A scout for the St. Louis Cardinals, Bennie Borgmann, once said, “In my opinion, the greatest ballplayer I’ve ever seen was Oscar Charleston. When I say this, I’m not overlooking Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, and all of them.”2 Buck O’Neil said that Charleston “was like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one.”3 Honus Wagner said, “I’ve seen all the great players in the many years I’ve been around and have yet to see one any greater than Charleston.”4 And, in 2001, Bill James ranked Charleston as the fourth-best player of all time, behind only Ruth, Wagner, and Willie Mays.

Charleston was a baseball lifer who served as a player, manager, umpire, and scout. Though he worked an assortment of other jobs to supplement his income, baseball was his life. It was on the ball field that Charleston developed a reputation as a hothead and performed apocryphal deeds such as yanking the hood off a Ku Klux Klansman and throwing a professional wrestler off a train. Off the field, Charleston married twice but divorced one wife and separated from the other; he left behind no children. He neither drank nor smoked and was a stern yet charming man who gained the respect of his peers through his no-nonsense attitude.

Oscar McKinley Charleston was born in Indianapolis on October 14, 1896. He was the seventh of 11 children born to Tom and Mary (Thomas) Charleston. His middle name came about because his parents were Republicans, and William McKinley was the Republican nominee for president in 1896. Oscar’s father was a construction worker and, according to one report, a former jockey. As a child, Oscar moved constantly, but always to some place within the greater Indianapolis area. His family was poor, and Oscar finished school only through the eighth grade. During his childhood, Oscar allegedly worked as a batboy for the Indianapolis ABCs, the most prominent local Black team.5

Rather than continue in school, Charleston lied about his age so that he could enlist in the US Army at 15. Shortly thereafter, he was shipped out to the Philippines and assigned to Company B of the 24th Infantry Regiment. Playing for the regimental team, Charleston starred as a pitcher and was selected for an all-star game in which he pitched a one-hit shutout and hit a triple. When his hitch was over, he was honorably discharged in 1915.

Charleston, who was between 5-feet-8 inches and 5-feet-9 inches, returned stateside and began to play for the Indianapolis ABCs.6 He pitched a shutout in his first game, striking out nine, walking none, and giving up only three hits. He also displayed impressive hitting prowess throughout the season. At the conclusion of the 1915 season, the ABCs played a series of exhibition games against White teams composed of major leaguers. During one of these games – on October 24, 1915 – a scuffle broke out between an ABCs player and a White umpire. Amid the scuffle, Oscar Charleston ran in from center field and punched the umpire. The sight of a Black man punching a White man caused chaos, as players, fans, and police poured onto the field. Before there could be any trouble, Charleston ran away. He was later arrested but was released on bond and allowed to go to Cuba with the ABCs.7

After the incident, ABCs owner C.I. Taylor issued a statement apologizing for the actions of his hotheaded center fielder. Charleston also published a statement saying he could not control his temper and that “[he] cannot find words in the vocabulary that will express his regret.”8 After the 1915 season, Charleston played in Cuba with his ABCs teammates. But, perhaps still having trouble controlling his temper, he was at one point dismissed from the team for disobeying club rules.9

Charleston played the first part of the 1916 season for the Lincoln Stars in New York before returning to the ABCs in August. In October the ABCs played Rube Foster’s American Giants in a seven-game series billed as Black baseball’s championship. The ABCs won the series, with Charleston going 7-for-18. During the offseason, he worked as a grocery clerk.

On January 9, 1917, Charleston married Hazel M. Grubbs, a young woman in her late teens who was the daughter of a public-school principal. Their marriage did not last long and, by early 1918, the couple had separated; they were divorced in 1921.

Charleston continued playing for the ABCs in 1917. As the United States became involved in World War I, Charleston registered for the draft on June 5, 1917; in order to maintain consistency with his previous lie, he listed his birth date as October 14, 1893.10 The ABCs posted a sub-.500 record against elite opponents this season, but Charleston continued his ascent. In games against elite opponents, Charleston posted a batting line 50 percent above league average.11 Because he was registered for the draft, he was unable to play in Cuba during the offseason.

Charleston continued his strong play in 1918. In a game on August 18, he made what was described as one of the greatest catches ever at Washington Park.12 In the field, Charleston’s incredible speed (he clocked in at 23 seconds in the 220-yard dash with the Army) allowed him to play shallow, just behind second base.13 Later in August Charleston was assigned to Camp Dodge in Johnston, Iowa, and was selected to attend the Colored Students Infantry Officers Training School in Arkansas. The war ended before he could become an officer and, on December 3, he was again honorably discharged.

Charleston emerged as a star in the postwar years. In 1919 he played for Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants and started the year in center field. Charleston showed his talents at bat, in the field, and on the bases. In the majors in 1919, Babe Ruth hit one home run every 19 plate appearances, while Charleston hit one home run every 26 plate appearances.14 Charleston’s defense was frequently written about, with the press describing him as making “hair-raising [catches]” and the “fielding feature[s] of the game.”15 Charleston was also a superb baserunner, and Foster pushed Charleston on the basepaths. In one game, Charleston had what was described as one of the speediest exhibitions of running ever seen on the diamond when he hit a single, stole second, advanced to third as the ball trickled into center field, and came home on a throw down to second.16 At the season’s conclusion, the Chicago Defender wrote that Charleston was the best player in the world, even better than Ty Cobb.17 The paper further credited Foster for developing Charleston’s natural abilities and cooling his temper.18 In fact, Charleston seemed preoccupied with the comparison to Cobb, repeatedly clipping articles for his personal scrapbook that compared him to the Georgia Peach. When the season ended, Oscar took a job as a chauffeur.19

With the creation of the Negro National League in 1920, Charleston re-signed with the ABCs, a move Foster allowed in the interest of league-wide competitive balance.20 His 1920 season was another star turn as he stole 20 bases and posted an OPS that was 76 percent better than the league average. In the inaugural NNL doubleheader, Charleston went 1-for-4 in the first game and laced a two-run triple in the second game.21 The press also continued to make note of his defensive ability. In a game one week later, the ABCs were leading 4-2 in the top of the ninth with two men on and two men out when José Leblanc hit a rocket to center field. Charleston, who had already made two good catches, saved the game with a dazzling catch made with his back to the plate. The fans jumped onto the field and showered Charleston with money.22 

Now in demand, Charleston was sold to the St. Louis Giants for the 1921 season. He took pride in his purchase price, clipping a newspaper article that stated he was worth more than Rogers Hornsby or Babe Ruth.23 He had another strong campaign during which he led the Negro National League in home runs, hitting 15 in 339 plate appearances.24 In fact, there were three occasions during the season on which Charleston hit two home runs in one game. Because of his surge in power, newspapers started to call him the colored Babe Ruth; this is the major-league player to whom Charleston was most frequently compared during the 1920s.25 Charleston also stole 32 bases and hit .433. After the 1921 season, Charleston spent the winter in Los Angeles and played in the California Winter League. He hit .405 as the Colored All-Stars went 25-15-1 and posted a winning record in games against teams that included both major- and minor-league players. By the end of the California Winter League season, the Los Angeles press proclaimed Charleston to be the second greatest living player, behind only Babe Ruth.26

In 1922, thanks to St. Louis’s financial difficulties, Charleston once again returned to the ABCs.27 C.I. Taylor had died between the 1921 and the 1922 seasons, and ownership of the ABCs transferred to his wife, Olivia. (Charleston later spoke very positively of Taylor, crediting him with teaching him how to manage a team.)28 In 1922 the ABCs were led by three outstanding hitters – Biz Mackey, Ben Taylor, and Charleston. In the league’s opening doubleheader, Charleston went 6-for-8 with a home run and a double. That set the tone for his season: Of the 98 games for which box scores exist, Charleston failed to get a hit in only 16. Bill James has rated Charleston as the best player in the Negro Leagues for the 1921 and 1922 seasons.29

After the 1922 season, Charleston married for the second time. The bride was a 27-year-old schoolteacher named Jane Howard. It was also Jane’s second marriage; her first husband had died in 1918. She often traveled with Charleston to Cuba during the winter, and several photos of them in Cuba appear in Charleston’s scrapbook. In fact, Charleston and Jane traveled to Cuba for their honeymoon, where Charleston played in the 1922-23 Cuban winter league.30 He and Jane had a rocky marriage, it seems, in part because Jane did not like baseball. It is possible that Oscar was unfaithful, too, as multiple contemporary newspaper articles reported that he was seen in public with women other than Jane.31 In fact, after a car accident in which Charleston escaped without injury, the Pittsburgh Courier wrote that Charleston “wiggled out of some love tangles the same, same way.”32 The couple separated in 1940, though they never divorced. Charleston filed for divorce in 1941, but the case was dismissed in 1942. Jane did not believe in divorce.33

In December 1922, Olivia Taylor traded Charleston to Rube Foster’s American Giants. Taylor was facing financial difficulties, and Biz Mackey and Ben Taylor also left the team. But Charleston returned to the ABCs prior to the season: Foster realized it was better for the league if Charleston played for the ABCs, and he worked out a deal with Taylor whereby Taylor would receive a subsidy for 1923 and let Charleston go to the American Giants in 1924.34 Charleston spent the 1923 season with the ABCs and was the leader of a depleted team that struggled to a fourth-place finish. In fact, the team needed Charleston to pitch on multiple occasions.

After the Indianapolis team disbanded, rather than heading to Chicago Charleston played for and managed the Harrisburg Giants, where he remained from 1924 to 1927. Charleston, who seemed to be preoccupied with the press coverage he received, clipped an article for his scrapbook that described him as a big loss for Foster’s league.35 In 1924 Charleston had another strong year at bat; though his team endured a .500 campaign, he reportedly hit 36 home runs by August 24. Charleston even had a stretch in early August where he hit seven home runs in three games.36 That October, the Harrisburg Giants played a postseason series against the crosstown (and White) Harrisburg Senators. There, in the middle of a competitive game, Charleston erupted when he attempted to punch an umpire after a bad call. The umpire evaded the punch, punched Charleston, and then ejected him from the game.37 Charleston returned to manage the Giants for the 1925 season. At age 28, he was in the prime of his career and had a magnificent season in which he batted .4271/.523/.776 with 20 home runs.38 Once again, Bill James has rated him as the best player in the Negro Leagues that season.39 From 1919 to 1925, Charleston posted an OPS+ above 200 four times and compiled a 1.143 OPS. Combined with his superb defense and great baserunning speed, this seven-year stretch ranks among the most dominant in baseball history.

After the 1925 regular season, Charleston played in an exhibition contest against a White “Bronx Giants” team that featured a young Lou Gehrig. Gehrig went 1-for-2 with two walks, while Charleston went 4-for-6 with a home run.40 During his career, we have box scores for 53 games in which Charleston played against major-league players, hitting .318 with 11 home runs. He got hits against Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, and Lefty Grove.41

In addition to his domestic play, Charleston burnished his reputation as a baseball star through his play in Cuba. He was known as “El Terror de los Clubs,” with one newspaper describing him as a man capable of fighting alone against other teams.42 During the time Charleston played in Cuba, it was a beisbol paradiso, as both major-league and Negro League stars spent their winters on the island. He had several superb seasons there and left quite an impression on Cuba’s baseball fans. In 1922–23, Charleston hit .446 in league games but was unable to qualify for the batting title when his Santa Clara team withdrew from the league because of a league decision that took away a win.43 In 1925 Charleston was part of a Cuban All-Star team that played against an All-Yankee team in front of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.44 In 1926-27 Charleston was one of four players (along with Pablo “Champion” Mesa, Tank Carr, and Dick Lundy) to hit over .400.45 Over 996 at-bats in Cuba, Charleston hit. 361 with 19 home runs and 58 stolen bases.46 His team also won three championships.

The best team Charleston played on was the 1923-24 Leopardos de Santa Clara, a team whose reputation in Cuba is much like that of the 1927 Yankees in the United States. That team was so dominant that the other teams in the league decided to award Santa Clara the league title based solely on the first half of the season.47 The team had the best Cuban outfield ever, with Charleston, Champion Mesa, and Alejandro Oms giving Santa Clara outstanding offensive performances.48 During this season, Cuban newspapers referred to Charleston as the best player in the league and as a perfect star who combined intelligence, baserunning, slugging, fielding, and clutch play in a way never before seen. Charleston led the league in runs scored and stolen bases.49

The 1923-24 season also saw Charleston get into a famous fight with a Cuban soldier. The fight started on January 19 after Charleston spiked an opposing player as he slid into third base. The player’s brother, a soldier, came onto the field and charged Charleston, sparking other soldiers to come onto the field as well. The fight was broken up and Charleston’s scrapbook shows him standing peacefully next to a soldier.50 Charleston was initially criticized and mocked in the press, but he was defended by his friends, who described him as a perfect gentleman who had become involved in an unfortunate accident.51 Charleston met with the Cuban military and explained that he had only been acting in self-defense. The military accepted the explanation, and Charleston received no punishment.

Charleston played the 1928 and 1929 seasons with the Hilldale club of Darby, Pennsylvania. (Darby is a Philadelphia suburb.) As he embarked upon his age-31 season in 1928, Charleston appeared more rotund than in prior years, but his batting performance remained strong, and he posted a .348/.453/.618 line. For the first time, Charleston played first base in addition to the outfield. Hilldale added Martin Dihigo for the 1929 season, which gave the team a powerful duo and led one newspaper to call Hilldale “[the] greatest ball team.”52 The press’s praise for Charleston remained especially effusive, and he was referred to as being “without fault” and “as near perfect as ball players come.”53 However, the press has always been fickle, and when Hilldale got off to a slow start in 1929, a newspaper account claimed that Charleston was not performing up to his usual standards.54 He still ended up with a 152 OPS+ for the season. Charleston then joined the Homestead Grays for a fall barnstorming tour, after which he stayed in Philadelphia and worked as a baggage handler.55

Charleston must have enjoyed playing with the Homestead Grays because he joined the team for the 1930 and 1931 seasons. Charleston was a leader on the team and during preseason training in Hot Springs, he led the players on daily five-mile runs.56 This training helped Charleston slim down prior to the 1930 season. In the home opener, Charleston had three hits, including a home run and a triple.57 The Grays were buoyed by the addition of Josh Gibson and played the Lincoln Giants in a 10-game series to determine who would claim the 1930 championship. In the first contest, Charleston hit a two-run homer as the Grays won, 9-1. In the seventh game, Charleston injured his leg and as a result was unable to play in the series’ final game. The Grays still won, and Charleston had his second Negro League championship.

In 1931 Charleston, now playing first base regularly, drew rave reviews for his defensive ability as the Grays won a second consecutive championship with six Hall of Fame players on their roster: Charleston, Gibson, Jud Wilson, Smokey Joe Williams, Willie Foster, and Satchel Paige (though he played in only one game). Newspaper writers continued to praise Charleston, with one columnist asserting that he was a better player than Rogers Hornsby because Charleston not only had a great bat but also was a superb baserunner and exceptional fielder.58 Batting leadoff, Charleston had a good season. In a mid-July game against Hilldale, he hit a go-ahead two-run homer to give Homestead a 5-4 victory.59 In a September doubleheader against Kansas City, Charleston hit four doubles and a single in the first game and got two walks and a single in the nightcap.60

On January 28, 1932, Charleston was named player-manager of the Pittsburgh Crawfords after Gus Greenlee outbid Cumberland Posey, the Grays’ owner, for Charleston’s services. The 1932 Crawfords possessed some transcendent baseball talent, as Charleston helped recruit Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson to join the team.61 Even with so many talented players, Charleston remained the team’s main attraction.62 After the major-league season, the Crawfords played seven games against a team of major-leaguers and won five of the seven contests.

In 1933 the Crawfords added Cool Papa Bell and Judy Johnson, both future Hall of Famers, to the team. Charleston remained an extremely popular player, as was demonstrated by his leading vote total for the inaugural Negro League All-Star Game that year. He also remained extremely competitive: After an umpire made what Charleston deemed an incorrect call, he became so angry that he inserted himself as a relief pitcher and walked six straight men – his way of showing that he considered the game a farce.63

The following year, 1934, Charleston ranked as the Crawfords’ second-best hitter by OPS+ after Gibson, but the team failed to win either the first- or second-half title. Charleston often continued to be the Crawfords’ headliner, although Paige now challenged him for the title as he received more votes than Charleston for the 1934 All-Star Game. Nonetheless, for a game on June 10, the Washington Post gave Charleston top billing and referred to him as the highest paid Black player in the game.64 After the season, the Crawfords played a barnstorming White team that featured Paul and Dizzy Dean. In a game that Dizzy Dean pitched, Charleston singled in the only run Dean allowed the Craws.

Going into the 1935 season, Charleston expected his club to be a “hustling, wide-awake ball club and one of the best teams he ever had the privilege of managing.”65 Even though Satchel Paige did not return to the team, Charleston refused to lower his expectations for the 1935 season. He got off to a hot start, hitting a home run in the home opener to lead the Crawfords to a victory and hitting a home run at Greenlee Field that went over 500 feet.66 Charleston also remained a threat on the basepaths and even made a straight steal of home in a game on August 5.67 By early June, Charleston believed that his team was the cream of the crop.68 According to Jeremy Beer, the club posted a 24-6 first-half record but did not play as well in the second half. Charleston was still popular with the fans and won the All-Star Game voting for first base by one vote over Buck Leonard. At the end of the season, the Crawfords played the New York Cubans in the NNL Championship Series. Charleston hit two home runs in the series and managed the Crawfords to the 1935 championship in a thrilling seven-game series. At the end of the season, even Grays owner Cum Posey praised Charleston’s managerial ability, crediting him with a good managerial job in leading the Crawfords to the championship.69

In 1936 Satchel Paige rejoined the Crawfords, and Charleston was credited with “taming the temperamental” hurler.70 Manager Charleston put himself into a first-base platoon with a young player named Johnny Washington and batted himself fifth in the order. Now known as the “Old Maestro of Swat,” a well-rested Charleston remained a strong hitter and posted a 152 OPS+.71

As a business, the Crawfords struggled in 1936, leaving Greenlee short on funds as the team headed into the 1937 season. The team traded Josh Gibson and Judy Johnson to Homestead for Pepper Bassett, Henry Spearman, and $2,500. Greenlee was dismayed when Satchel Paige took a lucrative offer to play in the Dominican Republic, leading to the Crawfords losing nine additional members from their roster.72 Charleston managed a decimated team and sat himself regularly while he gave most of the playing time at first base to Johnny Washington. However, he remained capable of big moments, such as the one he had on Opening Day, when he won the game with a two-run homer in the eighth inning. It was a sign of the changing times and Charleston’s gradual decline that he failed to make the All-Star team, losing the first-base voting to Leonard that year. The Crawfords finished with a 21-38-1 final record, but Charleston’s reputation remained intact; in December, he was selected as the center fielder on Cum Posey’s all-time Negro League squad.73

The Crawfords did not fare much better in 1938. Although Charleston attempted to put together a quality team, the squad finished in fourth place. After the season Greenlee sold the Crawfords to Hank Rigney, who moved the team to Toledo, Ohio. The Crawfords lost many of their star players prior to the sale as Greenlee could no longer afford their salaries. Greenlee also sold Paige’s contract to the Newark Eagles for $5,000 in an attempt to make one last bit of profit from his franchise. Rigney kept Charleston as manager and part-time player for the Toledo Crawfords in 1939, but the team posted a sub-.500 record and switched leagues – from the NNL to the NAL – in midseason. By this time, Charleston’s playing days had effectively ended, though he still played in games on rare occasions. Yet his involvement with baseball continued, as he became the manager of the Philadelphia Stars in 1941 and played for and managed the semipro Quartermaster Depot team, where he worked, in Philadelphia in 1942 and 1943. At the ripe old baseball age of 46, Charleston still managed to garner a player-of-the-week award.

Soon thereafter, Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey sought Charleston’s help in identifying Black players who could play major-league baseball. In 1945 a new Black baseball circuit, the United States League, had been launched by Gus Greenlee. Rickey hired Charleston to manage the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, the league entry that played at Ebbets Field. Charleston provided information on players that helped Rickey learn about their backgrounds and characters. One of the players Charleston advised Rickey about was future Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella, who played for the Baltimore Elite Giants at that time. The USL folded in its second season and, after his work for Rickey, Charleston was unable to find a managerial job, so he decided to become an umpire for the 1946 and 1947 seasons.

In 1948 Ed Bolden hired Charleston to manage the Philadelphia Stars.74 By this time, the Negro Leagues were losing their best players to Organized Baseball, thanks to the integration of the game that had been initiated by Rickey and Jackie Robinson. Charleston managed the Stars from 1948 through 1952, but the team never finished better than fourth. Still, he was reported to have done a great job with the team.75 In an era when Black baseball players had a reputation for rowdiness, Charleston’s team followed the straight and narrow path, earning themselves the nickname “the Saints.”76 Charleston had mellowed with age, and his players referred to him as being “relaxed,” “very mild,” and “friendly.”77

The Stars disbanded after the 1952 season, and Charleston was not involved in baseball in 1953. He returned to manage the barnstorming Indianapolis Clowns to an NAL championship in 1954. In October of that same year, Charleston fell down a flight of stairs at his home, an accident that left him paralyzed from the stomach down. Charleston initially thought he would recover, but he died due to the injury on October 5, 1954, at the age of 57. He left behind no spouse or children. Thousands of fans attended Charleston’s viewing in South Philadelphia.78

In the early 1970s, the National Baseball Hall of Fame formed a committee to remedy the lack of Negro League players in Cooperstown. Charleston was elected in 1976, following the elections of Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Monte Irvin, Cool Papa Bell, and Judy Johnson. Oscar’s sister Katherine delivered his induction speech, which she said was the greatest delight of her life.

Today, Oscar Charleston rests in an unadorned grave in Floral Park Cemetery in Indianapolis. His headstone consists of a simple gray slab – standard issue for United States military veterans. No mention is made of the great American athlete – considered by many the greatest Negro Leagues player of all time – who lies underneath.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Charleston’s player file from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, contemporary newspaper articles about Charleston, and his personal scrapbook.

Photo credit: Oscar Charleston, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Notes

1 William G. Nunn, “Diamond Dope,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 20, 1925: 12.

2 Grant Brisbee, “Baseball Time Machine: 20 Individual Seasons Worth Going Back in Time For,” The Athletic, July 19, 2019.

3 Brisbee.

4 Jeremy Beer, Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 328.

5 Beer, 44. Charleston’s job as a batboy for the Indianapolis ABCs is typically included in his biography, though no definitive proof exists to show this is true.

6 In the Hall of Fame press release announcing his induction, Charleston’s height and weight are listed as 5-feet-11 and 210 pounds. But on his World War II draft card, Charleston listed his height as 5-feet-8.

7 My account of this game is taken from “Race Riot Is Balked by Police,” Indianapolis Star, October 25, 1915.

8 “Charleston’s Unclean Act – He Is Very Sorry,” Indianapolis Freedman, November 13, 1915.

9 “Charleston Dropped by the A.B.C. Club,” Indianapolis Star, November 26, 1915.

10 Oscar Charleston, 1917 Draft Card Registration.

11 Beer, 89.

12 “A.B.C.’s wallop New York Red Caps,” Chicago Defender, August 24, 1918.

13 “Oscar McKinley Charleston,” in David L. Porter, ed., Biographical Dictionary of American Sports (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000).

14 Beer, 110.

15 Beer, 109.

16 Beer, 109.

17 “Oscar Charleston, Giants’ Crack Center Fielder,” Chicago Defender, in Oscar Charleston’s Personal Scrapbook, available at the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City.

18 “Oscar Charleston, Giants’ Crack Center Fielder.”

19 Beer, 111.

20 Beer, 116.

21 Beer, 117-18.

22 “Great Playing Beats Cubans,” Indianapolis Star, May 10, 1920.

23 “How Much for This One?” in Oscar Charleston’s pPersonal Scrapbook.

24 Beer, 124. This figure differs from the data on Seamheads, which is 17 in 362 PAs.

25 Beer, 124.

26 Beer, 130.

27 Beer, 132.

28 Beer, 132.

29 Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 175.

30 Beer, 145.

31 Beer, 272-73.

32 “Talk ’O Town,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 12, 1938.

33 Beer, 274.

34 Beer, 149.

35 “Migration Hits Foster League,” in Oscar Charleston’s Personal Scrapbook.

36 Beer, 160-61.

37 Beer, 163.

38 When sources differ on statistics, SABR uses the statistics from Seamheads.com.

39 James.

40 William E. Clark, “Little World Series for Bronx Title,” New York Age, October 24, 1925.

41 Phil Richards, “Retro Indy: Oscar Charleston,” Indianapolis Star, February 28, 2011, available in Charleston’s Hall of Fame player file.

42 “El Terror de los Clubs,” in Oscar Charleston’s Personal Scrapbook.

43 Jorge Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003), 143.

44 Figueredo, 162.

45 Figueredo, 171.

46 Oscar Charleston record in Cuba, available in Charleston’s Hall of Fame player file.

47 Harrisburg Courier, February 3, 1924.

48 Figueredo, 150.

49 Figueredo, 149

50 Beer, 155.

51 Beer, 155.

52 W. Rollo Wilson, “Hilldale Is Greatest Ball Team: Aggregation Credit to National Pastime,” Baltimore Afro-American, March 16, 1929.

53 Wilson.

54 “Cuban Stars Twice Wallop Hilldale,” Baltimore Afro-American, June 15, 1929.

55 “Johnson, Charleston, Stevens, Thomas play for Posey,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 19, 1929.

56 Beer, 206.

57 Beer, 209.

58 C.E. Pendleton, “Charleston’s Fielding Makes Him Greater Than Hornsby, Opinion,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 30, 1931.

59 “Homestead Grays Defeat Hilldale 5 to 4, and Takes [sic] Lead in the Series,” New York Age, July 18, 1931.

60 “Has Big Day,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 5, 1931.

61 Beer, 229.

62 Beer, 230-31.

63 Beer, 237.

64 “Negro Nines Clash at Stadium Today,” Washington Post, June 10, 1934.

65 Chester L. Washington, “Sez ’Ches,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 11, 1935.

66 Al Abrams, “Sidelights on Sports,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 29, 1935: 20. 

67 “Chester Loses,” Delaware County Times (Chester, Pennsylvania), August 6, 1935.

68 “Crawford Out to Win from Farmer Nine,” Times Union (Brooklyn, New York), June 6, 1935: 14.

69 “Cum Posey’s Pointed Paragraphs,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 21, 1935: 13.

70 Beer, 257.

71 “Adding Color to Baseball,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 7, 1936.

72 “Players Who Fled League Face Return/Morton Files Names with Government for Damages,” New York Amsterdam News, May 29, 1937: 17. The list of players submitted to the State Department on May 24 included Pittsburgh Crawfords players Leroy Matlock, Ernest Carter, Chet Brewer, Satchel Paige, Bill Perkins, Cool Papa Bell, Thad Christopher, Sam Bankhead, Harry Williams, and Pat Patterson.

73 “Meet Cum’s All-Time All-Americans,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 18, 1937. The final record of the team is as presented by Beer.

74 “Phila. Stars to Begin Spring Training April 1,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 27, 1948.

75 “Bushwicks Host to Philly Stars at Dexter Tonight,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 16, 1948.

76 Richards.

77 Beer, 21.

78 Beer, 327.

Forbes Field, as seen from the top of the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning tower during the 1960 World Series (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

Baseball can link rivalry and geography. In 1908 the Philadelphia Phillies built the sport’s first concrete and steel double-decked field, Shibe Park. Three hundred miles to the west, that franchise’s main foe turned green. Pittsburgh Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss began a search for an idyll that “will make people forget about Shibe,” he told friend and business baron Andrew Carnegie.

Since 1892 the Buccaneers had inhabited 16,000-seat Exposition Park II. Dreyfuss wanted a larger park in Pittsburgh’s future Oakland-Schenley section, three miles from the business district. “There was nothing there but a livery stable and a hot house, with a few cows grazing over the countryside,” he said. “A ravine ran through the property [ultimately, right field]. The first thing necessary to make it suitable for baseball was to level off the entire field.”

