On Tuesday, February 25, members of the NYGPS were privileged to attend the 2014 Cactus League Luncheon at Mesa Riverview Cubs Park, the new spring training home of the Cubs. Most notably the luncheon included induction of the inaugural class of the newly formed Cacuts League Hall of Fame and of special interest to Giant fans Mr. Horace Stoneham was one of the inductees. Making the occasion extra special was the enthusiastic attendance of members of the Stoneham family including granddaughters Jaime and Kim Rupert and nephews Craig and Peter Stoneham. Jaime Rupert gave a very fine acceptance speech on behalf of her grandfather and, hopefully, the Cactus League HOF will be prelude to Horace Stoneham’s overdue induction into Cooperstown! She mentioned our group in the process and how we are keeping the NY Giants past alive.

And making the day even more enjoyable we spoke by phone with Monte Irvin on the occasion of his 95th birthday. Monte was a joy to speak with and, overall, is doing well. He shared with us that Bobby Thomson and Whitey Lockman were his best friends on the club and that he misses them to this day. How wonderful to speak with Monte, a true Giant in every way!”

Great article by Jerry Izenberg
http://www.nj.com/sports/ledger/izenbergcol/index.ssf/2014/02/izenberg_happy_95th_birthday_m.html#incart_river

The last Eagle will be 95 years old this morning. Monte Irvin broke the New York Baseball Giants’ color line in 1949 and played in two World Series for them. He was the first African-American to work as an aide in the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
That’s for the résumé.
But for me, he will always remain a Newark Eagle.
They played for and against great ballplayers who were born too soon to play for the Dodgers or the Yankees or any of the baseball teams that called themselves the major leagues. They knew in baseball’s racist world the Dodgers and the Yankees and the others were all white men and they expected it to stay that way.
So Monte, the oldest and probably the last survivor of those days, and Larry Doby and Josh Gibson and so many great players whose names you never heard, followed the sun when their all-black league seasons ended. They followed it to Mexico and Venezuela, to Puerto Rico and Cuba, to any place where the sun was shining and a man was judged not by the color of his skin but the speed of his fastball.
Once, when I asked him about his nomad days with the Newark Eagles, the bus trips, the ridiculously low salary of $125 a month and later $150, the greatness of teammates like Doby and Ray Dandridge and Willie Wells and Leon Day that surrounded him, and the icons like Gibson and Satchel Paige and Buck Leonard who played against him, he smiled and then said:
‘‘I played in three countries. I played in two World Series. But I never found anything to match the joy and the laughter those years with the Eagles brought me. The city (Newark) and county (Essex) loved us. We’d go out to hear jazz or to dinner and our fans were always grabbing the check. We were young and the world was new to us. We had never traveled.
‘‘They were the happiest times of my life.
‘‘And we still had this game … this marvelous, beautiful, blessed game … and nobody and nothing could take that away from us, so we just went out and played it. Wherever and whenever we could.”
Played it?
Right.
Continue reading →