We talk all the time about the Negro American League, and we talk about the Negro

National League, and the Negro Southern League, and the traveling caravans and

barmstorming tours across the country. And the more we talk about it, and the more you hear about it,

I hope you realize, even though we weren't allowed in the so-called major

leagues at that time, black baseball was all across this country in the early 20th century.

You could hop on a train, head to wherever you could imagine across the 48 states, and the chances

were you were going to be able to find professional black baseball,

even out west on the Pacific Coast in the summer of 1946.

Two men you may have heard of, Abe Saperstein, the founder of the Harlem Globetrotters,

and Jesse Owens, the four-time gold medalist and the fastest man on the planet,

headed west to help capitalize on the booming African-American population that landed on

the coast during World War II at military bases and shipyards.

Sapistein brought his barnstorming team, the Cincinnati Crescents, to Seattle, and renamed them the

Steelheads. Owens went out to Oregon and founded the Portland Rosebuds, managed by the great

Wesley Big Train Barrow, the former manager of the Baltimore E-Light Giants. And on May 12, 1946,

the Steelheads and the Rosebuds went head to head in the

first game of the West Coast Negro Baseball League. Saperstein became League president. Owens became

vice president, and the league landed teams in four more cities playing in the Pacific Coast

League stadiums while the white

teams were on the road. The Oakland Larks, the San Francisco Sea Lions, the San Diego

Tigers, and home team at our destination next week, the Los Angeles White Sox. That's right,

Black Diamonds is hitting the road for two special events at Major League Baseball's

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