A Team in Yeadon Played in the First Negro League World Series 100 Years Ago

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Group portrait of the Hilldale team and the Monarchs before the opening game of the 1924 Negro League World Series.
Image via Library of Congress.
Group portrait of the Hilldale team and the Monarchs before the opening game of the 1924 Negro League World Series.

There’s a blue sign on MacDade Blvd. in Yeadon that marks the spot where The Hilldale Athletic Club, who played in the first Negro League World Series, once played, writes Lochlahn March for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

It’s Hilldale Park, home from 1910 to 1932 of the African American-run Hilldale Athletic Club. one of the best Negro League baseball teams in the country.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the first Negro Leagues World Series played between the Hilldale Club of the Eastern Colored League and the Kansas City Monarchs of the National Negro League.

“They deserve to be remembered,” said Neil Lanctot, baseball historian and the author of “Fair Dealing and Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and the Development of Black Professional Baseball, 1910-1932”. “They’re probably the most significant African American team in Philadelphia.”

Kansas City won that best-of-nine series 5-4, but Hilldale became part of the bedrock of Black baseball history, transformed by Ed Bolden of Concordville, a Black postal worker who started as a scorekeeper and ended up manager and president of the team.

Read about the great players that came out of the Eastern Colored League and the National Negro League and about the 1924 World Series in The Philadelphia Inquirer.


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