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Baseball pioneer J. L. Wilkinson (1878-1964) was the owner and founder, in 1920, of the famed Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. The only white owner in the Negro National League (NNL), Wilkinson earned a reputation for treating players with fairness and respect. He began his career in Iowa as a player, later organizing a traveling women's team in 1908 and the multiracial All-Nations club in 1912.
He led the Monarchs to two Negro Leagues World Series championships and numerous pennants in the NNL and the Negro American League. During the Depression he developed an ingenious portable lighting system for night games, credited with saving black baseball. He resurrected the career of legendary pitcher Satchel Paige in 1938 and in 1945 signed a rookie named Jackie Robinson to the Monarchs. Wilkinson was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, joining 14 Monarchs players.
List of contents
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments
Prologue: "A Thrilling and Fascinating Epic"
¿1.¿Early Life and a Start in Baseball (1878-1911)
¿2.¿Breaking New Ground-The All-Nations Team (1912-1919)
¿3.¿Founding the Monarchs and the Negro National League (1920-1923)
¿4.¿Negro National League and World Champions (1924-1929)
¿5.¿The Innovator-Night Baseball and Barnstorming (1930-1936)
¿6.¿Joining the Negro American League (1937-1938)
¿7.¿J. L. Wilkinson and the Rebirth of Satchel Paige (1938-1939)
¿8.¿The "Black Yankees"-The Monarchs Reach Their Peak (1940-1945)
¿9.¿J. L. Wilkinson, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball (1945)
10.¿Final Years for Wilkinson and the Monarchs (1946-1964)
Epilogue: The Long Road to Cooperstown
Appendix: Kansas City Monarchs Rosters and Records During the J. L. Wilkinson Era (1920-1948)
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
William A. Young, SABR member, is an emeritus professor of religious studies at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and the author of John Tortes "Chief" Meyers: A Baseball Biography (McFarland, 2012) and several books on the world's religions. He lives in Columbia, Missouri.
