One glorious season: How baseball helped to integrate Decatur, Illinois

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Spring 2003 by Chicoine, Stephen

The railroads and associated heavy industry established Decatur as an important town in early twentieth-century central Illinois. African Americans, moving up from the South to find a new life, settled in Decatur. Although racial policies in the North were different in some ways from those in the South, segregation, while not legislated, remained an every day fact of life. Most restaurants in Decatur did not serve African Americans. They were only allowed to view movies at local theaters from the balconies. African Americans rarely attended baseball games at Fans Field unless Negro League teams were passing through central Illinois and there had never been a black baseball player on the Decatur Commies.

Decatur was without a professional baseball team for the 1951 baseball season and it appeared for a time that the situation would remain the same for the 1952 season. The Mississippi-Ohio Valley League was prepared to expand to eight teams with league play to begin during the first week of May, but no one had stepped up to buy the Decatur franchise as March came to an end. The return of baseball to the town became a regular subject in the columns of Decatur Review Sports Editor Howard V. Millard.18 The Decatur Herald and Review published the Herald in the morning, the Review in the evening and a combined edition on Sunday. Millard, in his thirtieth year writing for the Decatur paper, had been president of the predecessor Illinois State League and was part of a group of baseball boosters, known as Decatur Baseball, Inc. The headlines read "Decatur Is Returning to Organized Baseball" as a jubilant Millard reported on 8 April 1952. Dick King, general manager of the Gonzalez Baseball system, signed the contract "last night just before he caught the train for St. Louis."

The season was about to start and there was little time to waste. King promptly ordered two sets of twenty uniforms at a cost of forty-five dollars each, although he had no players yet for his team.19 He managed five other baseball teams for Gonzalez Baseball System. Arturo Gonzalez was an attorney in Del Rio, Texas, a predominantly Hispanic town on the Mexican border. Gonzalez first got into baseball in 1939 when he started up a team in his hometown of Del Rio to play in the Big State League. Baseball was Gonzalez's passion, but a sidelight. He was a sophisticated attorney, whose bilingual ability made him invaluable to American oil companies interested in the Caribbean region. He represented Houston oil companies, first in Venezuela and later in Cuba in the 1940s. Gonzalez met Joe Cambria in Cuba in the course of business and the two became close friends. Cambria was the man responsible over the years for numerous fine Cuban baseball players that became established in the major leagues, particularly for Calvin Griffith's Washington Senators. Gonzalez began to import Cuban baseball players into his various teams through Cambria in 1949.

Arturo Gonzalez laughs when asked how a man in Del Rio, Texas came to own a baseball franchise in Decatur, Illinois. His initial response to Dick King was "What do I want with Decatur, Illinois? I don't even know where it is!" Gonzalez adds, however, that Dick King could be very persuasive about baseball matters and urged him to seize the opportunity.20 Gonzalez and his wife immediately drove to San Antonio, where they caught a plane to St. Louis. Representatives of Decatur Baseball Inc. met the couple at St. Louis and drove them to Decatur. Gonzalez agreed to buy the franchise after seeing the town and inspecting the fine facility at Fans Field.21 The entire process took less than one month.22 As a result, the Decatur Commodores became one of eight teams in the 1952 Mississippi-Ohio Valley (MOV) League.