For more than forty years, the Negro Baseball Leagues provided opportunities for Black American athletes to play professionally. We learn about these leagues with author, historian, and son of a NBL umpire, Byron Motley. This episode comes with a Learn-Along guide!

This time on The Children’s Hour we learn about the Negro Baseball Leagues, professional teams made up of Black and other non-white players. Our guest is Byron Motley, author of Negro Baseball Leagues – A Memoir which chronicles the story of these leagues.

Byron’s own father was an umpire for the Negro Baseball Leagues. His father’s love of the game was passed along to Byron, who only understood as an adult what challenges his dad had to overcome to be included in the world of baseball.

Many legends of baseball history come from the NBL, including Jackie Robinson, the first Black player to integrate the Major Leagues. We learn about the oldest player to ever rookie for Major League Baseball at the age of 42, Satchel Paige, along with NBL players Larry Doby, and Josh Gibson.  

Satchel Paige

We’ve also got a poem from E. Ethelbert Miller’s book “If God Invented Baseball” and we hear some classic comedy by Abbot & Costello.

Mixed with great music!

This episode was produced by Katie Stone and Eli Henley. Chad Scheer was our live engineer. This program was recorded at Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque, New Mexico USA. Our thanks to Tom Guralnick at Outpost for sharing the space with The Children’s Hour Kids Crew. Our Learn-Along guide for this episode was written by Lorraine Archibald.

© 2024 The Children’s Hour Inc.

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Playlist: Negro Baseball Leagues