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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

All statistics, unless otherwise noted, are from:

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

Notes

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

2 Holway, Black Giants, 92.

3 Holway, Black Giants, 92.

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

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

6 Lester, 1.

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

8 Lester, 88.

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

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

11 Bankes, 110.

12 Bankes, 110.

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

14 Revel and Munoz, 23.

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

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

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

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

19 Lester, 89.

20 Lester, 109-110.

21 Holway, Josh and Satch, 151-155.

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

23 Virtue, 12.

24 Virtue, 85.

25 Revel and Munoz, 11.

26 Revel and Munoz, 11.

27 Revel and Munoz, 12.

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

29 Revel and Munoz, 12.

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

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

32 Game Two ended in a tie.

33 Holway, Josh and Satch, 171.

34 Revel and Munoz,19.

35 Revel and Munoz,19.

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

37 Holway, Black Giants, 92.

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

39 Holway, Black Giants, 97.

40 Holway, Black Giants, 97.

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

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

43 Holway, Black Giants, 99.

44 Holway, Black Giants, 101.

“He had time for everybody. Never hurried. Signed autographs, talked to the people, gave advice on baseball, anything they wanted. All the time showing his big beautiful smile. He was so kind. If everybody was like Cool, this would be a better world.” – Judy Johnson (Hall of Fame third baseman)2

He was often described as regal, noble, gentle, and soft-spoken, and a person would be hard pressed to find an ill word uttered about Negro League legend Cool Papa Bell. Just the mention of his name conjures up a seemingly endless line of mythical stories, some true and some no doubt exaggerated. Bell played for three of the greatest teams in Negro League history, the St. Louis Stars of 1928-1931, the Pittsburgh Crawfords of 1932-1936, and the Homestead Grays of 1943-1945. He played in eight East-West All-Star games, was enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 1974, and is often mentioned as the fastest baseball player ever to lace up a pair of spikes.

James Thomas Nichols was born just outside of Starkville, Mississippi, on May 17, 1903. His mother, Mary Nichols, was widowed before his birth when Samuel Nichols died just a month after they were married. Bell had six brothers and two sisters.3 He claimed that his grandfather was three-quarters Indian and his great-grandfather was full-blooded Indian, although he didn’t know which tribe they were from.4 Mary was remarried some time after James was born to a man named Jonas Bell. James didn’t take on his stepfather’s name until he was forced to do so after his move to St. Louis in 1920. As he recalled, “They said you got to have your father’s name. Just changed my name to Bell.”5

James spent the majority of his childhood helping out on his grandfather’s farm, on which the family raised cotton, corn, fruit, vegetables, and just about anything else that people had a use for.6 He also began to play baseball on those hot summer days in rural Mississippi and later recalled playing ball at the age of 10 as one of his fondest memories:

“I was just a little boy, but I could throw hard. One day there was a picnic in a little town called Blackjack. After we ate under the cool shade trees, they asked me to pitch in the men’s game. I was scared, but I went out and did my best. I pitched three innings and struck out eight of the nine men I faced. The only guy who hit the ball was Joe Minor. He was the best hitter around, a big guy with thick wrists and real strong forearms. But all he could do was hit a little grounder back to me.

“When it was my turn to hit, a big woman came running to the plate, picked me up, and put me on her shoulder. She yelled at the pitcher, ‘You’re throwing too fast, and this little boy’s going to get hurt.’ But they convinced her to let me bat, and, on the first pitch, I hit a line drive into the outfield for a single. I stole second base and wound up scoring the winning run in the game. Was I happy!

“After I left the field the girls came running up to me and gave me a big piece of chocolate cake. I remember that game better than any I played as a professional.”7

Bell moved north to St. Louis at the age of 17 to live with his brothers and (perhaps) stepbrothers, Robert, Fred, L.Q., and Sammy.8 It is not known which siblings were fathered by Samuel Nichols and which by Jonas Bell, although James claimed that he was raised without a father. He got a job at a packing house and had hoped to go to night school, but the lure of baseball was just too strong.9 He started playing sandlot ball on the weekends with the Compton Hill Cubs. Bell’s first known appearance in a game was mentioned in a short write-up in the October 15, 1920, edition of the St. Louis Argus. The game took place on October 10, against the East St. Louis Cubs, and Bell was listed as the pitcher — with his older brother Robert catching — in a 15-4 victory for the Cubs.10

In the spring of 1922 those same East St. Louis Cubs were looking for a pitcher to go up against the Negro National League’s St. Louis Stars. Bell jumped at the chance. Although he lost that contest, 9-1, on Sunday, April 30, he struck out eight and impressed the Stars so much that they immediately signed the 19-year-old for $90 a month and headed out on a long road trip with Bell in tow.11

Bell’s first Negro League appearance most likely took place on May 9, 1922, against the Indianapolis ABCs as a lanky knuckleball pitcher.12 In regard to his pitching, Bell said, “I used to throw the knuckle ball. If I got two strikes on you, I could throw my knuckle ball and it would just do this dart-down. I bet you I could strike anybody out with that knuckle ball. My brother couldn’t catch me. But you know who could catch me with that knuckle ball? My sister.”13

It was around this time that Bell received his legendary moniker. Big Bill Gatewood, manager of the Stars in 1922, who had twirled the Negro Leagues’ first no-hitter during the previous season, is most often credited with bestowing the fabled “Cool Papa” nickname upon Bell.14 Supposedly, Bell fanned Oscar Charleston during a tight spot in an early-season game and Gatewood commented about how cool under pressure he was. Papa was added later to make it sound better.15 Gatewood’s influence on Cool Papa’s career didn’t stop there. He also had the foresight to move Bell to the outfield to get his bat in the lineup more often, and persuaded him to bat left-handed to take advantage of his speed heading to first.16 Bell switch-hit for the remainder of his career.

Negro Leagues pioneer Rube Foster was so impressed with Bell’s speed that he issued him a challenge. Wanting to see how fast Cool Papa truly was, he pitted Bell against Jimmy Lyon, the league’s fastest player at the time. Bell won the race easily. Afterward, Foster remarked on Bell’s cheap shoes:

“ ‘If you can run that well in those shoes, just think what you might do in a good pair. Tell you what, go down to the Spalding Sporting Goods Store here in Chicago and tell the man you want the best pair of spikes he has in stock. Charge them to me.’ I thanked him and told him I’d get the shoes, but I was going to pay him back. I was raised to pay my debts. The man at the store gave me a pair of kangaroo-hide shoes. They cost $21, but by the end of the season, I had saved enough to pay Mr. Foster back.”17

Bell continued to pitch for the Stars in 1922 and posted a 7-7 record as he completed nine of his 12 starts and spun one shutout. He fared better in 1923, going 11-7 and completing nine of 14 games started in a total of 25 appearances. However, the team ranked near the bottom of the league in both seasons.18

The California Winter League was the first professional circuit to pit Negro League teams against squads of white professionals. The league began play at the turn of the twentieth century and its season ran between October and February until the league disbanded after the 1947 campaign. Cool Papa was a fixture in the league and played 12 seasons out West. His first go-around in California came after his rookie season with the Stars in 1922-1923. According to Bell:

“I went to California that winter on the pitching staff to play in the winter league. We got rooms in a little hotel down by the station, a big room, had two beds. My brother Fred Bell and I slept in one. Turkey Stearnes slept in the other. … (Stearnes) went to Cuba and they needed an outfielder, so they put me out there. One Saturday we were playing in Pasadena and a lot of balls were hit over the center fielder’s head. I’d run over behind him and catch them. So from then on I played center field. I wasn’t a pitcher anymore.”19

Bell split his time between playing center field and pitching for the Stars in 1924. He batted .289 in 246 at-bats and went 3-1 on the mound, but Bell and the St. Louis Stars did not really hit their stride until 1925.20

Between 1925 and 1927 Bell’s batting average never dipped below .316, including a stellar 1925 campaign in which he batted .342 in 409 at-bats with 99 runs scored. Of course, these are only the partial numbers that historians have been able to unearth so far; his actual statistics were likely much higher. The St. Louis Stars were 180-103 during this period for a .636 winning percentage, and, with the addition of Hall of Famer and powerhouse slugger Mule Suttles in 1927, the best was yet to come.

Bell met his wife, Clara, at some point in the late 1920s, but there initially was a slight roadblock to their union. Bell’s best friend and roommate, future Hall of Fame shortstop Willie Wells, was courting Clara at the time, but Wells’s mother disapproved of the relationship, which gave Bell the opportunity to swoop in. This turn of events did not affect the two players’ friendship; Bell and Wells remained close for the remainder of their lives.21 Willie Wells summed up the situation and their relationship when he said:

“Cool Papa Bell was my best friend in St. Louis. He was the most beautiful ballplayer and a great base runner. And Bell was a clean liver, he wouldn’t dissipate at all. He was like me. We’d sit in the room and play cards, he and I. We were roommates. He married a girl who was my sweetheart. But he and I were just like this-friends-you know? It never came between us. A good relationship. A wonderful fellow. Bell, he was a beaut.”22

Cool Papa and Clara were married in 1928 and they went on their honeymoon to Cuba, where Bell got his first taste of life and baseball in Latin America.23

Bell enjoyed tremendous success in the Cuban Winter League. In the 1928-29 season he led the league with 44 runs scored, 5 home runs, and 17 stolen bases. He hit a robust .325 while playing for the Cienfuegos Elefantes.24 The following season saw more of the same as Bell once again led the league with 52 runs and became the first player in Cuban League history to hit three home runs in game when he stroked three inside-the-park four-baggers in a game played on New Year’s Day in 1929.25

The St. Louis Stars started firing on all cylinders in 1928 as Bell, along with Mule Suttles and Willie Wells, led their team to a 65-26 record and a nine-game championship series victory over the Chicago American Giants, including wins in Games Eight and Nine as they faced elimination. Bell hit a solid .336 during the season and turned it up a notch for the championship series, in which he rapped out 11 hits in 27 at-bats (.407).26

The Stars continued their successful run into the early 1930s. The team captured the Negro National League championship in 1930, with a seven-game win over Turkey Stearnes and his Detroit Stars, and repeated as uncontested champions in 1931, a season in which the squad won both the first- and second-half NNL titles. Bell was outstanding during the 1930 campaign: He hit .350 and scored 109 runs in only 366 at-bats and led his team to a sparkling 73-28 record, 13½ games ahead of the second-place Kansas City Monarchs.

The Negro National League fell victim to the Great Depression and disbanded after the 1931 season. The demise of the first NNL also marked the downfall of one of the greatest teams in Negro League history, the St. Louis Stars. Bell spent 1932 bouncing around between the Independent League Kansas City Monarchs and the Detroit Wolves and Homestead Grays of the East-West League before finally settling in with the storied Pittsburgh Crawfords amid the return of the Negro National League in 1933.27

Bell was often called the black Ty Cobb and was also compared to other players, like Wee Willie Keeler, who chopped down at the ball and relied on their speed to beat opponents. Bell said as much as he explained, “I’d stand back from the plate and chop down on the ball. That’s something I learned from the old players. By the time the ball comes down, they can’t throw me out. They’d bring in their infield, as if there was a man on third and no out; they couldn’t get me if they played back in their normal position. I’d just hit the ball to short, and if he has to move over for it, he can’t throw me out.”28 Hall of Fame third baseman Judy Johnson put it this way: “He was so fast, that if he hit a ground ball to the left side of the infield that took more than one hop, you just couldn’t throw him out. Might just as well hold the ball.”29

Gus Greenlee, racketeer and owner of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, began to load up on talent for the 1933 season. He had already signed Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige, the best hitter and pitcher available, and soon set his sights on Cool Papa Bell, the fastest player in the Negro Leagues. “Greenlee told me that I had the chance to be part of the best team in the history of black baseball and that I was the key,” Bell remembered.30 Greenlee’s boast may not have been exaggeration as the 1933 Pittsburgh Crawfords featured five future Hall of Famers in Bell, Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Paige, and Judy Johnson. Bell appreciated what Greenlee was trying to do with the Crawfords: “Gus really did his best to run a class organization. We had a fine bus, nice uniforms, good equipment, everything.”31

One of Bell’s signature achievements is said to have taken place during the 1933 season. Although the claim cannot be supported by currently available statistics, it is something that Bell consistently claimed to be true throughout his lifetime. He asserted, “The best year I ever had on the bases was 1933. I stole one hundred and seventy-five in about one hundred and eighty to two hundred ball games, all of them against other Negro League teams.”32 Bell also kept track of Gibson’s mammoth blasts during his stint with the Crawfords: “People ask me how many homers Josh Gibson hit and I can’t tell them for sure. I did count 72 in 1933. Josh and I played on the Crawfords from 1933 to 1936, and I can tell you that during those seasons he never hit less than 60 home runs and maybe as many as 80 or 85.”33 Such assertions may appear to be tall tales, but, unlike Satchel Paige’s legendary hyperbole, Bell was a thoughtful, straightforward man, whose intelligence and honesty make these legends more likely.

The East-West All-Star Game, which became the centerpiece of every Negro League season, took place for the first time in 1933. The creation of sportswriters Roy Sparrow of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph and Bill Nunn of the Pittsburgh Courier, they took their idea for the game to the man who could make it happen: Gus Greenlee. This annual contest was even more popular than the Negro League World Series and was an event the players excitedly looked forward to each year.34 Players were selected by the fans through the prominent black newspapers of the day. Bell had already logged 11 seasons before the inaugural game was played, but he still managed to play in eight East-West games. While he did not have much success in these contests, with only six hits in 30 at-bats, he produced a defining moment in the 1934 game.35 Bell walked in the eighth, stole second, and then scored the only run of the game when he sprinted home from second on a bloop single to give the East a 1-0 victory.36

The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords were a juggernaut, and the team is often compared to the 1927 New York Yankees. The Crawfords were a force of nature and rank among the greatest teams to ever take the field.37 Sporting a 50-23-3 record, the Crawfords ran away with the first half of the Negro National League season and featured a star player at almost every position. In 49 recorded games, Bell scored an amazing 68 runs and batted .345 in the process. The Crawfords faced Hall of Famer Martin Dihigo and his New York Cubans in the NNL Championship Series in which Bell celebrated another career-defining moment. A back-and-forth series led to a Game Seven that the Cubans led 8-5 in the eighth inning. The Craws mounted a comeback against Luis Tiant Sr. as homers by Gibson and Charleston tied it up before Bell worked his magic. He singled off Dihigo, who had replaced Tiant on the mound, stole second, and then raced home with the winning run on a bobbled infield grounder.38 For the second time in three years — the team had also won the title in 1933 — the Pittsburgh Crawfords were champions of the Negro National League.

The Crawfords remained a formidable team in 1936 and again captured the NNL championship, but cracks were beginning to show. By the spring of 1937, Gibson had been traded to the Homestead Grays and Bell, Paige, and Sam Bankhead had all left to play in the Dominican Republic and had cited low pay in the Negro Leagues as the reason for jumping their contracts.39 The mighty Pittsburgh Crawfords hung it up for good after the 1938 season, with the remnants of the team moving to Toledo in 1939 and then Indianapolis in 1940 before finally disbanding. A wistful Cool Papa Bell looked back on his four years with the team. “We had such a great team, a team that could win in every way possible. I was sorry I had to leave the Crawfords.”40

Instead of playing in the Negro Leagues in 1937, many Negro League stars made the jump to the Dominican Republic in search of a better payday. Satchel Paige helped lure teammates Bell, Josh Gibson, Sam Bankhead, and Chester Williams south of the border to play for dictator Rafael Trujillo’s team in Ciudad Trujillo to help boost his chance for re-election.41 The players quickly realized the predicament they’d gotten themselves into. Bell asked a local resident, “They don’t kill people over baseball, do they?” The man responded. “Down here they do.”42 Luckily for Bell and company, they won the championship game, albeit under very tense circumstances. In the bottom of the seventh, with his team trailing 3-2 and two out, Bell singled and Sam Bankhead homered to give Trujillo a 4-3 lead. Paige retired the final six batters in a row and they escaped with the win. They couldn’t get out of town fast enough.43

The most improbable of the Cool Papa Bell yarns turns out to be the one that’s verifiably true. For over 40 years, Satchel Paige claimed that “Bell was so fast he could flip the switch and then jump in bed before the light went out.”44 At a 1981 Negro League reunion in Ashland, Kentucky, Bell came clean about this story:

“During one winter season in the late 1930’s, Satchel and I roomed together out in California. One night, before he got back, I turned off the light, but it didn’t go out right away. There was a delay of about three seconds between the time I flipped the switch and the time the light went out. There must have been a short or something. I thought to myself, here’s a chance to fool ol’ Satch. He was always playing tricks on everybody else, you know. Anyway, when he came back, I said, ‘Hey, Satch, I’m pretty fast, right?’ ‘You’re the fastest,’ he said. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you haven’t seen anything yet. Why, I’m so fast, I can turn out the light and be in bed before the room gets dark.’ ‘Sure, Cool. Sure you can,’ he said. I told him to sit down and watch. I turned off the light, jumped in bed, and pulled the covers up to my chin. Then the lights went out. I howled and Satchel was speechless for once. Anyway, he’s been telling the truth all these years.”45

Barnstorming against teams made up of white major leaguers was common during the offseason, and Bell was a staple in these contests as well. He is credited with a .311 lifetime batting average in 52 of these exhibitions, with 57 hits and 21 stolen bases, and, like the teams he played for, often dominated squads made up of his white counterparts.46 In a 1931 game in St. Louis, against a team that included future Hall of Famers Max Carey, Paul Waner, Lloyd Waner, and Charlie Gehringer, the Negro Leaguers embarrassed the white team, 18-3. Bell ran wild in the game as he bunted for a hit his first time up, then stole second, third, and home against New York Giants pitcher Bill Walker. The display of daring and speed prompted Detroit Tigers great Charlie Gehringer to remark, “I saw Ty Cobb many times, even as a young man before I joined the Tigers. But I never saw him do anything like Bell did in St. Louis that night.”47

The Negro League players played a different style of baseball than the white major leaguers of the time, which is what often gave them the advantage. Bell called it tricky baseball and explained:

“When I came up, we didn’t play baseball like they play in the major leagues. We played tricky baseball. When we played the big leaguers after the regular season, our pitchers would curve the ball on 3-2. They’d say, what, are you trying to make us look bad? We’d bunt and run and they’d say, why are you trying to do that in the first inning? When we were supposed to bunt, they’d come in and we’d hit away. We’d go into third standing up so the third baseman couldn’t see the throw coming and it might go through him. The major leaguers would play for one big inning. I think we had a better system than the majors. Whatever it takes to win, we did.”48

In addition to the offseason barnstorming tours, Bell continued to play ball in the Latin winter leagues. Bell and many other Negro League players loved life so much in Latin America that they did not want to leave. Bell said of his time in Latin America, “Everybody was the same down there. We could go in any restaurant, stay in hotels, and oh, the fans? They loved us.”49 Life in Latin America provided a stark contrast to the way Negro League players were treated under Jim Crow laws in the States. Bell played exclusively in the Mexican League from 1938 to 1941, and put his Negro Leagues career on hiatus.

As a former knuckleball pitcher, Bell was able to help his good friend Satchel Paige learn a new pitch while the two were in Mexico. Bell recounted, “In 1938 his arm got sore and I told him, see Satchel, you’ve got to learn to pitch. I showed him how to throw the knuckle ball, and he was throwing it better than I was. That’s what I liked about him, he didn’t want anybody to beat him doing anything.”50

Bell was a superstar in the Mexican League, where he had some of his finest seasons. Perhaps no season was finer than his 1940 campaign with Vera Cruz during which he captured the league’s triple crown and led the team to a championship. Bell hit an astounding .437 with 12 home runs and 79 RBIs in 89 games. He also showed off his speed with 15 triples and a remarkable 119 runs scored. Bell’s four years in Mexico saw him hit .367 overall, and he scored 310 runs in 287 games.51

Bell is obviously most famous for his speed. When Negro League legend, manager, and historian Buck O’Neil was asked, “Just how fast was Cool Papa Bell?,” he would always answer the same. “Faster than that.”52 One of Bell’s most famous quotes about circling the bases in 12 seconds flat cannot be verified, but a recorded time of 13.60 was reported by the Los Angeles Times in 1933, and Bell claims he did it on a wet field. A time of 13.60 puts him slightly behind Maury Wills and ahead of Ty Cobb in recorded times circling the bases.53 Jesse Owens famously dodged Bell when Owens traveled with different teams and took on all comers.54 In 1933 Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Pirate great Paul Waner complimented Bell: “The fastest man I have ever seen on the baseball diamond was Cool Papa.”55

Former Negro League and major-league star and Hall of Famer Monte Irvin also extolled Bell’s ability:

“He might’ve been the fastest baseball player who ever lived. They used to tell stories about Bell’s running. He was known to score from second base on a bunt. That’s right. Now, suppose he’d played under good conditions, you know, get a massage after every game, not have to drive five hundred miles to play a doubleheader, this kind of thing. There’s no telling how many bases he would’ve stolen. It’s just a shame that more people didn’t get to see him. The only comparison I can give is, suppose Willie Mays had never had a chance to play big league. Then I were to come to you and try to tell you about Willie Mays. Now this is the way it is with Cool Papa Bell.” 56

Although Bell is best known for his feats on the basepaths, he was no slouch in the field, a fact to which Satchel Paige attested in his autobiography: “Why, he was the best fielder you ever saw. He could grab that ball no matter where it was hit. He was just like a suction cup.”57 Paul Waner agreed when he called Bell “the smoothest center fielder I’ve seen.”58 Trailblazing owner Bill Veeck compared him to center fielders Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, and Tris Speaker and called Bell “one of the most magical players I’ve ever seen.” And Hall of Famer Pie Traynor once remarked, “It doesn’t matter where he plays. He can go a country mile for a ball.”59

Bell returned from Mexico to the Negro Leagues for a short stint with the Chicago American Giants in 1942 before he signed on with the Homestead Grays the following year. Bell had a knack for playing on great teams, and the 1943 Grays were an overwhelming force that finished the year with a 78-23-1 record and captured their fourth straight NNL title. The 40-year-old Bell led off, played left field, and had a hand in helping the Grays win their first Negro League World Series title by beating the Birmingham Black Barons in a nailbiter, four games to three.60 Bell hit a game-winning single in the bottom of the 11th inning to take Game Three, 4-3, and had a solid Series in which he went 8-for-26 for a .308 average.61

Bell found a kindred spirit on the Grays for the 1944 season in aging veteran and fellow Hall of Famer Buck Leonard. The two intelligent, soft-spoken men were perfect roommates, who both preferred to forgo the nightlife and retire early every evening; however, they were not above taking a couple swigs of gin before bedtime to help with their arthritis. Pittsburgh Courier columnist Wendell Smith said of the duo, “These men weren’t big drinkers; they were aging ballplayers trying to stall Father Time.”62

The Homestead Grays once again met the Birmingham Black Barons in the 1944 Negro League World Series and this time dismantled them, four games to one. The 41-year-old Bell stroked .322 for the season and chipped in with a respectable .260 in the Series.

The 1944-1945 offseason marked Bell’s last campaign in the California Winter League. His success in this league rivaled that of his Mexican League accomplishments as he finished with a .368 batting average in 159 games, including 219 hits in 596 at-bats, with 16 homers, 12 triples, and 31 doubles in 12 years of action. He won two batting titles and his teams consistently dominated the league in each season that he played.63

Bell began to feel all of his 42 years in 1945 with the Homestead Grays. He recalled, “In ’45 I was sick. I had arthritis, I was stiff, I couldn’t run.”64 He still managed to hit .299 and helped the Grays to a 47-25-3 record and yet another NNL title, their sixth in a row. The Grays ran into a buzz saw in the World Series, though, and were swept by the Sam Jethroe-led Cleveland Buckeyes in four games. The aging Grays managed only three runs in the Series and hit a paltry .165.

