Serendipitously, the Call was founded in May 1919, a year before the formation of the first successful professional Black league, the Negro National League, and the organization of the Kansas City Monarchs. The Call’s founder was Chester Arthur “C.A.” Franklin (1880-1955). Franklin was born in Denison, Texas, to a barber and a teacher at a time when African Americans were leaving Texas and other Southern states in search of better educational opportunities for their children. In 1887 the Franklin family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where C.A.’s father established a newspaper, the Omaha Enterprise. C.A. attended the University of Nebraska for two years, but because of his father’s ill health had to leave school to take over as editor of the Enterprise. To improve his father’s health, the family moved to Colorado in 1898 and bought another paper, eventually called the Star.

In 1913 C.A. Franklin moved to Kansas City, where six years later he began publishing the Call. The paper started as a four-page sheet with a weekly run of 2,000. Its circulation grew rapidly, soon reaching 18,000. Before long nearly every African American home in Kansas City was receiving a copy from a carrier. At the same time, mail circulation throughout Missouri and the states to the southwest expanded. The Call was on its way to becoming one of the largest, most successful Black businesses in the region. By the 1950s the Call had expanded to 32 pages with 40,000 copies sold each week.1

As soon became obvious in his first weekly editorials, C.A. Franklin was a strong advocate of Black self-reliance, endorsing the philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois. For example, in the January 14, 1922, edition of the Call, under the headline “The Manhood of Kansas City Negroes Is Challenged,” Franklin decried the manipulation of Blacks in Kansas City politics, concluding “[we] are not underlings because other men say we are, we are masters of our fate. Strong men, just men of every race, will applaud the day when we cease to be measured by the scorn of our contemners, and offer our own proved merit.”

During its first decades the Call covered fully the campaign to expand the right to vote for African Americans and for equal opportunities for Blacks in employment, education, and housing. One of the Call’s first victories was breaking the ban in Kansas City that prohibited African Americans from serving on juries.

Nor did the Call shy away from addressing the most highly charged national issues facing African Americans. The paper strongly endorsed the struggle against segregation in the armed forces and the fight for nondiscriminatory hiring in government agencies. It also ran front-page stories on the scourge of lynching and kept track of the numbers of lynching victims state by state.

Some of the Call’s first subscribers were members of the Paseo YMCA volleyball team, on which Franklin played. Whether at the YMCA, where in 1920 the meeting to organize the NNL was held, or another venue, Franklin met and became good friends with J.L. Wilkinson (1878-1964), founder and principal owner of the Kansas City Monarchs. For the nearly three decades Wilkinson owned the Monarchs, he and Franklin worked closely together, and the paper was an enthusiastic supporter of the team and Black baseball in general. In its coverage of the organizational meeting of the NNL, the Call enthused in its February 27, 1920, edition that “[i]t was the first time in the history of a baseball meeting that there was exhibited so much harmony and good spirit.”

Known for his acumen as a promoter, Wilkinson quickly recognized the importance of a good relationship with Franklin and the Call. He assigned the Monarchs business manager, Q.J. Gilmore, the responsibility of providing the Call with a steady stream of positive articles about the Monarchs. The Call reciprocated with frequent endorsements of the team. When Wilkinson decided to name the team the Monarchs (upon the recommendation of one of his players, John Donaldson), the Call later proclaimed that the team had proven in its first years of play, in the words of eighteenth-century poet William Cowper, that they were “MONARCHS OF ALL THEY SURVEY.”2

C.A. Franklin recognized the role that Wilkinson and the Monarchs were playing in improving racial harmony in Kansas City. In its October 22, 1922, edition the Call noted that “[f]rom a sociological point of view, the Monarchs have done more than any other single agent to break the damnable outrage of prejudice that exists in this city. White fans, the thinking class at least, cannot have watched the orderly crowds at Association Park … and not concede that we are humans at least, and worthy of consideration as such.” When the team began playing games in Association Park, Wilkinson had insisted that the signs marking “colored section” be taken down and that patrons, regardless of race, be allowed to sit anywhere in the stands.

When the Monarchs moved to Muehlebach Field in 1923, Wilkinson’s agreement with the stadium’s owner, brewer George Muehlebach, allowed Black spectators to sit throughout the stands. In reporting on the agreement, the Call noted that “[f]ans from both races will continue to be able to sit side by side, and, after a while, the same relation may be carried to the workshop” (November 3, 1922). The Call had long recognized that Wilkinson expected clean play on the field, noting his slogan for how the Monarchs players were expected to deal with an opponent was “treat him right, but get him out.”3

In the July 20, 1923, edition of the Call, sports editor Charles A. Sparks claimed that the Monarchs and other Black teams were showing that the racist attitude of “the superiority of the whites and the inferiority of the Blacks” is dead. The Monarchs were proving that “Negroes play the game with much more thought and snap than the average white player.” The public is beginning to question, Starks maintained, the results of a World Series championship played between two white teams “when perhaps there are one of several colored teams in the country better than the contenders.”

When necessary, the Call also could be critical of the Monarchs and Black baseball, as in a scathing December 16, 1927, editorial by sports editor A.D. Williams that laid out the concerns he claimed needed to be addressed in the Negro leagues. Williams also chastised African American fans in Kansas City for lack of support of the team. At the end of the 1929 season Williams wrote, “If there ever was a club deserving the support of a city – it is [the Monarchs]. Their brand of baseball is second to none in the country. [J.L. Wilkinson has] always placed a real ball club on the field. … I wonder where that old Monarch loyalty is.”4

When Wilkinson introduced portable lights in 1930 to make night games possible, Williams and the Call were among the first to endorse the scheme that other journalists and baseball executives were rejecting as foolish and unworkable. In its January 10 and 24, 1930, editions the Call explained Wilkinson’s rationale for the experiment and Williams declared that the Monarchs owner had tested the lights sufficiently to go ahead. “Believe it or not,” Williams concluded, “there’s method in the supposed madness of friend Wilkinson. There’s one thing about him – he knows baseball … and the highway to the dollars.” After the lighting scheme had proved successful, the Call asserted that Wilkinson had risked everything financially and kept the Monarchs afloat “for the sake of the men who played for him. …”5

After six years (1931-36) spent exclusively barnstorming with his portable lighting system, as far north as Canada and south into Mexico, Wilkinson decided it was time to return the Monarchs to league play. He had a key role in the formation of the Negro American League in 1937 and was elected the new league’s treasurer.

In 1942 the Call’s reporting began with a January 2 article on the annual meeting of the NAL. The key issue at the meeting was the decision to join with the NNL in banning all clubs from playing the Ethiopian Clowns. Tom Wilson, president of the NNL, who was present at the NAL meeting, said that “the Eastern owners had long been of the opinion that the painting of faces by the Clowns players, their antics on the diamond and their style of play was a detriment to Negro league baseball.”

For Wilkinson and the Monarchs, not playing the Clowns represented a change in policy. The Call reported on Monarchs and Clowns preseason exhibition games and tours in 1940, playing in towns as far north as Winnipeg, Canada, and in 1941. For scheduling games with the Clowns, the Monarchs had drawn the ire of Cum Posey, owner of the Homestead Grays, and other Negro Leagues magnates, who claimed that the Clowns were playing to white stereotypes of Black baseball. However, Wilkinson maintained that the Monarchs played the Clowns not only because their showmanship drew crowds but because they played excellent baseball.

The 1942 Monarchs trained in Monroe, Louisiana, beginning their exhibition season on Easter Sunday, April 5, with a game against the Cincinnati Tigers. On April 24 the Call reported to the delight of Monarchs fans that Satchel Paige would be with the team for the 1942 season. On April 26 an overflow crowd of 15,000 at Pelican Stadium in New Orleans watched Paige pitch five innings against 1941’s top team, the Homestead Grays. It was the second game of a doubleheader, won by the Grays 10-7. The Monarchs took the first contest, 6-5, with Hilton Smith and Connie Johnson on the mound.

The 1942 Monarchs were considered by many, including Buck O’Neil, to be the best team in the franchise’s history, and games when Paige pitched drew large crowds; however, as the season got underway overall attendance began to decline. The Call’s new sports editor, Sam McKibben, questioned why African Americans were supporting the white Kansas City Blues instead of their own Monarchs. At Blues games, Blacks were still forced to sit in the bleachers, exposed to the sun and rain. “Apparently,” McKibben wrote sarcastically, “rank discrimination doesn’t spin their enjoyment of the game.” By contrast, at the Monarchs home opener, McKibben observed, “whites and Negroes sat together, cheered together, slapped each other on the back.”6

The Monarchs opened the 1942 regular season in Chicago on May 10, taking both games of a doubleheader with the Chicago American Giants, 7-4 and 6-0. Paige earned the shutout victory in the second game, and, according to the Call of May 15, “Old Satchel” showed “some of the smartest pitching of his brilliant career.”

The home opener at Ruppert Stadium on May 17 against the Memphis Red Sox featured a patriotic theme, with War Bonds on sale and soldiers in uniform admitted free (as they were throughout World War II). The Monarchs and Red Sox split a doubleheader as Paige took the loss in the second game.

On May 24, 1942, the Monarchs and Satchel Paige faced off at Wrigley Field in Chicago against a white team composed of major and minor leaguers led by Dizzy Dean. The game drew nearly 30,000 fans. The Call noted in its promotional article for the game (May 22, 1942) that Dean was still smarting at the losses he had suffered to Paige several years earlier. Indians ace Bob Feller was scheduled to play but had to withdraw when he was called back to active service in the Navy; he donated his fee to a Navy relief fund. The Monarchs won the game, 3-1, with both Dean and Paige taking the mound. As he would often do, after Paige pitched the first innings (in this game, six), Hilton Smith finished the contest. According to the Call’s game report (May 29, 1942), several of the big leaguers on Dean’s team “were loud and sincere in their praise of the Monarchs[,]” saying the several Monarchs could play in the white majors. However, the game drew the attention of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The Call reported on July 3, 1942, that Landis was about to rule that games between teams led by Paige and Dean would not be allowed to be played in white parks.

On June 5, 1942, the Call reported that Frank Duncan, who had been sharing managerial duties with Dizzy Dismukes, was named permanent skipper. According to the Call, with the departure of J.L. Wilkinson’s brother Lee from team duties, Dismukes resumed the role of business manager and traveling secretary. The ban on NAL teams playing games against the Ethiopian Clowns did not stop the Call from publishing a picture of Clowns pitcher Peanuts Nyassas, “who performs antics that keep fans in an uproar.” On June 26 the Call noted that the Clowns were playing throughout the Midwest, drawing an average of 5,000 per game.

