Would hear about contributions to the baseball world, including future hall of fame players and several innovations of the sport like the use of lights for night games. D eisenhower president ial library and museum hosted this hourlong event. I want to say good afternoon. Long event. First i want to say good afternoon, and i want to thank some people, of course, tim for giving me this opportunity to come down and speak with you today. Im really excited about it and samantha who handled a lot of the publicity for the event she did just a wonderful job and without people like that, also there was a local Radio Station that did a great interview, and between newspaper, radio, im always appreciative of all the people who support your visit and so i want to thank all of them before i get started. Im going to jump right into it and tell you a little bit about why im here. The kansas city monarchs was a Negro League Baseball team and most of you have heard of them. Maybe you heard of Jackie Robinson or Satchel Paige. They were organized in 1920, 194 they won the first world championship. That was 90 years ago. I was trying to figure a way to honor these great men who purely played for the love of the game because they didnt make great salaries back then, and so i decided i was going to visit 90 cities to basically commemorate the monarchs efforts as a Negro League Baseball team. Now they played in more than 90 cities, so im going to 90 cities and believe me that just scratches the is your facilitates all the places that the kansas city monarchs did. They were great ambassadors for the game. For me my journey started a long time ago. As a child i collected baseball cards and i kind of went nuts with that. So i found out about baseball and i just kept collecting, collecting, collecting and the collection kept growing, growing, growing. And my knowledge grew. And so not only did i know about the baseball statistics but the thing that captured me the most were baseball stories. So i liked to read the backs and whatever stories they had and then i gravitated to books and just kept growing. And finally, this kind of brings me home to abilene and heres what happened. I got my first full time job working for a retail store. I was out of college and they bounced me around to a few places. I was in Colorado Springs, albuquerque for a little while, wichita and i ended up in topeka, kansas. I always talked baseball, no matter where i went. I always talked baseball. Somebody mentioned there was a negro leaguer that had played ball who lived in topeka. And i got to know this negro leaguer, his name was carroll ray and he was on that 24 team. He later passed. But through that association i decided to do a little tribute to him. So in doing this tribute, you know, once again being that kind of person who loves to collect information, you know, i challenged myself. I said im going to find every game the kansas city monarchs ever played. That was pretty aggressive idea back in that 1980. There was no internet at that time. So if you wanted to know the name of the library say if they played in abilene, you write to the library, had to go the library. They had a big book with all the library addresses, i write them down. I would write letters. I had all these letters. It was a labor of love and a passion that just kept on growing. And needless to say, i was able to find games that were played in abilene because of that. So, as a tribute to the kansas city monarchs who were way in kansas city, what im doing now is going to towns that they played and name of my program is the kansas city monarchs and our home town. Now, give you a little bit of overview of the kansas city monarchs as i said a moment ago they were organized in 1920. And they were charter members of the Negro National league. And they won their first championship in 1923 p. M. At that time they didnt have a world series. So 1924 they played the eastern colored league, hilldale team and the monarchs won. In 1925 they returned to the world series but they didnt win. Hilldale won. They were the best team in the eastern colored league. The kansas city monarchs don continued to play and by 1929 they won another championship by bullet rogan. The kansas city monarchs played exhibition games. In the negro league they had a regular schedule. You had eight teams and they had a regular schedule. But most of those games would be on the weekend when they could draw the largest audience. So they would play friday, saturday, sunday and then sometimes on monday. Well in between that if youre coming from kansas city going to st. Louis, theres a lot of cities in between and remember were talk about the golden age of town baseball. And these are grown fellows who are playing baseball and some of them were, you know, workers in the town but they loved baseball as well. These are grown men playing baseball. As you can see, the monarchs during the 1920s, this is an article from the kansas city kansas daily traveller, you see they only lost three times in over 400 exhibition games. The towns had good teams but the monarchs were hard to beat. During that time when they were barnstorming of course the first time they came to abilene was in 1923 and they were on trains but in 1925 there was a highway act and they started building up the highways, connecting all the major cities and some not so major together and so the owner of the kansas city monarchs being this Creative Genius he was, his name was j. L. Wilkinson decided he would use a bus to transport his players and they could go places on a different schedule than the railroad, get more games in, they could go to cities who werent along the railroad lines. So in that he became the first in the kansas city monarchs first team to travel exclusively by bus. The other thing that i think is always interesting is that the kansas city monarchs in 1930, they popularized night baseball. You think of night baseball you dont think of the monarchs. Most people remember the date, i think it was may 24th, 1935, when they talk about cincinnati lighting up its park. Thats the date i learned as a child. This is when night baseball started in the major leagues. But actually with the