Emery Adams was born in the vicinity of Collierville, Tennessee, on October 10, 1911, according to his 1940 military registration card. Collierville is about 20 miles from Memphis. Based partly on the censuses from 1900 to 1920, his parents were farmers named Sam and Polly. Sam’s entry in the 1900 census stated that he was born in South Carolina during 1845 and thus 16 years prior to the Civil War. He was presumably a slave well into his teens. Sam would have been 66 when Emery was born. Polly was much younger, reportedly born in 1870 in Mississippi.

The 1910 census indicated that it was the second marriage for both of Emery’s parents. In early 1899, a Memphis newspaper noted that a “Colored” couple, Sam Adams and Polly Williams, had obtained a license to be married.5 However, her death record and Emery’s 1948 certificate of marriage, among other documents accessible via genealogical websites, identified Polly’s maiden name as Butler. Emery apparently had at least five half-siblings born before 1900 and was the youngest of at least four children born to Sam and Polly. In the 1910 census, Polly was reported to have given birth to five children, of whom four were still living.

In the 1920 census, Emery and his two brothers, ages 12 and 13, were all reported as attending school. In the 1940 census, it was stated that Emery had completed one year of high school. A history of Collierville focusing on civil rights noted that a school for Black children opened in Collierville during the 1920s.6 It was rarely mentioned in Memphis’s daily newspapers, but the “Collierville Industrial School, a negro institution,” existed by the summer of 1923, if not earlier.7 It was called the Collierville Industrial Junior High in an article five years later, about its students’ participation in the “eighteenth annual negro Tri-State Fair.”8

Census records show the township’s population in 1920 and 1930 hovered around 1,000.9 During that decade, farming operations in the Collierville area began to shift dramatically, as boll weevil beetles began to devastate cotton crops. Over just a few years, up to 1929, the number of dairies in Collierville jumped from a handful to several hundred.10 Sam Adams was identified as a farmer up to the time he died.

The elder Adams’s Certificate of Death, accessible via genealogical websites, indicates that he died in nearby Germantown on February 9, 1929. In the following year’s census the Adams household comprised Polly, Emery, and one of his brothers. Polly was still listed as a farmer, while Emery’s occupation was farm helper.

Emery Adams got married on July 8, 1930, in the county of his birth. The marriage license reported his bride’s name as Emma Bell Hull. They were husband and wife for no more than six years. The couple apparently had one child together, a girl named Virginia, also known as Annie Virginia. She was reportedly born September 1, 1933.11

However, Emery’s obituary noted that he was also survived by a son, Emery Jr. Two Social Security records agree that Junior’s birthday was August 8, but one showed 1932 and the other 1933. Though Emery Jr. was likely older than Virginia, he was born to a different mother, Lula M. Craft. Because her mother was also named Lula, Junior’s mother was often called Mary or Mattie instead. She and Emery Senior might never have married one another.12

Emery Adams turned 20 years old during the autumn of 1931, and six months later he was pitching for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro Southern League. Though it seems very likely that he had considerable baseball experience prior to 1932, there might be no records in existence documenting any of that. The Red Sox received decent coverage in newspapers during 1931, but dailies in that city rarely mentioned any Black semipro or amateur teams.13 Among more than 30 players on the Red Sox at some point during 1931, none was named Adams.14

The NSL was generally considered Black baseball’s top minor league for much of its existence, but for the 1932 season it is considered to have been a “major league,” a status officially recognized by Major League Baseball in 2020.15 For just that one season, the NSL included two prominent Northern teams, the Chicago American Giants and the Indianapolis ABCs, plus a short-lived club in Columbus, Ohio. In fact, in the second game of a preseason doubleheader at home on April 17, Adams shut out Chicago, 3-0, in a game limited to five innings so the visitors could catch a train. He gave up just two singles, walked one batter, and struck out four.16

Emery Adams made his regular-season debut as a pro on May 1, 1932, in a doubleheader against the first-place Monroe (Louisiana) Monarchs. He was 20 years old. He started the seven-inning second game, and in the bottom of the third frame his team gave him a 3-0 lead. The only other scoring was a pair of runs by Monroe in the top of the fifth. Details of that inning aren’t available, except that Adams retired just one batter before being replaced by a reliever. He struck out two Monarchs and yielded only two hits, but his three walks may have contributed to Monroe’s threat in that fifth frame. (Also, each of Memphis’ middle infielders made an error at some point, and the home team’s catcher was charged with a passed ball.) Adams did contribute a little on offense: Though he was hitless in one at-bat, he stole a base and scored a run.17

As the 1932 season unfolded, only Harry Cunningham and player-manager Goose Curry logged more innings than Adams as starting pitchers for Memphis, based on seamheads.com data as of 2024. He started 10 of 11 games, completed four, and had a 4-3 record.18 He was on the wrong end of a shutout at least twice, in May and in July.19

Memphis’s stats in the Seamheads database jump to 1937 because the NSL reverted to minor-league status after 1932. In 1937 the Red Sox joined the Negro American League. However, from 1933 to 1936, William J. Plott’s painstaking history of the NSL listed Emery Adams on the club’s roster only in 1935, though in 1936 the club did have a pitcher named Adams (first name unrecorded) during April, if not later.20 The 1933-1934 and 1936 gaps in Adams’s personal record might be explained by Memphis newspaper reports about legal action against a local man (or men) named Emery Adams.

On February 6, 1933, “Emery Adams, negro,” was prosecuted for “assault to murder, because of a fusillade of shots fired at W.B. Sandlin, marshal of Germantown, Dec. 21.” In the end, he “pleaded guilty to assault to commit second degree murder, not more than three years at the penal farm.”21 Though Adams was mentioned often during 1935 as a member of the Memphis Red Sox, that name instead showed up in local legal news in 1936, from April 25 into October. A companion of Adams received a 10-year prison sentence for the shooting death of another Black man named Martin Hill, but Adams himself, “who was jointly accused of the crime, was found not guilty by a jury in Judge Tom W. Harsh’s criminal court.”22 Assuming this relieved defendant was the Red Sox pitcher, then he celebrated his freedom the following month by getting married. His wife was the former Floyd Myers (an uncommon first name for a woman, but the November 22 marital record accessible via genealogical websites isn’t the only place it was rendered that way).

“Statistically, the 1935 season was the worst ever” for the NSL, Plott insisted, because “results of any kind were found for only 33 league games.” Plott said Bill Howard was the winning pitcher in all seven Memphis wins he’d located, but on June 30, Adams had an impressive victory in the second game of a doubleheader (following a win by Howard): He shut out the Claybrook (Arkansas) Tigers in a seven-inning contest, 1-0. Overall, Memphis did well enough to qualify for a postseason playoff series, which it lost to Claybrook.23

Adams pitched a few times against Claybrook in September. On September 1 Claybrook took both games of a doubleheader “to claim the National semipro championship,” as reported by the Chicago Defender. In defeat, “Adams, the Memphis hurler, had a fair day on the hill, tossing the apple by the batters for strikeouts in usual manner.”24

Coverage later in the month indicates the doubleheader was part of a seven-game series to determine the NSL championship. Adams relieved in both games of a doubleheader in Claybrook on September 8, which the teams split.25 The teams had each won three games by September 15, when nearly 3,000 fans in Memphis attended the finale, which the home team lost, 5-2.26

Another mystery relating to Adams during the 1935 season was whether he was the Bill Adams who was with Claybrook briefly. If so, he was in the front row of a team photo that season.27 “Bill” was a secondary nickname for Emery Adams, though possibly not otherwise in print prior to 1941.28

Regardless, September ended on a high note for Adams, when he pitched in the very first North-South Classic all-star game. It was played on September 29, at Memphis’s Russwood Park before 3,800 fans. Adams pitched the final two innings for the South, against a lineup that included future Hall of Famers Cool Papa Bell leading off and Oscar Charleston batting cleanup. Adams allowed just one hit and was the only hurler on either team not to yield a run.29

On April 15, 1936, a preview of a game against the Monroe Monarchs mentioned Adams as one of two Memphis pitchers. On April 26 Adams was Memphis’s reliever against a Black team visiting from Omaha.30 It was two mornings earlier when the aforementioned Martin Hill, a Black man residing in Germantown, was shot to death by an unknown person. At some point within a month Adams and a companion were formally accused, but clearly not prior to his team’s game on the 26th.31 Though he was found not guilty in October, Adams may have been jailed for about half of that year due to the serious nature of the charge.32

As noted previously, for the 1937 season the Memphis Red Sox switched from the NSL to the NAL. Adams hurled a complete-game 7-6 victory at home against the Chicago American Giants on Opening Day, May 9. That gave the Red Sox a split of a doubleheader.33

As of 2024 the Seamheads database had data for 20 Memphis games in 1937, only one of which was a victory by Adams (in four appearances). However, in addition to that Opening Day win, brief newspaper coverage indicates he had a complete-game win vs. Indianapolis on May 17 and beat the St. Louis Stars later that month.34 Also not documented in Seamheads is a game in August when he helped beat Birmingham by swatting a 10th-inning double (although he didn’t pitch).35

A preview of a game late that month said “Adam [sic] hurled for the New Orleans Black Pelicans before joining Memphis.” Unclear was whether that meant before he first joined Memphis in 1932, or before he rejoined the club much more recently.36 Regardless, searches for a pitcher named Adams on that club prior to mid-1937 were fruitless.

To date, the Seamheads database shows just one game in 1938 for Adams, a four-inning relief outing for the Red Sox. In fact, that game was a preseason exhibition at home on April 3, a 7-3 loss to the Homestead Grays. The Atlanta Daily World printed a batter-by-batter account, though it wasn’t clear in which middle inning Adams entered the game. He was mentioned again in a preview on April 16, but might not have been with the Red Sox during the regular season.37 One distinct possibility is that he was injured. Another explanation is that he was making steady money at another job: Memphis’s 1938 and 1939 city directories show him as employed by the Memphis Power and Light Company.

In any case, in 1939 Emery Adams played his first games in the second Negro National League, as a member of the Baltimore Elite Giants. As of 2024 the Seamheads database has documented five games pitched by Adams during that regular season, including two victories, plus a playoff loss. Using different criteria, the timeline for SABR’s book on the 1939 Elite Giants identified 19 games for Adams from May through August (though at least six were nonleague contests).38

A high point for Adams during the season’s first half was in June 12 in Indianapolis, against the Homestead Grays, reportedly the league’s preseason favorite. It certainly helped that the famous Josh Gibson was unavailable due to a bruised hip, “but Adams, ace right-hander for the Giants, refused to allow the Champs a chance to get a line on his famed smoke ball.” He struck out 11 Grays on the way to a 7-3 win for Baltimore.39

Not long before the NNL playoffs, Adams notched a complete-game win at home against the New York Cubans on August 27. It was the seven-inning nightcap of a doubleheader, and the final score was 8-4.40 He then started the first game of a best-of-five playoff series against the Newark Eagles on September 6, at the opposition’s Ruppert Stadium. After the top of the fourth inning, Adams and his teammates led 5-0, but Newark scored eight runs by the end of the sixth inning and ultimately won, 8-6.41 The Seamheads entry for this game shows Adams having retired one batter in the sixth before exiting. He was charged with giving up seven runs, five earned. There’s no record of Adams playing in the championship series against the Grays, but on September 24 the Elites became the NNL champs.42 Though Adams pitched a half-dozen more seasons in the NNL, there’s no indication that he ever appeared in another playoff game.

In the 1940 census, Emery and Floyd Adams were living in Memphis in the home of her mother, at 2563 Spottswood Avenue, near a very large railroad yard. Adams earned his nickname of Ace that year. The Seamheads database shows him as having won 12 games and lost five for the Elite Giants.

In June he tossed a 6-0 shutout against the Philadelphia Stars in a doubleheader’s seven-inning nightcap, and his nine-inning shutout against the New York Cubans about a week into September won the Ruppert Memorial Cup for the Elites again.43 In between those two high points, he was the only Baltimore pitcher named to the East team’s roster for the East-West Classic in August, though he didn’t play.44

The peak of Adams’ career might have come shortly after the 1940 season. At New Orleans’ Pelican Stadium on October 1, he sparkled for multiple scoreless innings as the starting pitcher in the Negro Leagues’ sixth North-South Classic all-star game, though sources disagree on whether he pitched the first four or five innings. Regardless, the game wasn’t decided until the ninth, when his North teammates scored once to break a 1-1 tie.45

Adams was on the Cienfuegos club in Cuba’s winter league during 1940-1941, but he couldn’t approximate his success of recent months. In 14 games, he had a record of 2-6.46 In fact, a passenger list accessible via genealogical websites shows Memphis resident Emery Adams (born October 10, 1911) as having sailed from Havana to Miami on January 2, 1941. At least three Cienfuegos teammates made the same trip on January 20.

The 1941 season was the second of Adams’s career for which the Seamheads database has documented considerable success. Though data is available for fewer games, his winning percentage with a record of 7-3 for Baltimore was comparable to that of 1940, with three shutouts documented in 1941 compared with two the prior season. One 1941 shutout was pitched on July 12 against the Newark Eagles and another on September 1 against the Black Yankees.47

Adams’s 1942 season was largely unremarkable until a five-game “do-or-die series” with the Philadelphia Stars at the end of the season, which found the Elites hanging onto pennant hopes. Adams lost games in relief on September 6 and 7, and thus ended Baltimore’s season.48

During spring training in 1943, the Baltimore Afro-American’s sports editor, Art Carter, reported that Adams was “on the market as trade material.” And by early May he’d been purchased by the Black Yankees.49 Adams had at least four awful starts before the end of June, in which he pitched no more than five innings yet gave up 7 to 13 runs, Not surprisingly, he was called upon to pitch much less from July onward, but instead was frequently in New York’s lineups as an outfielder. The Philadelphia Stars borrowed him as their starting pitcher on September 12, but he was back in New York’s outfield within 10 days.50 In fact, it was reported on September 20 that his batting average of .350 was the best among the Black Yankees.51

Less than three months into 1944, Emery Adams’ life took a dramatic shift. US Army enlistment records accessible online show him having started military service on March 27. The military registration card he’d completed back in 1940 included a handwritten note specifying that he received an honorable discharge on September 9, 1944. Vaguely, the stated reason was “a lack of adaptability for military service.”52 If Adams played a little pro ball in the weeks after his discharge, it might have gone unreported.

Adams returned to the Black Yankees for the 1945 season, but was rarely used as a pitcher. In February of 1946, Adams was to be on a team projected to tour the Pacific for three months, playing against military ballclubs. The announced leader as Joe Lillard, a Black halfback for the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals in 1932 and 1933, who’d helmed such a tour in Asia a year earlier. Very shortly after the 1946 trip was announced, it was “postponed indefinitely.”53 Adams then saw minimal action that season with New York, and likewise in 1947. That was apparently the extent of his pro career.

In 1948 Adams married for (at least) the third time. A Delaware certificate of marriage accessible via genealogical websites shows him marrying Irene Geter of New York City on March 21. The document presumably had a few details wrong (e.g., he’d been single, it was his first marriage, and he was born in Delaware), but his birthdate matched. In the 1950 census, the couple was living near a relative of hers in New York City, and he was employed as an inspector at a television factory.

Emery and Irene presumably divorced by mid-1952, because in October of that year she was identified by her maiden name, Geter, in a newspaper article detailing how she was swindled out thousands of dollars a few months after a personal-injury lawsuit. In June, attorneys won her $40,000 for a leg amputation that resulted from a bus accident, and after their fees and court expenses, she took home $15,000. A con man cheated her out of that entire amount, though police did catch him.54

Emery Adams died “suddenly” in New York on January 22, 1955. His obituary published in Memphis mentioned that he was survived by daughter Virginia and son Emery Junior. There was no mention of any spouse, and his two surviving grandchildren were unnamed. (Of course, his daughter and son could have had additional children after his death.) He was survived by a sister and three brothers, all of whom were named with their places of residence. The funeral director was back in Collierville.55

Almost 60 years after his death, Adams was reportedly the central figure in an auction of a “Negro League game-used uniform,” which had “E. Adams” written in marker near the manufacturers’ tag. Grey Flannel Auctions of Scottsdale, Arizona, attributed it to Adams, and dated it in the mid-1930s. However, the tag identified the producer of this Memphis Pros jersey as Lawson-Cavette, a Memphis sporting-goods firm that had changed its name from Lawson-Getz during the summer of 1948. This would seem to indicate that for at least one season after leaving the Black Yankees, Adams went back home to play more baseball. At the time, he couldn’t possibly have imagined that this jersey would have been purchased at the end of 2014 for $1,420.56

Sources

Information about Adams’s personal life is from Ancestry.com (Library Edition) and FamilySearch.org.

Except when contemporary coverage of games is cited in endnotes, the sources for his statistics and individual game performances are the Seamheads database, starting at https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=adams01eme and the Retrosheet website, starting at https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=adams01eme.

Notes

1 For example, he was called “Ace” in the preseason article, “Elites to Open Against Stars,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 11, 1940: 21.

2 See https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=adams01eme. In 1940 and 1941, Adams was the only pitcher to start more than six games each season for Baltimore, as of research up to 2024.

3 “Homers May Decide East-West Classic,” Chicago Defender, August 17, 1940: 24. See also https://retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1940/B08180ASW1940.htm.

4 See https://retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1940/B10010SAS1940.htm.

5 “Licensed to Wed,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 18, 1899: 7.

6 Collierville Community Justice, “We Can’t Understand Collierville’s Present Without Understanding Collierville’s Past,” https://www.colliervillejustice.org/history. This history reported no race-related incidents in the twentieth century until the mid-1960s.

7 “County Fighting Malaria,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 30, 1923: 8.

