by John Holway
Webster McDonald
Webster McDonald
Newt Allen (left) with fellow Monarchs. Turkey Stearnes is third from left; Eddie Dwight, father of the astronaut, is fourth, and Bullet Joe Rogan, on the right.
Kansas City Monarchs pose with House of David players. Allen is on the right in the back row. Bullet Joe Rogan is on the left in back. The first three men standing are Chet Brewer, owner J. L. Wilkinson, and George Giles.
Chapter 6
NEWT ALLEN
Little Newt Allen of Kansas City was one of the slickest-fielding second basemen the Negro leagues produced. Teaming with Monarch shortstop Dobie Moore or with Willie Wells of St. Louis, Allen sparkled on the double play. “He wouldn’t even look at first base on the pivot,” says Monarch pitcher Bill Drake. “He’d throw the ball to first under his left arm like the great Bingo DeMoss of Chicago.”
Allen was a much better fielder than Jackie Robinson, says James Wilkinson, son of the Monarch owner, who saw both men play. Others compare the switch-hitting Allen to the Athletics’ great Eddie Collins. Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, for one, rates Allen the best second baseman in the Negro leagues.
Allen joined the Monarchs in 1922 at the age of twenty. “We called him ‘Colt,’ ” says outfielder George Sweatt, “because he was young. Newt was a different guy from the other players. They were mostly rough and illiterate—he was a little rough too when he was playing, though.” Allen’s chief partner in deviltry was his roommate, third baseman Newt Joseph. “They were characters,” Sweatt grins. “But I think Allen toned down after Newt Joseph died.”
Allen didn’t hit too well, judging from the fragmentary averages that have been discovered. His lifetime average for six scattered Negro League seasons was only .251, though he did much better against white big leaguers, hitting them for an estimated .301 in twenty-four games.
Allen was a favorite with the fans. Five times they voted him to first place among second basemen chosen for the East-West game—1933, 1934, 1936 and 1941. In 1933 he scored more than twice as many votes as his nearest rival, and in the next year he beat out the great Sammy T. Hughes for the honor.
I met Newt Allen in the summer of 1971 in his home on a quiet street in Kansas City. He had just returned from doing some political canvassing, one of his favorite activities. For more than two hours he talked to me, leaning forward in his chair and speaking softly, with a gentle smile playing across his face.
Newt Allen Speaks . . .
I’ve had a wonderful career in baseball—twenty—seven years, from 1921 to 1947. I’ve played in almost every state in the Union, in Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Venezuela, Japan, China and the Philippines. It’s been a wonderful career, and at one time I was considered a pretty good second baseman.
When the Monarchs first started back in 1920, I was only a canvas puller and ice boy out at the ball park. Baseball was my whole life. I just loved it from the beginning. I was born in 1902 right here in Kansas City. Frank Duncan and I were boys together on the Paseo at 17th Street. We were in the same school together, lived in the same neighborhood for years, and we were friends throughout our boyhood days. Another fellow with us was Rube Currie [who later pitched for the Chicago American Giants]. He and Frank Duncan lived almost next door to one another. We all used to play sandlot ball in school. We’d put in twenty cents apiece and the winner take the pot.
Newt Allen, second from right. Bullet Joe Rogan is at far right, catcher Frank Duncan second from left.
Later I used to go out and practice with the Monarchs, and when the ball game was over, I’d pull the canvas across the ball field. That’s the way I would get two or three balls from the groundkeeper—that’s how we got our balls to play with.
Meanwhile, Duncan had gone to the Monarchs to play. They’d been watching me, and they asked me to come try out with them. I went out twice, but at that time the manager didn’t think I could make it. So I went to a semipro club in Omaha, and we had a pretty good ball club. They put us in the Nebraska State League, and when we started winning, the Monarchs began to watch me again. When they came through and played us an exhibition, I showed up good, and I left and went with them.
