The drive, the fumble, the shot, the meltdown, the move, the decision. The history of Cleveland sports is filled with failures, heartache, and plain old bad luck. But failure is a more recent trend of Cleveland sports history. The catastrophes of the 1980s Bernie Kosar-led Browns, the meltdown of Jose Mesa in the 1997 World Series, and the mind-numbing minutes leading up to LeBron James’ decision to take his talents to South Beach, all overshadow the past rich heritage of Cleveland sports history. Jim Brown and Otto Graham of the Browns, Bob Feller and Larry Doby of the Indians, are just several names that harken back to the lore of past great teams. But memory of sports is fickle; most people only remember great successes or epic failures, but forget the moments when teams of less notoriety, the underdogs, achieve victory. For example, in 2007, Appalachian State, then a Division I FCS (Football Championship Series) school, defeated the no. 5 team in the nation, Michigan, at Michigan, by a score of 34-32. The game is cemented into the lore of college football, but the narrative centers less on Appalachian State’s tremendous upset victory than on Michigan’s epic loss. It is in similar fashion that the long-forgotten Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro League experienced a similar lack of notoriety. The story of the Buckeyes is of great victory, saddening loss, and an abrupt end that coincided with the integration of Major League Baseball.

Fall, 1945. The Cleveland Buckeyes had, in monumental fashion, swept the Homestead Grays in a best of seven series to earn the title of Negro American League World Series champions. It was a historic event; the Grays had posted back-to-back championships in the ’43 and ’44 seasons, only to be dislodged by a relatively new and unknown team, the Cleveland Buckeyes. The Buckeyes, minimized in Cleveland sports memory, were not only an impactful team in the Negro leagues, but a great historic franchise of professional baseball.

The team was formed at the end of 1941 by an Erie, Pennsylvania nightclub and hotel owner named Ernest Wright as well as a local Cleveland sports promoter named Wilbur Hayes, who served as the team’s general manager. Ernest Wright was a successful black business owner whose long list of business ventures included barbershops, nightclubs, restaurants, and pool halls. Most notably, Wright owned Erie’s Pope Hotel, which was a hotspot for black culture and music. According to Dave O’Karma of Cleveland Magazine, “Wright’s ventures and solid business acumen provided something the white business structure of the time ignored: entertainment and jobs for black people by black people.”

Wilbur Hayes, on the other hand, did not attain the level of financial success that came to Wright. Hayes, born in Cleveland, dreamed of forming a professional ball club, but without any financial backing he had been unable to see that dream to fruition. However, that was about to change. Wright, in his hunt for players to form a professional baseball team, arrived in Cleveland during the spring of 1941. After talking with a local reporter in Cleveland, Wright was told that Wilbur Hayes was the man he needed to see. That is when Wright approached Hayes at his Central Avenue shoe shine stand to present him with an opportunity. “For years,” stated O’Karma, “Hayes had tried unsuccessfully to get financial backing for a professional club in Cleveland. Hayes’ confidence and enthusiasm impresses Wright enough for him to back a local semi-pro team.”

The first years of the Buckeyes' existence coincided with the United States’ involvement in World War II. For professional ballclubs, especially those in the Negro League, players came and went. For example, Bob Feller, Hall of Fame pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, was the first professional athlete in the United States to enlist in the war. He served in the Navy during the peak of his career. Inconsistent play on the field led to a lack of revenue for Negro League teams and forced them to cut expenses. One popular cut was team transportation, a decision that proved fateful for the Buckeyes.

In the early hours of September 7, 1942, a carload of Buckeye players were involved in a tragic accident near Geneva, Ohio, while carpooling between road games. The resulting crash led to the tragic deaths of catcher Ulysses “Buster” Brown and pitcher Raymond “Smokey” Owens. Among the injured were pitchers Alonzo Boone, Eugene Bremerton, and Herman Watts as well as team General Manager, Wilbur Hayes. Despite such tragic losses, the Buckeyes chose to complete the remainder of their season. Unfortunately for the Buckeyes, the last two weeks of the season were all on the road. The Buckeyes lost every game.

The tragedy of 1942 was soon eclipsed by the great victories of the 1945 season. The Buckeyes had developed all-star centerfielder, Sam Jethroe, along with pitcher Willie Grace into a formidable core. To add to this talent, the Buckeyes signed all-star catcher Quincy Trouppe to act as player manager during that year’s campaign. Other all-stars who rounded out the 1945 squad included third basemen and team captain Parnell Woods and right fielder Lloyd “Ducky” Davenport. Call and Post sports editor Bob Williams declared “With the exception of the World Champion Homestead Grays, the Bucks are reputed to be the highest-paid Negro club in America.” The money Ernest Wright invested did bear fruit. The Buckeyes went 53-16 in the 1945 season and as stated above, swept the two-time Negro American League Champions, the Homestead Greys, in a best of seven series. The offense was prolific in 1945, having a team batting average of .270 while hitting 78 homeruns in 74 games, but it was the pitching that really set the tone. The Buckeyes, in 147 innings pitched, compiled a team Earned Run Average (ERA) of 2.57.

The Buckeyes again reached the Negro League World Series in 1947. Quincy Trouppe continued to guide the Buckeyes as player manager and posted a 44-25-1 record that year. Unfortunately, the Buckeyes fell short of their World Series title goals and lost to the Cuban Giants (New York) four games to two. The team’s defeat on the World Series stage was matched by a greater defeat off the field.

