The Negro Baseball League of Milford

Founded in 1920 in Kansas City, the Negro Baseball League included many independent and regional teams across the country. Milford was no exception and the Milford Yankees, one of the most successful in the area, drew large crowds to baseball fields.

Considered a semi-professional team, the Milford Yankees were under the management of the late Frank Fountain. The team was created from area residents and college students at Delaware State College. Fountain also recruited players from all-black Maryland colleges. Some of the players agreed to join the team in order to raise funds and head south to play for the Black Barons of Birmingham and other big-name teams.

During this era, a black team could earn between $300 and $400 per game in Milford, the equivalent of between $6,000 and $8,000 today. Because of segregation rules, players could not travel or stay in many hotels. Most traveled in old buses that they had to sleep in since they were not welcome in hotels or motels where they played.

Still remembered today are players like George Brown, a Delaware State College student who pitched for the Yankees. Brown was a great pitcher “as long as he was wearing his glasses,” Charles Hammond, batboy for the Yankees and nephew of Fountain, has been quoted as saying. Brown signed with the Cleveland Indians in 1951 but never played for the team due to a knee injury he suffered while serving in Korea.

Another player, Walter Reed, catcher for the Milford Yankees, received offers to play for other teams but since he had a family, he was not interested in “living his life out of a suitcase.”

Despite segregation, Milford’s baseball bleachers were filled with both black and white spectators during games. Fountain was quoted often as saying the sport brought people together. When Satchel Paige pitched a game in Milford, the stadium was full.

“Paige was a show pitcher who called in his fielders to strike out the side,” Fountain was quoted as saying.

Fountain also remembered Paige’s famous “hesitation pitch” and that Paige was “an engaging man who was true to his beliefs.” Fountain, who owned the Moonlight Grill and a package store, attested that Paige had a strict no alcohol rule and that he “ever even asked” for a drink.

When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, segregation in baseball slowly ended and the Yankees stopped playing.

“I didn’t make any money in it,” Fountain said in an interview with the Delaware State News in 1990. “In fact, I probably lost a good bit. But it didn’t matter. I was young and it was baseball. I loved it.”

In April 2000, Fountain was one of 12 inducted into the Delaware African American Sports Hall of Fame.

“A graduate of Milford High and Delaware State College, Fountain was selected to manage the Milford Yanks, a semi-pro baseball team formed in the early 1940s,” a write-up about his induction read. “After World War II, he reorganized the team which challenged Negro League teams until the late 1950s. Fountain was the manager the entire span. He was the first black person in the United States to hold an executive office in highway safety and also was a Milford city councilman and a governor’s representative for the state.”