by Randy Alcorn
“You knew Willie Mays?” Ollie asked, slackjawed.
“Sho ’nuf. I introduced Willie to Mama’s pork rib sauce, and we was friends from then on.” Obadiah laughed like a little boy.
“What was the Negro League like?” Ollie asked. Both he and Manny leaned forward to hear the old man’s soft voice. Clarence could see Obadiah’s eyes sparkle. He had an audience.
“We was barnstormers. Played three games a day, travelin’ on our bus. Couldn’t stay in most hotels. Wrong color. But we was so tired we didn’t have energy to go where we wasn’t wanted. Lots of peoples come to see us. In the big cities it was mostly coloreds. The whites had their Major Leagues, but lots of white folks come to see us too. Out in the sticks everybody came, more whites than blacks. We was the only pro teams come to play there. They cheered us and wrote us up. Still got some o’ them old newspaper clippings. Played every city. They’d hitch up the team to come see us. If they didn’t have a buggy, they’d ride two to a mule. If they couldn’t find a mule, they’d ride an armadillo.”
Ollie laughed. Daddy was just gettin’ warmed up, Clarence knew.
“So who’d you play with?” Ollie asked. “I want some names. And some stories.”
“Well, in those days we changed teams a lot, so half the peoples I played against I ended up playin’ with, somewhere along the line. One year I’d be with the Kansas City Monarchs or the Indianapolis Clowns, next year the Birmingham Black Barons. You want names? How about Cool Papa Bell?”
The name drew a blank with Ollie and Manny both.
“Never seen a man so fast as Papa, and I seen ’em all, including Cobb. Only man who could hit himself with his own line drive. I watched Papa Bell run from first to third on a bunt, maybe a dozen times. They’d throw the ball to second thinkin’ they’d catch him, but he was already headed toward third. The second base-man throws to third, and Cool Papa Bell’s already standin’ on the base, brushin’ off from his slide. He always slid, that way he never had to decide whether it was necessary. One game I saw him hit three inside the park homers.”
“No joke?” Manny asked.
“The Lord is my witness. His roommate swore Cool Papa Bell could flip off the light switch and be in bed before the room got dark.”
Everybody laughed again, revving up Obadiah’s engines.
“You want pitchers? Early on I played with Smoky Joe Williams. Six foot five, and in those days nobody was six five. Whoa, boy, um um. Smoky Joe had a cannon. He threw so hard we had to change catchers two or three times a game. They’s hands would swell up the size of a melon.” Obadiah flexed his big loose-skinned left hand as if it were throbbing. “When ol’ Smoky joined our team, he was already a legend. I was just a rookie first baseman, just sittin’ against a fence, no dugouts for us, usually. I hears one of our catchers whinin’ about his achin’ hand. I thinks, with all that padding in his glove, he has to be puttin’ on. So I says, ‘Lets me catch Smoky an inning or two.’ In those days we always knew a couple of positions just in case. Anyways, the catcher, he’s lookin’ at me like I was crazy and hands me the mitt.
“First I calls Smoky a curveball and it curves all right, but it was the speed of a fastball and it really smarted. I thought, hey I’m not gonna call him a fastball. I was young, but hit me wid a two-by-four and I don’t ask you to come back and take a swing at me with a fence post! So I calls another curve, and he shakes me off. I calls a four-day creeper, and he shakes me off. I went through every pitch known to God’s angels, and finally I gives up and calls a fastball and Smoky just smiles, kind of like the dentist before he drills your teeth. Before I saw him wind up, that ball was in my glove. I heard thunder before I saw lightning. I don’t know how I caught it. Never saw it. I screamed and threw off the mitt, and the umpire and the batter laughed their fool heads off. Ol’ Smoky laughed so hard he was layin’ on the mound poundin’ the dirt. That was the end of me catchin’ Smoky Joe.”
Obadiah shook his head, chuckling from deep inside. Then he looked back at Ollie. “I faced Christy Matthewson and most the great white pitchers. Even young Warren Spahn. But none of them threw like Smoky Joe Williams.”
“You hit against Spahn?” Ollie asked. “But how did you play against him and Matthewson and Cobb if you weren’t in the majors?”
