Baltimore Black Sox: Field Portrait (1920s)

Through the 1920s, the Baltimore Black Sox were the pride of Black baseball in Maryland. A charter member of the Eastern Colored League, the club fielded future Hall of Famers Jud Wilson and Pete Hill, power hitter John Beckwith, and, by 1929, a "Million Dollar Infield" that carried Baltimore to the American Negro League championship. This field portrait brings you up close to that era: three Black Sox players standing on an open field in pinstripe flannels, gloves in hand, with BLACK SOX lettered across the chest. Double matted in a black frame, it arrives ready to hang.

A Closer Look at the Photograph

Unlike a formal team portrait, a field portrait shows players the way fans saw them at the ballpark. The three men stand a few paces apart in pinstriped uniforms with piped trim and striped stirrup socks, each holding his glove at his side. Two of the jerseys carry BLACK SOX in block letters, and a fence line and trees mark the edge of the field behind them. The players have not been individually identified, and the 1920s date is an estimate based on the team's peak years.

The Black Sox in the 1920s

Founded as an independent club in 1913, the Black Sox joined the newly formed Eastern Colored League in 1923 and quickly became contenders. They finished second in 1924 under player-manager Pete Hill, with Jud "Boojum" Wilson and John Beckwith anchoring the lineup. Pitcher Laymon Yokely arrived in 1926 and became a fixture on the staff for years. In 1929, Wilson, Frank Warfield, Oliver Marcell and Dick Lundy formed the celebrated "Million Dollar Infield," a nickname the press gave them for what they might have been worth in the segregated major leagues, and that year Baltimore won the American Negro League title.

Home Field in South Baltimore

For most of the decade, the Black Sox played at Maryland Baseball Park, a ballpark the club built near Bush and Russell Streets in South Baltimore. In 1924, it hosted two games of the first Colored World Series. The park became a junkyard in 1934, and its exact site went unconfirmed for decades until historian Bernard McKenna found a 1927 aerial photograph of it in 2013.

Complete the Collection

Pair this portrait with our 1924 Baltimore Black Sox Team Photo, which shows the team seated in two rows in their arched-letter uniforms, or the Baltimore Black Sox Team Photo (1920s), where the full club poses in pinstripes like the ones worn here. Go back to the club's independent years with the Baltimore Black Sox Team Photo (Late 1910s). Jud Wilson later starred for the Homestead Grays, featured in our 1943 Homestead Grays at Forbes Field team photo.

The Negro Leagues

Segregation kept Black players out of the American and National Leagues, so they built leagues of their own. Rube Foster launched the Negro National League in Kansas City in 1920, and the Eastern Colored League, which Baltimore helped found, followed in 1923. A century later, Major League Baseball formally recognized the Negro Leagues of 1920 to 1948 as major leagues, and in 2024 their records became part of MLB's official statistics.

Framing Details

The 5x7 inch image is printed on premium satin (semi-gloss) photo paper, double matted and set in a black frame for a finished size of approximately 12x10 inches. It is available framed only and ships ready to hang.

About the Photograph

Like most images of Black baseball from this period, this photograph carries no photographer's credit. Black teams rarely kept team photographers or archives of their own, so much of what survives came from local commercial photographers and the Black press. In Baltimore, that meant the Afro-American, the city's leading Black newspaper, which reported on the Black Sox throughout the 1920s. First published in 1892 and owned by the Murphy family since 1897, it grew into one of the largest Black newspapers in the country. Its archive remains a key source for historians of the team, including Bernard McKenna, whose 2020 book on the Baltimore Black Sox traces the club from 1913 to 1936.