very beginnings of something big in baseball history - the breaking of the color barrier.

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN The Sports Time Traveler?

The Case for Integration in Baseball

90 years ago today, on Feb 8, 1933, sports writer Jimmy Powers started the conversation in the New York Daily News

Len Ferman

INTRODUCTION from?The Sports Time Traveler?

I was traveling around in Manhattan exactly 90 years ago this morning and picked up a copy of the New York Daily News. The back page had caught my attention. There was a large picture of Babe Ruth standing in front of a giant birthday cake made to look like a baseball stadium. The Babe had turned 39 years old 2 days prior (according to the caption).

I always love to read Jimmy Powers sports column in the Daily News. So I flipped to page 40 to read his latest installment.

What Jimmy Powers wrote blew me away. It was a masterful piece calling for the end of race discrimination in baseball. I did not expect to see something like this written in 1933.

The color barrier in baseball wasn’t broken until after World War II when the Dodgers made the bold move and sent Jackie Robinson out to play first base at Ebbets Field on the afternoon of April 15, 1947.

But here, I was 14 years earlier, at the height of the Great Depression, while Herbert Hoover still had another month to go as President. And I was reading Jimmy Powers making the case for integration in major league baseball.

Powers was highly influential. He was the lead sports columnist in New York’s (and the country’s) number one newspaper in circulation (1.4 million copies a day in 1933).

After reading the article I felt I had to travel straight back to 2023 and tell you about it right away. Here’s my article:

NEW YORK - February 8, 1933

I just read Jimmy Power column in “today’s” New York Daily News and I have to share the highlights of this remarkable post.

While some of the language might sound offensive to us in 2023, the article was a heartfelt, impassioned plea to allow black baseball players to have an opportunity in the major leagues.

Jimmy’s first sentence states that he is going to make the case for black baseball players. He couldn’t have been more blunt in revealing his position.

The Daily News Editorial Staff Subtly Floats the Idea

In the middle of the column, Powers referenced that the Daily News had floated the idea in an editorial the prior week. I quickly found a copy of the February 1st Daily News and read the main editorial column. They had a section titled,?“What’s Wrong with Baseball”,?which examined why baseball attendance had been in decline. The 2nd paragraph in that section read as follows:

“Another trouble with major league baseball would seem to be the color line drawn in the big leagues.”

It was noted that there have been good baseball players who were Indians, Mexicans, Cubans, etc. But good black players weren’t eligible.

At the end of the editorial was a list of suggestions to improve the baseball situation, which included the idea to?“erase the color line.”

Powers Attempts to Influence the Top Brass in Baseball

Powers then writes that a few days later, on Sunday, February 5th there was a baseball writers dinner at the Commodore Hotel, which was also attended by many owners, players and managers. At the dinner, celebrated journalist Heywood Broun was a speaker and he endorsed the editorial from the Daily News.

Powers then made an audacious move at the dinner that he described in his column today:

“At the Baseball Writers Dinner I made an informal tour around the tables asking club owners and players their reactions to Heywood Broun’s little talk… I was amazed at the sentiment in favor of the idea. The only important man present vetoing it was the guest of honor John J. McGraw. The others, Branch Rickey of the Cardinals, John Heydler, president of the National League, Jacob Ruppert of the Yankees, Frankie Frisch, Herb Pennock, Lou Gehrig - all displayed a refreshing open mindedness.”

Powers is Empowered by His “Focus Group” Feedback

Enthused from the results of his informal focus group at the writers dinner, Powers asserted in his column that it is only a question of time as to when black ball players would be admitted into the big leagues. He supported this by writing:

“I base this upon the fact that the ballplayer of today is more intelligent and liberal than yesterday’s leather-necked, tobacco-chewing sharpshooter. White college men who have hung up football cleats or track spikes in the same locker rooms as their (black) teammates are not suddenly going to assume the old bias when they enter the runways of the Stadium or Polo Grounds.”

Near the end of the column he refers positively to the great Olympic track stars Eddie Tolan and Ralph Metcalfe as black athletes who are humble heroes. The pair had won gold and silver in the 100 meter dash 6 months ago at the Los Angeles Olympics.

Powers Punches Home His Case

Powers then punched home his final stamp of approval for integration in baseball with this concluding sentence:

“Youngsters of this type can play ball for my money any afternoon in the week.”

Jimmy Powers provided a good start to a long overdue conversation 90 years ago today.

It’s a shame that it still took another 14 years to see the first black player in a major league uniform.

POSTSCRIPT from?The Sports Time Traveler?

In the article 90 years ago this morning, Jimmy Powers mentioned he received positive feedback on his idea when he shared it with Branch Rickey while they were together at the baseball writers dinner. Rickey at that time was the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals aka “The Gas House Gang.”

14 years later, in 1947, Branch Rickey was the GM for the Brooklyn Dodgers. And it was Rickey who cultivated and brought up Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers for the purpose of becoming the first black man to play major league baseball.

We’ll never know for sure, but it’s likely that Jimmy Powers sharing his idea with Branch Rickey in 1933 may have set in motion the steps that Rickey took to break the color barrier in baseball.