The 1946 Homestead Grays failed to win the title, but Bell amazed everyone by leading the batting race near the end of the season. Soon, he performed one of his most selfless acts as he ceded the title to Monte Irvin. Bell explained his motives thusly: “For the first time the Major Leagues were serious about taking in blacks. I was too old, but Monte was young and had a chance for a future. It was important he be noticed, important he get that chance.” Bell removed himself from the lineup and ended up not having enough at-bats to qualify for the title.65 He still ended up hitting .393 in his final season in the Negro Leagues.

Soon after Bell’s retirement, he signed on to manage the Monarch Travelers, an independent team that played west of Kansas City in search of major-league talent. Bell managed this team through 1949 and turned out to be adept at recognizing future stars.66 He is credited with first spotting Cubs Hall of Fame shortstop Ernie Banks and recommending him to Buck O’Neil and the Kansas City Monarchs.67

With major-league integration just around the corner, it was difficult for players like Bell not to wonder what might have been. Had integration come sooner, fans could have witnessed the greatness of players like Bell, Gibson, Charleston, Leonard, Johnson, and Suttles in their primes. They would be household names like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Ty Cobb. For more than a decade before Jackie Robinson was signed, the hope that the color barrier might be broken seemed tantalizingly close. Bell had the final word on this false hope: “They used to say, if we find a good black player, we’ll sign him. They was lying.”68

Cool Papa Bell played a role in Jackie Robinson’s success at integrating the major leagues. News that Robinson was about to sign with the Dodgers had many veterans worried that he might not make it. Bell told of the players’ outlook and his role:

“All us old fellas didn’t think he could make it at short. He couldn’t go to his right too good. We was worried. He miss this chance, and who knows when we’d get another chance. So I made up my mind to show him he should try for another spot in the infield. One night I must’ve knocked a couple hundred ground balls to his right, and I beat the throw to first every time. Jackie smiled. He got the message. He played a lot of games in the majors, only one of ’em at short.”69

Bell produced another highlight in 1948 when Satchel Paige got him to suit up against a team led by future Hall of Famer Bob Lemon and, ironically, Jackie Robinson. 70

Bell also described his iconic moment:

“So this time I was hitting eighth and I got on base, and Satchel came up and sacrificed me to second. Well, Bob Lemon came off the mound to field it and I saw that third base was open, because the third baseman had also charged in to field it. Roy Partee, the catcher, saw me going to third, so he went down the line to cover third and I just came on home past him. Partee called ‘Time, time!’ But the umpire said, ‘I can’t call time, the ball’s still in play,’ so I scored.”71

Cool Papa Bell finally hung up his spikes for good in 1950 and moved back to St. Louis with his wife, Clara, where he took a job working for the city, first as a custodian and later as a night watchman.72 Bell sometimes took in Cardinals games and on a couple of occasions shared his wisdom and experience with the stars of the day. The Dodgers asked him to help out young speedster Maury Wills. Bell did, and advised Wills, “When you’re on base get those hitters of yours to stand deep in the box. That way the catcher, he got to back up. That way you goin’ to get an extra step all the time.”73 Wills went on to steal 104 bases not long after that. Cardinals speed demon Lou Brock also listened and learned when Bell was around. Brock recalled, “He was a nice man, a good teacher, and he just instinctively knew more about stealing a base than anyone else I’ve ever met.”74

St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck made an attempt to sign both Bell and Buck Leonard in 1951, but both players were well past their primes. A 48-year-old Bell explained his decision not to play: “People told me I should have tried for the job just for the money, but I couldn’t do it just for a paycheck. I never had any money, so I never worried about it. I just didn’t want fans to boo me, and if I had played at that age they sure would have. Sometimes pride is more important than money.”75

Bell and Clara continued to live in their small St. Louis apartment, which was surrounded by abandoned stores and vacant lots. Bell worked for nine years as a city hall custodian and spent another 13 years as the night watchman on the midnight-to-8 shift. His 22 years with the city earned him a paltry $130-a-month pension.76

In the meantime, Bell had to wait until 1974 to finally get the call every ballplayer dreams of. Cool Papa Bell was unanimously voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and was inducted on August 12, 1974. He was the fifth Negro Leaguer to be elected and joined Paige, Leonard, Gibson, and Irvin in baseball’s hallowed shrine. Bell remained cool when he was given the news. He said, “It’s the highest honor, but I don’t jump up and down and holler and rush to the telephone to call my friends. They’ll learn about it sometime.”77 Ed Stack, former president of the Hall of Fame, said of Bell in 1991, “Cool Papa was the dean of the living Hall of Famers. What he said had a tremendous amount of meaning. It was the sermon of the evening, the inspiration and mood-setting for the whole weekend.”78

Bell made the trip from St. Louis to Cooperstown every year until his health finally prevented him from traveling toward the end of his life. He signed autographs, took pictures, and talked with fans for hours until no one remained. When asked about the dangers of the long journey at his advancing age he responded, “So what if I died on the way to Cooperstown. Besides Clara, baseball has been my whole life.”79

Cool Papa Bell’s beloved wife of 62 years, Clara, died on January 20, 1991. Bell suffered a heart attack shortly thereafter, on February 27, and died at St. Louis University Hospital on March 7.80 The couple was survived by their only daughter, Connie Brooks. Lou Brock was one of Bell’s pallbearers and had this to say after the funeral: “To his grave goes a whole chapter in the black history of baseball, in black history, period. His dream got deferred. I just hope somewhere in history that his performance gets accurately recorded.”81

Bell wasn’t bitter about his exclusion from the major leagues. In 1988, at his home in St. Louis, he reflected on his life.82 In summary of all he had experienced, he said, “Because of baseball, I smelled the rose of life. I wanted to meet interesting people, to travel, and to have nice clothes. Baseball allowed me to do all those things, and most important … it allowed me to become a member of a brotherhood of friendship which will last forever.”83

Sources

All statistics, unless otherwise noted, are from seamheads.com or baseballreference.com.

Notes

1 Jim Bankes, The Pittsburgh Crawfords (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2001), 84.

2 Bankes, 43.

3 Rod Roberts, Cool Papa Bell interview, September 26, 1981, 1. Hall of Fame archives.

4 John Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues (New York: First Da Capo Press Inc., 1992), 112.

5 Rod Roberts interview, 2.

6 Rod Roberts interview, 4.

7 Bankes, 45.

8 Without access to more information, it proved very difficult to determine all family relationships.

9 Mississippi History Now online publication, 1-2008. mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/277/cool-papa-bell.

10 Gary Ashwill, “Cool Papa’s Rookie Season,” Agate Type, July 15, 2016. agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/cool-papa-bell/.

11 Gary Ashwill, “Cool Papa’s Rookie Season.”

12 Gary Ashwill, “How Cool Papa Got His Name,” Agate Type, July 27, 2006. agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/2006/07/how_cool_papa_g.html.

13 Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, 113.

14 Leslie A. Heaphy, Black Baseball and Chicago (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2006), 79.

15 Gary Ashwill, “How Cool Papa Got His Name.”

16 Heaphy, Black Baseball and Chicago, 79.

17 Bankes, 47.

18 Seamheads.com seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=bell-01coo.

19 William F. McNeil, The California Winter League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2002), 88.

20 Seamheads.com. seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=bell-01coo. All statistics are from Seamheads unless otherwise noted.

21 James A. Riley, Dandy, Day, and the Devil (Cocoa, Florida: TK Publishers, 1987), 121.

22 Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, 225.

23 Phil Dixon and Patrick J. Hannigan, The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History (Mattituck, New York: Amereon House, 1992), 125.

24 Jorge S. Figueredo, Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball: 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2003), 348.

25 William F. McNeil, Black Baseball Out of Season: Pay for Play Outside of the Negro Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2007), 42.

26 John Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House Publishers, 2001), 237.

27 Baseballreference.com, baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=bell–001coo.

28 Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, 118.

29 Bankes, 44.

30 Mark Whitaker, The Untold Story of Smoketown: The Other Great Black Renaissance (New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 2018), 109.

31 Larry Lester and Sammy J. Miller, Black Baseball in Pittsburgh (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2001), 35.

32 John Holway, “How to Score from First on a Sacrifice,” American Heritage, August 1970. americanheritage.com/how-score-first-sacrifice.

33 Bankes, 42.

34 Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase: The East-West All-Star Game, 1933-1953 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 21-22.

35 Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase, 412-413.

36 Whitaker, The Untold Story of Smoketown, 115.

37 Bankes, 148.

38 Mark Ribowsky, The Power and the Darkness (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1996), 148.

39 Averell “Ace” Smith, The Pitcher and the Dictator (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 62.

40 Bankes, 51.

41 Anthony J. Connor, Baseball for the Love of It: Hall of Famers Tell It Like It Was (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1982), 240-241.

42 McNeil, Black Baseball Out of Season, 144.

43 William F. McNeil, Baseball’s Other All-Stars (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2000), 172.

44 Bankes, 43.

45 Bankes, 43-44.

46 Todd Peterson, The Negro Leagues Were Major Leagues: Historians Reappraise Black Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2020), 228.

47 Bankes, 47-48.

48 McNeil, The California Winter League, 111.

49 Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick McKissack Jr., Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Scholastic Inc., 1994), 110.

50 Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, 132.

51 Pedro Treto Cisneros, The Mexican League: Comprehensive Player Statistics, 1937-2001 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc., 2002), 93.

52 “No. 99: Cool Papa Bell,” Medium.com, medium.com/joeblogs/99-cool-papa-bell-ef4d0c4d8bf5.

53 Scott Simkus, Outsider Baseball: The Weird World of Hardball on the Fringe, 1876-1950 (Chicago: Chicago Review Press Inc., 2014), 232-234.

54 Dixon and Hannigan, 214.

55 Dixon and Hannigan, 160.

56 Connor, Baseball for the Love of It, 212.

57 Leroy “Satchel” Paige and David Lipman, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever (South Orange, New Jersey: Summer Game Books, 2018), 38.

58 William A. Young, J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc.,2016), 167.

59 Mark Kram, “No Place in the Shade,” Sports Illustrated, June 20, 1994: 66.

60 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), 162.

61 Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues, 410-411.

62 Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, 212.

63 McNeil, The California Winter League, 250.

64 Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, 127.

65 Bill Kirwin, Out of the Shadows: African American Baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2005), 31.

66 Janet Bruce, The Kansas City Monarchs: Champions of Black Baseball (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1985); 120.

67 Young, J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs, 178.

68 Connor, Baseball for the Love of It, 210.

69 Kram.

70 Timothy M. Gay, Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert: The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2010), 272.

71 Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, 109.

72 Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues, 130.

73 Kram.

74 “No. 99: Cool Papa Bell.”

75 Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, 292.

76 William Brashler, Josh Gibson: A Life in the Negro Leagues (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000), 158. See also “Cool Papa Steams Up for Hall of Fame Induction,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, August 9, 1974.

77 “Cool Papa Bell in Hall of Fame,” New York Post, February 13, 1974: 76.

78 “Belated Respect,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, March 17, 1991.

79 Bankes, 139-140.

80 “Cool Papa Dies After Brief Illness,” Sports Collectors Digest, March 29, 1991.

81 “Belated Respect.”

82 Bankes, 83.

83 Shaun McCormack, Cool Papa Bell: Baseball Hall of Famers of the Negro Leagues (New York: Rosen Publishing Group Inc., 2002), 87.

Another Negro League star who was a member of the 1935 Pittsburgh squad for a time, but who has garnered less mention is William Bell. Over the course of a 12-year career between 1923 and 1937, Bell posted an excellent Negro League pitching record of 93-47 that included an 84-44 ledger in league play, a 6-2 record against Latin League teams, and a 3-1 mark against major-league squads; when he was not pitching, Bell sometimes played the outfield. Later he became a manager. Bell also played four seasons in Cuba, where he pitched to a 25-17 record that brings his combined career mark to 118-64. Bell was a finalist on a special committee’s Hall of Fame ballot in 2006, but fell short of being one of the former Negro League players to be selected for induction.

William Bell was born on August 31, 1897, in Hallettsville, Texas, to Otto and Viney (Williams) Bell.1 Hallettsville is the county seat of Lavaca County, so named for the Lavaca River which runs through it, and is about 120 miles east of San Antonio. As was the case with many black residents of Texas in the late nineteenth century, the Bells were poor, minimally-educated farmers; census information indicates that Viney Bell completed school only through the fifth grade. At the time of William’s birth, the family already included older brother David; two sisters, Louisa and Estell, came along later.

Otto Bell died at some point before 1910 while William was still a child. The exact year and cause of Otto’s death have been lost to history, but the 1910 census lists Viney and her children as boarders in the home of Anthony and Ida Harold of Lavaca County. By the time of the 1920 census, the widowed Viney Bell had moved with her daughter Estell and grandchild Arthur Stewart to El Campo, Texas, where she worked as a cook in a private household. Viney Bell remarried and became Mrs. Viney Mayberry; though she was soon widowed again, she remained in El Campo until her death on March 29, 1949.

In light of the hardscrabble conditions of his youth, Bell was determined to improve his lot in life by attending Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas, where he also played college baseball.2 He soon became noticed by the professional Negro League circuits in Texas and was signed by the Galveston Black Sand Crabs of the Texas Colored League in 1921. The league had been founded in 1916 as the Colored Texas League and had franchises in Cleburne, Dallas, Waco, Houston, San Antonio, Beaumont, and Galveston.

After debuting with Galveston, Bell joined the barnstorming All-Nations team the following year. The squad was recognized for imitating the House of David team by having its players wear beards. John Donaldson, a Hall of Fame-worthy Negro League pitcher himself, managed the team during Bell’s tenure with the squad.3

Bell started the 1923 season with the All-Nations contingent, but in midsummer he began to pitch for the Kansas City Monarchs, for whom the All-Nations team served as a sort of farm club. Bell had made it to the “big-league” club under the best of possible circumstances as the Monarchs were a Negro League powerhouse from 1923 to 1925. The 1923 Monarchs featured two future Hall of Famers, Jose “The Black Diamond” Mendez and Wilbur “Bullet Joe” Rogan, along with a third star pitcher, Reuben “Rube” Curry. Bell acquitted himself well once he joined the team, posting a 3-1 record and a 3.32 ERA with three complete games and one shutout in five starts. The pitching staff had ample offensive support from a lineup including Oscar “Heavy” Johnson, Walter “Dobie” Moore, and Rogan, who was an exceptional all-around player and manned every position except catcher at some point in his career.

The 1924 Monarchs returned most of the same players and Bell had a record of 9-2 in 16 appearances (13 starts) during the regular season. At the end of the season the Monarchs, who at the time were members of the Negro National League, played in the first Negro League World Series against the Eastern Colored League’s Philadelphia Hilldales (sometimes also known as the Hilldale Giants). The Hilldale team had its own bevy of stars, including future Hall of Famers Louis Santop, Biz Mackey, and William “Judy” Johnson.

Game Three of the series, which was played at the Maryland Baseball Park in Baltimore because Pennsylvania’s Blue Laws did not allow games on Sunday, had Bell on the mound for the Monarchs and Red Ryan on the mound for Hilldale. Bell went 12 innings, allowed 10 hits, and gave up six runs (four earned); he walked nine batters, struck out four, and hit one batsman while going 0-for-3 at the plate himself. Fielding errors by the Monarchs in the fifth and ninth innings allowed Hilldale to stay in the game. In the 13th inning, Bell moved to right field and Bullet Joe Rogan came on to pitch. The game, still tied, was called on account of darkness after the 13th.

Bell started two more contests over the course of the 10-game series. In Game Six he was the winning pitcher as he logged eight solid innings on the mound and hit an RBI double to help his own cause. Kansas City won, 6-5, and now trailed in the series by three games to two. The Monarchs won the next two games, and then Bell started Game Nine hoping to win the clincher for his team. He got a no-decision, lasting only four innings and surrendering two runs (one earned), as Hilldale prevailed, 5-3, to even the series at four games apiece. In Game Ten the Monarchs won the series when Mendez pitched a three-hit shutout.

Bell returned to the Monarchs in 1925 and went 11-5 with a 2.80 ERA over 144⅔ innings in 22 appearances (15 starts) in the regular season and World Series. Mendez managed again, and the team included pitching stalwarts Rogan (15-2) and Nelson Dean (11-3) alongside Bell. The offense continued to be stout as four players hit .300 or better: Rogan (.360), center fielder Hurly McNair (.332), third baseman Newt Joseph (.323), and shortstop Dobie Moore (.312).

The 1925 Monarchs won the first half of the Negro National League season and finished the year with a record of 62-23. They played against the second-half winner, the St. Louis Stars, for the league championship. The St. Louis lineup included such luminaries as shortstop Willie Wells, center fielder James “Cool Papa” Bell, and the veteran Candy Jim Taylor, who also managed the team. William Bell took the mound in the third game of the seven-game series, losing to the Stars, 3-2. He also started Game Six, facing the Stars’ Roosevelt Davis – another future Pittsburgh Crawfords teammate – and came away with a 9-3 victory that tied the series at three games apiece. Rogan started Game Seven, which the Monarchs won, 4-0, to capture the NNL title.

With the victory over the Stars, the Monarchs advanced to the Negro League World Series for a repeat matchup against the Hilldale team. This time Kansas City lost to Hilldale in six games. Bell pitched in the sixth and final game, losing a 5-2 decision to Phil Cockrell. He flied out with the bases loaded to end the game.4

At the beginning of the 1926 season the Monarchs added Cuban star Cristobal Torriente, another strong hitter. Bell’s 15-6 record put him in a tie for the team lead in wins with Rogan, who was 15-5, and the veteran pair had the help of 19-year-old Chet Brewer, who went 13-2. Pitching carried the Monarchs in 1926; the batting fell off from the past few seasons. Torriente (.348) and Rogan (.306) were the only Monarchs batters to hit over .300. Kansas City won the first half of the NNL season with a record of 57-21 and faced the second-half winner, the Chicago American Giants, to determine the league championship. Kansas City won four of the first five games, but Chicago roared back to win the final four games and claimed the pennant.5

Rogan took over as the Monarchs’ manager in 1927, and Bell returned to the hill as well, his fifth straight year with the team, owned by James Leslie “J.L.” Wilkinson. In addition to his 13-3 record (second on the team to Rogan’s 16-6 mark), Bell had an excellent 2.99 ERA that year. He batted .280 as the Monarchs (54-29) finished in second place behind the Chicago American Giants. In addition to the games played in their league slate, the Monarchs posted a 26-12 record in exhibition games. Fans turned out in great numbers wherever they played so that they could see Kansas City’s great players and winning brand of baseball.6

After the Negro League season ended, Bell traveled to the Caribbean to play for the Habana Leones in the Cuban Winter League’s 1927-28 season. According to Cuba baseball historian Jorge S. Figueredo, “This edition of Habana was probably the best they ever had in their illustrious history. Not only did the Reds run away with the pennant by 8 games, they had a team batting average of .310 and scored 208 runs in 33 games – over 6 tallies per outing.”7 Habana finished with a 24-13 record as Bell posted a 6-2 record, second best on the team behind Oscar Levis’s 7-2 mark. Habana was so dominant that the Almendares team withdrew from the league after suffering an 18-4 thrashing as the hands of the Leones on January 21, and the remainder of the season was terminated shortly thereafter.8

On the heels of his success in Cuba, Bell again pitched for the Monarchs in 1928. In spite of an excellent 2.64 ERA, he managed only a 9-7 record for Kansas City as the Monarchs again finished second in the NNL with a 50-29-1 record, well off the 61-26 pace of the St. Louis Stars.

In the winter Bell returned to the Habana Leones and won as many games during the Winter League season – he finished with a 9-3 record – as he had during the much longer Negro League season. This time the full season was played, though Habana again thoroughly dominated the league and finished 10½ games ahead of second-place Almendares. Bell’s nine victories tied for the league lead with Adolfo Luque, who went 9-2 for Cuba (8-2) and Habana (1-0).

After helping Habana to another title, Bell was able to accomplish the same feat with Kansas City as the Monarchs in 1929 won both halves of the Negro National League season. The Monarchs finished with a 63-17 record in NNL play and a 66-17 overall mark. Bell contributed to the team’s success with a 14-4 record and 3.29 ERA in 26 games (17 starts) and by batting .299. There was neither an NNL playoff series nor a Negro League World Series that year, but the Monarchs did play a championship series against the Houston Black Buffaloes, the champions of the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana League who had finished the season with an awe-inspiring 67-8 record. The Monarchs, coming out of the more competitive NNL, bullied the Black Buffs and swept the four-game series, after which the Texas press declared the Kansas City squad to be the “Colored Champions of the World.”9

When Bell returned for a third season in Cuba’s Winter League, he likely expected more of the same results, but Havana ended the 1929-30 season in last place. Although Figueredo attributed Habana’s collapse “mainly to poor pitching,” Bell managed a 9-8 record for a team that finished at 20-30 in league play.10 Bell’s eight losses were the most in the league, but the fact that he finished with a winning record was a tribute to his remarkable pitching acumen.

Similarly, the Kansas City Monarchs regressed in 1930 and finished at 39-26 in NNL play, which put them third behind the St. Louis Stars (66-22) and the Detroit Stars (50-33). Two highlights of this season involved the Monarchs playing night games under owner J.L. Wilkinson’s portable lighting system, and engaging in a 16-game barnstorming tour through Pennsylvania against the Homestead Grays.11 Bell was the ace of the Kansas City staff in 1930, with a 10-4 record and a 2.96 ERA.12 In a doubleheader against the San Luis Cubans, Bell pitched the first game, winning 5-3. Game Two saw the Monarchs win 4-3 for a sweep.13

Bell made a final trip to Cuba for the 1930 season, which ended up being played under unique circumstances. The actual Cuban Winter League season “was short-lived as only 5 games were played due to a contract dispute between the teams and the management of La Tropical Stadium.”14 Bell, playing for Habana once more, lost his only start, and Habana had a 1-2 record when the season was canceled.

After the regular Cuban season fell by the wayside, a special season – called “Unico” – took place at Almendares Park in November 1930. Three of the four Cuban teams – Almendares, Cienfuegos, and Habana – took part in Unico, with Marianao taking the fourth spot in place of the regular league’s Santa Clara squad.15 Bell finished the special season with a 1-3 record for Habana, which finished in third place with a 5-9 ledger. Perhaps because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the 1930 season, Bell never returned to Cuba.

Bell also failed to return to the Kansas City Monarchs in 1931. Before the season, legendary shortstop John Henry “Pop” Lloyd had been named manager of the newly formed New York Harlem Stars, and he was able to talk Bell, Frank Duncan, and Lee Livingston into leaving the Monarchs and joining his team. The Stars were an independent team that played a limited schedule, and Bell posted a 2-2 ledger with a 2.53 ERA for a squad that had only a 6-12 record.

