Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues

by John Holway

  Frankie Salas and another white fellow named Tapley out of Chicago, and another one named Culley were our friends. Sunday afternoons there’d be carnivals in town, and we’d all go out and we’d drink and go to these good-time houses. Well, we traveled around together so we knew each other and understood each other. We might have some misunderstanding during the ball game, but after the ball game, that was all over with and we were going out together. We stayed at the same hotels most of the time in Canada, so we got to be pretty close with one another, and it made things pretty good. A fellow who didn’t want to associate with you, why, we didn’t bother with him. Eventually he’d understand and we’d get talking. Used to play pool in the pool halls, used to fill up the pool halls with nothing but ballplayers.

  Babe Didrikson pitched for them one year. We played against her. She was fair as a pitcher—pretty good as a pitcher—the only thing was, you couldn’t treat her like a regular pitcher. Nobody would bunt on her, because she couldn’t field bunts. And if somebody hit a line drive through the box, it would kill her. You just tried to place your ball away from hitting it directly at her. She had a curve ball and a fast ball, and I know players she’d strike out. That’s right. But they’d only pitch her two or three innings and then take her out of there, because you had some mean and nasty ballplayers. If you struck them out once, next time they went up there, they’d cut like they were cutting for the fence. Well, they might hit a line drive and break the woman’s nose or break her leg or something. But she was more novelty than anything, just a drawing card. People came out to see her pitch, and you made it look good for her. Maybe the first two innings she’d get fellows out, then in the third inning you’d run in one run on her, just one run. Then the papers would say she held the great Monarchs team to one run, the other towns would read it and come out to see her pitch. That’s the way we’d do it all up through Canada, Minnesota, the Dakotas and out west as far as Wyoming and Montana. We played every day, sometimes every night.

  Grover Cleveland Alexander also traveled with them one year and drew money. A lot of the Canadian people had never seen him. Satchel was with us, and he and Satchel would pitch against one another, about three innings apiece. It was just a thrill to see that duel, any way it went. Satchel was in his prime as a pitcher then, and Alexander could still throw hard, and the thing about it was, he knew how to pitch. He didn’t wear whiskers, he was the only one that didn’t—in fact, he said he couldn’t grow any. You know, he used to be a pretty mean fellow. But he turned out to be an awfully nice guy in his late years.

  A lot of players like Alexander learned that there were as good Negro ballplayers as there were white ballplayers. When they began to play in the winter leagues together they found out, hell, this is a sport for everybody, and we had good friends during those times before integration came in. We had Paul and Dizzy Dean, the Waner brothers, the DiMaggio brothers, Bob Feller, Pepper Martin, Lon Warneke, Mike Ryba. Mike Ryba used to manage a Cardinals’ farm team down in Springfield, Missouri, and every time we ran across him it was just like meeting a brother or something, he was right along with the gang, whatever they did.

  It was quite an experience to show a fellow man how to accept a friend regardless of what color he is. I learned that way back before integration. A man is a man. If you treat him right, you can bet your life eight out of ten times you’ll get that same kind of treatment back.

  Dizzy Dean was just a prince of a guy. He was a real fellow. Paul wasn’t a very good mixer, but Dizzy was an everyday guy. My hits against Dizzy were pretty scarce, because he had everything—he was a pitcher. What year was it that he and Paul beat the Tigers in the Series? ‘Thirty-four? They flew that next night to Oklahoma City and we played them. Wilkinson got up some of the white semipro ballplayers in that town to play for Dizzy and Paul against the Monarchs. We toured with them clear down to Dallas, Texas. I disremember how all the games came out. We beat ’em in Oklahoma City 4–2. We had so many people the grandstand wouldn’t hold them. The ball game quit in the fifth inning—had to, people were all out in the outfield, and every inning they would press closer to try to see Dizzy. We had to stop the ball game, but the people were satisfied, they got to see Dizzy and Paul pitch. And we made $1,200 a man.

  Bob Feller beat us in 1936 before he went to Cleveland, right up there in Iowa—Des Moines, I think. He beat us 3–0 that night. He could throw hard, the young man could throw hard, and the lights were kind of dim anyway, and he was setting us down one right after the other.

