By: Katie Lawrence/Contributing Writer
Baseball fever started early at the Biscayne Bay Campus as an event showcasing the Negro Baseball League and their accomplishments was hosted in the Wolf University Center as part of the University’s Black History Month activities.
Students wandered through booths of photos and memorabilia on the afternoon of Feb. 8 in the Wolfe University Center while televisions played movies charting the historic accomplishments of the Negro League. Even some former league players were on hand to take pictures and share stories of their time in a tumultuous era playing America’s greatest game.
The event was sponsored by the Department of Campus Recreation in partnership with More Than a Game, a non-profit organization based in Fort Lauderdale that educates the community about the history of blacks in baseball and promotes the game to inner-city children.
“It’s really about keeping the history alive, and getting kids into it,” said Danny Phillips, the founder and executive director of More Than a Game. “Kids today want to play basketball or football, so we try to remind them how fun baseball can be.”
Phillip, a former minor league player, coach, and lifelong baseball fan, founded More Than a Game in 2004. The organization has since put on numerous events with the African-American Library in Fort Lauderdale, worked with Old Dillard Museum and private collectors to bring memorabilia to the masses, and even started inner-city youth little league teams, the last of which Phillip said brought almost 200 kids out.
Derek Davis, the curator of Old Dillard Museum in Fort Lauderdale works closely with Phillip to help bring the spotlight back to baseball, and to stress the importance of it’s history to black players.
“For the negro league, they were entrepreneurs. They had to build and make a living doing this. That shows the ingenuity they had even through diversity,” said Davis.
Keeping in the spirit of the ballpark, hotdogs, nachos, and popcorn were served (notably absent: beer), and students mingled amongst replica jerseys from teams based on the uniforms from as early as 1907.
John Gray, formerly of the Indianapolis Clowns, and Chico Arenas of the 1957 Cuban Giants, set up shop at a booth with photos and statistics from their heydays.
Gray, who played for five years making 300 to 500 mile bus trips a night for eight months and was not allowed to stay in hotel rooms with his team, often comes out to the More Than a Game events.
“It’s a history,” Gray said. “Our job now is to never let it be forgotten.”
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