"'Take Me Out To The Ballgame', A Look At East Orange, NJ's Role In Negro League Baseball History."

The first person I met today, when I visited the Edward T. Bowser, Sr. School of Excellence in East Orange, New Jersey, was "Mr. Tony", a 1935 Orange High classmate of Baseball Hall of Famer and former Orange Triangle, Newark Eagle and New York Giants outfielder Monte Irvin. Mr. Tony, a youthful elderly man who has hardly been slowed by time, was kind enough to show me his copy of the 1935 Orange Peel, Orange High's school yearbook, which he opened, and carefully turned through, 73-year old page after page, until he finally arrived at a picture of Monte Irvin, on the Orange High football team as a freshman, his head circled in black marker in the middle of the second row of players, as Monte Irvin appeared at just sixteen years old, two years away from first joining the Newark Eagles as a professional baseball player under the assumed name, "Jimmy Nelson", which Monte Irvin used to protect his collegiate eligibility according to the Negro League Baseball Players Association(NLBPA) web site's profile of the great Negro League and MLB outfielder.

The reason for my visit to the Edward T. Bowser school was the performance of a play conceived and written by former teacher, Administrator and East Orange School Board member Annie V. Moore entitled "'Take Me Out to the Ballgame': The story of Negro League Baseball", which was going to be perfomed by the school's fourth grade class in front of a crowd that was comprised of members of the families of several of the baseball players featured in the play, including Monte Irvin, Charlie Biot and Ray Dandridge, along with the Honorable Mayor of East Orange, and various politicians and baseball scholars and writers with connections to the school or city. 

 The audience was informed in the introduction that the fourth grade class had only been give a month to prepare their parts, but you never would have known by the way they flawlessly stomped, cheered, rapped, sang, donned baseball gloves, swung well-timed bats and danced their way through the performance. The audience was clearly won over and moved by the children's enthusiasm and genuine connection to the material they performed, with one solo song by a young soft-voiced shy girl even drawing screams of support from the parents in the first rows of the crowd. 

Following the performance and several speeches, by the Mayor, the School's Vice Principal, the author and the director of the play, the teachers and families of the Negro League players were treated to coffee and pastries in the school's library and I took a moment to show Monte Irvin's elderly, but still younger brother some photos I had collected while doing some research on his older brother's career, and the younger Mr. Irvin looked at the pictures on my computer, quickly noting that they all showed Monte Irvin as a NY Giant, as opposed to his Negro League days with the Newark Eagles, and Mr. Irvin was then kind enough to tell me a few quick anecdotes as he rested at one of the tables in the library... 

According to his brother, Monte Irving had gone up to his fellow outfielder with the Giants, Willie Mays, shortly after Mays' iconic catch in center field during the first game of the 1954 World Series against Cleveland in New York's old Polo Grounds, (with Irvin playing in left), and Monte Irvin had told Mays that he never thought Willie would catch up with the ball, to which Willie Mays responded, "I had it all the way." 

Willie Mays the Catch (via gregusjay)

Mr. Irvin relayed that his brother Monte had had a tough time after returning from World War II, where he had been around at the Battle of the Bulge, and he says that it took about a year after he had returned before his brother improved, and then several years after Jackie Robinson had first broken the color barrier in baseball in 1947, Monte Irvin joined the New York Giants, where along with Willie Mays and Hank Thompson, Irvin was one of the three starters, according to his NLBPA profile, to, "...form the first all-black outfielder(sic) in the Major Leagues."

I asked Mr. Irvin if he was aware of any animosity his brother Monte or any of the other Negro League ballplayers had been said to have felt toward Jackie Robinson because he was chosen as the first black player to enter the Major Leauges, and Mr. Irvin responds, "Oh yeah, Josh Gibson was mad." "Why?" I ask, "...because he thought he was better than Jackie?" "He was better," Mr. Irvin assures me." I ask Mr. Irvin one last question, "Did you go to the Polo Grounds a lot after Monte joined the team?" "I lived there," Mr. Irvin smiles, "...got in free too, so..." 

I decided that I'd taken enough of his time, especially when there were several other people wanting to take pictures and talk to Mr. Irvin, so I said goodbye to him, and Mr. Tony, and Annie V. Moore, the author of the play, and thanked them for having me as their guest, took a few pictures and left, and once outside quickly jotted down everything I could remember having heard into my notebook, before heading off toward home where I would spend the night watching the modern game.