8 “Negro Fair Promises Best Show Yet Held,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 25, 1928: 14. The school was occasionally mentioned in articles published by Black newspapers, such as “Popular Teacher Bids Farewell to Classroom as Cupid Beckons,” Atlanta Daily World, September 21, 1936: 3.

9 See https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/33973538v1ch09.pdf at page 1022.

10 Town of Collierville, “Collierville the Dairy Town,” https://www.colliervilletn.gov/government/town-departments/morton-museum/exhibitions/collierville-the-dairy-town.

11 In particular, see “Death Notices,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 26, 1955: 30. Emma’s Certificate of Death in 1953, which identified her by widower husband’s surname of Allen, said she was the daughter of Jim Hull and Rosie Green. She was using her mother’s surname in the 1940 census and was Mrs. Allen by the 1950 census, both of which included daughter Virginia in her household. As of 2024, an Ancestry.com family tree for Emma B. Hull identified three of her children, namely Willie Mae Franklin, Rosie Lee Gray, and Roscoe Lindsey. The latter’s obituary in 1981 reported that he was survived by Willie Mae Franklin and Rosie Lee, plus a third married sister, Mrs. Annie Virginia Beard. See “Deaths,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 21, 1981: 16. The Beard family tree on Ancestry.com identified Adams as her maiden name and said she had been born in Germantown on September 1, 1933, information that quite possibly came from the woman herself.

12 “Death Notices,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, January 26, 1955: 30. See also two Social Security Applications and Claims Index entries for Emery Adams Jr., accessible via genealogical websites. In the 1940 census near Memphis, he is presumably “Emory Byas,” 6-year-old brother of Katy May Byas, son of 23-year-old Mary Byas, and grandson of 55-year-old Lula Craft, the head of that household. Another half-sister’s obituary mentioned being survived by two brothers, “Emery Adams and Charles Byas.” See “Mary G. Williams,” Michigan Chronicle (Detroit), October 22, 1997: D-6.

13 For example, when the Red Sox scheduled an exhibition game against the Chisca Hotel Bears, one Memphis paper said the latter was “probably the best negro amateur club in the city.” However, there seems to be no record of any Memphis daily actually reporting on any of that team’s games. See “Red Sox to Play Bears,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 19, 1931: 15. (It’s likely the game wasn’t played that day, based on “Chicks, Barons Rained Out; Kelly vs. Edwards Today,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 20, 1931: 16). For a rare example of a Black amateur game that received publicity as well as some coverage in Memphis dailies that year, see “Negro Barbes Lose,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 15, 1931: 15.

14 William J. Plott, The Negro Southern League: A Baseball History, 1920-1951 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2015), 217.

15 Anthony Castrovince, “MLB adds Negro Leagues to Official Records,” December 16, 2020, https://www.mlb.com/news/negro-leagues-given-major-league-status-for-baseball-records-stats.

16 “Red Sox Win Two More from Chicago; Open Season Friday,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 18, 1932: 9.

17 “Red Sox Win Two Games from Monroe; End Series Today.”

18 See https://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/player.php?playerID=adams01eme; click on “MRS” next to 1932 for the team’s record.

19 Holsey Drake, “Montgomery Had a Word for Memphis Reds,” Atlanta Daily World, May 15, 1932: 5. “Memphis Red Sox 9 Split 2 with Monroe,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, August 1, 1932: 7. The latter shutout ended 1-0.

20 Plott, 222, 224, 225-226, and 227. “Red Sox Play Monroe,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 15, 1936: 19. “Memphians Down Omaha Negro Club,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 27, 1936: 13.

21 “Auto Theft Trials Will Open Tomorrow,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 5, 1933: 20. “News in the Courts,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 7, 1933: 16.

22 “News of the Courts,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 27, 1936: 25. News of the Courts,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, June 18, 1936: 27. “Negro Sent to Prison,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 23, 1936: 21.

23 Plott, 133-134. “Claybrook Loses Pair to Memphis,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, July 1, 1935: 14.

24 Robert Ratcliffe, “Arkansas 9 Cops Semi-Pro Baseball Title,” Chicago Defender, September 7, 1935: 14.

25 “Negro Red Sox Split Two,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 9, 1935: 11.

26 “Clay Brooks in 5 to 2 Victory,” Chicago Defender, September 21, 1935: 15. This article identified all dates, locations, and results of the series, though it didn’t report the final scores. The Defender might have provided the most detailed coverage, but it left readers with a minor mystery. “The Red Sox were forced to use two pitchers,” that weekly noted, the second of whom was Howard. “Five errors by [Red] Longley, Sox second baseman, and wild pitching by Adams accounted for three of the Tiger scores,” the paper added. However, the line score’s battery for Memphis instead listed its starting pitcher as R. Jones, not Adams. One possibility is that Jones did start and Memphis used two relievers, not just two pitchers all told. However, player-manager Ruben Jones wasn’t known at all as a pitcher, so the inclusion of him in the battery was most likely just a mistake.

27 For the 1935 Claybrook Tigers’ photo that included a Bill Adams, see http://arkbaseball.com/tiki-index.php?page=Claybrook+Tigers.

28 Adams was called Bill in “Stars Wopped by Elites,” Philadelphia Tribune, July 10, 1941: 1.

29 See https://retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1935/B09290SAS1935.htm, though it doesn’t appear to align completely with the box score that accompanied the brief account, “North Downs South in All-Star Battle,” Commercial Appeal, September 30, 1935: 13.

30 “Red Sox Play Monroe,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 15, 1936: 19. “Memphians Down Omaha Negro Club,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 27, 1936: 13.

31 “Negro Slain,” Commercial Appeal, April 25, 1936: 5. “News of the Courts,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 27, 1936: 25.

32 “Negro Sent to Prison,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, October 23, 1936: 21.

33 “Red Sox Split Two with Chicago Team,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 10, 1937: 11.

34 “Memphis Red Sox Win,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 18, 1937: 16. “Memphis Is Too Much for St. Louis 9,” Chicago Defender, May 29, 1937: 13.

35 “Memphis Wins,” Chicago Defender, August 14, 1937: 22.

36 “Negro Teams Meet Monday,” Decatur (Illinois) Daily Review, August 28, 1937: 15.

37 “Josh Gibson Two Home Runs Wellmaker’s Hurling Beats Memphis Red Sox, 7 To 3,” Atlanta Daily World, April 5, 1938: 5. Sam R. Brown, “Philly Stars Meet Redsox,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 16, 1938: 16.

38 Bill Nowlin, “1939 Baltimore Elite Giants Timeline,” The 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants (Phoenix: SABR, 2024).

39 “Grays Bow 7-3 to Baltimore With Gibson Out of Line-up,” Indianapolis Recorder, June 17, 1939: 14.

40 Ralph F. Boyd, “Elites and Cubans Split Twin Bill,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 2, 1939: 23.

41 “Mule Suttles Slugs Hard,” Newark Evening News, September 7, 1939.

42 “Elites Win, 2-0, in Colored Final,” New York Daily News, September 25, 1939: 40. Adams did remain with the Elites after the Newark series, having started an exhibition game midway through the championship series. See John G. Palmer, “Bushwicks, Met. Champions, Win From Negro League Champs, 3 to [sic],” Brooklyn Citizen, September 20, 1939: 6. To complete that headline, the score was 3-1. Palmer reported Adams’s first name as Cliff.

43 “Box Scores,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 13, 1940: 11. “Grays Win Over Memphis, 3-1,” New York Daily News September 9, 1940: 40. For details about the Ruppert Cup, see a few paragraphs into an article by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Library Associate Bill Francis, “Negro Leagues Photos Now Available Online through Pastime,” https://baseballhall.org/discover/negro-leagues-photos-now-available-on-pastime.

44 See Note 3.

45 See https://retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1940/B10010SAS1940.htm (which shows Adams as having stolen a base). At least one article said Adams pitched five innings. See Hayward Jackson, “Mackey’s Single Helps North Beat South, 2-1,” Pittsburgh Courier, October 12, 1940: 18. At least one box score also showed he pitched five innings. See “North Wins 2-1 Game From South in N. Orleans,” Chicago Defender, October 12, 1940: 24. However, the box score accompanying the latter incorrectly called Adams the winning pitcher, while omitting that actual pitcher of record, Baltimore teammate Bud Barbee. At least one preview of this game stated, incorrectly, that Adams had earlier started that summer’s East-West Classic, but he didn’t pitch in it at all. Contrast https://retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1940/B08180ASW1940.htm with Hayward Jackson, “North-South Baseball Classic for Crescent City October 1,” Atlanta Daily World, September 21, 1940: 5.

46 Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003), 239.

47 Details relating to the two shutouts are available via https://www.retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1941/Padame1011941.htm. In contrast to Adams’s Seamheads line for 1941, the Retrosheet list for Adams in 1941 currently shows him with only two shutouts and only five regular-season wins (plus an exhibition win against the Birmingham Black Barons on August 11). Conversely, Retrosheet shows him with two regular-season losses plus two in exhibition games.

48 “Elite Hurlers Face Tough Task in Philly Series,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 5, 1942: 25. “Grays Win NNL Flag; Elites Split,” Baltimore Afro-American, September 8, 1942: 19. See also the September 6 and 7 entries at https://www.retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1942/Padame1011942.htm.

49 Art Carter, “Adds to Elites’ Problems as Camp Opens,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 17, 1943: 24. “Baseball Bits,” Baltimore Afro-American, May 8, 1943: 26. The latter article called him “John (Ace) Adams.”

50 See his Pitching Log outings of May 15, May 25, June 20, and June 24 at https://www.retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/A/Padame101.htm. His Batting Log is also accessible there. According to a profile posted online by the Center for Negro League Baseball Research, citing author John Holway, Adams also lost a game for Philadelphia in 1940, in addition to 1943. However, no such game has been logged by Seamheads or Retrosheet. See Dr. Layton Revel, “Forgotten Heroes: Roy ‘Red’ Parnell,” 2018, at http://www.cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Hero/Roy_Parnell%202019-10.pdf .

51 “Black Yanks Here for Tilt Tomorrow With Memphis Nine,” Muskogee (Oklahoma) Times-Democrat, September 20, 1943: 11.

52 A little more specifically, it’s possible he was labeled with some sort of “personality disorder,” as was another veteran of that war as described in a published case, at https://www.va.gov/vetapp08/files2/0816194.txt.

53 “Joe Lillard to Take Negro Ball Club on USO-Camp Show Tour,” Cleveland Call and Post, February 2, 1946: 8B. “Delay Star Nine’s Overseas Tour,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 2, 1946: 22.

54 “Woman Swindled – 15Gs,” New York Amsterdam News, October 25, 1952: 1.

55 “Dead,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, January 26, 1955: 23. His obituary in Memphis dailies (see Notes 11 and 12) spelled his first name as “Emory.” His daughter was identified as “Mrs. Virginia Moore” but attempts to determine the first name of her husband then have been unsuccessful. However, in 2008, she became the widow of longtime Memphis resident George Beard Sr.; see “Deaths,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, November 6, 2008: DSA4. Around 1970, Emery Junior was married to the former Alma Jean Arnold, according to Perry O. Withers, “50th Wedding Anniversary,” Tri-State Defender (Memphis), August 1, 1970: 8.

56 See https://greyflannelauctions.com/Mid_1930s_Memphis_Pros_Negro_League_Game_Used_Unif-LOT33011.aspx. It’s quite possible the Memphis Pros baseball club was never mentioned in local newspapers.

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.

Keystones vs. Pythian box score, May 12, 1887 (Philadelphia Times)

When it comes to the Black baseball experience in Pittsburgh’s history, most people will think it starts with the Homestead Grays, incorporates the Pittsburgh Crawfords, and ends after Jackie Robinson and integration. This truncated and incomplete history is the narrative that makes its rounds in discussions and articles about Pittsburgh’s Black baseball history. What most people don’t know, besides the countless sandlot and semipro Black teams in the area, is that Pittsburgh was home to a team called the Keystones—well, actually two teams called the Keystones.

However, we are not going to discuss the 1921 Keystones with Willis Moody, Ernest E. “Pud” Gooden, Archie Barnett, and player/manager Fred Downer. We are going to travel back a little further in time to 1887, to the Keystones that played in the short-lived League of Colored Base Ball Clubs (also known as the Colored League or the National Colored League).1

Alongside King Solomon “Sol” White, Weldy Walker, Frank Miller, Willie Standard, and eight others, David Allen and the 1887 Pittsburgh Keystones played for just two weeks during the summer of 1887 for the National Colored Base Ball League. But who was he, where did he come from, and what happened to him when the league folded? The information that follows is the most comprehensive reconstruction of his life that can be completed at this time. While there are questions that will forever remain unanswered, there is enough to shine a light on this forgotten pioneer of early Black baseball.

The early life of David Allen is murky, to say the least. According to his death certificate, Allen was born on February 15, 1858, in Madison, Virginia. His father, Warren Allen, is the only parent listed, with “unknown” written in the space for mother. This is really all we have to go on about his early life which is all based on the recollection of the individual who filled out the death certificate. The issue begins here as there is no corroborating documentation to back up the information presented on the death certificate. No “David Allen” can be found living in Madison, Virginia in any of the proceeding census years.2 However, there is another David Allen that has a clear timeline that takes him from Virginia to Pittsburgh.

Born in October of 1856 in North River, Virginia, “Davy Allen” was born into slavery, with his owner listed as John Allen and his mother’s name listed as Amanda.3 If this is the David Allen in question, this would make him only the second known baseball player, besides William White, to have been born into slavery and then later suit up to play professional baseball. The evidence strongly favors this claim. North River and Madison are only about sixty miles apart, and the two men are only separated by two years (or by one if going by the 1870 census). One must remember that recordkeeping was shoddy during this time in American history.

In the 1870 and 1880 censuses, “Davy Allen” can be found working as a farmhand. In 1870, he was listed as living in Curdsville, Virginia (Buckingham County) and in 1880 in Newtown, Kentucky (Scott County).4  It’s this last entry that seems to bridge “Davy Allen” the former enslaved person to “David Allen” the baseball player. When examining the 1900 census for the Allen family, the document states that all of Allen’s children were born in Kentucky, both leading up to his time on the Keystones and after, with his youngest child, Hazel being born in 1896 in the Bluegrass State.5 Also, there is no “Davy Allen” living in Kentucky post-1880. With all this information, it seems very likely that David Allen started out his life in the institution of chattel slavey, though we may never know his origins for sure. What we do know for certain is that he began playing for the Pittsburgh Keystones in 1887.

David Allen the ballplayer first appears in the historical record playing with the Keystones in a box score found in the May 7, 1887, edition of the Pittsburgh Post. The game was played the day before, on May 6, at Recreation Park (now the site of an industrial complex). This was the opening game of the League of Colored Base Ball Clubs (called the Colored League Championship series in the article). The Keystones took on the New York Gorhams. Allen scored one run and made two errors, and the Keystones were defeated 11-8.6

Though the Keystones lost, the papers report about one thousand in attendance, including Ajax Jones. Local historian JaQuay Edward Carter writes about Jones in detail, proving that for three days, he was actually the first Black mayor of Pittsburgh.7 There was also a street parade headed by the Cornet Band and a concert at Recreation Park.8 This was the high-water mark for the league, with the remainder of the season falling apart on a daily basis.

On May 10, the Boston Resolutes were to play the Keystones; however, Boston postponed.9 The following day, Pittsburgh took on and lost to the Philadelphia Pythians 9-8, but they turned it around and beat them 19-13 just 24 hours later.10 The final games of the Keystones were played against the Lord Baltimores. From May 16-19, the two teams played a total of four times. Allen appears in a box score from the game on May 16. Allen scored two runs, but Baltimore stomped on the Keystones 22-10.11

Allen next appears in the May 19 edition of the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette. The game, played the day before, was a Keystone victory of 16-8. Sadly, the game write-up didn’t have too many kind words for Allen: “Allen seemed to be playing far below his usual gait, and his errors produced a number of runs, as, bad [sic] he played perfectly each time the side would have been retired.”12 He committed two errors that game, though it should be mentioned that he did score two runs and was part of a double play with Ben Gross and Sol White.13 The last game the Keystones played was May 19, when they lost to Baltimore 6-2.

Lacking funds and interest, the league folded, but the Keystones continued to play that summer against local teams. On May 21, they defeated a local team called the Iron City16-6.14 On June 9, the Keystones took on a local team called the Finnertys at Recreation Park.15 What became of Allen for the remainder of the summer is unknown, as there is no further mention of him. The Biographical Encyclopedia of The Negro Baseball Leagues states that he caught for the Cuban Giants (Trenton, New Jersey) in the Middle States League the same year. However, no primary sources could be located to assess the validity of this claim.16

The following year, on April 5, 1888, the Pittsburgh Press announced that the Keystones of the year prior were reforming for the baseball season, with Allen again on first base.17 By all accounts, the team started out strong, playing teams from the tri-state area. However, by mid-May, they vanish from the historical record. Their last recorded game was on May 7, when they defeated a team from East Liverpool (Ohio) called the Crockery Cities 7-6.18

What became of Allen and his baseball career after this date is unknown. He may have played for local teams, or he may have hung up his glove. With such a common surname, it is almost impossible to pin him down concretely. However, we do know that in the 1900 census he was married to Susan (they wed in 1881), and he had five sons (Warnzer, Walter, James, David, and Robert) and three daughters (Pearl, Fannie, and Hazel). The census lists him as a “landscape gardener.”19 By 1910, he had switched careers and was a “hod carrier” (someone who gets supplies for a bricklayer), and he added a daughter, Ethel, to the brood.20 Both the 1920 and 1930 censuses list Allen in the same field of employment.21

On October 21, 1931, David Allen passed away from acute endocarditis. His death certificate lists his occupation as “plaster.”22 Allen’s final resting place is Section 10 of Monongahela Cemetery in North Braddock, Pennsylvania.23 He lay in an unmarked grave until 2023, when he became the second recipient of a marker through the Negro Leagues Memorial Markers: A Josh Gibson Foundation Initiative project. Coincidently, Ernest E. “Pud” Gooden was the first to receive a stone, and both men are buried within feet of each other.24

In the end, David Allen may not have made a huge impact with his playing. However, his time on the Keystones, along with the other men who played with him, helped pave the way for Black baseball and led to iconic teams like the Grays and Crawfords, and to players like Josh Gibson, Cum Posey, and Cool Papa Bell. This is his true legacy.

