Alexander stayed on the move, spending 1938 with the Negro American League’s Indianapolis ABC’s and at least part of 1939 with the barnstorming Satchel Paige’s All-Stars, a “B team” of the Kansas City Monarchs. Paige, who had been injured, wasn’t deemed healthy enough to pitch for the real Monarchs, but was still a big drawing card, and his “Baby Monarchs” spent most of their time touring the western part of America.2 Alexander had a front-row seat as Paige somehow recovered from his injury to pitch brilliantly for another 20-plus years.

According to historian James A. Riley – who describes the 5-foot-10 right-hander as “an average pitcher with the standard three-pitch (fastball, curve, and change of pace) repertory”3 – Alexander also pitched for the New York Black Yankees in 1939, the Cleveland Bears in 1939 and 1940, and perhaps the Newark Eagles as well; however, no statistics are available from his stints with those clubs. He pitched for the Chicago American Giants in 1941, but neither Riley nor any other reference has anything to say about Alexander’s work in 1942.

In 1943 and 1944 Alexander, now in his early 30s, finally pitched for the big-league Kansas City Monarchs. There was a war on, of course, and in 1944 Alexander found himself in the US Army. More specifically, for at least a spell he was stationed at Camp Breckenridge, Kentucky, where a chance meeting with a young black lieutenant who was waiting for his medical discharge might well be responsible for having utterly changed the course of baseball history.

It is a story that Jackie Robinson would tell, albeit with slightly different details, in both of his post-career memoirs. In the earlier version, from 1960, Robinson recalled:

“I was walking across the camp recreation field when a baseball arched high into the sky and was carried toward me by a strong breeze. As it hit the ground and bounced toward me I leaned over and scooped it up with one hand. I saw a player running in my direction so I pegged a perfect strike to him. As it plopped into his glove he shouted, ‘Nice throw!’ ”

After watching for a bit, Robinson struck up a conversation with the player, complimenting him on his curveballs. “He said he had heard of me as a football player and a track man,” Robinson recalled, “but not as a baseball player. Then he explained that he pitched for the Kansas City Monarchs … and that the team needed good players. He suggested that I write if I thought I could make the grade. I wrote.”4

Robinson did not identify this Monarchs pitcher in 1960. But in his later autobiography, published in 1972, he identified him as “a brother named Alexander.”5

Considering that baseball was not considered one of Jackie’s best sports – a big star in both football and basketball at UCLA, he’d batted just .097 in his only baseball season, way back in 1940 – it was hardly inevitable that Robinson would one day find his place in professional baseball. In fact, if his memoir is to be believed, it seems highly likely that major-league history would today look quite a bit different, absent that chance meeting at Fort Breckenridge.

Meanwhile, Alexander’s biggest chance might have come in the fall of 1946 – at roughly the same moment that Robinson’s Montreal Royals were winning the Little World Series – when his Monarchs squared off against the Newark Eagles in black baseball’s World Series. Between them, the two powerhouse squads featured four future Hall of Famers in Satchel Paige, Monte Irvin, Larry Doby, and Leon Day; plus three future major leaguers, Willard Brown, Hank Thompson, and Connie Johnson. All those stars attracted the scouts, but Alexander garnered attention, too, as he started Game Four in Kansas City. It was not a stellar outing, and he gave way to Paige in the top of the sixth, trailing 4-1 in what would become an 8-1 Monarchs loss. Alexander pitched better out of the bullpen in Game Six, though that contest resulted in another Kansas City loss by a 9-7 score. Newark ended up taking the championship in a hard-fought seven-game series.

Alexander returned to the Monarchs in 1947, but the following season he joined the Homestead Grays. In the fall of 1948 he was back in the Negro League World Series, as the Grays squared off against the Birmingham Black Barons for black baseball’s championship for the third time in six years. Alexander earned the win as the Grays triumphed, 3-2, in Game One in Kansas City. In Game Three, however, he was victimized by 17-year-old Willie Mays in Homestead’s only loss in the series, at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field. With the game tied, 3-3, in the bottom of the ninth, Alexander retired Birmingham’s leadoff batter, Jim Zapp, but then surrendered a single to relief pitcher Bill Greason. He then induced a fly out from Artie Wilson but walked the fourth batter of the inning, Johnny Britton. Up to the plate came Mays, who “hit through Alexander’s legs to centerfield,” driving home Greason with the winning run.6 Though Alexander took the loss in Game Three, he and the Grays earned the championship as they topped the Black Barons in five games. That winter the Negro National League folded, which left the Grays to operate as an independent, barnstorming club.

After the demise of the NNL, Alexander played for at least four different teams in 1949, eventually ending up as a member of the barnstorming New Orleans Creoles. His itinerant existence continued when he went north in 1950 to ply his trade in Canada with the London Majors of Ontario’s Intercounty League. Alexander, who was listed at 185 pounds at the outset of his career, now weighed 220, which created an unusual dilemma as he began the season in London. According to the team’s manager, Dan Mendham, “He was real heavy and the Majors didn’t have a uniform big enough to fit him. That’s why he started the season in his Homestead Grays outfit.”7

Alexander spent all of 1950 with the majors and returned to the team in 1951; the highlight of second season in Canada was a 10-inning, two-hit shutout he pitched in London’s 1-0 victory over Guelph.8 After a brief stint with the Brandon Greys of the ManDak League in 1952, his baseball career was over.

According to his obituary, in the late ’40s Alexander began to work at Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, as a “submarine technician,” and retired from the company in 1977.9 He later lived in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and East Orange, New Jersey, where he died on March 6, 1999, at the age of 86. He is buried in the Brooklyn C.M.E. Church Cemetery in Chesnee, South Carolina.

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 Barry Swanton and Jay-Dell Mah, Black Baseball Players in Canada: A Biographical Dictionary, 1881-1960 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009), 16.

2 Larry Lester and Sammy J. Miller, Black Baseball in Kansas City (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2000), 42.

3 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994), 29.

4 Carl T. Rowan with Jack R. Robinson, Wait Till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson (New York: Random House, 1960), 93-94.

5 Jackie Robinson as told to Alfred Duckett, I Never Had It Made (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), 35.

6 “Grays Hold 3-1 Lead in Series,” Afro-American, October 8, 1948: 8.

7 Swanton and Mah, 16.

8 Ibid.

9 The obituary is unfortunately from an unknown newspaper.

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.

Although Bassett used the gimmick that gave him his nickname throughout his playing days, he was far more than a mere sideshow: he was a premier backstop who was voted into eight East-West All-Star Games in seven different seasons (he played in both games in 1939) over the course of his career. In his memoirs, Motley extolled the catcher’s abilities:

“A switch-hitting slugger, Bassett had an arm like a rifle and would sometimes mow down base stealers while sitting at the edge of the rocker. Most times, however, he would leap up from the chair and fire a bullet down to second, or pick off a runner loafing at first. If there was going to be a play at the plate, Bassett would kick that rocker out the way so fast you’d think he was kicking shit off his shoes. He’d quickly position himself to make the play. … Bassett was really an outstanding catcher, truly one of the best in the league. If times had been different, there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have found his way up to the majors.”3

The paradox that the Negro Leagues had to exist due to segregation but were nonetheless often popular even with racially unenlightened white fans is perhaps best summed up in the words of one white Texan who asserted about Bassett, “I didn’t care if I was the only white man in the stands. I was gonna see that nigger in the rocking chair.”4 Bassett’s prime years were behind him by the time integration of Organized Baseball began, and he never did make it to the major leagues.

Lloyd Pepper Bassett was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on August 5, 1910, to Cortez Bassett and Lillie Hatter.5 No information about his parents is available, but it appears to have been important to them for their son to get an education as Bassett attended Reddy Street Elementary School and later graduated from McKinley High School.6 Along the way, however, baseball got in young Bassett’s blood and, as was the case with so many youths in his time, he honed his skills by playing ball on the local sandlots after school. The details of Bassett’s early life have been lost to history, but he became a professional ballplayer at the age of 23 when he joined the New Orleans Crescent Stars in 1934.

After his debut with New Orleans and his travels through Texas with the Black Senators, the burly Bassett – he stood 6-feet-3 and weighed 220 pounds – caught on with the Homestead Grays in 1936. Playing time was sparse for Bassett that season, but he made the most of his opportunities by going 7-for-22 at the plate for a .318 batting average.7 The press was complimentary, with one article asserting, “Pepper Bassett is the big league sensation behind the plate. … [H]e has become one of the best catchers in the game today.”8

In March 1937 Bassett was one piece of a major trade between the Grays and their crosstown rivals, the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Gus Greenlee, the Crawfords owner, who had funded his team via his numbers lottery and had barely avoided a conviction in 1934, was running low on money. Greenlee was unable to pay his stable full of star players any longer, and he began to unload them to other teams. This circumstance led to Greenlee’s trading future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson and William “Judy” Johnson to the Grays in exchange for Bassett, Henry “Little Splo” Spearman, and $2,500, which was “reportedly the largest sum involved in a player deal in black baseball to date.”9

Bassett never attained Gibson’s level as a player, but he was an adequate replacement for the legend in 1937, batting .377 over the course of 18 Negro National League games for the Crawfords.10 His performance was good enough to win him a starting spot in that year’s East-West All-Star Game, and he was the leading vote-getter among catchers with a total of 41,463.11 In the game, which was played before 25,000 fans at Chicago’s Comiskey Park on August 8, Bassett went 0-for-3 with the bat. Perhaps to make up for this shortcoming, the Pittsburgh Courier was effusive about his defensive performance, stating, “Practically sitting  on his heels, he swayed as he snatched the fast and slow ones as they came skipping across the plate, and then tossed ’em back without shifting his position.”12

Bassett returned to the Crawfords in 1938, but his batting average dipped precipitously to .250 in 17 league games.13 Greenlee attempted to turn Bassett into his main attraction and “had a multicolored rocker built” for Bassett to use in “selected nonleague games,” from which he swore the catcher could “knock a gnat off a dwarf’s ear at a hundred yards.”14 Greenlee’s efforts were not enough to save the franchise. At the end of the season, his financial situation compelled him to disband the team, and he sent Bassett a letter to inform him that he was now a free agent; these “new circumstances left (Bassett) unable even to cash his final $53 check from the Crawfords.”15

Bassett joined the Negro American League’s Chicago American Giants for the 1939 season, where his batting average plummeted to .202 as he went only 21-for-113 in 30 league games.16 His defensive prowess was such, however, that he was still selected to the West team for that year’s two East-West All-Star Games. As he done in 1937, Bassett led all catchers with a total of 502,394 votes, which was second among all players to first baseman Ted Strong’s tally of 508,327.17 In the first game, played at Comiskey Park on August 6, Bassett caught the first four innings and took part in a double play behind the plate while going 0-for-2 with the bat. He repeated his 0-for-2 batting performance in the second All-Star Game, which was played at Yankee Stadium on August 27.

In 1940 Bassett became one of the many Negro Leaguers who jumped to the Mexican League, where he played for the Nuevo Laredo Tecolotes and batted .230 with eight home runs.18 After his foray into Mexico, Bassett returned to the Chicago American Giants for the 1941 season. In spite of an abysmal .174 average in only eight league games, his popularity was such that he was once again the starting catcher for the West team in the July 21 All-Star Game at Comiskey Park. Once again the honor of playing in the game had to suffice as Bassett went 0-for-1 at the plate and allowed the East’s second run of the game to score when he was charged with a passed ball in the first inning of the West’s 8-3 loss.

In 1943 Bassett joined the barnstorming Ethiopian Clowns, a team with a name and a show-business flair that seemed suited to his rocking-chair routine. He continued to play for the team after it was relocated to Cincinnati in 1944 and became a member franchise of the Negro American League. Statistics for Bassett’s two seasons with the Clowns are unavailable, but he added new forms of showmanship to his game that he continued to use throughout his career. Fellow catcher James Dudley, who played for the Baltimore Elite Giants, later remembered, “That guy [Bassett] lay down in the dirt like a little child playing. He’d tell the pitcher, ‘Throw hard ‘cause you can’t throw bad.’ It didn’t make no difference where the ball went in that dirt, he got it.”19

Dudley’s reminiscence about Bassett’s catching acumen was an example of how well the rocking-chair catcher had developed that aspect of his game. In fact, Bassett’s focus on defense led to his contribution to the history of baseball equipment. According to Negro League historian Donn Rogosin:

“[Bassett] found that the 1930-style catcher’s mitt with its pillow-like design was unsatisfactory, particularly when a quick release was needed to get the runner stealing second. Experimenting, he gradually removed more and more of the padding, toughening up his hand in the process. Unknown to history, he helped create the ‘squeezer’ style of catcher’s mitt.”20

In light of Bassett’s serious effort to be a first-rate backstop, it made sense for him to leave the Clowns, which he did when he signed with the NAL’s Birmingham Black Barons in 1944. As a part-time starter, Bassett batted .212 for the powerful Birmingham squad, which won the NAL title and faced the Homestead Grays, one of his former teams, in the Negro League World Series that year. As fate would have it, however, Bassett and at least three other Black Barons – including Tommy Sampson, John Britton, and Leandy Young – were involved in a car accident in which a drunk driver hit their vehicle head-on. Sampson, who had been driving and who had suffered the worst injuries, recalled:

“I got hurt the week before the [1944] World Series. I think we had played in Louisville, I believe, and we were on our way to Birmingham when we had the accident. I was out ’til that next spring. I was in the hospital, I think, almost 13 weeks. I had a broken leg, head busted, and everything.”21

Though Bassett’s injuries were minor compared to Sampson’s, he also missed out on playing in the World Series, which Birmingham lost to Homestead in five games.

Bassett settled into his role as a platoon catcher with the Black Barons and stayed with the team through the 1950 season; after a year in Canada, he rejoined Birmingham for the 1952 season, his last with that franchise. Statistics are scarce for the 1945-47 seasons with Birmingham, but Bassett did make it to his first East-West All-Star Game with the Black Barons in 1947. He played in the second of the two All-Star Games, which was held on July 29 at the Polo Grounds in New York, and registered his first-ever hit in such a game as he went 1-for-2 with the bat. In the offseason after 1946 and 1947, Bassett also plied his trade – by all accounts sans rocking chair – in the Cuban Winter League.

In 1948 Bassett had his finest season with the Black Barons as he went 43-for-123 to post a .350 batting average. Once again he played in the second of that season’s East-West Games on August 24 at Yankee Stadium; this time, he reverted to a 0-for-2 batting line in the contest.

At 38 years of age and with 14 years of professional experience, Bassett had also attained the status of grizzled veteran. Birmingham’s youngest player, 17-year-old Hall of Fame-bound Willie Mays, learned a hard lesson from Bassett about the pecking order among players on one particular bus ride. According to Mays’ biographer James S. Hirsch:

“One night, over a long, bumpy road, (Mays) was jounced so badly that he moved to the front of the bus to sit with Bassett. … Willie tried to get him to move, but he wouldn’t. So Willie asked [manager Piper] Davis, sleeping nearby, for assistance, but Bassett opened his eyes and growled, ‘You better get away from me.’ He took a swing, missed, and hit an overhead rack. Willie retreated.”22

Team chemistry was normally better, though some of the other veterans also were initially resentful of the youthful Mays, and the team won the NAL pennant. After defeating the Kansas City Monarchs in the NAL playoffs, they once again faced the Homestead Grays in what became the last Negro League World Series. This time around, Bassett got to play in the Series, though his fortunes were much the same as in the majority of his All-Star Game appearances: In Game One he was thrown out at the plate in the eighth inning of a game that the Black Barons lost, 3-2.23 Birmingham again lost to Homestead in five games, just as it had in 1944; it was their third loss to the Pittsburgh-area squad in three World Series; they had also fallen in seven games in 1943.

The halcyon days of the Negro Leagues were past after 1948, due almost exclusively to the integration of Organized Baseball. Bassett was too old to merit consideration by either a minor-league or major-league team, so he remained with the Black Barons; he batted .295 in 1949 and .271 in 1950.24 On August 20, 1950, at Comiskey Park, Bassett went 1-for-1 with a double in his final East-West All-Star Game as a Black Baron.. During his lengthy stint with Birmingham, Bassett was known for “a propensity for fancy clothes and fine ladies that matched his hitting prowess.”25 He also had become a fan favorite who, according to sportswriter Ellis Jones, was “one of the most popular players ever to wear the livery of the Black Barons.”26

In spite of his popularity in Birmingham, the 1951 season found Bassett playing in his third different foreign country when he went north to join the Brandon Greys of Canada’s ManDak (Manitoba-Dakota) League. Bassett may have been struck by the irony of playing for a team whose name, though spelled differently, was the same as that of the nemesis that had prevented him from being part of two Negro League championships, but it would become a sweet irony by the end of the season.

On June 28 Bassett won a game against the Elmwood team in dramatic but unusual fashion. Brandon trailed 6-5 in the bottom of the ninth inning and had two men on base when Bassett came to bat and belted what appeared to be a game-winning home run. The ball was “clearly heading out of the park, [but it] hit a guy wire and fell back onto the playing field. He was awarded a triple.”27 The hit still resulted in two RBIs that gave the Greys a 7-6 come-from-behind victory. For the season, Bassett batted .251 with 2 homers and 23 RBIs for Brandon.28

Bassett played a key role in Brandon’s playoff fortunes as he doubled and scored the winning run in the 10th inning of a 2-1 victory over Carman on September 4. Ten days later he was behind the plate as Brandon defeated the Winnipeg Buffaloes, 5-3, to win the ManDak League’s title. 29 After losing twice to the Negro League’s Homestead Grays, Bassett finally had become a champion with the Brandon Greys.

In 1952 Bassett returned to the warmer climes of Birmingham, where he now split the catching duties with Otha Bailey. The rigors of catching were getting to be too much for Bassett’s now 42-year-old body, and Bailey recalled, “He’d catch four and I’d catch five, but then if the game get real tight, I would come in as a defensive catcher ’cause I could move faster and get a lotta balls that he don’t get ‘cause he’s big and kinda old, too. … Later on, I was the startin’ catcher.”30

Clearly, Bassett’s career was nearing its end. He began 1953 with the Philadelphia Stars but spent most of the season with the Memphis Red Sox. He had one last hurrah as a player when he took part in his eighth All-Star Game as the starting catcher for the West team. In the game, which was played at Comiskey Park on August 16, Bassett went 0-for-3 in the West’s 5-1 triumph over the East. Bassett’s final season was spent with the Detroit Stars in 1954.

Though Bassett’s career has been documented fairly well, not much is known about his personal life. He did marry Exidena Johnson in April 1941, but the couple never had any children. When Bassett’s playing career ended after the 1954 season, they ended up in California, where he worked as a janitor until he died of bone cancer on December 28, 1980, in Los Angeles.31 Even his death remains shrouded in mystery, as former pitcher Bill Beverly once told an interviewer, “He’s [Bassett] passed. There’s two conflicting stories. One said he was killed in California with marked cards and another one said that he just passed.”32 Though Bassett is gone, the Rocking-Chair Catcher lives on in baseball lore.

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 Donn Rogosin, Invisible Men: Life in Baseball’s Negro Leagues (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 143.

2 Bob Motley with Byron Motley, Ruling Over Monarchs, Giants & Stars (New York: Sports Publishing, 2012), 121.

3 Ibid.

4 Rogosin, 143.

5 Some well-known sources, including James A. Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Leagues and The Negro Leagues Book by Dick Clark and Larry Lester, give the year 1919 for Bassett’s birth. However, Bassett’s 1940 World War II draft registration form lists his birth year as 1910. Bassett also gave his full name as Lloyd Pepper Bassett, indicating that Pepper was his middle name rather than a nickname.

6 Lloyd Pepper Bassett file, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York. Thanks to Negro League historian Leslie Heaphy for providing information from Bassett’s HOF file.

7 baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=basset000llo, accessed February 3, 2017.

8 “Colored Teams to Appear at Riverside Park,” Portsmouth (Ohio) Times, September 16, 1936: 8.

9 Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 61. The Grays got the short end of this trade as Johnson retired before playing a single game for the team and Gibson jumped the team during the 1937 season to play for the barnstorming Trujillo’s All-Stars with Satchel Paige; see James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 314, 445.

