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The season’s first contest that would be played for keeps was in Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. The Dodgers had nearly taken the pennant the year before and were favored to do well again. Satchel Paige (pictured below) started for the Phillies and Bobo Newsom for Brooklyn. The Alabama-born hurler was the most successful athlete in black baseball, and signing him had been a signal that Veeck intended not only to hire Negro League athletes, but to pay them what they deserved.

The Dodgers scored first on Dolph Camilli’s solo home run in the fourth. They nearly had another in the seventh, but Gene Benson’s frozen rope to the plate nailed Hal Peck by fifteen feet. Roy Campanella pinch hit for Phillies third baseman Pinky May in the eight and stroked a single, coming around to score on Buck Leonard’s base hit to right. That opened the floodgates. Paige finished the game as the Phillies won it, 4-1.

Si Johnson, the only starter in the rotation who had played for the 1942 Phillies, took the mound the next day against Brooklyn’s Kirby Higbe. The Phillies loaded the bases in the top of the first and Ray Dandridge’s single up the middle plated one. Another run scored on a ground out and the Phillies were off to a solid start. Johnson struggled early, too; Billy Herman scored on a balk in Brooklyn’s half of the first, but that was all. The Dodgers scored two more in the second to take the lead. In the top of the fourth, “Home Run” Brown lived up to his name by depositing one into the left field seats to tie the game. Brown scored again in the sixth on Danny Murtaugh’s RBI single to give the visitors the lead. “Boom-Boom” Beck finished the game when Johnson was lifted for a pinch hitter, and the Phillies held on to win 4-3. With their first series in the books, the grand experiment looked to have gotten off to a fine start.