Thursday, June 05, 2008

Dodgers Select Andrew Porter in Ceremonial Negro League Draft

Andruw "Pullman" Porter


Dave Winfield came up with the inspired idea of conducting a ceremonial draft of living Negro League players to accompany this year's First-Year Player Draft. Each major league team has been assigned a former Negro League player, who will receive a small stipend...and a small piece of long-overdue attention.

Fittingly, the Dodgers' selection is a flamethrower: Andrew Porter:

Los Angeles Dodgers: Andrew Porter, P, Baltimore, Louisville, Cleveland, Newark, and Indianapolis
His nickname was "Pullman," and the powerful Porter worked as hard as a Pullman porter. Noted for throwing smoke, he became one of the linchpins in the 1930s of an Elite Giants rotation that featured Bill Byrd and Jonas Gaines, legendary pitchers from black baseball. Porter, who played in Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela, played in the Negro League East-West All-Star Game in 1932 and 1950. He is second oldest Negro Leaguer and one of the few who barnstormed against Major Leaguers. In his later baseball days, he played for the first all-black team in organized baseball (Porterville Comets in 1952).

Finally, an Andrew we can all get behind!

photo courtesy of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

1 comments:

Katy said...

My company does video news stories on great people with awesome attitudes -- they don't get much better than some of the Negro League players who broke barriers in baseball!

You can see a video we did at MLB's recent symbolic draft of Negro League players, which includes Millito Navarro, Peanut Johnson and Bill Blair as well as Ken Griffey and Dave Winfield.

I hope you enjoy it!

http://growingbolder.com/media/Sports/Baseball/Righting-a-Wrong-155775.html