Passon Field had staged plenty of ballgames in its time, but on this warm June afternoon in 1933, it felt like the ballpark was holding its breath. The bleachers filled early. Fans pressed two and three deep along the fences. Even the grassy bank beyond the outfield lines drew clusters of spectators who stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting for something new.
They weren’t simply there for baseball.
They were there to witness a first.
Philadelphia’s roots in Black baseball ran deep — the pioneering Pythians and Excelsiors, the formidable Philadelphia Giants, the nationally respected Hilldale Club in Darby. But never once had the city hosted two fully professional Black teams at the same time. Never once had Philadelphia fans been able to watch two local Black clubs share the same field as equals.
That changed in 1933, when Ed Bolden introduced his new Philadelphia Stars, barely two months old, and Philadelphia sporting-goods magnate Harry Passon resurrected and relocated the Bacharach Giants from Atlantic City.
So when the two clubs finally faced each other for the first time on June 24 at 48th and Spruce, the game didn’t carry the feel of an exhibition. It carried the feel of a beginning — the opening chapter of a rivalry the city had never seen before.
If there was any suspense about which club would strike first, the Stars smothered it quickly.
In the top of the first, Jake Stephens singled, Chaney White followed, and Dick Lundy drew a walk. With the bases loaded and Passon Field humming, Tom Finley delivered the swing that cracked open both the game and the series — a towering three-run triple that slammed off the left-center fence. The Tribune wrote it “carried high and far,” and from the way the crowd rose with the ball, that felt like understatement.
One inning later, Clarence “Fats” Dixon rifled a double to left-center, and Finley crushed a home run over the left-field fence — a “Herculean clout.” Jud Wilson doubled behind him and scored when Bacharach second baseman Javier Perez hurried a throw that skidded into foul ground.
In the third, Pete Washington walked, and Dixon lashed his second double of the day into the right-center gap, scoring him easily.
Three innings, five extra-base hits, and a 7–0 lead.
The Stars weren’t easing into anything. They were announcing themselves.
Pressure creates separation
What stood out wasn’t just the extra-base damage; it was the relentlessness.
The Stars put traffic on the bases every inning. They worked counts. They made the Bacharachs throw strikes — and often, they couldn’t. Perez, working second base, suffered through a long afternoon, committing three errors, each one extending innings or directly producing runs. His sixth-inning bobble on a Dixon grounder kept the frame alive long enough for another run. Another misplay in the eighth turned a quiet inning into noise.
And in the ninth, the Stars applied their final flourish: three consecutive doubles from Finley, White, and Biz Mackey, stretching the margin to 11–1.
They finished with 14 hits, including:
Dixon (2 doubles)
Wilson, Lundy, Finley, White, Mackey (doubles)
Finley (triple and home run)
Finley drove in at least five runs. Dixon owned the alleys. Wilson delivered two of the loudest swings of the day.
But the Stars’ dominance wasn’t limited to the lineup.
Porter Charleston worked with an ease that made the Stars’ offense feel even heavier. He struck out 10, walked only one, and allowed just four hits — two of them to Bacharach center fielder Harry Jeffries, who was the only Giant to consistently square him up.
Charleston carried a shutout into the ninth before Jeffries and pitcher Phil Cockrell dropped back-to-back Texas Leaguers. Ed Stone singled to score Jeffries, but the rally stopped there. Charleston closed the inning the same way he’d pitched the rest of the day: in control.
Cockrell, meanwhile, labored under the weight of his own command. He issued eight walks, several of which extended innings the Stars had no trouble exploiting.
This was an exhibition only in the bookkeeping. The crowd knew better. The players knew better. And Philadelphia — a city suddenly split between two Black professional clubs — certainly knew better.
Within a year, both teams would join the Negro National League, taking this rivalry into organized league play. And the arc that began on this afternoon didn’t stop here.
In 1934 — their first official season as a member of the reorganized NNL — Bolden’s Stars stormed through the schedule and captured the league pennant, defeating the Chicago American Giants in the championship series. For a franchise barely a year old, it was a stunning and emphatic rise.
As for the rivalry with the Bacharachs, that first meeting told the story in miniature.
Between June 1933 and the end of 1934, the Stars and Bacharachs met seven times.
The Stars won six, outscoring their neighbors 49–15.
The template was already visible in the opening frame of their first contest.
June 24, 1933 wasn’t just the first Stars–Bacharach meeting.
It marked the birth of Philadelphia’s only intracity rivalry between two professional Black baseball clubs.
And from the moment Tom Finley’s triple crashed off the left-center fence, the Stars made clear how that rivalry — and the next era of Black baseball in Philadelphia — would unfold.
They didn’t simply win.
They set the direction for everything that followed.
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