Acknowledgments

This story was reviewed by Darren Gibson and Natalie Montanez and fact-checked by Terry Bohn.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com, Seamheads.com, and the following:

Ancestry.com

Findagrave.com

Newspapers.com

US Census, 1870-1930

Notes

1 Ken Mars, “Guide to the 1887 Colored League,” SABR.org, accessed July 19, 2024, at https://sabr.org/latest/mars-resource-guide-1887-national-colored-league/.

2 David Allen Death Certificate: Pennsylvania, U.S., Death Certificates, 1906-1970 – Ancestry.com, accessed July 19, 2024.

3 Commonwealth of Virginia Birth Registers 1853-1911

4 1870 US Census, 1880 US Census

5 1900 US Census

6 “How the First Colored Championship Ball Game Was Played,” Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Post, May 7, 1887: 6.

7 Jaquay Edward Carter, “Ajax Jones is the first African-American to serve as mayor of Pittsburgh,” Very Local, February 25, 2021, accessed July 19, 2024, at https://www.verylocal.com/pittsburgh-black-mayor-ajax-jones/1551/.

8 “Colored League Opening,” Pittsburgh Post, May 2, 1887: 6.

9 Mars, “Guide to the 1887 Colored League.”

10 Mars, “Guide to the 1887 Colored League.”

11 “Unfortunate Keystones,” Pittsburgh Post, May 17, 1887: 6.

12 “The Colored League,” Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Commercial Gazette, May 19, 1887: 3.

13 “The Colored League,” Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Commercial Gazette, May 19, 1887: 3.

14 “Base Ball Notes,” Pittsburgh Post, May 23, 1887: 6.

15 “For a Local Pennant,” Pittsburgh Post, June 9, 1887: 6.

16 Rikey, James A. The Biographical Encyclopedia of The Negro Baseball Leagues (New York, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc 1994), 30.

17 “Melange of Sports,” Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) Press, April 5, 1888: 2.

18 “East Liverpool Events,” Pittsburgh Press, May 7, 1888: 4.

19 1900 US Census.

20 1910 US Census.

21 1920 US Census, 1930 US Census.

22 David Allen Death Certificate.

23 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/250808922/david-allen

24 https://jgfmemorialmarkers.org/#david-allen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

13 Bruce, 43.

14 Dixon, 76.

15 Revel and Munoz, 3.

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

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

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

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

20 Figueredo, 159.

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

22 Figueredo, 222.

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

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

25 Holway, 94.

26 Holway, 95.

27 Lester, 48.

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

29 Lester, 49.

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

31 Revel and Munoz, 10.

32 Bruce, 86-87.

33 Holway, 102.

34 Dixon, 144.

35 Bruce, 61.

36 Bruce, 80.

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

38 Bruce, 19.

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

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

41 Bruce, 106.

42 Holway, 103.

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

44 Holway, 104-5.

45 Holway, 105.

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

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

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

As the title of his 2013 autobiography showed, George Altman’s baseball journey took him from the Negro Leagues (1955) to the majors (1959-67) and beyond (Japan, 1968-75). The slugging 6-foot-4 outfielder, who also played first base from time to time, hit 101 home runs in the majors. He was a National League All-Star in 1961 and 1962, but a string of nagging injuries prevented him from achieving stardom in the U.S. over a longer period. However, he went on to hit 205 homers in Japanese ball, in a career that ended when he was 42 years old.

George Lee Altman was born on March 20, 1933, in Goldsboro, North Carolina. This small city lies in the east-central part of the Tar Heel State, southeast of the Raleigh-Durham metro area. During Altman’s youth, the local economy relied most heavily on farming – especially of tobacco – though there was some manufacturing in the area. All of the schools were segregated and the town was divided.1

Altman’s father, Willie, was a tenant farmer and later an auto mechanic. His mother, Clara (née Langston), was a homemaker. George was their only child. His mother died when he was four years old – he never really knew her – and so the boy went to live with his father’s sister for about a year. Willie then remarried, and George moved back in with his father and stepmother.2

Altman’s father did not care about sports at all. George, however, “lived and breathed sports as a little boy – he cried when he was told to stay home from a game because of bad weather.”3 He later speculated that his interest in athletics arose from being an only child; since he had no help when he got into fights with other boys, his way to get back at them came through games.4

Altman ran well, and he had a jesting theory about how he developed his fast feet: from competing in youth recreational programs in Goldsboro, in a rival team’s gym. “After the game, you had to move on home. They [other players] get very territorial after a while. And that’s how I think I got my speed.”5

Altman attended Dillard High School in Goldsboro, starting in 1947. He played four years of baseball there, as well as basketball and football. He then attended Tennessee A&I State University, a historically black institution in Nashville that was renamed Tennessee State University in 1968. Altman had worked as a laborer during his teens and didn’t like it. He called the benefits of a college education “immeasurable.”6

Tennessee A&I did not have a baseball team in either Altman’s freshman or sophomore year; it started when he was a junior. The college was actually interested in Altman for basketball, in which his height was an asset. He played under the pioneering coach John McLendon, who later became the first African-American head coach in any professional sport.7 Altman described McLendon as a demanding technician who kept his players in top physical condition with constant running and drilled them in the finer points of the game.8

Altman jammed a knee while playing basketball, however, and it affected his jumping a bit. After four years of college hoops, the wear on his knees increased his doubts about whether he had a professional future on the hardwood. In addition, even then he wasn’t big enough to be a forward in the NBA – he would have had to become a guard. He was not drafted.9

Therefore, Altman thought about coaching. After getting his degree in physical education, he received an offer to become the basketball coach at Lemoyne College in Memphis. Although he was only 22, he was confident that he could do it.10

However, the business manager of athletics at Tennessee A&I, J.C. Kincaide, was a booking agent in his territory for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. He tipped them off to Altman, who worked out with the team when it visited Indianapolis.11 The Monarchs’ interest led Altman to change his career plans; he joined the team in 1955.

The Monarchs were managed by the universally beloved baseball legend Buck O’Neil. “I had been an outfielder all of the way,” Altman said, “but Buck taught me how to play first base and I played first base for the Monarchs that summer. He taught me all of the moves around the bag when receiving the throws from the infielders.”12

Altman played in Kansas City just three months, though, before signing with the Chicago Cubs. Nonetheless, he enjoyed the experience greatly. Reminiscing in 2016, he said, “What I liked about the Negro Leagues was all the history. I heard about all these guys, and I just liked how colorful it was when they played. They had colorful nicknames – Double Duty Radcliffe, Smokey Joe Williams, Boojum Wilson.”13

Signing with the Cubs “was all because of Buck O’Neil. The Cubs signed me, Lou Johnson, and J.C. Hartman all together on Buck’s say-so. All three of us signed as amateur free agents before the end of 1955 and the Cubs paid Kansas City something like $11,000.”14

During Altman’s first season in the minors, 1956, he played for the Burlington (Iowa) Bees in the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League (Class B). He hit .263 with 16 homers and 67 RBIs in 121 games. The young black man suffered some racial epithets from opponents, and he wasn’t especially comfortable with his Southern white teammates, even though they did not insult him.15

After the season ended, Altman received a draft notice from the U.S. Army. “I pretty much went straight from Burlington into the Army and was sent to Fort Carson, Colorado,” he recalled.16 While he was in the service, Altman continued to play baseball (as well as basketball). “The Army experience was huge,” he said, “because of the way I played with other guys who I knew were ahead of me in the minors, or in the majors. We played against some major league players in the All-Army Championships tournament.”17

Fort Carson won the All-Army title. In the final game against Fort Dix, Altman had a key hit in the 5-1 victory: a two-run inside-the-park homer. Another member of the Mountaineers was Willie Kirkland, who played in the majors from 1958 through 1966 and in Japan from 1968 through 1973.18

When Altman returned to the minors in 1958, he was promoted to Class A. With Pueblo (Colorado) of the Western League, he posted a strong batting line of .325-14-78 in 89 games. As evidence of his speed, he also hit 11 triples. That September, The Sporting News mentioned that Cubs farm director Charlie Grimm was “quite high on the husky outfielder.”19

Soon thereafter, Altman went to Panama to play winter ball. He was a member of the Marlboro Smokers. Statistics from very near the end of the season show that in 139 at-bats, he hit .288 with seven homers (just one behind the league leaders) and 22 RBIs.20 Watching him there, on the recommendation of Pueblo manager Ray Mueller, was the Cubs’ head scout, Ray Hayworth. Hayworth reported to the front office that Altman was ready for the majors – defensively at least.21

Altman vaulted directly to the majors in 1959, thanks to his “exceptionally impressive” performance in spring training – though it was mainly his batting that opened eyes. It was thought that he would need at least one year in Triple-A, but instead the Cubs traded Chuck Tanner and made room for their prospect.22 When it became official that Altman had won a roster spot, Cubs vice-president John Holland said, “The thing that I like about him is that he very seldom swings at bad pitches. We think he is going to make it.”23

Altman’s teammate, the great Ernie Banks, seconded the opinion that the rookie had excellent knowledge of the strike zone. Two more of the greatest hitters in baseball history also observed Altman firsthand that spring. Rogers Hornsby, then a coach with the Cubs, said that Altman couldn’t miss. Ty Cobb said, “George isn’t a sucker for any kind of pitch.”24

Altman also got married for the first time in March 1959, to Raquel DeCastro. The wedding took place in Pueblo, where they had met. George and Rachel (as she was more commonly known) were married for 13 years and had two children: Laura and George Jr.25 Rachel was a fair-skinned Hispanic woman who looked Caucasian, and as Altman observed, “We heard about that a lot in the United States.”26

As Chicago’s primary starting center fielder in 1959, Altman hit .245-12-47 in 135 games. He was benched for a time in midseason, but his hitting picked up sharply after he returned to the lineup in mid-August. Of his 12 homers that season, seven came after August 13, including four in three days from September 21-23. Most notable was a game-ending blow at Wrigley Field on September 22, a two-out, two-run shot off Sam Jones that damaged the San Francisco Giants’ pennant hopes. His fielding was also well regarded.

Altman also handled the demanding mental aspects of life in the majors well. Manager Bob Scheffing said, “He not only is eager to learn, but has the intelligence to absorb instruction.”27 Altman got a lot of help in adjusting from his roommate on the road, Cuban second baseman Tony Taylor.28

Scheffing wanted Altman to go to winter ball again, with an express desire that it be in the best competition possible – “a league with good pitching, a lot of breaking stuff, like screwballs, sliders and curves.”29 At the time, the top winter league was Cuba’s. Altman joined the Cienfuegos Elefantes. He played first base, since the team already had a fine regular center fielder in Tony González. Though Altman hit just .251 in 219 at-bats, he belted 14 homers, which led the club and was just one behind Pancho Herrera for the league lead.30

Cienfuegos won the Cuban pennant that season and thus went on to the Caribbean Series, which pitted the champions of the region’s winter leagues against each other in a round-robin tournament. Cuba won all six of its games. Jorge Figueredo later wrote, “The greatest team ever in Cuban baseball? Maybe it was this Cienfuegos edition of 1959-60.”31

During that Caribbean Series, Altman went 7-for-16 (.438), tied with Panama’s Eddie Napoleon, but neither man had enough at-bats to qualify for the tournament’s best average, so that honor went to Tommy Davis (9-for-22, .409).32 That was the last time the Caribbean Series would be held, however, until it was revived in 1970.

Altman also enjoyed life in Cuba; he had always been interested in languages and picked up some Spanish. There was a downside to that winter season, though, that became visible over time. He noted, “My injury problems started with a sprained ankle in Cuba. It also became a knee problem. I think I started having knee pain because I was favoring my leg because of the sprained ankle.” He reinjured the ankle during the Caribbean Series.33

Also, while the 1959-60 Cuban season was in progress, Chicago obtained veteran center fielder Richie Ashburn in a trade with the Philadelphia Phillies. As a result, with the Cubs in 1960, Altman rotated among the three outfield spots and first base. He started no more than 25 games at any position. He hit .266-13-51 in 119 games. Various ailments hampered him throughout that year – he had come home from Cuba with mononucleosis, which took him a long time to get over, and a kidney infection. Making matters worse, he injured his ankle a third time.34

However, the best two seasons of Altman’s big-league career then followed. He became the Cubs’ regular right fielder in 1961 and hit .303-27-96, with a league-leading 12 triples. He had a noteworthy moment in the first of 1961’s two All-Star games. At Candlestick Park in San Francisco, pinch-hitting for Mike McCormick to lead off the eighth inning, he homered off Mike Fornieles of the Red Sox. Having known Fornieles from Cuba, he looked for a curveball, and got all of it on the first pitch.35 It gave the NL a 3-1 lead, and the run proved valuable because the AL tied it in the ninth. The senior circuit won in 10 innings, 5-4. Altman called it one of his two greatest days in the majors. 36

The other of his greatest days came less than a month later. On August 4 at the Los Angeles Coliseum, Altman hit two home runs off Sandy Koufax. Only two other players went deep off the great lefty twice in one game, and they were both righty batters: Ernie Banks (June 9, 1963) and Felipe Alou (July 9, 1966).

The early 1960s were a dismal period for the Cubs. The symbol of the times was the odd experiment that owner Philip Wrigley launched in 1961: the system of rotating managers called “The College of Coaches.” Altman said, “The whole College of Coaches thing was just peculiar. You didn’t know what a manager might do on a given day, what he would say.”37

Altman repeated as an All-Star in 1962 (.318-22-74), even though he suffered a sprained wrist in June that hampered his power production.38 Again the Cubs finished deep in the second division. A bright spot that year, however, was the addition of Buck O’Neil to the coaching staff (though O’Neil was denied his rightful opportunity to be one of the rotating skippers). “He was inspirational to us, just by his presence,” Altman said. “He was also a cheerleader in a fun kind of way.”39

Despite Altman’s strong performance, shortly after the season ended, Chicago traded him, along with pitcher Don Cardwell and catcher Moe Thacker, to the St. Louis Cardinals. In return the Cubs got pitchers Larry Jackson and Lindy McDaniel, plus catcher Jimmie Schaffer. The Cardinals had been interested in Altman for more than a year, and the 310-foot fence in right field in old Busch Stadium was an attractive target for the lefty power hitter.40 Publicly, at the time, Altman put a positive face on the deal – but he later wrote, “To say that I was shocked would definitely be an understatement.”41

Altman’s one season in St. Louis was disappointing: .274-9-47 in 135 games. Injuries remained a factor, but he also admitted that he had been pressing too much to take advantage of the short porch. “Hitting the ball there seemed easy and I tried to pull entirely too much. It fouled me up.” He also cited platooning. “When I’m going right,” he noted, “it doesn’t matter whether I’m batting against lefthanded or righthanded pitching.”42 Yet another ingredient was impaired vision. He tried playing with glasses, but they were uncomfortable and got steamed up in the muggy summer air of St. Louis.43

Altman was traded again in November 1963, going to the New York Mets along with pitcher Bill Wakefield for Roger Craig. He noted with regret that St. Louis, which finished second in the NL in 1963, went on to become World Series champions the next year.44 Except for 1967, when he played just a fraction of the year in the majors, the ’63 Cardinals were his only big-league team that finished above .500.

Again, Altman spent just one season with his new team while playing hurt. As the primary starting left fielder for the cellar-dwelling Mets, his homer and RBI totals were identical to 1963’s (9 and 47), but his batting average tailed off to just .230. Altman summed it up frankly: “The year with the Mets was probably the least amount of fun I had in baseball, considering the difficulties with my wife, me not hitting and the team losing . . . the injuries always frustrated me.”45

For the third time in three years, Altman was traded. He went back to Chicago in January 1965, in an even-up swap for another outfielder, Billy Cowan. Cowan, then aged 26, had been voted the minor league player of the year in 1963. The Mets envisioned him as their regular center fielder. Meanwhile, press reports suggested that Altman had been obtained as first base insurance for Ernie Banks.46

The return to the Cubs did not revive Altman’s career. He started well in 1965 but got hurt yet again. “I had so many injuries over those few years, most of them to my legs and groin muscles,” Altman recalled. “One sportswriter said that my team was Blue Cross.” This time, he suffered a severe groin tear while running to first after trying to bunt his way on.47 Overall in 1965 and 1966, his batting numbers were uninspiring: a total of 9 homers and 40 RBIs in 178 games, with an average of .228.

Altman also believed that Leo Durocher, who became Chicago’s manager in 1966, “soured on me a little because of my wife . . . in those days you weren’t supposed to have mixed marriages. It may or may not have been true, but that was my perception.”48

The last 15 games that Altman played in the majors came in 1967. He spent most of the season with Tacoma in the Pacific Coast League. Yet even though he was aged 34, he was far from finished. In fact, he embarked on a very fruitful new phase of his career.

