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The East-West League was an American Negro baseball league that operated during the period when professional baseball in the United States was segregated. Cum Posey organized the league in 1932, but it didn't last the full year and folded in June of that year. It was the first Negro league to include teams from both the Eastern and Midwestern United States. Although the league lasted less than one season, it featured one of the strongest teams in the history of Negro league baseball, the Detroit Wolves. The league provided a foundation for the development of the second Negro National League, which would become the premier league for African American baseball players. ==League history== By early 1932, facing the severe financial problems associated with the Great Depression, the nation no longer had any functioning major Negro leagues. The first Negro National League, which operated primarily in the American Midwest, limped through the 1931 season following the death of its founder, Rube Foster, but formally disbanded in March 1932. In the Eastern states, the Eastern Colored League folded in 1928, and its successor, the American Negro League, folded after the 1929 season.〔Hogan, pp. 204, 226, 231–233, 238.〕 In this environment, Cum Posey, the owner of the Homestead Grays, undertook an ambitious plan to create a single league that encompassed teams in the East and Midwest. Posey was facing a strong local competitor, Gus Greenlee's Pittsburgh Crawfords, and hoped that a new league would bolster the Grays and isolate the Crawfords. In January 1932, Posey organized the East-West League. The team featured eight teams located in the East and Midwest, at least two of which (Homestead and Detroit) were owned by Posey. The plans for the new league were ambitious relative to the previous Negro leagues. The Al Munro Elias Bureau was hired to compile statistics, and the league would hire salaried, traveling umpires.〔Hogan, pp. 239–240; Snyder, p. 41.〕 The league began play in May, but attendance was poor because of the severe financial conditions of the Depression. Teams soon abandoned the planned schedule and turned to better paying bookings with white semipro teams. Within a month, it was clear that the league couldn't continue. In June the Detroit Wolves folded, and by early July the league had ceased operations.〔Hogan, pp. 240–241; Snyder, p. 41.〕 The poor financial performance of the league weakened Posey's Grays in their competition against Greenlee's Crawfords. Greenlee recruited a number of Grays star players, including Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and Oscar Charleston, who joined a Crawfords team anchored by the great pitcher Satchel Paige. In the face of dismal league attendance, by late May Posey invited the Crawfords to join the league and allowed the Grays and other East-West League teams to schedule games with the Crawfords. By the end of the year, Posey's new league was defunct and his Grays were severely weakened.〔 In the following year, 1933, Greenlee organized a second Negro National League (1933–1948). The Homestead Grays and Baltimore Black Sox of the old East-West League were franchises of the new league, though Homestead was expelled part-way through the season after a dispute. Because initially the new Negro National League operated in both the Eastern and Midwestern regions in many of the same cities as the East-West League, it was sometimes also referred to as the "East-West League." Beginning in 1937, the Negro American League was organized in the Midwest, and the Negro National League was concentrated in the East.〔Snyder, p. 42; Holway, pp. 305, 316, 338, 343.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「East-West League」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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