Lead City Grays
The Lead City Grays, based in Lead, South Dakota, played the 1891 and 1892 seasons as charter members of the Black Hills League. The town, then commonly called Lead City, existed because of the Homestake Mine, which opened in 1876 and ran for more than 125 years as the largest and deepest gold mine in North America.
The league was an independent four-team affair pulling from the mining towns of the Black Hills plus Chadron, Nebraska. Baseball had been organized in the region since at least 1885, when the first Black Hills Base Ball League formed to bring the scattered town teams under one set of rules and to curb the violence and gambling that surrounded the games.
John Tierney managed the 1892 Grays. Alex Beam and Robert Pender both appeared for Lead in 1891, and both went on to the major leagues. Records and standings from the two Black Hills League seasons have not survived, which is not unusual for independent baseball of the period.
Chadron relocated to Fort Meade during the 1892 season, and the league folded once that year ended. Lead has not hosted professional baseball since. A semiprofessional league using the Black Hills name continued in the region into the 1950s.
