Cumberland Posey
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Cumberland Willis "Cum" Posey (June 20, 1890, Homestead, Pennsylvania - March 28, 1946, Pittsburgh) was an American player, manager and team owner in baseball's Negro Leagues. He played with the Homestead Grays in 1911, was manager by 1916, and became owner in the early 1920s. In a quarter-century running the team, he built it into one of the powerhouse franchises of black baseball, winning numerous pennants, including nine consecutively from 1937-45.
In 1910, a group of Homestead steelworkers was organized into one of baseball’s greatest clubs by Posey. This team, the Homestead Grays, played many locations such as Forbes Field and Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. The team won eight out of nine Negro National League titles.
Posey, the principal owner of the Homestead Grays, spent 35 years (1911-1946) in baseball as a player, manager, owner and club official. He built a strong barnstorming circuit that made the Grays a perennially powerful and profitable team, one of the best in the East.
After starring in basketball (which had been invented only 18 months after he was born) in college, Posey began playing baseball for the semi-pro Grays in 1911. He soon ended his playing career to become field and business manager. He took control of the Grays in 1920 and turned them into a highly successful regional enterprise as an independent team. The Grays' strong identity in Pennsylvania and surrounding states enabled them to survive the depths of the Great Depression.
Posey, an aggressive talent seeker with the Grays, at one time or another had over a dozen current Negro leagues Hall of Famers playing for him. He was often accused of raiding other clubs' rosters, enticing their best players to join his team. He suffered a heavy dose of the same in the early 1930s, when he lost several stars to the well-financed Pittsburgh Crawfords. The Grays rebounded and became a member of the second Negro National League in 1935, soon dominating the circuit. Posey's teams reeled in nine consecutive pennants form 1937-1945.
Posey unwisely attempted to start the East-West League in 1932, during the Depression, but it did not last the season. He later became an officer of the Negro National League, and was a major force at its meetings throughout the rest of his career. He also was a frequent critic of the league, both before and after joining it, in his regular sports columns for the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black weekly newspaper.
Courier sportswriter Wendell Smith once wrote of Posey: "Some may say he crushed the weak as well as the strong on the way to the top of the ladder. But no matter what his critics say, they cannot deny that he was the smartest man in Negro baseball and certainly the most successful."
Posey died of cancer at age 55 in Pittsburgh. His hometown of Homestead declared a school holiday in his honor the day of his funeral.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
[edit] External links
- Baseball Hall of Fame bio
- Baseball Library
- Bio from Beyond the Shadow of the Senators
- Short bio at WVU
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