The lure of a big payday proved too great. Skirting the ban on games by NAL and NNL teams against the Clowns, “by special arrangement with KC Monarchs management[,]” a game between the Ethiopian Clowns and Birmingham Black Barons was played at Ruppert Stadium in Kansas City on August 9, 1942. In a promotional article on August 7, the Call noted that “all the Clowns’ stunts will be on display.” For example, Pepper Bassett would catch the game seated in a rocking chair, the Call reported. The Clowns were currently barnstorming before huge crowds through the Dakotas, Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, and Illinois. More than 600,000 fans had paid to see them, the Call added. They had played to crowds as large as 25,000. In his “Sports Potpourri” column, Sam McKibben wrote that the Ethiopian Clowns would present their “baseball tomfoolery” … “Incredible feats will be accomplished before the final ball is thrown.” The game was a “must” for baseball fans, he dutifully wrote. They will “clown their way into the hearts of the Heart of America.” The Clowns lost both ends of the doubleheader before 4,000 fans.

NAL owners decided at their February 1943 meeting not only to allow teams to play the Ethiopian (now Cincinnati and later Indianapolis) Clowns but also to allow the Clowns to join the league.7 The Clowns played their home games at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In August 1943 the Monarchs played a profitable series against the Clowns.

In 1942 the Call was also lending its voice to the campaign to break the through the color barrier in major-league baseball. On June 12 the paper published the full text of a resolution adopted by the 2,000 members of the National Maritime Union calling for Negro players to be allowed in the major leagues. Another union, the United Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store employees, had already passed a similar resolution. A copy was sent to Commissioner Landis.

In addition to its NAL schedule, the 1942 Monarchs were continuing to barnstorm. The Call reported on a June tour through Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, including a no-hitter hurled by Paige and Booker McDaniel against the Frigidaire Icemen at Ducks Park in Dayton, Ohio, on June 16.8

During the 1942 campaign Wilkinson made the turnstiles spin by booking games for the Paige All-Stars. The Original House of David team continued to be a popular rival, as on July 5 in Louisville, Kentucky. The Call enthused that “there is little doubt about the magnetic quality of Paige’s box office appeal.” In 1942 he was, according to the Call, having one of his best seasons, noting that “his fast hopper is jumping.”9

On Friday, July 17, 1942, the Monarchs met an Army team, Johnny Sturm’s Jefferson Barracks All-Stars, which featured several former major leaguers. The game took place at Ruppert Stadium, and the Call made clear in its July 24 issue that there would be integrated seating. The game was the brainchild of J.L. Wilkinson and Monarchs co-owner Tom Baird. They covered all the Monarchs’ expenses and the New York Yankees, for whom Sturm had played, and who owned the white Kansas City Blues, covered the ballpark expenses. The proceeds were to go to charity. The Monarchs staged a rendition of the popular pepper game before the first pitch and then shut out the All-Stars, 6-0.

In its July 24, 1942, edition the Call’s Sam McKibben noted that on July 17 “death claimed Segregation, Discrimination and Jim Crow, father, son and grandson, all pioneer residents of Ruppert Stadium. … There were no mourners, just 6,000 enjoying a baseball drama. The ushers, who are usually rude to Negro patrons, were bubbling with friendliness. That’s democracy at work. Whites seated next to Negroes without incident and asked, ‘Why don’t they allow the [white Kansas City] Blues to play the Monarchs?’ and ‘Why are Negroes kept out of the majors and minors?’ There was no trouble-making, no vile language, no fights. The Ruppert management had contended that white patrons would object to sitting next to Negroes at ball games. Oh well, if it never happens again, it happened Friday night. There was no segregation nor discrimination. Whites will benefit more than Negroes as a result of the charity proceeds, but Negro fans came out in huge numbers in support of the game.” McKibben went on to write that Commissioner Landis has let it be known he had not laid down a law saying Negroes cannot play in the majors, that it is up to club owners. There were some White owners willing to sign Negroes. “Let Negro league teams like the Monarchs play leading major league teams and owners could tell how Negro and white players compare in ability,” McKibben concluded.

The next week the Call printed the full statement of Commissioner Landis. In part, Landis proclaimed: “If [Leo] Durocher, or any other manager, or all of them want to sign one or 25 Negro players it is all right with me. That is the business of the manager and the club owners.” The statement was provoked by comment from Durocher that “he would hire Negro players if he were permitted.” The Call also included a response to Landis by civil-rights leader A. Philip Randolph that “the door was now open for Negro players, but it will not remain open. It is up to Negroes themselves with the support of their white friends to keep it open and open it wider. With so many players going into the military, the demand is now greater than the supply. If Negro players do not break in during the war, it is not likely they will after the war. We do not want Negroes to enter the majors as Negro teams we want them integrated into every baseball club in the country.”10

The July 31 edition of the Call returned to the July 17 game in an editorial by McKibben headlined “Modern Version: Dr. Jekel [sic] – Mr. Hyde.” He again contrasted the courtesy of the white ushers at the Monarchs-Jefferson Barracks game with the attitude toward Black fans attending games between the Kansas City Blues and other white teams. At a Blues-Toledo Mud Hens game, attendants insulted Black fans with racial slurs. Two Negro men responded to the ushers, saying, “[w]e are American citizens and entitled to the rights of Americans.” Before long Negro players, McKibben asserted, will be in the majors, and “the jim-crow practice will be drowning in its own sweat.” McKibben had guessed three weeks earlier that “some cellar-dwelling big-league team would buy some Negro players. [Josh] Gibson, [Buck] O’Neil, [Joe] Greene, [Satchel] Paige, [Hilton] Smith, [Willard] Brown, and [Ted] Strong, to name a few, are “on the threshold of a new day.”

On August 7, 1942, under the headline “The Monarchs Owner Is Elated,” the Call published an Associated Negro Press wire story. According to the release, “J.L. Wilkinson, co-owner of the Kansas City Monarchs, champions of the Negro American League, gave approbation this week to the plan of William E. Benswanger, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, to give Negro baseball players a tryout with his team. Moghuls [sic] of major league teams expressed themselves pro and con on the issue. ‘I think it would be a fine [day] for the game,’ said Wilkinson, ‘although we would lose some of our stars.’ Wilkinson is a former minor league pitcher who has been [involved with] Negro ball teams with his partner, Tom Board [sic], since [1920].” Wilkinson said he had talked “with Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige, the pitching great” recently “and said he advised the right hand speed-ball [artist], ‘we certainly won’t stand in your way if you have a chance to play.’ Paige is under a two-year contract with the Kansas City club. … Wilkinson said he believed Josh Gibson, catcher for the Washington Homestead Grays, would attract the most attention next to Paige. … ‘There are at least a score of players who could make any major league team,’ added the Monarchs owner.”

Sam McKibben conducted an interview with Satchel Paige at the 1942 Negro Leagues East-West All-Star Game played on August 16 before 45,179 at Comiskey Field in Chicago. It was published in the August 21 edition of the Call under the headline “Paige Says Abolish Jim Crow and He Will Be Ready for His Major League Debut but Not Before at Any Price.” It clearly showed that Paige had given careful consideration to the prospect of his signing with a major-league team. McKibben wrote, “Satchel Paige doesn’t want a major league tryout, nor to play major league ball … unless two things come to pass: the complete abolition of JIM CROW on a NATIONAL scale … and he is given a contract identical to that tendered a white player getting a tryout. The white papers have been saying Paige is through. When Paige told a reporter that he wouldn’t sign a $10,000 contract with a big-league team, and refused to reveal his current salary, it was written that he was receiving $40,000 a year. Satchel is an enthusiastic talker and I just let him talk,” McKibben commented. “‘Imagine,’ he says, ‘me living at a Negro hotel although I play with a white team. Record my feelings when dishes, out of which I eat, are broken up in my presence. How could I pitch a decent game with insulting jeers coming from spectators and even some of the players? … Just convince me that agitation can be halted and I’ll push fast balls by Joe DiMaggio.’ ‘Why,’ he says, ‘if the President hasn’t made southern DEFENSE plants hire, and use Negro labor in government plants, how can Judge Landis, Connie Mack or anyone make the southern white folk accept the Negro as a ball player. His training camp life in the South would be miserable … and the camps won’t be moved for one or two Negroes. … What about the tryouts allegedly scheduled by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Who will ‘bell the cat’ (meaning end jim crow)? Will the white trainers work on a Negro to say nothing to take care of him. Indeed not. I’ve never been able to get any service out of one. … Tell the reading public,’ says Satch, ‘not to believe half of what it reads that I say in the [white] daily papers. I say to others what I am saying to you, but my statements are twisted. Negroes will never get into the major leagues because of jim crow. It’s a wonderful dream but will never come true. With the nation at war not one is going to try to abolish jim crow …. and even in peace time, jim crowism will flourish. Me, I am going to stick with Wilkie, J.L. Wilkinson, Monarchs owner, and whoever says I am afraid I can’t make the grade … is just plain nuts. I experience enough prejudice now, why court more?’”

In the same edition, in his “Sports Potpourri” feature, McKibben opined that “Negro soldiers are being killed in the South while in uniform for ‘mixing’ with whites. What will happen to Negro ballplayers training in the South?” He said that as a native Southerner, he believed “Jim Crowism will keep Negroes out of major league baseball. … Jim Crow must be destroyed but who will accomplish it? Truthfully, I am 100 per cent for Negroes in the majors – but too young to attempt self-disillusionment when overwhelming odds are stacking against it. … [I]t will take two years to properly season and infiltrate Negroes into major league ball.” “It’s time we sport writers cease sugar-coating. …”

The next week the Call noted reports of “[Ku Klux] Klan activity in a plot to stir up race hatred in the war industry” and “destroy national unity behind the administration’s win-the-war program.”11

In its September 4 edition the Call began its coverage of the 1942 Colored World Series between the Monarchs and the Homestead Grays, with the prediction that 32,000 would strain the capacity of Griffith Stadium in Washington when the Grays crossed bats with the Monarchs in the opening game of the 1942 Colored World Series on September 8. The Call noted that “the great Satchel Paige will be on the mound with power hitting Josh Gibson in the box. In two previous meetings this season in Washington, the Grays have edged out the Monarchs in extra-inning games.”

Since the Call was published weekly, fans would already have learned the outcomes and likely seen the box scores of the Series games, so the rest of the Call’s reporting on the Series (in the September 18 and 25 editions) focused not on individual games but on Satchel Paige’s famed confrontation with Josh Gibson in the second game, played in Pittsburgh on September 10, and a controversy that threatened to derail the Series. The former clash has become part of Negro Leagues baseball lore, but the latter event has received lesser attention.