  The winter of 1935 we made a trip to Japan, China and the Philippines. What a wonderful trip! We got $3,000 apiece before we left, and 40 percent of every game we played. That was split twelve ways, because we only had twelve ballplayers.

  We left San Francisco and stayed about ten months in the Philippines, playing Philippine teams and Army teams. We were all in a league together. And we went up to sugar plantations and played clubs up there too.

  After we left there we played a Chinese team over in Shanghai. Sure, they had a baseball league over there, mixed Chinese and Hawaiians, pretty well educated people. But most of those fellows were pretty small. We stayed there around a month. There were so many people, thousands of them right there in Hong Kong Bay in boats. Our boat would collect all the food left on our table, and they’d take it and spread it out on their boats and get enough out of it to make some kind of a meal. They didn’t have any place to go, there was too many of them, so they lived on those boats. They’d fish from them, but they couldn’t do much fishing; they just looked like automobiles in a parking lot, they were so crowded. I’m not saying there weren’t decent people in China, because there are, but there was such a big mass of them it was hard for all of them to make any living. When a big boat came in, those fellows would get twenty cents a day to paint the boat. That shows how cheap wages were. It was quite amazing that something like that could ever exist. People talk about it—but when you see it, then you know it really happens.

  Japan was different. The majority of them seemed to be decent, respectable, and they really had ball teams. They had some ballplayers. Sessue Hayakawa, the movie star, and a Japanese girl who was a star for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—I can’t remember her name now—opened a movie studio in Japan and sponsored one of the best ball clubs over there. Japan was a fine country, full of fine people.

  In Hawaii they had teams made up of all nationalities—Hawaiians, Japanese, two or three Negroes and quite a few Koreans. A man named Yamashiro, a superintendent down at Dole Pineapple Company, offered Rogan and me a salary and the only thing we’d have to do was check crates of pineapples and play ball two days a week, Saturdays and Sundays. At the end of the ball season, the team split all the money. The factory just furnished us the suits and the name. But we decided to come on back home and play.

  Satchel came to play with us in ’38, but his big career was through. His arm was sore. He had gone to Santo Domingo and pitched all winter, and that really hurts pitchers. When he came back his arm was real sore. He couldn’t wipe the back of his neck. That’s when the Monarchs took him.

  The Monarchs had a second team then, and Wilkinson, our owner, sent Newt Joseph with Satchel out to the Northwest with the second team. Newt Joseph taught him how to throw a curve ball, and control. When he came back the second team played us out in Kansas City, Kansas, and Satchel pitched and wore us out. And he went on from there. But he was almost gone at one time—out of baseball. He was almost gone when he came to the Monarchs. He started pitching around three or four innings. Then he pitched every day, every ball game almost, and the people started coming back to see him.

  You know who Satchel reminds you of when you talk with him? Remember the comedian Stepinfetchit? He talks and sounds just like him. And he can sing and dance. Oh, he’s got a wonderful voice for singing, and he can dance. And he’s a solid comedian, he’s another Bob Hope. He can think of more funny things to say and tell you and keep you laughing all the time. Quite a character. All
the ballplayers were crazy about him, because he was a showman, he was really a showman. It’s not the things that he did, it’s the things that he said. He was a kidder, a great kidder. He used to make some of those ballplayers so mad that they’d want to shoot him. He can really rib a fellow. And if he knew that he was getting under your skin, he’d really have your skin rolling up.

  He liked to hunt. If he’s got one gun, he’s got a hundred, all kinds of guns. But he couldn’t hit that vase right there. Can’t shoot a lick, and he’s always shooting.

  The Monarchs developed several players who starred in the majors, especially of course Jackie Robinson. Jackie was smart, he was an awful smart ballplayer. He didn’t have the ability at first, but he had the brains. We had a ballplayer here that was a much better ballplayer than he was—Willard Brown. He could hit, run, throw. But Jackie had one-third ability and two-thirds brains, and that made him a great ballplayer.

