Sherman Maxwell

Sherman Leander "Jocko" Maxwell (December 18, 1907 – July 16, 2008) was an American sportscaster and chronicler of Negro league baseball. Many veteran journalists of his day, including Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American, believed that Maxwell was the first African American sports broadcaster in history. It was an assertion that many in the mainstream press also accepted, and Maxwell himself sometimes stated that he had in fact been the first. For much of his life, he was known by the nickname of Jocko. His father was a journalist, one of the few black men of his era to rise to an editorial position at a predominantly white newspaper, The Star-Ledger. He graduated from Central High School in Newark, though he was such a fan of baseball that he intentionally failed high school final exams so he could remain at the school for one more year in order to play for his high school baseball team. He received his nickname of "Jocko" when he was a teenager. He had been passionate about baseball ever since childhood, although he never thought he was good enough to play professionally. Prior to being sent overseas, he married his long-time sweetheart, Mamie Bryant, a social worker, in June 1943. They had two children, a son and a daughter.

Sports broadcasting career Maxwell reportedly began his broadcasting career in 1929 at the age of 22 when he began doing a five-minute weekly sports report on WNJR, a radio station based in Newark. It is believed by many authors and historians of the radio era that Maxwell became the first African American sports reporter. although some newspapers qualified it by saying he was the only black sports announcer in the East, or in any major city. Maxwell was broadcasting on stations throughout northern New Jersey, and was also heard in New York City, beginning in the early 1930s. He later hosted a sports report called, "Runs, Hits and Errors" on WRNY, a station based in Coytesville, New Jersey, which had a studio in Manhattan at the Roosevelt Hotel.

Maxwell later became the public address sports announcer at Ruppert Stadium for the Negro leagues team the Newark Eagles.

He was inducted into the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994. In 2001, Maxwell achieved his lifelong dream by visiting the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, when he was 93 years old, though he was not inducted into the Hall of Fame during his lifetime.

Death Sherman Maxwell died on July 16, 2008, of complications of pneumonia at Chester County Hospital in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was 100 years old. He was survived by his sister, Berenice Maxwell Cross, of West Caldwell, New Jersey, and his son, Bruce Maxwell, of West Chester, Pennsylvania. His wife, Mamie, and daughter, Lisa, had died previously.

In an interview after Maxwell's death, Bob Kendrick, the director of marketing for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Missouri said that Maxwell had been well known by Negro league players as someone who preserved records and scores that would have been lost without him.