(From the Agate Type newsletter.)

In July of 1924, Earl Brown, a lefthanded pitcher who was Harvard’s first Black player in about twenty years (since William Clarence Matthews and Eugene Gregory in the 1900s), was working a summer job as a red cap at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The manager of the New York Lincoln Giants, Judy Gans, tracked him down and offered him a contract, and by July 6 he was in a Lincolns uniform. On Wednesday, July 9, in Bradley Beach, New Jersey, he took the mound against the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants. In the bottom of the second inning, the Lincolns, trailing 2 to 0, put across four runs on three home runs, one of them by Earl Brown, in his first professional plate appearance. He thus joins Pete Hill as another player confirmed to have homered in his first time at bat in the Negro leagues.

Brown “pitched a pretty game,” according to the Asbury Park Press, “but he was free with his passes and these resulted in runs. He weakened in the eighth and allowed his opponents to pommell [sic] him for four of their nine hits and the game.” (July 10, 1924, p. 15). The Bacharachs won 7 to 5.

Brown would continue the next few months with the Lincolns, appearing at least twice more as a reliever and ending up with an 0-2 record and a 7.82 ERA in league games. In September the Baltimore Afro-American reported that he had “found the pace too strenuous and gave up professional ball” (September 12, 1924, p. 1). His post-baseball career was considerably more illustrious: he would go on to be a well-known sportswriter and journalist before getting into politics, spending 12 years on the New York City Council and serving as Acting Borough President of Manhattan and chairman of the city’s Commission on Human Rights. He passed away in 1980.

For more on Earl Brown, see Stephen Eschenbach’s article in Harvard Magazine (also linked earlier).