St. Louis Giants
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The St. Louis Giants were a Negro League baseball team that competed independently from as early as 1906 to 1919, and joined the Negro National League (NNL) for the 1920 and 1921 seasons. After the 1921 season, the franchise was sold to another group of investors, who built a new park and renamed the club the St. Louis Stars.
In 1906, Charles A. Mills, an African-American bank messenger and baseball fan who wanted to upgrade the team, approached Conrad Kuebler, a white man who owned a ballpark, and convinced him to invest in the team. He then persuaded the Leland Giants to visit St. Louis to play his team. Mills discovered that the Leland Giants' star third baseman, Felix "Dick" Wallace wanted a change of scenery and persuaded him to join the St. Louis Giants as the team's playing manager. Wallace stayed with the team for most of its existence and assembled a core of veterans, including future Hall of Famer Ben Taylor, shortstop Joe Hewitt, first baseman Tully McAdoo, catcher/outfielder Sam Bennett, pitchers Bill Drake and Bill Gatewood, and outfielders Jimmie Lyons and Charles Blackwell. Though they were a good club, winning the St. Louis City League championship in 1912 and 1913, they couldn't break the grip of the Chicago American Giants and, later, the Indianapolis ABCs on the unofficial western championship of black baseball.
In 1920, the Giants finished sixth in the eight-team NNL with a 25-32 record. For the next season, St. Louis acquired superstar future Hall of Famer center fielder Oscar Charleston from Indianapolis. Led by an historic season by Charleston (the latest research shows him batting .436, with 12 home runs and a league-leading 32 stolen bases in 62 games), who was nearly matched by Blackwell (.430), and with Bill Drake contributing 16 wins, the Giants surged to second place with a 40-28 record. In October, they played a best-of-seven series with the second-place Cardinals in Sportsmen's Park, and lost four games to one even though Rogers Hornsby did not show up. That would be both the club's high point and its swan song, as Mills gave up the NNL's St. Louis franchise that winter. In 1922 most of the Giants' roster would play for the new St. Louis Stars.
Mills organized new, independent teams using the St. Louis Giants moniker, frequently signing old Giants' players. That team toured the east coast in both 1924 and 1928. An African-American industrial league team used the name in the late 1930s (it was also known as the St. Louis Titanium Giants), counting eventual major leaguer Luke Easter among its players.