Critics panned downtown’s snub. “Oakland’s Orchard!” they cried. “Dreyfuss’s Folly!” Barney knew better. His park would be expandable, accessible by trolley, and far from the smog of mills. Ultimately, the Pirates’ hull conjured a soda fountain, stick dams, and unlocked homes. “You had the smell of grass, could park six blocks away, take a walk through the neighborhood,” said beloved 1948-75 Bucs announcer Bob Prince in 1980. “The House of Thrills it was, and in memory still is.”

In 1909 the ravine was filled and building began on the park named for John Forbes, a British general in the French and Indian Wars who bivouacked troops in Oakland, captured Fort Duquesne in a crucial battle, and renamed it Fort Pitt. “We shape our buildings,” Winston Churchill said. “Thereafter, they shape us.” Racetrack architect Charles Leavitt crafted an irregular shape, vast outfield, and sun-baked infield, the ballpark itself becoming a participant.

Forbes Field rose at the junction of Bigelow Boulevard, Joncaire Street, the Cathedral of Learning, and (General Henry) Bouquet Street, after a Swiss soldier who helped the British. Later, it was filled by an early-1900s melting pot – Slavs, Poles, Italians, Germans – who trooped through southwest Pennsylvania to the flatlands of the Middle West.

Thousands remained in Pittsburgh among its hills and rivers that split the forest like an aorta through the heart. The Roman Quintilian wrote, “It is feeling … that makes us eloquent.” Forbes Field’s feeling soon projected a scent of pleasance and pioneer.

Forbes Field opened for play on June 30, 1909. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

Men worked double shifts to open it on schedule. On June 30, 1909, a crowd of 30,338 engulfed the then-25,000-seat park. Thousands stood behind a rope barrier to watch the Cubs win, 3-2, Dreyfuss observing I told you so. “The formal opening of Forbes Field … was an historic event,” the 1910 Reach Baseball Guide wrote: “Words must fail to picture in the mind’s eye adequately the splendors of the magnificent pile President Dreyfuss erected as a tribute to the national game, a beneficence to Pittsburgh and an enduring monument to himself. For architectural beauty, imposing size, solid construction, and public comfort and convenience, it has not its superior in the world.”

Behind the plate, player and umpire clubhouses underlaid the grandstand. Right field abutted Schenley Park. Two decks extended from beyond first base to the left-field line, outfield seats rimming a 12-foot wooden fence. Distances were pitcher-friendly – left to right, 360, 462, a 462-foot flagpole, and 376 feet – as Forbes’s first year showed. The ’09ers went 110-42, had a 2.07 earned-run average, and beat Detroit in the World Series, Forbes luring “more [in three games] than the entire Series of ’07 or ’08,” said future Pittsburgh Press writer Les Biederman. The yard presaged a franchise more atypical than most. Once two Pirates led off base, the day so dark Christy Mathewson had to approach the catcher to see his signs. A batter lined to right-center field, lightning hitting the ball like a scene from film’s The Natural. Red Murray leapt to make a barehanded catch. De Mille could not have staged it better.

No one threw a no-hitter in Forbes’s 4,760-game history. By contrast, unassisted triple plays seemed as common as a cold. In 1925 Pirates shortstop Glenn Wright caught Jim Bottomley’s liner, stepped on second base to double Jimmy Cooney, and tagged Rogers Hornsby before the Rajah could retouch first. Wright encored as a Cub two years later. “For the unusual, go to Forbes,” a saying went. “For the impossible, go twice.” In 1890 Exposition Park I had hosted baseball’s first triple-header. Thirty years later Forbes reprised its last three-for-the-price-of-one. “Three teams in each league got money from the Series pool, so the Bucs and Reds met to decide third place,” Biederman said. Cincinnati won, 13-4 and 7-3. “The Bucs then lost a meaningless [6-0] third game. The age was a stickler for rules.” In 1912 Chief Wilson hit a still-major-league-record 36 triples. Some parks aid homers. Forbes Field spurred average, defense, and speed.

In 1925 Dreyfuss grooved a lollipop to lefty batters: Two pavilion decks shrank right field to 300 feet. Pitching countered in 1932: A 14½-foot in-play screen topped its 9½-foot concrete wall. Left field rose from 360 to 365. Center field and the flagpole dipped to 435 and 457 respectively. The backstop was a big-league-high 100 feet behind home plate until the batting cage was moved in 1923 to left-center field: in play, like the outfield flagpole bottom and light tower cages.

For a time cars and trucks were repainted and sold under the left-field seats. Said 1921-27 Pirate Kiki Cuyler: “Size was just one thing that made Forbes special.” Exempli gratia: The Bucs were the first team to use a tarpaulin (1906); put padding on the outfield wall (1930s); host a night All-Star and World Series game (1944 and 1971 respectively); wear knit uniforms (1970); and broadcast on radio (August 5, 1921), on America’s first station, Pittsburgh’s KDKA: Pirates 8, Phillies 5. Announcer Harold Arlin, 26, used a telephone as microphone, sat behind the screen, and chatted as though an audience surrounded him around a potbellied stove.

Westinghouse-owned KDKA had debuted on Election Night 1920. “We were looking for programming,” Arlin said, “so I went to Forbes and set up shop.” Often the transmitter failed, or the crowd silenced him. “We didn’t know whether we’d talk into a total vacuum or whether somebody would hear us.” Like a centerfold, television leaves little to fantasy. Early radio left all. Fancy retail stores mounted sidewalk speakers. Streets filled with play-by-play, like shopping malls with Muzak. One day Arlin even pinch-spoke for the Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth, scheduled to read a speech on KDKA.

“He was going on my show,” Harold said. “I introduce him and this big, garrulous guy – he can’t say a word.” “Babe Ruth froze?” a reporter marveled. “Mute,” Arlin jabbed. “I read his script on air and now I’m Ruth as Babe tries to compose himself, smoking and leaning against the wall. You know something? We pull it off. I sign off and Babe hasn’t made a sound.” Forbes’s real sound of the 1920s was the uncorking of champagne.

The ballpark in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood served as home of the Pirates from 1909 to 1970. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

Honus Wagner retired as a player three years before KDKA debuted, leaving Arlin’s Bucs still alight with stars. Pie Traynor batted .320 and was a 1920-37 palatine at third base. A writer mused: “So and so doubled down the left-field line, and Traynor threw him out.” Ten times Max Carey led the National League in stolen bases. In 1925 Cuyler hit .357. By then, Forbes Field held 41,000 seats, Dreyfuss needing them for that fall’s World Series. Down three games to one, Pittsburgh won twice before Washington’s Walter Johnson yielded 15 hits in Game Seven. “He might have survived even that,” said Pie, “if his defense hadn’t cracked.” After Roger Peckinpaugh’s eighth-inning homer gave the Senators a 7-6 lead, his two errors tied the score. Cuyler then fouled off pitch after pitch, doubling for the last two runs. Pittsburgh won, 9-7, its first title since 1909 and last till 1960. “It’s been a long time coming,” sang Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Bill Mazeroski would be a long time gone.

About this time French Marshal Ferdinand Foch visited the Grand Canyon, noting, “What a marvelous place to drop one’s mother-in-law.” Forbes was a fine place to drop perhaps baseball’s most luminous brothers. Lloyd Waner – 5-foot-8½-inch Little Poison – hit .355 in 1927. Big Poison – brother Paul – led the NL in average (.380), RBIs (131), and four other categories. The rightness of things inspired – Pittsburgh in that year’s World Series – save how its foil was as great a team as ever lived. The Yankees hit .307, clinched on Labor Day, and outhomered the Bucs, 158-54. Their Classic began on October 5. After a 10 A.M. workout, “Traynor, the Waner brothers [Lloyd and Paul], and other Pirates went into the stands to look us over,” said New York manager Miller Huggins. “I thought I’d give them something to see,” telling batting practice pitcher Waite Hoyt to throw down the middle. In the Series, Earle Combs, Bob Meusel, Ruth, and Lou Gehrig bombarded Forbes and adjacent Schenley Park, forging the Yanks’ four-game sweep.

In the 1930s, the Pittsburgh Press defined the Bucs as “L. Waner, P. Waner, Vaughan [Arky’s .385 leading the 1935 NL], and Traynor.” By then, Pittsburgh’s niche as a multiracial baseball hotbed was clear. From 1918 to 1948 its Homestead Grays compiled a 1,034-570-50 (.645) record, won nine Negro League titles and three World Series championships, and divided their home schedule among Forbes Field (1918, 1924-32, 1936, and 1939-48), Homestead Park (1921), Rankin Car Barn Field (1922), Greenlee Field (1932-38), and Washington’s Griffith Stadium (1939-1948) – playing all or part of 19 seasons at Forbes as perhaps the most gifted team of its age. 

Individually, the largest name of all, Josh Gibson, launched 131 home runs in 1930-46. Buck Leonard added 103 in 1934-48; Vic Harris, 38 in 1925-47; Raymond Brown, 33 in 1932-45; and Jerry Benjamin, 28 in 1935-47. Others included Howard Easterling, 19 (1940-46), Jud Wilson, 17 (1931-45), John Beckwith, 17 (1926-35), Oscar Charleston, 16 (1926-31), and Sam Bankhead, 13 (1939-48). Raymond Brown led in victories (119, 1932-45), followed by Edsall Walker (52, 1936-45) and Johnny Wright (40, 1941-47). Joe Willams and Roy Welmaker each won 37 games (1925-32 and 1936-45 respectively). Lefty Williams added 27 (1922-35), Roy Partlow 26 (1938-43), and George Britt 25 (1926-40). Spoon Carter won 24 and Tom Parker 23 in 1942-45 and 1935-48 respectively.

In 1930-39 and 1942-46, Forbes hosted an extremely rare two-league doubleheader anchored by the Grays’ and Pittsburgh Crawfords’ Gibson: often styled “The Black Babe Ruth.” One game matched the Pirates and Phillies; the other the Negro East-West League Grays and Philadelphia Hilldale Athletic Club. On May 25, 1935, the real Ruth hit his final three home runs – at Forbes. Said Guy Bush, yielding Babe’s last, number 714: “Leave it to [him] to [be first to] clear the [86-foot-high right-field] roof.” Only 16 blasts eclipsed that barrier, including five later by Pirates African American Willie Stargell. Other highlights: Chuck Klein’s four homers in a 10-inning game and the Bucs taking Forbes’s 1940 night debut.

In 1938 Pittsburgh finished two games behind the Cubs. “Dreyfuss had died in 1932,” said Biederman. “His son-in-law, [President] Bill Benswanger, was sure they were going to make the Series. So he ordered a new deck of seats [dubbed the Crow’s Nest] built on the grandstand roof and also a press box with baseball’s first elevator.” A visitor could leave through an exit gate in right-center field. Nearby the Pirates erected a bronze and granite Dreyfuss statue, joined in 1943 by a wooden US Marine, 32 feet high by 15 feet wide at his feet, standing at parade rest. “He was there to salute our World War II effort,” said Prince. “Maybe the most bizarre in-play object in baseball history.”

In time, Forbes added an objet d’art: a brick and ivied wall from right-center field to the left-field line. In left, a 27-foot-high hand-operated scoreboard listed balls, strikes, outs, scores, and pitching changes. Atop it lay speaker horns and a Western Union (later Longines) clock. Seats were blue (boxes), gray (reserved), and green or red (general admission). Beyond third base lay bleachers down the line. “This became the look,” said 1956-76 general manager Joe Brown, “how we remember her – the scoreboard, brick, so beautiful.” Interest was further enhanced by 1936-55 announcer Rosey Rowswell, spawning “dipsy-doodle” (curveball) and “bases FOB” (“Full of Bucs”) and “doozie marooney” (extra-base hit). Ten times his Pirates braved the second division. The Tri-State area listened, anyway.

When a Pittsburgh drive neared the wall, Rowswell shouted, “Get upstairs, Aunt Minnie, and raise the window! Here she [the baseball] comes!” An aide then dropped a pane of glass: to a listener, it meant her window. “That’s too bad,” Rosey cried over the fictitious belle. “Aunt Minnie tripped over a garden hose! She never made it!” Aunt Minnie debuted in 1938. A year later a plump lass by that name joined Rowswell in hyping a KDKA-TV exhibit by entering Forbes Field in an Austin car. Few criticized baseball’s Empress with No Clothes. Said Prince: “People knew she wasn’t real, and they didn’t care.”

Bob Prince’s late-’40s arrival changed Rosey’s tack. “Instead of glass – too messy – I had this big dumbwaiter’s tray with bells and nuts and bolts,” Prince mused. “Anything to make noise. On Rowswell’s signal, Bob, standing, dropped it. “On radio, it sounded like an earthquake. And Rosey’d say, ‘Poor Aunt Minnie. She didn’t make it again.’” Prince then proceeded to pick up the nuts and bolts. “I had to have the tray ready again, just in case the next guy hit one out.” Another Bucs announcer, Jim Woods, later said to him, “You got a lot of practice.” Bob agreed, adding, “Who wouldn’t with Ralph Kiner around?”

In 1946 Pittsburgh bought slugger Hank Greenberg, moved bullpens from foul ground to left field, strung a fence to left-center, and shrank the foul line from 365 to 335 feet. “The [30-foot] area between the new fence and scoreboard was called Greenberg’s Gardens,” said Kiner. “Balls landing there were homers.” After one year Greenberg retired, his Gardens renamed Kiner’s Korner.

Ralph Kiner had returned from war in 1946, later saying, “Home-run hitters drive Cadillacs.” General manager Branch Rickey observed, “Ralph was our team,” taking a nonpareil seven straight NL home-run titles, including 1947’s 51 and 1949’s 54. The long ball didn’t win a pennant, but kept the Pirates solvent: In 1948, placing fourth, they drew a then-franchise-record 1,517,021. “After my last up,” Kiner laughed, “half the crowd would leave.”

In 1952 Ralph wafted 37 homers and requested a raise. Rickey refused, saying, “We could have finished last without you.” His Bucs were last in runs, doubles, triples, home runs, walks, shutouts, ERA, and record – 42-112. “It was the most courageous team in the bigs,” said reserve catcher Joe Garagiola. “We showed up for every game.” Next year Kiner joined the Cubs, and Forbes’s inner fence came down. In 1955 Rickey dedicated an 18-foot, 18,000-pound statue of Wagner in Schenley Park. On May 28, 1956, before 31,221 at home, Dale Long homered in a major-league-record eighth straight game. Long got a curtain call – a then-rarity. Even rarer: The ’58ers finished second, Danny Murtaugh overwhelmingly voted Associated Press Manager of the Year.

The Pittsburgh Pirates played in four World Series at Forbes Field, in 1909, 1925, 1927, and 1960. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

In 1959 three new field- and dugout-level rows upped Forbes’ capacity to 35,000. Dick Stuart became the first to clear left-center’s 457 mark. Reliever Elroy Face won his 17th straight game. Said Joe Brown: “We won’t soon see that again.” That was especially true of a year when western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and West Virginia celebrated “Beat ’Em Bucs” and “The Bucs Are Going All the Way,” an all-time Forbes attendance record of 1,705,828, and a surreal World Series. Wrote Biederman of 1960: “Those Pirates were something special.”

Pittsburgh won 23 games in its last at-bat. MVP shortstop Dick Groat hit a big-leagues-high .325. Vernon Law went 20-9, won the Cy Young award, and said of second baseman Mazeroski, “When he pivoted [on a double play], the ball looked like it took a U-turn.” First basemen Stuart and Rocky Nelson had 30 homers. In center field, Bill Virdon rivaled Willie Mays. In right, Roberto Clemente batted .314, drove in 94 runs, and threw out a league-best 19 runners. On September 25 Pittsburgh clinched its first pennant since 1927.

Ten days later the World Series began at Forbes, its pews so near the players you could almost know what they were like. The Pirates took Games One, Four, and Five, 6-4, 3-2, and 5-2 respectively. The Yankees swaggered, winning 16-3, 10-0, and 12-0. Bobby Richardson set a fall classic mark for most RBIs in a game (six, Game Three) and Series (12). Whitey Ford threw two shutouts. The stripes outhit (.338-.256), outhomered (10-4), and outscored (55-27) the Bucs. Nova blur: diving stops by Don Hoak and Mazeroski; Mickey Mantle, batting righty, clearing the 436 right-center mark; Virdon’s leaping catch off Yogi Berra, saving Game One.

October 13 broke mild and bright for a Good God Almighty, one frantic play after another, top-this final. “We have been blessed again with summer weather,” Mel Allen mused on NBC Television. Off-air he asked if Prince wanted a drink. “Don’t worry,” Bob passed. “I’m just as crazy sober.” Game Seven left you feeling like a morning-after binge. Tide: Nelson, first inning. “There’s a drive!” said Prince. “Deep into right field! Back she goes! You can kiss that one goodbye!” – Pirates, 2-0. Riptide: The Yankees rallied. Down, 4-2, Berra batted in the sixth. “There’s a drive hit deep to right field!” Allen said, calling foul, then amending: “All the way for a home run!” – Yanks, 5-4.

In the eighth inning, behind 7-4, Virdon slapped a one-on grounder to Tony Kubek. “A sure double play,” said the Yankees shortstop, “except the ball hit something, came up, and hit me in the throat.” Groat and Clemente singled: 7-6. Hal Smith’s three-run “electrifying homer,” read the Press, “turned Forbes Field into a bedlam”– 9-7, Pirates. New York tied the score in the top of the ninth. In the bottom, Ralph Terry threw a slider. The left-center-field clock read 3:36 P.M. “There’s a drive deep into left field!” said Allen, Berra retreating to the 406-foot sign. “Look out now! That ball is going … going, gone! … Mazeroski hits it over the left-field fence for a home run. And the Pirates win it, 10 to 9, and win the World Series!”

Maz’s homer became a Baby Boomer touchstone. In Los Angeles, future broadcaster Bob Costas, 8, retired to his room. “I’m sitting there, eyes welling with tears as I take a vow of silence. My plan was not to speak until Opening Day of the ’61 season.” Reality soon intervened. “But I kept mute for 24 hours – protesting this cosmic curse.” In suburban Pittsburgh, Larry Lucchino, 15, was walking home from school. “I was a Pirates fan and had a radio. When Maz homered, I threw it toward the sky.” Alight, the future president of the Orioles, Padres, and Red Sox raced home: “Really, I was walking on air.”

For a long time a hangover shrouded bars, mail routes, and screened-in porches, where one radio after another ferried the Bucs. Five decades later, even a Yankees fan recalls the leaves and splashing hues and spooked-up days that cradled fancy. “We had ’em allll the way!” Prince cried upon a victory. Nineteen-sixty has Pittsburgh, even now.

By default, Maz’s shot sustained the 1960s. It is true that in 1966 Matty Alou won the batting title (.342), Prince coined a hex (the Green Weenie, a hot dog painted green that locals bought at stores, shook at rivals, and hung on car antennas), and the Bucs barely missed a pennant. It is also true that the 1961-69 Pirates five times flunked the first division, relying on Clemente to grease their creaking gate. The Great One had 3,000 hits, five times led outfielders in assists, and won a dozen Gold Gloves and four batting titles. His MVP pinnacle was 1966’s .317, 29 homers, and 119 RBIs. Clemente ran like Secretariat, hit like Ali vs. Frazier, and “treated baseball,” wrote Roger Angell, “like a form of punishment on the field.” Sadly, he also left Forbes for a very different kind of home.

In 1958 the Pirates sold The House of Thrills to the University of Pittsburgh for $2 million. The college wanted to expand graduate facilities. The Bucs wanted a new multisport stadium, said Costas. Prince noted that “leaving Forbes Field, they took the players away from the fans. It was unique. So what if girders needed replacing? You could have done it, adding bleacher seats. They had a way – just not a will.” It is likely that no baseball team ever suffered more by leaving one site for another.

Pirates Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski is shown during the final game at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field on June 28, 1970. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

Forbes Field closed on June 28, 1970, before 40,918, the Bucs’ largest crowd since 1956, in a doubleheader vs. Chicago. “The Cubs won Forbes’s first game [1909],” said Brown. “Now the Pirates returned the favor [winning, 3-2 and 4-1].” Mourners heisted soil, seats, and numbers from the scoreboard. Sterile and circular successor Three Rivers Stadium took two years to build, cost $55 million, and had Tartan Turf, symmetrical distances, a large foul area, and an upper deck near the troposphere. A 10-foot inner fence ringed the outfield. Three levels of plastic chairs enclosed the park, including a huge upper deck. Sight lines favored the football Steelers, who soon ruled the city.

Three Rivers housed the Bucs through 2000 – hard to access and/or leave after a game. In turn, it almost led the Pirates to leave Pittsburgh, no longer fitting in its emotional luggage. In 2001 baseball-only $228 million PNC Park opened downtown between the Fort Duquesne and Sixth Street (renamed Roberto Clemente) bridges by the Allegheny River. Designed by a Forbes II Task Force, PNC’s brick, steel, terra-cotta-tiled plasters, masonry arches, corner pens, 16 light towers, and flat green roof evoked the original. Like Forbes, its wall height and distance varied, the farthest seat a big-league smallest 88 feet from the field. “People never accepted Three Rivers,” said 1976-79 Bucs announcer Milo Hamilton. “By contrast, they loved this place since Day One.”

Fire struck Forbes Field on July 17, 1971, wreckers soon crumpling it. Today home plate, in glass, anchors the University of Pittsburgh’s Forbes Quadrangle, a large graduate-school classroom and office building. A plaque notes where Maz’s homer cleared the fence. A lovely red brick path traces the left-field wall. Patches of the center field and right-center wall conjure the Waner brothers and in-play batting cage. The Great One hovers over Mervis Hall – in 1960, right field. You approach the plot on Roberto Clemente Drive.

Each October 13 pilgrims flock there, like the devout to Lourdes. “We listen to a recording of Bob Prince and Jim Woods re-create Game Seven,” said former Bucs pitcher and announcer Steve Blass. “We remember where we were, talk about why Forbes was special.” Prince died in 1985, often returning to a place still pleasant, almost golden. “I’d come by myself, just look around, marvel at what we had.” In Schenley Park, memory comes unbidden like a postcard from the past.

Sources

Material, including quotes, is derived from Curt Smith’s books Voices of The Game, Storied Stadiums, Voices of Summer, The Voice, Pull Up a Chair, and A Talk in the Park (in order: Simon & Schuster 1992, Carroll & Graf 2001 and 2005 respectively, The Lyons Press 2007, and Potomac Books 2009 and 2011 respectively.)

If there was a signature moment for a baseball player, Willie Foster’s complete-game victories in both ends of the doubleheader for the Chicago American Giants to decide the 1926 western Negro League playoffs against the Kansas City Monarchs might well be it.  That occasion at the young age of 22 marked a stretch of unparalleled pitching. Seventy years later, Foster was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His early promise, epitomized by his accomplishments in 1926, was merely a foretaste of his career. 

The decision to induct William Hendrick “Big Bill” Foster into the Hall of Fame was predicated on his body of work. However, this was a significant hurdle for Negro League players; their career statistics were problematic to assemble and only estimative of their achievements. That said, Foster in his prime was second to none, fortified by the box scores of African-American papers like the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier and the recollection of the many who played for and against him. 

The testimonial of Cum Posey, part-owner of the Homestead Grays, didn’t hurt. In the late 1930s, Posey picked a team of Negro League All Stars, noting, “[T]he agitation which has rightly arisen over the blacklisting of colored baseball players from the White Major Leagues was the source from which the idea of picking an All-star Colored Baseball club from 1915 to the present time came.” In a series of articles in the Pittsburgh Courier in late 1937, Posey selected the players of his team, one of whom was Foster. He is, Posey wrote, “a man who took utmost care of himself … the Willie Foster of this team is the Foster … who specialized in a blazing fast ball and a sharp curve.”1

With the likes of Satchel Paige and Smokey Joe Williams often stealing the limelight of Negro League pitching lore, Foster’s selection by Posey as probably the greatest left-handed Negro League pitcher was high praise. Even the incomplete records of the day affirmed Foster’s legacy: 79 wins against only 44 losses, 94 complete games, and 20 shutouts along with 685 strikeouts over 12 seasons.2 Some would argue that on the Mount Rushmore of Negro League pitchers –Paige, Williams, and Foster would be there, with the fourth spot going to either Leon Day or Bullet Joe Rogan. 

Willie Foster’s birth, like his early career in baseball, started in the shadow of his half-brother, Rube. Twenty-five years before Willie was born, Andrew “Rube” Foster became the fifth son of Reverend Andrew Foster and gospel singer Evaline on September 17, 1879, in Calvert, Texas.3  Rube Foster’s well-chronicled place as a player, manager, owner, and force in the formation of the Negro Leagues makes him one of the more compelling figures in the game. Willie Foster’s baseball beginnings were influenced, if not directed, by his older half-brother.

Reverend Foster later remarried and his second wife, Geneva, gave birth to Willie on June 12, 1904, also in Calvert.4 “His mother died when he was only 4 years old, and the youngster was raised by his maternal grandparents in Mississippi,” says Negro Leagues historian James Riley.5 At an early age, baseball became an important part of Foster’s life. His size and giftedness must have made him stand out. Foster told the story of how he became connected to what was then Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (“the oldest public historically black land-grant institution in the United States”6, now Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Mississippi. It was his springboard to organized baseball and his landing place in later years.

After Saturday chores, the 13-year-old Foster would play ball all day long. One Saturday, he went to Lorman, a dozen miles from Rodney, Mississippi, his home, to watch the Alcorn baseball team.

Foster told the story that “after a while, the coach walks over to me and says, ‘What are you doing here, big fella?’ I told him I could beat anybody out there, so he said to come on. I struck out everybody they had. I made the baseball team then.” Even in sixth grade, Foster said, you could make the college baseball team. “The school was sixth grade up. You could play ball the whole time. You could also play professionally and still come back and play for the college.”7

According to Riley, Foster “attended school at Alcorn until 1918, when he traveled north to Chicago to work in the stockyards.”8 Alcorn focused on vocational training as well as education and at the age of 14, when Foster went north as part of the great migration of African-Americans from the South, his schooling helped prepare him to find work.

Around that time, when Willie was a young teenager, he learned that he was the great Rube Foster’s half-brother. Given the younger Foster’s emerging love for baseball, he reached out to Rube to ask to play with the Chicago American Giants, the team Rube owned and managed. John Holway’s lengthy interview with Foster in 1970 in an unpublished manuscript in the Baseball Hall of Fame archives (from which a March 1975 Black Sports article was derived as well as Holway’s chapter on Foster in Voices from The Great Black Baseball Leagues) captured Willie’s recollection of those early days.

Foster remarked, “I knew I had a brother and I heard all about the great Rube Foster, but I never met him until I went to Chicago to work in the stockyards. That was around 1918. … Rube was 15 [sic] years older than me. He was my half-brother, but I never knew him until I was 15 years old. He had already left home and gone to Chicago when I was born, in 1904, in Texas.”9

No one can tell the story better than Foster himself about what happened next. “He wouldn’t let me play baseball at all. He had a ball team then and wouldn’t let me play. Well, he didn’t want me to play ball, that was it, he wanted me to do so something else: ‘That’s no life for you, don’t play baseball.’ Well, I wanted to play.”10 What might have shaped Rube’s thinking at the time?  Was this the protectiveness of an older brother for his 14-year-old kin? Or a belief that Willie should focus on school? A brief essay on Willie by Larry Lester in the Hall of Fame archives suggests the latter: “Rube encouraged Willie to complete his education.”11

Foster returned to Mississippi and over the next few years played semipro ball between his time at Alcorn. This caught the eye of the Negro National League Memphis Red Sox, just north of the Mississippi border. The team signed him to pitch in a series against rival Arkansas in which he won twice.  

