Just outside Philadelphia, in a little ballpark along MacDade Boulevard, a team rewrote the city’s baseball story in 1925. Hilldale—Darby’s proud club—had been stung a year earlier by the Kansas City Monarchs. Twelve months later, the rematch wasn’t heartbreak. It was a coronation: a best-of-nine Colored World Series that ended 5–1 for Hilldale, the only World Series title ever won by an Eastern Colored League team.
The backbone was as Philly as a Saturday stoop: pitching, defense, and a lineup that strung line drives like clotheslines. Start with the ledger. Against top Negro-league competition, Hilldale went 53–20–1 overall and 45–13–1 in the Eastern Colored League, with second baseman Frank Warfield as player-manager. Their park—Hilldale Park in Yeadon, just beyond the city line—shaped the club’s identity. Off the field, president and business manager Ed Bolden turned a boys’ team into a professional powerhouse.
Look at the infield and you’ll see the future—literally. Third baseman Judy Johnson, a Hall of Famer in waiting, hit .378 with power and timing that aged well into October. First baseman George “Tank” Carr mashed at a .354/.429/.621 clip with 10 home runs and 24 steals, a combination that reads like a typo until you remember this was Hilldale. Behind the plate (and sometimes at short), Biz Mackey did everything: shepherded pitchers, switch-hit thunder (.327/.397/.548), and stabilized the middle of the order. Clint Thomas added a .330 average and extra-base thump; right fielder Otto Briggs posted a .326 on-base profile and ran everything down. Three future Hall of Famers were on the roster—Johnson, Mackey, and veteran catcher Louis Santop, then 36—because excellence wasn’t a cameo here; it was the brand.
And then there was the lefty who set the tone. Jesse “Nip” Winters started 22 times, finished 17, and went 17–9 with a 2.70 ERA. Rube Curry (11–2) and Phil Cockrell (11–2) made it a three-man drumbeat, with Red Ryan and Bullet Campbell filling the cracks. The staff’s 3.93 ERA was the best in the league, and an ERA+ of 116 says the same thing in a modern dialect: this group suffocated lineups.
When the World Series arrived, it felt less like a sequel and more like a course correction. Hilldale stole Game 1 in Kansas City, 5–2, in 12 innings, and never looked back. The signpost moment came in Game 3: Johnson opened the 10th with a single; Namon Washington ripped a run-scoring double; Newt Robinson followed with an RBI single, and Hilldale took a 3–1 win and a 2–1 series lead. By the time the final out settled, the tally was five wins in six tries, the pain of 1924 flipped on its head.
You can read Hilldale through numbers, but the texture tells the story. This was a club that blended Bolden’s front-office discipline with Warfield’s on-field pragmatism. It featured a catcher who would later mentor Roy Campanella, a third baseman who became Philadelphia baseball royalty, and a left-hander whose fastball carried an era. The style wasn’t loud; it was relentless. If there was a runner on third with one out, someone found grass. If there was a lead, Winters protected it.
So what did 1925 mean? For Hilldale, it was the peak of a three-year climb—ECL pennants in ’23, ’24, and ’25—ending in the league’s lone World Series crown. For Philadelphia’s baseball map, it proved greatness lived not only at Shibe Park and Baker Bowl, but in Yeadon, where a neighborhood park and a visionary owner built a champion. Nearly a century later, the score still reads the same: Hilldale 5, Monarchs 1—Judy at third, Biz behind the plate, Winters on the mound, and a banner that never fades.
Nearly a century later, the echoes of Hilldale’s 1925 triumph are still too faint in Philadelphia’s baseball memory. That changes now. Over the coming two months, we’ll revisit the journey—game by game, story by story—chronicling the club’s run to the Negro League World Series with fresh retrospectives and deep features. Because this was more than a champion. This was Philadelphia’s team, and it’s long past time they receive the recognition they earned.
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