Joyce Sports Research Collection Manuscripts

1 vol., 37 cm., 250 leaves, with 200 pages of manuscript entries in various hands; 14 additional manuscripts; 1 clipping: A collection of records, mostly financial, of the Birmingham (Alabama) Black Barons, 1923 to 1930. During this period the Barons were an elite African American team, affiliated with the Negro Southern League (1920–23, 1926) or the Negro National League (1924–25, 1927–30).

The most significant item in the collection is a bound cash book, showing the club's financial accounts with each of its players for the seasons 1926 through 1930. Individual player accounts for a given season typically occupy two facing pages; each credit (usually in the form of salary) and debit (cash advances, equipment charges, fines, etc.) is indicated. Among the notable players in the ledger is Leroy "Satchel" Paige. A few non-player accounts are also noted.

In addition to the ledger, the collection includes a few team-related letters, receipts, and other records. MSSP 0001

The Mae Faggs ephemera collection consists of printed materials and ephemeral items collected by African American women’s track and field athlete Mae Faggs in the 1950s and 1960s. The collection contains items related to her college career at Tennessee A&I University, an Historically Black College and University; items documenting her participation in track events as a member of the United States national team, including the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics, the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City, and several American women’s national track championships; and materials related to her high school teaching career. Formats include printed material, ephemera, programs, guidebooks, maps, and a photograph. MSSP 10115

This small collection consists of legal documents and correspondence related to Curt Flood’s lawsuit, Flood v. Kuhn against Major League baseball’s reserve clause in the early 1970s. The legal documents include official court papers from the Appellate Court case in the Second Circuit of Appeals (1971) and the Supreme Court decision (1972) against Flood. The correspondence largely consists of letters to and from the law firms Arnold & Porter and Wilkie, Farr, & Gallagher, who represented Bowie Kuhn (the Commissioner of Baseball) the National League, and the American League. MSSP 10008

The Leslie Pollard Letters consists of a small number of letters pertaining to Leslie Pollard, African American athlete, football player, football coach, and journalist. Pollard wrote three of the letters to his wife Eleanor Pitts Pollard while serving as the Head Coach of the Lincoln University football team in the fall of 1914. Pollard addressed the letters with various nicknames for his wife and discussed several topics including the 1914 Lincoln University football season, events at the New York Amsterdam News newspaper, gossip about friends, and his younger brother Fritz’s Pollard’s attempts to enroll in colleges in New England. Formats include letters.. MSSP 1008-1.

The Negro Leagues Pennant Collection consists of more than ten felt pennants for African American baseball teams that played in the organized Negro Leagues during the 1930s and 1940s. The teams represented in the collection include the Homestead Grays, the New York Black Yankees, the New York Cuban Stars, the Baltimore Elite Giants, the Newark Eagles, and the Philadelphia Stars. The pennants contain no information about their origin or date of creation. Several of the pennants share the same design and graphics suggesting a common manufacturer. MSSP 10079

One Jackie Robinson doll wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. The doll is a 13-inch tall, fully jointed composition doll, molded with painted hair and painted facial features. The doll is wearing a blue Brooklyn Dodgers hat with with a white “B” logo, a blue warm-up jacket that reads “Dodgers” in white script, a gray jersey that reads “Dodgers” in blue script on the front and the number “42” in blue on the back, gray pants, blue socks, and black shoes with laces.

Original accessories with the doll include a wooden bat, a hard plastic baseball, a cardboard hang tag in the shape of a glove that reads, “The Jackie Robinson Doll” with a photo of Jackie Robinson on the front and “MF’d by Allied Grand Doll Mfg. Co. Inc., Brooklyn 5, NY” on the back. MSSP 10083

One homemade fan poster of the Harrisburg Trojans football team. The poster consists of clippings pasted to a piece of cardboard from an unknown printed book or program about the Harrisburg Trojans written by Manager Ned Givens in about 1945. The poster includes a summary page that reads: “The 1945 Harrisburg Trojans professional football club have played five games thus far this season, and they are proud after eight years of playing to honor the loyal fans with this book. The Trojans held the Negro World Championship three times, 1941, '42 and '44, while holding championships of seven Pennsylvania Counties and three States. MSSP 10118