10 seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=basse01pep, accessed February 3, 2017.

11 Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase: The East-West All-Star Game, 1933-1953 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 106.

12 Lester, 104.

13 Seamheads.com.

14 Mark Ribowsky, Josh Gibson: The Power and the Darkness (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 166.

15 Riley, 65.

16 Seamheads.com.

17 Lester, 139.

18 Riley, 66.

19 Brent Kelley, The Negro Leagues Revisited: Conversations With 66 More Baseball Heroes (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2000), 56.

20 Rogosin, 73.

21 Kelley, The Negro Leagues Revisited, 127. Accounts of this accident vary greatly among several different sources, and Sampson did not go into detail about the accident in his interview with Kelley. One discrepancy involves how many players were riding in Sampson’s car. No one disputes that the four players named here were in the vehicle, but some accounts claim that Artie Wilson also was involved in the accident and that he suffered a sprained wrist: however, Wilson played in the World Series and batted .271. In an April 13, 2017 phone conversation with the author, Artie Wilson, Jr. confirmed that his father had not been involved in the accident. The second discrepancy involves the extent of Bassett’s injuries, with some sources stating that he incurred only minor cuts and bruises while other sources claim that he suffered two broken ribs; since Bassett did not play in any of the five World Series games, the latter accounts appear more likely to be accurate. All sources agree that Britton suffered a thumb injury and Young a hip injury.

22 James S. Hirsch, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend (New York: Scribner, 2010), 50-51.

23 “Grays Score First Win in World Series,” Afro-American, October 2, 1948: 9.

24 negrosouthernleaguemuseumresearchcenter.org/Portals/0/Birmingham%20Black%20Barons/Statistics%20-%20Birmingham%20Black%20Barons.pdf, accessed February 3, 2017.

25 Tim Cary, “Slidin’ and Ridin’: At Home and on the Road with the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons,” Alabama Heritage, Fall 1986: 26.

26 Ibid.

27 Barry Swanton and Jay-Dell Mah, Black Baseball Players in Canada: A Biographical Dictionary, 1881-1960 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009), 26.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Brent Kelley, Voices From the Negro Leagues: Conversations With 52 Baseball Standouts (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1998), 280.

31 Lloyd Pepper Bassett file. As is the case with Bassett’s birth year, a different death year is found in some sources. Baseball-Reference.com is one source that lists Bassett’s death date as February 27, 1981; however, the state of California’s Death Index shows that Bassett died on December 28, 1980.

32 Kelley, Voices From the Negro Leagues, 284.

Herman Bell was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on April 18, 1915, the first of Henry and Mamie Lee Smith Bell’s three children. A second son, Lucious Bell, was born in 1916. The youngest, daughter Marian (sometimes spelled “Marion” or “Mary”), was born in 1919. In 1915 the family lived with Herman’s maternal grandparents, Anderson and Gertrude Smith, in East Birmingham. Henry Bell worked at cottonseed-oil mills alongside his father-in-law.

The Bell family’s roots can be traced to 120 miles south-southeast of Birmingham, in Alabama’s cotton-belt country. Herman’s great-grandfather Joshua Bell was born into slavery around 1840, near Tuckers Store, a now-defunct community in southeastern Montgomery County. Evidence from the US Census population and slave schedules suggests that Joshua and his wife, Hester Ann Prince, were the property of Orsmond Robert Bell, a cotton-plantation owner and member of a prominent Alabama family. Joshua and Hester lived near Tuckers Corner even after Emancipation and the Civil War and continued to do so for the remainder of their lives. Their son George Bell, Herman Bell’s grandfather, was born a slave in 1861. George worked in the cotton fields with his parents and siblings but by 1900 left the farm and headed north to Birmingham to seek work in an iron furnace.

George married Millie Warner in 1884, in Montgomery County. Millie, whose name also appears in the record as Minnie, was born there in 1868. After they moved to Birmingham, George and Millie had at least four children — one daughter and three sons. Their eldest son, Henry Bell, born in 1894, was Herman Bell’s father.

Herman Bell’s mother, Mamie Lee Smith, was born in Georgia around 1898. Her parents, Anderson and Gertrude Bearden Smith, were born in Georgia, but were married in Birmingham. Anderson Smith was a laborer at a fertilizer factory and cottonseed-oil plants in East Birmingham. Anderson and Gertrude played an important role in Herman Bell’s early years. Herman and his family lived in his maternal grandparents’ household throughout much of his early childhood.

After Anderson Smith’s death, on March 2, 1920, at the age of 55, Herman and his family continued to live with his grandmother Gertrude Smith. The temporary stability of the Smith-Bell household was likely due to home-ownership, Henry Bell’s paycheck from the oil mill, and Gertrude’s work as a laundress.

In 1928, when Herman was 13 years old, for the first time in his young life he did not live in his grandmother Smith’s house. In fact, neither did Gertrude Smith. Household data from the 1930 Census illustrates Herman Bell’s fractured family situation. His mother’s marital status was listed as “widow” although her husband, Henry, was very much alive. Herman was 14 years old. Gertrude Smith was no longer a home-owner. Instead, the Bells rented a house for $25 per month in East Birmingham. In 1930 Mamie was the only wage earner in the household; she supplemented her meager income as a laundress by taking in two boarders.

Between 1930 and 1935, Henry Bell was in and out of the family picture. For several years he was not part of the household. In 1934, the family was briefly reunited, but the following year, when Herman was 10 years old, Henry was absent once more.

Henry Bell’s frequent absences from the family household during the 1920s were likely due to marital problems rather than work obligations. Although one baseball historian asserts that Henry played for the Birmingham Black Barons,1 a review of box scores and newspaper articles provides no evidence to support that assumption, and other Negro League histories do not corroborate this assertion. Further, Henry Bell did not work for ACIPCO or Stockham, two Industrial League training grounds for Black Barons players. This is not to say that Henry Bell did not play baseball — there is no evidence to support or refute that claim — but it is highly unlikely that Henry Bell ever wore a Black Barons uniform.

Herman Bell lived just a short walk from his first employer, Stockham Pipe and Valve Company, for whom he likely played his first organized baseball on the company’s Industrial League team. On March 22, 1936, he married Lillie Harris, who lived across the street. Herman was 21 years old and Lillie was 20. Bell worked for Stockham Pipe before and after his marriage to Lillie and played baseball for the company’s Birmingham Industrial League team; he later played for Stockham’s archrival, the American Cast Iron Pipe Company (ACIPCO). As it turned out, Bell’s baseball career lasted much longer than his marriage to Lillie. The 1940 Census provides some clues about their abbreviated marital life. In November 1939 Lillie gave birth to daughter Eva May Bell. By April 1940, Lillie and 6-month-old Eva May (also spelled “Eva Mae”) moved out of the Bell household and never returned. The census gave Herman’s marital status as “married, spouse not present.” It noted that Herman was 25 years old, had one year of high school to his credit, and was a “catcher” employed as a “ball player.”

In April 1940 when the census enumerator documented that Herman Bell was “absent” from the household, it was because he had already joined up with Hank Rigney’s Toledo/Indianapolis Crawfords of the Negro American League. He had embarked on a new life as a barnstorming baseball player, an adventure that lasted for more than a decade. The 1940 Census provides evidence that Herman Bell began his Negro League baseball career before he joined the Black Barons. Most biographical entries for Herman Bell state that his Negro League career began in 1943 with Birmingham, but clearly it began as early as 1940 with the Crawfords.

Bell had hitched his wagon to a circus in the form of Hank Rigney’s Toledo Crawfords. The previous season was not financially successful for Rigney’s Crawfords. He was punished by the Negro League for poaching players from the Homestead Grays and was not permitted to schedule games for the Crawfords until he paid a fine.2 Rigney claimed that the league had conspired against him and blamed them for his red ink.3 After being given the go-ahead for the 1940 season, Rigney ostensibly moved the team from Toledo to Indianapolis although the team more often than not was referred to in the press as the Toledo Crawfords.

In February Rigney entered into an agreement with Syd Pollock for the Crawfords to barnstorm with the Ethiopian Clowns with an “extraordinary sports carnival and baseball show.”4 In the center ring of the “sports carnival” was Olympic track star Jesse Owens, whom Rigney managed in the early 1940s. Owens and Rigney also were co-owners of the Toledo Crawfords, with Owens serving as the club’s president.5

Rigney was also the business manager of the Toledo White Huts of the National Basketball League. He attracted some controversy in 1941 with his inclusion of two African-American players on the Toledo squad in what was otherwise an all-white league. In response to the scorn Rigney received, he blasted the press by saying, “Hell, I don’t give a hang about their color. What I want to do is to win.”6

Bell ended up as the catcher for the 1940s Toledo Crawfords after the previous season’s starter, Tommy “Dixie” Dukes, decided to play in the Mexican leagues. Backup catcher Willie “Pee Wee” Spencer was a contract holdout, leaving the starting job open for rookie Bell. Spencer eventually rejoined the team, but he had lost his starting position as catcher to Bell.

If there had been any uncertainty surrounding who would serve as the Crawfords’ backstop in 1940, there was even more confusion over the name of their new catcher. Some of the omissions and errors regarding Herman Bell’s baseball career are linked to his name. Reporters covering the Crawfords at the start of the 1940 season referred to Herman as “James Bell” or “Steel Arm Bell.” Bell’s name was most likely changed to James based on confusion with a better-known Negro Leaguer, James “Cool Papa” Bell, who had played for the Pittsburgh Crawfords from 1933 to 1938. Cool Papa Bell played several positions with distinction in his long and illustrious career, but catcher was not one of them.

Herman Bell was referred to as Steel Arm Bell for the 1940 season with the Crawfords but not during his tenure with the Birmingham Black Barons. By all accounts, he earned his nickname through his excellent throwing skills, but it was also appropriate given his work in Birmingham’s steel and iron manufacturing sector. The first use of this nickname was in the spring of 1940 when the local press touted Steel Arm Bell as a “catcher who can hit and throw”7 before the Crawfords played the Monarchs at Monroe, Louisiana. Bell was last referred to as Steel Arm in 1942 when he played in a game featuring a Birmingham Industrial League all-star team versus the Atlanta Sunshine Stars.8

After one homestand, Bell and the Crawfords headed to Storm Lake, Iowa, for a game, at which Jesse Owens held a sprinting exhibition against Irwin Crotty, a former Notre Dame football star.9 When the Crawfords headed back home, Rigney chose Owens and two Crawfords — pitcher Ernest “Spoon” Carter and Bell — as traveling companions in his car. The four had driven nearly 500 miles when they reached Elgin, Illinois, around noon on Saturday, June 8. Rigney was behind the wheel when his car stuck another vehicle that was entering the highway. Both cars were “heavily damaged” and Owens was taken to the hospital with “lacerations about the arms, head and face.”10 Bell, Carter, and Rigney were also hurt but no report was given as to the extent of their injuries. Bell was out of the lineup for several weeks after what came to be the first of several misfortunes that beset his career in the 1940s. As Bell recuperated, Willie “Pee Wee” Spencer reclaimed the Crawfords’ catcher’s position.

The highlight of Bell’s season with the 1940 Crawfords must have been the doubleheader he played against the Birmingham Black Barons at Rickwood Field on July 7. The game was billed as a “homecoming” for “two of the most valued members of the Crawfords, Herman ‘Steel Arm’ Bell, the league’s deluxe catcher, and John ‘Lefty’ Smith, hard-hitting left fielder.”11 The Chicago Defender wrote, “Both of these boys formerly starred in the fast Birmingham Industrial league here and have a host of followers in this city who are anxious to see them for the first time in big league competition.”12

After the 1940 Negro League season, Bell returned to Birmingham. He worked as a laborer at ACIPCO and played for its Industrial League team. It was not a happy homecoming because he and Lillie were still separated and would remain so until they divorced after his discharge from the US Army in 1944.

Bell continued as the starting catcher for the ACIPCO team through the summer of 1942. The squad was undefeated in league play and was viewed by some as the “best industrial league team of all time”;13 the Industrial League champions finished with a 49-1 record and Bell’s batting average was .351.14

Bell joined the Birmingham Black Barons late in the 1943 season after the team had become shorthanded in the catching department. Starting catcher Paul Hardy had been lost to the draft, which left the team with only 35-year-old John Huber, who had the lowest batting average on the team. The Black Barons were headed for a matchup with the Homestead Grays in the 1943 World Series but were in dire need of a backstop, which set the stage for Bell to join the team. If Bell thought his luck was changing, he was wrong. After just eight plate appearances, and on the eve of the 1943 World Series, he was injured and missed his chance to play in his first Negro League championship. After Bell was hurt, the Black Barons found themselves in the World Series without a catcher. In an extraordinary concession by the Grays, the Black Barons were permitted to use the services of Ted “Double-Duty” Radcliffe, catcher and manager of the Chicago American Giants, for the duration of the series.15 In an odd twist of fate, after granting permission for Birmingham to use Radcliffe, the Grays’ own catcher, Josh Gibson, fell ill and was unable to play.16 Gibson recovered in time to return to the Grays lineup and hit a grand-slam in the fifth game of the eight-game series. Bell would have to wait until 1948 to get another chance to play in a World Series for Birmingham.

World War II and the draft initially had created an opening for Bell on the Birmingham roster, but then the draft took him away. Bell reported for Army duty at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama, on January 25, 1944 at age 29. Herman’s civilian occupation fell under the category of “Athletes, sports instructors, and sports officials,” and this line of work would persist during his military service. He played baseball at Fort Benning, Georgia, for the Reception Center Tigers. The Army team crossed bats with civilian and military teams, including the Atlanta Black Crackers and the Tuskegee Army Fliers. It was during a game with Tuskegee, on June 24, 1944, that Bell became a baseball casualty of the war when he broke his right leg sliding into second, and “was removed from the diamond by an ambulance” with speculation that he would probably be lost to the team for the season.17

But Bell returned to his catching duties in early August 1944 after a brief six-week recovery. In October the Black Barons were once again in a World Series against the Homestead Grays without him. The Grays won, four games to one.

Bell was discharged from the Army, on December 6, 1944. By the end of March 1945, Birmingham announced its lineup for the season, which included catchers Bell and Pepper Bassett.18 Though Black Barons manager Winfield S. Welch maintained a positive outlook, not everyone outside of the organization was as enthusiastic. Pittsburgh Courier sportswriter Wendell Smith favored Cleveland over Birmingham for the Negro American League crown, noting that the Black Barons had deficiencies in the “catching and infield departments.”19 In May the catching situation was still uncertain, and Bell platooned with Double Duty Radcliffe and Bassett. By June, only Bell and Bassett were sharing the catching duties.

On July 16 a Black Barons game in Cleveland to benefit a local community center was marred by a fight between Birmingham’s second baseman, Lorenzo “Piper” Davis, and umpire Jimmy Johnson in which Davis broke the umpire’s nose in front of 12,000 fans.20 The brawl was just the beginning of the team’s troubles. The Black Barons were criticized by Negro American League President Dr. J.B. Martin for splitting the squad into two teams; however, since no official league games were involved, no more than an admonishment was forthcoming. In Battle Creek, Michigan, on July 22, Bell and pitcher Jimmie Newberry were the only two regular Black Barons who took the field as part of a makeshift team for an exhibition game.21 Fans had been expecting the full 1944 pennant-winning squad to appear, and Welch’s mea culpa was that the team had lost players like Radcliffe to the Harlem Globetrotters and John Britton to the Mexican League.22 The Battle Creek Clark Equipment team and the Lafayette Red Sox withheld travel expenses and Birmingham’s share of the gate receipts, which, in the case of the Battle Creek game, would have totaled around $350.23 A writer for the Battle Creek Enquirer mused, “It looks like there’ll be plenty of meatless days for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American league in the immediate future — and it won’t all be because of the short of ration points.”24

In early August the Black Barons and New York Black Yankees were scheduled to play a game at Knoxville, Tennessee. Bell was slated as the starting catcher.25 But the Black Barons’ bad luck followed them to Tennessee when the Black Yankees’ bus broke down near Chattanooga and the game was canceled.26 The result was another day without a paycheck for the team.

On September 8 the Black Barons played the Black Yankees in a two-day Labor Day holiday series that also featured games with the Cincinnati Clowns and the Philadelphia Stars. The games were played at Yankee Stadium before crowds of over 10,000. The Black Barons lost to the Black Yankees and were eliminated from the series finale, but they lost more than a game — they also lost Bell when he was “struck in the head by a New York batsman who swung late, the bat thudding against the catcher’s temple as he crouched behind the plate.”27 That was Bell’s last appearance for the Birmingham in 1945.

Off the field Bell had not fared much better; his marriage to Lillie Harris Bell finally ended in 1945. Bell did not remain a bachelor for long. On May 26, 1945, he married Mary Belle Cobb Boykin in Birmingham. Mary Belle Cobb was born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1919 and previously had been married to William Boykin with whom she had one son William Charles “Bo Pee” Boykin Jr., born in 1937.

When the 1946 Black Barons’ season began, Bell found himself watching from the dugout while Pepper Bassett did the bulk of catching, especially in official Negro League games. Bell made only sporadic plate appearances, mostly in exhibition games during barnstorming tours. His fortunes began to change in mid-July when his batting average improved to .300 and he regained his status as the primary catcher; for the first time that year, it was Bell who started the first game of Negro League doubleheaders.

By the end of July, Bell’s offensive production was getting noticed by sportswriters. In August, the Black Barons moved up in the standings and showed some of their old form but they could not catch up with Satchel Paige and the Kansas City Monarchs and finished in second place.

In 1947 baseball’s spotlight shifted to Brooklyn, where National League Rookie of the Year Jackie Robinson was becoming a star. Negro League teams struggled to draw fans through the turnstiles and to attract supportive press coverage. The Black Barons announced that they would conduct their 1947 spring training in Orlando, Florida. Bell was included in the team’s spring-training roster but Bassett was not; he and Newberry were in California “after playing winter baseball in Cuba and Mexico.”28 Manager Tommy Sampson named Percy Howard as Bassett’s replacement, but Howard did not graduate to Birmingham’s regular-season roster.

By the time the Black Barons played their first exhibition games at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, Bell was not in the lineup because Bassett had made a late return and had resumed his role as the starting catcher. As in previous years, Bell was a slow starter and seemed to hit his stride later in the season, especially with his bat. It appears that Bell was replaced in the Birmingham lineup by backup catcher Earl Ashby, who also filled in at first base. Ashby had started his 1947 season with the Homestead Grays and was “loaned to the Black Barons” for the remainder of the year.29 According to Atlanta Daily World sports columnist Emory O. Jackson, during spring training Bell was relegated to mentoring Birmingham’s rookies, including pitcher and first baseman Alonzo Perry.30

When Birmingham opened the regular season at Rickwood with a 5-2 win over Kansas City on May 10, 1947, Bell was on the bench. The next day he shared catching duties with Ashby in the first game of a doubleheader against the Monarchs. An error-prone Birmingham nine lost both games. When the Barons and Monarchs met three days later on the road in Shreveport, a local sportswriter noted, “Undoubtedly, ‘Pepper Bassett’ of ‘rocking chair fame’ is the most colorful and capable in the negro sic major league … with William sic Bell as his understudy.”31 Not only was Herman Bell not getting any playing time or praise from the press, they could not even get his name right.

As had been the case the previous year, Bell began to get into the groove by midseason. In June he began to alternate starts with Bassett, and Ashby was no longer being used as the default backup. By the end of the month Bell was hitting a blazing .375, second on the team only to Piper Davis, who was batting .380.32 The Black Barons were on fire and were leading the Negro American League with an overall batting average of .303.33 But by August Bell’s bat had cooled off and he was once again demoted to being Bassett’s backup.

