Kansas City Monarchs

The Kansas City Monarchs were the longest-running franchise in the history of baseball's Negro leagues. Operating in Kansas City, Missouri, and owned by J. L. Wilkinson, they were charter members of the Negro National League from 1920 to 1930. Wilkinson was the first white owner at the time of the establishment of the team. In 1930, the Monarchs became the first professional baseball team to use a portable lighting system which was transported from game to game in trucks to play games at night, five years before any Major League Baseball team did. The Monarchs won ten league championships before integration, and triumphed in the first Negro World Series in 1924. The Monarchs had only one season in which they did not have a winning record and produced more major league players than any other Negro league franchise. After relocating to Grand Rapids, Michigan, the team was disbanded in 1965.

Negro National League

The Monarchs were formed in 1920, primarily from two sources. Owner J. L. Wilkinson drew players from his All Nations barnstorming team, which had been inactive during World War I, and the 25th Infantry Wreckers, an all-black team recruited into the U.S. Army almost exclusively for their playing talent. He put together a collection of talent, including pitcher/outfielder Bullet Rogan, an eventual Hall of Famer who established himself as one of the most popular stars of the new league; sluggers Dobie Moore, Heavy Johnson, George Carr, and Hurley McNair; and pitchers Rube Currie and Cliff Bell. Immediate contenders, the Monarchs became bitter rivals to black baseball's reigning power, Rube Foster's Chicago American Giants. After three years of failing to break off the Giants' hold on the pennant, Wilkinson fired manager Sam Crawford in mid-1923, replacing him with veteran Cuban star José Méndez, who then led the Monarchs to the league championship.

thumb|left|Frank Duncan, 1924 Monarchs

Winning the pennant again in 1924, the Monarchs participated in the first Negro League World Series, defeating the Eastern Colored League champion Hilldale team from Darby, Pennsylvania, in a ten-game series (five wins, four losses, and one tie). In this series, Méndez had an ERA of 1.42 in four of the games and was responsible for a shutout in the one game he was the starting pitcher in. Motivated by the Monarchs' runaway pennant victory, NNL president Rube Foster changed the league schedule to a split-season format for 1925. However, Kansas City still took the league title again in 1925, but lost the World Series to Hilldale when Rogan was injured just before the series began, winning one game and losing five.

Even though Méndez was the manager, he still pitched during the few years he held the position.

Night baseball

The Monarchs won four pennant championships before they introduced night baseball in the 1930s. The Kansas City Monarchs started playing night baseball to try to get more people to come to the games. the first night game was in early march, 1930 in Lawrence, Kansas. The Monarchs had portable light systems that could be transported on the team's bus to any game. The lights were powered by portable generators and attached to retractable poles. This was the first team to regularly play baseball under artificial light, including the major league teams. Night baseball gave the Monarchs more time to play more games, which also allowed them to make more profits. This increase in profits helped the Kansas City Monarchs continue to be one of the most stable franchises in the Negro Leagues.

Barnstorming, Negro American League

Following the death of the original league, the Monarchs spent several years as an independent team, mostly barnstorming through the Midwest, West, and western Canada. They frequently toured with the House of David baseball team. Hall of Famers Hilton Smith, a pitcher, and Willard Brown, a slugging shortstop/outfielder with a consistent batting average of over .300, Suffering from an arm injury and generally thought to be done, Paige joined the Monarchs' B team in 1939; by 1940 he had recovered and been called up to the Monarchs' main squad, where he became their top drawing card. Paige was the subject of a lot of stories, both true and folklore, and became a legend to people who don't even follow baseball. For example, he was known to have known the outfielders to sit on the ground behind him while he struck out the hitter and there was someone on base that could possibly tie the game up. Paige also warmed up before pitching in a game by throwing across a gum wrapper as home plate.

In 1945, UCLA football star and Army lieutenant Jackie Robinson hit .387 as the Monarchs' shortstop. He became the first Monarch to make the jump to white baseball, signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946. He broke the minor league color line in 1946 with the Montreal Royals, and integrated the major leagues with the Dodgers in 1947. As baseball gradually desegregated in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Monarchs developed a niche as the foremost developer of black talent for the major leagues. The team sent more players to the majors than any other Negro league franchise, including Robinson, Paige, Ernie Banks, Elston Howard, Hank Thompson, and Willard Brown.