Bell toiled for three different teams in 1932, including the Detroit Wolves and Homestead Grays in the East-West League and, later in the season, the Pittsburgh Crawfords. He was successful everywhere he went and compiled an 8-3 overall ledger that included a 5-2 mark with the Crawfords, third on the team in wins behind Satchel Paige (7-6) and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe (6-4). At the end of the 1932 season, the talent-laden Crawfords played a seven-game series against the Casey Stengel All-Stars. According to the York (Pennsylvania) Dispatch, Bell “‘toyed’ with the Stengels” as the Crawfords routed the All Stars, 11-2, in the first game of the series; Bell also won Games Three and Seven for a 3-0 record that paced all hurlers on both sides.16

In 1932 the Crawfords had been an independent team, but they joined the Negro National League for the 1933 campaign. The team finished the NNL slate with a 37-21-2 record (47-35-2 against all competition), in second place behind the Chicago American Giants. In Bell’s first start of the the season, against the Nashville Elite Giants, he spun a four-hit, 7-0 shutout. But he finished with a 7-6 record in 17 games (13 starts) and had an unusually inflated 5.44 ERA; his win total was only fourth-best on the team.

Although Bell was 36 years old when the 1934 season started, the Crawfords were counting on him to be one of their starters. Bell responded with a fine season and posted an 11-4 record in league play that was second on the team only to Paige’s 13-3 mark. The Crawfords finished with a 47-27-3 record and the second-best winning percentage in the NNL, but the team won neither half of the league season: the Philadelphia Stars were the first-half champions and the Chicago American Giants captured the second-half flag.

Bell started the 1935 season with the Crawfords, for whom he pitched to a 1-3 record. His most notable game of the year was the one-hitter he threw against the New York Cubans on May 23. The last game we know him to have pitched for the Crawfords was on May 28.17 After that, Bell moved to the NNL’s Newark Dodgers, where he took over as manager from Dick Lundy. Newark played its home games at Ollemar Stadium in Irvington, New Jersey. The team finished dead last in the league with an 18-43-1 record. (The team’s record under Bell was 12-24-1.) Bell inserted himself into six games (two starts) for the Dodgers, going 2-1 with a 4.15 ERA.

In 1936 Brooklyn Eagles owners Abe Manley and Effa Manley purchased the Newark Dodgers and combined the two squads to form the Newark Eagles. They retained Bell as their new team’s manager, and he piloted the Eagles to a 14-20 record before an impatient Abe Manley took the reins and led the team to a 13-11-1 finish; the combined 27-31-1 record was good enough for only a fourth-place finish in the NNL. On the mound, Bell finished the season at 4-4 with a 4.50 ERA.

Bell remained with the Eagles for a brief time in 1937. Now 39, he seldom called on himself to pitch (2-2, 3.77), and he retired as a player at the end of the season. He returned for one last stint as manager of the Newark team in 1948. The integration of Organized Baseball, begun in 1946, had depleted the Negro Leagues of much of their young talent and had brought about a dramatic decline in attendance. The Manleys asked Bell to come back for the 1948 campaign, and he led the Eagles to a 29-28-1 record and a third-place finish in NNL play. The home attendance was so dismal that when the Negro National League disbanded after the season, the Manleys sold the franchise and the new owners moved the team to Houston, Texas. Although Bell’s adopted hometown of El Campo is only 64 miles southwest of Houston, he was now retired from professional baseball for good.

Bell was held in high esteem by his fellow Negro League players, both during and after his playing days. Crawfords outfielder Jimmie Crutchfield noted, “William Bell pitched a lot like a major-league pitcher, had good control, would mix up his pitches and would just outsmart you at the plate.”18 As to Bell’s personal side, star Negro League pitcher Chet Brewer simply said, “[He was] a fine gentleman and a scholar.”19

Once Bell permanently retired from baseball, he and his wife, Betty, became pillars of the El Campo community. Bell became a successful businessman “on the west side of El Campo at a time when stores separated their clients by color,” and he devoted all of his spare time to community service.20 Among his many activities, he “helped build a new church and organized a local NAACP chapter, making sure all blacks were registered to vote. He organized an ‘old-timers’ baseball club and a youth baseball league that played at a cow pasture called the Bull-Patch.”21 Betty Bell was a school principal in the nearby town of Louise and later taught special- education courses at El Campo High School. The couple adopted a daughter, Mary, and also raised four nieces and nephews. Mary Bell followed in her adoptive mother’s footsteps and worked as a teacher and counselor in El Campo from 1973 until her death in 2009.

Bell died in an automobile accident at the age of 71 on March 16, 1969, when the pickup truck he was driving collided with another vehicle in El Campo. Although Bell’s truck was struck on the driver’s side and both vehicles were thrown more than 30 feet by the impact, police noted that his injuries were slight and “expressed the opinion that Bell died of a heart attack.”22 Bell is buried in the El Campo Community Cemetery, along with Betty and Mary. Also buried there are his mother, Viney, and his older brother, David, a World War I veteran who spent his life in El Campo until his death in 1975.

Bell remained such a popular figure in El Campo that the city named a park after him in 2009. According to the El Campo Leader-News, the park is “set on the grounds he once rented so that colored children would have a place to play baseball.”23

At the park’s dedication ceremony, Bell’s surviving family members fondly reminisced about their uncle. Paul Bell, a nephew, recalled, “He raised us all up like we was his kids” and asserted that he had “always wanted to help people.”24 Paula Bell Cole, a great-niece, who was a young child at the time of William’s death, best summed up William Bell’s influence on the people he came in contact with by stating simply that “more ‘Uncle Bills’ are needed.”25

Author Notes

1) William Bell is often listed as William Bell Sr., but, as this article indicates, Bell had no sons and was not a “Sr.” The confusion comes from the fact that some sources have erroneously listed another Negro League pitcher, William Bell Jr., as his son. However, William “Lefty” Bell Jr. was born in 1930 in Des Moines, Iowa, and was obviously no relation to William Bell of El Campo, Texas.

2) Although William Bell managed the Newark Eagles in 1948, a Chicago Defender article dated August 6, 1948, reported that “Willie Bell [would be one of] the starting [Homestead] Grays twirlers” in a doubleheader against the New York Black Yankees that day.26 According to the Center for Negro League Baseball Research’s article about William Bell, all other newspaper articles point to his having been with Newark for the entire season.27 Frederick C. Bush wrote in the book Bittersweet Goodbye, “There is the possibility, though, that the ‘Willie Bell’ listed in the paper as the starting pitcher against the Black Yankees was actually Willie Pope,” who was a pitcher for the Grays in 1948.28

3) In regard to William Bell’s time in Cuba, it has been established that Cliff Bell, another former Kansas City Monarchs pitcher, has erroneously received credit for the seasons that William played in the country’s winter league. Dr. Layton Revel and Luis Munoz, co-authors of the Forgotten Heroes article cited in the Notes cite a Chicago Defender article among other items to support their conclusion; their most irrefutable proof is a photo of William Bell in a Habana Leones uniform.29 Negro League researcher Gary Ashwill also provides documentation in the form of ships’ logs that list William Bell as a passenger traveling from Cuba to the United States, and he has a different photo of William Bell and two teammates in Habana uniforms posted on his website, which is dedicated to the history of the Negro and Latin leagues.30 Additionally, Bush’s research turned up William Bell’s World War II draft card, which lists his height as 5-feet-6. (Most sources inaccurately list a height of 5-feet-11.) William Bell’s nickname in Cuba – also erroneously attributed to Cliff Bell – was Campanita, which means Little Bell. The moniker was obviously applied to William Bell due to his short physical stature.

Sources

All Negro League statistics are taken from the Seamheads.com website unless otherwise indicated. It must be kept in mind that there is great discrepancy among sources regarding Negro League statistics, but Seamheads is becoming the definitive source and continues to conduct research and add new statistics.

All Cuban League statistics are taken from Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003). Figueredo is one of many authors who has erroneously attributed William Bell’s Cuban League career to Cliff Bell, but his book is otherwise accurate in regard to the league’s history and statistics; see author note 3 (above) for more information about how this error has recently come to light and been corrected.

Unless otherwise indicated, all information about the 1924 Negro League World Series was taken from Larry Lester, Baseball’s First Colored World Series: The 1924 Meeting of the Hilldale Giants and Kansas City Monarchs (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006).

Notes

1 William Bell 1942 World War II draft registration card, ancestry.com, accessed September 14, 2019. Many sources list either Galveston or Lavaca County, Texas, as Bell’s birthplace. Bell listed Hallettsville on his draft registration card, confirming that Lavaca County is correct.

2 The college moved to its current location in Dallas in 1990.

3 Dr. Layton Revel and Luis Munoz, “Forgotten Heroes: William Bell,” 2. cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Hero/William-Bell.pdf, accessed October 4, 2019.

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

5 All statistics and records for the 1926 season were taken from Revel and Munoz: 7.

6 Revel and Munoz, 7-8.

7 Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003), 174.

8 Figueredo, 174.

9 Revel and Munoz, 9-11.

10 Figueredo, 182.

11 Revel and Munoz, 11-12.

12 Revel and Munoz, 12.

13 “Monarchs Take Two,” Chicago Defender, April 26, 1930: 8.

14 Figueredo, 189.

15 Figueredo, 192-193.

16 John Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House Publishers, 2001), 296-297.

17 This information is contained in Bill Nowlin’s timeline for the 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords season in the present volume.

18 Lester, Baseball’s First Colored World Series (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006), 52.

19 Lester.

20 Shannon Crabtree, “City Honors Willie Bell Park Namesake,” El Campo (Texas) Leader-News, June 24, 2009.

21 Plaque at Willie Bell Park.

22 “Fatal Accident,” El Campo Leader-News, March 19, 1969: 1.

23 Shannon Crabtree, “Go Green at City Parks,” El Campo Leader-News Routine Special Section: Experience El Campo, issuu.com/ecleader-news/docs/eln_routinespecialsection, accessed September 14, 2019.

24 Crabtree, “City Honors Willie Bell Park Namesake.”

25 Crabtree, “City Honors Willie Bell Park Namesake.”

26 “Grays Oppose Yanks Today,” Chicago Defender, August 6, 1948: C3.

27 Revel and Munoz, 28.

28 Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin, eds., Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2017), 361.

29 Revel and Munoz, 28; also see “Manleys Hire Bill Bell to Pilot Newark,” Chicago Defender, March 27, 1948: 11.

30 Gary Ashwill, “Which Bell in Cuba?”, October 18, 2014, agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/2014/10/which-bell-in-cuba.html, accessed October 10, 2019.

Theodore Hubbard Bond was born in Kimball, West Virginia, on January 25, 1904,3 to William and Louise (Robinson) Bond. His parents were on the same page of the 1880 census, living with their respective parents in Bedford County, Virginia. Theodore’s paternal grandparents were farmers Ann and Stephen Bond, and his maternal grandparents were Mary and William Robinson, the latter a blacksmith. Virginia marriage records indicate that Louise and William had been wed on December 28, 1892, in their home county. The 1910 census indicates that Theodore’s three oldest siblings, brother Landon and sisters Nora and Mabel, were born in Virginia between 1894 and 1901. His sister Berta was born in West Virginia around 1902, and their youngest brother, Vernon, was born in 1917.4

The Bonds lived in Kimball until at least 1912, because that was identified as Landon’s home community in June of that year when he was a student at Storer College in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Landon reportedly graduated the following year from Storer, a historically black college that produced mostly teachers.5 Within a few years, Landon and his family moved to Bluefield, about 30 miles to the southeast. He and his parents had separate entries in Bluefield’s 1915 city directory, though with their surname misspelled as “Barnes.” William was identified as a brakeman for the Norfolk and Western Railway. Theodore’s parents lived on the 100 block of Vine Street for the rest of their lives, very close to the John Stewart Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, which was built in 1921. At some point, William Bond began to serve as a minister in addition to his railroad job.6

By 1920, Bluefield’s African-Americans were doing relatively well collectively, and they were served by two hotels, at least four grocery stores, several eateries, four doctors, two hospitals, and two drugstores.7 Nevertheless, racism had intensified after the World War, and in 1924 the Ku Klux Klan opened an office in Bluefield. It soon held a rally in a theater, and Bluefield’s mayor made welcoming remarks to a full house.8

According to Chester Washington of the Courier, Theodore Bond was a product of the Bluefield Colored Institute,9 which had been renamed Bluefield State Teachers College by the time he joined the Crawfords. In fact, in Bluefield’s 1925 city directory, his occupation was specified as a teacher. Not surprisingly, the Courier also reported that he had played on the college’s baseball team.10

Bond’s time as a teacher was apparently short-lived because, by the publication of the next city directory, for 1927, he was listed as an employee of the Norfolk and Western Railway, like his father.11 By mid-1924 the African-American employees of the railroad’s machine shop had formed a baseball team, and it received “strong support” from the company’s local management, “both morally and financially,” according to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.12 By May of 1926 this team had taken on the name the “Smart Set” when it defeated the Pittsburgh Keystones and Bond’s alma mater.13 Box scores for Smart Set games are almost nonexistent, but in September of that year Baltimore’s Afro-American newspaper printed a letter signed by four of the team’s leaders, including “T. Bonds,” in which they claimed a record of 34 wins to only eight losses.14

According to the Center for Negro League Baseball Research, Bond played on “numerous” baseball teams in Cleveland from 1927 through 1934.15 For the 1931 season, the Cleveland Giants had signed infielder “T. Bond” by mid-February, and he starred in a shutout against the Paducah Black Hawks in mid-June.16 However, by the end of July, Theodore Bond was playing the first of several seasons in Grand Rapids, Michigan.17

He played on teams led by third baseman John Shackelford, who played four seasons in the top Negro Leagues from 1924 to 1930. Shackelford later graduated from the University of Michigan Law School, practiced as an attorney, and was president of the United States Baseball League during its two seasons, 1945 and 1946.18 The first team onto which Shackelford recruited Bond was the Fineis Oil Giants, and one of its stars was Juan Padrón, a Cuban who pitched in the NNL from 1922 through 1926. Bond soon had the opportunity to watch Padrón and Shackelford play on Grand Rapids all-star teams that faced the previous year’s American and National League pennant winners about two weeks apart. The locals defeated the Philadelphia Athletics, 4-3, and the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-1.19 In between those exhibitions, the Fineis team ran a winning streak to at least 18 games.20 In a regional tournament semifinal game in late September, Bond faced Jack Wisner, a four-year National League pitcher, and his second-inning single off him led to the decisive run in a victory that guaranteed the Giants at least $500. (Despite having Padrón starting, Shackelford’s nine lost the finale, 6-5.)21 Bond presumably found his experience in 1931 to be rewarding, because in Bluefield’s city directory for 1932 his occupation was listed as “ball player.”

In 1932 the Fineis Oil Giants began a 10-game winning streak in May, and Bond helped to add one more victory with four hits on June 5. Later that month, he was called “one of the greatest shortstops in western Michigan,” though by that point he’d been given a questionable nickname, “Midget.”22 Over the course of about four weeks, starting in late August, Bond and the Giants faced several nationally known teams. They split a pair of games against the Nashville Elite Giants, the Negro Southern League’s second-half champions. Nashville won, 7-6, on August 27, but the next day’s game was tied, 1-1, until the sixth inning, when Bond scored the final run on a perfect squeeze bunt by Shackelford.23 The Giants played a series against the Kansas City Monarchs during the first half of September and battled the Indianapolis ABCs later in the month.24 In one game vs. the ABCs, Bond batted in the sixth inning against reliever Candy Jim Taylor, the Indianapolis manager, with a runner on base and the Giants trailing, 6-4. Bond homered over the right-field fence to tie the score, but his team ultimately lost, 9-8.25

For 1933, the team’s name changed to the Dixie Gas Stars and it had many newcomers. The Grand Rapids Press stated that several of them hailed “from West Virginia and were handpicked by Midget Bond, who is generally regarded as one of the greatest shortstops ever seen here in semi-pro circles.”26 In June Bond was sent home to Bluefield in search of two additional pitchers. The Stars needed help because they had scheduled 18 games across a span of 13 consecutive days into early July.27 Apparently one of his recruits was Carl Howard, who in 1935 pitched briefly for the NNL’s Brooklyn Eagles.28

Bond likely did more recruiting early in the 1934 season, because two additional Dixie newcomers also were from West Virginia.29 In any event, not long after Independence Day a high point for Bond was being named to a local mixed-race all-star team that faced the American League’s eventual pennant winners, the Detroit Tigers. He was the leadoff batter in the game, which was played on July 11 before 2,200 fans. Vic Frazier, in his fourth American League season, pitched a complete game. Shackelford was the hitting star for the locals, with a double among his three hits, to offset two errors. Bond went hitless but his four assists without an error helped keep the game close, and it was tied, 2-2, after eight innings. In the top of the ninth, the Tigers scored the final run when Jo-Jo White smacked what was scored a double, but he continued to home plate when the Grand Rapids right fielder misplayed the ball.30 Still, 1934 was a very successful season for Bond, Shackelford, and the Stars as they won 84 games and lost only 25.31

During the first half of March 1935, the Pittsburgh Crawfords franchise included Theodore Bond on its list of players “submitted to the National Association of Negro baseball clubs in convention in Philadelphia.”32 He had been recommended to them by “Attorney Shackelford.”33 Bond made a good early impression with three singles in one of the first spring-training exhibition games, a 5-4 win over the Memphis Red Sox in New Orleans.34 Bond received a nice writeup in the New York Amsterdam News later in April: “Although Manager Oscar] Charleston has continually expressed a preference for big men, one little man at least has changed Charley’s mind. This man is Bond, peppery little shortstop who hails from Grand Rapids, Mich., and is playing ball like a house afire,” the African-American weekly wrote. It added, “Bond may not win the first-string shortstop’s job this season, but if he doesn’t he will give the regular short a hot race.”35

Theodore Bond, at the age of 31, remained on the roster as the regular season began on May 11. That day, Chester Washington of the Pittsburgh Courier correctly anticipated that the Craws’ starting lineup at home against the New York Cubans would include “Timothy Bond, a promising young newcomer from Grand Rapids, Mich., at short.”36 (Bond was then called Timothy repeatedly, but it seems more like an error than a nickname.) From a preview of the game in the Pittsburgh Press, it seems that Bond was assigned 6 as his uniform number.37 Bond, who batted eighth, went hitless in the Craws’ 6-5 win, but he was credited with two putouts and three assists. He also participated in the game’s only double play, which the Chicago Defender specified as “Charleston to Bond to Charleston.”38

Bond’s first NNL hit came the next day in his team’s second game, which was the first game of a doubleheader. He had two singles in that game, and what was presumably the second of them was well timed: The Cubans had tied the score, 1-1, in the top of the seventh inning, and Bond singled to right in the bottom half of the frame. He then scored the final run of the game on a triple by Cool Papa Bell. Bond also helped with six assists.39 The Courier called him a “sterling young star who made a fine impression by his fielding in the Cubans-Crawfords series.”40

The Crawfords won nine of their first 12 regular-season games, though Bond had a batting average of just .194. Over the same span, the Newark Dodgers had won just three games and lost 11.41 One of those losses was at home to Charleston’s nine, and Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee was impressed that 4,000 fans had come to watch their weak local team. He decided to make a gift of two players to the Dodgers, namely Bond and pitcher William Bell, who was immediately named Newark’s player-manager.42 In the Dodgers’ 7-6 loss at home to the Crawfords on June 3, Bell put Bond into the second slot in his batting order, and the rookie responded with a double, single, sacrifice, and a run scored, while handling five chances without an error.43 He put his name into a headline later that month when his three-run double against the Homestead Grays was the key blow in an 8-5 victory at home.44

Bond did well enough during his first two months with Newark to finish third among Eastern shortstops in East-West All-Star Game balloting with a respectable total of 11,369 votes. Jake Stephens of Philadelphia edged Bill Yancey of Brooklyn by just 52 votes, 14,028 to 13,976.45 Bond did quite well overall with Newark; his batting average was .302 in 25 NNL games.46

In April 1936 it was reported that Bond would play his baseball back in Grand Rapids, where John Shackelford continued to lead the Chicky Colored Giants. In two preseason articles, it was clear Bond had picked up a new nickname, “Dad.” He was again asked to find new talent back home in Bluefield.47 In an early loss, he batted cleanup, right behind Shackelford, but in a July doubleheader he was back in his more familiar leadoff spot.48

In 1937 Bond was with the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League. It was possible that he had become interested in playing in Chicago because his brother Landon (and his wife, Essie) had been living there since at least the time of the 1930 census. In fact, ample evidence points to Theodore living the rest of his very long life in Chicago. Bond played third base for the American Giants. One highpoint for him came early during the season’s second half, in a loss to the Atlanta Black Crackers. He batted second, smacked two doubles and a single, and scored both of his team’s runs.49 In early August Bond batted leadoff in both games of a doubleheader against the Detroit Stars and combined for four runs, three hits including a triple, and two stolen bases.50 Bond finished third in NAL all-star voting at both third base and shortstop; as a result, he was put on the roster of the East-West All-Star Game, played on August 8, though he did not get into the game.51 The American Giants won the NAL’s second half and faced the first-half champions, the Kansas City Monarchs, in a playoff series. One game ended in a tie, but the Monarchs won five of the other six. In statistics for four of the games, Bond batted just .167, about 100 points lower than his average for the regular season.52

In 1940 Bond played a second season with the American Giants. Box scores consistently showed him batting second, such as in a 12-7 loss to the Monarchs in which he led the hitting attack with three hits in four at-bats and two runs scored.53 Bond was second among Western third basemen in East-West voting but did not make the roster as a reserve.54 Statistics are currently available for only about half as many of his games as in his 1935 and 1937 seasons, but they show him with a very good average of .304 for his final pro season. The American Giants finished the season in the bottom half of the standings.55 According to the Center for Negro League Baseball Research, Bond attempted a comeback in 1943 with the Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro American League in spring training.56 Apparently, though, his professional baseball career now came to an end.

Bond’s father died in Bluefield on December 10, 1940, and his brother Landon died in Chicago three weeks later, on January 1.57 In early 1942, a few weeks after Theodore had turned 38, he completed a military registration card which indicated that his employer was a printing business called the Cuneo Press. His height was identified as 5-feet-5 and his weight as 142 pounds, which explained the “Midget” nickname that had been applied to him early in his career. He may have made annual trips to visit his mother and sister Mabel in Bluefield.58 His mother died in early 1953, and Mabel died in November 1963.59 At some point after Mabel’s death, the youngest of the Bond family, Vernon, moved to Chicago. Cook County death records indicate that when Vernon died in 1986, he had been living at the same address as Theodore for many years, 4638 South Prairie Avenue. It may be no coincidence that this dwelling was located near South Side Park, the home of the Chicago American Giants until it was destroyed by fire on Christmas Day in 1940.

Cook County death records indicate Theodore Bond died on December 18, 1997, at the age of 93. The location of his burial (assuming that he was not cremated) was not noted.

Sources

Unless otherwise indicated, all Negro League statistics and team records have been taken from Seamheads.com.

Notes

1 “Nat’l Association,” Afro-American (Baltimore), June 1, 1935: 20. In 12 regular-season games with the Crawfords, Bond’s batting average was .194, according to seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=bond-01ted.

2 “Loyalty of Newark Fans Praised; Add W. Bell, Bond to Strengthen Club,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 8, 1935: Section 2, 4.

3 The location and date of Theodore’s birth are from the draft registration card he completed in 1942, and his middle name was used in his father’s will, which is also accessible online. As of this writing, Theodore’s entries at baseball-reference.com and seamheads.com identify his birthplace as Grand Rapids, Michigan, but there is ample evidence that he lived in West Virginia from his birth through his teens.