They used the park of the old Western League white club at 20th and Olive. There’s a playground there now. It was a much smaller field than the present one. In right field they had a twenty-five- to thirty-foot screen, like you have in Boston. But in left field the bleachers went all around from the railroad track clear around to 21st Street, from left field to center field. At that time the capacity was around 25,000. It was single-deck, all wood, nothing was concrete.
Kansas City is a good baseball town, if you’re a winner. You’ve got to win, though. That’s the reason the Royals and A’s had such a time. But you put a team up in first or second place, and the fans will turn up. We used to draw 14 to 15,000 people during those times, 18 to 19,000 on Sunday; and ladies’ night, my goodness, we’d have lots of people. We drew quite a few people, white and colored. They’re good baseball fans here, but you have to have a winner. You see how they turn out for football here, almost 60,000 people, ’cause they’re winners. They don’t like a loser here.
Allen, far left, with Monarchs and House of David players.
We won eight pennants in all.
I was a right-handed hitter, hit second. I was a pretty good bunter if I have to say so, a pretty good hit-and-run man. As I stayed in baseball I learned how to hit the way the ball was pitched. A ball pitched inside, pull back and hit it to left field; a pitch outside, step into it and hit it to right field; a pitch down the center, just cut and let it go where it may.
In fact, our entire ball club was like that. I’ll tell you why: Between weekend series here in Kansas City against the big Negro clubs, we would go down through Oklahoma and Kansas and play those semipro clubs. Well, naturally, we could beat them, so they’d have their own town umpire. You know, in the pinches he would call a ball this far outside a strike, and strike you out. So we learned how to hit both the outside pitches and the inside pitches. It got so that the fellows in the league playing against us didn’t know what to pitch. All they had to do was throw the ball down the middle to get seven out of nine of us out.
Newt Joseph was our third baseman. Joseph was a smart ballplayer. He was a great signal catcher. He’d watch everybody on the other ball club—the bench, the pitchers down in the bull pen, the coaches, the manager—and in three innings, if there was any kind of sign, he had one or two of them. He’s passed now. His name was Walter Joseph, but they called him Newt. My name was Newton. After my wife and I separated, he and I lived together here in Kansas City for about five years. The two Newts.
Of course Frank Duncan was our catcher. I don’t say this just because he was a friend of mine, or because I played with him, but he was a great receiver and thrower—one of the greatest. He wasn’t too much of a hitter, but at that time there were only two men who were tops on him as a receiver: fellow by the name of Bruce Petway who caught for Detroit and another one named Biz Mackey, who caught for Philadelphia.
Rube Foster’s Chicago American Giants were our big rivals. Foster had five or six men who didn’t do anything but push and bunt, kept you moving all the time. Just kept us playing on the grass, and then they’d hit it by you. And that’s for nine innings—he did that for nine innings, not just one. You had to be on your toes, and you had to have a good pitcher to try to stop them.
Now the Monarchs were just the opposite of the Giants. We had the ball team that just slammed away on the ball at all times. A fellow like myself or Newt Joseph or Hurley McNair, why, we’d upset the apple cart and bunt every once in a while and get them to looking for bunts and pull their infield in. Then we’d kind of loosen the big bats and shoot by them.
In those days every town had its own umpires, and naturally the home team was favored with them. There’d be quite a few arguments, and sometimes there was a lot of fist throwing. Oh yes, they threw fists quite often. Like
the Yankees and Senators in the American League at that time. We had three or four great fights there in Chicago. We did a lot of throwing at one another, running over one another, jumping at each other. Some guy would get temperamental enough to swing at someone, and the ballplayers and spectators would mix it up. It took all the 35th Street police in Chicago to stop it. Then when Chicago came here, 17 to 18,000 people would come out to see who was going to start a fight. The owners were all making money.
