ALUMNI SNAPSHOTS
Dennis Biddle in front of his permanent Yesterday's Negro Leagues exhibit.
KEEPING THE LEGACY FOR THE NEGRO LEAGUES Dennis Biddle can tell stories about Jackie Robinson, Buck O’Neil and other Negro Leagues greats as if they all shared a dugout together. Because even though he never played with them, Biddle was in those Negro Leagues dugouts, and he remembers well long-ago conversations with his own teammates. Biddle is one of the last living alums of the Negro Leagues. He was 17 when he first played for the Chicago American Giants in the Negro American League in 1953, and he played one more season after that. Now 86, Biddle is dedicated to keeping these Negro Leagues stories alive. He heads the Yesterday’s Negro League Baseball Players Foundation, which he established in 1996 with a fellow Negro Leagues alum, the late Sherwood Brewer. “There were 314 living players at that
time, and we had no representation. People didn’t know that,” says Biddle, who graduated from UWM in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in community education. “The words ‘Negro Leagues’ were never copyrighted but were being used all over.” Yesterday’s Negro League isn’t affiliated with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. But the roots of Biddle’s organization stem from a conversation he had with Brewer after a meeting of former Negro Leaguers in 1995 in Kansas City, where the museum is located. “From that day, players decided we would represent ourselves and formed Yesterday’s Negro League,” says Biddle, one of about three dozen surviving Negro Leaguers today. The organization also advocates for the economic interests of former players.
Yesterday’s Negro League has a traveling exhibit that stops at colleges, universities and events across the country. There’s also a permanent exhibit on Mayfair Mall’s second floor in suburban Milwaukee. And the exhibit makes annual visits to American Family Field for every Milwaukee Brewers Negro Leagues Tribute Game, which is scheduled for July 22 in 2022. Biddle authored “Secrets of the Negro Baseball League” and plans to write another book featuring more stories passed down from former teammates. “These were older men who had played in the league for many years,” Biddle says. “They knew the true history somehow would not be told. I never forgot about it. I didn’t understand it at the time, but the stories never left me.” – Genaro C. Armas UWM ALUMNI
SPRING 2022 •
4