4 Vernon’s date of birth was identified on the draft registration card he completed just after his 23rd birthday and in death records for Cook County, Illinois (though those two sources differed by a few days). Their mother was often called Louisa instead of Louise, and in the 1880 census as well as her marital record, her surname was entered as Robertson, not Robinson. However, twentieth-century records consistently used Robinson (including as her brother James’s surname).

5 “Storer Has 25 Graduates,” Advocate (Charleston, West Virginia), June 13, 1912: 1, 6. The Jefferson County Black History Preservation Society identifies Landon Bond as a 1913 alumnus in a list available at jcblackhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/StorerCollegeStudents.pdf.

6 S.R. Anderson, “Among the Colored People,” Bluefield (West Virginia) Daily Telegraph, August 11, 1921: 5. C.W. Tiffany, “News of the Colored People,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, December 13, 1940: 9. An early reference to him as a reverend was in “Funeral Rites Today for Matthew Preston,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, March 12, 1930: 8. He may also have been the “Bro. W.M. Bond” who was scheduled to give an invocation at the Scott Street Baptist Church in early 1925; see “News of Colored Folk,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, January 9, 1925: 6. Theodore’s sister Mabel and her husband, John Hairston, were also longtime residents on the same block of Vine Street.

7 Joe William Trotter Jr., Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 145-146. Trotter quoted from the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

8 Trotter, 127-128.

9 Chester Washington, “Sez Ches,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 25, 1935: Section 2, 5. The 1940 census indicated that his sister Mabel completed a year of college.

10 “Bond, New Craw Shortstop Find, Is W.Va. Product,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 18, 1935: Section 2, 5.

11 He may also have worked for the Norfolk and Western railroad prior to being a teacher, based on “News of the Colored People,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, August 31, 1924: 30. “Theodore Bonds” served on the Entertainment Committee for what the “First Annual Picnic of Colored Employees of Pocahontas Division N&W.”

12 “News of the Colored People,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, July 6, 1924: 24.

13 “Local Colored Team Wins Third Straight,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, May 13, 1926: 8. “Colored Institute Loses to Railroaders,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, May 16, 1926: 11. On May 21 the team took out an ad in the Telegraph (page 15) advertising two home games against the Winston Salem White Sox.

14 “Sports Mirror,” Afro-American (Baltimore), September 4, 1926: 8. The Smart Set continued at least through 1930.

15 See cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Players%20Register/A-B%202018-04.pdf, specifically the entry for “Bond, Theo. H. (Timothy).”

16 “Cleveland Giants Form Company,” Chicago Defender, February 21, 1931: 9. “Black Hawks Beaten,” Chicago Defender, June 27, 1931: 8.

17 “Hopkins, Lansing to Visit Ramona,” Grand Rapids Press, July 31, 1931: 21. In this article Bond’s team was called “the Fineis Oils Colored Giants, of Lowell and Grand Rapids.” Lowell is less than 20 miles east of Grand Rapids.

18 See SABR member Caleb Hardwick’s biography of Shackelford at arkbaseball.com/tiki-index.php?page=John+Shackelford. For more about his league presidency in 1945-1946, see seamheads.com/blog/2010/01/08/the-united-states-baseball-league/.

19 John J. McGinnis, “Grand Rapids Boys Beat Champion A’s,” Grand Rapids Press, August 18, 1931: 15. Roscoe D. Bennett, “Grand Rapids Team Defeats Cardinals,” Grand Rapids Press, September 3, 1931: 21. Two of the hits off the Cardinals were made by Neil Robinson of the Fineis nine, according to “Padron to Pitch in Tourney Sunday,” Grand Rapids Press, September 3, 1931: 23. This is almost certainly the Neil Robinson who later played in multiple East-West All-Star Games. Neil also played on the Fineis team in 1932, with a brother.

20 “Oils Hope to Beat Old Elster Record,” Grand Rapids Press, August 27, 1931: 20.

21 “Fineis Oils Win Tourney Struggle,” Grand Rapids Press, September 28, 1931: 13. “Ramonas Victors in Tourney Final,” Grand Rapids Press, October 5, 1931: 15.

22 “Fineis Giants Win Two More Games,” Grand Rapids Press, June 6, 1932: 12. “Mariners to Play State’s Leading Independents in Twilight Game Friday,” Ludington (Michigan) Daily News, June 22, 1932: 6. This article noted that Bond teammate and longtime local ballplayer Walt “Big Six” Coe, was “a member of the Grand Rapids detective force.”

23 “Fineis Giants Split Two with Nashville,” Grand Rapids Press, August 29, 1932: 10.

24 “Monarchs Arrive for Fineis Series,” Grand Rapids Press, September 9, 1932: 21. “Monarchs Victors over Oils Friday,” Grand Rapids Press, September 10, 1932: 15. “Extra Innings in Oil-Monarch Series,” Grand Rapids Press, September 12, 1932: 15. “Indianapolis Nine Booked for Series,” Grand Rapids Press, September 16, 1932: 20. “Fineis Oils Lose to Visiting Nine,” Grand Rapids Press, September 17, 1932: 13.

25 “Jim Taylor’s Nine in Easy Victory, 9-8,” Chicago Defender, September 24, 1932: 8.

26 “Shackelford’s Giants Starting Play Sunday,” Grand Rapids Press, May 26, 1933: 22.

27 “Dixie Stars Face Eighteen Contests in Thirteen Days,” Grand Rapids Press, June 22, 1933: 26.

28 By mid-August the Stars had pitchers from West Virginia named Sailor Howard and Still, according to “Second Giant-Dixie Game on Saturday,” Grand Rapids Press, August 18, 1933: 16. This article indicated that at some point Juan Padrón had switched to the Pere Marquette Colored Giants. Sailor Howard’s time with the Brooklyn Eagles was noted in “Chicky Presents Star Negro Nine,” Grand Rapids Press, April 20, 1936: 13. According to seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=howar01ed-, a pitcher for the Chicago American Giants in 1946, Ed Howard, was also nicknamed Sailor.

29 “Dixie Stars Face David Nine First,” Grand Rapids Press, May 9, 1934: 20. The two new players from West Virginia were Watkins, a catcher, and Palmer, a first baseman and pitcher.

30 “Tigers Defeat Rapids Nine,” Detroit Evening Times, July 11, 1934: 15. The box score was printed on page 17. See also John J. McGinnis, “Tigers Beat Locals in Ninth Inning, 3-2,” Grand Rapids Press, July 11, 1934: 16. The Detroit paper’s box score didn’t credit Bond with any putouts, and credited his team with only 25, but the Grand Rapids paper’s box score credited Bond with one putout and the team with 27. McGinnis noted that the crowd was roughly half the size of the Tigers’ recent exhibition in Traverse City, about 140 miles to the north. “Many diamond devotees undoubtedly were kept away by the prices, which ranged up to $1.65 for adults,” he wrote. “This, by the way, is just what you will pay for a box seat at Navin field at any regularly scheduled American league game. An ordinary reserved grandstand seat, even for doubleheaders, costs only $1.40 in Detroit.”

31 This record is according to the Kent Base Ball Club, a founding team of the Vintage Base Ball Association, as reported at kentbaseball.wordpress.com/history/timeline-of-baseball-in-grand-rapids/.

32 “Craws’ Roster,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 16, 1935: Section 2, 4.

33 “Bond, New Craw Shortstop Find, Is W.Va. Product.”

34 “Craws Top Memphis, to Play in New Orleans,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 20, 1935: Section 2, 5.

35 “‘Craws’ Take Clarksdale,” New York Amsterdam News, April 27, 1935: 11.

36 Chester Washington, “Sez Ches,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 11, 1935: Section 2, 4.

37 Paul Kurtz, “Negro Nine Opens Here with Cubans,” Pittsburgh Press, May 11, 1935: 8.

38 “Crawfords Win 2, Tie Pair in Series with N.Y.,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 18, 1935: Section 2, 4. “League Scores,” Chicago Defender, May 18, 1935: 14. Though he was hitless, at least Bond wasn’t listed among the batters who struck out.

39 “Craws-Cubans,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 18, 1935: Section 2, 5.

40 “Bond, New Craw Shortstop Find, Is W.Va. Product.”

41 “Nat’l Association,” Afro-American (Baltimore), June 1, 1935: 20. The Cubans kept Newark out of last place with a record of 2-8 for a .200 winning percentage, versus .214 for the Dodgers.

42 “Loyalty of Newark Fans Praised.” The full quote, excerpted in the first paragraph, was, “Bond is the Grand Rapids flash. A sure fielder, steady hitter, and looms as the best first-year prospect in the League.”

43 “Gibson’s Prodigious Homer Paves Way for Crawfords Victory Over Dodgers,” Central New Jersey Home News (New Brunswick), June 4, 1935: 12.

44 “Bond’s Double Cleans Bases and Gives Newark Dodgers Win Over Homestead Grays, Central New Jersey Home News, June 25, 1935: 12. The first paragraph noted that the game was “a non-league tussle.”

45 “The East,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 10, 1935: Section 2, 5.

46 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=bond-01ted.

47 “Chicky Presents Star Negro Nine,” Grand Rapids Press, April 20, 1936: 13. “Postums Will Open with Chicky Giants,” Grand Rapids Press, April 30, 1936: 25. Bond’s trip home from Grand Rapids was confirmed in “News of the Colored People,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, May 13, 1936: 9.

48 “Postum Wins 6-1 at Grand Rapids,” Battle Creek (Michigan) Enquirer and Evening News, May 11, 1936: 13. “Postums Divide at Grand Rapids,” Battle Creek Enquirer and Evening News, July 13, 1936: 9. In the July doubleheader, Howard was the winning pitcher for Bond’s team, but Juan Padrón was the losing pitcher for them in the nightcap.

49 Ric Roberts, “Crax Crash Chicago American Giants, 8 to 2,” Atlanta Daily World, July 21, 1937: 5.

50 “Giants Make It 3 Over Detroit to Sweep Set,” Chicago Defender, August 7, 2937: 21. In the first game of the doubleheader he had the pleasure of watching the other three infielders turn a triple play.

51 “Chicago Ready for Big Baseball Classic,” Chicago Defender, August 7, 1937: 19. “Colored Nines Meet Today in All-Star Game,” Chicago Tribune, August 8, 1937: Part 2, 2.

52 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=bond-01ted; seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1937&lgID=All&tab=standings.

53 “Twin Bill Split on Sunday,” Chicago Defender, August 3, 1940: 24.

54 “Hilton Smith Tops East vs West Voting,” Chicago Defender, August 10, 1940: 24. “East and West Negro All-Star Lineups Named,” Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1940: 27.

55 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=bond-01ted; seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1940.

56 cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Players%20Register/A-B%202018-04.pdf.

57 C.W. Tiffany, “News of the Colored People,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, December 13, 1940: 9. “Burials From Metropolitan Funeral Parlors,” Chicago Defender, January 11, 1941: 4. All evidence points to Theodore’s sister Nora having died before their father; she seems to have disappeared from the public record after the 1910 census.

58 Examples of reports on his visits to his mother and sister Mabel: C.W. Tiffany, “News of the Colored People,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, December 28, 1944: 7. “Personals,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, January 6, 1946: 15. “News of the Colored People,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, December 30, 1947: 9.

59 West Virginia death records indicate that Louise Violet Bond died on February 6, 1953, and was buried in Bedford County, Virginia, as was her husband. Toward the end of 1963, Berta “Bertie” Matthews became Theodore’s only surviving sister, according to “Deaths and Funerals,” Bluefield Daily Telegraph, November 13, 1963: 3. Family obituaries and trips back to Bluefield never mention Theodore having a wife.

Ernest C. Carter was born on December 8, 1902, in Harpersville, Alabama, to Elick C. and Jennetta (Williamson) Carter. He was the oldest of the Carter children and was followed by a sister, Bera, and a brother, Weldon. Three cousins – Mary, Mattie, and Fred Carter – also grew up on the family farm. Young Ernest completed school through the eighth grade and then worked in Birmingham, 28 miles northwest of Harpersville. He began to play baseball in Birmingham’s Industrial League, though it is not known for which team; perhaps it was already for the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, where he worked in later years. It took time for Carter’s pitching to be noticed, and he did not embark upon his career in professional baseball until the ripe old age of 29.

As Negro League baseball struggled amid the depression, Carter signed with the NSL’s Birmingham Black Barons for the 1932 season. His rookie season turned out to be brief, because “it was the shortest season ever for a Birmingham team. They played for a little over a month before apparently folding without warning or acknowledgment in the local press.”1 Carter earned the distinction of being Birmingham’s Opening Day starter and was the winning pitcher of record in a 7-3 road victory over the Memphis Red Sox.2 He garnered another win in a 3-2 triumph over the Montgomery Grey Sox in the first game of a May 15 doubleheader.3 However, the 1932 season “also was one of the poorest covered in the team’s long history” and little else is known about the Black Barons’ play before the team folded for the year.4

Birmingham fielded an independent team in 1933, but Carter moved to the Black Barons’ former NSL rival in Memphis. The Red Sox were rolling in the first half of the NSL season, and the Pittsburgh Courier reported, “Spoon Carter, Lefty Harvey and Peterson have pitched wonderful ball to help the Sox along.”5 The national black press continued to remark on Memphis’s strong showing as the Chicago Defender noted, toward the end of June, “It is noticeable that the Memphis bunch has not lost a series in seven weeks, some record for playing.”6 The Red Sox swept a three-game series from the Little Rock Stars at the end of June, with Carter winning the finale, on their way to the NSL’s first-half title.7 However, an event occurred that derailed Memphis’s fine season, and they lost the NSL championship to the second-half titlist, the New Orleans Crescent Stars. What happened was that the Pittsburgh Crawfords, members of the second incarnation of the NNL that began play in 1933, gave tryouts to Carter, fellow Memphis hurler Bill Harvey, and pitcher Jim “Speed King” Lewis. According to the Pittsburgh Courier, “[t]hese men were later sent to the Akron Grays and ended the season with the Cleveland Club.”8

The Crawfords’ crosstown league rivals, the Homestead Grays, had moved to Akron, Ohio, for the second half of the NNL season and made their debut in that city in a Sunday doubleheader against the Nashville Elite Giants on July 23. Carter turned in a complete-game effort in the first tilt but was saddled with an 8-4 defeat as Nashville swept the twin bill.9 Akron finished 3-7 in NNL play, and Carter struggled to a 0-3 record with an inflated 7.59 ERA. He then made his lone start for the Cleveland Giants, in which he surrendered seven runs – all earned – in 3⅓ innings and took the loss. Contrary to the Courier’s report, Carter finished the year with the Crawfords rather than the Giants. Now pitching for a stronger team, Carter responded accordingly and put up a 2.82 ERA over 22⅓ innings with the Crawfords. In a late September game, the Crawfords lost to the Philadelphia Stars, 3-2, “despite the airtight pitching of Carter in the initial contest, in which he conceded but two hits to the Quaker City club.”10 Carter continued to be a victim of hard luck and had a 0-2 record with Pittsburgh to finish a winless season.

Carter’s move to the Grays and, later, the Crawfords caused understandable displeasure in the Southern circuit and created friction between the NSL and NNL. Dr. J.B. Martin, the NSL’s new president and co-owner of the Memphis Red Sox, wrote to NNL Chairman (and Crawfords owner) Gus Greenlee “[in] an effort to prevent club owners from raiding teams in the Southern league” and informed him “that the practice of the major circuit members must be brought to an end.” Greenlee agreed to the demand, stating that he did “not want these players [Carter, Harvey, and Lewis] unless they are secured according to the rules and regulations of organized colored baseball.”11

Although Greenlee’s acquiescence meant that Memphis should have had claim to Carter’s services once more, it is unclear where he began the 1934 season. What is known is that toward the end of May, Carter and Irving “Lefty” Vincent, another Pittsburgh Crawfords hurler, traveled to Bismarck, North Dakota, to play for car dealer Neil Churchill’s integrated semipro team. Satchel Paige had plied his trade for Bismarck the previous year and had been contracted to return for a repeat engagement. When, in typical Paige fashion, he failed to show in Bismarck in 1934, Churchill lured Carter and Vincent to the Dakotas as replacements. A Bismarck Tribune account of the two pitchers’ arrival reported that “Carter is in midseason form having won five out of seven starts this spring playing with Cleveland in the colored league. In the east he engaged Satchel Paige … in two pitching duels and broke even.”12 The claim about Carter’s pitching prowess that year appears to have been pure propaganda – most likely generated by Churchill – as there is no evidence that Carter pitched for Cleveland in 1934. In all likelihood, Churchill wanted to convince Bismarck fans that he had found a replacement who was the equal of Paige, and there was no better way to make that claim than to assert that Carter had split two duels with Satchel.

While Vincent found success in Bismarck, Carter continued to be plagued by the same bad luck he had experienced with the Crawfords in 1933. He started Bismarck’s game against Jamestown “before a record-breaking Fourth of July crowd” and suffered a 4-2 defeat.13 The Bismarck Tribune reported, “In the celebration day attraction, Carter held the Jimmie heavy hitters to six safeties but the combination of four errors and two homeruns paved the way for the Jamestown victory in a game which took only 1 hour and 32 minutes.”14 When Churchill decided he no longer needed Carter, Spoon found employment with Valley City, where he fared no better. On August 16 Bismarck and Valley City engaged in “a nip and tuck battle featuring Frank Stewart and Spoon Carter in a superb pitching duel. The Valley City hurler held his former Bismarck teammates to five hits in the first nine innings and allowed only one man to see third base.”15 Carter’s good fortune ran out in the 10th inning and he took the loss in a 1-0 game.

After having traveled from the East to the Midwest to play in one integrated league, Carter journeyed to the West Coast to play in another, the California Winter League. As a member of Tom Wilson’s Nashville Elite Giants, Carter teamed with a veritable “Who’s Who in the Negro Leagues” – a group that included Satchel Paige, James “Cool Papa” Bell, Willie Wells, Turkey Stearnes, Mule Suttles, Andy “Pullman” Porter, and Larry Brown – to form as formidable a team as the league had ever seen. Satchel Paige was late to the show because he had just married Janet Howard in Pittsburgh on October 26, but he still dominated the league to the tune of an 8-0 record. Pullman Porter led the Elite Giants with 12 wins (to only three losses), but the Opening Day start once again went to Carter.16

The Elite Giants opened the 1934-35 season by winning two games of a three-game series against the Pirrone’s All-Stars team at White Sox Park in Los Angeles. The first game was played on October 20 and numerous festivities marked the beginning of the new season. The press raved about the event:

“A mammoth street parade formed at 12th and Central Avenue, marched south on Central to Vernon Avenue, then to the park. One hundred and fifty cars and three bands were in the line of march. This was the greatest winter league opening ever staged here. Supervisor Gordon L. McDonough pitched the first ball and Congressman William Treagur was the umpire.”17

The Elite Giants romped to a 14-5 victory, and the “[f]eatures of the game were the pitching of Carter, the hitting of Stearns,[sic] Snow, Wells, Williams, Suttler [sic] and Carter, the all around playing of the Giants.”18

Exactly one week later, Carter again went the distance in a much closer 9-8 triumph over the Pirrone’s All-Stars in which Stearnes’ second homer, in the bottom of the eighth, provided the game’s decisive run.19 In spite of Carter’s 2-0 start, his role diminished once Paige arrived on the scene. Carter started (and completed) only one more game, which he also won, and finished the winter league season with a spotless 3-0 record. It also marked the first of many times that he was a member of a championship team.

Carter’s success in California led to renewed interest by the Pittsburgh Crawfords, and he rejoined the team for the 1935 season. In a season preview, the New York Age predicted, “With their pitching staff strengthened by the addition of Ernest Carter, a brilliant right hander who was unbeaten in the California Winter League; Harvey, a sterling left hander and “Lefty” Schofield, another promising young portsider, the Pittsburgh Crawfords of 1935 are out to make a determined bid for the championship of the National Negro Baseball Association [which soon became known as the Negro National League].”20 The Age’s forecast turned out to be a classic example of understatement as the 1935 Crawfords have become labeled as the Negro Leagues’ version of the 1927 Murderers’ Row New York Yankees. The Crawfords finished the season with a 50-23-3 record, won the first-half NNL championship, and defeated the second-half champion New York Cubans to win the league title. The team’s accomplishments were all the more impressive because they were achieved without expected ace Satchel Paige. In an ironic twist, Paige spurned the Crawfords in 1935 and spent most of the season with Churchill’s Bismarck squad, the very team he had abandoned the previous year in order to pitch for Greenlee’s Pittsburgh team.

Carter contributed as much as possible to the Crawfords’ 1935 championship run. Negro League statistics are notoriously incomplete due to inconsistent press coverage, but available statistics show that Carter appeared in 11 league games and pitched to a 4-1 record with a 3.07 ERA in 55⅔ innings. His lone loss occurred early in the season, on May 21, when, “[i]n the first Negro game of the season [in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,] the Chicago Americans walloped the Pittsburgh Crawfords 8 to 1 on the island.”21 Carter was erratic, walking three, hitting a batter, and unleashing a wild pitch while allowing seven runs in six innings of relief work. As Carter’s statistics show, this game was not representative of his performance over the entire season. One regular-season highlight for Carter was his six-hit victory over the Crawfords’ intrastate and NNL rival, the Philadelphia Stars, on May 25 at Greenlee Field in Pittsburgh.22

Although Carter pitched effectively in 1935, when the Crawfords faced the Cubans in the NNL championship series, he found himself relegated to bullpen duty. He appeared in Games Two and Four and allowed no runs in 7⅓ innings. In spite of Carter’s efficiency, the damage had already been done in those contests, and the Crawfords lost both games, 6-3 and 3-2. Nonetheless, the Crawfords prevailed, 8-7, in Game Seven to capture the title. Carter was a champion once more, but the season was not yet over.

On September 22, the day after Pittsburgh’s pennant-clinching victory, the Crawfords took part in a four-team doubleheader at Yankee Stadium. The Nashville Elite Giants defeated the Cubans 4-3 in the first game. The nightcap featured the Crawfords and the Philadelphia Stars and was a highly anticipated matchup because Paige was scheduled to pitch for the Crawfords. Even though Greenlee and Paige had been at odds all year, the former was all too aware of the lanky hurler’s drawing power and had paid Paige $350 to appear in New York on this day. In a move that should have surprised no one, but which certainly dismayed many, Paige failed to appear. Greenlee later informed the press that Paige had gone through Chicago while making his way to New Yotk and had been offered $500 to pitch there for the Kansas City Monarchs on September 22. Apparently, the Monarchs’ offer “caused him to forget all about his agreement to appear in New York.”23 Carter stepped into the void created by Paige’s absence and scattered 10 hits as he went the distance in the Crawfords’ 12-2 throttling of the Stars.

Carter returned to the Crawfords in 1936, as did Paige. The team again captured the NNL title, this time by virtue of having the best record (48-33-2) rather than via a championship series against the second-half champion Washington Elite Giants, but was not as dominant as the previous year’s squad had been. Carter was used sparingly, likely because – as his 6.94 ERA demonstrates – he was often ineffective, though he finished on the positive side of the ledger with a 3-2 record. One of Carter’s more notable outings was a 3⅓-inning relief stint in an exhibition game against the semipro Belmar Braves on July 24. In that game, Josh Gibson lived up to his billing as the “Black Babe Ruth,” clouting three home runs to lead Pittsburgh to victory. Gibson’s third homer was a leadoff shot in the ninth inning which sparked the four-run rally that made winners of Carter and the Crawfords.24 With his 34th birthday right around the corner and a poor individual season in his rear-view mirror, Carter may have wondered what the future held for him.

