Phil Dixon of Kansas City, Mo., is an author and baseball historian who is passionate about his hometown team.
But it's not the Royals, who played in the World Series last season for the first time since 1985. It's not the Athletics, who fielded mostly losing teams in Kansas City from 1955-1967 before moving to Oakland.
Dixon's passion is the Kansas City Monarchs, a barnstorming team and a charter member of the Negro Leagues from 1920 to 1965 when the franchise finally disbanded. The Monarchs defeated the Homestead Grays in the first Negro Leagues World Series in 1924 and had only one losing season during their long history in professional baseball.
Dixon has written nine baseball books with information gathered mostly from sifting through old newspaper clippings and sitting hours in front of microfilm reels. He spoke enthusiastically about the Monarchs before a small crowd last week at the Rogers Little Theatre in Rogers.
"I've been doing this for 35 years and I'm still finding out new information about the Monarchs," said Dixon, who is co-founder of the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City.
Baseball fans who listened to Dixon's presentation, myself included, were surprised at the Monarchs' connection to Northwest Arkansas. We learned the Monarchs played the House of David in Rogers on Sept. 28, 1933. The House of David was an all-white team from a religious sect based in Benton Harbor, Mich. Their players all wore long beards except for a select few like Grover Cleveland Alexander, who was invited on occasion to participate in the baseball exhibitions.
The Monarchs also played games in Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Bentonville, and even Green Forest. Over 1,000 showed up at the Fairgrounds in Bentonville when Leroy "Satchel" Paige led a group of negro all-stars against Bentonville in 1948. Paige was also in uniform when his team beat a Fayetteville team that was coached by Buster Dunlap, who was a Campbell Soup executive.
Exhibitions involving the Monarchs or the Satchel Paige All-Stars usually drew large crowds across the country, especially when top players from the major leaguers participated.
"Dizzy Dean made more money barnstorming that he ever did with the Cardinals," Dixon said of the Hall of Fame pitcher who was born in Lucas in Logan County.
The Monarchs also had some Arkansas-born players on its roster, including Alfred "Slick" Surratt of Danville, Neale Henderson of Fort Smith, and Woody Woodson of Clarksville.
"The Kansas City teams were to the Negro Leagues what the New York Yankees were to the American League," Dixon said while citing a newspaper article about the Monarchs in a St. Joseph, Mo., newspaper from 1930. "From 1930 to 1937, the Monarchs won over 800 games. In 1933, they won 134 games and lost only 14 all year. They were the first team to travel the country by bus instead of a train and they carried with them a portable lighting system for night games, five years before a night game was played in the major leagues.
"The Monarchs' roster included many great players like Satchel Paige, who was the Lebron James of his day."
The Negro Leagues began to fade after Jackie Robinson, a former Monarchs player, broke the color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in April, 1947. Other stars from the Negro Leagues followed, including Ernie Banks (Monarchs/Chicago Cubs), Willie Mays (Chattanooga Choo Choos/New York Giants), Larry Doby (Newark, N.J., Eagles/Cleveland Indians) and Paige, who became the oldest player to make a major league debut when he took the mound for the Cleveland Indians in 1948 at age 42.
Sadly, many others top players from the Negro Leagues never got the chance to play in the major leagues because of segregation, including Wilbur "Bullet Joe" Rogan, whom Dixon compared to Babe Ruth in his ability to pitch and hit.
"In 11 years with the Monarchs in the 1920s and 30s, 'Bullet Joe' batted .339 and won 71 percent of his games as a pitcher," said Dixon, who wrote a book about Rogan. "He could pitch and hit like Babe Ruth and he was much faster than the Babe. He was definitely a great all-around player."
Sports on 05/03/2015