Bell’s 1947 season with the Black Barons was a vast improvement over his fortunes in previous years in the Negro League. First, he did not suffer any major injuries as he had in 1940 (car accident), 1943 (unspecified injury), 1944 (broken leg), and 1945 (head trauma). In spite of his typical slow start to his season, Bell played in 26 league games and ranked third among Negro American League catchers with a .304 batting average and a .976 fielding average.34

Bell and Bassett returned to Birmingham in 1948, but Bell was now 33 years old and in the twilight of his playing days. The two catchers were described by columnist Ellis Jones as the Black Barons’ “old guard,” part of a group of “oldtimers” that also included Ed Steele and John Britton.35

In March 1948 the Black Barons held spring training at the historically black Alabama State Teachers College (now Alabama State University) in Montgomery. Filling out the roster with top-flight players was becoming more difficult for Negro League teams, so owners were forced to come up with some new staffing strategies. The Black Barons held tryouts for players attending Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Florida A&M, Grambling, Knoxville College, and Lane College.36 Sharing spring training with collegians must have made some of the grizzled veterans like Bell feel particularly aged. However, it was not a youthful collegian who had the greatest impact on the Black Barons’ 1948 season. Instead, it was a 17-year-old high schooler named Willie Mays.

During spring training, on April 11, Bell’s mother, Mamie Lee Bell Smith, died in Birmingham at age 58. Bell was in Greenville, Mississippi, with the Black Barons for an exhibition game against the New York Cubans. To add to his grief, there would be no paycheck since the Cubans failed to show and 2,000 fans demanded a refund.37

The Black Barons opened the season against the Cleveland Buckeyes at Rickwood Field on May 1. Birmingham won the opener, 11-2, and took two of three games from Cleveland with Bell behind the plate for both wins. His career revival in early 1948 was noted by one sportswriter who said, “The youthful Bell has been doing the bulk of catching in the early games and his handling of pitchers, and his heavy stick work has been causing eyebrow lifting around the circuit.”38

At the end of May, with Birmingham sitting atop the NAL standings, Bell found himself spending more time in the dugout; Bassett had a blazing .444 batting average in mid-June that assured him the starting catcher job. Bell, his role diminished, still contributed to the team’s success and mentored younger players, including Willie Mays. Bell briefly took over the catching duties for the Black Barons when Bassett suffered a hand injury in July,39 but as soon as Bassett recovered, Bell resumed his backup duties.

The Black Barons were pursuing their first NAL championship since 1944, and Bell did his part when called upon. He was not known as a power hitter, but he had a flair for providing the occasional base hit or sacrifice fly when called upon at a pivotal moment in a game. Such was the case when the Birmingham took a doubleheader from the Cleveland Buckeyes at Rickwood Field before a crowd of 9,000 on August 8.40 Bell knocked a pinch-hit single to drive in two runs that lifted the Black Barons to a 4-3 victory.

The final weeks of the regular season proved costly for the Black Barons. They lost center fielder Norman “Bobby” Robinson to a broken ankle, though this injury resulted in Mays moving from left field to his natural position in center field. Player-manager Piper Davis was hobbled after being spiked, as was Bell.41 Bell’s injury came on September 10, the day before the playoffs were set to begin, as the Black Barons played the Chicago American Giants at Comiskey Park. With the Giants down two runs in the bottom of the ninth, Quincy “Big Train” Trouppe homered with the bases empty to narrow the margin to one run. Then, with the Giants’ Chet Brewer on first, Big Jim McCurrine42 grounded to second baseman Artie Wilson. Wilson was unable to get Brewer out at second so he threw to first. Wilson’s throw to first baseman Joe Scott was too late to get McCurrine. Brewer rounded third and headed for home at “full tilt.” When Bell applied the tag, the catcher’s “foot was cut and he was forced to retire from the game.”43 Bassett stepped in to replace Bell at that point. McCurrine later scored and tied the game, but the Black Barons answered with a run of their own in the top of the 10th inning and held on to win the game, 9-8. It was a satisfying win for Birmingham but a resolutely painful personal loss for Bell. Just as in 1943, when an injury had denied Bell the chance to play in the Negro Leagues World Series, a physical setback once again sent him back to the dugout.

The first two games of the seven-game NAL playoffs against the Kansas City Monarchs were played at Rickwood Field on September 11 and 12. Bassett was in the lineup and Bell was on the bench while Piper Davis did triple duty as manager, second baseman, and backup catcher.44 Birmingham swept the first two games, with Bassett providing the winning RBI in Game Two, and the teams headed to Kansas City. After leading three games to two, the Black Barons needed the seventh game of the series to punch their ticket to the Negro League World Series, which they did when they won the deciding game, 5-1.

Bell did not play in any of the games against the Monarchs, and his leg injuries did not heal in time for him to appear in the regular lineup in the Negro League World Series, against the Homestead Grays. He did make one plate appearance as a pinch-hitter in the second game of the Series, hitting a run-producing double, but the “lumber-legged Bell” was pulled from the game for a pinch-runner.45 The Black Barons lost the last Negro League World Series to the Grays in five games and, as in previous years, Bell returned to his life in East Birmingham after the season ended.

When spring training began in 1949, Bell was a 34-year-old catcher whose career was nearing its end due to an injury-worn body and the rapid decline of Negro League baseball. He and Bassett resumed their tag-team duties as the Black Barons’ catchers. Bell started out well, but by the end of the season, his batting average was in the neighborhood of .200. He remained a sharp defensive player, but age had caught up to him and his diminished skills at the plate relegated him to backup duties for most of the season. There may have been a second contributing factor to Bell’s declining performance: At the end of May he was batting .278,46 but he suffered an injury to his right hand in early June,47 and by early July, he was hitting just .240.48

In spite of Bell’s subpar performance in 1949, when the final East-West All-Star Game lineups were announced, Bell was listed as the reserve catcher for the West. He replaced Earl Taborn, who had been signed by the New York Yankees in late July.49 His selection was especially surprising given that he was hitting a paltry .207 at the time.50 The East upset the heavily favored West, 4-0. Bell pinch-hit for Memphis shortstop Orlando Verona, but popped up in his first and only appearance in an All-Star Game.51

The Negro National League had folded after the 1948 season, so no World Series was slated for 1949. After the regular season concluded, the Black Barons and other Negro League teams engaged in a series of games throughout the South, including contests with Jackie Robinson’s barnstorming All-Stars. After the last game was played, Bell returned home to Birmingham, where his widowed father still lived and worked at the cottonseed-oil mill. His younger brother Lucious was now married and he and his wife were part of the household. But his sister, Marian Bell Pearson Goodwin, had died on March 29, 1949, at the age of 29.

In March 1950 Bell was the starting catcher early in the season. He occasionally caught both games of a doubleheader as he did against the Indianapolis Clowns on April 16, one day after his 35th birthday.52 By early May, however, the lineup pattern from previous years emerged and Bell fell back into his familiar role as the backup catcher. One positive event in Bell’s life in 1950 was the arrival of his only son, Herman Bell Jr., who was born in Birmingham on June 21.

One of the Black Barons’ most notable baseball achievements in 1950 took place in Knoxville, Tennessee. Arguably more important and longer lasting than anything else the Black Barons ever accomplished, it has gone largely unnoticed by sports historians. A benefit game between the Black Barons and Houston Eagles at Caswell Park in Knoxville was organized by Claude Walker of the Knoxville City Recreation Bureau, a program developed for the city’s African American population. Walker had played for the Knoxville Colored Giants in the 1920s and was one of the organizers of the new 1945 edition of the Negro Southern League.53 The proceeds of the charity game were earmarked for what Walker claimed would be the first “Negro Little League team in the South.”54 Prior to the event, Walker said that the future of “Little League for Negro boys hangs in the balance at Caswell Park tonight.”55 The Black Barons returned to Caswell Park for a second benefit game in October against Luke Easter’s “All-Stars” and added more funds to the Little League’s coffers.

Today, Claude Walker Park Ballfields honor Walker’s contributions to Knoxville sports history and the African American community. Bound up within Walker’s legacy are Bell and the Birmingham Black Barons, who helped provide the seed money to create the first Little League team for African Americans in Tennessee and, most likely, the first such team in the South. It is also likely that the benefit game against Luke Easter’s team was the last game Bell played in a Black Barons uniform.

In 1951 Bell was among the veterans who signed up for another tour of duty, but he did not play with the Black Barons beyond spring training at Alabama State College in Montgomery. Pepper Bassett continued with the team in 1951 along with two new backup catchers, Louis “Sea Boy” Gillis and Roy “Willie” Patterson.

After his playing days ended in 1951, Bell returned to East Birmingham. He did not return to factory work at ACIPCO or Stockham; his post-baseball occupation, according to Birmingham city directories, was as a janitor and warehouseman for the Kirby-Pierce Paint Company in North Birmingham.

Herman Bell died in Birmingham on September 27, 1970, at the age of 55. His wife, Mary Cobb Bell, died on December 26, 1985. Herman’s brother Lucious, the last surviving Bell sibling, died in Milwaukee in 2007. Both Herman and Mary Bell were buried in Shadow Lawn Memorial Gardens in Birmingham. After Bell’s death in 1970, his accomplishments — often overshadowed by the exploits of other Black Barons with better offensive skills and/or those who later played in the major leagues — were largely forgotten. He also had played much of his career at a time when press coverage of Negro League games was either absent or minimal, even in African-American newspapers. Bell did have one champion in the media, though: Atlanta Daily World columnist Othello Nelson “Chico” Renfro mentioned him often. Renfro had firsthand knowledge of Bell’s baseball talents, having played shortstop in the Negro Leagues for the Monarchs, Buckeyes, and Clowns between 1945 and 1950, during Bell’s tenure with the Black Barons.

In 1977 Renfro wrote a column in which he criticized New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson’s salary demands and included Bell among “the great catchers of the old Negro National and American League [who] could tie one hand behind their back and out catch Munson and when they came to bat they could untie the hand and blind fold them and they could out hit him.”56 A year later Renfro again referenced Bell, judging him to have been one of the best players on the 1942 ACIPCO team.57 Renfro continued his high praise of Bell into the 1980s when he referred to the catcher as being “among the unsung heroes of the Negro Leagues.”58 When Negro League historian Brent Kelley interviewed Willie Young, a one-handed pitcher for the Black Barons in 1945, he asked, “Who was the best player you saw?” Young replied, “In my time? Herman Bell was the best catcher.”59

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 John Klima, Willie’s Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, The Last Negro League World Series, and the Making of a Baseball Legend (New York: Wiley, 2009), 127.

2 “East-West Game Aug. 18,” Chicago Defender, March 2, 1940: 24.

3 Leslie A. Heaphy, The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960 (Jefferson North Carolina: McFarland, 2003), 89.

4 “Ethiopian Clowns Eye Another Big Season,” Atlanta Daily World, February 20, 1950: 5.

5 “Chicago at Indianapolis for a Double Header,” Chicago Defender, May 25, 1940: 5.

6 Fay Young, “The Stuff Is Here,” Chicago Defender, November 15, 1941: 22.

7 “Owens and Negro Clubs Coming Here,” Monroe Morning World, April 14, 1940: 8.

8 “Birmingham, Sunshine Stars Play Two at BTWHS Today,” Atlanta Daily World, August 30, 1942: 8.

9 “Jesse Owens Runs at Storm Lake Tonight,” Des Moines Register, June 6, 1940: 16.

10 “Jesse Owens Injured in Elgin Crash,” DeKalb Daily Chronicle, June 10, 1940: 7.

11 “Crawfords at Birmingham Sunday July 7,” Chicago Defender, July 6, 1940: 23.

12 Ibid.

13 “American Cast Iron and Pipe (ACIPCO): ACIPCO Dominates the Birmingham Industrial League,” Negro Southern League Museum Research Center, undated: 18.

14 Emory Jackson, “Birmingham ACIPCO Nine Lost 1 Game,” Chicago Defender, October 24, 1942: 24.

15 “Sox Park Is Site of Negro Game Today,” Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1943: A6.

16 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 2, 1943: 16.

17 “Reception Center Defeats Tuskegee,” Columbus Sunday Ledger-Enquirer, June 25, 1944: 10.

18 “Cubans Play Barons Sunday,” Chicago Defender, March 31, 1945: 7.

19 Wendell Smith, “The Sports Beat,” Pittsburgh Courier, May 5, 1945: 12.

20 “Cleveland Group Demands Apology,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 4, 1945: 12.

21 “Birmingham Barons’ Actions Draw Fire of Unit President,” Battle Creek Enquirer, July 29, 1945: 14.

22 Ibid.

23 “Black Barons Denied Gate Receipts Share,” Battle Creek Enquirer, July 28, 1945: 8.

24 Ibid.

25 “Black Barons Play Yankees,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, August 2, 1945: 16.

26 “Negro Battle Is Called Off,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, August 3, 1945: 12.

27 “Black Yankees Win Two Games in Row in Stadium Tourney,” New York Amsterdam News, September 8, 1945: 11A.

28 “B’ham Black Barons to Leave for Spring Training March 9,” Atlanta Daily World, February 25, 1947: 5.

29 James A. Riley. The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994), 39.

30 Emory O. Jackson, “Hits and Bits,” Atlanta Daily World, April 29, 1947: 5.

31 “Barons Who Play Monarchs, Second in 1947 Flag Race,” Shreveport Times, May 12, 1947: 11.

32 “Black Barons Hard Hitters of the N.A.L.,” New York Amsterdam News, June 28, 1947: 12.

33 Ibid.

34 Ellis Jones, “Art Wilson Cops League Batting Crown Honors,” Atlanta Daily World, February 11, 1948: 5.

35 “Ellis Jones, Hits and Bits,” Atlanta Daily World, April 1, 1948: 4.

36 “Birmingham to Try Out Collegians,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 6, 1948: 17.

37 “Greenville Club to Seek Initial Pre-Season Win,” Greenville (Mississippi) Delta Democrat-Times, April 12, 1948: 5.

38 “Black Barons Set to Face Famed Indianapolis Clowns May 16-18,” Atlanta Daily World, May 14, 1948: 6.

39 “Barons, First Half Negro Champions, Here Thursday,” Newark Advocate, July 20, 1948: 8.

40 “Barons Win Two From Cleveland,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 14, 1948: 10.

41 Emory O. Jackson, “Hits and Bits,” Atlanta Daily World, September 11, 1948: 5.

42 James “Big Jim” McCurrine’s last name appears in some sources as McCurine.

43 “Black Barons Win, 9-8, Game From Chicago,” Chicago Defender, September 11, 1948: 11.

44 “Birmingham Grabs First Two Games in Playoff Series,” Chicago Defender, September 18, 1948: 11.

45 Klima, 180.

46 “Negro American League,” Atlanta Daily World, June 1, 1949: 5.

47 “New York Cubans Lose Twice to First Place Black Barons,” Atlanta Daily World, June 15, 1949: 5.

48 “Negro American League,” Atlanta Daily World, July 6, 1949: 5.

49 “Yankees Purchase Two Players From Monarchs,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 29, 1949: 30.

50 “LaMarque and Porter Possible Starters for Annual East-West Baseball Classic,” Atlanta Daily World, August 7, 1949: 7.

51 Marion E. Jackson, “East Upsets West 4-0 in 17th Annual Competition in Comiskey Park, Chicago,” Atlanta Daily World, August 16, 1949: 5.

52 “Black Barons Stop Naptown Clowns Twice,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 22, 1950: 23.

53 “The New Southern Negro League,” Macon (Georgia) Telegraph, February 19, 1945: 8.

54 “Barons, Eagles to Clash for Little Loop Fund,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, August 15, 1950: 14.

55 Ibid.

56 Chico Renfro, “This and That in Sports,” Atlanta Daily World, January 27, 1977: 9.

57 Chico Renfro, “Let’s Remember the Old ‘Atlanta’ Black Crackers,” Atlanta Daily World, June 15, 1978: 8.

58 Chico Renfro, “Sports of the World,” Atlanta Daily World, May 16, 1986: 5.

59 Brent P. Kelley, I Will Never Forget: Interviews with 39 Former Negro League Players (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2003), 185.

Compounding the difficulty in determining the identity of this pitcher is the fact that he was most often identified by the press simply as “Lefty” Bell. Additionally, conflicting information about Bell exists in the few available sources that mention him at all. Both James Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia and Dick Clark and Larry Lester’s The Negro Leagues Book list a pitcher named Charles “Lefty” Bell as having played for the Grays in 1948.2 The fact that his first name is given as Charles likely stems from the Post-Gazette’s article. Riley asserts that Bell “was a second-line pitcher … but fashioned a perfect 3-0 record.”3

A pitcher named Charles “Lefty” Bell also is listed on baseball-reference.com, where it is alleged that he was born in Lakeland, Florida, in some unknown year. However, this player is listed on the roster of the 1929 Memphis Red Sox and split his time between Memphis and the Chicago American Giants in 1930.4 In light of those listings, two questions remain: Why does B-R.com not list this Bell on the roster of the 1948 Grays, and where did he spend the years between 1930 and 1946?

Further confusion arises from the fact that B-R.com, while not listing Charles Bell on Homestead’s roster, does list a 50-year-old pitcher named William Bell on the roster of the 1948 Grays.5 This pitcher has been identified as William Bell Sr. of Lavaca County, Texas, whose Negro League career spanned the years 1923-37 and 1948; his pitching line on B-R.com shows a 0-0 record in only 3⅓ innings pitched for Homestead in 1948. However, according to Riley, William Sr. was a member of the Homestead Grays in 1932 and “his last appearance in black baseball was as a manager of the [Newark] Eagles in 1948.”6 The differences in first name and statistics indicate that Charles “Lefty” Bell and William Bell Sr. have not accidentally been conflated into one and the same player.7

The Charles “Lefty” Bell who pitched for the Homestead Grays may have been a Mississippi native, and his true first name most likely was James. What may be the earliest mention of Bell in print appears in a news account of a game between the House of David team of Santiago, Cuba, and the Wechsler High Black Cats at Traction Park in Meridian, Mississippi, on April 29, 1931. Wechsler High’s coach started a pitcher identified as “Jas. (Lefty) Bell,” who allowed three runners to score when he made a wild pitch with the bases loaded in the game, which Wechsler lost, 8-6.8 The Mississippi location and the year 1931 match up well with what little is known about “Lefty” Bell, though the abbreviation “Jas.” for “James” indicates a different first name. While it is possible that there could have been both a James “Lefty” Bell and Charles “Lefty” Bell within short proximity of one another in Mississippi, such a scenario is improbable. More likely, in a time in which misspellings and typographical errors pervaded newspapers, is that “Jas.” accidentally became “Chas.” when Bell was signed by the Grays in 1948.

The likelihood that Wechsler High’s James “Lefty” Bell was the player who eventually joined the Homestead Grays in 1948 stems from the fact that a player who was referred to simply as Lefty Bell began to pitch semipro ball in Mississippi at some point in the early to mid-1930s. A 1934 press account touted Lefty Bell and Baby Face Green, “two of the best semi-pro pitching stars [who] hooked up” in a 1-0 pitchers’ duel in which Bell’s Laurel Big “M” Black Cats defeated the Colored “Y” Tigers.9 The following season, Lefty Bell was again in fine form as he led the Laurel Black Cats’ staff in their attempt to win the Mississippi state title over the Meridian Giants. In two separate 10-inning, 1-0 victories over Meridian, he struck out 14 and 18 batters.10 Bell continued to pitch for Laurel through at least 1938, but it is not certain where he might have played the next two seasons.