“We’d play exhibition games. Sometimes we’d go down to Cuba and play a long series against a Major League All-Star team. I remembers Ty Cobb’s Detroit Tigers and Pop Lloyd’s Havana Reds played against each other in a five-game series. Cobb batted .370; Pop hit an even .500. Cobb was the best base-stealer in the majors, and he bragged he was gonna ‘steal those darkies blind.’ Well, those darkies caught him every single time he tried. Cobb was an ol’ sourpuss. You could put his face on a buffalo nickel and nobody’d notice the difference. They used to say, ‘Nothin’s wrong with Cobb that couldn’t be fixed by hittin’ him upside the head with a skillet.’ After the last game in Cuba, Cobb announced he’d never play against blacks again. Well, we never blamed him for that. Cobb was ugly, but he weren’t stupid!”
Now Manny joined in the chuckles. Clarence hadn’t heard most of these stories for years. The pride in his chest showed on his face.
“You want a slugger? Josh Gibson. Hit more five-hundred-foot home runs than Ruth ever did. Only man ever to hit a ball clean out of Yankee Stadium. One season Josh hit seventy-five home runs.”
“So how come I’ve never heard of him?” Manny asked.
“Well,” Obadiah shrugged, “he was colored. I reckon it’s that simple. Nobody wanted to think a black man was as good as Ruth. But he was. Except Ruth struck out 110 or 120 times a year. Josh, maybe fifty. If Josh had been allowed in white ball, he would have had Ruth’s home run record. When Hammerin’ Hank went for the record, it would have been held by a black man. And Josh would have been so far ahead of Ruth, even Hank like to never catch him.”
“If this Gibson guy was playin’ in the majors today, what do you think he’d hit?” Manny asked.
“Oh,” Obadiah paused, “maybe .280, with thirty home runs.”
“That all?”
“Well, you has to understand,” Obadiah said, “he’d be over eighty years old.”
Ollie convulsed with laughter, slapping Manny on the leg.
“They tried a lot of things to get us coloreds in the majors. They’d paint a black man’s face light and make up the craziest stories. One team was called the Cuban Giants. They was mostly black waiters from a Brooklyn Hotel. Used to speak gibberish to each other on the field so people would think they was Cuban. Ol’ John McGraw tried to sneak Charlie Grant onto the Baltimore Orioles by claiming Grant was a Cherokee named Chief Tokahoma. But they figured it out. White people do catch on after a while!” Obadiah grinned.
“McGraw went on to manage the New York Giants. One of the best pitchers in baseball was a colored named Rube Foster. The size of a barn, old Rube, black as coal, black as Clarence and me. Rube musta been twenty years older than me, and he was runnin’ the colored league when I was playin’. McGraw hired Rube to teach Christy Matthewson how to pitch a screwball. That’s the closest Rube got to the majors. If they’d let him in, I guarantee you woulda heard his name.”
“Was Gibson the best you ever played with?” Ollie asked.
“No, Josh was great.” Obadiah’s eyes sparkled and Clarence knew what was coming next. “But one man was the greatest there’s ever been.” He paused, savoring the moment.
“Satchel.” Clarence said. Obadiah nodded vigorously.
“Satchel Paige?” Ollie said, voice cracking. “You played with Satchel Paige?”
“I’s not just black as coal,” Obadiah said, “I’s old as coal! Yeah, I played with Satch on two different teams, and I played against him more than I cares to remember. Satchel was older, but he was really somethin’. He was an inch shorter than Smoky Joe, but he towered over everybody else. And he was skinny—all arms and legs. No man never pitched like Satchel. He’d go into a game sayin’ he’d strike out
the first nine men he faced. And usually he did. First baseman didn’t touch the ball for three innings. We used to clown around. Once we put a bat boy out on first base for two innings ’cause we knew he wouldn’t have to do anything. Another time all us unfielders sat down around second base and played poker till somebody finally got wood on the ball. It was the fourth inning. When I was with the Clowns, the catcher would bring out a rocking chair and sit in it. Yessuh, we knowed how to has fun!”
“I’ve read about Satchel Paige,” Manny said. “And I saw his picture in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.”
“You been there? Always wanted to go,” Obadiah said. “Always thought I’d go with my son the sportswriter. Maybe someday we’ll make it there still, hey Son?”
No way you’ll ever see it now, Daddy. Time isn’t on your side anymore.
