May 25, 1952: Hank Aaron’s star shines bright in the northern New York sky

In his first 17 games with the Clowns, Henry Aaron batted a robust .427 with five home runs and 26 RBIs. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Yes, the team known by many as the Indianapolis Clowns was known as the Buffalo Clowns when they played at Offermann Stadium, which was quite often as interest in the Negro Leagues declined.

For many years, Negro League teams had been coming to play in Buffalo. The Homestead Grays sojourned there for at least one series each season, and the fans thrilled to the home-run hitting of Josh Gibson, who hit seven homers there between 1938 and 1946. Twice, he hit two in a game.

But the Homestead Grays were a memory by 1952, and the Buffalo fans most often welcomed the Clowns with King Tut, Spec Bebop, and a cast of players, some bound for the major leagues.

The 1952 Negro American League was the only Negro major league left standing, and there were six teams in the league. Two of those teams were the Memphis Red Sox and the Clowns. Calling them the Indianapolis Clowns was somewhat pointless as they, as of May 25, 1952, had yet to play a game in Indianapolis. (They did play a game there on June 10, 1952.)

On May 25, 1952, Memphis and the Clowns faced off at Offerman Stadium. The announced crowd at Offermann Park was 1,800.

They had come to see King Tut. They got to see King Henry, an 18-year-old kid from Mobile, Alabama.

The pitchers in the first game were Jim Cohen for the Clowns and lefty Isiah Harris for Goose Curry’s Memphis Red Sox. Memphis kept things close due in large part to a three-run homer in the sixth inning by catcher Casey Jones.1 It was his second homer at Offermann Park and the first since August 7, 1947. But Henry Aaron went 4-for-5 as the Clowns won, 6-4.

In the nightcap, Ted Richardson pitched for the Clowns and yielded only two hits in an 11-0 shutout. It was his first shutout of the season. Marshall Bridges was the losing pitcher. Shortstop Felix “Manuel” Valdez collected the only two hits for Memphis.

Home runs sailed out of Offermann Park over the years, and May 25, 1952, was no exception. There were four homers in all during the doubleheader. In the second game, Aaron, the Clowns shortstop, went 3-for-4 with an opposite-field homer that sailed over the right-field wall. Jimmy Wilkes and Richardson also hit home runs. In less than two decades, more than 70 homers by upward of 50 players sailed out of Offermann Stadium in fewer than 40 Negro League contests.

As noted by Joseph Overfield in his essay for the 1979 Baseball Research Journal, “Offermann Stadium was always known as a hitter’s park. Its foul line dimensions (297 to right and 321 feet to left) were not nearly as those at (other ballparks). What made it a hitter’s paradise, particularly if you were righthanded, was the short distance to left center (346 feet) and the prevailing Jetstream, as the players called it, which traditionally helped every ball hit in that direction.”2

There was little mention of the games, aside from the scores, in the Buffalo newspapers. On June 2 the first articles began to appear in the Black weeklies. Actually, there was only one article – one that that was reprinted in about six Black weeklies. That article did not even let us know how many RBIs were produced by Aaron’s seven hits. It did not indicate if there were any errors or double plays in the game.

The double victory raised the Clowns’ record to 11-3 and moved Buster Haywood’s team into first place, ahead of Buck O’Neil’s Kansas City Monarchs, who faded as the season went on. The Clowns finished the first half of the season in first place and posted a 44-30 record for the full season. Birmingham, which finished at 51-36, had the best record in the second half. By this point, there was no formal Negro League World Series, but the two teams squared off in an 18-game postseason barnstorming tour.

Most of the men who played in the doubleheader were not destined for the major leagues, although a few played in the affiliated minor leagues.

Ted Richardson, the winner of the second game. pitched for the East in the annual East-West Game in 1952 and posted a 12-5 won-lost record in 1952. He made it to the minor leagues in 1956. In 1957 he became the first Black player to appear with the Durham Bulls of the Carolina League. One of his finest efforts came about a week after the game in Buffalo. On June 2, in Wichita, he came into the game in relief in the second inning and pitched the remaining 12⅔ innings in a Clowns win, striking out 21 batters.3

Wilkes and Cohen also were named to the East team in the East-West Game in 1952, but Cohen did not pitch. For Cohen, who was in his fifth season with the Clowns, 1952 was his last season. He finished with a 9-6 record.4 Wilkes began his career as a 19-year-old, with the Newark Eagles in 1945. He moved with them to Houston in 1949. He signed with the Brooklyn organization in 1950 and spent two years in the minors before joining the Clowns in 1952, and led the league in stolen bases with 49 and batted .325. A year later, he signed with the Brantford Red Sox in Canada’s Inter-County League and played for another 11 seasons.5

Isiah Harris, losing pitcher in the first game, continued hurling for Memphis and in three consecutive years (1953-1955) represented his team in the annual East-West All Star Game. He never played in AL/NL affiliated baseball.

