| Sol White | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Second baseman /Manager | |
| Born:(1868-06-12)June 12, 1868 Bellaire, Ohio, U.S. | |
| Died: August 26, 1955(1955-08-26) (aged 87) Central Islip, New York, U.S. | |
Batted: Right Threw: Right | |
| Negro leagues debut | |
| 1887, for the Pittsburgh Keystones | |
| Last Negro leagues appearance | |
| 1907, for the Philadelphia Giants | |
| Negro leagues[a] statistics | |
| Managerial Record | 11–20 |
| Winning percentage | .355 |
Managerial record atBaseball Reference  | |
| Teams | |
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| Career highlights and awards | |
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| Member of the National | |
 Baseball Hall of Fame | |
| Induction | 2006 |
| Election method | Committee on African-American Baseball |
King Solomon White (June 12, 1868 – August 26, 1955) was an American professionalbaseballinfielder,manager and executive, and one of the pioneers of theNegro leagues. An active sportswriter for many years, he wrote the first definitive history of black baseball in 1907. He was elected to theBaseball Hall of Fame in2006.
Born inBellaire, Ohio, White's early life is not well-documented. According to the 1870 and 1880 U.S. Census, his family (parents and two oldest siblings) came from Virginia. His father, Saul Solomon White, apparently died when White was very young. White's mother, Judith, supported Sol and four siblings with her work as a "washer woman."[5] White "learned to play ball when quite a youngster."[6]
As a teenager White was a fan of the Bellaire Globes, local amateurs. The journalist Floyd J. Calvin recounts the story of how White got a chance to play for his team. The Globes were playing a team from Marietta, Ohio. "One of the Globes players got his finger smashed and since they all knew Sol, the captain pushed him into the game. Sol always remembered that game for the captain and second baseman of the Marietta team was none other thanBan B. Johnson, in later years president of theAmerican League and a leading sportsman of the West. Sol takes pride in having played against Ban when he was an obscure captain of a hick town club."[7]
White quickly made a name for himself as a ballplayer. By the time he was 16, he "attracted the attention of managers of independent teams throughout the Ohio Valley and his services were in great demand."[6] Originally a shortstop, White eventually "developed into a great all-round player filling any position from catcher to right field."[8] In 1887 he joined thePittsburgh Keystones of theNational Colored Base Ball League[1] as a left fielder and later second baseman. He was batting .308 when the league folded after a week of play.[9] He then joined the Wheeling (West Virginia) Green Stockings of theOhio State League and batted .370 with a slugging percentage of .502 as the team's third baseman.
In the off-season the Ohio State League renamed itself theTri-State League and banned black players, including White.Weldy Walker, an African American catcher for the league's Akron club, wrote an eloquent open letter to league officials protesting the decision. It was published in theSporting Life in March 1888, and within a few weeks the ban was rescinded.[10][11] White was resigned and sent to join his team on the road, but the Wheeling manager,Al Buckenberger, refused to accept him, and he was released.[12] He rejoined the Pittsburgh Keystones, and played in a "Colored Championship" tournament held in New York City, in which the Keystones finished second to theCuban Giants.[13]
White spent 1889 with theNew York Gorhams, a black team that spent part of the season in theMiddle States League.[14] White played both catcher and second base for the Gorhams.[15] The next year, he joined theYork Colored Monarchs of theEastern Interstate League, a white-owned team that signed up most of the 1889Cuban Giants. White played second base, hit .350, and stole 21 bases in 54 games. In 1891 he played for theBig Gorhams of New York, a team that he later called "without a doubt one of the strongest teams ever gotten together, white or black."[16] The Gorhams briefly representedNorwalk, Connecticut, in theConnecticut State League.[17]
In 1895 White batted .385 as a second baseman forFort Wayne, Indiana of theWestern Interstate League.[9] Later that year, White replacedBud Fowler at second base on the barnstormingPage Fence Giants team, batting .404 as the Giants finished with a 118-36-2 record and played in 112 towns in 7 states.[18]
White enrolled inWilberforce University as a theology student in 1896, spending the next four years alternating between professional baseball with theCuban X-Giants in the summer and college in the fall and winter.[19][20] He was still listed as an athletic instructor at Wilberforce in 1900.[3]
After a year as shortstop for theChicago Columbia Giants in 1900 and one last season with the Cuban X-Giants in 1901, White moved to Philadelphia where he co-founded thePhiladelphia Giants. His playing time was gradually curtailed as he concentrated on management.
According to research by Bob Davids, White spent all or part of five seasons in organized minor leagues, playing 152 games and hitting .359 with 169 runs scored, 231 hits, 40 doubles, and 41 stolen bases.[21]
Along withWalter Schlichter, a sportswriter for thePhiladelphia Item, and Harry Smith, a baseball writer for thePhiladelphia Tribune, White founded thePhiladelphia Giants in 1902. He served as the team's captain and manager. The Giants were at first paid on a profit-sharing "cooperative plan," but in 1903 White reorganized the team and put all the players on salary.[7] The Giants lost a playoff for the colored championship to theCuban X-Giants and their ace pitcher,Rube Foster. The following season White signed Foster, outfielderPete Hill, and second basemanCharlie Grant, and the Philadelphia Giants won a championship series from the X-Giants, five games to two.
