Hilldale Club

American Negro league baseball team

The Hilldale Athletic Club (informally known as Darby Daisies) were an American professional Negro league baseball team based in Darby, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia. Established as a boys team in 1910, the Hilldales were developed by their early manager, then owner Ed Bolden to be one of the powerhouse Negro league baseball teams. They won the first three Eastern Colored League pennants beginning in 1923 and in 1925 won the second Colored World Series. Hall of Fame player Judy Johnson was a Hilldale regular for most its professional era with 12 seasons in 15 years (1918–1932). Pitcher Phil Cockrell played for Hilldale throughout those years. Oscar Charleston, Biz Mackey, Louis Santop, Chaney White, and Jesse "Nip" Winters were also important Hilldale players in the 1920s.

Ed Bolden founded the team in 1910 as an amateur athletic club for local young men. Devere Thompson was the first manager but Bolden took over as manager himself before the end of the first season. The club incorporated November 1916, as Hilldale Baseball and Exhibition Company, and began to hire some established players. Spot Poles and Bill Pettus led the 1917 team to a 23 15 1 record. Hilldale and the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants played as eastern "Associates" of the western Negro National League in 1920 and 1921. In the latter season they held a four game series in September with the winner to face the NNL champion Chicago American Giants. After both teams won two games, the American Giants traveled east to play one series each. Chicago defeated the Bacharach Giants 2 1 1 but Hilldale beat Chicago 3 2 1. Hilldale was a charter member of the Eastern Colored League in 1923 and won the first place pennants in 1923, 1924, and 1925. They lost the inaugural, 1924 Colored World Series to the Kansas City Monarchs five games to four (with one tie). Next season they won a rematch with the Monarchs five games to one. The 1925 club featured star catcher and cleanup hitter Biz Mackey, third baseman Judy Johnson, and outfielder Clint Thomas. Player manager Frank Warfield's pitching staff was led by left handed ace Nip Winters and spitballer Phil Cockrell. Hilldale dropped to third in 1926 and fifth in 1927. After a single season, the team was purchased by John Drew, who ran the club until its final collapse in 1932. During the Great Depression, Black urban unemployment hit as high as 50%. This negatively impacted attendance in the Negro leagues in the 1930s. Drew disbanded the ballclub in July 1932 after the combined attendance of two subsequent Saturday afternoon games at Hilldale Park totaled 295. (Hilldale was the club name, Darby the locale.) While various nicknames were informally applied to the club, including "Darby Daisies" and "Clan Darbie", the team was most commonly known simply as Hilldale or the Hilldales.

Hilldale did not have an official team logo as professional and collegiate teams have today. It was not common practice for teams to have such standardized team symbols in the 1910s and 1920s. They wore red and white. Their jerseys in the 1920s had "Hilldale" across the front in the style shown above as the "team logo". The club wore a red cap with a white plain block capital H as seen above. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) created a series of team logos in the 1990s for the well known Negro league teams so that the NLBM could license such logos and collect royalties for their use on merchandise. Such revenue helps sustain the museum. Hilldale was one such team for which a contemporary logo was created. It is seen on NLBM licensed Hilldale Giants merchandise and while it supports the educational efforts of the museum, it is not a historical logo.

The African American Museum in Philadelphia maintains the "William Cash/Lloyd Thompson Collection" of Philadelphia Stars and Hilldale scorebooks, photographs, and correspondence.