Filmmaker Sam Pollard explores Black baseball history with ‘The League’

Christy Mathewson rose to greatness as a pitcher for the New York Giants in the early 1900s on the strength of his “fadeaway,” a pitch that would resemble the screwball of later generations. 

What most people don’t know is that it was a pitch he learned from a Black pitcher, Rube Foster, who’d been quietly brought in by Giants manager John McGraw to teach Mathewson. 

Foster, who went on to pitching greatness himself, later founded the Negro Leagues, which would become home to the legendary Satchel Paige, whose control was so masterful, his daughter would say, that he could pick out a single berry on a bush and hit it with a pitch. 

Those stories, as well as the history of Black players before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the Major Leagues in 1947, are recounted in “The League,” the new documentary about the Negro Leagues directed by Sam Pollard (whose previous films include “MLK/FBI” and “Citizen Ashe”).

The film, which is in selected theatres and available for streaming on July 14, spans from the 19th century when Black players were first banned all the way to the demise of leagues after integration. It also looks at external forces, from the 1896 Plessy vs Ferguson Supreme Court decision that enforced the “separate but equal doctrine,” to the rise of thriving Black communities. But the emphasis is on players and executives, including Effa Manley, the only woman to own a team, and catcher Josh Gibson, who was haunted by personal demons and died tragically young. 

Pollard spoke recently by video about his awakening as a baseball fan, about the film and about incorporating Negro League statistics into the official record books. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. What drew you to this project?

My dad spent some time in St. Louis and had some brothers there so he was a big Cardinals fan. I was a huge baseball fan growing up and in 1963 and 1964 I became a fan of Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Curt Flood and Bill White. I always knew about Jackie Robinson, but then as a young man, I started doing research and learning about Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell. 

Byron Motley’s father, Bob Motley, had been a Negro League umpire and Byron had done a tremendous amount of legwork and shot all these interviews with different players like Monte Irvin and Satchel Paige and Willie Mays. He approached me a few years back and knowing what I did about the history, I was excited about telling the story for people of the 21st century who don’t know about these trailblazers like Rube Foster, who started the Negro Leagues. 

Baseball is not the national pastime anymore. It’s an opportunity now to give people a chance to see that baseball was pretty interesting back then. I wanted to get these people the recognition they deserve.

Q. How much did you try to balance the “inside baseball” stories with the human interest stories”?

We wanted to give you both inside baseball stories and the human stories. It was an opportunity to bring some nuance and to tell the real history of the evolution of the Negro Leagues all the way up to its demise. For instance, I wanted to talk about Effa Manley, the first Black woman to own a team and to be in the Hall of Fame. 

Q. In the section on Jackie Robinson you puncture the halo surrounding Branch Rickey when you talk about how, unlike Bill Veeck (who signed Larry Doby and Satchel Paige), he took Negro League players without providing compensation to the owners — and how Manley was outspoken in pushing back.

We can’t tell this story without paying homage to Jackie Robinson – and people don’t know that part of the story. It was a sign of the times and there was no way it was going to go differently. Robinson’s signing was the big thing. Did Branch Rickey pay for Robinson or Roy Campanella or Don Newcombe? He didn’t feel like had to. I was glad we had that story about Effa challenging Rickey and then Veeck giving her money for Doby.

Integration was a very complex thing – there were these thriving Black communities that were changed and that’s what happened with the Negro Leagues, but that’s the cross we bear.

Q. There has been a recent decision to include Negro League statistics in official major statistics but some argue that they were not always playing against major league quality opponents, especially when they were barnstorming. How do you feel about that issue?

I think it’s complicated when you try to break down how many homers were in Negro League games or in barnstorming games – there were different teams, different level of players. The upside is that Major League Baseball now see that these players are part of the evolution of American Baseball. I hope this film contributes to that as well. The percentage of African American players is now so small; maybe all this will mean that some young athlete will be inspired to play baseball.