In the September 25 Call, McKibben wrote an article headlined “Grays Employ Outside Talent to Beat Monarchs, 4-1” in which he gave a straightforward description of what the Grays had done. “With the aid of the Newark Eagles’ ace pitcher, Leon Day, who is reputed to be one of the classiest performers in baseball today, and who was aided and abided [sic] by more of his Newark Eagles’ teammates, Pearson and Stone, and Buster Clarkson of the Philly Stars,” McKibben wrote, “the Homestead Grays et al. defeated the Kansas City Monarchs 4 to 1, Sunday afternoon [September 24], at Ruppert Stadium. If the Monarchs had won[,] it would have ended the series. If won by the Grays[,] the series would have been extended from 4 of 7 to 5 of 9. … The facts make known the desperation of the Homestead Grays and explained why the ‘ringers’ were brought in to stem the tide.” The game was interrupted several times because someone was using emery to scuff the ball, but the offender was not discovered.

McKibben noted that the game was nullified at a meeting of NAL moguls called by Wilkinson and Baird. That left the Monarchs with a 3-0 lead in the series. Additionally, the use of emery boards and “other infractions of sportsmanlike ethics were ironed out to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.” The game was replayed in Philadelphia on September 29 and the Monarchs prevailed for a 4-0 Series win.

During the 1942-43 offseason the Office of Defense Transportation ruled that, effective March 15, 1943, the use of all privately owned buses by baseball teams would be forbidden. The order drew a quick reaction from NAL and NNL owners. They pointed out that Negro League teams appeared in several different parks each week and would not be able to play enough games to have financial stability without travel in private buses. In addition, since Black ballplayers were denied hotel accommodations in some cities, the buses were essential as sleeping quarters. The owners also emphasized that Negro League games provided much-needed entertainment for Black war workers in 11 metropolitan areas as well as competition for military teams.

Unmoved, the ODT refused to grant Black baseball an exemption to the ban. Wilkinson and Call editor C.A. Franklin joined forces in mounting a campaign to overturn the ruling. The Call published a series of articles condemning the ban and printed a “Save Negro Baseball” petition.12 It took until midway through the 1943 season for the campaign to convince the ODT to reverse its decision and to allow teams to use private buses.

The Monarchs continued to draw decent crowds through the 1945 season and peaked when Wilkinson and Baird signed Jackie Robinson. The turning point for the Monarchs and other Negro Leagues clubs was, of course, Branch Rickey’s acquisition of Robinson’s contract in August 1945, followed by Robinson’s joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in April 1947.

The Monarchs fielded teams in various manifestations into the 1960s and the Call continued its coverage, although more sporadically. In the final years of the Monarchs, the greatest attention in the Call’s sports section was devoted to Monarchs whose contracts were sold to major-league teams, more than from any other Negro League teams. The list includes Hall of Famers Paige, Willard Brown, Andy Cooper, and Ernie Banks, and the first African American to play for the New York Yankees, Elston Howard.

Sources

In addition to the articles in the Kansas City Call cited, other Kansas City Monarchs game reports are drawn from a timeline for the 1942 season compiled by Bill Nowlin.

Portions of this essay are drawn from William A. Young, J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2016).

Notes

1 William H. Young and Nathan B. Young Jr., “The Story of the Kansas City Monarchs,” Your Kansas City and Mine (Kansas City: Midwest Afro-American Genealogy Interest Coalition, 1950), 137-38, 142.

2 Kansas City Call, July 27, 1928.

3 Kansas City Call, June 17, 1922.

4 Kansas City Call, August 30, 1929.

5 Kansas City Call, January 26, 1934.

6 Kansas City Call, May 15 and 22, 1942.

7 Kansas City Call, February 26, 1943.

8 Kansas City Call, June 19, 1942.

9 Kansas City Call, July 3, 1942.

10 Kansas City Call, July 31, 1942.

11 Kansas City Call, August 28, 1942.

12 Kansas City Call, April 9 and 16, 1943.

In 1934 Paige pitched for the Monarchs in a game against an all-star team put together around the St. Louis Cardinals Gas House Gang’s ace pitching duo, Dizzy and Paul Dean. The Monarchs hired Paige again the next year for another series against the Dean All-Stars. Dizzy told Paige as they were saying goodbye after the tour, “You’re a better pitcher’n I ever hope to be, Satch.”1 On another occasion, Dizzy said, “If Satch and I was pitching on the same team, we’d cinch the pennant by July Fourth and go fishin’ until World Series time.”2

During portions of two seasons (1933 and 1935) Paige pitched for car dealer Neil Churchill’s integrated team in Bismarck, North Dakota. The ethnically diverse team also had a Cuban, a Jew, a Lithuanian, an Italian, an Irishman, a Swede, and a German, much like J.L. Wilkinson’s famed All Nations club. Paige pitched in more than 60 games in three months for the Churchills, won 30 of 32 decisions, and averaged nearly 15 strikeouts per game. More than once Wilkinson’s Monarchs played the Churchills while they were barnstorming. For example, in June 1935, Paige hurled a 2-0 shutout against the Monarchs’ Chet Brewer.

While playing for Bismarck in the summer of 1935, Paige said he was given some snake oil by Sioux Indians he met. They told him it was “hot stuff” and not to put it on anything but snake bites. Figuring it might be good for him in the cold North Dakota air, Paige put some on his arm after pitching and it loosened him up. He began using it after every game and kept some on hand in a jar.3

With the help of stars like Quincy Trouppe, Hilton Smith, and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, the Bismarck team won the 1935 National Baseball Congress Tournament in Wichita, Kansas. After the tournament, the Churchills barnstormed their way to Kansas City, where, on September 15, Paige (with Radcliffe as his batterymate) took the mound against the Monarchs. Satchel told Churchill the umpire’s tight strike zone was causing him “unwarranted pain and suffering” and he wanted to leave the game. Churchill appealed, saying it was his last game as manager, and offered Satchel an extra $750 if they beat the Monarchs. Satchel relented, struck out 15, and pocketed the cash after an 8-4 victory.4

In the spring of 1936, Paige rejoined Gus Greenlee’s Pittsburgh Crawfords, where he had played earlier in the 1930s. In 1937 Satchel left the Crawfords to play for a month in the Dominican Republic, for the Dragons, a team sponsored by dictator Rafael Trujillo. He was 8-2 and won the championship game.

When Paige and the other players who had jumped to the Dominican Republic returned to the States, they formed an all-star team that outdrew Negro League clubs. Greenlee offered him $450 a week to return to the Crawfords, but Satchel told him, “I wouldn’t throw ice cubes for that kind of money.”5 Greenlee then sold Paige’s contract to the Newark Eagles for $5,000, but the “travelin’ man,” as Satchel called himself, went to Mexico instead, where he signed for $2,000 a month. Enraged, Greenlee led the charge that resulted in Negro League owners voting to ban Paige for life.6

In Mexico, Paige’s arm hurt so much he could barely throw. He was hit hard by virtually every batter he faced. At times Satchel said that the spicy Mexican food was to blame for his arm trouble.7 On other occasions he said he had run out of the special oil the Sioux Indians had given him. In fact, years of pitching so many games had caught up with Satchel. Some speculate he had suffered a rotator cuff injury. Infielder Newt Allen said Satchel’s arm had gotten so bad he couldn’t rub the back of his neck.

Looking back, a decade later, the Kansas City Call suggested alliteratively, “[t]he great one owned a wing that was as dead as a new bride’s biscuit. … It was at that time that J.L. Wilkerson [sic], owner of the Monarchs, toyed with the idea of employing Satch, who was nursing the once-poisonous paw in pathetic pity.”8 Indeed, almost everyone in the baseball world, except Wilkinson, thought Paige was washed up. He called Paige, and Satchel remembered the conversation well:

“Satch, this is J.L. Wilkinson. I own the Kansas City Monarchs. Remember me?”

Paige said, “I remembered good. I’d put in some time for Mr. Wilkinson. … ‘Yes, sir, Mr. Wilkinson,’ I said.”

“Satchel, Tom Baird, my partner, and I just got your contract from Newark. When can you report to Kansas City?”

“I can be there tomorrow.”

“Make it next week and meet me there.”

Satchel said he felt “I’d been dead. Now I was alive again. I didn’t have an arm, but I didn’t even think of that. I had me a piece of work.”9

Wilkinson’s signing of Paige turned out to be transformative for the Monarchs as well. As John Holway has described the moment: “[T]he decision Wilkinson made, while they talked, represented the second great achievement that would help bring the Monarchs a new dynasty [the first being night baseball]. It was an achievement born of baseball acumen, of wisdom about muscle and bone, skill and sporting spirit. Wilkinson decided to give Satchel Paige a second chance.” As it turned out, “Wilkinson saved Satchel Paige’s career. And Paige rejuvenated the Monarchs.”10

When Paige met Wilkinson and Baird, he explained that he couldn’t throw. Wilkinson responded that the plan was for him to play first base. Then Satchel asked when he could join the Monarchs. Wilkinson was quiet for a moment, then said, “[Y]ou’re not going to play with the Monarchs. We’ve got a Monarchs traveling team, a barnstorming team. We planned to send you up North on a tour with them. You couldn’t pitch with that arm of yours, and you haven’t played first enough to hold it down in the Negro Leagues.”

Paige said, “that good feeling I’d had just sort of floated away.” However, he said to Wilkinson, “I guess that’s how it will be.”

Then Paige asked why Wilkinson was giving him a job, if he wasn’t good enough for the Monarchs.

“We think you’re still big enough to pull the fans,” Wilkie said.

“My name,” Paige responded, “ain’t gonna lure that many fans.”

Wilkinson was quiet again for a moment, then said, “It’ll lure enough. Anyway, I thought you needed a hand.”

In a 1971 interview, Bill “Plunk” Drake said “Wilkerson,” whom Drake called an “awful good man,” even took Satchel to Chicago for treatment of his stomach trouble.11

Wilkinson and Paige may have been pleased that Satchel would be playing again, but Effa Manley, co-owner with her husband, Abe, of the Newark Eagles, and the only woman inducted (with Wilkinson in 2006) into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, was furious. She believed that the Monarchs owner should have sided with her when Satchel jumped his contract with the Eagles to play in Mexico. She accused Wilkinson of being no different than other White booking agents or ballpark owners, interested only in making money, and threatened to sign players from the Monarchs in retaliation.12 Wilkinson responded to Mrs. Manley’s outrage calmly, telling her that “no one had offered Paige a contract, so I picked him up.”14 Technically, Wilkinson was right. The deal in which the Crawfords had sold Paige’s contract to the Eagles was contingent on Satchel showing up, and he hadn’t.

