Author: Scott Adamson

The Black Barons’ 2-for-1 special

Split seasons have long been common in baseball’s farm system. Once the first half of a schedule is completed, the records are reset and the second half of the slate begins.

But a season that sees a club split from its minor league circuit in order to move up to the majors?

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That’s quite the rarity.

However, that was the turn of fortune for the Birmingham Black Barons (and Memphis Red Sox) 100 years ago. They started out the 1923 season as franchises in the Negro Southern League – then considered a minor league – only to finish as associate members of the top-tier Negro National League.

The “traditional” season began on May 1 at Rickwood Field, where 5,000 fans were on hand to watch the Black Barons – managed by Poindexter Williams – defeat the Red Sox, 16-4. According to press reports, the game featured 27 hits, seven stolen bases and 10 errors.

Birmingham, down 3-0 entering the bottom of the third, scored five runs in the frame and cruised from there.

In fact, that year the Black Barons spent much of their time in the Southern League cruising past the opposition. The team was overflowing with talent, from power-hitting left fielder/first baseman (and future National Baseball Hall of Famer) George “Mule” Suttles to shortstop Geechie Meredith to pitcher Harry Salmon, who boasted a 2.19 ERA in 1923.

Birmingham took one game of a doubleheader from Memphis on July 15 to improve to 54-6, having long since clinched the first half of the NSL title. According to a Birmingham News story, the team also held their Tennessee rivals scoreless for 63 innings during a stretch in May.

The clubs were scheduled to meet again at Memphis’ Lewis Park on July 16, but that didn’t happen.

Instead, both organizations became associate members of the National League, prompting the Southern League to cancel the rest of its 1923 season.

The big league was founded by Rube Foster on February 13, 1920, and featured some of the game’s top players. Among them were future Hall of Famers Bernardo Baro, Oscar Charleston, Valentin Drake, Pete Hill, Biz Mackey, Jose Mendez, Bullet Rogan, Ben Taylor and Cristobal Torriente.

Foster, who was a great player before becoming a manager and executive, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1981.

The 1923 Negro National League was made up of the Kansas City Monarchs, Chicago American Giants. Detroit Stars, Indianapolis ABCs, Cuban Stars West, St. Louis Stars, Toledo Tigers (replacing the Cleveland Tate Stars, which dropped out of the league midseason) and Milwaukee Bears. Black Barons team owner Joe Rush put up $10,000 to help make the move up possible, and the addition of the Red Sox gave the Negro National League solid footing in the Deep South.

Before ever playing a game, Birmingham’s team was in the national spotlight.

“For the first time in the history of the Negro National League, the American Giants and Chicago will leave home during the middle of the season and make a trip South, playing in Birmingham on Aug. 20, 21 and 22,” touted The Chicago Defender. “These three days will be gala days in the Southern metropolis and many people are expected to come out and witness the new Southern entry in the Negro National League play Rube Foster’s club, thrice winners of the league pennant.”

The Black Barons’ first major league outing resulted in a 4-4 draw with Milwaukee on July 19 at Rickwood, a clash that earned a glowing review from the Birmingham News:

“The Birmingham Black Barons opened their career as Major Leaguers at Rickwood Field on Thursday afternoon by fighting the famous Milwaukee giants to a 4-4 tie in the 10 hectic and exciting innings of real baseball. Seldom has the old park seen such a fiercely waged battle as was fought within the confines of its walls Thursday. The game was featured by the diminutive Black Baron shortsmith, Geechie, and the hitting of (Charles) Wesley, the local keystoner (second baseman).”

Birmingham went on to win the series, which also made news far from the Magic City.

Wrote the Pittsburgh Courier: “The Birmingham Black Barons, pride of the South, made an auspicious debut into the big-league circles last week when they won two games from the Milwaukee Bears of the Negro National League, lost one and tied one.”

Birmingham’s season ended on September 29 with a 5-3 home loss to the American Giants. In 45 Negro National League games that summer, Williams’ charges compiled a 16-25-4 record and earned the support of overflow crowds at Rickwood Field.

The Black Barons existed from 1920 to 1960, and during that time competed in the Negro Southern League (1920-1923, 1926, 1931-36); Negro National League (1924-25, 1927-30); and Negro American League (1940-1960). They claimed four NAL titles (1943, 1944, 1948 and 1959).

On Dec. 20, 2020, Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that the sport would correct “a longtime oversight in the game’s history” by granting all Negro Leagues as well as their 3,400-plus players official major league status.

“All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game’s best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice,” Manfred said in a statement. “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.”

Turns out the Black Barons were big leaguers even before they reached the big stage a century ago.

(If you’re in or near Birmingham and want to learn more about the history of the Black Barons and these leagues, visit the Negro Southern League Museum across from Regions Field. It’s open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday).

