The real-life Ace grew up to be the relief ace of the New York Giants during World War II. One of the first iron-man relievers, the right-hander worked more than 60 games for four straight years — no one else had done that even twice in a row — and pitched a record 70 times in 1943. But he wasn’t happy about it. “You couldn’t make any money relieving,” he complained. “Relieving was the low dog.”1

Adams ended his major-league career abruptly when he jumped to the Mexican League in 1946. He never expressed any regret. He said the Mexicans gave him 50,000 reasons not to.

Adams was born in Willows, California, on March 2, 1910, to the former Emma Jane Nichols and Walter Scott Adams. He grew up on a fruit farm in the Northern California mountains.

The boy earned a local reputation as a pitcher, catcher, and boxer. While still a teenager, he married his first wife, Ethel, and they named their son Ace. Adams moved to San Francisco to take a job pitching for the El Rey brewery team. Between games he poured free beer for visitors to the plant. When a Brooklyn scout signed him in 1934, he was 24 years old but subtracted two years from his age.

Assigned to the Class-D Evangeline League, Adams stalled in Louisiana for three years despite winning 16 games and then 20 while twice leading the league in strikeouts. Some scouts thought he was too small at 5-feet-10½, even though he was a blocky 180 pounds. Getting nowhere, he decided to quit the game. But his manager at Jeanerette, Emmett Lipscomb, persuaded him to come along to Cordele, Georgia, in the Georgia-Florida League, another Class-D circuit.

By this time Ace and Ethel had divorced. He met his second wife, Ellie Hornsby, in Cordele. Ace bought a 180-acre farm near the crossroads hamlet of Iron City, acquired a passable drawl, and lived in Southwest Georgia for the rest of his life.

Adams won 26 games for Cordele in 1937, plus two more in the playoffs, and began to move up. He led the Class A-1 Southern Association in strikeouts in 1940, despite missing some time after he was hit on the wrist by a line drive. He helped Nashville win the pennant and the Dixie Series with two victories over Texas League champion Houston. When the Vols arrived home from Houston, Ellie met the train waving a newspaper with the headline “Adams Sold to Giants.”2

Reaching the majors after a seven-year slog through the bushes, he erased another two years from the calendar. He was listed as 27 instead of 31. Taking some of the edge off his thrill, he learned that the Giants expected him to live in New York on $2,500 a year.

On Opening Day in 1941, Adams sat on the bench at Ebbets Field enjoying the first big-league game he had ever seen. When the Giants fell behind the archrival Dodgers, manager Bill Terry let the rookie get his feet wet. He pitched the last three innings, allowing only one hit, and was rewarded when the Giants rallied to win. Terry “picked me up on his shoulders, carried me off and gave me a thousand dollar raise before we got to the clubhouse,” Adams recalled.3

Terry thought he had found a relief pitcher, willing or not. Adams got into 38 games, more than any other Giants reliever, with a 4-1 record but an unsightly 4.82 ERA.

Adams’ fastball didn’t scare anybody. He threw a little of everything — including some pitches he didn’t talk about — changing speeds on his breaking stuff and recording few strikeouts. “I would mix the rosin and Beech-Nut tobacco juice,” he said. “Chewing tobacco and rosin. You could lick your fingers like that and when you got those two together you could throw a pretty good curve ball. That was legal.”4 He had been working on a slider since a Nashville teammate showed him how to throw it, but didn’t get the hang of it until 1942. It turned him into an outstanding big-league pitcher.

A new manager, Mel Ott, began using Adams primarily to finish games. Adams led the league in that category for the next four seasons. He usually pitched just an inning or two ­— only 88 in 1942 — but his role was unlike the modern closer’s. He was a true fireman, often called in with runners on base, no matter whether the Giants were ahead or behind. His 61 appearances equaled the major-league record for relief games set by Clint Brown of the White Sox three years earlier.

Adams’ 1.84 ERA was his career best. Although 1942 was the first wartime year, most major leaguers were still on the field. Adams was not pitching against the replacements who would populate the rosters for the next three seasons.

He put up a 7-4 record with 11 saves. Of course, nobody knew he saved 11 games. “We couldn’t bargain with saves when it came time to talk contract because there was no such thing back then,” he said years later. “That’s why I didn’t like the relief.”5 But he did not labor in obscurity. His chase of the record was big news, more so because he broke the National League mark of 56 games pitched (at the 60’6” distance) that was shared by the sainted Giant Christy Mathewson.

After a third-place finish in 1942, the Giants collapsed the next year. The military took three of their leading hitters, Johnny Mize, Harry Danning, and Willard Marshall. Player-manager Ott showed his age at 34 and hit only 18 home runs, about half his usual production. The club’s best pitcher, Hal Schumacher, also went into the service. Carl Hubbell was finished at 40, and the rest of the pitchers stunk up the Polo Grounds, except for Adams and his pal Cliff Melton. The Giants lost 98 games and finished last for the first time since 1915.

The league’s worst pitching staff completed only 35 starts, leaving plenty of work for the bullpen. Ott tested how far Adams’ rubber arm would stretch. Adams pitched in 30 of the club’s first 57 games. He was beginning to show the strain, blowing three of his last four save opportunities.

Ott continued to call his number. The alternatives were not appetizing. Adams pitched on back-to-back days 20 times, although he worked three days in a row only once. He pitched in both ends of a doubleheader 10 times. He was a show horse as well as a workhorse. He reeled off 27 consecutive scoreless innings in May and blew just one save after June 20, only four all season.

Adams pitched the longest outing of his career, 9 2/3 innings in relief, on September 4 before losing to Brooklyn in the 17^th. He never stopped pestering the manager to give him a chance to start. With the season down the drain, Ott must have figured, “What the hell. At least it will shut him up.” Ott promised Adams a start in a Sunday doubleheader against the Boston Braves on September 12.

But on the Wednesday before that, Ott called on him in the eighth with the Giants trailing Philadelphia by just one run. Adams worked the last two innings in his 62^nd appearance, breaking his and Brown’s record for games in relief.

On Saturday the 11^th, the Giants and Braves went into extra innings tied 3-3. Ott brought in Adams to pitch the 10^th. And the 11^th, 12^th, and 13^th before Mickey Witek won the game for him with a walk-off homer.

“Ott said, ‘It looks like you can’t start tomorrow.’ I said, ‘The heck I won’t.’”6

After 162 relief appearances, and no day off, Adams took the mound for his first career start in the second game of the Sunday doubleheader. All he did was limit the Braves to one hit in eight innings while the Giants staked him to a 7-0 lead. He yielded two meaningless runs in the ninth before he finished the three-hitter with a strikeout.

“The next day they called me into the office and said, ‘If we double your salary, will you relieve for us?’ I said, ‘I’ll relieve, and I’ll be the batboy, too.’”7

Adams pitched for the 65^th time when he relieved on September 15. His next appearance would match the major-league record of 66 games in a season by Ed Walsh in 1908. The spitballer Walsh was a starter who also worked in relief.

Ott decided to let Adams tie the record as a starter. He lasted six innings against Brooklyn, giving up two runs, and was the winning pitcher. Ott gave him another start to break the record on September 27. This time the Cubs knocked him out in the fifth. He got no decision, but he wrote his name in the record books.

Adams appeared three more times in relief to raise his mark to 70 games pitched.8 He worked 140 1/3 innings, won 11, lost 7, and saved 9 with a 2.82 ERA. Now here’s the weird part: Another reliever, Cincinnati’s Clyde Shoun, finished far ahead of him in the Most Valuable Player voting, 24 points (10^th place) to 7. Why? Shoun won 14 games and posted the league’s best winning percentage, .737. That made him a more valuable pitcher in the eyes of 1940s sportswriters. In 45 games, Shoun earned seven saves, but blew five opportunities.

As a married father, Adams had been exempt from military service. With draft calls growing, he took a physical and was classified 4-F, unfit for service, because of an old knee injury. He pitched through the war as the majority of big leaguers were called up, to be replaced by the old, the young, and the infirm.

Ott gave Adams a shot at a regular starting job in 1944. He beat the Dodgers in his first outing, allowing just two runs in a complete game. But his next three starts were disasters: 13 runs in 14 1/3 innings. Back to the bullpen for good.

His 65 appearances led the league for the third straight year and he led in saves for the first time with 13. But his effectiveness slipped. His ERA in relief jumped to 3.94, and he blew five save opportunities, finishing with an 8-11 record in 137 2/3 innings. Ernie Lombardi, winding up his career as the Giants’ wartime catcher, caught one of Adams’ fastballs barehanded. “I was hot,” Adams recalled. “I said, ‘What the hell are you trying to do, you big son of a gun, showing me up like that! … Yeah, he could have at least rubbed and let the fans know I had something.”9

Adams opened the 1945 season by holding opponents scoreless in nine of his first 10 appearances. But he was 35 years old, a fact he kept to himself, and his performance soon turned erratic. Ott began easing his workload, seldom using him on consecutive days. Again pitching 65 games, this time he accumulated only 113 innings. His ERA improved to 3.42, with an 11-9 record. His 15 saves tied for the major-league lead, but he blew eight chances.

When the genuine big leaguers came home from military service in 1946, most wartime replacements were quickly shunted aside. Adams had no reason to fear for his job because the Giants had no proven relief pitchers returning. On Opening Day he made his 300^th career appearance, working one shutout inning, but he was hit hard in his next two games. On April 24 the Braves greeted him with a walk and a double, then Tommy Holmes slammed a home run, chasing Adams off the mound before he got anybody out. Holmes was the last batter he faced in the majors.

Recruiters from the Mexican League had been prowling the spring training camps, waving gobs of cash. They struck out with the big stars, but lured some mid-level players. Seven Giants, including pitcher Sal Maglie and outfielder Danny Gardella, had already gone south. The Mexicans offered to better Adams’ $9,000 salary. On April 26 he and fellow pitcher Harry Feldman went to the Polo Grounds, packed their gear, and took off. Commissioner Happy Chandler had decreed that the Mexican League “jumpers” would be suspended for five years, so the 36-year-old Adams knew he was walking away for good.

He said the Mexicans gave him a $50,000 contract. “That was pretty hard to turn down then, all expenses paid, an apartment. Fifty thousand in 1946 for five months work. That’s all I can save in five years. I was about to retire anyway, why not take it?”10

In other interviews, Adams said $50,000 was the total for a three-year contract. At nearly $17,000 a year, that would be more than the salaries paid to the most prominent jumpers, All-Stars Mickey Owen of the Dodgers and Vern Stephens of the Browns. Owen told historian William Marshall that he signed for five years at $15,000 a year, plus a $12,500 bonus. Stephens said he was promised the same salary.11

When Adams and Feldman left the Giants, the New York Times reported that each had received a $10,000 bonus and $10,000 salary from the Mexicans.12  Even $20,000 up front was more than double Adams’ paycheck from the Giants. “Adams, in particular, felt that he was nearing the end of his career,” Giants secretary Eddie Brannick said, “and wanted to get the dough while the getting was good.”13

The US players found Mexican ballparks primitive, with no clubhouses or showers. Games in one park had to stop when a train chugged across the outfield. Some players got sick from the food and water. Stephens turned around and came home before Opening Day, avoiding a suspension. Owen wanted to return, but Dodgers president Branch Rickey wouldn’t take him back.

Many of the imported players were expensive disappointments, especially the pitchers, whose curve balls straightened out at high altitude. Adams, pitching for Veracruz, compiled a 5-7 record and 4.09 ERA.14  League president Jorge Pasquel dumped most of the big salaries after the season. Adams heard nothing from Pasquel about playing again in 1947. In the spring he told writer Furman Bisher, “I’m tickled pink not to have to return. It’s strictly second-rate.”15

Adams remembered the experience differently in later years. “My wife went along down there with me and we had a nice year,” he said in 1990. … “[W]e went first class, train and plane. No buses, and it wasn’t bad at all.”16  With those comments, and his insistence that he was paid $50,000, he may have been covering up his embarrassment over making a mistake. But he felt no loyalty to major-league baseball: “They owned you like a mule.”17

While some of the Mexican jumpers suffered financially during their suspensions, Adams had his Georgia farm to fall back on. He reportedly owned more than 500 acres planted in peanuts, cotton, and corn. When Gardella and others sued baseball for reinstatement, Adams did not join them. But he still felt the sting of the suspension: “Being on the blacklist is sorta like being a criminal. If I could only get that lifted. It’ll hang over my head and folks won’t remember me for my National League records, only as the guy who was banned for five years because he went to Mexico.”18

His outlaw status hit home when the Dixie Lily flour company hired him to coach its team. “I was coaching a little semipro team down in Florida,” he said, “and they sent somebody out on the field and said that I couldn’t coach, took me off the field.” He filed his own lawsuit and said he collected a settlement from baseball.19

In June 1949 Commissioner Chandler declared amnesty for the 18 Mexican League defectors because major league owners were afraid to test their reserve clause in court. Adams, now 39, did not try to come back.

He returned to Organized Baseball as an owner in 1952 when boosters in Fitzgerald, Georgia, essentially gave him their failing Class-D club. He managed and tried to pitch, but his arm was gone. In June President Adams fired manager Adams.20

Ace, Ellie, and their son Alvin and daughter Cindy moved to the nearby town of Albany in 1953. He opened a liquor store and later owned Ace’s Oyster Bar next door, another restaurant, an Amoco service station, and a monument company.21  Alvin eventually took over the businesses, but Ace continued to work part-time at the liquor store into his 80s. When a visitor asked him to sign a baseball, he said, “You better be careful, I’m likely to take my ring and cut this thing. Force of habit!”22 

Adams died at 95 on February 26, 2006. In addition to the children and grandchildren from his second marriage, his family included a son, grandson, great-grandson, and great-great-grandson, all named Ace.23

Acknowledgments 

This biography was reviewed by Jan Finkel and fact-checked by Alan Cohen.

Additional sources

Lieb, Frederick G. “Ace Adams, His Barrel Overflowing, Keeps Tossing That Apple As Majors’ Relief Marvel.” The Sporting News, September 10, 1942.

Smith, Ken. “Rookie Adams, Once a Pro Boxer, Tossed into Ring by Bill Terry As Late-Round Box Stopper for Giants.” The Sporting News, June 5, 1941.

Notes

1 Ace Adams interview by Brent Kelley, September 27, 1991, in the SABR Oral History Committee collection.

2 Ibid.

3 Bob Cairns, Pen Men (New York: St. Martins, 1992), 49.

4 Ibid., 48.

5 Ibid., 51.

6 Mike Eisenbath, “Pioneer Closers Didn’t Require Much ‘Down Time,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 12, 1990: 4F.

7 Ibid.

8 Adams’ record stood for just six years, until the Phillies’ Jim Konstanty pitched in 74 games in 1950. Nobody passed Konstanty until 1964.

9 Cairns, Pen Men, 51.

10  Ibid., 54.

11  William Marshall, Baseball’s Pivotal Era, 1945-1951 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 50, 53.

12  “Feldman and Adams Quit Giants,” New York Times, April 27, 1946: 20.

13  Associated Press, “Ace Adams, Feldman Jump Giants for Mexican League,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, April 27, 1946: 16.

14  Statistics provided by Rory Costello from Pedro Treto Cisneros, editor, Enciclopedia del Beisbol Mexicano (Mexico City: Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V.: 11th edition, 2011).

15  Furman Bisher, “Ace Living Like a King on Farm, With Only One Regret—His Ban,” The Sporting News, May 7, 1947: 24. 

16  Cairns, Pen Men, 54.

17  Kelley interview.

18  Bisher, “Ace Living Like a King.”

19  Cairns, Pen Men, 55.

20  Associated Press, “Adams, Ex-Relief Ace, Fires Himself,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 13, 1952: 48.

21  “Ace Townsend Adams,” Albany (Georgia) Herald, March 4, 2006: 6B. Obituary provided by Laura Elliott of the Dougherty County Public Library.

22  Cairns, Pen Men, 47.

23  Stephen Miller, “Ace Adams, 95, Giants Pitcher of the 1940s,” New York Sun, March 10, 2006. http://www.nysun.com/obituaries/ace-adams-95-giants-pitcher-of-the-1940s/28677/, accessed January 22, 2018.

Second baseman Newt Allen’s Kansas City Monarchs teammates gave him the nickname “Colt” in 1922 because he was the youngest member of the team.1 Over the course of a 23-plus-year career in the Negro Leagues that also included stints in other countries, Allen proved to be one of the best players ever to man the keystone sack. During his tenure with the Monarchs, Allen contributed sterling defense and a potent bat to 11 championship squads.2

At the conclusion of his second full season with Kansas City, he played in the first Negro League World Series, in which the Monarchs defeated the Hilldale Club of the Eastern Colored League. Eighteen years later, now a seasoned veteran, he helped the Monarchs triumph over the Negro National League’s Homestead Grays in the first Negro League World Series between those two circuits. During the intervening years, Colt Allen had galloped over all competition so soundly that in 2006 he was on the final ballot of the Special Committee on the Negro Leagues for induction into the Hall of Fame, though he ultimately fell short of enshrinement.

Newton Henry Allen was born on May 19, 1901, in Austin, Texas, to Newton H. and Rose (Baker) Allen. The elder Newton and Rose had married in 1897 and led a hardscrabble existence as they raised a family in Texas’s capital city. Newton Allen was a laborer who worked whatever odd jobs he could find while Rose worked as a laundress. Young Newt had an older sister, Dora, and was joined later by another sister, Eva Mae, and a brother, Lawrence; two other siblings, including a sister named Mary who was born in 1903, died in childhood prior to 1910.

Newt’s father succumbed to tuberculosis on July 21, 1910, forcing Rose and the four children to fend for themselves. This new circumstance contributed, in a roundabout way, to Newt’s arrival in Kansas City, Missouri. Rose briefly took the children to Cincinnati – presumably she had family there – and, shortly thereafter, Newt accompanied her to Missouri to visit an aunt whose young son had recently died. As Allen later recalled:

“I went to live with my auntie, Ophelia Henderson, in Kansas City. She had a boy and he and I were the same age. And he passed. And when she lost him, then she took me.

I lived at 17th Street, about 17th and Woodland. Just across the street from where I lived was a ballpark by one of them playgrounds. I was out there all the time. That was Parade Park.”3

Such were the unusual circumstances by which Newt grew up in Kansas City while his siblings were raised by their mother, first in Austin and later in Cincinnati.4

Allen attended Bruce Elementary School and Lincoln High School and became close friends with Frank Duncan, a future Monarchs teammate and manager. According to Allen, another future Monarchs star, pitcher Rube Curry, was also part of their circle of friends who played sandlot ball together.5 As Allen and his friends advanced from sandlot to semipro ball, he started to chase after balls from the minor-league Kansas City Blues’ games, saying, “[I would] come back with the ball and sell it or keep it. That’s the way our ballteam [sic], which was a semipro team, always had balls to play with when we would go out to play.”6 Allen also started to work at the Monarchs’ ballpark at 20th Street and Prospect where, he said, “I pulled the canvas and filled the water jug for them, things like that.”7 Allen and Duncan played for the semipro Kansas City Tigers, but Newt spent a lot of time on the bench and soon joined the Paseo Rats as well as playing for Swift’s in a packinghouse league.8

Duncan began his professional career with the Chicago Giants in 1920 – the same year that Curry debuted with the Monarchs – and joined Kansas City early in the 1921 season, but Allen had to take a longer road to join his longtime friends on their hometown team. First, he ventured to Nebraska, where he honed his skills playing for the Omaha Federals in 19ry21. Monarchs’ co-owner J.L. Wilkinson had resurrected his barnstorming All-Nations team – so called because it was integrated and employed players of different races and ethnicities – and based it in Omaha. He soon took notice of Allen and gave him a tryout in 1922, after which he assigned Allen to the All-Nations team, placing him under the tutelage of the diverse squad’s manager, already-legendary pitcher John Donaldson.

Allen toiled for the All-Nations team, which also served as a farm club for the Monarchs, for most of the season before being called up to the Monarchs in October for a six-game “City Championship” series against the Double-A Kansas City Blues.9 The Monarchs won five of the six games against their White counterparts to claim the title as champions of Kansas City. Allen fared poorly at the plate, going 1-for-14 for an .071 batting average in five games, but he nonetheless had learned well in 1922 and was able to break spring training with the Monarchs the next season.

Perhaps the reason for Allen’s poor performance in the City Championship series was that he was distracted by his early-October marriage to 17-year-old Mary Edwards and the impending arrival of their first child, Newton Henry Allen Jr., who was born on November 27, 1922. Newt Jr. eventually graduated from Western Baptist Bible College, the same institution his father had attended for two years before pursuing his baseball career, and he founded Kansas City’s Mount Joy Missionary Baptist Church.10 Newt Sr. and Mary had a second son and a daughter, but their marriage did not endure. Allen recalled, “After my wife and I separated, [teammate Newt Joseph] and I lived together here in Kansas City for about five years. The two Newts.”11

The difficulty in Allen’s marriage was representative of the problems that have shaken many ballplayers’ marriages in all eras. According to one historian, “[M]arried players always spoke of the ‘understanding’ a man and his wife had to have.”12 Allen said, “It’s a hard life. There has to be an understanding between you and your wife – a good understanding.”13 Whether that understanding entailed the expectation of marital fidelity or the acceptance of infidelity may have varied from marriage to marriage. Allen was known to revel in his celebrity as a ballplayer and confessed, “The women, they were lovely everywhere we went. If they didn’t recognize me in my regular clothes, then I’d go up to them and tell them who I was. But sometimes they could be a worrisome deal.”14

One concern that Allen hoped would no longer be worrisome was his status with the Monarchs, a member team of the Rube Foster-founded Negro National League. He began the 1923 season at third base with Kansas City and batted .304 in 33 league games but was returned to the All-Nations team in June and spent the summer barnstorming throughout the Midwest again.15 The Monarchs finished with a 54-32 league record (61-37 overall) and wrested the NNL championship away from Foster’s Chicago American Giants, the team that had claimed the first three league pennants. Although Allen had not spent the entire season with Kansas City, he still had been a major contributor to the first of the 11 Monarchs championship squads on which he played.

Finally, in 1924, Allen took over at second base for Kansas City for the long term. He gained his older teammates’ acceptance through hard play and by taking their pranks in a good-natured way. Allen noted, “The players would ride you to see if you can take it,” and recalled that one time some of the Monarchs veterans “told the hotel where we ate not to give me no meat because I’d have fits. I ate breakfast without meat and lunch without meat. So I asked them what was going on and they told me the players told them if they gave me meat, I’d have fits.”16 His first full season with the Monarchs involved a learning curve on the baseball diamond as his batting average fell to .258 and he committed 33 errors in the field in 73 league games; his .918 fielding percentage was slightly below the league average of .925.

In time, Allen remedied all shortcomings. He was not a big man – standing 5-feet-9 and weighing 165 pounds – so he learned how to become an ideal number-two hitter in the Monarchs lineup. Later in life, when asked what he considered to be his outstanding achievement in baseball, Allen answered that he “learned how to play second base, bunt and hit behind the runner, and think while playing.”17 That Allen was a fast learner was evidenced by the improvements in his performance at the plate and in the field as the Monarchs faced the Hilldale Club in the first Negro League World Series that October.

That first World Series provided as much excitement as any fan could desire. The Monarchs prevailed 5-4-1 over Hilldale. The tie occurred in Game Three, which had to be called due to darkness with the scored knotted, 6-6, after 13 innings. Allen improved his batting average to .282 with 11 hits (seven doubles) and 8 runs scored and his fielding percentage rose to .968. However, one of the two errors he committed proved costly.

In Game Four, which was played on October 6 at Maryland Baseball Park in Baltimore, the teams were tied, 3-3, when Hilldale loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth. Hilldale catcher Louis Santop hit “a routine grounder to Newt Allen at second and Allen [threw] wildly to catcher Duncan, allowing Judy Johnson to score the ugly, but winning run.”18 Hilldale’s winning pitcher was Allen’s childhood friend Rube Currie, and the Philadelphia-area club took a 2-to-1 Series lead.

Allen was able to redeem himself in Game 10, which took place on October 20 at Schorling Park in Chicago. Hilldale’s Script Lee and Jose “The Black Diamond” Mendez, the Monarchs’ Cuban hurler, engaged in an epic pitchers’ duel that remained scoreless until the bottom of the eighth inning. In that fateful frame, the Monarchs offense exploded for five runs. Allen drove in the second and third runs with a single to right field and put the exclamation point on Kansas City’s rally by scoring the fifth and final run on Dink Mothell’s double. Mendez finished the shutout, and the Monarchs were the champions of Black baseball.