In the end, Paige was allowed to remain with the Monarchs, and the Eagles were permitted to keep two Negro American League players they had signed in violation of interleague rules.

According to Monarchs pitcher Chet Brewer, the first thing the Monarchs owner did after signing Paige in 1938 was to take Satchel to a dentist and get him a new set of teeth. Wilkinson just had a way, Brewer said, of knowing what a player needed.13 As J.L.’s son, Dick, said, “Satchel had a ‘whalebone arm,’ all bone, not much muscle. Dad could tell by looking at a ball player whether he could play ball or had potential. They talked, and Dad gave him another chance.”14 Buck O’Neil remembered that “J.L. Wilkinson saw the potential there [in Paige, after he hurt his arm], knew that he was a great drawing card.”15

Wilkinson sent Satchel, with Newt Joseph, to play in the West, all the way to Canada, on a team sometimes called the “Second Monarchs,” “Junior Monarchs,” or “Kansas City Travelers.” The players often called the team the “Baby Monarchs.” During one stretch, the Shreveport Acme Giants journeyed with the Travelers and played against them, O’Neil recalled.

With the Monarchs traveling squad, before a game, Satchel would often perform a “pepper show,” doing tricks with the ball, like rolling it across his arm and chest to the other arm and hand, and some shadowball playing, slow-motion throws, and gags. When the game started, he would sometimes take the pitcher’s mound and soft-toss his way through a few innings with what he called his “Alley Oops and Bloopers.” Then he would play first or occupy the first-base coaching box, to the delight of the fans in the small towns where they played.16

As Satchel remembered, on the traveling team the other players at first treated him like he “was dead and buried.” About the only one not like that was Newt Joseph, an old-timer who was the traveling club’s secretary, who told him “maybe we can work that arm of yours out.” At least, Paige said, he was making spending money.17

Before long, the Monarchs “B” squad was outdrawing and earning more than the main team, because of the “Paige effect.” Wilkinson wisely began advertising the Travelers as “Satchel Paige’s All-Stars.” They played games against “community teams, post office teams, industrial league teams, church squads, Sunday-school teams, railroad-sponsored teams, pharmacy-sponsored teams, and any local nine that came together with enough cash to sponsor the contest, cover travel expenses, and guarantee a reasonable gate.”18 For many semipro teams, the entire year’s budget was based on booking Paige. He kept many clubs solvent just by appearing.

The Monarchs traveling team included young talent but also older players such as Newt Joseph as well as George Giles and Cool Papa Bell. Paige respected Wilkinson for giving jobs to older players like him, whom others ridiculed as being past their prime. He quoted Wilkinson as saying, “[t]hey can still do some good. And they’ve done a lot for the Negro Leagues and made us all some money, so I’m just trying to pay them back a little.” Wilkinson also realized that their well-known names would still be draws at the box office. The Paige All-Stars toured the Northwest and played in the California Winter League as well as barnstorming in the Midwest. Backed by Wilkinson, Paige refused to play in towns where they could not eat or sleep. Wilkinson also made “Jew Baby” Floyd the pitcher’s personal trainer.19

One of the most successful matchups was between Paige’s All-Stars and the Ethiopian Clowns. On June 11, 1939, 4,000 turned out in Peoria, Illinois, to see the two teams split a doubleheader. According to the June 16 Call, the Clowns “captured the crowd’s fancy in both games with their whirlwind fielding practice speed and their determined efforts.” Their “remarkable shadow ball exhibition took the crowd by storm.” The two teams met again in Milwaukee.

During the 1939 barnstorming season, while the traveling squad was in Canada, Satchel’s arm and overpowering fastball miraculously returned. Some say it was on a warm Sunday, as he pitched against one of the House of David teams, that Satchel’s arm strength and fastballs returned. O’Neil recalled: “‘Jew Baby’ Floyd went out to rub Satchel’s arm, and … his arm came back, the batters didn’t hold back [as they had at first been instructed to do by Wilkinson], and he struck out seventeen in one night.”20 Floyd’s remedies were “massages, ointments (including one he called ‘Yellow Juice,’ so potent it scared away mosquitoes), a combination of scalding and ice-cold baths for his arm, and warm and cold wraps.”21

Newt Joseph “called Wilkinson, [and] said ‘[Satchel’s] ready to come back,’ so he came back to the Monarchs. He was a natural showman. He was just a natural.”22 Satchel’s control was once again excellent. “He could throw the ball right by your knees all day,” said Cool Papa. However, Wilkie “told Paige to take it easy and to stay with the traveling squad through the end of the season.” Wilkinson had not yet received league approval to reinstate Paige, but he was sure he would because of the hurler’s box-office appeal.23

Without Paige the Monarchs won the first-half 1939 NAL pennant race and met the winners of the second half, the St. Louis Stars, in a playoff for the league championship. Kansas City won the series, taking four of the five games played. During the playoffs, Satchel Paige’s All-Stars were guests of the Monarchs management. Receipts of one of the games played went to a rescue mission.

The Monarchs ended the 1939 season with two “dream games” against Satchel Paige’s All-Stars (who, the Call pointed out, were under Monarchs management) the last week in September at Ward Field in Kansas City, Kansas. The Monarchs won them both, 11-0 and 1-0. Paige pitched four innings in the first game and gave up seven runs. Hilton Smith hurled for the Kaysees, scattering four hits.24

The dispute over rights to Paige festered on, finally coming to a head when, on June 27, 1940, the Negro National League and the NAL came to an agreement that both leagues had a justified claim on Paige. However, Paige indicated he wanted to stay with the Monarchs. Almost 30 years before Curt Flood challenged the reserve clause in the White major leagues, Paige contended that slavery was over and he could play for whomever he pleased. “The leagues’ owners tried to strong-arm Paige to leave the Monarchs for the Eagles and told him that unless he did, ‘there will be a war between the two leagues.’”25 However, as historian Donald Spivey has noted, “Paige and Wilkinson ignored the threats. Paige was declared ineligible for the 1940 East-West All Star Game in Chicago, but he just continued barnstorming and going south to the Caribbean islands.”26

In late September 1940, after Paige had completed two years on the Monarchs traveling team, Wilkinson decided the time was right for the pitcher to rejoin the main Monarchs club. He signed Satchel to a new contract for the 1941 season and sweetened the deal with something he knew Paige would love – a new car. To test him out, Wilkie put Paige to work before the 1940 season ended. Satchel’s first start in Chicago, against the American Giants, drew 10,000; the next game in Detroit brought out 12,000 fans.

Having showcased Paige’s box-office appeal, Wilkie next sent Satchel to the Puerto Rican winter league, where he was named the league’s most valuable player.27 According to Paige biographer Larry Tye, J.L. Wilkinson “was savvy enough to know that Satchel’s two years of toiling in the wilderness with the traveling team had kept him out of sight and mind of Negro sportswriters and their hundreds of thousands of readers. So he enlisted New York playwrights Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman to help script the pitcher’s return.”28 They agreed that the only proper platform to reintroduce Paige was New York City, so Wilkinson booked him to pitch the 1941 season opener for the New York Black Yankees on May 15. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia threw out the first pitch before a record crowd for an opening-day Negro League game: 20,000. Paige pitched all nine innings, struck out eight, and won the game over Philadelphia, 5-3. The game was covered not only by the Black press but also by the New York Times. Life magazine ran an article on Paige in its June 2, 1941, issue. Effa Manley objected, but promoter Eddie Gottlieb pointed out to her that having Paige pitch was helping the Black Yankees get out of debt.

A week later Paige pitched the Monarchs home opener and let it be known that his habit of jumping teams was over. With his fastball reduced, as Paige put it, from “blinding’ speed” to “just blazin’ speed,” he relied more on a curve, a knuckleball Cool Papa Bell had taught him, and a slow sinker. Drawing on the still strong buzz surrounding Paige’s traveling team, in June 1941 Wilkinson reassembled the Paige All-Stars for a doubleheader against the Ethiopian Clowns at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.29

By midseason in 1941 Paige’s rehabilitation with Negro League owners was complete. Wilkinson and Baird were willing to lend Paige to any NNL team for exhibition games … at a price. Eddie Gottlieb promptly booked another doubleheader in Yankee Stadium for July 20, featuring Paige’s Monarchs and three NNL teams. Philadelphia and other NNL clubs also booked the Monarchs on the Kansas City team’s Eastern swing. A large crowd showed up at Parkside Field in Philadelphia on July 17, 1941, in response to advance publicity that promised Paige “will definitely hurl part of the game.”30

Paige received 276,418 fan votes for the 1941 East-West All-Star Game, 100,000 more than the next pitcher, the Monarchs’ Hilton Smith. Satchel was cleared to play by the owners and pitched two innings in the July 27 game in Chicago. It didn’t matter that Paige’s West team lost, 8-3. The fans had seen Satchel pitch.31

Wilkinson surely understood that the Kansas City Monarchs were well on their way to morphing into the Paige All-Stars. After Paige joined the team, in addition to their games in Kansas City and in the Midwest, they were playing to huge crowds throughout the East, with the stipulation that Wilkinson’s team get a higher percentage of the gate for the privilege of having Paige on the field.32

According to his Monarchs teammate Chet Brewer, who had also played with Paige on the Bismarck, North Dakota, team, Wilkinson would “hire [Paige]” out on Sunday and take 15 percent off the top of the gate receipts, right after the government got their money.”33 In particular, whenever a team was in financial trouble, Wilkinson’s willingness to “lend” Paige helped the team boost gate receipts. Of course, the deal would also put money in Paige’s and Wilkie’s pockets.

Because Paige was perpetually late to games, Wilkinson had Brewer sometimes ride with him. After one harrowing trip, Brewer told J.L., “I don’t want to ride with Satchel anymore. He’s going to get us both killed.” Satchel would pitch a game at Yankee Stadium on a Sunday, then take off in his big Cadillac and not show up until the next Sunday. “The Monarchs put up with it,” Brewer said, “because they were making money off him. J.L. got rich on him.”34

At the same time as Wilkinson was treating Satchel with dignity and respect (and cashing in on his fan appeal), the White media, now well aware of the public’s interest in the lanky Monarch hurler, portrayed him stereotypically. In its June 30, 1940, edition, Time featured Paige in a condescending article, calling him “Satchelfoots.” A month later the Saturday Evening Post’s Ted Shane wrote an article on Paige. It was titled “The Chocolate Rube Waddell,” and described Black baseball as “much more showman like than white baseball. … Their baseball is to white baseball as the Harlem stomp is to the sedate ballroom waltz. … They play faster, seem to enjoy it more than white players.” According to Shane, Paige had “apelike arms” and a “Stepinfetchit accent in his speech,” but “behind his sleepy eyes was a shrewd brain.”35

Frazier “Slow” Robinson played with and became a good friend of Paige when both were on the Monarchs in 1942. Robinson believed that “J.L. Wilkinson knew what made Satchel tick.” He “knew that as long as Satchel lived out of a suitcase” he was liable to vanish at any time. So Wilkie took Paige under his wing, as he did his own children. He helped Satchel buy a home in Kansas City. It was the first time Satchel had any home to go back to. According to Robinson, “Wilkinson let him know the value of making money while you were able to make it. Especially playing baseball.” Wilkinson was showing him that “if he wanted to make something of himself, he’d have to change his way of living.” Satchel “never did jump anymore,” Robinson pointed out.36

There must have been some confusion as to Satchel’s status with the Monarchs at the outset of the 1942 season, as the Kansas City Call felt it necessary on April 24 to assure fans Paige would be back with the team for the season.

