James “Jake” Sanders, Negro League Star
Segregation shut out ballplayers like James “Jake” Sanders from ballparks and the major leagues, but it didn’t quell his passion for the game.
He attended the same high school in Fairfield as Willie Mays and went on to star in the Negro League. These days, Sanders travels the country telling the history of the league to school kids so the stories don’t get lost.
Sanders turns 84 this month, and he still loves to talk about baseball. He grew up playing in the streets of Fairfield, using a broomstick and tennis ball. He didn’t have the real equipment.
When he was about 12, Sanders’ father took him to a Negro League game at Rickwood Field. He saw Toni Stone, a female playing second base. He decided, if she could play baseball, he could do the same.
Sanders traded that broomstick for a bat – and later played in the Negro League for the Birmingham Black Barons, the New Orleans Bears and several other teams.
He still remembers the huge crowds that came to watch the Negro League games.
“There’d be so many people in Birmingham, they’d have to put a line down the third and fourth base line,” he says. “I’ve played before 50,000 people in the Negro League.”
A lot of Negro League History still lives in Birmingham. Nine Birmingham-area players went to the Major League after integration.
Sanders enjoys talking about his friends, such as Rev. William Greason, a Birmingham minister.
“His curve ball was so good. He could throw a curve ball and it could wrap around a house,” Sanders says of Greason. “He went on to play in the Major League with the St. Louis Cardinals.”
Not all of his memories from the early days of baseball are good. Sanders remembers getting cut from LA Dodgers Farm System in the 1950s.
“I’m battin’ clean up, with a .462 battin’ and I get cut,” he says. “I’m leading the club in every department. I gets cut, because of the color of my skin.”
When another Major League team tried to recruit him, Sanders turned them down.
Sanders and other Negro Leaguers players get some recognition now. Congress issued a proclamation in 2002 recognizing the league as part of the Major League.
WBHM Anchor/Producer Janae Pierre contributed to this story.
Americans’ medical debt can stay in credit reports, judge rules. What does that mean?
The judge's decision vacated a rule imposed by the Biden administration earlier this year to keep medical debt from affecting credit scores.
Attorney General Bondi brushes aside questions about her handling of Epstein files
Pam Bondi sought to move past questions about her handling of the Justice Department's files from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, as pressure continued to grow for her to release them.
Increase in military aid to Ukraine marks a shift in White House policy toward Russia
The Pentagon and U.S. military officials in Europe are working with NATO members to ship more Patriot missile systems to Ukraine and release more munitions that were briefly halted.
Texas flash flood recovery effort turns its focus to lakes
With 101 people still missing after the July 4 flash flood, the focus turns to local lakes, and what may be buried in them.
U.S. senator wants DOGE out of sensitive payment system for farmers
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., wants the USDA to revoke high-level access granted to the Department of Government Efficiency to a database that controls payments and loans to farmers and ranchers.
Lawyer says an Alabama teen who was killed by police was shot in the back
Authorities have not released police body camera video of the June 23 encounter or disclosed the name of the officer who shot 18-year-old Jabari Peoples in the parking lot of a soccer field in the affluent Birmingham suburb of Homewood. They also haven't released the findings of the county's official autopsy.