Guest Author - David Landry
Missing among the accolades for Bruce Sutter and his unhittable split fingered fastball was sufficient celebration of the first woman ever inducted into the Hall. Effa Manley is one of 17 players and executives associated with the Negro Leagues who were inducted after having been elected by the Hall of Fame Veteran’s Committee. Effa and her husband Abe were the owners of the Newark Eagles from 1935 to 1948. During that time Effa exerted day to day control over the team and distinguished herself as a strong manager and an effective promoter of her team and the league. She helped launch the careers of hall of famers Larry Doby and Monte Irvin, as well as Cy Young Award winner Don Newcombe.
Effa Manley was born in Philadelphia in 1900 and moved to New York after graduating from High School. She became a committed baseball fan after falling in love with Babe Ruth's swing. A fixture at Yankee Stadium, she met her future husband there during the 1932 World Series. Abe, a real estate investor and alleged racketeer, bankrolled the Brooklyn Eagles of the Negro National League, but ceded control to Effa. She seized initiative from the start with a spectacular opening ceremony featuring over 100 VIPs, including Fiorello LaGuardia who was mayor of New York at the time. When they found competition with the Brooklyn Dodgers too intense, Abe purchased a team in Newark and they relocated the Eagles there. Newark would be home to the team until the Negro Leagues were disbanded in 1948, following the integration of the major leagues.
Effa was very close to her players and set the standard for player-friendly management. She provided personal support for players who showed good character, such as helping them find off-season work. She and Abe purchased a team in Puerto Rico to provide Winter League opportunities for their players. She looked after her player’s health by being the only league owner to hire a team doctor and a trainer. To ease the demands of travel, she provided an air conditioned 1946 Flexible Clipper bus for the team at cost of $15,000. She even loaned Monte Irvine the down payment for his first home.
Although Abe was nominally the treasurer of the Negro National League, it was Effa who fulfilled all of the responsibilities of the post. When integration began in 1946, she sought and received compensation from the Indians when they signed Larry Doby and from the Giants for Irvin. This set a precedent for subsequent transactions involving Negro League players that kept several teams afloat in the short term.
Effa’s accomplishments went beyond baseball. As a young woman working in the New York millinery trades, she organized a boycott of Harlem shops that did not hire African American clerks. This led to a change in hiring practices and jobs for over 300 African Americans.
Throughout her life, Effa was assumed to be a light skinned black, but several years before her death she revealed that she was white. Her mother was a white woman who had been married to two black men over her lifetime. Effa had been conceived out of wedlock prior to either of these marriages and the father had been her mother’s white employer. This was just another complex aspect of a fascinating life.
