Lefty Phillips

Hooty Phillips, father of Lefty Phillips. (Courtesy of the Nashville Metro Archives)

The John William “Lefty” Phillips story begins with another ballplayer, his father, John “Hooty” Phillips.1 Father and son played for their hometown Nashville Elite Giants, among other teams. Neither Hooty nor Lefty Phillips is especially well-known, although Hooty Phillips had a longer and more varied career than his son. And if baseball was all in the family for the Phillipses, it was also baseball that tore the family asunder and contributed to their unhappy endings.

John William “Lefty” Phillips was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on May 24, 1917. His parents, Hooty Phillips and Minnie Mae Kelly, married about three months before John Phillips’s arrival. When they wed, Hooty Phillips was 19 years old, and Minnie Phillips was just a few months shy of her 16th birthday. Hooty Phillips was mostly an absentee father. When he wasn’t on the road playing baseball, he worked alongside his father, William Phillips, at an East Nashville brickyard. It was likely a difficult marriage, and by 1925 Lefty Phillips’s parents no longer shared the same Nashville address. One possible cause of the demise of the Phillipses’ marriage was Hooty Phillips’s long absences from home in pursuit of his baseball career.

Hooty Phillips started his professional baseball life in 1921 as a shortstop with the Nashville Elite Giants.2 John “Lefty” Phillips was about 4 years old when his father had his championship season with the Elite Giants. Hooty Phillips was Nashville’s starting shortstop and frequent leadoff man. Based on the published box scores for the Elite Giants, Hooty was known more for his fancy infield play than for any prowess at the plate. Throughout the spring and summer of 1921, he was lauded for taking “sensational chances without erring,” and for his “great fielding at shortstop.”3 In September the Elite Giants vied for the Negro Southern League championship against the Montgomery Gray Sox at Athletic Park in Nashville.4 Phillips’s play was described as “brilliant,” as he “cut off several prospective hits.”5 Phillips and his fellow Elite Giants took home the NSL championship and the trophy presented by NSL President Frank M. Perdue.6 At the conclusion of the season, Hooty Phillips returned to his family’s home on Sixth Avenue North in Nashville and headed back to work at the brickyard.7

In the spring of 1922, Hooty Phillips briefly jumped from the Elite Giants to Fred Caulfield’s New Orleans Black Pelicans, also known as “Caulfield’s Ads,” before boomeranging back to Nashville by June.8 The Elite Giants were in New Orleans for a series with the Black Pelicans when owner Tom Wilson “pulled a deal” and “bought Square Moore, pitcher, and Phillips, shortstop, from Caulfield for a cash consideration.”9 Why Hooty Phillips skipped town and joined the New Orleans nine is unknown, but his return to Nashville helped to create a more “balanced and strengthened” team.”10 That summer Phillips had a few moments in the spotlight. On June 28, in a game against the Birmingham Black Barons, he stepped up and launched a three-run blast to deep center.11 Against the Knoxville Giants on July 29, his “great fielding” and lively batting were among the highlights of a 13-inning marathon that ended in a 4-4 tie.12 It was an unsatisfying day, with no winner declared and no light left by which to play. That was Phillips’s last game with the Elite Giants – at least for 1922. At the end of July, the Elite Giants were in first place in the NSL, but this time around there would be no celebrations or trophies. The NSL collapsed before the season came to an official conclusion. In August the Elite Giants embarked on a barnstorming venture with the Knoxville Giants.13 But it was back to Nashville and the brickyard for Phillips, and to his wife, Minnie, and young son and future Elites player, John William “Lefty” Phillips.

