Baseball (11 page)

In 1960, Rickey tried to build a rival league, the Continental League, which never got off the ground but did force the first expansion of the majors. He then had a brief role as advisor to the Cardinals' ownership in 1964, apparently trying to get his old accomplice, Leo Durocher, hired to replace the fatherly manager, Johnny Keane.

As a young reporter in 1964, I got a glimpse of Rickey on the night the Cardinals surged into first place during a fantastic pennant race. We were in Keane's tiny office when a hidden door suddenly opened and beetle-browed, three-piece-suited Branch Rickey materialized, like Banquo's Ghost.

“Johnny Keane, you're a gosh-dang good manager!” Rickey thundered at the man he had been undermining for months. Then Rickey was gone. Keane won the World Series—and immediately quit the Cardinals to join the Yankees.

A year later, Rickey collapsed at a banquet in his honor, and he died soon afterward, just short of eighty-four. In essence, baseball's great teacher went out talking.

W
hile seeking talent for the Cardinals in the destitute corners of the country, Branch Rickey was not ready to tap one great source of talent: black America. Baseball had remained white since the late nineteenth century, when Albert Spalding and Cap Anson contrived to keep blacks out; it preached about being the national pastime and received special dispensation from Congress and the courts, yet it remained segregated nearly halfway into the next century.

Black players got the message, and formed teams of their own. In 1885, in Babylon, Long Island, New York, a headwaiter at the Argyle Hotel named Frank Thompson organized a team of waiters, called the Cuban Giants. In order to get white fans to ignore their dark skins, the players pretended to speak Spanish, correctly assuming that hardly anybody in the United States could tell they were actually speaking gibberish. The novelty helped the waiters become full-time touring players, with white owners backing them up. Sometimes the players livened up their games with comedy routines—jokes, songs, snappy games of catch with exaggerated motions, maybe a pitcher telling his fielders to sit down while he handled the batter by himself. With their flair for show business, the Cuban Giants were the forerunners of other black teams that felt the need to entertain, like the Harlem Globetrotters of basketball. Just like black actors or singers or even public figures of the day, they had to seem simple, innocent, and harmless.

Blacks also played the game straight. In 1887, the National Colored Base Ball League, the first attempt at a professional Negro League, was formed. Rebuffed by white America, blacks formed touring teams that played in ramshackle stadiums in black neighborhoods, or sometimes in rented big-league stadiums, producing players now recognized as the equal of the greatest white players, including Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, and Satchel Paige.

Sometimes players slipped through to the major leagues, often
Cuban players ostensibly of Spanish heritage. The darker the skin, the louder the insults. A few players of mixed race undoubtedly managed to pass as white or Native American. In my home I have a coffee-table book containing photographs of various major league players from the past ten decades. In the section from the 1920s, a rather inconspicuous player from a border state has noticeably mixed features. My guess is that this player had passed the color scrutiny and was able to earn a major league salary for a few years—and more power to him.

Generally, it was not easy for a player to get past the vigilant race detectors. John J. McGraw, in his last year with Baltimore in 1901, tried to hire Charlie Grant, a bellhop at the Orioles' spring training base in Arkansas, to play the infield, as long as Grant would maintain the fiction that he was of Cherokee ancestry. After Charles Comiskey threatened to sign a “Chinaman” for his White Sox, the furor ended McGraw's plans. Charlie Grant remained a bellhop until the day he died.

Rumors persisted that Babe Ruth was part black, based partially on his athletic skills and partially on his broad, flat nose. There was absolutely no basis to this urban legend. In one famous family photograph taken in fin de siècle Baltimore, young George Herman Ruth looks just like dozens of his relatives gathered on a classic white stoop. Nevertheless, many blacks bragged on Ruth, who, while typically congenial to blacks, observed the normal racist language of the day. The great Bambino would accept “monkey” and “ape” as normal heckling from the opposing bench jockeys but would threaten to fight opponents who used racial slurs on him. “Don't get personal,” the Babe warned.

