In the 1940s, baseball belonged to icons like Joltin' Joe, Teddy Ballgame and Stan The Man.
But it also belonged to generations of players few have heard of, like Willie Stewart, Jim Goins and Grant Kelly, black players who formed teams of their own before Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line in 1947.In 1945, some of those players organized the Salt Lake Monarchs and for two decades barnstormed across Utah and into Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado, passing the hat but playing for the sheer love of the game.
For two decades they traveled in cars that often broke down, sometimes slept in parks, avoided segregated restaurants, played through the jeers and racial epithets. They played at prisons and on dusty diamonds in places like Dugway. But they played.
And in this year that marks Robinson's breakthrough with the Brooklyn Dodgers 50 years ago, the surviving Monarchs speak with some pride about their own role in eroding racial barriers.
Some of the dates and details are blurred by time, but the anecdotes and friendships remain sharp.
"I can see them out there on the field now," remembers Jim Goins, now 76, who still can rattle off the names and positions of every Monarch.
The team struggled at first. Many of the players hadn't played much. But under the coaching of Eddie Royster and Ben Brooks, they improved.
Royster had played with the Kansas City Monarchs, widely regarded as one of the best teams, black or white, ever assembled. Brooks had been a catcher for the Salt Lake Tigers, a black team in the 1920s and '30s.
The Monarchs embraced the daring, fast-paced style that had become the trademark of black teams across the country: the squeeze play, the hit-and-run, the double steal.
"We weren't the best ballplayers, but we had a team that played some of the white ball clubs. Sometimes we'd beat them. A lot of times they'd beat us," says Grant Kelly, the second baseman who is now 73. "But we got better as we went along."
After barnstorming its first few seasons, the team joined the Amateur Federation League, which played games from Ogden to Provo, Salt Lake to Dugway.
"We were kept out of the other leagues, but we were admitted to the (Amateur Federation)," which had more teams and better competition, Goins says. "We could play against (white players), but not with them."
Kelly says the league didn't necessarily force the team to be segregated, but societal segregation off the field made it the only practical choice.
By the end of the decade, the improved Monarchs had won three straight league championships.
"We had a pretty good group," says the team's shortstop and center fielder, Cliff Piggee, now 70. "Of course, segregation was a way of life in those days, back before the Jackie Robinson era."
Few of the players were pro prospects, but Willie Stewart, the team's hard-hitting first baseman, was picked up for a season by the Cuban Giants of the professional Negro National League.
"(Willie) hit some mammoth shots. He could hit the ball out of Yellowstone Park," says Piggee.
Kelly also was offered a spot with the Giants, but stayed in Utah.
And the team had Joe Bridgewaters, a fireballing pitcher who threw so hard Goins remembers pitying the catcher.
Robinson's breakthrough didn't directly affect the Monarchs, but the players were glad to see it come, especially Kelly. In the Army, he had been stationed with Robinson - a football star at UCLA - at Camp Hood, Texas.
"(Robinson's breakthrough) gave us a lot of enthusiasm to try to excel, and it made us feel like we had a place in baseball," Kelly said.
In the early '50s, the team changed its name to The Occidentals, a name once used by a black team in Salt Lake that won a state title in 1909.
Today, the surviving Monarchs remember the local fans as supportive, with up to 1,000 attending home games generally played at Municipal Field near Liberty Park.
The team would pass the hat for a few dollars to buy balls or maybe dinner.
On weekends when home games weren't scheduled, the Monarchs traveled to Grand Junction, Colo.; Pocatello, Idaho, and all across Utah. Or, recalls Stan Bankhead, 64, who played shortstop and catcher, they would go play on Sundays at the Utah State Penitentiary.
Most fans, they say, were just looking for a good game.
"It kind of brought people a little closer together, baseball did," Kelly said. "They enjoyed watching black people play baseball. They just like to see a good baseball team and see what people can do."
"People get to know people. That's so important," Piggee said. "You hear stories, but when you really get to mix and mingle and get to know people, that makes all the difference in the world."
In the '50s, as players left, the Monarchs added two white players, a Japanese player and a new manager, Jack Gregory, in order to keep going. But by the 1960s, amateur baseball was struggling, unable to compete with television and an eroding fan base.
"It was a common pastime in (the '40s and '50s). There were a lot more teams and a lot less to do. And as time goes on, people make a little more money and they start doing different things," Stewart said.