Category: History and More

Major League Rugby debuted in 2018 and since then has become a major draw for me. The 2022 season began Saturday with four games – Rugby ATL 55, Old Glory DC 22; Austin Gligronis 43, Dallas Jackals 7; Houston SaberCats 21, LA Giltinis 11; and New England Free Jacks 24, NOLA Gold 13. Today, it’s the Utah Warriors at San Diego Legion and Toronto Arrows at Seattle Seawolves. Rugby New York has a bye week.

Until MLR, my interest in rugby had been confined to catching random international matches on TV and watching “Invictus,” but now I’m hooked on the 13-team circuit. And (fingers crossed) it appears professional rugby has finally found a home in North America, which is a spot on the globe a play-for-pay version of the sport has previously been unable to stick.

I knew about PRO Rugby, which had five franchises and lasted only one season (2016), but I was curious if there were any other earlier attempts to get a league up and running in the United States and Canada.

Turns out there was, but the North American Rugby League – which hoped to piggyback professional football – was all talk and no scrum.

In December, 1958, the Vancouver Sun reported that teams from England, Australia, New Zealand and France had committed to come to the Pacific Coast and play four games against members of a new professional rugby loop that would feature clubs representing Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver. And in order to take advantage of the growing popularity of American and Canadian football, pro players who had made names for themselves on the gridiron would fill out rosters.

The San Francisco and L.A. teams would use athletes who spent their falls playing for the NFL 49ers and Rams, respectively, as well as semi-pro players from teams in Anaheim, Eagle Rock and Venice, California.

Vancouver, on the other hand, was working on a deal that would allow that team to use CFL players employed by the British Columbia Lions.

The news report stated that promoters expected to gross $100,000 the first year and TV rights had already been secured.

Officially named the North American Rugby Football League (but quickly shortened to North American Rugby League), the NARL was formally organized on January 17, 1959. Ward Nash was named commissioner; Charles Edmondson was appointed chairman of the board; and Derek Gardener was tapped as secretary and treasurer.

While Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver were the first three franchises alloted, applications had been received from parties in Bakersfield, California, Houston and Seattle. Groups in Phoenix and Portland had also shown interest in obtaining franchises.

The season would begin in February, 1960, and teams would feature 13-man rosters. The NARL would mostly use International Rugby League rules, although there would be four, 20 minute quarters instead of two, 40-minute halves; halftime would last 15 minutes instead of five; there would be a one-minute rest period between the first and second and third and fourth quarters; and instead of a “try” a major score would be called a “touchdown.”

San Francisco 49ers all-pro Gordy Soltau was one of the organizers of the Bay Area team and in April, 1959, said the league was making headway toward a 1960 launch. However, there were still some questions from investors.

“We have the financial backing,” Soltau told the Vancouver Sun. “But the people backing this want to make sure the league won’t be a flop. When they spend their money, they want the investment to last.”

Former B.C. Lions fullback Al Pollard was offered the Seattle franchise.

“The men I’ve talked to in Seattle have shown great interest in the league,” he said. “One of the problems we have to consider is getting qualified players, But I’ve been informed that this can be done and that the University of Washington has a number of players who could probably make the team.”

However, after that story appeared on April 14 the NARL went dark and – to the best of my knowledge – was never heard from again.

I found no mention of it after the last wave of publicity; it was as though it never even existed. Obviously no pro football players were needed to fill rosters because there were no rosters to fill, and rugby went back to being a strictly amateur sport in North America for the rest of the 20^th century and the first decade and a half of the 21^st.

It would’ve been interesting to see if the popularity of football would’ve rubbed off on its ancestor, helping the North American Rugby League establish itself as a popular spring pastime for fans in the Lower 48 and Canada 62 years ago.

But while that’s something we’ll never know, I do know that Major League Rugby is back in action this weekend. And that makes me happy.

Editor’s note: This column was written two years ago while I was living in Greenville, South Carolina. Now I’m once again a resident of Birmingham and am re-posting as part of Black History Month.

Before last Friday, I didn’t realize that back in 1897 my hometown had a baseball team called the Birmingham Unions.

I knew the great Satchel Paige’s stint with the Birmingham Black Barons lasted from 1927-1930, but was unaware of many of the details.

And I had no idea that more Negro League players got their start in the Birmingham Industrial League than any other semi-pro or textile league circuit in the United States.

Then again, I moved away 14 years ago and before last Friday hadn’t visited the Negro Southern League Museum in Birmingham. Now that I have, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

I’ve long been fascinated by the history of African-American baseball. As a kid growing up in the Magic City my father told me stories of Paige, saying he was “probably the greatest pitcher who ever lived.” That led me to spend plenty of time at the library chasing facts about the Mobile native, who was a five-time Negro League All-Star before becoming the oldest Major League Baseball rookie when he signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1948 at age 42.

My deepest dive, though, came thanks to my friendship with the late Clarence Marble.

A member of the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame due to his success as a prep basketball coach, he was also a skilled athlete who played with the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League in the 1950s.

I covered his basketball teams during my newspaper sports writing days but enjoyed bending his ear about baseball more – conversations that would sometimes last for hours.

Born of segregation and the Jim Crow era, the Negro leagues were case studies in triumph rising from racism.

To that end the NSLM is part classroom, part exhibit – and I could’ve spent all day there.

It has an on-site research center, so any questions you have about the history of virtually everything related to the various leagues is readily available. For me, though, there’s nothing like “seeing” the past, and the memorabilia at the museum turns a stroll down its halls into a trip through a time tunnel.

