FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 To commemorate Juneteenth for the 5th consecutive year, the Fresno Grizzlies paid tribute to their forefathers, the Fresno Tigers, at Chukchansi Park on Friday night.<\/p>\n
In 1946, the Tigers were 1 of only 6 teams on the West Coast that allowed Black players a route into professional baseball, at a time when they were not allowed to play in the Major Leagues.<\/p>\n
The modern-day Grizzlies represented the Tigers this Juneteenth, wearing their uniform and giving away Fresno Tiger hats to fans as they walked in.<\/p>\n
“What the Fresno Tigers did was groundbreaking. It was extremely special,” said Johnny Bravo, Director of Marketing & Communications for the Grizzlies.<\/p>\n
“They are as important a part of Fresno baseball history as the Grizzlies are, or as any of the teams who came before us are.”<\/p>\n
According to records at the Oakland Public Library, the Tigers played the first games in West Coast Negro League baseball history at Fresno Midget Auto Racing Park.<\/p>\n
After a few games there, the Tigers moved to San Diego. Their stay in Fresno lasted only a week.<\/p>\n
Yet their impact lingers 80 years later, which is why the Grizzlies paid homage Friday to the time when baseball’s color barrier was broken in Fresno.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) \u2014 To commemorate Juneteenth for the 5th consecutive year, the Fresno Grizzlies paid tribute to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-368151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}