Cast iron mechanical bank featuring stereotypical representations of three African American baseball players. The metal bank includes a pitcher, a batter, and a catcher all with moveable parts. The fully-functioning spring-loaded bank operates by placing a coin in a slot in the pitcher’s hand and rotating the pitcher’s arm backwards (which also bows the pitcher’s head) to set the arm. Pressing a lever behind the catcher, causes the pitcher to “throw” the coin, the batter to swing the bat, and the coin to be deposited in a revealed hole in the catcher’s chest. The coin drops to a compartment below the field. All three players wear garish brightly colored mismatched uniforms and their exaggerated facial features are typical of the stereotypical and offensive portrayals of African Americans in the late nineteenth century. MSSP 10098

238 containers and 5 flat storage drawers; 122.79 cubic feet. The Pfefer Collection comprises the business papers and promotional materials of U.S. professional wrestling manager and booking agent Jacob "Jack" Pfefer (1894-1974), one of the sport's most colorful and influential figures in the second quarter of the 20th century. It includes manuscript material, printed matter, and photographs, most notably: pro wrestling programs (20 containers); photographic prints, mostly publicity portraits (52 containers); scrapbooks of clippings (40 containers); wrestler files (35 containers); business and financial records (58 containers); correspondence, mostly incoming (13 containers); and posters, handbills, and other graphic formats (8 containers and 5 flat storage drawers). MSSP/PFEFER.

Nathaniel S. "Nat" Fleischer (1887-1972) was a sports journalist who founded The Ring magazine—the "Bible of Boxing"—in 1922 and remained as editor and publisher for fifty years. He also wrote more than fifty books on boxing and wrestling, and compiled what was for decades boxing's definitive reference, the annual Ring Record Book. These papers consist mainly of typed manuscripts of Fleischer's boxing articles, serialized features, and books; several of the latter appear never to have been published. Some of these typescripts are earlier drafts; some bear handwritten notes and emendations. Among the other items in the collection are four personal scrapbooks of clipped articles and manuscript correspondence; two photo albums, recording a 1954 trip to Thailand and a trip to the 1956 Olympics; typewritten indices for The Ring; and a great variety of clippings and clippings files. MSSP 2003

This collection includes more than 300 exhibit cards featuring images of boxers. Cards are the size of postcards. The fronts of most cards contain an image of a boxer with his name and sometimes other information like hometown, nicknames, etc. The backs of cards from the 1920s often contain short bios and/or selected match results, and many have a postcard back for mailing. Some of the cards from the 1920s are tinted in different colors. Many cards, especially those printed after 1928, contain no information about the year of publication and have blank backs.MSSP 10093

This collection consists of 22 photographs by Larry Fink from his boxing series, The gelatin silver print photographs document several levels of the sport of boxing from 1990 through 1993. Many images capture aspiring boxers and their handlers at local and regional boxing gyms in the Philadelphia area. Two photographs document the heavyweight championship boxing match between Mike Tyson and Donovan “Razor” Ruddock in Las Vegas in March 1991. MSSP 10066

The Harry E. Winkler Photographic Collection (WIN) includes more than 7,500 different boxing related images in various formats (photographic prints, glass negatives, and film base negatives), ca. 1920-ca. 1958. Winkler was a longtime Los Angeles area fight figure and California correspondent for The Ring magazine from 1939 to 1953. He is best remembered, however, for his extensive collection of boxing photographs, many of which were acquired by the University Libraries of Notre Dame in 1977. WIN

1 vol., 28 cm., 103 leaves; mimeographed typescript with manuscript annotations: An annotated copy of the Arthur Mann/Lawrence Taylor script for Eagle-Lion Films 1950 biopic, The Jackie Robinson Story. MSSP 0008.

15 letters: A group of 15 short letters written by as many different veterans of the Negro Leagues, responding to an autograph collector. MSSP 0012.