On the heels of Kansas City’s championship, Allen and Monarchs teammate Wilbur “Bullet” Rogan traveled to Cuba to play for the Almendares Alacranes (Scorpions) during the 1924-25 Winter League season. Almendares fielded four future Hall of Famers in Rogan, Raleigh “Biz” Mackey, John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, and Oscar Charleston and was the dominant squad on the island. In fact, “Almendares reclaimed the title by such ample margin that the league, as was customary in those days, stopped the activities to prevent financial harm to the different clubs.”19 Allen contributed a .313 batting average in 48 at-bats while splitting the third-base duties with Cuban Jose Gutierrez.20 With the regular season cut short, it was decided that a special eight-game series would be held between “All Cubans” and “All Yankees” teams. The All Yankees, composed exclusively of Negro League players, finished with a 5-2-1 record in the series, and Allen went 8-for-30 for a .267 average while playing third base in all eight games.21 He returned to Cuba only once, in 1938-39, and split the season between Almendares and Habana. He hit .269 combined between the two squads but fell short of a championship as the Santa Clara team won the title that season.22

In April 1925 the Chicago Defender noted that the Monarchs would field an all-veteran starting lineup to begin the season.23 Kansas City’s talent and experience led them to the NNL’s first-half title, but the St. Louis Stars captured the second-half flag, and it took a hard-fought seven-game series for the Monarchs to retain the NNL championship. Allen once again handled the second-base chores, batted .289 in 80 regular-season games, and raised his level of play and batting average to .370 in the NNL championship series against the Stars. The Monarchs’ reward was a rematch against Hilldale in the 1925 World Series. Between their exhausting series against St. Louis and an injury to pitching ace Bullet Rogan, who “was hurt in a freak accident at home and spent the entire series on the bench,” the Monarchs were no competition for Hilldale this second time around.24 Hilldale’s pitchers quieted Kansas City’s bats and captured the championship in six games. The Monarchs likely wished that Rube Curry had still been on their side, as their former righty, who had gone 1-1 with a 0.55 ERA in the 1924 World Series, posted two victories in the rematch. Curry threw a 12-inning complete-game victory in Game One and hurled another complete game in Hilldale’s 2-1 triumph in Game Five. Meanwhile, Allen slumped to .259 and only one Monarchs hitter – Dobie Moore – managed to bat over .300 for the Series.

Rogan recovered in time to play in the California Winter League’s 1925-26 season and Allen accompanied him west. The two played for the Philadelphia Royal Giants in what was at that time the only integrated professional baseball league in the United States. Allen scuffled to a .254 batting average in 29 games, but Rogan posted a 14-2 record to help the Royal Giants run away with the league title. Allen returned to California for the next five Winter League seasons, playing for the Philadelphia Royal Giants in 1926-27, 1929-30, and 1930-31 and for the Cleveland Giants in 1927-28 and 1928-29. During his six winters in the Golden State, Allen compiled a career .324 batting average, and his teams captured the league title every year except in 1927-28.

Allen’s career settled into a winning pattern in both California winters and Kansas City summers. However, as successful as the Monarchs were, they were unable to return to the World Series in 1926, losing a nine-game playoff series to the archrival Chicago American Giants. There had long been bad blood between the Monarchs and the Giants, and it brought out one of Allen’s less desirable traits: his temper. Chicago’s Dave Malarcher had once spiked Allen as he slid into second, opening a gash that required 18 stitches. Allen held a long grudge, recollecting, “It took me three years to repay him, but they say vengeance is sweet. One day we were leading by two runs, he was on first, and I took the throw at second for a double play. Well, instead of throwing to first, I threw straight at Malarcher charging into second. I hit him right in the forehead. … Hurt him pretty bad. He was out of the ball game for three days.”25

Malarcher was one of many players with whom Allen had run-ins during his long career in the rough-and-tumble Negro Leagues. In looking back, Allen admitted:

“A lot of times I had a nasty feeling within myself, not against a ballplayer. I was pretty bad playing ball, yes, I was pretty bad – run over a man, throw at him. I did a lot of wrong things. But I got results out of it, because they were leery of what I was going to do, and I’d get by with it. …

We used every trick in the book to win a ball game. All kinds of good tricks and nasty ones. In fact, there were more nasty ones than there were good. Caused many a ballplayer to get hurt.”26

Although Allen put fear into some opponents via the use of his “tricks,” he also gained the respect of his peers as one of the best second sackers to play the game. Pitcher Chet Brewer, who joined the Monarchs in 1925 and was a longtime teammate, raved, “Newt was a real slick second baseman, he could catch the ball and throw it without looking. Newt used to catch the ball, throw it up under his left arm; it was just a strike to first base. He was something! Got that ball out of his glove quicker than anybody you ever saw.”27 Buck O’Neil, who came to Kansas City in 1938 and who had an eye for talent as good as (or better than) Wilkinson’s observed, “When I got there, Newt was in his mid-thirties, but even after sixteen years he was an excellent second baseman, and he had six more good years left in him. He could make all the plays around the bag, and I’ve never seen a second baseman with as good an arm.”28 Even White baseball took notice, as New York Giants manager John McGraw asserted, “Allen is one of the finest infielders, white or colored, in organized baseball.”29

While their second baseman made a name for himself, the Monarchs franchise was about to embark on a new phase of its existence. Allen batted .332 for the 1929 squad as Kansas City won its final NNL championship by virtue of capturing the league title in both halves of the season, finishing with a 63-17 record in league play (66-17 overall). The Great Depression was taking its toll on NNL teams, and the league folded after the 1931 season. Wilkinson had seen the handwriting on the wall and withdrew the Monarchs from the league after the 1930 season, turning the franchise into a barnstorming team. Wilkinson figured that he could turn a profit via his innovative portable lighting system that had introduced night baseball to America in 1930. Thus, the Monarchs became an independent barnstorming team from 1931 to 1936. Although Allen spent the entirety of his career with the Monarchs, circumstances now forced him to seek employment with other teams for brief periods of time. Prior to the Monarchs beginning their barnstorming season, he played for the St. Louis Stars in 1931 and the Homestead Grays in 1932.

Additionally, while Allen had already been to Cuba, he soon got to see other parts of the world as well. On December 12, 1931, the Chicago Defender reported, “The Kansas City Monarchs left Tuesday morning for Mexico City to play a series of games. This trip is being made under the supervision of the Mexican government. The club will travel in a special Pullman and will be quartered in one of the best hotels in the southern republic.”30 The Mexico City Aztecas provided the primary opponent over the course of the 30-day tour, and newspaper accounts showed the Monarchs to have a 19-2 record.31

Two years later, during the winter of 1933-34, Allen and five Monarchs teammates – including his winter traveling companion Bullet Rogan – were members of a 12-player all-star team that toured China, Japan, and the Philippines. The three-month exhibition tour was organized by Lonnie Goodwin, the manager of the California Winter League’s Philadelphia Royal Giants, and the all-stars competed against Army teams and clubs from sugar plantations.32 On the return trip, the team played additional games in Hawaii. According to Allen:

“A man named Yamashiro, a superintendent down at Dole Pineapple Company, offered Rogan and me a salary and the only thing we’d have to do was check crates of pineapples and play ball two days a week, Saturdays and Sundays. At the end of the ball season, the team split all the money. The factory just furnished us the suits and the name. But we decided to come on back home and play.”33

Having returned stateside, Allen and Rogan, as members of the Monarchs, integrated the prestigious Denver Post Tournament in 1934 as they vied for the $5,000 purse that was to be awarded to the winners. The House of David team responded to the powerful Monarchs entry by hiring Satchel Paige (who later became more closely associated with the Monarchs than any other team he had played for) and catcher Cy Perkins of the Pittsburgh Crawfords as mercenaries to play for their otherwise all-White squad. Paige outdueled Chet Brewer, 2-1, in a semifinal game. The Monarchs made it to the championship game but again succumbed to the House of David, 2-0, as Brewer lost another duel, this time against Spike Hunter. Allen ended up being the tournament’s leading basestealer, but that was of no consolation to him or the rest of the Monarchs.

The Monarchs, along with Paige and Perkins, as the first Black players to participate in the tournament, had to deal with a great deal of discrimination in the press. The Post ran numerous insulting articles; in one item, “[a]cting as if Paige’s nickname of ‘Satchel’ wasn’t good enough, the newspaper invented a new one – ‘The Chocolate Whizbang.’”34 Like most Black players, the members of the Monarchs had long ago become inured to the prejudice they encountered in the age of Jim Crow, but sometimes they could be pushed over the limit. Allen recalled one incident when, after a Michigan restaurant owner told them they could not eat inside his establishment, “We just all walked out – we left them with fifty some hamburgers on the grill. It was one of those times when you even the score.”35

Although some White players also lacked racial tolerance, it was much rarer for the Monarchs to experience discrimination from the White players on local teams or major-league all-star teams that they played against. Allen explained, “Ball players – white and black – have a lot of respect for each other. They know they can play ball, and they know they’re going to play with them or against them. You hear a lot of harsh words from the grandstand, but very seldom find prejudiced ball players.”36

The Monarchs were also the only Negro League team under White ownership, and Wilkinson and his players gave mutual respect. Wilkinson was so proud of his players’ success in exhibition games against major-league teams that he once boasted “his team could compete with the New York Giants or Yankees, the two teams in the 1937 white major leagues’ World Series.”37 However, pride in their abilities alone would have meant little to the Monarchs players. They respected Wilkinson because of the way he treated them. Allen stated, “He was a considerate man; he understood; he knew people. Your face could be as black as tar; he treated everyone alike. He traveled right along with us.”38

In 1937 Wilkinson decided that the Monarchs would rejoin a league. The franchise became one of the charter members of the Negro American League rather than enlisting with the second iteration of the Negro National League that had been established in 1933. The Monarchs dominated their new competitors, claiming the NAL championship in five of the league’s first six seasons. They defeated two former NNL rivals now in the NAL, the Chicago American Giants and St. Louis Stars, in 1937 and 1939 respectively to win the pennant in those two seasons. From 1940 to 1942, Kansas City was declared the NAL champion by virtue of finishing with the league’s best record. Even when the title eluded the Monarchs in 1938, the team still owned the NAL’s best overall record; however, it failed to win either the first- or second-half league title.39

Allen batted .314 in 51 league games and continued to man second base for Kansas City as the franchise embarked upon its first NAL title run in 1937. However, over the next three seasons his batting acumen and defensive range began an inevitable decline. In 1941 the now 40-year-old Allen was moved to third base; he also took the managerial reins and guided the Monarchs to a 25-11 league record (34-13 overall) in his lone season as the team’s skipper. Despite the falloff in Allen’s overall play, he was a well-established, popular star and was elected to play in four East-West All-Star Games (1936-38, 1941).40 The fact that Allen went 0-for-15 with the bat in the four all-star contests, however, was one indicator that his best playing days were behind him.

Nevertheless, in 1942 Allen managed one last hurrah as he manned third base in 24 of the Monarchs’ 39 league games and batted .304. Kansas City won the NAL with a 27-12 record in league play (35-17) overall and earned the right to face the NNL’s Homestead Grays in the first World Series between the two rival leagues. Thus, almost two full decades after participating in the first-ever Negro League World Series, Allen now took part in another landmark event. The Grays ruled the NNL in the same manner as the Monarchs reigned over the NAL, so it was expected that this Series might be every bit as dramatic as its predecessor had been in 1924. The Monarchs had other ideas, however, and swept the Grays in four games. As a 23-year-old youngster, Allen had batted .282 against Hilldale in 1924. Now, at the venerable age of 41, he played in three of the four games and hit .286 against Homestead as he won the final championship of his long career.

After two subpar seasons, in which he batted .239 and .236, Allen voluntarily retired after the 1944 season. However, in March 1945 he was around in spring training to evaluate a new player for Wilkinson, a former college athlete fresh out of the Army by the name of Jackie Robinson. Allen’s assessment was, “He’s a very smart ball player, but he can’t play shortstop – he can’t throw from the hole. Try him at second base.”41 Although Allen identified the position with which Robinson would become most associated after breaking the White major leagues’ color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Robinson won the Monarchs’ shortstop job by default in 1945 when starter Jesse Williams suffered an arm injury. Later in life, Allen continued to extol Robinson’s baseball acumen, saying, “Jackie was smart, he was an awful smart ballplayer. He didn’t have the ability at first, but he had the brains. … Jackie had one-third ability and two-thirds brains, and that made him a great ballplayer.”42

Allen had been a great ballplayer for a long time as well, and as is often the case with such individuals, he could not resist one final attempt at playing the game he loved. In April 1947 the Chicago Defender listed Allen on the roster of the NAL’s Cincinnati-Indianapolis Clowns, who now had future Hall of Fame shortstop Willie Wells Sr. as manager.43 Allen and Wells had formed the keystone combo for the St. Louis Stars in the first half of the 1931 season, prior to Allen’s rejoining the Monarchs for their barnstorming schedule. In his limited playing time with the Clowns, Allen turned back the clock at the plate, batting .314 in 13 league games, before hanging up his spikes for good. Wells did not have the same success as manager that he had enjoyed as a player and was replaced by Jesse “Hoss” Walker after the Clowns started the season 14-29. The Clowns finished fifth in the NAL with a 31-52-1 record, while Allen’s hometown franchise, the Monarchs, finished second at 52-32.

Once Allen’s baseball career was at an end, he settled in Kansas City, where he became involved in Democratic Party politics and worked as a foreman in the county courthouse. In the mid-1960s, Allen enjoyed attending yearly player reunions that were usually held in nearby Kansas City, Kansas. In 1971 he stated, “[T]he last five years we’ve had a reunion every year, all the ballplayers, white and colored [from the area’s former semipro and professional teams].”44 He also kidded, “You talk about hearing some baseball – everybody’s talking, and among the habitual drinkers, that’s when the truth comes out and there are some tall tales told. One guy says that’s the only time he ever hits .300, when he remembers the old days at those parties.”45

Eventually, Allen moved back to Cincinnati to be closer to family members who lived in the area. By the time the Kansas City Star interviewed him for a profile article in 1985, he was already residing in an assisted-care facility. In January 1986 Allen’s eldest son, Newt Jr., died. The Rev. Allen’s obituary listed as survivors his wife, Bertha; his father, Mr. Newton H. Allen Sr., of Cincinnati; as well as his mother, Mrs. Mary E. Allen, and a sister, Mrs. Myrtle Vanoy, both of Kansas City.46 No mention was made of Allen’s other son, who had made a career out of the Army and may also have preceded his father in death.47

Newt Allen Sr. died of a heart attack on June 9, 1988, at Cincinnati’s Golden Age Nursing Home. No obituaries were published in Cincinnati or Kansas City newspapers; only the Kansas City Times ran a short blurb about Allen’s death. In the Times’s brief write-up, Buck O’Neil was quoted as saying, “He was one of the best I’ve ever seen. I’d compare him with [longtime Kansas City Royal] Frank White, except Newt’s arm might have been a little stronger. He had soft hands and great range. The three best players I saw at the position were Newt, Frank and Bill Mazeroski.”48

Considering such accolades, it is even more distressing that Allen lies buried in an unmarked grave in Cincinnati’s Union Baptist Cemetery, a historical Black graveyard. In 2020 Negro League researcher/author Paul Debono and Cincinnati-area historian Chris Hanlin were able to identify Allen’s final resting place among other members of his family. Efforts began to enlist the aid of the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project and other entities to place a headstone at the site to commemorate the life of Newt Allen, one of the stars of the old Negro Leagues.

Sources

Ancestry.com was consulted for public records including census information; birth, marriage, and death records; military draft registration cards; and ships’ passenger logs.

California Winter League statistics and records were taken from: McNeil, William F., The California Winter League: America’s First Integrated Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002).

Negro League player statistics and manager/team records were taken from Seamheads.com, unless otherwise indicated.

Sanford, Jay. The Denver Post Tournament (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2003).

Notes

1 “Teammates’ Tests Put Allen on Way to Long Career,” Kansas City Star, July 23, 1985.

2 This number includes first-half and second-half league titles, composite-standing league titles, and World Series championships. It is not to be understood as an assertion that the Monarchs won 11 World Series titles.

3 “Teammates’ Tests Put Allen on Way to Long Career.” Although Allen was raised in Kansas City from about the age of 9 years, the identity of his aunt is a mystery. Allen gave her name as Ophelia Henderson in the 1985 interview with the Star, but the only person by that name that this author could identify was younger than Allen; therefore, this Ophelia Henderson could not have been the woman who raised him. Allen may have mixed up names, especially as this interview was given late in his life. It also would not have been the first time he had told part of his life story inaccurately: In a 1971 interview with historian John Holway, Allen claimed to have been born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1902 (see John Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 91). Regarding Parade Park, it may be of interest to note that it is now the home of the Kansas City MLB Urban Youth Academy (see https://kcparks.org/places/the-parade-park/).

4 The 1920 US census shows that Rose Allen was still living in Austin; however, by the time of the 1930 census she had moved her family to Cincinnati permanently. Although Newton H. Allen had died in 1910, four children – two daughters and two sons – were added to the immediate family after his death; as there is no evidence that Rose ever remarried and all four had the surname Allen, it is possible that she adopted the children, perhaps from one or more relatives (as she had allowed her own son, Newt, to be taken in by a relative). Rose Allen died in Cincinnati in 1957 at the age of 81 or 82. (She was born in 1875, but her exact date of birth is unknown.)

5 Holway, 91. Rube Currie’s last name was also spelled “Curry” at times; see http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=curry01reu.

6 “Teammates’ Tests Put Allen on Way to Long Career.”

7 “Teammates’ Tests Put Allen on Way to Long Career.”

8 Phil S. Dixon, Wilber “Bullet” Rogan and the Kansas City Monarchs (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010), 75.

9 Dr. Layton Revel and Luis Munoz, “Forgotten Heroes: Newton ‘Newt’ Allen,” http://www.cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Hero/Newton-Newt-Allen.pdf, accessed December 29, 2020.

10 “The Rev. Newton H. Allen Jr.” (obituary), Kansas City Times, January 8, 1986, 39.

11 Holway, 93. Although Newt and Mary separated, this author uncovered no divorce records; thus, the couple may have remained married even though they ceased to live together.

12 Janet Bruce, The Kansas City Monarchs: Champions of Black Baseball (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985), 43.

13 Bruce, 43.

14 Dixon, 76.

15 Revel and Munoz, 3.

16 “Teammates’ Tests Put Allen on Way to Long Career.”

17 “Newt Allen Questionnaire for Normal ‘Tweed’ Webb’s Record Book.” Thanks go out to SABR Negro League Research Committee Chair Larry Lester for providing a copy of Allen’s questionnaire.

18 Larry Lester, Baseball’s First Colored World Series: The 1924 Meeting of the Hilldale Giants and Kansas City Monarchs (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006), 134.

19 Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003), 157.

20 Figueredo, 159.

21 Severo Nieto, Early U.S. Blackball Teams in Cuba: Box Scores, Rosters and Statistics from the Files of Cuba’s Foremost Baseball Researcher (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008), 161.

22 Figueredo, 222.

23 “World Champion Monarchs Start Spring Training with All Veterans in the Lineup,” Chicago Defender, April 4, 1925: 10.

24 Kyle McNary, Black Baseball: A History of African Americans & the National Game (New York: PRC Publishing Ltd., 2003), 110.

25 Holway, 94.

26 Holway, 95.

27 Lester, 48.

28 Buck O’Neil with Steve Wulf and David Conrads, I Was Right on Time: My Journey from the Negro Leagues to the Majors (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 79-80.

29 Lester, 49.

30 “Monarchs to Play Series with Mexico,” Chicago Defender, December 12, 1931: 8.

31 Revel and Munoz, 10.

32 Bruce, 86-87.

33 Holway, 102.

34 Dixon, 144.

35 Bruce, 61.

36 Bruce, 80.

37 William A. Young, J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2016), 101.

38 Bruce, 19.

39 The Memphis Red Sox won the first-half championship, and the Atlanta Black Crackers clinched the second-half title in the 1938 NAL season.

40 The inaugural East-West game was played in 1933 while the Monarchs were an independent barnstorming team. Although Kansas City was still an independent team in 1936, the franchise’s players were eligible to be voted onto the West team for that season’s all-star game.

41 Bruce, 106.

42 Holway, 103.

43 “Red Sox to Play Three with Clowns” Chicago Defender, April 12, 1947: 23.

44 Holway, 104-5.

45 Holway, 105.

46 “The Rev. Newton H. Allen Jr.” (obituary).

47 Holway, 104. In this 1971 interview, Allen mentioned that his younger son was making a career out of the Army and was stationed in Europe at that time.

48 “Ex-Monarch Second Baseman Dies,” Kansas City Times, June 14, 1988: 30.

Lore and legend surrounded the family long before Andrews first opened his eyes to the world. His preacher grandfather is said to have successfully hidden a cow in the woods when General William Tecumseh Sherman’s scorched earth campaign arrived outside Rowland, North Carolina, in 1865, taking everything else they owned. Decades later Dr. Nathan Andrews, Nate’s father, fared slightly better. In the poor rural community 100 miles southeast of Charlotte, the good doctor often dispensed care in exchange for eggs, chicken, ham, or anything else patients could afford. It was in this environment that Nathan Hardy Andrews, Jr. was born on September 30, 1913.

The middle of three surviving children (and the eldest son) born to Dr. Nathan Andrews, Sr. and Leona Prevatte Andrews, Nate often sought the love frequently withheld by a strict and stern mother – years later he compensated by being overly doting to his own family. A former music teacher, Leona passed on her gift of song, and Nate became adept at a variety of musical instruments. But his passion from any early age was always baseball. A capable athlete in all sports, he did not hesitate to forgo other endeavors when his college coaches, fearful of injury that might prevent him from being able to pitch, asked Andrews to focus exclusively on baseball. His pitching prowess was a steady progression from Rowland High School to Presbyterian Junior College and eventually to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Andrews shattered Southern Conference strikeout records. A no-hitter against Wake Forest represented the pinnacle of his collegiate career. He soon attracted major-league attention and was signed to a contract by Frank Rickey (younger brother of Branch). Belatedly approached by another club offering considerably more money, Andrews is said to have been so excited about playing that the money was irrelevant.

If Andrews had sought to advance to the major leagues rapidly, he might have considered signing with a team other than St. Louis in 1934. That year the Gas House Gang made the Cardinals’ fifth World Series appearance in nine years. In the six years during which Andrews toiled in the Cardinals’ organization, the team fell into the second division only once, and much of its success was was due to its pitchers. That left little room for Andrews.

Andrews’ first professional team was close to home, Greensboro in the Class B Piedmont League, where he was 7-10 in 1934. In 1935 the franchise moved to Asheville. After pitching in 14 games there, Andrews got a series of rapid promotions that had him pitching for the Cardinals’ Double-A teams in Columbus and Rochester. Andrews pitched in Double-A ball (the equivalent of today’s Triple-A) for the next seven seasons, with brief stays in St. Louis in 1937 and 1939, but at the end of which he was no longer Cardinals property.

After winning 11 games for last-place Sacramento in 1936, Andrews was mentioned as one of the pitching “candidates worthy of special notice”i the following spring. (Also on that list was Mort Cooper, who would play a significant role in Andrews’ later career.) After some impressive work at spring training in 1937, Andrews was promoted to the Cardinals but pitched very little and was sent to Rochester in May. A fine 3.13 ERA there placed him among the International League leaders, but still resulted in a pedestrian 9-13 won-lost record – a harbinger of things to come.

Dizzy Dean’s injury-shortened 1938 season contributed to the Cardinals’ uncharacteristic sixth-place showing (they hadn’t finished lower since 1919). While the team experimented with 12 starters during the dismal campaign, at no time does it appear Andrews received any consideration. He was struggling in the American Association with an ERA that mushroomed to 4.91 and an equally morbid 11-19 record (though he did place among the league leaders in complete games with 14). Assigned to the same Columbus Red Birds squad in 1939, he rebounded swimmingly. A 17-9, 2.70 season mark earned Nate the starting honor in the Association’s All-Star Game, resulting in a jump to the parent club less than a month later.

The promotion came at the expense of Paul “Daffy” Dean. Disgruntled by his outright demotion to Columbus, Dean unsuccessfully appealed to Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis for a reversal. The sad fact was that the Cardinals’ patience with Dizzy’s younger brother had worn thin – he was once described as “a problem child”ii – and his early success had turned unexpectedly sour. Nate took quick advantage of this new opportunity. Two days after joining the team, he secured his first major-league decision, in relief over the Cincinnati Reds, by hurling three shutout innings. Two subsequent outings earned Andrews his first starting assignment, in Boston against the Bees (the once and future Braves). In this performance he fared much worse – six runs surrendered in the first inning – and he struggled thereafter to keep his ERA below 6. A week before the end of the season the Cardinals seemingly did not hesitate when their American League poor sisters, the Browns, offered $7,500 to take Andrews off their hands.

“[Nate] was the best pitcher in the American Association,” said Browns general manager Bill DeWitt. “He came up expecting to be pitched regularly. He didn’t do so well after the first game, then was thrown into the [bullpen as] a relief pitcher. It hurt his pride [and he] became sulky. He quarreled with [Cardinals’ manager] Ray Blades and broke training. That’s how we happened to get him. He was a swell pickup for the money. Mind you, he’s really not a bad actor, just a victim of circumstances.”iii Notwithstanding the sympathies expressed by DeWitt, Andrews would never throw a pitch for the Browns. In June 1940 he was sold to the Cleveland Indians.

By the start of the 1943 season, Andrews had been shuffled from the Indians to the Cubs to the Braves. Suspensions, descriptions of “too much of a good-time-Charlie” resulting in “a tendency to stray off the training reservation,”iv and an inability to “adjust himself properly to the team”v often served as euphemisms for why Andrews frequently wore out his welcome. Later in his career the loneliness experienced while traveling on the road caused him to occasionally bolt unexpectedly for home, leaving his team in the lurch. But in his early to mid-20s, the lonely feelings produced a different result, and Andrews turned to the bottle. In March 1941 the Indians left him behind in Fort Myers, Florida, for “violation of training rules”vi when the team went to Cuba for an exhibition series. To his credit, Andrews was applauded for having worked himself back into shape when the team returned to the US. Andrews pitched well and appeared poised to return to the major leagues (he’d made only six appearances with the Indians in 1940), but a shaky performance while the team played its way north resulted instead in another minor-league assignment, where he remained until a September call-up.

