'Jack who?’ Yeah, even as his self-appointed number one fan, I acknowledge this is a fair question.
Hannibal had a splendid athletic career that has, sadly, been nearly forgotten as time has marched on and the pages of history have turned. A multisport dynamo, Hannibal was a fixture across the city of Indianapolis’ sporting scene for nearly three decades - particularly in the Black community. Publicly commemorated for the first time on a Negro Leagues baseball marker in Richmond, Indiana (pictured at the bottom of the post), Hannibal’s career is ripe for the telling. Let's bear witness, shall we?
A quick aside: there will be a helluva lot of exposition here before we get to the 1940 Richmond Lincoln Giants - most of it has never been told or chronicled, including the story of the Richmond Giants themselves. It’s all very much worth it…trust me.
Jack Hannibal in the Ring
Hannibal was born Porter Lee Floyd in Campbellsville, Kentucky on March 20, 1891 to Ruben Floyd and the former Sarah Shively. His family moved 200 miles north to Indianapolis when Porter was still a youngster. It can be assumed that his family, like millions of other Black families at the time, moved to the industrial centers found in the North in an effort to find better-paying jobs and economic stability often not found in the rural South. Ruben passed away sometime before Porter's 20th birthday, which quickly made him the head of the household.
According to a 1937 issue of the Indianapolis Recorder, young Porter starred on the Shortridge High School track, football, and basketball teams, but shortly after finishing school, he moved on to the career that would gain him the most notoriety in the Indianapolis sporting circles; boxing. The budding pugilist quickly adopted the ring name of ‘Jack Hannibal’. Nicknames of the 'Fighting Poor Boy’, and the 'Indianapolis Ironman’ would eventually follow.
According to his obituary, Hannibal would ultimately spar 100 times in the ring, allegedly losing only five matches. In a twist of delicious serendipity, the first recorded fight where a ‘Jack Hannibal’ shows up on the card - a December 4, 1911 six-round preliminary bout against a fellow local welterweight Kid Watkins - also happened to be the debut fight of Roy Charleston, who was the older brother of Negro Leagues luminary Oscar Charleston. Roy, born in January 1888 and over eight years older than Oscar, was queued to fight Kid Ash of Cincinnati, Ohio. Roy’s debut assignment was a tough one; Ash, whose birth name was Albert Laurey, had been fighting professionally for over a decade.
For what it’s worth, Hannibal easily defeated Watkins, and Charleston made a ‘great showing in the no-decision’ against Ash, according to the December 5, 1911 issue of the Indianapolis Star.
Hannibal’s son, Leo, who would take on his father’s ring name of ‘Hannibal’ was also born in 1911, and destined to become a multisport star like his father.
By 1913, Hannibal was crowned the middleweight champion of Indianapolis – even getting his picture in printed in the January 4, 1913 issue of the Indianapolis Recorder to celebrate the triumph (pictured above).
His boxing career spanned until 1930 (his obituary stated 1928, but his final fight appears to be in October 1930). None of his fights were higher profile than his August 29, 1921 match with Jack Blackburn, held in Muncie, Indiana. Blackburn, a near-constant contender for multiple world weight titles, was a national figure and boxing professional for over two decades. Unfortunately for Hannibal, despite 'taking the fight to Blackburn' the first two rounds, a devastating right jab to the jaw in the third round sent him to the mat for the night – and Blackburn was declared the victor.
Blackburn stayed in the spotlight; he would later become the ‘Brown Bomber’ Joe Louis' first trainer from 1934 until Blackburn's death in 1942. Louis was the heavyweight champion of the world from 1937-1949. In 1938, Louis even had most of white America rooting for him when he squared off against German Max Schmeling. The fight carried heavy political and symbolic implications; across the globe, Schmeling represented a Nazi, Aryan ideal, while Louis an American and democratic one. Worldwide, 100 million folks tuned their radios to hear Louis absolutely drub Schmeling (Louis threw 41 punches to Schmeling's two).
Admittedly, I am a bit of boxing novice, but I'd say a loss to the 'Brown Bomber's' eventual trainer seems like a quality loss.
Hannibal trained young boxers and officiated matches up until his death. Not for nothing, one of his stablemates throughout the 1910s and 1920s was Jack 'The Hoosier Bearcat' Dillon, a former World Light Heavyweight Champion.
Are you impressed yet? Grip the seat a bit tighter!
Jack Hannibal on the Gridiron
In addition to boxing, Hannibal also starred on the football field – most notably starring as the guard and right tackle on the Indianapolis-based semipro J.J.C. football team. The team took home the independent state championship in both 1925 and 1926. The team was coached by Al Feeney – who played center with the famed Knute Rockne at Notre Dame from 1910-1913, and also coached Negro Leaguer Connie Day during his high school football days at Greenfield High School (Greenfield, Indiana). Most notably, Feeney would later become the first Catholic mayor of Indianapolis and serve in the role between 1948-1950.
