Tracking Down Willie Mays’s 1948 Game Log

 

In 2020, Retrosheet belatedly extended its work to include Negro League games and Negro League seasons. The first full season that Retrosheet attempted to compile was 1948, which also happened to be Willie Mays’ rookie year.

The primary challenge for Retrosheet in putting together the 1948 Negro League season is that a full schedule of games was not compiled and reported at the time. To reconstruct the 1948 Negro League season required searching through old newspapers to compile games one at a time. In addition, while statistics were kept for league games in 1948, these statistics have not survived to the present day. And even if they had, official Negro National League and official Negro American League games represented only a fraction of the games played by these teams, even if one only considers games involving two Negro League teams.

To give something of an overview of the process, this article looks at Retrosheet’s efforts to compile Willie Mays’ statistics for his rookie year.

Mays began the 1948 season playing for a semipro team called the Chattanooga Choo-Choos. The earliest reference we can find for his playing against a major Negro League team was an exhibition game between the Choo-Choos and the Newark Eagles in Macon, Georgia, on April 19. The teams played to a 1-1 tie in 12 innings, and the Chattanooga Daily Times reported that “Willie Mays, 16-year-old centerfielder from Birmingham, was the hitting and fielding star for the Chattanooga team.”1 No more details are given. The article also fails to identify who pitched for Newark, which was still in spring training, so it is unclear whether Mays actually faced major-league pitching in this game.

Retrosheet has not attempted to compile game accounts for the 1948 Choo-Choos. But a newspaper search suggests that Mays was a star for the Choo-Choos. In a June 13 doubleheader against the Memphis Blue Sox of the Negro Southern League, he went 5-for-7 in a Chattanooga sweep and Mays’ two-run home run in the sixth inning of the first game proved decisive in the Choo-Choos’ 3-2 win.2

It was fairly soon after this game that Willie Mays was signed by the Birmingham Black Barons.

The first game for which Retrosheet has found definitive evidence of Mays playing for the Black Barons was the second game of a doubleheader in Birmingham (at Rickwood Field) on June 27, 1948, against the Indianapolis Clowns. The Birmingham News published box scores for both games of this doubleheader that show Mays did not play in game one but batted eighth and played left field in game two. He went 0-for-2 (probably with one walk) and had no putouts or assists.3

Interestingly, the Black Barons and Clowns had played in Chattanooga two nights earlier. The Chattanooga Daily Times ran a four-paragraph story and line score. The only Barons players mentioned by name were pitchers Nat Pollard and Jimmie Newberry, catcher Herman Bell, and third baseman John Britton, whose “[h]eavy hitting” was “a highlight of the game.”4

Did Mays play in this game? Or did the Black Barons perhaps sign him at this time while they were in town? We don’t know.

Overall, Retrosheet has found definitive evidence that Mays played in 27 games for the 1948 Black Barons. This total includes 10 playoff games.

Several accounts have suggested that Mays had two hits off Chet Brewer in his debut with the Black Barons, playing left field in the second game of a doubleheader at Rickwood Field. Based on Retrosheet’s research, this appears to be an amalgamation of three separate games.

As best we can tell, Mays made his Black Barons’ debut playing left field in game two of a doubleheader at Rickwood Field. Mays did have a two-hit game at Rickwood Field against the Cleveland Buckeyes (Chet Brewer’s team) on August 12, 1948. But this was a single game (played on a Thursday night), and Sam Jones and John Brown pitched for the Buckeyes (Chet Brewer pinch-hit for Brown in the ninth inning).5

Mays did bat against Chet Brewer the night before, August 11, at Alberta Park in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. We have not found a box score for that game yet, but the game story we found did say that Mays hit a solo home run off Brewer in the bottom of the second inning to give Birmingham its first run in a game they won, 3-2.6

Mays’ home run off Brewer was the first of two home runs he hit against Negro League competition that Retrosheet has found. Mays’ second home run was a three-run first-inning home run off Raul Lopez of the New York Cubans at Blue Grass Field in Lexington, Kentucky, on August 27, 1948, in an 8-4 Black Barons win.7 No box score has been found for this game either.

Overall, Retrosheet has found evidence of 17 regular-season games in which Mays played for Birmingham. In these games, Mays had at least 14 hits – including at least three multihit games: August 1 vs. the Kansas City Monarchs (three hits),8 August 12 vs. the Cleveland Buckeyes, and August 15 vs. the New York Cubans.9 Those 14 hits included at least three doubles, two triples, and two home runs. Retrosheet has found evidence of one regular-season stolen base by Mays – on August 1 vs. the Monarchs. In Mays’ 17 known regular-season games, he scored at least nine runs and had at least 11 RBIs. Not bad numbers for someone who turned 17 years old less than two months before his debut.