I’ve spent many summer nights at Rickwood Field, but never saw teams like the Atlanta Black Crackers, New Orleans Crescent Stars or Nashville Elite Giants.

The Black Barons exhibits provide a glimpse of what it was like during the era of greats such as Paige, Willie Mays, Bill Foster and Mule Suttles. These members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, began perfecting their craft in Birmingham, Alabama.

And while it’s cool to see how baseball equipment and uniforms have evolved over the years, studying the actual game-used uniforms worn by legends was a thrill for me.

Paige’s wool uni and cleats as well as a hologram of him pitching? Yeah, that pic will forever remain on my camera roll.

So will the giant photo of Paige featuring actual baseballs he used to throw self-named pitches such as the “Bat Dodger,” “Midnight Rider,” “Wobbly Ball,” and “Trouble Ball.”

There is a display commemorating Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier; a literal wall of 1,500 baseballs; a Cuban Stars baseball contract from 1907 (the oldest known Negro league contract in existence); the McCallister Trophy, the oldest known Negro league trophy … the NSLM has too many treasures to name.

It’s like a part of Cooperstown is located in my hometown, and I look forward to experiencing it again.

For more information on the Negro Southern League Museum, go to birminghamnslm.org.

Indoor football found its niche in the late 1980s thanks to the Arena Football League, and six such circuits are still in operation today.

But indoor baseball?

Well, it was first played on Christmas Day, 1888, when the Down Towns defeated the Up Towns, 6-1, at the Philadelphia State Fairgrounds. But that was just a one-off contested by pro players “wintering” in the city.

An actual indoor league wasn’t realized until more than than a half century later, opening on November 17, 1939, and closing on December 22, 1939, when the league dissolved. And it wasn’t even baseball.

The very, very brief history of the National Professional Indoor Baseball League begins when it was formed in the summer of 1939.

Major League legend Tris Speaker – who had been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame two years earlier – began promoting the concept in July of 1939, suggesting it was a fall/winter indoor sport that could challenge hockey and basketball for popularity. The NPIBL hoped to begin with franchises in Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Toronto. The championship series would be played in March.

Clubs were managed by famous players from baseball’s past. Lined up to lead the charge were big names that included Moose McCormick (New York); Otto Miller (Brooklyn); Harry Davis (Philadelphia); Freddy MacGuire (Boston); the only man to pull an unassisted triple play in the World Series, Bill Wambsganss (Cleveland); Brick Owens (Chicago); Bubbles Hargreaves (Cincinnati); and Gabby Street (St. Louis).

The league constitution included club territorial rights, giving them “exclusive control in each city in its circuit and of the surrounding territory to the extent of five miles in every direction from its corporate limits.”

As for player salaries, they were not to exceed $75 per man, per week.

“We’d run it just like the big leagues,” Speaker told the Cincinnati Enquirer for a September 1, 1939 story. “Two umpires, contracts, a regular schedule, a world series each March between the Eastern and Western sections, and divide up the service money as they do in the big show. We’d limit the teams to 13 players, and I believe that after those nonbelievers among the baseball fans got a load of one of those softball pitchers who strike out 20 and 25 men a game, or look at one of those .500 hitters, they’d really like the game.

“It’ll keep the game alive during the winter. If it stirs up a lot of new kids it will develop some big league stars. Tommy Henrich got his start with a softball team, and so did Ken Keltner. And I think (Joe) DiMaggio did, too.”

To accommodate the enclosed space bases were located 60 feet apart, the pitching distance was 40 feet from mound to plate, and a 12-inch “deadened” ball was used. Players – nine to a side on defense – used ribbed gloves and sneakers.

Miller told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that fans would be impressed by the underhanded pitching skills of the league’s hurlers.

“In this game, the pitcher works the inside of the plate and with good stuff he can have the boys popping up all night,” Miller said. “The topnotch indoor pitcher can put plenty of stuff on the ball and can throw the same curves that you see in the major leagues. It’s real baseball and don’t let any one kid you that it’s an old man’s game. The way these fellows play the game is just as tough as big league baseball.”

Rosters were dotted with some former Major Leaguers, but most were pulled from the amateur softball ranks.  That prompted Wilbur E. Landis, president of the Amateur Softball Association, to warn softball players they’d lose their amateur status if they signed with the NPIBL.

But the idea was that indoor “baseball” could serve as a feeder league to the bigs, so many jumped at the chance to play indoors for pay.

Speaker threw out the first pitch at the November 17 opener at Philadelphia’s Convention Hall, a contest that saw Philly beat Boston, 16-3, in front of 1,000 fans. (Admission fees throughout the league were set at 25 cents, 50 cents and 75 cents).

A few days later 2,500 showed up in the Bronx to see Brooklyn split with New York, 6-5, 7-14, and Boston and Brooklyn played at the Boston Garden before 5,000 fans on November 27 with Brooklyn winning, 4-3 and 8-0.

However, the novelty quickly wore off.

Paying customers lost interest, and by early December most St. Louis players left the team to seek readmission to ASA leagues. On December 5 International News Service reported that the league was close to folding as organizers scrambled to alter the schedule to feature series instead of single games and doubleheaders.

On December 19 Boston withdrew from the NPIBL, and three days later the entire league was done.

“After several meetings to work out a revised schedule which would permit games to be played between eastern and Western teams, it became apparent that this was not practical at this time because suitable buildings were not available on dates which would not conflict,” Speaker said in a statement. “Therefore the clubs will discontinue play for the present. It is hoped that in the future a change in conditions will make it possible to resume.”

As of Christmas Day, 2021, a “change in conditions” has yet to occur, and the Professional Indoor Baseball League continues its 81-year hiatus.