Remembering the St. Paul Colored Gophers and Their Legendary Legacy

[Greggory Masterson]

Seventy-eight years before the Twins brought a World Championship to Minnesota, and even before the Minneapolis Millers won the 1911 American Association Championship, the Twin Cities boasted a baseball team named National Champions.

Image courtesy of Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports (Max Kepler wearing St. Paul Gophers retro jersey in 2019)

Black baseball existed separately from white baseball back in the early 1900s, mainly at the regional level. Twin Cities businessman Phil "Daddy" Reid met future Hall of Famer and founder of the first professional league for African-American players, the National Negro League—Rube Foster. The two formed a friendship that led Reid to start his own ball club.

This club, however, would not be a regional team, gathering players from around the Twin Cities. Instead, Reid wanted to build a team that could compete with the best teams in the Midwest, so he hired Walter Ball to scout the country to find the best players willing to relocate to Minnesota. Many of these players had recently been released by the Leland Giants of Chicago, a team recently taken over by Rube Foster.

Among those players were team captain George Taylor and pitcher Clarence "Dude" Lytle, who led the team to astounding success. Although reports differ, the team played approximately 110 games that year with a winning percentage of around 85%, including a stretch of 36 consecutive wins. 

The team played any challengers willing to take them on, whether Black or white, including the St. Paul Saints of the American Association. Foster himself—a great pitcher who earned his nickname "Rube" after besting the legendary Rube Waddell in a 1903 exhibition—took the mound for the Gophers in the deciding game of the series against the Saints. Roster rules were a bit laxer in those days (except for the whole not-allowing-Black-players-to-play thing).

Foster would return again in 1908 to pitch for the Gophers in a game against the Hibbing Colts, throwing a no-hitter. The team brought in a few notable full-season players, including George "Rat" Johnson (he also went by "Chappie"; please, George, save some good nicknames for the rest of us) and Bill Gatewood, who joined Lytle in the rotation. The team experienced similar levels of success, winning about 75% of their approximate 120 games, though they did lose their season series to the Saints.

The Gophers were reaching the peak of their popularity. Teams from around the Midwest were lining up to take their shots at beating the juggernaut of a team—and paying good money to Daddy Reid for the privilege of losing to them, more often than not. The club also drew large crowds at their game, but not just because of their ability.

At that time, Minnesota was 0.3% Black, and although the percentage was higher within the Twin Cities, many people had never seen a Black man, let alone a Black ballplayer. Some of these players had parents who were born in slavery. There was a novelty to the game, and although the players were not allowed in "organized baseball," the average person wanted to watch these young men play.

In 1909, the team continued to grow, as the Gophers and Foster's Leland Giants took a scouting trip into the South to find adding star brothers "Candy" Jim and "Steel Arm" Johnny Taylor and a three-fingered pitcher named Julius London. Also among those joining the team that year were a spit-baller named Archie Pate, veteran Bill Binga—a defect from the cross-town rival Minneapolis Keystones—and Minnesota legend Bobby Marshall.

That year, the St. Paul Colored Gophers, at the pinnacle of their talent and popularity, would take on their greatest challenge yet—the Leland Giants. Since Foster's control of the team began, the Giants had been widely regarded as one of, if not the best, colored baseball teams in the country. Behind Foster on the mound, the team was nigh unbeatable.

The series was to be five games, held in St. Paul, with the winner declared as the "Black National Champions," as proposed by Foster. There was no tournament to be played, just the team widely considered the best in the country, squaring off against one of the most popular teams in the area. Notable and respected people from Chicago made the trip by train to see the two talented teams face off.

Unfortunately, the Gophers could not use Foster as a ringer for this series. Fortunately, he did not pitch for the Lelands, either. The series went all five games, and the Gophers clinched the series in a nail-biting 3-2 Game Five victory. Foster, always gracious in defeat, was quoted saying, "No man who ever saw the Gophers play would think of classing them world's colored champions or would think the playing ability of the other teams was very weak."

The Giants handily won Game 2 and Game 3 by scores of 8-1 and 5-1, but the Gophers' wins came in 10-9, 4-3, and 3-2 games, meaning the Giants outscored the Gophers 26-19. (Of note, the Gophers won Game 1 on a walk-off home run by St. Paul's Bobby Marshall, who would go on to become the NFL's first Black player.) Still, Foster's calling the games "exhibition contests" after the fact was probably a bit too far. Arguably the greatest player to don a Colored Gophers jersey became the team's most prominent critic.