In 1923 the young Willie Foster was becoming good and his pitching with Memphis exposed him to a wider audience. That included Rube Foster, who, as president of the Negro National League, regularly kept in touch with the teams in the league. “So he routinely called the Arkansas manager, and asked how they had done against Memphis, and the Arkansas manager told him that a young left-hander had whipped  them a couple of times. ‘What was his name?’ the president-manager [Rube Foster] asked. ‘Bill Foster,’ said the Arkansas manager. ‘Bill Foster!’ exclaimed the president manager. ‘Why that’s my brother!’” Rube’s introduction to young Willie’s baseball prowess changed his thinking and he is reputed to have said, “Find him, give him a train ticket and $50, and send him up to Chicago. I want him playing for me.”12

The younger Foster continued his reflections. “I came back on down here [to Lorman, Mississippi after his failure to convince his brother to let him play] and then when I got ready to go up again, I went to Memphis, and Bubber Lewis [according to Larry Lester, his mother’s brother13 gave me a chance to pitch for the Memphis team. That was in 1925 [the year actually was 1923].”14

Holway’s invaluable interview with Foster offered additional insight on the sibling relationship and its impact on the younger brother.

Rube was manager and owner of the American Giants, and he was also president of our league. When he found out I was in Memphis, he just told Bubber Lewis to send me to Chicago, and I think that’s one of the things that came between Rube and me. After Bubber had given me a chance, I didn’t feel like I should have left Bubber. I just didn’t want to go, but Lewis said, “I don’t have any way out. He’s your brother, he’s president of the league and he’s got a ball team. I didn’t have any business, really, trying to sign you until you had talked to Rube.” So he says, “You gotta go.”15

After Foster’s brief Memphis sojourn and forced transfer to his brother’s team, his career with the Chicago American Giants took shape. Initially, it was a rocky one. Upset by the events in Memphis, Foster queried his older brother, “Why didn’t you take me before I went to Memphis? I never did get over that. I decided from then on I was going to do everything like I wanted to do it. He would try to show me the right way, and I didn’t know the right way or the wrong way. I didn’t know anything. But I was going to be obstinate, you know … but Rube was a shrewd man. The more I think of it, the older I get, I can see Rube’s point of view in a lot of things. And whatever he told me, stuck.”16

Foster’s first stint with the Chicago American Giants, from 1923 to 1930, witnessed his ascendence to elite status. From 1923 to 1925, he pitched on a limited basis for the American Giants, and was also loaned to Memphis in 1924 and to the Birmingham Black Barons in 1925.17 However, Rube had no intention of losing Bill and, in fact, indicative of his embracing his brother in his orbit, called on the services of his younger brother to serve as majority shareholder when Rube orchestrated the initial incorporation of the Negro National League in the winter of 1924-1925. Lester notes, however, that later on “Willie Foster did not play an active role in the league’s operation, leaving the administrative decision to his older brother Rube.”18

In 1926 the fans of Negro National League witnessed Big Bill Foster’s breakout year. Negro League statistics were problematic, record-keeping being as uneven as it was, but according to the Hall of Fame’s brief bio of Foster, “He won 26 consecutive games (both league and non-league games).”19 Foster reflected, “That was the year they said I was one of the greatest pitchers of all time, that I had well-nigh perfect control. I think I won 28 or 29 games that year, and I didn’t lose but three or four.”20

Foster led a Chicago American Giants team managed by Dave Malarcher (who took over from Rube Foster that year due to Rube’s deteriorating health) to the second-half championship of the Negro National League. The reward was playing the Kansas City Monarchs (winners of the first half) for the league championship. The seven-game series between the two teams was the stuff of ages. The Monarchs were one of the best teams in the Negro Leagues, having won the first Negro League World Series (against Hilldale) in 1924. 

The American Giants and Monarchs played a best-of-nine series in which Bullet Joe Rogan outdueled Foster in Game One. Kansas City also won Games Two and Three (all three games were in Kansas City), but lost Game Four in their home park (Foster got a rare save for Chicago) before the Series shifted to Chicago. Rogan won again in Game Five with Foster giving up six runs in the fourth inning. Kansas City needed to win only one more to take the West. Chicago fought back and hurlers George Harney and Rube Currie won the next two games to pull the American Giants to three wins against the Monarchs’ four. It was left to a doubleheader on Wednesday, September 29; the Monarchs needed one win, Chicago two, to take the Series. In Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African American Baseball, Lawrence Hogan tells the story of that memorable doubleheader:

“When the Monarchs won three out of four on their home field, and took the first contest at the American Giants’ Schorling Park grounds, the outcome seemed assured. What no one counted on was Willie Foster – no one, that it is, but the Giants themselves. Needing a sweep of a final doubleheader on September 29, manager Dave Malarcher, who assumed the team’s reins that summer after Rube Foster was hospitalized, sent younger brother Willie to the mound against Kansas City’s best, Bullet Rogan. Light snow was falling as one of the great pitching duels in baseball history commenced. It took nine innings for either team to score a run. That one tally came in the bottom half when pitcher Foster sacrificed Stanford Jackson to third, and with two out, Sandy Thompson hit a walk-off single to register the win for Chicago.”21

The series was now tied four games apiece. Hogan continued:

“‘Who do you want to pitch the second game?’ Dave Malarcher asked his players. They replied with one voice, ‘Foster!’ When Bullet Rogan saw who was warming up, he took the ball from the appointed starter Chet Brewer, determined to match Willie Foster and avenge the first-game loss. Shortened because of approaching darkness to a five-inning contest, the score stood 5-0 when the game was called for a lack of light. It is unusual for any pitcher to throw a shutout. It is rare for a hurler to pitch two in one day. Willie Foster sparked one of the greatest comebacks in baseball history, black or white.”22

What did Foster think about that day? “We hadn’t planned to leave Chicago – it wasn’t in the plan that we were going to play the World Series, because everybody was expecting Kansas City. So when we beat the doubleheader, we had to get ready and go out East. Well, I had pitched a doubleheader on Friday in Chicago and then I opened up on Sunday in Philadelphia in the World Series against the [Atlantic City] Bacharach Giants.”23 In fact, Foster came in in the eighth of that game to relieve Rube Currie, who could not hold on to an early lead. 

That first game ended in a tie and the best-of-nine Series went 11 games due a second tie in Game Five (that Foster pitched). With Dick Lundy’s Bacharach team up three games to one (along with the two ties) entering Game Seven, Foster pitched and won when the American Giants scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. Chicago took two of the next three, evening the series at four each.24 Game Eleven, for all the marbles, had Foster pitching against Hubert Lockhardt, who had already lost once to Foster in Game Seven. What followed was another masterpiece: Foster pitched a shutout, even more remarkable given that he gave up 10 hits. The American Giants won on a single by light-hitting outfielder Sandy Thompson with one out in the bottom of the ninth, scoring Jelly Gardner.25

What kind of pitcher exactly was Willie Foster? At 6-feet-2 and 195 pounds, Foster’s frame brought length and power. According to Buck O’Neil, Foster was a “front line starter [with a] hard sinking fastball and over the top curve ball.” Both pitches were “strike out pitches” and he spotted all pitches well.”26 “As a young pitcher Foster relied mainly on his blinding speed,” writes another biographer. “Upon maturing, he added a fast breaking curve, a change-up, and an early version of the slider to his repertoire, and delivered all his pitches with the same motion.”27

As great as Foster pitched in 1926, 1927 was an encore performance. He led the Negro National League (West) in victories (21) and strikeouts (106). Chicago won the first-half pennant and defeated the second-half winners Birmingham Black Sox to play Atlantic City from the Eastern Colored League for the World Series. The American Giants won the best-of-nine series with Foster going 2-2.28

In 1927-1928, Big Bill Foster journeyed to Cuba for his only appearance in the Cuban winter league. Records are sketchy for these games, but thanks to Jorge Figueredo, it is known that Foster played for the Cuba franchise in a four-team league against Habana, Cienfuegos, and Almendares. Habana ran away with the league title, led by league MVP Martin Dihigo. Foster played alongside Oscar Charleston and Judy Johnson for second-place Cuba. His nine complete games and two shutouts led the league, but he was also tagged with eight losses against six wins.29 

Foster also played three seasons in the California Winter League. The league was considered America’s first integrated professional baseball league and featured quite a few Negro League stars playing against white competition. He appeared in 1926-1927, 1930-1931, and 1931-1932, each time for the Philadelphia Royal Giants.30 The league’s size and duration of season changed over time, but Foster’s superlative play was a constant. He was 6-0, 9-1, and 9-0 in those three seasons, leading his team to first-place finishes each year. Over those three campaigns, he played on a Giants team with the likes of Turkey Stearnes, Joe Rogan, Willie Wells, Biz Mackey, Jud Wilson, Mule Suttles, Rap Dixon, Cool Papa Bell, and (in his first California Winter League stint in 1931-1932), Satchel Paige. Although white players were deemed, with a few exceptions, to be Triple-A caliber at best, Foster’s pitching reflected a superlative talent that shone whether in Negro League play or on the winter or barnstorming circuit.31

The years 1928 and 1929 were solid seasons for Foster (14-10 and 15-10 respectively), although Chicago finished in the middle of the pack behind the St. Louis Stars and Kansas City Monarchs.

The American Giants’ hometown paper, the Chicago Defender, regularly chronicled Foster’s games. Big Boy Bill Foster is the “southpaw hurler on whom the Giants rely to win his ball games on the southern tour. Foster is the main cog in the pitching machine.”32 And even when he did not have his best, Foster prevailed. “Sunday the Cubans touched Willie Foster for 11 hits in the first game of the twin bill, but couldn’t score one run as Foster would tighten with men on base.”33 The American Giants eventually won that game, 8-2.

No World Series with the American Negro League (East) winners was played in 1929, but the American Giants bested the Homestead Grays (both teams added some star players to their sides) in a postseason series, sweeping them in five games with Foster winning Game Two against Smokey Joe Williams, 1-0.34

The 1929 season featured one of the more famous Negro League vs. Major League All Star series. The beefed-up Chicago American Giants with Cool Papa Bell, Mule Suttles, and Willie Wells, just off their series win against the Grays, played five games against a team led by Charlie Gehringer, Heinie Manush, and Harry Heilmann. Chicago won three of the five games and Foster pitched in three, winning two.35

In the mid-1920s, Foster entered his prime and did so at a time when his older brother began suffering from mental illness. Rube first withdrew from managing, turning over the reins to Dave Malarcher. Later, he departed from the game completely to the care of health institutions in Chicago. Rube died on December 9, 1930, a sad loss to his family, including Willie, and to the game.

In 1930 Bill Foster became a player-manager for the only time in his career. Many accomplished players took on a managerial role as their careers evolved and perhaps Foster felt it was his turn. But he served only one year, reflecting that “he could not do justice to the manager’s job and continuing pitching.”36 In a troubled year for the league due to the Depression, leading to its collapse, Chicago finished with a record a few games over .500, but well behind the win totals of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Detroit.37

Foster recounted the impact of the hard times on him and his fellow players after the Great Crash. “The team couldn’t pay us, it was the Depression and nobody was working. … The people couldn’t go to the ball game, and our bosses promised us so much money, but they didn’t have it ’cause they weren’t making it.38 

In 1931 Cum Posey, the owner of the Homestead Grays and better off financially than most owners at the time, lured Foster to his team. Foster went 12-2 for the Grays that year, winning three games against Kansas City in the World Series ending on September 14. Curiously, with the agreement of both teams, Foster then switched jerseys and played for Kansas City in barnstorming games after the Series. Notable was his winning performance versus a team of major-league all-stars in a game the Monarchs won 4-3. On the major-league squad were Bill Terry, Paul Waner, Lloyd Waner, Babe Herman, and Heinie Meine (NL leader in wins).39 

“I played with the Homestead Grays in ’31, and we had nine starters. I pitched on a Friday, pitched my ball game and finished it. Do you know that Sunday evening it was my turn again? Everybody had pitched and everybody had stayed in the ball game? Yes sir, we played nine ball games in two days! … That was a great ball club there – Oscar Charleston, Vic Harris, Jake Stephens, Judy Johnson, Jud Wilson, Cool Papa Bell, and Smokey Joe Williams. And that was the year that Josh Gibson first came up.”40

After the 1931 season, Foster rejoined the American Giants, now sometimes named for its new owner, Robert Cole. The 1932 campaign would be one of Foster’s best, with John Holway’s Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues naming him the George Stovey Award recipient for best pitcher in the Southern League, where the American Giants now resided. Foster won games Seven and Eight of the series against Nashville in a Southern League playoff between the winners of the two half-seasons to give the American Giants the league title.41

In 1933 the American Giants played in Indianapolis after their park burned down, and led the standings in the revamped Negro National League, but league President Gus Greenlee awarded the pennant to his own team over the American Giants’ protest.42

That year, more so than league play, the first black All-Star game, the East-West classic, drew the rapt attention of fans around the country. On September 10 in Comiskey Park, the same venue as the first major-league All-Star Game, the West defeated the East 11-7 with Foster as the starting and winning pitcher.

His league performance in 1933 and the fan vote (he received 40,637 – the most for any player) earned him the distinction of being the starting pitcher for the West squad.43 At that time the rules did not restrict a pitcher to three innings in All-Star competition, and Willie pitched the entire game to win over an East lineup with Cool Papa Bell, Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Biz Mackey, Jud Wilson, and Dick Lundy. According to William Nunn of the Pittsburgh Courier, “This afternoon, Willie Foster, who likes to boast and backs his talk with his mighty left arm, humbled the bats of the greatest All Star aggregation he’s ever met and allowed but seven hits. … We saw a great southpaw who was ‘right’ this afternoon. He proved to us that he had a ‘fighting’ heart, and our hats are off to him.”44 The inside story suggested Foster’s accomplishment was even more astounding. “Lefty Bill Foster was in there for the West with a sore arm, but with the aid of a curve ball and a fine pitching head, held the Easterners to seven hits and as many runs to pile up victory number 1 in the all-star tussle,” wrote the Chicago Defender. “Foster had been suffering from a sore arm for two weeks prior to the classic.”45 His arm troubles would stay with him for the remainder of his career.

The 1933 season also saw players take their talents to a North Dakota semipro league. Foster and Paige joined the exodus and famously dueled in a game where Paige pitched for Bismarck and Foster for Jamestown. The game was scoreless until the ninth inning when Paige won the game with a single.46 

That year was also important to Foster for a reason other than baseball. A document he apparently completed for the Hall of Fame some years later (and is in the HOF archives) records that Foster attended Alcorn for four years in elementary school, four years in high school, and four years in college. It showed that in 1933, he earned a bachelor of science in agricultural education thanks to his offseason sojourns at Alcorn to complete his studies.47 Foster valued his education and not only was Alcorn the bookend to his baseball career; it had become a stopping place throughout his playing days when he could find a moment to continue and complete his studies.

In 1934 the American Giants won the second-half championship of the Negro National League but lost a tough playoff, four games to three, to the first-half champion Philadelphia Stars.48

Foster pitched again in the East-West All-Star Game (August 26, 1934), entering the game in the seventh inning, but lost 1-0, giving up the run in the ninth.49

“I remember the All-Star ball game of 1934, Satchel and I were pitching against each other. The ball game was 0-0 in the ninth, I had two men out, Bell was on second base, Jud Wilson hitting. I had two strikes on Jud and two balls. I threw Jud a high fast ball, broke the bat in two places, and the ball dribbled by the second baseman, didn’t hardly get on the grass when Bell scored and beat me 1-0.  From second! He scored from second on that dribble!”50

The Chicago press commented on the game and reflected on the pitching matchup that did not go the West’s way. “When the 7th inning opened Malarcher sent Willie Foster to the mound and just as many feared it was Bill’s inability to match the pitching of Paige that gave the East its victory,” commented the Defender.51 

Admittedly, at the age of 31, Foster’s talents were diminishing and he had only a few years left in the tank. Nor was his team as good as it used to be. There were no playoffs for the American Giants in 1935; the team finished under .500 and Foster was no longer among the league leaders in wins or strikeouts.

After Foster underwent offseason surgery for a “peculiar shoulder injury,”52 Gus Greenlee took a chance on the aging veteran and Foster joined the Pittsburgh Crawfords in midseason in 1936. The Pittsburgh Courier noted his first game with the Crawfords on July 25: “Willie Foster made his initial appearance for the Crawfords and won the second game [of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Stars – Satchel Paige won game 1, 6-4] 8-5.”53 Although he was past his prime, records show he started a half-dozen games for the Crawfords and was one of six future Hall of Famers (along with Paige, Gibson, Bell, Johnson, and Charleston) on a team that won the Negro National League (East).54

The 1937 season was the left-hander’s last full season with a top team in the Negro Leagues. He was back with the Chicago American Giants. In the erratic seasons that had become the Negro Leagues, the American Giants won a playoff with Kansas City to claim the Negro American League pennant, but then the combined teams of the Monarchs and American Giants lost to the Grays and Eagles in an impromptu showcase series.55

The 1938 season would be Bill Foster’s swan song; he tried out for Memphis, but did not play beyond the exhibition season. “I had a sore arm way late – in ’38 – that’s why I came out of baseball. I probably would have stayed in there if I hadn’t had to have an arm operation. I’d have to wait a year until it got healed, and then I decided, well, I’m 35 years old anyway, so what the heck?”56

Foster never lost the baseball urge and although he didn’t play again in the Negro Leagues, he continued in semipro ball for a number of years.

Comparisons abound when reviewing Bill Foster’s career. He had his share of head-to-head matchups against Satchel Paige, the premier Negro League pitcher of the day and one of the few Negro League greats who made it to the major leagues. “I think, as near as I can remember, we faced each other 13-14 times. And I think I got the edge on Satchel when I beat him a doubleheader in Pittsburgh one Saturday, 5-0 and 1-0. I think that put me one ball game ahead of him in our career. … But I’ll tell you something: If Satchel got one run first, he would beat you; if I got one run first, he was beat.”57

Thanks to John Holway, Bill Foster’s own words are available to share his story about the game he played. “I had a pretty good fastball, and I had a good overhand curve ball, which was known as a drop ball. And then I had what they call sliders now. I had what is called a sidearm curve ball – palm down. I had a slider, an ‘outshoot’ and a curve ball all on the same pitch. … Now, if you can keep a man off balance, he can’t hit the ball hard. … How do I keep him off balance? And with what pitches? It boils down to the fact that I had to have one motion to control every pitch.”58

Foster continued, “This job of pitching is a little more technical than I think most ballplayers give credit for. You see, you can’t forget when you’re pitching out there. I can’t forget what I got you out on the first time up. Because you’re thinking, too.” And if once you catch up with me with that big bat, I’m hurt.”59

About pitching complete games, “We didn’t tire back then, and we didn’t have much relief pitchers. Here’s one thing I can’t understand: I can’t understand why these fellows in the major leagues take two and three men to pitch a game … because you didn’t get us out in our league that fast. When we started a game, we finished it.”60

Larry Lester’s reflections on Foster’s pitching gave further tribute to how special he was: “Foster was to baseball what Picasso was to painting. Big Bill could paint the corners of home plate with his colorful palate of pitches. He had a rainbow of pitches that he delivered for a variety of windups. This painter was known for his pinpoint control, silver-streaking fastball, a red ball espresso slider, and a blouse-inducing sidearm curve that dropped like a slinky. During his 16-year career, Foster white-washed many teams.”61

Willie settled after the 1936 season in Tarboro, North Carolina, where his childhood sweetheart Thelma Quigless had relocated, They married in 1941.Their son, William Douglass Foster, accepted his father’s plaque at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1996, 18 years after Willie’s passing. Stories of his time in Tarboro speak of Foster’s selling insurance for North Carolina Mutual Life, participating in social activities, playing semipro ball, and managing the local Little League team. Foster and Quigless eventually divorced, and he relocated to Lorman and Alcorn State. Foster became the dean of men and baseball coach at Alcorn in 1960. He married Audrey Davis and lived in Lorman until his death on September 16, 1978, on the campus at Alcorn. He was buried at Carbondale Cemetery in Alcorn.62

In a conversation with John Holway in his later years, Foster reflected, “I’ve had a wonderful life. I don’t regret anything at all that I can remember, up to this very night. … It just wasn’t time then for Negroes in the major leagues. Oh, I could have made it all right, but it wasn’t time.”63

Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe summed up William Hendrick Foster’s life well: “Willie Foster was the greatest left-hander that I ever played with and he was a gentleman on and off the field.  He could have made history if he could have played in the big leagues.”64

Like many of Negro League standouts, Foster’s achievements were eventually given proper due, but only after his death. The National Baseball Hall of Fame came in 1996, the Texas Sports Hall of Fame honored him and Rube together in 1999.65 The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame inducted Foster in 2003 and Alcorn State named its baseball field after him in 2010.66 

His Hall of Fame induction in 1996 was at the hands of the Veterans Committee. As had been the case for some years, the committee was empowered to choose as many as two executives, managers, umpires, and older major-league players. However, it was further permitted (as of 1995) to consider Negro Leagues and nineteenth-century players and could pick one each from those categories. In 1996, the committee elected four for induction (the maximum permitted): Jim Bunning, Earl Weaver, Ned Hanlon, and Bill Foster. Foster was the 13th Negro League player chosen for the Hall.

The Hall of Fame’s plaque for Foster captured his career with these words:

Regarded as one of the best left-handed pitchers in Negro League history and also managed several clubs. Devastating sidearm delivery made him consistent winner.  Instrumental in Chicago American Giants Negro League pennant and World Series success in 1926, 1927, 1928, and 1933. Won 26 straight in 1926 and had 32-3 mark in 1927. Coached baseball at alma mater, Alcorn A&M College in Mississippi, 1960-1978.67

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Chris Rainey and Len Levin and fact-checked by David Kritzler and Warren Corbett.

Notes

1 Cum Posey, “Posey Picks All Time All America Baseball Club,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 18, 1937: 16.

2 Seamheads,com: seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=foste01bill, last accessed October 9, 2019.

3 Larry Lester, Rube Foster in His Time (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2012), 169.

4 Rob Fink, Foster, William Hendrick, Texas State Historical Association: tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ffo56, last accessed March 26, 2019.

5 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994), 292.

6 Alcorn State University: alcorn.edu/, last accessed March 31, 2019.

7 Lonnie Wheeler, “Memories: Foster Recalls the Good Ole Days,” Clarion Ledger-Jackson (Mississippi) Daily News, August 14, 1977: 1D.

8 Riley, 292-293.

9 John Holway, “Historically Speaking: Bill Foster,” Black Sports, March 1974: 58.

10 John Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, Revised Edition (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 191.

11 Larry Lester:, Bill Foster Essay, National Baseball Hall of Fame Player File, March 6, 1996, 1.

12 Wheeler: 11D.

13 Lester, Essay, 1.

14 Holway, Voices, 191.

15 Holway, Voices, 191.

16 John Holway, Unpublished Bill Foster Manuscript, Baseball Hall of Fame Player File, 1970, 4-5.

17 Baseball-reference.com, Last accessed March 25, 2019.

18 Lester, Essay, 1.

19 Baseball Hall of Fame, Bill Foster: baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/foster-bill, last accessed March 14, 2019.

20 Holway, Voices, 192.

21 Lawrence D. Hogan, Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African American Baseball (Washington: National Geographic Society, 2006), 171-172.

22 Holway, Voices, 193.

23 Holway, Voices, 193.

24 John B. Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House Publishers, 2001), 218.

25  Baseball reference.com: baseball-reference.com/bullpen/1926_Negro_World_Series, last accessed October 9, 2019.

26 Buck O’Neil, Bill Foster Scouting Report, Baseball Hall of Fame Player File.

27 Gerald E. Brennan, Foster, Willie “Bill,” in Biographical Dictionary of American Sports, Baseball Hall of Fame Player File.

28 Holway, Complete Book, 230.

29 Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2003), 174-176.

30 William F. McNeil, The California Winter League: America’s First Integrated Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2002), 174-176.

31 McNeil, 119.

32 “Chicago Ace,” Chicago Defender, June 2, 1928: 11.

33“Chicago Off with Flying Start: Win Five Straight from Cubans to Lead in 2nd Half,” Chicago Defender, July 14, 1928: 2.

34 Holway, Complete Book, 250.

35 Holway, Complete Book, 252.

36 Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (New York: McGraw Hill, 1984), 211.

37 Holway, Complete Book, 258.

38 Holway, Voices, 195.

39 Holway, Complete Book, 284.

40 Holway, unpublished Foster manuscript, 8.

41 Holway, Complete Book, 277.

42 Holway, Complete Book, 299.

43 Lester, Essay, 3.

44 William G. Nunn, “West’s Satellites Eclipse Stars of the East in Classic,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 16, 1933.

45 “Wins! Sore arm and All,” Chicago Defender, September 16, 1933: 8.

46 Holway, Complete Book, 303.

47 William H. Foster, unpublished profile, Baseball Hall of Fame Player File.

48 Seamheads.com: seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1934, last accessed on October 9, 2019.

49 Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase: The East-West All-Star Game, 1933-1953 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 61.

50 Holway, unpublished Foster manuscript, 10.

51 Al Monroe, “Willie Foster Loses Contest to S. Paige,” Chicago Defender, September 1, 1934: 11.

52 Cum Posey, “Cum Posey’s Pointed Paragraphs,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 21, 1936: 5.

53 “Paige, Foster Pitch Craws to 2 Wins,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 1, 1936: 5.

54 Holway, Complete Book, 329.

55 Holway, Complete Book, 346.

56 Holway, unpublished Foster manuscript, 22.

57 Holway, unpublished Foster manuscript, 3.

58 Holway, Voices, 198.

59 Holway, Voices, 199.

60 Holway, unpublished Foster manuscript, 18A.

61 Ryan Whirty, “Baseball Bonds Princeville, Hall of Fame Pitcher Bill Foster,” Newsobserver.com, September 24, 2013.

62 Whirty, “Baseball Bonds Princeville, Hall of Fame Pitcher Bill Foster.”

63 Holway, Voices, 202.

64 Kyle P. McNary, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe: 36 Years of Pitching and Catching in Baseball’s Negro Leagues (Minneapolis: McNary Publishing, 1994), 241.

65 “Eight Picked for Texas Hall of Fame,” Albany (New York) Times Union, January 29, 1999.

66 Rob Fink, Foster, William Hendrick, Texas State Historical Association: tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ffo56.

67 William H. Foster Hall of Fame Plaque, Baseball Hall of Fame, 1996, last accessed April 4, 2019.

He was referred to as the Black Babe Ruth, but some – then and now – believe it might be just as accurate to call the Bambino the White Josh Gibson.1 In June 1967 a column in The Sporting News credited Gibson with a drive in a Negro League game that hit just two feet from the top of the wall circling the bleachers at Yankee Stadium, approximately 580 feet from home plate in the original park. Had the ball been just two feet higher, the article mused, the ball might have carried 700 feet.2 Jack Marshall, of the Chicago American Giants, swore that he saw Gibson hit a ball completely out of Yankee Stadium,3 and some accounts credit Gibson with between 800 and 1,000 home runs in a career that lasted only 16 years.“

There exists no official source of statistics…no compilations of scorecards. … Many gaps exist in the historical record,” an authority on the Negro Leagues points out.4The record-keeping was incomplete and nonstandardized, so the actual total is unclear and probably unknowable.  That reality, that statistics cannot be usefully compared between the Negro Leagues and the pre-integration major leagues, is an unfortunate one, yet it is also largely irrelevant.  Josh Gibson was, by so many accounts as to make the claim indisputable, one of the greatest sluggers who ever stepped into a batter’s box.

Gibson was born to Mark and Nancy (Woodlock) Gibson in Buena Vista, Georgia, on or about December 21, 1911, named Joshua after one of Mark’s grandfathers.5 As Leigh Montville observed about such specific facts in his biography of Babe Ruth, “Details are important but do not seem to be available. There is so much we want to know. There is so much we never will.”6  That is especially true of the histories of many of the old Negro League players, certainly ones born in the Deep South in the early part of the 20th century. But it is close to certain that Gibson was the eldest of three children.  His brother Jerry, who pitched briefly for the Cincinnati Tigers, was three years younger, and sister Annie (Gibson) Mahaffey was six years his junior.7

Mark Gibson was a sharecropper who in 1923 traveled to Pittsburgh in search of a better life for his family.  He found work with the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Company and sent money back to Georgia for three years until he was able to bring the whole family to Pennsylvania in 1926.The Gibsons bought a house on Strauss Street in the Pleasant Valley section of Pittsburgh, and set about turning it into a home.

