Effa Manley, the Most Powerful Woman in Baseball, circa 1938
Image Source: Unknown, but believed to be in the public domain.
Image Subject: Effa Manley, the only women elected into the MLB Hall of Fame, in a dress and wearing a Newark Eagles ball cap while being instructed by Hall of Fame member Mule Suttles on how to hold a bat.
Fun Fact: In the summer of 1947, the most powerful woman in baseball received a call from Bill Veeck, the owner of the Cleveland Indians. Veeck had spent the last five years scouting the Negro Leagues for the right ballplayer to integrate the American League and shortly after the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League had broken baseball’s color line by acquiring Jackie Robinson from the Kansas City Monarchs, Veeck set his eyes on Larry Doby of the Newark Eagles. However, whereas the Dodgers managed to acquire Robinson without paying a cent to the Monarchs, Veeck found himself in a very different sort of negotiation with the owner of the Eagles, Effa Manley.
When Veeck offered to purchase Doby’s contract for $15,000, Effa knew that it was far less than what a player of Doby’s caliber should be worth –– that a white free agent of his talent would get an offer of $100,000. However, she also recognized that it was a lot more than what the Monarchs had received for Robinson, and that her club had little leverage against the might of the Major Leagues. Still, she forced Veeck into two concessions –– the first being that the Eagles would get an extra $5,000 if Doby lasted 30 days with the club, and the second being that Veeck would promise to never pay Doby any less than $5,000 per year.
That July, Doby stepped right in with the Indians and become the first black player in the history of the American League. Manley would later become the godmother to Doby’s first child, and was inducted as the first woman into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. She remains the only woman in the Baseball Hall of Fame to this day.
Painting Detail: Printed on 13” x 19” canvas and painted using Schmincke Mussini and Marshall’s oil paints. Finer details were made using Prismacolor pencils.
Acknowledgement: Fun Facts text is a direct copy of a select parts of a narrative written by Joe Swide.