In Tacoma, Altman had become acquainted with Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada, a Japanese-American who was then the general manager of the Cubs’ farm team in the California League. Harada, who was well-connected in Japanese baseball, asked Altman if he wanted to play there.49 Altman agreed. His hope (as it had been when he accepted the demotion to Tacoma) was to stay healthy, play well, and get noticed. He thought he would be back in the majors after a year or so.50

When Altman arrived in Japan, he realized something that struck many gaijin (foreign) players. “They do things over there that are a loooooot different, and one thing was the spring training. I call it kamikaze training.”51 He was referring to how long and grueling the practice sessions were. However, the type of training he had done for John McLendon helped him.52

Altman spent his first season in Japan with the Tokyo Orions. The franchise changed its name to the Lotte Orions in 1969 after being sold to the Korean company Lotte. During seven seasons with the Orions, Altman hit 193 home runs and drove in 609 in 821 games. He hit below .300 only in 1969. His strong batting came despite what he viewed as another glaring disparity: “Americans had a different strike zone than Japanese players. Balls and strikes could be anywhere.”53

Nonetheless, Altman succeeded where many gaijin failed. He worked hard and made an effort to learn the Japanese language and customs. He noted, “You had to have a certain temperament and the ability to roll with things even if they seemed outrageous.”54

In 1974, Altman was hitting better than he ever had in Japan – .351, with 21 homers and 67 RBIs in just 85 games. However, that August, about three-quarters of the way through the season, he was diagnosed with colon cancer and underwent chemotherapy.55 The treatment was successful, but Lotte’s manager, former star pitcher Masaichi Kaneda, and Altman had a strained relationship. According to Altman, “Kaneda wanted to sign another American and have me around as coach . . . just as an insurance policy. . .He wanted to cut my salary to the bone.” For all intents and purposes, Altman was a free agent, but the bad press that Kaneda fomented scared many teams away. Finally, the Hanshin Tigers gave Altman a chance.56

In his final season, 1975, Altman hit .274-12-57 in 114 games. He started strongly but then slumped. “I think my body was weaker than I thought,” he later admitted. “I was feeling the lingering effects of the chemotherapy.” He also noted that Hanshin’s ballpark was bigger and the prevailing winds blew in from right field, which was hard on him as a dead-pull lefty hitter.57

Altman had previously said that he would continue to play until he had a subpar season. He decided to retire from baseball, and returned to Chicago, where he spent 13 years as a commodities trader, buying a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade. He said, “Wherever I played, one thing on my side was my competitive nature,” and the same held true in his new line of work. He also brought that spirit to his new sports, racquetball and later horseshoes.58

Altman got married for the second time in 1976 to Etta Allison, a piano teacher.59 He continued to trade commodities out of his home; in addition, he ran a prepaid legal services business. He also volunteered with the Boys Foundation and mentored youth within the community. He stated an intense interest in keeping kids off drugs and alcohol and out of trouble.60

Around 2002, Altman and Etta moved to O’Fallon, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. In his eighties, Altman remained in good health and his memory was excellent. He was invited in 2016 to open SABR’s 19th annual Jerry Malloy Negro Leagues Conference and regaled the audience with many anecdotes.

With regard to the presence of African-Americans in baseball today, Altman said, “You just have to work hard, study and concentrate, and just be there when your chance comes along. The young black American player just isn’t pursuing baseball like they did in the past. But baseball offers so many opportunities, so I would think that black players would look at baseball more.”61

Looking back on his long and successful life, George Altman reflected, “I feel I could have been a star in the major leagues, but things worked out pretty well in another way. I did okay. I have a lot of good baseball memories. I met a lot of good people.”62

Postscript

George Altman died peacefully in his sleep at home on November 24, 2025. He was 92. His death came eight days after the loss of his wife, Etta.

Last revised: December 1, 2025

Sources

The backbone of this biography is George Altman’s full-length autobiography, co-authored with Lew Freedman, George Altman: My Baseball Journey from the Negro Leagues to the Majors and Beyond, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2013. Grateful acknowledgment to Mr. Altman for additional input (telephone interview, January 24, 2017).

Special thanks also to Laura Altman Jones for the introduction to her father and to Gina Rodgers-Sealy for the introduction to Laura. Gina’s father, André Rodgers, and George Altman were close friends while they were teammates on the Cubs. Their daughters have remained good friends since childhood.

Internet resources

Negro League Baseball eMuseum (http://coe.k-state.edu/annex/nlbemuseum/history/players/altman.html)

comc.com (online baseball card database)

Notes

Sandy — so called for a supposed resemblance to champion boxer Sandy Saddler1 — was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978. He also showed great promise in the Negro Leagues, the Dominican Republic, and Triple-A. In the majors, however, he remained a role player, spending just three full summers there along with fractions of four others. In author Peter Golenbock’s view, a language barrier hindered his career.

“Amorós had been one of the greatest players ever to come out of pre-Castro Cuba. If he had spoken English, he certainly would have played more, because in Cuba he was a .300 hitter in a fast league, was fleet in the field, was excellent at stealing bases, and was a good bunter. But he didn’t learn the language, and it was a handicap that kept him from becoming a star. A manager just doesn’t trust employing a player when he isn’t sure whether the guy understands him or not.”2

After his days as a pro ended in Mexico in 1962, Amorós then fell on hard times, running afoul of Fidel Castro. Poverty and ill health marked the last 30 years of his life.

Edmundo Amorós was born on January 30, 1930, in the Pueblo Nuevo district of Matanzas, 50 miles east of Havana.3 This city is known for Afro-Cuban culture. Many people from the area are called “Congos” — which, as author Roberto González Echevarría notes, is “a common (if tasteless) way of referring to someone who is very black. Cuban blacks themselves apply it to each other. . . . Congos are reputed to be short but tough.”4 Amorós, one of many Afro-Cuban ballplayers from Matanzas, was such a man. At 5-feet-7 1/2 and 170 pounds, he had surprising home-run power. The scout who signed him for the Dodgers, Al Campanis, called him “Miracle Wrists.”5

Edmundo was the youngest of six children born to Guillermo Amorós and Carida Isasi. Guillermo, who labored in sugar cane fields, died when his little boy was just 3. Carida supported her family by working in a textile mill. Edmundo attended school for eight years but began working in the mill too at the age of 14.6

The small but speedy youth had played baseball from an early age; he was already talented enough to hold his own with older players in Matanzas. In 1947, when he was 17, the young black man also drew inspiration from his pioneering future teammate. The Dodgers held spring training in Havana that year, and Amorós later remarked, “When I see Jackie Robinson play in my country, I say if he can do it, I can do it too.”7

In the baseball structure of Cuba before Castro, the cutoff point for the Juveniles division was age 20. In 1949, aged 19, Amorós won the national batting title at this level.8 This is significant because even well into his big-league career, newspapers and Topps baseball cards indicated that he was born in 1932. Yet by 1951, Edmundo had turned pro at home. Clearly the prospect shaved a couple of years off his age for U.S. purposes.9

In early 1950, the young outfielder gained international exposure. From February 25 through March 12, the sixth Central American and Caribbean Games took place in Guatemala City. Cuba won all seven of its games in the eight-team baseball tournament — led by Amorós, who hit .370 with six homers and 14 RBIs. Author Peter Bjarkman described Amorós and pitcher Justiniano Garay as “two initially token blacks carried on Cuba’s roster as racial integration slowly and quietly arrived within Cuban amateur baseball circles.”10

Cuba’s Amateur League, a bastion of white-only private social clubs, actually remained segregated until 1959. There was a strange and surprising Catch-22 at work. Black players could play in the main Cuban professional league but needed places to develop. Yet while two new integrated amateur leagues sprang up in the 1940s, many Afro-Cubans were forced to turn either to semipro ball or the sugar-mill circuit — and thus became ineligible for amateur international competition. Amorós and Garay remained eligible in 1950, though. Joining them was Ángel Scull, another black outfielder from Matanzas, who played nine seasons at Triple-A but never made the majors.

Edmundo then went on to join the New York Cubans, run by Cuban impresario Alex Pómpez, in the Negro American League. Playing first base in addition to the outfield, he hit .338 (an isolated and probably incomplete statistic), with at least one notable homer at the Polo Grounds. Pitcher Sam Williams had promised to knock Amorós down before the game, and sailed a fastball dangerously close to the batter’s head. Sandy then held up his end of the pregame exchange by belting one into the second deck.11

That winter, 24 Cuban sportswriters unanimously voted Amorós Rookie of the Year in the Cuban League. (The records show he played in 41 games but with just 42 at-bats, which is also likely incomplete.) He helped the Havana Rojos (Reds) to their first of three straight Cuban championships under manager Mike González. Down in Caracas, Venezuela, Amorós then went 5-for-15 in the third Caribbean Series, won by Puerto Rico.

The New York Cubans ceased to exist after the 1950 season. During the summer of 1951, Amorós played in the Dominican Republic, where pro baseball had resumed that year (the league would not switch to the winter until 1955). With the Estrellas Orientales club in San Pedro de Macorís, Edmundo went 31 for 79 (.392), scoring 20 runs and driving in 19.12

In the winter of 1951-52, Amorós posted .333-3-27 numbers for Havana and was named a league All-Star. He also attracted the attention of Brooklyn Dodgers coach Billy Herman, who was managing the Cienfuegos team. Herman in turn tipped off Al Campanis, who signed the outfielder for a $1,000 bonus.13 After the Cuban season ended, the Reds went on to the fourth Caribbean Series, played in Panama City. Cuba finished 5-0 with one tie, and Edmundo led all hitters by going 9-for-20 (.450). One of those hits drove in pitcher Tommy Fine with the only run in Fine’s no-hitter on February 21 — a unique achievement in Series history.

That spring, Amorós made his minor-league debut with the St. Paul Saints, one of Brooklyn’s two Triple-A affiliates. At that time he acquired his nickname, Sandy, from veteran teammate Bert Haas, also a teammate with Havana. The resemblance to featherweight champ Saddler was only passing, but the label stuck over time, though many contemporary articles still called him Edmundo. In the United States, however, non-Spanish speakers typically accented the first syllable of his last name.14

In 129 games with the Saints, Amorós hit strongly (.337-19-78). That July, Andy High, the Dodgers’ chief scout, said he was worthy of a $150,000 bonus, given what young American high-schoolers were then receiving.15 About a month later, on August 21, 1952, the Dodgers announced that they were sending down pitcher Chris Van Cuyk and calling up Amorós — touted as “another Willie Mays”16 — for help in the stretch drive.

Sandy made his debut the next day, in the first game of a doubleheader at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. In his first at-bat, as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning, he singled off Woody Main and came all the way around to score as the ball went through the legs of center fielder Brandy Davis. Apparently Amorós was right on the tail of Gil Hodges as he crossed the plate.

Amorós batted .250 in 44 at-bats the rest of the way — “change-ups fooled Miracle Wrists,” as Dodgers chronicler Roger Kahn noted.17 Still, he remained on Brooklyn’s roster for the World Series, appearing briefly as a pinch-runner in Game Six.

Amorós starred again that winter in Cuba. Along with 3 homers and 38 RBIs, he won the batting title with a .373 mark — the league’s highest in more than 30 years. Yet despite playing at home, Havana finished behind Santurce of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Series; Edmundo went just 4-for-24.

For various reasons, Amorós spent the whole 1953 season with Brooklyn’s other Triple-A team, Montreal. He won the International League’s batting crown as well at .353, with 23 homers and 100 RBIs. Don Thompson, Jackie Robinson, and George Shuba saw most of the action in left field for Brooklyn.

The front office may have sought some more seasoning for Sandy, whose English was also still very limited — “Hokay” and “steak” were his key vocabulary words. Another factor is worth noting, though. On April 7, 1953, the New York Times observed, “Delayed for a time in Havana by the McCarran Act, Amorós hasn’t worn a Brooklyn uniform this spring. He has been working out at Vero Beach since his arrival.”18 The McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 was a controversial law aimed at “subversives,” passed over President Truman’s veto while the Senate was in the grip of McCarthyism. Even though Communism was still several years away in Cuba, people around the world faced tighter curbs on admission to the United States, especially after the related McCarran-Walter Act was passed in 1952.

Unsavory racial implications were also visible. On days when Don Newcombe pitched, the Dodgers lineup had the potential for a majority of black players (Robinson at third instead of Billy Cox, Roy Campanella, and rookie second-baseman Jim Gilliam, as well as Sandy). Brooklyn had been a groundbreaking organization, but by that time, Branch Rickey was gone. Roger Kahn noted, “Actually, by this time the Dodgers were exceedingly cautious crusaders.”19

Sandy had another excellent winter in Cuba (.322-9-39), and then a strong spring with the Dodgers in 1954. This prompted further “poetic license” with the pronunciation of his surname as New York Mirror writer Dan Parker parodied the song “That’s Amore.”20 Amorós opened the 1954 season in Brooklyn, but the Dodgers sent him down to Montreal in mid-May when the time came to meet roster limits.

Though Dodgers management denied it, the possible racial motive again surfaced, as journalist John Lardner discussed in his May 10 story for Newsweek, “The 50 Per Cent Color Line.” Bill Roeder of the New York World-Telegram & Sun (who had separately remarked on Sandy’s habit of wiggling his wrists at the plate) also wrote of “an undercurrent of suspicion.” When Amorós returned in July, however, the majority-black lineup took the field for the first time in big-league history on July 17 at Milwaukee’s County Stadium. Jackie Robinson played third base. Six days later, Edmundo hit his first big-league homer, off Vic Raschi of the Cardinals.

The 1954 season was also notable for a controversy that developed later — Roberto Clemente’s contention that the Dodgers “hid” him in Montreal. Author Stew Thornley re-examined this generally accepted belief in the 2006 edition of SABR’s annual, The National Pastime. He quoted Canadian baseball historian Neil Raymond:

“What becomes apparent going through the Montreal papers daily (La Presse, The Gazette, The Star) is that this team was not perceived as a player development exercise,” maintained Raymond. “They were expected to win. Translation: Sandy Amorós’s at-bats were deemed a lot more valuable.” Indeed, Edmundo swung a hot bat before his recall (.352-14-50). His output for Brooklyn, largely against righty pitching, was good (.274-9-34).

Just after Christmas 1954, Amorós married Migdalia Castro, his childhood sweetheart from Matanzas.21 She may already have delivered their only child — articles from 1967 note daughter Eloisa’s age as 13.

Following a fifth straight fine season in Havana (.307-5-37), Sandy finally became the primary left fielder for Brooklyn in 1955. He posted career highs of 119 games and 388 at-bats. The numbers were not outstanding (.247-10-51), but his World Series action turned out to be special. Amorós was 4-for-12 in five games, and when he entered Game Seven in the sixth inning (as Jim Gilliam shifted from left to second), his peak moment was at hand.

Billy Martin had led off the bottom of the sixth with a walk, and Gil McDougald bunted his way on. This was Yankee broadcaster Mel Allen’s call as the dangerous Yogi Berra came to the plate:

“Johnny Podres on the mound. Dodgers leading 2-0. . . . The outfield swung away toward right. Sandy Amorós is playing way into left-center. Berra is basically a pull hitter.

“Here’s the pitch. Berra swings and he does hit one to the opposite field, down the left field line. . . . Sandy Amorós races over toward the foul line . . . and he makes a sensational, running, one-handed catch! He turns, whirls, fires to Pee Wee Reese. Reese fires to Gil Hodges at first base in time to double up McDougald. And the Yankees’ rally is stymied!”

When asked how he made the play, Sandy summed it up simply: “I dunno. I run like hell.” In addition to his superior speed, Amorós was also left-handed; righty Jim Gilliam said he would not have reached the slicing liner on his backhand. Yet according to winning pitcher Podres, “The big thing about it, though, more than the catch, was how he fired the ball back to Reese.” Podres added that Don Zimmer jokingly took credit for the turn of events because manager Walt Alston had pulled Zimmer for a pinch-hitter and inserted Amorós.22

Life magazine published a splendid photo of Sandy smiling brilliantly around a Cuban cigar as he celebrated the victory. The Cuban press reveled even more.

“Amorós, hero of the year,” proclaimed Carteles. Bohemia published a full-page photograph of Amorós over the caption: “His performance in the World Series has produced intense joy in our nation.” His deeds signified a “triumph and corroboration for the quality of our sports” and “assure him a place of honor in the history of the pastime of Cuba.”23

Sandy spent his last winter with the Havana Reds in 1955-56, falling below .300 (.262-8-34). He enjoyed his best big-league season in 1956, though, hitting 16 homers and driving in 58 for Brooklyn in just 292 at-bats. In the World Series, however, he went cold, going just 1-for-19 in six games — with one crucial near-miss. In the fifth inning of Don Larsen’s perfect game, Amorós hooked a drive barely wide of the right-field foul pole.

Before the 1956-57 winter season, Havana traded Edmundo to Almendares for four players: infielder Héctor Rodríguez, outfielders Román Mejías and Óscar Sardiñas, and pitcher Raúl Sánchez. With the Alacranes (Scorpions), he suffered a poor season, hitting just .194 with 4 homers and 24 RBIs.

Sandy never could reach a higher level in Brooklyn. From the language standpoint, he had not made great progress, relying on support from Spanish-speaking teammates including Joe Black, Gilliam, and Campanella (Roy let him live on his yacht). Brooklyn fan Pete Trunk recalls that as a boy, “My crew of buddies and I always hated when Sandy was on Happy Felton’s Knothole Gang. We couldn’t understand one word he was saying!”