  Same way with the catcher on Baltimore, Campanella. Campanella was a second-string catcher, but he had more sense than Eggie Clark, the first-string catcher. In those days there was always a clique on a ball club. Clark was in the clique, and Campanella was young. Clark would do all the catching in the big ball games, Campanella would catch the second game or catch the exhibition games. But Campanella got more out of baseball than Clark did, because he was a smarter catcher.

  Larry Doby never developed into an outfielder until he went to Cleveland. At Newark he was a second baseman, one of those good-hitting second basemen. He was a fair double play man, but his weight and his size kept him from being loose like he could be in the outfield. See, there’s nine innings of busy baseball in the infield, and that would kind of slow him down. If they’d catch a second baseman leaning this way, heck, they’d hit the ball over here and you can’t get back to it. We had pretty smart hitters in those days. Cleveland put him out there in the outfield and my goodness, the man just didn’t look back in baseball. He went on to the top. You get to be relaxed in the outfield.

  I have two sons. My oldest boy’s a preacher here in Kansas City. My younger boy is in Europe in the Army; he’s making a career out of it.

  I’m a foreman in the county courthouse now. I went into politics, and through that I got a pretty good job. I’m a Democrat, so if we win in November I’ll have a good job for four more years. Satchel Paige ran for assemblyman here in 1968. They put him on the ticket as a “runner.” That’s to keep somebody else from running. When the voting starts, why he’ll drop out. A candidate will give two men $25 and tell them to go down and file for his office. That way other candidates will say, “What’s the use of me running? There’s already three of them in the race. I can’t win a four-way race, I wouldn’t have a chance.” But just before the election, the other two will drop out. Politics is dirty, it’s a dirty game. You talk to anybody, it’s dirty game. They’ll cut one another’s throat to win. I don’t mean crookedness, I don’t say that’s crooked.

  I’ll talk baseball with anyone, like a little boy out there on the street. A lot of times the kids ask me, “Mr. Newt, when you were with the Monarchs, how about so-and-so and so-and-so?” Now I’ve got me a conversation going.

  And all the old ballplayers have a get-together every year. One time in this neck of the woods, all the way down to Oklahoma City, we had some awfully good semipro ball clubs. Had some good semipro ball clubs. A lot of those fellows went to the Western League or the American Association. Some white players had a reunion over in Eagles Hall in Kansas City, Kansas, and one guy, Whitey Harrison, ran across me at the county courthouse and said, “We’ve been trying to get in touch with some of you fellows, you and Frank Duncan.” He called me up later and told us to come out to the reunion. We all went over, and the last five years we’ve had a reunion every year, all the ballplayers, white and colored. They come from Kansas, from Oklahoma. One guy even comes down from Chicago, two or three fellows from St. Louis, and we have an all-day get-together. Some of them are old men, but they come out for that occasion. We have all the way from 150 to 200 old-timers. When you arrive at the door, they put a name tag on your jacket, and you’ll see them wandering around looking at each other’s tags. “Who are you?” “What about so-and-so?” “Oh, he’s passed.” “You remember about such-and-such a game . . . you remember that?” “Don’t you remember when I did this or we did that?”

  My, it’s a wonderful get-together. We got a pretty good write-up about it in the papers too. You talk about hearing some baseball—everybody’s talking, and among the habitual drinkers, that’s when the truth comes out and there are some tall tales told. One guy says that’s the only time he ever hits .300, when he remembers the old days at those parties. Some of them are retired, and a lot of them don’t have too many people to talk baseball to. When they get together with some people that they knew, that they played ball with, why my goodness, they don’t know when to go home. You sit there and talk and go from this fellow to that fellow and go over the things we used to do and what’s happened since we met one another last time. We get quite a kick out of it. A wonderful time.

  Cool Papa Bell is admitted to the Hall of Fame with Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and umpire Jocko Conlan. (Photo, National Baseball Library.)

  Chapter 7

  COOL PAPA BELL

  “Cool Papa Bell?” Satchel Paige’s brown eyes dance and his mustache twitches with suppressed mirth. “That man was so fast he could turn out the light and jump in bed before the room got dark.”

