Kansas City Monarchs

One of those episodes is with Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

But we've had a significant number of Negro Leagues-related episodes in our five previous seasons, including one with Sam Allen, who actually played with the Kansas City Monarchs.

We've had a panel discussion with authors and researchers Larry Lester and Stephanie Liscio, which was recorded live in front of an audience at Cleveland's Historic League Park.

And we've had another episode with author and researcher Phil S. Dixon, who told us the story of how he was the one responsible for writing the words which appear on Satchel Paige's tombstone in Kansas City.

And Page, you know, he needed a job, right? He wasn't a rich man.

He was doing better than most of his peers and certainly most of black America, but he was not rich enough so he could not work.

So J.L. Wilkinson, who owned the Kansas City Monarchs, offered him a job.

The loophole was that it was a barnstorming team that he had, which was not the Monarchs, which was often called in the paper the Kansas City Travelers or the Baby Monarchs, but probably most often was called the Satchel Paige All-Stars.

... excitement.

Um, but yeah, about five years ago, when they were playing at the Kansas City Monarchs, which is kind of where-

Yeah

... all this started.

... it's something that I've always enjoyed.

Um, and so was getting around to the different areas, been, you know, to the Royals, been to a few other things.

But Monarchs was, uh, and I, I love baseball, so it was-

Mm-hmm

Be quite a commute for them.

Get some T-Bones guys down there, I guess the, the, the Monarchs now.

Yeah.

Hey, they, they have done a lot better with minor league baseball.

All right, we'll take you back.

Let's start us off by talking about the Kansas City Monarchs and the Milwaukee Milkmen, right? Nice little three-game series.

It was a while ago now, right? But you can also say that about Milwaukee's offense because it was a while before it even remotely looked alive.

And even when it looked alive, it still seemed pretty dead.

while we've delayed people, there's a group of people just waiting on feet of breath.

Like, God, I know what happened.

Yes, Kansas City defeated Milwaukee in three games here.

They outscored them 9-1 in those three games.

Right.

As great as the Kansas City Monarchs were, and they were great, the Kansas City Star had very little documentation about those games that were being played by the Kansas City Monarchs.

Mm-hmm.

The Kansas City Blues, which were a Yankees farm team, was covered extensively.

Right.

But not the great Kansas City Monarchs.

And therein lies the challenge that we had with Negro Leagues history and trying to document as much of this as we possibly could, because mainstream press essentially ignored it.

Yeah.

That's all you can ask for.

Uh, Meg Burr wants to shout out to the KC Monarchs for winning the 2026 Miles Wolf Cup.

She shouts out to the Monarchs.

They did.

Nine seasons with the Detroit Stars.

Ten seasons with the Kansas City Monarchs.

Briefly played for the Chicago American Giants.

Negro League record holder in career saves as a pitcher.