by rburgh » Sun Dec 04, 2011 8:59 am
I don't think they had relief specialists in the Negro leagues. A lot of times, they'd move a guy like Martin Dihigo from CF to the mound to make a pitching change, and either bring an OF off the bench or move the P to another position and shuffle the defensive alignment as best they could.
Most teams only had 12 or 13 man rosters, since the leagues operated on a shoestring. If they couldn't field nine guys for a game, they would recruit from local talent to fill out the rosters.
Sandlot and semi-pro baseball were a huge thing before 1950. All those teenaged black kids you see today on the corner basketball court were playing baseball then; the NBA and NFL were all white and there were no good black analogs. That's one reason why there was such a depth of star-caliber talent (relative to population size) in Negro league baseball. There was no other sport where the great black athletes of the day could make more than chump change.