Curveball (28 page)

On October 9, nearly a month after Mamie Johnson joined Toni on the postseason tour, Connie Morgan appeared at the Baltimore stadium for a tryout. Some thought Syd Pollock was just as interested in Connie’s cute appearance as he was in her athletic skills.
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A petite, attractive eighteen-year-old “gal guardian” in the infield would be in marked contrast to Toni with her rough hands, fiery disposition, and bow-legged walk. Syd wanted the newcomer to try out in Clowns flannels and arranged for some photographs to be taken of Connie just to see how she would look as an official team member. Buster Haywood told Connie to take up position at third base and then hit balls to judge her fielding and throws to first base. Haywood and others thought third base “was too hot a corner for me,” Connie said, and Buster put her on second instead. Toni watched from the sidelines, keenly aware that second was her spot in the infield. She felt nervous, even usurped—like some of the old-timers on the Clowns who six months before wondered why Syd had gambled on a woman from the New Orleans Creoles.

The greatest pressure was on Connie, however. Few players could ever say they had a tryout in front of Jackie Robinson, Luke Easter, Pee Wee Reese, and Gil Hodges. Robinson’s All-Stars had responded to Syd’s earlier invitation and signed to travel throughout the South, playing games against the Clowns, the Negro League All-Stars, and other teams. Robinson and his teammates watched Connie and commented on “her good arm.”
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Bunny Downs, seeing an opportunity to have Connie photographed with Jackie, asked Robie to pose as though he were offering “batting tips” to the young woman. Robinson complied and stood with the teenager, who looked dutiful and stunned next to her hero. Haywood told Connie that Syd Pollock would be in touch with her later. She returned home to Philadelphia in her grandmother’s DeSoto, “surprised that [the Clowns] wanted me.”
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Nobody took a photo of Jackie Robinson with Toni Stone. Toni thought Syd would have wanted one. He always wanted her to sell photographs of herself in the stands or after games. It was a chore that Toni disliked and one that she felt diminished her stature as a professional baseball player. “I shouldn’t have to do that, you know,” Toni said.
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Then there were problems with Toni’s mail. All of her fan mail and professional inquiries were routed through Pollock’s Tarrytown office. Toni believed letters from other teams—asking if she might be interested in joining them for a higher salary—never found their way to her. “They say, ‘We sent you a letter so and so and so.’ I never got it. I know there were a lot of people wanted me to try to play for them. You know, more opportunities.” Then there were the comments she began to hear from the Clowns management. “Oh, she’s chesty,” Toni said she heard—too full of herself, too ambitious and unyielding. “Things looked like they just got rougher,” she said.
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The Clowns and the Jackie Robinson All-Stars continued their play throughout the South, sometimes also playing against Roy Cam-panella’s All-Star team. In Memphis and Birmingham, local Jim Crow ordinances forbade whites and blacks from playing on the same team. Birmingham Sheriff Bull Connor warned that if the Robinson All-Stars fielded a team of whites and blacks, there would be “big trouble.” Many of Jackie’s white major league players stayed away, afraid for their lives. Robinson believed that paying fans were entitled to a game and did not challenge the ordinance. Instead, he supplemented his team with other black players, including Willie Mays. Critics of Robinson said he should have defied Birmingham’s Jim Crow rules and refused to play the game. Later in the season, Robinson rethought his position. He pledged to field another integrated barnstorming team next season and donate his earnings to charity.
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Debate among those who believed prejudice should be faced down intensified in 1953. When Robinson and the All-Stars pulled into Baton Rouge the evening of October 25, the city was still spinning from the successful bus boycott that summer. Baton Rouge’s city-parish council had voted earlier in the year to raise bus fares, an increase that affected mostly black passengers, who rode the buses more frequently than whites. Reverend T. J. Jemison, the pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, denounced the increase and also called for an end of segregated seating on buses. Although black passengers paid full fare, he said, they were forced to sit in the back or stand while “white” seats up front remained empty. The Baton Rouge Council amended the seating policy to allow blacks to occupy bus seats as long as they didn’t sit in front of or alongside whites. Yet no one enforced the policy, bus drivers threatened to strike, and the Louisiana attorney general stepped in to declare the new seating ordinance unconstitutional since it violated the state’s existing segregation laws. Angered, Reverend Jemison and others formed the United Defense League (UDL) and called for a boycott of the city’s bus system. Thousands of black residents began participating in nightly UDL meetings across Baton Rouge. Five days later, black and white leaders negotiated a compromise allowing bus riders of any race to sit wherever they wanted, except for the first two rows, which were reserved for whites, and the last two rows, for blacks. One young man who took special interest in the successful bus boycott was Martin Luther King Jr., who had recently completed his theology degree at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. Reverend King and his new wife, Coretta, were preparing to take up his new ministry at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

When the postseason with the Jackie Robinson All-Stars ended, Toni’s husband knew she was upset with the addition of Mamie Johnson, and the prospect of Connie Morgan, on the team. “At the end of your contract you understand you are free to do what you want, though I say look before you leap,” he warned her. Alberga thought that the Clowns might be in a better financial position than other Negro League clubs and encouraged Toni not to make any quick decisions. “Dear, you have shown good judgment in the past and I am sure you can do it again,” he wrote.
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With the season concluded, the Howe News Bureau posted the Negro League’s final results, showing that the Kansas City Monarchs had won both the first and the second half of the 1953 season. The Clowns finished third out of the four teams. Although Buster Haywood feared Toni’s play at second base for the Clowns would affect Ray Neil’s batting average—it did not. Neil won the Negro League batting title, hitting .397. Ernie Banks came in third at .347. In the last days of the season, Banks signed with the Chicago Cubs. The Bureau reported that Toni Stone hit .243 in league play, with seventy-four at bats over fifty league games. “All of her hits were singles, except for one double,” it stated. Toni also stole one base, had three RBIs, and posted a .852 fielding percentage.
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What the Bureau did not record, however, were statistics from the nearly one hundred non-league games and other barnstorming contests that Toni and the Clowns played during the majority of the 1953 season. In some respects the Bureau numbers represented only a portion of any player’s record. Most sportswriters believed a Negro League player’s statistics for the full year—rather than just the league-sanctioned games—were higher than what the Howe News Bureau reported.

