Uniform & Team History
The original Boston Giants were an early Negro Leagues baseball team founded at the turn of the century as the Dartmouth Athletic Giants. Mostly a semipro team that served as a sort of minor-league team for better-known Negro Leagues teams elsewhere in the country, several incarnations came and went from the 1920’s to the 1940’s. They were variously known as the Boston Royal Giants and Boston Colored Giants and played home games at such venues as Carter Field and Lincoln Park in the South End, at Dorchester’s Town Field and, in Cambridge, Russell Field and Hoyt Field.
Their best-known player was dazzling submariner Will “Cannonball” Jackman, a Texas native who settled in the South End after his playing days. A “Will Jackman Night” was held at Carter Field in 1971, attended by more than.3,000 fans. Jackson, who died in 1972, is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Boston.
Oldtime Game History
Added to the Oldtime Baseball Game in 2018, Boston Bruins legend Raymond Bourque was wearing it when he stepped up to bat and lined a single to left field off another legend, retired Red Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefield.
For many years Bourque had wanted to get a chance to bat against Wakefield, a longtime golfing buddy. The 2018 Oldtime Baseball Game at St. Peter’s Field is when and where it happened.
Also worn by:
John West, Boston College (’19, ’21-23).