Before the 1942 regular season started, Paige was already drawing fans to exhibition games. An overflow crowd of 15,000 saw the Monarchs split a doubleheader with the Homestead Grays at Pelican Stadium in New Orleans on Sunday, April 26. Paige pitched five innings in the nightcap.37

Paige was on the mound in the second game of a doubleheader with the Memphis Red Sox on May 3 at Martin’s Park in Memphis. He pitched the first four innings, giving up three runs, before Hilton Smith took over. Smith held the Memphis bats in check for a 4-3 victory. Paige was scheduled to pitch on May 6 in another game with the Red Sox, but he refused and was fined $25.

Paige’s first appearance in the 1942 regular season was in a doubleheader with the Chicago American Giants on May 10 in Chicago. The May 15 Call reported that “Old Satchel” showed “some of the smartest pitching of his brilliant career,” going five innings in a 6-0 victory.

In the Monarchs’ 1942 home opener on May 17, Paige took the loss (4-1) in the second game of a twin bill against the Memphis Red Sox. According to the May 22 Call, Paige’s “jump ball” was hopping but his change proved to be his undoing.

On May 24 the Monarchs took on Dizzy Dean and his major-league all-star team at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Most of the nearly 30,000 in attendance were Black. According to the May 29 Call, Dean hadn’t been able to heal the wound left when Paige outpitched him several years earlier. The Monarchs beat Dean’s All Stars, 3-1. Smith took over for Paige in the seventh and allowed one run and two hits. Call sports editor Sam McKibben noted that the big leaguers were “loud and sincere in their praise of the Monarchs.” They said several of the Monarchs could play in the White majors.38

In his July 3 “Sports Potpourri” column, McKibben wrote that Paige’s “pinning back the ears of Dizzy Dean’s All-Stars has incurred the wrath of [Commissioner] Judge Landis. Word is out that he is ruling out all future games between Paige and Dean by making white parks off limits for such games. If so, it will kill the scheduled game in July at Indianapolis. There is only one Negro park, in Memphis. The clamor for Negroes in the major leagues may have something to do with it.” “Can’t have the Negro ball players showing up the whites y’know.”

Paige was not on hand for a May 30 game against the American Giants at Ruppert Stadium in Newark. Wilkinson had “loaned” him to the Homestead Grays for a game against a White all-star team at Griffith Stadium in Washington. The Grays won, 8-1, before a largely Black crowd of 22,000.

On June 14 at Cleveland, the Monarchs split a doubleheader with the Buckeyes before 2,000. The Buckeyes plated two runs off Satchel Paige in the first inning, and they held up for a 2-1 win in the initial matchup. On June 16, at Dayton’s Duck Park, Paige and Booker McDaniels teamed up to toss a 4-0 no-hitter against the Frigidaire Icemen. Paige worked the first four innings.39

Paige pitched the first five scoreless innings of a game against the Homestead Grays in Washington on June 18, 1942, before 28,000. It was the first time the Monarchs had met the Grays in 10 years. Satchel gave way to Hilton Smith, who took the 2-1, 10-inning loss.

At an exhibition matchup with the Eber-Seagrams in Rochester, New York, on June 24, Paige threw one-hit ball through five innings and contributed with his bat in a 6-1 Monarchs victory. It took 13 innings, but the Monarchs defeated the Chicago American Giants, 9-7, in Milwaukee at Borchert Field before 12,000 enthusiastic fans on June 28. Paige started and gave up seven hits and four runs before being relieved by Smith, who was credited with the win.

A promotional article in the July 3 Call announced that Paige would bring his all-stars to Louisville for a game against the House of David on July 5. “There is little doubt about the magnetic quality of Paige’s box office appeal. … And he is having one of his best seasons. … His fast hopper is jumping.” The game may not have been played as there was no further mention of it in the Call.

Paige and the Monarchs suffered a 1-0, 10-inning loss to the Memphis Red Sox at Pelican Stadium in New Orleans on July 7. The Monarchs shut out the Red Sox in both games of a doubleheader played at Rebel Stadium in Dallas on July 12 before 5,000 (11-0 and 6-0). Paige, “the magnet of the crowd,” pitched all seven innings in the first game, striking out 10, and was 3-for-4 at the plate.40

On July 17, 1942, the Monarchs met the Jefferson Barracks All Stars, who featured some former major leaguers, at Ruppert Stadium. The Army-Navy Relief Fund received 50 percent of the gate while the other 50 percent went to the Salvation Army Penny Ice Fund. The Monarchs won, 6-0. Paige started and went five, relieved by Hilton Smith. Both struck out seven. The two each allowed only one hit, and each had a hit.

An August 7 Associated Negro Press article printed in the Call cited J.L. Wilkinson’s support for Negro players in the major leagues. The Monarchs owner said he had talked with Leroy “Satchel” Paige, the pitching great of Negro baseball, about the situation in Chicago recently and said he advised the right-handed speedball artist, “[W]e certainly won’t stand in your way if you have a chance to play.” The ANP article noted that Paige was under a two-year contract with the Kansas City club and that he held decisions over Dizzy Dean, Schoolboy Rowe, and Bob Feller. It further observed that the pitching star had received as high as $2,000 for working one game and is reputed to have earned as much as $200,000 in a single year.

On August 13 Paige pitched all 12 innings at Griffith Stadium in a 3-2 loss to the Homestead Grays before a boisterous crowd of 26,000.

Paige took the loss in the first of two 1942 East-West All-Star Games, played before 45,179 at Comiskey Park in Chicago on August 16. He took the mound in the seventh with the score knotted 2-2 and surrendered the winning run. The August 21 Call blamed loose play behind him. While Satchel and four other Monarchs were at the All-Star Game the rest of the team was in Canton, Ohio, to play the House of David, winning 6-2.

On August 21 heavy rain in Cincinnati held the crowd to 5,000, but the soaked fans were treated to a 5-1 Monarchs win over the Ethiopian (now Cincinnati) Clowns. Paige pitched three innings. The two teams met again on September 1, also at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Satchel pitched the first five innings in a 10-2 Monarchs mauling of the Clowns.

For the August 21, 1942, edition of the Call, Sam McKibben penned an article headlined “Paige Says Abolish Jim Crow and He Will Be Ready for His Major League Debut but Not Before at Any Price.” “Satchel Paige,” McKibben wrote, “doesn’t want a major league tryout, nor to play major league ball … unless two things come to pass: the complete abolition of JIM CROW on a NATIONAL scale … and he is given a contract identical to that tendered a white player getting a tryout. The white papers have been saying Paige is through. When Paige told a reporter that he wouldn’t sign a $10,000 contract with a big-league team and refused to reveal his current salary, it was written that he was receiving $40,000 a year. Satchel is an enthusiastic talker,” McKibben noted, “and I just let him talk. ‘Imagine,’ he says, ‘me living at a Negro hotel although I play with a white team. Record my feelings when dishes, out of which I eat, are broken up in my presence. How could I pitch a decent game with insulting jeers coming from spectators and even some of the players. … Just convince me that agitation can be halted and I’ll push fast balls by Joe DiMaggio. ‘Why,’ he says, ‘if the President hasn’t made southern DEFENSE plants hire, and use Negro labor in government plants, how can Judge Landis, Connie Mack or anyone make the southern white folk accept the Negro as a ball player. His training camp life in the South would be miserable … and the camps won’t be moved for one or two Negroes. What about the tryouts allegedly scheduled by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Who will ‘bell the cat’ [meaning end Jim Crow]? Will the white trainers work on a Negro to say nothing to take care of him. Indeed not. I’ve never been able to get any service out of one. Tell the reading public,’ says Satch, ‘not to believe half of what it reads that I say in the daily papers. I say to others what I am saying to you, but my statements are twisted. Negroes will never get into the major leagues because of jim crow. It’s a wonderful dream but will never come true. With the nation at war not one is going to try to abolish jim crow … and even in peace time, jim crowism will flourish. Me, I am going to stick with Wilkie, J.L. Wilkinson, Monarchs’ owner, and whoever says I am afraid I can’t make the grade … is just plain nuts. I experience enough prejudice now, why court more.’”41 The interview was conducted before the East-West game at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

Paige appeared in all four games that counted in the 1942 Colored World Series against the Homestead Grays. He was credited with a victory in the fourth game and a save in the second game. He did not figure in the decisions in the first and third games.

If the second game of the 1942 Series, played on a stormy September 10 night in Pittsburgh, had been in a White World Series, it would go down with Babe Ruth’s “called shot” in the third game of the 1932 World Series, historian John Holway has contended, as “a transcendental moment of baseball lore.”42 There are various versions of the game’s highlight: a confrontation between two of baseball’s most storied players, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige. According to one, Paige entered the game in the seventh inning with the Monarchs leading 2-0. Two were out, and there was a Gray on first base. Satchel called first baseman Buck O’Neil to the mound and told Buck he was going to walk the next two hitters to get to Josh Gibson.

O’Neil said he told Paige, “Aw, man you gotta be crazy!”

Then Monarchs manager Frank Duncan, joined by J.L. Wilkinson (in at least one version of the story), came onto the field “waving their arms wildly.” Unable to change Paige’s mind, they shrugged, “It’s your funeral.”

With Gibson already in the batter’s box, Satchel called for the Monarchs trainer, “Jew Baby” Floyd, to bring him a foaming glass of bicarbonate of soda, which he drank and then let out a big belch.

“The bases was drunk,” Paige later recalled. To Gibson he said, “I heard all about how good you hit me. Now I fixed it for you. Let’s see how good you can hit me now.”

“I’m ready,” Josh replied testily. “Throw it.”

