A couple of years ago Bill Nowlin of SABR asked me about Negro leaguers who homered in their first at bat. It was for a SABR project called Dazzling Debuts. Unfortunately it’s not possible to construct a definitive list, as many Negro league games lack the narratives that would make it possible to know when in a game a home run was hit. In addition, a sizeable minority of Negro league games lack box scores, so we don’t have a record of all home runs hit.

But we can identify two first-plate-appearance home runs for sure, along with a few other possibilities. We’ll discuss the first one today, then move on to the others on subsequent days. (These posts first appeared last week in the Agate Type newsletter.)

The Negro National League started play on May 2, 1920, with a game between Joe Green’s Chicago Giants and the Indianapolis ABCs in Washington Park, Indianapolis. Most of the league’s teams, however, were busy with other commitments, and the official schedule didn’t really get going until the middle of the month. On May 15 the Detroit Stars played their first-ever NNL game, hosting the Cuban Stars at Mack Park. The Cubans took the lead with one run in the top of the first; in the home half, Detroit’s Frank Warfield led off with a double off the Cuban spitballer José Leblanc, then went to third on an out by Joe Hewitt. Jimmie Lyons got on base, probably via a walk, with Warfield held on third. They pulled a double steal with Warfield scoring and Lyons taking second. With the score tied, Detroit player-manager and cleanup hitter Pete Hill stepped up to the plate for his first time at bat in the Negro National League.

The previous year in independent play for the Stars, Hill had hit 28 home runs in 80 games, taking full advantage of Mack Park’s short right field fence. His slugging exploits were mentioned consistently in the papers and compared to Babe Ruth’s breakout season with the Boston Red Sox (Ruth would end up with a major league record 29 home runs). Now Hill had a man on second with one out in the first inning of his team’s first game in the new league. History was ready for him.

He rose to the occasion, launching a two-run homer to give Detroit a 3 to 1 lead, a lead they would turn into a 5 to 2 win. This was not only his first Negro league home run, and a home run in his first plate appearance. It was almost certainly the first Negro league home run, period.

Eight games were played in the NNL prior to May 15, 1920. We have box scores for seven of them, and no home runs were hit in any of those games. Only one game—game 2 of the opening day Chicago/Indianapolis doubleheader on May 2, an 11 to 4 win by the ABCs—lacks a box score. The brief accounts we have of that game mention a second-inning triple by Oscar Charleston (with either two on or the bases loaded—sources differ) as the game’s big hit. There is no mention of a home run, though the lack of a box score makes it impossible to say for sure. No other NNL games were played on May 15, so Pete Hill’s first-inning blast that day stands as the first known home run in any of the seven recognized Negro major leagues.

Of course, we are deploying the term “Negro leagues” in its strictest sense: the seven canonical Black major leagues that operated from 1920 through 1948, the leagues that have been recognized by MLB as “major league.” Hill was a 37-year-old veteran in May 1920. It was (at least) his 17^th season as a professional ballplayer. He had played league baseball before, with several seasons in the Cuban League in addition to the 1907 National Association of Colored Professional Clubs, the 1908 International League (not the minor league, but a Philadelphia-based, racially integrated league of Black, Cuban, and white semipro teams), and the 1909 Chicago City League. He batted .351 with 1 home run in 24 exhibition games against white major leaguers in Cuba. So he was far from a rookie.

The Seamheads Database uses a more expansive definition of “Negro league” that includes games between teams at the top level of independent, pre-league Black professional baseball. Under this definition, Hill hit a minimum of 41 Negro league home runs prior to 1920. This of course does not include many games without box scores, and many more games against white minor league and semipro opposition. Nevertheless, on May 15, 1920, Pete Hill struck the first home run in the MLB-recognized (1920-1948) Negro leagues, and he deserves recognition on those terms.

Returning to our original subject, this also makes Pete Hill one of only two Negro leaguers who are definitively known to have hit a home run in their first Negro league plate appearance. The other one is extremely obscure as a ballplayer, but much better known for his other careers–more on him tomorrow.