Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues

by John Holway

  In 1916 I came here to St. Louis to play with the St. Louis Giants. At that time the Giants were playing in Finley Park, the old Federal League park, at Grand and Laclede. See, the Federal League only ran two years, ‘14 and part of ’15. Charles Mills owned the Giants then. He was a saloon keeper, but he had a white fellow in the background named Ed Brock, an automobile salesman. His brother was Johnny Brock, used to play for the Cardinals. He’s the one got us into that park.

  Jimmy Lyons was with the Giants then. And I’d feel awful bad if I failed to mention Sam Bennett: outfield, a great hitter, good arm—in later years he started catching. And the Giants had one of the greatest shortstops back in those days, a boy named Dick Wallace. They used to compare him with Bobby Wallace of the Browns. And we had a good second baseman in Bunny Downs, a short little guy. You’ve heard of him?

  Now that was the ball club we had in ’16, when I first came here.

  It was rough when I came up, awful rough. They used to file their spikes. They’d cut your throat if you got in the way. And those old ballplayers, they wouldn’t help you. They couldn’t afford to because they’d be pushing themselves out of a job. See, we only had twelve men on a team. If a young ballplayer said, “I play first base,” why the first baseman would say, “I play first base on this club, how you going to play first base?”

  In those days the old-time ballplayers had what you call a uniform roll. So I walked in the clubhouse and unrolled my stuff. I had a pair of real good shoes, and they said, “Look at him, he’s got the tools. He must be pretty good.” I impressed them, see?

  My best pitch, I might say, was the curve ball. I loved to throw it on three-and-two. I didn’t believe in throwing a man a fast ball. I called that a “Johnny Pick” ball—they’d be waiting for it. You don’t find many boys could hit a curve ball on three-and-two, and you didn’t have many pitchers with nerve enough to throw it. My biggest success was control.

  Bill Gatewood was manager, he was my tutor. Did you ever hear of Bill Gatewood? Tremendous pitcher. At the ball park he’d make you throw at things. Just like a shooting gallery: you got to aim, you got to pick a target. If you want to throw at a man’s knees, you aim at his knees. You want to throw around his shoulders, you aim at his shoulders. It requires practice, just practice. I got so I could wake up in the morning and throw in a quart cup. You had to have control to pitch back in those days.

  I guess every series we played, I opened the series and then came back the next two or three days and did relief work. No, it’s not tough on your arm. You take a man that throws sidearm or three-quarters and follows through, it’s no wear and tear on your arm. A curve ball is. That snap is what throws your arm out. I pitched seventeen or eighteen years, and see how straight my arm is? You see some of those old boys carry their arm crooked. I followed through.

  I was getting $100 a month. Back then that was tops. But that was a fortune when you consider prices. The best room in town only cost $2.50. A T-bone steak was a quarter—biscuits a nickel extra. And if you wanted to eat soul food, why that was even less.

  We had some strong ball clubs back in those days. You take around Chicago we had the Logan Squares, the Pirates, any number of teams. Those white boys who didn’t make the big leagues or got a little too old, they played on those ball clubs. And they had some good ball clubs. Back in ‘16 they had a ball club called the Henry Grays. They had this boy Hod Eller, pitched a no-hit game for Cincinnati. I played a lot of ball games against Hod Eller. We used to do a whole lot of barnstorming.

  Oooh, please don’t ask me about 1921! That was the greatest year of my life. That’s the year I played the Cardinals, the premier year of my life. We played the St. Louis Cardinals eight ball games in ‘20 and ’21, and they beat us five of the eight. They had Jacques Fournier at first base. They had the whole team except Rogers Hornsby. Hornsby wouldn’t play us. He was very frank about it. He just came right out and said, “I won’t play with any Negroes.” But the others, they all came out—Jess Haines, Doc Lavan, Austin McHenry, Verne Clemens, all the other regulars. They had the whole team except Hornsby.

  We played the Cardinals in Sportsmen’s Park. At that time Negroes had to sit in the pavilion in right field and in the bleachers. Negroes didn’t go in the grandstand. I remember Jesse Haines shut us out 6–0, and Freddie Schupp shut us out 5–0. Then Carter beat me 4–3 in twelve innings.