“Ol’ Satchel, he could pitch a greasy pork chop past a hungry coyote. He’d throw a no-hitter and be grumpy about it ’cause too many batters grounded out!” Obadiah’s eyes glazed off to bygone days, his memory of the distant past incredibly sharp. “A showman, Satchel was. Used to call in the outfielders and have ’em sit on the bench. Then he’d finish the inning with just the infield—sometimes sat down the infield too. You know what that does to a batter to have a pitcher so sure he’s got your number he sits his whole team on the bench? Well, I know. ’Cause when I was playin’ in Kansas City and Satchel was with the Pittsburgh Crawfords, he did it to me. Big ol’ smile on his face. I was hittin’ .320 that year, so I wasn’t exactly mulch on the flowers. But ol’ Satch, he calls in the whole team. And it takes ’im three pitches to get me. Got me on an outside fastball, a four-day creeper, and a Satchel pitch.”
“What’s a Satchel pitch?” Ollie asked.
Obadiah shook his head and laughed. “Can’t tell you to this day. Never seen another pitch like it. Called it a bat dodger, Rube did. That ball did things no ball is entitled to do. You know, after the war ol’ Satchel finally got to pitch in the majors. He was somethin’ like forty-five years old by then, though he claimed to be younger. Oldest rookie there ever was. Pitched for the Cleveland Indians. Chosen Rookie of the Year, can you imagine? Course he’d lost most his stuff by then. Still had enough that he only lost one game that season, though.”
“Forty-five and he lost one game?” Manny asked.
“Yeah, he was 6 and 1. He felt terrible bad about that one loss too,” Obadiah chuckled. “We changed baseball, you know. Changed the majors even though they didn’t let us in.”
“How do you mean?” Manny asked.
“Buntin’ and slidin’ and base-stealin’. They all come out of the Negro Leagues. And sign stealin’, that was perfected by Judy Johnson. Called him Mr. Sunshine ’cause he was always so happy. Ol’ Judy, he’d watch the other team’s hand signals a few innings and break the code. Then he’d whistle his own coded message to let us know what was gonna happen next. The Pittsburgh Crawfords, now that was a team. One of the best I played on. Gus Greenlee owned the Crawfords. He was a black businessman. Most stadiums wouldn’t let coloreds use the locker rooms. Ol’ Gus, he asked ’em, ‘What you afraid coloreds gonna do in those urinals that white men aren’t doin’ already?’ I gots me a Crawford team picture in my room.”
“No kiddin’? I’d love to see it,” Ollie said.
“Well, come on over and take a gander, Mr. Detective. You too, Mr. Manny. No charge. Got some other stuff you might like to see. By the way, ol’ Gus decided to build his own stadium so we coloreds could be at home. First stadium ever built for a black team. Then he bought us a topflight bus. Got a picture of that too.”
“You seem like such an even-tempered guy, Mr. Abernathy.” Ollie said. Clarence suspected he might be contrasting father and son. “Did you ever get mad at anybody when you played ball?”
“Well, one time I was battin’, and it was a full count. The ball was way low and outside, so I drops the bat and trots off to first for the walk. Then behind me I hears the umpire call, ‘Strike three, you’re outta there.’”
“What did you do?” Ollie asked.
“Well now,” Obadiah said, “I went right up to that umpire and looked him straight in the eye. Then I proceeded to thank him sincerely for doin’ such a difficult and thankless job.” He held a straight face, but when he finally broke out into a grin, Ollie and Manny laughed out loud.
“We’re here, gentlemen,” Clarence said, pulling into the stadium parking lot.
“Already?” Ollie sounded disappointed. The three hours had flown by.
“Mr. Abernathy, did you know Jackie Robinson?”
“Yessuh, I knowed Jackie. Knowed him well.”
They got out of the car, Obadiah proudly putting on his Mariners cap Jonah got him last Christmas. Ollie and Manny walked on each side of Obadiah as if they were his escorts.
“Tell us about Jackie,” Ollie said.
“Got to knows him three years ’fore I left baseball. Jackie was the grandson of a slave. See, those days, some of our parents was born slaves, like mine was, and nearly all our grandparents was slaves. Anyways, Jackie growed up in an all-white neighborhood in Pasadena. The white kids threw rocks at the Robinson boys until Jackie and his brothers said enough of this and threw rocks back at ’em. That stopped it real quick ’cause them Robinson boys, they knowed how to throw! Then he went to college and he was a star in everything—football, basketball, track, baseball. Set a national record in long jump. Then he went to the war. One good thing comin’ outta that war was the signs coloreds held up at the baseball stadiums. They said, ‘If we can stop bullets, why not balls?’”
Obadiah was breathing hard, and Clarence was about to suggest he stop talking till they got inside, but he didn’t want to take away his father’s moment in the sun.
