Three Sundays ago they began playing again, at fields in West Philadelphia and Germantown, and on subsequent days at Diamond Number One at 33d and Dauphin - continuing with love a tradition that began in the final years of baseball bigotry and hate.
For the A League is a neighborhood-scale vestige of that era when major- league baseball was an all-white game, and blacks had to form their own leagues if they wanted to play. Forty years after Jackie Robinson broke the so-called color barrier, blacks now play in the major leagues, and whites and other minority group members play in the A League.
Still, most of the players, and all the managers, of the A League are black - the only such league, those associated with it believe, left in Pennsylvania and certainly one of the only ones left in the country.
Which is not to say that the A League is all it once was. There was a time, two or three decades back, when its games were among the black community's most popular recreational events, drawing several hundred spectators, said Blake, who works for a shipping company.
"After church on Sundays, that's when we'd get our biggest crowd," Blake reminisced. "Families would come to the park. If they didn't like a call or a move by the manager, they'd say they won't be putting anything in the hat, they won't be coming back. But they'd be there next time. Every team had their own following."
At one time, there were 14 teams in the league. Today, just five teams - the Mustangs, Bombers, Woodland Giants, Cubs and Braves - survive. And the crowds have dwindled to a few dozen - maybe 50 on a weekend.
But if the ardor of the general community for A League baseball has cooled, the ardor of the league's most passionate devotees has not.