In April 1941 it was reported that the “Mobile Black Shippers [would] be strengthened for the occasion [of a doubleheader against the Ethiopian Clowns] by the addition of Lefty Bell of Laurel, Miss., and both Tommie Lee and Bill Tate, St. Louis.”11 However, whether or not Bell was simply on loan to Mobile, or had signed with the team was unclear. Bell may have led an itinerant existence that season, as he also spent time with the Reidsville, North Carolina, Black Luckies. On June 9, in Reidsville’s 9-7 victory over the appallingly-named South Boston Spooks, “Lefty Bell did the mound duties for the Luckies and struck out 13 Spooks.”12

Where Bell spent the years 1942-46, or how and when he ended up with the Lakeland team in the Florida State League is a mystery. Coverage of the league’s games was sparse and inconsistent, but an August 23, 1947, news article — with Bell’s last name misspelled as “Bill” — hints at Lefty’s sustained pitching acumen. The Palm Beach Post reported, “Lakeland’s Tigers used timely hitting and effective southpaw pitching by Bill to trim the local Yankees, 6 to 2, in a Florida State Negro Baseball League game at Wright Field Friday night.”13 Bell lost a shutout with two outs in the ninth inning but still earned the win in Lakeland’s triumph. Whatever Bell’s record may have been in 1947, he was certainly a known commodity prior to the 27-1 season attributed to him by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In April 1946 the Atlanta Daily World had reported that the Birmingham Black Barons had not “had any success trying to get ‘Lefty’ Bell, billed as a good slab prospect, away from his Mississippi home.”14

If pitching closer to home was important to him, it seems odd that Bell signed with the Homestead franchise — which played its home games in Pittsburgh and Washington — after not having signed with the much closer Birmingham franchise in 1946. Nonetheless, the first mention of a southpaw named Charles Bell occurs in the April 29 issue of the Post-Gazette. It is not far-fetched to suppose that since Bell was usually referred to simply as “Lefty,” a reporter who had seen his first name abbreviated “Jas.” may have remembered “Chas.” and inadvertently changed Bell’s first name to Charles. Errors in player names were not uncommon; for example, the April 10 edition of the Pittsburgh Courier reported that the Grays had acquired a new Cuban catcher named Ramon Sosa, whose actual first name turned out to be Victoriano.15

The Pittsburgh newspapers also appear to have embellished the new Gray’s previous accomplishments, though it is entirely possible that they were victims of misinformation spread by the Grays’ front office in an attempt to make its new signees appear to be star acquisitions. The April 10 Courier article claimed that Sosa had been “recently obtained from the Mariaona [sic] team, a member of the Cuban Winter League,” and that he had “won the Cuban Batting Championship in 1946.”16 In truth, Victoriano Sosa had spent his only season in Cuban baseball, which was 1946, with the Cerro team in Cuba’s new Summer League, and there is no evidence that he had won the league’s batting championship.17 It is not a stretch to believe that Charles Bell’s reported 27-1 record with Lakeland in 1947 may also have reflected hyperbole.

In any case, by July 17, 1948, Homestead’s new southpaw was named as “Charles (Lefty) Bell” in an article printed prior to a start he was scheduled to make against the Philadelphia Stars at Wilmington Park in Delaware. In that article Bell was touted as “one of the greatest pitching finds in Negro baseball,” who was “making his Wilmington debut for the Grays.”18 However, it appears unlikely that Bell pitched against the Stars that day; for reason(s) unknown, his stint with Homestead ended abruptly.

On Wednesday, July 21, 1948, the Atlanta Daily World reported that the Atlanta Black Crackers had defeated the Jacksonville Eagles, 2-1, three days earlier — on Sunday, July 18 — “behind the stellar three-hit pitching of Lefty Bell, colorful southpaw who formerly tossed the pellet for the Homestead Grays of the Negro National League.”19

On July 29 it was reported that “Lefty Bell, formerly with the Homestead Grays, will pitch for Atlanta” in a game between the Black Crackers and the Asheville Blues at McCormick Field in Asheville, North Carolina.20 There still was no explanation as to why the Grays had parted ways with their so-called pitching sensation or how he had come to join the Atlanta team. From this point forward, Bell was again referred to simply as Lefty Bell — there is no further mention of the first name Charles, nor any mention of the name James — and he proceeded to win 15 games as the ace of the Atlanta staff in 1948.21

As late as September 2, the Atlanta Daily World referred to “Husky ‘Lefty’ Bell, southpaw sensation,” who was going to take the mound for Atlanta against the Raleigh (North Carolina) Tigers.22 Yet the Daily World never mentioned by which unusual manner a “second-line pitcher” for the Grays of the Negro National League, one of black baseball’s two major leagues, had become a star for the Black Crackers of the Negro Southern League, a somewhat lower-level professional circuit.

The Black Crackers franchise encountered financial troubles, briefly moved to Detroit for part of the 1949 season, and then returned to the Negro Southern League as the Atlanta Brown Crackers in 1950. In advance of the new Atlanta franchise’s May 14 game against the New Orleans Creoles, the Daily World ran a preview of the team and its key performers, which included a pitcher named James Bell (sans the nickname “Lefty” however).23 Interestingly, the Daily World mentioned that the Brown Crackers had spent spring training in Lakeland, Florida.

Presumably, the Brown Crackers’ James Bell was Lefty Bell; however, that would mean that the mystery man’s identity has finally been solved. James Bell was selected as a Negro Southern League All-Star in 1950, and the Daily World listed the roster of the NSL All-Star team prior to its game against the Memphis Red Sox in July. James Bell was listed there as a right-hander.24 Although this could well have been a misprint — Bell’s name is found immediately below a left-hander, John Diamond of the New Orleans Creoles — it leaves open the possibility that this could have been a different James Bell.

One thing is certain: If “Jas.” (Lefty) Bell of Meridian, Mississippi, who pitched for Wechsler High School in 1931, was indeed “Charles” (Lefty) Bell — which seems to be the most likely scenario — then he obviously was not the pitcher who played for Memphis and Chicago in 1929-30.25 Thus, there remains the question: Who was the player supposedly named Charles “Lefty” Bell who pitched for Memphis and Chicago? The answer to that query may never be found.

The answers to most questions about James “Lefty” Bell’s identity also remain elusive, showing how quickly a man’s life can be erased from the annals of history. The lone fact about Bell that has not been obscured is that he was a pitcher of some renown in certain circles of the Negro Leagues. As late as 1986, Samuel Malone, Bell’s manager with the Laurel Black Cats, asserted:

“Lefty Bell was the best left-hander I ever saw. He beat Satchel Paige one time   1-0. He had five pitches and mastered them all, including the knuckleball. I saw Warren Spahn and Whitey Ford pitch, but I’d take Bell. He was that good.”26

In spite of such accolades, Lefty Bell remains almost as great a mystery as the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster, rising suddenly out of the mists of time and quickly disappearing again before he can be fully grasped.

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks fellow researcher Margaret Gripshover, who unearthed the material about Lefty Bell’s semipro days in Mississippi as well as the first article found that reported Bell’s move from the Homestead Grays to the Atlanta Black Crackers in July 1948. The latter fact indicates that Bell was no longer a member of the Grays at the time of the World Series against the Birmingham Black Barons.

Notes

1 “Grays Launch League Season,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 29, 1948: 18.

2 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 71; Dick Clark and Larry Lester, The Negro Leagues Book (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1994), 145, 171.

3 Riley, 71.

4 Charles “Lefty” Bell, baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=bell–006cha, accessed January 13, 2017.

5 1948 Homestead Grays, baseball-reference.com/register/team.cgi?id=113d8785, accessed January 13, 2017.

6 Riley, 75.

7 William Bell Sr. was a right-hander, which is another reason he could not be confused with Charles “Lefty” Bell. William “Lefty” Bell Jr. did not join the Negro Leagues until 1949, his first season with the Kansas City Monarchs; he pitched for Kansas City through the 1954 season and also spent part of 1950 with the Birmingham Black Barons.

8 “High School Sports: Wechsler Loses to Cubans,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), May 2, 1931: 8.

9 “Laurel Black Cats Win Hot Baseball Set,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), September 22, 1934: 17.

10 “Mississippi Nines Battle: State Title is Prize as Meridian, Laurel Play,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), September 21, 1935: 15.

11 “Showboat Thomas Day on April 27th for Mobile Fans,” Chicago Defender (National Edition), April 26, 1941: 22.

12 “Black Luckies Lose to Danville; Win Two Other Games,” Norfolk (Virginia) Journal and Guide, June 21, 1941: 13.

13 “Homer in 9th Robs Lakeland of Shutout,” Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Florida), August 23, 1947: 5. The news article gives no indication as to the city of origin of the Yankees team that opposed the Tigers that night.

14 “Hits and Bits: Pitching Problems,” Atlanta Daily World, April 30, 1946: 4.

15 “Pittsburgh Opener Set for April 29; Outfield Has Power,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 10, 1948: 15.

16 Ibid.

17 Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2003), 272-73.

18 “Homestead Grays Tangle With Philadelphia Stars,” Wilmington (Delaware) Morning News, July 17, 1948: 10.

19 “Crax Climb in Upper Division by Topping Eagles, 8-0, 2-1,” Atlanta Daily World, July 21, 1948: 5.

20 “Blues Clash with Atlanta Here Tonight,” Asheville (North Carolina) Citizen-Times, July 29, 1948: 17.

21 Leslie Heaphy, “The Atlanta Black Crackers,” sabr.org/research/atlanta-black-crackers, accessed January 13, 2017.

22 “Black Crackers Gird for Blazing Battle With Raleigh Tigers,” Atlanta Daily World, September 2, 1948: 5.

23 “Atlanta Brown Crackers Play New Orleans Creoles, Sunday,” Atlanta Daily World, May 9, 1950: 5.

24 “Memphis Red Sox to Play All-Stars Here,” Atlanta Daily World, July 9, 1950: 7.

25 There was another left-handed pitcher in the Negro Leagues named James Bell, who eventually was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. However, James Thomas “Cool Papa” Bell of Starkville, Mississippi, began his career in 1922 and switched from being a “lefty” pitcher to a center fielder whose speed became legendary. Cool Papa Bell had a brother named Fred who pitched for several different Negro League teams over the course of his career. Fred Bell, who was a southpaw, was nicknamed Lefty.

26 Rick Cleveland, “ ‘Blinkum’ had his heyday before color lines broke,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi), October 25, 1986: 43.

Blair attended Pittsburgh’s Langley High School, a member of the Class of February 1940. The school itself is an impressive one architecturally, and is on the National Register of Historic Places. He was 4-0 for Clark High in 1938, moving over to Langley in 1939. The Langley baseball team was the 1939 city champion team in Pittsburgh. Photography in the school yearbook suggests Blair was the only black player on the team, but he was one of two standout pitchers. The yearbook in general shows that this was a well-integrated school, and the notations next to student photos were kind to all. The photograph of him informs us today that his nickname was Tiny (he stood 6-feet-4 and is listed as weighing 215 pounds) and the write-up reads:

We know he’s a star in the field of sports;
His character’s got the swellest report.

Blair played basketball, baseball, and football, as well as serving as vice president of Consumer’s Education. His standout moment in high school was the no-hitter he threw against Carrick High on May 11, 1940. Blair struck out 15 Carrick batters that day.

As yearbooks often do, there were remarks predicting what students would be doing 10 years hence – in 1950. Blair was foreseen as “star pitcher” for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

This was, of course, a remarkable notion, given that there would not be a black player for any of the major-league teams until Jackie Robinson broke the “color barrier” in 1947. Yet Blair’s fellow students at Langley had no problem seeing him as pitching for the Pirates. In actuality, the Pirates themselves did not integrate until Curt Roberts joined the team in April 1954.

Blair did play professional baseball in Pittsburgh, but it was for the Homestead Grays of the Negro National League, for whom he played five seasons. His high-school record notwithstanding, Jim Riley says he was “discovered by the Homestead Grays playing sandlot ball with the Pittsburgh Monarchs.”1 He wasn’t exactly a secret, though. The Pittsburgh Courier ran a three-column headline proclaiming, “Garnett Blair, Point Scoring Ace Of Pittsburgh High Schools, Turns Attention To Baseball.”2 Blair was 6-feet-3, 187 pounds at the time, “a fine-looking, curly-haired, 17-year-old colored boy who plays basket, baseball, and football equally well and thinks nothing of the brilliant records he has made in each of the three major sports during his sensational high school athletic career.”3

Prior to his stint with the Grays, Blair had pitched for three seasons for the Pittsburgh Monarchs, a strong local team that reeled off 22 consecutive wins in 1941, with Blair noted as “still pitching like an ace.”4

Garnett E. Blair was born on July 31, 1921, in East Carnegie, a neighborhood of Pittsburgh just about five or six miles southwest of the city center. His father, Edward Blair, came from Milledgeville, Georgia, where he had worked as a laborer in a tailor shop. He married fellow Georgian Celestine Brown on December 30, 1918, and the couple moved to Pittsburgh, where they lived on Copley Way. Edward’s parents had been Moses Blair, a laborer in a brickyard, and Earnest Blair, a washerwoman for a private family.

Private family work was what Edward did after coming to Pittsburgh. He is listed in the 1930 census as a janitor for a private family, and in 1940 as a caretaker on a private estate. The couple raised five boys and one daughter. Garnett was the second-eldest. The youngest was Lonnie, who also played baseball for Homestead.

After high school, Blair went on to begin studies at Virginia Union University, a historically black university in Richmond, where he played center on the basketball team, the Panthers, in 1942. That December Blair enlisted in the US Army at Fort Meade, Maryland. He was in military service for more than three years, mustered out on February 17, 1946, at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. Because of his talent in baseball, he worked in special services, playing some ball to provide morale-building entertainment for other military personnel. He returned to Virginia Union after the war, and ultimately graduated with a bachelor of science degree in commerce in 1949.

During his tour of duty in the Army, Pfc. Garnett Blair married Ruth Odessa Brown in January 1945. She was also a graduate of Virginia Union University.

Negro Leagues records are unfortunately quite incomplete, but Blair does appear to have started one game pitching for Homestead in 1942, without a decision (and also without a base hit in four at-bats.) In 12 innings pitched, he is reported to have given up 12 hits and five runs.

It was not uncommon for servicemen stationed stateside to have time to appear in occasional baseball games, and that appears to have been the case with Blair. He was stationed at Perry Point, Maryland, and pitched in Washington on weekends for Homestead when he could.5 The Grays played “home games” both in Pittsburgh and in Washington, DC. Records available on Baseball-Reference.com show him pitching in (and winning) one game, working seven innings for the 1944 Grays. John Holway shows him as 2-0. Both agree he was 8-1 in 1945, starting nine games, striking out 35 while only walking nine. He’s shown as 0-1 in two starts for Homestead in 1946, after having “turned up with a sore arm.”6 Though on the Opening Day roster, he doesn’t appear to have pitched at all in 1947, and then 0-1 again in his only game in 1948. Jim Riley says he was 3-2 in 1948.

Buck Leonard said that Blair “had been a promising young pitcher. He went into the Army and never was the same when he came out. He hurt his arm and couldn’t throw like he had before, so he quit baseball and started playing basketball.”7 Blair’s son, Douglas, understands it to have been a rotator-cuff injury to his right shoulder; doctors had wanted to operate, but with only a prognosis of a 50 percent chance of success. His father declined and took injections for pain for many years.8

Blair continued to play center for Virginia Union basketball in 1947 and 1948. (At the time, his amateur standing in basketball was not compromised by his having played professionally in another sport.) He was said to have also “made the Caribbean baseball circuit.”9 Douglas Blair says that a couple of his teammates played winter ball in the Caribbean but that his father “went back to college, the Virginia Union University in Richmond.”10 

In June 1948, Blair is also seen pitching for the Richmond Giants, in one game beating the Greensboro Red Wings with a two-hitter on June 6.11 Blair also worked as baseball coach for Virginia Union University, while wrapping up his studies. He was also a member of the Joseph T. Hill Philosophy Club, the NAACP, and the Varsity Club, and played intramural sports.

Back with the new Negro American Association’s Washington Homestead Grays in the early part of 1949, Blair was joined briefly by his younger brother Lonnie, who had finished up his school term and was signed by Homestead, reporting for duty on June 12.12

Jim Riley shows Lonnie Blair as pitching and playing second base for the Grays, writing that he “joined the Homestead Grays in 1947 while still in high school but was not on the traveling squad, and pitched mostly in exhibition games. After the demise of the Negro National League following the 1948 season, he stayed with the Grays for two more seasons while they played as an independent ballclub, sometimes ‘passing’ because of his light complexion to buy food for the team as they traveled throughout the South. Earning a salary of $300 per month with the Grays, he declined a tryout with the Cleveland Indians, and after the Grays broke up in 1950, he joined the Air Force.”13

The two brothers overlapped briefly on the Grays.14 Just shortly after the time Lonnie joined the new Grays in 1949 (Josh Gibson Jr. was also on the team as a utility player), Garnett Blair moved to work for the Richmond Giants. He won the second game of the August 7 doubleheader against the Washington Hilldales, 3-2, but lost a real heartbreaker, a 1-0 game that ran for 13 innings on September 17.

After his June 1949 graduation, Blair became the baseball coach at Manassas (Virginia) Regional High School.15 He pitched for Richmond in 1950 and part of 1951 as well, but he then retired with a sore arm. In 1953 he was signed to pitch for the Richmond Colts, becoming the first black ballplayer on the team. Colts owner Eddie Mooers announced on April 8 that the Colts were considering adding a Negro player to the team. He chose not to present a name but said the man he had in mind was 6-4, weighed 225 pounds, and hailed from Richmond. Blair acknowledged he had been contacted by Mooers and would try to get himself into condition. “I think I’ll be able to win in the Piedmont League,” he said, “if my arm doesn’t pain me.”16 He was working with the Binga Community Center at the time.

Blair made the Colts and opened the season with them, but he figured so little in actual play that he does not appear in final team stats. He pitched four scoreless innings against Binghamton on April 19 but apparently could not continue. Riley says he appeared in two games without a decision.

The travel did a number on Blair’s arm. “Sitting with his arms crossed on rickety old buses that bounced along on bad roads for hours at a time took a toll on Blair’s body,” wrote Mike Harris of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Teams would often play doubleheaders on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, in different cities. Even if the Grays were ‘home,’ there was travel because the team split its home games between Forbes Field in Pittsburgh and Griffith Stadium. For a while, the team was known as the Washington Homestead Grays. Blair recalled one weekend where the team played a late doubleheader on Friday in Pittsburgh. It then got on the bus for Washington and arrived just in time to change clothes and go out and play two more games. After that doubleheader, the team got back on the bus and headed to Chicago for two more games.

“Eating, sleeping, even going to the bathroom was a chore on the road because blacks were still not allowed in many places. ‘I remember once someone needing to use the bathroom and we had to drive through Richmond all the way to Fredericksburg before we could find a place,’ Blair said. ‘Nowadays, people wouldn’t stand for that, of course. But we put up with it then, overlooked a lot of things we probably shouldn’t have, because we wanted to play baseball. You had to conform, go on and do it. That’s what we did.'”17

Blair later took up a position coaching and working in the special-education department of Richmond’s Booker T. Washington Junior High School, where he served for nine or 10 years into the late 1960s. Subsequently, he spent 25 years as a special-education teacher at the Richmond Career Education Center. Blair also worked for many years officiating in both high-school and college basketball.18

Ruth Brown Blair became the first black policewoman in Richmond, serving from December 1949 to December 1966. “She was a detective,” said the Blairs’ son, Douglas.19

On September 10, 1988, Blair was honored along with 1948 Homestead Grays teammates at a 40th reunion hosted by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Joining him were Clarence Bruce, Wilmer Fields, Buck Leonard, and Willie Pope. He was also honored in an Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball tribute to the Negro Leagues at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium on August 10, 1991. It was nice to be remembered so many years after his playing days, he told Harris, but he did wonder if the interest was genuine or if it was due to “cash to be made in the growing collectors market.” Blair, who was already suffering from the colon cancer that took his life, said, “It is never too late to correct something that should have been done years ago. But I do sometimes wonder what took so long and why is it happening now?” He had started to get requests for autographs in the mail, as many as 20 a week. After going more than 40 years without recognition of this sort, “All of a sudden, here is come, boom, like a flood. It is all I can do to keep up with it. Prior to that, you never heard one word about black baseball.”20

Looking back on those days, he said, “You know, a lot of what we went through wasn’t very pleasant. Back then it was because I was traveling and seeing the world. We were had, we really were, in a lot of ways.  But we wanted to play baseball. That’s as high as a black man could go to play baseball at that time. We got two dollars a day to eat on. We wanted $2.50. Today, players strike over that kind of thing. We didn’t get that extra 50 cents. We kept on playing. We wanted to play ball. Besides, at $450 a month, I was making more than my father ever made.”21

Blair told Harris he couldn’t recall ever losing more than one game, but the problem in pinning that down later was the lack of accurate records: “They just weren’t kept.” He ascribed that more to his teammates’ offense than his own pitching. “I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: If you could hold a team to seven, eight, nine runs, you could win a game with the Grays. They were that good. I didn’t have many 1-0 games. Most of ’em were blowouts. If anybody could pitch at all, they could win there.

 “I only lost one game that I know of, 2-1 to the Philadelphia Stars at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. It was on a Sunday. That’s what I say. Somebody else wants to say something else, I’m not going to dispute ’em.