kansas city monarchs it started in 1930. Wilkinson being the basebabseba innovator and genius he was he wanted to make night baseball popular. He saw carnivals and circuses had lights and he created some towers he could take on trucks from city to city and popularized this night baseball. Now the major leagues were skeptical of the night baseball, so its been recorded that ben johnson president of the American League said it was a passing fad, it would never last. And wilkinson said that lights will be to baseball what talkies are to movies. Another bit of interesting bit of history is that the first all night world series where all the games were played in the night was 1985 when the Kansas City Royals played the st. Louis cardinals. So it took that long. As a matter of fact, the first weekends game at night wasnt until 1971 and back in the 1930s the monarchs were popularizing that. As a matter of fact, their pitcher, one of them pitched the first nohitter back in 1930 under the lights. So this is up with of his greatest innovations and one he doesnt get credit for but he should because it revolutionized major baseball and baseball every where. The monarchs spent a lot of time barnstorming. And in 1930, the depression had pretty much hit most of the major cities that were in the league. So st. Louis, st. Louis, chicago, all those cities were in depressions. And so wilkinson decided to pull his team out of the league and go 100 barnstorming. So what he was able to do through that is to take the monarchs to places that they couldnt go in between their schedule. So like in between their schedule he could come out to western kansas, take a week, take a few days and come back to kansas city. Well, when he went, got out of the league they went as far as the pacific coast, they went to portland, washington state, idaho, they went down to mexico, went over the border into mexico. They went up to canada. They went all the way to saskatchewan, alberta. They went all over the place. Going to all those places you can see they rarely lost. This was an awfully good team. But the barnstorming is the part that most people had the opportunity to see the kansas city monarchs. This is the way that most baseball fans had a chance to see the kansas city monarchs especially outside of the major cities. This picture here is a barnstorming picture. You can see the towns teams they knew how great the monarchs were and most a ball player can recognize another ball player, no doubt about it. So when they saw the kansas city monarchs they recognized how good these players were. And this picture right here, this game was played in blue rapids kansas. Thats the 1939 and that shows how popular they were, teams were willing to pose with the kansas city monarchs and this is at a time when racial divide could be pretty tough. But the kansas city monarchs were welcomed almost every place they went. So because of his great innovations, j. L. Wilkinson we have pictured here is now a member of the Baseball Hall of fame in cooperstown, new york. One of his pitchers i might mention wilkinson also when they organized the Negro National league he was the only white manager in the league or white owner in the league and how that came about was because in 1911 he organized a team called the all nations. And the all nations had many nationalities on one team traveling together. So jose mendez was them. And he was cuban. They had John Donaldson an africanamerican out of missouri, one of the greatest lefthanders that ever lived. They had an italian guy, they had a couple of guys that played formerly in the major league. They had whites, blacks, a native american that played with them, and the first professional japanese player played on wilkinsons team. So that team played right up until world war i and they were pretty much decimated by the draft in world war i. So when the opportunity comes in 1920 because of his goodwill and friendliness and his relationships with various races, he was picked to organize a team and thats how he became the only white owner in the negro league. Mendez, outstanding player. Monarchs first manager. He started with wilkinson years ago. He also has been enshrined in cooperstown, new york. Also, along the way they had other players that joined them. This gentleman by the name of andy cooper. Andy cooper was born in waco, texas but raised in wichita, kansas. 1920 he plays for the detroit stars in the Negro National league in a in 1920 wilkinson traded two players to get him and he comes to the kansas city month marks and remains there and died while he was the manager of the monarchs in 1940. But he comes. And because he was such an outstanding player, he too is in the major League Baseball hall of fame at cooperstown, new york. But of all the greatest players, especially during the 1920s, there was none greater than wilbur bull jet rogan. Many people to this day have not heard of rogans name. If i had the same group of people here in 1920 and i was to mention rogans name they would know exactly who i was talking about. He was widely publicized and heres the reason why i personally think he was the greatest all around baseball player that ever lived. You know right before, you know, we went and started this whole new decade and new century they did all these polls of the greatest Baseball Players of our time. Of course everybody picks babe ruth. Let me tell you what rogan was able to do. First of all rogan like ruth was jyi2 pitcher. He actually invent ad pitch, rogan did called the palm ball which is change of pace. Rogan was a great pitcher. As a pitcher he won over 400 games. As a pitcher. Also he was a great batter. And he hit with home run power and he was 57. He hit over 400 home runs as a batter. He was a consistent. 