In the spring of 1923, Hooty Phillips once again left his wife and son behind to pursue his baseball career. But he did not return to the Nashville Elite Giants. Phillips was picked up by the Detroit Stars as their new second baseman, replacing Frank Warfield, who headed east to sign with Ed Bolden’s Hilldale club of Darby, Pennsylvania.14 Phillips’s new boss was the Stars’ player-manager and fellow Nashvillian, Bruce Petway. Hooty Phillips’s tenure with the Detroit Stars was unremarkable and he was clearly heading toward the end of his baseball life expectancy. He played in at least four games for Detroit in May and June but produced no more than a handful of hits and about as many errors.15 In early July, Phillips was offloaded to the hapless last-place Milwaukee Bears, only to continue his hitless and error-prone ways.16 The newly constituted Milwaukee club was a hitless wonder and folded before end of the 1923 season.17 Within a few weeks of his hibernation with the Bears, Phillips was back with the Stars where he sleepwalked through the remainder of the season, waking up only briefly to punch out the occasional single or bungle the ball. His final documented game with the Detroit Stars was on September 4, 1923.18 Hooty Phillips’s stint with the Stars ended that day in Detroit. He played third base and went 1-for-3 and scored a run in a 6-4 loss to the Chicago American Giants.19

After Hooty Phillips’s brief turn with the Detroit Stars and Milwaukee Bears, he returned home to Minnie and John Phillips and their life in Nashville. The transition to domestic life was not easy and within a year Hooty and Minnie Phillips were no longer living at the same address. Phillips took a sabbatical from professional baseball and sat out the 1924 and 1925 seasons. It is unknown why he did not play during those years but marital problems may have contributed to his absence. Phillips returned to baseball in June 1926 when he signed, once again, with the Nashville Elite Giants.20 He spent that summer primarily as Nashville’s leadoff batter and as their man on the hot corner. Phillips’s contributions to the Elite Giants in 1926 are difficult to gauge due to the lack of published game reports and/or box scores. But when results did appear in print, the outcomes for Phillips were mixed. In June he helped Nashville take down Montgomery 10-4 by swatting a double, scoring four runs, and stealing two bases.21 In July Phillips exceeded his offensive expectations by going 3-for-5 at the plate and scoring three runs, albeit in a losing effort to the Chattanooga White Sox, who bested the Elite Giants, 12-8.22 But the following day, Phillips chalked up two errors and went 1-for-5 in a poor effort against Chattanooga that saw Nashville fall by a score of 7-3.23 As it turned out, 1926 was a mediocre year for both Phillips and the Elite Giants. Nashville finished the year in sixth place out of eight teams in the NSL standings.24

At the beginning of the 1927 season, Hooty Phillips left his family behind in Nashville and jumped to the Chattanooga Black Lookouts, formerly known as the Chattanooga White Sox.25 He reclaimed his old familiar position at short, and joined a Chattanooga roster that included Satchel Paige – that is, at least until Paige jumped to the Birmingham Black Barons.26 The change of scenery seems to have helped Phillips. In early May, his bat came alive just in time to help the Black Lookouts take three straight games from his old mates, the Elite Giants.27 A week later, he swatted the pellet over the fence in Evansville, garnering three RBIs in the process, to seal a win for Chattanooga.28 Phillips’s renaissance in 1927 helped the Black Lookouts defeat the Elite Giants to win the first half of the NSL season. A dispute over league records later, however, resulted in Nashville being credited with the title.29 Hooty Phillips’s baseball career ended with the Black Lookouts in the summer of 1927. His final appearance in an NSL tilt was likely at Andrews Field in Chattanooga, when the Black Lookouts lost to Paige and the Black Barons, 7-2.30 It was also the last game for Hooty Phillips in a professional baseball uniform.

