Tribute To Negro League Baseball Breaks Ground In East Orange

EAST ORANGE, NJ — Ground has been broken on a tribute to Negro League Baseball in East Orange.

Last week, East Orange officials and community members gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony at Oval Park – a local landmark steeped in baseball history.

City officials said the Oval Park renovations will include a shaded gazebo, a rain garden of native shrubs, perennials, and flowers, 126 new trees, new bleachers, a multi-purpose turf field, a rubberized walking path and two new basketball courts.

The park is scheduled to re-open in the late summer of 2024.

The Negro National League teams played at the Oval from 1940 to 1948, and the Negro American League teams played there for one year from 1949 to 1950, according to Alfred M. Martin and Alfred T. Martin in “The Negro Leagues in New Jersey.”

Teams that played at the Oval included the Newark Eagles, New York Black Yankees, Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, Brooklyn Colored Giants, Baltimore Elites, Birmingham Barons, Chicago Giants and the Asheville Blues.

One of the most famous Negro League players who hurled his fastballs in Oval Park was Satchel Paige, a National Baseball Hall of Famer and famed pitcher who competed against local legends Larry Doby and Monte Irvin in the 1946 Negro World Series.

Former City Councilman William Holt, who played minor league baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates, said that watching the games as a child was a “seventh heaven” for an avid baseball fan and future prospect like himself.

Holt said he relished in his ability to regularly attend games of the New York Cubans — the nation’s first African American team — who made Oval Park their home playing field between 1941-1947.

Mayor Ted Green agreed that the city is a haven for baseball history.

“Oval Park is rich with so much American and East Orange history — from the Negro League teams that once played there to the multiple sports leagues that at one time dominated youth baseball, track and field, football and basketball,” Green said.

“That park has bred greatness and produced top-notch talent such as current NFL players Jabrill Peppers, who plays for the New England Patriots and Rasul Douglas, a Super Bowl LII champion who now plays for the Buffalo Bills,” the mayor continued. “The renovation of the Oval is long overdue and we are excited to revive and modernize the park for the benefit of our residents, visitors and generations to come.”

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