St. Louis Cardinals: Celebrating recognition of the St. Louis Stars

The St. Louis Cardinals weren’t the only baseball team in St. Louis. Let’s talk about the best of the St. Louis Stars.

St. Louis has a new Major League team, and it hasn’t existed in 89 years. On Wednesday, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred announced that the Negro Leagues were being elevated to Major League status, meaning the stats of players in the Negro Leagues will now count as MLB statistics.

While the St. Louis Cardinals have received the overwhelming share of local baseball coverage since their inception in 1884, the St. Louis Stars Negro League team was a force in its heyday, and now is a perfect time to reflect on the team’s history and the players who shaped it.

The predecessor to the Stars were the St. Louis Giants, a team that played from 1906 to 1921. The Giants weren’t the most dominant team, but for one year, they had one of the best players of all time in outfielder Oscar Charleston.

With St. Louis in 1921, Charleston earned the maximum league salary of $400 per month. He hit .444/.469./.698 in 183 plate appearances. Against Negro League competition, Charleston hit .339, and against white competition, he hit .326. In his book “The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract,” baseball historian Bill James named Charleston the fourth greatest baseball player who ever lived.

Many players in the Negro Leagues had exceptionally long careers. While many statistics from that time were spotty, what is known is that Charleston played for 26 years, from age 18 in 1915 to age 44 in 1941.

When the Giants became the Stars after the 1921 season, the team became a juggernaut on the field, winning three pennants in four years: 1928, 1930 and 1931. The team also owned one of the only stadiums devoted solely to Negro League baseball, Stars Park, and it was very large for its time, with a capacity of 10,000 people.

One of the Hall of Famers, Willie Wells, was a slick-fielding shortstop who played for the Stars. Wells played for the team far longer than Charleston did, from 1924 to 1931. Wells was usually considered the best shortstop in the league, defensively and offensively. Wells was very solid at the plate with a career average if .319. He was especially notable in 1926, when he set a Negro Leagues single-season record for home runs with 27.

Biz Mackey was a defensive stalwart as well. Mackey spent most of his career behind the plate, and in 1920, his one year with St. Louis, he hit .333 in 81 plate appearances. He also served as a mentor to future Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella on skills at catcher.

Power-hitting first baseman Mule Suttles played for the Stars from 1926 to 1931, and in his career against Negro League teams, Suttles hit .329 with 129 home runs, second in Negro Leagues history, trailing only Turkey Stearnes‘ 176.

But by far the most remembered player on the Stars was Cool Papa Bell, one of the fastest men to step foot on a baseball diamond. While Bell began his career as a pitcher, he was soon moved to center field, where he was able to take advantage of his speed. Bell was the subject of a quote most often attributed to Satchel Paige: He was so fast, he could turn off the light and be under the covers before the room got dark.

Bell contributed to his legend with his own quips about his speed. He once stated that he got five hits and stole five bases, but the scorekeeper forgot to bring his scorebook that day.

The Stars folded in 1931 along with the first iteration of the Negro Leagues, so while these five players are the only St. Louis Negro Leagues players who were inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, their importance to the league and to baseball as a whole cannot be overstated.

Now that baseball is giving the Negro Leagues the recognition it deserves, perhaps even the casual St. Louis fan will become acquainted with some of the above names. Their time to be honored is long overdue, because they served as pioneers for the game we have today.