Still, Amorós remained a useful role player in 1957, platooning with Gino Cimoli in left (.277-7-26). He rebounded somewhat with Almendares that winter (.247-7-29). After 1957, though, Sandy saw little time in the majors. In March 1958, the Dodgers — by then in Los Angeles — put him on waivers. Authors Larry Moffi and Jonathan Kronstadt described the situation as “a bitter salary dispute,” noting also that “Sportswriter Bill Nunn, Jr., of the Pittsburgh Courier claimed the Dodgers had influenced other teams to ‘keep their hands off Amorós’ to punish him for refusing to sign for the same salary, $10,500, he had made the year before.”24

Passing through waivers unclaimed, Sandy returned to Montreal. It is not known whether he ever picked up much French, though it should have been easier for him. He had good years at Triple-A in both 1958 (.260-16-62) and 1959 (.301-26-79), plus two more middling winters for the Scorpions, highlighted by a return to the Caribbean Series in 1959 (7-for-21). Los Angeles finally recalled him for five games in September at the end of the ’59 season. However, Amorós was not on the postseason roster.

Sandy actually made the Dodgers roster out of spring training in 1960, but saw very limited duty. On May 7, Los Angeles traded him to the Detroit Tigers for Gail Harris. He remained with the Tigers as a seldom-used reserve for the rest of the year. On May 31, his pinch-hit homer off Dick Hall — the last of his 43 home runs in the big leagues — gave Detroit its only run in a 2-1 loss.

The Cuban professional league played its last season in the winter of 1960-61, and Sandy was there until the end with Almendares, going out with a respectable .288 average. His lifetime totals in Cuba across 11 seasons, subject to some uncertainty, were 49 homers, 312 RBIs, and a .281 average in 2,305 at-bats.

Amorós then spent 1961 with Denver in the American Association (.259-10-58). On March 18, 1962, the Tigers organization sold him and infielder Ossie Álvarez to the Mexico City Red Devils. Sandy played well (.305-13-71) — but his days on the field were over, as he hit a new obstacle.

Author Nicholas Dawidoff (perhaps best known for his book on Moe Berg, The Catcher Was a Spy) provided many insights on Sandy’s life in a feature he wrote for Sports Illustrated in July 1989. He described how things went downhill because of a run-in with El Líder Máximo, Fidel Castro.

“Castro decided to form an entire professional summer league in Cuba. He asked Amorós, who, as usual, was spending his offseason in Cuba, to stay home and manage one of the teams instead of returning to Mexico that summer. ‘I told Castro I didn’t know how to manage,’ says Amorós. ‘I could play, why would I want to manage?’ Privately, Amorós had qualms about working for the government. Castro did not take Amorós’s refusal lightly. He stripped Amorós of his ranch, car, all his assets and cash.”25

Sandy worked for himself as a mechanic, repairman, or whatever he could find.26 His reduced circumstances led to other problems, notes Roberto González Echevarría:

“For many players, the collapse of the Cuban League had tragic consequences. The diaspora began. Amorós, for instance . . . could not leave for many years, during which he became an alcoholic and eventually a diabetic. When he did leave, the Dodgers put him on their roster for the few days he needed for his pension.”27

That was in May 1967. John McHale, then assistant to Commissioner Spike Eckert, was behind the kind act. When the future Montreal Expos executive found out that Sandy was seven days short of qualifying, he mentioned it to Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi, who took it in turn to club owner Walter O’Malley. 28 There is a photo of Sandy — “penniless, bald and 30 pounds lighter than when he played for Brooklyn”29 — delivering the lineup card to home plate during his time at Dodger Stadium.

Sandy had been able to escape Cuba at last, thanks to the good offices of Armando Vásquez, his old comrade from home and the Negro Leagues.30 Catholic Charities of Brooklyn sponsored his visa, and Amorós got a job coaching baseball in a Catholic Youth Organization playground in New York City.31 But after the family arrived in the United States and the Dodgers lent their support, a sad sequence of events ensued, as Nicholas Dawidoff portrayed:

“In December 1967, Migdalia divorced him, taking Eloisa with her. After three years, the store he worked in [a TV shop in the South Bronx] burned down. For six months Amorós was unemployed, until a friend at the New York Post, who had connections in the office of New York Mayor John Lindsay, helped him get a job with the parks department in the Bronx. When Lindsay’s term was up so was Amorós’s. Two years of unemployment followed.”

In 1977, Amorós claimed his first pension check from major-league baseball and moved to Tampa, where he lived alone on the money he earned from a variety of menial jobs and from his pension.”32

By that time, Sandy was suffering greatly from leg pain owing to poor circulation from his diabetes. Doctors amputated part of his left leg in September 1987. Roberto González Echevarría offered another moving depiction of Sandy, “who was in no condition to be interviewed formally”:33

“I will never forget peering through a window of Edmundo Amorós’ apartment in Tampa, with Agapito Mayor [a Cuban pitcher], to see if the old hero of the 1955 World Series was awake. Every day, Mayor brought him a meal from a nearby restaurant with take-out service and cleaned up the apartment for him. I was deeply moved by Mayor’s kindness, which he displayed without fuss, as if he were performing the most routine of chores. Once inside we find a withered figure, missing a leg from the knee down (diabetes), and with the ashen color of poor health. He speaks softly of leaving Cuba, of getting an offer to play in some independent league in Canada because they still remembered him there from his salad days with the Montreal Royals. But he knew that he was through, he says. His artificial leg is propped up against the wall. A small television set blares with some adventure movie. Mayor is puttering about, picking up things, tidying up. He has run Amorós to the hospital several times. . . .”34

This was actually a step up from the worst conditions Sandy had faced. After his operation, fellow Cuban and Brooklyn Dodger Chico Fernández got the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) to supplement the meager $495 monthly pension with an additional $400 a month.35

Amorós was still capable of some travel, though, and many other friends still kept him in their minds and hearts. In February 1990, he went to Miami for a meeting. “The Federation of Professional Cuban Baseball Players in Exile hosted their own reception in conjunction with the Caribbean Series of Baseball. The meeting room was full of baseball history. Cuban greats like Tony Oliva, José Tartabull, and Sandy Amorós gathered to talk about yesterday and today.”36

As of 1991, Sandy still lived in Tampa.37 In the last year of his life, though, he moved to Miami to live with his daughter Eloisa and her four children. The New York Times wrote another feature article on him in June 1992, shortly before he was to travel back to Brooklyn as guest of honor at the Coney Island Sports Festival. An autograph signing and memorabilia auction were set up, with the lion’s share of the proceeds intended for his benefit. June 20 was scheduled as Sandy Amorós Day in Brooklyn.38

Alas, he never made it north. He was stricken with pneumonia on June 16 and entered Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital.39 Though it looked as though he was rallying after he went on a respirator,40 Sandy declined and eventually passed away on June 27. He was buried in Woodlawn Park North Cemetery and Mausoleum in Miami.

More than 60 years after his greatest feat, Edmundo Amorós is still remembered in the United States and celebrated as a hero in Cuba. Yet beyond the field, through good times and hardships, there was always one constant about this proud but modest man. Said his lawyer, Rafael Sánchez:

“From the days when he played until now, he’s always had that wonderful smile. You’ll look at him and just marvel at that smile.”41

Sources

SABR Minor League Database

Professional Baseball Player Database V6.0

www.retrosheet.org

www.findagrave.com

Photo Credit

Sandy Amoros, Trading Card Database.

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

Notes

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

2 1930 Census, Ancestry.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As it turned out, Ash’s collegiate baseball career lasted only slightly longer than his stint with the American Giants. After he moved from his native state of Indiana to New York City in 1926, Ash had one last cup of coffee in the Eastern Colored League. Ed Bolden signed Ash to his Hilldale club,1 but he played in only one league game before being released. He caught on with the Newark Stars in June and played in three games before an unexpected circumstance ended his season and his pursuit of a career as a professional baseball player.

After Ash married in 1927, he found employment off the diamond, although he also played semipro ball for a few more years. In 1942, Ash’s coach at Michigan, Ray Fisher, named him as a member of his all-time Michigan baseball team.2 Fisher had pitched to a career 100-94 record with a 2.82 ERA for the New York Yankees (1910-17) and Cincinnati Reds (1919-20). As of 2021, he was still Michigan’s winningest head coach, having led his teams to a 636-295-9 record and one national championship between 1921 and 1958.3

The fact that Fisher bestowed such high praise on an athlete who had participated in his program for only one year was remarkable, but it also poses the question why Ash did not have a successful professional career. Perhaps Rube Foster, the American Giants’ Hall of Fame owner, was correct when, upon firing drunken former college pitcher Tom Williams in 1918, he asserted that “in all his experience in baseball this sort of players [college players] are the hardest kind to keep straight in the world.”4 Considering why Ash left Michigan, it is entirely possible that Foster’s comment could be applied to him as well.

Ash’s family background and college years are perhaps of more historical interest than his stunted professional baseball career. Regarding his ancestry, he was descended from one of the first Black families to settle in South Bend, Indiana. Ash’s maternal great-grandfather, Pharaoh Powell, was a freed slave from South Carolina who brought his wife, Rebecca, and their children to the Hoosier State circa 1853.5 The fact that Powell settled in Indiana at that time put his family and the residents of South Bend who allowed him to stay there in violation of Article 13 of Indiana’s 1851 state constitution, which read:

“Section 1: No negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the State, after the adoption of this Constitution.

“Section 2: All contracts made with any Negro or Mulatto coming into the State, contrary to the provisions of the foregoing section, shall be void; and any person who shall employ such Negro or Mulatto, or otherwise encourage him to remain in the State, shall be fined in any sum not less than ten dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars.”6

The law also stipulated that all fines collected for violations of Article 13 would be set aside to send the “negro or mulatto” in question to Liberia, if said person(s) were willing to emigrate there.

Despite Indiana’s official hard-line stance against Black settlers, the city of South Bend proved to be a hospitable location, and no one is known to have been fined under Article 13. According to a local historian, “Beginning in 1858, Pharaoh Powell bought several acres of land to the southwest of downtown South Bend, in Union Township, along Main Street and elsewhere in the county.”7 In addition to becoming a prominent family in the area, three of the Powells’ sons enlisted in the Union Army to fight in the Civil War.8

Pharaoh and Rebecca’s daughter, Nancy Powell, married William Henderson on August 5, 1879. Henderson was from La Porte County, Indiana, and had also served in the Civil War. At a banquet given in his honor in October 1934, he recollected, “My ancestors were freed slaves. When about 13 years of age, I entered the civil war [sic] near its close as a handy boy to Colonel Milroy, of the Ninth Indiana Infantry. Peace was declared before I saw a battle.”9 William later moved to South Bend, where he met Nancy.

William and Nancy Henderson had one child, a daughter named Cora Bell, who was born on January 8, 1881. On February 21, 1899, Cora Bell Henderson married Thaddeus Ash, who was from Michigan, and the couple resided with the Hendersons. Rudolph Thaddeus Ash, the future baseball player, was born on November 2, 1899, in South Bend.

Although William Henderson provided a roof over his daughter and son-in-law’s heads, he was not so well off that he could support them financially. Henderson worked as a waiter at the Grand Central Hotel while Thaddeus Ash held a job as a porter and Cora found work at the local YMCA. The family’s hardscrabble existence is hinted at by how young Rudolph Ash referred to himself in his 1906 letter to Santa Claus, which was printed in the South Bend Tribune on December 15. Seven-year-old Rudolph wrote (with all misspellings and grammar errors left intact by the newspaper):

“Dear Santa Clause – I want a new suit and a cap and a pair shoes and lagerns. Please send also a large engine with 5 cars and a coal car. I want a Xmas book with nice Xmas pieces in it. I would like to have all these things hung on a tree in my parlor good by Santa Clause please make some little poor boy happy thanks for every thing I am Rudolph Ash 422 S Main St South Bend Ind.”10

His childhood interest in railroads cars must have had a lifelong appeal for Ash, since he eventually found a career with the Pennsylvania Railroad and worked for the company long enough to receive a pension.

Less than a year after Christmas 1906, life became harsher for Ash’s family due to his father’s excessive drinking. On July 11, 1907, Thaddeus Ash pleaded guilty to charges of assault and battery upon his wife and father-in-law. He was ordered to pay $20 (a $5 fine and $15 for court costs) and received a 30-day jail sentence. However, “upon his promise to the court as well as his father-in-law to refrain from drinking in the future, he was released upon suspended sentence by paying the fine and costs.”11

Thaddeus soon reneged on his promise and he and Cora separated on August 9, 1907. Thaddeus moved back to Kalamazoo, Michigan, and young Rudolph continued to live with his mother and his grandparents in South Bend. Thaddeus kept in touch with Rudolph and even listed him as his contact on his World War I draft registration card in 1918. It appears that Cora wanted to give her husband every chance to make good; however, on February 23, 1917, she finally sued for divorce, “making a general charge of cruel and inhuman treatment.”12

According to the US Census, South Bend had seen a 49.1 percent population growth between 1900 and 1910, and the crime that often accompanies such growth affected the Henderson-Ash household in 1911. A thief who had become known as a “gentleman burglar” had been working the neighborhood and continually eluded the police. On October 9 he targeted the Henderson house, but he picked the wrong time as its occupants were still awake. Cora “screamed while her father stood by the rear window with a club in hand to receive the midnight visitor, but he was frightened away.”13

Although Ash and his family had their struggles, he also experienced some benefits of growing up in South Bend. At a time when most schools throughout America were still segregated, Ash was able to attend South Bend High School, the only high school in town, and graduated in 1918.14 In September Ash registered for the draft and indicated that he was working at Notre Dame University and was preparing to attend college.

As the United States continued to ramp up its war efforts since having become involved in World War I the previous year, Ash joined the Student Army Training Corps at Indiana University in Bloomington. The Corps existed on many campuses and had been “created to keep students in college while preparing to fight the war.”15 At Indiana University it “included four companies and well over 1,000 men. Members wore uniforms, were paid $30 a month and lived in barracks that were converted fraternity houses.”16

Ash was one of “only a handful” of Black men at Indiana University, who “drill[ed] with white classmates and liv[ed] separately in Barracks No. 7.”17 All branches of the US military maintained racially segregated units at that time; thus, the separate living quarters at IU were no surprise. However, by drilling with their White classmates, Ash and his Black classmates had become trailblazers. John Summerlot, the director of the university’s Veterans Support Services, asserted, “I would argue the first racially integrated Army unit was the SATC. And it may have been just at IU. I’ve yet to find any other integrated SATC units during World War I.”18

When the 1918 flu pandemic reached Bloomington, Indiana’s State Board of Health closed the IU campus from October 10 until November 4. As a result, “SATC members were confined to their barracks, and other students were sent home. … By the end of December 1918, the SATC members had been discharged from the military.”19 Ash returned home to South Bend in time for Christmas. Before the next academic year, he visited his father in Kalamazoo and then announced that he was going to attend the University of Michigan.20

Surprisingly, since Ash had not spent any time in the limelight, his life had been well documented to this point. South Bend directories and the 1920 US Census list Ash as a university student, presumably at the University of Michigan, although he was not yet a member of the Wolverines’ baseball team. He did, however, have a brief stint with Chicago American Giants in the summer of 1920.

Ash must have played baseball somewhere to be discovered and signed by Foster, but when and where are unknown. Ash was so unfamiliar to the Chicago press that he was listed in box scores as “Rudolph” more often than by his surname, Ash. Professional baseball may have been just a summer diversion for Ash as he received most of his playing time in July. He manned left field in a series against the St. Louis Giants from July 11 to 13 at Schorling Park in Chicago; the American Giants triumphed by scores of 5-2, 4-2, and 7-6. Ash, listed as “Rudolph” for all three contests, contributed two hits in the middle game and scored a run in the July 13 contest.21

On July 19 Ash – now listed in the box score by his surname – played right field in a 3-1 triumph over the Dayton Marcos at Schorling Park.22 He had one hit but did not score a run. Ash participated only in games in Chicago, a city that he and his family often visited. He did not distinguish himself during his brief time with the American Giants; he batted .208 (5-for-24), scored three runs, and had two RBIs in eight NNL games.

In October, it was reported that Ash had “returned to Ann Arbor, Mich., where he [was to] resume his law studies at the University of Michigan.”23 At this point in his life, Ash did not yet combine academic and baseball pursuits. In late May of 1921, after the spring semester ended, it was reported that “Jess Elster and his new gang of Colored Athletics” from Grand Rapids, Michigan, had “obtained Rudolph Ash of Ann Arbor, an infielder, who should be a big attraction during the season.”24 No further mention of Ash is found in articles about the Colored Athletics’ games; he may not have reported to Elster’s team after all.

After a one-year baseball hiatus, Ash popped up again in 1923. The Chicago Defender claimed, “Rudolph Ash of South Bend, Ind., is the first student of Color to ever play on the Michigan university baseball team.”25 Since the Defenderhad not been founded until 1905, perhaps it can be forgiven for its error. However, the fact is that Moses Fleetwood Walker had enrolled at Michigan in 1881 and had become the first Black player on the university’s baseball team in 1882.26 Ash held the distinction of being Michigan’s first Black baseball player in the twentieth century. As such, he was a precursor to Jackie Robinson. In 1946 Robinson – at the outset of his Hall of Fame career – became the first Black player in the International League since Walker in 1889 (Syracuse) and, in 1947, the first Black player in the White major leagues since Walker in 1884 (Toledo).

