Theodore “Bubbles” Anderson, local Black baseball icon, finally gets his due with induction into Colorado Sports Hall of Fame

A bygone Black baseball legend who was initially buried in an unmarked grave is finally getting his Colorado due.

Theodore “Bubbles” Anderson, the state’s only native to play in the Negro Leagues, will be inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame on Wednesday evening at Hilton Denver City Center.

Anderson’s candidacy was spearheaded by Justin Adams, an anchor/reporter for CBS News Colorado who has been on the Hall of Fame’s selection committee since 2017. Anderson came close to making the Hall a couple of times previously, including missing induction by one vote last year, before he was voted in by the old-timers’ committee as part of the 60th anniversary class.

“My mindset was, how can the only person who was born in Colorado to represent the state in the Negro Leagues not be in the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame?” Adams said. “It didn’t make any sense to me. It’s one plus one equals two, so that’s why it was so important for me to get him into the Hall of Fame.

“Bubbles Anderson is for sure Black history … and we love it and appreciate it. But he is also Colorado history, and something that is embraced by everybody cannot be erased. To not have that individual in the Hall of Fame, it felt incomplete. That day he was elected (last November), we added a great chapter.”

Anderson played in the Negro Leagues from 1922 to ’25 for four teams: the Kansas City Monarchs, the Washington Potomacs, the Birmingham Black Barons and the Indianapolis ABCs.

The Monarchs discovered him during a barnstorming tour when Anderson was playing for the local Black powerhouse Denver White Elephants, and upon his Negro National League debut in 1922, baseball historian Jay Sanford says Anderson became the youngest Negro Leagues player ever at 17 years old. That season, Anderson was 10.2 years younger than the average position player in the Negro National League.

Anderson played second base. He hit .251 with 15 doubles, eight triples, 47 RBIs and a .351 on-base percentage in his Negro Leagues career, according to Baseball Reference.

“He had decent speed, and he was really good with the glove,” Sanford said. “And he wasn’t a big bat, but he had alley power.”

According to a 1922 season preview in the Kansas City Sun, Anderson made “a great impression on his first trip around the (barnstorming) circuit.” And per a box score that ran the next day on May 21, 1922, in the Kansas City Star, Anderson had an impressive first game for the Monarchs in front of a crowd of 3,500 at Association Park. He was 2 for 4 with a run scored, a double and a sacrifice as the Monarchs won 4-3 in 13 innings.

Anderson — whose “Bubbles” nickname is of unknown origin — returned to Denver in 1925 at 20 years old. He later served in the U.S. Army in World War II and died in 1943 at just 38 from a gastric ulcer. He was buried in Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery. Sanford got a headstone put on his unmarked grave in 2005 after years of research on Anderson, meeting with one of his former teammates as well as his last living relatives.

“I had put a stone on three graves before that, of ballplayers who had unmarked graves,” Sanford said. “We had a very nice ceremony, and it’s rewarding to see anybody get a stone on their grave decades after they’re gone.”

Going forward, Sanford and Adams both hope that Anderson’s induction opens the door for recognition for more of the state’s old-time Black ballplayers who played a significant role in Denver helping to erase baseball’s color line.

The city produced more than a dozen prominent Black baseball squads from about 1890 to 1940, the most notable of which was the White Elephants. That team featured pitcher Thomas “Pistol Pete” Albright — the other Coloradan besides Anderson to make the Negro Leagues — and was owned by successful local businessman/politician A.H.W. Ross.

“It’s going to take somebody like Justin again, or maybe Justin himself, to push (Hall of Fame candidacies for Albright and Ross) through,” Sanford said.

“… It’s just human nature that we think the value is in the present. It’s hard to put the value in somebody from 100 years ago and what they did in their sport, even though the contribution to baseball for both those men was immense.”

The Hall of Fame’s 2025 class features five other inductees. Skiing great Mikaela Shiffrin, Rockies all-star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, championship basketball coach Larry Brown, Broncos sackmaster Simon Fletcher and CU basketball star Lisa Van Goor will join Anderson in induction on Wednesday night.

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