Four teams inquired about Andrews’ availability over the winter, and before the 1942 season he was sold to Cincinnati. Assigned to the Reds’ Syracuse farm club, he displayed the dominance he had exhibited in Columbus three years earlier, producing a 16-12, 2.93 season record with seven shutouts. The Reds, already well fortified with pitchers, were willing to entertain offers for the 28-year-old Andrews.

The Boston Braves, tired of dealing with shortstop Eddie Miller, their talented but “temperamental star who has been at odds with the Braves several times.”vii On December 4, 1942, the Braves sent Miller to the Reds for shortstop Eddie Joost, Andrews and $25,000. The inclusion of Andrews clinched the deal for the Braves, and skipper Casey Stengel happily declared that “with Andrews added to our pitching staff, we may be able to get out of seventh place.”viii This was undoubtedly high praise for a pitcher whose best seasons had still not exceeded Double-A ball. Still another benefit accrued to the Braves: Two months earlier the team’s prized pitching prospect, Warren Spahn, had enlisted in the Army, and Andrews would be counted on to fill the void.

When the US entered World War II in December 1941, Andrews likely received a hardship exemption as the father of three – a boy and two girls (a second boy did not survive infancy, and two more daughters were born thereafter). He had been married on Valentine’s Day in 1936 to Ellen “Virginia” Andrews, a cousin raised on a farm in the nearby community of Fairmont. According to family lore, they first met at a barn dance outside of Rowland. Virginia filled the void of the loveless home life Nate knew growing up. They remained together until Virginia died 50 years later.

As predicted by Stengel, the Braves escaped seventh place in 1943 – they finished sixth, with a 68-85 record. The pitching staff’s ERA (3.25) was slightly better than the league average of 3.38. But the Braves’ anemic offense managed a major-league low 465 runs. Andrews took the mound 34 times as a starting pitcher, gave up 253 hits in 283 innings, and two of his 20 losses were in relief. Of his 14 victories as a starter, three were shutouts.

In order to make a good first impression in his new surroundings, Andrews reported early to the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, the team’s spring training site in 1943 because of wartime travel restrictions. A strong showing in camp resulted in a sterling start to the new season, and by mid-May his record stood at 4-1, with a 1.90 ERA. Years before the Rookie of the Year award was given, he drew prominent attention “in the freshman sweepstakes.”ix Then the heartbreaking losses began to set in. Perhaps nothing epitomizes Andrews’ season-long struggles more than an outing on May 23, when he pitched nine shutout innings only to surrender a tenth-inning run in a 1-0 loss. In all, the Braves managed two or fewer runs scored in nearly half (16 of 34) of Andrews’ starts, easily explaining his 20-loss season.

Since 1920 there have been 97 seasons of 20 or more losses for a pitcher. (Bobo Newsom did it three times.) Andrews may be the least deserving among this fraternity, as his 2.57 ERA remains by far the lowest such mark. (His closest competitor, Hall of Famer Jesse Haines, was 13-20 in 1920 despite a 2.98 ERA.) As the season drew to a close, one observer acknowledged that “the guy [c]ould have had 20 victories easily. … How could any one man have so much bad luck as Nate has had all year?”x

In training camp the following spring, Andrews barely avoided disciplinary action when he reported in poor condition. He fell further from grace by going absent days before the start of the season. In spite of these difficulties, Andrews had established himself a desired commodity, and Giants manager Mel Ott included Nate among his most-desired list in improving his own team’s fortunes. Andrews’ 16 wins accounted for a quarter of the Braves’ 65 victories. He was one of three Braves pitchers named to the NL squad for the All-Star Game. (The others were Jim Tobin and Al Javery; of the three, only Tobin pitched.)

When the Braves acquired Mort Cooper from the Cardinals in 1945 to bolster their already impressive mound corps – as opposed to improving their perennially anemic offense – the team was instantly put on the short list of National League contenders.

Eight years earlier, both Cooper and Andrews were considered by St. Louis to be the most promising of a cadre of young arms. But Cooper’s salary demands after three consecutive 20-win seasons led the Cardinals to offer him in a trade. Under the direction of new club president Lou Perini the Braves acquired Cooper and his hefty contract in late May, but a sore-armed Cooper pitched only 27 innings after a June 27 outing, and continual losses resulted in “the ‘resignation’ of Manager Bob Coleman.”xi Events soon spiraled out of control with the team waiving disgruntled pitcher Jim Tobin in August, and both Andrews and shortstop Eddie Joost going AWOL. For Andrews it was the third time he had bolted the team that season, and he was shipped to Cincinnati on waivers, though he did not pitch for the Reds until the following season.

It appears that jealousy played a pivotal role in the Braves’ turmoil. Cooper’s salary was $15,000, more than twice that of the average Braves player. In the midst of this explosive environment, Andrews turned again to his addictive crutch. In explaining his third absence, newspapers reported “[t]his time there wasn’t so much silence, because practically everybody knew Nate’s case.”xii

An event in 1944 may help explain the challenges of loneliness that contributed largely to Andrews’ need to seek refuge in the bottle. His family had come to Boston from North Carolina for an extended visit. As the visit came to a close, Andrews had difficulty parting and was caught on the train when it began its journey south – an indication of his need to surround himself with his loved ones, and the challenges he faced when they were apart. The discord on the team ignited an already-volatile situation for Andrews. It wasn’t until the following spring that he would be prepared to take the mound again.

The 1946 season was Andrews’ eighth and final campaign in the major leagues. Whether it was elbow problems stemming from a 1945 injury, intemperance, or competition from returning war veterans, the following apocryphal nugget may best describe Andrews’ struggles:

“While the Cardinals were slapping Nate … in a recent game … [c]atcher Ray Lamanno called time and, walking out to the box, asked: ‘Do you feel all right, Nate?’ Andrews … replied: ‘I’m all right, Ray; I ain’t got no pain; I ain’t got no misery’ – and then after a pause, ‘and I ain’t got nuthin’ on the ball.”xiii

Released by the Reds on June 11, Andrews was quickly snapped up by Mel Ott in New York. Three appearances later – including his final big-league win, against Cincinnati on June 19, 1946 – Andrews walked away from the major leagues. A couple of months later, he offered an explanation: “I came home … of my own accord. I decided I had had enough of the Big Show and the time had come for me to return to North Carolina, where I could be with my family. I had a lot of years up there and too many away from home”xiv [emphasis added]. There were rumors about a return to the majors with Pittsburgh in 1947, but Andrews chose minor-league venues close to home (Wilmington, North Carolina, and Florence, South Carolina) to play, coach, and manage through the 1948 season.

Andrews occupied his post-baseball career working in the family drugstore in Rowland, and he later opened a dry-cleaning business. In the 1950s he scouted for the White Sox, and sport was never far from his purview. He refereed amateur football games. He pursued his passions of hunting and fishing. In Andrews’ later years, circulation problems forced the amputation of both legs below the knee, and depression soon followed. Andrews was heartened by the resulting groundswell of support from the public.

Andrews, 77, died on April 26, 1991, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to which he had moved for better employment opportunities in 1959. He was brought home to Rowland, where he was buried in the community cemetery. In 2013 he was survived by three of his five children, seven grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.

Nate’s daughters fondly recalled a story their father was prone to tell of striking out Ted Williams twice in an exhibition. Williams, he said, invited Andrews to dinner that evening and pressed the hurler as to how he was pitching to the future Hall of Famer. Whether or not this story is truth mixed with myth, Andrews possessed a unique niche in the game’s history by losing 20 games with an ERA that would make any daughter proud. In fact, with the dearth of 20-loss campaigns occasioned by five-man rotations, Andrews’ mark may never be matched again.

Author’s note

The author wishes to thank Nate Andrews’ daughters, Olivia A. Robbins and Judith Andrews Adams, for helping ensure the accuracy of this narrative. Further thanks are extended to Michael Haupert.

Sources

Baseball-reference.com

ancestry.com

http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/16b7b87d

Notes

At a time when America, along with the rest of the world, was struggling to cope with the worst depression in its history and the ominous rise of fascism in Europe, baseball provided some diversion from dark times. Appling started his major league career in 1930, just about the beginning of the Depression. The best word to describe Luke Appling is durability, a quality he showed throughout his baseball career and his life. He was emblematic of an America struggling through the Depression and digging into their psyches (perhaps unknowingly) to prepare for another world war. Appling endured and so did America.

“Old Aches and Pains,” as Appling was called, was arguably the greatest hypochondriac to ever play the game. Backaches, headaches, bad knees, eye problems would torment him-and then he’d go out and get three hits.

Lucious Benjamin Appling, born in High Point, North Carolina, on April 2, 1907, was clearly no slouch when he took the field. All of his medical complaints disappeared when game time came. He was so infirm that he managed to collect only 2,749 hits in a career that spanned twenty years, all with the Chicago White Sox. Appling never let a backache or headache get in the way of playing shortstop and getting in his licks as a hitter. He even complained about field conditions at Comiskey Park. “I swear that park must have been built on a junkyard,” he exclaimed. It turned out later he was right.

Appling attended Fulton High School in Atlanta and spent two years at Oglethorpe College. In 1930, when he was a sophomore at Oglethorpe, he signed with the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association. He hit the ball solidly for the Crackers, but his fielding at shortstop left something to be desired, as he committed 42 errors.

Late in the 1930 season the Atlanta Crackers were sold to the Chicago Cubs. But due to the intervention of Milt Stock, Appling joined the White Sox in a cash transaction that also involved an outfielder named Doug Taitt. Despite his fielding woes the White Sox bought his contract for $20,000. Appling made his debut for the White Sox at the end of the 1930 season. Appearing in six games, he committed four errors but also collected eight hits. He had a strong arm, but many of his throws ended up in the stands, sending fans scurrying out of the way.

The 1931 season was less than stellar for Appling. His fielding troubles still plagued him, and his hitting fell off. The White Sox tried to trade him, but there were no takers. White Sox manager Jimmy Dykes took Appling in hand and with great patience helped Appling polish his fielding skills and had him stop swinging for the fences.

Appling married Faye Dodd in 1932. They had two daughters (Linda and Carol) and one son (Luke III).

In 1932 the Pale Hose finished in seventh place behind the lowly St. Louis Browns. Appling batted .274 with ten triples and 63 runs batted in. He still was swinging for the fences and got himself out innumerable times through his lack of patience at the plate.

It all came together for Luke Appling in 1933, when he stopped trying to hit home runs, learned to use the entire field, and batted .328 for the season. Eight more years of .300 or better followed, and he improved enough to become an adequate fielder. He showed great range in the field, leading the American League in assists seven times. On the minus side he led the league in errors five times.

The apex of his career came in 1936. He won the American League batting title with a .388 batting average, the highest in the twentieth century by a shortstop. Luke also had a 27-game hitting streak that year. After winning the batting title, Appling was promised a $5,000 bonus, but General Manager Harry Grabiner reneged. In disgust Appling tore up his 1937 contract. Lou Comiskey, the owner, withstood Appling’s protests, and when Appling cooled down and was ready to play gave him a new contract. Unfortunately, it was for $2,500 less than he had wanted. In 1940 Appling, Rip Radcliff of the St. Louis Browns and Joe DiMaggio of the Yankees battled each other for the batting title with DiMaggio winning out.

The White Sox contended only once during Appling’s tenure at short. They lacked power, so Appling, a natural leadoff hitter, batted third in the lineup. Never a slugger, he did manage to drive in 1,117 runs during his career. Appling remembered that his teammates were not great baserunners. Player-manager Jimmy Dykes instituted an automatic fine for any baserunning blunders. The very next day Dykes was on second base when he became lost in thoughts about his managerial duties. He wandered off second base, wondering whether he should hit for the pitcher, and in a flash he was picked off. The players on the bench howled with delight and had some uncomplimentary words about the gaffe. When Dykes sheepishly returned to the bench he said, “All right say it, come on, I’ve got it coming,” but no one said a word. Later he asked Appling why they didn’t say anything. Appling replied, “They already said it before you got back to the dugout.”

Championships eluded the White Sox and the Cubs year after year. Ironically, the two greatest players in Chicago, Luke Appling and Ernie Banks, both shortstops, never played in a World Series.

Appling was a pitcher’s nightmare. He could and would foul off pitch after pitch until he got the one he wanted. Pitchers would get so frustrated they’d almost dare him to hit the blasted thing. Appling struck out only 528 times in his career and coaxed out 1,302 walks.

As one story goes, Appling once asked the tight-fisted business manager of the Sox for several balls to sign for friends. The business manager refused, citing the Depression and that each ball cost $2.75. Appling turned and walked out without a word. That afternoon in his first at bat he fouled off ten consecutive pitches into the stands. Turning to the club official in the owner’s box, he said, “That’s $27.50 and I’m just getting started.”

In 1938 the Sox had a chance to beat out the Yanks for the pennant. However, Appling suffered the only major injury of his career when he fractured his ankle, thereby hampering the chances of the club.

DiMaggio got a break during his 56-game hitting streak in 1941 when he hit a slow roller that bounced up on Luke. Joe was given a hit on the play to keep his streak going at 30 games.

Bill James in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract named Luke Appling the best player of the 1943 season as Appling won his second batting title with a .328 average. Of course, 1943 was a war year and most of the stars were in the service.

Teammate Ted Lyons recalled Appling’s ability to foul off pitches until he got the one he wanted. Red Ruffing was pitching for the Yankees against the Sox on a miserably hot, humid day in Comiskey Park. Appling came up with two men on base and worked the count to 3-2. He then proceeded to foul off 12 pitches in a row. The profusely sweating Ruffing finally walked Appling and gave up a grand-slam homer to the next batter. Ruffing was in a cool shower immediately after. Pitchers considered themselves lucky if Appling got a hit early in the count.

Despite all his alleged ailments Appling was a good-natured person and popular with his teammates. The only White Sox player to win a batting championship until Frank Thomas, he was also voted the greatest White Sox living player by Chicago writers in 1969.

Appling entered the service in 1944 and returned to baseball late in 1945. At the time Appling entered the service his wife said, “The war will be over soon. Luke has never held a job for more than two weeks outside of baseball.” His hitting did not suffer when he returned in 1945. He batted .368 in his shortened season.

Appling was still playing ball at age 41, having been moved to third base from his shortstop position. Before a doubleheader in 1948 he complained of not being able to get his throwing arm loose. In the first game he lashed out three hits and with a supposedly crippled arm set an American League record with 10 assists. Before the nightcap he complained of severe pains in his legs and went out and did a sterling job.

In 1949 he batted .301 at the age of 42, but “Trader” Frank Lane, general manager of the White Sox, was committed to a youth movement, and Chico Carrasquel took over at shortstop. Appling helped Carrasquel adapt to the big leagues and at playing shortstop. Appling was asked to play first base, but after a few lackluster attempts he gave it up and filled in as a utility infielder. He played in 50 more games for the White Sox in 1950 and then retired. At the time of his retirement he held the American League records for most games played, assists, putouts and chances accepted by a shortstop. Appling also eclipsed the major league record for most games played at shortstop previously held by Rabbit Maranville. Maranville had played 2,153 games at short, and Appling exceeded that with 2,198. Luis Aparicio later eclipsed most of these records. Appling is still the club leader in runs, games played, hits, doubles, total bases, runs batted in, walks, and at bats; he’s also third in triples. In 1951 Appling was asked to manage the Memphis Chicks and surprised everyone including himself when he accepted.

The quality that emerges from Appling’s career and character is his durability. Maybe his ailment complaints were his way of exorcising the demons that baseball players (probably the most superstitious athletes to play sports) exhibited. Whatever his secret, his major league career spanned twenty years. Long after his retirement he showed he could still hit when in an appearance in a Cracker-Jack All-Star Old-Timers game in Washington, D.C., at the age of 75 he hit a homer off Warren Spahn. He said, “It was a good pitch and I just swung away.” The ball traveled only 250 feet as the fences were moved in for the old-timers game, but it’s still a good distance for a 75-year-old.

Appling managed in the minors for quite a few years, winning pennants for Memphis in the Southern Association and Indianapolis of the American Association. Named Minor League Manager of the Year in 1952, he still had only one chance managing in the majors, at Kansas City replacing Alvin Dark. He was not very successful as his team went 10-30 during his tenure. He also managed at Richmond and coached in the majors at Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Kansas City. He served as batting instructor for the Braves until 1990.

Appling died suddenly from an abdominal aneurysm on January 3, 1991, in Cumming, Georgia. His wife Fay; a brother Clyde; sisters Dela Campbell, Inez Jones, and Marie Shelton; his three children; and six grandchildren survived him. Appling is buried in Sawnee View Memorial Gardens, Mausoleum Chapel West in Cumming.

Luke Appling was in the mold of most Depression ballplayers-tough, somewhat hard-bitten, often with lean faces that showed the rugged times all Americans were enduring. Happy to be playing ball when so many others were standing on street corners selling apples or standing in line for soup, they brought some relief to a nation back on its heels. Appling along with others helped take people’s minds off the Depression if only for a few hours and made life a bit more bearable. It was the endurance of players like Luke Appling who carried baseball through these troubled times and sparkled even in a time of misery and foreboding as the sound of cleats on the dugout steps would soon be muffled by the hobnailed boots of oppressors.

Photo credit

Luke Appling takes batting practice before a game at Comiskey Park in 1940. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Sources

Cataneo, David. Peanuts and Crackerjack. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991

Creamer, Robert W. Baseball In 1941. New York: Penguin, 1991.

James, Bill. The New Bill James Baseball Historical Abstract. New York: The Free Press, 2001.

Luke Appling File at National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, New York.

Nemec, David, and Saul Wisnea. Baseball: More Than One Hundred Fifty Years. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International, 1997.

Armour was born on April 27, 1915, in Madison, Mississippi. The historical record of his youth has yet to be found. The family moved to Carbondale, Illinois, at some point before 1930, as that year’s census shows him living there in the household of his grandparents, Alfred and Fannie. Alfred was a laborer at a tire factory, and Fannie was a laundress for a private family.2 Armour’s biological father, the son of his grandfather and also named Alfred, died in 1932, when Buddy was 17.3

The earliest mention of Alfred in the local press was in 1929, for his eighth-grade graduation from Crispus Attucks High School,4>/sup> an African American school organized in 1920, which operated independently until its students were integrated into Carbondale Community High School in 1964.5

Attucks offered basketball and track and field as sports. The possibility of baseball is mentioned on the Illinois High School “Glory Days” website, but there is “no record of trophies or plaques won by Attucks in baseball or any other extracurricular activity at the state tournament level.”6 The record of past individual accomplishments fails to mention Armour.

In 1933 Armour appeared professionally as a reserve third baseman for the Indianapolis ABCs/Detroit Stars. His performance as an 18-year-old is modest: He played in nine games and went 4-for-25 (.160). However, he is not listed on a professional roster again until 1938, apparently toiling on semipro teams.

From 1934 to 1935, the trail of Armour’s playing career goes cold. If he was a member of a professional organization, it’s barely documented. More likely, he played for a barnstorming or semipro team, which wasn’t uncommon for the time.

Two sources list Armour as reaching the Negro Leagues in 1936. All Mississippi Baseball, a blog self-described as highlighting Mississippi-connected players from preps to pros, past and present, notes that “Alfred Allen Armour reached the ‘big leagues’ of Black baseball in 1936, when he signed with the St. Louis Stars.7

A “bullpen” post on Baseball Reference asserts that “Armour got his start with the 1936 St. Louis Stars. After a couple years on the bench, he was the starting shortstop for the 1938 Indianapolis ABC’s.”8

Independent confirmation of this was elusive, as there is no statistical mention of Armour on either Baseball Reference or Retrosheet for the 1936 and 1937 seasons. But he appears in a photograph of the Mounds (Illinois) Blues, participants in the 1937 Illinois Semipro Baseball Championships in Elgin.9

Later, that team is mentioned as the predecessor to the Indianapolis ABC’s, which became the Stars in 1939.10

Eliminated from play by the Elgin West Ends after winning two earlier contests,11 the Blues returned to the St. Louis area and competed against area teams throughout the remainder of 1937. Whenever a box score accompanies a summary of the game, Armour is generally listed at shortstop and batting second in the lineup.

Finally, in 1938, Armour secured a starting position, this one with the Indianapolis ABC’s of the Negro American League. In the preview of an early series with the Atlanta Crackers, he is characterized as follows:

“Alfred Armour, short stop, throws right, hits life [left], is very fast, and a good hitter. He is rated by Manager Big George] Mitchell to go to first base in 3 seconds.”12

Indianapolis finished sixth with a 17-21 record with Armour mostly batting leadoff and again playing shortstop. Accounts differ regarding his offensive production, but Seamheads lists Armour as a .250 hitter in 17 games played. A Retrosheet download indicates 24 hits in 72 at-bats (.333 average). The discrepancy could be partially explained by the inclusion of three exhibition games.

With the franchise moving to St. Louis in 1939, the now St. Louis Stars fared no better than the ABC’s, finishing sixth again in the Negro American League, but Armour, then 24, was hitting his stride as a player. Again, statistical sources differ slightly, but the Retrosheet log reports 29 hits in 94 at-bats for a .309 batting average. Generally batting in the middle of the order, he had 16 RBIs.

That season was also the first time Armour was referred to by his nickname. Early-season coverage of the Stars’ 14-11 win over the Indianapolis ABC’s stated that “‘Buddy’ Armour who was spiked Sunday night was still out of the lineup, [Marshall Riddle] playing short and Dan Wilson holding down second base.”13 No further explanation of the moniker was noted.

With ongoing financial difficulties, the club split its home games between St. Louis and New Orleans in 1940 and 1941, becoming the St. Louis-New Orleans Stars. Armour’s emerging stardom was evident in an early-season preview of a series with the Atlanta All-Stars, in which he was characterized as a “shortstop who is exceptionally fast and a good fielder who carries the power of a 200-pounder although he weighs only 150.”14

Armour put up impressive numbers in 1940, now as an outfielder, with John Lyles becoming the staple at shortstop. Armour’s average was third among regular players with the Stars, .327 in 29 games, trailing only first baseman Ed Mayweather and second baseman Riddle in that category.

The Stars finished fourth in the Negro American League, well behind the Kansas City Monarchs, a team that included such greats as Buck O’Neil, Satchel Paige, and an aging Turkey Stearnes. But Armour’s performance was garnering notice.

Back with the Stars in 1941, Armour’s production waned, and he had yet to play for a first-division team in his professional career. The Stars were 21-27-3, with the Monarchs again winning the league. But despite the lack of team successes, 1941 saw Armour being selected as a reserve for the West team in the annual East-West All Star Game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.

In that game, Armour replaced Neil Robinson in center field in the fifth inning and singled in his first at-bat in the sixth but was stranded at second base. He struck out in the eighth, but a dropped third strike by East catcher Roy Campanellaput him on first, and he ultimately scored the second run for the West in an 8-3 loss.

With ongoing financial struggles and a developing interest in the New York Black Yankees, Allen Johnson, a nightclub owner in Mounds, Illinois, and the Stars’ financial backer, dissolved the Stars and attempted to move 10 players to the Black Yankees, then of the Negro National League. The other owners objected, but former Stars manager George Mitchell, serving as business manager for Johnson, cited a previous ruling by the league that “any owner could quit one league and join the other league taking at least 10 players with him.”15 The Black Yankees did field a team in 1941, and a comparison of rosters shows eight of the 1941 St. Louis-New Orleans Stars as members of the 1942 Black Yankees.

Professionally, 1942 was lost for Armour, as he was not among them.

The 1943 season was only marginally better. A member of the Negro National League II operating as the Harrisburg-St. Louis Stars with home games played on the Island Park diamond in Harrisburg, had a roster made up of former members of the St. Louis Stars, and “players recruited from the disbanded American circuit.”16 For Armour, that meant limited opportunity, as he wasn’t part of the featured nine. The collective record of both teams was 12-32, again a second-class team performance that seemed to plague Armour’s career.

The chronicling of his personal successes is hard to define, because many of his games were exhibitions or not formally reported. His official stats for 1943 show participation in 14 games, split between Harrisburg and the Black Yankees. But other new entries, including one in June 1944, note that “[the cleanup] hitter for Cleveland, Buddy Armour, plays left field and slugged the horsehide at a .330 clip in 1943.”17

Armour’s career break occurred when he joined the Cleveland Buckeyes early in the 1944 season. He was 29 years old. An early-season match with the New York Cubans introduced him:

“The Cleveland Buckeyes are confident that they have overcome the faults of their first week’s practice, and with the addition of Alfred ‘Buddy’ Armour, former New Orleans-St. Louis Stars centerfielder, they believe they possess the punch and pitching to halt the Cubans.”18

Finally playing for a contender, Armour was again selected to the East-West All Star Game. As a starter, he batted cleanup and got a hit, stole a base and scored two runs in the West All Stars’ 7-4 victory.

The Buckeyes finished second behind the Birmingham Black Barons, 15½ games back. For Armour, his season results showed a .296 batting average in 20 games, with 15 RBIs. Although considered by many as a left-handed power hitter, he failed to tally a home run.

