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Cedar Rapids’ Superman Negro Leagues are on track to be recognized as Majors, affecting the legacy of a Cedar Rapids legend. By Rob Cline
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here’s a few key facts about Superman that are pretty universally known. He’s more powerful than a locomotive. He’s able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. And Superman is renowned for being faster than a speeding bullet. Cedar Rapids had its own Superman. And Art “Superman” Pennington—who lived there from the mid-1950s until his death in 2017—had his own superpower related to the speed of bullets. Pennington described that power in a 2002 interview about his life that was conducted by The History Center as part of an oral history project in Cedar Rapids. He was telling the story of his tryout for the American Giants, a Negro League baseball club, in 1939 when he was just 16 years old. “The guys got mad at me because I had such a great arm,” he said. “Oh my, I could throw ’em like a bullet.” The manager of the American Giants was suitably impressed— and not just by Pennington’s throwing arm. In fact, he was impressed enough to offer Pennington the chance to replace one of the team’s players. “Jim Taylor was the manager, and he saw that I could run like a deer, and I could throw that ball like a bullet, and I could hit that ball,” Pennington recounted in his oral history interview. “So he took me over his shortstopper. That’s where it started.” Now, thanks to a recent recommendation by the Society for American Baseball Research, Pennington’s years in the Negro Leagues may be recognized as time in the Majors. This long-overdue recognition would finally acknowledge that many of the game’s most talented and dedicated athletes were
From the 1986 Fritsch Negro League Baseball Stars set. Courtesy of Bryan Cline
banned from competing in the official Major Leagues from 1884 until 1947, consigning their accomplishments to a lesser status than, say, extraordinary white players like Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth. A review process is currently underway. The updated designation would mean, for example, that Pennington’s status as a Negro League All-Star would be recognized as the equivalent of being a Major League All-Star. It would also officially recognize that Pennington made it to the big leagues as a teenager—a rare feat accomplished by some of the biggest stars in the
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history of the game, from Iowa’s own superstar pitcher Bob Feller to Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr. and, more recently, Bryce Harper and Juan Soto. He was so young when he went to join his new team in Chicago that Taylor promised Pennington’s mother he would look after the boy. His childhood nickname, “Superman”—given to him by his mother, the story goes, after he lifted a car by its bumper to allow the placement of a jack when he was 10 or so years old—went to the Windy City with him. “People come out to see me, they
called me ‘Superman,’ and they wondered where I got that name from, so I told them my mother gave me that name when I was a young boy. That’s all they would announce: ‘Superman at bat,’ and I was fast and I could throw. Guys hit the ball to me at shortstop and it would take a bad hop and hit me in the chest. I was never in a hurry ’cuz I had such an arm. I’d pick the ball up and ol’ Pep Young over on first base would yell, ‘Throw it, Supe!’ and I’d shoot it over there. He wanted me to get rid of it so it wouldn’t hurt his hand.” In the 2002 interview, Pennington
