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RetroSeasons
RetroSeasons recaps past sports seasons through stories, photos, videos, and stats from every team, league, and stadium in history. Coverage includes the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL, as well as vintage media from defunct teams and leagues.
- Players
- Teams
- Atlanta
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- Cleveland
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- Kansas City
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- Los Angeles
- Louisville
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- Milwaukee
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- New York
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- Washington DC
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- Leagues
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Recap
The team was also known as the Boston Giants, Quaker Giants, Philadelphia Giants and Boston Colored Giants. The Royal Giants served as a farm team of sorts for the league. They played as far north as Canada's Cape Breton League, and games against mill or industrial teams in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Though the Boston Giants were never among the most nationally popular black semi-pro teams, Boston was a hotbed of black baseball in the 1930s and 1940s.
In 1923, Negro league veteran Danny McClellan organized a team that had been playing as the Quaker Giants into a Boston-based contingent called, for marketing purposes, the Philadelphia Giants. Black sports teams often named themselves after cities that would immediately identify them as African American to white fans and media (such as the Harlem Globetrotters, who were founded in Chicago).
The Boston Royal Giants sometimes played in famed Boston Park League. Venues that hosted the Giants were often small public parks such as Medford's Playstead Park and Boston's Lincoln Park, but Braves Field (now Boston University's Nickerson Field) rented to African American owners as early as 1938, and Fenway Park was used for heavily-promoted games after 1942.
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