Ron Teasley, Pioneering Baseball Player and One of Two Surviving Negro League Veterans, Dies at 99
The former Brooklyn Dodger and New York Cuban leaves a lasting legacy of coaching and service in his hometown of Detroit
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Ron Teasley, one of the last surviving veterans of the Negro Leagues and the eighth player to break Major League Baseball’s racial barrier, died this week at the age of 99.
At his time of passing, the man they called “Schoolboy” was the third-oldest living major leaguer, and one of just two surviving players to have suited up in a Negro Leagues game. Bill Greason, 101, is now believed to be the historic league’s last living member.
“Every time we lose one of these legendary athletes who called the Negro Leagues home, it takes a piece of us with them,” Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, tells KCTV’s Betsy Webster.
Born in Detroit in 1927, Teasley attended Northwestern High School before enrolling at Wayne State University, where he lettered multiple times in both basketball and baseball. A first baseman and right fielder, Teasley wasted no time showcasing his five-tool talent. He hit .500 over 42 at-bats in his 1945 rookie season—becoming the first player in university history to eclipse a .400 batting average. He also scored 12 runs and boasted a near-perfect .981 fielding percentage.
The next season was remarkable for entirely different reasons. Rather than return to the diamond, Teasley enlisted in the U.S. Navy and toured Saipan and the Western Pacific Islands during World War II. When his service ended, he played one more standout year at Wayne, leading the team with a .325 batting average in 40 at-bats. His performance garnered national attention.
The Brooklyn Dodgers reached out to Teasley ahead of the 1948 season and invited him to a spring training tryout in Vero Beach, Florida, where he impressed. On May 2—roughly 13 months after Jackie Robinson debuted for the Dodgers, breaking the MLB’s color barrier—Teasley became the eighth black ballplayer to sign a Major League contract.
“He was actually signed by Branch Rickey, who was the same person who signed Jackie Robinson,” Ronald A. Teasley, his son, tells NPR’s Debbie Elliott. “So that’s kind of historic right there.”Did you know? The oldest professional ballpark still being used in America is in Birmingham, Alabama.
- Rickwood Field was home to the Birmingham Black Barons, a Negro Leagues team from about 1920 to 1960.
The Dodgers assigned Teasley to the Olean Oilers, their minor league affiliate, where—along with fellow Detroiter Sammy Gee—he became one of the first two black players in the Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York League. Despite batting a respectable .267 and leading the PONY league with three home runs and 23 hits in 23 games, he was released later that summer.
“You had to be Hank Aaron or Willie Mays to make it at that time, and they knew we weren’t Hank Aaron or Willie Mays when they signed us,” Teasley told the Detroit Free Press’s Scott Talley in 2024. “I wish I could say that everything was peaches and cream, but that was the saddest part and it was devastating at the time.”
The Oilers’ loss was the New York Cubans’ gain. The 21-year-old Teasley finished the 1948 campaign with the historic Negro Leagues ball club, picking up two hits and two RBIs in two games—though he may have played more, as many of the league’s formal records and statistics have been lost.
Regardless of his playing time, his impact and legacy remain immeasurable.
“You can't talk about baseball in the ‘40s and ‘50s in the African American community and Ron Teasley not be at the center of that conversation,” Layton Revel, a Negro League historian, tells NPR.
On the Cubans, Teasley wasn’t the only standout player. He shared the dugout that year with a 24-year-old Minnie Miñoso, who later signed with the Cleveland Indians to become Major League Baseball’s first Afro-Latino player. Miñoso’s 17-season MLB career (15 with the Chicago White Sox) included nine All-Star Game selections and three Gold Glove Awards. In 2022, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Teasley went on to play the next three seasons in Canada’s integrated Manitoba-Dakota League, where he was an All-Star selection himself, before returning to Wayne State and reinforcing his “Schoolboy” nickname, which was given when he was a high school standout. In 1955, he graduated with a bachelor’s in physical education; he would earn a master’s of administration in 1963. These degrees propelled him into a career of coaching and leadership in the very place his own athletic journey began: Northwestern High School in Detroit.
For more than two decades, beginning in 1968, Teasley coached varsity baseball at Northwestern. At least nine players reached the big leagues under his tutelage, and he was inducted into the Michigan High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
“When I joined the Negro Leagues, we would travel from city to city and the fans just welcomed us—especially the African American fans,” Teasley told MLBPlayers.com’s Jerry Crasnick a few years ago. “They were so happy to see us. We played an outstanding brand of baseball, and they were so appreciative. I often think about that—how we would just encourage people to hang in there and work hard, and eventually things would change for the better.”
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