| St. Paul Colored Gophers 1907–1910 Saint Paul, Minnesota |
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The St. Paul Colored Gophers was a small club of black baseball players formed in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1907. The club lasted only 4 years, as the market in St. Paul was too small. They were not a formal Negro League team, as the Negro League was not created until 1920. However, like other barnstorming teams of the time, they had considerable impact on the desegregation of baseball.
In 1909, the Colored Gophers defeated what was considered to be the most powerful Negro baseball team, the Leland Giants.
Today, the Colored Gophers are rarely mentioned in Negro baseball history, and statistics and rosters are hard to find. On three occasions, the Minnesota Twins have honored the club by wearing replica throwback jerseys of the 1909 team. The Twins wore Gophers uniforms at home against Cleveland on July 13, 1997. They wore Gophers uniforms on July 10, 2005 in Kansas City against the Royals.[1] And most recently, on August 7, 2010, the Twins featured the Gophers uniforms in a game against the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field Announcers carefully referred to the jerseys as the Saint Paul Gophers, Leaving out the word colored , as the Indians wore the Negro League's Cleveland Buckeyes 1946 replica jerseys.[2]