Initially, it looked as though the 1937 season would spell the end of Carter’s career. He started out the year in Pittsburgh but performed worse than he had in 1936. In two appearances, one of them a start, he surrendered 11 earned runs in three innings. In spite of his bloated 33.00 ERA at the time, Carter was still in demand. In fact, the latest bid for his services was the final straw that sparked an international incident.

Rafael Trujillo, the dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic, had changed the name of the country’s capital city from Santo Domingo to Ciudad Trujillo, and he wanted a baseball team that would win the Dominican League championship for him and the city that bore his name. Trujillo’s pockets were not deep enough to lure white major leaguers, but he had ample money to entice prime Negro League talent. In mid-May, the Pittsburgh Courier reported:

“First intimation that the Negro National League was being ‘raided’ came three weeks ago, when Satchell Paige, the Peck’s ‘bad boy’ of the baseball world; Catcher Perkins and Outfielder Christopher boarded a plane in New Orleans and hustled off to the Island Republic and its diamond ‘gold field’ breaking contracts with the Crawfords, last year’s league leaders.”25

Soon, players from the New York Cubans and New York Black Yankees also jumped their contracts to play in the Dominican Republic. Then, on May 8, Luis Mendez, an employee of the Dominican consulate in New York City, and Frederico Nina, a “wealthy lawyer and sportsman, representing a syndicate,” were spotted scouting players at a game between the Crawfords and the Homestead Grays at Greenlee Field. The two men were arrested and “placed in jail on a charge of ‘conspiracy’ after they had made an attempt to sign Ernest Carter, wild speedball pitcher with the Pittsburgh Crawfords.”26

A hearing was held on May 10, and Mendez and Nina were released on bonds of $500 each. Details of their attempt to sign Carter were revealed at this time. The two men testified that they had met with Carter at Greenlee’s Crawford Grill and then had accompanied him to his hotel room, where they had made their offer. Crawfords manager Oscar Charleston was informed about the meeting and, according to the two Dominicans, stormed into the room and threatened them: “‘I came in here to whip you,’ Charleston is alleged to have said, ‘but since you’re so little, I won’t do it. Why don’t you go into the white leagues and get your players.’”27

Carter also testified at the hearing and admitted that “he had agreed to play for Nina for $775 for eight weeks. In addition to this, he was to receive two round-trip tickets for himself and his wife, plus expenses. To substantiate his claim, he produced a railroad ticket to Miami, which he claimed the representatives had purchased.”28 Carter ended up going to the Dominican Republic, where he played for Santiago, a team that belonged to one of Trujillo’s political rivals.

On May 24, the NNL filed the names of all players who had defected from its league’s teams with the US State Department and requested “return of the fleeing players and damages for the clubs formerly owning them.”29 By June, Greenlee was headed to Washington to plead the NNL’s case with the US government. The Pittsburgh Press wrote that Greenlee planned to “create a diplomatic rumble that will shake the crease out of every frock coat and trouser leg from the State Department to Tanganyika” and reported that he already had “enlisted the support of 10 U. S. Senators and 28 Congressmen behind his charge that the Republic of San Domingo has ‘dealt with, induced and lured away’ … the brightest stars in the Negro baseball firmament.”30 Greenlee, who had raided other teams for their top talent in the past, now saw the Dominican Republic’s raids as an existential threat to all of Negro League baseball.

Meanwhile, the majority of “the brightest stars” of the Negro League belonged to the Ciudad Trujillo team, which, as expected, won the league championship. Little information is available about Carter’s stint with the Santiago squad, but ship’s logs show that he and the other Negro League defectors returned en masse to the United States in July. Upon arrival, they found out that they had been banned by the NNL, so Satchel Paige formed the Trujillo All-Stars (later renamed Satchel Paige’s All-Stars) with his fellow “outlaws,” and they sojourned first to Colorado to take part in the Denver Post Tournament.

Carter was a member of the All-Stars, managed by shortstop George Scales, who dominated the field and won the tournament. Paige, the biggest star of them all, was customarily late. He claimed that he had stayed in Cleveland to await a final payment from Trujillo and then had left in such a rush that he forgot his uniform; thus, he had waited in Chicago until his wife arrived there with both his uniform and glove.31 It was a tale that only Paige could spin and what happened next was, according to Negro League historian Donn Rogosin, an example of “the ambiguity with which the Negro League regulars viewed Satchel Paige.”32 The tournament promoters pressured the team into letting Paige pitch in the championship of the double-elimination tournament, and Paige could smell the $1,000 in bonus money that was to be awarded to the winning pitcher of the final game. However, Paige did not win the prize because the All-Stars did all they could to throw the game.

The Duncan (Oklahoma) Halliburtons handed the All-Stars a 6-4 defeat, their first of the tournament, as “errors played havoc with the Stars in the first game.”33 The team made five errors – more than they had made in their other six tournament games combined – and catcher Clarence “Spoony” Palm was charged with three passed balls that allowed two unearned runs to score in the first inning.34 Paige struck out 14 batters and allowed only five hits, but he trailed 5-4 after eight innings. Carter pitched the ninth inning and struck out the side, though he also allowed two hits and the Halliburtons’ final run. When Leroy Matlock took the mound for the second game, he got the support that Paige had wanted as the All-Stars romped to an 11-1 victory over the Halliburtons to secure the tournament championship. Matlock received the $1,000 bonus and was named the tourney’s most valuable player.

The entire All-Star team profited from its members’ baseball prowess. In addition to the hefty sums the players had received for playing in the Dominican Republic, their tournament victory earned them another windfall: $5,179.15, to be split evenly among all team members.”35 The team was lauded throughout the tournament and afterward, with one press account stating, “At Denver major league scouts heralded the All Stars as one of the greatest clubs in the country. Special praise was heaped on the pitching staff. …”36 The All-Stars continued to barnstorm throughout the country in 1937 and made mincemeat of their opponents. Carter started a game in Grand Island, Nebraska, in which “[t]he all-stars never extended themselves” as they won 11-6.37 The team was feted wherever it played, so much so that East Chicago, Indiana, declared “Pat Patterson Day” when the team played a semipro aggregation in that city. Patterson had grown up in East Chicago and had starred in football, basketball, and baseball at Washington High School. Once the Trujillo All-Stars’ triumphal tour ended, Carter sought baseball employment in yet another country, Cuba.

On the heels of playing for as great a squad as the All-Stars, Carter joined one of the worst teams he played for in his career. The 1937-38 Cuban Winter League’s Habana Leones suffered a fate similar to that of his first professional team, the 1932 Birmingham Black Barons. “Habana had the most woeful season of its history,” a historian of Cuban baseball wrote. “After only 8 wins in 46 encounters, management withdrew the team” on January 25, 1938.38 Carter appeared in four games in which he had a 1-2 record.39

When the 1938 NNL season rolled around, “the Negro League bosses did an about-face – lifting their ban, lowering their fines, and bringing back into the fold any who would come.”40 Carter came back but to the Philadelphia Stars rather than the Crawfords. He was the Stars’ Opening Day starter on May 7 in an exhibition game against the South Phillies and pitched a four-hitter in a 5-1 victory. He also pitched a two-hitter in a 4-3 triumph over his former team from Pittsburgh. The fact that Carter had allowed those three runs in such a low-hit game made this game a microcosm of his entire season. Although he led the Stars’ pitching staff with a 7-3 record and 109⅓ innings pitched, he had a hefty 6.01 ERA as Philadelphia finished the season with a 37-31-3 record, good enough only for third place in the NNL.41

Carter returned to the Stars for the beginning of the 1939 campaign, but he did not last long. The Stars were touted to challenge the Homestead Grays in the NNL, but the Pittsburgh-area nine asserted their superiority as they pounded the offerings of Carter and his reliever, Henry McHenry, in a 12-5 rout on May 27 in the first game of a key series.42 It was likely the final game Carter pitched in a Stars uniform. For the season, he made three appearances (all starts) for Philadelphia in which he had a 6.19 ERA in 16 innings.

Shortly thereafter, Carter was back with the Crawfords, albeit in new surroundings. Greenlee had sold the team after the 1938 season, and new owner Hank Rigney had relocated the franchise to Toledo, Ohio; the team had also switched from the NNL to membership in the Negro American League in midseason. To promote his team, Rigney hired Olympic track champion Jesse Owens to run races or simply give exhibitions of his speed prior to the Crawfords’ games; as a result, the team was as well-known for Owens’ feats as for its play on the field. On June 4 Carter struck out 13 batters as the Crawfords “handed an all-star team made up of Frigidaire and Pure Oil players a 6 to 0 defeat.”43 He continued to pitch well in exhibition games against semipro teams, but in NAL play he was 1-1 with a 5.65 ERA. The team fared poorly, as it finished at 8-11-1, in spite of several notable players: Charleston, who still managed the team, Jimmie Crutchfield, and a young Johnny Wright, who became the second black player to be signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers organization in January 1946.

Although Carter’s 1939 season had hardly been a stellar one, he was back with the Crawfords in 1940. The moribund franchise struggled financially and split the 1940 season between Toledo and Indianapolis. The team opened its spring exhibition season against the Miami Ethiopian Clowns at Miami’s Dorsey Park on March 31. Carter pitched the final two innings and took the loss when he surrendered the game’s lone run in the bottom of the ninth.44 Carter, whom the Chicago Defender referred to as “Satchel Paige’s old sidekick,” did not spend much time with the Crawfords during the NAL season; he was 1-0 as he won his only start for the team, a 10-inning 2-1 triumph over the St. Louis Stars on June 2.45 Two weeks later, he ended up embroiled in the third dispute between teams that laid claim to him as their property.

On June 16 Carter pitched for Abe and Effa Manley’s Newark Eagles team in a game against the Homestead Grays. Both of these squads were members of the NNL, while Carter was a member of the NAL’s Toledo/Indianapolis team. Abe Manley had used Carter and a teammate, shortstop Bus Clarkson, to spite the NAL. The origins of the dispute went back to the end of 1938. At that time, the Manleys had purchased Paige’s contract from Greenlee for $5,000; however, Paige never reported to Newark in 1939. Abe Manley believed that “Paige had not reported because one of the members of the Negro American League had influenced him not to play with Newark but to play with an independent club in the west bearing his name.”46 The club in question was another barnstorming squad named Satchel Paige’s All-Stars and was affiliated with Kansas City Monarchs owner J.L. Wilkinson. Since Manley held the NAL responsible for Paige’s failure to report, he decided he would use any NAL players he could convince to play for his NNL squad until Paige reported to the Eagles.

The matter was finally settled at a joint meeting between NAL and NNL leadership at Harlem’s Woodside Hotel on June 18. As had been the case in 1934, team owners – this time in the NAL rather than the NSL – were angry about their NNL counterparts raiding their franchises’ players and “the fur flew” as both sides presented their arguments.47 It was finally decided that Paige would become property of the NAL and that Carter and Clarkson would remain members of the Newark Eagles; subsequently, Paige signed with Wilkinson’s Kansas City Monarchs, an NAL team, in 1941. The agreement was described as “a concession by the N.A. league for the sake of inter-league harmony.”48

The Eagles were an average squad in 1940 and finished the NNL season in third place with a 26-21-1 record. Carter pitched in six league games (two starts) and ended his stint with Newark with a 1-0 record and a 3.86 ERA.49 At season’s end, he returned home to Birmingham, where he resided with his wife, Eloise, and his daughter, Jennetta, whom he had named after his mother.50 When Negro League legend Candy Jim Taylor brought his “baseball carnival” to Birmingham’s Rickwood Field in early October, he enlisted Carter to play on his team of Negro League stars that faced off against “the best players in the city and county industrial league teams.”51

For reasons unknown, Carter did not play in the Negro Leagues in 1941. He had pitched well enough with Newark to merit consideration for a return engagement, but perhaps the fiasco created by the previous season’s dispute between the leagues had left a bad taste in his mouth. As far as can be determined, Carter’s only professional baseball activity involved an extremely brief stint with the Mexican League’s team in Torreón. Carter made four appearances (one start) and put up a 1-1 record with a 10.13 ERA.52 Bus Clarkson, the second player who had become Newark Eagles property in the 1940 dispute, also played in Mexico in 1941, though he spent the entire season with Tampico.

In February 1942, as World War II raged, Carter registered for the military draft. He listed the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company as his employer on his draft registration card, but he once again found employment in the Negro Leagues that year. Now 39, he returned to Pittsburgh, this time to join the powerhouse Homestead Grays. Carter was the elder statesman on the pitching staff and was used sparingly. In eight appearances (five starts) he managed only a 1-4 record with a 7.55 ERA. The Grays were in the middle of a stretch in which the team won nine NNL pennants in 11 seasons, and they dominated the league in 1942. Homestead finished 47-19-3 in league play and 64-23-3 against all competition, but the team ended up being swept by the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro World Series. Carter’s postseason action consisted of one appearance in which he faced two batters and allowed no runs.

In spite of his relative ineffectiveness in 1942, Carter was welcomed back to the Grays again the following season. The 1943 season turned out to be magical for both Carter and the Grays. The team finished the NNL campaign with an amazing 53-14-1 league record and was 78-23-1 against all teams. Johnny Wright, Carter’s old Toledo teammate, was the undisputed ace of the Grays’ staff that year with an 18-3 record and a 2.54 ERA in NNL games, but Carter was right behind him at 14-2 and had lowered his own ERA to 3.83. Edsall Walker (9-4) and future Hall of Famer Ray Brown gave the Grays the most formidable pitching staff in the Negro Leagues. The Grays won the Negro World Series as they defeated the Birmingham Black Barons in eight games, with one game ending in a tie. Carter made one start but received no decision as Brown earned the win for the Grays in relief.

After the World Series, newspapers reported that Carter would be a member of the Negro Leagues’ entry for the 1943-44 California Winter League season. One account said, “Baseball fans will have an opportunity to look over Spoon Carter, one of today’s greatest colored players and ace pitcher for the Pittsburgh Homestead Grays when the winter league opens its season at Hollywood baseball park on Sunday, October 24.”53 This report was clearly in error as Satchel Paige made that opening-game start, and Carter did not participate in winter league play at all. Carter would not have been in California for a long time anyway because the season was cut short. In mid-November, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis refused to allow major leaguers to continue to participate in the winter league by invoking a rule that forbade players to participate in exhibition games 10 days after the major-league season closed.54 The Pittsburgh Courier noted that “[m]ost of the games in which these players have played have been against Negro teams” and lamented that Landis’s crackdown “will wipe out the sole means of measuring the abilities of Negro players with major leaguers.”55

In 1944 Carter returned to a depleted Grays team that was nonetheless still the class of the NNL. Wright was one of the many players who had been lost to military service, but Brown stepped up as the ace with an 11-1 league record. Carter and Walker tied for second on the staff in league wins with identical 6-4 records. After breezing through the NNL with a 47-24-3 record, the Grays again clashed with the Black Barons in the Negro World Series. Carter got the starting assignment at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field in Game Four and took the loss in a 6-0 setback to Birmingham. It was the only defeat for Homestead, which made quick work of the Black Barons in five games to capture its second consecutive championship.

An aging Carter played a reduced role on the 1945 Grays who, due in part to wartime travel restrictions, played so many home games at Griffith Stadium that they were now called the Washington-Homestead Grays. Roy Welmaker (10-2) was the new pitching ace, and Carter appeared in only six league games (three starts) in which he compiled a 1-1 record and a 3.69 ERA. The Grays won the NNL pennant by nine games over the Baltimore Elite Giants and played in their fourth consecutive Negro World Series. Carter saw no postseason action as the Grays suffered a shocking sweep at the hands of the Cleveland Buckeyes, an event that Pittsburgh Courier columnist Wendell Smith deemed “one of the biggest surprises in baseball history.”56

In April 1946, it was reported that “Carter was purchased from the Washington Homestead Grays” by the new Montgomery Dodgers of the Negro Southern League, and Montgomery owner Jake Whatley installed Carter as the team’s manager.57 News reports of the Dodgers’ games are scarce, but a June 11 article in the Montgomery Advertiser indicated that the team had changed its name to the Red Sox.58 It is quite likely that the Brooklyn Dodgers organization put legal pressure on Montgomery’s owner to make the name change. Carter also made a transition – from one Red Sox squad to another – as he rejoined one of his earliest teams, the NAL’s Memphis franchise. He pitched in only three league games for Memphis and had no decisions, though he did have a fine 2.89 ERA.

Although Carter had departed Montgomery in midseason in 1946, the NSL’s new Jacksonville Eagles franchise gave him a second opportunity to manage a team at the outset of the 1947 season. Jacksonville opened its season on the road, and Carter debuted with his new squad in a May 4 doubleheader against the Chattanooga Choo Choos.59 By July 7, prior to a game against the Harbor House of David team in St. Joseph, Michigan, it was reported that “[l]eading pitcher for the Eagles is none other than the manager, Spoon Carter, who made a great name for himself while hurling for the Homestead Grays of the Negro National League.”60

By mid-July, however, Carter had rejoined the Memphis Red Sox. On July 29 he was part of the West All-Star team in that season’s second East-West All-Star game, which was played at the Polo Grounds in New York. Carter pitched the final three innings, allowing only two hits and no runs, as the West sewed up an 8-2 victory.61 Memphis also played the Harbor House of David squad in Michigan, and this time the local paper reported that Red Sox manager Larry Brown had available among his pitching staff “Ernest (Spoon) Carter” who was “regarded the best relief hurler in the league” and who “often plays third base.”62 Box scores for Negro League games had become scarce by this time, and Carter’s statistics for the fourth-place Memphis team are unknown.

In 1948 Carter chose simply to begin the season with Memphis. Many games went unreported and only line scores are available for most others, but the available statistics show Carter with a 1-1 record and a 5.68 ERA in five appearances (two starts). Nevertheless, he was again chosen as a member of the West team for the second All-Star game at Yankee Stadium on August 24. Carter did not pitch in the game, but the 45-year old entered the contest as a pinch-runner for Kansas City Monarchs third baseman Herb Souell. He did not steal a base, nor did he score, in a game that the East team won, 6-1.63 As for the Red Sox, they finished last in the NAL that year.

The seemingly ageless Carter went to spring training with Memphis in 1949, though it is unknown whether he made the cut. His Negro League career came full circle when he signed with Birmingham in mid-June. The Black Barons had lost ace hurler Jimmie Newberry to a broken right arm and signed three pitchers – Carter, Felix “Chin” Evans, and Ted Alexander – to fill the void created by Newberry’s absence.64 As a Black Baron, Carter was a teammate of 18-year-old Willie Mays, who already amazed scouts, players, and fans alike with his all-around talent. On September 3 the old man and the young phenom led the way in a 7-1 triumph over the Cleveland Buckeyes. Carter went the distance, allowed only one run, and struck out nine hitters while “Willie Mays paced the victors at bat with a 350-foot homer and a double.”65 It was a highlight in an otherwise down season that saw Birmingham finish in fourth place.

Carter’s Negro League career was at an end, but he had one last season left in him. In 1950 he sojourned to Canada, where he played for the Winnipeg Buffaloes of the new Manitoba-Dakota (ManDak) League. The Buffaloes’ roster was made up entirely of former Negro League players and included two future Hall of Famers, pitcher Leon Day and manager Willie Wells. Although Winnipeg finished the regular season in second place, seven games behind the Brandon Greys, the team made it to the playoff tournament and advanced to the finals against first-place Brandon. In the fifth and final game of the championship series, both Day and Greys pitcher Manuel Godinez pitched all 17 innings before the Buffaloes emerged with a 1-0 victory and the ManDak League’s inaugural championship.66 Carter, for his part, contributed a 4-2 record in 12 appearances and finished his baseball career as a champion.67

Carter retired to his native Birmingham, where he and Eloise raised their two daughters, Janice and Rhonda, and their son Roderick. He owned the Community Barber Shop in the Ensley neighborhood and was active as a deacon with the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church.68 Ernest Carter died on January 23, 1974, and was buried in Shadowlawn Memorial Park in Birmingham.

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

Thanks to Rhonda (Carter) Horhn, Spoon Carter’s daughter, who discovered this biography of her father in January 2023 and contacted SABR after reading it. In addition to confirming the accuracy of the personal information in the biography, Rhonda cleared up the mystery of the origin of her father’s ubiquitous nickname, “Spoon,” which she stated his teammates gave to him because the shape of his lower lip made it look like a spoon. Additionally, she revealed that her father selected the first name “Ernest” for himself because his parents had named him “E. C.” with neither initial standing for any name.

Thanks to Rosalind B. Brooks, an assistant at the Birmingham Public Library, for her thoroughness in fulfilling my request for information about Carter’s death.

Sources

Ancestry.com was consulted for US Census, draft registration, marriage, and death records as well as ships’ passenger logs.

Unless otherwise indicated, Seamheads.com was the source for all Negro League statistics.

Notes

1 William J. Plott, Black Baseball’s Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons, 1919-1962 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2019), 87.

2 “Memphis and Birmingham Divide/Teams Own Two Games Each at End of Fourth,” Chicago Defender, April 30, 1932: 9.

3 Holsey Drake, “Black Barons Take 3 Games Out of 4 From Montgomery,” Atlanta Daily World, May 18, 1932: 5.

4 Plott, 87-88. Due to the sparse press coverage, there are discrepancies as to the Black Barons’ 1932 record. Plott has the team at 11-7-1 in NSL play and 15-15-1 against all teams (page 272) while the Negro Southern League Museum Research Center lists an 8-11 record for the team in NSL play (see negrosouthernleaguemuseumresearchcenter.org/Portals/0/Negro%20Southern%20League/Negro%20Southern%20League%20%20(1920-1951)STANDINGS.pdf ).

5 “Memphis Reds Have Hope for Pennant,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 10, 1933: 14.

6 Dr. R.B. Martin, “Southern Flag Is in Memphis’ Bag,” Chicago Defender, June 24, 1933: 9.

7 L.S.N. Cobb, “Memphis Wins Three in Arkansas/Sox Increase Lead in Southern Loop,” Chicago Defender, July 1, 1933: 9.

8 “Heed Protest of Dixie League Head on ‘Raiding,’” Pittsburgh Courier, April 14, 1934: 12.

9 “Nashville Giants Defeat Grays in Both Ends of Doubleheader, “Akron Beacon-Journal, July 24, 1933: 20.

10 “Craws Lose 3-2 Thriller to Philly,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 23, 1933: 15.

11 “Heed Protest of Dixie League Head on ‘Raiding.’”

12 “Colored Club Has All-Star Players in Every Position,” Bismarck Tribune, June 15, 1934: 8. This author was unable to locate any game reports or box scores that named Carter as a member of the Cleveland team, let alone that he had twice dueled against Paige. Additionally, Seamheads.com does not list Carter as a member of the 1934 Cleveland Red Sox.

13 “Two Homers Pave Way for Jimmies’ 4-2 Victory Over Locals,” Bismarck Tribune, July 5, 1934: 6.

14 “Two Homers Pave Way.”

15 “Bismarck Scores 1-0 Victory Over Valley City in 10 Innings,” Bismarck Tribune, August 17, 1934: 8.

16 William F. McNeil, The California Winter League: America’s First Integrated Professional Baseball League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 171.

17 James Newton, “Suttles’ Two Homers Beat All Stars/Stearns Then Uses Bat for a Second Win/Porter and Carter in Rare Form,” Chicago Defender, October 27, 1934: 16.

18 Newton.

19 “Royal Giants Annex, 9 to 8,” Los Angeles Times, October 28, 1934: 28.

