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Cum Posey

Outfield
  • Series: Diamond Heads '15
  • City: Homestead
  • Team: Grays (IND)
  • League: Independent
  • Hall: National Baseball Hall of Fame

Cumberland Willis Posey Jr, (1890-1946) was a brilliant, gifted and driven man, on the basketball court, the boxing ring, the diamond and the front office. He starred as Penn State’s first black hoops player, played at Pitt and Duquesne before founding his Black Five entry where the team won four straight Colored Basketball World Championships. He was an owner and columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier, managed a boxing team and, by the way, built the Homestead Grays into one of the dominant franchises in Negro League history. Posey wasn’t big (5’9” and 145 lbs) but he excelled at every sport he tried. Yet, it was as player/manager/executive of the Grays from 1911 to 1946 that Cum made an indelible mark on American sports. Eleven of the 18 Negro League-era players in the Hall of Fame when Posey was inducted had played for him at some point. He had an unerring eye for talent and recruited the best, even in the face of fierce competition.

  • Posey’s Grays had been a force in Negro ball through the ‘20s and 30’s but never more so than during their unparalleled surge to nine straight league championships, a string that ended with this remarkable man’s untimely death from lung cancer on the very eve of Jackie Robinson’s matriculation
  • Elected to Hall of Fame: 2006

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