Satchel remembered saying to Gibson, “Now I’m gonna throw you a fast ball, but I’m not going to trick you.” Then “I wound up and stuck my foot in the air. It hid the ball and almost hid me. Then I fired.” Side-arm, knee-high. Josh, thinking curve, took it for strike one. He didn’t lift the bat from his shoulder.

“Now I’m gonna throw you another fast ball, only it’s gonna be a little faster than the other one,” said Satchel. “It was so tense you could feel everything jingling,” Paige remembered.

The last pitch was a three-quarter side-arm curveball. Satchel recalled that Josh “got back on his heels; he was looking for a fastball.” However, it was knee-high on the outside corner – strike three. “Josh threw that bat of his 4,000 feet.”

Paige said he could not remember Gibson ever paying the $5 he owed him. The Grays’ Buck Leonard always said he had no recollection of Paige walking two to get Gibson to the plate.43

The 1942 postseason saw a repeat of the Series in a pair of games in the Tidewater region of Virginia. On October 2 Paige hurled the first three innings, allowing one run, in the game played in Norfolk, Virginia. The Grays’ bats came alive when Connie Johnson took the mound for the Monarchs, and Homestead won 8-5. Satchel also started the second game, played in Portsmouth, Virginia, on October 4, going four innings before giving way to Hilton Smith. Paige and Smith allowed only one run each. The Monarchs blasted Grays pitching for 12 runs.

What stood out for Satchel Paige during his years with the Monarchs was his relationship with J.L. Wilkinson. “Working for Mr. Wilkinson was something no man’d forget,” Paige recalled. “He was as good a boss as you could ask for. And he was a real promoter.” With Wilkie’s portable lights, Paige remembered pitching in as many as three games in one day. In one three-game stretch in the East, Paige said, he drew 105,000 fans, pitching between three and six innings each game. His speed was back, and people were talking about him more than any other pitcher – White or Black.44

Paige biographer Larry Tye called J.L. Wilkinson “the father figure that Gus Greenlee, Alex Herman, and John Page [other owners for whom Paige played] had tried and failed to be.” Paige “felt a loyalty that he had never known before to an owner, team, and city.”45 “A lover of ribs, riffs, and reporters, he found Kansas City irresistible.”46 Satchel said, “The folks in Kansas City treated me like a king and you never saw a king of the walk if you didn’t see O’ Satch around Eighteenth and Vine in those days, rubber-necking all the girls walking by.”47

According to Tye, “It was a love instantly requited. For if Satchel adored Kansas City, Kansas City loved him right back. …”48 “Wilkinson pushed Paige to buy real estate in Kansas City, the only way he ever was able to save,” Tye has observed. Satchel was 35 when he bought his first home in Kansas City – on Twelfth Street, high on a terrace, with 14 rooms, and plenty of space for his cars, guns, and antiques as well as “a backyard big enough for hundreds of chickens, a dozen dogs, and a cow.”

Tye concluded that “[h]ome ownership had precisely the effect on Satchel that Wilkinson had hoped: It settled him down. He would remain a devoted Monarch for as long as he remained in the Negro Leagues and a devotee of J.L. Wilkinson as long as he lived.” As Satchel told the Pittsburgh Courier in 1943, his contract-jumping days were over. “I am going to play with the Kansas City Monarchs as long as the owner and manager will have me.”49

Satchel filled his house “with Chippendale chairs and roomfuls of trophies and guns.” Not surprisingly, it was Wilkinson, whose wife, Bessie, had owned an antiques store in Kansas City since 1931, who led Paige into the world of collecting, and Satchel took to it with the same gusto he had for hunting and fishing. Someone told him that in his first couple of years what he had collected was worth $20,000.50

Paige benefited from Wilkie’s promotional acumen, but, as he always had been, Satchel continued to be his own best publicist. In a July 24, 1943, Chicago Defender column, Frank “Fay” Young described a conversation he had had with Paige. Satchel was recalling that he had beaten Bob Feller in two of three games, winning the rubber game 6-3. He said Dizzy Dean had quit trying to outpitch him, as Satchel had won all but one of the games in which they had met.51

By 1945 others were noting the effect Wilkinson was having on Paige. In a May 16, 1945, Philadelphia Tribune column, Dr. W. Rollo Wilson observed that Satchel had changed his prima donna lifestyle since recovering from his arm problems and playing with the Monarchs. “He retained the on-duty color and slugged off the off-duty trimmings,” Wilson wrote. “Now, he travels with his fellows, in uniform every day and is on the field for all pre-game activities. The snob is now a regular fellow.”52

Intent on getting his moneymaker to as many appearances as possible, in June 1946, J.L. Wilkinson leased a two-seat, single-engine Cessna. The pilot was his son, Dick, who had been captain of a B-24 Liberator bomber on multiple missions during World War II. “Satchel Paige” was stenciled on the side of the Cessna. The day after the plane was delivered, Dick flew Paige from Kansas City to Madison, Wisconsin, without any problems. On the return flight, however, they encountered a storm system and bounced up and down all the way to Kansas City. “You trying to kill me! Get me out of here!” Paige yelled at Dick. Although he said he would never fly again, Paige relented (after Dick told him he would lose $500) and flew to Oklahoma. Again, the first leg of the flight was fine, but mechanical trouble made for a hectic return to Kansas City. After only two flights, the Cessna was returned to its owner when Paige let it be known in no uncertain terms that he would not fly in it again. According to Satchel, that was the last time he flew in a little plane. Wilkie didn’t force the issue.53

According to Paige, after J.L. Wilkinson “decided to kind of retire” and Tom Baird was his boss, Satchel took a sizable pay cut from the Monarchs for the 1948 season. As attendance dropped, so did his income, since he was getting a percentage of the gate on top of his salary. Even though he was almost 42 years old he still thought he was “too young to take any cut in pay.”54

During the summer of 1948 Paige was on a barnstorming tour in Iowa with his All-Stars when Dick Wilkinson, who was traveling with the team, said he got a phone call from J.L. in Kansas City. Dick recalled years later: “Dad called me on the phone and said, ‘The majors want Satch to report to Cleveland.’ I walked over to Satchel and said, ‘You’re going to the majors. Dad says get home.’ He looked at me with a big grin and said, ‘Oh boy!’ He jumped into his Cadillac and took off. That’s the last time I saw Satchel.”55

According to Paige, the first indication that he would be signed by the Cleveland Indians came in a letter from promoter Abe Saperstein, owner of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team, who told him that Bill Veeck was looking for pitching help. Saperstein recommended Satchel and Veeck brought him to Cleveland for a tryout on July 7, Paige’s 42nd birthday. Manager Lou Boudreau caught Satchel as Paige hit the strike zone on 46 of 50 throws.

Veeck signed Paige the same day and gave the former Monarch a $10,000 signing bonus and $5,000 a month – a total of $25,000 for the season. After Satchel told Veeck that he thought Mr. Wilkinson and Mr. Baird should get something for taking him on when his arm went dead, the Indians owner agreed to give them $5,000 (according to Paige, or $15,000 in other sources) for his contract. Veeck also gave Abe Saperstein $15,000 as a finder’s fee ($10,000 according to some sources).56

In its overview of Paige’s career, the National Baseball Hall of Fame describes Satchel’s start in the majors: “At the age of 42, Paige made his big league debut when Bill Veeck signed him to a contract with the Indians on July 7, 1948. Two days later, he made his debut for a Cleveland club involved in one of the tightest pennant races in American League history. That summer and fall, Paige went 6-1 with three complete games and a save and a 2.48 earned-run average. Cleveland won the AL pennant in a one-game playoff against [the] Boston [Red Sox], then captured the World Series title in six games against the [Boston] Braves. Paige became the first African-American pitcher to pitch in the World Series when he worked two-thirds of an inning in Game 5.”57 Most importantly for the Indians and Paige, the turnstiles were twirling. More than 200,000 showed up to see Paige’s first three major-league starts, and the crowds continued.58

Bob Feller said of his Indians teammate, “He could throw the ball through a keyhole and did. …”59 However, the aging Paige could not sustain that high level of performance. After a disappointing 4-7 record for the Indians in 1949 (which Satchel attributed to a return of his stomach trouble) and the sale of the team by Bill Veeck, Paige was offered a contract for the 1950 season of $19,000 by Hank Greenberg, the new controlling owner of the Cleveland club. It was $6,000 less than his 1949 contract.

Satchel asked his wife, Lahoma, what he should do, and she said, “Maybe we’d better see Mr. Wilkinson. He’ll know. Maybe he can tell us what to do.”

Paige contacted Wilkinson at home where the retired Monarchs owner was spending most of his time since he’d sold his share of the team. When Satchel went to see him, Wilkie said, “[Y]ou’d better accept. Negro baseball and barnstorming aren’t what they used to be, not with the major leagues open now. You’d be better off with that steady job. Maybe you’d make more barnstorming, but maybe you wouldn’t.”

“I’ll sign the contract, then,” Satchel said.

“Call them up and let them know,” Wilkinson advised him. “You’ve had that contract a couple of weeks now without letting them know anything. It might be better to call.”

Paige called Hank Greenberg. It seemed settled, but Greenberg called back and told Paige that manager Boudreau had told him that he couldn’t use Satchel. In late January 1950, Greenberg announced the release of Paige, saying, “[o]lder players will have to make way for rookies.”60 Satchel was officially let go from the team on February 17, 1950.

Paige called Wilkinson and asked, “Can you get me some work? I ought to be worth something barnstorming after those two years in the major leagues.”

“Do you want to hook up with a team?” Wilkinson asked him.

“No,” Paige responded, “I don’t want’a get tied down. I want to stay loose so those big boys can call me if they want me.”

“I’ll see what I can do about booking you independent, then,” Wilkinson told him. Wilkie contacted Eddie Gottlieb and Abe Saperstein, whom Paige considered “pretty fair promoters and real sharp.” Pitching offers started coming in fast.

“It looks like you have some good jobs coming up, Satchel,” Wilkinson told him.

“When do I start?” Paige asked.

“In a couple of days. I’ve gotten a hold of a reporter and he wants to come around to talk to you. It’ll help us get more bookings. You going to be home?” Paige told him he was home, babysitting his two girls until Lahoma returned. Wilkinson and the reporter arrived about an hour later.61

When Bill Veeck purchased the St. Louis Browns in 1951, he made good on his promise to give Paige a job if he was able to acquire a new team. Satchel’s record for the year was 3-4. When it was rumored that Paige was being offered a salary of $22,000 for the 1952 season, he retorted that he had “made lots more in 1950 barnstorming for J.L. Wilkinson, my manager, and Eddie Gottlieb.”62 However, Paige would continue to pitch with the Browns through 1953 and was selected to play in two All-Star Games (1952 and 1953).