Ash made the most out of his on-field opportunities for Michigan. On May 5, against Notre Dame – his former employer – Ash “clouted a home run in the tenth after the score stood 10 all in the ninth and won the game.”27 Two days later, in a victory over Iowa, “Ash’s rap sent in two runs in the early part of the game … [and] in the tenth he again aided in pushing his teammate to third from where he scored on the next play.”28

Ash continued to excel as Michigan went 10-0 in Big Ten Conference play in 1923. In a 6-3 win over the University of Illinois on May 12 in Urbana, Illinois, Ash and catcher Jack Blott were “responsible for the Michigan victory” in front of “[a] crowd estimated at 10,000.”29 Ash was 3-for-5 at the plate and scored a run. Against Ohio State on May 28, he hit an RBI triple in the top of the first inning and scored on an error as Michigan prevailed, 5-2. He went 2-for-4, scored two runs, and stole second base in the seventh inning (which led to his second run scored).30

Ash batted .405 for the season for Michigan’s Big Ten championship squad and made a name for himself in baseball circles.31 He spent the summer back home in South Bend, and, in July he agreed to be co-director of a YMCA camp “for the colored boys of the city” that was “the first camp of its kind to be directed in the state of Indiana.”32 Ash was hailed by his hometown press as the “foremost athlete in the city and Michigan university outfielder extraordinary [sic].”33

Ash had certainly turned heads on the baseball diamond for Michigan in 1923. However, he had failed to distinguish himself in the classroom. In a report about how Michigan’s athletes had fared on their June exams, the Grand Rapids Press noted, “Very few athletes met with reverses during the past term although Rudolph Ash, star Negro outfielder and leading hitter on the Michigan baseball team, failed in his studies and it is doubtful if he will return next season.”34

The Press’s prediction was accurate, and Ash’s collegiate baseball career was at an end. More than a year later, in December 1924, it was reported that “Rudolph Ash, who is attending the University of Chicago, is spending his vacation with his mother, Mrs. Cora B. Hill, 428 South Main Street.”35 Six years after her divorce, Cora had married Henry Hill on July 24, 1923.

The cause for Ash’s failure at the University of Michigan is unknown. The stereotype about college students who like to drink and have a good time, rather than to study and earn a degree, is an old one but is right on the mark for some individuals. Rube Foster implied as much about college students’ drinking and behavior in his 1918 comment after he fired Tom Williams. Whether Ash exhibited some of his father’s fondness for alcohol while in college is a matter of speculation, and unsubstantiated conclusions on the matter would wrongfully impugn an otherwise respectable reputation. One thing is certain, however, and that is the fact that Ash never graduated from the University of Chicago either; the 1940 census lists his highest grade completed in school as “College, 3rd year.”

In 1926, sans college diploma, Ash moved to New York City, though he apparently spent some amount of time in Philadelphia as well. Ed Bolden signed him for his Hilldale (Darby, Pennsylvania) Daisies, a member club of the Eastern Colored League, and gave him only the briefest tryout: one game in which he did not even make a plate appearance. Ash then signed with the ECL’s Newark Stars and was in the lineup for both games of a June 20 doubleheader against the New York Lincoln Giants at the Catholic Protectory Oval in the Bronx. Ash manned right field in both contests and was 1-for-4 at the plate in each game as well. He scored one run in Newark’s 7-6 loss in the opener but did not score in the Stars’ 9-2 victory in the nightcap. The Game Two triumph was the first win in nine ECL games for Newark.36

Ash batted .200 (2-for-10) in three games for Newark, but his stint with the team was not cut short due to his performance. On July 10, the New York Age reported, “The Newark Stars, organized at the beginning of this season by Andy Harris, have ‘given up the ghost,’ at least for the remainder of this season. … Lack of money to pay salaries is said to have caused several members of the team to quit even before the project was finally abandoned.”37

After the Newark franchise folded in 1926, Ash turned his attention to Anna Perdita Sanford, his bride-to-be. The couple was married on June 9, 1927, in Brooklyn. Perdita gave birth to their only child, Rudolph Thaddeus Ash Jr., on November 17, 1928. Ash found steady work to support his new family, but he continued to indulge his love for baseball by playing for various semipro squads for a time, including occasional stints with Ed Bolden’s Darby Phantoms.38 However, baseball was now an avocation and, by the time of the 1940 census, Ash’s occupation was listed as “red cap,”39 and on his 1942 World War II draft registration card he listed the Pennsylvania Railroad as his employer. Ash worked for the railroad until his retirement.

Ash’s father, Thaddeus, had died in May 1928, six months before Rudolph Jr.’s birth, and his mother, Cora, died in 1931. His grandfather, William Henderson, long outlived his wife – Nancy Powell Henderson, who had died in 1922 – and was, in 1940, the last family member from Ash’s childhood home to pass away. Rudolph Thaddeus Ash Sr. died on February 16, 1977, in New York City “after a two-week illness” of an unspecified nature.40 Upon Ash’s death, his body was returned to South Bend for burial.

Rudolph Jr. served in the Army during the Korean War and later worked for the General Motors Corporation. He died on September 26, 1980, in the Veterans Administration Hospital in New Rochelle, New York, at the youthful age of 51.41As had been the case with his father, no cause of death was given, and his body was interred in South Bend.

After the deaths of her husband and son, Perdita Ash – who was originally from Macon, Georgia – moved from New York City to South Bend. Members of her husband’s extended family, the Powells from his maternal grandmother’s side, still lived there and she connected with them. Perdita died on February 17, 1985, at the Fountainview Place nursing home in Mishawaka, Indiana, which is a few miles west of South Bend.42

Rudolph Sr., Perdita, and Rudolph Jr. are buried in South Bend’s Highland Cemetery. They were the last of the Ash family in South Bend, but other descendants of Pharoah and Rebecca Powell still live in the city.

Sources

All Negro League player statistics and team records were taken from Seamheads.com, except where otherwise indicated.

Ancestry.com was consulted for US Census information; military records; as well as birth, marriage, and death records.

Notes

1 Neil Lanctot, Fair Dealing & Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and the Development of Black Professional Baseball, 1919-1932 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 146.

2 “Johnny Gee Starts Fast/Long Michigan Pitcher Does Well for Toronto in Opener; Saginaw Honors Top Bowler, Grand Rapids Press, May 20, 1942: 19.

3 “Michigan Baseball Coaching History,” https://mgoblue.com/news/2009/6/5/michigan_baseball_coaching_history.aspx, accessed June 6, 2021.

4 “Rube Fires Tom Williams Outright: Latter Is Accused of Being Under Influence of Liquor on Training Trip,” Chicago Defender, April 6, 1918: 9. Williams had attended Morris Brown College in Atlanta.

5 Jeanne Derbeck, “Plan Powell House Benefit,” South Bend Tribune, February 24, 1975: 17.

6 “Article 13 – Negroes and Mulattoes,” Indiana Constitution of 1851 as originally written, https://www.in.gov/history/about-indiana-history-and-trivia/explore-indiana-history-by-topic/indiana-documents-leading-to-statehood/constitution-of-1851-as-originally-written/article-13-negroes-and-mulattoes/, accessed June 6, 2021.

7 Travis Childs, “Blacks Settled in the Area Around Potato Creek State Park in 1830s, 1840s,” South Bend Tribune, January 29, 2006: B7.

8 Childs.

9 “‘Handy Boy’ in Civil War Dies at South Bend,” Indianapolis Recorder, February 3, 1940: 8.

10 “South Bend, Ind., Dec. 5, 1906,” South Bend Tribune, December 15, 1906: 30.

11 “Promises to Be Good,” South Bend Tribune, July 11, 1907: 5.

12 “Wife Asks Divorce,” South Bend Tribune, February 23, 1917: 9.

13 “Bold Thief Still Defies Detectives,” South Bend Tribune, October 10, 1911: 5.

14 “In Colored Circles,” South Bend News-Times, June 6, 1918: 6.

15 “World War I Transformed Campus, Opened Indiana University to the World,” IU and World War I, https://news.iu.edu/stories/features/world-war-i-anniversary/iu-during-wartime.html, accessed June 7, 2021.

16 “World War I Transformed Campus.”

17 “World War I Transformed Campus.”

18 “World War I Transformed Campus.”

19 “World War I Transformed Campus.”

20 Ellis S. Bell, “South Bend Ind.,” Chicago Whip, October 4, 1919: 9.

21 “Fosters Upset St. Louis Giants,” Chicago Tribune, July 12, 1920: 15; “Foster’s Giants Win Again, 4-2,” Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1920: 13; “Fosters, 7; St. Louis, 6,” Chicago Tribune, July 14, 1920: 15.

22 “American Giants Trim Dayton Nine Again, 3-1,” Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1920: 14.

23 “Society,” South Bend Tribune, October 9, 1920: 5.

24 “Elster and Reuben Will Clash Again on Ramona Field,” Grand Rapids Press, May 25, 1921: 18. Ash normally played the outfield, both in college and as a professional; however, he did play one game at second base for the American Giants in 1920, so he could play certain infield positions as well.

25 “Rudolph Ash Makes Good at Michigan ‘U,’” Chicago Defender, May 12, 1923: 10.

26 “Moses Fleetwood Walker,” Go Blue: Competition, Controversy, and Community in Michigan Athletics, http://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/michiganathletics/exhibits/show/key-players/fleetwood-walker, accessed June 7, 2021.

27 “Rudolph Ash Makes Good at Michigan ‘U.’”

28 “Rudolph Ash Makes Good at Michigan ‘U.’”

29 “Michigan in Great Rally Beat Illini,” Rockford (Illinois) Republic, May 14, 1923: 8.

30 “Ohio State Fails to Grasp Chance/Michigan Keeps Its Conference Slate Clean by Defeating Our Boys, 5-2,” Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, May 29, 1923: 14.

31 James Tobin, “The Belford Lawson Mystery: A Family Story and Racism’s Long Shadow, Ann Arbor Observer, https://annarborobserver.com/articles/the_belford_lawson_mystery.html#.YL5NPvlKjIU, accessed June 7, 2021.

32 “Will Open Camp Lincoln,” South Bend Tribune, July 22, 1923: 17.

33 “Will Open Camp Lincoln.”

34 “Michigan Grid Heroes Pass June Exams,” Grand Rapids Press, June 28, 1923: 23.

35 “In Colored Circles,” South Bend Tribune, December 22, 1924: 10.

36 “Newark Stars at Last Win Game in Eastern Colored League Race,” New York Age, June 26, 1926: 6.

37 “Newark Stars Disbanded,” New York Age, July 10, 1926: 6.

38 “Corley Cashes In,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 1, 1929: 23; “Phantoms Win First from Rival Foes,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 10, 1929: 18; “Darby Phantoms Win,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 3, 1930: 42. The January 31, 1986, edition of the South Bend Tribune contained a photo of a jersey worn by Ash that had the name Tigers across the front (“Museum Exhibit to Mark Black Experience in Area,” South Bend Tribune, January 31, 1986: 15). Inquiries to the History Museum in South Bend, where the exhibit containing the jersey was housed, yielded no information due to the change of museum personnel in the interval between 1986 and 2021. In a July 13, 2021, email to this author, Negro League researcher Gary Ashwill wrote, “To my knowledge Ash didn’t play for the Philadelphia Tigers, but there were semipro teams in the Philadelphia area in the late 1920s called Tigers – most notably the Main Line Tigers, but also the Norwood Tigers.” No newspaper articles were found to indicate which Tigers team Ash played for, and efforts to locate any surviving members of Ash’s extended family proved unfruitful. Currently, it appears that the year 1930 may have marked Ash’s last attempt to play baseball (whether as a semipro or professional) as the final mention of his name is found in that year’s August 3 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

39 Red caps – so-called because they wore red caps in the early twentieth century – were porters at train stations.

40 “Rudolph T. Ash,” South Bend Tribune, February 20, 1977: 49.

41 “Rudolph T. Ashe,” South Bend Tribune, September 27, 1980: 6. Either Rudolph Jr. added an “e” to his last name, perhaps to distinguish himself from his father, or the Tribune inadvertently added the letter to the name.

42 “Anna Perdita Ash,” South Bend Tribune, February 18, 1985: 20.

Earl Randolph Ashby Powbett led a fascinating baseball life. He was a backup catcher for the 1945 Negro champion Cleveland Buckeyes. He was given a chance to replace Josh Gibson as Homestead Grays catcher in 1947. He played in Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States and perhaps other lands as well. 

But he also never stayed in one place for very long. Ashby had a temper and a habit of finding trouble. He never seemed to produce as much as he was expected to. Little is known of Ashby’s life outside of baseball. We do not even know when he died. What follows includes some speculation as Ashby played under multiple names throughout his career.

As the Negro Leagues disintegrated and Ashby and dozens of other players were left to find jobs playing baseball across North America, Ashby put together a career longer than a decade as a catcher, first baseman, and outfielder.

Very little is known of Ashby’s early life, past his birthday of May 16, 1921, in Havana, Cuba. He was close to his 24th birthday when he first came to the United States to play for the Cleveland Buckeyes. Prior to a tilt against the then first-place Memphis Red Sox on May 26, 1945, sportswriter Bob Williams said, “Two Cuban stars, Avelino Cañizares and Earl Ashby, will be seen at shortstop, or possibly catch or outfield, for the first time in the Buckeyes Lineup.”1 The pair were “Aces in the Hole” for Cleveland and Ashby “stars as an extra catcher when he isn’t strutting his stuff in and out field.”2

Ashby did not play much for Cleveland, who had star catcher-manager Quincy Trouppe taking most of the time behind the plate as well as Jesse Williams. For this reason, Ashby became an option in the outfield but was not considered a starter there either. For the season he hit .269/.345/.346, a 101 OPS+. Ashby mostly played during exhibitions, though he did have one highlight. In the second game of a doubleheader on July 1, Ashby hit a late double and scored a run as part of a late comeback in a 5-3 win over the Kansas City Monarchs to give the Buckeyes a sweep.3

Ashby’s and Jesse Williams’s roles were celebrated by the Cleveland Call and Post, the city’s African American newspaper: “[T]hese two boys have proven their worth both in the catching and hitting, and are to be given credit for aiding greatly in bringing the Buckeyes their new title.”4 In addition to winning the Negro American League pennant, the 1945 Buckeyes swept the Homestead Grays in four games in the Negro World Series. Ashby had a successful first season in the United States, even though he did not factor into the World Series victory.5

Ashby was not back with Cleveland after the 1945 season. It appears that he followed many other US-based players to Mexico in 1946, as Jorge Pasquel tried to build up the Mexican League. While there is no Earl Ashby listed in the records, there is an Edward Ashby who played with three teams: Mexico City, Veracruz, and Puebla.6

Ashby was back in the United States for the 1947 season. He began the year with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League but soon had the opportunity to replace the great Josh Gibson, who had died in January. Ashby had Gibson’s imposing size and strong arm, so it was probably a chance worth taking. He had some moments with Homestead with multihit games against the New York Black Yankees, Philadelphia Stars, and New York Cubans.7 Overall, Ashby hit .262 in 15 games for the Grays. Retrosheet shows 16 games, but none in which he appeared after July 20.8

That winter, a catcher named E. Randolph (who was likely Ashby though there is no definitive proof) played with Marianao of the Cuban Winter League, getting into one game and going 0-for-4.9 Ashby came back to the United States for the 1948 season with the Newark Eagles. He made an early impression with a two-hit game and a home run in separate exhibitions against the Atlanta Black Crackers.10 Reports were that Newark was excited to have Ashby as the starting catcher. One paper claimed, “Much is expected of Earl Ashby, who showed promise with the Grays last year”11 and another reporting that Eagles manager William Bell was impressed12 with the “hard working Cuban catcher.”13 

Ashby began the year as the starting catcher but played his last game for the Eagles on May 31. He would catch on with the defending champion New York Cubans, who had beaten the Buckeyes in the 1947 World Series, but according to Retrosheet he is known to have played in only one game for them, in August. For the season, Ashby hit .059 in 34 at-bats. His final line in the Negro major leagues was .196/.293/.284, a 61 OPS+.

From there, Ashby became one of numerous African American and Afro-Latino players who were baseball vagabonds. He spent 1949 playing for the Fulda (Minnesota) Giants of the semipro Centennial League.14 Ashby joined a Giants squad with future Hall of Famer Hilton Smith, then 42. The locals deemed that Ashby “was the character of the two.”15 It is here that we begin to see evidence of Ashby’s temper, which may explain his itinerant jumping around in the Negro leagues. Teammate Delly Koopman recalled, “Ashby could hit and he was a good catcher, but he had a temper. I stayed away from him. Sometimes, he would get mad at the pitcher, and he would take off the catcher’s gear and say he was going to pitch.”16 During a game in Iona, the away fans were taunting Ashby and he responded with an obscene gesture that led to his arrest.17 However, he had success in Fulda, with one source reporting that he hit .425.18

In 1978 columnist Patrick Reusse told the story of how Ashby caused a stir during a visit in Kinbrae, a hunting town near Fulda, when he showed up “dressed to the teeth.” As one resident said, “We haven’t seen a fellow that dressed up, before or since.”19 That a well-dressed Black man was remembered in that town three decades later is a window into how hard it was for Black players (to fit in) in the early years after integration. It also provides some context for Ashby’s disciplinary issues.

Ashby’s baseball journey continued in 1950 with Drummondville of the Class-C Provincial League. Ashby was celebrated as a three-time Negro League champion who had hit .312 for the famed Homestead Grays. This was all untrue. Ashby’s old manager and teammate Quincy Trouppe played for Drummondville the year before. Whether Trouppe recommended Ashby to Drummondville (or vice versa) is unclear but it appears that Drummondville thought they were getting Trouppe’s protégé when Ashby arrived. Ashby acquitted himself well, hitting .292 with 3 doubles and 2 home runs in 22 games. However, he was sent on a trial to the Bridgeport Bees of the Class-C Colonial League in June, probably due to his temper. There is a May 17 report of his being thrown out of a game for yelling at an umpire.20

He did not impress with Bridgeport,21 and Drummondville was forced to trade him to St. Jean for a player, Al Pajones, who did not play in the Provincial League that year. No statistics of his time in St. Jean have been found but there is a July 1 report that he was released after attacking teammate Rubén Gómez in a dispute that started over “unimportant stuff.”22

After he left St. Jean, Ashby becomes hard to follow. It appears that he caught on with the Paris Lakers of the Mississippi-Ohio Valley League using the name Earl “Chico” Randolph.23 However, he was suspended and released on August 3 for throwing his glove at an umpire in a disagreement on a catcher-interference call.24 This was apparently not his first infraction with an umpire while playing with Paris. He also had a collision with Mount Vernon first baseman Pete Milinkov while running out a grounder.25 It is unclear if the collision was anything out of the ordinary but given that he cannot have joined Paris until July, it was part of a pattern of ill-discipline and violence on the field.

