Washington Elite Giants
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Baltimore Elite Giants 1920–1950 Baltimore, Maryland |
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The Baltimore Elite Giants were a professional baseball team that played in the Negro leagues from 1920 to 1950. The team was established by Thomas T. Wilson, in Nashville, Tennessee as the semi-pro Nashville Standard Giants on March 26, 1920. The team was renamed the Elite Giants in 1921, and moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1938, where the team remained for the duration of their existence. The team and its fans pronounced the word "Elite" as "ee-light".
The Nashville Standard Giants were formed as a semi-professional all-Negro team in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 26, 1920. The club was chartered by Thomas T. Wilson, T. Clay Moore, J. B. Boyd, Marshall Garrett, Walter Phillips, W. H. Pettis, J. L. Overton, and R. H. Tabor. The team's origins lie in that of two of Nashville's local negro amateur baseball teams: the Nashville Maroons (formed in 1909) and the Elites (formed in 1913). Their home games were played at Sulphur Dell and Greenwood Park, the African American community's local park. The Standard Giants welcomed any and all competition, including white-only teams, but played independently of any organized leagues until the mid-1920s.
The team was renamed the Nashville Elite Giants (pronounced EE-light) in 1921. That same year, they swept the Montgomery Grey Sox (of the minor league Negro Southern League) in a four-game championship series to win the right to declare themselves the Southern Colored Champions.They continued to play independently until joining the Negro Southern League in 1926. Nashville completed its first season in the league with a 15–15 (.500) record.
In 1929, Nashville was granted an associate membership in the Negro National League. The team finished in eighth (last) place with a 10–20 (.333) record. That same year, Wilson built a new ballpark for his team, Tom Wilson Park, which also served as a spring training site for other Negro league teams, as well as white-only minor league teams, such as the Southern Association's Nashville Vols.Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Roy Campanella are known to have played at the park. The 8,000 (or 4,000) seat facility featured a single-decked, covered grandstand. The ballpark was centrally located in Nashville's largest black community, known as Trimble Bottom, near the convergence of Second and Forth Avenues, just north of the fairgrounds.
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