The Randolph Society Foundation Board is pleased to announce that George and Robert Mitchell, twin brothers from Sparta who had remarkable baseball careers in the Negro Leagues, will be inducted into the 2024 class of honorees.
George and Robert Mitchell, twin sons of Charles and Hattie Mitchell, were born in Sparta on March 31, 1900. Charles and Hattie were part of the first generation of African-Americans born after the Civil War, and they settled with their growing family in the established community of Black men and women living in Sparta at the turn of the twentieth century. Charles started his own barber shop, and Hattie cleaned houses for other families. Their hard work and dedication helped them to buy a home for their family on North Miller Street, where they raised their twin sons and two younger daughters.
After high school, both George and Robert Mitchell began working alongside numerous other local residents at the Moffat Coal Company’s mine south of Eden. Tall and slender, the brothers also used their strength on the community’s playing fields. They joined the Sparta Stars, a segregated baseball team, in the late 1910s. Robert was a catcher and outfielder, while George was a pitcher and first baseman. The Mitchells played on an all-Black team, but baseball in Randolph County was not a fully segregated activity, and the Stars frequently competed against teams made up of white players from neighboring communities. In the summer of 1922, they played against Baldwin in the county championship game, which was called a tie in the tenth inning.
The next summer, Robert made the leap to the next level. He signed to play with the Birmingham Black Barons, a Negro Southern League team in Alabama. The Black Barons played at Rickwood Field, now the oldest professional baseball stadium in America. Twenty-three-year-old Robert played one season with the team, spending most of his time in right field. In 1924, he and George were both added to the roster of the St. Louis Stars. The Mitchell Brothers formed a unique twin-brother battery, with George working as a relief pitcher and Robert as catcher, playing alongside greats like future Hall of Famer Cool Papa Bell. Robert left professional baseball in 1924, but George embarked on a career that would last for a quarter of a century. He played with six different Negro League teams over the next decade, including the Kansas City Monarchs and the Detroit Stars. At the end of each season, he returned to Sparta, where he continued to work in the mines each winter.
The Depression era spelled an end to George’s playing career, but in 1938, he was hired to become the new manager of the Stars franchise. He would serve as manager and owner of different iterations of the team for the next decade. Passionate about the game, and devoted to mentoring young players, George navigated the difficult financial and logistical waters of managing a Negro Leagues franchise, at a time when securing monetary backing and finding suitable places for the team to play were growing challenges. But George prospered, so much so that he was chosen as one of the managers for the Negro American League’s all-star game at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1939. His team won the game in front of a crowd of 40,000 spectators.
The 1940s posed even more challenges for George and the Stars. Many Black athletes were called up to serve in World War II, and the Stars joined in the war effort by going on a barnstorming tour to sell war bonds in 1943. When baseball was integrated in 1945, George continued managing Black teams for a few more years before returning to Sparta, where he died in 1953. Robert, who had lived and worked in St. Louis since the 1920s, passed away two decades later in 1971.
The legacy of the Mitchell Brothers teaches us to appreciate the tenacity and drive of men who worked, against all odds, to organize opportunities for Black players when few were available. Robert and George bravely stepped forward from their tight-knit community into the challenging world of national baseball at a time of legalized segregation. And George, after his own playing career was finished, worked tirelessly to provide young players with opportunities to develop and showcase their talent. The Mitchell Brothers are an important piece of the history of the great American pastime, one that deserves a more prominent place in our understanding of the game of baseball today.
Click here to read a more detailed biography of George and Robert Mitchell.
The Randolph Society 