For 1905 White brought inHome Run Johnson of the X-Giants, and made the Philadelphia Giants into what he considered "the strongest organization of the time." The Giants went undefeated againstNew England League teams and swept four games from the NewarkInternational League team.[7] The Giants played a total of 158 games, winning 134, losing 21, and tying 3.[22] The powerful baseball promoter and team ownerNat Strong declared the 1904-1905 Philadelphia Giants "the best team in the history of the game."[23]
Despite losing Johnson to theBrooklyn Royal Giants in 1906, the Giants won both the informal "colored championship" and the pennant of the racially integratedInternational League of Independent Professional Base Ball Clubs. More player losses followed in 1907, as Rube Foster defected to theLeland Giants of Chicago. But White brought in eventual Hall of FamerJohn Henry Lloyd to play shortstop along with catcherBruce Petway, and the Giants finished first in theNational Association of Colored Baseball Clubs of the United States and Cuba, an all-black league. This marked the fourth consecutive year in which the Philadelphia Giants claimed the black professional championship.[24]
The Giants lostPete Hill to the Lelands in 1908, and in 1909 Sol White left the team after a disagreement with Schlichter.[25] White managed thePhiladelphia Quaker Giants for a year. In 1910 he was hired to manage theBrooklyn Royal Giants, but had trouble controlling some of the players, and left after the season.[26] For the following seasonJess McMahon and his brother Eddie hired White to manage their new team, theNew York Lincoln Giants. White assembled another collection of top players, includingJohn Henry Lloyd,Spot Poles, andBill Francis. In July 1911 he raided his old team, the Philadelphia Giants, for their star rookie battery,Dick Redding andLouis Santop. As a result, Schlichter could no longer keep the team running, and disbanded it.[27] However, White quit the Lincolns before the season was over, replaced as manager by Lloyd.[28]
White was next hired to manage theFe club of theCuban League for the 1911-12 winter season. He brought along Rube Foster and a number of American black players, but the team lost five of its first six games, and White and most of his players were released.[28][29] After a year managing an obscure team called the Boston Giants, White retired from baseball, and returned to Bellaire.[7]
He returned to baseball to serve as secretary for theColumbus Buckeyes of theNegro National League in 1921, and helped bring in his old player, John Henry Lloyd, as player-manager. White then took on his last two managerial jobs, both in Cleveland: in 1922 he guided an independent club, the Fears Giants of Cleveland, and in 1924 he managed theCleveland Browns of the Negro National League.[30][31] His last job in baseball was as a coach for the 1926Newark Stars of theEastern Colored League.[32]
Sol White is perhaps best known for writingHistory of Colored Base Ball, also known (on the title page) asSol White's Official Base Ball Guide. A small, 128-page, soft-covered pamphlet,History of Colored Base Ball was sold atPhiladelphia Giants games in the spring of 1907.[33][34]
The first chapter, "Colored Base Ball," begins with the organization in 1885 of the first professional colored baseball team, discusses the brusque removal of all black players from predominantly white teams during the next four years, and then traces the growing strength of "colored base ball" into the early years of the 20th century. This short book-within-a-book is history, but it can also be described as an almanac, a scorecard, an archive, a who's who of African-American baseball up to 1907.
In addition to White's narrative of the history of black professional teams, the book featured chapters on "Colored Baseball as a Profession," "The Color Line," and "Managers' Troubles," among others.Rube Foster, one of White's former players, contributed a chapter on "How to Pitch," andHome Run Johnson wrote a short essay on the "Art and Science of Hitting." The book was also illustrated with 57 photographs of players, manager, and owners, many of them found nowhere else.[34]
White'sHistory of Colored Base Ball was the first book devoted to black professional baseball, and it would remain the only one for more than 60 years, untilRobert W. Peterson publishedOnly the Ball Was White in 1970. Today only five copies are known to exist.[35]
Sol White's career as a baseball writer would continue with a series of articles on "colored baseball" in theCleveland Advocate, a black newspaper, in 1919.[36] After he moved to the east coast in the 1920s he wrote articles and columns for theNew York Age and theNew York Amsterdam News.
In 1927 thePittsburgh Courier reported that White "has a new book he would like to publish, a kind of second edition to his old one, bringing the game from 1907 down to date, and if there is anybody anywhere in sports circles who thinks enough of what has gone before to help Sol print his record, he will be glad to hear from them. Without a doubt this record will prove valuable in years to come." This second book on black baseball by Sol White never appeared.[7]
Sol White married Florence Fields on March 15, 1906. Their first child, a son named Paran Walter White (named after Sol's older brother), was born later that year. A second son, a boy, died when he was only two days old in August 1907. Paran died of kidney disease in April 1908. A third child, a daughter named Marion, lived to adulthood and survived her father. Florence and Sol White appear to have become separated at some point before 1930.[37]
When White was inducted into theNational Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, no family member was present, so Commissioner of BaseballBud Selig accepted his plaque on the family's behalf.[37]
In September 2024 an Ohio Historical Marker was placed in Bellaire, Ohio at the city park, Union Square, to remember the town's native son.
White died at age 87 inCentral Islip, New York. He was buried in an unmarked grave inFrederick Douglass Memorial Park in theOakwood neighborhood ofStaten Island,New York City, until 2014, when theNegro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project installed a new headstone at his burial site. He remains the only Hall of Famer buried on Staten Island.[38][39]
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| League pennants (2) | International League: 1906 National Association: 1907 | ||||||
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