Mount Pleasant Magazine July/August 2019

64 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.BestOfMP.com feature Sullivan’s Island team and could deliver the ball with either arm. Joseph Jones, 78, was among the few East Cooper players who went on to college baseball at Denmark Tech from 1958 to 1960. To East Cooper’s baseball players, however, no one ever attained the pinnacle reserved for Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era. Robinson’s influence was so strong that among the six players interviewed who have a favorite professional team today, four said they root for the Dodgers, a team that long ago left Brooklyn, where Robinson earned his Hall of Fame credentials. “Most black kids really got into baseball when Jackie started playing,” said Jerome Parker, 77. “When Jackie came into the league, it gave you a drive. If he can do it, I can do it. It made you feel proud.” “We didn’t have many heroes, but now we had a hero for the first time,” Fred Lincoln, 74, added. “He was an inspiration to so many people. Jackie really tweaked everyone’s interest in baseball.” Major League Baseball was integrated on April 15, 1947, when Robinson broke in with the Dodgers, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that baseball become a black and white sport in East Cooper. A league that eventually grew to 24 teams was formed with integrated teams from Charleston and West Ashley, and, for a time at least, the crowds that came out to watch on Sunday afternoon were larger than ever in and around Mount Pleasant. Sadly, the league — and organized baseball — didn’t last much longer in East Cooper, for one reason or another. Parker said the Vietnam War was to blame because most of the players left home to fight in Southeast Asia. “When we came back, the kids were playing basketball,” he said. Green pointed out that the National Basketball Association was better at promoting its stars than Major League Baseball, while Lincoln lamented the small crowds that show up for high school baseball, compared with the larger numbers at basketball and football games. Fordham’s opinion is that a financial crisis brought on by accusations of stolen money killed the league. Regardless of what caused the demise of African American baseball in East Cooper, the roar of the crowds, the fierce competition and the love of the game live on among those who counted the days until Sunday afternoon arrived. “It was America’s pastime, and it was definitely the pastime in black neighborhoods in the Lowcountry,” Green said. Members of the 10 Mile Eagles, in a photo taken in 1980, included James Hazel, Willie Hazel, Elijah “Candy” Pinckney, James Coleman, Wesley Clark, Fred Williams, Eugene German, Paul Ravanel, David Pinckney, Charles Nelson, Robbie White and Donald Singleton. Photo courtesy of John Wright.