20 “Crawfords Set to Make Strong Bid for League Championship,” New York Age, April 27, 1935: 3.

21 “Chicago Americans Win Night Game,” Harrisburg Telegraph, May 22, 1935: 12.

22 “Crawfords Win Philly Series; Hold Lead in League Race,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 1, 1935: 15.

23 William E. Clark, “15,000 Fans See 4-Team Series at Yankee Stadium Sunday; Crawford and Elite Gts Win,” New York Age, September 28, 1935: 8.

24 “Gibson Hits Three Homers as Pittsburgh Crawfords Trounce Belmar Braves by 6 to 2,” Asbury Park (New Jersey) Press, July 25, 1936: 16.

25 “Two Jailed in Baseball War/League Acts to Check ‘Raids,’” Pittsburgh Courier, May 15, 1937: 1.

26 “Two Jailed in Baseball War.”

27 “Two Men Jailed in Big Baseball Scandal”: 4. (Continuation of “Two Jailed in Baseball War”).

28 “Two Men Jailed in Big Baseball Scandal.”

29 “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; New York Black Yankees Clarence Palm and George Scales; Newark Eagle Clyde Spearman; and the Philadelphia Stars’ Showboat Thomas and Red Parnell.

30 Richard J. Lamb, “Gus ‘Whereas-es’ Diplomats into Action over Foreign ‘Raid’ on Negro Ball Team,” Pittsburgh Press, June 20, 1937: 2.

31 John Bentley, “I May Be Wrong,” Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star, August 12, 1937: 13.

32 Donn Rogosin, Invisible Men: Life in Baseball’s Negro Leagues (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 140.

33 “Paige’s All-Stars Win Denver Tourney/Matlock Hero in $5,000 Win,” Chicago Defender, August 21, 1937: 21.

34 “Paige’s All-Stars Win Denver Tourney”; Jay Sanford, The Denver Post Tournament: A Chronicle of America’s First Integrated Professional Baseball Event (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2003), 64.

35 ”Paige’s All-Stars Win Denver Tourney.”

36 “Satchel Paige and His Denver Champions Play Powers Here Tonight/Famous Negro Team Captures Title in Post’s Tournament,” Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star, August 12, 1937: 13.

37 “Win at Grand Island,” Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star, August 12, 1937: 13.

38 Jorge Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003), 218.

39 Figueredo, 221.

40 Larry Tye, Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend (New York: Random House, 2009), 117.

41 Since Seamheads.com has been used as the primary source for Negro League statistics, it should be noted that the site lists Carter as having made (and lost) one start for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1938. Carter made his home in Birmingham, so it is possible that he could have played for the Birmingham team late in the year.

42 “Grays Wallop Philly in Opener, 12-5/Leonard Leads Hitting Assault, Pittsburgh Courier, June 3, 1939: 16.

43 “Crawfords Win Over All-Stars,” Dayton (Ohio) Herald, June 5, 1939: 11.

44 “Clowns Edge Toledo, 1-0,” Miami News, April 1, 1940: 13.

45 “Crawfords Have 6 Ace Hurlers; Star Outfield,” Chicago Defender, May 11, 1940: 24; “Crawfords Split with St. Louis,” Chicago Defender, June 8, 1940: 22.

46 “Satchel Paige to American League/All-Star Game is Aug. 18,” Chicago Defender, June 29, 1940: 22.

47 “Satchel Paige to American League.”

48 “Satchel Paige to American League.”

49 Seamheads.com shows Carter to have made one appearance for the NNL’s New York Cubans in 1940 that covered 1⅔ innings and for which he received no decision. It is possible that he may have been “on loan” to the Cubans for one game or that he pitched one game for the team after Newark’s season had ended.

50 Jennetta was Carter’s daughter by a woman named Annie Lee Matthews; the author has relied on census information and marriage records for Jennetta Carter to establish this fact. However, no documentation has come to light to determine whether Carter and Matthews were married or, if they were, how their marriage ended (whether by divorce or Matthews’ death). The year of Carter’s marriage to Eloise Underwood is also undetermined, but the two had a long union and were still married at the time of Carter’s death in 1974.

51 “Array of Stars to Compete in Candy Jim Taylor’s All Star Carnival Sunday,” Weekly Review (Birmingham, Alabama), October 4, 1940: 7.

52 All major sources show Carter to have pitched briefly in Mexico in 1941. Pedro Treto Cisneros’ book of Mexican League statistics, from which Seamheads.com most likely took its information, lists “Hammis Carter” as the player with a 1-1 record for Torreón in 1941. There was no player, black or white, by that name, and no other pitcher with the last name Carter is reported to have played south of the border at any time. Thus, “Hammis” must be a misprint that may already have occurred in a primary news source. See Pedro Treto Cisneros, The Mexican League: Comprehensive Player Statistics, 1937-2001 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 468.

53 “Great Negro Hurler Pitches at Hollywood,” Long Beach (California) Independent, October 15, 1943: 18.

54 “Landis Clamps Down on Winter Leaguers,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 27, 1943: 16.

55 “Landis Cracking Down on Players in Winter Loop,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 4, 1943: 16.

56 Wendell Smith, “The Sports Beat,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 29, 1945: 12.

57 Leon B. Beauchman, “Birmingham’s Sepia Dodgers,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 20, 1946: 17.

58 “Red Sox Meet Black Barons Here Wednesday,” Montgomery Advertiser, June 11, 1946: 6.

59 “Largest Negro Crowd May See Opening Pair,” Chattanooga Daily Times, May 4, 1947: 51.

60 “Davids Meet Eagles Nine,” Herald Press (St. Joseph, Michigan), July 7, 1948: 7.

61 Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase: The East-West All-Star Game, 1933-1953 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 299, 301-302.

62 “Memphis Red Sox at Colony Park Tonight,” Herald Press (St. Joseph, Michigan), August 27, 1947: 12.

63 Lester, 321.

64 “Black Barons Edge New York Cubans,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 18, 1949: 24.

65 “Black Barons Beat Buckeyes Easily, 7-1,” Birmingham News, September 24, 1949: 9.

66 Barry Swanton, The Mandak League: Haven for Former Negro League Ballplayers, 1950-57 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006), 20.

67 Barry Swanton and Jay-Dell Mah, Black Baseball Players in Canada: A Biographical Dictionary, 1881-1960 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009), 47.

68 “Deaths: Ernest C. Carter,” Birmingham News, January 27, 1974: 23.

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.

Jimmie Crutchfield, the fielding star, would eventually play in four East-West Games, his all-around baseball prowess distinguishing him among his peers despite his relatively small stature at 5-feet-7 and 150 pounds. He was labeled the “black Lloyd Waner,” a white analog who was slightly taller, at 5-feet-9 but won a spot in the National Baseball Hall of Fame on the basis of his well-rounded excellence on the diamond. A left-handed batter and right-handed thrower, Crutchfield was, according to James Riley, a “gusty hustler … a fine all-around ballplayer … a proficient bunter, excellent hit-and-run man, fast base runner, good fielder, and consistent … line drive hitter.”2 He was also, by reputation, one of the true gentlemen of the game. None other than James “Cool Papa” Bell referred to Crutchfield as “the best team player in baseball,” adding, “If he never played in a game he would still have been an important part of any baseball team. You always knew you could count on Jimmie to be on the bright side of everything.”3

John William Crutchfield was born on March 25, 1910, in the vicinity of the tiny community of Ardmore, Missouri, to John H. Crutchfield, a coal miner from Virginia, and his 15-year-old wife, Carrie. The elder John and Carrie would have four daughters as well: Fannie, Agnes, Maggie, and Pauline. By the time the 1930 US Census was taken, Carrie was a coal-mining widow and was listed as “Head of Household,” working as a hotel maid.

The young Crutchfield attended elementary school in Ardmore, but the only eligible high school was in nearby Moberly. “My mother said that, even before I could walk, my father used to sit and roll baseballs to me,” he said. And when the coal miners would come by, they would say, “Hey come in and look at the baseball player.”4 Crutchfield loved baseball from an early age, and graduated from playing on the local sandlots to playing with an organized team managed by former Negro League star pitcher Bill Gatewood. Crutchfield evidently showed Gatewood a glimpse of the possible, and the latter was encouraged the former’s professional ambitions. “He told me I had a good chance, even as small as I was,” said Crutchfield. “With the love I had for baseball and, as small as I was, I thought I could play baseball. I believed I could play any place.”5 His career may have begun as early as 1928, playing on a Moberly team called the Gatewood Browns.6

In 1930, after less than two years of college at Lincoln University, at the time a historically black institution 66 miles south, in Jefferson City, Crutchfield packed up his dreams and a few meager possessions and left home to try out with the Birmingham Black Barons, a tryout that was arranged through Gatewood’s connections with league officials. “When my friends among the people around my hometown … heard that I was leaving, they said, ‘Hey Crutch, you got your bus fare back?’ and things like that,” Crutchfield said. “Because the rumors were about 100-1 that I couldn’t make it. But they didn’t know the love I had for baseball.”7 After spring training at Fort Benning, Georgia, the Black Barons named Crutchfield their starting center fielder for the season. Playing for a $90-a-month salary, he batted .288 with nine triples. “It wasn’t the money, because the money wasn’t there,” he said. “It was just the recognition that came with being a regular baseball player on a big-time colored baseball team. Just to walk down the street and know you had made it.”8

After spending 1931 with the Indianapolis ABCs, teaming with his future Chicago manager Candy Jim Taylor, Crutchfield joined Gus Greenlee’s Pittsburgh Crawfords. The team, until 1932 more of a semipro team, had almost overnight become a juggernaut in professional baseball, and the young outfielder now played with teammates like Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Judy Johnson, Satchel Paige, Jud Wilson, Smokey Joe Williams, and manager-first baseman Oscar Charleston. It took Crutchfield some time to worm into Charleston’s good graces, but he finally did. In one particular game, “The bases were full and two outs, and I was playing this particular hitter to hit to right-center,” Crutchfield remembered. “Charleston came out in front of the whole crowd and moved me over to left-center. And the guy hit a long line drive where he had just moved me from. I was young then and I caught the ball running away from home plate to retire the side. Everybody rushed off the field and into the clubhouse. Charleston came in the dressing room and he didn’t even look at me. He just looked straight ahead and said, ‘Crutch, you are a fielding ass,’ From that time on I had it made. From then on I played outfield for the Crawfords.”9

During this period, Crutchfield enjoyed opportunities to play against Dizzy Dean’s All Stars, toured Puerto Rico with another all-star squad, and played in three consecutive East-West All Star games (1934-1936). While the baseball was often outstanding, the conditions were always challenging. The team often stayed in poor accommodations and traveled via seemingly endless bus and car rides. The few months in which winter weather made baseball impossible found Crutchfield working at whatever jobs he could find. As he recalled, he was a “hotel bellhop, shoe-shine boy in a barber shop — that was about it. We just took whatever we could find. You had to take something because you came home every winter with very little, and even though you knew that the results would be the same, you couldn’t wait for March to start again. I love the game so much I would have paid to play.”10

Crutchfield left the Crawfords after the 1936 season and moved to Abe and Effa Manley’s Newark Eagles for the 1937 and 1938 campaigns. Once again teamed with some of the game’s immortals — including Leon Day, Ray Dandridge, Mule Suttles, Willie Wells, and, later, Monte Irvin — the speedy outfielder helped the Eagles to finish in second place behind the Homestead Grays in 1937. After a disappointing 1938 season, Crutchfield played for San Juan in the Puerto Rican League’s inaugural season. He remembered, “I first came down to Puerto in 1936. At that time, we played six weeks with Paige and Gibson. It was a success, and [Puerto Rico] decided to start a league, and in 1938 I was the first center fielder to play for San Juan.”11 Crutchfield loved the island and returned there for an old-timers game in 1979. He said of his time in Puerto Rico, “If you were nice to the nice people, the sun would shine in your face all the time. It was a fun time.”12

For the moment, Crutchfield returned to the Crawfords, now based in Toledo, Ohio, for 1939. The next season, Crutchfield, for reasons that remain unclear but that historian James Riley termed “personal,”13 played very briefly for Indianapolis, and then nowhere else. The 1940 US Census recorded that Crutchfield listed his employer as the Merchants Hotel, and his residence as Moberly, Missouri.

Crutchfield made an abrupt return to the diamond in 1941. At the behest of Candy Jim Taylor, a former teammate of mentor Bill Gatewood and an outstanding manager in his own right, Crutchfield signed with the Chicago American Giants. There, teamed with popular players like Pepper Bassett and Alex Radcliffe, and with a position from which to mentor a young Art Pennington, Crutchfield played well enough to earn his fourth selection to the East-West All Star game. Although the East defeated Crutchfield and the West team, the outfielder managed a hit, his only one in 10 East-West Game at-bats. The outfielder returned to Chicago for the 1942 season, but his performance declined precipitously.

On November 30, 1942, Crutchfield enlisted in the US Army, and he served nearly a year before being discharged on October 20, 1943. “I had a chance to beat the army rap if I wanted to, but I just felt I had to serve,” he said. “And when two [draft board] people asked when I wanted to go, I said, ‘Well, in the next batch.’”14 After being discharged with the rank of staff sergeant, Crutchfield returned to the American Giants in 1944, and then ended the year in a Cleveland Buckeyes uniform. He closed out his playing career in 1945, returning to his new home in Chicago to once again play for Taylor and the American Giants.

Crutchfield knew when it was time to hang ’em up and retire. He observed, “I was 35 years of age and I was worn out from the traveling, and all the worst of conditions. … I had made a name for myself.”15 Once he was out of baseball, Crutchfield worked for the Post Office. In 1947 he wed, marrying Julia R. Day, a Chicago elementary-school teacher eight years Crutchfield’s senior.16 While they had no children of their own, they remained happily married until his death in 1993. They split their golden years between their Southside Chicago apartment, a seventh-floor unit in an area called Lake Meadows,17 which is less than a mile from Comiskey Park, and their vacation home in South Haven, Michigan.18

Crutchfield retired from the Post Office in 1970, but he worked for the Continental Illinois Bank for three more years, retiring for good in 1973.19 The relative explosion of interest in the history of the Negro baseball leagues and teams finally afforded Crutchfield some national recognition, albeit late in his life. The governor of Kentucky named him an honorary Kentucky Colonel.20 The designation is conferred in “recognition of … noteworthy accomplishments and outstanding service to our community, state, and nation.”21 It was a lifetime honor, and from that point on, Crutchfield almost always signed autographs as “Col. Jimmie Crutchfield.” In February 1992 President George H.W. Bush invited Crutchfield and some other former players to participate in a celebration of Black History Month at the White House, and two years later Crutchfield was among the players honored on a poster created by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.22

That last acknowledgment came just a year too late. On March 31, 1993, Crutchfield died of cancer. He was survived for three more years by his wife, Julia, and is buried at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.23 His grave went unmarked until 2003, when members of the Society for American Baseball Research corrected that with a formal marker commemorating Crutchfield’s life and final resting place.24

John William “Jimmie” Crutchfield was widely acknowledged as a terrific, All-Star-level outfielder, and an even better human being. His gentility and class suffused and influenced much of his thinking. As with so many of the players of his era, those talented athletes who preceded Jackie Robinson’s assault on baseball’s racial barrier in 1947, and who could be forgiven a degree of bitterness or resentment at the world-as-it-was, he was often asked if he regretted not having had the opportunity to play in an integrated, major league. Lawrence Hogan recounted Crutchfield’s thoughts on the subject:

I have no ill feeling about never having had the opportunity to play in the big leagues. There have been times — you know, they used to call me the black Lloyd Waner. I used to think about that a lot. He was on the other side of town in Pittsburgh, making $12,000 a year and I didn’t have enough money to go home. I had to borrow bus fare to come home.

It seemed like there was something wrong there. But that was yesterday. There’s no use in me having bitterness in my heart this late in life about what’s gone by. That’s just the way I feel about it. Once in a while I get a kick out of thinking that my name was mentioned as one of the stars of the East-West game and little things like that. I don’t know whether I’d feel better if I had a million dollars.

I can say I contributed something.25

Notes

1 Chester Washington, “Hes’ Sez,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 17, 1935: 14.

2 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994), 201.

3 Tony McClean, “The Negro Leagues: Gone but Not Forgotten: Remembering Jimmie Crutchfield,” 2005. blackathlete.net/2005/03/the-negro-leagues-gone-but-not-forgottenremembering-jimmie-crutchfield/, accessed January 11, 2019.

4 James A. Riley, Of Monarchs and Black Barons: Essays on Baseball’s Negro Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012), 120.

5 Riley, 121.

6 This information comes from the Center For Negro League Baseball Research (cnlbr.org) and was specifically located online: cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Players%20Register/C-E%202018-04.pdf Accessed March 21, 2019.

7 Riley, Of Monarchs and Black Barons, 120.

8 Riley, Of Monarchs and Black Barons, 122.

9 Riley, Of Monarchs and Black Barons, 123.

10 J.G. Keenan and S. Cohen, “Jimmie Crutchfield’s Baseball Life,” Loyola Magazine 22(1), 199: 28-34.

11 Thomas E. Van Hyning, Puerto Rico’s Winter League: A History of Major League Baseball’s Launching Pad (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995), 83.

12 Van Hyning, 83.

13 Riley, Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, 202.

14 Keenan and Cohen, 6.

15 Riley, Crutchfield essay.

16 Julia Crutchfield obituary, Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1996: 143.

17 William Brashler, Josh Gibson: A Life in the Negro Leagues (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publishing, 1978), 166-170.

18 Keenan and Cohen, 8.

19 Keenan and Cohen, 8.

20 Leslie Heaphy, ed., Black Baseball and Chicago (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2006), 62.

21 For the general criteria regarding selection for this honor, see kycolonels.org/, accessed January 2, 2019.

22 McLean.

23 findagrave.com/memorial/9517611/jimmie-crutchfield, accessed January 4, 2019.

24 Joe Paladino, “In Death, Baseball Pioneer Receives His Due,” larrylester42.com/uploads/1/9/5/4/19545937/sol_white_by_joe_palladino.pdf, accessed January 9, 2019.

25 Lawrence Hogan, Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball (Washington: National Geographic, 2006), 377.

Hyperbole or not, Davis, 41 years old at the time of this article, had played baseball for nearly 30 years – a veteran of the Negro National League (I and II), the Negro American League, the Mexican League, and multiple independent leagues.

While records of Roosevelt Davis and his family are, at best, minimal and inconsistent, it appears certain that he was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, on November 19, 1904. His father, Will, was born on April 10, 1880, possibly in Bartlesville. Roosevelt’s mother has been identified as Anna; however, records indicate that Will did not wed until 1909 when he married, in nearby Arkansas, Octavia Campbell of the Cherokee Tribe, Foreman, Sequoyah, Oklahoma. It is unclear when Octavia died, but by 1935 Will lived in Peoria, Illinois, where he remained until his death in 1960. A brief obituary states that Will had been widowed for a number of years and left a son, Roosevelt; a daughter, Oleander; and a sister, Bertha.1 While his earlier employments may have varied (including California vineyard worker)2, during the final 26 years of his life in Illinois Will Davis had been employed as a janitor by the U.S. Barge Lines.

Roosevelt may have attended the Douglass School, which was founded in 1907 for Bartlesville’s Black students.3 The 1920 US Census shows Roosevelt, age 15, living in Bartlesville, not with his father and/or mother, but with his aunt Bertha Mackey and her two sons, Eddie and Robert.

There is also uncertainty in regard to exactly when Roosevelt began to play, but his name appears in Bartlesville newspapers in the early 1920s, including one game summary in which he is identified as a pitcher for the Coffeyville, Kansas, baseball team.4 At this time, and perhaps already in years prior, his baseball talent became evident and he played on other teams including the Wichita (Kansas) Monrovians5 and an integrated team in Tekamah, Nebraska.6 

The St. Louis Stars, members of the newly organized Negro National League, added him to their roster as a starting pitcher in 1924. He was listed as 5-feet-9 and 168 pounds, and he batted and threw right-handed. He appeared in 25 games that season, compiled a 7-4 record, pitched 121 2/3 innings, and held a 4.29 ERA. The Stars’ squad, managed by 40-year-old James Allen “Candy Jim” Taylor, included James “Cool Papa” Bell and Willie “El Diablo” Wells. After the season Davis married Lillian Turner of Omaha, Nebraska, on December 5, 1924. How long they remained married is unknown, and it appears that they had no children.

Davis again was a starting pitcher for the 1925 Stars, and his 17-7 record helped the team to reach the Negro National League Championship Series against the Kansas City Monarchs. Although the Stars lost the series, Davis had secured his spot in the starting rotation. For the season, he started 21 games, completed nine, and struck out 54 batters.

In 1926 Candy Jim Taylor left the St. Louis Stars to manage the Detroit Stars; St. Louis’s new manager, Dizzy Dismukes, led his team to a third-place finish, and Davis compiled a 8-5 record, with only one complete game, in 18 starts. In 1927 Taylor managed St. Louis to a 62-37 record and a second-place finish. Davis pitched to an 11-8 record that year. Davis appeared in 23 games during the 1928 NNL season, although he made only eight starts, and achieved a perfect 8-0 record; however, he made only a brief one-inning appearance in one game of the championship series. The team, again managed by Taylor, did very well, posting a 61-26 record in league play, and won the Negro National League pennant in the championship series against the Chicago American Giants.

In 1929 Davis split the season between the St. Louis Stars, with Taylor in his final season as the manager, and the Chicago American Giants, managed by Jim Brown. Davis compiled a 6-7 record for St. Louis, but he was with Chicago by the time the team played a seven-game series versus a team of American Leaguers that included Wally Schang, Charlie Gehringer, and Harry Heilmann. The American Giants won the series, five games to two. Davis pitched in two games, one complete-game start and one relief appearance, and struck out six while pitching to a 1.69 ERA in 10 2/3 innings.

By then Davis resided in St. Louis. The 1930 U.S. Census listed him as a single lodger who was employed in “League” industry as a ballplayer. The 1930 season again saw Davis play with two teams: the Stars, now managed by John Reese, and the Kansas City Monarchs, managed by Charles Wilber “Bullet Joe” Rogan. He was 1-0 in two appearances for the Monarchs but posted a stellar 10-3 regular-season mark for the Stars and won his only start against the Detroit Stars in the NNL Championship Series, which St. Louis won in seven games.

Davis led a peripatetic existence in 1931 as he pitched for three teams. He was 1-0 with the St. Louis Stars before he joined the Indianapolis ABCs, also of the Negro National League, and played again for manager Candy Jim Taylor; Davis won only one of five decisions for the ABCs. He moved on to the Pittsburgh Crawford Giants, a member team of the Independent Clubs League that was managed by Bobby Williams. In Pittsburgh, he posted a 2-2 record that included a shutout and 20 strikeouts in 27 1/3 innings pitched.

With the 1932 season came yet more change for Davis. With the Cuban Stars West, also known as [Syd] Pollock’s Cuban Stars of the East-West League, he pitched in two games. He also pitched in four games with the Cleveland Stars, another squad that was part of the East-West League. His composite record was 1-3 and he had a cumulative 3.61 ERA.

Davis again played a minor role in the 1933 season, this time for the Columbus (Ohio) Blue Birds of the Negro National League, who were managed by another familiar name, Dizzy Dismukes. Davis had a 2-2 record in eight appearances (four starts), but he had a sparkling 2.66 ERA in 44 innings pitched. The 1933 campaign was also when Davis taught Bill Byrd how to throw the spitball. Once Byrd became known for the spitball, he often faked throwing that pitch “for psychological reasons” to confuse batters.7 Indeed, Davis himself was a master of the spitball and, “legal or not, he was deemed one of the best spitball and emery-ball pitchers in black baseball.”8 Davis’s prowess in applying “slippery elm juice” to the ball would create interesting moments later in his career.