See that scar on my shin? Eighteen stitches in that. I got it from the third baseman of the American Giants, a fellow by the name of Dave Malarcher. I had him out by about ten feet and was going to tag him, when he came in with one foot high. I was out quite a while. It took me three years to repay him, but they say vengeance is sweet. One day we were leading by two runs, he was on first, and I took the throw at second for a double play. Well, instead of throwing to first, I threw straight at Malarcher charging into second. I hit him right in the forehead, just enough under his cap bill to keep from breaking his nose. Hurt him pretty bad. He was out of the ball game for three days. The next time he was on first and rounding second to go to third, I could have thrown the ball over his head and gotten him out, but it was just one of those “evil spirit” days. I cut down on him overhanded and hit him right in the back of the head. That hurt him pretty bad too, but that’s the way they played the game then. But he never slid into me with his spikes up again.
Yes, I sure did have trouble with some of those.base runners.
See this scar on my hand? Oscar Charleston jumped at me at third base, cut my glove off of my hand—as big a fellow as he was, he weighed two-something. I had him out, but he hit me, he jumped high, knocked away my glove and the ball. Years later I learned that if they jump high, watch the leg that’s in the air. If he’s going to try to spike with it, step aside and hook it with your arm. Sometimes your glove will catch a spike; or you want to hook your arm just past his shoes and pull. I could throw a man ten feet and break his neck almost. You do that to one or two bad sliders and you don’t have any trouble out of the rest. Or hit two or three of them coming into second base in the chest with the ball —next time they’ll run right out of the base path.
In my career I was a rough ballplayer, but we were all friends. You have a certain feeling toward a fellow that’s nice and never had any nasty words against you. A lot of times I had a nasty feeling within myself, not against a ballplayer. I was pretty bad playing ball, yes, I was pretty bad—run over a man, throw at him. I did a lot of wrong things. But I got results out of it, because they were leery of what I was going to do, and I’d get by with it. Sometimes if we started fighting, those great big old guys would come and back me up—kept things going and livened it up!
We used every trick in the book to win a ball game. All kinds of good tricks and nasty ones. In fact, there were more nasty ones than there were good. Caused many a ballplayer to get hurt.
Catchers had a way to stop those hard sliders too. If a man was on second and he knew the runner was coming home, he’d lay his mask down right by home plate. The runner would jump and slide and hit that mask and break his hip. They don’t allow that anymore.
And quite a few pitchers on every ball club would throw at batters. There’s usually at least one pitcher on every ball club that you can hit good. Almost every ball he throws at you, you can hit. They seem to get to be kind of leery of you and you come up in the pinches with men on, the first thing they’ll do is throw at you. I hit two home runs off a fellow named Jack Combs in Detroit, and in the next ball game, why the first pitch knocked a button off of my cap. The next one hit me right there in my side, and I had a knot in my side that big for about a week. That’s the way they’d do you. They didn’t mean for you to hit them. The average hitter in those days, the first thing he’d do would be get loose and get ready to duck. Sometimes your bat would go one way, your cap the other and you laying down on the ground. After Ray Chapman got killed—when Carl Mays killed Ray Chapman—that’s when that beaning ball went out, but they still threw a little close to you, what they call “moving him back.”
You know, in boxing there’s two rules, Queensbury and the one they call “coonsbury.” We played the coonsbury rules. That’s just any way you think you can win, any kind of play you think you can get by with. We played pretty smart baseball in our days.
Cool Papa Bell, a great outfielder. When he hit it, you’ve got to throw it to the next base. The man ran so fast, we woke up to the fact that if he’s on first and a man singles, he’s gone. We’d have to throw it to home plate. There’s a tale you’ve got to tell on him, though. I don’t know whether anyone else will tell you, but he’d miss second base by three feet—he’d cut in a little bit behind the pitcher. I know he was fast, but how did he get to third base so quick? He wasn’t going anywhere near the bag! The umpires in those days weren’t quite as alert, and a lot of things passed them by. Cool Papa did that for almost a year before anybody caught on. But he was the fastest ballplayer I’ve seen.