  In ’22 C. I. Taylor had formed the Continental League, and he had offered me a nice salary to pitch for them. In the meantime he died, and his brother Ben was going to take care of things. Well, Wilkinson had the Monarchs by then, and I’d also been out to Kansas City a couple of times that winter to talk to him, unbeknownst to people here in St. Louis—he was way too sneaky for these people. Anyway, I joined Kansas City. They traded Branch Russell and Dempsey Miller for me. Rube Foster in Chicago like to died. He said, “They got the best pitching staff in the league, now they’ve grabbed another good pitcher.”

  At that time the Monarchs were what you might call the Yankees of Negro baseball. They were organized in 1920, and in ’21 Wilkinson got Bullet Rogan, Dobie Moore, Lemuel Hawkins, Heavy Johnson, and a boy name of Bob Fagan. They all came out of the Army. They were playing in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and Casey Stengel was out there and discovered those boys.

  I know you heard of the great Rogan Well, down deep in my heart, I don’t believe Rogan ever saw the day he could pitch as much baseball as I could pitch. You know what made Rogan such a great pitcher? Now you know your best ballplayers in the big leagues were Yankees, because they got more publicity. You know that is a fact. Rube Foster was owner of our league, and he wouldn’t let you beat Rogan. Played the bunting game on him all the time—they wouldn’t slug him. Now Rogan I would consider a little better fielding pitcher than myself, but they would bunt him and slug me, wouldn’t bunt me. They never would let anyone beat him. That kept him as a drawing card. That was Rube’s smart idea. We used to go to Chicago back in them days and draw 7, 8, 10,000 people, which was a nice crowd at the time.

  Bill Drake, St. Louis Giants, 1916, back row second from left

  When I was with Kansas City with Rogan, they couldn’t feature the two of us. Rogan’s disposition was different from mine. There was a picture show at 18th and Lydia. They used to advertise the ball games, and they’d put a ballplayer’s picture on the screen. “Well, don’t put that fellow Drake’s picture on there,” they said, “he’ll want a raise.” I’d talk a whole lot. I wanted something. I told them, “The hell with you, I’ll go back and fish. I don’t have to play no damn baseball.” I sometimes think I was a little too impetuous.

  I have some very fond memories. I recall we used to barnstorm. We’d go out in the small towns in Iowa, and we would take our tents and put them up and we would sleep in those tents. And we’d go to those restaurants and eat during the day, and in the evening we’d go fish. We had just a dandy good time.

  When we’d leave Kansas City to go to Chicago or someplace, we always had a tourist coach so we could sleep. Wilkinson had a special car that we traveled around in, and a cook. We ate and slept right on the car. And we stopped at the best Negro hotels and we ate in the best Negro restaurants.

  A ballplayer is like a contented cow. A contented cow gives good milk, see? And you got to keep your ballplayers satisfied. If you underpay a man, he’s not satisfied. He’s not going to give his best. You couldn’t put all those other teams on the same par with the Monarchs, ’cause I remember later I played with a ball club in Nashville, Tennessee, and they didn’t allow as much expense money as the Monarchs. Frankly speaking, the Monarchs lived awfully good.

  In 1922 we played six games against the Kansas City Blues of the American Association, and beat them five of the six.5 When we played a team like the Blues we were off salary. We played what you called “cold” playing: you get a certain percentage of the gate receipts, which would run maybe a hundred or so dollars. That was a wonderful feeling for the Blues to play the Monarchs. I
t was just something exciting, and the crowds were won-derful. And when we played the Blues or those teams, we got a lot of recognition from the fellows. We talked with those boys. They’d come right over and chat with you and tell you what a good ballplayer you were. I’ve had lots of white ballplayers say to me, “It’s a shame you’re black,” meaning if I was white, I’d be playing up there too. But everybody was up in arms about us playing the Blues when we beat them. A fellow by the name of Hickey was president of the American Association, and he wouldn’t sanction any more games. We never played them again.

  We had a lot of great ballplayers. But to tell you the truth, you just can’t hardly compare a man with Satchel Paige. I only saw one man I believe was anyways as fast as Satchel, and that’s Feller. And I’ll tell you a boy threw an awful hard ball, Steel Arm Tyler from Memphis. He threw a big ball. Now Satchel threw a little ball, a little fast ball, like an aspirin tablet.

