Over the past few years organizers have been building a baseball field on South Bend’s southeast side. The goal is to both teach children about local Black history and introduce them to the game of baseball, and they’re hosting an Opening Day event Saturday.
The idea started in 2019 when Matthew Insley, a player in the Sappy Moffitt adult baseball league, was riding his bike near Southeast Neighborhood Park. With the nearby railroad overpass offering an ideal left field wall, the site seemed to cry out for a baseball diamond.
A group of league players incorporated the nonprofit Sappy Moffitt Field Foundation to raise money. Some of the players work at Notre Dame, where soon, faculty and students started researching the Foundry Giants, an all-Black baseball team made up of Studebaker foundry workers.
Much of the Giants’ history has been lost, but it’s now been pieced together with the help of newspaper clippings, interviews and other records. It’s an effort to gain a clearer picture of these men and women, helping to preserve their stories of courage, resilience, and determination as they navigated issues of inequality, accessibility, and representation in their time.
The team included South Bend’s first Black police officer, Dusty Riddle, and Alonzo Poindexter, a longtime sheriff’s deputy. Six of the men played professionally in the Negro Leauges, including John “Big Pitch” Williams, who won two National League pennants for the St. Louis Stars in the 1930s.
Old South Bend Tribune sports pages show that the Giants often dominated the Studebaker Industrial League. But on weekends when the league picked the best players from each team for the traveling all-star team, Giants players weren’t allowed.
Clinton Carlson, associate professor of visual communication design at Notre Dame, has focused on the visual aspects of telling the story.
"How do we make this vision for this field come alive," Carlson said. "We built our website and developed a video that kind of told the story of how we felt that this space could impact the community, through telling of story and history, that maybe was underrepresented."
The foundation has raised over $250,000 over the last two years, and they’re working to raise more to finish the field. If they can raise another $125,000 to get the field into competitive play condition, with lights, bullpens, fencing, seating, a scoreboard and pavilion, they’re pursuing a grant to match it from Major League Baseball’s Youth Development Fund.
Organizers brought in visiting artists to paint murals of Giants players. Boys and Girls Club kids have also designed banners for the left field wall depicting the men and women who played on Black baseball and softball teams in the city.
Baseball lover Milt Lee, athletic director for South Bend schools, hopes the project interests kids in baseball and maybe even changes their lives. Growing up in the 70s in South Bend, Lee says he was starting to act up a bit at Harrison Middle School when a teacher encouraged him to sing a very difficult song in the spring choir production.
Lee says he practiced long and hard after school to learn the song. His performance went so well that he ended up earning a scholarship to a summer music camp at Ball State, where he would ultimately earn a bachelor’s degree.
"She kind of changed the way I saw life," Lee said of his teacher, "and so that's kind of how I see this Foundry Field project. Our interest is to fuse history and art and storytelling, and get kids to recognize that being a good athlete is not one-dimensional. It's not this myopic thing. It all takes the same type of effort, and I feel like a lot of kids who are kind of left behind, like I could have been, can really use that same type of experience."
Lee’s father grew up in rural Mississippi. He said his father was a quiet man and baseball was something they bonded over. Milt loved the Chicago Cubs and when he was nine in 1974, many of his favorite players were Black, along with nearly 20% of MLB players – compared to 6% today.
"There's just no excuse for that, particularly when baseball has such a rich history and such a storied presence and impact on all of Black culture, back in the days during the Nero leagues and when Jackie Robinson faced humiliation to actually play the game. So we really owe it to them to try and get this game the kind of attention and platform that it really deserves."
One person who’s excited for Saturday’s event is Seabe Gavin Jr., dean of students and athletic director at Riley High School. He says he can’t help but drive by the field these days to admire the new mural of his father, Seabe Gavin Sr.
He starred at South Bend Central High School, then played for the Colored Monarchs.
"My father, from a historical point of view, I was told that he was probably the best baseball player in the state of Indiana from '31 to '34, the years he spent at Central High School, and because of the color of his skin, he wasn't recognized. But there's so much historical value when it comes to baseball, from an African American standpoint, that hasn't been told."
The park is located at Fellows and Wenger streets. Saturday’s Opening Day festivities will start at 9 a.m. with a free baseball clinic for ages eight to twelve. At 1 o’clock they’ll play the field’s first initial game, the Inaugural South Shore Classic, where kids from South Bend and from Chicago’s south side will face off in a three-inning showcase.
The game will be followed by sandlot games, where kids and adults of all skill levels are encouraged to play informal baseball or wiffle ball games.
"This field, hopefully this field will open up a lot of eyes, and not only for African Americans but for all races and genders, about how diverse our community is and how neat this is that a group of people have come together and set a beautiful field right in the heart of an urban neighborhood."