Football across the stars

The modern incarnation of the United States Football League pulled off that rarest of feats; not only did the made-for-TV spring/summer circuit survive its inaugural season, it was renewed for a second.

In 2022 all eight teams were based in a Birmingham hub, so the Birmingham Stallions were the only squad that actually played in the city bearing its name.

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The New Jersey Generals, Tampa Bay Bandits, Houston Gamblers, Michigan Panthers, New Orleans Breakers, Philadelphia Stars and Pittsburgh Maulers never once suited up in New Jersey, Tampa Bay, Houston, Michigan, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

This coming season there will be four hubs; Birmingham will host the Stallions and Breakers at Protective Stadium; Detroit’s Ford Field will be base camp for the Panthers and Stars; the Memphis Showboats (replacing the Bandits) will share Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium with the Gamblers; and home for the Generals and Maulers will be Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio.

Yep, fans in Ohio will be asked to cheer for a New Jersey and/or Pittsburgh-branded team.

While league officials plan to eventually get all teams in the actual markets they represent, I think that’s secondary in the grand scheme of things. The USFL is a television series as much as it is a sports organization, so its owner – FOX – is more concerned about eyeballs watching the TV production than fans watching from the stands.

Good Triple A football presented in a major league way resulted in solid ratings from first week to last, meaning this USFL might’ve cracked the code when it comes to building a sustainable alternative football league.

Thus, they gave future football league founders a blueprint for success. And the way I see it, if it’s possible to identify teams with a city, state or region without actually having them play in that city, state, or region, why not go galactic?

Therefore, I respectfully request that the next person/group/business/corporation/network that decides to jump into the sports startup game forms the Interplanetary League of American Football (ILAF), which will compete in a single Earth-based hub for its first few thousand years of operation.

Each of the eight planets in our solar system will have a team to call their own, and to save you all time and effort I’ve taken the liberty to select nicknames for them. Please give a warm, alt-football welcome to the Earth Wind & Fire, Jupiter Auroras, Mars Rovers, Mercury Messengers, Neptune Voyagers, Saturn Rings, Uranus Probes, and Venus Flytraps. (Ideally, inhabitants of each planet would participate in a name-the-team contest, but that’s at least a millennium or two away).

Keeping with the interplanetary theme, the hub should be placed in an area known for space travel. To that end I suggest Brevard County, Florida, home of Cape Canaveral. A quick Google search shows that Rick Stottler Field is located on the Florida Tech campus in Melbourne, so that should do.

It’s primarily used for soccer and lacrosse and seats only 750, but that’s not a problem. The key is getting people from around the globe (and eventually, beyond) to watch on their TVs or mobile devices.

Who should be the ILAF’s broadcast partner?

The USFL has the FOX and NBC family of networks, and XFL 3.0 will be beamed via Disney’s ESPN, ABC and FX. If you’re looking at traditional, “major” networks, then CBS would be the logical choice.

But I’m not logical, and I choose to stick with a theme.

Therefore, Pluto TV should televise all the ILAF games.

I mean, it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Pluto is a dwarf planet and the ninth-largest known object to directly orbit the Sun (and of course I’m referring to the trans-Neptunian object and not the network … the network is located on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, which is roughly 91.525 million miles from the Sun. I’m not sure about its square footage).

It’ll be fun to see Drew Barrymore do commercials for the ILAF, although Pluto advertisements tend to haphazardly break into programming. That could prove to be irritating, especially in the middle of a play.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think it could work.

Put together some good logos, uniforms and color schemes, and I guarantee people would snatch up T-shirts, hoodies and hats repping ILAF teams.

In addition, a league of planets lends itself to catchy slogans.

“Mars Attacks!” could tie in to both the 1996 Tim Burton movie and the high-octane offense of the Rovers.

Saturn could go with, “Saturn: We run rings around the competition.” A secondary theme might be, “Saturn: We stopped building cars so we could build champions.”

And T-shirts that proclaim, “Jupiter … it’s a gas, gas, gas,” and “They’re not Uranus, they’re OURanus” would fly off the shelves.

Probably.

However, one big difference between the ILAF and USFL involves the timeline of franchise placement. I’m confident that if the USFL takes root, it’ll migrate to local markets. When it comes to moving ILAF clubs to their home planets, though, league officials will have no choice but to play the long game.

The desire to have the Rovers ply their trade in a domed stadium near scenic Olympus Mons must wait for colonization of the Red Planet as well as a combination of public and private funding for the venue. The holdup might be whether to use New Republic Credit (Star Wars) or Energy Credits (Star Trek) to pay for it.

And the temperature on Venus is anywhere between 820 and 900 degrees. Thus, just about all the Flytraps’ home games would have to be played at night.

Plus, Venus is more than 141 million miles from Earth, so that’ll make road trips exhausting for the Wind & Fire. It’ll be even worse if they try to cut costs and travel by bus.