300 hitter. As for average, he also played the outfield when he wasnt pitching, and was a gold glove outfielder, tremendous arm. He was a fast runner. He could run a 100 yard dash in less than ten seconds or right in ten seconds in that area. And on top of that he managed the monarchs and he led them to the pennant in 1929 and in 1934 they had a record of 134 wins and 14 losses and he managed that team and when he wasnt doing all of that he drove the bus. [ laughter ] so, there are lots of games i could talk about that happened here in abilene and this is kind of this is one of the things i do when i go to cities. I talk about the games in that particular town. And there was one interesting game in Junction City i would like to add. Well get to that. The first time the monarchs came as i said was in 1923, august 17th. And one thing that was unique, this didnt happen too often, in 1925 they came to abilene twice in the same year. That was rare that they would go back to barnstorming city twice. I tell you that says something for abilene right there. And, of course, in i jumped to 1938. There were some other games along the way. 1926 they came here in august and got rained out. Then they came back in september 15th of 1927, they got rained out again. Theres another game i know in 1939, im still trying to find information on so i cant give you much detail on that one. But we got some interesting games i do want to talk to. Now keep in mind, integration in the area of blacks being on teams with whites in kansas was not new and so people were kind of already prepared long before the kansas city monarchs came. This is a pitcher here of the humbolt team. Bud fowler first frances played in topeka in 1886 and another gentleman by the name of Burt Wakefield out of troy, kansas and his name was jones, burt jones and he was from atchison and they played in the kansas state league. So kansas was one of the last leagues to include africanamerican players and a lot of people werent aware of this knowledge, but this is the earliest picture i ever found of the integrated team in the state of kansas. Now these games there were always scouts from other cities trying to figure out how they could beat the monarchs. In this particular article here that appeared in the manhattan morning chronicle, i saw a reference that the manager coming over from manhattan to scout the kansas city monarchs because they were going to be playing them and he wanted to see how he could beat the monarchs. He comes over and scouts the monarchs which is kind of interesting because you wouldnt think that people were scouting teams at that time. Of course when he got over here this is what he saw. The kansas city monarchs, the first time they came through they pretty much handled the local team, beat them 102. As you notice, mendez is in the game. The guy who was in the hall of fame. And hes probably one of the earliest hall of famers and bullet rogan in the hall of fame was also there that day. Wilkinson their owner was there as well. In that game there was a guy by the. Im of swede, his name was pa pearson. He was a heck of a good pitcher and good enough to go the big leagues but in times like those big leagues didnt pay the larger amount of money so some guys if they had a good enough job they didnt leave and could get work in town teams. So they come to abilene, pretty much beat abilene. Because the score was 102 would you believe abilene was proud of that. In the paper they printed that theres some mean satisfaction knowing that the kansas city monarchs defeated Junction City 131 and abilene only 102. I thought that was interesting. That happened all the time. If you couldnt beat them maybe you could look better than the surrounding towns. When the monarchs organized in 1929, the first League President was andrew rube foster. He had a couple of teams. He was booking those teams and getting eater 5 or 10 of the gate wherever they played. So they needed rube foster to come in to the league to be a part of the league because he controlled five or four of the best teams. They had to convince him to give up his booking money to come in to the league and join the new league. So in order to satisfy him they said that we will give you 5 from every game thats played in the Negro National league. So the new teams plus the teams he used to book, they were going to give him 5 . Detroit they had an agreement with detroit they had to pay 10 to foster. He kept immaculate records and so i was able to come across his record book and what i was able on the find out exactly how much money they made in abilene. And so if you look here, abilene, according to the newspaper account, had 1,000 people at the game. And the monarchs share, once again they got a share, the monarchs charged 65 of the take. They made 341 playing in abilene. You can see the gate receipt from the other cities that they played in Junction City. Leroy, they couldnt get a crowd, 75. But it just kind of gives you a view of how important these games were from a profit stance. The monarchs had pretty much handled abilene but abilene still had their great pitcher swede. They invited the monarchs back twice in 1925. Is this lineup that appeared here in 1925 when the monarchs came through. Some of these names like bullet rogan, he was in left field that day. Didnt pitch that day. And so they come through and some of the players like gerard swit he was born in humbolt. Sylvester foreman is buried in coffeyville, kansas. Bill drake, chet brewer born and raised in leavenworth. This is the team that they played. Bullet rogan wasnt pitching that day but pearson for the local team struck out the end of the kansas city monarchs and that was going some back then. Bullet rogan played outfield and went one for three. He hit the only home run of the game. So when they came, once again, how much money did they make, right . So we go back to fosters ledger. And there were 900 people in that first game. And the monarchs for their take of the game made 260. Now whats interesting, if you look, the monarchs are in abilene on the 9th. If you go down to the 20th you can see they were in birmingham, alabama and you could see they made 160 playing on the first day they went to birmingham. So they made more in abilene than they made in birmingham and birmingham was a league town so you can see why these games are pretty important and thats why the monarchs continued barnstorming. I guess the people in abilene were not satisfied because they had never seen bullet rogan pitch. So they had to invite them back to see bullet rogan pitch. Bullet rogan comes to town and this is the