“I have no idea how many games I won, no idea. I couldn’t tell you to save my life. I do know I never had a home run hit off me in the eight years I played baseball.”22

In later years, Blair was occasionally welcomed at events honoring former Negro Leagues players. His son Douglas says he held good memories of his time playing baseball. “We heard so much as kids, and thought maybe there was a little yeast in the stories, but later on they made some movies like Bingo Long and the Traveling All-Stars.” He recalled buying his father the video of the 1976 film The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings. It had a little Hollywood stuff, but a lot of that was based on the Homestead Grays. Some of that was a little dramatized, but for the most part [he thought it was accurate.] They did some barnstorming. One story he liked to tell, they came to Richmond and play a game on a Friday, and then go south to another town called Colonial Heights. The story was that they’d give you a ticket if you were going one mile an hour over the speed limit. They stopped the bus and the man said, ‘How much is the ticket?’ and they said $100. ‘Well, here’s $200 because we’re coming back Sunday.’ So they gave him $200. You think that money ever made it to the court?”23

The main regret Douglas recalls his father expressing was when the commissioner of baseball cracked down on the barnstorming tours that often pitted Negro Leagues players against teams led by major leaguers such as Dizzy Dean. It spared the embarrassment to major-league ball that occurred when Negro Leagues teams beat some of the best in baseball. “That’s what it was,” says Douglas. “Dizzy Dean was one of the best pitchers in baseball. It wasn’t like these were third-string guys.”

Blair died of colon cancer at Johnston-Willis Hospital in Richmond on January 12, 1996, survived by his wife, Ruth Brown Blair, and described as “a retired educator and former pitcher in the Negro National League.” Also surviving were the couple’s three sons, Garnett Blair Jr., Douglas, and William. The three played Little League baseball when they were young. Garnett Jr. retired from the Virginia Employment Commission, Douglas sold life insurance for 37 years, and William works in the automobile business.

In 2008, Garnett Blair was honored with induction into the Virginia Union University Hall of Fame.

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Blair’s player file from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Baseball-Reference.com, and the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com. Thanks to Douglas Blair, to Michael J. Szvetitz of the Richmond Times Dispatch, and to Selicia Gregory Allen of Virginia Union University.

Notes

1 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994), 88.

2 “Garnett Blair, Point Scoring Ace Of Pittsburgh High Schools, Turns Attention To Baseball,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 11, 1939: 13.

3 Ibid.

4 Robert Hughey, “Monarchs Qualify for City Series,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 30, 1941: 16.

5 “Former Pitcher G.E. Blair Dies at 74,” Richmond Times Dispatch, January 14, 1996: B3.

6 R. Earl Johnson, “The Sports Whirl,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 1, 1946: 25.

7 Buck Leonard with James A. Riley, Buck Leonard: The Black Lou Gehrig, An Autobiography (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), 162.

8 Letter from Douglas Blair Jr. to author, June 21, 2016.

9 “Negro Hurler May Sign With Colts,” Richmond Times Dispatch, April 9, 1953: 24. Wherever he may have played, he is not listed in the standard sources as having played professional baseball in Cuba.

10 Author interview with Douglas Blair on March 17, 2016.

11 “Giants Divide With Red Wings; Blair Star,” Richmond Times Dispatch, June 7, 1948: 16.

12 “Grays Hope to Clinch First-Half Flag Today,” Washington Evening Star, June 12, 1949: 44.

13 James A. Riley, 89. Riley says that Blair worked as a meatcutter in the Pittsburgh area after completing his military service.

14 See for instance the Beckley (West Virginia) Post-Herald, June 24, 1949: 12.

15 “Smith’s Stars Whip Giants by 1-0 in 13th,” Richmond Times Dispatch, September 18, 1949: 70.

16 “Negro Hurler May Sign With Colts.”

17 Mike Harris, “Limelight at Last,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 29, 1993.

18 Letter from Douglas Blair Jr.

19 Douglas Blair interview.

20 Mike Harris.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Douglas Blair interview.

The Pittsburgh Courier reported a Grays victory over a South Carolina squad in the first exhibition game that spring, and noted that Homestead’s new third baseman was “Bob Boston, big Ohio star, (who) played at third and out of five times at bat got one hit, a long line drive into right field and a walk.”1 Boston, the paper later noted in a report from spring training in Daytona Beach, Florida, was a “young star from East Liverpool, Ohio,” and at 6-feet-4 and 205 pounds appeared to “have the inside track for third base this season since Howard Easterling left the hot corner. Boston led the East Liverpool City League in fielding and batting last year, and has made quite an impression on Manager Vic Harris.”2 The 1948 season would prove to be Bob Boston’s only year in professional baseball, but he filled an important regular-season spot on the final Negro League World Series champion squad.

On July 4, 1918, Ed and Bernice “Burma” (Evans) Boston welcomed Robert Lee, their sixth and last child, into the world in Dearing, Georgia, a small community just west of Augusta.3 Boston’s parents were extraordinarily hard-working people who, by available accounts, raised their family well.4 Ed had emigrated from Nova Scotia, Canada, as a boy, and worked as a sawmill laborer at Culpepper & Company in McDuffie County. He died shortly after Robert’s birth, at the young age of 26 or 27.5 His even younger widow, called “Burma” by family and friends, had married Ed at the age of 14 and now was left to both raise and provide for her children on her own. Working out of their rented house in Rome, Georgia, she labored as a laundress just to keep a roof over their heads and a little bit of food on the table. The burden was incredible, and she died two days before Christmas in 1934.

Robert, the youngest child, was only 16 and was not yet ready to move out on his own. A neighbor took Boston in, and he took a job as a laborer at a local quarry. Like so many youths of that time, irrespective of race, he had developed a deep affection for baseball and filled his free hours with any games he could find. Boston later moved to Gadsden, Alabama, to take a job with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. According to Mark F. Twyford:

“The rubber company fielded two teams, one for whites and the other for blacks. An applicant’s baseball abilities often played a deciding role in the outcome of the hiring process, and those employees who played for the company’s teams were given more desirable jobs and had to work fewer hours each week than those who did not play.  Boston’s job required him to work only two days a week. The remainder of his work week was spent playing baseball.”6

The young player reputedly took the field with several semipro teams in the area, largely as a way to supplement his meager income. In 1940, he married fellow Georgian Lucy Hachett. Boston continued a life of work and play without much money until 1943; on March 26 of that year, he reported to Fort Benning, Georgia, and enlisted in the US Army. Lucy moved to East Liverpool, Ohio, to stay with her sister while Robert was away. Boston remained on active duty through the end of World War II, but he was not finally discharged until 1946. He had obviously been a solid soldier, as he was a technician fifth grade (the modern equivalent would be an E-3) when he departed. Upon his release from active duty, Boston left the South for good, moving to Ohio to rejoin Lucy and taking a $300-a-month job at Crucible Steel in nearby Midland, Pennsylvania.

At Midland he naturally joined the company baseball team, with whom he played against numerous industrial-league players and teams. Boston distinguished himself in every aspect of the game: Not only was he well regarded as a powerful hitter and fast runner, he also pitched at least one no-hitter and struck out 16 batters in a game. It was his bat, though, that made outsiders pay attention. Clarence Huffman, manager of the Golden Star Dairy team in the East Liverpool City League, invited Boston to try out for his team.7 When Boston accepted a roster spot, he became the only black player in the league.

In his first season at the higher level, Boston batted a reported .560 while leading Golden Star to the city championship. It was that renown that led the Homestead Grays to offer him a $500-a-month contract to play for them in 1948. Boston roomed with Luke Easter, a player with whom he drew favorable comparisons, and played well, as did the entire Grays team. In one evening game, he ran into a light pole at full speed while chasing down a foul ball and shattered part of his arm in the collision. Doctors told the Grays that Boston needed complete rest in order for his arm to heal properly, but Harris had his prized third baseman in the lineup as soon as the open wound on his arm had closed.

A few games after his return to the diamond, Boston attempted to throw out a runner who had grounded to third, but his arm would not go forward. Twyford noted that the rookie just dropped his glove and walked off the field; he exited both the game and Negro League baseball.8 The career-ending injury deprived Boston of the opportunity to prove his mettle with the Grays; had he been able to do so, he may even have had a shot at joining a team in Organized Baseball, since integration of the major and minor leagues was now under way. Boston was also deprived of the chance to play in the last Negro League World Series, as the Grays won the NNL championship and went on to defeat the NAL champion Birmingham Black Barons four games to one in that landmark series.

After the abrupt end to his stint with the Grays, Boston returned to Crucible Steel and worked there until his retirement in 1980. Eventually his arm healed well enough that he was able to resume playing for local baseball teams. Between 1948 and 1951 he was part of two East Liverpool City League championships with Golden Star Dairy, and he dominated most of the statistical categories. He also played first base on a team in an East Liverpool fast-pitch softball league. After 1951, now in his early to mid-30s, Bob Boston retired from baseball entirely, but continued to play softball until the late 1950s.

After Boston retired from Crucible Steel, he and Lucy relocated across Ohio to the Dayton area. Lucy died in 1993, and Bob was eventually admitted to long-term care at the Dayton Veterans Administration hospital.  At 1:30 A.M. on July 2, 2002, Robert Boston died.9 He and Lucy are buried together at the VA cemetery in Dayton.

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

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

Ancestry.com.

Baseball-Reference.com.

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

Notes

1 “Grays Curb Bats fo(sic)Spartansburg Sluggers, Win First Game 9 to 4,”  Pittsburgh Courier, April 3, 1948.

2 “Pittsburgh Opener Set for April 29; Outfield Has Power,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 10, 1948.

3 It is not uncommon for records of the day (and particularly Negro birth, death, and marriage records) to be incomplete, especially in the Southern United States a mere generation after the end of Reconstruction. There are several competing accounts of the details of Boston’s birth.  James A. Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Leagues and Boston’s player listing at baseball-reference.com both give his birthdate as July 4, 1922, and his birthplace as Gaston, Alabama. Boston’s biographer on the East Liverpool (Ohio) Historical Society’s website is confident that Boston was indeed born on July 4, but in 1919 instead of 1922, and in Rome, Georgia, rather than Gaston, Alabama. Official census, Social Security, and other records variously list his birth date as either July 3, 4, or 13 in 1918, or July 4, 1919. His military discharge information used the July 4, 1918 date; thus, for the sake of consistency, that is the date that will be assumed to be correct in this biography. Additionally, based on the weight of documentation available onAncestry.com, it is most likely that Boston was actually delivered in Dearing, Georgia, rather than Rome, Georgia, or Gaston, Alabama.

4 Mark F. Twyford, “Blastin’ Bob Boston: East Liverpool’s Link to the Negro Baseball League,” eastliverpoolhistoricalsociety.org/Bobboston.htm, accessed June 21, 2016. This essay first appeared in the 20th Anniversary Tri-State Pottery Festival Plater Turner’s Handbook, published in June 1987. Twyford relied on personal knowledge of the subject coupled with very thorough research to write his article about Robert Boston. To the greatest extent possible, the information used from that source has been corroborated by other, independent sources.

5 Ed Boston certified on his 1917 draft registration form  that he had been born in 1891, but he was unaware of the exact date of his birth; he was also illiterate and was unable to sign his name on the form. (Source: US Draft Registration Form for Ed Boston, dated June 1917).

6 Ibid,

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Dayton Daily News, July 7, 2002: B5.

Britton played in the Negro Leagues for more than 10 years, typically at third base. Unfortunately, we know far less than we would like to know regarding his life — not atypical for Negro League ballplayers.

He was born as John A. Britton Jr. in Mount Vernon, Georgia — the county seat of Montgomery County — on April 21, 1919. His father was, of course, John A. Britton. His mother is listed in Social Security Administration files as Tehnie Collins. Britton’s death certificate gives her name as Tempie Collins.

How and when Britton got started playing baseball eludes us so far, but he is said to have begun in 1940 with the Minnesota Gophers, described as “a minor black team.”1 His play there was said to have impressed Abe Saperstein of the Gophers, who recommended him to Cincinnati’s Ethiopian Clowns and to the Homestead Grays; he signed with the Clowns later in the year. Jim Riley writes, “While with the Clowns, he played shadow ball and engaged in a few of their comedy routines. The one best received by the fans involved his wig. He had a clean-shaven head, but wore a wig and, as part of a comedic routine, after a bad call by the umpire would take his hat off and throw it on the ground in mock anger while arguing the ump’s call, and then would take his wig off and do the same with it. Then he would pick the wig and hat back up and put them on this head. The crowds loved it.”2

John Britton batted left-handed but threw right-handed, stood 5-feet-8, and is listed at 160 pounds. And he had a shaved head.

Dick Clark and Larry Lester say he also played for the New Orleans-St. Louis Stars in 1940. Jim Riley has him with the Ethiopian Clowns from 1940 through 1942, though at least one news story had him still playing for the Gophers (though the geography had changed somewhat) along with Goose Tatum and others.3 In March 1943 the Macon (Georgia) Telegraph reported that “Johnny Britton, hard-hitting third-sacker of the St. Paul-Milwaukee Gophers has been signed by the Clowns for this year.”4 Tatum and King Tut were both on the 1943 Clowns team and, along with pitcher Edward “Peanuts Nyasses” Davis, were said to form a “triumvirate of buffoons unequaled in baseball funology.”5

In 1943 one unidentified author wrote, “Britton hit .389 for the 1943 Cincinnati Clowns and was traded to the Birmingham Black Barons for Hoss Walker. With Birmingham, Britton was a key player in the heart of the order, batting third for the next five years.”6 Jesse “Hoss” Walker had already been with the Black Barons since 1941, however, and played for Birmingham in the 1943 playoffs and World Series against Homestead, so one is left to wonder when the trade took place. Given the fluidity of player movement in those days, it is not at all impossible that Walker opened and closed the season with Birmingham but was traded to Cincinnati at some point during the season. Perhaps the trade was after the season. Newspaper articles in May and June of 1943 show Walker at shortstop for Birmingham and Britton with the Clowns.

When games were played, of course, in cities such as Dallas and New Orleans, newspapers noted, “Special sections will be provided for Negro and white fans” or “A large section of the Pel Stadium stands will be reserved for white patrons tonight.”7

In 1944 John Britton played for the Barons and is shown with a .338 batting average in 68 plate appearances with one homer and 11 RBIs.8 One suspects he played in more games than this, but records are unfortunately less than complete throughout Negro Leagues baseball. John Holway cited his average as .324, ranking him fifth among Negro American League batters.9 Holway may well have been citing an unattributed summary record in Britton’s Hall of Fame player file, which shows a .324 batting average over 259 at-bats in 65 games. The New Orleans Times-Picayune showed him at .327.10 Artie Wilson led the team in hitting.

The Kansas City Monarchs had beaten the Homestead Grays in the 1942 Negro World Series. The Barons had finished second in the Negro American League in 1941 and 1942. Now in 1948, it was Birmingham’s turn to take on the Grays, Negro National League champion for six consecutive years. The series went to the seventh game, but Homestead prevailed.

Both Wilson and Britton were among five Barons in an “auto smashup” just prior to the Series, but as of September 16 most were expected to play, though Tommy Sampson had a broken leg and hip.11 Britton was in fact unable to play, due to a dislocated left hand, and both shortstop Wilson and catcher Lloyd “Pepper” Bassett were forced to miss action.12

Lester “Buck” Lockett filled in for Britton at third base. Homestead took the first three games, but Birmingham shut out the Grays 6-0 in Game Four behind the pitching of Johnny Huber. The Grays won in five games, and then the two teams continued to play each other in a series of exhibition games. Britton was active again with the touring Black Barons team, which made it to California in October. He was with the team during the preseason and as late as the end of April, but then departed, taking a sojourn to Mexico.

He played for the Azules de Veracruz (Veracruz Blues) in Mexico City, not in the coastal city of Veracruz. The owner of the team was Jorge Pasquel, himself a native of Veracruz. Signing Britton was far from an aberration. In 1940 alone, Pasquel had signed 13 Negro League players for the Blues. Author John Virtue reports that “Many fans dubbed the Azules the Aquila Negra because it was the Veracruz team with more black players than any other team in Mexico.”13 Veracruz at one time or another featured six future residents of Cooperstown: Cool Papa Bell, Ray Dandridge, Leon Day, Martin Dihigo, John Gibson, and Willie Wells. In 1942 Monte Irvin and Roy Campanella played baseball in Mexico, as did many others over the years. Willie Wells had managed the Azules in 1944, and Ray Dandridge was the manager when Britton played for the team in 1945.

With Dandridge playing third base and batting .366, Britton didn’t get that much work. He played in 29 games for Veracruz, collecting 118 at-bats. He was 33-for-118, with four doubles and three triples as his extra-base hits. That gave him a .280 batting average and a .364 slugging percentage. He did not homer, but he scored 18 runs and drove in 10. He had a pair of stolen bases.14

Back with the Birmingham Black Barons, Britton appears to have gotten into 27 games in 1945, with a .333 batting average.15

Britton played very little in 1946 and 1947, according to currently available statistics, with only seven plate appearances in 1946 (he was 2-for-7 at the plate) and 28 in 1947 (with only 25 at-bats and a .160 batting average).

In 1948 Britton got into quite a few more games, with 141 plate appearances, 18 RBIs, and a .201 batting average. He played in the 1948 World Series against Homestead, walking and scoring the second Barons run in the eighth inning of their 3-2 loss in Game One. In Game Four’s 14-1 loss, it was Britton who grounded out for the final out of the game.  

Britton started the 1949 season at third base with the Barons. After 58 games, in mid-September, Britton was batting .242. Final statistics have so far proven elusive. After the season Britton played on a Creole All-Stars team which played Jackie Robinson’s Major League All-Stars in an October 16 game at Atlanta’s Ponce de Leon Park. Don Newcombe pitched for the Major-League All-Stars and won, 15-4, but Britton was 2-for-4 in the game.16

Britton started the 1950 season with the Indianapolis Clowns and helped beat Birmingham in an April matchup, singling to drive in the first run of the game. In late May he was the lead man — scoring on the play — as the Clowns pulled off a triple play against the Barons during a Negro American League game in Chattanooga.17

By the end of May 1950, Britton had headed north of the border, to Canada, where he played very briefly for the Elmwood Giants, but primarily with the Winnipeg Buffalos.18 Syd Pollock of the Indianapolis Clowns said Britton had jumped his NAL contract, but that he’d be willing to accept a cash settlement from the Buffalos.19 In the May 27 game against the Brandon Greys, hitting into the wind, “John Britton, hard-slugging third sacker for the Buffs, powered a tremendous home run onto the roof of the Amphitheatre to open the seventh.”20 He also had two singles in the game, and was singled out by the Winnipeg Free Press for his fielding. He had a few three-hit games, on August 5 a triple and two doubles, and a four-hit game on the 24th. Barry Swanton in his book on the Mandak (Manitoba-Dakota) League reports that Britton batted .328 with the one home run and 26 RBIs. Jimmie Newberry and Leon Day both pitched for Winnipeg. The next year, 1951, Britton hit over .300 again, batting .310 with 3 homers and 40 RBIs for the Elmwood Giants. (Elmwood was a neighborhood in Winnipeg.)21

Having played in the United States, Mexico, and now Canada, what was Britton’s next move?

On April 28, 1952, the occupation of Japan officially ended and Japan was again declared independent. That same day Bill Veeck and the St. Louis Browns sent Britton and pitcher Jim Newberry to the Hankyu Braves. The Associated Press story announcing the arrangement is somewhat amusing and informative and worth quoting at length:

Bill Veeck and his St. Louis Browns, who always welcome festive occasions, today marked the return of Japanese independence by sending two farm club ball players to Japanese professional baseball.

This marks the first time in history American ball players have been loaned to clubs outside the Continental United States.

Both of the lend-lease players are Negroes –third baseman John Britton, Jr., and pitcher James Newberry, a curve-balling right hander.

Final arrangements for sending the pair to Japan were completed by Abe Saperstein, owner-coach of the Harlem Globetrotters, and a stockholder in the new Brownies. Britton and Newberry were scheduled to leave Chicago late today for the plane hop to Japan.