On the cusp of greatness, Cleveland entered the 1945 season with a similar lineup and high expectations. Armour was again a fixture in the outfield, and the Buckeyes dominated the first and second halves of the season to win the Negro American League championship by a wide margin over the Kansas City Monarchs. At the end of league play, the Buckeyes lost only 17 times in 80 outings, qualifying them for a shot at the Homestead Grays, a Negro League dynasty and winners of the previous two World Series. Like the Buckeyes, the Grays had won both halves of their season.

Armour was positioned seventh in the batting order for the Series. His 3-for-3 performance in Game Three was a key element in the Buckeyes’ 5-0 victory. The Buckeyes swept the Grays in four games, and after laboring with subpar teams for most of his career, Armour was a champion.

Armour returned to Cleveland in 1946. A new manager and multiple player changes to the core group found the Buckeyes less competitive, and they finished third behind Kansas City and Birmingham. But Armour regained his form, again batting over .300. (Seamheads lists his batting average as .333.) He was invited to and played for the North-South All Stars in a late-season clash against the Homestead Grays. But despite his production, Buckeyes general manager Wilbur Hayes traded him to the Chicago Giants for 24-year-old Clyde Nelson.19

Again saddled with a losing franchise (Chicago finished last in the 1947 Negro American League standings), Armour was still proficient on the field and was selected to the first 1947 East-West All-Star Game for the third time. (In 1946, 1947, and 1948, the Negro Leagues held two All-Star games a few days apart, one in Chicago and the other in New York or Washington.) As the starting right fielder in Chicago, he was 2-for-4 with two doubles and scored a run for the winning West team. He also played in the second game, starting in right field and going 0-for-1 before being replaced.

Armour stayed with the Giants in 1948 and again hit .300. But the team was once again a bottom-dweller, and with baseball being integrated and the Negro Leagues ultimately a casualty of that decision, his days in the spotlight were essentially over.

Reports of Armour playing in the Negro Southern League and the Canadian League are sporadically reported, but he did join the Homestead Grays, now an independent club, with a nod to his earlier accomplishments, in 1950.

“The signing of Buddy Armour was pleasing news to Manager Sam Bankhead, who immediately installed the former Cleveland Buckeye star in centerfield,” wrote the Washington Afro American. “Armour, a capable defensive player, also will add to the Grays already power-laden batting attack. He was batting king in the Canadian League last year.”20

It was the final year of the Grays, and the final year of Armour’s baseball career.

When his baseball career ended, Armour settled back in Carbondale and worked as a custodian for the city. He was married with a daughter, according to the 1950 census.

After his career ended, occasional mentions in the local newspaper listed him as an instructor for the Carbondale Junior Baseball League.21

Armour died on April 15, 1974, after a two-year illness. He is buried in the Oakland Cemetery in Carbondale.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, and Seamheads.com.

Notes

1 Hayward Jackson, “Windy City All Agog Over Big Classic; Expect 40,000, Atlanta Daily World, July 15, 1941: 5.

2 1930 Census, Ancestry.com.

3 US, Deaths and Stillbirths Index, 1916-1947, Ancestry.com.

4 “Colored Pupils to Get Diplomas Tonight,” Carbondale (Illinois) Free Press, May 29, 1929: 3.

5 Brad Pace, “The Spirit of Attucks Schools,” https://carbondalespiritofattucks.weebly.com/the-spirit-of-attucks-schools.html.

6 https://illinoishighschoolglorydays.com/2022/03/01/carbondale-crispus-attucks-hs-bluebirds/.

7 www.allmississippibaseball.net/spotlight-on-4/ February 15, 2011, entry.

8 https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Buddy_Armour

9 “The Mounds Blues, With St. Louis Boys, Near the Illinois State Championship,” St. Louis Argus, August 6, 1937: 6.

10 “Card Twin Bill,” Indianapolis Star, July 23, 1938: 13. In 1937 a team from Mounds, Illinois (Blues) competed in the Illinois Semi Pro Tournament held in Elgin. A photograph of that team, with players identified, includes at least seven players who were on the roster of the Indianapolis ABCs of the Negro American League in 1938, including Armour. The ABCs moved to St. Louis in 1939 and became the St. Louis Stars.

11 “Elgin Defeats Colored Blues Last Night,” Dixon (Illinois) Evening Telegraph, August 11, 1937: 6.

12 “Indianapolis ABC’s Coming to Atlanta for Big Series,” Atlanta Daily World, June 5, 1938: 5.

13 “Stars Show Power in Hot 19-10 Victory,” St. Louis Argus, May 19, 1939: 11.

14 “Lucius ‘Melancholy’ Jones,” “St. Louis Stars Play Atlanta Nine at Harper Field This Sunday,” Atlanta Daily World, April 3, 1940: 5.

15 “Lucius ‘Melancholy” Jones”, “Sports Slants,” Atlanta Daily World, March 11, 1942: 5.

16 “Enter Negro Nine in League Here,” Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Evening News, May 6, 1943: 21.

17 “Buckeyes Invade Twin City for Giant Twilight Game,” Hammond (Indiana) Times, June 16, 1944: 21.

18 Hayward Jackson, “Bremmer’s Pitching May Halt Cubans’ Power in New Orleans,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 22, 1944: 14.

19 “Buckeyes Get Nelson of Chicago in Trade for Armour,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 31, 1946: 22.

20 “Grays Sign Buddy Armour,” Washington Afro American, May 13, 1950: 30.

21 “Carbondale Boys Get More Lessons,” Southern Illinoisan (Carbondale), May 23, 1958: 9.

Don Richard “Richie” Ashburn, a Hall of Fame outfielder, who made the most putouts of any outfielder in major-league baseball during the 1950s, started out as a catcher, which should not be surprising because throughout his long career in baseball, Richie Ashburn had always been his own man. His independent quality even emerged during his acceptance speech in Cooperstown. After waiting 28 years for induction, he expressed his opinion about the long wait: “They didn’t exactly carry me in here in a sedan chair with blazing and blaring trumpets.”1

Because of such candor and homespun humor, Ashburn became an iconic figure in fan-gritty Philadelphia during his careers with the Philadelphia Phillies — as a speedy center fielder for 12 years, and as a broadcaster for 34 years. He starred in center field and as a leadoff hitter for 12 seasons, including the pennant-winning Whiz Kids of 1950. Ashburn won two batting titles and earned four All-Star selections. After retiring from the field, he thrilled and amused not only Phillies fans but all baseball fans with his colorful, witty commentary of action on and off the field from 1963 until his sudden death shortly after he broadcast a Phillies-Mets game September 9, 1997.

A son of the Plains, Ashburn came into this world on March 19, 1927, in Tilden, Nebraska, as one of a pair of identical twins, Don and Donna, to his parents Neil and Genevieve “Tootie” Ashburn. Nicknames were common in the Ashburn household: Everyone called the male twin by his middle name, Richie, to further distinguish him from his sister; and Genevieve was called Tootie because of her tiny size at birth.2

Ashburn’s father, Neil, was a blacksmith and monument maker who played semipro baseball on the weekends. His brother Bob said he made more money playing baseball than at his trade. On some occasions the money was just enough to keep his family in food. Neil Ashburn had a very close relationship with his athletically-inclined son — he encouraged Richie in his boyhood activities and steered the boy throughout his developmental years.3

Ashburn tried to play all the sports — except football; his father ruled that out because of the threat of injury, but baseball and basketball were his favorites. He began playing baseball in 1935 as an 8-year-old in the Tilden Midget Baseball League under the tutelage of Hursel O’Banion. He played catcher because his father thought it would be the quickest way to get him to the major leagues, and he batted left-handed because his father said his speed would give him a better jump to first base from the port side.

The term “speed” would always be associated with Ashburn. His high-school basketball teammate Jim Kelly said that Ashburn could dribble down the court faster than the other players could run down it. In his 1948 major-league rookie year, one sportswriter said of the 21-year-old, “He’s no .300 hitter, he hits .100 and runs .200.”4 And even after his playing days ended, Ashburn challenged a young Dick Allen in a foot race and beat him.5

He played baseball and basketball for Tilden High School but the baseball season was short and his coach, Harold Mertz, suggested to Neil Ashburn that his boy needed more playing time. Neil agreed.

Ashburn graduated to American Legion baseball with the Neligh Junior Legion team and continued as a catcher. He was derided at first for his small stature, but he soon drew the admiration of his teammates with his speed and his concentration at the plate. He also played the outfield and it was during this time that Richie’s speed helped him in another way. His coach, Harold Cole, recognized that Ashburn lacked a strong throwing arm. He trained him to compensate for this deficiency by charging balls hit to him and throwing on the run. Ashburn later used this technique in the major leagues.6

It is difficult to imagine the Hall of Fame outfielder continuing on in baseball as a catcher because of his burning speed but, being a good son, Ashburn followed his father’s wish — despite advice to the contrary. As the state of Nebraska’s representative on the West team of Esquire Magazine’s American Legion Junior Baseball East/West All-Star game in 1944 at the Polo Grounds, Ashburn’s quality of play and his size caused Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack to advise him to play another position.7

At his Legion games, baseball scouts quickly recognized Ashburn’s talent and began following him. In fact, he signed three contracts to play professional baseball. He signed first with the Cleveland Indians in 1943 at the age of 16, again in 1944 with the Chicago Cubs to play for their Nashville farm team, and in 1945 with the Phillies. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis voided the Cleveland contract because the rules then prohibited the signing of boys still in high school. He also nullified the Cubs contract because of an illegal clause that would have paid Ashburn if the Nashville franchise was sold while he was playing there. The two nullifications soured Ashburn’s opinion on the integrity of major-league baseball.8

The elder Ashburn shared Richie’s doubts and supported his son’s decision to go to college in 1944 even though 13 of the 16 major-league clubs had showed interest in his son. After one semester at Norfolk Junior College, the Phillies convinced the family that their intentions were honest, and Neil approved Richie’s signing with them. Delighted by this change of mind, Phillies scout Ed Krajnick said, “Something tells me this is about the most important deal I ever made.”9

Ashburn reported to the Utica Blue Sox of the Class A Eastern League in 1945 and it was there that his speed finally changed everyone’s mind about his future position in baseball. He utterly astounded them on one occasion when he beat the batter to first base and took the throw for a putout. His manager, future Whiz Kids pilot Eddie Sawyer, forthwith converted the speedster to a center fielder. According to teammate Putsy Caballero, Richie’s father initially disliked Sawyer’s decision and objected to the new direction. But Neil eventually agreed that Sawyer’s decision appeared right for his fleet-footed son. During his time in Utica the players started calling Ashburn Whitey because of his light blond hair. The new moniker stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Early in the season, Ashburn was drafted by the US Army. Fortunately for Ashburn, the allowed him to finish the season, in which the Blue Sox won the Eastern League pennant while Ashburn led the team in batting with a .312 average. The Blue Sox held a Richie Ashburn Day in August and fans passed the hat and collected $357 for him, an amount he likened then to a million dollars.10

The Army sent Ashburn to Alaska, about which he later quipped: “Sending a ballplayer to Alaska was like sending a dog sledder to the Sahara Desert.”11 He spent a year there and missed the 1946 season.

Ashburn returned to the Blue Sox in 1947, and his team again won the Eastern League championship. Ashburn set a league record for the most hits in a season with 191 in only 137 games. After this successful season he went back to school for a second semester at Norfolk Junior College, where he met his future wife, Herberta “Herbie” Cox.12

Ashburn made the 1948 Phillies team as a 21-year-old rookie and opened the season as the starting left fielder. He replaced veteran Harry “The Hat” Walker, the reigning NL batting champion, as the team’s leadoff hitter. He started the first 12 games in left field before replacing Walker as the regular center fielder.

Ashburn engineered an unusual living arrangement in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd — a home rental with fellow rookies Robin Roberts, Jack Mayo, Curt Simmons, and Charlie Bicknell, a move that saved everyone money, especially when Ashburn’s parents moved in in midseason. On the ballfield, he electrified the crowds at Shibe Park with his hitting, speed, and outfield play.

At the conclusion of a doubleheader with the Cubs in Chicago on June 5, Ashburn sported a .380 batting average and had a 23-game hitting streak. A local sportswriter said, “Richie Ashburn is the hottest thing to hit this town since the great Chicago blaze.”13

Ashburn was the only rookie chosen to the National League All-Star team. In the game held in Sportsman’s Park, St. Louis, won by the American League, 5-2, he hit two singles, garnered the only stolen base in the game, scored one of the NL runs and was named by sportswriters as the outstanding player on the losing side. It was there that Ted Williams bestowed Ashburn with another nickname, “Putt-Putt,” because, as Ashburn explained later, “I ran as if I had an outboard motor in the seat of my pants.”14

Ashburn’s season ended abruptly in August when he broke his finger. He started a total of 101 games in center field and 13 games in left field and finished the season with a .333 batting average. At season’s end The Sporting News named him its Rookie of the Year. In the selection process for Major League Baseball’s Rookie of the Year, he finished third behind Al Dark and Gene Bearden.

Whitey experienced a sophomore slump in 1949, finishing with a .284 average, although he continued to exhibit stellar fielding play, setting a major-league record for outfielders with 514 putouts. Some writers said his sensational catch of a Ralph Kiner liner on September 14 was the greatest catch they’d ever seen at Forbes Field.15

The next season Ashburn returned to the Phillies a married man. He was in top form as the youthful Phillies, known as the Whiz Kids, captured the NL pennant. Richie made a “veteran” adjustment borrowing one of teammate Del Ennis’s heavier bats to fool opposing teams that used a “creeping shift” to thwart the speedster’s infield hits. It worked. He started off at .370, weathered a slump in June, and finished at .303 while leading the National League in triples with 14.

Ashburn’s biggest contribution to the NL champs was a fielding play in the final game of the season, October 1 against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field. The play itself wasn’t extraordinary but its timing was. The Whiz Kids had squandered a six-game lead in first place and faced a tie with the Dodgers if they lost the game. With no outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and the score tied, 1-1, the Dodgers had men on first and second. Duke Snider hit a liner into center field and if the runner on second, Cal Abrams, could score, the Dodgers would force a one-game playoff for the pennant. Ashburn charged the ball, scooped it up, and uncorked a perfect running throw right into catcher Stan Lopata’s mitt in plenty of time to tag Abrams at the plate.

The Phillies won the pennant in the tenth inning when Dick Sisler hit a momentous three-run homer and Robin Roberts retired the Dodgers. Ashburn’s play is considered one of the most significant defensive plays in Phillies history.

Ashburn again led the NL in putouts with 405. He did not perform well in the World Series against the New York Yankees as the Phillies were swept in four games, though the games were close, with three being decided by a single run. He batted only .176 in the Series, 3-for-17, and his disappointment could be summed up with a comment he made as he turned down refreshment after the final game, “I couldn’t swallow a cornflake.”16

The Phillies would not appear in the Series again for many more years as they slid down in the NL standings during the 1950s, but Ashburn’s career did not suffer. He had great years from 1951 through 1954, averaging .318 while leading the NL twice in hits and being named an All-Star in 1951 and 1953. In 1954 he had a career-best 125 walks to lead the league in that category and in on-base percentage with .441.

In 1955 Ashburn received a new $30,000 contract. But before the season began he landed on the disabled list following a collision with Del Ennis that ruined his 731-consecutive-game streak. He recovered relatively quickly — starting in the third game of the season before missing nine games. He pinch-hit in the 13th game, and then resumed playing and went on to have a memorable season — with one exception. For the first time in seven seasons, he failed to lead the league in putouts — but he still posted an outstanding .983 fielding average. His batting excelled — by June he led the NL and had a 17-game hitting streak. He sported a .341 average in July, but incredibly, was not chosen for the NL All-Star team. He shrugged off that slight and finished the season with a .338 average and the NL batting title — his first.

The next three seasons the Phillies continued their slide, never leaving the second division. Ashburn’s play was steady though not stellar with .303 and .297 finishes in 1956 and 1957. The Phillies held a Richie Ashburn Day on August 14, 1956.

In 1958 Ashburn broke out and won his second batting title with a .350 average, edging his center-field rival of the San Francisco Giants, Willie Mays, on the last day of the season with a 3-for-4 effort. He led the league in hits, triples, walks, and on-base percentage. Teammate Robin Roberts remembered that Richie’s first hit that day came on a ball that bounced 50 feet in the air after hitting home plate. Roberts said Ashburn chortled loudly as he safely crossed first base. Richie had told Roberts before the game that for Mays to win the title he needed to get three hits while Whitey went hitless. The chortle erupted because that odd hit practically gave Whitey the title.17

Ashburn’s other accomplishments that year included an unusual double play when he backed up second base on an infield rundown. On June 12 he ran down a Los Angeles Dodgers runner, John Roseboro, who was caught off second base, unaware that Whitey had crept up behind him from center field, for an unusual shortstop-catcher-third base-center fielder double play. And at the end of the season he led the league in putouts, tying Max Carey for the most seasons leading the NL in that statistic. It was only the second time in his career up to that point that he did not finish with double-digit assist totals. Additionally, he served as Nebraska chairman of the American Cancer Society during the offseason.

Ashburn’s 1959 season was largely forgettable. All of his offensive stats fell: hits by 65, walks by 18, stolen bases by 21, and batting average by 84 points. Defensively, it was the same: putouts declined by 136, errors rose to 11, and outfield assists dropped to 4, while his fielding percentage fell 13 points. He suffered through the worst performance of his career.

Richie’s tenure with the Phillies ended when the team traded him to the Chicago Cubs in December 1959. In retrospect, it was a terrible trade for the team as Ashburn rebounded to have three good seasons — two with the Cubs and one with the Mets, although his speed had slowed and his outfield putouts declined all three years. The players the Phillies obtained for Ashburn performed horribly, contributing to their further decline. The Phillies finished last; the third of four straight bottom-of-the-heap finishes from 1958 through 1961. Ashburn’s replacement in center field hit just .237.

Ashburn’s time with the Cubs coincided with their “College of Coaches” experiment — a system of rotating a different coach to manage the Cubs each day, which didn’t work. Some of the coaches were rotated to the minors and back again. A visiting Philly sportswriter asked Ashburn how he was doing: “Not so good,” quipped Richie, “the guy who likes me is in Des Moines.”18

Ashburn’s last season spent as a player spawned a second career in baseball. After playing fairly well on one of the most unforgettable and bumbling teams in baseball history, the 1962 New York Mets (40-120), he sent back his contract offer unsigned — not to get more money, but with the thought that he didn’t want to go through another season like the one he had had with the lowly NL expansion team. His Mets tenure was a horrible season of improbable losses, unbelievable errors, and inept baseball manifested by the quintessential story Yo la tengo.

The story revolved around the antics of the Spanish-speaking shortstop for the Mets, Elio Chacon, and his penchant for frequent near-collisions with outfielders. This was especially true with Ashburn on short fly balls to center field. Ashburn realized that Chacon did not understand the English warning: “I have it,” so he went to a bilingual Mets player and was told that Chacon would understand the warning in Spanish, yo la tengo; that it meant the fly ball was the center fielder’s to catch. Soon enough a short fly ball was hit and a back-pedaling Chacon veered off, following Ashburn’s admonition in Spanish. What was unexpected was that onrushing, English-only left-fielder Frank Thomas completely flattened Ashburn. After pulling his center fielder from the ground, Thomas asked him “What’s a Yellow Tango?”19

Selected as a National League All-Star, he became the Mets’ Most Valuable Player with a batting average of .306. The award merited him the gift of a boat, of which he later said: “…to be voted the MVP on the worst team in the history of baseball is a dubious honor for sure. I was awarded a 24-foot boat equipped with a galley and sleeping facilities for six. After the season had ended, I docked the boat in Ocean City, New Jersey, and it sank.”20

Ashburn also dubbed the much-maligned first baseman for the Mets with his famous moniker, “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry.

He accepted a broadcasting job in 1963 with the Phillies to provide “color” to the regular broadcaster. When asked if he had been making more with the Mets, Ashburn said, “Much more.” And a query as to why he would quit such a good-paying job in a sport he loved and accept a much lower salary elicited a simple, “Well…” 21

Ashburn was not the only candidate for the broadcasting booth. The Phillies first offered it to Robin Roberts, who declined — he played baseball for four more seasons — but who suggested Ashburn to Les Qually, the Phillies official in charge of broadcasting. “The rest is history,” said Roberts.22

It turned out Ashburn had the gift of providing commentary during a broadcast and he parlayed this gift into a career that spanned 35 seasons. His career as a color man enabled his voice and his personality to touch more Phillies fans in the Delaware Valley than all of his on-field heroics at the Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium venue. Folks all over the area listened as he spoke with an infectious zest, corny humor, admirable candor, unflinching disbelief, and an understated outrageousness that endeared him to millions. He spoke his mind and fans loved it along with his wit and humor delivered in his trademark deadpan style. Soon, his aphorisms percolated throughout the Delaware Valley: “This fella on first looks runnerish,” “It’s a leadpipe cinch that they’ll bunt here,” and “Hard to believe, Harry,” among others.

Other, nonverbal, sounds tickled listeners’ ears as well. People recognized Ashburn lighting his pipe when they would hear a match being scratched while on the air. Or they heard him puff his pipe as he piped in with another comment on something odd or good or bad during a game.

Ashburn first teamed with Bill Campbell and By Saam but his true broadcast partner became Harry Kalas when Kalas joined the Phils on-air team in 1971. Kalas gave him another nickname that gave tribute to Ashburn’s unique status with Phillies fans, “His Whiteness.”

The team of Kalas and Ashburn clicked. They complemented each other so well that author Curt Smith said of their rapport and teamwork, “Where chemistry really works … at any time in any franchise was, of course, Harry Kalas and Whitey Ashburn.”23 The pair worked together for 27 seasons and their partnership became noted for Kalas’s smooth delivery of game action and Ashburn’s quips, insights, and critiques.

Besides his broadcasting, Ashburn wrote a regular column for the Philadelphia Bulletin and later for the Philadelphia Daily News. His columns were noted for his candor as well as his insights into sports and baseball.

Ashburn was so well liked that in one of his columns he noted that Cal Abrams — whom he had thrown out at home plate during the 1950 pennant-clincher — paid Richie a compliment: Abrams, wrote Richie, thanked him for throwing him out because that play bestowed more recognition upon Abrams than his short baseball career did. He also noted that Abrams saved all of his baseball cards — including Ashburn’s 1948 rookie card — and, in selling them, was making more money than he did as a player.24

Ashburn stayed married to his wife, Herberta Cox “Herbie” Ashburn, until the day he died. And he stayed true to his roots, returning to his Tilden home every offseason until 1964, when they moved to Gladwyne, a Philadelphia suburb. With Herbie he had six children; he missed every one of their births because all of them were born when he would be with the Phillies. “I was a miserable 0-for-6,” he would quip.25 But he made sure to make it up with them during the offseason and his children referred to him as a good dad.

However, although Whitey’s love for Herbie remained strong, their marriage was not. In 1977, after 28 years of living together, the two separated but did not divorce. The Ashburns lived apart for the rest of their lives but by dint of their unique natures they kept their children together and Whitey remained their father forever.

The Ashburns experienced tragedy when their daughter Jan died in an automobile crash in 1987. It is always a crushing blow when a parent has to bury a child and this loss hurts most. Richie’s grief remained with him and a year later, during a Phillies tribute to Ashburn at the Vet, he thanked the fans for the “thousands of cards and letters” that shared his family’s grief. His column allowed him to make that grief public with Jan’s eulogy in the Philadelphia Daily News of April 28, 1987.

Ashburn’s personality was often described as honest and open. It seemed to allow him to hang out with kings and janitors and everyone in between because he treated everyone the same way. It seems he had the moxie to present himself naturally to anyone, and folks accepted it– and forgave him for it. Stories abound about Richie and this unique quality.

He could be ribald, too. Once, after a lengthy discourse during a game by broadcaster Tim McCarver on the qualities of Mount St. Helen’s volcanic ash, Ashburn opined that “If you’ve seen one piece of ash, you’ve seen them all.”26 On another occasion he admitted that he slept with his bats when he was going good. “In fact, I’ve been in bed with a lot of old bats in my day,” he said.27 And he could be disarmingly charming, often referring to anyone within listening distance as the youngest of men. Once he took leave from some to go into the broadcasting booth, “Well, boys, I can’t be sitting around talking to fans.”28

Richie Ashburn’s induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown took some time. In his 15 years of eligibility his vote count did not engender continuation after 1982 and his status was relegated to the Veterans Committee. His candidacy stalled and then ended with the passing of the “60 percent rule” in 1991 that stated eligibility by the Veterans Committee for players whose careers began after 1946 was limited to those who garnered 60 percent of the ballot in previous elections.

Ashburn’s run up to his Hall of Fame induction included two fans who recognized his numbers and took up his banner: SABR member Steve Krevisky and superfan Jim Donahue. Krevisky would appear at every New England SABR gathering and expound on Ashburn’s qualities, especially educating attendees on his defensive statistics but also pointing out that Richie had the most hits of any major leaguer during the 1950s. Donahue organized his campaign around overturning the 60 percent rule, one time forwarding 55,000 postcards to the Hall of Fame. Both men’s efforts paid off and the rule was overturned in 1993. In the spring of 1995 the Veterans Committee voted Whitey into the Hall. The first person Ashburn called was his 91-year-old mother, Tootie, who wept.

