Benjamin Harrison Taylor (July 1, 1888 – January 24, 1953) was an American

first baseman A first baseman, abbreviated 1B, is the player on a baseball or softball team who fields the area nearest first base, the first of four bases a baserunner must touch in succession to score a run. The first baseman is responsible for the majori ...

and

manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activitie ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

Negro leagues The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be ...

. Taylor played for the

Birmingham Giants The Birmingham Giants were a Negro league baseball team, based in Birmingham, Alabama, from 1904 through 1909. They were the first black professional baseball team in the city. C. I. Taylor managed and played for the Giants. His brothers Candy J ...

Chicago American Giants The Chicago American Giants were a Chicago-based Negro league baseball team. From 1910 until the mid-1930s, the American Giants were the most dominant team in black baseball. Owned and managed from 1911 to 1926 by player-manager Andrew "Rube" ...

Indianapolis ABC's Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of U.S. state and territorial capitals, state capital and List of U.S. states' largest cities by population, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat, seat of ...

St. Louis Giants The St. Louis Stars, originally the St. Louis Giants, were a Negro league baseball team that competed independently from as early as 1906 to 1919, and then joined the Negro National League (NNL) for the duration of their existence. After the 192 ...

, Bacharach Giants, Washington Potomacs,

Harrisburg Giants The Harrisburg Giants were a U.S. professional Negro league baseball team based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Originally formed in April 1890 by Colonel William "C.W." Strothers as an amateur team, they became semi-professional by 1894. They joined ...

, and

Baltimore Black Sox The Baltimore Black Sox were a professional Negro league baseball team active between 1913 and 1936, based in Baltimore, Maryland. Founding The Black Sox started as an independent team in 1913 by Howard Young. They were one of the original six ...

. His playing career lasted from to . He was elected to the

Baseball Hall of Fame The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by private interests. It serves as the central point of the history of baseball in the United States and displays baseball-r ...

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro votes to declare independence from Serbia; The 2006 ...

Early life

Taylor was born in

Anderson, South Carolina Anderson is a city in and the county seat of Anderson County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 28,106 at the 2020 census, and the city was the center of an urbanized area of 75,702. It is one of the principal cities in the Green ...

. He was the youngest of four brothers who all became famous in baseball, including C.I., Candy Jim and Johnny "Steel Arm".

Negro league career

Taylor initiated his career as a pitcher for the Birmingham Giants in 1908. After playing for the St. Louis Giants (1911–12), New York Lincoln Giants (1912) and Rube Foster's Chicago American Giants (1913–14), Taylor made his name playing for the team one of his brothers, C.I. Taylor, managed and owned, the Indianapolis ABCs. Following a 1915 season in which he hit .308, he set Cuba ablaze, hitting .500 in winter league play. He took that hot bat into the 1916 championship season. Ben went 11-for-18 in the World Series, stealing three bases in five games. Other than a 1919 season split between Hilldale and a managerial stint with the Bacharach Giants, Ben played with the ABCs from 1914 to 1922. In that final season, he replaced C.I. as manager, following his death. In 1923, Taylor organized the Washington Potomacs, bringing brother Johnny along as pitching coach. The team joined the new Eastern Colored League in its inaugural season the following year. Defensively, he was good on ground balls and could execute all the plays at first, making the other infielders look good by digging out low throws and making difficult plays with such ease that they appeared routine. Ben continued as a player/manager, joining Harrisburg in 1925 and the Baltimore Black Sox from 1926 to 1928. He was then traded to the Bacharach Giants in exchange for their manager Dick Lundy prior to the 1929 campaign, the final season of his playing career. In all but one of his first 16 seasons, Taylor batted over .300. During his career, he was also a manager and excellent teacher of young players. It was from him that

Buck Leonard Walter Fenner "Buck" Leonard (September 8, 1907 – November 27, 1997) was an American first baseman in Negro league baseball and in the Mexican League. After growing up in North Carolina, he played for the Homestead Grays between 1934 and 1950, ...

learned to polish and refine his skills as a first baseman. He continued to coach and manage until 1940.

Later life

After retiring, Taylor was an active businessman, operating a poolroom and acquiring the rights to print and sell game programs at

Baltimore Elite Giants The Baltimore Elite Giants were a professional baseball team that played in the Negro leagues from to . The team was established by Thomas T. Wilson, in Nashville, Tennessee as the semi-pro Nashville Standard Giants on March 26, 1920. The team ...

games. In a 1949 '' Philadelphia Evening Bulletin'' article, Oscar Charleston selected Ben Taylor as his first baseman on his all-time All-Star team. In 1952, as the Negro league's decline was in rapid motion, the

Pittsburgh Courier The ''Pittsburgh Courier'' was an African-American weekly newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1907 until October 22, 1966. By the 1930s, the ''Courier'' was one of the leading black newspapers in the United States. It was acqu ...

polled its readers to name the greatest players of the Negro leagues. They eventually named 5 teams plus honorable mentions. Among those honored, Taylor was awarded 2nd team, first base. He died at age 64 in

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore wa ...

References

* *(Riley.
Ben Taylor
Personal profiles at Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. – identical to Riley (confirmed 2010-04-16)

External links

an
Baseball-Reference Black Baseball stats
an
Seamheads
* an
Seamheads
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Ben National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees Bacharach Giants players Baltimore Black Sox players Birmingham Giants players Chicago American Giants players Harrisburg Giants players Indianapolis ABCs players Lincoln Giants players St. Louis Giants players Washington Potomacs players West Baden Sprudels players Negro league baseball managers Baseball players from South Carolina People from Anderson, South Carolina 1888 births 1953 deaths 20th-century African-American people