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On December 16, 2020, Major League Baseball (MLB) officially designated the Negro Leagues as “Major League.” By doing this, MLB “ensures that future generations will remember the approximately 3400 players of the Negro Leagues during this period as Major League-caliber players.” MLB continued by stating, “the statistics and records of these players will become a part of MLB’s history.”

MLB and the Elias Sports Bureau (the primary source of statistics for ESPN, Comcast Sportsnet, Turner Sports, NFL Network, Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football,Thursday Night Football, league and media websites, and dozens of broadcasters of MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLS telecasts) have begun a review process to determine the full scope of this designation’s ramifications on statistics and records.

This means Miami’s first MLB team is not the Marlins. Instead, South Florida was the birthplace of another illustrious “Major League” team, founded as the Miami Giants in 1936.

The team will see among its alumni many names baseball fans would recognize today – Hank Aaron, all-time MLB home-run record holder till it was broken in 2007 by Barry Bonds, and Satchel Paige, the Hall of Fame pitcher. Also, the first female professional baseball player, Toni Stone, was on the team. All their history will now be incorporated into the story of MLB.

Unfortunately the owners, looking for a publicity stunt, decided to cash in on a faraway conflict. As Italian dictator Mussolini, in a prelude to World War II, invaded Ethiopia in 1935, the team was renamed to the Ethiopian Clowns.

The team owners appear to have borrowed from the headlines of local black newspapers, which often featured sympathetic headlines to the Ethiopian plight. The team’s Ethiopia reference was seen by some as the exploitation of black sympathy, which encouraged some Negro league owners to oppose adding the Clowns to their ranks.

Homestead Giants (playing in Pittsburg) co-owner C. Posey, for example, wrote in his weekly Courier column in 1942 that sportswriters would “always feel disgusted at Syd [the Clowns owner] for… capitalizing on the rape of Ethiopia when that country was in distress.” In the Afro-American, the longest- running black weekly newspaper in the US, E.B. Rea took a different view, calling the move to block the Clowns “as funny as the Clowns themselves.” “If so many were paying to see them joke and jest, how much more ardently would they turn out to see them play Negro American competition?”

The Clowns were known for their antics. The box scores featured King Tut, Abbadaba, Tarzan, Ulysses Grant Greene, Wahoo, Goose Tatum, Highpockets West, Peanuts Nyassas, and Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia.

At the same time, the Clowns were also known as a first-rate baseball team. Legendary pitcher Satchel Paige, playing on a visiting team in 1939, described the team as, “fast-fielding, hard-hitting” and “one of the greatest clubs [he] has ever played against.” Exactly what all baseball teams aspire to be remembered for.

The Clowns won the Negro American League championships in 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1954.

The Clowns name stayed with the team through its transition to the Indianapolis Clowns, where it signed a 17-year-old shortstop and cleanup hitter with the nickname “Porkchop,” because of his fondness for them.

“Porkchop”, aka, Hank Aaron, played three months for the Clowns before being purchased by the Boston Braves for $10,000, but it had an impact on him.

“Everything I learned [from the Clowns] got me ready for the big leagues,” Aaron said in an interview with mlb.com. “I honestly believe that I wouldn’t have gotten to the big leagues as quickly as I did if I hadn’t even played those few months with the Clowns.”

The team left the Negro American League in 1955 to pursue a full-time barnstorming schedule (like the Harlem Globetrotters). You can get a taste of their antics if you have seen the 1976 movie “The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings”, starring James Earl Jones, Richard Pryor, and Billy Dee Williams. The movie is loosely based on the barnstorming Clowns.

On August 16, 2020, the Florida Marlins honored the first South Florida Major League team by donning the Miami Giants uniform on the 100th anniversary of the Negro League’s founding. They played against the Braves, long time home to the “Hammerin’ Hank”, who outgrew his earlier Clown nickname.

The Marlins did not quite channel the “fast-fielding, hard-hitting” Clowns, by losing 4-0 to the Braves.

RIP Hank Aaron, one of baseball’s greatest, died at 86.

For many, the different styles of whiskey often confuse and scare off newcomers. The wide variety of taste profiles and the almost snobbish vocabulary aficionados use turn away many who want to learn more about whiskeys.

First, some history. Whiskey is a distilled alcoholic beverage that likely originated in the monasteries of the British Isles. The word Whiskey is believed to be derived from the Gaelic word for water. Though if you tasted one of the original whiskeys James IV of Scotland greatly admired, you would find it very raw. Renaissance era whiskeys are not aged or diluted.

Over the years, the process was refined, and the drink became more refined, as we now know today. Along the way, different styles started to take shape, often based on where the whiskey is produced.

The first main difference is what is used for fermentation. The monasteries in Scotland and Ireland used barley, which grows well in the area’s cold, wet climate. Barley is allowed to malt, which is the process of soaking the barley in water, but is halted from germination by drying with hot air. This process causes the carbohydrates in the grain to be broken down into sugars, then fermented and distilled. When you see terms like single malt, it means the whiskey is made fro malted barley from a single distillery.

The fermented grain mixture is called mash. Mash traditionally uses a portion of a previous fermentation as the “starter,” similar to the sourdough process. It helps to ensure a proper pH level for the yeast to convert sugars into alcohol.

Starter mash whiskey, rather than that made with only yeast, is called a sour mash and the process creates acidity. Once distilled, you will not taste the acidity. You will find the Irish differ from the Scottish in distillation, where the Irish distill the mash three times, the Scottish only do it twice. Some like the cleaner taste of the Irish whiskey, while others enjoy the flavor of Scottish, especially those of the Islay style, where the peat moss is used to dry the malt, which gives it the unique smokey flavor many enjoy.

As European settlers came to the Americas, they brought their love of Aqua Vitae, meaning Vital Water, from their homeland. They adapted the recipes to the abundance of corn in the Americans to make their mash, which results in a sweeter product versus barley. Bourbon was likely started by Scots and Irish settlers in present-day Kentucky. It’s believed Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, was first to age the distilled alcohol in charred oak barrels, giving it the unique, bold flavor profile. To this day, by law, all bourbon must be aged in new charred oak barrels and made with a 51% corn-based mash.

Back in the British Isles, whiskey distilleries traditionally used old wine and port barrels to age their whiskeys. As Bourbon became more popular in recent years, many whiskey makers switched to use old Bourbon barrels. Thus, you will find many Scottish labels stating the type of barrels used for aging, impacting their taste profile.

Lastly, the longer you age a whiskey, the more of the barrel’s flavors are imparted into the drink. You will find the Scottish and Irish whiskeys to be aged longer than those in warmer climates. Part of that is, the evaporation process is slower in colder temperatures, resulting in a slower aging process. This is often referred to as the “Angel’s share.” You will find some fine Whiskeys like Kavalan, aged in Taiwan, or Bourbons in Kentucky, to have a shorter age duration, as the angel’s share is collected faster than in Scotland.

Hopefully, this gives you a basic understanding so that you can pick out a great gift this holiday. Or be dangerous in chatting with your local aficionado.

Tag: process

The storied history of a South Florida-born Black baseball team

Whiskey primer for budding aficionados