After the curtain fell on his baseball career, Hooty Phillips returned to Nashville – but not to his family. His estranged wife, Minnie, and his son, John William Phillips, who was now 10 years old, lived at a different address. Hooty and Minnie Phillips never reconciled. Minnie and her son had not shared a home with Phillips since 1925. Hooty Phillips did not live long enough to see his son Lefty Phillips follow in his baseball footsteps. On November 16, 1935, Hooty was shot in the back during a dispute over a dice game and died four days later from a fatal gas gangrene infection. He was just 37 years old and his son was not yet a teenager. Hooty was buried in the Mount Ararat Cemetery in Nashville. His assailant, John McKinley, was given a 20-year sentence for second-degree murder.31

John “Lefty” Phillips likely pitched his first game for one of Nashville’s sandlot teams in 1938, three years after the death of his father. It is unknown if Hooty Phillips had any influence in cultivating his son’s baseball talents. Sandlot baseball leagues were organized for White players in Nashville as early as 1906.32 By the 1930s, leagues for African American amateur nines were developed and teams participated in citywide tournaments held at Sulphur Dell.33 Sandlot teams also played against some professional nines. In 1935, for example, the Elite Giants opened their home season by taking on the Old Hickory Black Caps, one of Nashville’s “colored sandlot” teams.34 Young Phillips made his baseball debut in the summer of 1938 with the Nashville Junior Elite Giants.35 Although the Elite Giant Juniors played at least a dozen games that season, and upcoming games were announced in local newspapers, print coverage of the results was rare. Almost all the Junior Elite Giants’ contests were doubleheaders played at Sulphur Dell against other sandlot aggregations. One notable exception was a contest between the Juniors and Phillips’s father’s former team, the Chattanooga Black Lookouts.36 Lefty Phillips pitched in the opener and helped the Junior Elite Giants chew up Chattanooga, 13-4.37

With a season of amateur baseball under his belt, Phillips made the leap to the big time in the spring of 1939 when he graduated from the “Junior” leagues and was signed by his father’s former employer, the Nashville Elite Giants, soon to be renamed the Washington Elite Giants and ultimately the Baltimore Elite Giants.38 At the time, he was still living in Nashville with his mother, who worked as a cook. Phillips made his pitching debut for the newly relocated Baltimore Elite Giants on April 2, 1939, in a spring-training game against the Memphis Red Sox.39 Phillips was the second of three hurlers used by the Elites in a 4-2 losing effort in Memphis.40 A week later, Phillips was again the second hurler to take the slab for the Elites.41 The quality of the pitching for that day was described as “alternately brilliant and lusterless,” with Phillips’s performance falling into the latter category.42 Phillips was roughed up by the Atlanta Black Crackers and quickly replaced by Bill Harvey.43 The winning pitcher for Atlanta that day was Eddie “Bullet” Dixon, who joined the Elite Giants later in the season after the Black Crackers crumbled in the summer of 1939.44 Lucius Jones, who covered the Elite Giants-Black Crackers game for the Atlanta Daily World, was the first to refer to Phillips in print as Lefty Phillips.45 Phillips had other nicknames in his brief career including Jack, Jake, and Johnnie, but Lefty, a good old-fashioned southpaw baseball moniker, stuck and for Phillips it was a good journalistic fit.46

During the Baltimore Elite Giants’ 1939 championship year, Phillips was used sparingly in relief and rarely as a starter. One such rare occasion was on May 30, 1939, when Phillips was the starting hurler for Baltimore in the second game of a doubleheader against the New York Black Yankees at Dexter Park in Brooklyn.47 He didn’t last long. Lefty gave up six runs in the first inning and was sent to the showers.48 Less than a week later, he was one and done again in a 14-1 victory over the Lloyd A.C., but this time it was in relief of Emory “Jim” Adams, and at the end of the one-sided affair.49 Through June and July, Phillips was named as a possible pitcher for a number of tilts in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Whether or not he made any appearances on the slab for the Elite Giants, however, is uncertain due to the absence of complete game reports and/or box scores.50 The last time Phillips was listed as a member of the Elite Giants’ pitching stable in 1939 was for a game against the Belmar Braves of Asbury Park, New Jersey, on July 18, which the Braves won 10-3.51 His name did not appear in the box score for the Asbury Park game nor in any other press coverage of the Elite Giants for the remainder of the season.52 Lefty Phillips did not play a role in Baltimore’s 1939 championship series.

