The West Coast Negro Baseball Association (WCNBA) was one of the several

Negro baseball leagues The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be ...

created during the time organized baseball was segregated. The WCNBA was organized as a minor league in 1946 by

Abe Saperstein Abraham Michael Saperstein (; July 4, 1902 – March 15, 1966) was the founder, owner and earliest coach of the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was a leading figure in black basketball and baseball from the 1920s through the 1950s, primarily bef ...

and

Jesse Owens James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games. Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lif ...

as a means to provide the west coast with a platform for

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

players. The league lasted about three months.

League history

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

in the mid-1940s, the African American population grew as wartime jobs demanded workers to relocate to the shipyards and military institutions along the California, Oregon and Washington coasts. After the war ended in 1945, Eddie Harris and David P. Portlock began the process of organizing a Negro league in the area using the current minor league

Pacific Coast League The Pacific Coast League (PCL) is a Minor League Baseball league that operates in the Western United States. Along with the International League, it is one of two leagues playing at the Triple-A level, which is one grade below Major League Ba ...

(PCL) stadiums while those teams were on the road. They reached out to Abe Saperstein to assist. Saperstein already owned a barnstorming team called the Cincinnati Crescents, which he moved to Seattle and renamed them the

Seattle Steelheads The Seattle Steelheads were a Negro league baseball team from Seattle, Washington. Owned by Abe Saperstein, they were also known as the Harlem Globetrotters and Cincinnati Crescents, though occasionally the teams split and played each other. ...

. He knew

, the track and field athlete and four-time gold medalist, and asked him to join. Owens formed the Portland Rosebuds in Oregon. Saperstein was elected league president, Owens vice-president and Portlock secretary. A 110-game season was planned. However, the league survived for only about three months. Most teams played under 30 games and the league folded due to "poor attendance, a lack of financing, and difficulty in accessing ballparks." Seattle and Oakland continued the season playing local teams across the midwest.

League franchises

The league was to be made up of six teams in cities with PCL stadiums. Originally, a team was slated to play in

Fresno Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...

, a non-PCL city. They moved their base of operations to San Diego, but did initially play at least one game in Fresno. Oakland far outpaced the rest of the league in the shortened season, with Seattle and San Francisco finishing above .500. San Diego, Portland and Los Angeles rounded out the standings.

External links

Baseball-Reference (Minors)

References

{{Negro League teams, Minorleague Negro baseball leagues Defunct baseball leagues in the United States African-American sports history Sports leagues established in 1946 African-American history of Oregon African-American history of California African-American history of Washington (state) Baseball leagues in California Baseball leagues in Washington (state) Baseball leagues in Oregon Defunct minor baseball leagues in the United States