Casey Jones, who had homered in the first game, was a long-term catcher in the Negro Leagues. He began his career with Memphis in 1943 and displayed a bit of power with them, hitting five homers at their home park, Martin Stadium, and four home runs at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field. He stayed with the Red Sox through 1955, having appeared in East-West games in 1950 and 1951. He never played affiliated baseball.

Valdez, whose Negro League career consisted of two seasons with Memphis, was gone after the 1952 season. He started for the West in the 1952 East-West Game. In 1953 he went to the minor leagues, where he spent three seasons, mostly with Decatur in the Mississippi-Ohio Valley League.

Marshall Bridges, who lost the second game of the doubleheader, was on a path that took him to the big leagues. He signed with the New York Giants in 1953 and, after six minor-league stops, made his debut with the Cardinals in 1959. His best major-league season was in 1962, when he went 8-4 with 18 saves for the New York Yankees. When he received his World Series ring in 1962, it was the 10th time, including every season from 1954 through 1962, that a Black player was on the World Series-winning team.

Manager Albert Elliot “Buster” Haywood was with the Clowns when they were the Miami Ethiopian Clowns in 1940. At that time, the box scores featured the players’ nicknames and not their real names. He was known as Khora. A good player in his own right, he was named to the East-West All-Star Games in 1946, 1951, and 1953. He led the Clowns to first place in the Negro American League from 1950 through 1952. He left the Clowns after the 1953 season and finished with Memphis in 1954 at the age of 44.6

Manager Homer “Goose” Curry of the Memphis Red Sox made his Negro League debut in 1928 with Chattanooga and had his first stint as a manager in 1932. A career .300 hitter, he batted .286 in 1952, playing 22 league games at the age of 47. He continued at the helm of the Red Sox through 1956, at which time he was 51.7

Aaron’s home run was his fifth since joining the Clowns, and he was on every team’s radar. Including exhibitions, he had played 35 games with the Clowns, and his 7-for-9 on May 25 took his batting average to .427. His last games with the Clowns were in Chicago on June 8 and Indianapolis on June 10. He joined the Braves organization during the second week of June.

Aaron made his first appearance with Class-C Eau Claire in a doubleheader on June 16. In his debut, an Eau Claire loss, he went 1-for-4 with a double and had an RBI. In the second game, an Eau Claire win, he went 2-for-4 with another double and a pair of RBIs. In the field, he flashed his glove at shortstop, initiating a game-ending double play.8

He batted .336 in 87 games with Eau Claire and returned to the Clowns after his minor-league season was complete, appearing with them in the barnstorming series against Birmingham. Details are not easily accessible, but sources say he batted .4029 during those games, homering at least once, at Knoxville on September 19. The homer was one of six in a game in which Indianapolis defeated Birmingham, 16-10.10

If one were to include his six documented Negro League homers, his 31 minor-league homers, and his 755 major-league homers, the reality would set in that Aaron amassed 792 homers during his remarkable career.

The Clowns continued in the Negro American League through 1954, after which they became a full-time barnstorming entity with the focus more on clowning, and they continued to play for another 30 years.

At the time of the May 25 game, a fair number of the 1,800 in attendance were major-league scouts, and the consensus was that “with a little polish, (Aaron) should break into the major leagues.”11 Two years later, Aaron was 32 games into his rookie season with the Milwaukee Braves. He went on to a spectacular AL/NL career that lasted through 1976 and sent him to the Hall of Fame. By then, the Negro Leagues and Offermann Stadium were distant memories.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources shown in the notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Seamheads.com, and the Center for Negro League Baseball Research.

NOTES

1  “Baseball News,” Macon (Georgia) News, June 2, 1952: 10.

2  Joseph Overfield, “Offermann Stadium in Buffalo: Hitters Welcome, Pitchers Beware,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, 1979.

3  Pete Lightner, “Clowns Win Long Game,” Wichita Eagle, June 3, 1952: 11.

4  “Final Batting and Pitching Records of Players in Two Negro Leagues,” Pittsburgh Courier, September 13, 1952: 26.

5  Bob Lemoine, “Jimmy Wilkes,” in SABR BioProject.

6  Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, “Albert Haywood,” in SABR BioProject.

7  Bill Johnson, “Homer ‘Goose’ Curry,” in SABR BioProject.

8  “Bears Split Pair with Duluth,” Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Leader, June 17, 1952: 10.

9  “Clowns Beat Barons, Claim Series Crown,” Kansas City Call, October 17, 1952: 12.

10  “Rookie Leads Clown Victory,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, September 20. 1952: 6.

11  “Baseball News,” Macon News, June 2, 1952: 10.