The limitations of what we know about Mays’ 1948 season are perhaps best illustrated by his postseason performance. The Black Barons won the first-half NAL title and played a best-of-seven series against the second-half winners, the Kansas City Monarchs. That series went eight games. (Game Five ended in a 3-3 tie.) Retrosheet has found box scores for seven of the eight games. Mays played center field and batted third or fourth in all seven of these games. He batted 7-for-25 (.280) with one double, four runs scored, and five RBIs.

We have been unable to find a box score for Game Three of this series, played at Martin’s Park in Memphis on September 15. The Black Barons won that game, 4-3. All we know about the Barons’ offense on that day is that left fielder Jim Zapp hit a home run.10 Mays was not mentioned in any game articles that we have found.11 He probably played in the game. But we cannot say that for certain, and if he did play, we have no idea what his stats were for the game.

The Black Barons won their playoff series against the Monarchs, earning the right to face the Homestead Grays in what would turn out to be the last Negro League World Series.

Retrosheet has found box scores for the first two games of this series.12 In both of these games, Mays batted third and played center field. He went 1-for-7 with one run scored as the Grays jumped out to a 2-0 series lead.

Retrosheet has not found a box score for Game Three. However, we know that Mays played in this game, because he drove in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth inning with a single to center field.13 That is all we know about Mays’ performance in this game (a 4-3 Barons win), though.

There were two more games of the 1948 Negro League World Series, both of which were won handily by the Grays (14-1 and 10-6, although the latter game went 10 innings).14 Retrosheet has not found box scores for either of these games. Nor have we found any reference to Mays playing in either game. It seems likely that he played center field and batted third in both of these games, but we cannot say for sure (yet).

Retrosheet continues to look for better accounts of Negro League games. In the meantime, what we know about Mays’ rookie season is suggestive. Including the postseason, he played at least 27 games and had at least 23 hits, at least eight of which were for extra bases (four doubles, two triples, two home runs). In the games we know Mays played, he scored at least 14 runs and drove in at least 17, including the winning run in the only World Series game the Black Barons won. And he did all of that at the age of 17. Not bad at all.

TOM THRESS is president of Retrosheet. He has been published in the Baseball Research Journal and is the author of Player Won-Lost Records in Baseball: Measuring Performance in Context (McFarland, 2017) as well as two other self-published books. Tom lives in Portland, Maine, with his wife and sons after spending most of his adult life on the North Side of Chicago, where he and his family attended Game Four of the 2016 World Series (the last World Series game ever lost by the Chicago Cubs). In his day job, Tom is an economist.

 

NOTES

1  “Choo Choos, Champs in 12-inning 1-1 Tie,” Chattanooga Daily Times, April 20, 1948: 13.

2  “Choo Choos Take Pair from Memphis Blue Sox,” Chattanooga Daily Times, June 14, 1948: 10.

3  “Black Barons Win Twin Bill,” Birmingham News, June 28, 1948: 18.

4  “No Time for Clowning and Black Barons Win,” Chattanooga Daily Times, June 26, 1948: 9.

5  “Black Barons Beat Buckeyes with Big Rally,” Birmingham News, August 13, 1948: 36.

6  Rity Thompson, “Birmingham Black Barons Defeat Cleveland Buckeyes Before Large Crowd Here,” Alabama Citizen, August 21, 1948: 2.

7  “Black Barons Whip N.Y. Cubans, 8-4, Lexington Herald, August 28, 1948: 10.

8  “Two for the Monarchs,” Kansas City Times, August 2, 1948: 15.

9  “Black Barons Blast Cubans,” Birmingham News, August 16, 1948: 17.

10 “Black Barons Win Again, 4-3,” Birmingham News, September 16, 1948: 42.

11 In addition to the Birmingham News article cited in Note 10, see also “A Costly Monarch Error,” Kansas City Times, September 16, 1948: 30; and “Black Barons Win Again,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, September 16, 1948: 25.

12 Game One: “First Game to Grays, 3-2,” Kansas City Times, September 27, 1948: 14. Game Two: “Homestead Grays Lead Black Barons 2-0 in World Series,” Memphis World, October 5, 1948: 5.

13 “Grays Hold 3-1 Lead in Series,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 9, 1948: 8.

14 Game Four: “Grays Overwhelm Black Barons, 14-1,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 4, 1948: 26. Game Five: “Grays Blast Black Barons,” Birmingham News, October 6, 1948: 27. Several additional sources have been found for both of these games, none of which mention Willie Mays.