The largest crowd in the history of the induction ceremony, more than 15,000 fans, showed up that summer to celebrate not only Ashburn’s induction but that of the greatest third baseman of all time, the Phillies’ Mike Schmidt. Several times during his acceptance speech, Whitey was overcome as he looked out onto a “sea of red clad” Phillies fans.29

It is generally considered that Ashburn’s defensive skills got him in. Although he finished with a .308 average which ranks 120th in major-league history, he hit only 29 home runs, and 82 percent of his hits were singles. However, he led the majors in putouts in nine of the ten years from 1949 through 1958. And he is the only outfielder in major-league history to record four seasons of 500-plus putouts. Despite his “weak” arm, he led NL outfielders in assists three times. Another factor was his durability. He possesses the seventh longest consecutive-game streak in National League history and missed only 20 games from 1948 through 1960.

And his fielding prowess was not limited to the can-of-corn variety. Some of Ashburn’s catches remain as the best in baseball. In addition to the aforementioned Kiner catch, Ashburn’s sensational outfield play at Forbes Field on June 20, 1951, led one famous fan in attendance to wonder. Hall of Famer George Sisler commented, “I’ve been around major-league baseball for 35 years. I’ve seen every great center fielder since [Tris] Speaker. I thought I had seen every sort of impossible catch. But that’s the greatest piece of center fielding I ever saw anywhere by any fielder. I still don’t believe it.”30

Richie’s competitive nature also kept his Hall of Fame candidacy alive. He especially would voice his own self-promotion, since he often mentioned it on air and during off-mike events. And he didn’t hesitate to use his especial candor. “You know, you can also get into the Hall of Fame as a writer or a broadcaster,” Ashburn once said. “I could be the first person in history to miss it in all three categories.”31

Ashburn sometimes kept to himself and he did so on a late summer evening in 1997 after calling a game in New York, telling friend and fellow broadcaster Kalas that he didn’t need any company. Later that night he reached out to a Phillies official, complaining that he didn’t feel well. At 5:30 A.M. on September 9, 1997, Ashburn was found dead in his hotel room.

The city of Philadelphia, Phillies fans, and team officials as well as other major-league teams and their cities descended into collective grief as news of Ashburn’s death percolated across telephone, teletype, audio, and video machines. His wake at Fairmount Park’s Memorial Hall drew thousands and his memorial service generated poignant remembrances as his family and myriad friends in the game sought solace through words, hugs, and tears.

Some years later, his son, Richard, spoke for thousands of us when he said of his father, “To this day some one will tell me a story about him every day. He just blew people away. And he didn’t even know he was doing it.”32

The Phillies have honored the memory of Whitey Ashburn in Citizens Bank Park, their much-admired ballyard off Broad Street in South Philadelphia. There is a long, concession-filled broad walk behind center field dubbed Ashburn Alley where an exciting statue of the former Whiz Kid is prominent. And the TV/radio booth has been named the Richie “Whitey” Ashburn Broadcast Booth. The Phillies also retired his playing number, 1, in 1979, the second number given that honor, and his plaque is featured on the Phillies’ Wall of Fame in Ashburn Alley.

This biography is included in the book “The Year of the Blue Snow: The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies” (SABR, 2013), edited by Mel Marmer and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

http://articles.mcall.com/1995-07-28/sports/3052376_1_richie-ashburn-elmer-flick-consummate-leadoff-man

baseball-reference.com.

http://www.ultimatemets.com/profile.php?PlayerCode=0012&tabno=7

http://www.centerfieldmaz.com/2011/03/original-1962-mets-center-fielder-hall.html

Notes

1 Dan Stephenson, Richie Ashburn, A Baseball Life. DVD. Written and produced by Dan Stephenson, Narrated by Harry Kalas (New York: Arts Alliance America LLC, 2008).

2 Stephenson.

3 Stephenson.

4 Joe Archibald, Richie Ashburn (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1960), 47.

5 Stephenson.

6 Archibald, 25.

7 Archibald, 32.

8 Archibald, 29, 30.

9 Archibald, 33, 34.

10 Archibald, 38, 39.

11 Bill Conlin, “Missing Whitey 10-Fold,” Philly.com, September 7, 2007. http://articles.philly.com/2007-09-07/sports/24995587_1_radio-hall-tv.

12 Archibald, 42.

13 Archibald, 46.

14 Archibald, 49.

15 Archibald, 64-65.

16 Archibald, 87.

17 Robin Roberts and C. Paul Rogers, III. My Life in Baseball (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2003), 161.

18 Roberts, 252.

19 http://phillysportshistory.com/2011/05/21/richie-ashburn-is-the-inspiration-for-the-band-name-yo-la-tengo/.

20 http://www.centerfieldmaz.com/2011/03/original-1962-mets-center-fielder-hall.htm”

21 Jimmy Breslin, Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game (New York: Viking Press, 1963), 85.

22 Roberts, 252.

23 Stephenson.

24 Philadelphia Daily News, December 9, 1986.

25 Fran Zimniuch. Richie Ashburn Remembered (Chicago: Sports Publishing LLC, 2005), 83.

26 Zimniuch, 57.

27 Zimniuch, 53.

28 Zimniuch, 61.

29 Stephenson.

30 Frank Yeutter, “They Call Him Mister Putt-Putt,” Baseball Digest, October 1951.

31 Don Bostrom, “Richie Ashburn From Cornfield to Cooperstown,” The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania), July 28, 1995.

32 Zimniuch, 99.

James Charles Jacob Bagby Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 8, 1916, while his father was pitching with the Indians. Jim spent much of his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia, where his father had settled after playing with the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association. Eventually the family re-located to the prosperous Atlanta suburb of Marietta, where both father and son resided until their deaths. The family was small but close. There were three children, Jim and his older sisters, Betty and Mabel, who was named after her mother, the former Mabel Smith. The bond between father and son was especially close.

As a child, Jim Jr. avidly followed his father’s career and spent a lot of time at Ponce de Leon Park, home field for the Crackers, starting when his father played there. When not watching his father play, Jim spent many hours playing catch with his dad. It wasn’t long before the younger Bagby learned all of his father’s pitches. Jim’s mother disapproved. Her thoughts, echoing those of so many baseball wives of the generation, were highlighted in a Liberty magazine profile that quoted her talking to her husband:

The conversation was repeated many times. Often enough to impress Jim Bagby Jr., young as he was. “I don’t know why you want him to grow up to be a baseball player,” his mother would say. “What has baseball ever done for you, Jim? You worked hard in the minor leagues for years, and then you were in the majors for a spell, and here you are in the minors again. After all those years what do you have to show for it? First I want our boy to have a good education, and then a job in some reliable business.”

The talk would die down, and then, when his mother had left the room, his father would ask, “Ready, Jim?” And Jim would nod eagerly and the two would go out behind the little house in Atlanta and play ball.¹

Young Bagby’s course to the majors was not a straight line from childhood to adulthood. There came a time in his adolescence when he came close to giving up on baseball completely. As a 12-year-old he was the best pitcher on the Atlanta area sandlots but then mysteriously, Liberty recounts, his arm “went lame.” His mother’s emotions were mixed but young Jim felt that she was secretly glad of the situation.

For three years Jim didn’t touch a baseball. Things changed when he turned 15. Starting slowly, he ultimately rediscovered his old form. The team he played on tied for the city of Atlanta championship game but lost the playoff. The re-emergence of his son’s talent elated his father. The elder Bagby knew the owner of a semipro team in Montgomery, Georgia. Beginning in 1932, the son pitched semipro ball in Montgomery and was winning consistently.

In the spring of 1935 the senior Bagby finagled a tryout for his son with Cincinnati. Amid the hubbub of Chuck Dressen’s first full season as manager of the Reds, the gangly 18-year-old attracted almost no attention. Embittered, he left the Reds spring training camp on his own volition after three disheartening weeks. A pep talk from his father soon revived his spirits. When the Boston Red Sox played in Atlanta as they barnstormed their way north to open the season, the father tried something else.

Gaining the ear of Red Sox manager Joe Cronin, he arranged another tryout for Jim. Cronin liked what he saw and wired Eddie Collins to find a position for the 6-foot-2, 175-pound pitcher with great stuff and a solid assortment of pitches. As a result Jim found himself in the ranks of professional baseball as a member of Boston’s Piedmont League farm club, the Charlotte Hornets.

With the Class B Hornets he compiled a 13-9 record while appearing in 40 games and pitching 218 innings. Showing a maturity beyond his years on the mound, Bagby possessed a wicked curve, a fantastic changeup taught to him by his father, a sinker, and his main weapon, blinding speed. In 1936, Charlotte dropped out of the Piedmont League and the Red Sox switched their affiliation to the new team in Rocky Mount. Bagby was assigned there.

But Rocky Mount was a bit of a setback; Bagby compiled a 9-12 record while pitching 169 innings in 38 games with an ERA of 5.11. Despite the mediocre season, Jim was promoted to the 1937 Single-A Hazelton (Pennsylvania) Red Sox (New York-Pennsylvania League), where his talents emerged. He went 21-8 in 37 games (his 21 victories led the league) with a stellar ERA of 2.71 to earn not just league MVP honors but also a promotion to the majors.

Jim made his debut in a way that every kid in America dreams about. He started on Opening Day, April 18, 1938, against the world champion New York Yankees, the most potent lineup in baseball. When he arrived at Fenway, Jim had no idea he would be on the mound to kick off the season. In what was also the first major-league game he had ever seen, Jim found himself inserted as the starter by Joe Cronin. Cronin made the conscious decision to not tell Bagby sooner because he did not want the 21-year-old to mentally “pitch himself out” with distraction.² Bagby pitched six innings and earned the win. The game was tied, 4-4, when he was lifted for a pinch-hitter and the Sox rallied to take an 8-4 lead. The lead held up and Jim Bagby, Jr. had the first of his 97 major-league victories.

Jim compiled a 15-11 record in 43 games, 25 as a starter. He had 10 complete games but achieved only one shutout that season, a tight 2-0 home win over the visiting Philadelphia Athletics on August 18. His ERA stood at 4.21 with 73 strikeouts – but 90 walks. He surrendered 218 hits and 110 runs. It was a fairly decent start for what became a successful career.

Once he made the majors, Jim and his father only argued about one issue: who was the better hitter. Both were good hitting pitchers, and Jr. actually was used as an occasional pinch hitter. His lifetime average of .226 was eight points higher than his father’s. The two were profiled in The Sporting News, the article ended thus: “But Junior is certain of one thing: that he can outhit the old man. The old man will grant him only one thing—that he probably gets more distance. ‘But look what he’s got to hit?’ says Pop, ‘Who couldn’t knock the rabbit ball a country mile?’”³

For Jim another life adventure began in the off season. On October 13, 1938, he married 21-year-old Leola Hicks in the pastor’s office of the Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta. The two had met two years previously at a local basketball game. In a small, simple ceremony, Jim’s sister, Mabel – herself married for only a short time — served as the matron of honor. The marriage would last the rest of his life.

Perhaps he had played over his head in 1938, perhaps he was distracted by the responsibilities of being a new husband, but whatever the reason, Bagby came out flat in the 1939 season. He amassed a 5-5 record with an ERA of 7.09. In mid-season the Red Sox decided that he needed to be sent down to the minors to get his game back, so he was sent to the Little Rock Travelers of the Southern Association. The Southern Association was Class A1, just a notch above his most recent minor-league assignment, in Hazelton.

The demotion had exactly the effect the parent club desired. Bagby pitched to a 7-6 record and a 3.54 ERA with Little Rock. Whatever the Red Sox were looking for in him, Jim found it. He was back in the majors to stay in 1940, although at first it didn’t look that way. His 1940 numbers were nothing to get excited about: a 10-16 record in 36 games. His ERA of 4.73 was a tad high, although he began to work relief on a regular basis. The combination was good enough to keep Bagby in a Sox uniform.

On August 24, he found himself involved in perhaps the oddest moment of Ted Williams’ long career in Boston. Although Ted was to say, “The only thing dumber than a pitcher is two pitchers”. Ted had been pestering Joe Cronin to let him pitch. Ted liked to brag about his youthful pitching exploits and when the first game of a doubleheader against the Tigers turned into a 11-1 blowout, Cronin decided that it was time for Ted to put up or shut up.

Jim Bagby, who was on the mound, was moved to left field and Ted came in to pitch the final two innings. Ted faced nine batters, allowing three hits and one run. The highlight was striking out Rudy York on three pitches. Interestingly, the catcher was Joe Glenn, who had also caught Babe Ruth’s last major league pitching performance.   

Jim stayed in a Red Sox uniform until December. The one thing the Sox lacked in 1940 was a quality catcher; at the league winter meetings, Joe Cronin, at the behest of Eddie Collins, rectified that problem. In a complicated deal to get Frankie Pytlak from Cleveland, Cronin “sold pitchers Fritz Ostermueller and Denny Galehouse to the St. Louis Browns for $30,000. Purchased Pete Fox from Detroit for an unannounced sum. Swapped Roger “Doc”Cramer, his veteran outfielder, to Washington for Gerald “Gee” Walker, and immediately turned over Walker, pitcher Jim Bagby and catcher Gene Desautels to Cleveland, receiving in return Pytlak, pitcher Joe Dobson, and infielder Odell Hale.”⁴

The deal was initially unpopular in Cleveland, as Pytlak was a fan favorite and the Indians seemed to get the worst of the deal. Bagby was perceived in Cleveland as a mediocre pitcher at best. It turned out that the Lake Erie air would eventually turn out to be just the tonic Jim needed.

The deal was, however, considered shrewd by most of the experts. The Sporting News ranked the Indians’ rotation of Bob Feller, Al Smith, Al Milnar, Bagby, and Mel Harder as “best in [the] loop.”⁵ Bagby’s season was not spectacular by any standard, but he did find a home with Cleveland. With the Tribe, Jim started 27 games but finished only 12; he won nine games while losing 15. His ERA was a pedestrian 4.04, but was an improvement over 1940. Interestingly, the same man who signed his father’s checks when he was with the Indians signed Jim’s as well. Indians bookkeeper Mark Wanstall had been with the club for 25 years. The Sporting News observed, “It happens only once in a lifetime, and can certainly occur only once in the history of major league ball in Cleveland.”⁶

Cleveland also offered some important off-field impact on his life. No doubt aware of his mother’s fears of a baseball career being an economic dead end, Jim enrolled in art school. Jim took morning classes at a Cleveland school; his long term goal was that of becoming a professional artist.  

The highlight of his 1941 season would ensure that his name would live forever, if only as the answer to a trivia question. It is almost impossible to convey the atmosphere and the national mania that was singularly focused on July 17, 1941. For the previous 56 games, Joe DiMaggio had hit safely at least once. The streak was the centerpiece of the nation’s newscasts; it was followed breathlessly by newspapers and fans to the exclusion of all else. Attendance for Yankees games both at home and on the road soared. Some 67,000 fans turned out at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium that night to see if “Joltin’ Joe” could extend the streak.

Cleveland starter Al Smith pitched the first 7 1/3 innings. He walked Joe once, and also got some exceptional help from third baseman Ken Keltner, who made two stellar grabs to retire DiMaggio in the first and seventh innings.  Bagby came in with one out in the eighth inning. For years afterwards he would tell all who asked what he pitched that night. Most reporters over the years usually asked about that night in 1941 when the country watched him end DiMaggio’s streak. Jim loved to tell and retell the story. “Just fastballs”, Bagby said when asked about pitch selection by interviewer John Holway. Bagby continued, “Joe hit one of them hard but he just hit it at somebody.”⁷ DiMaggio hit into a 6-4-3 double play, Boudreau to Mack to Grimes, which just beat Joe to the bag. Ultimately the Yankees won the game, 4-3, but that was distinctly an anticlimax for the evening.

Jim achieved some professional highlights in 1942 and 1943. In both years he led the American League in games started. In 1942 he compiled a 17-9 record in 38 games. The 1942 season was Jim’s single greatest season. He started 35 games and recorded 16 complete games with 4 shutouts, both professional bests. His outstanding ERA of 2.96 was also his personal best. Jim was a natural selection for that July’s All-Star Game. In 1943 he returned to the All-Star Game but in neither year did he see action. His 1943 numbers were 17-14 in 36 games while leading the league in innings pitched with 273. His ERA of 3.10 however, was closer to his final major league average of 3.96. (His father led the American League twice in games, and once each in victories, complete games, and innings pitched.) 

In 1944 Jim appeared in just 13 games before leaving baseball for a one-year stint in the Merchant Marine. His hitch was uneventful and perhaps left Jim with a desire for more. Early in 1945 Jim took the Army physical but was rated 4-F because of his harelip. He returned to the Indians for the final year of World War II and had an 8-11 record. He started 19 games and worked 6 in relief. On December 12, 1945, the fifth anniversary of the trade from Boston, he was traded back to Boston for pitcher Vic Johnson and cash.⁸

With Boston he was used almost equally as a starter and as a reliever. Bagby built a 7-6 record, he started 11 games and completed six with one shutout. He also relieved in 10 games. The highlight of his career came in October when the Red Sox went to the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. In Game Four, after Tex Hughson surrendered three runs in the second inning and two more in the third inning without recording an out, Bagby was called upon to face Enos Slaughter with Stan Musial stationed at second base. Bagby got Slaughter to ground out and Whitey Kurowski to foul out before Joe Garagiola singled to drive in Musial. Bagby struck out Harry Walker to end the uprising. In three full innings of work, Jim gave up one earned run on six hits and a walk. Jim flied out to center field in his one Series at-bat, falling short of his father’s 1920 feat: a pitcher hitting a home run in a World Series. Jim, Sr. was the first pitcher to homer in the fall classic.

On February 10, 1947 the Pirates bought Bagby from the Red Sox for slightly over the $10,000 waiver price.⁹ It turned out to be his last big-league season. In another parallel with his father, the Pirates were the last major-league team for both Bagbys. With the Buccos, his record was 5-4 in 37 games with an ERA of 4.67. He started six games and finished two of them, as he was used almost exclusively in relief.

His big-league career was almost the same length as that of his father. “Sarge” played nine years, while his son hung on for one more year, making an even decade in the bigs. The 1948 season found Jim in the Triple A American Association with the Indianapolis Indians, trying to pitch his way back onto the Pirates’ lineup. He amassed an impressive 16-9 record in 31 games but it wasn’t enough to get him back to the smoky Steel City. At the end of the season, the Pirates gave Jim his outright release.

As a free agent in 1949, Jim latched on with the Atlanta Crackers. He was pitching in his hometown, in the same stadium he had grown up in as he watched his father’s professional baseball life begin to sputter down. In 30 games he completed a 10-14 record in 178 innings, not quite good enough at age 33 for someone to pick up his option.

The story was even more interesting in his final year as a professional baseball player. With the Class B Tampa Smokers of the Florida International League he put on an impressive show with a 9-1 record in 26 games and 114 innings pitched. Not bad at all for a 34-year-old. His final big-league career record was 97-96 with an ERA of 3.96. He recorded 84 complete games and 13 shutouts. With the conclusion of that season, Jim adjusted to life without baseball. He settled in Marietta and began working as a draftsman in the aircraft industry. Those old art school classes he had taken in Cleveland paid dividends. This job lasted until he retired in the 1980s. He also began playing golf seriously. He had started golfing as a player but now had time to work on his game. He became adept enough at golf to turn professional, playing in tournaments on weekends or while on vacation from the airplane factory. These jobs paid him more than baseball had. A life-long smoker, Jim’s cancerous larynx was removed in 1982. From that point on he relied upon Leola to communicate with the world, as she became an accomplished lip-reader.  

Jim’s cancer re-emerged in 1988 and killed him on September 2, just days before his 72^nd birthday. Completing the pattern set in childhood, he was buried not far from his father in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery. Jim followed his father posthumously in still another way in 1992. Ten years after his father had been enshrined, James Bagby, Jr. joined him in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.          

Notes

1. Graham, Frank, “Bagby and Son.” Liberty, September 26, 1942 p.21

2. Clifford Bloodgood “Beginner’s Luck” Baseball, April 1941 p.487

3. Troy, Jack “Bagby, Jr, Just Like His Pop, Even to Ability to Sock, Happy with tribe for Whom Father had 31 wins in’20” The Sporting News February 27, 1941 p. 3

4. “Bosox Chief Lack Plugged by Pytlak In Three-Way Deal” The Sporting News December 19, 1940 p.1

5. McAuley, Ed, “Cleveland Pitching Keeps Its Date with Best In Loop Rating” The Sporting News April 24, 1941 p.1

6. “Once in a Lifetime” The Sporting News February 20, 1941 p.8

7. Holway, John B. “A Mystery Man in the End to DiMaggio’s Streak” The New York Times July 15, 1990 p. S1

8. Who’s Who in Baseball 1947, p.60

9. Doyle, Charles J. “Hank Quit When Bucs Snubbed His Bid For Release” The Sporting News, February 19, 1947 p.3

Sources

Graham, Frank “Bagby and Son” Liberty, September 26, 1942, p.21

Bloodgood, Clifford “Beginners Luck”, Baseball, April 1941, p. 487

Troy, Jack “Bagby, Jr. Just Like His Pop, even in the ability to Sock, Happy with Tribe for Whom Father had 31 wins in ’20” The Sporting News, February 27, 1941, p.3 

“Bosox Chief Lack Plugged by Pytlak in Three Way Deal” The Sporting News, December 19, 1941, p.1

“Cleveland Pitching Keeps its Date with Best in Loop Rating” The Sporting News, April 24, 1941, p.1

“Once in a Lifetime” The Sporting News, February 20, 1941, p.8

Holway, John B. “A Mystery Man in the End to DiMaggio’s Streak” The New York Times, July 15, 1990 p. S1

Who’s Who in Baseball 1947, p. 60

“Hank Quit When Bucs Snubbed His Bid for Release” The Sporting News, February 19, 1947, p. 3

Statistics come from: Palmer, Pete and Gillette, Gary, The Baseball Encyclopedia (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004)

Additional data from www.retrosheet.org and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame and Museum website: http://www.gshf.org/site/

These dots were widely scattered – as with many Black ballplayers in his day, Bankhead’s career was multinational. He starred in Puerto Rico, made detours to the Dominican Republic and Canada, and then knocked around Mexico well into his 40s. Always a respectable hitter, Bankhead played the field abroad in addition to pitching. Outside the US, he was also a coach and manager.

Though Bankhead was clearly talented – he drew Bob Feller comparisons – he was hindered by control problems and an old injury. Authors Larry Moffi and Jonathan Kronstadt also pinpointed a crucial problem: “Like many of baseball’s first Black players, he was thrown into white baseball with the physical tools to succeed but little or no emotional support.”1 Jackie Robinson was Bankhead’s roommate when the pitcher first joined the Dodgers, four months after Robinson broke the color barrier. In his biography of Robinson, Arnold Rampersad said it bluntly: “Some observers, including Blacks, thought that [Bankhead] choked in facing white hitters.”2

Negro Leagues star and raconteur Buck O’Neil offered a more nuanced view. Author Joe Posnanski was there for a conversation between Buck and Satchel Paige’s son Robert:

“See, here’s what I always heard. Dan was scared to death that he was going to hit a white boy with a pitch. He thought there might be some sort of riot if he did it. Dan was from Alabama just like your father. But Satchel became a man of the world. Dan was always from Alabama, you know what I mean? He heard all those people calling him names, making those threats, and he was scared. He’d seen Black men get lynched.”3

Also, while Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber described Bankhead as “a quiet, pleasant man,”4 there were other sides of his personality. Sometimes he simply did not act in his own best interest – he lost two jobs abroad under a cloud. His brothers Sam and Garnett Bankhead both died by gunshot following quarrels (aged 70 and 63, no less); Dan too had a temper, which a weakness for women allegedly provoked. His family life was at times tumultuous. Yet as he battled illness and lived hand to mouth in his final years, this man attained peace.

Daniel Robert Bankhead was born on May 3, 1920, in Empire, Alabama. His parents, Garnett Bankhead Sr. and Arie (née Armstrong), had five boys and two girls who lived to adulthood. His given name appears as simply Dan in his military records, in the Social Security system, and on his gravestone. His son William F. Bankhead believed that his father shortened it at some point.

The town of Empire is a little more than 30 miles northwest of Alabama’s largest city, Birmingham. It is in the coal country that fueled Birmingham’s steel industry. Garnett Sr., who had worked for a lumber company around the time of World War I, labored in coal. The 1920 census shows him on the crew of a coal tipple (or loading facility); the 1930 census lists him as a miner. The sawmills, lumber yards, and mines were all hard and dangerous jobs – but they offered steady pay and a step up from sharecropping for many African Americans. The shadow of Jim Crow then loomed over the Deep South.

Garnett also played baseball. Although the source of the anecdote is not clear, Moffi and Kronstadt wrote that “he was a star first baseman in the Cotton Belt League until the day he saw a man die after being hit by a flying bat.”5

Dan was the third of the five ballplaying Bankhead brothers. The eldest, Sam, was a top-notch Negro Leaguer: a speedy, versatile, good-hitting infielder-outfielder from 1930 through 1950. A hardnosed leader on the field, Sam became a manager late in his career. While still playing shortstop, he was skipper of the Vargas Sabios (Wise Men), champion of the Venezuelan winter league in 1946-47. Sam then led the Homestead Grays during their last two years as an independent club (1949-50). He also managed Farnham in Canada’s Provincial League in 1951 and is recognized as the first Black skipper of a predominantly white team. Negro Leagues author John Holway contended that Sam inspired Troy Maxson, the lead character in August Wilson’s award-winning play Fences.