The most notable event for Davis in 1933 occurred when Neil Churchill, who owned an integrated team in Bismarck, North Dakota, recruited him after consulting with Chicago’s Abe Saperstein.9 The Bismarck Tribune’s account of Davis’s debut noted, “Davis caught the fancy of local diamond enthusiasts in his first game here Sunday when he blanked Fort Lincoln 16-0, allowing only three hits, striking out 16 (four in one inning), getting three hits and driving in five runs.”10 He was later joined in Bismarck by other Negro Leaguers who included, most notably, Satchel Paige.11

In 1934 Davis joined forces with Paige, Josh Gibson, James “Cool Papa” Bell, and player-manager Oscar Charleston on the NNL’s Pittsburgh Crawfords. He pitched in only five games, starting two and compiling a 1-0 record. He soon made a return trip to North Dakota, along with Quincy Trouppe and Satchel Paige. This time, Davis played for the New Rockford club while Paige and Trouppe again provided Bismarck with a formidable battery. The Bismarck Tribune remained complimentary to Davis even as he pitched for a rival team, and wrote about his loss to Bismarck, “Roosevelt Davis, a former teammate … turned in a good pitching exhibition but his erratic support gave him little chance against the Capital City team.”12

At 30 years old, Davis returned to the Crawfords for their 1935 championship season. After finishing the first half of the season with a record of 26-6, the Crawfords defeated the winners of the second-half pennant, the New York Cubans, in a hotly contested seven-game series. Davis fashioned a 5-1 record in 13 appearances (eight starts) during the regular season, but he was a key cog for the team in the championship series. He made two complete-game starts and one relief appearance against the Cubans and put up a 2-1 record pitching 23 2/3 innings against the Cubans. Had it not been for Davis’s tough-as-nails pitching efforts, the New Yorkers might have prevailed against the team that many consider to be the finest Negro League squad in history, the 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords.

On the heels of his great performance in the 1935 championship, Davis moved to New York, where he joined the Black Yankees for the 1936 season. Manager Bob Clarke led the team to a 21-16-1 record in NNL play; Davis put up a 2-4 record. The following season, Davis made one appearance for the Black Yankees before he rejoined the Crawfords, who were still being managed by Oscar Charleston. Davis pitched to the same 2-4 record (all for the Crawfords) he had accumulated the previous season and saw his ERA balloon to 5.04 over 44 2/3 innings with the Steel City team.

By 1938 it appeared as though Davis’s career might be nearing its end. He once again split time between two teams, playing for the Black Yankees, managed by Walter Cannady, and the Newark Eagles of Abe Manley and Dick Lundy. His cumulative statistics included a 0-1 record in three appearances (one start) and a 6.75 ERA in only eight innings of work.

Perhaps in the hope that a change of scenery might help, Davis moved south to join the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League in 1939. On this team, managed by Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, Davis started four games, completed three and, while striking out 16, compiled a 1-3 record and brought his ERA down to 3.82. That same year, Davis made his only venture outside the United States to play for the Monterrey team in the Mexican League. He was one of “the stars of the first year” of the Monterrey Sultanes, who were later renamed the Industriales.13 During his stint south of the border, Davis was 3-6 in 11 starts, struck out 49 batters, and had a 3.76 ERA in 67 innings.14

While baseball had become Davis’s main source of income, he still needed to supplement his finances with employment in the winter months. His October 16, 1940, draft registration form indicates that he lived in Chicago and that he was employed by the Palmer House hotel (likely as a waiter).15 Keenly aware of the limitations of baseball income, Davis noted that “off season employment should have been ‘tackled and solved long ago. Baseball players have to eat and sleep and see the laundry man in December as well as June.”16

It also happened that, during the 1939 season, Satchel Paige’s ailing arm miraculously healed, and Paige returned to J.L. Wilkinson’s “B” team in Kansas City.17 To prove that Paige could indeed pitch again, Wilkinson and Abe Saperstein scheduled a game with the Palmer House Stars. Paige later recounted, “Abe says, ‘If Satch is great again let’s let his arm speak for us. The hottest arm in Negro baseball is Roosevelt Davis: How about putting Satch up against him?” However, Paige knew Davis and he said “Now wait. That Roosevelt Davis throws a cut ball. I don’t like to throw no cut ball. … Davis scratches the ball with his nails and his belt buckle. That makes the ball sail and Davis knows how to control it.”18 Paige continued, “So Abe books a game in late September with the Palmer House Indians, the team Roosevelt Davis was pitchin’ for. … They got three hits and we win, 1-0.”19 Lost in Paige’s account is whether he actually faced off against Davis that day, or whether a different pitcher took the mound for the Palmer House team.

Davis returned to the Memphis Red Sox in 1940 as a pitcher and occasional left fielder, but he mostly pitched for the Palmer House Stars in independent baseball. As the Stars traveled north from spring training in Texas, they stopped to play the Kansas City Monarchs in a seven-game series: “[T]he Palmer House team was credited with downing the Monarchs six times before finally losing, 2-1, to Satchel Paige. Roosevelt Davis took the loss in that game even though he struck out 10 Monarchs (besting Paige’s eight strikeouts). Davis was accused of scuffing the ball, though nothing came of the accusation.”20 He continued to pitch for the Palmer House nine, with success and controversy. “In 1940 they came in fifth in the Wichita National Semi-Pro Tournament, relying on the solid pitching of Roosevelt Davis.”21 His reputation as a creative pitcher preceded him: “Roosevelt Davis 38 year old Palmer House pitcher, who was ejected from the game in the ninth inning by Umpire Virgil Blueitt [sic] when he refused to surrender what Kansas City players charged was a tampered ball, struck out ten, yielded seven hits, and gave two walks. … Umpire Bluett chased Davis from the field amusing the crowd by putting on a wrestling act with the Palmer House coaches.”22

Davis now settled in Chicago and, in addition to playing for the Palmer House squad, also anchored the Chicago Brown Bombers’ pitching staff in 1942. In 1943, at the age of 38, Davis pitched in nine games for the Cincinnati Clowns of the Negro American League. He made six starts and completed them all, hurled one shutout, and posted a 2.35 ERA over 61 1/3 innings. Davis had brief stints with the same team – now known as the Cincinnati-Indianapolis Clowns – in 1944 and 1945 before his professional pitching career came to an end. In 1944 he finished the year at 3-1, and in 1945 he had no wins and no losses in one start.

Roosevelt Davis played 20 seasons in the Negro Leagues. During that time, he played for 12 teams in four leagues while also competing in multiple independent leagues, where he played alongside many of baseball’s greatest players, both Black and White. He compiled a 98-63 record, with a .609 winning percentage, and a 4.11 ERA in Negro League play. Despite a well-founded reputation for using the spitball, cut ball, and emery ball, he had remarkable control of his pitches.

On January 22, 1950, the Chicago Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America held its annual meeting at the Palmer House. During the occasion, “Some observant sports writers … spotted vaguely familiar faces” among the waiters. Five waiters in starched shirts and ties turned out to be veterans of the Negro Leagues and among them Roosevelt Davis, the first black player brought to Bismarck by Neil Churchill in 1933, the scuffed-ball maestro … in his Mid-forties (and balding), he carried serving trays for a living.”23

Roosevelt Davis died on December 28, 1968, in Chicago at the age of 64. He was buried in the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. Through the efforts of the SABR Negro Leagues Committee and its Grave Marker Project, a marker noting his career in Negro League baseball was dedicated and placed at his gravesite in 2005.

Sources

Unless otherwise indicated, all Negro League statistics were taken from Seamheads.com. Additional sources of content include Baseball-Reference.com, Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, the Oklahoma and Kansas Historical Societies, and a statistical bio prepared by SABR member Kevin Larkin.

Notes

1 Find a Grave, Will Davis, April 10, 1880-November 11, 1960, findagrave.com/memorial/187482031.

2 Alan J. Pollock, Barnstorming to Heaven: Syd Pollock and His Great Black Teams (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 125-126.

3 Bartlesville, Oklahoma, segregated Black students from the rest of the student population until 1956. Bartlesville, Oklahoma Public School site, bps-ok.org/home/district/history/douglass.

4 “Black Oilers Down Hotshots, Score 4-3,” Bartlesville (Oklahoma) Morning Examiner, June 30, 1922.

5 “Panthers Open with Wichita Monrovians,” Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), April 29, 1923.

6 Pollock, 125.

7 Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, “William Byrd,” nlbemuseum.com/history/players/byrd.html.

8 Mark Schremmer, “Negro League Greats Started in Topeka,” Topeka (Kansas) Capital-Journal, August 6, 2011. cjonline.com/article/20110806/SPORTS/308069876.

9 Donald Spivey, If You Were Only White: The Life of Leroy “Satchel” Paige (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2012), 102.

10 “Bismarck Nine Will Play Gray Ghosts of St. Louis Here Tonight; Expect Roosevelt and Mates Will ‘Pack ’Em In,’” Bismarck (North Dakota) Tribune, June 28, 1933.

11 Spivey, 102-103.

12 “Bismarck Hammers Roosevelt Davis; Wins from Rockford, 13-3,” Bismarck Tribune, June 18, 1934.

13 Martha Cedillo, “Sultanes de Monterrey, el Iceberg de Beisbol,” milenio.com/especiales/sultanes-el-iceberg-del-beisbol

14  Pedro Treto Cisneros, The Mexican League: Comprehensive Player Statistics, 1937-2001 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 469.

15 Of note: Roosevelt identifies his father, Will, as next of kin on his draft registration form. Will Davis, at the age of 61, registered for the draft on April 27, 1942.

16 Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 163.

17 “Satchel Paige,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/paige-satchel.

18 Satchel Paige, as told to Hal Lebovitz, Pitchin’ Man: Satchel Paige’s Own Story (New York: Ishi Press International, 2015), 60.

19 Pitchin’ Man, 61.

20  Leslie Heaphy, “Palmer House Stars,” The National Pastime, 2015, https://sabr.org/research/palmer-house-stars.

21 Leslie Heaphy, ed. “Chicago Teams in the Negro League Era,” Black Baseball and Chicago: Essays on the Players and Teams (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2006), 34.

22 James Segreti, “Satchel Paige Pitches, Grins, and Conquers,” Chicago Tribune, September 23, 1940.

23 Tom Dunkel, Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Lines (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 267. According to the Center for Negro League Baseball Research, Davis also pitched in 1945 for the Philadelphia Stars and the Cleveland Buckeyes. He may also have played at one point during his career for the Brooklyn Royal Giants.

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.

Greenlee Field, located in the 2500 block of Bedford Avenue, had its official opening on April 29, 1932, when the Crawfords hosted the New York Black Yankees and lost a tough 1-0 game. (NOIRTECH RESEARCH, INC.)

In 1931 the United States economy was drowning in the sea of the Great Depression, which brought nearly every industry in the nation to a standstill. The ripple effects of the crisis hit Pittsburgh’s black community particularly hard as thousands were out of work and unable to meet financial commitments.1 So, it was remarkable when William “Gus” Greenlee, a benevolent racketeer, built a baseball park on Bedford Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Hill District to serve as the home of the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Greenlee Field was truly a Depression-era facility during its short life, which ended abruptly when it was torn down in 1938. The fate of the park, the Crawfords, and Gus Greenlee’s involvement in the Negro Leagues were intertwined during this period.

Gus Greenlee grew up in North Carolina. His three brothers went into the medical and legal professions, while Greenlee was a college dropout who found his calling in the underworld.2 His first documented crime occurred in 1916, when he hopped a freight car from North Carolina to Pittsburgh.3 He drove a taxi and became a bootlegger during Prohibition. Eventually Greenlee became a powerful figure in the numbers and loan-shark rackets in the Hill District.4 He ran his empire out of the Crawford Grill on Wylie Avenue and made a fortune, reportedly earning up to $25,000 in a single day.5 Surely Greenlee must have realized he needed to find legitimate investments. Owning a professional baseball club and constructing a ballpark presented him with an easy opportunity to launder money from his criminal enterprises.6

Pittsburgh Courier columnist John L. Clark helped organize the Crawfords to represent the Crawford Recreation Center in the mid-1920s.7 He promoted the players and worked tirelessly to raise money to buy equipment. Clark soon became friends with Greenlee. Using the power of his column, he became Greenlee’s “part-time publicist.”8 It was a natural marriage of personal and financial interests when Clark persuaded Greenlee to become the Crawfords’ benefactor in 1930.9

After acquiring a principal ownership stake in the Crawfords, Greenlee provided baseball uniforms and a $10,000 bus for travel.10 He decided to not just compete, but dominate Negro League baseball, much to the ire of Homestead Grays owner Cum Posey. During his relatively short tenure as owner, Greenlee assembled a Who’s Who of black baseball’s best players and future Hall of Famers, which included at various times: Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Judy Johnson, Cool Papa Bell, Bill Foster, and Jud Wilson.

According to Clark, who added the titles of Crawfords publicity director and secretary to his duties as a columnist,11 Greenlee quickly became disenchanted with having to rent facilities for home games. Many ballparks were inadequate, and others were simply expensive, including Forbes Field.12 At Forbes, the players suffered the further indignity of not being allowed to use the clubhouse.13 Greenlee solved these problems by building his own ballpark. He knew that putting it in the Hill District would help the Crawfords build a following among residents of the area.14 Creating a fanbase was a critical step in competing against Posey’s established Grays in what sportswriters were already describing as a “baseball war.” 15

In 1931 Greenlee found an ideal parcel of land on Bedford Avenue, where the Entress Brick Company had its operations. He was opportunistic in his choice; the company was in financial distress, which saved him money on the acquisition. Clark recalled:

“Greenlee began negotiations with Dr. Toms, principal stockholder of the Entress Brick and owner of the land. Zoning restrictions were modified, and the project approved by Lincoln cemetery, situated on the west and the Municipal hospital on the east. The corporation was set up, with Dr. Toms, president; Joe Tito, treasurer, and Robert F. Lane, secretary. W.A. Greenlee, owning 25 per cent of the stock, held no office. The operating company was known as the Bedford Land Company.”16

A black architect, Louis Arnett Stuart Bellinger, designed Greenlee Field,17 which made it one of the few baseball parks designed and constructed by African-Americans for a Negro league team. The reported cost of construction was $100,000, which was an exorbitant sum to spend on an entertainment venue during the Depression.18 Grandstand seats were originally priced at 50 cents, while access to the bleachers cost 35 cents.19

Greenlee located the park “in the 2500 block [of] Bedford Avenue between Junilla and Watt Streets,” with an enclosure around the field.20 The capacity of the concrete and steel grandstand was initially reported as 5,000. Additional bleachers were placed between right and center field, which may have seated an additional 1,000 patrons;21 later reports suggested between 7,000 and 7,500 fans could attend baseball games.22 As a boxing arena, 10,000 seats accommodated spectators.23 By November, the ballpark became a true multisport facility, which could expand to 15,000 for football.24 In December 1933, Greenlee Field also served an important civic role in the community as the site of protests against the trial of the falsely accused Scottsboro Boys.25

The interior was modest but included dugouts for both sides. A brick veneer extended along the interior of the grandstand from the third-base side to the edge of right field.26 Although there were restrooms for fans,27 other aspects were spartan. There was no roof over the stands, so spectators experienced the same elements as the players;28 while there may have been some seats with backs, aerial photographs suggest most of the available seats were bleachers. The clubhouses were located under the first-base stands, and the Crawfords’ offices were incorporated as a two-story building beneath the home-plate stands facing Bedford Avenue.29

The Pittsburgh Press reported the planned outfield dimensions as 375 feet in left field, 345 in right, and a massive 500 feet to dead center. Geri Strecker’s The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field: Biography of a Ballpark is the gold standard of its history.30 Strecker left no stone unturned in her comprehensive research. Using aerial photographs, she calculated the actual distance of the fences as 342 in left, 338 in right, and 410 in center, which was similar to Shea Stadium’s outfield.31 Using the same method, it appears the backstop was approximately 55 to 60 feet from home plate. The photos show about 25 feet of foul territory on the first-base side, which narrowed to roughly 15 feet down the right-field line.

In right field, a row of trees stood between the bleachers, which were pressed against an eroding hill, and the Municipal Hospital, perched above the field and its meandering wooden fence. Just over the left- and center-field fences was a steep hill, which stretched several hundred feet down. Beyond the third-base stands, the foul territory was much larger and probably measured up to 60 feet from the baseline to an unkempt hill, and another 30 feet from there to the exterior fence, which marked the boundary with Lincoln Cemetery.

The most recognizable aspect of Greenlee Field was the exterior brick façade, which began at the Crawfords offices and “extended the full length of Bedford Avenue between Junilla and Watt Street.”32 In the Crawfords’ most famous photograph, the players are kneeling in front of their bus, with the façade in the background. A ticket window appears on the left of the picture next to three archways where fans entered. A sign in the photograph advertised a championship boxing match between Charlie Massera and John Henry Lewis, whom Greenlee managed.

The 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords team photo shows the exterior of Greenlee Field, with its brick façade and three arched entryways. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

While excitement was building for the opening, the Crawfords held their 1932 spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and then played exhibition games across the Midwest and South on their way home.33 The Sports Fans of Pittsburgh announced a dance and reception at Princess Hall, along with a parade, as part of the official dedication on April 29.34 The Crawfords unofficially opened the ballpark on April 28 by thumping a local amateur team, the Vandergrift Baseball Club, 11-0.35

The next day Greenlee Field officially opened with 4,000 fans reportedly in attendance. Chester L. Washington was sufficiently impressed by the opening to feature it in his Sportively Speaking column, writing:

“All the color, glamour and picturesqueness that usually attends the opening of a big league ball park was in evidence as Goodsen’s New York Black Yankees helped the popular Pittsburgh Crawfords dedicate the attractive new Greenlee Park here Friday. Photos of both teams were taken … the band played … an impressive dedicatory speech was made by attorney R.L. Vann, during which the spectators stood to pay homage to Gus Greenlee, builder of the park. … [B]oth teams paraded to deep center field, led by Charley Stewart, Mr. Vann and the band, where the American flag and the Crawford pennant were raised to zephyr-like breezes. … Attorney Vann strode to the plate and dramatically pitched out the first ball … the electrified radio amplifiers announced the batteries – and the game was on.”36

After the pregame festivities, player-manager Oscar Charleston gave Satchel Paige the honor of starting against the Black Yankees.37 Had Josh Gibson started at catcher, the duo arguably would have formed the greatest battery ever to open a stadium. However, Bill Perkins got the start behind the plate and Gibson played in left field.38 The Black Yankees countered with Jesse Hubbard, a tall right-hander from Texas, who had pitched in the Negro leagues since 1919.

For eight innings, Hubbard and Paige dueled; Paige struck out 10 and allowed six hits, while Hubbard allowed three hits, and the game remained scoreless.39 In the top of the ninth, the Black Yankees finally scratched out a run. With one out, Orville Riggins singled and Ted Page’s fielder’s-choice grounder forced him at second. Page stole second and advanced to third on Perkins’s throwing error. A bloop single by Thomas40 brought Page home and the Black Yankees led 1-0.41 In the bottom of the ninth, the Crawfords made two quick outs, and Josh Gibson was Pittsburgh’s last hope: “The mighty Gibson sent a terrific clout to deep center field that looked for an instant like an extra base hit, but the fleet footed Thomas was away with the crack of the bat and gathered in the speeding pellet and the first pitchers’ battle was over.”42

Despite the Opening Day loss, the Crawfords bounced back and played well as an associate member of the East-West League. The highlight of the campaign undoubtedly occurred on July 15 at Greenlee Field. With Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe behind the plate, Satchel Paige threw a no-hitter against the Black Yankees.43 Remarkably, Paige overcame seven errors by his fielders in the 6-0 win.

In August the Crawfords hosted their first night game, against the House of David.44 By September, the always innovative Greenlee made the lights permanent several years before major-league ballparks did the same.45 The lights proved useful that month when the Crawfords and Grays experimented by starting a game at midnight on a Monday to circumvent Pittsburgh’s ban on Sunday baseball.46 Paige later recalled that the crowd “jammed the park” that night.47

Historian Jim Bankes credited the Crawfords with 99 wins in 1932, which seems improbable and likely included barnstorming games. Both Seamheads.com and the Center for Negro League Baseball Research calculate a record of 32-26.48 After completing their regular schedule, the Crawfords played exhibition contests against major-league all-stars. Pittsburgh defeated Casey Stengel’s National League All-Stars, 11-2, in York, Pennsylvania.49 The next day, the All-Stars got their revenge, winning 20-8, as Hack Wilson homered twice at Greenlee Field.50

Greenlee’s baseball operations lost between $15,000 and $16,000 in 1932, most likely because of construction costs, generous salaries for his players relative to other franchises, and ticket sales reported at only 69,229.51 Football, boxing, and soccer accounted for an additional 50,164 patrons for a total attendance of 119,384 from April 1932 to April 1933.52 Clark blamed the Depression and miserable conditions for spectators as a partial explanation for modest fan support at games. He contended that attendance dwindled in June as the summer turned hot because of the cost-cutting measure of leaving the grandstand uncovered. Clark also asserted that the black community grew disenchanted with practically every stadium job – concessions, groundskeeping, ticket sales, etc. – going to whites, who lived outside of the neighborhood.53

Greenlee remained undeterred in his efforts to promote baseball in the Hill District. In 1933 he formed a new Negro National League and installed himself as president.54 Meanwhile, his club, which already included a star-studded lineup of Paige, Gibson, Charleston, and Judy Johnson, added fleet-footed outfielder, Cool Papa Bell.55 Bell loved playing on the Crawfords’ home field and later recalled, “[i]t was beautiful. It had lots of grass and you almost felt like you were playing in a major league park. … The best thing for me was the outfield. It gave me lots of room to run.”56 Depending on the source, the Crawfords finished 1933 either with a record of 40-21, tied for first with the Chicago American Giants,57 or 38-17 and a second-place finish behind Chicago.58 After winning a playoff series against the Nashville Elite Giants, instead of playing Chicago, Greenlee exercised his league office power and declared the Crawfords pennant winners.59

Greenlee’s presidency of the NNL irritated other owners, who called for a commissioner to be appointed because of Greenlee’s obvious conflict of interest.60 Posey’s Grays left the league in the middle of the 1933 campaign. Posey claimed he did so voluntarily because Greenlee demanded that owners share 5 percent of gate receipts with the league.61 However, Clark claimed the Grays withdrew from the league before members could vote on his franchise’s expulsion for signing players already under contract with the Detroit Stars.62

Prohibition officially ended on December 5, 1933, which was surely damaging to Greenlee’s criminal empire. However, as Clark reported, Greenlee had a contingency plan and mitigated his losses. His nearby Crawford Grill was the first local establishment with an alcohol license. The Grill was quickly “jammed and packed [with customers] – buying – the hard stuff at 15 cents per drink and high-test beer at 10 cents a glass.”63

In the spring of 1934, Greenlee Field’s grandstand remained uncovered, which left the structure unfinished. To the stockholders of the Bedford Land Company, Greenlee proposed adding an awning-style roof, but they declined his request.64 On the field, the Crawfords were 47-27, but finished second in the NNL behind the Philadelphia Stars.65 The Crawfords played a home schedule of 25 games.66 Even the rival Grays occasionally played home games there.67 Once again Paige provided the highlight of the Crawfords’ season. On July 4 he struck out 17 Grays as he threw his second no-hitter at Greenlee Field.68 This time Gibson was his catcher in the 4-0 victory over Homestead before a reported audience of 10,000.69

Paige was one of the most popular Crawfords. Throughout the spring of 1935, area newspapers published accounts of his whereabouts and were hopeful about his return to the Crawfords.70 However, because of a contract dispute he never reported; he pitched in Bismarck, North Dakota, for the semiprofessional Churchills. Even without its star pitcher, Pittsburgh dominated the first half of the NNL and cruised to a record of 50-23, or 42-15, depending on the source.71

Pittsburgh then faced the second-half champion, the New York Cubans, in the NNL championship series. Oscar Charleston’s Crawfords defeated Martin Dihigo’s Cubans in an exciting seven-game series, taking the finale 8-7.72 Two series games were played at Greenlee Field. On September 18, Dihigo threw a complete game and the Cubans won Game Four easily, 6-1.73 The victory gave New York a three-games-to-one advantage in the series. With the Crawfords facing elimination, Bell began the comeback in Game Five by scoring the winning run on an errant throw in the ninth inning by Frank Blake, as Pittsburgh won, 3-2.74

After a summer as a baseball expatriate, Paige returned to the Crawfords in April 1936.75 Greenlee had not given up on putting a roof over his grandstand. However, with uncooperative stockholders unwilling to underwrite the project, he needed to find another way to raise money.