As was true of many Negro American League teams in the late 1940s, money became more of an issue for the Buckeyes. Starting in 1947 the Buckeyes began to lose money at a faster rate. In an attempt to save the franchise, Wright moved the team to Louisville, Kentucky, for the 1949-50 seasons. This attempt proved futile and the team returned to Cleveland. After a 3-33 start in the 1950 season, Wright folded the team. It is not surprising that the decline of the Buckeyes came at a time when Major League Baseball began to integrate. Larry Doby broke the American League color barrier in 1947 when he joined the Cleveland Indians. 1948 saw a title return to Cleveland in the form of an Indians World Series Championship. As a result of this progression, the Buckeyes faded into the shadows of Cleveland sports memory. The integration signaled the end of the Negro League as the black community was absorbed into the larger fan base of the Cleveland Indians.

The legacy of the Buckeyes is overshadowed by the integration of baseball in 1947 and the Indians’ World Series title in 1948. The onetime phenom of the Buckeyes, Sam Jethroe, played for the Boston Braves in 1950. At the age of 32 he hit .273, with 35 stolen bases, and 18 homeruns. He won the National League Rookie of the Year. Other former players also found success in the big leagues, but it was their experiences in the Negro Leagues that made them a formative force in baseball.

The Buckeyes deserve a place in the larger sports history of Cleveland. Decades before embarrassments such as the drive, the fumble, the shot, the meltdown, and the move, took over the Cleveland sports narrative, the Buckeyes reigned supreme in a city that was divided. The Buckeyes brought prominence and hope to many of its fans as they followed their favorite players' transition into Major League Baseball.

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The construction of the massive, 70,000-seat Cleveland Municipal Stadium in the 1930s spelled the beginning of the end for a much older stadium— League Park. This ballpark was constructed in 1891 east of downtown in Cleveland's Hough neighborhood at Dunham Street (East 66th) between Linwood and Lexington Avenues. Lexington Avenue trolley-line operator Frank Robison shoehorned the ballpark into the residential neighborhood, conveniently generating revenues from fares and game tickets. Its tight quarters and restrictive right-field fence to fit the property gave rise to “pinball” baseball, leaving outfielders never knowing where the ball would ricochet. Close-by homes featured signs advertising local businesses for home-run promotions. Despite renovations in 1910 that replaced the original wood with concrete and steel, expanding capacity to over 20,000, League Park was deemed to be too small and antiquated for professional baseball after Municipal Stadium opened. 

League Park began its run as the home of the Cleveland Spiders who became the Indians in what was the site of the 1920 World Series, in which the Indians beat the Brooklyn Dodgers for their first championship. From 1916 to 1927, as a perquisite of owning the team, Jim Dunn changed the name to Dunn Field, but thereafter the name reverted to League Park. Negro League baseball teams also thrived at League Park from the mid-1930s, culminating with the Cleveland Buckeyes winning the the Negro American League World Series in 1945. The Indians played their last game at League Park in 1946, but for ten years prior to that they had been playing weekend and holiday games at the bigger stadium on the lakefront. During its heyday, the Park hosted MLB’s best—manager Tris Speaker, hitter Ty Cobb, slugger Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, infamous shoeless Joe Jackson, shortstop Ray Chapman, and champion Bob Feller, among others. Joe DiMaggio finalized his 56-game hitting streak at the Park in 1941; the streak ended the next day at Muny Stadium. The Indians initially achieved success after departing League Park, but the team's fortunes soon declined. The last thirty years or so of the Indians' tenure at Municipal Stadium were marked by losing seasons and tens of thousands of empty seats until their move to Jacobs Field in the mid-1990s and re-emergence of winning ways.

Though usually remembered for baseball, League Park also hosted a wider variety of sporting events. In the second and third decades of the 20th century, boxing drew crowds in the mild weather months to see Clevelander Johnny Kilbane defend his titles at the Park. Local high school football first appeared at the Park in 1896 when Central High met University School in a championship contest. More games were hosted over the years, including several Thanksgiving Day games between Cathedral Latin and St. Ignatius. College football also came calling to the facility between 1920 and 1949. The Big Four League of Western Reserve, Case Tech, John Carroll, and Baldwin Wallace used League Park regularly, hosting visiting teams from Ohio State, Ohio U., and others. The 1945 NFL champion Cleveland Rams, the last of a series of Cleveland professional football teams predating the Browns, also called League Park home between 1916 and 1950. Much of the stadium was demolished in 1952, when the site became a public park. However, a few remnants, including the baseball diamond itself, still stand today.

In 2002 the last of the grandstand structure was demolished. Cleveland city councilwoman Fannie Lewis mobilized local interest in capturing and preserving memories of the glory days of the stadium, and in revitalizing the surrounding neighborhood. Osborn Engineering, the firm that managed the 1910 refurbishment, provided design work for a renewed League Park recreation area. The Baseball Heritage Museum has been located at League Park since 2014. The Museum is dedicated to preserving the artifacts and stories of baseball’s past with a special focus on diversity in the sport; the stories of challenge and triumph intrinsic in the stories of the Negro Leagues and other underserved demographics in the sport. “General programming, youth educational offerings, community outreach and other initiatives are driven by the rich repository of life lessons in these stories. The Museum is also a driver of Cleveland’s sense of place, by continuously working to become a center of neighborhood life and a destination location for baseball and history lovers from across the city and across the country.”

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