First Team to be on Salary pay

The New York Cuban Giants was the first team to get paid salary wages. Plus, they were first professional black team was the Cuban Giants. They called themselves "Cuban" to hide the fact that they were black. They used "Giants" after the popular New York Giants. It was said that they spoke gibberish to each other during the game so that fans would think they were speaking Spanish. Formed and financed by Trenton promoter and businessman Walter Cook in 1885 -- and without a single Cuban among them -- the Cuban Giants won all 10 of their games against white Long Island clubs that first summer and came to be dubbed the "world colored champions’’ of 1887 and 1888, according to a Negro Leagues Baseball Museum website.

The team’s name, The Cuban Giants, was one which Cook believed would feed off whites’ prejudices at the time, according to Mark Ribowsky’s "Complete History of the Negro Leagues."

Cook believed that white crowds would have sooner handed over their money to see Latinos play ball than they would to see blacks play.

So the black Cuban Giants were instructed to "bound onto the field chirping pidgin Espanol and cackling loudly, in a gross parody of everybody’s idea of how Hispanics acted,’’ Ribowsky wrote.

In his book, "In Search of a Community’s Past: The Black Community in Trenton, New Jersey, 1860-1900," city high school history teacher Dr. Jack Washington says the Cuban Giants managed to look past the racial hatred of the day and play the game with near perfection.

Washington said the Cuban Giants was "perhaps one of the most, if not the most, respected African-American team."

The team won 40 consecutive games in its first full season of summer baseball in 1886.

In that first season, Clarence Williams, catcher Arthur Thomas, Billy Whyte, Shep Trusty, pitcher George Stoney, first baseman Jack Frye, second baseman George Williams, shortstop Abe Harrison, third baseman Ben Holmes, left fielder Bill White, and center fielder Ben Boyd, ushered in a new era for baseball and chipped away at America’s color complex.

"Pitchers and catchers were paid $18 a week (a handsome sum for the 1880s and 1890s), plus expenses; infielders got $15 and outfielders got $12," according to Washington’s book.
The Giants won many championships including:
DURATION: 1885-1899
HONORS: COLORED CHAMPIONS (1887-'88)
EASTERN CHAMPIONS ('94)
AFFILIATIONS: INDEPENDENT ('85-'88, '92-'99)
MIDDLE STATES LEAGUE ('89-'90)
CONNECTICUT STATE LEAGUE ('91)

The first Black Player to intergrate Baseball

I know many people think Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, but in 1878: Bud Fowler, becomes the first Negro player to cross the color barrier as a pitcher for the Lynn, Mass. Live Oaks of the International League.One of the top black baseball teams of the 1890s, the Page Fence Giants were based in Adrian, Michigan and named after the Page Woven Wire Fence Company. The team was sponsored by the company's founder, J. Wallace Page.

Formed in 1894, the team played its first game on April 9, 1895. Bud Fowler and Home Run Johnson organized the team, which was managed by Gus Parsons. Fowler picked players who did not drink and aimed for a group with high moral character. Five of the 12 players were college graduates. Fowler played second base while Johnson manned shortstop. The team played in 112 towns that year against all kinds of competition, going 118-36-2. They were 8-7 against clubs from the white Michigan State League. They lost games by scores of 11-7 and 16-2 against the Cincinnati Reds. The club lost Fowler and pitcher George Wilson to the white Adrian-based team in the MSL during the season.

In 1896 Charlie Grant replaced Fowler at second. The Page Fence Giants beat the Cuban X-Giants in a 15-game series, 10 games to 5, to claim they were the top team in black baseball. Overall they went 80-19 through August 1. In 1897 they went 125-12 with 82 consecutive wins. The 1898 tour was the club's last and the next year many of the players went to the new Columbia Giants.