Satchel went back on the road and, by 1961, according to his own estimate, he had pitched in more than 2,500 games, winning about 2,000. He claimed he had pitched as many as 153 games a year. On September 25, 1965, at the age of 58, Paige appeared one last time in a major-league game, appropriately for the Kansas City Athletics, pitching the first three innings. In 1967 he toured for the Indianapolis Clowns for $1,000 a month. The next year illness kept him home. Satchel worked briefly as a sheriff’s deputy in Kansas City, and ran unsuccessfully for the Missouri legislature, before, in 1968, the Atlanta Braves took him on as a coach so he could qualify for a major-league pension. He died in Kansas City on June 8, 1982, a month before his 76th birthday.

Satchel Paige was, as a Collier’s writer put it, “one of the last surviving totally unregimented souls.” To paraphrase Paige himself, he did as he did. According to two of the greatest hitters of all time, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, Satchel was the best pitcher they’d ever seen.63

Satchel was in a class by himself in terms of what he was paid, as he was in so many other respects. During the best years of Black ball, he regularly made $30,000 to $40,000 a year. Far behind was the next highest player – Josh Gibson – who made about $1,000 a month during his peak period in the early 1940s. The secret, of course, was Satchel’s drawing power as the best pitcher of his time, as well as a master showman. He negotiated bonuses and special deals because the mere announcement that he would appear at a game meant an additional 5,000-10,000 tickets sold in the bigger parks.64

Though he was schooled in a reformatory, Paige bought a typewriter and wrote drafts of his autobiography, a 96-page version in 1948 (Pitchin’ Man) and a 300-page 1962 version (Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever). He did collaborate with Hal Lebovitz in the writing of the first and David Lipman in the second, but the two works reflect Satchel’s voice and perspective. “Unlettered yes, but not unlearned,” his biographer Larry Tye has suggested.65

In another well-researched biography of Paige, historian Donald Spivey linked J.L. Wilkinson, Abe Saperstein, Bill Veeck, and Satchel Paige as “the four [who] together wrote in bold and bright ink for future generations the how-to book of promoting professional team sports and marquee athletes. …” They also showed that “black and whites could work together for mutual self-interests in professional athletics. …”66

Buck O’Neil said, “Satchel was a comedian. Satchel was a preacher. Satchel was just about everything. We had a good baseball team, but when Satchel pitched, a great baseball team. The amazing part about it was that he brought the best out in the opposition, too.”67 O’Neil had more stories to tell about Paige than any of the countless other ballplayers, Black and White, he had known. One is particularly moving. When the Monarchs were on the road in Charleston, South Carolina, Satchel said to O’Neil, “Nancy [the nickname Satchel had given Buck, but that’s another story], c’mon with me. We’re gonna take a little trip.” They went to Drum Island, where slaves had once been auctioned off, and there was a big tree with a plaque on it, marking where the slave market was. Buck and Satchel stood there in silence, for about 10 minutes. Finally, Satchel said, “Seems like I been here before.” And O’Neil said, “Me too, Satchel.” Buck wanted it known that Paige was “a little bit deeper than most people thought.”68

Robert Leroy “Satchel” Paige was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971 as the first selection of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues. When word filtered out that the Hall of Fame planned to put Paige’s plaque and those of any future Negro Leagues inductees in a special exhibit rather than the hall where the plaques of White major-league Hall of Famers were displayed, Paige retorted, “[B]aseball has turned [me] from a second-class citizen into a second-class immortal.”69 The public outcry was so great that the decision was reversed and Paige’s Hall of Fame plaque and those of subsequent Negro Leaguers selected for the Hall were placed in the same room as those honoring Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson.

WILLIAM A. YOUNG is professor emeritus of religious studies at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. He is the author of J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball (McFarland, 2016), for which he received a SABR Research Award (2018). Young has also written John Tortes “Chief” Meyers: A Baseball Biography (McFarland, 2012), and several books on the world’s religions. He is a member of SABR and resides with his wife, Sue, in Columbia, Missouri.

Sources

An earlier version of this essay appeared in William A. Young, J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs: Trailblazers in Black Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2016).

In addition to the articles cited from the Kansas City Call, other Kansas City Monarchs game reports are drawn from a timeline for the 1942 season compiled by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 Leroy “Satchel” Paige, as told to David L. Lipman, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever; A Great Baseball Player Tells the Hilarious Story Behind the Legend (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), 92.

2 Roger Kahn, Rickey and Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball (New York: Rodale, 2014), 59.

3 Paige, 97.

4 Tom Dunkel, Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013), 240.

5 Buck O’Neil with Steve Wolf and Daniel Conrads, I Was Right on Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 105.

6 Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 73.

7 Janet Bruce, The Kansas City Monarchs: Champions of Black Baseball (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985), 93.

8 Kansas City Call, March 11, 1949.

9 Paige, 130-131.

10 John B. Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues (New York: Dover, 2010 [originally published 1975]), 87; John B. Holway, Black Ball Stars, Negro League Pioneers (Westport, Connecticut: Meckler, 1988), 339-40.

11 Interview with Bill “Plunk” Drake conducted by Dr. Charles Korr and Dr. Steven Hause (December 8, 1971), Negro Baseball League Project, https://shsmo.org/stlouis/manuscripts/%20transcripts/s0829/t0067.pdf.

12 Larry Tye, Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend (New York: Random House, 2009), 144.

13 John B. Holway, Black Diamonds: Life in the Negro Leagues from the Men Who Lived It (Westport, Connecticut: Meckler Books, 1989), 21.

14 Holway, 1988, 339.

15 Fay Vincent, The Only Game in Town: Baseball Stars of the 1930s and 1940s Talk About the Game They Loved (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 88.

16 Tye, 123.

17 Paige, 132.

18 Donald Spivey, “If You Were Only White”: The Life of Leroy “Satchel” Paige (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2012), 168-69.

19 Bruce, 93-94.

20 Vincent, 88-89.

21 Tye, 126.

22 Vincent, 88-89.

23 Spivey, 169.

24 Kansas City Call, September 29, 1939.

25 Spivey, 176.

26 Spivey, 176.

27 Mark Ribowsky, A Complete History of the Negro Leagues (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995), 231-32; Tye, 145.

28 Tye, 146.

29 Charles C. Alexander, Breaking the Slump: Baseball in the Depression Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 235.

30 Lanctot, 105-06.

31 Larry Lester, Black Baseball’s National Showcase (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 153-71.

32 Ribowsky, 237.

33 Holway, 1989, 21.

34 Holway, 1989, 22.

35 Time, June 30, 1940: 44; Saturday Evening Post, July 27, 1940: 79-81. Cited in Alexander, 233-34, and Lanctot, 227.

36 Frazier “Slow” Robinson, with Paul Bauer, Catching Dreams: My Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 37-38.

37 Kansas City Call, May 1, 1942.

38 Kansas City Call, May 29, 1942.

39 Kansas City Call, June 19, 1942.

40 Kansas City Call, July 17, 1942.

41 Sam McKibben, “Paige Says Abolish Jim Crow and He Will Be Ready for His Major League Debut but Not Before at Any Price.,” Kansas City Call, August 21, 1942.

42 John B. Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, Florida: Hastings House, 2001), 398-99.

43 Sources for the 1942 Colored World Series: Kansas City Call, September 18 and 25; Holway, 2001, 398-99; Ribowsky, 258-62; Robinson, 93, 95; Bruce, 103-04; Luke, 91-92; Paige, 146-47, 152; O’Neil, 126-38; James A. Riley, Of Monarchs and Black Barons: Essays on Baseball’s Negro Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012), 153.

44 Paige, 138-139.

45 Tye, 137.

46 Tye, 137.

47 Tye, 142.

48 Tye, 137.

49 Cited by Tye, 166.

50 Tye, 136-38, 165-66. See also Robinson, 50; Paige 1993: 142, 168-69; Larry Lester and Sammy Miller, Black Baseball in Kansas City (Charleston, South Charleston: Arcadia, 2000), 103; Interview with Richard “Dick” Wilkinson conducted by Janet Bruce (October 1, 1979). Kansas City Monarchs Oral History Collection (K0047), Tape No. A0016-17. State Historical Society of Missouri Research Center-Kansas City.

51 Frank “Fay” Young, Chicago Defender, July 24, 1943.

52 Jim Reisler, Black Writers, Black Baseball: An Anthology of Articles from Black Sportswriters Who Covered the Negro Leagues, revised edition. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2007), 128.

53 Kansas City Call, July 5, 1946; Spivey, 199, 209-11; Paige, 75-78; Thomas Fredrick, “KC Connection Began Baseball’s Globalization,” Kansas City Star, October 16, 2004: C6 (J.L. Wilkinson File, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, New York).

54 Paige, 195.

55 Tye, 205.

56 Paige, 196-98. See also Tye, 217-18; Lanctot 335-36.

57 baseballhall.org/hof/paige-satchel.

58 For Paige’s vivid description of his Indians debut, see Paige, 200-205.

59 Interview with Bob Feller conducted by Fay Vincent; Vincent, 51.

60 Spivey, 246; Tye, 264.

61 Paige, 234-35.

62 Spivey, 250.

63 Dunkel, 277.

64 Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (New York: Oxford University Press), 120-21.

65 Tye, 288-89.

66 Spivey, xix-xx.

67 Dunkel, 70.

68 O’Neil, 100-101.

69 O’Neil, 222.

In December 1941, the world saw the smoldering fire that charred the iron guns and, even from a distance, they could smell the burned human fresh; and the pillaring smoke opened America’s nostrils during a time filled with disarray. After an early-morning surprise attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, just west of Honolulu, on December 7, much of the United States Navy’s Pacific fleet lay damaged and destroyed. Resting in the cool waters was the broken steel of the USS Arizona. The warship’s hull was now surrounded by oil-contaminated waves, which served as a fluid coffin for over 1,000 sailors’ bodies committed to a watery grave. On the day when the United States was attacked, Negroes were still considered second-class citizens due to America’s insidious apartheid system known as Jim Crow. Negro soldiers and sailors had limited possibilities while serving in the military, but that all changed after that surprise December morning: “From the moment the embers began to burn at Pearl Harbor, Black society, in general, vowed that it would not be shut out of the American war effort and its palpable unifying effects at home.”2

As the Japanese pilots swooped down and targeted bombs into the belly of the USS West Virginia, Dorie Miller, a Black cook from Waco, Texas, who lacked any combat training operated an antiaircraft gun and began firing at the swirling enemy planes. Only a few hours earlier, Miller had just finished serving breakfast and was simply gathering laundry. Like society, the Navy had the perception that Blacks had low mental aptitudes and that they should be relegated to menial chores like laundry duty, serving as cooks, and shining white officers’ shoes. Dorie Miller turned that perception upside down and his act of bravery at Pearl Harbor earned him the Navy Cross. The Black press, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Black leaders publicized Miller as a symbol of Black achievement in the military.3

Miller, the grandson of slaves, had worked on his family’s farm but could not find work elsewhere, so he joined the Navy in 1939. The little Texas town he was from supported strong racist attitudes against Black people; in one instance, a 17-year-old boy was burned alive at the town’s square a few years before Dorie’s birth in 1919.4 Miller carried a 6-foot-3 frame, and with over 200 pounds of weight behind his punches, he was crowned as his ship’s heavyweight boxing champion. Back in Texas, he had been the school’s fullback, and he could have played baseball well, but Dorie Miller’s destiny involved more than just hitting a ball across the field. His courageous act of heroism helped changed the military’s evaluation of Black men in uniform. It also helped to pave the way for Negro League players to be accepted as professional baseball players.