Then on August 11, eight days after being released by Paris, Ashby was arrested and fined $15 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for participating in a brawl and taking a swing at a police officer.26 He was described as 27 years old (he was 29 at the time) and a suspended member of the Homestead Grays. It does not appear he was on the Homestead roster at the time, though it is also unclear why he was in Fort Wayne. Homestead was a nonleague barnstorming club by 1950 and it is possible, though unlikely, that Ashby did catch on with them again.

Ashby is listed as having played with the Duluth of the Northern League in June of 1951.27 There is a report that he was assigned, on trial, to Mexican club Aguiles in 1952.28 No statistics have been found for his time there. In 1953, it appears, he was back in Illinois. A Jimmy R. Powell played with Hannibal of the Mississippi-Ohio Valley League, hitting .382 in nine games. However, the manager of the Paris team, Tom Sunkel, protested a game that Paris played against Hannibal, claiming that Powell was in fact the suspended Chico Randolph.29 Powell was released shortly after. This makes it possible that Randolph/Ashby’s suspension was a permanent one. There is also a report of Powell spiking Mount Vernon first baseman Roger Werner, though it is unclear if this is the same incident reported above.

In 1954 Ashby appears to have played in Mexico (though it is unclear what team he played with), hitting a reported 19 home runs.30 He was back in the United States in 1955, starting the season with the Port Arthur (Texas) Seahawks of the Big State League as a first baseman and utilityman. One report from this time said that he called New Orleans his home.31

However, his time in Port Arthur was short as The Sporting News reports that he was picked up by the Rochester Red Wings, the Triple-A club of the St. Louis Cardinals.32 He was signed on an emergency contract as a backup catcher in case of an injury to catcher Bob Rand following an injury to catcher Charlie White. He was apparently signed in Toronto but not put on the roster.33 Whether he was a free agent after his time in Port Arthur went sour or left directly from Port Arthur is unclear. It is also unclear why he was on the radar of the Rochester Red Wings, given his on-field demeanor.

Eventually Ashby was released on June 20 for disciplinary reasons. It appears that on the night of June 19, he was seen having drinks with a woman named Ive James. That night, James’s boyfriend, Tom R. Blythers, was found stabbed to death. James was arrested on a charge of murder and Ashby was brought in as a material witness and held for 12 days. He had left town for New York after the incident and was found and brought back to Rochester by two detectives. However, it appears that Ashby was never a suspect, and he was paid $36 for his inconvenience. He also got medical attention during his time in Rochester after he claimed that James bit him on the finger the night of the incident. It turns out that the DA failed to indict James and Blythers’ murder remains unsolved.34

After his release from Rochester, it was reported that Ashby’s friend Sandy Amorós, a few months before making a World Series-saving catch for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ only World Series title, got him a job playing in the Dominican League. The problem was that Ashby was still needed in Rochester so DA Harry L. Rosenthal called and vouched for him.35 That said, there is no statistical record of Ashby playing in the Dominican Republic, which had switched to a winter league that season.36 It is possible that if he did go down to the Dominican, he just did not get into any games. He was 34 at the time and was not playing in high-profile leagues.

This is where the trail on Earl Randolph Ashby Powbett runs cold. It is unclear what happened to him after he was released by the Rochester police. We do not even know when he may have died.

So what to think of Earl Ashby? First, he was a player with impressive physical traits who despite never putting it together as a star player kept getting chances based on those skills. Second, Ashby played at a time when many Black American and Latino players were given little choice but to be baseball nomads. The Negro leagues collapsed in the early 1950s and there were few opportunities in Organized Baseball as integration was slow and many teams, fearful of being “too Black,” had unofficial quotas for the number of Black players they would employ and play at any one time. In fact, in many of his stops, like Fulda in 1949, Ashby appears to have been viewed as much as a sideshow as a baseball player. Ashby’s ability to promote himself, use connections, and embellish his own credentials in the low-information environment of the times served him well. But it was still a challenging and entirely unnecessary situation.

This leads to the third story. Ashby had a temper and often found himself in trouble with umpires, players, and the authorities. It is nearly impossible to untangle this from the abuse he probably faced because of being a Black man in America in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This is no excuse for Ashby’s actions but an explanation. So Ashby, a Negro League champion who reportedly hit .300 a few times, had a very unusual career in the context of baseball history, though perhaps not unusual for a Black man in his era.

Sources

All Negro League statistics are from Seamheads.com as of the close of 2024. All game-level data is from Retrosheet.org unless otherwise noted. The author would like to thank Adam Darowski, Bill Nowlin, Gary Ashwill, Gary Fink, Christian Trudeau, Ruben Sanchez, and Sean Lahman for their help with this research.

Notes

1 Bob Williams, “Vastly Improved Buckeyes Strong in Every Field, May Bring Out Fans 10,000 Strong,” Cleveland Call and Post, May 26, 1945: 7B.

2 “Aces in Hole Are Bucks’ Cuban Stars,” Cleveland Call and Post, June 2, 1945: 6B.

3 Retrosheet (https://www.retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1945/B07012KCM1945.htm).

4 “Here Is Buckeyes’ Pitching Staff, Rated Peerless,” Cleveland Call and Post, September 9, 1945: 7B.

5 RetroSheet (https://www.retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/1945PS.html).

6 Baseball Reference: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=ashby-000edw. Negro League researcher Gary Ashwill told the author in an email exchange that he thinks Edward Ashby was Earl Ashby.

7 Retrosheet (https://www.retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1947/Bashbe1011947.htm).

8 That may be because no box scores have turned up. There is no record of his playing elsewhere that season.

9 Jorge S. Figueredo, Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History: 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Publishing, 2003). Ashby’s first two names were Earl Randolph and he was a Cuban catcher of the right age to be playing here. Ashby, as we will see later, had a habit of changing his name when it suited him as well.

10 Joel W. Smith, “Newark Eagles Sink Black Crackers By 19-2 Margin,” Atlanta Daily World, April 22, 1948: 5; Joel W. Smith, “Newark Eagles Squeeze Out 8-5 Victory Over Atlanta Black Crax,” Atlanta Daily World, April 27, 1948: 5.

11 “NNL Teams Begin Exhibition Contests,” Baltimore Afro-American, April 3, 1948: 8.

12 “Newark Eagles Sign Max Manning, Ace Hurler, to Contract,” Philadelphia Tribune, April 13, 1948: 10.

13 Joel W. Smith, “Newark Eagles, Black Crackers Clash Here Sunday,” Atlanta Daily World, April 23, 1948: 5.

14 Armand Peterson and Tom Thomashek, Townball: The Glory Days of Minnesota Amateur Baseball (Duluth: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 50-1.

15 Patrick Reusse, “Once Upon a Time in Fulda, Folks Were Tuned Into Baseball,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 4, 1993: 1C, 7C.

16 Reusse, 1993.

17 Reusse, 1993.

18 “Les Cubs Auront un Bon Receveur en Earl Ashby,” La Tribune (Sherbrooke, Quebec), May 6, 1950: 18. Translated by Christian Trudeau. The source, a report from an interview with Ashby also claims that Ashby went 11-1 as a pitcher and led the team to the championship. However, it contains a lot of inaccuracies and may be an example of Ashby taking advantage of a low-information environment to embellish his résumé.

19 Patrick Reusse, “Reusse at Random: Frogs Destined to ‘Croak,’” St. Paul Dispatch, August 24, 1978: 59.

20 “Les sportifs de Drummondville demandent la tête de Murphy,” La Tribune, May 17, 1950: 20. Translated by Christian Trudeau.

21 “Bees Take Twin Bill From Kingston Colonial,” Bridgeport Post, June 5, 1950: 26; “Bees Triumph Over Kingston Club 9-6,” Bridgeport Telegram, June 7, 1950: 25.

22 Gerard Hebert, “Le Saint-Jean a perdu un excellent joueur avec R. Ste-Marie blessé,” Le Front Ouvrier (Montreal), July 1, 1950: 14. Translated by Christian Trudeau.

23 Earl Randolph, The Sporting News Baseball Player Contract Cards, maintained by the LA84 Foundation and SABR.  

24 “Paris Player Hits Ump,” Mt. Vernon (Illinois) Register-News, August 2, 1950: 8; “Paris Lakers Release Fiery Cuban Catcher,” Terre Haute Tribune, August 3, 1950: 20.

25 Email conversation between Gary Fink and Christian Trudeau handed to the author (and verified by both men) by Gary Ashwill. In the exchange Mr. Fink sources this from a Mount Vernon newspaper from July 24.

26 “Fined for Brawl,” Fort Worth Telegram, August 11, 1950: Second Section.

27 Earl Ashby, The Sporting News Baseball Player Contract Cards, maintained by the LA84 Foundation and SABR.  

28 “League Distributes Players of Pasquels’ Two Teams,” The Sporting News, March 12, 1952: 32.

29 Howard V. Millard, headline undecipherable, Decatur (Illinois) Daily Review, June 3, 1953:12.

30 “Les Cubs Auront un Bon Receveur en Earl Ashby.” Ashby had a track record of polishing his credentials and never showed that type of power before.

31 “Hawks Brave Wind to Hold Workout,” Beaumont Enterprise, March 28, 1955: 8.

32 “Deals of the Week,” The Sporting News, June 22, 1955: 24.

33 “Dugout Diggins,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, June 20, 1955: 19.

34 “Two Women Indicted on Murder Charges,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 27, 1950: 22.

35 “DA Goes to Bat for Catcher,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 6, 1955: 15.

36 Dominican League statistics can be found at: https://www.winterballdata.com/en.

Thomas Younger Baird was born January 27, 1885, in Madison County, Arkansas. His father was Hampton “Noah” Baird, a plumber who ran his own business and, in 1902, moved the family to the Armourdale section of Kansas City, Kansas. Thomas’s mother was Harriette “Hattie” (Duncan) Baird, and her side of the family presents an interesting backstory to his life. She was the daughter of Sally (Younger) Duncan, and Harriet’s maiden name was given to Thomas for his middle name. Sally had 13 siblings in all, including brothers Bob, Jim, John, and Cole, who were members of the famous James-Younger outlaw gang, led by Frank and Jesse James. The Younger name became associated with robbing banks, trains, and stagecoaches throughout the Midwest. Their careers ended in 1876 when three of the remaining brothers were arrested. Only Jim and Cole lived to see the twentieth century when they were paroled in 1901. A year later Jim put a bullet in his head, but Cole lived a few more years doing Wild West shows. Due to the notoriety of the Younger name, Thomas never used it, and was known as “T.Y.” He likely did not take kindly to anyone asking him about his uncle Cole.

Tom also had younger brothers William and Floyd and a sister, Bertha. At the 1910 census a boarder named William Arnold also lived with the family at 1213 Kansas Ave. Tom worked as a cutter for the Peet Brothers Soap company. On January 22, 1912, Baird married Frances E. Stuart, also of Kansas City, Kansas. By the 1915 Kansas state census, Tom was working for the Rock Island Railroad Company in White City, Kansas.

Baird formed T.Y. Baird’s Baseball Club, which became one of the best semipro baseball teams in Kansas City, Kansas. The club leased Billion Bubble Park, an amusement park on Mill Street and Scott Avenue that was run by the Peet Brothers. The team was often nicknamed the Soapmakers. Baird also purchased a set of uniforms left from the Federal League’s Kansas City Packers, and his team – hand-me-down outfits and all – was the semipro champion of the city in 1916 and 1917.1 Around 1917 Baird also opened a pool hall at 1139 Kansas Ave. An advertisement boasted that a person could play pool and get candy, soda pop, cigars, and tobacco at the shop. Baird opened several pool halls and bowling alleys throughout the area.2

In May of 1918, Baird became wedged between two sets of train cars while setting a brake and suffered a broken leg. He was laid up in the hospital for months and sued the company for $30,000.3 The news about Baird, who was well-known by the community, was devastating. “Mr. Baird has done more than any other man the last few years to give the public a decent brand of the national pastime,” wrote The Press in Kansas City, Kansas.4 Although physically unable to play again, Baird managed his own team as well as a second team organized by the Peet Brothers.5

By the 1920 census, the Baird family lived at 413 N. 18th St. and included daughters Harriet and Ellen with a boarder couple named Bauer. The family moved to a new five-bedroom house at 1818 Grandview Boulevard, on the corner of North 19th St. Baird’s move was reported in the newspaper, showing how well-known he already was throughout the city.6 Baird was also a member of the Kansas Billiard Men’s organization.7

Just as Baird had a history in baseball prior to the Monarchs, so did his future longtime business partner, J.L. Wilkinson. “Wilkie,” also white, was one day recognized for his contributions to the Negro Leagues with a plaque at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1908 he formed a traveling all-female team. Women’s teams had been popular since the nineteenth century and Wilkinson established his own “Bloomer” team, as they were called after the clothing they wore. In 1912 he formed the All-Nations club, made up of players of every imaginable nationality. This team barnstormed the country over the next several years. Traveling by Pullman car, Wilkinson even dabbled in a primitive, yet effective, portable lighting system so games could be played at night. Some players Wilkinson either hired or observed would become key members of those early Monarchs teams, including African Americans John Donaldson and Bullet Joe Rogan and Cuban José Méndez .

Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants team was the best independent Black club while Wilkinson’s melting-pot team toured the country. Foster sought to organize an all-Black league, something that had been unsuccessfully attempted by others in the past. In February 1920, Foster realized his dream and the Negro National League was founded at a YMCA in Kansas City, Missouri. Wilkinson was one of the original founders of the league.

What role Baird played in those earliest days and how he met Wilkinson is not entirely known. Baird is not mentioned by name in the early reports, although later accounts describe him as being there with Wilkinson from the very beginning. Both men were well-known and likely their paths had crossed. Wilkinson was always the public face of the Monarchs and Baird worked behind the scenes. Wilkinson was a player’s owner, known for his friendly demeanor, while Baird was tall and lean and more standoffish. Some players interviewed decades later did not even know Baird had been a part-owner of the club. Whatever the exact role Baird played, his partnership with Wilkinson lasted nearly 30 years.

The Monarchs rented Association Park from the white Kansas City Blues of the American Association. The two clubs often played a postseason series for bragging rights in the city. Babe Ruth also appeared with his traveling all-stars on a postseason barnstorming tour.8

Foster’s Giants dominated the Negro National League for the first three years, but the Monarchs had winning clubs. The Monarchs won the pennant in 1923, the first of many during Baird’s tenure, and now established themselves as a premier club. In 1923 the Monarchs also moved into the Blues’ new ballpark, Muehlebach Field.

The Monarchs won the 1924 NNL pennant behind the solid pitching of Bullet Joe Rogan and the powerful lineup of Hurley McNair, Dobie Moore, Newt Joseph, and Heavy Johnson. They played Hilldale of the new Eastern Colored League in the first Negro League World Series, which was then called the Colored World Series. It was a hard-fought best-of-nine series that went the distance in a deciding 10th game (one game finished tied) before a small and bundled crowd on a cold day in Chicago on October 20. In heroic fashion, José Méndez, recovering from surgery, took the mound against doctor’s orders and shut out Hilldale, 5-0.

The Monarchs dominated the start of the 1925 season and stormed into the new NNL playoff system, in which the winners of each half-season faced each other to determine who played the Eastern Colored League champion. The Monarchs defeated St. Louis but lost the World Series to Hilldale. A new acquisition by Wilkinson and Baird in 1926 was Cuban legend Cristóbal Torriente, once an All-Nations standout, who led the team in batting. The Monarchs dropped the NNL playoffs to Chicago.

With the demise of the Eastern Colored League, no World Series was played for a decade. The Monarchs won the 1929 pennant but became an independent barnstorming club in 1931 as the Great Depression made playing in large stadiums impractical. The NNL itself folded after the 1931 season, leaving no professional Black baseball league. The Monarchs still found a way to be profitable through barnstorming small towns and capitalizing on Wilkinson’s portable lights.

Baird is credited with providing the finances needed ($100,000 by some accounts) for this new lighting system.9 With the loss of a league schedule, the main booking responsibility fell to Baird. He also booked games for the House of David, the independent barnstorming club from the religious commune in Michigan noted for men following scriptural commands by not shaving. The new lighting system helped both clubs survive during the Depression. During the first half of the summer, the Monarchs leased its lights to the House of David team, allowing it to play more contests. Once Wilkinson and Baird saved enough money through the rentals, they began the Monarchs’ season. Sometimes that season did not begin until August, but they still earned enough funds to be profitable. With other teams winding down, star players left their clubs, such as legendary greats Cool Papa Bell and Willie Wells. The night games drew large crowds and huge paychecks, irritating other club owners.10

One example of Baird’s brilliant booking was the exhibition games against barnstorming white major leaguers. In the fall of 1933, Dizzy Dean and Pepper Martin of the St. Louis Cardinals Gas House Gang brought a team to Muehlebach Field. Negro League baseball had also returned; the Negro National League had been resurrected under the leadership of Cumberland Posey and Gus Greenlee. The league that year held its first East-West Game, the equivalent to the white major leagues’ inaugural All-Star Game. The Monarchs continued as an independent club and barnstormed their way to the Denver Post tournament in 1934; the Monarchs were the first Black team to be invited to the tournament. Chet Brewer dominated most opponents, but he ran into pitcher Satchel Paige, who won three games in leading the House of David to the championship. Later that fall, after leading St. Louis to a World Series championship, Dizzy Dean, his brother Paul, and others promoted a “Dizzy and Daffy Tour.” The Deans and Monarchs played to huge crowds and profits, although Monarchs players received considerably less money than their white counterparts.11

The Monarchs continued as a hot attraction in 1935 as they barnstormed with the House of David and also an integrated club from Bismarck, North Dakota, which included Paige. Bismarck won the National Baseball Congress semipro tournament in August. In September, Paige pitched for the Monarchs in the stretch run and against another Dizzy Dean postseason barnstorming team.12 A decade later, Baird showed appreciation to Paige and gifted him with a two-seater airplane.13 Baird also had a strong relationship with Syd Pollock, the owner of the Indianapolis Clowns, and the two franchises held barnstorming tours.