  Bell once roomed with Paige, and while the pitcher was out galavanting, Cool Papa discovered that the light switch was defective; there was a delay of a few seconds before the lights went out. When Satch came back, Bell instructed him, “Sit down, I want to show you something.” He flicked the switch, strolled over to bed, and pulled the covers up. Bing! The lights went out. “See, Satchel,” he said, “You been tellin’ people that story ’bout me for years, and even you didn’t know it was true.”

  Like Satchel, everyone who saw Cool Papa agrees that he was probably the fastest man ever to play baseball. Faster than Ty Cobb, faster than Lou Brock—yes, probably faster even than Jesse Owens. No one will ever know how many bases Bell stole in his career, which stretched from 1922 to 1948 and covered just about the last twenty-seven years of baseball’s long apartheid era. His feats are almost legends. But ex-pitcher Harry Salmon (who taught Paige to pitch in Birmingham in 1927) insists that Bell once stole two bases on the same pitch.

  Bell often scored from first on a sacrifice. But perhaps his most famous feat was scoring from second on a ground ball to win the 1934 East-West (all-star) game 1–0.

  In Cuba he slugged three home runs in one game against Johnny Allen, who was then on his way to the major leagues. According to Salmon, Bell chided John, “I hear you’re going up to the Yankees.” “Yes,” Allen replied, “I have a chance to go.” “Well,” said Cool Papa, “I think I’ll just hold you back a couple of years.”

  How would Cool Papa have hit in the major leagues? Over a twenty-one-year period he had ample chance to hit big-league pitching in post-season exhibitions. In 54 games against men like Bob Feller, Bucky Walters, Buck Newsom and Bob Lemon, he hit a rousing .391. Stolen base statistics were kept in only thirty-five of the games; in those thirty-five games Bell stole fifteen sacks, about one every other game.

  Thus while white fans remained ignorant, white players did not. “The smoothest center fielder I’ve seen,” said Paul Waner. Bill Veeck ranks Cool Papa right alongside Tris Speaker, Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays. And Jackie Robinson selected Bell on his all-time all-star outfield, right between Mays and Hank Aaron.

  Bell still looked as if he could play an inning or two when I met him in 1970 in his small duplex apartment in the St. Louis ghetto. While his wife entertained my sons with ice cream and cookies, Bell bounced nervously around the living room, explaining in his squeaky voice how he took his lead off first and got a jump on the pitcher almost half a century before.

  Cool Papa B
ell Speaks . . .

  I’ve scored from first base on singles lots of times. Sometimes I could even score on a bunt. The last time I did that was against Bob Lemon’s all-stars when I was forty-five years old. I was playing winter ball in California in 1948. Satchel Paige picked me as a reserve outfielder on his team. I had about quit playing ball, but Satchel wanted someone out there with experience. Some of those young boys just coming up, they would seem like they had a fear of those major leaguers. They’d say, “I’m not as good as the major leaguers, I don’t know whether I can hit them or not.”

  Satchel said, “When I pitch, I want Bell to play.”

  I said, “Satchel, I’m not in condition, I’m just halfway in condition. I’ve been managing this farm team and I don’t play every day.” I could hit the ball, catch it, but by not being in condition, I said, “Don’t let me lead off. I don’t want to be coming to bat too often, get on base often.”

  Satchel said, “Oh, you’ll be in condition. I’ve told all the guys what you can do and they don’t believe it. And I told them you’re older than me and they don’t believe that!” I said, “I don’t want to lead off, I’m not in condition.” He said, “I’ll pitch five innings, you play five innings, then you can come out.”

  So this time I was hitting eighth and I got on base, and Satchel came up and sacrificed me to second. Well, Bob Lemon came off the mound to field it and I saw that third base was open, because the third baseman had also charged in to field it. Roy Partee, the catcher, saw me going to third, so he went down the line to cover third and I just came on home past him. Partee called “Time, time!” But the umpire said, “I can’t call time, the ball’s still in play,” so I scored.