Some American blacks migrated to Cuba early in the century, relishing the chance to play against touring major league teams like the Tigers, Giants, and Athletics. The aptly named Ban Johnson was so upset when the A's divided eight games, many against the star Cuban pitcher Jose Mendez, that he prohibited his teams from visiting the island. “We want no makeshift club calling themselves the Athletics to go to Cuba to be beaten by colored teams,” Johnson
said. Ty Cobb and McGraw uttered the same sour grapes after humbling trips to Cuba.

In 1911, Andrew (Rube) Foster, a tall pitcher out of Texas, formed his own team, the Chicago American Giants, or Foster's Giants, as people called them. Foster was an astute businessman with ties to the white community, once helping to rebuild the grandstand at the White Sox' South Side ballpark, where his players were welcome only as tenants, not equals.

Four years later, Foster challenged the upstart Federal League to admit his team but was turned down. He waited out the war and the gambling scandal of 1919, and then in 1920 Foster lobbied for admission of black players to the major leagues. He was led to understand this was not a priority of Judge Landis.

Realizing that blacks would have to play in a parallel universe, Foster helped organize the Negro National League in 1920, with eight teams, mostly in the Midwest. He felt strongly that the ownership should be black, but he did accept J. L. Wilkinson, the white owner of the powerful Kansas City Monarchs, who helped keep Negro baseball alive. Shortly after that came the Negro Southern League and the Eastern Colored League. In 1924, the first Negro World Series was played, with the Monarchs beating the Hilldale Daisies from Darby, Pennsylvania, five games to four.

In the fall, the Negro teams barnstormed with white players, doing so well that in 1921 Judge Landis ordered all white stars to not wear their major league uniforms while playing black teams. In 1926, Foster suffered a nervous breakdown and his league began a quick downturn. He died in 1930 and the league disbanded in 1931, while the Eastern League had disbanded in 1927.

Still, Negro baseball thrived, partially because of the energy from one city—Pittsburgh. The first powerhouse was the Homestead Grays, representing a steel town on the Monongahela River, just south of Pittsburgh, once the base of a giant United States Steel plant.

The Grays were founded in 1912 by Cumberland Posey, a black athlete who had attended Penn State. He kept his team out of the
Negro Leagues because he rightfully felt he could make more money playing an independent schedule, going where the money was, two or three games a day, and sometimes picking up the best players from other teams for cameo performances.

Money was tight during the Depression, but one industry in which blacks could participate was the numbers, the illegal lottery system with winners, losers, and runners on every corner. Gus Greenlee, who ran the Pittsburgh operation, did so well that in 1930 he took over the Pittsburgh Crawfords, a black team from the Hill District. Greenlee spent $100,000 to build his own stadium near his Crawford Bar and Grille, known for its food, music, and good times.

In short order, Greenlee accumulated five players who would one day be initiated into the Baseball Hall of Fame: Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, Judy Johnson, and Cool Papa Bell. Gibson was born in Georgia but his father moved to Pittsburgh to work in the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Plant. The young man dropped out of school after the fifth grade to work in the mills and became a promising catcher at the age of nineteen. In 1930, the Grays' catcher, Buck Ewing, split a finger while catching a Sunday doubleheader against the touring Monarchs. The Grays sent across town for Gibson, who was playing against a white team, and he caught the second game. He was soon a legend, known as “Sampson.” Greenlee's wad of bills soon recruited Gibson to the Crawfords.

In 1933, Greenlee and his colleagues organized one of the great events in Negro League baseball, the East-West Game, which drew 20,000 fans to Comiskey Park, named after the white pioneer who had blown the whistle on the “Cherokee” bellhop, Charlie Grant. The White Sox gained an annual big rent day, as the all-star game became a highlight of the calendar for blacks, not only for the high level of baseball but also for the style of the celebrities who flocked to Chicago. With the Depression putting millions of people out of work, the Negro Leagues became one of the most important black industries in the country.

Cumberland Posey got the message from his rival, Greenlee, and in 1935 he entered his Grays in the Negro National League. In
1937, Posey enticed Gibson back to the Grays to play alongside Buck Leonard, the first baseman, forming one of the great tandems in baseball history, comparable to Ruth and Gehrig. The Grays would win nine consecutive Negro National League championships and three Negro World Series titles.