To increase revenues, he offered season tickets. According to the Pittsburgh Courier, “[t]he season pass answers a demand by fans since the club was organized in 1932 and will sell for $8.00, admit the holder to a grandstand seat to any game played at Greenlee Field by the Crawfords, whether opposed by a league or independent club.”76 In addition, during the first half, Greenlee promoted a drawing for a 1936 Ford sedan with the winning ticket to be announced on July 4.77 The Crawfords swept an Independence Day doubleheader from Homestead; the Pittsburgh Courier did not report who won the car.78 The promotions failed to raise the funds needed to cover Greenlee Field’s grandstand. Years later, Buck Leonard always recalled fans broiling in the hot afternoon sun at the park.79

With a record of 48-33, the Crawfords again raced to the stop of the NNL standings.80 They were scheduled to face the Washington Elite Giants in a playoff series at Nashville’s Sulphur Dell.81 On September 28, 1936, the Tennessean reported the series was tied at one game apiece.82 For reasons that remain unclear, the owners aborted the series; the Center for Negro League Baseball Research has concluded that “the Pittsburgh Crawfords clearly had the best team over the course of the entire season.”83 Nonetheless, Gus Greenlee’s fortunes soon took a downward turn.

In March 1937 Greenlee had financial setbacks in his numbers business.84 Because he needed money, he dealt Gibson and Johnson to Posey’s Grays for Lloyd “Pepper” Bassett, Henry Spearman, and cash.85 Despite the trade, the Crawfords returning players should have made them competitive in the NNL. However, later that spring, Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo signed eight of the Crawfords to big contracts. Paige, Bell, Leroy Matlock, Pat Patterson, Harry Williams, Sam Bankhead, Spoon Carter, and Bill Perkins jumped to Trujillo’s San Domingo Stars. An angry Gus Greenlee lodged a complaint with US State Department, which proved fruitless.86 To add insult to injury, the Stars actually played the New York Cubans in an exhibition game at Greenlee Field that September.87 Charleston, who was now 40, remained one of the few holdovers; however, Pittsburgh sank to a distant sixth in the NNL with a record of 18-35.88

The following spring, in an apparent cost-cutting measure, the Crawfords stayed in Pittsburgh for spring training.89 They improved their record to 22-21 and finished in fourth place in the NNL.90 However, the summer of 1938 held no reprieve for Greenlee or his ballpark. On July 23, the Pittsburgh Courier reported that the Federal Housing Administration had allocated money to construct three housing projects in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Housing Authority selected Greenlee Field as the site for one project and offered $50,000 for the property.91 The news story suggested that if the stockholders turned down the sale, the Housing Authority would take the parcel by eminent domain.92

Clark reported that the Authority actually offered $60,000 as its opening bid, but it eventually paid the shareholders only $38,000 for the property.93 That fall, the Authority began making payments for properties in the Hill district to construct “Bedford Dwellings.”94 The Crawfords played their final game at Greenlee Field on September 3, 1938, against the Grays.95 Although a box score has not been located, one week later, the Courier mentioned that the Grays had beaten the Crawfords 13 straight times.96 The last sporting contests at the field appear to have been a softball game between boxer Joe Louis’s Detroit Brown Bombers and local all-stars,97 and a soccer tournament.98

Wendell Smith lamented the end of the brief era, writing, “Greenlee Field, home of the Pittsburgh Crawfords, once the best Negro League ball park in the country, looks like a graveyard now.”99 Soon after his summation, classified advertisements for Greenlee’s lights and steel beams appeared in the Pittsburgh Press.100 Workers officially began tearing down the grandstand and the offices in December.101 Although Posey expressed some sadness at losing Greenlee Field, he candidly admitted it had “been a financial stumbling block in the path of the Grays since 1932.”102

In February 1939 Greenlee skipped the annual winter meeting of the NNL; the members treated his absence as a resignation of his presidency.103 Later that spring, he also resigned as the president of the Crawfords.104 In his letter to the board, he cited the loss of his ballpark as a tipping point in his decision:

“Greenlee Field has passed into history, and we have no home grounds that we can control. We can no longer plan for the day when improved industrial conditions will appear and make more profitable athletic activity in this section – from which activity our own organization would share in these profits. The stinted support given to Greenlee Field when it was considered one of the best diamonds in the organized circuit, is taken as an indication by me that a positive loss must be arranged for in Pittsburgh this year.”105

Greenlee sold the franchise to Hank Rigney, who moved the Crawfords to Toledo, Ohio, where the club switched to the Negro American League in 1939.106 After moving to Indianapolis the next year, the Crawfords wound up their operations after the 1940 NAL season. Greenlee died on July 7, 1952. In his obituary, the Pittsburgh Courier cited his ballpark as marking the beginning of “an era of diamond lore which eventually gave Negro players recognition in white organized baseball.”107

In his epitaph for the park, John Clark documented Greenlee’s financial losses in providing a venue that black fans could proudly call their own. In an oft-cited passage, he bitterly closed: “Greenlee Field joins the list of banks, industries and other enterprises which should not be again attempted in this city for the next 100 years.”108

On July 17, 2009, the State of Pennsylvania unveiled a historical marker in the Hill District forever memorializing the ballpark’s place in the history of the Negro Leagues and Pittsburgh.109 Thanks to Geri Strecker’s meticulous research, the marker was properly located “directly where Greenlee Field’s arched entry gates had been.”110 The marker reads:

GREENLEE FIELD

“Located here from 1932 to 1938, this was the first African American owned stadium in the Negro Leagues. Home of Gus Greenlee’s Pittsburgh Crawfords baseball team, 1935 Negro League champs. Players included Hall of Famers Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, and Cool Papa Bell.”

There has been debate over where Greenlee Field fits within the realm of baseball parks built for black clubs, and whether it really was the first of its kind. In “A Historical Look at the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Impact on Black Baseball on American Society,” Richard L. Gilmore Jr. cites the Hill District’s Central Park as an earlier example.111 According to baseball historian Gary Ashwill, Tate Field in Cleveland was a black-owned ballpark that predated Greenlee Field.112 Ashwill argues that Greenlee’s ballpark was actually the final attempt at true autonomy by a Negro league owner, writing:

“It also strikes me that Greenlee Field is misunderstood if it’s thought to be a pioneering enterprise, the ‘first’ of anything. In fact the Crawfords’ ballpark was actually a backwards-looking enterprise, an attempted revival of the golden age of the Negro leagues in the 1920s. With the collapse of Rube Foster’s NNL and the Eastern Colored League, black teams in the 1930s turned more and more to barnstorming, and instead of building their own parks they rented major and minor league venues. Greenlee Field was not the first of its kind, but the last. Its demolition in 1938 marked the end of a particular dream of black self-sufficiency, and served as a harbinger of the age of integration that was to follow.”113

By 1955, as the Negro leagues were winding down, columnist Marion Jackson opined that “[t]he decline of Negro baseball is due to the failure of clubs to own their ball parks.”114 Thus, Greenlee Field should not just be remembered as the home of arguably the most successful team in the history of black baseball, but also within a much broader historical context of independent black-owned businesses.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes thank Cassidy Lent, a reference librarian at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, who provided him with Geri Strecker’s excellent article on the history of Greenlee Field. Strecker’s research was so exhaustive that the author resisted the temptation to read the article until the first draft of this chapter was complete. Longtime SABR member William J. Plott was helpful in discussing Marion Jackson’s 1955 column about the decline of the Negro leagues. Finally, the author is grateful to members of the Historical Negro League Baseball Site on Facebook, who helped to identify other baseball parks that were owned by Negro league clubs.

Notes

1 phmc.state.pa.us/portal/communities/documents/1865-1945/great-depression.html.

2 Mark Whitaker, Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 91; Brian McKenna, “Gus Greenlee,” SABR BioProject: sabr.org/bioproj/person/fabd8400.

3 Jeremy Beer, Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), 225; John N. Ingham and Lynne B. Feldman, African-American Business Leaders: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press 1994), 297.

4 Monte Irvin, Few and Chosen Negro Leagues: Defining Negro Leagues Greatness (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2007), 172; Leslie A. Heaphy, The Negro Leagues: 1869-1960 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003), 103.

5 Whitaker, 94; McKenna.

6 Whitaker, 99-100; Heaphy, 228; Brian Carroll, “To Pittsburgh from Chicago: A Changing of the Guard in Black Baseball and the Black Press in the 1930s,” Black Ball, Vol 2. No. 2, 2009: 92.

7 Lewis Dial, “The Sports Dial,” New York Age, September 3, 1932: 6.

8 Whitaker, 97.

9 Dial, 6; Whitaker, 99; Richard L. Gilmore Jr., “A Historical Look at the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Impact of Black Baseball on American Society,” The Sloping Halls Review, 1996: 67.

10 Gilmore, 67.

11 Dial, 6.

12 John L. Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 10, 1938: 17; Phil Dixon, The Negro Baseball Leagues: A Photographic History (New York: Amereon Ltd. 1992), 156. Chris Fullerton’s book, Every Other Sunday (Birmingham, Alabama: R. Boozer Press, 1999), 67-68, delves into the issue of the availability of Rickwood Field for the Birmingham Black Barons, when the Birmingham Barons (the primary tenant) were on the road. Without their own ballpark, the Black Barons traveled so much, they rarely played games in Birmingham. Fullerton, 65.

13 Dixon, 156; Geri Strecker, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field: Biography of a Ballpark,” Black Ball, Vol. 2, Number 2, Fall 2009: 37-67.

14 Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field,” 17.

15 William G. Nunn, “Sport Talks,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 26, 1931: 14.

16 Nunn, “Sport Talks.”

17 Strecker: 40.

18 Paul A.R. Kurtz, “Crawfords, Black Yanks Vie Tonight,” Pittsburgh Press, April 29, 1932: 41; Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field”: 17.

19 “Crawfords Cut Prices for All Baseball Games,” Chicago Defender, July 16, 1932: 8. Getting to the ballpark was also economical for fans who were not within walking distance. On November 19, 1932, the Pittsburgh Courier published a public service article entitled, “How to Reach the Greenlee Field With Only One Car Token.”

20 “Oscar Charleston to Lead Crawford Club this Year,” Pittsburgh Press, February 14, 1932: 18.

21 “Gus Greenlee and the Crawfords,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 11, 2006: C-7.

22 Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field”: 17; Jennifer Kaye, “Let’s Learn from the Past (Greenlee Field),” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 15, 2007: 53; McKenna.

23 “Gleanings from Greenlee Field,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 11, 1932: A4.

24 “Ticket Rush On for Pittsburgh Grid Classic,” Pittsburgh Courier, November 19, 1932: 1. The Pittsburgh Pirates professional football team, who were later renamed the Rooneys and finally the Steelers, used Greenlee Field for workouts. “Local Pros Drill for Cincinnati Fray,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 6, 1933: 43; “Pro Eleven Faces Cuts, Says Coach,” Pittsburgh Press, August 23, 1936: 20.

25 John L. Clark, “Wylie Avenue,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 9, 1933: 2.

26 The wall, and other aspects of Greenlee Field can be seen by searching the Charles “Teenie” Harris collection at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art. collection.cmoa.org/.

27 “Oscar Charleston to Lead Crawford Club This Year,” Pittsburgh Press, February 14, 1932: 18.

28 Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field”: 17; Art Rust Jr., “Walter ‘Buck’ Leonard: Fence buster: Black League’s Lou Gehrig,” New York Amsterdam News, May 26, 1979: 72.

29 “Oscar Charleston to Lead Crawford Club this Year.”

30 Strecker: 37-62.

31 Strecker: 47.

32 Strecker: 44. Strecker discovered in her research that “[t]he facade used locally kilned red brick with simple corbelling along the top of the two-story section and along the lower section between the arched entrances and the two exit gates.” Strecker, 47. However, no source has confirmed whether Greenlee and the Bedford Land Company utilized bricks from the now defunct Entress Brick Company, but this would have been a local decision, which would have saved material costs.

33 “Crawfords Work Out at Hot Spring[sic],” Pittsburgh Courier, March 19, 1932: 15; John L. Clark, “I Believe You Should Know: Following the Crawfords,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 9, 1932: 14; “Crawfords Back, Set for Test,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 30, 1932: 15.

34 “Plan Dance to Honor Crawfords,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 9, 1932: 15; “Crawfords Reception Next Week,” April 23, 1932: 5; “Crawford Club Opens Tonight,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 29, 1932.

35 “Crawford Club Opens Tonight”; Paul A.R. Kurtz, “Carl Jordan to Play with Geisler Nine,” Pittsburgh Press, April 28, 1932: 27.

36 Chester L. Washington, “Sportively Speaking,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 7, 1932: 15.

37 “Expect Record Crowd at Park,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 30, 1932: 15.

38 “Hubbard Pitches Three-Hit Game to Beat Page, 1 to 0,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 7, 1932: 15. According to Strecker, Gibson was “recovering from an appendicitis operation he had undergone in Hot Springs.” Strecker, 54.

39 “Crawfords Defeated in Opening Game,” Pittsburgh Press, April 30, 1932: 9.

40 It is unclear whether Dave Thomas or Clint Thomas delivered the winning hit for New York. Both played for the Black Yankees in 1932, but only one “Thomas” appeared in the box score for the opener. Bankes cited Clint Thomas with making the final catch in center, so it appears he also got the winning hit. Jim Bankes, Pittsburgh Crawfords (North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2001), 24.

41 “Hubbard Pitches Three-Hit Game.”

42 “Hubbard Pitches Three-Hit Game.”

43 “New York Yanks Win Series from Crawfords,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 16, 1932: A5; “Paige Twirls No-Hit Win Over Black Yanks,” Chicago Defender, July 16, 1932: 8.

44 “Night Hero,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 20, 1932: A5.

45 “Greenlee Field Installs Lights,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 10, 1932: A5; Strecker: 49.

46 “Crawfords, Grays Play at Midnight,” Chicago Defender, September 10, 1932: 9; “Greenlee Field Introduces The Midnight Game,” Norfolk (Virginia) Journal and Guide, September 17, 1932: 13.

47 Al Abrams, “Sidelights on Sports, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 22, 1964: 20.

48 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/organization.php?franchID=PC; cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/East-West%20League%20(1932)%202019-10.pdf.

49 “National League Downed by Crawfords,” Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), September 28, 1932: 12.

50 “Major All-Stars Beat Crawfords by 20 to 8,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 29, 1932: 16.

51 McKenna; Dixon, 158; “Greenlee Field Preparing for Opener on May 6,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 15, 1933: A4.

52 “Greenlee Field Preparing for Opener.”

53 Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field”: 17.

54 “Eastern Owners Meet New League Head, Boom Seen,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 11, 1933: 14.

55 “Craws Sign Bell, Cooper, Hunter,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 18, 1933: 15.

56 “Greenlee Field Site Earns Place in History,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 17, 2009: 31.

57 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1933&lgID=NN2.

58 cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/Negro%20National%20League%20(1920-1948)%202019-10.pdf.

59 cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/Negro%20National%20League%20(1920-1948)%202019-10.pdf.

60 “No Owner Should Be Prexy, Says Wilson,” Afro-American, August 5, 1933: 20.

61 Cum Posey, “Posey Reveals Why Grays Left Nat’l Ass’n,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 8, 1933: A4.

62 John L. Clark, “Baseball’s Future Lies in Organization,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 22, 1933: 15.

63 John L. Clark, “Wylie Avenue,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 9, 1933: 2.

64 Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field,” 17. Strecker suggests that once Greenlee Field got lights the roof was no longer a necessity. Strecker, 55-54. However, most baseball games would have still be played in the daytime during this era and the roof would have also kept fans dry during rain delays.

65 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/team.php?yearID=1934&teamID=PC.

66 “Free Ford, Season Passes Offered at Greenlee Field,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 9, 1936: A4.

67 Chester L. Williams, “Grays Blast Birmingham Barons’ Victory Hopes by 9-2 Score,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 30, 1994: A5; Robert Peterson, “Josh Gibson Was the Equal of Babe Ruth, But …,” New York Times, April 11, 1971: SM12. By 1938 Greenlee Field presented Cum Posey with a Hobson’s choice. Fans of the Grays did not attend games at Greenlee Field. However, he also did not want to alienate residents “who honestly believe that the Grays should play all of their homes games at Greenlee Field because of the money put in it by colored investment.” Posey’s curious solution to the dilemma was to play home games outside of Pittsburgh. “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 4, 1938: 17.

68 William G. Nunn, “Paige Hurls No-Hit Classic,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 7, 1934: 1.

69 William G. Nunn, “Paige Hurls No-Hit Classic.” By 1954, the reported attendance for the game had grown to 13,000. “Sports Slice,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 16, 1954: 15. Paige’s teammate Harold Tinker later remembered, “when Satchel pitched, there was nowhere to put all the people anyway.” Clara Herron, “Lost Pittsburgh,” Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, December 25, 1990: 35.

70 “Pirates Beat Semi-Pro Team in First, 3 To 1,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 11, 1935, 15; “Cum Posey’s Pointed Paragraphs,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 4, 1935: 14; “Cubans Meet Crawfords,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, May 11, 1935: 9.

71 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1935&lgID=NN2&tab=standings; cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/Negro%20National%20League%20(1920-1948)%202019-10.pdf.

72 “Crawfords Snare Negro Loop Crown,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 22, 1935: 44; “Crawfords Take 4 to 7, to Top Stars,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 26, 1935: 10; “Grid Circus Now in Town,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 28, 1935: 14; “Thousands See Defeat of Cubans and Stars,” New York Amsterdam News, September 28, 1935: 12.

73 “Cubans Defeat Crawfords Again,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 19, 1935: 18.

74 “Crawfords Beat Cubans by 3 To 2,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 20, 1935: 18.

75 “Satchell Paige Returns to Crawfords,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 25, 1936: A4; Chester L. Washington, “Satchell’s Back in Town,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 9, 1936: 14.

76 “Free Ford, Season Passes Offered at Greenlee Field.”

77 “Free Ford, Season Passes Offered at Greenlee Field.”

78 “Crawfords Take Two from the Grays,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 5, 1936: 16.

79 “A.J. Carr, “At Age of 40, Leonard Belted 42 Homers,” The Sporting News, March 4, 1972: 24; Art Rust Jr., “Walter ‘Buck’ Leonard: Fence Buster: Black League’s Lou Gehrig,” New Amsterdam News, May 26, 1979: 72.

80 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1936&lgID=NN2.

81 “Negro Club Will Play Pittsburgh,” Tennessean (Nashville), September 23, 1936: 10; “Elite Giants Slight Favorite to Defeat Crawfords,” Tennessean, September 27, 1936: 9.

82 “Crawford Split Two with Giants,” Tennessean, September 28, 1936: 8.

83 cnlbr.org/Portals/0/RL/Negro%20League%20Play-Off%20Series%20(1930-1939).pdf.

84 Robert Peterson, “Josh Gibson Was the Equal of Babe Ruth, But …”

85 “Grays, Crawfords in Player Trade,” Pittsburgh-Sun Telegraph, March 24, 1937: 26.

86 Richard J. Lamb, “Gus ‘Whereas-es’ Diplomats into Action Over Foreign ‘Raid’ on Negro Ball Team,” Pittsburgh Press, June 20, 1937: 2.

87 “Former Crawford Stars Play Here,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 4, 1937: 10.

88 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1937&lgID=NN2.

89 “Crawford Nine Trains Here,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, April 7, 1938.

90 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1938.

91 “Greenlee Field,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 23, 1938: 6.

92 “Greenlee Field.”

93 Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field”: 17.

94 “Hill District Dweller Paid $2,000 in Slum Cleanup,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 9, 1938: 36; “City’s Housing Fund Total Now Close to $18,500,000,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 10, 1938: 8.

95 “Craws Battle Grays in Holiday Series,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 3, 1938: 17.

96 Wendell Smith, “Smitty’s Sport Spurts,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 10, 1938: 17. Strecker cited September 3 as the date of the final scheduled home game but reached no conclusions as to who won. Strecker: 61-62. To further complicate the issue, the following spring a columnist wrote, “in the final series with the Homestead Greys [sic], the Crawfords won four out of five.” Jerry Liska (Associated Press), “Press Passes,” Fremont (Ohio) News-Messenger, April 28, 1939: 12.

97 “All-Star Mushball Tryouts Arranged,” Pittsburgh Press, September 5, 1938: 14.

98 Harry Fairfield, “Keystone League Teams Collide Today at Greenlee,” Pittsburgh Press, October 30, 1938: 23.

99 Smith.

100 “Dismantling Greenlee Baseball Field” (Lights), Pittsburgh Press, November 20, 1938: 50; “Dismantling Greenlee Baseball Field” (Steel Beams), Pittsburgh Press, December 4, 1938: 31.

101 Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field”: 17.

102 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 10, 1938: 17.

103 “Baseball League to Be Headed By Wilson; Gus Greenlee Absent,” New York Age, February 15, 1939: 8.

104 “Crawfords’ President Resigns,” Chicago Defender, April 8, 1939: 8; “Future of Craws Still in Doubt,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 8, 1939: 17.

105 “Crawfords’ President Resigns.”

106 Heaphy, 89.

107 William G. Nunn Sr., “Sports, Political Figure Dies Quietly at Home,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 12, 1952: 1.

108 Clark, “The Rise and Fall of Greenlee Field”: 17 (quoted in Whitaker, 121); Rob Ruck, Sandlot Seasons: Sport in Black Pittsburgh (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 164.

109 “Greenlee Field Remembered,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 18, 2009: 10.

110 Strecker: 67 n. 83.

111 Gilmore: 67-68.

112 Gary Ashwill, “Louis Bellinger and Central Baseball Park,” February 26, 2012, accessed at agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/greenlee-field/.

113 Ashwill.

114 Marion Jackson, “Black Barons, K.C. Monarchs Owned by Tom Baird, Sid Lyne,” Alabama Tribune (Montgomery), April 22, 1955: 6; William J. Plott, Black Baseball’s Last Team Standing: The Birmingham Black Barons, 1919-1962 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2019), 232.