At the conclusion of the 1939 season, Minnie Phillips must have had déjà vu all over again when her son came back home to Nashville after his stint with the Elite Giants. Her late husband, Hooty, had a similar track record of bouncing back and forth between home plate on the road and his family’s home base in Nashville during his baseball career, a pattern that likely contributed to their fractured marriage. Despite Lefty’s poor showing on the hill for Baltimore in 1939, when the 1940 Census was conducted in Nashville on April 9, 1940, he listed his occupation as a professional baseball player, and his employer as Tom Wilson of the Elite Giants. He was definitely counting on playing in the coming season with Baltimore. When the Census was enumerated, Phillips lived with his mother in a house they rented for $2 per month on the northeast of downtown Nashville, that today is the site of Frederick Douglass Park. According to the Census, Minnie Phillips worked as a maid in a private home and earned $400 in 1939. For that same year, Lefty Phillips’s income as a professional baseball player was $500.

When the 1940 spring-training season commenced for the Elite Giants, Phillips was not on the roster.53 Baltimore’s early-season slab staff consisted of veterans Willie Hubert, Emery Adams, Jonas Gaines, and Dixon; and newcomers including Cowboy Murray and Woody Williams.54 But no Phillips. It was not until later in the 1940 season that he rejoined the Elite Giants. His first known appearance was in July in relief of Baltimore’s Bud Barbee in a 4-3 loss to the Bay Parkways in Brooklyn.55 The next day, Phillips made one of his rare appearances on the mound as a starter for the Elite Giants in a losing effort against New Jersey’s Belmar Braves.56 Lefty gave up nine hits in 6⅔ innings, with two strikeouts to his credit and four walks charged to his account.57 A few days later, he repeated his rescue of bullpen mate Barbee in an 11-10 win over the Bushwicks, although Phillips lasted only 1⅔ innings before he was relieved by Adams.58

The last time Phillips was named as a possible hurler for the Elite Giants was for a game that was played on August 8, 1940, against the Pirates of Red Bank, New Jersey.59 At the time, the Baltimore nine was tied with the Homestead Grays for first-place honors in the Negro National League.60 Phillips was slated to start the game but did not play. Barbee went the distance for Baltimore and was brilliant in a one-hitter, copping the win, 2-1.61 It was back to Nashville for Phillips. His two-year tour with the Elite Giants was over, as was his career as a professional baseball player.

On October 16, 1940, Phillips registered for the US Army draft in Nashville. He was described as 5-feet-9½ and 182 pounds. He named his mother as the “person who will always know” his address but did not live with his mother, who had recently remarried. Phillips’s residence was on Maury Street in Nashville, just a few blocks from the Napier neighborhood where Elite Giants owner Tom Wilson lived. Wilson was listed as Phillips’s employer. Phillips did not serve in the Army; during the 1940s, he worked primarily as a truck driver at the Nashville Terminal rail yards and at a laundry and dry-cleaning shops. By the mid-1940s, Phillips had moved into the newly developed J.C. Napier Homes, a public housing project developed in Nashville in 1939.62

Details on Lefty Phillips’s life after baseball are almost as scant as his stats and newspaper coverage of his game appearances. In 1955 he married Janie Mae Batey in Nashville, and for a time they operated a dry-cleaning establishment near the J.C. Napier Homes. By the late 1950s, however, Phillips was back on the road again as a truck driver, and life took a turn for the worse. In the summer of 1960, he was arrested in a bootlegging raid in Nashville and charged with possessing untaxed whiskey.63 Nearly two years later, on October 11, 1962, Lefty died in Nashville from a massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage, caused by cirrhosis of the liver. He was 41 years old when he died; his father, Hooty, had died at age 37. Phillips’s immediate survivors were his wife, son William Phillips, and his mother, Minnie Phillips Williams, who outlived her son by 10 years.64 Lefty was buried in the Hills of Calvary Memorial Park in Nashville.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to express her heartfelt appreciation for the wisdom, good humor, generosity, encouragement, and expert editing of the late Frederick C. Bush, who assisted with the early research for this chapter.