  You should have seen Cool Papa Bell. He joined St. Louis after I left. I used to get a little shaky myself when he got on first base. I knew he was going to steal. I don’t know where Bell got his speed from—I don’t know where he got that speed from. He’d just be standing there like that, and then he’d be gone. A lot of fellows got to lean off. He’d stand up straight, like nothing was going to happen, and was off just like a streak of lightning. I don’t guess Bell had any kind of weakness. He had a good arm, could run, could throw and could hit.

  There were a lot of good ballplayers, but when you have an outstanding one, he just shines above those others. Now you take Hornsby. They’ve had 10,000 second basemen, but how many Hornsbys have you had? They’ve had 10,000 center fielders, but how many excel Cool Papa Bell? When a man stands out in his position, he just stands out, there’s nothing you can do about it. Cool Papa Bell is due in the Hall of Fame. 6

  They had some Cuban ballplayers back then: Hooks Jimenez, Pelayo Chacon—a little fellow, real short; his son used to play for Cincinnati. In fact, just name a Cuban that came over here and wasn’t a good ballplayer. Just name one. I don’t know of any. Of course, some of them never played on prominent ball clubs. Red Parnell played in the South most of the time. If he’d played out East, why, he’d have gotten a lot of publicity. He could hit. And I can tell you when a man can hit.

  I’ll tell you this much: a newspaper makes a ballplayer. What about the Mets? Look at Seaver. We got a boy here that’s just as doggone good a pitcher, Bob Gibson, but he doesn’t get the publicity that that boy gets. But why should the white papers have told about us? They weren’t interested. In the late years we always had a scorekeeper, and they would send that box score to the press, and they would publish it in the morning paper. I’ve had some nice write-ups from white papers. I remember in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, I pitched a no-hit game there, got an awful nice write-up. But as far as having a press agent or something like that, no, we didn’t have anything like that. We didn’t keep any averages. There’s no record of the Negro ballplayers unless you kept it yourself. We used to kid each other. Somebody would say, “Look at him, he’s carrying his batting average on his cuff.”

  I have seen the time when if you would say the Negro is as good a ballplayer as the white, the majority of people just didn’t believe it. But those old ballplayers I’m telling you about, they didn’t have any shortcomings. They could do anything: they could think, they could hit, they could run, they could throw. You just couldn’t say who was the best hitter. Too many of those boys could hit. You can’t say the Negro is not as good a ballplayer as the white. Just look at the records. See who’s leading in the big-ten hitters today, see who your leading base stealers are.

  We played more semipro baseball and they played professional baseball. And their umpires were schooled; I’ve played ball when they called a man out of the stands to umpire. It was complicated back in those days. Everywhere we went to play ball they had a different baseball. We used a Leacock ball here, you go to Chicago they used the Wilson ball, go to Kansas City they had a Schmeltzer ball. All of them were sporting goods houses. Some of the balls were larger, some smaller, and no telling how good some of those boys would have been if they had had the regular ball like they do in the big leagues. And those boys were kind of tricky back in those days. If a ball club came to town that was a good-hitting ball club, they’d take a dozen balls and lay them on fifty pounds of ice and let them stay there overnight. You could hardly hit that ball out of the infield.

  And all those boys used to cheat back in those days. For instance, I used to put my heel on the front of the rubber instead of putting my toe on the back. That gave me an extra foot. Instead of 60’ 6”, I was pitching at 59’ 6”. I’d cheat that much.

  If you didn’t have brains back in my day, you couldn’t get by. We had what we called “the old angle play.” When a man is stealing third base, a left-handed hitter can see the play. If the third baseman comes in to field the ball, the hitter lets it go; if he stays back to take the throw, you bunt it. We played smart baseball back in them days.