His team was clearly good, and well-coached. How good was Hannibal? Not for nothing, Jack was the only man of color on the championship team (pictured fourth from right below).
On to baseball. By now, I am sure one can plainly see why boxing and football are absolutely critical to Hannibal’s career as an athlete. For what it's worth, his basketball exploits at the local YMCA (for which he was an ardent supporter) were legendary in their own right, too.
Jack Hannibal on the Diamond
In the midst of everything else, Hannibal was also a fantastic baseball player – surprise, surprise. Making his bones as a fleet-footed outfielder who could spray the ball to all parts of the yard, he looks to have initially broken in with the all-Black Indianapolis ABCs in 1913, then owned by white bail bondsman Thomas Bowser. He bounced the next year to the Louisville White Sox, then owned by Hall of Fame player/executive/Negro National League founder Rube Foster. In 1916, he suited up for Jewell’s ABCs, an offshoot of the main ABCs club which was then owned by Black baseball standby C.I. Taylor.
By the breakout of World War I, Jack and his wife Hazel had four children and, aside from bringing in money for the family from baseball and boxing, he also worked at an Indianapolis bottling factory. Jack and Hazel ultimately had nine children.
He suited up for the Richmond Giants of Richmond, Indiana in 1918. Though he mostly played right field for the Giants, he also twirled seven scoreless innings in a 6-0 win against the Piqua (OH) Coca-Colas on August 25.
On Labor Day weekend 1918, Hannibal played a doubleheader with the Giants in the afternoon, and participated in a boxing exhibition in Richmond that evening. The Giants won one and tied the other game (a day noted because Bill Holland made his baseball debut with the Giants), and of course he won his boxing match. Seems like quite a day...sometimes I break a sweat making coffee in the morning.
I guess the newspaper may have been on to something when it once claimed that Hannibal ‘was always in training…(and) took great care of himself (physically)’. He was also a ‘perfect gentleman’, according to 1926 issue of the Indianapolis Times.
He suited up once again for the Giants in 1919, who soon merged with the former Kokomo Black Devils to become the ‘Hoosier Giants’ the rest of the season.
Here comes a bombshell.
To accentuate his baseball career even further, against qualified competition, Seamheads (the premier, can’t-live-without-it Negro Leagues database) has him hitting .435 (30-for-69) against qualified competition - which is to say some of the best competition Hannibal would have encountered at the time. Now, people, I am aware we are talking about a very small sample size of just 69 qualified at-bats…but not one single player in the entire database has a higher batting average with a minimum 69 at-bats than Jack Hannibal’s .435 mark. Not one. If I had pearls right now, I’d be clutching 'em.
After his boxing, football, and baseball careers wound down, he picked up a job as janitor he stayed active training fighters and helped organize and coach baseball teams. Included in this count were the Indianapolis Cubs (1931), the Lincoln Highways (1932), and even the Indianapolis ABCs (1935). If he wasn’t managing a club, he could be consistently found umpiring, or putting on sports clinics for the youth of Indianapolis.
Meanwhile, his son Leo, nicknamed ‘Hippo’, was carving out a sports career of his own. Standing 6-foot-2 and tipping the scales at nearly 195 pounds, he pitched for the Indianapolis ABCs (1932), the Indianapolis Athletics (1937), the latter of which he was selected to the North All-Star team. In 1938, he shared a dugout with Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, and Ray Brown as a member of the Homestead Grays. He sported a respectable 3.38 earned run average in four games for the team, per Seamheads.
In addition to baseball, Hippo was also a mainstay on the hardwood, starring with the Lincoln Collegians, and reputedly took a turn with the famed Harlem Globetrotters (pictured from the Palladium Item on January 31, 1940).
Jack Hannibal and the 1940 Richmond Giants
Bubbling beneath the legend, legacy, and lore of the Negro Leagues – the Indianapolis Clowns, Kansas City Monarchs, Homestead Grays, Chicago American Giants et al., is the vast network of colored semipro teams woven throughout the country. In the quilted fabric of Black baseball, these town teams helped pull the stitches tight. Often, you don’t tend to hear much about these teams, even those from the bigger cities in America, but the rosters often featured an exciting amalgamation of former and future Negro Leaguers, has-beens and never-weres, local prodigies and washups, you name it.
In 1940, Jack Hannibal made what would become his final foray in the Black baseball world. With former teammate and Black baseball veteran Connie Day heading up the Indianapolis ABCs as manager, Hannibal planned to take his Indianapolis-based team to play their home games in Richmond, Indiana - his club would be dubbed the ‘Richmond Lincoln Giants’. The team, to my knowledge, has not been chronicled.