Sources

Unless otherwise indicated, all Negro League statistics and records were sourced from Seamheads.com and baseball-reference.com. Ancestry.com was used to access census, birth, death, marriage, military, immigration, and other genealogical and public records.

Notes

1 John Phillips’s nickname appeared in various records as Hooty and/or Hootie.

2 “Nashville Team Has Good Prospects,” Tennessean (Nashville), February 26, 1921: 8.

3 “A Nashville Southern League Club Wins Game,” Tennessean, April 26, 1921: 7; “Elite Giants Win First Game of Series,” Tennessean, September 16, 1921: 8.

4 “Negro Title Series Open in the Dell,” Nashville Banner, September 15, 1921: 10.

5 “Triple and Single Give Elite Giants Hard Game,” Tennessean, September 19, 1921: 6.

6 “Giants Win Flag in Negro League,” Nashville Banner, September 20, 1921: 9.

7 In 1921 the Phillipses’ house was located about 1,000 feet from home plate of the present-day First Horizon Park, home to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds.

8 William J. Plott, The Negro Southern League: A Baseball History, 1920-1951 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2015), 34, 35.

9 “The Southern League,” Chicago Defender, June 3, 1922: 10.

10 “Nashville Elite Giants Will Be Home Today,” Tennessean, June 8, 1922: 8.

11 “Black Barons Drop Double-Header to Nashville Giants,” Birmingham (Alabama) News, June 29, 1922: 17.

12 “Elite Giants and Knoxville Play Tie,” Tennessean, July 29, 1922: 6.

13 Plott, 41; “Knoxville Giants Mop Up on Road,” Knoxville (Tennessee) Journal and Tribune, August 5, 1922: 9.

14 Neil Lanctot, Fair Dealing and Clean Playing: The Hilldale Club and the Development of Black Professional Baseball, 1910-1932 (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 97.

15 “Monarchs Blank Detroit Stars, 6-0,” Detroit Free Press, May 21, 1923: 14; “Detroit Stars Defeat A.B.C.’s,” Detroit Free Press, June 11, 1923: 15; “Detroit Stars Lose,” Detroit Free Press, June 14, 1923: 26; “Merchants Set for Fast Fray,” Port Huron (Michigan) Times Herald, June 14, 1923: 13.

16 “Milwaukee Bears and A.B.C.’s Sunday,” Indianapolis News, June 30, 1923: 20.

17 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 553.

18 “Giants Defeat Detroit Stars,” Detroit Free Press, September 5, 1923: 13.

19 “Giants Defeat Detroit Stars.”

20 “Negro Southern League Games Are Real Features with Ample Comedy,” Tennessean, June 30, 1926: 11.

21 “Negro Southern League Games Are Real Features with Ample Comedy.”

22 “Local Negroes Take Third in a Row,” Chattanooga Times, July 6, 1926: 9.

23 “White Sox Outfit at Top Negro Loop,” Chattanooga Times, July 7, 1926: 10.

24 Plott, 62.

25 “Want to Be Known as the Black Lookouts,” Chattanooga Times, April 3, 1927: 15; “Black Lookouts to Meet Barons,” Chattanooga Times, July 9, 1927: 8.

26 “Black Lookouts Play Giants Today,” Chattanooga Times, April 22, 1927: 10.

27 “Black Lookouts Win Third in a Row,” Chattanooga Times, May 11, 1927: 11.

28 “Evansville Outfit Meets Local Blacks,” Chattanooga Times, May 13, 1927: 15.

29 “Black Lookouts Beat Nashville,” Chattanooga Times, July 5, 1927: 11; Plott, 72.

30 “Black Barons Take Another from ’Nooga,” Birmingham Age-Herald, July 11, 1927: 9.

31 “Negro Given Twenty Years for Murder,” Nashville Banner, January 10, 1936: 14.