Willie Wells of the St. Louis Stars was one of the greatest shortstops. It was a toss-up between him and Moore, but Wells was a smarter ballplayer than Moore. Good hitter, good base runner and a wonderful shortstop. He’d catch them with his bare hands. He and I went to California together. Wells was at short and I was at second, and we were the first Negro ballplayers whose pictures came out in the Los Angeles Examiner, we made so many double plays. And he was quite a guy for tagging, with that big hand and big glove. You’d go in there and he’d slap you all up side of the head.
In 1924 we played the Philadelphia Hilldales in the first colored World Series. They had some fine players. Nip Winters was a tall left-hander—oh, he was a tough man. He beat us three ball games. Scrip Lee pitched that series too. A submarine pitcher, threw from down here. I used to hear from him, he wrote Joe Rogan and me quite often. We beat him in the World Series in Chicago. It was tied 0–0, I think, in the ninth inning. He had struck me out three times with that submarine curve ball and intended to throw me a bad pitch overhand with three men on base. But I hit it down the third base line and pulled up on third. The next man, Hurley McNair, came up and singled, and we ran in about five runs and beat him.
Newt Allen
Birmingham was another tough club back then when they had Satchel Paige and Harry Salmon, a guy they called “the black diamond.” Satchel and Salmon were six-footers, they both threw sidearm and they were pretty tough. Satchel kicked his foot way up here like Dizzy Dean, then he’d throw around that foot. Half the guys were hitting at that foot coming up. We had a hard time bunting Satchel’s throws, much less hitting them. He’d strike out eighteen or nineteen men at three o‘clock in the afternoon. He didn’t do that at night, he did that in the daytime before night baseball came in, back in ’27, ’28 and ’29. Satchel was just a good hard thrower, a hard man to hit. But as far as being a smart pitcher, he never was. I still say Rogan was a better pitcher.
The circumstances under which we had to play ball were awful hard. When I first started out we used to travel by trains. Later we used buses. We used to travel all night, sleep in the bus, then three o‘clock that evening get out and play the ball game. A lot of times we’d play a night game here in Kansas City and have to be in Chicago for the ball game the next night. It was a twelve- to fourteen-hour drive in the bus. By the time you got into Chicago it would be 10:30 or 11 o’clock. That’s excusing trouble, stops for water and all those things. By the time you got to sleep, why it’s time to get up and go play ball. Not only our club, but all the other clubs would do it, and yet they played wonderful ball.
Every ballplayer had to look out after his own paraphernalia. We had to take what they call a suit-roll. You wrapped your own uniform, your sweatshirt, your stockings, your shoes and your bats. Well now, you’ve got your hand bag, you’ve got your suit-roll with your uniform in it and you’ve got your bat bag. You’ve got to go to the train or bus and get on the thing with that. Today all the ba
llplayer has to do is go into the clubhouse, pull off his clothes, take a shower, put on his coat and go on out. His uniform will be wherever he’s going.
The highest salary I drew was $900 a month. That was good money in those days. All the way from I’d say ’29 up to around ’36, the middle of the Depression. But at that time a dollar was a dollar. It takes a whole lot of dollars to make a dollar now, I mean to get the same value out of it. And we were doing something we liked.
You know, when you do something you like, you can do it real good. That was the way with myself and a lot of others. Everything I tried to do would be the best in that game.
During the Depression the league folded up. We started playing one another in different towns, but there wasn’t any league schedule.
We traveled up through the Northwest with the white House of Davids, those guys out of Michigan, where they have the colony. They had a whale of a ball club. Three of those bearded men had that pepper game, throwing the ball under their legs, behind their backs, around their necks. People would come out to see them. They’d hire ballplayers too and tell them to start growing their beards around December. The real House of David guys would put their hair up under their caps; their hair would grow pretty long. They had Frankie Salas, a boy who played with the New York Yankees organization, a good hitter and outfielder; when the Yankees sent him down to their farm team, he joined the House of Davids. They had another one named Mullins, and a pitcher named Hunter who pitched for Pittsburgh. He was quite a wild fellow, liked to drink and harass around. Well, he didn’t stay in condition. Then they had two fellows named Talley and Tucker, who were major league prospects, but they wouldn’t leave their colony.