Jack looked to the family for an ace hurler; son Leo was quickly brought into the fold for pitching duties. The rest of the team filled out with some of the best available Black players from Indianapolis. Some were sage veterans of Indy sandlots, such as outfielder Willie Lockett and catcher Joe Blackwell.
The team also had first baseman George Gill, who had tasted the highest level of Black baseball and ostensibly wanted his ticket back. Gill had broken into the Negro National League in 1931 with the Detroit Stars, even batting .389 with the Homestead Grays in 1933.
Some were still wet behind the ears, but hungry to play. The teenaged Hiawatha ‘Bill’ Shelby manned left field (he would be signed to the Philadelphia Stars the next season), 20-year-old Sam Segraves played outfield/second base (he’d see time with the Memphis Red Sox, Cleveland Buckeyes, and Indianapolis Clowns between the 1943-1944 seasons), and pitcher Herman ‘Lefty’ Watts, a future New York Black Yankee and Cleveland Buckeye (who would be seriously injured in the Buckeyes infamous 1942 bus crash), would arrive on the scene later in the season.
The Lincoln Giants played their home games at Municipal Stadium in Richmond (a stadium that still stands today), and began the season on a 4-0 tear, including an 8-6 victory over the Richmond semipro team called the Grays on May 5, 1940. Sandwiched between victories over the Kokomo Merchants (8-4 on May 12), and the Brooklyn, Indiana town team (20-0 on June 9), the team squared off against the Columbus Buckeyes, who were managed by John ‘Bubber’ Huber. The Giants registered a 7-6 win over the Buckeyes in 11 innings on June 2.
Their highest-profile matchup of the season was on June 16. After the Cleveland Bears were stranded in Florida with transportation issues, the Oscar Charleston-led Indianapolis Crawfords of the Negro American League needed a team to play – Hannibal quickly volunteered his Lincoln Giants for the twin bill at the legendary Perry Stadium in Indianapolis. Charleston and Hannibal had actually been teammates for a time 22 years earlier with the Richmond Giants.
The Lincoln Giants faced two of the Crawfords best hurlers in John ‘Needle Nose’ Wright in the first game and teenage sensation Connie ‘Cannonball’ Johnson in the second.
The Lincoln Giants showed well. In the first game, they scrapped to a 2-0 lead after three innings and scored two more runs in the top of the fifth to tie the game at four. The talent of the Crawfords eventually carried the first game by an 11-6 margin.
To the credit of Hannibal and the Lincoln Giants, they bore down in game two – battling to a 2-2 tie after the game was called in the sixth inning due to Sunday baseball laws (blue laws).
The Lincoln Giants, after a strong start to the season, skidded to the finish with a 6-9-1 record (.406) among games with a reported outcome. Other notable matchups for the season was a 5-2 loss against Connie Day's Indianapolis ABCs (July 21), a 7-6 victory over the Frankfort (IN) Ushcos which saw four doubles fly off the collective bats of Gill and Shelby (August 11), and a 7-0 loss against the Seymour (IN) Reds in the final game of the season. The loss made interesting since they squared off against a 22-year-old Seymour lad named Don Dunker, who pitched a one-hit shutout. Dunker would go on to win 29 minor league games later in the decade.
Though Hannibal stayed active in the boxing realm in his beloved Indianapolis, the modern-day researcher doesn’t find any additional involvement in baseball. He settled into life as the proprietor of a successful janitorial service. Leo served in the Army during World War II and would eventually join the Indianapolis Department of Parks and Recreation, where he served for 30 years until retiring in 1975.
In August 20, 1948, tragedy struck the Hannibal family when Jack’s 25-year-old daughter Helen was tragically murdered by her husband. She left behind two children, ages three and 20 months old.
Almost a year to the day after his daughter’ death, Jack Hannibal died of a heart attack on August 24, 1949. He was just 58 years old.
Six years after his death, Hannibal (and Leo) were selected to the all-Indianapolis Black baseball second team in a poll held by Indianapolis Recorder sportswriter Tiny Baldwin – himself a mainstay on the city’s diamonds. Jack was selected as a manager and Leo as a pitcher. Baldwin, in the August 20, 1955 issue, fondly remembered Hannibal:
“Jack Hannibal was a quiet man, who always managed to talk at the right time, and only the right time. Jack put each player on a high pedestal and made him feel he was on top of the world, and that way gave the players that little extra something which made each give his everything every time he strode onto the diamond. His famous words were: ‘Every time I get out of Indianapolis, I like Indianapolis that much more.’”
Additional Reading
As it were, there isn't a whole lot about Hannibal out there - perhaps the most comprehensive work (which sadly isn't saying a ton) to date about him is my 2020 work for which this blog is named for: Blackball in the Hoosier Heartland: Unearthing the Negro Leagues History of Richmond, Indiana. It is available in the blog's store or at the publisher's bookstore.