Other teams around the country also objected to the Gophers being declared Black National Champions—given that there was no tournament or governing body. Still, such was the state of baseball at the time. Eleven years later, Foster would go on to found the Negro National League, the first step in officially organizing Black baseball. In the meantime, if Major League Baseball was crowning a World Champion every year while preventing Black players from playing, maybe the term had no meaning anyway.

The Colored Gophers would play the 1910 season before many of their key contributors moved on. In 1911, the team played under the name Twin Cities Gophers, then the St. Paul Gophers in 1913, and the Minneapolis Gophers in 1914 and 1916. Daddy Reid died of a heart attack in 1912, combined with the difficulty keeping young men in the Twin Cities, opposed to other, more favorable, US cities. The organized Negro Leagues were beginning, but an official team never laid roots in Minnesota.

Between the 1920s and 1950s, when the Negro Leagues ceased to exist, Black teams called the Gophers popped up in the Twin Cities from time to time, though none as successful or long-lasting as Daddy Reid's club. Still, notable players would come to the Twin Cities to play against the Gophers, such as Ted "Double-Duty" Radcliffe in 1942, who earned his nickname by pitching in one game of a doubleheader and catching the other.

Like many similar teams at the time, the Colored Gophers ended with a whimper, but they were instrumental in furthering the game. They brought Black baseball players from around the country to build a talented and entertaining team in Minnesota. Their existence was intimately tied to one of the most significant figures in baseball history, the Godfather of the Negro Leagues, Rube Foster. One of the biggest plays in their history was courtesy of the first Black player in the NFL, Bobby Marshall. And they were champions.

 

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[AceWrigley]

Good read.

[ToddlerHarmon]

Thanks for the well researched and fascinating history. And the reference to Foster besting Rube Waddell reminded me of this link that the stats lovers should find fascinating: https://www.baseball-reference.com/articles/negro-leagues-major-leagues-todd-peterson.shtml

The link provides statistical evidence that the Negro Leagues were at least equal to the white "major leagues" of their time. Wonderfully done and eye opening for those of us raised on legends of Hornsby, Ruth, and Cobb, but not Foster, Gibson, and Paige.

 

[Melissa]

Thanks, Greggory - fascinating stuff!

Were University of Minnesota athletes called Golden Gophers at the time? I think so.

[Greggory Masterson]

15 minutes ago, Melissa said:

Thanks, Greggory - fascinating stuff!

Were University of Minnesota athletes called Golden Gophers at the time? I think so.

From what I was able to find--yes! Minnesota was using the Golden Gophers name for a couple decades prior to the Black Gophers. It wasn't unusual for Black teams to take a local team name as their own. One of the funniest was the Atlanta Black Crackers, named after the all-white Atlanta Crackers. 

[Melissa]

8 minutes ago, Greggory Masterson said:

It wasn't unusual for Black teams to take a local team name as their own. One of the funniest was the Atlanta Black Crackers, named after the all-white Atlanta Crackers. 

Wow, that's kind of surprising! Wouldn't happen these days ... though maybe the word Cracker didn't yet carry the same connotations then, especially in the South? 

[Greggory Masterson]

15 minutes ago, Melissa said:

Wow, that's kind of surprising! Wouldn't happen these days ... though maybe the word Cracker didn't yet carry the same connotations then, especially in the South? 

It had more meanings in those days than it does now, but one of them was "poor, white, southerner." No one can agree on where the original name came from, though.

Edit: another tie, the Atlanta Crackers (the white team) was a minor league affiliate of the Twins in 1964.

[mikelink45]

I love baseball history - this is a nice break from all the Twins speculation.  Give us more. 

[Greggory Masterson]

3 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

I love baseball history - this is a nice break from all the Twins speculation.  Give us more. 

I really appreciate it. I have a second topic I’m working on that probably won’t be enough for a full article, but I’ll be posting it on my blog, Brewed in the Trough here on TD sometime this week. Keep an eye out for it!

[mikelink45]

29 minutes ago, Greggory Masterson said:

I really appreciate it. I have a second topic I’m working on that probably won’t be enough for a full article, but I’ll be posting it on my blog, Brewed in the Trough here on TD sometime this week. Keep an eye out for it!

You might want to look into the Indian influence on MLB and we can speculate on why it has disappeared.  Chief Bender - all Guardians were called chief back then - is a HOFer from Brainerd area 

[BobAzar]

Before the Twins wore the jerseys, I had never heard of the team. This was great. Thank you

PS nicknames were so much better back then, Steel Arm, Dude, Chappie...