Josh had finished the fifth grade while in Georgia. In Pennsylvania he started in the electrical studies program at the Allegheny Pre-Vocational School, and at 13 was placed in a similar program at Conroy Pre-Vocational, in Pleasant Valley.8 By the time he turned 15 he dropped out of school in order to take a job at an airbrake manufacturing plant to help support the family. At 6-feet-1 and 200 pounds, he was already capable of working with the adult men doing heavy labor. He went to work after school with Carnegie-Illinois Steel, which left his evenings free for recreation.

Despite his combination of size and an easy, natural athleticism, Gibson did not embrace football or basketball, instead preferring swimming and, of course, baseball, the sport at which he excelled. His first formal, uniformed baseball team, at age 16, was an all-Negro team sponsored by Gimbels Department Store.9 After a stint as a catcher, Gibson finally settled in at third base.  Mark Ribowsky summarized it neatly: The firm “thought enough of his ability that (they) gave him a job as an elevator operator so it could keep him in uniform.”10

The baseball team, along with other amateur Black teams, became organized into the Negro Greater Pittsburgh Industrial League. The entity included teams from various steel companies, Pittsburgh Railways, and Pittsburgh Screw and Bolt,11 and the contests drew quite a few fans (and some gamblers) to the ballyards. One newer team, Pittsburgh Bath House, was able to recruit several additional sponsors and renamed itself the Pittsburgh Crawfords. One of those partial sponsors was Honus Wagner, who, retired as a player and the owner of a sporting-goods store, donated uniforms to the team.  Even so, the team might have folded due to lack of funds had it not been for the intervention of Gus Greenlee, who took control in 1926. With the infusion of money, and commensurate talent, the Crawfords dominated both the Negro Industrial league and Pittsburgh’s recreational league that year.

In 1927 Greenlee installed Harold “Hooks” Tinker as manager. Tinker happened to watch an Industrial League all-star game at Ammon Field in 1928, and Josh Gibson’s life changed forever. “I had two of my Crawford players on that all-star team. … Otherwise I wouldn’t have been there. And that’s when I saw Josh. He was playin’ third base, and he was very mature in his actions; you wouldn’t think he was only 16 years old.”12 “He was built like sheet metal. If you ran into him it was like you ran into a wall.”13 Tinker later recounted: “I signed (him). I brought Josh Gibson into the semipro picture.”14

Gibson, for all his size and notoriety, was a decent human being. “Now with Josh,” Ted Page, a fellow Negro Leaguer, observed, “Nobody could criticize his personality. Next to hitting, I think he liked eating ice cream more than anything else in the world.”15

In 1928 Gibson met Helen Mason, a year his junior, and by 1929 the two had fallen deeply in love. That February Helen announced that she was pregnant with their first child, and a month later, on March 7, 1929, the two were married at Macedonia Baptist Church in Pittsburgh. The pregnancy did not endure, but Helen became pregnant again in 1930, this time with twins. 

On August 11, 1930, Helen went into premature labor. Her pregnancy had evidently “aggravated an undiagnosed kidney condition and by the time she reached the hospital, one of her kidneys had ruptured.”16 Josh arrived at the hospital minutes before Helen died. The babies, at least, were delivered safely. The first was a son, Josh Jr., and a sister, Helen, followed him. Josh Sr., however, was inconsolable at the loss of his wife. Deciding that he was neither ready nor fit to be a single parent, he prevailed on his in-laws, James and Margaret Mason, to take the infants into their home. Gibson was emotionally devastated, and some argue that he never recovered from the tragedy.

On the baseball diamond, though, there was no difference in Josh’s performance. Gibson played for the semipro Crawford Colored Giants in 1929 and 1930, earning a few dollars a game while often playing in front of 5,000 or more spectators, and word of his power inevitably reached Judy Johnson and the Homestead Grays. “I had never seen him play,” said Johnson, “but we had heard so much about him.  Every time you’d look at the paper you’d see where he hit a ball 400 feet, 500 feet.”17The Grays already had two catchers, Buck Ewing and Vic Harris, so they didn’t immediately pursue Gibson, but he was certainly on their figurative radar.

On July 25, 1930, the 1929 Negro League Champion Kansas City Monarchs came to Pittsburgh to play an exhibition. Monarchs owner J.L. Wilkinson had developed a portable lighting system that the team towed around the country so that they could play at night and maximize the local attendance, but the lights were far dimmer than those used in the modern day. According to legend, Joe Williams was catching for the Grays that night and lost the ball in the low visibility, breaking a finger in the process. Vic Harris was in the outfield that evening, the story goes, so Grays owner Cum Posey called Josh out of the stands and asked him if he would like to catch the rest of the game.18

It is, perhaps, an apocryphal story, myth mixed with memory and laced together with a few facts, but there is no other more definitive account of how Gibson became a member of the Homestead Grays. He went hitless that night, but recorded no errors, either, and he remained with the team for the rest of 1930. Johnson had Gibson catch batting practice every day, eventually working him into a few games if only to get his bat into the lineup.

Over his career, there would form several opinions about Gibson’s ability as a catcher. Some who saw him said he was passable, even good, but not as talented as Biz Mackey or Bruce Petway. Roy Campanella, though, averred that Gibson was “not only the greatest catcher but the greatest ballplayer I ever saw.”19 Regardless of his ability as a backstop, the man could hit and hit with power. Any team he played for would have found a uniform for Josh. On September 27, 1930, Gibson smote the first of his most legendary homers, a shot that flew an estimated 430 to 460 feet into the left-field bleachers at Yankee Stadium during a playoff game between the Grays and the New York Lincoln Giants.20

In 1931 the Homestead Grays affiliated with the American Negro League, a short-lived precursor to the Negro National and American Leagues that would emerge in 1932. The Grays played on a circuit with the Cuban Stars East, the Baltimore Black Sox, and the Philadelphia Hilldale Giants, and 19-year-old Josh had the opportunity to play alongside legends like Oscar Charleston, Bill Foster, Smokey Joe Williams, Jud Wilson, Ted Page, and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe. Within league play, Gibson was credited with 132 at-bats, hitting 10 home runs and slugging at a .545 clip.

The next year, 1932, Gus Greenlee enticed Gibson back to the still-independent Crawfords to catch for a pitcher named Satchel Paige, the first time the two were paired. As independents, the Crawfords played exhibitions against a wide array of teams, and some have credited Josh with as many as 72 homers during the long season, although only five are recognized by baseball-reference.com.  Again, with incomplete records, unregulated ballparks and fence distances, and a wide span of exhibition pitching talent, the number is less important than the reality that Gibson was already an elite power hitter.

In order to make a few more dollars, and to play in an environment where racial segregation was not an issue, Gibson traveled to Puerto Rico that year to play part of an exhibition season with the new Santurce Cangrejeros for a reported $250 per month.  In 1933 he returned to Pittsburgh and played for the Crawfords in the new Negro National League through 1936. The 1934 season saw another epic blast at Yankee Stadium, this time one that Jack Marshall of the Chicago American Giants swore flew completely out of the ballpark.21 Whether or not it actually departed the friendly confines is, again, largely irrelevant. Even if the blast only made it to the bleachers, it was still one of the longest blows ever in the history of the stadium, and only added to the growing legend. Sam Jethroe later noted: “If someone had told me that Josh hit the ball a mile, I would have believed them.”22 Gibson himself “always pooh-poohed the notion that he’d actually hit a ball out of the House That Ruth Built, maintaining that he’d only reached the center-field bullpen.  He was a modest man and a powerful one.”23

“In the hotel, in the restaurant, or at a bar everybody wanted to meet Josh Gibson,” said Monte Irvin. “He could handle the attention that came with his celebrity status. Josh never did get a swelled head.  He had that kind of quiet confidence. Naturally the ladies were all crazy about him because he looked so boyish.”24

After a 1936 season in which he was credited with as many as 84 homers (albeit only six in Negro National League play), Gibson headed back to the Caribbean and the Cuban Winter League for the 1936-37 season. When he returned to the United States, the Crawfords’ cash-strapped owner, Gus Greenlee, was forced to sell Gibson back to the Grays for $2,500 and two players (Pepper Bassett and Henry Spearman). Gibson spent part of the season with Homestead, hitting .392 with 12 home runs in just 97 at-bats, and part of the year playing in the Dominican Republic. Working for Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, Josh batted .453 and led the Dominican League in RBIs and triples.

Gibson moved back and forth between Pittsburgh and Cuba throughout the period 1937-1940.  In 1937 he hit another mythical home run, later credited as 580 feet in The Sporting News.25  In a report filed three decades after the fact, the paper noted that “Gibson hit one in a National Negro League game that hit the escarpments in front of the 161st Street elevated railway, about 580 feet from home plate.  It has been estimated that if the drive would have been two feet higher, it would have sailed out of the park and travelled some 700 feet.” The various uncorroborated distances reported for some of Gibson’s longer home runs have been the source of much of the doubt about the facts of his career.26

Regarding Gibson’s power and the lore of his tape-measure homers, Sam Jethroe noted: “If someone had told me that Josh hit the ball a mile, I would have believed them.”27 “Gibson himself always pooh-poohed the notion that he’d actually hit a ball out of the House That Ruth Built, maintaining that he’d only reached the center-field bullpen.”28 Jethroe’s comment, especially in the context of some of Gibson’s reported home-run distances, is laden with implication. Author, historian, and analyst Mark Armour, among others, has noted that over the last 15 years or so, home-run distances are measured with greater precision over earlier times. The new system relies on dozens of measurements taken at every major-league park, and when fused with observed ball velocity and height data for each homer yields a much more accurate estimate of the actual distance. As might be expected, reported home-run distances have dropped considerably under the new protocol.29

Perhaps Gibson did not hit baseballs 600 or 700 feet. Perhaps his longest blows were only 450 or 500 feet. Perhaps they were even shorter than that. It remains indisputable that Gibson was hitting the ball farther than any of his contemporaries in the Negro Leagues, and it is quite plausible that he was hitting them as far as, or farther than, his White contemporaries as well.  Pittsburgh Courier writer Wendell Smith interviewed Dizzy Dean in 1937 and asked his opinion of some of the more prominent Negro League stars. When pressed about Josh, Dean was unusually articulate: “Gibson is one of the best catchers that ever caught a ball. Watch him work this pitcher. He’s top at that. And boy-oh-boy, can he hit that ball!”30

In 1937-38 Gibson batted .342 for Havana, in the Cuban League, while back with Homestead in 1938 he hit .365 with 10 homers in fewer than 100 at-bats before hitting .380 that winter in Puerto Rico. In 1940 Gibson accepted a pay raise to join the Veracruz Azules in the Mexican League. Despite playing only about one-quarter of the season he tied for second in the league with 11 home runs. After the Mexican League season he returned to the Puerto Rican Winter League where he not only batted .480, but hit a home run that was estimated at 600 feet.31

Back in Mexico for 1941, alongside fellow Negro Leaguers Cool Papa Bell, Martin Dihigo, Leon Day, Willie Wells, and Ray Dandridge, Gibson continued to terrorize pitchers. Josh batted .374 and slugged at a .754 clip with 100 runs, 33 homers, and 124 RBI in 94 games, drawing 75 walks while striking out only 25 times. Burnis “Wild Bill” Wright led the league that year with a .390 batting average, beating Gibson by only .016 for the crown. Of note, Gibson’s 1941 RBI total remained, as of 2001, the 19th best single-season total ever in Mexican League history.32Josh’s slugging percentage topped Wright by 121 points and third-place Bus Clarkson by 156, and he also finished fifth in runs scored, driving in 29 more than runner-up Santos Amaro, third with 31 doubles, and second in walks to Leslie Green.  His 33 homers were 14 more than Clarkson as the runner-up, and Gibson nearly outhomered the second- and third-ranked hitters combined.33

Gibson returned to Cum Posey’s Homestead Grays for the 1942 season. On January 1, 1943, he suffered a seizure and lost consciousness at home. He recuperated at St. Francis Hospital in Lawrenceville, near Pittsburgh, for 10 days, and was ultimately diagnosed with a brain tumor.34The newspapers reported that Gibson had suffered a nervous breakdown; he was unwilling to share his true condition with the public. That year Mark Gibson, Josh’s father, died, adding tragedy to turmoil, but Josh enjoyed one of the finest seasons of his baseball career in 1943.

Although he was reportedly becoming increasingly reliant on alcohol and marijuana,35 the 1943 version of Josh Gibson was as lethal as ever. At the age of 31, Josh batted .486 with 12 home runs and 22 two doubles. Posey had crafted a unique arrangement in which some of the Grays’ home games were played in Pittsburgh and the rest at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C.  According to author Brad Snyder, “In front of record crowds, Gibson wrested center stage away from (Satchel) Paige by hitting a home run once every four games.”36Josh hit more homers over Griffith Stadium’s left- and center-field walls in 1943 than did the entire American League that year, Snyder wrote.37

Gibson’s headaches and the erratic behavior, along with his weight, continued to increase, while his on-field production began to move in the other direction. Josh led Homestead to another Negro National League crown in 1945, batting .323, and in 1946, according to baseball-reference.com, reportedly bashed a 440-foot home run at Yankee Stadium, a 457-foot blow in Pittsburgh, a 500-foot shot at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, and a ball that cleared the roof at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Even until the end, he was the best hitter in the universe of Black baseball.

On January 20, 1947, at 1:20 in the morning, Gibson collapsed in an unconscious heap. At 1:30 he awoke briefly in a moment of apparent lucidity, then lay back down and died. For three days after his death, Gibson lay in state at the funeral home, then for three more days at the home of Margaret Mason, his mother-in-law. The funeral was held at the same church, Macedonia Baptist, in which he and Helen had been wed 20 years earlier, and according to some accounts, people lined up for more than a half-mile to pay final respects.

For his “official” career, Josh Gibson hit 107 home runs and batted .350. His Grays teams won nine consecutive league titles at one point, and he played on too many all-star teams to count. Unofficially, he may have homered close to 900 times in various settings. Some in the media, and historians since, have occasionally tried to portray Gibson as a martyr of segregated baseball, a big man who died of a broken heart at not getting to play in the integrated major leagues, but that would seem to diminish the contributions of the entire cadre of Negro League players.  Gibson’s son, Josh Jr., said, “When I hear that stuff about how my father died of a broken heart, that pisses me off. Cause that wasn’t my father. He was the last guy to brood about something he couldn’t do nothing’ about.”38

Gibson’s National Baseball Hall of Fame plaque credits him with “almost 800 homers” in a 17-year career, but it is the testimony of his peers that truly underscores Josh Gibson’s prowess.  “I played with Willie Mays and against Hank Aaron,” said Monte Irvin. “They were tremendous players but they were no Josh Gibson.”39Josh Gibson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, part of the inaugural induction of former Negro League stars.  He was, truly, worthy of the honor.

Photo credit

Josh Gibson, courtesy of Graig Kreindler.

Notes

1 Ken Burns, volume 5 of the documentary series Baseball (“Shadow Ball”), 1994.  Quote online at https://hardboiledcinema.blogspot.com/2010/05/ken-burns-baseball-5th-inning-1930-1940.html.

2 Dick Kaegel, “Gibson’s HR Blast Was Indeed Majestic,” The Sporting News, June 3, 1967, quoted in Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1970), 160.

3 Peterson.

4 Lawrence Hogan, Shades of Glory (New York: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, 2006): 380.

5 Peterson.

6 Leigh Montville, The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth (New York: Doubleday, 2006).

7 Mark Ribowsky, Josh Gibson: The Power and the Darkness (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 23.

8 Ribowsky, 25.

9 Ribowsky, 26.

10 Ribowsky, 27.

11 Ribowsky, 11.

12 Ribowsky, 29-30.

13 Ribowsky, 30.

14 Hooks Tinker, quoted in Brent Kelley, ed., Voices From the Negro Leagues: Conversations With 52 Baseball Standouts of the Period 1924-1960 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1998), 13-14.

15 James Banks, The Pittsburgh Crawfords: The Lives and Times of Black Baseball’s Most Exciting Team (Dubuque, Iowa: William C. Brown, Publishers, 1991), 48.

16 Ribowsky, 49.

17 Judy Johnson, cited in Peterson, 158-170.

18 Peterson, 160.

19 Peterson, 160.

20 sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=neyer_rob&id=3403111.

21 John Holway, Josh and Satch (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishing, 1992).

22 baseballhall.org/hof/gibson-josh.

23 https://www.mlb.com/player/josh-gibson-492568.

24 Monte Irvin and James Riley, Nice Guys Finish First: The Autobiography of Monte Irvin (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1996), 55.

25 The Sporting News, June 3, 1967: 4.

26 In 2004 George Manning, a mechanical engineer with Battelle Memorial Institute and the True Temper Corporation before becoming the vice president of technical services for Hillerich & Bradsby Company in Louisville (home of the Louisville Slugger), commented on the feasibility of such prodigious home runs. There are, according to Manning, an array of factors that impact distance of flight, including speed and mass of the bat, the mass of the ball, weather conditions, direction of bat and ball at impact, the spin on the ball, and perhaps a dozen more. Gibson swung a heavy, 41-ounce bat and held it at the knob, increasing the potential for maximum distance of a perfectly struck fastball, and he was certainly a strong, athletic man. Extrapolating from Manning’s remarks, however, there is absolutely no reason to assume that Gibson hit a 700-foot fly ball, a blow that would have flown more than 20 percent farther than Mickey Mantle’s shot out of Griffith Stadium in 1953 estimated by a Yankees PR man at 565 feet. The only evidence for the reported distances is the collection of eyewitness accounts from game participants, but such evidence is rife with problems and error (among many, see Laura Englehardt, in a 1999 article in the Stanford Journal of Legal Studies (https://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%20One/fisher&tversky.htm) in which she clearly impeaches the value of much eyewitness reporting.  None of that is to diminish Gibson in the slightest, but only to caution against absolute reliance on that which was reported but which remains unproven. Full contents of the Manning interview available online at https://sluggermuseum.com/workspace/uploads/hitting-a-baseball.

27 baseballhall.org/hof/gibson-josh.

28 mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/mlb_negro_leagues_profile.jsp?player=gibson_josh.

29 Mark Armour, email dated June 5, 2015.

30 Lester, 110.

31 https://bseballamericanaii.blogspot.com/2019/09/josh-gibson-collection-of-quotes.html

32 Pedro Treto Cisneros, The Mexican League: Comprehensive Player Statistics 1937-2001 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002), 40.

33 Cisneros.

34 Ribowsky, 215.

35 Ribowsky, 215.

36 Brad Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2003), 156.

37 Snyder, 157.

38 Ribowsky, 300.

39 https://sfgate.com/sports/kroichick/article/NEGRO-LEAGUE-LEGEND-THE-BLACK-BABE-Josh-2519027.php.

Longtime teammate Buck Leonard said of Harris’s baserunning style, “He just undressed the opposing infielder – cut the uniform right off his back.”1 Second baseman Dick Seay agreed. “He would cut you in a minute. Cut you and laugh.”2

Harris earned the nickname Vicious Vic for his reputation for violent behavior, both on and off the field.3 Harris and teammates Jud Wilson, Oscar Charleston, and Chippy Britt composed a group that became known as “the four big, bad men of black baseball.”4

Elander Victor Harris was born to William and Frances Harris in Pensacola, Florida, on June 10, 1905. His father was a farmer.5 Two of his brothers, Bill and Neal, would also play Negro League baseball. He moved with his family to Pittsburgh when he was “nine or ten years old”6 and soon started to play baseball in with the YMCA team. William Harris brought his family from the agrarian South to the industrial North. Many African American families moved North to find better economic opportunities in the first decades of the twentieth century in a movement known as the great migration. William Harris found a job as a scrap man at a steel factory.7 Vic Harris attended Pittsburgh’s Schenley High School from 1919 to 1922.8

Harris caught the eye of Homestead Grays owner Cum Posey, who approached him in 1923 about playing for his team, but Harris joined the Cleveland Tate Stars instead.9 In his first season in professional baseball, Harris hit .297 as an 18-year-old starting outfielder.

The next year, Harris jumped from the Tate Stars to the Cleveland Browns. As a Brown, Harris hit .229 in 27 games and was second on the team with 14 RBIs. He jumped the Browns to take advantage of the opportunity to play for Negro League pioneer and legend Rube Foster and his Chicago American Giants. In his final 10 games of the 1924 season with Chicago, Harris hit .257. There is no doubt that Foster’s leadership style had an impact on the manner by which Harris would later compile his own legendary numbers as a manager.

In 1925, Harris began his long-term service for the Homestead Grays. He recalled, “I stayed with Posey for the rest of my career, except for one year – 1934. That’s the year I played with Gus Greenlee and the Pittsburgh Crawfords.”10 That “rest of my career” would last 22 years with the Homestead Grays as a player, and from 1935 to 1948 as a player-manager. The only years in which Harris was not associated with the Grays were the 1934 season he spent with the crosstown rival Crawfords and 1943, when he took a job at a defense plant during World War II.11 Limited records from the 1925 season show Harris hitting .250 (1-for-4) in his first season with the Grays.12

Negro League records are scarce for Harris’s first few seasons with the Grays. Available statistics show him batting .500 (3-for-6) for 1926, but no statistics for 1927 are to be had. Harris hit .333 for the Grays in 1928. By this time, he had entrenched himself at the top of the Grays lineup, usually batting first or second.13 Harris was a contact, spray hitter, and this quality made him a good hit-and-run man batting behind a leadoff batter. In 1929 Harris hit a steady .286 for the Grays in 140 at-bats.

The 1930 season was a breakout campaign for Harris. He hit .338, which was third on the team in average, finished second on the team in home runs, and was third in RBIs.

Harris’s average dipped to .273 for the 1931 Homestead Grays, a team that notched its place in baseball history via a 143-29-2 record against all levels of competition.14 Catcher-pitcher Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe called this team the greatest baseball team of all time, and recalled that the team won 35 games before it suffered its first loss.15 Baseball scholars have debated whether the 1931 Homestead Grays, 1925 Kansas City Monarchs, or 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords were the greatest single-season team in Negro League history. More broad-thinking scholars include the 1931 Grays with the 1927 New York Yankees in their discussions of the greatest baseball team of all time. The 1931 Homestead Grays included future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Jud Wilson, Oscar Charleston, Willie Foster, and Smokey Joe Williams. The team also included perennial all-stars George Scales, Ted Page, and Double Duty Radcliffe. Harris started and played left field on this great team. With the Great Depression raging, Negro baseball took quite an economic hit. As a result, the 1931 Grays were not affiliated with any league. They were strictly a barnstorming team, which meant that this outstanding lineup did not even have the opportunity to claim a pennant or championship.

In 1932 Homestead joined the East-West League. That year’s squad was the first Grays team to win a league championship as it recorded a .614 winning percentage to claim the league pennant. Harris hit .333, but the team was so strong that his average was good enough for just fourth on the team.

Harris followed his solid 1932 season by hitting .311 for Homestead in 1933, the first of seven seasons in which he would be selected to participate in the East-West All-Star Game. The annual game was played at Chicago’s Comiskey Park (some years a second game was played elsewhere as well) and was the highlight and showcase of every Negro League season. Harris was also named to the East-West Classic in 1934, 1938, 1939, 1942, 1943, and 1947.16

The city of Pittsburgh was embroiled in a baseball civil war between Cum Posey of the Homestead Grays and Gus Greenlee of the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Harris left the Grays for the Crawfords for the 1934 season, though he was not the only one. Several Grays jumped to the Crawfords during its eight-year existence in Pittsburgh. Harris hit .339 for the Craws in 1934, which led a team that was stocked with both future Hall of Famers (Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Judy Johnson, Cool Papa Bell, and Satchel Paige) and East-West All-Stars (Rap Dixon, Jimmie Crutchfield, Sam Streeter, and Leroy Matlock among them).   

Harris was lured back across town for the 1935 season by an offer he could not refuse. “I went back to the Grays,” he recalled, “and Posey made me manager. He had been managing the team until then. He was fiery, and he knew I was fiery, so he made me manager.”17 Harris’s first managerial assignment began a career of 15 extremely productive years as a manager and coach. Harris hit .326 and tied for the team lead in home runs for 1935, the season in which he also was selected to his second East-West All-Star team. The Grays recorded a only a 25-35-2 record (.417) in Harris’s first season at the helm, but it would be 11 more years before the Homestead Grays had another sub-.500 winning percentage for a season. That winter he played in Puerto Rico for San Juan.

Harris enjoyed a banner year in 1936. Not only did he lead the Grays in batting with a .351 average, but that offseason – on October 14, 1936 – Harris married Dorothy Smith, the woman who would remain by his side until the day he died. After the season Harris also tried his hand at managing in winter ball. For the years 1936-1939, he managed a barnstorming team in the continental United States.18 He went farther south from 1947 to 1950 to manage Santurce in the Puerto Rican League, where he recorded three straight winning seasons.

The 1937 Negro League season began an unprecedented run of success for the Homestead Grays. From that year through 1945, the Grays won nine consecutive league championships, a record that has never been equaled at any level of professional baseball. Harris did not manage during the 1943 and 1944 seasons because of his work in the defense factory. Negro League legend Candy Jim Taylor was the full-time manager while Harris was doing his bit for the war effort. For those championship years, Harris hit .315 in 1937; .327 in 1938; .264 in 1939; .269 in 1940; .248 in 1941; .264 in 1942; .348 in 1943; .500 in 1944 (10 at-bats); and .333 in 1945 (nine at-bats).

In 1941 Harris was named as a manager for the first time in the East-West Classic, an honor that would again be bestowed upon him in 1942, 1943, 1945, 1946, and 1948. In all, Harris recorded a 4-4 record as a manager in the Classic.19 His eight games as a manager were twice as many as the runner-up, Oscar Charleston.20

Harris came back to the Grays full-time as a manager in 1946. After two sub-.500 seasons in 1946 and 1947, Harris led his 1948 team, a member franchise of the Negro National League, to another pennant, and a 4-games-to-1 victory over the Negro American League’s Birmingham Black Barons in the final Negro League World Series.

The NNL disbanded after the 1948 season and the Grays became a member of the Negro American Association, a Black minor league, in 1949. By then Negro League baseball teams were losing their best players to the major leagues after Jackie Robinson made it big with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Harris had foreseen such a fate for the Negro Leagues in 1942, when the integration of major-league baseball had become a hot topic after Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher asserted that he would use Black players if only the major-league owners and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis would allow it. Harris had predicted, “If they take our best boys, we will be but a hollow shell of what we are today.”21

Harris voiced doubts about whether the integration of Organized Baseball would be a positive development for Black ballplayers, saying, “[It] might be a good thing and then again, it might not be.”22 He knew that not every Black ballplayer would have a shot at the majors and wondered how the other 75 to 80 percent of Negro League players would survive.23 Integration had come to pass, however, and Harris’s prophecy about its effects on the Negro Leagues was in the process of being fulfilled. Harris signed on as a coach for the Baltimore Elite Giants in 1949. He became the skipper of the Birmingham Black Barons in 1950, and posted a 52-25 record in what was his final season as a manager.

Harris retired from professional baseball after the 1950 season. In his retirement, he was the head custodian for the Castaic Union Schools in Castaic, California. He died on February 23, 1978, after an unsuccessful second operation to rid him of cancer.24 He was survived by Dorothy, his wife of 36 years; a daughter, Judith Victoria Harris; and a son, Ronald Victor Harris.

In evaluating Vic Harris’s 27-year career in baseball, several statistics stand out above his peers. On one of the greatest teams of all time, the Homestead Grays, Harris finished his playing career in the top seven of 14 different offensive categories. He finished first on the Grays’ all-time list for games played, at-bats, hits, triples, and hit batsmen. He finished second in runs scored, doubles, and bases on balls. He is third on the Grays’ list of home runs and runs batted in, fifth in sacrifice hits, sixth in batting average and slugging percentage, and seventh in stolen bases. Add Harris’s lifetime .303 batting average,25 and it is enough to make a person wonder why the National Baseball Hall of Fame has not enshrined him yet.

