John Ford Smith: Arizona’s Black Baseball Pioneer

John Ford Smith, the son of a pioneer Arizona family, was a pioneer himself whose baseball career spanned the pre- and post-integration eras, both in Phoenix and nationally. He is the only Negro League player presently known to have been born in Arizona.

Smith was born in Phoenix on January 9, 1919. His father, Charles Smith of Frederick, Maryland, had been a Buffalo Soldier who moved to Phoenix after he was discharged from the Army. Charles married Cora MacKenzie and they raised eight children, two of whom were exceptionally talented athletes.

Commonly known by his middle name, Ford first rose to prominence while attending Phoenix Union Colored High School in the 1930s. Baseball was his starring vehicle. Primarily a pitcher, the right-hander could fill in anywhere, being a good batter and fielder. He was always a hard thrower, but his high school teammate Robert Gerton remembered him as a seven-inning pitcher, needing relief help after that point. The highlight of his high school career was a five-inning no-hitter for the Monarchs.

Since Phoenix Colored High was unable to play against white schools in the Valley of the Sun, the Monarchs found most of their competition from Indian schools such as those in Phoenix. Sacaton, and Casa Grande. Gerton said the 6-foot-1 Smith also was a good forward in basketball and a “longpasser” in football. Ford’s brother Louis was also a sports star who was considered a great basketball player before he died of pneumonia in his late teens. Ford was afflicted with the same malady while a student at Phoenix College, and he suffered recurrently during his professional career.

After college, Smith remained in Phoenix to pitch for the all-Black Arizona Compass team that ran through the 1940 semi-pro district and state tournaments without a loss. Ford starred in two decisive victories over Winslow, striking out 18 in the championship game. His batterymate Tom Gee, the team’s best hitter, had played two seasons for the New York Lincoln Giants of the Eastern Colored League in the mid-1920s. Although Compass was eliminated from the national Semi-Pro Tournament at Wichita after two straight defeats, the first to the all-Black Chicago Palmer House team which featured many Negro League stars, Smith was able to use this experience as a stepping stone to a professional career.

In 1941, he joined the Kansas City Monarchs, a club on its way to the third of four straight Negro American League pennants in the year before the resumption of the Negro World Series. The 22-year-old found himself on a veteran pitching staff that included such stalwarts as Satchel Paige, Chet Brewer, Hilton Smith, Little Walker, and Lefty Bryant, as well as developing stars Jack Matchett, Booker McDaniels, and future major leaguer Clifford “Connie” Johnson. In such fast company, Ford was fortunate to find any work, and finished with a 1-1 record.

His prospects looked good but World War II intervened, and Ford left the Monarchs’ mound corps for a pitching assignment with the Quartermaster’s Corps at Ft. Lewis, Washington. Ford led the team to a 42-2 record and the Washington state semi-pro title. Transferring to the Army Air Force, he rose in rank to lieutenant and reached the pinnacle of his service baseball career when he pitched his European Theatre of Operations team to a 1-0 victory in the 1945 military championship game in London.

The Monarch team that Ford rejoined in 1946 was as strong as the one he had left after the 1941 campaign. The 1946 squad won both halves of the Negro American League and the league playoff. Smith went 4-0 on a staff that again included Paige, Bryant, Johnson and Hilton Smith, along with Amos Watson and Jim “Lefty” La Marque, a mainstay since 1942. In the 1946 Negro World Series, the Monarchs unexpectedly lost to the Negro National League champion Newark Eagles, four games to three. In the Series, Ford started two games (losing his only decision) and played in the outfield in Game Seven.

Ford became one of the team’s staff aces in 1947, going 7-2 with a 2.57 ERA in NAL play. The following season, he was the Monarchs’ number one starter and compiled a 10-5 record with a 2.64 ERA. Kansas City won the second-half title in 1948 before losing the NAL playoff to the Birmingham Barons.

Like many Negro Leaguers, Ford spent his off-seasons playing winter ball in the Caribbean. In 1947-48 and 1948-49, he led the Puerto Rican Winter League with 13 victories each season for the Santurce Cangrejeros. Along with fellow Negro League stars Bob Thurman, Earl Taborn, Willard Brown, and manager Vic Harris, Ford was a key player on Santurce’s first “Escuadrón del Pánico,” literally translated as “Panic Squad.”

