Two players definitely hit home runs in their first Negro league plate appearance: Hall of Famer Pete Hill (whose May 15, 1920, home run vs. the Cuban Stars was the first Negro league home run, period) and future New York City Councilman Earl Brown. There are a few more possibilities for first-at-bat home runs in the Negro leagues that we can’t yet verify, due to the lack of detail in game reports. (Originally published in the Agate Type newsletter.)

April 28, 1923: The brand-new Milwaukee Bears, player-managed by Pete Hill, “surprised even their own folks” (in the words of the Chicago Defender) by winning their opening league game against the Cuban Stars. The Bears spiced their offense with home runs by center fielder and leadoff hitter Andrew Wilson and first baseman/number two hitter Percy Wilson (no relation), each playing his first game in the NNL. Unfortunately none of the articles we’ve seen about this game gives any details on the Wilsons’ home runs. The Bears did score one run in the first inning, so it is possible that one of them opened his major league account with a homer, but on the present evidence there’s no way to know.

April 29, 1923: The very next day after the Wilsons’ pair of blasts, Rich Gee homered in his league debut with the New York Lincoln Giants. Again, there was no description of his hit or when it occurred. The Lincolns went scoreless in their first two innings, and Gee batted seventh. Conceivably his team could have gone out 1-2-3 twice in a row then Gee homered as the leadoff hitter in the third—so it is a possibility.

May 22, 1938: There were (at least) three significant Jack Johnsons in Negro league history: the heavyweight champion that you’re probably thinking of (who had various baseball connections), Topeka Jack Johnson (also a boxer, but primarily a baseball player and manager in the early 20^th century), and Jack Johnson of the 1938 Homestead Grays. This last bearer of the name was a sandlot star for such teams as the Edgar Thomson Steel Works and the Pittsburgh Monarchs (and also starred in semipro football and basketball). He tried, and failed, to catch on with the 1938 Pittsburgh Crawfords, but the Homestead Grays quickly snapped him up. He got off to a fast start, hitting a single and a home run in his first league game, an 11 to 3 Grays victory over the Philadelphia Stars. There are, of course, no details about the home run, but the Grays scored two runs in each of the first two innings, so it is possible that Johnson, who batted sixth, could have hit a leadoff home run in the second inning.

June 19, 1938: Less than a month after Johnson’s debut, his erstwhile Edgar Thomson teammate James “Bus” Clarkson homered in his first league game for the Pittsburgh Crawfords, batting in the number seven spot. The Crawfords (playing the Black Senators in Washington) did not score in the first inning, but scored twice in the second, so Clarkson could have hit his home run in his initial time at bat.

August 14, 1940: The Toledo-Indianapolis Crawfords, on tour in Texas, signed Douglas Rhone, a Houston-area boxer and pitcher. On July 30 he appeared as a reliever in a 10 to 9 loss to the St. Louis Stars in Houston. No box score was printed, so it’s not known whether or not he came to bat. A couple of weeks later he started for the Crawfords against the Kansas City Monarchs in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Rhone lost the game, 6 to 4, but in the second inning he temporarily put his team ahead with a three-run home run. Since he was batting ninth, it was definitely his first time up. So if he did not bat in the July 30 game, he could well have homered in his first Negro league plate appearance.

These barnstorming games are quite likely not to have counted in the official Negro American League standings, though that, too, is uncertain, as the NAL did not provide reliable standings or results, so it is mostly not possible now to know exactly which games were official.

May 3, 1941: The Blanco brothers, Carlos (first base and third base) and Heberto (second base and other infield positions), played together on several teams in the 1930s and 1940s, most notably Habana in the Cuban League and the New York Cubans in the Negro National League. On May 3, 1941, they appeared in their first game for the Cubans, facing the Black Yankees on Staten Island. “A. Blanco” (that is, Heberto) homered for the Cubans, but the available sources do not indicate whether it came in his first plate appearance or not. Heberto batted sixth, and the Cubans scored once in the first inning, so he couldn’t have hit it then; but they scored another run in the second inning, so it is possible he hit a solo home run in that inning. Or he could have hit it later in the game, as the Cubans scored seven more runs (three in the third, one in the fourth, two in the fifth, and one more in the seventh).

I’ll close by noting that of course there might well be (almost certainly are) other cases of first-at-bat home runs. Most obviously we haven’t finished compiling known details of games without box scores, so we could find some there; also we might find additional accounts of games that already have box scores, with new details. Retrosheet is ahead of us in actually posting details of games, so they may find these games before we do.