As impressive as Harris’s lifetime totals are as a player, his record as a manager is even more extraordinary. Harris is first on the Grays’ list of games won as a manager. His teams won more Negro League titles – eight – than any other manager; the next closest competitors (Candy Jim Taylor, Dick Lundy, Frank Warfield, Dave Malarcher, Rube Foster, and José Mendez) have three titles each.26 His lifetime managerial record in the Negro leagues, All-Star games, postseason, and winter leagues stands at 754-352, a .682 winning percentage.27 Harris was not only the greatest Negro League manager of all times, it can be argued that he may well have been the greatest manager in the history of baseball. If Cooperstown cannot use him in its outfield, surely it can use him as a dugout strategist.

Whether or not Harris was the greatest manager of all time, one thing is certain: He was the manager of the reigning and defending Negro League World Series champion Homestead Grays, a title he is guaranteed to keep since there never was another Negro League World Series after 1948.

Sources                                                                                                   

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com, the Seamheads.com Negro League Database, the Center for Negro League Baseball Research, and the following:

Clark, Dick, and Larry Lester, eds. The Negro Leagues Book (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1994).

Hogan, Lawrence D. Shades of Glory (Washington: National Geographic, 2006).

Johnson, Earl. “Sports Whirl,” n.d.

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

“Obituaries,” The Sporting News, March 11, 1978.

Photo credit: Vic Harris, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Notes  

1 Vic Harris and John Holway, “Baseball Old Timers: Vic Harris Managed the Homestead Grays,” Dawn Magazine, March 8, 1975: 12.

2 Harris and Holway.

3 James Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 360.

4 Karen and Kevin Flynn, “Remembering Vic Harris,” DCBaseballHistory.com, https://dcbaseballhistory.com/2013/08/remembering-vic-harris/

5 1910 US Census.

6 Harris and Holway, 13.

7 1920 US Census.

8 Merl F. Kleinknecht, “Vic Harris,” in David L. Porter, ed., Biographical Dictionary of American Sports(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000).

9 Harris and Holway, 13.

10 Harris and Holway, 13.

11 Brad Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 258.

12 baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=harris002vic. This appears to reflect incomplete statistics.

13 Riley, 360.

14 Phil S. Dixon, Phil Dixon’s American Baseball Chronicles Great Teams: The 1931 Homestead Grays Volume 1 (Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris Corporation, 2009), 17.

15 Jon O’Sheal, Pride and Perseverance: The Story of the Negro Leagues, A&E Home Video, 2014.

16 Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase: The East-West All-Star Game, 1933-1953 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 422.

17 Harris and Holway, 13.

18 In 1938 and 1939 he played for and managed the Grays in the American Series in Cuba. In the 1939-40 Cuban Winter League season, he played for the Santa Clara team, but Jose Fernandez was the manager. Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2003), 229.

19 Dr. Layton Revel and Luis Munoz, “Forgotten Heroes: Elander Victor ‘Vic’ Harris” (Carrollton, Texas: Center for Negro League Baseball Research, 2011), 25.

20 Lester, 401.

21 Snyder, 167.

22 Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 240.

23 Lanctot, 240-41.

24 John Holway, “Negro League Star Harris Dead, Club Won 134 Games in Season,” Washington Post, February 26, 1978.

25 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=harri01vic.

26 Revel and Munoz, ii.

27 Revel and Munoz, ii.

Satchel entered the world as Leroy Robert Page. He was delivered at home into the hands of a midwife, which was more help than most poor women could afford in 1906 in Mobile, Alabama. His mother, Lula, was a washerwoman who already spent her nights worrying how to feed and sustain the four daughters and two sons who had come before. Five more would follow. Leroy’s father, John, alternated between the luxuriant lilies in the gardens he tended uptown and the corner stoops on which he liked to loiter, rarely making time to care for his expanding brood. With skin the shade of chestnut and a birthplace in the heartland of the former Confederacy, the newborn’s prospects looked woeful. They were about to get worse.

For more than 200 years Mobile had welcomed outsiders — Irish Catholics fleeing the famine, Jewish merchants, along with legions of Creoles, the free offspring of French or Spanish fathers and chattel mothers — and they in turn challenged inbred thinking on everything from politics to race. The result, during the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction, was a blurring of color lines in ways unthinkable in Montgomery, Selma, and most of the rest of Alabama.1 Unfortunately for young Leroy, that live-and-let-live mindset had begun fraying by the turn of the century and it unraveled entirely the very season of his birth, when a local ordinance mandated separate seating on streetcars. Blacks were barred from most restaurants, cemeteries, saloons, hotels, and brothels. Whites and Blacks were not allowed to attend the same school, marry one another, or play baseball on the same fields of green. Leroy Page was too young to understand those developments but they were reinforced every day he spent in his native city. Those first few years, “I was no different from any other kid,” he wrote half a century on, “only in Mobile I was a nigger kid. I went around with the back of my shirt torn, a pair of dirty diapers or raggedy pieces of trousers covering me. Shoes? They was someplace else.”2

All the Page kids knew by the age of six that they had to help to put food on the table and, in a good year, shoes on their feet. Leroy worked the alleyways like a pro, cashing in empty bottles he found there. Delivering ice also brought in small change. But he was springing up like a weed in a bog, and as he grew so did Lula’s and John’s expectations of his earning power. The obvious place to look for work was the nearby L&N station, where the pint-sized porter polished the boots of wealthy white travelers or carried their bags to hotels like Mobile’s luxurious Battle House for as little as a dime. Realizing he could not bring home a real day’s pay if he made just 10 cents at a time, he got a pole and some rope and jerry-rigged a contraption that let him sling together two, three, or four satchels and cart them all at once. His invention quadrupled his income. It also drew chuckles from the other baggage boys. “You look like a walking satchel tree,” one of them yelled. The description fit him to a tee and it stuck. “LeRoy Paige,” he said, “became no more and Satchel Paige took over.”3

His last name eventually was rewritten, too, from Page to Paige. “Page looked too much like page in a book,” his mother offered. Satchel had a more exotic explanation: “My folks started out by spelling their name ‘Page’ and later stuck in the ‘i’ to make themselves sound more high-tone.”4

While he played baseball as a boy, it was in reform school that he became a player. Two weeks before his 12th birthday Satchel was sentenced to the Alabama Reform School for Juvenile Negro Law-Breakers. It was partly that he missed school so often. And at the L&N station he stopped pulling and started purloining suitcases, along with anything else that was easy to grab. Now court officials were telling him he would not see freedom again for six long years. It seemed like a bad dream until they shut the door on him. That is when he knew it was real.

The good news was that his new home gave him endless time for his favorite pastime: pitching a baseball. There was a coach, too, Edward Byrd, who for the first time taught Satchel the fundamentals, and for the first time Satchel paid attention. Byrd’s young protégé had an anatomy that was all up and down. Rising more than six feet and weighing barely 140 pounds, Satchel joked that if he stood sideways you could not see him. His wiry arms and stilt-like legs were aerodynamically perfect to propel a ball from mound to plate. They gave him motion. Momentum. Strength. And he had the ideal launching pads: hands so huge they made a baseball look like a golf ball, with wrists that snapped with the fury and flash of a catapult. Byrd understood what God had given this manful boy with his outsized appetites, limbs, and talents, and the coach was determined that it not be squandered. He showed Satchel exactly how to exploit his storehouse of kinetic energy. The first thing was to kick his foot so high before unleashing the baseball that it blacked out the sky and befuddled the batter. Then the novice pitcher swung his arm far enough forward that it seemed like his hand was right in the batter’s face when he let go of the ball. So was born the Paige pose, the look that over the decades made Satchel stand out from pitchers before and after: left leg held skyward, right arm stretched as far as it would go behind him, the catapult cocked to give the ball maximum power as he whirled forward to release it.5

His coach also showed him that physical gifts were not all it took to win. Satchel had to outwit his opponent. Watch a batter’s knees, Byrd advised, the way a bullfighter studies a bull. Detect any weakness in the setup of his feet, his stance, the positioning of his bat. Then put the ball where the slugger can’t hit it. Satchel was better at doing that than anyone who had ever come through the reform school. It was less his accuracy, more his velocity. He threw hard. No curveball or slider, no change of pace or special finesse. Not yet. Oftentimes he almost fell off the mound as he was letting go of the ball. He was as wild as young and untamed pitchers often are. Sometimes his pitches hit a batter, or several. However unconventional his demeanor, he delivered. A baseball weighs just five ounces — it is a mass of cork wound with woolen yarn and bound in cowhide — but flying off of Satchel’s fingers it resembled a cannonball. Most who came to the plate failed to connect by what looked like a mile. And he kept getting better, the way Coach Byrd said he could. Looking back, Satchel said of his time under Byrd’s tutelage, “You might say I traded five years of freedom to learn how to pitch.”6

The young hurler quickly put those lessons to work for a series of Negro League teams, starting with Chattanooga and progressing to bigger, better clubs in Birmingham, Baltimore, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Kansas City. The best available information suggests that he had an overall record in Black baseball of 103-61, with 1,231 strikeouts and just 253 bases on balls.7 Those numbers, compiled for a study supported by Major League Baseball, understate his dominance because he was not used in a conventional way. Stats of Negro Leaguers continue to be reevaluated as new records are unearthed. The latest on Satchel, as of early 2021 on seamheads.com, are 115-62, with 1,524 strikeouts and just 360 bases on balls.8

As the best drawing card in the Negro Leagues, he started often, but might leave the game after three or four innings, which was too short an appearance to be credited with a win but long enough to be stuck with a loss. The records also don’t include his games barnstorming in small towns across the country the way he did between games and seasons for more than 40 years, playing against sandlotters, semi-pros, and big leaguers from California to the Caribbean, or playing for teams like the one in Bismarck, North Dakota, where he managed a 35-2 mark over two seasons. Even the official Negro League games did not always produce records that were complete or reliable, since Blackball generally could afford neither statisticians nor record keepers.

Satchel defied that shadowy system by keeping his own records. He carried a notebook listing innings pitched, game scores, opponents, strikeouts, bases on balls, and, according to one sportswriter who said he saw it, “a very important item to [Satchel], his end of the gate.”9 The Paige almanac had him pitching in more than 2,500 games and winning 2,000 or so. He professed to have labored for 250 teams and thrown 250 shutouts. His per-game strikeout record was 22, against major-league barnstormers, which would have been an all-time record for all of baseball. Other claims that would have set marks: 50 no-hitters, 29 starts in a month, 21 straight wins, 62 consecutive scoreless innings, 153 pitching appearances in a year, and three wins the same day.10

The numbers were dizzying, but each required an asterisk explaining that Satchel kept records the way he set them: with flair, grace, and hoopla. The numbers changed as he added to his accomplishments and as yet another reporter wanted to peak at his books. Each longed for something new and daring, an exclusive to impress their editors; none asked why the numbers or stories kept shifting. His tally of no-hitters was as low as 20, as high as a hundred, and perhaps most accurately, “so many . . . I disremember the number.” The picture was equally muddled for shutouts. Press accounts, and Satchel’s, offered options: 250, 300, or 330. Sometimes he dished out a figure so outrageous he seemed to be testing whether his reader was paying attention, like when he wrote that “I never batted less than .300 any season.” (His career Negro Leagues average was .218; in the majors he dropped to .097.)11

Just when any serious statistician might be tempted to dismiss it all as a ruse, closer scrutiny suggests that much of it was true. Pitching 2,500 games seems inconceivable since the major-league record-holder, Jesse Orosco, managed just 1,252. But Orosco’s numbers are just for the big leagues, where he pitched 24 years starting every April and ending, when he was lucky, in October. Satchel’s include games played as a semipro and professional, in the Negro Leagues, on barnstorming tours, in Latin America and Canada as well as the United States, and in the major and minor leagues. He played spring and summer, fall and winter. He often threw just three or four innings a game, but he did it every day or two for 41 years. By that schedule, pitching 2,500 games amounts to slightly more than 60 games a year, which actually does not seem high enough.

The same is true for his other assertions. One hundred no-hitters, or even 20, looks dubious considering that Nolan Ryan holds the major-league record with just seven, followed by Sandy Koufax with a mere four. But press accounts detail Satchel doing it against highly-touted opponents like the all-Black Homestead Grays, and it is easy to imagine him repeating the feat with relative ease and considerable frequency against the sandlot teams he faced in his wayfaring across the Western Hemisphere. His 2,000 wins would give him four times as many as Cy Young, whose name is attached to the award signaling pitching excellence. His calculation of career strikeouts would have bested Ryan not by a hair but by several thousand. Some pitchers were brilliant during short runs at glory; others made their names for duration as much as dominance. Satchel excelled at both, to the point where it is difficult to overstate all that he did or to dismiss even his most outrageous boasts.12

Satchel’s stats are clearer when he finally made it to the majors, belatedly signed by owner Bill Veeck in the summer of 1948 to play for the Cleveland Indians. That milestone occurred on July 7, Satchel’s 42nd birthday. His earned-run average for the remainder of that season, a measly 2.48, was second best in the American League. His performance over the half-season he played so impressed the nation’s baseball writers that, when the Associated Press polled them, 12 voted for Satchel as Rookie of the Year in the American League, enough to place him fourth (he joked that if he had won the honor he would have declined since “I wasn’t sure what year the gentlemen had in mind.”).13 His 6-1 record was neither a joke nor an afterthought; it was the highest winning percentage on an outstanding Indians staff and a crucial factor in the team capturing the pennant, which it did by a single game over the Red Sox. Each game he won had fans and writers marveling over what he must have been like in his prime and which other lions of Blackball had been lost to the Jim Crow system of segregation.

That was the best of his six seasons in the majors, two of which were with the Indians, parts of three with the old St. Louis Browns, along with one unforgettable game with Charles O. Finley’s A’s of Kansas City. Satchel’s record in the big leagues was just 28-31, with a 3.29 earned run average. Mediocre — until you consider that he was 42 when he launched his major-league career, and 59 years, two months and eight days when he ended it with the Athletics in 1965. That final appearance set a major-league record that might never be broken. He was two years older than the runner-up, 33 more than his catcher that night, and Paige seemed as old as baseball itself when he shut out the hard-hitting Boston Red Sox for three innings. He needed just 28 tosses to get nine outs. He struck out one and walked none over three innings. Batters popped up his pitches and tapped meek grounders. The only base hit was a double by Carl Yastrzemski, an All-Star who led the league in doubles that season and had seen his father hit against Satchel a generation earlier in a semipro game on Long Island.14

The denizens of baseball were impressed enough with that and all Satchel’s other achievements that they inducted him into the Hall of Fame in 1971, the first vintage Negro Leaguer to be voted into this most exclusive club.

Satchel’s last years were quiet ones. Too quiet for this man who adored being on the mound, in the middle of the action. Satchel last appeared in public on June 5, 1982, in Kansas City, where he had spent most of his adult years and, with his wife Lahoma, raised seven children. The roar was gone from his voice as he wheeled closer to the microphone, an oxygen tube strapped to his face while his hand gripped a baseball. “I hope the next time you come out, I can stand up,” he said hopefully as the thin crowd stood in his honor. They were dedicating in his name a baseball stadium near his home. The ballpark was as decrepit as the old ballplayer, weeds poking through fresh-cut grass and wind pouring through breaches in the grandstand roof. Friends who knew his condition had rushed to organize the naming ceremony, hoping it would lift his spirits. But it would take more than that. “I am honored with the stadium being named for me. I thought there was nothing left for me,” he said. “I’ve been in Kansas City 46 years and I can walk down the street and people don’t know me.”15

Two days later Kansas City was battered by a rainstorm that felled trees and knocked out power. Satchel woke that night with a headache. The next morning, the 8th of June, he could not find a comfortable position to lie or sit. His shoulder was throbbing. He had the chills. Lahoma applied a hot water bottle and draped her jacket around him, then she headed to the store for ice to keep food from spoiling during the outage. While she was gone Carolyn, their second oldest, found Satchel in a daze. She fanned him, calling, “Daddy, daddy can you hear me?” All he could manage was, “Ugh.” His daughters called the paramedics, but their arrival was delayed by a fallen tree. In the meantime Lahoma got home and tried to resuscitate Satchel using the CPR she had learned as a nurse’s aide. He was “limp as a dish rag,” she said. His heart gave out for good in the ambulance and he was pronounced dead at 1:15 p.m. at Truman Medical Center. In the days just before “he knew he was going to pass on,” his wife recalled. “We would try and not talk about it.”16

Looking back, we can see that it was more than his memorable pitching form that made Paige stand apart and earned him a cherished spot not just in the Hall of Fame, but in a Satchel statue that now graces its grounds. There was also his role as a racial pioneer, a role that got lost in his showmanship and bluster. Satchel pitched spectacularly enough during the era of segregated baseball, especially when his teams were beating the best of the white big leaguers, that white sportswriters turned out to watch Black baseball. He proved that Black fans would fill ballparks, even when those parks had concrete seats and makeshift walls, and that white fans would turn out to see Black superstars. He barnstormed here and in the Caribbean alongside Dizzy Dean, Bob Feller, and other Caucasian champions, winning them over to him and to the notion that Negro Leaguers could really play ball. He drew the spotlight first to himself, then to his Kansas City Monarchs team, and inevitably to the Monarchs’ rookie second baseman Jackie Robinson.

The truth is that Satchel Paige had been hacking away at baseball’s color bar decades before the world got to know Jackie Robinson. Satchel laid the groundwork for Jackie the way A. Philip Randolph, W.E.B. DuBois, and other early Civil Rights leaders did for Martin Luther King Jr. Paige was as much a poster boy for Black baseball as Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong was for Black music and Paul Robeson was for the Black stage — and much as those two became symbols of their art in addition to their race, so Satchel was known not as a great Black pitcher but a great pitcher. In the process Satchel Paige, more than anyone, opened to Blacks the national pastime and forever changed his sport and this nation.

Acknowledgments

This article draws from the author’s book Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend (New York: Random House, 2008).

Photo credits: Satchel Paige, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

1 Michael V.R. Thomason, ed., Mobile: The New History of Alabama’s First City (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001), 1-2 and 155-67.

2 Satchel Paige and David Lipman, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever: A Great Baseball Player Tells the Hilarious Story Behind the Legend (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 16 and 19.

3 Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever, 17-18.

4 Arthur P. Glass, “How Old Is Satch?” Sports Illustrated, February 1949.

5 Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever, 26; and Mark Ribowsky, Don’t Look Back: Satchel Paige in the Shadows of Baseball (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 34.

6 Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever, 24 and 26.

7 This information was compiled by Negro Leagues researchers Larry Lester and Dick Clark for a study supported by Major League Baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It was published in Lawrence D. Hogan, Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2006), 406-407.

8 https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=paige01sat

9 Joe Williams and Peter Williams, ed., The Joe Williams Baseball Reader (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1989), 199.

10 The almanac is the author’s compilation of every stat Paige wrote about himself — or reported to sports writers, authors, teammates, and others — over his four decades in baseball.

11 Frank Finch. “Satchel Still Going Strong,” Los Angeles Times. July 15, 1958; Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever, 57; Satchel Paige and Hal Lebovitz, Pitchin’ Man: Satchel Paige’s Own Story (Westport, Connecticut: Meckler, 1992), 41 and 54; Baseball Hall of Fame; and Lawrence D. Hogan, Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2006), 394-95.

12 Henry Metcalfe, A Game for All Races: An Illustrated History of the Negro Leagues (New York: MetroBooks, 2000), 95-96.

13 David Sterry and Arielle Eckstut. Satchel Sez: The Wit, Wisdom, and World of Leroy “Satchel” Paige (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), 91.

14 Author interviews with Carl Yastrzemski, Bill Monbouquette, Ed Charles, Lee Thomas, and Eddie Bressoud.

15 E.A. Torriero, “‘We Lost Satchel’: KC Neighbors Shed Tears as Legendary Baseball Pitcher Dies.” Kansas City Times, June 9, 1982; and Rick E. Abel, “After Honors, ‘Satchel’ Paige Dies.” Kansas City Call, June 11-17, 1982.

16 E.A. Torriero, email to author, 2007; and “‘We Lost Satchel.’”

In 1922 Pittsburgh was invaded by a professional nine run by Dizzy Dismukes. In response Posey converted his part-time semipro outfit into a professional squad. Within a few years they were regularly beating the best clubs in Black baseball and numerous college teams, as well as some in organized baseball. Soon, the club signed Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and Judy Johnson and joined the organized Black league. The Grays called two major-league stadiums home, Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field and Washington’s Griffith Stadium. Over the next two decades the Homestead Grays sat atop the world of Black baseball, at one time capturing nine pennants in a row.

Cumberland Willis Posey Jr. was born on June 20, 1890 in Homestead, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County. At the time of his birth the area was known as Harding Station. He was the youngest child of Cumberland and Angelina (Anna) Posey. Cumberland and Angelina were married about 1883 and had three children, Beatrice, Seward (See), and Cumberland. The Posey family was among the richest Black families in western Pennsylvania.

As a young man Cumberland Sr. took a job as a deck sweeper on a ferry which ran up and down the Ohio and Little Kanawha Rivers. He eventually studied the mechanics of ship engines which allowed him to seek employment as a riverboat pilot and engineer on the Ohio River, the first African-American licensed as such. He eventually settled in Harding Station and began constructing barges, becoming the proprietor of a large fleet. He expanded his financial portfolio with investments in various coal and coal-related companies and was one of the original investors in the Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper. Eventually, Cumberland Sr. became general manager of the Delta Coal Company and later owned the Preston Coal Company and the Diamond Coal and Coke Company. The latter became the largest Black-owned business in Pittsburgh. He also invested in banking and real estate ventures.

Cum Sr. was a leading member of the Black community in Pittsburgh. He served as president of the Courier and a like position with the prestigious Loendi Social and Literary Club, an exclusive all-Black Pittsburgh-based club and the Warren Methodist Episcopal Church. Anna, formerly Anna Stevens, was the daughter of an Ohio Civil War veteran. She became the first African-American to graduate from The Ohio State University and was the first to teach there as well. She was also an artist who decorated her family’s walls with her paintings.

See Posey, about three years older than his brother, was an organizer with the Monticello basketball team; he also played with the squad for many years. In baseball he worked as a business manager, traveling secretary, and booking agent for the Homestead Grays, and was associated with the club through much of the period 1920-1951.

Cum Jr. attended local Homestead schools and, like many boys in western Pennsylvania, he played sandlot football, basketball, and baseball. On the gridiron, as a teenager he played for a local amateur club called the Collins Tigers as a fullback, and much later (in 1923) he formed, coached and played for the Homestead Grays football team, which played against local squads.

Meanwhile, in 1909 Posey traveled to Pennsylvania State University to study chemistry and pharmacy. Basketball dominated his thoughts while at Penn State, but poor grades caused him to leave after two years. In 1913 he briefly attended the University of Pittsburgh and in 1915 enrolled at Holy Ghost College, now known as Duquesne University. He did so as a distinct minority—Posey, a light-skinned African-American, standing out in three primarily White colleges.

An extremely quick guard, Posey was one of the top Black basketball players of his time. He was one of only a couple of pre-1915 Black players who achieved lasting fame. After the spotlight placed on the man with his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, Posey’s resume for induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame at Springfield, Massachusetts, was also reviewed in recent years. He was posthumously elected for his basketball accomplishments in 2016. Posey, 5-foot-9 and 140 pounds, copied the style of a local White player named Harry Hough, who was similarly a small, agile, and quick athlete. Posey believed Hough to be the greatest basketball player of the era.

It was in high school that Posey first gained a great deal of attention for his basketball skills. He also started coaching. In 1908 he led Homestead High to the city championship. At Penn State, Posey played basketball for two seasons beginning in 1909, making the varsity squad as a sophomore. In 1909 Posey with his brother See and some friends organized the Monticello (named for a Pittsburgh street) Athletic Association basketball club, also known as the Monticello-Delany Rifles, which played in and around Homestead. The club gained a following outside of Homestead when it defeated Howard University in 1911. The following year they won the Colored Basketball World’s Championship. In 1913 the club changed its name to the Loendi Big Five in recognition of its sponsor, the Loendi Social and Literary Club. By this time, it was a professional squad. Posey was the star player and operator, which included managing, booking, and promoting. Leondi played through 1925, copping the Colored Basketball World’s Championship four years in a row from 1920-23.

Posey also played basketball at Holy Ghost in 1915, leading the team in scoring. He performed under the name Charles W. Cumbert to preserve his athletic eligibility. He was also captain of the golf team at Holy Ghost. In 1925 he retired from basketball to concentrate on baseball, though he later formed a Homestead Grays basketball squad in 1927. It defeated the New York Celtics, a club that would win the American Basketball League championship that season.

The Homestead Grays baseball nine was originally formed in 1900 as the Blue Ribbons when a group of teenagers, some of whom worked in local factories and mills, decided to organize to play local White clubs and other company-based nines. Like most amateur and semipro clubs, they played primarily on the weekends. Eventually the club became semipro and changed its name to the Murdock Grays in 1910. At times they were an integrated squad. White future professionals Ziggy Walsh and Johnny Pearson played for the team. In 1912 the club became the Homestead Grays. Posey, a right-handed thrower and batter, had joined the club the previous year. His quickness made him a natural center fielder. He became captain in 1916 and field manager in 1917. Stemming from his experience with his basketball club, Posey started booking contests for the Grays by 1918 and was consequently named team secretary. In 1920 Posey and local businessman Charley Walker, a former Grays batboy, purchased the club.

The Grays continued as a semipro outfit until 1922 when the encroachment of Dizzy Dismukes’ Keystones into the Pittsburgh area pushed the club to rework its salary structure. The Keystones proved to be the Grays first real competition in Homestead. Dismukes paid his men as professionals, so Posey and Walker decided to do the same. As one of the Grays’ players would describe the club’s management during the 1920s, Walker was the money behind the club and Posey was the brains.

Posey quickly signed Oscar Owens, Bobby Williams, and Sam Streeter to kick off the revamped version of the Grays. For the first time Posey also secured use of Forbes Field, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, in 1922. Over the following winter the Eastern Colored League was formed. It was east coast’s answer to the predominantly Midwestern Negro National League formed by Rube Foster in 1920. Posey and Walker chose not to participate in the ECL because it would seriously distract from their lucrative barnstorming schedule. Posey later claimed that he spent much of the 1920s being courted by both the NNL and ECL to join their ranks. The Grays, located in Pittsburgh, were desired because geographically they fell in between the two leagues.

By the mid-1920s, the Grays were regularly defeating most of their opponents, including clubs from the Black pro leagues, White semipro and professional outfits, Ohio-Pennsylvania League clubs, and postseason barnstorming clubs which often fielded major leaguers. Posey would beef up his lineup against the stronger opponents. The Grays attracted competition from well outside their traditional base for games at Forbes Field. By 1926, they were dominating opponents, posting a 140-13 record, at one point winning 43 consecutive contests. They also won 31 straight in 1927.

The Grays joined the American Negro League, the replacement of the failed ECL, during its only season in 1929. Posey made his last active appearance as a player that year. After the ANL folded, the club grew dramatically in stature, signing such greats as Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, and Judy Johnson. Posey capitalized on the unsteady atmosphere at the time of the folding of the ANL to sign Johnson. In 1930 Cum and See Posey were able to lure Gibson from the Pittsburgh Crawfords.

The 1931 Grays are often identified as the top Black team of all-time, notching a 163-23 record. In 1932 Posey founded and the Grays joined the East-West League, another one-season venture which collapsed in June that year. The EWL was the first league to merge the eastern and western clubs. When the league failed, Posey initiated a tirade against eastern booking agents, blaming them for the downfall. He also took a firm stance against the Pittsburgh Crawfords in relation to his EWL. Posey naturally wanted the Grays to dominate the Pittsburgh area, but the Crawfords were on the verge of developing a stranglehold. If the Crawfords wanted to join the EWL, Posey insisted on two outlandish conditions. First, he wanted a five-year contract that allowed the Grays to control the Crawfords’ local schedule and their roster and, secondly, he wanted See Posey installed as the Crawfords manager. Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee rejected the ridiculous terms. The tables were turned the following year as Greenlee spearheaded the new Negro National League, a league which would survive past the initial campaign.

