Atlantic City Weekly

Lloyd played with Atlantic City’s own Bacharach Giants at three different times over his long career. (From the collection of the Pop Lloyd Committee)

High-priced recruiting efforts, multi-year, multi-million dollar salaries, complex advertising deals.

These items would seem like science fiction to ballplayers from the Negro Leagues, a group of seven successful baseball leagues that provided a professional home to thousands of black ballplayers when racism and "Jim Crow" laws prevented them from playing with other professional teams.

But, then again, players from those storied leagues might have a thing or two to say about what modern players are missing.

Chief among the Negro Leagues' earliest and finest players was John Henry "Pop" Lloyd, who called Atlantic City home.

By all accounts, Lloyd was a gentleman off the field and a legendary competitor on the field, where he played a variety of positions, primarily shortstop. Reports also are universal that Lloyd didn't curse, smoke, or get thrown out of games, and that he tried to get to sleep by a decent hour every night.

Born in Florida in 1884, Lloyd joined hundreds of other black ballplayers who migrated north during their teenage years. While his first stop was the Macon Acmes in Georgia, he soon moved to the Philadelphia Cuban X-Giants, then later to the Chicago American Giants. He played with several other northern teams from that time forward.

During his active playing career, spanning from 1904-31, Lloyd played with at least 13 different teams. He also played 12 winter seasons in Cuba -- a lucrative venue to which only top players were invited.

Lloyd played with Atlantic City's own Bacharach Giants (named after Mayor Harry Bacharach) at three different times over his long career. In 1922, at age 38, Lloyd hit a .387 average for the team. He returned to the Bacharachs in 1924, when, at age 40, he led the league with a .433 average, and again in 1931, when he spent his last year as a pro playing first base.

After retiring from active professional play, and until 1942, Lloyd played and coached semi-pro ball with Atlantic City's Johnson Stars. During his tenure, the team was renamed the Farley Stars after State Senator Frank "Hap" Farley -- a powerful politician who played a key role in building a stadium in Lloyd's honor.

In 1949, the city officially dedicated the Pop Lloyd Baseball Stadium, at Huron and Indiana avenues, where it still stands today. Among those keeping Lloyd's story alive are sports enthusiasts at Richard Stockton College -- where a permanent exhibit of Pop Lloyd memorabilia is being developed -- and members of the Pop Lloyd Committee, which originally formed to restore the Pop Lloyd Baseball Stadium.

The committee's projects coordinator, Michael Everett, stresses that Lloyd enjoys a "sterling" reputation. "I have never heard, nor met anyone who had anything bad to say about John Henry Lloyd, and I've never seen anything bad in print about him," says Everett. "There's a reason some still call him the 'Honorable Lloyd' -- it's because he was a sterling individual.

"And in any history book of baseball, he'd be considered one of the all-time greats of the game," Everett adds.

Author and baseball historian Jerrold Casway, at work on a new book exploring the formation of the Negro Leagues, agrees. "Many considered Lloyd the best all-around player in the [Negro] Leagues' history," Casway notes.

During the first weekend in October, the Pop Lloyd Committee will sponsor the 16th Annual Pop Lloyd Weekend Celebration (see sidebar). At a Friday symposium guests will be welcomed by Pop Lloyd Committee president Belinda Manning, whose father, Max Manning, was another standout player with the Negro Leagues. Born and raised in Pleasantville, during high school Manning was visited by major league scouts who left abruptly after discovering that he was black.

"That was pre-Jackie," Everett notes -- meaning before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by signing with Branch Rickey's Brooklyn Dodgers in the mid-1940s. (Even after Robinson was allowed to play for the Dodgers, it still took until about 1960 for all major league baseball to fully integrate.)