The second brother, Fred, was an infielder from 1936 through 1948. Joe and Garnett Jr. were both pitchers. Joe was with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, while Garnett pitched briefly with the Memphis Red Sox in 1947 and spent some time with the Homestead Grays in 1948 and 1949. (Another brother, James, born roughly two years before Dan, apparently died young. He appeared in the 1920 census but not in 1930.)

Bankhead attended public schools in Birmingham. In 1940, he became a pro ballplayer with the Black Barons. In a talk with author Brent Kelley, William “Jimmy” Barnes, another young local player who went to the Negro Leagues, recalled how it happened (though his memory was slightly off on the year and the team that signed Bankhead). “I just tried out for a little city league team. Dan Bankhead and I were trying out for third base and we were throwing the ball across the infield so hard.”6

Kelley also heard from another of Bankhead’s contemporaries, Barons infielder Ulysses Redd. “We went to spring training and had a bunch of guys out there – a bunch of shortstops anyway. . . .even Dan Bankhead wanted to be a shortstop at that time, but he was throwin’ so hard they said they would make a pitcher outta him. They did the right thing.”7 Seamheads.com shows a pitching record of 4-1 for Bankhead in 1940 and 7-1 the next year. He pitched two scoreless innings in the East-West All-Star Game, on July 27, 1941.

In the winter of 1941-42, Bankhead went to play ball in Puerto Rico for the first time. The Puerto Rican Winter League was in its fourth season, and a host of great Negro Leaguers were there, most notably Josh Gibson (Santurce) and Willard Brown (Humacao-Arecibo). Sam Bankhead was with Ponce, but Dan was a member of the Mayagüez Indios, who also featured Willie Wells and Buster Clarkson. He won 7 and lost 8.

Returning to the Black Barons in 1942, Bankhead posted a known record of 2-1. After that, though, the young man decided to serve his nation amid World War II. On April 22, 1943, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in Macon, Georgia. He was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. The Montford Point Marines, as they were also known, were not a combat unit. Even so, the all-Black troops became historically significant as an important step toward the integration of American military forces. Bankhead was part of the Montford Point baseball team, which remained in the States for the duration of the war and toured as a “morale raiser.” In addition to pitching, he played shortstop and the outfield.8

The Marine got occasional leave to pitch for the Black Barons, appearing at least once in 1943 and twice in 1944. On June 5, 1944, the New York Times reported that Bankhead struck out 17 New York Black Yankees as he fired a three-hit shutout in the nightcap of a doubleheader. In the opener, the Barons blanked the Philadelphia Stars 9-0. The twin bill took place at Yankee Stadium before an estimated crowd of 12,000.9

Bankhead, who had gained sergeant’s rank, was released from the service on June 7, 1946. He re-entered baseball with the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League. He once again made the roster for the East-West All-Star Game – in fact, a pair of them were held that year. He started the first game, on August 15, allowing two earned runs in three innings with no decision. Three days later, he got the win for the West with three scoreless innings.

According to The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues, Bankhead finished the year with a 7-3 record, far outshining his 24-36 team. His 42 strikeouts led the league, though this seemingly low number, like his won-lost records, likely reflects patchy data (Seamheads shows even lower totals).

Sometime in the mid-1940s (the exact date remains under investigation), Bankhead got married to Linda Marquette, who had gone to school in Kansas City and also attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music. According to his son William, they met while she was performing as a jazz singer. The couple had a daughter named Waillulliah, or Lulu for short. The young girl’s name was patterned after famous actress Tallulah Bankhead – a member of a prominent Alabama family. Tallulah may have been linked to the Black Bankheads, because her great-grandfather owned slaves in Lamar County, about 80 miles west of Empire.

William Bankhead came to believe that Lulu was actually a foster child, and there is reason to believe him. A 1947 article in the Richmond Afro-American noted that the young girl was nine years old and that her parents had been married for 10 years.10 But that means Dan and Linda would have been about 17 and 15, respectively, upon their wedding. This is at odds with the evidence and suggests a vague effort at propriety in the article.

With Linda and Lulu in tow11, Bankhead returned to Puerto Rico in the winter of 1946-47. Pitching for the Caguas Criollos, he went 12-8 and led the league with 179 strikeouts. He also showed his speed on the basepaths with 12 steals.

Back with Memphis in 1947, Bankhead had the pleasure of playing with his brother Fred. That year was the first time that any of the Bankhead men were teammates; Garnett also appeared briefly with the Red Sox in ’47, possibly after Dan left. On July 27, Dan again got the win in the East-West All-Star Game, allowing one run in three innings at Comiskey Park. The West won, 5-2, before a crowd of 48,112.

Dodgers scouts George Sisler and Wid Matthews were aware, and they alerted their boss, Branch Rickey. Brooklyn was short on pitching – ironically, they had unloaded starter Kirby Higbe because he refused to play with Jackie Robinson – so Rickey again turned to the Negro Leagues. On August 22, as Rickey biographer Lee Lowenfish wrote, “he and Sisler then traveled to Memphis to observe Dan Bankhead. . . . After the game [in which he struck out 11 and lifted his record to 11-512], Bankhead and his wife fed the visitors dinner, and soon thereafter Rickey announced that the pitcher had been purchased from Blue Sox [sic] owner J.B. Martin for $15,000.”13

The Richmond Afro-American carried a picture of Dr. Martin’s brother B.B. (a co-owner and also a dentist) shaking hands with Linda Bankhead after the deal was announced. The slender, graceful woman (who was not African American) was noted as a former featured singer with jazz great Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra. She and Lulu – along with a dog named Tackie and a pet chicken named Fannie Chee-Chee – would join Bankhead in Brooklyn in early September. Linda said she was only a baseball fan when her husband was pitching.14

Lowenfish continued, “Rickey was happy that Dan Bankhead’s color did not attract overwhelming press attention when the pitcher arrived in Brooklyn. The executive always hoped for the day when merit, and not color of skin, determined a person’s chance for success.”15 However, author Jules Tygiel differed, writing that “[Bankhead] received a terrific workout from photographers and newshounds.”16

Rickey would have preferred to test his new pitcher in the minors first, but he needed a live arm more. The 27-year-old’s NL debut came at Ebbets Field on August 26. One news story estimated that Black fans made up roughly a third of that day’s crowd of 24,069.17. A very nervous Bankhead entered in the second inning in relief of Hal Gregg.

The new Dodger allowed eight runs (all earned) on 10 hits in his 3⅓ innings of work that day. In one of his well-honed turns of phrase, sportswriter Red Smith wrote, “(T)he Pirates launched Bankhead by breaking a Louisville Slugger over his prow.”18 However, the hurler displayed his all-around ability by homering off Pittsburgh’s Fritz Ostermueller in his first NL at-bat.

After the game, Bankhead told pioneer Black sportswriter Sam Lacy, “I think I’ll be okay as soon as this newness wears off. Today it seemed like I was wearing a new glove, new shoes, new hat, everything seemed tight.”19

Dodgers manager Burt Shotton mixed praise (“speed, a good curve, and control”) and criticism (“the boys were calling all his pitches”) in his post-game remarks. He said he “wanted another look before I form an opinion one way or another.”20 Bankhead pitched just three times more over the remainder of the season, though, with no decisions and a 7.20 ERA in 10 innings overall. Nonetheless, he remained on the Dodgers roster for the World Series. He made one appearance as a pinch-runner in Game Six. Bobby Bragan had doubled off the Yankees’ Joe Page to score Carl Furillo and put the Dodgers up 6-5. The future big-league manager recalled what happened next:

“Bankhead would have scored from second a few pitches later when Eddie Stanky singled to right but Dan fell down rounding third and just scrambled back to the bag in time. When Pee Wee Reese singled to center both Dan and Eddie scored to ice the game.”21 (Not quite – it took Al Gionfriddo’s famous catch off Joe DiMaggio to hold the lead.)

In the spring of 1948, the Dodgers trained in the Dominican Republic. It marked the first time that Black and white ballplayers stayed at the same hotel. This was a refreshing experience for Jackie Robinson and Bankhead, not only because of the good treatment at the classy Hotel Jaragua but also thanks to the fans. Robinson said, “They show it every time Dan Bankhead or I walk on the field by cheering and clapping as enthusiastically as if we were one of their native players.”22

News service stories from what was then Ciudad Trujillo stated that Bankhead “was converted into a gardener [outfielder] because of his batting power and speed afoot.”23 The experiment was abandoned, though – the Dodgers assigned Bankhead to their Class B affiliate in Nashua, New Hampshire, and he concentrated on pitching. On July 25, he fired a seven-inning no-hitter against the Springfield Cubs. He blazed his way to a 20-6, 2.35 record with a league-leading 243 strikeouts. His wins also led the New England League, and he barely missed the Triple Crown of pitching, with his ERA behind only Harry Schaeffer’s 2.33.

On August 22, newspapers reported Bankhead’s promotion to St. Paul, the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in the American Association. Two days later, Lula Garrett of the Baltimore Afro-American wrote, “Satchel Paige opines that Dan Bankhead, youngest [sic] member of the Bankhead Baseball Brothers, throws a faster ball than Cleveland’s Bobby Feller.”24 He finished the season in good form, going 4-0 for the Saints with a 3.60 ERA.

Bankhead rejoined Caguas that winter, posting a 9-8 record. In 1949, he was assigned to Brooklyn’s other Triple-A team, the Montreal Royals. Again he won 20 and lost just six, while leading the league in strikeouts (176). Bankhead also led in walks with 170, though, earning the label “Wild Man of the International League.” The bases on balls were no doubt what pumped his ERA up to 3.76. In addition, he batted .323 with a homer and 26 RBIs.

The third-place Royals swept Rochester in the first round of the playoffs and then took four of five from Buffalo to become IL champs. Bankhead won the opener against the Red Wings and the clincher against the Bisons. Despite a sore arm, he added another win in the Little World Series, which the American Association champ, Indianapolis, won, four games to two.

In the winter of 1949-50, after barnstorming in the Southwest with a group of Black players led by Luke Easter, Bankhead was back in Puerto Rico again. He led the Puerto Rican Winter League in strikeouts for the second time, with 131. In addition to his 10-8 record, he hit seven homers. Caguas won the league championship and thus represented Puerto Rico in the second Caribbean Series, which was played in February at Sixto Escobar Stadium in San Juan.

In the second game of the four-team round robin, Bankhead faced ageless veteran Conrado Marrero, the ace of heavily favored Cuba’s staff. Puerto Rico gave Bankhead one run in the second inning, but that was all he needed as he threw a shutout. However, he lost two games to the eventual champion, Panama, including the tiebreaker.

Before the 1950 season opened, Bankhead was the subject of an uncomplimentary story quoting Branch Rickey. Allegedly the Mahatma turned down “a flattering offer from the Braves for the big right-hander. He confidentially told [Boston co-owner] Lou Perini that Bankhead wouldn’t help the Boston club.”25 The Bankhead-to-Boston rumor had been swirling since the prior fall; Rickey had also offered to deal the pitcher that winter to the White Sox.

Still, Bankhead won a job with Brooklyn that spring. He proceeded to get all nine of his NL wins with the Dodgers. His first came in relief of Don Newcombe at the Polo Grounds on April 28. Bankhead took his first four decisions, going all the way versus the Cubs at Ebbets Field on May 24. On June 18, he shut out the Cardinals on six hits at home.

Just when Bankhead looked to be settling in as an important member of the rotation, though, arm problems worsened. On July 8, the New York Times reported, “Dan Bankhead’s trouble is serious and may call for surgery. The Negro has considerable calcification in his shoulder.”26 The shoulder had pained him earlier that season too. He had complained of soreness in his first start on May 4. The root cause was apparently a dislocation suffered at the age of 17.27

Bankhead’s last start that year came on July 31, but he continued to work frequently out of the bullpen. He finished the year with a record of 9-4, 5.50, starting 12 times in 41 appearances. Control was a problem, as he walked 88 in 129⅓ innings.

In the winter of 1950-51, the Bankheads were in the Dominican Republic, where they welcomed son William that March. William stated that Bankhead was playing with the Escogido Leones, one of the four long-running Dominican clubs, a year before professional ball resumed in the country.

Bankhead’s arm really ailed him in 1951. He pitched a total of just 14 innings in seven games for the Dodgers (0-1, 15.43). In his last two appearances, he was shelled for 14 runs and 16 hits in seven innings. On July 24, Brooklyn announced that it had sold his contract to Montreal and brought up Clem Labine from St. Paul to replace him. Bankhead never made it back to the majors. Perhaps his most lasting big-league moment came amid a clubhouse debate, as he imparted a piece of down-home wisdom to his one-time roommate. “Not only are you wrong, Robinson,” said Bankhead, “You are loud wrong.”28

The pitcher offered another reason for his performance in Brooklyn – “financial pressure brought on by an inability to find an apartment that would accept children. He and his family stayed at an expensive hotel suite, which ate up most of his salary. ‘Nobody with an apartment would let me bring in my kids,’ he said. ‘Nobody wanted them. But I did.’”29

Things were not a whole lot better with the Royals. It took Bankhead over a month to pick up his first win in the International League, and he finished at 2-6, 3.91, mainly in relief. He saw some action out of the pen in the playoffs – Montreal again won the pennant – plus two more brief outings as the Milwaukee Brewers took the Little World Series in six games.

Bankhead resumed his Puerto Rican career in 1951-52 with a new club, the Santurce Cangrejeros (Crabbers). His record was 7-1, with a 3.71 ERA – although he had just 40 strikeouts in 70 innings, showing that he was no longer getting batters out with heat. Still, he was “unbeatable down the stretch” as the Crabbers won 16 of their last 20 games to make the playoffs before losing the finals to San Juan.30

Bankhead returned to Montreal for the 1952 season. However, the Dodgers organization released him in July, with a record of 0-1, 6.92. “Plagued with arm trouble, he worked only 13 innings in five games this season.”31 Bankhead then went back to Escogido – the Dominican baseball season was held in the summer from 1951 through 1954 – but he did not last long there.

In August, he had been named the club’s manager, replacing Félix “Fellé” Delgado, who had gone to the US to scout talent. Against the Estrellas Elefantes, Bankhead was trying for his first win against three losses when an aggressive baserunning play backfired. The third baseman had thrown a live ball to the ground arguing with the umpire, who had called Bankhead safe at third. Bankhead broke for the plate, slid in hard, but was out.

“[Catcher Zoilo] Rosario, fuming . . . immediately fired the ball at the Negro pitcher as he headed towards the Lions’ bench, but his aim was inaccurate and he missed. However, Bankhead quickly whirled around, picked up the catcher’s mask and hit Rosario over the head with it, opening a gash that required three stitches. In the free-for-all that followed, Bankhead was knocked out cold. After peace was restored, Rosario and Bankhead were fined and jailed.”32

Later that month, Bankhead was fired for “breaking training, fraternizing with players of another team and failing to show up for practice,” according to club president Paco Martínez Alba (Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo’s brother-in-law). Perhaps a more telling factor was that “the club had been having financial squabbles” with Bankhead.33 This man was always known as a tough negotiator, going back to his Negro League days.

In 1953, Bankhead played for Drummondville in the Canadian Provincial League. Quite a few Black ballplayers were in this league, including (though briefly) Bankhead’s younger brother Garnett. A few big-leaguers were there too, including player-manager Al Gionfriddo, Bankhead’s teammate on the ’47 Dodgers and with Montreal in ’49 and ‘’51. (Gionfriddo’s distinct memory of Bankhead was the way he used to “stamp the hell out of the rubber when he pitched.”34) With the last-place Royals, Bankhead’s batting line was .275-3-28; he pitched a handful of games at most (0-0, 0.00).

Late that July, Drummondville dumped veterans whose salaries were too high for the team’s modest budget.35 Bankhead went to Mexico, where he would spend nearly all of his remaining 13 years in the game. He served mainly in the field for the Monterrey Sultanes (.281-3-12) in 1953, though he also went 1-0, 2.90 in two games as a pitcher, including a complete game.

In the winter of 1953-54, Bankhead played in Mexico’s Liga de la Costa del Pacífico, which was entering its ninth season. His team was the Jalisco Charros, also known by the state’s capital, Guadalajara. Bankhead batted .335 as the first baseman and went 7-5 on the mound. He was named to the All-Star team for the league’s Southern division; that game took place on January 13, 1954. Joining him was Charros catcher Sam Hairston, patriarch of a three-generation big-league family.36

Bankhead stayed in Monterrey for the 1954 season (.273-7-33/2-2, 5.56 in seven pitching appearances). In 1955, the Mexican League entered Organized Baseball at the Double-A level. Bankhead split the season between the Sultanes and Veracruz Águila (combined totals: .316-9-46/0-1, 9.00). In 1956, he again played with two teams, Veracruz and the Mexico City Tigres (combined totals: .288-4-28/1-0, 3.00 in just 6 innings pitched).

In 1957, Bankhead took a step down to the Class C Central Mexican League. With the Aguascalientes Tigres, whose roster also included future Duke University athletic director Tom Butters, he batted .361 with 4 homers and 52 RBIs. He also went 2-2, 6.30 on the mound; Estadio Alberto Romo Chávez was and is a hitter’s ballpark. Butters recalled that the air was thin – Aguascalientes is 6,184 feet above sea level.

There was a gap in Bankhead’s summer career in 1958. William Bankhead remembered seeing his father arrested in Brooklyn that year after a stormy domestic dispute. To the best of William’s knowledge, though, Bankhead and Linda (who died in 2007) never got divorced. Throughout the years in Mexico, “he used to come home and make pit stops.”

Bankhead resumed play that winter with the Puebla Pericos (Parrots) in Mexico’s Veracruz League. He turned up in assorted stories in The Sporting News; little head shots showed he was still a “name.” The Parrots were the league champion, with Bankhead playing first base and pitching. In the spring of 1959, he returned to Veracruz as a player-coach, which likely explains his limited action (.244-0-6/0-0, 0.00).

A relatively stable period of four summers in Puebla then followed; the Parrots franchise was by then in the Mexican League. Bankhead was largely a reserve and pinch-hitter as he entered his 40s. During this time, he appeared in 225 games but amassed only 358 at-bats, with a grand total of one homer and 34 RBIs. His average was .293, driven largely by his .378 mark in 1960 (31-for-82). As a pitcher, his composite record was 24-15, 4.60 – mainly in relief, as he started just six times and pitched just 272 innings across 133 appearances.

In 1960 and 1961, Bankhead’s name occasionally popped up in the American papers, especially in San Antonio. During these two years, the Mexican League teams faced Texas League opponents regularly – 36 games and 24 games for each Mexican League club. The combined leagues were known as the Pan American Association. In August 1961, Bankhead won three games in two days in relief. That fall saw him with Saltillo in the little-known Northern Autumn League, which apparently lasted only one season despite drawing decent crowds thanks to pitchers like Luis Tiant.

Bankhead then wintered with another obscure Mexican circuit, the Bajío (Lowlands) League. He managed the Acámbaro Trains, a club in the state of Guanajuato. Bankhead must have inspired a following, for 100 fans traveled 500 miles to Puebla in August 1962 to cheer for him on Dan Bankhead Day in Puebla. The veteran pitched a complete game and won 13-1, as Alonzo Perry (another ex-Negro Leaguer, then 39) scored Monterrey’s only run on a wild pitch.37

To start the 1962 winter season, Bankhead was manager of Martínez de la Torre in the Veracruz League – but he was fired on November 14. The club was 6-4; there was only a cryptic report saying, “The Sugar Canes’ officials . . . took the action ‘for the good of the club.’”38 So then, after 10 seasons away, he resurfaced in Puerto Rico as a player-coach. He was 3-0 pitching for Caguas, winning both ends of a doubleheader in relief on December 2. A week later, Bankhead was named the club’s interim manager after Preston Gómez resigned on December 9.39 Within three days, though, the Criollos released him and made Jim Rivera manager. Bankhead then joined the Ponce Leones.40

William Bankhead went to the island that winter too. He had fond memories of how his father provided him with a white horse to ride. “I used to ride up into the hills there and shoot at iguanas with a Daisy BB gun,” he said. William recalled that Bankhead left the club after another domestic dispute with Linda. A Criollos teammate, pitcher Julio Navarro, said, “I can’t say whether it did or didn’t happen – I don’t remember anything like that. But he did a hell of a job pitching for an older guy. You tell me he was 42, I thought he was in his 50s.

“He was a good person, but I think he didn’t have much experience managing. Also, our team didn’t look like it had a chance to make the playoffs that year. Just before Christmas, some guys who aren’t from Puerto Rico want to go home, so teams will release them if they’re not winning. It’s also the last date to give them a chance to sign with somebody else.” However, the post-Bankhead Criollos won 24 of their last 32 games, surged from fifth place to second (out of six teams), and made it to the playoff finals.

After his last season with Puebla – he brought along a couple of Puerto Ricans he’d scouted41 – Bankhead moved to the Mexican Central League (Class A) in 1964. With the León Broncos, he put up a remarkable average of .441 with 4 homers and 41 RBIs, while still pitching capably (4-1, 4.20). He was listed as manager for part of that year, along with Cuban Santos Amaro, father of Rubén Amaro and grandfather of Ruben Amaro Jr.

In 1965, Bankhead remained as nonplaying manager of the León ballclub, which then became known as the Diablos Verdes (Green Devils). He led them to a second-place finish. At age 46 in 1966, Bankhead then enjoyed his last hurrah as a player with Reynosa. On June 2, the Broncos hired him away – as manager – from Aguascalientes in the Central League. In 11 games, he went 6-for-14, also posting his last pitching win on July 17. He was 1-0, 4.73 in 19 innings across six relief outings.

Bankhead’s time in baseball then came to an end. Like many men in this position, he really didn’t have another good career option – the game was his life. Much insight on the ensuing period came from Cornelius “Doc” Settles, whose mother, Martha Ann, and aunts Charlene and Essie grew up with Bankhead in Alabama. These good neighbors offered a helping hand.

“It would have been in the mid to late ’60s,” said Settles. “From what I understand, everything started to implode for Dan in Mexico.” William Bankhead stated, “He was pitching more than balls, you know what I mean? Too many kids, too many intimacies. There are several kids down in Mexico that I know of. And you can’t live in a foreign country without money.”

“The nearest oasis was Houston,” Settles continued. “My mom and her sisters weren’t looking for anything. This was just somebody close from home – there was a connection by marriage in there too.

“Dan was facing inner turmoil when he first came to Houston. He was trying to get back on his feet. But he stepped in right when I needed somebody in my life. He was so humble, and he had a down-home sensibility that grounded him. I was just a teenager, and he was always willing to share a few moments with me and my brothers tossing baseballs and playing games. I will never forget Dan Bankhead burning up my hand while trying to catch one of his pitches. Even in his final days Dan could still toss a mean fast ball.

“There’s a photo in Rachel Robinson’s book called An Intimate Portrait on page 92. Jackie is playing cards with Don Newcombe, Campy [Roy Campanella], and Dan. I remember firsthand that Dan also loved playing cards and checkers. He wouldn’t take any prisoners! He would beat us kids in games and laugh afterwards with that sparkle in his eyes and big smile.

“I only wish that I could have grasped who we were hanging out with. I would have done a better job of absorbing every little tidbit. Back then I was too naïve to understand. He would talk about Mexico and the league, how hot it was. He was so fluent in Spanish – he looked Hispanic. His pigmentation was light, and as he got older, he got even lighter. [Note: Garnett Bankhead was listed as a mulatto, as were his sons, in the 1920 census.

“There was a woman living in Mexico too. I just remember vaguely, I don’t remember her name or their child’s, but I met them. She was beautiful. Dan never went into detail about it, though.

“Dan spent his final years working for a small service company delivering food goods and supplies to small businesses and restaurants across Houston. I remember driving over and picking up Dan from his tiny rented apartment that was located upstairs over a garage in Kashmere Gardens, just 10 minutes from our house. He’d have a glove and ball, and he’d be smoking a Camel.”

At some point in the 1970s, Bankhead was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he was in and out of the Veterans Administration hospital in Houston. “His little smoking habit finally caught up with him,” said Doc Settles. “I always thought he’d go back to Mexico, but then he got sicker. You could see him erode. He’d have his ups and downs, but he knew. He just got more and more humble. He was resolved to make peace. Dan’s final days living in Houston were filled with reflection, days of happiness.” Eventually, he succumbed on May 2, 1976 – a day short of his 56th birthday.42

Thanks to the VA, the old Marine was buried under a modest bronze marker in Houston National Cemetery. “I don’t remember if any of his old teammates came to the funeral,” Settles said. “It was a small and quiet event. I don’t think he was in touch with them. It was in the past and he didn’t dwell on it.”

Bankhead’s name surfaced in 2006 in a dispute between his sons William and Dan Herbert Bankhead (born in 1949, later known as Dan Al-Mateen) over the pitcher’s memorabilia. William alleged that the items came into the possession of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum by improper means. A legal battle ensued.43

The less said of this episode, however, the better. It’s best to remember Dan Bankhead as a talented player, a pioneer, and for the goodness in him. William Bankhead remembered once coming to blows with his father, on the street in front of Linda’s residence in Brooklyn Heights. Yet later, before the younger man went to serve in Vietnam in 1971, Dan said “I am sorry,” giving his son a kiss. He bequeathed William the Smith & Wesson pistol he got upon enlisting in the Marines. William also remembered how his father taught him to love and respect animals, birds, and other children.