Approximately 120 Negro League baseball players participated in World War II by serving in the Army, Army Air Corps, Navy, and Marines. The Kansas City Monarchs had over 13 players who served during the war years. Henry “Hank” Thompson, a second baseman, fought in the Battle of the Bulge in the Army’s 1695th Combat Engineers unit.5 Monarchs catcher Joe Greene was part of a well-decorated unit, the 92nd Infantry. Greene’s company removed the body of disgraced Italian dictator Benito Mussolini after his execution during the liberation of Milan, Italy.6 The Monarchs’ Willard Brown of the Army Quartermaster Corps fought on France’s Normandy beaches. Brown, a great outfielder, was a seven-time Negro League home-run champion and was enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.7

In 1942 the Kansas City Monarchs won the Negro World Series over the Homestead Grays. That same year, the team had a father and son drafted into the Army. Frank Duncan Jr., a catcher for the team, and his son, pitcher Frank III, created professional baseball’s first known father-son battery before their military service.8 According to Negro League historian James Riley, Frank Jr. was considered one of the top catchers in Negro League baseball. One of Frank Duncan’s epic stories was that Dizzy Dean, a major-league pitching great, needed a good catcher to play an exhibition game against the Monarchs. It was said that Dean pulled Duncan out of a poolroom and had him catch the game.9 In the beginning of his career, the senior Duncan was acquired by Kansas City in a three-player trade in 1921. From 1923 to 1925, he helped the Monarchs win three Negro National League pennants.10

During his career with the Monarchs, Duncan left and returned to the team four times. At the age of 42, he was drafted into the Army, serving in the 371st Infantry Regiment of the 92nd Division. Although he served in the Army for only six months, Duncan set a marksmanship record and was promoted to sergeant.11 Wartime service affected the careers of many baseball players and teams. After Frank Duncan III was discharged from the service, he started pitching for the Baltimore Elite Giants and played in the Mexican League but was not as productive as he had been during his time with the Monarchs.

Just as Frank Duncan Jr. arrived back to the Monarchs in 1943, other Kansas City teammates were shipping out. Outfielder Ted Strong joined the Navy while Connie Johnson and James “Pea” Greene committed to the Army. Buck O’Neil, the team’s solid first baseman, was drafted and attached to a Navy Construction Battalion.

American society began to change as the Second World War progressed. More women began to work outside the home, and with the loss of many White baseball players to the armed services, the talk of Negro players integrating into the major leagues increased. A Pittsburgh Courier reporter asked the new commissioner, Happy Chandler, what his thoughts were on the integration of Negro players. Chandler said, “If they can fight and die in Okinawa, Guadalcanal, and in the South Pacific, they can play baseball in America.”12 Unlike Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Chandler’s predecessor, Chandler, a U.S. senator from Kentucky, was more commonly known as a player-friendly baseball executive. For years, Landis had a negative racial attitude toward baseball integration and “publicly maintained there was no discrimination in baseball, and privately worked against any effort to end discrimination.”13

One of Senator Chandler’s promises was to support the continuance of baseball during World War II. The new commissioner was also responsible for ushering in Jackie Robinson’s opportunity to break the color line and bringing fair treatment for Black players. After Robinson entered the league, he met with several incidents of blatant racial taunting. Chandler threatened to suspend the Philadelphia Phillies’ manager, Ben Chapman, for hostile racial insults directed at Robinson.14 Buck O’Neil later commented that integration for Black people still moved at a turtle’s pace. While in the Navy, O’Neil got letters that informed him about how the Monarchs team was making out. One letter mentioned that the Monarchs had just signed a “colored” Army officer to play shortstop. The letter stated that this Army officer was a football and track standout named Jackie Robinson. The University of California, Los Angeles, star was an electrifying player who could hit and steal bases.15

While in the Army, Lieutenant Jack Roosevelt Robinson had been waiting for his physical to clear so that he could join the 761st Tank Battalion, a segregated combat unit at Fort Hood, Texas.16 One day, Robinson, a handsome, gentlemanly young man dressed in his distinguished Army uniform, flanked with officer’s insignia, boarded an Army bus and set off an incident that greatly impacted his Army career. After boarding the bus, Robinson was told to move to the back of the segregated Army bus. He refused and was later court-martialed. Robinson was found not guilty and, after he completed his service commitment, he was honorably discharged.17

Kansas City Monarchs pitcher Hilton Smith had seen Robinson playing baseball for an all-Black Army team against a White service team during a 1942 exhibition game. As Robinson waited for his Army discharge papers, he heard that the Monarchs needed players, so he wrote the team and was granted a tryout.18

After enduring two seasons without some of the Kansas City Monarchs’ stars, who were missing due to the war, owner J.L. Wilkinson signed two players who became household names within the Negro Leagues: Jackie Robinson and Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe.19 Robinson played only one season for the Monarchs, but he significantly impacted baseball history for a lifetime. Radcliffe played only 12 games with Monarchs after being hurt in a home-plate collision.20 He was referred to as “Double Duty” because he sometimes pitched one game of a doubleheader and then caught the other. He was a six-time Negro League All-Star, selected three times as a pitcher and three times as a catcher. Radcliffe played for a few other teams before becoming a manager. Talent-wise, Radcliffe was equal to or greater than his younger roommate Robinson during their time with Kansas City. During their short time together, the two men had a special bond. As Radcliffe put it, “I roomed with Jackie the two months before he was called up to Montreal. I don’t think I’ve met a guy with more class in my life.”21

In 1947 Robinson was the first of five Negro League players who was admitted into the White major leagues; Larry Doby, Dan Bankhead, Willard Brown, and Hank Thompson were the others who soon followed. All five of the players were World War II veterans, which demonstrated that White society was more accepting of Black players who had served in the military during the war years. After the color barrier was broken, the Monarchs and other Negro Leagues teams began a rapid decline, as White minor- and major-league teams signed away all of the best Black talent. The once-powerful Monarchs lasted until 1965; they were an independent team for the final three years of their existence as the Negro American League had finally folded after the 1962 season; the Negro National League already had disbanded after the 1948 season. Monarchs owner J.L. Wilkinson never received any benefit from Robinson’s signing by the Brooklyn Dodgers. As Hilton Smith recalled at Wilkinson’s 1964 funeral, “[T]hey just took Jackie, made all that money off him, and Wilkinson was the man that was responsible for him playing, and he didn’t get a dime out of it.”22

On the other hand, one of the Monarchs players who enjoyed the fruits of Wilkinson’s grace was Satchel Paige. One of the greatest pitchers, Black or White, Paige spent the majority of his career in the Negro Leagues. He was later inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1971. Paige’s reputation allowed him to demand, and to receive, a cut of the gate, and Wilkinson provided him the use of his airplane to ferry Paige to games across the country.23

Although many Monarchs players left to serve in the military during the war years, Paige remained behind and made a sizable name and income through self-promotion and by barnstorming with several teams. Paige’s glorious return to the Monarchs signaled the team’s “Second Dynasty” and the Negro World Series Championship in 1942. They also won six Negro American League pennants in 10 years from 1937 to 1947. The 1942 Negro World Series featured two of the league giants, Satchel Paige pitching for Kansas City Monarchs and Josh Gibson catching for the Homestead Grays.

In 1939 Wilkinson had introduced a portable lighting system that enabled the Monarchs to play night games, thus allowing them to attract larger crowds.24 Between NAL games, barnstorming tours, and the advent of night baseball for some teams, many Negro League franchises had become profitable organizations. At the height of the World War II in 1944, the Monarchs franchise was one of the most popular of all Negro League organizations and a top money-maker as well, with $100,000 in gate receipts and a profit of $56,281.25 The popularity of the Monarchs and their Negro League peers during wartime helped to set the stage for the integration of White baseball in the years that followed.

Notes

1 Alexa Mills, “The Story of the Only Known Lynching on a U.S. Military Base in American History,” Washington Post, September 2, 2016: 1.

2 Mark Ribowsky, A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884 to 1955 (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995), 245.

3 Robert K. Chester, “‘Negroes’ Number One Hero’: Doris Miller, Pearl Harbor, and Retroactive Multiculturalism in World War II,” American Quarterly, March 2013: 31, 61.

4 Thomas W. Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish, “How Dorie Miller’s Bravery Helped Fight Navy racism,” World War II magazine, October 31, 2019.

5 Davis Barr, “Negro Leagues Players Played Major Role in World War II,” MLBlogs, November 10, 2017. https://nlbm.mlblogs.com/negro-leagues-players-played-major-role-in-world-war-ii-97421eb0130a. Retrieved February 7, 2021.

6 Bill Swank, “They Also Served with Valor,” in Todd Anton and Bill Nowlin, editors., When Baseball Went to War (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2008), 174.

7 Swank, 173-174.

8 James A. Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 256.

9 Riley, 254.

10 Riley, 255.

11 Riley, 255.

12 Buck O’Neil and Steve Wulf, I Was Right on Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 166.

13 O’Neil, 166.

14 John Paul Hill, “Commissioner A.B. ‘Happy’ Chandler and the Integration of Major League Baseball: A Reassessment,” NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Fall 2010: 40.

15 O’Neil, 163.

16Swank, 172.

17 Swank, 172.

18 William A. Young, J.L. Wilkinson and the Kansas City Monarchs (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2016), 142.

19 Young, 137.

20 Young, 137.

21 Patricia McKissack and Fredrick McKissack Jr., Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1994), 134.

22 Young, 148-149.

23 Ribowsky, 248.

24 Ribowsky, 144.

25 Young, 135.