At this point the Grays were in a precarious financial plight. The cross-town Crawfords were thus able to lure some of the Grays’ top talent including Charleston, Gibson, and Johnson. In 1934 Posey brought in moneyman Rufus “Sonny Man” Jackson, the reputed king of the numbers racket in Homestead, to financially stabilize the Grays. Jackson also owned and leased many of the area’s jukeboxes. He served as the club’s president and treasurer, but Posey continued to run the day-to-day operations.

With racketeer Jackson aboard the Grays joined the NNL in 1934, a league rife with gambling-based capital. The following year Posey relinquished his field manager responsibilities to Vic Harris after luring him back from the Crawfords. In 1937 Posey was named secretary of the Negro National League. The club moved into Griffith Stadium in Washington D.C. on a more or less a permanent basis in 1940. The Grays remained in the league through 1948, becoming the premier club in the game. They were able to regain Josh Gibson, who teamed with Buck Leonard to solidify the lineup. The club won nine consecutive pennants from 1937-45 and another in ‘48. This clearly marks them as the leading dynasty in the Black baseball history.

Professionally, Posey worked fulltime with the federal postal service at Penn (Railroad) Station in Pittsburgh. After buying into the Grays, he quit the mail job in 1920 to devote himself to basketball and baseball. He also served for years as the athletic director for Homestead High. Through his Homestead Grays Athletic Club, Posey sponsored local baseball, football, basketball and boxing events. He was a member of the Homestead Board of Education from 1931 until his death. Posey furthermore penned a column for the Pittsburgh Courier, his father’s paper. The column was called “Pointed Paragraphs” from December 1931 to April 1936 and “Posey’s Points” from May 1936 until June 1945. He contributed numerous other articles as well, stemming as far back as his early basketball career.

Posey married Ethel Truman, a Pennsylvania native, in 1913. They had four girls. Their oldest daughter Ethel married longtime Grays pitcher Ray Brown at a home plate ceremony on July 4, 1935. Cumberland Posey died at Mercy Hospital from lung cancer on March 28, 1946, at age 55. He had suffered from the disease for more than a year and was confined to a hospital bed for the last three weeks of his life. He was interred at Homestead Cemetery.

Posey left half of the club to his widow though Jackson ran it. After the 1948 season the Grays once again became an independent club. Jackson died on March 6, 1949, from complications after a brain tumor operation. Ethel Posey and Helen Jackson, Rufus’s widow, took over administration of the club for a short time. It was then turned over to See Posey, who ultimately disbanded the Grays on May 22, 1951, citing “financial setbacks and the egress of the best Negro talent into organized baseball.”

Cum Posey was posthumously elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016.

Sources

Ancestry.com

Chicago Defender

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

Hoopedia.nba.com

Ingham, John N. and Lynne B. Feldman. African-American Business Leaders (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994).

Kirsch, George B., Othello Harris and Claire Elaine Nolte. Encyclopedia of Ethnicity and Sports in the United States (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000).

New York Amsterdam News

Pittsburgh Courier

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

Ruck, Rob. Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh (Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

Washington Post

Theodore Roosevelt Radcliffe sported one of the most iconic nicknames in the history of baseball: Double Duty. Few are so evocative of a player’s place in the game. Two jobs at the same time. Two for the price of one. Pitcher. Catcher. And not too bad a manager, either. So, Triple Duty?2

Legend has it that Ted Radcliffe’s moniker came from acclaimed columnist Damon Runyon after Runyon witnessed a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium where Radcliffe caught Satchel Paige’s 4-0 shutout in Game One and then pitched his own 6-0 shutout in Game Two.3 Radcliffe himself recounted this to his biographer Kyle McNary and later in a SABR oral history audio recording.4

Evidence for this is not so certain. No references to Radcliffe, or Negro League baseball at all, have surfaced so far in any of Runyon’s New York American columns during the 1932 season when “Double Duty” first appeared in print. In fact, the Philadelphia Tribune and Pittsburgh Courier offer the earliest sightings in their May editions, implying that the doubleheader in which Radcliffe caught and pitched may have already taken place. Further, the purported doubleheader itself of the Crawfords playing against either the New York Black Yankees or the New York Cubans or Monroe Monarchs has not yet been found. Nor were any Negro League games played in Yankee Stadium the year the doubleheader supposedly happened (which is part of the legend). Radcliffe was known to be loquacious and, at times, a self-promoter. Perhaps tying the origins of the nickname to the famous Runyon helped burnish his credentials. “Double Duty” was a common term in those days and Radcliffe (previously referred to in the press as Ted or Rad) was not the only player in Negro League ball who played multiple roles. Limited rosters required versatility and players of Radcliffe’s talent stepped up and performed more than capably. None of this is to discount or dispute Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe’s skill and renown. It is merely to say that as is the case with many myths, its repetition has given birth to a narrative that has not yet been proven.5

There is much to be thankful for when it comes to hearing Ted Radcliffe’s story in his own words, both through the authorship of his biography with McNary as well as what John Holway and Brent Kelley captured in their oral histories of Radcliffe. His recollections offer great insight into his career as a player, manager, and ambassador of the game.

“I was born in Mobile, Alabama on July seventh, 1902. My daddy named me Theodore Roosevelt Radcliffe. … I weighed nine pounds when I was born. My daddy was a contractor for the shipyard company. He built the houses where the people that made ships lived. … What did my mom do? What’s she gonna do with the 10 of us — five boys and five girls.”6

In the player file that the Hall of Fame asked retired ballplayers to complete, Radcliffe identified his parents as James and Mary. He wrote that he attended Booker T. Washington Elementary School in Mobile for seven years but did not attend high school.

Mobile famously produced an array of major-league talent over the years: Hank Aaron, Billy Williams, Willie McCovey, and Cleon Jones, to name a few. And Satchel Paige. “Me and Satchel was born five blocks apart in Mobile.”7 Like his peers, Radcliffe’s early years were a mix of work and play. “I helped him [my dad]—I was a good carpenter. When I got older and he didn’t want to give me but a dollar a day I came up to Chicago.”8

Meanwhile, “me, Satchel, and Bobby Robinson started playing around together on the lot with a rag ball when we was eight or nine years old. … I don’t remember when I first started to pitch and catch. I think I first started pitching in 1912 when I was ten years old. I always had a good arm. I started catching Satchel and all those big boys when I was 15. … That’s right, I was Satchel’s first catcher and caught him more than any catcher who ever lived.”9

Radcliffe recounted that his first foray into any form of organized ball was with his younger brother Alex Radcliff10, who had his own successful career in the Negro Leagues. Both played for the Mobile Black Bears along with Paige, for whom Radcliffe caught. “That was the best young battery I’ve ever seen,” [Ted] Radcliffe remembered being told.11 Players weren’t paid though, according to Radcliffe. Spurred by what little income he made working for his dad, “in 1919, when I was 17, me and my brother Alex, hoboed up to Chicago. Wasn’t nothing doing around Mobile, so we got tired of it. My oldest brother who lived in Chicago kept telling us to come up, so we did. … All my family came up to Chicago right after us and we lived at 3511 Wentworth—four blocks from the old White Sox Park where the Chicago American Giants played [South Side Park].” 12

Radcliffe attended Wendell Phillips High School on Chicago’s Southside. Living so close to the park, Radcliffe tells the story of getting into games before tickets went on sale and then, “when they started to warm up, we’d get a glove and go out in the outfield and start shagging balls. Sometimes when I was young, they’d ask me to pitch batting practice, and my reward would be a Coca-Cola or lemonade or something.13

Once in Chicago, Radcliffe’s origin story in professional ball took shape. “I started playing with a little team they called the Illinois Giants in 1920. A White guy from Spring Valley named Murphy had the team. There was a playground down there at 33rd and Wentworth where I’d go and play every day. Murphy came there one afternoon to bring his team there in the spring, and I pitched against his team and struck out so many of them.”14

Murphy invited Radcliffe to join the team and because he was only 18, he ran home and asked his father for permission to begin his career in baseball. Radcliffe’s start with the Illinois semipro all-Black team spanned his late teens and early twenties from 1920 into 1927. The team played throughout Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Wyoming, traveling on a bus driven by the owner. In 1927, Radcliffe also played some for Robert Gilkerson’s Union Giants, another traveling semipro team. It was with the Union Giants that Radcliffe met Clarence “Pops” Coleman, who both pitched and caught and who taught Radcliffe the skills to become a catcher.15 Radcliffe’s apprenticeship with the two teams precipitated Bingo DeMoss’s invitation to join the Detroit Stars both as a pitcher and to catch Rube Currie and “Steel Arm” Davis and others in the Stars rotation. However, Radcliffe did not pitch much, if at all; instead, he “caught nearly every day and soon gained a reputation as one of the best throwing catchers in years.”16 With the Stars, Radcliffe also showed that he could hit, both with power and to all fields. Appearing in 65 games, he hit .260 and slugged .413 with eight home runs and 41 RBIs.

In his second Negro League season, Radcliffe was tempted by better offers from the Homestead Grays, the Chicago American Giants, and his old team, Gilkerson’s Union Giants. In fact, he jumped to the latter squad, which called upon him to pitch throughout its barnstorming season across the upper Midwest. Detroit Stars manager DeMoss later invited Radcliffe back for the Stars’ postseason play against both Black and White teams.17

The following spring, Detroit traded Radcliffe, leading to what was truly his breakout year as pitcher, catcher, and hitter. “In 1930, I was traded to the St. Louis Stars for three players: Clarence Palm, a catcher; Roosevelt Davis, a pitcher; and Pop Turner, a third baseman. I went to St. Louis, and we won the championship [over Detroit] by 16 games. I think I pitched in 38 games and caught in 90 and I played some outfield.”18

St. Louis was stocked with an all-star lineup including Ted Trent, George Giles, Dewey Creacy, Willie Wells, Mule Suttles, and Cool Papa Bell. As first-half winners of the NNL, the Stars took on second-half winners Detroit in the championship series. Radcliffe pitched in Game One, giving up five runs in three innings, but was bailed out by St. Louis’s hitting and Ted Trent’s five scoreless frames in relief. Radcliffe mopped up in Game Four, a 5-4 loss to Detroit, and took the loss in Game Five, giving up two runs in the bottom of the eighth in a 7-5 Detroit victory. St. Louis persisted, winning Games Six and Seven to take the series.19

As fulfilling as a title was for Radcliffe, his mantra became, “If they didn’t pay me, I would go.”20 St. Louis didn’t and so he went, early in the 1931 season, to the Homestead Grays, arguably one of the greatest teams ever, Black or White. “The 1931 team of the Homestead Grays—we had George Scales on second, Oscar Charleston on first, Jake Stephens at short, Boojum Wilson on third, we had Vic Harris … Billy Evans … Ted Page … Josh Gibson and me catching … Bill Foster, Smokey Joe Williams, Lefty Williams … that was the best team I ever been on. The 1931 Homestead Grays.”21

However, Grays owner Cumberland Posey had his own money problems. The crosstown rival Pittsburgh Crawfords poached many of the Grays’ better players, including Charleston, Page, Gibson, and Radcliffe, for the 1932 season.22 Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee had already acquired Satchel Paige from the Cleveland Cubs the year before. The Crawfords excelled in 1932 and a January 28, 1933, article in the Pittsburgh Courier highlighted the Craws’ 1932 pitching exploits, led by hurlers Paige, Bell, and Radcliffe. “Ted Radcliffe lived up to his nickname, ‘Double Duty’ by serving effectively as a twirler and a catcher. ‘Double Duty’ turned in 19 victories out of a total of 27 contests.”23

What kind of pitcher was Radcliffe? At 5-feet-11 and 215 pounds in his prime, Radcliffe had the usual repertoire of pitches, but his claim to fame was the other stuff. Said outfielder Jimmie Crutchfield, “Anything they name it, Duty could throw it. You had to watch Double Duty all the time. He could throw those illegal pitches, then argue he wasn’t throwing ’em.” Radcliffe’s own story merits telling. “They called me the emery champ. I was the best at throwing it. I could make my emery ball break any kind of way I want. Got that piece of emery cloth in the chewing gum and slice the ball like that. Then I’d take my finger and open up the seam a little and make it break four feet down.”24

The years from 1933 to 1937 were nomadic ones for Radcliffe, not because his two-way talents were a hard sell, but rather because he, like many of his peers in the early 1930s, followed the money and looked for opportunities to showcase and be paid for his talents. He began the 1933 season at spring training with the reconstituted Detroit Stars, but then moved, first to the Grays, and then the Columbus Blue Birds and New York Black Yankees.25 At that time, the Grays were playing lackluster opposition in a mostly independent schedule, which bothered Radcliffe’s competitive spirit. So, as he later reminisced, “I went with the Columbus Blue Birds. … I played with them for just two weeks because they were just starting out. The owner didn’t have no money so then I went to the New York Black Yankees.”26 His composite statistics for the year were mixed, but his play paid the bills.

Like many of his fellow Negro League standouts in the mid-1930s, Radcliffe succumbed to the lure of semipro ball in the Dakotas, a time when otherwise unassuming towns like Bismarck and Jamestown upped the ante to attract pro talent to their barnstorming squads. Abe Saperstein, wrote McNary, “one of the country’s largest bookers of baseball games, was the pipeline to Negro League players.”27 Many Black ballplayers who made their way to the Dakotas, Radcliffe included, had Saperstein to thank.

Radcliffe himself was first drawn to Jamestown in 1934.28 The team included Barney Brown and according to Radcliffe, “[he] told me about playing for Jamestown, North Dakota. He recommended me and I got Bill Perkins and Steel Arm Davis to come up with me.”29 Radcliffe ended up managing the team, leading the way with a 17-3 record and a .355 batting average.

The 1934 season also included barnstorming against a big-league all-star team including Jimmie Foxx, Luke Appling, Rube Walberg, George Uhle, and others. This was one of many competitions against White competitors in which Radcliffe took part throughout his career. These head-to-head contests included play with Satchel Paige’s All-Stars against Bob Feller’s squads that took place in the postseason in the early to mid-1940s.30

The following year, Radcliffe moved to the Bismarck squad. He was part of a stellar starting rotation of Paige, Hilton Smith, Barney Morris, and later, Chet Brewer, caught by Quincy Trouppe. Neil Churchill, Bismarck’s owner, made an early play for Radcliffe, but he could not join them right away. Radcliffe explained, “At the beginning of the year, Satchel did almost all the pitching for Bismarck ’cause I was having trouble getting my release from the Brooklyn Eagles. See, I had signed a contract with both teams. Abe Manley owned the Brooklyn Eagles, and he made me the manager to keep me there.31 … We had a lot of great players on the Eagles, but Churchill gave me more money than Manley so I ducked out one night and went to Bismarck. I managed Bismarck the rest of the season.”32

Any team worth its salt wants to show how good it is, and Churchill arranged at the height of the 1935 season for his team to play in the inaugural National Semi-pro Championship Tournament in Wichita, Kansas. The integrated squad, led by Paige’s pitching exploits and Radcliffe’s tandem pitching and catching, went 7-0. They defeated the Halliburton Cementers of Duncan, Oklahoma in the final game, 5-2, a complete game by Paige.33

1936 found Radcliffe playing and managing in Arkansas for the Claybrook Tigers. Once again, money talked. With the team named for him, owner John C. Claybrook “came to Chicago and told me he would give me what I was making at Bismarck plus 20 percent of the gate. I couldn’t turn that down.” Later, Radcliffe had the chance to play for a Negro National League all-star team in the Denver Post Tournament but demurred. Instead, he traveled to Mexico to play for Jorge Pasquel, a prosperous multi-industry magnate with a love for baseball. “He offered me $1000 a month and I had to take it. You’d have taken the money, wouldn’t you?”34

Radcliffe began the 1937 season for the Cincinnati Tigers and appeared in his first East-West All-Star game. According to McNary, “Double Duty was approached at the game by Dr. W.S. Martin [co-owner with his brothers] of the Memphis Red Sox and switched teams.”35 Radcliffe told the story: “I went to the Memphis Red Sox, and I stayed with them from 1937 to 1942. … When I went there, they had players making $100 a month, but I wouldn’t have no ballplayers making less than $250 and the owners didn’t like that. But I won three championships in six years, so they had to do what I said to do.”36

Radcliffe’s Memphis years as player and then player-manager spanned most of the period from mid-1937 to 1942, with the occasional side trip that was emblematic of many a Negro League career. The 1938 Red Sox team, including Neil Robinson and Lefty Wilson, were first half champions and defeated the Atlanta Black Crackers for the NAL crown. The 1939 team finished sixth and though Radcliffe did not pitch much, he did use himself occasionally as a reliever.

Along with many of his peers, Radcliffe jumped to Mexico in 1940 and was subsequently among the players outlawed by the NNL’s executives. Radcliffe joined the Mexican League’s winning squad, Veracruz, along with Josh Gibson, Leon Day, Ray Dandridge, Roy Partlow, and Martín Dihigo. They were attracted by the money offered by the owners of the six-team circuit to Negro League ballplayers. According to McNary, “Because Negro Leaguers knew they could get away with jumping to Mexico, some, like Double Duty, did so several times in their careers.”37 Radcliffe himself suggested, “I played in Mexico six years and went down to South America one year.”38

After a full 1940 season in Mexico, Radcliffe returned stateside and led the 1941 Red Sox to a third-place finish at 23-23-2. Radcliffe started the 1942 season with Memphis but then moved on to the Birmingham Black Barons – run by his friend Abe Saperstein – and eventually to the Chicago American Giants. He explained, “People say I jumped to so many teams to get the most money but in the Negro Leagues the owners got together and asked me to go to different teams because I was a drawing card. They were trying to build their teams up.”39

1943 was a different story. Radcliffe was player-manager of the American Giants for the entire season, leading them to the second-half championship of the Negro American League and playoffs against first-half winners Birmingham. The Black Barons prevailed and then signed Radcliffe to catch in the World Series against Homestead. “Their regular catcher hurt his hand, so they asked me to catch for ’em. … The Grays didn’t kick about it, though, ’cause they knew I’d help bring in bigger crowds.”40 Birmingham lost the Series to the Grays but for the 1944 season sought to retain the nucleus of their postseason roster, which included trading for Radcliffe from Chicago for two players and cash.41

Some records suggest that Radcliffe briefly served in the military,42 receiving an early discharge due to asthma, but Radcliffe himself indicated no military service on the player file he completed for the Hall of Fame in 1972.43 Birmingham again lost to the Grays in the 1944 World Series, but Radcliffe had a serviceable season at the age of 41.

Radcliffe started 1945 with Birmingham, but with owner Abe Saperstein gone, his incentive lessened, and he moved to Kansas City.44 As a sign of changing times, Radcliffe noted, “Our shortstop in ’45 was Jackie Robinson. We were roomies.” Not long afterwards, Robinson was recruited by the Brooklyn Dodgers and signed with their top farm team, the Montreal Royals.45 True to form, Radcliffe found other pastures that season, signed by his longtime friend Saperstein to manage the baseball equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters, a team he would lead off and on for the next several years.46

The Saperstein-Radcliffe connection was a strong one. Radcliffe reflected in later years that “Saperstein was my man, he was my man. He was the greatest friend to the colored athlete of anybody I know today. He’s the great man in the history of Negroes, for helping Negroes. … I was connected with him twenty-eight years.”47

In 1946, he moved again, initially to the Cleveland Buckeyes to rejoin a former teammate, Quincy Trouppe. However, it did not take long for Radcliffe to respond to a request for his services.

“Cum Posey called me and asked me to come to the Grays. He said he had some young pitchers and he needed me to polish ’em up. He always said I was the smartest catcher he’d ever seen. Cum Posey gave me the most money I ever made in the US. In 1946 I was an old man – $850 a month.”48

Radcliffe ended up not catching much, given Josh Gibson’s rebound year from health issues. He pitched some and probably served as much as a coach and mentor as anything. The Grays failed to win the NNL that year, falling to the Newark Eagles. Radcliffe, as was often the case, joined in postseason play with Satchel Paige’s All-Stars against an array of big-league opponents.

1947 marked the beginning of the end for the Negro Leagues, what with Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby leading the way to the AL/NL major leagues. Radcliffe played initially with Homestead, and then went to Mexico, tempted one more time by the pay. Fittingly, the following year, Radcliffe himself helped break the color barrier in two baseball leagues. Wrote McNary, “In April of 1948, Double Duty was signed by the Rochester Aces and became the first black player in the Southern Minnesota [League’s] half century history.”49 Later that summer, Radcliffe joined the South Bend Studebaker factory team and became the first Black player in the Michigan-Indiana League, a semipro team considered by some to be of Triple-A caliber50. The Aces did not play well, but Radcliffe helped lead the Studebakers to the finals, only to lose to Lafayette. He ended his stint with Studebaker batting .312 and leading the team in homers and RBIs.51

In 1950, at the age of 48, Radcliffe ended his Negro League career as player-manager of the Chicago American Giants. The Negro Leagues were slowly being eclipsed in the eyes of African Americans, given the initial, albeit limited, influx of Black players into the National and American Leagues. As a consequence, the quality of play and level of attendance at Negro League games began to decline in parallel.

Alongside Radcliffe’s play stateside and in Mexico, Cuba was an occasional winter stop for him. Cuban baseball chronicler Jorge Figueredo cites action with the 1938-1939 Habana team, where Radcliffe played alongside Martín Dihigo, Luis E. Tiant, and his brother Alex. He pitched in 19 games with a 5-8 record as Habana finished second to Josh Gibson’s Santa Clara team. He then played with the 1939-1940 Almendares side that finished first, hurling in 12 games, seven complete, with a 7-3 record. He also pitched with Habana that winter, appearing in four games.52

The California Winter League was another facet of Radcliffe’s career in baseball. McNeil tracked Radcliffe playing with his brother Alex on the 1938-1939 Detroit Stars entry in the CWL, finishing a distant fourth to the Philadelphia Royal Giants. His Baltimore Elite Giants played head-to-head against Pirrone’s All-Stars in 1943-1944, winning the series 7-5-1. And Radcliffe was with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1945-1946 as part of that club’s West Coast stint.53

Radcliffe appeared in six East-West All-Star Games, three each as a pitcher and catcher.54 He debuted at the August 8, 1937, game for the Cincinnati Tigers, helped by the absence of many players who had opted to go to the Dominican Republic that year. Radcliffe caught the entire game and was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth. The East prevailed, 7-2.55 In 1938, Radcliffe tossed four scoreless innings and closed out the game in a 5-4 West victory.56 It was the first of three consecutive pitching appearances in a Memphis Red Sox uniform. The 1939 Comiskey Park game (the first of two) again saw him finish the game with three scoreless innings, for which he garnered the win in a 4-2 West victory.57 Radcliffe was among many not eligible for the 1940 game because of their choice to play south of the border.

In 1941, he was back, but produced a lackluster two-thirds of an inning in the fourth, in relief of Hilton Smith. Radcliffe gave up six runs, but only two were earned because of the errant play behind him. Another pair scored on Buck Leonard’s two-run homer.58 Appearing for the Chicago American Giants in 1943, Radcliffe went 0-for-3 as the West’s starting catcher in a 2-1 West win.59

Radcliffe’s final appearance came at the August 13, 1944, game as a Black Baron – and it was perhaps his finest. His two-run shot in the fifth inning cemented a West lead that they would not relinquish, taking the game 7-4. The Hall of Fame later asked players to submit responses to the question, “What do you consider your outstanding achievement in baseball?” In his own hand, Radcliffe wrote, “hitting a home run [in the] 1944 East-West game with two men on base [actually only one runner was aboard, Archie Ware on second] that won the game for the West.”60 Radcliffe’s blow made him the only player to give up a homer as a pitcher and hit one in East-West ASG history.61

Radcliffe’s last chapter in organized ball was a memorable one. After the season started, he signed on as manager of the Elmwood Giants of the Man-Dak league in 1951 and soon stepped in to pitch and hit. The team did not recover enough from its poor start before his arrival to win the League. However, it performed so well that Radcliffe was brought back as player-manager in 1952, although he stepped away before the end of the season. And then? “I went up to Canada the next two years and played a few tournament games, mostly pinch-hitting, but that was it. 36 years is long enough for anyone.”62

Radcliffe later told historian Holway why he played so long. “I never had a sore arm in my life. I never was prone to injuries. … You see, by me being big and rugged, I never was out much with injuries. I was pretty hefty, see. I weighed 210, 215. With all that padding and stuff on [as a catcher], they couldn’t buffalo me. … You know if I played for thirty-two years, I had to take care of myself.”63

Radcliffe married his second wife, Alberta, on June 6, 1950. After Ted retired, they lived in the projects on Chicago’s Southside, not far from Comiskey Park. Some sources attribute three children to them; however, neither Radcliffe’s Hall of Fame player profile form (completed in his own hand) nor his funeral program list either children of his own or any stepchildren. (Radcliffe’s first marriage, to Ann, lasted from 1932 to 1940.)

As Radcliffe’s New York Times obituary recounted, “In 1990, [he and Alberta] were robbed and beaten, an event that brought Radcliffe’s financial plight to the attention of the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) which assists elderly players without means. With BAT’s assistance, he moved into a church-run home.”64

The change helped. According to McNary, life was “sweeter in the last decade [for Radcliffe]. Autograph shows and a greater awareness of black baseball has [sic] given Duty and his peers the recognition they have long deserved.”65 He ran a bar for a time on the Southside. But baseball remained important to him and in addition to attending White Sox games, he found other ways to stay connected. He reminisced, “After I retired, Abe Saperstein got me a job scouting with the Cleveland Indians in 1962. He told the owner, ‘I got a man who knows more about baseball than any man around.’” Later, Radcliffe reflected, “The Cubs had scouts that didn’t know half as much as me and they only wanted to give me $600 a month. I didn’t need that shit so I quit.”66

Radcliffe was always a straight shooter. While in Cuba one winter, after his squad beat a team of American League all-stars, he was asked why he was not in the big leagues. He responded, “You have to ask the two Grand Dragons of the Ku Klux … J. Edgar Hoover and Judge Landis.”67

As for the game’s ultimate honor, in his later years he expressed his view that “The Hall of Fame’s nothing but politics anyhow.”68 Radcliffe died in Chicago on August 11, 2005, at the remarkable age of 103. He was buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Cook County, and is grave marker includes two illustrations: a pitcher and a catcher with a baseball in between. “Negro League Baseball Star,” the marker reads – a humble accolade for a true baseball icon and ambassador.69 Historian Steven R. Greenes calls Radcliffe a super utility player, transcending the one-dimensional label of pitcher, catcher, or hitter. Is he worthy of the Hall? Historian Riley offered the following eulogy:

“There may have been better pitchers, better catchers, better hitters, and there may have been a more colorful player, but there has never been another single player imbued with the diverse talents he manifested during his baseball career.”70

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Donna L. Halper and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Bill Johnson.

Photo credit: SABR-Rucker Archive.

Notes

1 Brent Kelley, Voices from the Negro Leagues: Conversations with 52 Baseball Standouts, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company (1998): 53.

2 James Riley thought this was apt. James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of The Negro Baseball Leagues, New York: Carroll & Graf (1994): 650.

3 Kyle P. McNary, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, 36 Years of Pitching and Catching in Baseball’s Negro Leagues, Minneapolis: McNary Publishing (1994):71.