Newt Allen succeeded Cooper as manager in 1941, and was followed by Frank Duncan in 1942. Duncan stayed at the helm through the 1947 season winning two league titles and one world title. After Duncan stepped down, longtime first baseman Buck O'Neil took over. Then Monarchs lost the league title to the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948 which prevented them from appearing in the last Negro World Series. 1948 was also the year that Wilkinson sold the Monarchs to Tom Baird who owned the team through their minor league days in the 1950s. After a single season of scheduling games with the major league Kansas City Athletics as prime tenants of the renamed Municipal Stadium, Tom Baird sold eight players to major league clubs and four more players to minor league teams, released his manager, Buck O'Neil, who then signed on as a scout for the Chicago Cubs, From 1956 on, the Monarchs were a full-time barnstorming team. The Negro American League ceased operations in 1962, and the Monarchs finally disbanded after the 1965 season. In Grand Rapids, the Monarchs Played at Valley Field, located at 700 Valley Ave NW, near where Sullivan Field is today.

Minor league affiliate

The Kansas City Monarchs were one of a few Negro league teams that informally employed a farm team. The Monroe Monarchs played from the late 1920s to 1935, mostly as a minor league team loosely associated with Kansas City.

Players

Baseball Hall of Famers

Players and managers listed in bold are depicted on their Hall of Fame plaques wearing a Monarchs cap insignia. An asterisk (*) denotes the player is depicted on Hall of Fame plaque without a cap insignia or with the cap insignia obscured but the Hall of Fame recognizes Monarchs as "Primary Team"

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ style="background:maroon; color:white;"|Kansas City Monarchs Hall of Famers

!scope="col" style="background:maroon; color:white;"|Inductee

!scope="col" style="background:maroon; color:white;"|Position

!scope="col" style="background:maroon; color:white;"|Tenure

!scope="col" style="background:maroon; color:white;"|Inducted

!scope="row"| Ernie Banks

| SS/1B || 1950–1953 || 1977

!scope="row"| Cool Papa Bell

| CF || 1932 || 1974

!scope="row"| Willard Brown

| OF || 1935–1944<br />1946–1949 || 2006

!scope="row"| Andy Cooper

| P || 1928–1929, 1931<br />1933–1939 || 2006

!scope="row"| Bill Foster

| P || 1931 || 1996

!scope="row"| José Méndez

| P || 1917, 1920–1926 || 2006

!scope="row"|Buck O'Neil

|Executive

|1938-1943, 1946-1955

|2022

!scope="row"| Satchel Paige*

| P || 1935, 1940–1947 || 1971

!scope="row"| Jackie Robinson

| 2B || 1945 || 1962

!scope="row"| Bullet Rogan

| P/OF ||1920–1930<br />1933–1938 || 1998

!scope="row"| Hilton Smith*

| P || 1937–1948 || 2001

!scope="row"| Turkey Stearnes

| OF || 1931, 1934<br />1938–1940 || 2000

!scope="row"| Cristobal Torriente

| OF || 1916–1917, 1926 || 2006

!scope="row"| Willie Wells

| SS|| 1932 || 1997

!scope="row"| J.L. Wilkinson*

| Founder || 1920–1947 || 2006

Other notable players

Toni Stone (1954); first woman to play in the negro leagues (1953); she was traded from the Indianapolis Clowns to the Monarchs in the 1950s.
Elston Howard (1948–1950) 12 time MLB All-Star; 1963 AL Most Valuable Player.
Quincy Trouppe (1932, 1935)
Sam Bankhead utility man; highly valued.

Legacy

In February 2021, the team's name was revived by a Kansas City, Kansas, minor league team, the Kansas City T-Bones. The name was approved through a negotiation with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

MLB throwback jerseys

The Kansas City Royals have honored the Monarchs by wearing replica uniforms during regular-season baseball games on several occasions, including July 14, 2001 (at Pittsburgh), July 1, 2007, and May 30, 2009 (at home vs. White Sox), June 9, 2012 (at Pittsburgh), July 21, 2012, and June 23, 2019 (both at home vs. Minnesota), August 24, 2013 (at home vs. Washington Nationals), May 18, 2014 (at home vs. Baltimore), May 17, 2015 (at home vs. New York Yankees), May 15, 2016 (at home vs. Atlanta), May 7, 2017 (at home vs. Cleveland), and August 13, 2022 (at home vs. Los Angeles Dodgers). Throwback jerseys worn during Royals home games have typically been auctioned as a fundraiser for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

References

Additional references

Only the Ball was White by Robert Peterson (1970) Publisher: Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs NJ)
The Kansas City Monarchs by Janet Bruce-Campbell {1985} Publisher: University Press of Kansas (Lawrence KS)
The Monarchs 1920–1938, Featuring Wilber "Bullet" Rogan by Phil S. Dixon {2002} Publisher: Mariah Press (Sioux Falls SD)
The Negro Leagues Book edited by Dick Clark & Larry Lester {1994} Publisher: The Society for American Baseball Research (Cleveland OH)
The Complete Book of Baseball's Negro Leagues by John B. Holway {2001} Publisher: Hastings House
Black America Series Black Baseball in Kansas Cityby Larry Lester and Sammy J. Miller (2000) Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (Charleston, SC)