Seattle Steelheads: The city's short-lived, but not forgotten, Black baseball team

There was something different about the Mariners when they went up against the Kansas City Royals in 1995. Seattle's uniforms were still blue with green and silver, but just not the same as the traditional game attire.

The Royals weren't wearing their usual jerseys either. This day was the 75th anniversary of the Negro National League, an organization originally founded in 1920, when baseball was segregated. In honor of the Kansas City Monarchs, the Royals donned their historic jerseys. The Mariners represented the Seattle Steelheads.

RELATED: 20 years of Seattle music history is now online

Except, these weren't actually the Steelheads' jerseys. Turns out, nobody knew what they looked like.

Listen to Vaughan Jones' full reporting on the Seattle Steelheads on Seattle Now.

The Seattle Steelheads emerged during baseball's segregated times. The Negro National League was founded in 1920 and included Midwest teams, like Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City. The Negro American League emerged in the South in the 1930s.

"Black populations in a lot of the West Coast cities were a lot larger and everything was starting up again," said sports historian David Eskenazi. "This was also a period when there were more minor leagues around than anytime in history.”

Still, the West Coast didn't have a league of its own until after World War II, when the West Coast Negro League formed. That's when Abe Saperstein took his team, called the Harlem Globetrotters (yes, they're related to the basketball team of the same name), moved them to Seattle, and renamed them the Seattle Steelheads.

The Steelheads played their first game at Sick's Stadium in Seattle on June 1, 1946. They didn't play in 1947.

Times were changing.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first Black baseball player in the Major League, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“It really spelled the beginning of the end for the negro leagues, simply because the top talent wanted to migrate to major League Baseball — better pay obviously, better benefits, better travel, better everything," Eskenazi said.

RELATED: The first Black 'Peanuts' character finally gets his origin story in animated special

The negro leagues faded into history, and so did the short-lived Seattle Steelheads. But they were not forgotten.

After the 1995 game with the Royals, it didn't sit well with Eskenazi that the Mariners didn't have accurate Steelhead uniforms. There weren't any readily available photographs to reference. He aimed to change that, and the hunt was on for records from that time.

In 2015, and on June 19, 2021, the Seattle Mariners took to the field wearing cream uniforms with black trim that said "Seattle" on the front — what the Steelheads wore in their day.

The Mariners won't be wearing the historic jerseys in 2024. According to a team spokesperson, the MLB is transitioning to new uniforms with a new supplier, so the single-game jerseys aren't in the mix this time around. The Mariners will have an African American heritage day in 2024.

Listen to Vaughan Jones' full reporting on the Seattle Steelheads on Seattle Now.