Toni returned to Oakland and her husband for the first time in over eight months. She was exhausted, and Alberga was ill. In January, Syd Pollock wrote with concern for Alberga’s health, adding that he knew Toni regarded her husband as “a guiding light and inspiration in your endeavors and future success.” Syd informed Toni that the Clowns’ contracts for the 1954 season would be mailed out in February and reminded her that the team had a “right to her services” for the upcoming year. He asked that she tell him as soon as possible if she intended to return for the next year.
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Toni could not make up her mind. She was worried about her husband, ground down by the road, and disturbed about several new developments. The hiring of Mamie Johnson for the barnstorming season made her feel as though the team had less interest in her, the potential of Connie Morgan at second base would reduce her playing time, and the lack of respect that Buster Haywood showed her was apparent not only to Toni but to others as well. Sam Lacy of the Baltimore
Afro-American
reported that “late summer rumors said Buster chafed at having to use Toni as box office bait.”
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The 1953 season was the only year Buster ever got angry at his friend Syd Pollock, he said. Haywood complained, “She wasn’t a ballplayer and I’m playing to win.”
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Syd’s January letter temporarily eased Toni’s distress on one score: Buster Haywood would not be managing the Indianapolis Clowns in 1954. The forty-four-year-old Haywood might stay on as a substitute player or the club chauffeur, Syd informed her, but Oscar Charleston—the legendary former Negro League slugger—was taking over the reins. The Monarchs coach, Buck O’Neil, was typical of many ballplayers who thought Charleston was the greatest ballplayer who ever lived. “He was like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Tris Speaker rolled into one,” O’Neil said.
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Players also said Charleston was an excellent coach who could teach anyone how to lift his game.

But Pollock confirmed Toni’s concerns about Mamie Johnson and Connie Morgan. Syd told her he was hiring both young women for the upcoming season and intended to use only one of the women in the lineup at a time. The team couldn’t risk “letting the public down when injury crops up,” he said, “which occurred so many times last season when [we] only had you to fall back on.” Pollock offered Toni $350 a month—down $50 from her 1953 high of $400. He realized the offer was less than she had been making and opened the door for Toni to consider other possibilities. Syd offered to contact Tom Baird, owner of the champion Kansas City Monarchs. Baird and O’Neil had agreed that the only woman they would consider was Toni Stone. They offered to sign her for $325 a month. Neither Pollock’s offer nor the possibility of going with Kansas City for even less money was a choice that pleased Toni, and she did not immediately reply to Pollock’s letter.
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Later that month, Toni heard from her strongest advocate on the Clowns, Bunny Downs. Toni had written to Downs after receiving Pollock’s offer and asked for his advice. “It was a real pleasure to hear from you,” Bunny said, “as I am beginning to feel as though I was the forgotten man as far as some people I do claim as my personal friends.” Bunny had taken the liberty of talking with Syd about Toni’s contract. “I think a person deserves every cent he or she can get for services rendered. So make up your mind what you estimate your services are worth and explain to Syd and see what terms are satisfactory to all concerned.” Bunny seemed to be as surprised with the change in Buster Haywood’s position with the team as Toni must have been. “Every thing changes in this world,” he wrote philosophically, “so we have to try and be ready for anything that may arise.” He then zeroed in with his most candid advice. “Before you arrive at your salary terms do a lot of thinking for YOUR future,” he wrote, “and then talk it over with Mr. Alberga, then explain your side to Syd.”
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Bunny Downs was right. Toni understood that the decision was about her future and that she needed to figure out what she wanted and how to negotiate for it. In 1954, she would be thirty-three years old, not the twenty-three-year-old that the new coach, Oscar Charleston, would think she was. She would no longer be the only woman in the Negro League and would have to share the spotlight with two nineteen-year-olds. In addition, the Clowns made it clear that she would not play every day. Toni knew baseball skills only improved with practice, and it gave her a fit, she said, to be “bench jockeyed.”
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So many possibilities she dreamed of had come true. She was playing professional baseball in the Negro League. She heard cheering crowds at Griffith Stadium and Forbes Field. And she had held her own against future major leaguers and seasoned pros. But, like Mamie Johnson said, the more she played, the more she wanted to play. Toni wanted to go as far as she could in baseball. If wild propositions like being traded to a Japanese team for twenty-five thousand dollars a year had not come true, maybe others that she could not even imagine would. Toni had to decide if she would take Syd’s offer, the Kansas City Monarchs’ proposed $325, or some other option that she could not recognize yet. The choice was hers to make. “You have always treated me right and looked out for my interest,” Toni wrote to Bunny in a return letter.
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The question Toni faced that January was: what exactly did she want?