Oh, and one hour on Mercury is equal to roughly 58 hours on Earth. You’ll want to stock up on plenty of beer and snacks for Messengers home games (and hope they never, ever go into overtime).

But we can worry about the minor details later.

For now, let’s concentrate on spreading alt-football hub love throughout our solar system.

And if the TV ratings are good enough, ILAF expansion in the Milky Way Galaxy might happen sooner than you think – possibly within the next 10,000 years.

Earth and Kepler-186f would be one heck of a gridiron rivalry.

A two-way street

Dereon Seabron was signed by the Pelicans organization last September.

Like other college basketball standouts, North Carolina State’s Dereon Seabron was hoping to hear his name called during the 2022 NBA Draft.

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl

Two teams were quite familiar with his name, though, and that prompted a call from his agent.

“On draft night, when it got to the later part of the second round, my agent called me and said there were two teams that would offer me a two-way contract if I didn’t get drafted – the (New Orleans) Pelicans and the (Philadelphia) 76ers,” remembers Seabron, who was voted the Atlantic Coast Conference Most Improved Player and second team All-ACC for the 2021-22 season. “But I never worked out with the 76ers. New Orleans liked me a lot and things went well when I got there, so I took the two-way from them. I flew in, we had training camp for summer league, and that’s how it all started.”

Seabron, a 6-6 guard, signed with the Pelicans last September, setting the stage for a season that has him spending some time with the parent club and the rest with New Orleans’ G League affiliate, the Birmingham Squadron.

Playing overseas can be a lucrative alternative for undrafted players, but Seabron said he never considered that an option, especially after scoring 17.3 points and pulling down 8.2 rebounds per game in his final (redshirt sophomore) season with the Wolfpack.

“For me, personally, playing overseas wasn’t something I thought about,” he said. “The NBA was the only thing on my mind because I dreamt of it as a kid and felt like I was good enough to make a team.”

Two-way contracts date back to January 19, 2017, when the NBA reached a collective bargaining agreement which went into effect for the upcoming season. Part of the deal meant that teams could retain rights to two players who were part of what was then called the NBA Development League.

It would allow big league clubs to effectively expand their rosters from 15 to 17 players.

Then, it was an experiment, with 53 players signing two-way deals for 2017-18.

Today, such contracts are standard practice in the NBA/G League dynamic. And for Seabron, the benefits of being in the system are already paying dividends.

“It’s a good experience,” Seabron said. “When I went to work out with New Orleans, it just felt like a family atmosphere. I really like the organization.”

Players who have fewer than four years of NBA experience can sign a two-way contract, and are limited to two years with the same team. They’re eligible to play in 50 of the parent club’s regular season games (but are ineligible for the postseason) and can still practice with the team when not playing. Of course, NBA down time usually means active time with the G League team.

Two-way players are paid a flat rate equal to half of the league’s minimum salary, and there are no salary cap implications.

Seabron is the only active two-way player in the Pelicans’ organization; the other, E.J. Liddell out of Ohio State, is currently recovering from a torn right ACL.

And while a player can be cut at any time, his contract can also be converted to a regular NBA contract (point guard Mike James was the first to get the contract upgrade, that coming on December 7, 2017, when he was with the Phoenix Suns). Once this happens, another two-way contract spot opens.

Seabron led the Squadron in scoring in two of the first three regular season games, then was transferred to New Orleans prior to Birmingham’s West Coast trip. On January 9, during the Pelicans’ 132-112 road victory against the Washington Wizards, he scored his first NBA points and was presented the game ball by New Orleans coach Willie Green.

Last Sunday in the Squadron’s 122-104 loss to the Stockton Kings, Seabron shared high-scoring honors with Javonte Smart by hitting for 22.

Entering the two-game road swing at Raptors 905, Seabron had suited up for Birmingham 17 times (averaging 14.3 points per game), and has four appearances with New Orleans. In his 18th and 19th games with the Squadron, he totaled 40 points, leading the team with 25 points in a 115-95 victory on Thursday.

“I really like the concept of two-way players, and I really like our guy,” Birmingham coach T.J. Saint said. “I told him after (Saturday’s win over Stockton) that it was one of the best games I’ve seen from him as far as controlling the game at the end. Not forcing it, getting organized … I was very proud of him.”

Seabron hopes to make his way to a full-time roster spot with the Pelicans sooner than later, of course, but his time in Birmingham has been time well spent.

“I definitely think playing in Birmingham has helped me a lot, especially on the defensive end,” he said. “I can go out and get the reps and make reads, and we do the same things here they’re doing in New Orleans, so it makes it easier when you make the move.”

Saint agrees.

“We have some non-negotiables and defense is one, so if he didn’t (play defense), I’d pull him right away,” Saint said. “But again, he’s getting it done, and I’m very proud of how he’s playing.”