Gibson is said to have hit more home runs than Babe Ruth or Henry Aaron, and longer, too. Witnesses said he once hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium, which has never been accomplished in a Yankee game, not by Ruth, or even Mickey Mantle, who came close. He is given credit for 84 home runs in 1936, including 200 league and barnstorming games, not necessarily all against the top level of Negro League teams.

Leonard was often called “the Black Lou Gehrig,” except, his fans insisted, the doomed captain of the Yankees could very well have been called “the White Buck Leonard.” Oscar Charleston was a left-handed hitting outfielder who played for half a dozen teams and is often mentioned as the best Negro League hitter, ever.

The Grays played home games at Forbes Field, the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, but also used Griffith Stadium, in Washington, D.C., as a home field. The Griffith family, just like the Comiskey family, managed to make money by keeping blacks out of the majors.

It is sad to think about the lost careers, the failed chances for great athletes to make a good living and prove themselves. Yet Negro League baseball was not gloomy when Satchel Paige fixed his deadpan mother-wit stare on the batter and extended his huge left foot high in the air and delivered his vast assortment of pitches, one of which he called “the bee” because it buzzed. The sense of deprivation was temporarily forgotten when Cool Papa Bell ran so fast that it was said he once hit himself with his own line drive while sliding into second base. It might have happened.

Not tied into the rigid methods of the major leagues, the black players and their leaders had the freedom to experiment. The Monarchs carried a portable lighting system for night games, allowing them to play two and three games a day. Most Negro teams played a very serious brand of ball but a few, like the Indianapolis
Clowns, perfected routines to entertain the crowd—whipping the ball around the infield, sometimes playing “shadow ball,” which included imaginary diving catches in the outfield.

The best baseball of all was probably played in October, after the major leagues' season had ended and the major-leaguers augmented their salaries by barnstorming. Dizzy Dean used to proclaim the greatest pitcher he had ever seen was “that old colored boy—Satchel Paige.” Most of the white major-leaguers, except for hard-core bigots like Ty Cobb, admitted their autumn opponents were their equals. Nevertheless, Paige and Gibson were still unknown to the average white fan.

According to most records, the Negro League stars held a margin of 309–129 over the major-leaguers in documented barnstorm games. The dominance can be explained partially by motivation but also because Negro players had developed their own style based on speed, surprise, and mental alertness. “In games between white and black all-star teams, this style of play often confounded the major leaguers,” Jules Tygiel has written. “Centerfielder Cool Papa Bell personified this approach. In one game against a major league all-star squad, Bell scored from first base on a sacrifice bunt.”

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Negro League players were also innovators of equipment. Pepper Bassett, famed for an occasional catching stint in a cut-down rocking chair, removed the padding from his bulky mitt to create a more flexible modern glove. After Willie Wells of the Newark Eagles was hit in the head by Bill Byrd of the Baltimore Elite Giants in 1942, he plopped a workman's hardhat on his head the next time he faced Byrd.

Some teams were reflections of the high standards and high hopes of the Negro community. In New Jersey, Effa Manley (who said she was white but lived among blacks) ran the Newark Eagles for her husband, Abe, a major numbers banker. Employing her potent mix of brains, beauty, and will, Manley prepared her talented players like Monte Irvin, Larry Doby, and Don Newcombe for the day the major leagues would come calling. Of course, when the majors
did open up, they did not pay Manley for the investment and care she had provided.

Other players did not stick around the States to wait for that day. Willie Wells played in Mexico for many years. In 1944, Wells told Wendell Smith, the distinguished columnist for the
Pittsburgh Courier
, “I am not faced by the racial problem.…I've found freedom and democracy here, something I never found in the United States.…In Mexico I am a man.”

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In 1942, the last Negro League World Series was held, with the Kansas City Monarchs beating the Crawfords in four straight games. With the war under way, money was drying up. Once Jackie Robinson and others joined the major leagues in 1947, the Negro Leagues were doomed.

The Homestead Grays disbanded after the 1950 season while the touring teams hobbled on for a few more years. Virtually forgotten for decades, the Grays and their opponents are now coming into their own. In July of 2002, Allegheny County and Homestead borough officials changed the name of a 3,000-foot-long bridge to the Homestead Grays Bridge.