Doc Settles summed it up nicely too. “He had a personality you wanted to be around. He left you with positive things. I was able to enjoy his laughter and his jokes and his smiles. I just wish we knew more about what he went through as an African American baseball trailblazer.”

Acknowledgments

This biography was originally published in 2009. An abridged version was published in The Team That Forever Changed Baseball and America: The 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers (University of Nebraska Press, 2012). This updated version was published in 2024.

Special thanks for their memories to Doc Settles (e-mail exchanges and phone discussions starting in June 2008) and William F. Bankhead (e-mail exchanges and phone discussions starting in September 2008).

Continued thanks also to Julio Navarro (telephone interview, 2008) and SABR member Jorge Colón Delgado (additional Puerto Rican statistics).

Image credits

Dodgers headshot: courtesy of walteromalley.com

Marines headshot: courtesy of www.mpma28.com

Watercolor: courtesy of Doc Settles, Artist

Sources

Obituary: “Dan Bankhead, 54 [sic], Ex-Dodger, Is Dead.” New York Times, May 7, 1976: 95. Note that The Sporting News sometimes presented Bankhead’s year of birth as 1921.

Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff. The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, Inc., 1997).

José A. Crescioni Benítez, El Béisbol Profesional Boricua (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Aurora Comunicación Integral, Inc., 1997).

Pedro Treto Cisneros, editor, Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano (Mexico City, Mexico: Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V., 1998).

James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994).

John Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House Publishers, 2001).

Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase: The East-West All-Star Game, 1933-1953, Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Professional Baseball Player Database V6.0

www.paperofrecord.com (various small pieces of information from The Sporting News and El Informador)

www.ancestry.com (census information on Garnett Bankhead)

www.findagrave.com

Social Security Death Index

Notes

1 Larry Moffi and Jonathan Kronstadt, Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers 1947-1959 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994), 13.

2 Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Ballantine Publishing Group, 1997), 184.

3 Joe Posnanski, The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007), 144.

4 Red Barber, 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1982), 280.

5 Moffi and Kronstadt, 11.

6 Brent Kelley, The Negro Leagues Revisited (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2000), 89.

7 Kelley, 118.

8 From the online history of the Montford Point Marines, webmaster James Stewart Jr.: http://www.mpma28.com/newsletters/newsletter/2854121/44177.htm

9 “Barons Win by 9-0, 13-0; Triumph Over the Philadelphia Stars and Black Yankees,” New York Times, June 5, 1944: 12.

10 “Wife, Daughter, Dog, Chicken Root for Dan,” Richmond Afro-American, September 6, 1947: 1.

11 Leslie Heaphy, The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2002), 173. See also note 10.

12 Dave Bloom, “Beale Street’s Dancing Over Its Boy, Dan,” The Sporting News, September 3, 1947: 7. Seamheads shows a record of 2-1.

13 Lee Lowenfish, Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 433. Two notes: the won-lost record cited here and in The Sporting News conflicts with the 4-4 mark shown in The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues. Also, Bankhead’s wife is referred to as “Charlotte.”

14 “Wife, Daughter, Dog, Chicken Root for Dan.”

15 Lowenfish, Branch Rickey, 433.

16 Jules Tygiel, in Sport and the Color Line: Black Athletes and Race Relations in Twentieth Century America, editors Patrick Miller and David Wiggins (New York: Routledge, 2004), 184.

17 “Bucs Win; Bankhead Homers,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, August 27, 1947: 24.

18 Red Smith, “Views of Sport,” New York Herald-Tribune; date uncertain. Reprinted in Baltimore Afro-American, September 6, 1947: 13.

19 Sam Lacy, “Bankhead Knocked Out in First Dodger Game,” Richmond Afro-American, August 30, 1947: 14.

20 Joe Reichler (Associated Press), “Negro Hurler to Get New Chance,” August 27, 1947.

21 Bobby Bragan, “Bragan Recalls Series Hit,” Evening Standard (Uniontown, Pennsylvania), July 10, 1965: 7.

22 Michael E. Lomax, in Race and Sport: The Struggle for Equality On and Off the Field, ed. Charles K. Ross (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 66. Originally in New Jersey Afro American and Pittsburgh Courier, March 13, 1948.

23 Leo H. Petersen, “Youth, Speed and Fight To Mark 1948 Dodger Team,” Lima (Ohio) News, March 29, 1948: 11.

24 Bill James and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers (New York: Fireside, 2004), 125.

25 “Branch Rickey May Be Forced to Eat Words.” Syracuse Herald-American, March 19, 1950: D1.

26 Roscoe McGowen, “Simmons Checks Brooklyn, 7-2, Behind 4-Run Onslaught in Sixth,” New York Times, July 8, 1950.

27 Moffi and Kronstadt, 12.

28 Dave Anderson, “Nice Wrong Isn’t Really So Terrible,” New York Times, February 27, 1998.

29 Anderson, “Nice Wrong Isn’t Really So Terrible.”

30 Thomas E. Van Hyning, The Santurce Crabbers (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1999, 38.

31 Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette, July 20, 1952: 29.

32 Alejandro Martínez, “Dan Bankhead Fined, Jailed in Dominican Republic Riot,” The Sporting News, August 13, 1952: 30.

33 Alejandro Martínez, “Bankhead Fired as Manager in Dominican Loop,” The Sporting News, September 3, 1952: 32.

34 Peter Golenbock, Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers (New York: McGraw-Hill/Contemporary, 2000 edition), 157.

35 Scott Baillie, “Happy Once Again: Al Gionfriddo Now Playing for Ventura,” Daily Review (Hayward, California), May 20, 1954: 10.

36 Manuel de Jesús Sortillón Valenzuela, www.historiadehermosillo.com/BASEBALL/Menuff.htm (online history of Mexico’s Liga de la Costa del Pacífico). One may also find pictures of and stories about Bankhead and Sam Hairston in the Guadalajara newspaper El Informador.

37 “Bankhead Stars on Big Day,” The Sporting News, August 18, 1962: 39.

38 Roberto Hernández, “Bankhead Fired as Manager; Pinkston Fractures Arm,” The Sporting News, December 1, 1962: 41.

39 Miguel Frau, “Orsino Steps High as Candidate for Triple-Title King,” The Sporting News, December 22, 1962: 29.

40 Miguel Frau, “New Skipper Rivera Spurs Caguas to Winning Splurge,” The Sporting News, December 29, 1962: 33.

41 Roberto Hernández, “Season Opens First in Mexico; Sultans Favored to Repeat,” The Sporting News, April 13, 1963: 48.

42 “Bankhead Dies,” Charleston (West Virginia) Daily Mail, May 7, 1976: 29. Of interest in this story is a reference to a wife coming up from Mexico.

43 Charles Emerick, “Negro Leagues museum brought into family feud, lawsuit over memorabilia,” Daily Record (St. Louis, Missouri), October 3, 2006.

Samuel Howard Bankhead was most likely born on September 18, 1910, in Sulligent, Alabama.4 His father, Garnett Bankhead Sr., labored in the coal mines and played first base in the Cotton Belt League, while his mother, Arie Armstrong, gave birth to five boys and two girls. Sam worked alongside his father loading coal until baseball led him to a better life.

All four of Bankhead’s younger brothers played in the Negro Leagues. Fred was a slick-fielding second baseman from 1936 to 1948, making an All-Star appearance in 1942. Garnett played for three seasons from 1947 to 1949, including a short stint on the 1948 champion Homestead Grays with his brother Sam as manager. Joe had the shortest career, taking the mound a few times with the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, and Dan became the first Black pitcher in major-league history when he took the mound on August 26, 1947. for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dan also hit a home run in his first major-league at-bat, but his success was short-lived; he was out of the majors by 1951.

Sam Bankhead punched his ticket out of the coal mines and into his Negro League career in 1929 with the Birmingham Black Barons, but he did not get much playing time as an 18-year-old rookie. From 1930 to 1932 he bounced around with Birmingham and the Louisville Black Caps until he finally found a home and a starting position with the Nashville Elite Giants.

In 1933 Negro League baseball introduced its inaugural East-West All-Star Game, which has been called “the pinnacle of any Negro League season,” and described as “an All-Star game and a World Series all wrapped in one spectacle.”5 The annual games were so popular and star-studded that many observers, including Negro League historian Larry Lester, have credited them with helping to integrate Organized Baseball. Bankhead, as he often did in high-pressure situations, shined in these contests. A nine-time all-star at five different positions, Sam had 12 hits in 31 at-bats with 7 runs, 4 RBIs, and 2 stolen bases. He is also credited with scoring the first run in an East-West All-Star Game. Coincidentally, the National and American Leagues also debuted the major-league All-Star Game in 1933, but by the early 1940s it was often being outdrawn by its Negro League counterpart.6

After a solid season in 1934, his last with the Nashville Elite Giants, Bankhead moved on to one of the greatest teams in Negro League history, the Pittsburgh Crawfords. The 1935 Crawfords squad included future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Judy Johnson, and Cool Papa Bell. Mark Koenig, shortstop for the 1927 New York Yankees, compared the ’35 Crawfords favorably to his legendary World Series-winning team.7 Bankhead made a seamless transition into this team of superstars, hitting .298 and playing a starring role as one of the Raindrop Rangers, a trio of speedy outfielders with Sam playing alongside Bell and Jimmie Crutchfield. Fanciful legend had it that the three players were so fast that they could keep a field dry by catching the raindrops before they hit the ground.8 The Crawfords capped off their magical season with a hard-fought seven-game victory over the New York Cubans in the Negro League World Series. Bankhead had a solid Series with seven hits, including a clutch single, stolen base, and run scored that gave Pittsburgh the lead in the seventh inning of the seventh game.9

The Crawfords began a steady decline in 1936. Bankhead had an off-year, hitting just .204. Though the Crawfords still ended up winning the Negro National League championship, no agreement could be reached with the Negro American League to play a World Series that year. After the season Gus Greenlee, owner of the Crawfords and creator of the East-West All-Star Game, was forced to cut payroll and players due to his involvement in racketeering. The Crawfords hung on through the 1938 season, but they were a mere shell of the team that dominated Negro League baseball from 1932 to 1936.

In 1937 Greenlee’s misfortunes turned into a boon for Crawfords players Bankhead, Bell, Gibson, and Satchel Paige, as they were all recruited to play in the Dominican Republic for dictator Rafael Trujillo’s Dragones team. Trujillo, a corrupt and violent leader, paid exorbitant salaries to these players in order to field a winning team to gain favor in the coming election. His two political opponents also fielded highly competitive teams made up largely of players raided from Negro League squads. The pressure on the Trujillo players was such that they felt that winning the championship was a life-or-death endeavor. The team would often be locked up at night to ensure that they would be in tip-top shape for the next day’s game.10

Bankhead posted a .309 batting average with 21 hits in 68 at-bats, but it was Gibson’s .453 average and Paige’s 8-2 record that led the Dragones to the championship game against San Pedro de Macoris. In that game Bankhead had the most dramatic at-bat of his career. The Dragones were trailing 5-4 in the seventh inning against Negro League All-Star pitcher Chet Brewer when Bankhead strode to the plate with Bell on first base. Bell recalled:

“Brewer knew Bankhead was a great clutch hitter and tried to be careful with him. Too careful. The count went to three and one. Brewer came in with some smoke, but he got it high. I thought Bankhead would drive the pitch, but he had a big cut and fouled it back. Then he connected on the three-two pitch. He was a line-drive hitter, and this one went way over the left field fence. We were pretty happy.”11

Paige retired the final six batters, five on strikeouts, to ensure the victory. “I guess we helped Trujillo stay in office,” claimed Bell,12 but the players could not get out of the Dominican Republic fast enough.

Bankhead, like many other Negro League players, treated baseball like a year-round job, and the winter of 1937 found him playing for the Santa Clara Leopards in Cuba. This turned out to be one of his finest seasons as he led the league in several categories, including a .366 batting average, 89 hits, 5 triples, and 47 runs scored.13 The Leopards finished with a 44-18 record and stood in first place in the final league standings.14

The year 1937 proved to be a busy one for Bankhead as he also married Helen M. Hall on February 25. The two had a daughter, Brenda, in 1939, and a son, Anthony, in 1941. Anthony was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1970 and died at the age of 29. Brenda’s fate is unknown, and Helen died on October 10, 1985 in Pittsburgh.

Bankhead was known as Hall of Famer Josh Gibson’s best friend and confidant.15 Josh Gibson Jr. had this to say about their friendship: “I know that as far back as I can remember, Sammy was a constant. I don’t think they were inseparable, ’cause my father didn’t get that close to nobody. But they clicked out of mutual respect.”16 Unfortunately the two were also known for their legendary drinking prowess. Stories of drinking contests that lasted long into the night, drinking on buses, between doubleheaders, and sometimes even during games, can be found in every Gibson biography and article where Bankhead is mentioned. In 1947 Bankhead was managing in Caracas, Venezuela, when he received a telegram announcing Gibson’s death. All-Star catcher, Bill “Ready” Cash was there and had this to say: “Bankhead went out that night, got drunk, came in and tore up everything in his room. They had to send him home.”17

Bankhead mended fences with Gus Greenlee in time to join the Pittsburgh Crawfords for the 1938 season. Greenlee had been upset that many of his star players had been lured to the Dominican Republic and had chosen money over loyalty. The Crawfords lacked star power that year as Gibson headed to the Homestead Grays while Bell and Paige played in the Mexican League. The Crawfords finished in fourth place with a 24-16 league record that placed them 4½ games behind Gibson’s first-place Grays.

The year 1939 marked the end of the great Pittsburgh Crawfords franchise, as Greenlee Field was demolished and replaced with housing projects.18 Bankhead started the season with the relocated but short-lived Toledo Crawfords; however, he quickly jumped to the Homestead Grays to play second base with his old friend Josh Gibson. Bankhead hit a solid .292, as the Grays won the Negro National League pennant, but lost the Negro League World Series to future Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella and his Baltimore Elite Giants. Bankhead went 7-for-23 in the series for a .304 batting average.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the integration of Black players into Organized Baseball was a hot topic for both Black and White sportswriters. Bankhead’s name often came up in such discussions. In 1936 William G. Nunn, city editor for the Pittsburgh Courier, wrote, “We don’t believe the majors can produce three outfielders with the all-around ability of ‘Cool Papa,’ Bill Wright or Bankhead.”19 Two years later White sportswriter Jimmy Powers of the New York Daily News wrote about seven Negro League players who would guarantee the New York Giants a pennant and included Bankhead as his starting center fielder.20 Even White superstar players like Honus Wagner, Dizzy Dean, and Paul Waner went to bat for integration, but their cries fell on the deaf ears of antiquated thinkers like Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith, Philadelphia Athletics owner Connie Mack, and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.21 Sadly, the window of time closed on Negro baseball legends like Gibson, (Buck) Leonard, Bell, Bankhead, and many others.

In the decade preceding Jackie Robinson’s arrival in the major leagues, more than 100 players from the Negro Leagues played in Mexico.22 Mexican business mogul and multimillionaire Jorge Pasquel was a big reason why. Pasquel, a strong and fearless leader,23 wanted to turn the Mexican League into baseball’s third major league. He lured dozens of Black players south of the border by offering them salaries that were two to four times greater than what they were making in the States.

In 1940 Bankhead signed with the Monterrey Carta Blanco, playing shortstop and leading the league in stolen bases with 32. He had 122 hits in 384 at-bats for a .315 average, but his team finished the year nine games behind Pasquel’s championship club, the Vera Cruz Azules.24 The Azules fielded one of the most impressive lineups in baseball history with Bell, Gibson, Ray Dandridge, Leon Day, Martin Dihigo, and Willie Wells, each of whom eventually received enshrinement in Cooperstown.

Bankhead signed with Monterrey again in 1941, which turned out to be career year for him as he tore up the league with 142 hits in 405 at-bats for a stellar .351 average. He hit 8 home runs, scored 74 times, stole 19 bases, and drove home 85 runs.25 In spite of Bankhead’s batting prowess, the Monterrey team finished in last place with a 43-59 record, 24 games behind the repeating champion Azules.26

At the conclusion of the 1941 Mexican League season, All-Star catcher Quincy Trouppe formed a barnstorming team that played throughout the United States. The team was called the Mexican League All Stars and included the familiar names of Bell, Dandridge, Wells, Gibson, and Bankhead. The team won all 10 of its games before disbanding for lack of financial support.27 The well-traveled Bankhead then finished off the year by playing for the Ponce Leones in Puerto Rico.

Bankhead returned to the Negro Leagues with the Homestead Grays in 1942. Garnett Blair, pitcher for the Grays, said:

“Sam Bankhead to me was an outstanding player. He played shortstop and he would go behind third to get it and throw you out waist high across the diamond. He could not only play short, he could play second, third, he could play outfield, he could pitch, and he could catch. He was all around, so anytime I was pitching I said if that ball goes to Sam Bankhead, fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, let it go there because if he got his glove on it, he was going to throw you out.”28

Bankhead batted .283 while playing shortstop for the first-place Grays. On July 21, 1942, the Mansfield (Ohio) News Journal credited the Grays with a 79-4 record that included exhibition games.29 The team reached the Negro League World Series but was quickly dismantled by Paige and the Kansas City Monarchs in five games.30

All the stars aligned for the Homestead Grays and Sam Bankhead in 1943, as the Grays finished the year with a 44-15 league record. Bankhead was second in the batting title race with an otherworldly .483 average.31 The Grays won a hard-fought eight-game Negro League World Series against the Birmingham Black Barons.32 With the Grays trailing 4-2 and two outs in the eighth inning, Bankhead delivered a clutch single to drive in what turned out to be the Series-winning runs.33

In what must have seemed like a foregone conclusion to the rest of the league, the Homestead Grays easily finished in first place in 1944 and 1945. Bankhead hit .345 in 1944 but slumped to .262 in 1945. The 1944 team once again met the Black Barons in the World Series and easily dispatched them in five games this time. Bankhead went 7-for-18 (.388) in the Series. The 1945 Series was a different story for the Grays as they were swept by future major leaguer Sam Jethroe and the Cleveland Buckeyes. In keeping with his subpar 1945 season, Bankhead had an uncharacteristically bad Series: 1-for-16 (.063).

The 1946 and 1947 seasons were both disappointments for the proud Homestead Grays. The 1946 team fell to third place with a losing record of 27-28, with Bankhead hitting .265. The 1947 squad finished in second place with a more respectable 38-27 record but Bankhead’s average dipped to an anemic .246. A Grays team composed of aging veterans, Jackie Robinson’s integration of major-league baseball, and the tragic death of Josh Gibson on January 20, 1947, seemed to spell the beginning of the end for the Homestead Grays.

The 1948 season turned out to be a last hurrah for both the Homestead Grays and the NNL. The press was paying far less attention to the Negro Leagues by this point, but it is known that the Grays defeated the Baltimore Elite Giants in the NNL playoffs and met the Birmingham Black Barons in the Negro League World Series for the third time in six years. The Black Barons had knocked off a strong Kansas City Monarchs team in the NAL playoffs and featured a 17-year-old legend in the making, Willie Mays.

Bankhead helped lead the Grays to a five-game championship victory. After the series ended, the NNL disbanded, which meant that the 1948 Negro League World Series had been the last of its kind.

The Homestead Grays still fielded teams for the 1949 and 1950 seasons, with Bankhead staying on as player-manager. By all accounts these teams were highly competitive, with newspapers reporting records of 97-15 and 64-8 for the 1949 and 1950 seasons respectively.34 In 11 box scores found from the 1950 season, an aging Bankhead banged out 18 hits in 45 at-bats.35 The decline of the Negro Leagues continued apace, however, and the Grays folded after the 1950 season.

After Josh Gibson’s death in 1947, Sam became a surrogate father for 16-year-old Josh Gibson Jr., who played second base and third base for Bankhead’s 1949 and 1950 Grays teams; however, Josh Jr. could not escape his father’s enormous shadow. In 1951 Sam took Josh Jr. with him north of the border to play in the Class-C Canadian Provincial League for the Pittsburgh Pirates-affiliated Farnham Pirates. Canada was where Bankhead attained one of baseball’s most underappreciated milestones by becoming the first black manager for a mostly White professional baseball team. Josh Jr. did not fare as well: While playing for Farnham, he broke his ankle sliding into second base, effectively ending his baseball career.

After spending the 1951 season in Canada, Sam and Josh Jr. returned home to the Hill District in Pittsburgh and took jobs working side by side for the Pittsburgh Sanitation Department. Josh Jr. had this to say about their experience together: “I worked with him. I listened to him still, like playin’ baseball. He was one of the smartest guys ’cause he read all the time.”36

Bankhead’s post-baseball life has led to speculation, most notably by Negro League historian John Holway,37 that the character Troy Maxson, from August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences was based on Sam. Like Bankhead, Maxson was a bitter ex-Negro League star who worked on a garbage truck in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Bankhead was bitter that he never got the chance to play in baseball’s major leagues,38 and he refused to go to baseball games in his later years, even missing the chance to see his younger brother, Dan, pitch for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In a 1971 interview, Bankhead had this to say about major-league baseball: “After I quit, I never went to see a game again. I am not jealous, but I cannot be a fan.”39 Sam preferred to stay close to home, playing cards with his buddies, endlessly talking about the old days, and – most of all – drinking. Bankhead’s brother Fred died in 1972, and his youngest brother, Dan, died in 1976, events that made Sam lean on the bottle even more heavily than before. While the exact circumstances of Sam Bankhead’s death are not known, it is known that he was shot in the head and killed on the night of July 24, 1976.40 Whether he was shot by a friend after an argument in a downtown hotel, or shot in self-defense by a co-worker at the William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh, one thing is certain: Negro League legend Sam Bankhead’s life came to an unceremonious end at the age of 65.

In 2005 the Washington Post honored Negro League legend Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe upon the occasion of his 102nd birthday and asked him, “What player do you think of when you think of the Negro Leagues?” Radcliffe responded, “Bankhead. He was a great player.”41 Indeed, Bankhead had been picked as the first-team utility player as early as 1952 in a Pittsburgh Courier poll that named the all-time Negro League All-Stars.42 He was universally respected as a player and manager and continually rose to the occasion when playing with and against the greatest players in Negro League history.

Bankhead would have made a tremendous major-leaguer. By all accounts he was an exceptional fielder, a speed demon on the basepaths, and a skilled batsman, as his lifetime .289 batting average attests.43 If nonleague statistics are included, then his average shoots up to well above .300. Bankhead is also credited with a .301 average against White major leaguers in barnstorming games.44

As of 2025, there have been 351 people elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame. Negro Leaguers have been grossly underrepresented, with only 44 players or executives honored with plaques thus far. When examining the scope of his entire career, it is not hard to envision a place for Sam Bankhead in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.

Sources

All statistics, unless otherwise noted, are from:

Holway, John B. The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House Publishers, 2001).

Notes

1 John B. Holway, Black Giants (Springfield, Virginia: Lord Fairfax Press, 2010), 92.

2 Holway, Black Giants, 92.

3 Holway, Black Giants, 92.

4 Conflicting sources have Bankhead being born on September 18, 1905, in Empire, Alabama, but the 1910 birthdate shows up on both the US Social Security Death Index and on his gravestone in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania.

5 Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 1.

6 Lester, 1.

7 Jim Bankes, The Pittsburgh Crawfords (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2001), 148.

8 Lester, 88.

9 John B. Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House Publishers, 2001), 321.

10 John B. Holway, Josh and Satch: The Life and Times of Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige (New York: Meckler Publishing, 1991), 90.

11 Bankes, 110.

12 Bankes, 110.

13 Dr. Layton Revel and Luis Munoz, Forgotten Heroes: Samuel “Sam” Bankhead (Carrollton, Texas: Center for Negro League Research, 2011), 23.

14 Revel and Munoz, 23.

15 Brad Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 171, 274.

16 Mark Ribowsky, The Power and the Darkness: The Life of Josh Gibson in the Shadows of the Game (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 164.

17 Brent Kelley, Voices From the Negro Leagues: Conversations With 52 Baseball Standouts (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1998), 145.

18 Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues, 356.

19 Lester, 89.

20 Lester, 109-110.

21 Holway, Josh and Satch, 151-155.

22 John Virtue, South of the Color Barrier (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2008), 11.

23 Virtue, 12.

24 Virtue, 85.

25 Revel and Munoz, 11.

26 Revel and Munoz, 11.

27 Revel and Munoz, 12.

28 Larry Lester and Sammy J. Miller, Black Baseball in Pittsburgh (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2001), 75.

29 Revel and Munoz, 12.

30 Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues, 398-399.

31 Tetelo Vargas of the New York Cubans hit .484.

32 Game Two ended in a tie.

33 Holway, Josh and Satch, 171.

34 Revel and Munoz,19.

35 Revel and Munoz,19.

36 Brent Kelley, The Negro Leagues Revisited: Conversations With 66 More Baseball Heroes (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2000), 258.

37 Holway, Black Giants, 92.

38 August Wilson, Fences (New York: Plume, 1986).

39 Holway, Black Giants, 97.

40 Holway, Black Giants, 97.

41 “Ex-Washington Player Goes Back a Few Years,” Washington Post, April 12, 2005. washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/2005/04/12/ex-washington-player-goes-back-a-few-years/4a2faf00-9223-4718-b46c-e1b8e0213a6b/?utm_term=.66be349249e0. Accessed December 31, 2016.

42 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graff Publishers, Inc., 1994), 52.