4 SABR Oral History Audio Recording. https://sabr.org/interview/ted-double-duty-radcliffe-2002/. Clip 1 – 8:10 mark.

5 The nickname’s origin story cites Runyon as the author and involves a Crawfords doubleheader sweep pitched by Satchel Paige winning 6-0 and Radcliffe winning 4-0 at Yankee Stadium against one of three opponents: the New York Black Yankees or the New York Cubans or the Monroe Monarchs. Although Runyon may have written about it elsewhere, none of his daily New York American columns from March 25 to October 31, 1932, mention Radcliffe. The only doubleheader located so far that Paige and Radcliffe tossed together that year was July 8 at Greenlee Field in Pittsburgh against the Black Yankees, with Paige famously pitching a 6-0 no-hitter in the night cap after Radcliffe lost 9-7 in the first game. According to Seamheads, as best known to date, there were no Negro League games at Yankee Stadium in 1932; the Park did not host a Negro League game until 1934. New York Black teams played instead at Dyckman Oval or Dexter Park. It is very important to note that the moniker Double Duty first surfaces (based on research to date) in the May 19, 1932, Philadelphia Tribune. Two days later, the May 21, 1932, Pittsburgh Courier calls Radcliffe Doubleday (not Double Duty). Then, in its edition of June 4, 1932, Chester L. Washington picks up the Double Duty name. Soon after, the press regularly called Radcliffe Double Duty. With the May dates in mind, the Crawfords did play the Black Yankees early in the season, but the games were in Pittsburgh and not until June 5 (captured in the June 11, 1932 New York Age) did Pittsburgh play the Black Yankees in New York at Dyckman Oval, where Runyon may have watched the doubleheader that the teams split (New York won 4-1 and then lost to Paige in the nightcap 14-6). The Crawfords inaugurated Greenlee Field in Pittsburgh on April 29 and 30, splitting the two games against New York. The two teams were to have played a doubleheader at Dyckman Oval in New York on May 1, but it was rained out, as was the planned make-up the following Sunday on May 8. The Crawfords and Cubans did play a doubleheader on June 14 in Pittsburgh with the second game most closely resembling the game Radcliffe described in his oral interview captured on SABR’s website, in which Radcliffe tossed a 7-0 complete game. However, the first game was a 3-1 win for the Cubans, and this doubleheader took place after mentions of Double Duty started appearing in the papers. Finally, Pittsburgh did play Monroe in at least two series in 1932, first in a two-game spring training setting while the Crawfords trained in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The games were on March 25 and 27 in Monroe with the teams spitting the series. Then, in September 1932, the teams played a “world series” in Pittsburgh and Monroe with the Crawfords winning 5-1-1. None of the games were in New York. All of this is to state that definitive evidence remains lacking to substantiate the legend surrounding Ted Radcliffe’s moniker.

6 McNary: 10-11.

7 McNary: 11.

8 McNary: 10.

9 McNary: 11-12.

10 Ted and Alec (or Alex) have had their names variously spelled as Radcliffe or Radcliff. Alec more commonly seemed to use the latter.

11 McNary: 12.

12 McNary: 13-14. Reportedly, Radcliffe was offered a contract to play for a team in Mobile as a teenager, but his father refused to approve the arrangement.

13 John B. Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, Revised Edition, New York: Da Capo (1992): 174.

14 Holway: 174.

15 McNary: 28.

16 McNary: 35.

17 Per Seamheads, he appeared in one game (as a pitcher) with the Chicago American Giants. He appeared in 32 games with Detroit (31 as catcher, one as right fielder).

18 McNary: 47.

19 John Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History, Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House (2001): 261-263.

20 Holway, Voices: 176.

21 Kelley: 11.

22 Riley: 649.

23 Chester Washington, “Sez Ches, And Now—The Craws’ Pitchers’ Records,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 28, 1933: 13.

24 Bill Brashler, Legends of the Negro Leagues: The Story of “Double Duty” Radcliffe, A Player Worth the Price of Two Admissions. 1995; this clipping from the book is included in Radcliffe’s player file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

25 The Pittsburgh Courier tracks Radcliffe’s nomadic journey that year, citing the resuscitation of the Detroit franchise in the new Negro National League to which Radcliffe was probably recruited given his previous ties, then to Columbus, Homestead, and finally New York. See the March 25, May 6, and August 12, 1932, editions of the Courier.

26 McNary: 76.

27 McNary: 79-80.

28 This was a year after the exploits of the Bismarck Churchills had shown a light on baseball up north, winning the state championship against Jamestown with a team stocked with Negro League ballplayers.

29 McNary: 88.

30 Holway: 180. Purportedly, Radcliffe hit .403 and went 3-0 in 22 games captured in the box scores against White competition.

31 The records do not show Radcliffe as the Eagles’ manager.

32 McNary: 100.

33 McNary: 116-120.

34 McNary: 131.

35 McNary: 140.

36 McNary: 140.

37 McNary: 156-158.

38 McNary: 202.

39 McNary: 161, 164. In fact, as the box scores indicated, Radcliffe moved back and forth that year, playing for both the Black Barons and American Giants, managing the latter team. He also made an appearance with the St. Paul Gophers.

40 McNary: 169.

41 McNary: 174.

42 Encyclopedia.com cites Radcliffe serving in the military during the war but released due to asthma. Radcliffe himself does not include this in his wartime timeline. Radcliffe, Theodore Roosevelt (“Ted”) | Encyclopedia.com; last accessed on September 8, 2023.

43 Radcliffe Baseball Hall of Fame Player File.

44 Riley: 649.

45 McNary: 182-183.

46 McNary: 187-188

47 Holway, Voices: 182.

48 McNary: 192-193.

49 McNary: 204-205.

50 McNary: 208.

51 McNary: 216.

52 Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company (2003):, 226, 230.

53 William F. McNeil, The California Winter League: America’s First Integrated Professional Baseball League. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company (2002): 191, 211-215, 224.

54 Riley: 650.

55 Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase: The East-West All-Star Game, 1933-1953, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press (2001): 96.

56 Lester: 110.

57 Lester: 125.

58 Lester: 153-156.

59 Lester: 199.

60 Radcliffe Baseball Hall of Fame Player File.

61 Lester: 212-216, 492.

62 McNary: 235.

63 Holway: 185.

64 Richard Goldstein, “Ted Radcliffe, Star of the Negro Leagues, Is Dead at 103,” New York Times, August 12, 2005: 122.

65 McNary: 243.

66 McNary: 245.

67 Kelley: 10.

68 McNary: 245.

69 Theodore Roosevelt Radcliffe in the U.S., Find a Grave® Index, 1600s-Current.

70 Riley: 650.

George Louis Scales was born in Talladega, Alabama, on August 16, 1900. He was the youngest of the five children of Joseph and Hattie Scales. At age 17, George married Nora DeWeaver and was employed as a waiter in Talladega. The young couple had three children: Georgia Teresa born in 1919; Harry Edward, 1922; and Gladys Marie, 1924. Nora died in 1929 at the age of 28.

Scales attended high school at Talladega College for two years and played baseball on the school team. A right-handed thrower, he began his professional career as a shortstop on the 1919 Montgomery (Alabama) Gray Sox.1 The 1920 Gray Sox belonged to the newly formed Negro Southern League, and Scales helped the team win the pennant.2 He played third base for the Gray Sox3 and St. Louis Giants in 1921 and for the St. Louis Stars in 1922. His 1922 season was cut short when he broke his leg sliding into second base.

At 5-feet-11 and 195 pounds, Scales was big for the era. He had a stocky build and was nicknamed Tubby. He emerged as a power hitter in 1923, with a career-high .747 slugging percentage. On June 17 he homered in the 11th inning to give the St. Louis Stars a 9-7 victory over the Cuban Stars.4 And against the Milwaukee Bears on August 11, he contributed a single, triple, and home run as the St. Louis Stars earned another 9-7 triumph.5 A week later he joined the New York Lincoln Giants.

It was strength versus strength on September 3, 1923. Scales, regarded as a great curveball hitter, faced pitcher Arthur “Rats” Henderson of the Bacharach Giants, who had “one of the best curve balls in history.”6 Scales went 3-for-4 with a home run as the Lincoln Giants prevailed, 6-2.7

On June 1, 1924, the Lincoln Giants swept a doubleheader from the Cuban Stars; playing both games at second base, Scales handled 18 chances without error, and he went 6-for-9 at the plate.8 In a doubleheader against the Jamaica (New York) Cardinals on May 30, 1925, he clouted four home runs — two in each game — yet the Lincoln Giants lost both contests.9

The Lincoln Giants released Scales in August 1925 “not because of his ball playing, but because of a personal difference with the owner,” Jim Keenan.10 Scales finished the season with the Homestead Grays. In 1926 he played for the Brooklyn Royal Giants and Newark Stars before returning to the Lincoln Giants in July. On September 19 he clubbed three home runs to lift the Lincoln Giants to a 5-4 victory over the Cuban Stars.11

Scales batted .419 in 28 games for the 1927 Lincoln Giants. His grand slam on May 15 carried the team to a 6-2 victory over the Royal Giants.12 He hit another grand slam a week later, against the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Giants.13 He played shortstop and third base that year. Manager John Henry “Pop” Lloyd said Scales “has the most wonderful throwing arm in baseball and is the most consistent hitter on the team.”14 Scales was also a savvy baserunner. On August 13 he “made a clean steal of home plate” against the Homestead Grays.15 It was “a pretty piece of baserunning,” said William G. Nunn of the Pittsburgh Courier.16

On June 10, 1928, Scales gave “a phenomenal exhibition” at shortstop and went 4-for-5 with a triple and home run as the Lincoln Giants routed Hilldale, 9-3.17 In a doubleheader against the Cuban Stars on August 19, he belted four doubles and at second base made one error in 19 chances.18 He slugged a tape-measure home run against the Cuban Stars on September 16. It was a Ruthian clout, the longest ever at the Catholic Protectory Oval, the Lincoln Giants’ ballpark in the Bronx.19 (The Oval was five miles east of Yankee Stadium.)

Scales “is as good as any of the infielders in colored baseball today,” declared Cum Posey, manager of the Homestead Grays, in September 1928.20 The following August, Posey pulled off a “sensational trade,” sending a disgruntled star, John Beckwith, to the Lincoln Giants for Scales.21 Playing mostly at second base, Scales led the 1930 Grays with a .398 batting average. In September of that year, the Grays were declared “Champions of the East” after defeating the Lincoln Giants, 6 games to 4, in a best-of-11 series. Scales and Grays catcher Josh Gibson, an 18-year-old phenom, “were easily the stars of the series,” said the New York Age.22

After another fine season on the Grays, Scales left to become playing manager of the 1932 New York Black Yankees. On May 14 his team played the Pittsburgh Crawfords in a doubleheader at Greenlee Field, the Crawfords’ new ballpark. In the first game, he singled in the ninth inning and scored the go-ahead run. And in the second contest, his home run over the left-center-field fence was the first home run at Greenlee Field, for which he was rewarded with a $50 cash prize.23

After two more seasons leading the Black Yankees, Scales was welcomed back to the Homestead Grays in the spring of 1935. Posey said, “The return of George Scales gives the Grays one of the most valuable men in baseball. George is a player who is ‘in there’ every minute of every game. George has no imaginary injuries and has always been rated the equal of any in baseball, when quick thinking is necessary.”24 Posey would later say that Scales was the smartest Grays player of all time.25

In 1936 Scales returned to the Black Yankees, now managed by Bob Clarke. The following spring, a group of Negro Leaguers that included Scales, Satchel Paige, and Cool Papa Bell jumped their contracts to play for more money in the Dominican Republic. In the fall, they toured the US as a team with Scales as their playing manager.26

In 1938 Scales was the playing manager of the Baltimore Elite Giants. Among the players he mentored was Roy Campanella, a 16-year-old backup catcher. As an inexperienced right-handed batter, Campanella bailed out of the batter’s box on curveballs. Scales cured him of the habit by placing bats behind his feet in batting practice so that if he backed out of the box he would trip over the bats.27 Years later, Campanella remembered Scales as “big, graceful, powerful, [and] smart.”28

In 1939 Scales was again playing manager of the Black Yankees, and he was given the honor of managing the East squad that played in two All-Star games. The West won the first game, 4-2, at Comiskey Park on August 6. Three weeks later, the East trounced the West, 10-2, at Yankee Stadium.

For the next five seasons, Scales played for the Elite Giants. He was also a coach and in 1943 the manager. He was “a great teacher,” said shortstop Tommy Butts, “a little hard on you, but if you’d listen you could learn a lot.”29

On May 18, 1940, the Elite Giants edged the Homestead Grays, 9-8; Campanella hit two home runs, and Scales contributed a pinch-hit home run. Even in his 40s, Scales was a dangerous hitter. On May 30, 1943, in the first game of a doubleheader, he went 4-for-5 with a double and two home runs in an 11-8 victory over the Grays; and in the second game, he drove in both runs in a 2-0 triumph.30

In 1945 Scales returned once more to the Black Yankees as playing manager. He routinely berated umpires in his “big deep voice.”31 In June he pulled his team off the field over a disputed call, and the game was forfeited to the opposition. After his tirades triggered another forfeit, the team was fined $500, and the Negro National League urged his dismissal as manager.32 The Black Yankees replaced him as manager, but he remained with the team as a player.

In 1946 Scales played one more season for the Elite Giants, and he served the team as a coach and road secretary until 1951. He taught Jim Gilliam to play second base and to switch-hit. Gilliam went on to a successful major-league career and credited Scales for his success.

Baseball was a year-round occupation for Scales. He often went to the Caribbean in the winter, and he mastered the Spanish language.33 He played for the Lincoln Giants in Puerto Rico, 1925-27, and the Almendares and Habana teams in Cuba, 1927-30. As manager of the Ponce Lions, he led the team to five championships in six seasons in the Puerto Rican Winter League, 1941-47; he considered this to be the greatest achievement of his baseball career. In February 1947 his team defeated the New York Yankees, 12-8, in Ponce.34 Scales also managed the 1950-51 Santurce Crabbers, champion of the Puerto Rican league and the Caribbean World Series. He managed the Ponce Lions again in 1958, his final year in professional baseball.

Later in life, Scales worked for a stockbroker in New York City. The major leagues never came calling, but he would have made a fine coach. In a 1972 interview, he said, “I’d like to be a teacher. I can see a lot of flaws. I see them on TV, plenty of it: in their batting stance, the way they throw, the way they field. They get off on the wrong foot on the base line, they hit the base with the wrong foot, they can’t turn, they run too far out of the base line.”35

On April 15, 1976, Scales died in Compton, California, at the age of 75. He was buried at the Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery in nearby Carson.

Scales considered Martín Dihigo the greatest player and Ray Brown the greatest pitcher he ever saw. In a 1952 Pittsburgh Courier poll of experts, Scales was rated the fourth greatest second baseman in Negro baseball history, behind Jackie Robinson, Bingo DeMoss, and Bill Monroe. In 2006 Scales was one of 39 candidates on the final ballot considered by the Special Committee on the Negro Leagues, but he was not one of the 17 elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the extraordinary work by John B. Holway in researching and documenting Negro baseball history, and by the team that created Seamheads.com.

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Len Levin and fact-checked by Kevin Larkin.

Sources

Ancestry.com and Seamheads.com (accessed March-April 2020). Unless otherwise noted, statistics are from Seamheads.com.

Scales’ file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Notes

1 Transcript of 1972 interview by John B. Holway in Scales’ file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

2 “Montgomery Sox Swamp Chicagoans,” Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser, July 23, 1920: 5.

3 “Black Barons Lose to Greys,” Birmingham (Alabama) News, August 2, 1921: 12.

4 “Stars Defeat Cubans, 9 to 7, in Eleven Innings,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 18, 1923: 16.

5 “Stars Are Winners over Milwaukee, 9-7,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 12, 1923: 13.

6 John B. Holway, Blackball Tales (Springfield, Virginia: Scorpio Books, 2008), 113.

7 “Lincoln Giants Win 5 Games in 3 Days,” New York Age, September 8, 1923: 6. The Henderson-Scales matchup took place in the first game of a doubleheader on September 3, 1923.

8 “Lincoln Giants Drop Two Games to Harrisburg Nine but Win from Cuban Stars,” New York Age, June 7, 1924: 6.

9 “Jamaica Cards’ Homers Disastrous to Lincolns,” Brooklyn Standard Union, May 31, 1925: 17.

10 “Judy Gans Quits as Lincolns’ Boss,” Baltimore Afro American, August 22, 1925: 7.

11 “Scales and Dihigo Get 5 Homors [sic], Cubans-Linclns [sic] Split,” Baltimore Afro American, September 25, 1926: 9. Scales hit three home runs in the second game of a doubleheader on September 19, 1926.

12 “Scales’ ‘Homer’ Comes with Bases Loaded,” Baltimore Afro American, May 21, 1927: 14. Scales hit a grand slam in the second game of a doubleheader on May 15, 1927.

13 “Heavy Hitting Gives Harrisburg Dual Win over Lincoln Giants,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 28, 1927: 17. Scales’ grand slam occurred in the second game of a doubleheader on May 22, 1927.

14 “Lincoln Giants Stars Who Will Appear Here against Grays This Week,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 13, 1927: 16.

15 “Grays Sweep Series with Lloyd’s Lincoln Giants,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 20, 1927: 16. Scales’ steal of home was in the first game of a doubleheader on August 13, 1927.

16 “Grays Sweep Series with Lloyd’s Lincoln Giants.”

17 “Lincolns-Hilldale Divide Double Bill at Protectory Oval,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 16, 1928: 17. Scales’ “phenomenal exhibition” was in the first game of a doubleheader on June 10, 1928.

18 “Cuban Stars Fall Twice under Rain of Heavy Hitting from Bats of the Lincoln Giants before Large Crowd,” New York Age, August 25, 1928: 6.

19 “Lincolns Lose to Cuban Stars in 11-inning Game,” New York Age, September 22, 1928: 6; John F. Condon, “Tribute to George Scales,” New York Age, September 29, 1928: 6. Scales’ long home run was in the second game of a doubleheader on September 16, 1928.

20 Cum Posey, “The Sportive Realm,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 1, 1928: 18.

21 “Grays Trade Beckwith for Scales,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 31, 1929: 17.

22 “Homestead Grays Win Title as Champions of the East in 10 Games with Lincolns,” New York Age, October 4, 1930: 6.

23 “Crawfords Divide with Black Yanks,” Pittsburgh Press, May 15, 1932: 20; “Crawfords Split with N.Y.,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 21, 1932: 15.

24 Cum Posey, “Cum Posey’s Pointed Paragraphs,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 23, 1935: 14.

25 “Historically Speaking,” Black Sports, May 1973.

26 “Diamond Dope,” Baltimore Afro American, April 23, 1938: 23.

27 Bill Roberts, “Ex-Elite Giant Player Recalls Campy’s Debut,” Nashville Banner, February 6, 1958: 35.

28 Roy Campanella, “Campy Talks about the Game He Played and Loves,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 29, 1963: 14.

29 John Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, Revised Edition (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 333.

30 “Grays Streak Ended,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1943: 18.

31 John B. Holway, Black Diamonds: Life in the Negro Leagues from the Men Who Lived It (New York: Stadium Books, 1991), 11.

32 Wendell Smith, “The Sports Beat,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 30, 1945: 12; “Owners Pledge Crackdown on NNL ‘Bad Boys,’” Baltimore Afro American, July 7, 1945: 22.

33 Sam Lacy, “Girls behind the Guys,” Baltimore Afro American, March 18, 1952: 25.

34 Thomas E. Van Hyning, Puerto Rico’s Winter League: A History of Major League Baseball’s Launching Pad (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1995), 224.

35 Transcript of 1972 interview by John B. Holway in Scales’ file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. See also: Holway, Black Giants (Springfield, Virginia: Lord Fairfax Press, 2010), 56-63.

Jake Stephens may have been the greatest defensive shortstop of all time. He was on par with Modern Era defensive shortstops like Mark Belanger and Ozzie Smith, but they had the advantage of television highlight reels. Stephens, called “The Wizard of York,” after his Pennsylvania hometown, had none of those benefits since he toiled in the Negro Leagues from 1921 to 1937. A little guy at 5-feet-6 and 135 pounds, the crafty Stephens was called “the diminutive Rabbit Maranville of colored baseball” by Chester Washington in the Pittsburgh Courier, and “one of the dandiest little shortstops ever to wear a glove” by the York Dispatch. The Chicago Defender called him the “human jumping jack.”2 He was known as a great bunter and “spectacular” fielder with a “whiplash arm” who was “greased lightning on the basepaths.”3 His name was often misspelled “Stevens” in the local papers and his birth name, Paul, gave way to Jake. “You know how I got the name Jake?” Stephens told a sportswriter. “Those big guys from the city figured I was from a hick town, so they used to call me Country Jake. It stuck.”4

Stephens also stuck, earning his reputation as a “wonder shortstop” whom the Courier dubbed the “jackrabbit of York.”5 “Fans get a great kick out of seeing Jake Stevens,” wrote the Altoona Mirror in 1930. “He covers so much ground in the infield that he is what is called a triple threat man in football. One minute he gobbles up a scorcher over towards third base. On the next he is in deep short and again he may be found over near second base. Few ground balls get past him.”6 If Stephens had learned to hit the curveball, as he himself confessed, he might have been a more recognized name in Negro League history. “He couldn’t hit a bull in the ass,” Sam Bankhead joked. “But he could field!”7

Paul Eugene Stephens was born on February 10, 1900, in Pleasureville, an unincorporated community in Springettsbury Township in York County, Pennsylvania, to William Henry and Minnie (Bear) Stephens.8 The 1900 census was conducted when Paul was just a few weeks old. William was working as a laborer in a chain works to provide for his family, which included older brothers, William (known as Harry) and John. At the 1910 census, William Henry was working at the Frey Brothers Coal Yard and the family was living in a rented house at 706 King Street. That area of East York was called Bullfrog Alley, a low-lying, swampy area that attracted the croaking creatures. Willow trees were plenteous, and many residents made their living as basket makers. Germans populated the area, as did those labeled “gypsies” for their junk peddling, horse trading, and bootleg whiskey.9 “Let’s put it this way,” Stephens said, “you stayed in your own neighborhood, about three or four blocks.” Stephens claimed he developed a strong throwing arm from the snowballs he threw to protect other children crossing the alley.10

Young Paul was often dropped off with neighbors who essentially raised him. “I went to church with them every Sunday,” he remembered, “and there wasn’t any such thing as a color line. I guess I was 14 or 15 before I realized I was a Negro.”11

Stephens witnessed many tragedies in his young life. His little sister, Flora, died before her second birthday in 1904. His mother died two years later, at the age of 29. In 1917 his brother Harry died when his wagon was struck by a freight train.12

On his World War I draft card, Stephens listed his occupation as a self-employed peddler working out of the family home at 667 Edison Street. In the meantime, he also learned baseball on the sandlots of his hometown. In 1918 he played for at least two teams in Pleasureville, Twelfth Ward and the Colored Giants.13 In 1919 he played on the local Smith Athletic Colored club, one of four in the York Twilight League. He had the best fielding percentage (.910) of all league shortstops, and his brother John led the league in batting. Smith AC finished 4-8 in league play and 22-12 overall.14

In 1920 the Stephens brothers played for another all-Black team in York, the Ajax Colored Giants. “P. Stevens, the acrobatic shortstop of the Ajax, is playing a bang-up game again this season,” wrote the Daily Record, which hailed him as a “flashy fielder and a good hitter.”15 Ajax played the Midvale Steel workers team in a game Stephens recalled in his own two-edition column in the Philadelphia Tribune in 1926. Ajax held a 4-3 lead with one out and the bases loaded with Midvale up. “The stands were in an uproar,” Stephens wrote. “It seemed to us that all the mill hands in the world were up there yelling for our scalps.” The pitcher, full of nerves, threw three straight balls. His fourth pitch was a “mile high” but the batter didn’t want to walk so he swung. “I caught a glimpse of a white streak flashing through the pitcher’s box,” Stephens wrote, “and I hurled myself forward, my gloved hand outstretched.” Stephens came up with the ball and stepped on second to end the game. The mill workers swarmed the field and hoisted Stephens on their shoulders. “I wouldn’t have changed places for any man alive,” he said.16 Feeling cocky about his skills, Stephens joined the Pleasureville team the next week as they played Glen Rock for the county championship. His error cost Pleasureville the championship. “It was a great lesson (in humility),” Stephens wrote, “and I reckon it carries over into every other walk of life.”17

In 1921 Stephens joined the professional Hilldale club of Darby, Pennsylvania, a small, mostly Black suburb of Philadelphia. He sent a series of anonymous letters to team owner Ed Bolden, boasting of the talents of this young shortstop. Bolden was oblivious, but the fake letters drew his attention to the real skills of Stephens. He impressed Bolden at a tryout and became a candidate for starting shortstop.18

Hilldale began as an amateur youth club in 1910, became semipro, then turned professional in 1917. Bolden was “a tireless and brash promoter,” wrote Michael Haupert, and “one of the greatest hustlers in the history of the Negro Leagues.” He was responsible for putting Hilldale on the map. Bolden was a master publicist and drew lucrative exhibitions to Darby Field (Hilldale Park) against well-known Eastern Black or White teams.19 Bolden also had a strict set of rules, Stephens recalled. “Only gentlemen got on the team – gambling and women chasing were out.”20

There were 30 Black baseball teams in the Philadelphia area by 1920, with Hilldale the top drawing card, especially for weeknight games. Bolden capitalized on the mass migration of African Americans fleeing deteriorating circumstances in the South who sought Philadelphia’s manufacturing jobs in the post-World War I years. Bolden had a tempestuous relationship with Rube Foster, founder of the Negro National League in 1920. Bolden and other Eastern club owners considered forming a rival league. Foster prohibited NNL clubs from playing Hilldale and other Eastern independent clubs like the Bacharach Giants, Lincoln Giants, and Brooklyn Royal Giants. The NNL was a success in 1920 and Bolden decided to join with Foster, paying $1,000 for Hilldale to become an associate member of the NNL.21

Stephens made the club and remained with Hilldale for most of the decade. His name (Stevens) appears in many box scores, but player-manager Bill Francis played the majority of league games at short. In July 1921 Bolden acquired another defensive stalwart, future Hall of Famer Judy Johnson, who occupied third base. Hilldale had an amazingly strong infield. In a July 30 contest against the Indianapolis ABCs, “Stevens and J. Johnson cut off scores with plays that seemed impossible,” praised the Philadelphia Inquirer.22

Hilldale dominated the 1921 season, finishing 107-40, according to the Philadelphia Tribune, counting all exhibitions and other various games with amateur clubs. Hilldale was 28-18-1 among major Eastern independent clubs.23 “The twelfth year has rolled around,” the Tribune wrote of Hilldale, “and finds Ed Bolden president of a thriving corporation and one of the best baseball managers east, west, north or south.”24 Stephens played in just six league games and broke his leg in August.25

In early 1922 Bolden and other NNL owners soured on their association with Foster. Bolden lost revenue since Hilldale could not play teams outlawed by Foster. He wanted to leave the NNL and get his $1,000 back, but Foster threatened to raid his team if he did so. Bolden relented and faced more financial losses from a Western trip and when Western clubs refused to travel to Darby. Hilldale fell to 20-26-2 against Eastern clubs.26 Stephens played just a few league games. He was just 22 and in the shadow of veteran stars Louis Santop, Otto Briggs, Chaney White, Toussaint Allen, and Phil Cockrell.27

Bolden resigned from the NNL at the end of 1922 and Foster refused to issue a refund. Bolden formed the Eastern Colored League, which included Hilldale and the Baltimore Black Sox, Brooklyn Royal Giants, Lincoln Giants, Cuban Stars, and Atlantic City Bacharachs. “The formation of the Eastern Colored League,” wrote Neil Lanctot, “was an inevitable reaction to Foster’s domination of the Midwest, revealing conclusively that Black baseball had grown beyond the control of one man.”28 While the ECL was being formed, Paul (Jake) and his brother John (known as Frank) Stephens helped establish an all-Black team known as the York Colored Giants or the Monarch Giants. Frank played for this club in 1923 after two seasons with the Indianapolis ABCs of the NNL.29

Stephens was demoted to a backup role as Bolden signed one of the all-time greats of the Negro Leagues, John Henry “Pop” Lloyd, as player-manager. Pop could still hit, but at 39 he had lost more than just one step in his fielding. “They brought him over to replace me,” Stephens said, “but the old man couldn’t do it. He was washed up. He could hit that ball, but you’ve got to cover territory.” Lloyd was later released.30 They needed Stephens’ glove. He was “the smallest man on the club and the best glove man I know,” said teammate Script Lee. “If the ball hopped bad, he’d hop with it.”31 Hilldale easily won the ECL pennant with a 37-21-1 record. They won five games against two groups of barnstormers from Connie Mack’s (White) Philadelphia Athletics, but Stephens didn’t factor in the series.32

Stephens spent the first half of the 1924 season with Dan McClellan’s Philadelphia Colored Giants, a Black minor-league barnstorming club. “We played up in New England,” remembered teammate Webster McDonald. “When Hilldale needed somebody, they’d call us. We covered the waterfront up there, all down east, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine.”33 Stephens needed more experience and McClelland’s tutelage paid dividends when he returned to Hilldale at the end of July. “The methods of Dan, the Ancient, got results,” wrote W. Rollo Wilson in the Pittsburgh Courier. “He stuck Steve in and told him to go to it. Steve knew that he was to play day after day no matter how many errors he made or how few hits he garnered. It had its effect. The kid’s confidence was established, his nerve was strengthened and here he is saving games for Hilldale.”34 When he returned, Stephens became the regular shortstop and joined second baseman Frank Warfield in a “stalwart defense,” which lasted through 1928 despite the fact that the two didn’t get along.35

Stephens’s return was cut short on September 14; he was carried off the field with a sprained ankle after sliding into second base. Stephens missed most of the rest of the season as Hilldale (47-26) won another ECL pennant. Stephens batted .183 over 28 games. With many NNL clubs struggling financially, Foster realized an ECL-NNL Colored World Series would be a boost to the game. Hilldale played the Kansas City Monarchs. Stephens, still noticeably limping, started only Game Seven of the best-of-nine series and left in pain after three innings. Kansas City won the series five games to four, with one tie.36

Stephens was Hilldale’s starting shortstop in 1925, batting .217 in 54 games. Hilldale again dominated the ECL, finishing 53-18-1. They faced the Monarchs (59-23-2) in a rematch for the Colored World Series. Stephens batted .250 (5-for-20) and Hilldale prevailed, five games to one. In a postseason banquet for the champions, Stephens joined Script Lee, George Carr, and Clint Thomas in a “Hilldale Quartet.”37

The 1925-26 seasons were financial disappointments for most NNL and ECL clubs. Attendance and ticket prices couldn’t keep pace with expenses. Issues with umpiring, scheduling, statistical tracking, and poor administration plagued the ECL in 1926. In the NNL, Foster’s physical and mental health declined, and he was admitted to an institution. The winner of three straight ECL pennants, Hilldale finished second to the Atlantic Bacharach Giants in 1926. Stephens batted a solid .271 in 66 games.38

In 1927 Hilldale fell to fifth place (38-48-1) and Stephens batted .234 in 82 games. But his defense still garnered attention. “Although he was charged with two errors,” the Courier reported in a June game against the Cuban Stars, “Stevens brought the fans to their feet time and again in accepting 10 of his 12 chances.”39

Bolden, like Foster, suffered a breakdown and resigned from both the ECL and Hilldale. He was away for several months. When he returned to Hilldale in early 1928, he announced he was pulling the team out of the ECL, the league he had created, after losing $18,000. The ECL itself would soon collapse. Hilldale finished 35-28-1 as an independent club, and Stephens batted a meager .152 in 54 games.