During the winter of 1949-50, Ford pitched for Habana in the Cuban League. Nicknamed “Teniente” in recognition of his military rank, he was a late addition to a starting rotation that included Negro League star Max Manning and went 8-6 with a 2.80 ERA. Smith also showed his usual prowess with the bat, winning a game for himself in relief with a clutch triple. In the popular Cuban magazine Carteles, writer Rai Garcia observed in 1950 that Ford was the most difficult pitcher to hit against in the Cuban League that winter due to his tremendous velocity and varied repertoire. However, Garcia labeled him as only a marginal major league prospect because he tended to lose control under adverse circumstances.

Ford jumped from the Negro Leagues to the New York Giants’ organization at age 30 when on January 27, 1949 he signed a minor league contract to play at $700 per month. Along with Monte Irvin, another 30-year-old Negro League veteran, Smith was assigned to the Giants’ Triple-A farm club in Jersey City of the International League. As Jersey City’s number four starter, Ford compiled a 10-8 record with a 4.15 ERA. During the 1949 campaign, African-American teammates Irvin and Hank Thompson were promoted to the majors but Smith did not get the call.

Ford began the 1950 season with high hopes. There were more black players in the Giants’ camp, including aging former football star Kenny Washington. Ford received a raise to $800 per month and was again assigned to Jersey City. But Smith was destined never to cross the Hudson River and play in the Polo Grounds. Although he pitched well enough for Jersey City (2-3, 3.40), he was stricken with pneumonia during the season, limiting him to only 45 innings of work. Smith’s days as a Giant farmhand ended after the 1950 campaign when he was not offered a contract for the upcoming season.

The following spring, Smith reported to spring camp with the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League. But Smith decided not to sign with the Rainiers because the club tendered him a conditional contract that did not protect him in the event of injury. Instead, he journeyed to Quebec for the 1951 campaign and emerged as the star hurler (16-8, 2.97) for the Drummondville Cubs of the Class C Provincial League.

After an 11-year baseball odyssey. the 33-year-old Smith returned home to play for the Class-C Phoenix Senators of the Arizona-Texas League in 1952. Ford finished with a 13-4 record with a 3.91 ERA in his first year back and tossed a no-hitter against Juarez on August 12, 1952. In 1953, Smith went 11-14 (5.65 ERA) for the last place Senators. He played out the string in 1954, going 9-3 with a 3.56 ERA for El Paso’s Arizona-Texas League entry.

While Smith ended his professional career after the 1954 season, he pitched one more year for the predominantly white semi-pro Arizona Cotton Kings in 1956.

Smith had married Senoma Rodgers in 1938, herself the daughter of Arizona Pioneers. Her father George S. Rodgers founded Arizona’s first Black-owned insurance agency. and when he was driven from business by his white competitors, he bought and becan1e the second owner of Phoenix’s first Black newspaper.

Senoma’s mother Myrtle Rodgers was one of the first two Black teachers in Arizona, teaching until Carver High School closed in 1954, bringing an end to the era of “separate but equal” schools in Phoenix. Ford and Senoma had two children, Jacqueline (Garner), who followed in her mother’s footsteps by becoming a teacher, and John Ford Smith II, who followed his father’s lead by becoming a professional athlete. Young Smith began as a baseball player, but as he grew towards his adult height of 6-foot-8 he logically migrated towards basketball. He starred at South Mountain High School and played two years at Phoenix College and two more at Puget Sound University in Tacoma. In 1969, the Seattle Supersonics selected him in the 12th round of the NBA draft. When he failed to make the club, Smith joined the Harlem Globetrotters in 1972 and toured with them for nine years.

After his playing career, Ford went to work for the District Office of Phoenix Union High School and served as director of East Lake Park in central Phoenix. He later joined the Arizona Bank and retired as an assistant vice president for human resources. A Republican in the mold of Jackie Robinson, he ran unsuccessfully for the Arizona State Legislature in 1966. Smith was a tireless champion in the struggle for civil 1ights and served as the executive director of the Arizona Civil Rights Commission.

Ford died in Phoenix on February 26, 1983. He was eulogized in the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette as a pioneer, an executive, and a civil rights leader; his role in baseball was not emphasized. The Arizona Informant, the state’s largest Black-owned newspaper, failed to even mention his athletic career. Like Jackie Robinson, his post-baseball participation in the civil rights movement brought him respect and admiration. Perhaps most impressively, he did all of this in his hometown, a city where he had performed some of his greatest feats as an athlete.