32 J.D. Langdale, “Negro Club House Boy Was Father of Amateurs Here,” Tennessean, June 15, 1930: 15.

33 “Negro Amateurs Stage Meet in Dell Sunday,” Tennessean, October 1, 1933: 28.

34 “Elite Giants Hold First Battle Here,” Tennessean, April 7, 1935: 19.

35 “Elite Juniors Nab Two,” Tennessean, July 25, 1938: 11.

36 “Giants in Action,” Nashville Banner, July 22, 1938: 10.

37 “Elite Juniors Nab Two.”

38 “Elites Train in Nashville,” Atlanta Daily World, April 15, 1939: 5.

39 Sam R. Brown, “Memphis Red Sox in 4-2 Win Over Elites,” Atlanta Daily World, April 4, 1939: 5.

40 “Memphis Red Sox in 4-2 Win Over Elites.”

41 Lucius Jones, “Felix (Chin) Evans, Donald Reeves Star as Atlanta Nine Loses 13-12,” Atlanta Daily World, April 10, 1939: 5.

42 Jones, April 10, 1939: 5.

43 Jones, April 10, 1939: 5.

44 Lucius Jones, “Slant on Sports,” Phoenix (Arizona) Index, September 9, 1939: 6.

45 Jones, April 10, 1939: 5.

46 “Lloyd Tackles Elite Giants,” Chester (Pennsylvania) Times, May 16, 1939: 11; “Baltimore Giants to Play Manheim,” Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Daily Intelligencer, June 7, 1939: 12; “Five Elite Hurlers Ready to Face Star Batsmen in Bargain,” Baltimore Evening Sun, July 7, 1939: 36.

47 “Black Yankees in Even Break,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 31, 1939: 18.

48 “Black Yankees in Even Break.”

49 “Nashville-Baltimore Elite Giants Wallop Lloyd Tossers,” Chester Times, June 3, 1939: 14.

50 “Nashville Colored Giants Scheduled for Pirates Park,” Long Branch (New Jersey) Daily Record, June 22, 1939: 8; “Baltimore Giants to Play Manheim,” Lancaster Daily Intelligencer, June 7, 1939: 12; “Five Elite Hurlers Ready to Face Star Batsmen in Bargain,” Baltimore Evening Sun, July 7, 1939: 36; “Cubans to Meet Giants at Pennsy,” Wilmington (Delaware) Morning News, July 15, 1939: 12; “Braves Import 2 New Hurlers,” Asbury Park (New Jersey) Evening Press, July 18, 1939: 9.

51 “Braves Break Slump, Rout Nashville Elites, 10-3,” Asbury Park Evening Press, July 19, 1939: 10, 14.

52 “Braves Break Slump, Rout Nashville Elites, 10-3.”

53 Cum Posey, “Posey’s Points,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 13, 1940: 16.

54 Cum Posey, April 13, 1940: 16.

55 “Bay Parkways Beat Elites, 4-3 in Night Game,” Brooklyn Citizen, July 26, 1940: 6.

56 “Belmar Braves Triumph, 6-5,” Long Branch Daily Record, July 27, 1940: 8.

57 “Belmar Braves Triumph, 6-5.”

58 “Parkways Battle House of David,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 3, 1940: 12.

59 “R.B. Pirates to Tackle Elite Giants Tonight,” Long Branch Daily Record, August 9, 1940: 8.

60 “R.B. Pirates to Tackle Elite Giants Tonight.”

61 “Pete Gray Spoils No Hit Tilt for Bud Barbee as Elite Giants Triumph,” Red Bank (New Jersey) Daily Standard, August 10, 1940: 16.

62 “Housing Body Selects Names for Projects,” Tennessean, August 19, 1939: 2.

63 “14 Arrested Here in Bootleg Raids,” Tennessean, June 18, 1960: 3.

64 “Death Notices,” Tennessean, October 11, 1962: 50.