In June of 1935, Babe Ruth quit the Boston Braves, ending his legendary major-league career. Sensing opportunity, Baird wired Ruth an offer for $20,000 to play for the House of David club. Baird told Ruth he would not even have to have whiskers. Ruth refused.14 In 1940 Baird became the head booker for the Negro National League, replacing Abe Saperstein.15

The Monarchs returned to league play when the Negro American League was formed in 1937, and won the inaugural season’s pennant. Their pitching stars were Hilton Smith and Andy Cooper, while Willard Brown was the top hitter. The Monarchs won four straight NAL pennants (1939-1942). Buck O’Neil began his long tenure with the team at first base, and a rejuvenated Paige dominated on the mound. In 1942 the Negro League World Series returned and the Monarchs swept the Homestead Grays, 4-0. “I do believe we could have given the New York Yankees a run for their money that year,” O’Neil remembered.16

Baird operated a pool hall and recreation center at Tenth Street and Minnesota Avenue and later at 1401 Minnesota Ave. with a partner, Ollie S. Stratton. Stratton was a former semipro player and had been a boxing manager for several years. Stratton sold his shares to Baird in 1945.17 Baird had plenty of other businesses to attend to, including his bowling alleys and rental properties. He also collected rent from a flower shop, tavern, and hotel. In addition to all of those ventures, Baird owned property in Kansas that he researched for drilling oil, but that endeavor failed.18 As the war years of the 1940s rolled on, Baird began taking over responsibilities from Wilkinson, including promotion of the team.19

The 1945 season was notable for Baird and Wilkinson signing UCLA athletic star Jackie Robinson to a baseball contract. The Kansas City Call, the local Black newspaper, hailed Robinson as the “prize freshman” on the 1945 Monarchs.20 Robinson destroyed Negro League pitching and batted anywhere from .345 to .414.21 No matter the statistic, Robinson was a true baseball star, and the time for integration had arrived. While the integration of the national pastime had been a longtime dream, the sustainability of the Negro Leagues was an uncomfortable subject. Wilkinson and Baird provided an alternative perspective from those who were dependent on the Negro Leagues for survival.

Clyde Sukeforth was a career baseball man and now chief scout for President Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1945 Sukeforth’s main job was to scout the Negro Leagues for Rickey’s Brooklyn Brown Dodgers Black minor-league club in the new United States League.22 Sukeforth, however, met Robinson and informed him of Rickey’s interest in putting him on the major-league Dodgers. Rickey signed Robinson and sent him to the Dodgers’ minor-league affiliate in Montreal in 1946. Robinson returned briefly to the Monarchs to finish the 1945 season. “I went to the management of the Kansas City club to get permission to play up until September 21 in exhibition games and then go home, as I was tired,” Robinson remembered. “I was told I would have to play all the games or none. I was left with no other alternative than to leave the ball club.”23

Robinson didn’t have a contract with the Monarchs for 1946, but Baird considered it common courtesy to give the Monarchs the first chance to sign him. From Baird’s perspective, Rickey’s signing of Robinson with no compensation for the Monarchs was unjustifiable. Baird and Wilkinson wanted to appeal to Commissioner Happy Chandler and ask him to bar Robinson from leaving the Monarchs. There was support among other Negro League club owners who saw a grim future of major-league owners raiding their talent. But the Monarchs owners soon decided otherwise. “For many years we have urged organized baseball to accept Negro players,” Wilkinson said. “Whether we get any recompense in return for Robinson may be considered beside the point – we want Jackie to have a chance.”24

Hard feelings still festered with Baird. Rickey “stooped to unethical methods,” he said. “Rickey didn’t pay us one cent for Jackie Robinson. He sneaked around and signed Robinson. His actions hurt us at the box office. But Rickey never even so much as thanked us for Robinson. We wrote him several months ago. He never even had the common courtesy to answer our letter. We’re glad to see any of our boys get a chance. Robinson has helped the Negro race a great deal. But we hate to have our property just taken away from us. We’ve sold players to other teams – they dealt with us in an honorable way.”25 Baird even wrote that Rickey’s tactics were like “Hitler’s march through Hungary.”26

Robinson responded to Baird’s claims that he was “stolen” from the Monarchs. “I was left with no other alternative than to leave the club,” he said. “The owner’s (Wilkinson) son gave me a lecture and assured me that if I left the club I was through, that I could play no place outside the Negro National League. The ‘cooperation’ I received that afternoon made me glad I no longer had to play with the Monarchs.”27

The Monarchs achieved one last Negro World Series appearance in 1946, losing to the Newark Eagles in seven games. After Robinson and other players left the Negro Leagues, attendance declined. Complicating matters, Wilkinson was involved in a car accident and lost sight in one eye, and was unable to read or drive. The task of the ownership duo was now in discovering talent, developing it as a minor-league team would, then selling the player for a top price to a major-league club. Hank Thompson and Willard Brown were players involved in two such deals.

The 1948 season was the last for the Negro League World Series and Wilkinson sold his ownership shares in the team to Baird for $27,000, ending their nearly three-decade partnership. Buck O’Neil was named the new Monarchs manager.28 Baird was involved in a more “honorable” transaction than the way Robinson had been dealt with. He sold Satchel Paige to the Cleveland Indians, who won the American League pennant. Baird received $20,000 and Paige received a $16,000 salary from the Indians.29

Baird thought business maneuvers like this would help the Negro Leagues survive. “Negro baseball is like any other business,” he said. “[A]s times get tougher it will be the survival of the fittest.” A.S. “Doc” Young of the Chicago Defender described the different approaches club owners in the Negro Leagues were taking to stave off extinction. The Monarchs, he wrote, were a “prize franchise.” One club owner said, “The Monarchs are drawing top crowds. That’s because Tom Baird is in there working hard.” “Did Baird sit back and let his franchise, which he rates as Triple-A caliber, go to pot?” wrote Young. “Nope! He went out and corralled more good players with the result that fans are behind him.” In addition to Paige, Thompson, and Brown, Baird sold off Booker T. McDaniels and Ford Smith.30 In 1950, Baird made $25,000 by selling Elston Howard and Frank Barnes to the New York Yankees.31

The Negro American League created Eastern and Western divisions in 1949 in order to carry out a postseason series in the absence of the National League. Baird withdrew the Monarchs from a postseason series as players were injured or jumping to the majors. Baird dabbled in football in 1950 when he staged a preseason game in Kansas City between the New York Yanks and Washington Redskins of the NFL. The contest attracted a little over 13,000 patrons, but Baird lost money.32

In 1952 Baird was presented a plaque by Ray “Hap” Dumont of the National Baseball Congress, which hosted a semipro tournament every year in Wichita, Kansas. The plaque honored Baird for sparking interest in baseball among the small towns in America. Baird received praise for “his work in helping to improve relations between the races.”33 It was in 1923 that Baird had convinced Dumont, then a high-school student, to sponsor a Monarchs game.

Also in 1952, one of Baird’s pool halls was raided by the police because of a dominoes game being conducted there. The suspicion was that illegal gambling was happening at the business, which Baird denied. “If there was no gambling going on,” the head of the vice squad said, “why did those who escaped feel they had to run?”34

It was a better story for Baird on the field as the Monarchs won yet another pennant during his era, winning both halves of the 1953 Negro American League season. The Monarchs were powered by the young phenom Ernie Banks, who was sold to the Chicago Cubs at the end of the season. The Monarchs had winning streaks of 14 and 17 games during the season.35 The success could not be sustained into 1954, however, despite signing female player Toni Stone. The team bus also burned during a pit stop.

The biggest threat came after the season when the Philadelphia Athletics moved to Kansas City and the Monarchs had to compete for attendance against a major-league club. Baird remained positive, at least publicly. “It will only serve to spur us on to greater achievements,” he said.36 But the Monarchs were able to play only two home games in Kansas City because of declining fan interest and the increased rent for their home ballpark, now remodeled to fit major-league standards and renamed Municipal Stadium.

In 1955 only the Monarchs, Birmingham, Detroit, and Memphis remained in the Negro American League. Baird reacquired Paige for $40,000.37 It was Paige’s last run with the Monarchs, for whom he pitched on and off from 1935 to 1955. It was also the last season for player-manager Buck O’Neil, who became a Chicago Cubs scout. The Monarchs won the pennant in the last hurrah for these legends, but by that time the league was so disorganized that no one was exactly sure who the champion was. The Monarchs won 14 pennants and two postseason titles during Baird’s tenure.

“I am not an alarmist,” Baird wrote to NAL President J.B. Martin, “but facts are facts and I know all owners are losing plenty. I have been in baseball long enough to see what might happen to us.”38 The writing was on the wall. In January 1956 Baird sold 12 players to major- or minor-league clubs. “It looks like I sold everybody but the bus driver,” he said, still finding a sense of humor. “But I’m happy to see these players get their chance in organized baseball.”39 This all but signified the end of the Kansas City Monarchs franchise he had been with since the beginning. “I haven’t made a definite decision yet,” Baird said in response to whether the Monarchs would even field a team in 1956. “I’ve been in baseball more than thirty-six years and will not decide until later on.” A report at the time stated that in the previous 10 years Baird had sold 29 players to major-league teams and another nine to the minor leagues.40 It was a final parting gift to his players and cemented his legacy of running what was unofficially an African American minor-league development system.

Less than a month later, Baird decided it was time to go and accepted a position as a scout with the Kansas City A’s. “I’m happy to be with the Athletics,” Baird said, “and I hope I can be of assistance to them in their building program.”41 Baird concentrated on finding and developing African American talent. It seemed to spell the complete dissolution of the Monarchs, but Baird was determined to put the club in good hands. He sold the Monarchs to Ted Rasberry, who also owned the Detroit Stars. One meager report said Rasberry bought the entire franchise for $3,500.42 Rasberry kept the club in operation through 1962, keeping the Kansas City Monarchs name but running the club out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Baird became the business manager of the Harlem All-Stars in 1957, a barnstorming Black basketball team. He also opened a $400,000 16-lane bowling alley in Kansas City, Kansas.43

In 2007 historian Tim Rives wrote that his research revealed Baird to have been a member of the Wyandotte County, Kansas, Ku Klux Klan. (Kansas City is the dominant community in the county.) The Klan did occupy a certain space in some areas which, though exclusionary in its membership, may not always have been violent toward others. Had Tom Baird been a member of the Klan in 1922? We don’t know. See the sidebar for further discussion on this subject.

We are left with many questions about Tom Baird that can only be answered through further research. What we do know is that Baird worked tirelessly for the Monarchs for over 35 years and much of his skill in the later years was found in developing and promoting players so they could move on to better opportunities in the major leagues. He was highly respected among players, other club owners in both the white and Black major leagues, and fans.

Tom Baird died in his sleep on July 2, 1962, in Kansas City, Kansas, at the age of 77.

Sources

In addition to the sources in the Notes, the author was assisted by the following:

Lent, Cassidy, A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, Cooperstown, New York, who provided a copy of Baird’s file.

Faber,Charles F., and William A. Young. “J.L. Wilkinson,” SABR BioProject.

Familyseach.org

Findagrave.com

“KC Monarchs to Travel in New Bus,” Atlanta Daily World, May 7, 1954: 7.

“Major Duncan Answers Last Call on Memorial Day,” Kansas City Globe, May 31, 1911: 1.

“Negro American League Standings (1937-1962),” Center for Negro League Baseball Research. cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/Negro%20American%20League%20(1937-1962)%202016-08.pdf. Retrieved May 13, 2020.

“Negro National league Standings (1920-1948),” Center for Negro League Baseball Research. cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/Negro%20National%20League%20(1920-1948)%202016-08.pdf. Retrieved May 13, 2020.

Dixon, Phil S. The Dizzy and Daffy Dean Barnstorming Tour: Race, Media, and America’s National Pastime (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 93-95.

“Semi-Pro Clubs to be United in West,” Jefferson City (Missouri) Post-Tribune, February 3, 1937: 6.

“Ted Raspberry Buys Monarchs,” Chicago Defender, February 25, 1956: 17.

“Topics in Chronicling America.” Library of Congress. loc.gov/rr/news/topics/jessejames.html. Retrieved April 25, 2020.

“Younger Brothers,” Encyclopedia Britannica. britannica.com/topic/Younger-brothers. Retrieved April 25, 2020.

Notes

1 “This Is a Sure Sign of Spring,” Kansas City Kansan, March 17, 1917: 1; “Sportlets,” The Press (Kansas City, Kansas), October 12, 1917: 8.

2 The Press, August 31, 1917: 7; C.E. McBride, “A Sports Cocktail,” Kansas City (Missouri) Times, October 28, 1952: 17.

3 “T.Y. Baird’s Leg Broken,” The Press, May 10, 1918: 10; “T.Y. Baird Asks $30,000,” The Press, August 23, 1918: 1.

4 “Sportlets,” The Press, June 14, 1918: 1.

5 “Gossip of the Semi-Pros,” Kansas City (Kansas) Kansan, April 30, 1919: 1.

6 Kansas City Kansan, April 14, 1921: 3.

7 “Billiard Men Organize,” Kansas City Kansan, December 2, 1921: 16.

8 William A. Young, J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2016), 39.

9 Young, 71; Janet Bruce, The Kansas City Monarchs: Champions of Black Baseball (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1985), 70.

10 Bruce, 72-73.

11 Young, 92.

12 Young, 95.

13 “The Famous Mr. Paige Becomes Air-Minded,” Chicago Defender, July 6, 1946: 11.

14 “House of David Wires Ruth $20,000 Offer,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 6, 1935: 12.

15 “Wilson Retains NNL Post,” Afro-American, March 2, 1940: 19.

16 Buck O’Neil with Steve Wulf and David Conrads, I Was Right on Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 119.

17 “Ollie S. Stratton,” Kansas City Times, October 13, 1952: 14.

18 Young, 169.

19 Young, 157.

20 “Monarchs Ready for Training,” Kansas City Call, March 16, 1945.

21 Seamheads lists Robinson batting .384 with the Monarchs, while Baseball-Reference credits him at .414. The Center for Negro League Baseball Research records him batting .345 in 41 games.

22 Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 57.

23 Robinson, “What’s Wrong with Negro Baseball?” Ebony magazine, June 1948: 22.

24 “Monarch Owners Won’t Block Move,” St. Louis Star & Times, October 25, 1945: 25.

25 United Press, “Kansas City Owner Raps Dodger Prexy,” Honolulu Advertiser, February 21, 1948: 11.

26 A.S. Young, “Tom Baird Resents Rickey’s Contract Methods,” Cleveland Call and Post, February 28, 1948: 6B.

27 “Jackie Robinson Rebukes Unruly Fans; Hits Baird,” Cleveland Call and Post, May 8, 1948: 6B.

28 Associated Press, “Gets Monarch Control,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 13, 1948: 16; Associated Negro Press, “John O’Neil, New Manager K.C. Monarchs,” Atlanta Daily World, January 8, 1948: 5; Young, 166-167.

29 “Indians Sign Satchel Paige,” New York Amsterdam News, July 10, 1948: 24; “National Baseball Congress to Honor Owner of K.C. Monarchs,” Philadelphia Tribune, June 28, 1952: 10.

30 A.S. “Doc” Young, “Sportivanting,” Chicago Defender, July 9, 1949: 16.

31 William A. Young, 171.

32 “Negro World Series Open Friday: Baltimore to Host 2 Games,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 13, 1949: 11; “Skins in Upset,” Kansas City Times, September 8, 1950: 22.

33 Leslie A. Heaphy, The Negro Leagues 1869-1960 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2003), 216-217; “NBA [sic] Cites Tom Baird of K.C. Monarch Club,” Atlanta Daily World, May 2, 1952: 7.

34 “Last Domino by Police,” Kansas City Times, March 11, 1952: 3.

35 “K.C. Has Top Season’s Mark,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 12, 1953: 14; “Good Year Coming to End for KC,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 5, 1953: 27.

36 “Coming of Major League Baseball to Kansas City Will Help – Baird,” Chicago Defender, January 15, 1955: 10.

37 “Satchel Paige Rejoins the Monarchs,” Chicago Defender, June 11, 1955: 10.

38 William A. Young, 180.

39 “Tom Baird Quits Baseball,” Chicago Defender, February 4, 1956: 18.

40 Paul O’Boynick, “Monarchs Sell 12 Players,” Kansas City Times, January 27, 1956: 38.

41 Joe McGuff, “Baird Joins A’s,” Kansas City Times, February 10, 1956: 34.

42 William A. Young, 181.

43 William A. Young, 182.

This biography appears in When the Monarchs Reigned: Kansas City’s 1942 Negro League Champions (SABR, 2021), edited by Frederick C. Bush and Bill Nowlin. Get your free e– book edition or save 50% off the paperback at SABR.org/ebooks.