  In 1924 the Monarchs played the Philadelphia Hilldales in the first Negro World Series. I never will forget. They got the bases loaded and put me in to pitch. Everybody used to cheat then. I had what they called a “half balk.” There ain’t no such thing as a “half balk” in baseball. It’s either a balk or it’s not a balk. I’d get on the mound and just bend my left knee a little, like I was going to throw home, then wheel and throw to first. Sure it’s a balk, but I used to pick off a whole lot of runners that way. Anyway, the first base umpire said to me, “You have to do away with that move.” I says, “Good God Almighty, something I’ve been doing for thirty years, they’re going to take it away from me.” The other umpire, Buck Freeman, says, “Hell, he’s been playing like that all season.” So they let me keep it.

  We used to have a lot of fun, used to go out in California in the winter and play ball. For a lot of the players the first thing you’re going to do is get yourself a chick for the winter. Back in those days you couldn’t get a ballplayer to work in the winter. You wanted to find someone to take care of you. And that’s what you needed, because you sure weren’t making enough in the summer.

  I wouldn’t go to Florida. I heard so many funny things about the South, I didn’t care to go down there. And I was afraid to go to Cuba. I had a pretty bad habit of throwing at players, and that was one thing they didn’t tolerate in Cuba. If you hit a ballplayer over there, they’d put you in jail. I was afraid to go down there, because I had cracked two or three of them in the States, and I think they were laying for me to go to Cuba, but I never would go.

  But they had some good ball clubs out in California. One good club was the White Kings, nothing but big leaguers—Bob and Irish Meusel. I tell you who got his start out there umpiring—Beans Reardon. He used to umpire all our ball games. Harry Geisel, Barr, Majerkurth, they were all out there in ’24 and ’25.

  Rube Marquard won nineteen straight ball games one year, and he was pitching against us. You know he had kind of a funny neck, and he twitched it like that and throwed to first base. When he threw to first, one of the boys struck at the ball!

  I left the Monarchs in 1926, went to Indianapolis and then Detroit and then the Nashville Elite Giants. I played with Donn Clendenon’s daddy, Nish Williams. He was a catcher with Nashville, and just like Clendenon, he was a good hitter.

  Bingo DeMoss was a pretty good man. He managed the Indianapolis ABC’s, and I was over there working for him. We had been out all night long, got in about six o‘clock that morning. But I knew it was all right, ’cause I was out with the manager all night. So one o’clock came along, time for the ball game, I’ll be doggone, that son of a bitch tossed the ball to me, said, “You’re going.”

  “What!”

  Well, we were playing the Cubans. They scored four runs off me first inning. I met him at the coach’s box coming in from the pitcher’s mound. He said, “Nine innings, win or lose.” After that I never let DeMoss know nothing about me. H
e went his way and I went mine. That taught me not to fool with the boss.

  Did I ever tell you what happened to me in Memphis? We went down there to play the Dixie Series. The owners split 65 percent and the players split 35 percent. So the money’s got to run up in the thousands for you to make any money. When they got to the ball park the players went on strike. I am the spokesman. So I went on in to see Bubber Lewis, the owner of the Memphis ball club. I said, “Bubber, the players are dissatisfied.” So he came on out to the clubhouse, said, “What about you, Hall?”

  “I’m all right.”

  “What about you, Bill?”

  “Okay with me.”

  He said, “Well, it looks like everyone’s satisfied except you, Mr. Drake.” That’s the last time I ever fronted for somebody else. You look out for yourself and I’ll look out for myself.

  When I had the ball club in Tulsa, a boy wrote me a letter and asked me for a job. He came to the hotel one morning and said “My name is MacIntosh.” I said, “Well, we work out at ten o’clock this morning.” So we went out to the park and I gave him a uniform and said, “Go on out there in left field and I’ll hit you some.” He said, “Where’s left field? I’ve never been in this park before.”

  I left baseball in ’31. You know, I never traveled by bus. Kansas City had always traveled with a tourist car, a Pullman car. When buses came in, I was leaving baseball. We used to play poker on those long train rides. I was as good a poker player as I was a ballplayer. All the players used to play poker then, not for big money—they weren’t making big money in those days.

  After I got out of baseball, I managed a basketball team. This fellow, a bootlegger, had the money, and I gave him the idea. He bought us uniforms and an automobile, and we just jumped in that car and lit out for the South. We played colleges around Atlanta, Morehouse, Tuskegee.