“After the war, Jackie come straight to the Kansas City Monarchs, where I was playin’. I roomed with him a couple of months. He’d last been stationed in Texas. A military bus driver told him to sit in the back of the bus. He refused. They told him they’d arrest him. He still refused. He was court-martialed, but they found him innocent. He got an honorable discharge and come to the Monarchs. Mr. Branch Rickey saw him there. He was lookin’ for the right man to be the first colored in the majors. The time was right, and Jackie was right.”
As they walked slowly through the parking lot, Ollie asked, “You have any idea what it was like for Jackie Robinson?”
“At first the fans would yell, ‘Nigger’ and ‘Go back to the cotton fields.’ It hurt Jackie bad. Almost had a breakdown, he told me later. Once some fans started in on Jackie, and ol’ Pee Wee Reese come over and put his arm around Jackie’s shoulder and looked at the crowd. Pee Wee was a favorite, and most of the fans shut their mouths. See, there was a lot of good whites in baseball. Pee Wee was one of ’em. Now, when the Dodgers come to Cincinnati, coloreds would pile into a train in Norfolk, Virginia, six hundred miles away, just to see Jackie play. They called that train the Jackie Robinson special, and they say colored folk never had so much fun as on that train. Jackie made us all proud.”
The sparkling eyes glistened with moisture. Obadiah stopped walking to wipe his brow. Clarence put his arm around his daddy’s waist.
“Mr. Rickey told Jackie he had to agree for two years not to talk back at all the namecallin’. He kept his word. But after two years he started demandin’ to stay in the same hotel as the white players, and it worked. Jackie and Roy Campanella, Ernie Banks, Aaron and Mays and Curt Flood. It wasn’t easy for any of them. Campy had a hard time ’cause the catcher calls the pitches and that meant white pitchers was takin’ directions from a black man. That didn’t sit well with some of ’em. Curt Flood once said, ‘I’m glad God made my skin black, but I wish he’d made it thicker.’”
“You know,” Ollie said, “I was in high school rooting for Hank Aaron to break Babe Ruth’s home run record. He ended the season with 713, one short of Ruth. Everybody knew he’d break it easy next season. I thought, he must be feelin’ great. Then years l
ater I saw an interview with Aaron. He talked about how horrible it was. About the hate mail, people calling him names and threatening to kill him. I never knew. I never understood.”
Obadiah’s eyes looked like a hound dog’s. “I phoned Henry once a year in them days. He told me all about it. Letters would start, ‘Dear Nigger Scum.’ They’d say, ‘You’re an animal, not a human being,’ and ‘The only good nigger is a dead nigger.’ All of us who’d been called every name in the book, we knowed a lot of white folk wouldn’t tolerate Babe Ruth being toppled by a colored. It was so bad the FBI started reading his mail before Henry did. I remember sayin’ to my Ruby, ‘I don’t think Henry will live through the summer.’ I really didn’t think he would. Sure glad he did. Sure glad he did.”
They showed their tickets to the gatekeeper and slowly walked in, Obadiah’s pace restraining the rest. “But Henry came through. Ended up all-time leader in homers, RBIs, and total bases. One of the greatest ball players that ever lived. Still say ol’ Satchel was the best, though.”
They made their way to their seats, Obadiah huffing and puffing. Clarence started to sit by his dad, but Manny and Ollie both positioned themselves to sit by the old man. They were about an hour early.
“Look at this stadium, will you now?” Obadiah said. “Never seen nothin’ so big. But baseball’s still baseball, I reckon. We used to joke playin’ baseball was the only time a black man could wave a stick at a white man and get away with it.” He laughed. “I almost made the big leagues. Born fifteen or twenty years too soon, that’s all. But that’s all right. Shadow ball suited me fine.”
“Why’d they call it shadow ball?” Manny asked.
“Well, let me set it up for you, Mr. Detective,” Obadiah said, tilting his baseball cap to the side and putting on his announcer’s voice. “The Indianapolis Clowns take the field for warm-ups. The hard throw from first snaps back the second baseman’s glove. He hurls the ball to third, for a quick peg back to the first baseman who dives to catch it, rolls a somersault, and heaves it to the catcher. He tosses it back gently to the pitcher, Satchel Paige, who watches for the catcher’s signal, then winds up and throws the curveball.” Obadiah flailed his arms. “The batter swings and hits. The second baseman leaps to his left, throws to first. The low throw kicks up dirt just before the first baseman catches it. The umpire calls him out. The crowd roars.”