Dayton Marcos

DAYTON MARCOS

In 1920, Chicago American Giants owner Rube Foster met with owners of other independent black professional teams at the Paseo YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri. This union of baseball minds thus formed the first organized black league to survive a full season - the Negro National League.

The Western-based league consisted of eight teams - the Dayton Marcos, Chicago Giants, Chicago American Giants, Detroit Stars, Indianapolis ABCs, Kansas City Monarch, St. Louis Giants and a traveling Cuban team, the Stars.

Their league motto "We are the Ship. All else the Sea," symbolized their relationship with major league baseball.

Old newspaper accounts and fading memories are the only sources of information on the Dayton Marcos. An announcement appeared on Feb. 16, 1920, in the old Dayton Evening Herald , under the headline, "Organize League." It offers one of the few clues to an elusive chapter in Dayton's professional sports history. The Dayton Marcos left the league after one year (1920) and rejoined briefly for part of 1925.