They are on loan to the Hankyu Braves of the Japanese Pacific League. The club plays in Nishinomiya Stadium at Osaka, about 300 miles south of Tokyo.

They’ll be the first Negro players in Japanese baseball.

Explaining the move timed with today’s unveiling of an independent Japan, Veeck said: “As Japan gains its independence as the world’s newest democracy, we of the St. Louis Browns are happy to aid the mutual relations between the United States and Japan by sending two of our American ball players to the Japanese pro leagues. In Japan, as well as in America, baseball is the national game, and we feel that this gesture on the part of American baseball will go a long way toward cementing good relations with the Japanese.22

A photo of Britton, Saperstein, and Newberry ran in Jet magazine on May 15.23

One might wonder why a Japanese team would be named the Braves. Before the Second World War, the Hankyu baseball team was established in 1936 by Ichizo Kobayashi, the founder of Hankyu Railways Group. The team’s name was “Hankyu-Gun” (“Gun” means military troop in Japanese), and this name went through until 1946. Perhaps needless to say, the idea of a baseball team bearing such a name was not appropriate in the immediate aftermath of the war.

In fact, all the teams were “-Gun” before the war’s end, and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers suggested a change in name.

In 1947, perhaps with the Chicago Cubs in mind, the Hankyu team changed its name to the Hankyu Bears. As Tom Yamamoto explained, the team unfortunately went on a losing streak right at the start of the season and some felt the name was another poor association, since in financial circles a bear market indicates one of rapidly falling prices. They decided to appeal to the public for suggestions. The name Braves was selected and the person who had submitted the winning suggestion explained that he had had the Boston Braves team in mind.

The season was already under way when Britton and Newberry arrived. In their first game for Hankyu, at Korakuen Stadium on May 7, 1952, Britton was 2-for-4 with a triple against the Mainichi Orions. He tried to steal home, but was thrown out at the plate. Jimmie Newberry started and went five innings, but the game was lost, 3-2, the three runs attributed to Newberry’s reliever, Yoshio Tempo. The winning pitcher for Mainichi was a Nikkei Nisei from Hawaii, Masato Morita. Britton, who wore number 8, was said to have made good defensive plays as the third baseman, backing up the pitcher and other infielders well.

Statistics show that Britton appeared in 78 games, batting .316 (seventh in Pacific League play) with 2 homers and 35 RBIs. We have learned since that foreigners arriving in Japan often have difficulty adjusting to Japanese pitching. Britton did so rather quickly and struck out only 12 times in 332 plate appearances.

Helping facilitate Britton’s welcome was manager Shinji Hamasaki, who had seen African American baseball players in his youth, finding them very friendly during a 1927 barnstorming tour of Japan. It was apparently he who requested that Hankyu sign some of the black ballplayers.

Britton was sufficiently impressive that he was named to the All-Star team, the first foreign player named to an All-Star team. The Braves finished fifth in what was that year a seven-team league, and not having made the top four, their season ended before any postseason play. Britton and Newberry returned to America on September 25.

Britton returned to Japan on February 13, 1953, and played a full season for the Braves, batting .276 with 60 RBIs. Still an exceptionally good contact hitter, he struck out only 13 times in 448 plate appearances. Former Negro Leaguers Larry Raines and Rufus Gaines were also on the Braves in 1953. The Braves finished in second place. Manager Shinji Hamasaki resigned, having not won the championship.

The season over, Britton once more returned to the United States. His professional baseball career as a regular was over. He still cropped up from time to time playing baseball. In Springfield, Massachusetts, he is found in June 1954 playing with the Harlem Globetrotters baseball team (headlined by Satchel Paige, though Paige was a no-show for this game), beating the House of David team, 9-6, Britton’s third-inning single having contributed to the win.24

After this point, Britton is not easily found in a search of online newspapers.

In June 1989 a reunion of Negro Leaguers was held in Atlanta and Britton was among them. An Associated Press photograph accompanied the story in some newspapers; the caption in the Augusta Chronicle read: “Former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe checks out dome of John Britton, who played for Birmingham Barons in Negro League.”25 Britton’s bald dome reminds one of his shaved-head antics with the Ethiopian Clowns.

The last 12 years of his life he had lived in Chicago and worked as a freight loader for Lifschultz Freight Lines.

Britton was being treated for prostate cancer at Oak Forest Hospital in Bremen Township, Oak Forest, Cook County, Illinois, when he died on December 2, 1990, of an acute myocardial infarction. Oak Forest is a city about 24 miles south/southwest of Chicago. He was survived by his wife, the former Louise Paige. He is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery on Chicago’s South Side.

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Many people were very helpful in gathering information for this biography. Baseball records had not recorded the place of his death or burial, but SABR member David J. Holmes secured his death certificate from the Cook County Clerk. Terry Bohn helped with leads and information on the Man-Dak League years of 1950 and 1951.

Very helpful as well were Tomotada “Tom” Yamamoto and Ichiro Shinohara of SABR’s Tokyo Chapter, and Dr. Virgilio Partida, SABR member from Mexico, and Daigo Fujiwara of SABR Boston.

Notes

1 baseball-reference.com/bullpen/John_Britton.

2 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994), 111. Riley is also the source for the Abe Saperstein story.

3 “Ace First Sacker With Colored Nine,” Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield, Illinois), July 15, 1942: 10.

4 “Cincinnati Clowns to Open Season,” Macon Telegraph, March 29, 1943: 2.

5 “Clowns to Meet Monarchs Tonight,” Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield, Illinois), September 14, 1943: 11.

6 baseball-reference.com/bullpen/John_Britton.

7 See the Dallas Morning News, July 28, 1943: Section Two, 7, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 27, 1943: 12.

8 John Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House, 2001), 406.

9 Holway, 413.

10 “Grays, Barons Meet Tuesday,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, September 17, 1944: 24.

11 Ibid. See also John Klima, Willie’s Boys (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 40.

12 “Black Barons Back at Top Strength,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 31, 1945: 9.

13 John Virtue, South of the Color Barrier: How Jorge Pasquel and the Mexican League Pushed Baseball Toward Racial Integration (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2008), 78.

14 Mexican League statistics are courtesy of SABR member Dr. Virgilio Partida, citing Pedro Treto-Cisneros, editor. Enciclopedia del Biesbol Mexicano, eighth edition (Mexico City, 2015).

15 The source for this is the unattributed player record in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

16 Joel W. Smith, “Jackie Robinson All-Stars Beat Creoles Before 7,500,” Atlanta Daily World, October 18, 1949: 5.

17 Chicago Defender, May 27, 1950: 19.

18 His first appearing with Elmwood is noted by Bob Moir, “Wells’ Double Beats Carman in Tenth,” Winnipeg Free Press, May 25, 1950: 16.

19 “Contract-jumpers in Loop?” Brandon (Manitoba) Daily Sun, June 23, 1950: 2.

20 Jim Reid, “Dropped Third Strike Gives Greys Win,” Brandon Daily Sun, May 29, 1950: 2.

21 Barry Swanton, The Mandak League: Haven for Former Negro League Ballplayers, 1950-1957 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2006), 79.

22 Associated Press, “Veeck Sets Precedence by Farming Pair to Jap Loop,” Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), April 29, 1952: 11. Rob Fitts comments: “The first African-American player to play professionally in Japan was actually Jimmy Bonna, who played in 7 games for the 1936 Dai Tokyo team. Although he hit .458 he did not stay with the team and had little impact on the history of Japanese baseball.” Fitts’ February 25, 2013, post is found at agatetype.typepad.com/agate_type/2013/02/early-black-ballplayers-in-japan.html.

23 Jet, May 15, 1952: 51.

24 Harold W. Robbins, “Satchel Paige Does Not Appear at Pynchon Park,” Springfield Republican, June 27, 1954: 7.

25 Associated Press, “Negro League Greats Gather to Reminisce About Old Times,” Augusta (Georgia) Chronicle, June 5, 1989: B5.

Early works about the Negro Leagues provided only the most cursory introductions for many of the players. In The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, James Riley describes Bruce as “a mediocre hitter without significant power … [who] was also an average defensive player.”1 The single biographical paragraph and its few accompanying statistical snippets provide an incomplete portrait of a man whose life, like the lives of players from all leagues in all eras, was far more complex.

Clarence Bruce the baseball player was actually Clarence Earl Bruce Jr., and he was born on September 26, 1924, in Pittsburgh, the first of six children born to Clarence and Blanche Bruce. Clarence Sr. made his living as a headwaiter at the Roosevelt Hotel Downtown in Pittsburgh. Whenever he could, he attended games of both of the city’s successful Negro League franchises, the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. He often took his namesake son to games with him, thus giving Clarence Jr. the thrill of seeing future Hall of Famers like Josh Gibson, James “Cool Papa” Bell, and Satchel Paige ply their trades in the primes of their careers.2

In an era when baseball was truly the national pastime, Bruce was no different from any other boy; he spent a good deal of his youth playing sandlot baseball in Pittsburgh. Though he enjoyed baseball, his education was important and, after graduating from Westinghouse High School, he enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh. His college career was brief, lasting about a year, because he was drafted into the US Army in 1943 as World War II continued to rage.

Bruce took part in the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 that turned the tide of the war against Nazi Germany. Interestingly, his own family was unaware of his role in the war until they obtained his complete military record after his death,3 a circumstance that may or may not be attributable to the fact that Bruce no doubt experienced many of the horrors of war that soldiers often do not care to recount.

Bruce was discharged from the Army in 1945, shortly after the end of the war, and he began his professional baseball career with the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers of the United States League in 1946. The USL, a third major Negro league that began play in 1945, was the brainchild of former Pittsburgh Crawfords owner Gus Greenlee. In order to lend credence to the endeavor, Greenlee struck a deal with Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, who prompted the move of the USL’s Hilldale franchise to Brooklyn. Immediately, the Brown Dodgers became the league’s best-known franchise, and they gained additional publicity by hiring Negro League legend Oscar Charleston as their manager, though Charleston was gone before the end of the team’s inaugural season.

The belief at the time was that Rickey was using the USL as a vehicle to allow him to evaluate African-American players for the Brooklyn Dodgers under the guise of merely scouting them for the Brown Dodgers. There is considerable doubt among modern baseball historians that this was Rickey’s true purpose (though Rickey sought to confirm it years afterward4), especially since he withdrew from active participation in the USL when it became apparent that the Brown Dodgers were a failure. Rickey blamed the franchise’s lack of viability on the team’s owner/operator, Joe Hall, who Rickey said had “no idea of promotional work” with the result that the team “did not draw at all.”5

The documentation of many Negro League players’ careers is such a difficult task that Bruce still does not appear on the 1946 Brown Dodgers’ roster in many of the currently available resources.6 However, clear evidence for his being part of the team exists in the form of an old newspaper photograph with a handwritten caption that identifies Peewee Bruce and Sonny Woods,7 who are wearing Brooklyn jerseys while sitting in a dugout during a game. The photo has been preserved thanks to Blanche Bruce who, fulfilling the role of the proud mother, kept a scrapbook of her son’s baseball career that contains photos, a player contract, letters, and newspaper clippings from 1946 through 1953. Clarence Bruce spent only one season with the Brown Dodgers (for which no statistics are currently available) as the USL folded after the 1946 campaign.

The USL’s demise turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Bruce, who signed with the Homestead Grays of the Negro National League in 1947. This gave him the opportunity to play at least some of his games in his hometown of Pittsburgh. His player contract shows that Bruce was paid $300 per month from May 1 to September 15 of that year, which was no meager sum for the average Negro League player of the 1940s.8

The Grays alternated home games between their true home in Pittsburgh, where they most often played at Forbes Field,9 and their second “home” in Washington, D.C., where they rented Griffith Stadium. It was not unusual for the Grays to play a day game at one home field and then ride the team bus to play a night game at their alternate home. When they were on the road, the Grays players – like all Negro Leaguers – either had to stay at African-American hotels or with black host families. The former arrangement resulted in as many players being crammed into as few rooms as possible, while the latter one created difficulty with transportation since players were spread out among families that did not always live near one another.

In spite of such less than ideal travel conditions, Bruce was elated to be playing for the Grays. His son Kirk Bruce recalled his father’s fond description of road trips, saying, “They would all pile into a couple of hotel rooms. Sometimes they would have some cheese and crackers and something to drink, and they thought they were living large [because they were] playing professional baseball.”10

Bruce took great pride in being a professional Negro League player. The fact that the 1947 Grays roster was filled with stars like Luke Easter, Buck Leonard, and Luis Márquez  demonstrates why Bruce once declared, “We didn’t just play and think we were inferior. We thought we were great ballplayers and I think we walked with that air. … We knew we were great players. And the fans knew it. I think the white fans knew it.”11 In fact, far from feeling inferior, Bruce believed that the American and National Leagues [of Organized Baseball] were not the true major leagues because they did not have Negro players in them.12

The 22-year-old Bruce saw limited action in his first season with Homestead, during which he was, according to Riley, a part-time starter who batted .246.13 In their landmark The Negro Leagues Book, Dick Clark and Larry Lester list the same batting average and fill in a 34-for-138 batting line that included four doubles and three home runs.14

In 1948, his second season with the Grays, Bruce became the starting second baseman after Marquez was moved to center field.15 In an era in which line scores largely replaced box scores for Negro League press coverage, the only available statistics show Bruce with a 3-for-25 batting line for a .120 BA.16 Once again, such a minute sample cannot accurately reflect his usual level of play since he was the regular second baseman for that year’s championship squad.17

Homestead, a powerhouse franchise through most of its existence, had won both the 1943 and 1944 Negro League World Series. The 1948 squad aimed at a third title in six years and was powerful enough to instill fear into the National League tenants of Forbes Field, the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1988 Bruce retold the story of a Grays-Pirates game that never came to pass:

“We were supposed to play the Pirates in an exhibition (in 1948), but some of their players came to watch us against the New York Black Yankees. Buck Leonard hit a home run over the roof in right field, Luke Easter hit one off the façade in right and Bob Thurman one over the 447-foot mark. We heard after that the Pirates didn’t want to play us.”18

Bruce and his Grays teammates rounded into playoff form in a doubleheader on Sunday, September 12, at which a crowd of 6,000– a far cry from the 35,000-plus the Grays often drew in the Negro Leagues’ heyday – gathered at Griffith Stadium to bid farewell to retiring first baseman Buck Leonard. Leonard received tributes and gifts between victories over the Indianapolis Clowns (8-3) and Kansas City Monarchs (6-1), with Bruce contributing an RBI double in the second inning of the nightcap.19 Bruce maintained a lifelong friendship with Leonard, a future Hall of Famer who was lauded for “his gentlemanly qualities on and off the field and his inspirational leadership as captain of the Grays.”20

Homestead clinched the NNL’s second-half championship and faced off against the first-half champion Baltimore Elite Giants, providing Bruce with the opportunity to participate in a playoff series that had an ending unmatched by any series in any league in the history of baseball. The Grays won the first two games, 6-0 and 5-3, and they turned a 4-4 tie into a 7-4 lead in top of the ninth inning of Game Three on September 17. It was then that Baltimore’s 11:15 P.M. curfew became a factor. The Elite Giants, believing that the entire ninth inning would have to be replayed if it went past 11:15, began to stall the game by refusing to get Grays batters out.21 At first, their tactic appeared to work as Game Three was indeed suspended and, before it was concluded, Game Four – an 11-3 Baltimore win – was played on September 19.

The next day, September 20, the Grays pulled off the oddity of a three-game sweep in spite of a Game Four loss, owing to a decision made by Rev. John H. Johnson, the NNL’s president. Johnson applied a league rule that any inning begun before 11:00 P.M. had to be completed (even if it lasted past the 11:15 curfew) and “ruled [the Elite Giants’ stalling] was unsportsmanlike and therefore grounds for the game to be forfeited to the Grays, 9-0.”22

In such manner the Grays advanced to the World Series, where they met a familiar opponent in the Birmingham Black Barons, the very team they had victimized for their 1943 and 1944 championships. The third time around resulted in the same outcome as the Grays won the Series in five games. Their only loss came in Game Three when Birmingham’s 17-year-old center fielder, Willie Mays, knocked a one-out single in the bottom of the ninth that scored Bill Greason from second base for a 4-3 victory. Clarence Bruce, ever proud of his time with the Grays, made sure to mention often that he had played against Mays – a future Hall of Famer who lit the major leagues on fire – back in the days before most of the American public had heard of him.23

The Negro Leagues were on the decline, however, and the NNL folded after the 1948 season. The Grays joined the Negro American Association in 1949, played as an independent club in 1950, and then disbanded in May 1951. As a result of these changes to Homestead’s fortunes, Bruce and three Grays teammates made an exodus to Canada in 1949, where they joined the Farnham (Quebec) Pirates of the Provincial League; Eudie Napier, Tom “Big Train” Parker, and Willie Pope were the other Grays on that season’s Farnham squad. In 1951, another of Bruce’s Homestead teammates, Sam Bankhead, became the first African-American manager of a predominantly white team at Farnham, but Bruce was no longer with the team that year. Statistics for Provincial League teams of that era are as scarce as for the Negro Leagues, and the only available statistics for Bruce show him batting .222 (12-for-54) in 14 games with Farnham in 1950. It was his last season to play professional baseball.

Once his baseball career was over, Bruce returned to Pittsburgh and settled into life as a family man. He married Marguerite Cole in 1952 and spent 35 years working as a clerk for the US Post Office and its successor, the US Postal Service; the couple had a son, Kirk, and a daughter, Jennifer. Prior to beginning his career with the post office, Bruce had one last flirtation with professional baseball in the form of a tryout offer from the Cleveland Indians. Harry “Suitcase” Simpson, who had been Bruce’s opponent as a member of the NNL’s Philadelphia Stars in 1947-48, was now an Indians player and had recommended Bruce. The team told Bruce it “would be happy to give [him] a trial at Cleveland Stadium”24 Bruce did not make the Indians team in 1953, and his son Kirk is unsure if his father ever went to Cleveland for the tryout at all.

Bruce took up golf and often played at The Dandy Duffer, an African-American golf club, where he honed his skills well enough to become a driving-range instructor. He passed his athleticism down to Kirk and Jennifer, who both played basketball at the University of Pittsburgh, and he became a fixture at his college-age children’s games. Kirk was a starting point guard from 1971 to 1975 and helped lead the 1974 team to a 25-4 record; as of 2016, he was an associate athletic director at Pitt. According to Kirk, though, Jennifer was the true star of the family; she became Pitt basketball’s all-time leading scorer – male or female – during her playing career at the university.25

In August 1986 Bruce had the opportunity to don a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform before a game at Three Rivers Stadium as part of a promotion by television station KDKA. The clock turned back more than 35 years as he fielded grounders and took batting practice. Bruce enthusiastically declared, “Oh, it felt good, I tell you. I hit ’em good. Almost jerked one out of there. I showed ’em.”26

Two years later – on September 10, 1988 – Bruce received an even greater honor and thrill as the Pirates raised a Homestead Grays flag over Three Rivers Stadium to commemorate the 1948 Grays championship. Bruce spoke on behalf of his former team and 18 other former Negro Leaguers were honored – a group that included Cool Papa Bell, Buck Leonard, and Monte Irvin – each receiving a medallion. Bruce told the fans, “We’ve waited and waited and waited to finally be recognized,”27 and emphasized the importance of that evening’s celebration when he said, “That means the Grays are a legend. That means we haven’t been forgotten.”28

On January 23, 1990, Bruce died in Pittsburgh at 65. Joan Bruce Griffin summed up her brother’s life and baseball career by saying, “He never complained. He loved baseball. He would have played it for nothing if they would have just let him.”29

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Kirk Bruce for taking the time to tell his father’s story and for providing valuable artifacts in the form of scanned photos, letters, and his father’s 1947 player contract with the Homestead Grays.

Thanks also to Dr. Rob Ruck, a University of Pittsburgh history professor and the author of several books about the Negro and Latin leagues, for pointing this author in the direction of his Pitt co-worker Kirk Bruce.

Notes

1 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 129.

2 Kirk Bruce, telephone interview with the author, January 18, 2016.

3 Kirk Bruce interview.

4 Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 451.