43 Holway, Black Giants, 99.

44 Holway, Black Giants, 101.

While his lifetime record was an even 69-69, he earned a page in the record books when he threw only 58 pitches for the Braves in a complete game. It was a 2-0 win over Bucky Walters and the Cincinnati Reds in a one hour, 15 minute affair the evening of August 10, 1944, at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. During the historic outing Barrett’s pitching included 13 groundouts, five fly balls, three popups in fair territory, four foul pop outs, and two line-drive outs. Barrett threw an average of two offerings per batter faced, giving up singles to Gee Walker and Eddie Miller. Known for his fast pace on the mound, the redhead faced only 29 batters and neither walked nor struck out a man. According to his son Bob Barrett, when Red was asked how it was that this game went so fast, “He would always answer that the other pitcher was working just as fast, and without him the record would never have been set.”¹

A lesser-known fact about the fun-loving and vocally gifted Barrett is that just two pitches nine months apart may have separated him from a plaque in Cooperstown. Twice he came within a single toss of a perfect game. On September 2, 1945, in a game Barrett pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals, Lennie Merullo of the Cubs made the only hit, in the third inning, and was the only baserunner. Merullo was caught stealing; the final score was 4-0, and it was the redhead’s 20^th victory of the season. The following June 6, the Phillies’ Del Ennis celebrated his 21^st birthday by singling in the eighth inning off Red, and no other batter reached first base. Barrett had retired 22 batters in a row before the Ennis hit. The 7-0 victory was Barrett’s first win of the 1946 season.

Red Barrett was born February 14, 1915, in Santa Barbara, California, one of four children of Joe Barrett, a rancher, and Josephine Barrett. At an early age, Red excelled in track and field as well as baseball. Simi High School had only 69 students and, he told a sportswriter years later, there was no football team. “The school would not let us play football because there weren’t enough able-bodied boys,” Barrett said. “The farmers were afraid the boys would get hurt and they would have to do the chores themselves instead of their sons; consequently we played baseball.”²

After graduating, Barrett played semipro ball for a team in Reseda, California, and then competed in a tryout camp with 500 players for 17 spots on the Los Angeles Angels’ Western Association Class C team in Ponca City, Oklahoma. He made the cut, and in 1935 signed with Ponca City and registered a 15-12 record.

The next year, however, he dropped to 5-12 and was released by manager Mike Gazella, who thought “Red was too screwy.”³ Barrett wired Joe Magota, president and owner of the Muskogee Reds, a Cincinnati farm team in the same Western Association, and promised him that if signed he would help the team win the pennant. Muskogee did win the pennant in 1937, with Barrett recording 24 victories plus two more in the playoffs, chalking up 213 strikeouts against just 49 walks, and posting a 2.85 ERA. During that season, he faced Ponca City seven times and won six of the games. Barrett later commented, “It was a lucky day for me when I got away from the (Ponca City) Angels, and a lucky day for Cincinnati when it got me, because if ever there was a major league pitcher it’s Red Barrett.”⁴ In 1937 he was with Muskogee of the Class C Western Association when his contract was purchased by Cincinnati. Late that season, he made his major league debut, appearing in the second game of a September 15 doubleheader against Brooklyn. He pitched 6 1/3 innings, allowing five hits and just one earned run.

In 1938, the Reds optioned Barrett to their Syracuse team in the International League, where he won 16 games with only three losses and a league-leading ERA of 2.34. His moundmates ranked second, third, and fourth in ERA. Near season’s end, the big-league club brought him up again, and on August 31 he defeated Brooklyn, 9-3, allowing three runs and eight hits under the lights at Crosley Field. He followed that first victory with another complete game win, a seven-hitter over St. Louis.

Red started the ’39 season with Cincinnati, but after appearing in only one game he was sent to Indianapolis of the American Association, where he recorded a 16-12 record and an ERA of 3.41. The next year, 1940, was another year in the minors with a short stint in Cincinnati, where he pitched a total of three innings in three games and chalked up one victory without a defeat. During the four-year period 1937-1940, Barrett pitched 44 innings in the big leagues and won three games without a loss. From all indications, Barrett was not the most popular player with his managers; this may have led to fewer opportunities.

Barrett outlined his view on pitching to Los Angeles Times sportswriter Bob Ray in a 1938 interview: “I’m no strike-outer. These strikeout pitchers are chumps in my book. Me, I try to make them hit that first ball. After all, those other guys out there are supposed to work too. If everybody in business was like me there wouldn’t be so many people out of jobs. My idea is to throw as few pitches as possible. Even when you strike out a batter it generally takes four to seven, and sometimes even more pitches. I’d rather get that batter out on one pitch and save my arm. I am a control, and if you don’t mind my saying it, smart pitcher.”⁵

Red’s off-field work during his minor league career included a job as a guard at a Cincinnati roller skating rink and another as a salesman in a sporting goods store. He was also quick with a song, and when he appeared at Cincinnati’s Moonlight Gardens in September 1938, he was spotted in the audience by famed bandleader Tommy Dorsey, who called the right-hander up to sing “Please Be Kind” and “The One Rose” to an appreciative crowd of 3,000. The 1939 National League Green Book described Barrett as the “Sorrel thrush of the pitching mound, sweet singer in lighter moments, tough man on the twirling tee.”

Barrett’s 5-13 record in 1940 with Indianapolis was the poorest of his career, but in 1941, hurling for Birmingham of the Southern Association, he rebounded with 20 wins — tops in the Southern Association (he lost 16). On August 17, he pitched in a twin bill against Knoxville, winning both games, 9-1 and 5-2. Barrett did not reach the majors in either 1941 or 1942, even after, in 1942, duplicating his 1941 total with a league-leading 20-win season at Syracuse, this time with just 12 defeats. His 20^th victory was a one-hitter over Jersey City. Pitching his best ball to date, Red had an ERA of 2.05 in 1942, also leading the league in starts (34); shutouts (7); complete games (25); innings pitched (268); strikeouts (114); and longest winning streak (7). Not surprisingly, he was named the International League’s Most Valuable Player, the first Syracuse Chief to win the honor. Forty-six years later, on July 25, 1998, Charles Henry Barrett was posthumously voted in as a member of the first class in the Syracuse Chiefs’ Wall of Fame.

It must have been a relief to Barrett when the Boston Braves purchased his contract from the Reds on September 30, 1942. Boston gave him the shot Cincinnati never did. In 1943, at the age of 28, Barrett finally played his first full season in the majors. He pitched in 38 games with a record of 12-18 and a respectable earned run average of 3.18. The Braves finished that season in sixth place with a 68-85 record. Barrett won his first game on April 29 against the New York Giants — he gave up six singles in a 5-2, complete-game victory at the Polo Grounds. His own single aided in the win, driving in two eighth-inning runs. During the season he also bested Cincinnati ace Bucky Walters three times.

Barrett’s first year in Boston, 1943, was manager Casey Stengel’s last season at the helm of the Braves. Stengel once related a story of how he counseled Barrett on pitching to slugger Stan Musial. “Feed the eager kid a slow pitch,” Stengel instructed his right-hander. Barrett followed orders and Musial hit the pitch out of sight. An angry Barrett snarled at Casey, “You don’t know how to pitch to him.” Stengel thought a moment and then retorted, “Lemme tell you somethin’. We still don’t know how to pitch to him.”⁶

On July 12, 1943, before 12,000 spectators at Braves Field, Barrett pitched to both Ted Williams and Babe Ruth during Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin’s annual charity field day. Ruth led a military service All-Star team that faced the Braves. Before the game, won by Ruth’s All-Stars 9-8, Ruth and Williams attempted to put on a long-range batting duel for the fans, with Barrett serving up batting practice lobs. Williams sent three balls into the right-field stands, while the 48-year-old Bambino, hampered by an old knee injury, was unable to clout a ball out of the playing confines.

Barrett finished 1944 with a 9-16 tally, appearing in 42 games and pitching 230 1/3 innings during another sixth-place season. Amid the dismal record and a 4.06 ERA, his highlight was the 58-pitch win over the Reds. 

Barrett continued to pursue his off-field singing career while with the Braves, winning first prize in Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge contest with his song “So You Want to Lead a Band.”⁷ He followed this with a two-week engagement in Boston singing with the Sammy Kaye Orchestra.

The right-hander seemed headed for another losing year in 1945 — with a 2-3 record and lofty 4.74 ERA in mid-May — when he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in a “throw-in” deal, with the Braves paying $60,000 and Barrett for disgruntled Cardinals pitching ace Mort Cooper. Cooper and owner Sam Breadon had a long-festering salary dispute and the St. Louis owner was happy to exchange the high-priced Cooper for the Boston journeyman. One columnist commented on the sale, “There was nothing to do but get rid of the troublemaker, even if the Cardinals received nobody more impressive than the 30-year-old Barrett.”⁸ Barrett himself quipped, “The Cardinals should have thrown in Kurowski,” a reference to the Cardinals’ slugging third baseman Whitey Kurowski.⁹

The self-confident hurler’s shift to St. Louis proved to be a career-saving move for the redhead. He won 21 games and lost nine for the Cards, and directed them to a second-place finish with a 95-59 record behind the Chicago Cubs. He led the league in complete games (24); victories (23); and innings pitched (284 2/3). Dan Daniel, a columnist for the New York World Telegram, wrote, “Barrett is not endowed with a lot of stuff. He isn’t fast, his curve ball is not especially baffling. He has no particularly elusive delivery but he jitters the hitter into a state of agitation.” Barrett explained his newfound success by saying, “The difference between the Cardinals and the Braves is that the Cards are fast enough to catch line drives hit off me.”¹⁰ Obviously not superstitious, Barrett chose the number 13 for his uniform when he joined the Cardinals in 1945, the same number he would later wear with the pennant-winning Braves in ’48.

Barrett defeated every club in the National League at least twice in 1945, including a 4-0 record over the New York Giants. The light-hitting pitcher’s bat also came to life when he slapped a two-bagger against the left-field wall in Boston good for two RBIs to help him beat his old teammates, 8-4, on August 21. He was named to the All-Star Team and was third in the MVP voting, trailing the Cubs’ Phil Cavaretta and Boston’s Tommy Holmes. Barrett was philosophical about his All-Star status, recalling, “I made the All-Star team in 1945, the only time the All-Star team never played a game because wartime gas rationing prevented travel.”¹¹ Adding to his workload, after the season, he toured with a group of National Leaguers to play before 225,000 troops on a USO tour of islands in the South Pacific. Among the players on the 22-game journey were future 1948 Braves teammates Frank McCormick, Jim Russell, Bill Voiselle, and Ed Wright. Barrett pitched in Honolulu, Guam, and the Philippines, throwing 39 innings and striking out 23 while walking just four. He posted a 3-1 record and batted .285 at the plate, usually playing in the infield or outfield while not pitching. He didn’t hesitate to sing a few songs from the USO stage, either.

Barrett had continued his singing career while with the Cards, appearing with Dick Slack’s All Star band. They were on the radio at 5:30 a.m., “before the birds even got up,” he commented.¹² For several years during the winter season, the “amiable thrush” (The Sporting News) earned extra money by singing country music on the radio. Son Bob recalls, “Dad used to sing in nightclubs and speak at dinners. He could tell a joke better than most comedians, with a great range of dialects and had a wonderful Irish tenor voice.”¹³

The singing redhead’s fame spread beyond the diamond when the April 1, 1946, issue of Life magazine featured the 23-game winner on its cover. A newspaper in St. Petersburg, where the Cardinals held spring training, reported, “Newsstands around Central Avenue were understandably bare of copies of Life magazine shortly after the issue hit the streets. Pitcher Red Barrett…took ample precautions to see that each of his mates would receive a copy of the publication. The redhead was up at sunrise to buy every available copy in St. Petersburg. He explained, ‘Just getting them to sell to the other Cardinals so they’ll be sure to have one.’” Prophetically, the caption describing Life’s cover stated, “The 31-year-old Barrett is working hard on his tricky pitching and change of pace to meet this year’s younger and stiffer competition.”

There was a little confusion in Beantown during this time. In 1944 and 1945, both the Braves and the Red Sox had right-handed pitchers named “Red” Barrett. The Red Sox’ “Barrett” was christened Francis and served as a reliever. Adding to the confusion, Francis “Red” Barrett was picked up by the Braves in 1946 during Charles “Red” Barrett’s exile to the Cardinals. That same season, the Tribe also briefly employed an outfielder named Johnny Barrett.

Red (Charles, that is) turned up a week early for 1946 spring training, raring to go for new Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer. But although it was a great year for the Redbirds, climaxing in a thrilling seven-game World Series victory over the Boston Red Sox, Barrett’s role was relegated to 23 appearances, a total of 67 innings, and a disappointing 3-2 record (though one of them was that near-perfect game against the Phillies). Dyer had replaced Billy Southworth, who left to join the Braves for what at the time was a record-breaking contract of $50,000 a year for five years. Dyer was blessed with a young pitching staff of strong-armed hurlers led by Harry Brecheen, Murry Dickson, and Howie Pollet, diminishing Barrett’s importance to the staff. The manager told The Sporting News in April that Barrett had been “hit hard most of the spring.” Giving up 20 earned runs in his first 20 1/3 innings of the regular season, he demoted himself to low man in the rotation. In midseason, sportswriter Fred Lieb wrote that Barrett “seems to have lost his touch.” The only complete game he won during the year was a masterful 7-0 one-hitter against Philadelphia, a near-perfect game on June 8, broken up by a Del Ennis single with one out in the eighth.

Barrett’s transformation from Life cover boy to afterthought in 1946 may have been related to a perception held by manager Dyer. “He’s essentially a control pitcher but control isn’t enough this season [with war veterans back in the lineups]. A pitcher has to have more than that. I was talking about him to Mel Ott last winter and remarked that Barrett had twirled some low-hit games against the Giants. However, Ottie stopped me cold. ‘I know that,’ he said, ‘but the park still was full of line drives.’”¹⁴

The Cards used only seven pitchers during their seven-game World Series victory over the Red Sox, and Barrett did not make an appearance. The autumn classic was not a total washout for the Barrett family. Red’s wife, Margaret, was chosen as the “most chic World Series wife” and was presented with a hat valued at $1,000. Dyer, who piloted the club to a 98-56 record in his first year, was named National League Manager of the Year.

In a reversal of fortune after the season, Barrett was sold back to his old team, the Boston Braves, joining his former manager, Billy Southworth, and Mort Cooper, the pitcher he was traded for two years previously. Southworth was “hopeful that the loquacious flinger will be able to regain some of the winning form he displayed in St. Louis in 1945.”¹⁵ Boston Globe cartoonist Bob Coyne heralded the return with a drawing headlined “Back With Billy!” and a compilation of small sketches with the following captions, “Arrived in camp with a well developed front porch wearing a ten gallon hat, boots and chaps!”; “Served as a professional entertainer singing hillbilly songs during the winter months”; and “The guy has more color than a crazy quilt.”

During the 1947 season, Barrett was the third starter in Boston’s four-man rotation and the club’s third leading winner with an 11-12 record. Fellow pitchers Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain each registered 21 wins. Barrett appeared in 36 games and pitched 210 innings. Never considered a strikeout hurler, he issued 53 walks and struck out 53. He recorded three shutouts, twice defeating the Cubs’ Hank Borowy, by scores of 1-0 and 2-0, and the Dodgers’ Vic Lombardi, by 3-0. Barrett hit just .118, but five of his eight hits were doubles — including two in a 6-2 victory over the Pirates on June 13. The Braves finished in third place with an 86-68 record.

Barrett’s tendency toward braggadocio proved somewhat embarrassing toward the end of the ’47 season. The Pirates’ Ralph Kiner went on a home run tear in September, and on September 11 in Pittsburgh hit four homers in a doubleheader against the Braves. His circuit clout string stood at six in three straight games, and scheduled to face the slugger the next day, Barrett predicted that Kiner wouldn’t hit one off of him. Barrett was only partially correct. In a 4-3 victory over the Tribe on the 12th, Kiner lashed out two homers, besting the old record of seven in four consecutive games, set by Tony Lazzeri of the Yankees in 1936.

At the opening of the 1948 season, Red changed his uniform number to 13, the lucky numeral that produced 23 wins for him that year. The Braves were primed for a big year with the league’s highest paid manager, two 20-game winners and a shortstop, Alvin Dark from Louisiana State University, who was given a $50,000 signing bonus to join the Tribe. To induce fan attendance, the team offered a special night-game package that included tickets, a room at the nearby Somerset Hotel, and dinner for $4.50.¹⁶ Barrett became a sometime starter, replaced in the regular rotation by Vern Bickford. While he, Nelson Potter, Bobby Hogue, and Clyde Shoun shared the bulk of the bullpen work, Red did have several key wins as a starter. He threw a complete game six-hitter against the Dodgers on April 27, winning 3-2. This was followed by a 3-2 victory over Cincinnati on May 8. Another big win over the Reds was on August 31, 3-1, to get the Braves within two percentage points of the first-place Dodgers. And on September 5, with Boston now in first, Barrett defeated the Phillies, 5-1, allowing only five hits and retiring 15 in a row. Del Ennis, the outfielder who spoiled Barrett’s perfect game bid in 1946, broke the spell with a harmless two-out single in the ninth.

During the season, Barrett also had the dubious distinction of losing both ends of a twin-bill against Cincinnati on June 12, as a starter in the first game and in relief in the second. Reds’ pitcher Johnny Vander Meer (who’d been Barrett’s teammate with Indianapolis in 1940) hit the only home run of his career off Red in the first game. Ultimately the Braves finished in first place with a 91-62 record, and also won at the gate by drawing a franchise-record 1,445,437 fans. Barrett had just a 7-8 record, but his big wins, versatility, and solid 3.65 ERA outshined his record. In the World Series against the Indians he appeared in Games Two and Three, pitching a total of 3 2/3 innings of shutout ball, but the Braves lost in six.

The New York Times recapped the Braves offseason plans after the ’48 season:

The Braves most vociferous off-season planner was right hand pitcher Charles (Red) Barrett, proud thrower of the game’s only “mushball.”

“As usual,” Barrett said without being asked, “I will resume my musical career as soon as possible. That means as soon as anybody offers me money to sing. I’ll admit I’m not one of the world’s topflight vocalists. But I do sing loud and I’ve been able to make more money with my voice during the cold winter months than I could driving a truck.

“I’ll let you know as soon as one of the more astute Boston night club owners comes through with a professional engagement,” Barrett continued despite many raucous interruptions. “Be sure to come up and see me and bring all your friends. But be prepared to pick up the check.”¹⁷

While in the minors, Red Barrett had married Helen Margaret Knutsen on April 5, 1936. A son, Bob, was born in August 1937, followed by daughter Kathryn in January 1941. Bob recalls his family’s stay in the Boston area: “We lived in a big house in the Auburndale section of Newton and had a French couple living with us, serving as a maid and butler. Dad had a lot of friends on the club but was closest to Sibby Sisti, Earl Torgeson, and Bob Elliott. I remember when Bob Elliott was voted the league MVP and I took a picture of him holding his trophy. Basically everyone liked my dad except the management. He was kind of a rabble-rouser and got into trouble a few times. And although he did not drink, he sure knew how to party. He had great control and was probably the first pitcher to throw a slider, although he called it a nickel curve.”¹⁸

After the pennant season, 1949 was not a good year for either the Braves or Barrett as dissension wracked the club. Spring training started with a closed-door meeting in which players confronted manager Southworth, who throughout his managerial career had been a hard disciplinarian. Barrett was a Southworth supporter. He suggested taking a vote of confidence among the players but was rebuked by Eddie Stanky, who declared, “If Southworth wants a vote of confidence, let him ask for it himself.”¹⁹ Southworth, who had long struggled with alcoholism, was rumored to be drinking heavily and near nervous collapse. In August, he was persuaded by owner Lou Perini to take a leave of absence and was replaced by coach Johnny Cooney.

Despite the return of All-Stars Sain and Spahn, however, the Braves fell to a lackluster 75-79 record and a fourth-place finish in ’49. Their attendance slumped to just over 1 million, and the cross-town rival Red Sox — led by superstar Ted Williams — captured the headlines with a photo-finish finale that climaxed in their losing to the rival Yankees on the last day of the season. The 34-year-old Barrett was now used exclusively in relief, compiling a 1-1 record in 23 games and a total of 44 1/3 innings. He played his final game in a Boston uniform on September 29, 1949, hurling one shutout inning in a 9-2 loss to the pennant-bound Dodgers. It was also his final game in the majors. Evidently he didn’t feature in the Braves’ plans for 1950, and no other big league team picked him up.

Barrett remained in organized baseball for four more years with minor league teams in Los Angeles, Nashville, Buffalo, Toronto, and Tampa, and ended up in Texas with the Paris Indians of the Big State League in 1953, where, at the age of 38, he had a record of 6-4 in 15 appearances. Barrett’s playing odyssey had taken him to 11 minor league cities and three major league cities. He appeared in 253 major-league games, 149 of which he started.

Life after baseball saw a move to North Carolina and a job with Sealtest Ice Cream. He was divorced in 1951 and while managing a plant for the ice cream company in New Bern met his second wife, Libby, whom he married in 1957. Red and Libby had one son, Rick, who remains in the North Carolina area. Red never lost his love of sports, and “officiated just about every sport — baseball, softball, basketball, and football at midget through college levels.” He worked for the North Carolina High School Athletic Association and for the U.S. Slo-Pitch Softball Association, where he also served as a director. Barrett commented on officiating to a local reporter, “Officials receive a lot of kidding and criticism. Ninety-nine per cent of calls are judgment calls — the call was right, but maybe my judgment was bad.”²⁰

Barrett eventually settled in Wilson, North Carolina, where he became active in the Wilson Hot Stove League, bringing many major league players to meetings, including former teammates Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter. In 1971, he went to St. Louis to participate in a replay of the 1946 World Series between the Cardinals and the Red Sox. Another trip, in 1987, took him to an old-timers game, an event he described as a “bunch of old veterans getting together to play five innings of baseball.”²¹ His retirement also improved his golf game, and he received two hole-in-one awards from the local Willow Springs Country Club.

Under the auspices of the New England Sports Museum, Barrett returned to Boston one last time in August of 1988 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1948 NL championship. At an onstage question-and-answer session held in an auditorium on the Boston University campus, which contains the remnants of old Braves Field, Barrett was cajoled by former Tribe publicity director Billy Sullivan to demonstrate his vocal talents and croon a tune.

Around this same time Barrett was diagnosed with cancer, and after a prolonged illness died at the age of 75 on July 28, 1990. He was buried at Evergreen Memorial Gardens in Wilson. The following year the Wilson Hot Stove League dedicated their banquet to the fun-loving redhead. Among the remembrances in the program:

• He played the quickest round of golf of anyone in the United States of America.
• He officiated every conceivable athletic contest that was ever played.
• He, year after year, led the Hot Stove League in singing “Take Me Out to The Ballgame.” In tune or out of tune made no difference.
• He was a great philosopher fond of saying, “Be careful of the words you say — keep them warm and sweet — because you never know from day to day which ones you’ll have to eat! And never complain of not getting everything you want — just pray to God you don’t get all you deserve.

Numerous photos and memorabilia from Barrett’s career are displayed at the legendary Dick’s Hot Dog Stand in Wilson, owned by Barrett’s good friend and fellow Hot Stove Leaguer Lee Gliarmis.

After Red died, son Rick, president of CityScape Builders, decided to honor his father, and in appreciation of the care he received during his illness, established the Charles “Red” Barrett Memorial golf tournament. The event has raised thousands of dollars for a local hospice.

Note

This biography originally appeared in the book Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948, edited by Bill Nowlin and published by Rounder Books in 2008.

Notes

1. Interview with Bob Barrett, May 13, 2007.

2. McCrory, Rosellen. Interview with Red Barrett sent to author.

3. Ray, Bob The Sports X-Ray, Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1938.

4. Ibid. Bob Brady located a story by Arthur Daley in the March 31, 1943 New York Times that tells how teammate Albert “Dutch” Mele led the Association in batting average (.354) and homers (30). Mele beat out “Mad Russian” Lou Novikoff of Ponca City for the batting title in the final game of the season. Red Barrett took the mound that game and told Mele, “You’ll win the title if you get a loud foul today, because I intend to take care of Novikoff myself.” He held Novikoff hitless while Mele went 4-for-4.

5. Ray, ibid.

6. Daley, Arthur, New York Times, August 16, 1962, p. 19.

⁷ McCrory, Rosellen, Wilson North Carolina Daily Times, June 18, 1990.

8. Drebinger, John, New York Times, December 8, 1946.

9. Kaese, Harold, The Boston Braves, p. 259.

10. Ibid.

11. McCrory, Rosellen, Wilson North Carolina Daily Times, June 18, 1990.

12. McCrory, Rosellen. Interview with Red Barrett. Barrett also told Rosellen McCrory that he “dated” Betty Grable while on a USO tour and that the two double-dated with Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan.

13. Interview with Bob Barrett, May 13, 2007.

14. Daley, Arthur Daley, New York Times, September 21, 1946, p. 21.

15. Drebinger, John, The New York Times, December 8, 1946.

16. Pietrusza, David, “Boston Braves Finale” at http://www.davidpietrusza.com/Boston_Braves_Finale.html

17. New York Times, October 13, 1948.

18. Interview with Bob Barrett.

19. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 279.

20. McCrory, Rosellen, Wilson North Carolina Daily Times, June 18, 1990.

21. Ibid.