Many Negro League players were able to survive financially by playing winter league ball in California, Puerto Rico, and Cuba (where a player could make $400-$500 per month). Stephens played in Puerto Rico in the winter of 1926-27. The following year he joined the Philadelphia Royal Giants in the California Winter League, batting .250 in 14 games. He spent the 1928-29 winter in Cuba.40 “We were playing in Cuba one winter,” remembered Clint Thomas, “and Jake had trouble hitting the curveball. So, when pitchers started curveballing him, he sent himself a wire saying his father had died and he had to go home.” Jake pulled the same trick in California. “I used to tease him, wondering how his father could have died twice.”41

In 1929 Bolden formed the American Negro League (ANL) with Hilldale and five other clubs. Stephens had a falling-out with Hilldale management and his days were numbered. “They started me with $150 a month,” he recalled in 1979, “and after eight years I was making $200. But I knew I was worth more than that. I was a halfway decent shortstop, and I knew I could get a job with another club. We had the best Negro ball team in America, and I knew they could afford it. I told them if they didn’t pay me more money, I would go back to York County and farm.”42 Stephens was involved in a blockbuster trade with the Homestead Grays of the ANL. The Grays sent the legendary slugger Martín Dihigo and pitcher George Britt to Hilldale for Stephens and infielder Walter Cannady.43 The excitement of the trade was soon gone, however, as for unknown reasons Stephens deserted the Grays in early May. The issue had to have been related to his relationship with Grays manager Cumberland Posey, who suspended Stephens. Posey traded Stephens back to Hilldale and reacquired Britt. “As this is written,” Wilson of the Courier noted in his July 13 column, “Stevens is still out, and wires and letters have failed to bring him to the Hilldale club.”44 Stephens played in just 15 games.

It was a short reunion with Hilldale, as the survival of the franchise was in doubt when the ANL folded. Stephens, Oscar Charleston, and Judy Johnson all defected to the Grays, now an independent club. “Posey in agreeing to bury the hatchet and use the player whose desertion probably cost him the gonfalon in the Eastern League last year,” wrote the Courier, “shows that he’s trying hard to provide a real winner.”45 Combined with George Scales, a solid veteran second baseman, the Grays infield “looms as one of the best in Negro baseball,” the same newspaper noted. “Charleston, Scales and Johnson are three of the best all-around infielders in the game and Stevens is generally considered to be about the classiest fielding shortstop in the East.”46 One of the greatest pitching duels of all time occurred in Kansas City on August 2 as the Grays’ Smokey Joe Williams faced Chet Brewer of the Monarchs. Williams fanned 27 batters in a 1-0, 12-inning win while Brewer fanned 19. The game was on the line in the bottom of the eighth with a runner at second and a blooper hit to center. Stephens “went back and made a spectacular catch to rob the Monarchs of a probable victory,” enthused the Courier.47

The club finished the season 45-15-1 and defeated the Lincoln Giants in a 10-game postseason tournament, declaring itself the best in the East. Stephens was “in splendid form for the series,” wrote the New York Age.48 He batted .271 in 55 games and was considered the best defensive shortstop in the Negro Leagues.49

After success with the Grays, Stephens and Judy Johnson were persuaded to return to Hilldale for a few games to close the season. Johnson remained with Hilldale, becoming their manager for two seasons as the club was rebranded the Hilldale Daisies under new ownership.50 The NNL folded after the 1931 season. Stephens re-signed with the Grays for $350 a month. “I hated to go to bed at night,” he said, “afraid I was going to miss something. You know, the country boy in the big city. Depression? I didn’t know what the Depression was. I lived high off the hog. You could get a haircut for 35 cents, a shave for 15 and a pack of cigarettes for a dime then.”51

Days before leaving for spring training in 1931, Stephens suffered a freak mishap at home when he fell down the stairs and broke two ribs. He missed several weeks.52 He was limited to a reserve role, batting .250 in 17 games while also battling a stomach ailment.53

Stephens returned as the starting shortstop for the Grays, who belonged to Posey’s new East-West League in 1932. He had his best year at the plate, batting .327 in 28 games. With the East-West League struggling to survive, the Detroit club was merged with Homestead, creating an abundance of players. Stephens was traded to the Pittsburgh Crawfords, where he rejoined Judy Johnson (Hilldale had folded). Stephens batted .193 in 46 games.54

Stephens and several teammates moved east in 1933. “A gang of us then jumped the Crawfords,” Stephens recalled in 1963, “and joined up with Eddie Gottlieb to form the Philadelphia Stars.”55 Gottlieb was a White Philadelphia booking agent who is more remembered for his legacy in basketball. He had a 50 percent share in the Stars and provided the financial backing for the franchise. He brought Ed Bolden back into professional baseball to handle the administrative tasks of the club. Gottlieb and Bolden attended a meeting of the new Negro National League (known as Negro National League 2) formed by Gus Greenlee. Bolden again had issues with the cost of belonging to a league and kept the Stars independent in 1933. He found financial success booking exhibition games against White teams and even marketed his club as Hilldale, renting Hilldale Park to attract patrons in Philadelphia.56

Bolden signed former Hilldale players, including Stephens, Biz Mackey, Chaney White, and Eggie Dallard, and other stars such as Jud Wilson and Dick Lundy. “We had a cracking good team,” Stephens said. “What a gang!”57 The independent club in 1933 had a successful 22-13 run with Stephens as the starting second baseman, batting .310 in 28 games. “‘Steve’ thrilled the fans here again,” wrote the Courier, “by his sparkling and peppery playing.”58 Manager Webster McDonald said, “Stephens and (Dick) Seay were the best double play combination in baseball. I called them ‘the acrobats.’ Stephens was fast, aggressive. He could jump like a cat.”59 The Stars benefited from new laws allowing Sunday ball, more economic optimism, and the prevalence of night games. By 1934, both Greenlee, seeing monetary potential in the Philadelphia market, and Bolden, with his new Passon Field and increased attendance, put their differences aside and the Stars joined the NNL2.

Stephens, often batting leadoff for the Stars, batted .264 (on-base percentage of .325) and “still play[ed] one of the best games at shortstop and [was] considered by many as one of the leading infielders in colored ranks,” wrote the York Gazette and Daily.60 He finished second in voting for the starting shortstop for the East in the East-West Game, losing to Dick Lundy 5,515 to 4,840. “Both shortstops have been playing a whale of a game,” wrote the Courier, “and the letters coming in from the fans indicated that Lundy’s ability to hit harder than ‘Steve,’ although no more consistently, gave the Newark manager a margin.”61 The Stars defeated the Chicago American Giants four games to three (with one tie) to win the NNL2 championship, their only title. Stephens called Bolden the greatest all-time manager in the Negro Leagues. “Ed knew all the answers on how to get the best out of a winning combination,” Stephens said.62

On January 7, 1935, Stephens wed Vivian Segrow, the daughter of Andrew and Ida (Carroll) Segrow. The Segrows were residents of New Orleans, where Andrew worked as a ship steward. 

Jake spent 1935 with the Stars, batting .242 in 40 games. He was voted the top shortstop (14,028) for the East in the East-West all-star game on August 11 at Comiskey Park in Chicago before a crowd of 25,000.63 He singled off Ray Brown to lead off the game, moved to second on a passed ball, reached third on an error, and scored on Dihigo’s single. The West won a thriller, 11-8, on a walk-off home run by Mule Suttles. Stephens had some fun in the Windy City that night and went back to his hotel at 2:00 A.M. “half juiced up,” he said. He bothered his often-irritable roommate, Jud Wilson, who grabbed little Jake and held him by one leg out the window, 16 stories up. Stephens had little memory of the event the next morning. The two were lifelong friends despite the very odd story. “A very sincere man,” Stephens said of Wilson. “But when he put that uniform on, he played for keeps. He was a little like me, he hated umpires.”64

Stephens left the Stars to play for the New York Black Yankees in his final seasons of 1936-37. The Black Yankees were loaded with veteran players, most of them north of 30 years old, including Jake, who was 36 in 1936. The well-traveled Walter Cannady (34) manned second base and with Stephens “loom[ed] as the best double-play combination in the league,” according to the Courier.65 Stephens was called the “sparkplug” of the club by the New York Age. The team finished 22-16-1 in the NNL2, second to the Crawfords. Stephens batted .212 in 31 games but had not lost his argumentative nature. In a game against the New York Cubans, he “tried to get (Neck) Stanley’s goat,” wrote the Age, “by accusing Stanley of cutting the ball. Umpire (Mo) Harris took his arguments seriously and then Stevens began helping his argument out by cutting a few balls himself. Every time he asked to see a ball, he would dig his long fingernails into the ball and cut the cover himself.”66

By the spring of 1937, Stephens was not “in condition to play regularly,” wrote the Brooklyn Times-Union. “His job is coaching now.”67 He batted a strong .284 in 24 games for the sub-500 team but was hampered by a twisted ankle. He and several other players were fined by Greenlee for unruly conduct against umpires. “If patrons want to see fist-fights,” the commissioner stated, “they’ll go to prize fights. But I believe patrons of the Negro League want to see baseball.”68

In 1943 Stephens was asked by the Pittsburgh Courier for his all-time Negro League all-star team. Many of them were his former teammates: Mackey (C), Wilson (1B), Warfield (2B), Judy Johnson (3B), Vic Harris (LF), Charleston (CF), Rap Dixon (RF), and pitchers Willie Foster, Nip Winters, and Bill Holland. The other two players were Dobie Moore (SS) and Rats Henderson (P). Notably absent, even from Stephens’ list of his second team, was Satchel Paige, who received only an honorable mention. One writer recalled Stephens once saying Paige was “the most overrated player ever God put breath into.”69

Stephens finished his career as a .236 hitter. He often batted leadoff, however, so one has to wonder about his accredited .307 on-base-percentage. Stephens found creative ways to get on base. “Our uniform shirts were puffy,” he said, “and when I would go to the plate, I would pull part of the shirt from under the back of my belt, and it would stick out slightly. The pitchers worked me closely and I pulled back to avoid being hit. I twisted my body so the ball would hit the shirt. I got free rides to first.”70

“I knew Father Time was catching up with me,” he recalled in 1979. “I knew I was washed up. Nobody has to tell you that. When you can’t do the things you used to do, it’s time to quit. So I folded up my tent and headed back to York.” The exhausting travel had much to do with it. “We would play seven games over a weekend,” he remembered, “say a twi-night in Pittsburgh on Friday, then an afternoon game in Baltimore, a twi-nighter there on Saturday, and a doubleheader in New York on Sunday. It was just too much, and we went everywhere by bus.”71

Stephens opened a café in York upon retiring but sold it after a couple of years. At the time of the 1940 census, Jake and Vivian (still spelled “Stevens”) were renting a house for $25 a week at 410 East King Street in York. Jake worked at the Department of Revenue and made $1,600 in 1939. He developed a messenger service that he ran for 12 years until it “got so big I couldn’t handle it anymore,” he said. It is laughable, considering the misspellings of his last name over the years, that the enumerator collecting data for the 1950 census wrote “Stevens” and crossed it out and wrote “Stephens.” Someone finally got it right. Stephens worked as an “analyzer” for the State of Pennsylvania in the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. He officially retired at age 67, then took a part-time job as a deputy sheriff at the county courthouse and also worked as a notary public.72

Stephens was active in local and state politics. He served as the county chairman of the Republican Bureau of Negro Affairs and was secretary for the Republican Negro State Council. In 1939 Stephens spoke out against communism and Nazism. In 1944 he conducted a survey of African American soldiers in Pennsylvania and found their strong support for the Thomas Dewey-John Bricker Republican ticket, which was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth term as president. In 1947 Stephens considered a run for mayor of York but later withdrew.73 In 1952 he was outspoken against the Democrats selecting Alabama Senator John Sparkman as Adlai Stevenson’s running mate. Stephens called Sparkman, known for his pro-segregationist and anti-civil rights policies, “an insult to the Negroes of this country. A man so antagonistic to colored people should not be placed in such a high position of responsibility.”74 Stephens supported the eventual winning Republican ticket of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

Stephens was inducted into the York Sports Hall of Fame in 1977. He threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium on York Night when the Orioles faced the Royals on August 16, 1979.75

Jake Stephens died on February 5, 1981, just shy of his 81st birthday. He was buried at Mount Zion Cemetery. He and Vivian had divorced in 1963, and he had remarried a White woman named Grace who bore him his only son in his late 60s, Paul E. Stephens Jr. Jake and Grace also were divorced a year before Jake’s death.76

In 2017 SABR members in Pennsylvania sparked a grass-roots fundraising campaign for a new plaque to recognize Stephens, whose gravestone had no such recognition. “The ‘Wizard of York,’” the inscription, written by Negro Leagues historian Larry Lester reads, “was black baseball’s greatest fielding shortstop. Outstanding on the basepaths and considered an excellent bunter.” “A lot of guys compare him to Ozzie Smith,” Ted Knorr said of baseball’s other “wizard.” “I compare him to Mark Belanger of the Orioles. Belanger was on five pennant-winning clubs and won many Gold Gloves. Jake Stephens was on four or five championship teams in the Negro Leagues, and he’d have as many Gold Gloves as Belanger if they had the award.”77

Photo credit

Courtesy of Gary Ashwill.

Sources

Special thanks to Ted Knorr and Ike Rollins for assistance in writing this biography. In addition to the sources in the Notes, the author was assisted by the following:

Baseball-reference.com

Familysearch.org

“John S. Stephens,” York (Pennsylvania Daily Record, March 4, 1991: 10.

Seamheads.com

“Sports Hall of Fame Names Three,” York Daily Record, January 13, 1977: 15.

York County Historical Society

Notes

1 John B. Holway, “Country Jake: Paul ‘Jake’ Stephens,” in Black Diamonds: Life in the Negro Leagues from the Men Who Lived It” (New York: Stadium Books, 1991), 1.

2 Cited in Holway, Black Diamonds, 1.

3 Chester L. Washington, “Ches’ Sez: Adding Color to Baseball,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 7, 1936: 15.

4 “Paul Stevens – York Shortstop Was Ranked with the Best,” York Dispatch, February 12, 1963: 16.

5 “Yancey to Play With Darby, Say,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 21, 1931: 15; “Charl’ston Johnson, Stevens Sign,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 14, 1931: 14; W. Rollo Wilson, “Sport Shots,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 15, 1930: 15.

6 “Homestead Grays Promise Real Battle Against Works,” Altoona Mirror, August 15, 1930: 19.

7 Holway, Black Diamonds, 1.

8 Alternate spellings are Baer and Bair.

9 June Lloyd, “The Basket Makers of York’s Bullfrog Alley,” York Daily Record, July 8, 2019. Retrieved May 31, 2022. ydr.com/story/opinion/2019/07/08/basket-makers-yorks-bullfrog-alley/1674955001; June Lloyd, “York Had Its Own Unique Gypsy Community,” York Daily Record, September 9, 2019. Retrieved May 31, 2022. ydr.com/story/opinion/2019/09/09/york-had-its-own-unique-gypsy-community/2264973001; Lori Snyder, “Baseball Historians Pull Back Curtain on Wizard of York.” Fox43. Retrieved May 25, 2022. fox43.com/article/news/local/contests/baseball-historians-pull-back-curtain-on-wizard-of-york/521-7af2a238-15e2-43ae-8851-0f0324dc60fc.

10 Holway, Black Diamonds, 4.

11 Holway, Black Diamonds, 4.

12 “Died,” York Gazette, April 26, 1904: 1; “Deaths and Burials,” York Dispatch, August 11, 1906: 7; “Negro Killed by Train,” York Dispatch, August 17, 1917: 2; “Knocked Down by Horse,” York Dispatch, May 13, 1918: 6.

13 Dave Gulden, “‘Country Jake’ Stephens,” York Sunday News, February 7, 1999: C1; The Twelfth Ward was the section of York where Stephens lived (667 Edison Street), based on the 1910 census; “Twelfth Ward Suffer at Wrightsville,” York Gazette, June 17, 1918: 6; “Colored Giants Lose to 12th Ward,” York Daily Record, September 9, 1918: 7.

14 “Form City League for Twilight Ball,” York Daily Record, June 18, 1918: 7; “Official Averages of Twilight League,” York Daily Record, October 31, 1919: 7; “Colored Athletics Made a Fine Record,” York Daily Record, September 29, 1919: 7.

15 “Fast Colored Ball Club Organized,” York Daily Record, April 23, 1920: 9; “Twilight League Starts Play Tonight,” York Daily Record, May 24, 1920: 3; “Dope for Twilight League Fandom,” York Daily Record, June 18, 1920: 10; “Stevens May Join Hilldale,” York Daily Record, April 19, 1921: 7.

16 Paul Stevens [sic], “Did Success Ever Go to Your Head? ‘It Once Went to Mine,’ Says Stevens,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 30, 1926.

17 “’It Took a Glaring Error to Knock the Conceit Out of Me,’ Says Paul Stevens,” Philadelphia Tribune, February 6, 1926.

18 “Opening Game at Hilldale Base Ball Park, Saturday, April 30,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 23, 1921: 7.

19 Michael Haupert, “Hilldale (Daisies) Club Team Ownership History,” SABR Team Ownership History Project. Retrieved May 15, 2022. sabr.org/bioproj/topic/hilldale-daisies-team-ownership-history.

20 “Paul Stevens – York Shortstop, Was Ranked with the Best,” =

21 Haupert; Neil Lanctot, Fair Dealing & Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and the Development of Black Professional Baseball, 1910-1932 (Syracuse: University of Syracuse Press, 2007), 58, 84-87, 127.

22 “Hilldale Bows to ABC in Thirteenth,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 31, 1921: 21.

23 From Baseball-reference.com and Seamheads.com respectively. Lanctot writes that Hilldale won 75 percent of its games against White teams (68-23-2) and had a 37-18-1 record against Black teams for a total record of 105-41-3. See Lanctot, Fair Dealing & Clean Playing, 63, 232.

24 “Hilldale Continues to Win as Biggest Season of Baseball Slowly Ends,” Philadelphia Tribune, November 5, 1921: 7.

25 “Hilldale’s Injured List,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 20, 1921: 7.

26 Haupert; Lanctot, 91-92, 232.

27 “Hilldale Club Meets Allentown Pros Today,” Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, July 9, 1922: 13.

28 Lanctot, 94.

29 “York to Have Fast Colored Ball Team,” York Daily Record, March 5, 1923: 7.

30 “John Henry Lloyd Deposed as Captain of Hilldale Team,” New York Age, September 29, 1923: 6.

31 Holway, Black Diamonds, 1.

32 Lanctot (p. 102) suggests the 32-17 record, which is used by the Baseball Hall of Fame. See Cassidy Lent, “The Hilldale ECL Champions,” baseballhall.org/discover/short-stops/hilldale-giants, retrieved June 1, 2022; Lanctot, 104.

33 John Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, Revised edition. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), 76.

34 “Paul Stevens Back with Hilldale Club,” York Daily Record, July 25, 1924: 8; W. Rollo Wilson, “Eastern Snapshots,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 9, 1924: 7; Lanctot, 109.

35 “Lincoln Giants Humbled by Hilldale Lads, 9 to 2,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 28, 1927: 17.

36 “Hilldale Beaten, But Comes Back,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 15, 1924: 18; Larry Lester, Baseball’s First Colored World Series (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006), 106, 153-154; Lanctot, 109-110.

37 Lanctot, 140-141.

38 Lanctot, 142, 146.

39 “‘Nip’ Zips ’Em, Hilldale Is Ahead,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 4, 1927: 16.

40 “Macks Coming Here,” York Dispatch, March 12, 1927: 12; Gary Ashwill, “Negro Leaguers in Puerto Rico,” Agate Type blog. Retrieved May 29, 2022. agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/2017/01/negro-leaguers-in-puerto-rico.html; William McNeil, The California Winter League: America’s First Integrated Professional Baseball League. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002), 127; Rollo Wilson, “Sport Shots,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 5, 1929: 13.

41 Holway, Black Diamonds, 2.

42 Curt W. Nix, “Orioles’ ‘York Night’ Honors Jake Stephens,” York Daily Record, August 15, 1979: 1B.

43 W. Rollo Wilson, “Sport Shots,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 5, 1929: 13; W. Rollo Wilson, “Grays and Hilldale Figure in Big Trade,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 9, 1929: 13.

44 “Grays Open Series With Hilldale Foe,” Pittsburgh Press, May 17, 1929: 51; “Britt Returns to Hilldale in Trade; Second Half Schedule Released,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 6, 1929: 17; W. Rollo Wilson, “Sport Shots,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 13, 1929: 16.

45 William G. Nunn, “The 1930 Edition of the Grays,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 22, 1930: 15.

46 “Big Shakeup in Grays’ Ranks,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 22, 1930: 15.

47 “Smokey Joe Scores 27 Strikeouts,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 9, 1930: 15.

48 “Homestead Grays Win Title as Champions of the East in 10 Games With Lincolns,” New York Age, October 4, 1930: 6.

49 W. Rollo Wilson, “Sport Shots,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 20, 1930: 14.

50 “Camden Club Plays Hilldale 2 Scraps,” Camden (New Jersey) Courier-Post, September 27, 1930: 16; “Hilldale Club Braces to Win Windup Fray, 5-2,” Morning Post (Camden, New Jersey), October 13, 1930: 12.

51 “Grays ’31 Infield Problems Solved,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 14, 1931: 14; Nix, “Orioles’ ‘York Night’ Honors Jake Stephens.”

52 “Ball Player Injured,” York Dispatch, March 14, 1931: 11; “Yancey to Play With Darby, Say,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 21, 1931: 15.

53 W. Rollo Wilson, “Sports Shots,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 12, 1931: 14.

54 “Grays, Detroit to Merge; League Shifts Loom,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 11, 1932: 15; “Rejuvenated Crawfords Crawfords and Grays to Clash,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 18, 1932: 15.

55 “Paul Stevens – York Shortstop,”

56 Haupert; Lanctot, 222-223.

57 “Paul Stevens – York Shortstop,”

58 “Smiling Steve,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 10, 1933: 15.

59 Holway, Voices, 83.

60 “Philadelphia Stars Face Birmingham Foe at Eagle Park Friday,” York Gazette and Daily, August 16, 1934: 10.

61 “Willie Foster, Brown, Satchell [sic] Paige, Jones Lead East-West Poll,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 25, 1934: 14.

62 Chester L. Washington, “The Scintillating Stevens Selects an All-Time All-Star Team,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 30, 1943: 17.

63 “The East,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 10, 1935: 15.

64 There are several accounts of this story. These details were taken from John Holway’s Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers. (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1988), 203; Holway, Blackball Stars, 214.

65 W.R. Wilson, “National Sport Shots,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1936: 14.

66 William E. Clark, “Black Yanks & Cubans Split Twin Bill Before Big Crowd,” New York Age, July 11, 1936: 9.

67 Irwin N. Rosee, “Bushwicks Seek Ex-Big Leaguer to Bolster Club,” Brooklyn Times-Union, April 27, 1937: 12.

68 “Black Yanks Point to Injured Players in Explaining Slump,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 23, 1937: 17; “Greenlee Cracks Whip on Unruly Players; Charleston, Stevens, Wilson, Burnett Fined,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 19, 1937: 16.

69 W.M. Lee Smallwood, “Column Rekindles Memories of Negro League Star,” York Daily Record, August 26, 2007: B4.

70 Harry McLaughlin, “Yorker Played With Some of the Greats in Negro League,” York Dispatch, April 19, 1996: 2.

71 Nix, “Orioles’ ‘York Night’ Honors Jake Stephens,”

72 “Paul Stevens – York Shortstop”; Nix, 2B.

73 “Bureau of Negro Affairs Meeting,” York Daily Record, May 14, 1938: 7; “Franklin Republicans Hear Paul Stevens,” York Dispatch, October 26, 1939: 28; “Negro Soldiers Are Voting for Dewey,” York Dispatch, November 1, 1944: 18; “Paul E. Stephens Enters Republican Mayoral Contest,” York Dispatch, July 15, 1947: 18; “Snyder Unopposed for Renomination,” York Dispatch, July 22, 1947: 18; “John Sparkman: A Featured Biography,” United States Senate. Retrieved May 7, 2022. senate.gov/senators/FeaturedBios/Featured_Bio_SparkmanJohn.htm.

74 “Sparkman Is Target Among Negro Voters,” York Dispatch, November 1, 1952: 22.

75 “Sports Hall of Fame Names Three,” York Daily Record, January 13, 1977: 15; Smallwood, “Column Rekindles Memories”; “Local Sports Figure Dies,” York Dispatch, February 7, 1981: 30; Larry Shapiro, “KC Spoils ‘York Night,’” York Daily Record, August 17, 1979: 1B.

76 “Legal,” York Gazette and Daily, July 18, 1963:39; York Daily Record, January 31, 1980: 15.

77 Snyder, “Baseball Historians Pull Back Curtain on Wizard of York.”