5 Ibid.

6 The Center for Negro League Baseball Research correctly lists Clarence Bruce as a member of the 1946 Brooklyn Brown Dodgers and lists him as playing shortstop. (The roster can be viewed at cnlbr.org.)

7 Sonny Woods has been identified as pitcher Sam Woods. His nickname, according to the CNLBR, was Buddy, which indicates that Mrs. Blanche Bruce may have documented Woods’s nickname incorrectly in her scrapbook. Kirk Bruce provided the author with a scanned copy of the photo, which unfortunately is too faded and grainy to reproduce well.

8 Newark Eagles co-owner Effa Manley said, “In those days $500 a month wasn’t a bad salary for a ballplayer, a real good player like [Monte] Irvin.” Irvin became a Hall of Famer so his salary was higher than the norm, but $300 per month was still a good salary for the average ballplayer. For the full interview with Manley, see John Holway, Voices From the Great Black Baseball Leagues (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1975). Manley’s quote can be found on page 320 of Holway’s book.

9 Though the Grays played the majority of their Pittsburgh games at Forbes Field, they played at many other ballparks in the Pittsburgh area as well. In May 1948, while Forbes Field was being resodded, the Grays played at West Field in Munhall. (“Grays to Play Games on Munhall Field,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 10, 1948).

10 Kirk Bruce interview.

11 Lawrence D. Hogan, Shades of Glory (Washington: National Geographic, 2006), 305.

12 Kirk Bruce interview.

13 Riley, 129.

14 Dick Clark and Larry Lester, eds., The Negro Leagues Book (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1994), 270. As a demonstration of the difficulty in determining Negro League players’ statistics, baseball-reference.com lists Bruce as going 10-for-37 for a .270 batting average in 1947; these statistics perhaps include only league games. (See baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=bruce-001cla).

15 Riley, 129.

16 “Clarence Bruce,” baseball-reference.com/register/player.cgi?id=bruce-001cla, accessed February 26, 2016.

17 Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia states that Bruce had a .255 batting average for the 1948 season; however, no specific statistics are provided, and it is unclear how many games or at-bats that average encompasses. In The Negro Leagues Book, Clark and Lester give no statistics for Bruce for 1948, emphasizing once more the difficulty in reconstructing the careers of Negro League players.

18 Alan Robinson, “THE NEGRO LEAGUE: Blacks Were Relegated to Their Own Hotels, Own Sides of Town and Played Baseball for Little Money, Recognition,” Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1988. (Homestead’s Bob Thurman related the same story, with slightly less detail, in Hogan, Shades of Glory, 305).

19 “6,000 Fans Pay Tribute to Grays’ Buck Leonard,” Afro-American, September 18, 1948.

20 Ibid.

21 Bob Luke, The Baltimore Elite Giants (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 2.

22 Ibid.

23 Kirk Bruce interview.

24 Laddie Placek, letter to Clarence Bruce, February 17, 1953. Kirk Bruce provided a scanned copy of this letter, which was typed on stationery that contains the logo and address of the Cleveland Indians’ spring-training complex in Daytona Beach, Florida. Placek was Cleveland’s director of scouts at that time.

25 Jennifer Bruce has since been supplanted by Lorri Johnson as the University of Pittsburgh’s all-time scoring leader in basketball.

26 Byron Smialek, “Clarence Bruce Made the Best of His Only Opportunity,” Washington (Pennsylvania) Observer-Reporter, January, 27, 1990.

27 Jimmy Dunn, “He Realized a Dream by Playing for Grays,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 20, 1997.

28 “Clarence Bruce, Was Homestead Grays Player” [obituary], Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 25, 1990.

29 Byron Smialek, “When the Line Was Crossed,” Washington (Pennsylvania) Observer-Reporter, April 8, 1997.

Luther Franklin Clifford Jr. was born on January 16, 1924, in Clairton, Pennsylvania, less than 15 miles south of Pittsburgh and the site of a steel mill.1 He was the only child of Luther Clifford Sr. and his wife, Effie, based on the family’s 1930 census listing (and with no evidence to the contrary). Young Luther was listed as Franklin in that census and was commonly called by his middle name at least through high school.2

Luther Sr. worked at the mill’s coke works. He was born on January 20, 1888, in Piedmont, West Virginia, and had five younger siblings, according to both the 1900 and 1910 censuses.3 His parents were the former Elizabeth Ann Stephens and pioneering schoolteacher James Henson Clifford. James’s older half-brother, John Robert Clifford, was the first African-American lawyer in West Virginia and a crusading newspaper publisher.4

In the 1910 census Luther Sr. was still living in West Virginia though newly married, to the former Isabella (or simply Isabell) Elizabeth Daugherty.5 In 1911 Luther’s brother Clyde was living within 20 miles of Clairton, in Irwin, where he ultimately lived for decades. A man named Luther Clifford was also in Irwin that year, as mentioned by a newspaper columnist reporting from there: “The fast colored team of Irwin defeated the McKeesport Colored Giants for the second time in a closely contested game by the score of 14 to 12,” Gertrude Simpson wrote for the Pittsburgh Courier. “The Irwin battery featured Clifford having 17 strike outs.” She also mentioned an H.L. Johnson of the Irwin team, and it was unlikely mere coincidence that later in her column she named Luther Clifford and Harrison Johnson among five local men with “class” who seemed “to be the only real sports of the burg.”6 Of course, it’s not a given that Luther was the pitcher named Clifford; it could have been Clyde, for one.

According to Luther Sr.’s draft registration card in 1917, he was married (though it doesn’t say to whom), a child was part of the household, and he was working for a steel works. The 1930 census indicates that he and Effie were married around 1922. Also living in Clairton by 1930 were Luther’s brother and sister-in-law, James Ward and Maude (sometimes Maud) Clifford, plus their children.

Effie Clifford was born on October 10, 1888, in Shirleysburg, Pennsylvania, after sister Pearl (who died of tuberculosis in 1919) and brother Ira. Effie and Ira remained close, and in the 1930 census she and the two Luthers were next door to Ira’s household. Pearl, Ira, and Effie were the children of the former Lucy Bulger and Franklin Barnes. Her paternal grandfather, James Barnes, was a private in the Union Army during the Civil War.7

A resident four years younger than Luther provided insights about the Clairton of Luther Jr.’s youth many years later. “It was an interesting community,” said Walter Cooper, in part because “there was not a rigid pattern of housing discrimination.”

“The nonwhite population was approximately (10 to 12) percent,” noted Cooper, who became the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Rochester in 1956. “We had neighbors from Italy, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Czechoslovakia. So as a youngster, I lived in a multi-ethnic, multicultural community. People being different – it never bothered me. We had harmonious relations with most of our neighbors. … During the Depression years, we were poor, but on occasions we fed the poor across racial lines.”8

One exception to such harmony was during the 1939-40 school year, while Luther was a high-school junior. “Colored pupils of the eighth grade of the junior high school returned from school … and told their parents that they were being separated from white pupils of the same class and placed in a room to themselves,” reported the Pittsburgh Courier. “Several honor students were included among those so treated.” After initial inertia, leaders undid that segregation. Though “Clairton colored citizens witnessed three days of the fanciest ‘buck-passing’ on record,” the paper wryly wrote, after many complaints “school board members went into action quickly, with the result that colored students were back in their regular rooms” that same week.9

Overall, Dr. Cooper said, “in the school itself, there was no pattern of discrimination and I think, by and large, the students got along very well with one another.”10

Luther Jr. was a three-sport athlete at the high school, and its 1941 yearbook noted that he was one of the senior lettermen in basketball. “Lumbering Franklin Clifford was considered the best offensive center in the section,” the yearbook asserted. He was also a force to be reckoned with on the gridiron. “Big ‘Ham’ Clifford smiles through his classes. But on the football field, his slow moving ways cease,” the yearbook enthused. “There he turns up the field in mad charges. He made the varsity in his senior year.” Track and field was Luther’s third sport, particularly discus and shot put.11

Luther’s name popped up on area sports pages during high school. In one preview of a football game during his senior year he was listed in Clairton’s starting lineup as a 185-pound fullback.12 He closed out his high-school athletic career with a few shot-put and discus victories in April and May of 1941. He even set a new local record by heaving a shot 47 feet, 10½ inches.13

Happy high-school experiences were offset in Luther Jr.’s family. For one, his maternal grandmother, Lucy, died at the start of his sophomore year. She had been living with them at the time of her death.14 His other grandmother had died in 1911, and his grandfathers also had died long before he was born; Franklin Barnes died months before Effie’s first birthday, and James Henson Clifford died in 1901, around the time Luther Sr. was 13 years old.

By the time Luther Jr. was halfway through high school his father was also out of the picture: Luther Sr. had left the household by the time of the 1940 census. At that point Effie and her son were living with her brother Ira. In fact, in the 1940 census there is a Luther Clifford who boarded with a family named Myrick in Washington, D.C. His age, race, and birthplace on that page, combined with the World War II draft registration card in his name filed during 1942, are all consistent with his being Luther Sr.15 The census page also indicates that he had lived in Washington for five years, which would have been before his son started attending Clairton High. In any case, during the summer of 1942 Effie formally filed for divorce from Luther Sr.16 That was about two months after her brother Ira died.

Luther Franklin Clifford Jr. entered the military on October 30, 1943, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and served in the Army Air Corps until March 1, 1946. At some point he married the former Sarah Thomas, and when he submitted a veterans benefits application in March of 1950 he listed a son, Ira Franklin Clifford, apparently 21 months old – which would put his birth in mid-1948.17

That was the year when Luther joined the Homestead Grays – and he was no longer called Franklin by sportswriters. He wasn’t with the Grays at the beginning of their season, based on box scores and game previews. One of the first newspaper articles about the Grays that mentioned him said that he had previously played for Clairton’s CIO (labor union) team.18 In mid-May, one area newspaper reported on the start of the baseball season for Clairton’s team in the United Steel Workers of America League: “It seemed in the seventh inning that Monessen was going to go run crazy but Bill Clifford, a catcher by profession, went to the mound and limited the outburst to one run.” That paper also included a box score, in which Clairton’s lineup had surnames matching those of Luther’s teammates in his high-school yearbook and basketball box scores back then.19 Thus, “Bill Clifford” might very well have been Luther.

With the Grays on June 11, Clifford made an immediate impact against the New York Black Yankees in a game played in New Castle, Pennsylvania, 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. He wasn’t the starting catcher, but it appears that he had already driven in at least one run with a hit when he came up with the score tied 8-8. “The fans got a thrill in the eighth inning as Clifford, a new catcher with the Grays making his first appearance … blasted a tremendous homer over the left center field fence,” reported the local paper. The Grays held on to win, 10-8, before 2,400 fans.20

Clifford didn’t see much action in those early weeks, but when the Chicago Defender published Negro National League statistics in early July, he was listed as having 4 hits in 8 at-bats. Meanwhile, the Grays led the standings with a record of 22-11.21

A noteworthy exhibition game early in Clifford’s career was played on July 3 in Charleroi, about 20 miles south of Clairton, between the Grays and Pie Traynor’s Charleroi All-Stars. Harold “Pie” Traynor had played his entire major-league career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, managed them from 1934 to ’39, and had been voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame earlier in 1948. A preview of the game noted that both Bobby Gaston and Clifford were competing as backups at catcher to Euthumn Napier.22 Still, the box score for the game shows that Clifford started and batted seventh. He went 1-for-5, drove in two runs and, at least as importantly, caught a shutout as the Grays won, 9-0. It was reportedly their 59th win in 61 exhibition games that season.23

In the Negro National League pennant race, Clifford contributed again toward the end of August. The Grays regained first place by edging the Philadelphia Stars, 4-3, thanks to homers by Luke Easter, Buck Leonard, and Clifford.24 Clifford also got into at least two NNL championship games against the Baltimore Elite Giants in mid-September, and reportedly even pitched in the first match.25 There is an absence of evidence of Clifford’s having played in that final Negro World Series victory over the Birmingham Black Barons, but his first season still had its moments.

After the NNL disbanded at the end of November, there was some supposition that the Grays wouldn’t continue. Meanwhile, the Negro American League imposed order on the competition to sign NNL players. In mid-February of 1949 the NAL unveiled a “distribution plan for players who formerly played with the now defunct Homestead Grays, Newark Eagles and New York Yankees.” Luther Clifford was assigned to the Louisville (previously Cleveland) Buckeyes along with Grays pitchers Tom Parker and John Wright.26 That ended up having no bearing on Clifford because the Grays continued to play as a member of the short-lived Negro American Association and then for one last season as a barnstorming team. It would be understandable if veteran players on the Grays found all this unnerving. Alas, Luther Clifford already had enough turmoil in his life at that point. Before the end of March 1949, he filed for divorce from Sarah. It was finalized three years later.27

In mid-May of 1949, one newspaper’s preview of an early game for the Grays reported Clifford’s weight as 230 pounds.28 That was 45 more than when he finished playing high-school football. More significantly, two other papers later in the month said that with the release of Euthumn Napier, Clifford was to be the starting catcher for the Grays. Napier had gone to a minor league in Canada to continue his career.29

One season after facing a team led by a Pittsburgh Pirates legend, Clifford caught for the Grays in another such game. This time the Grays were facing the legendary Honus Wagner. On May 18 the Grays beat the Honus Wagner Stars in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, just southwest of Pittsburgh.30

Other highlights for the season included a performance that may have caused some déjà vu. Against the Black Yankees in New Castle, the foe and site of his memorable debut about a year earlier, Clifford homered in the sixth inning with Wilmer Fields on base to provide the game’s decisive blow.31 Another noteworthy game for Clifford took place about a month later, before 2,300 fans in Lima, Ohio, against the House of David team from Benton Harbor, Michigan. In beating that memorable team 15-5, Clifford led the way with four hits, including a triple and double.32

Not quite qualifying as a highlight was the Washington Post’s preview of a mid-August game against the Indianapolis Clowns in which there may have been an attempt to cement a nickname for Clifford: While mentioning him in the same breath as Buck Leonard, and Red Fields, the unnamed sportswriter referred to him as Baby instead of Luther.33

The biggest news of Clifford’s season occurred in September, when he joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. In July the Monarchs sold outfielder Bob Thurman and catcher Earl Taborn to the Newark farm team of the New York Yankees, and Luther Clifford was eventually brought in to help fill Taborn’s shoes. He joined the Monarchs during a pennant race and faced at least two NAL opponents multiple times.

During the first week of September Clifford got into at least three games of a series against the New York Cubans. In one of those games he batted fifth and went 2-for-4.34 He also played in games that month against the Indianapolis Clowns. He received some recognition for a key contribution in one of them, when he batted after Elston Howard (later the first African-American to play for the Yankees), who had walked, and drove him in with a long triple.35 The Monarchs qualified for the NAL playoffs, but team owner Tom Baird quickly announced that the team wouldn’t participate, saying that it was too depleted after the departure of Thurman, Taborn, and others. “The failure of the league to insist on Kansas City living up to its obligation is a definite violation of the baseball law,” wrote Wendell Smith, the sports editor of the Pittsburgh Courier. “But from all indications, nothing will be done about it.”36 Smith was correct, and the Chicago American Giants replaced the Monarchs as the Western team in the championship series against the Baltimore Elite Giants.

One source of stability for Luther Clifford throughout the 1940s may have been where he called home. His address was 146 Lincoln Way in Clairton on the application for veterans benefits that he filed in March of 1950. Though he left the section about his father blank, he listed his mother at the same address. She in turn had given their address as almost the same, 149 Lincoln Way, when she signed her mother’s death certificate back in 1938.

Since his roots were in the greater Pittsburgh area, Clifford went from the Monarchs back to the Homestead Grays for 1950. The Negro American Association was no more, so the Grays were solely a barnstorming team. A preview of a mid-April game against the New York Black Yankees in North Carolina may have been the first time that the nickname used frequently for Clifford later in the decade appeared in print: Shanty.37 The box score for a game during the first week of May showed that he played right field (going 2-for-4), and a newspaper article a few days later named him as one of the team’s four outfielders.38 That was presumably because catcher Euthumn Napier had also rejoined the Grays, though Clifford did see some action behind the plate in May and following months.39

On July 1 Clifford was listed as the center fielder in a box score of an exhibition game in which he faced legendary pitcher Satchel Paige. The Grays played the Raleigh Clippers in Charleston, West Virginia, and Paige pitched three innings. Clifford went 0-for-5, so he didn’t get a hit off Paige.40 A few days later a newspaper reported that the Grays had already compiled a record of 64 wins, 8 losses, and a tie, and that 7 of those victories were over the Paige All-Stars, for which Satchel typically pitched at least three innings.41 Thus, Clifford may have batted against Paige in more than one game.

Late in July the Grays made a trip to Canada that would change Clifford’s life forever. The big story from the game itself, which the Grays won 18-8, was that Josh Gibson Jr. was hit in the head by a pitched ball and suffered what was called “a slight concussion.” The game was a benefit for the Shriners’ Crippled Children’s Hospital Fund, so goodwill between the teams was apparently assumed and reports of the incident didn’t suggest any intent by the pitcher. The significance for Clifford was that the game was against the Brantford Red Sox,42 a team he soon joined, in a city where he lived most of the rest of his life.

On August 3, 1950, Clifford was reportedly the pitcher for the Grays against the New York Black Yankees at Charleston, West Virginia. The Grays won handily, 11-4.43 Clifford’s name showed up a few more times in the following weeks, but his appearances dwindled by September. About three weeks into September it was reported that former Grays pitcher Dan Bankhead, who still had a few games left with the Brooklyn Dodgers, would tour with the Grays after the major leagues’ regular season ended. Games were scheduled at least three weeks into October, but newspaper coverage was minimal.44 The Grays were disbanded in 1951. By then, ownership of the club had passed from Cum Posey’s widow, Ethel, and Rufus Jackson to Posey’s older brother Seward, called See. It was See who reportedly persuaded Ontario’s Brantford club to sign Clifford as well as Wilmer Fields.45 Many years later, one sportswriter asserted that Clifford and Fields were paid $1,000 per month.46

Brantford, where hockey legend Wayne Gretzky was born a decade later, belonged to a semipro league in which players were compensated very well. Clifford seemed to fit right in, as indicated by a special community event in mid-June, a baseball school for younger local players. “Three members of the Brantford Red Sox, top team in the Senior Intercounty loop, were on hand to act as instructors,” wrote an area newspaper. “Catcher Luther ‘Shanty’ Clifford, southpaw pitcher Alf Gavey and centre fielder Jerry Wilson put the boys through their paces in a three-hour session, which should benefit the players considerably.”47 The Red Sox ultimately won the Intercounty League pennant that season, though the London Majors prevailed in the playoffs.

