In the days before civil rights progress, the overt racism of the Cardinals took many forms, including during Ladies Day games at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis.
The Cardinals’ advertisements for Ladies Day games promised free general admission tickets at the gate to women 16 and older. Left unsaid was that the tickets were for whites only. Women of color who came to Ladies Day games were told they’d have to pay for tickets to sit in a segregated section of the ballpark.
The bigotry was the policy of the American League St. Louis Browns, who owned Sportsman’s Park, and agreed to by their tenant, the National League Cardinals.
Customer relations
Chris von der Ahe, who owned the St. Louis franchise that became the Cardinals, initiated Ladies Day ballpark promotions as early as 1883, according to MLB.com. He allowed women to attend games for free if they came with a male escort. The man had to buy a ticket.
That was the practice until 1909, when the National League banned Ladies Day promotions because team owners wanted all women to buy tickets instead of being admitted for free, MLB.com reported.
Two years later, in 1911, Helene Britton became the Cardinals’ owner. Defying the Ladies Day ban, she reinstated the promotion in 1912. Women were allowed to attend Ladies Day Cardinals games for free and didn’t need a male escort to do so, according to MLB.com.
Britton owned the Cardinals for six years before selling to a group of investors led by former team president James C. Jones. In July 1920, car dealer Sam Breadon became principal owner and moved the Cardinals from rundown Robison Field to Sportsman’s Park.
Until May 4, 1944, blacks, or anyone defined as Negroes, attending a Cardinals home game could purchase tickets only in segregated seating areas in the Sportsman’s Park outfield bleachers or behind a screen in the outfield pavilion. Blacks weren’t allowed to sit in the double-decked grandstand, meaning any seats behind home plate and along the lines. The Cardinals and Browns were the last franchises in the majors to end segregated seating.
Send in the crowds
During the Great Depression, the Cardinals regularly designated select weekday afternoon games as Ladies Day events, not for humanitarian reasons but because it was good for business.
“The concession proceeds are almost equal to the gate receipts on Ladies Day, for what the women save on admissions they appear to spend on refreshments,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in July 1931. “They may attend for the bargain, but they buy plenty to eat and drink.”
An example was the Ladies Day game between the Braves and Cardinals on a Friday afternoon, June 12, 1931, at Sportsman’s Park. The paid attendance was 4,445, but the total attendance, swelled by the free Ladies Day admissions, was 17,927, according to the Post-Dispatch. Boxscore
The Cardinals experienced a boon in concession sales that afternoon because of all the women customers in the ballpark. As the Post-Dispatch noted, league rules required the home team to share with the visiting club 25 percent of each cash ticket sold, but the Cardinals kept all concession revenue.
“The reason for Ladies Day is that baseball clubs today have other things to sell other than baseball,” the Post-Dispatch reported in 1931.
Nowhere in its advertising of the many Ladies Day games did the Cardinals indicate that free admissions were for white women only. Apparently it was assumed that no one would expect black women to be allowed to sit in general admission areas rather than in the segregated outfield seats.
(According to the Cardinals yearbook, the club offered five ticket options. From cheapest to most expensive, those were: right-field pavilion, bleachers, general admission, reserved and box seat. After men complained about not getting the same free tickets as women, Sam Breadon declared on July 9, 1931, that any [white] man buying a general admission ticket to that Thursday’s Cardinals home doubleheader against the Reds would be given an upgrade to a reserved seat, the Post-Dispatch reported.)
Tears, not cheers
The Cardinals, who, like all big-league clubs, refused to sign black players, won the 1931 World Series championship. The St. Louis Argus, a newspaper serving the black community, used the opportunity to call them out for their racist Ladies Day policy.
In an October 1931 editorial that also was published in the Baltimore Afro American, the editors of the Argus wrote, “Following the Cardinals’ victory over the Athletics in the seventh game of the World Series, there was much rejoicing … We found no pleasure in the Cardinals’ victory. Not that we have anything against the members of the team … It is their home surroundings and environment which are so insulting to us. We make particular reference to the so-called Ladies Day.
“Colored ladies who venture to attend these games are insulted by being told at the gate, ‘This is Ladies Day, but …’ This statement is followed by a discourteous demand for 75 cents as a premium on her color if she desires to enter Sportsman’s Park to see a game of ball.
“This is an insult of the rankest sort, and we don’t see how any person of color could possibly, under any circumstances, find any pleasure in going to, or milling around, Sportsman’s Park.”
Noting that quality seats were denied to men and women of color for all Cardinals home games, the Argus editorial made clear, “This we have always regarded as an insult to the entire colored race. Therefore, games and other athletic sports at this park have no appeal to us. Hence, even the great victory of the Cardinals over the Athletics brought no pleasure to our heart.”
The editorial concluded with, “It is rather unfortunate that such a big team as the Cardinals has to claim as its home a park which is controlled by such little men as the owners of Sportsman’s Park. If the owners were real sportsmen, there would be no discrimination as to seats.”
In a sidebar, Bill Gibson of the Baltimore Afro American noted that discrimination at the World Series took place in other ways, too. He wrote, “When police officers were asked to help handle the crowd at the 1930 World Series in Philadelphia, some of the officers who arrived were black. (The Philadelphia police force was integrated in the 1880s.) White officers were allowed inside, but black officers were told their place was outside. In the 1931 World Series, when the same request was made for police help, it was put in writing, ‘White officers only,’ and the order was filled in that manner.”