However comfortable Clifford may have been in Brantford, for 1952 the 28-year-old accepted an opportunity enjoyed by many American players in that era: to play ball in the Caribbean. In his case, it was the Dominican Republic. The season began there on April 26, and the league consisted of four teams.48 On April 1 Clifford departed from New York for San Juan, Puerto Rico, along with Gread McKinnis, Robert Griffith, and Otto Miller.49 McKinnis and Griffith had been well-known pitchers in the Negro Leagues. The other passenger was likely the infielder for the Indianapolis Clowns in the summer of 1951, Otto “Buddy” Miller, who reportedly had played for the New York Black Yankees before the Clowns.50 Clifford, Griffith, and McKinnis were all on the Estrellas Orientales, and Clifford even served as manager at one point.51 Presumably the highlight for Clifford was a game in which he hit three home runs. A photo of him shaking the hand of a coach while circling the bases after one of those blows was published in 2004.52

By mid-July Clifford traveled back to Canada, though this time he went to Brandon, Manitoba, where a team was partway into the third season of the independent Manitoba-Dakota (ManDak) League. The player-manager for the Brandon Greys was Willie Wells, whose long career in the Negro Leagues led to his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997. Upon reporting, the local paper noted that Clifford weighed 246 pounds and stood 6-feet-2-inches tall.53

At the beginning of the next month Clifford certainly made an impression among local sports fans. He jump-started his team’s scoring in one game with a second-inning triple, but it was his defense that was praised in the newspaper. He picked runners off second base twice and added a difficult catch of a pop foul near the screen. Within the week Clifford had a two-homer game for the Greys, and those swats helped him reach 11 RBIs in his first 11 games.54

Howard “Krug” Crawford of the Brandon Daily Sun speculated that early on the Greys were looking to Clifford to generate such power often. Clifford sensed that, and challenged that thinking. “If it’s home runs you want, I’m not your man,” he volunteered. “Down where I [have] just come from (Santo Domingo) they expected me to hit a homer every time up. That’s why I left.” He had been back in Clairton for only a few hours when he received an urgent call from Brandon. “My mother had my shirts out on the line, and so I had to come fast (he flew) with only what I got.” Crawford called Clifford “one of the best assets the Greys have right now.” He noted that Clifford had “been hitting the fences with some of his blows,” but he praised Clifford’s defense in particular: “He’s got a great throwing arm and he gets the ball away easily. And he’s one of the best catchers of looping foul balls we’ve seen around here for some time.”55 Though the Greys may have been looking to Clifford for big blasts, he ended up topping their hitters with a .330 batting average.56

During the first few months of 1953 there were conflicting accounts of the next chapter in Clifford’s baseball career. In January the Brantford Red Sox were reportedly expecting Clifford to rejoin them. A report in Toronto’s Globe and Mail noted that he and Wilmer Fields had already been “the first African American battery” in the Intercounty League’s history, and in 1953 the Red Sox were anticipating the league’s biggest battery: 250-pound Clifford and 6-foot-9 John Alexander Gee, who pitched six years for the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Giants from 1939 to 1946.57 Conversely, in early April the Brandon Daily Sun twice reported that Clifford was among a few players expected to join Willie Wells in Chicago for a bus trip to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for some preseason exhibition games before returning to Brandon in early May.58

In actuality, Clifford’s spring training took place in Waycross, Georgia, at the minor-league camp of the Braves as that franchise was transitioning from Boston to Milwaukee. In late March the Pittsburgh Courier reported this fact, though in the context of Clifford being under contract with the Indianapolis Clowns – making him a teammate of Toni Stone, the first woman signed to a Negro American League contract. The Courier’s preview of Indy’s season didn’t explain why Clifford was working out in Waycross instead of prepping with other members of the Clowns.59

In any case, on March 21 the Waycross Journal-Herald listed lineups for the first intrasquad games at the camp and Clifford was named as an alternate catcher.60 A week later the paper listed players for a game that night between Class-B Evansville and Class-A Jacksonville. Clifford was one of the two catchers for the former, while Henry Aaron was listed as a second baseman for the latter.61 Conditions in the South were rough for African-American players at the time; however, though Aaron experienced racism during his initial car ride to the camp, his treatment on the grounds was relatively enlightened for the time.62

In short order Aaron’s team left the camp to head south to Jacksonville. Luther Clifford remained in Waycross, and one week into April he was the starting catcher for Evansville in a loss to the Class-B Eau Claire Bears. In at least two subsequent games he played for the Bears and in a contest against Evansville Clifford had two hits, but in mid-April it was reported that he had been cut by Eau Claire.63 By mid-May he rejoined the Brantford Red Sox, as noted in the Brandon Daily Sun, with a hint of disappointment.64 The remainder of his baseball career was spent in Ontario.

In 1953 another Negro Leagues player began an even stronger association with the Brantford Red Sox than Clifford’s: Jimmy “Seabiscuit” Wilkes. His nickname implied that he was as speedy as the famous racehorse of that name. “If you think Jimmy’s fast now, you should have seen him in his prime,” Clifford told a Brantford Expositor sportswriter.65 Despite such imported talent, Brantford didn’t win the regular season or the playoffs the next few seasons.

Highlights for Clifford in the mid-1950s included a game against the London Majors in June of 1954 when he homered twice in the eighth inning. A few weeks later he squared off against the team that signed him in early 1953, the Indianapolis Clowns, before a full ballpark of more than 6,000 fans.66 He won the league’s batting title in 1956 with a .377 average. That achievement was undercut by the death of his mother on August 7. His return to Clairton for the funeral was noted in the Pittsburgh Courier, which described him as appearing “physically fit.”67

For 1957 the Brantford and London clubs left the Intercounty League to join the new Great Lakes-Niagara District League. Clifford was the player-manager for the Red Sox.68 Even in a new league the Red Sox were unable to find late- or postseason success. The new league folded after that single year and Brantford rejoined the Intercounty League, but Clifford signed with the Galt Terriers instead, for whom he was an all-star first baseman in 1958. He also came very close to winning the playoffs for Galt at home. The Terriers led the St. Thomas Elgins three games to two and the sixth game was knotted at 3-3 after seven innings. Clifford hit a 370-foot homer in the eighth, after which his team needed to shut down the Elgins for just three more outs. Instead, Galt gave up seven runs and lost the seventh game as well.69

Shanty Clifford overcame what a Toronto newspaper called “a minor back operation” to sign with Galt again for 1959.70 That year he was finally on a pennant winner again, though the Terriers lost in the playoffs to Brantford.

Relatively little was reported about Luther Clifford’s life after that, though in 1962, at least, one Pennsylvania newspaper noted that he visited his son Ira that summer in Mount Pleasant, about 30 miles southeast of Clairton.71 His memory has been kept alive by some baseball enthusiasts, such as lifelong Brantford resident Jim Huff, who reminisced about Wilkes and Clifford on a local company’s website. “Shanty Clifford worked with my dad at the school board – those guys were legends,” he wrote.72 Huff elaborated further:

Shanty worked with my Dad at the Brant County Board of Education as a school janitor in the 1960s and 70s and that is when I first met him, although I had seen him play many times. My Dad introduced me to him but of course, I was already familiar with Shanty. … We did talk all baseball (what else would you want to talk to Shanty about anyway) and he did say working for the Board was the first full time job he ever had, because all he did was travel to play ball. The way he talked I think he was very happy with his occupation as a professional ball player. I will always remember shaking his hand, he had the hands of a catcher, big strong hands and “crooked fingers”—he looked like a ballplayer top to bottom.73

At the age of 55, Luther Clifford had the pleasure of marrying a local widow in Brantford, Lorraine Saunders, on September 28, 1979. Attendants were one of her daughters, Diane Davis, and a Paul Christopher.74 Alas, Clifford’s final years were marked by a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.75 It presumably had taken hold no later than 1987, because an author writing about him for a book interviewed just Lorraine instead.76

Luther Franklin Clifford died on May 4, 1990, at the age of 66. His obituary in the Brantford Expositor listed Lorraine and her five adult children among his loved ones, but also his son, Ira, and wife, Carla, in Pittsburgh and his aunt Maude back in Clairton. Thus, despite the decades he spent in Canada, he obviously still had enough contact with kin back in Pennsylvania for Lorraine to have noted that at the time of his passing. He was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Brantford. The obituary, which called him Shanty, mentioned that he “was supervisor at Brant County Board of Education for many years [and] an avid golfer at Arrowdale Golf Course.” As might be expected, it also noted his time with the Homestead Grays in the Negro National League, the Brantford Red Sox, and the Galt Terriers.77

This biography appears in “Bittersweet Goodbye: The Black Barons, the Grays, and the 1948 Negro League World Series” (SABR, 2017), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 According to Veteran Compensation Application Files, WWII, 1950-1966, for Pennsylvania, accessible via Ancestry.com. The steel mill was originally Carnegie Steel Co.

2 Though he may have typically been called by his middle name, in 1927 he might have been the Luther Clifford awarded first prize among 2- and 3-year-olds during Negro Health Week at the YWCA in nearby McKeesport. See “McKeesport, PA,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 16, 1927: 9.

3 According to his federal Draft, Enlistment and Service registration cards for both World Wars, accessible via Ancestry.com.

4 According to Rosemary Clifford McDaniel, “The Early History of the Clifford Family of Maryland, Virginia/West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio:  Descendants of Isaac Clifford, The Patriarch,” 2004, available at henryburke1010.tripod.com/lettsettlementreunion/id34.html. In 1898 John Robert Clifford won a landmark civil-rights case before the West Virginia Supreme Court for another teacher in Tucker County, in Williams v. Board of Education.  In 2009 John Robert Clifford was among a dozen early civil-rights figures honored by a series of stamps by the US Postal Service.

5 Their marriage record is available at wvculture.org/vrr/va_mcdetail.aspx?Id=11266551.

6 Gertrude Simpson, “Irwin, Pa.,” Pittsburgh Courier; June 24, 1911: 2. For an early mention of a Clyde Clifford of Irwin, see Nellie V. Hackney, “Greensburg,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 9, 1911: 2.

7 These details about Effie and her family are from federal censuses and documents accessible via Ancestry.com, including her entry in the Social Security Applications and Claims Index, several death certificates, and her grandfather’s Record of Burial of Veteran on file with Pennsylvania’s Department of Military Affairs, which lists him as having served in Company B, “8th Regt. P.V.”

8 See Elaine Spaull, “The Magnificent Life of Dr. Walter Cooper,” Post (Rochester, New York), March/April 2014, and Dr. Cooper’s overlapping memories in the oral history transcript from 2008 at rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/rbfs-Cooper.

9  “School Segregation in Clairton Quickly Nipped,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 23, 1939: 2.

10 See Note 8. Dr. Cooper made his own contribution to undoing discrimination at the high school just a few years after Luther graduated: “In 1943, when I was a sophomore at Clairton High School in Pennsylvania, the football squad was 30 percent African-American. So my sister Thelma and a few of the other African-American girls wanted to be cheerleaders. The unspoken rule in the physical education department was that black girls could not be cheerleaders. The football squad had won its first four games. Prior to the fifth game against our rival, I gathered the black football players and said, ‘We’re going to boycott practice in protest against this unwritten rule.’ I talked it over with my mother, and she said it was the right thing to do. She said, ‘I’ll make some cookies and such for the athletes as they gather.’ So in school on Monday, we boycotted practice. On Tuesday, you could hear the football coach bellowing up and down the corridor: ‘What do they want? Give it to them!’ We never met with the director of the physical ed department, but four black girls—my sister Thelma Cooper, and Ruby Sears, Hortense Gordon and Jane Moore—all ended up cheerleaders.”

11 Clairtonian Yearbook, Clairton High School (Clairton, Pennsylvania), 1941, quoting from pages 57 and 54, respectively.

12 “Changed ’Cat Team Opens Away Season With Clairton,” Monongahela (Pennsylvania) Daily Republican, September 27, 1940: 2.

13 “Mounties’ Track Team Tops Clairton,” Pittsburgh Press, April 17, 1941: 16; “Uniontown High Wins Track Meet,” Pittsburgh Press, May 3, 1941: 8. See also Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 9, 1941: 18.

14 According to the death certificate for Lucy Barnes, accessible via Ancestry.com, on which her home address was 149 Lincoln Way in Clairton at the time of her passing, on August 25, 1938.  The certificate was signed by Mrs. Effie Clifford, whose address was the same. 

15 See Note 3.

16 “Divorce Libels Filed,” Pittsburgh Press, August 6, 1942: 20. 

17 See Pennsylvania’s Veteran Compensation Application Files for WWII, 1950-1966, accessible via Ancestry.com.  The military branch wasn’t identified but his obituary in the Brantford Expositor – see Note 74 – specified the Army Air Corps.

18 “Grays Break Even in Two With Cubans,” New York Amsterdam News, July 3, 1948: 27. 

19 “Monessen Triumphs in Opening USW Tilt,” Monessen (Pennsylvania) Daily Independent, May 17, 1948: 5.

20 “2,400 Fans See Grays Nip Yanks,” New Castle (Pennsylvania) News, June 12, 1948: 13. 

21 Chicago Defender, July 3, 1948: 10. 

22  “Grays, All-Stars Await Big Clash,” Charleroi (Pennsylvania) Mail, July 2, 1948: 7.

23 “Homestead Grays Top Stars, 9-0” Charleroi Mail, July 6, 1948: 7.

24 “Grays Regain League Lead, Nip Philly Stars, 4 to 3,” New Castle News, August 28, 1948: 12. 

25 “Grays Win Over Baltimore, 6-0,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 15, 1948: 20.  See also Sam Lacy, “Grays Take First 2 in NNL Playoff Series,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 18, 1948: 14.

26 “AL Teams Draft Stars of Clubs Calling It Quits,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 19, 1949: 11.

27 “Divorce Proceedings,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 29, 1949: 10; “Divorce Proceedings,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 7, 1952: 11. 

28 “Grays Open Local Baseball Season Sunday,” Indianapolis Recorder, May 14, 1949: 11.

29 “Grays Strengthen Club With 3 New Players,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 21, 1949: section 2, page 13; “Grays Sign 3 New Players, Meet Richmond Sunday,” Washington Post, May 28, 1949: 10. 

30 “Grays Defeat Stars,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 19, 1949, 19.

31 “Homestead Grays Defeat Yankees,” New Castle News, June 29, 1949: 18.

32 “2,300 See Grays Beat House of David,” Lima News (Ohio), July 26, 1949: 12.

33 “Clowns Meet Grays Tonight,” Washington Post, August 12, 1949: 27.

34 Clifford was catcher in one box score of a doubleheader covered by the Kansas City Times, September 6, 1949: 20. His 2-for-4 game was documented by the box score accompanying “4 Double Plays Feature Negro Big Leaguer Game,” Chillicothe (Missouri) Constitution Tribune, September 9, 1949: 5. See also the Kansas City Star, September 8, 1949.

35 For examples, see one box score of a doubleheader covered by the Kansas City Times, September 12, 1949: 14.  Clifford’s triple behind Elston Howard was reported in “Baseball Season Ends,” Kansas City (Kansas) Plain Dealer, September 23, 1949: 4. See also Kansas City Star, September 18, 1949.

36 Wendell Smith, “Kansas City Quits Play-Off Series,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 17, 1949: 22.

37 “N.Y. Black Yankees to Meet Homestead Grays Thursday, April 13,” Carolina Times (Durham, North Carolina), April 8, 1950: 4.

38 “Bushwicks Split in Official Opener,” Brooklyn Eagle, May 8, 1950: 13; Art Carter, “From the Bench,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 13, 1950: 28. 

39  For examples, see the box score accompanying “Hustlers Lose to Homestead Grays, 7 to 3,” Frederick (Maryland) News, May 23, 1950: 13, and the one in the New Castle News, June 22, 1950: 28.

40 “Clippers Lose Doubleheader Over Week-End,” Beckley (West Virginia) Post-Herald, July 3, 1950: 6. 

41 “Merchants Meet Homestead Grays in Exhibition Here Monday Night,” Greenville (Pennsylvania) Record-Argus, July 8, 1950: 5. 

42 “Gibson Jr. Gets Beaned,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 5, 1950: 24. Accounts of the game in two Pittsburgh papers are vague about the date, but the beaning was also mentioned four days earlier, putting it in July. See Dan McGibbeny, “Josh Gibson Jr. Follows Footsteps of Famous Father as Grays’ Slugger,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 1, 1950: 12.

43 “17-Hit Gray Attack Buries Black Yanks by 11-4 in Slugfest,” Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette, August 4, 1950: 13. 

44 “Bankhead to Tour With Homestead Grays,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 23, 1950: 8; for examples of specific games scheduled, see “Bushwick Games Rained Out,” New York Times, October 9, 1950: 7, and “Homestead Grays Play Tuesday in North Gulfport,” Biloxi (Mississippi) Daily Herald, October 23, 1950: 10.

45 Ted Beare, “A Man for All Seasons,” Brantford (Ontario) Expositor, August 12, 2008. Available at brantfordexpositor.ca/2008/08/12/a-man-for-all-seasons. 

46 George Hayes, “Just a Shell of What It Was,” Woodstock (Ontario) Daily Sentinel-Review, July 10, 1981: 5. 

47 “Baseball School Is Big Success,” Simcoe (Ontario) Reformer, June 18, 1951: 6. 

48 “Dominican Season Opens,” The Sporting News, May 7, 1952: 39. 

49 U.S., Departing Passenger and Crew Lists, 1914-1965, accessible via Ancestry.com. 

50 “Ball Belters to Display Wares in Big Negro Tilt at Stadium,” Sikeston (Missouri) Daily Standard, September 5, 1951: 8. 

51 Bienvenido Rojas, “1952, Refuerzos Ganaron los Lideratos Ofensivos,” Diario Libre (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), September 1, 2015: 35. 

52 William Humber, A Sporting Chance: Achievements of African-Canadian Athletes (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2004), 57. 

53 “Greys Suffer Eighth Straight Home Loss,” Brandon (Manitoba) Daily Sun, July 15, 1952: 2. 

54 “Greys Hit Peak Form to Win Third Straight and Move to Within Striking Distance,” Brandon Daily Sun, August 2, 1952: 2; “8-Run Rally Gives Cards 12-11 Victory,” Winnipeg (Manitoba) Free Press, August 6, 1952: 21.  “Clarence King in Second Place in Mandak Batting Race,” Brandon Daily Sun, August 8, 1952: 2. 

55 H.L. Crawford, “Here and There in Sports,” Brandon Daily Sun, August 14, 1952: 2.

56 “Joe Mitchell and Skeeter Watkins Topped the League in Offensive, Defensive Play,” Brandon Daily Sun, September 18, 1952: 2. 

57 “Biggest Battery in IC Planned by Brant Hose,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), January 27, 1953: 18.  

58 “Bus Leaves Thursday to Pick up Greys,” Brandon Daily Sun, April 1, 1953: 6; “Greys Assemble Today in Baton Rouge Camp,” Brandon Daily Sun, April 6, 1953: 6. 

59 “Two Stars to Rejoin Indianapolis,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 28, 1953: 16.

60 “Braves’ Initial Intra-Squad Contests Set This Week End,” Waycross (Georgia) Journal-Herald, March 21, 1953: 2. 

61 “Jacksonville and Evansville Play Exhibition Here Tonight,” Waycross Journal-Herald, March 28, 1953: 2. On the same page two days later the paper reported that Evansville beat Jacksonville, 5-2, but little detail was provided and there wasn’t even a line score.

62 Daniel Papillon and Bill Young, “The Red Clay of Waycross: Minor-League Spring Training in Georgia With the Milwaukee Braves,” The National Pastime: Baseball in the Peach State, 2010: 123. This SABR journal article is available at sabr.org/research/red-clay-waycross-minor-league-spring-training-georgia-milwaukee-braves.

63 “Braves Top Evansville Second Time, 5-4,” Hagerstown (Maryland) Morning Herald, April 9, 1953: 23. “Eau Claire Bears Beat Quebec, 7-6,” Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Leader, April 12, 1953: 10. “Bears Top Evansville 12-10; Carr Seeks Two,” Eau Claire Daily Telegram, April 14, 1953: 12. “Quebec Wins 8-3 as Bears Falter,” Eau Claire Leader, April 16, 1953: 16.

64 Jim Reid, “Sport Scripts,” Brandon Daily Sun, May 16, 1953: 6.

65 For the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum profile of Wilkes, see coe.k-state.edu/annex/nlbemuseum/history/players/wilkes.html. For an overview of his life in Brantford, including the quote by Clifford, see Ted Beare, “Red Sox Star Loved City,” Brantford Expositor, August 12, 2008. 

66 “Clifford’s Bat Booms as Sox Rout London for Fisher’s 4th Win,” Toronto Daily Star, June 10, 1954: 28; “Clowns, Kaycees Play in Chi, N.Y.,” New York Age, July 3, 1954: 21.

67 “Things to Talk About,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 18, 1956: A9.

68 For example, see “Hamilton Finally Slips to Third, London Wins,” Toronto Daily Star, July 22, 1957: 14. 

69 “St. Thomas and Galt in Sawoff Tuesday,” Toronto Daily Star, September 22, 1958: 21. 

70 “Slugger Clifford Back With Galt,” Toronto Daily Star, May 7, 1959: 45.  This article confirmed that he had been an Intercounty League all-star. 

71 “Personal Mention,” Daily Courier (Connellsville, Pennsylvania), August 15, 1962: 13.

72 See brantfordhomes.com/brantford-red-sox/.

73 Email exchange between James B. Huff and author, October 17, 2016.

74 See the short marital announcement, “302 Marriages,” Brantford Expositor, October 11, 1979: 37.

75See his obituary, “Clifford, Luther Franklin (Shanty),” Brantford Expositor, May 4, 1990: D1.

76 Humber, 138.

77 See Note 74.