Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues

by John Holway

  Satchel Paige says I would have made Jesse Owens look like he was walking. Jesse Owens ran 100 yards in nine-something, and I could circle the bases—120 yards, plus—in twelve flat. So, comparing his time and mine, they said I was faster than Owens.

  Jesse Owens went to spring training with us one year to draw people. They wouldn’t let me run him. But he did run against horses and some ballplayers. I saw him run in San Antonio. He’d put a fellow at home, one at first, one at second and one at third. He’d circle all the bases and each guy would run one base against him, but by the time each of them got started, Jesse had built up his speed and passed them. On flat races, Jesse Owens was giving the guys fifteen yards head start. We had a guy named Speed Whatley, and Jesse Owens gave him fifteen yards in a 100-yard race; Whatley gained on him, and when he got to the finish line, Jesse Owens had just run sixty or seventy yards.

  He’d run against these horses at sixty yards. He beat all the horses but one, because some of those horses were slow starters. But then they put a quarter horse in against him. I saw one of them on television the other night; he could start and stop and turn faster than the cows can. Anyway, this quarter horse got a good start on Jesse and passed him, and the people booed. That’s why they wouldn’t let me run. My manager said, “He can’t beat you and I know you won’t let Jesse Owens beat you, so I won’t let you run.”

  I remember once Jesse Owens ran against George Case of the Washington Senators. They were going to run the 100-yard dash and Jesse Owens was going to run in his track shoes. But they said no, you have to put on baseball shoes. Jesse still beat Case.

  They wanted us to run once in Cleveland, and he saw me running bases and came out on the field and praised my running and said, “I don’t want to run today. I didn’t bring my track shoes.”

  I don’t know if Maury Wills ever saw me play or not. I was playing with the Washington Homestead Grays when he was a kid in Washington. I only met Wills once, here in St. Louis the year he broke Ty Cobb’s record. I said, “I have noticed that you’re running bases and some guy fouls the pitch off.” I knew Junior Gilliam was a team man, Gilliam would probably take a strike in order to give him a chance to steal. I said, “Do you have anyone else behind Gilliam who can do that?” He said no. I said, “I’m going to tell you when I was running bases, I had about three guys behind me, and I had a signal when I was going to steal a base, on the first pitch or the second pitch. So if I’m going to steal a base, they had a chance to help me, they wouldn’t hit that ball.” I said, “If you had cooperation, you could steal more bases. Tell them to get back in the box, and hold the bat back. You don’t have to swing as long as you hold that bat back here. If you’re back here in the box, you give the catcher less room to throw. That gives you a couple of steps. And then if you don’t get a good lead, he can swing at the ball.”

  He said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  I said, “Well, that’s the kind of ball we played.” You don’t have those kinds of players today. These players today, they don’t think of things like that. When we came up we played different baseball than they do in the major leagues. We played “tricky” baseball.

  Cool Papa Bell

  I would be alert on the bases. A lot of fellows could do the same things I did if they were alert. A guy drops the ball and then they run. I was always looking for a break. It wasn’t that I was that much faster than the other guys, it was just the way I played. They said, “You’re faster than those guys.” I said, “I don’t know, they’re just slow in thinking.”

  The best year I ever had on the bases was 1933. I stole 175 in about 180 or 200 ball games.

  They once timed me circling the bases in twelve seconds flat. One guy said, “If you can do it in twelve, you can do it in eleven.” So he had a field day, and I was supposed to run against Tuck Stainback, who played center field for the Yankees. The major league record was : 13.3 by a guy named Swanson with Cincinnati. We were going to try to break it. Well, it rained and it was muddy and Stainback wouldn’t run. He said he had a cold. But the fans kept hollering, so I ran alone in :13.1 on a wet ground.

  Back then Fats Jenkins of the Lincolns was supposed to be the fastest guy out East. A white fellow had seen Fats Jenkins run, but when he saw me, he said I was the fastest man he’d ever seen. He asked me, “Bell, do you want to make some money? I can take you overseas running on tracks and nobody would beat you running.” But I never did. I don’t know how I would have done.

  I scored from first base on singles lots of times. If the ball isn’t hit straight at the outfielder, I’d score. You have to be heads up and watch those things.

  I was born in Starkville, Mississippi, in 1903. My father was a farmer. He raised cotton, corn. He lived good. He wasn’t a rich man, but he lived well. My grandfather was a farmer too. He was three-quarters Indian. My great-grandfather was a full-blooded Indian. I don’t know what tribe—those tall, rawboned Indians with high cheekbones. He owned three trotting horses, but he couldn’t put a horse on the racetrack. He had to let some white fellow do it. He never got credit for it.

  When they changed the Oklahoma Territory over to a state, we had an uncle told my mother and her daddy to come down, that they could get so much land for themselves because they had the blood of Indians. He got some land in Oklahoma, but they didn’t go down there.

  See, my mother had about two acres of land and a house in Mississippi. My grandfather wasn’t married to my mother’s mother, but he reared my mother. She was with him before he had any land at all, she helped him work to get this land. When my grandfather died, he had some “outside” sons, but he had just one son from his wife.

  They went to divide the land, and his son wanted all the land himself. They brought it to court, and the white people said, “Now she [my mother] was here before any of the others, she has to have a child’s part.” But she said, “I don’t want to go into court. I’ll ask my children about it.” I was young then and let my older brother and sister decide. They said, “If you don’t want it, don’t go to court.” All she had to say was, “Yes, I want my part,” and she wouldn’t have had to go to court. But she said, “Oh, forget about it.” It was divided between the wife and the son, and we didn’t get any at all.

  See, they didn’t know much back in those days. Some Negroes had just come from out of slavery and didn’t know too much. You can’t hardly fault them in a way for not knowing these things. That’s why the Negro is so far behind on some things.

  I started playing baseball when I was seventeen when I came to St. Louis in 1920. I played with my four brothers, who were playing with the Compton Hill Cubs in the old city league.

  I used to throw the knuckle ball. If I got two strikes on you, I could throw my knuckle ball and it would just do this—dart down. I bet you I could strike anybody out with that knuckle ball. My brother couldn’t catch me. But you know who could catch me with that knuckle ball? My sister.

  My brother was a good pitcher, but he didn’t play long. A great arm, could throw hard. For distance I don’t know anyone who could throw farther. In 1923 he didn’t lose a ball game; he won all his games and tied one. Then he went to Harrisburg with Oscar Charleston. Later he went to Detroit and they didn’t pay him, so he quit playing ball.

  My oldest brother was the best player of us at that time. He was a left-handed outfielder and catcher—could hit, run, do everything. He worked out with the St. Louis Stars, but he broke the stitches in his arm and the doctor told him not to go back. At that time, 1922, I was ready to quit baseball. I was making $35 or $40 a week at the packing house and $20 on Sunday to play ball. It was more than I could make playing ball full time, and I figured it was time to get a steady job. But the East St. Louis Cubs needed a pitcher to throw against the Stars, and they asked me to come out for just one game.

  Bill Drake was pitching. My other brother, named L.Q., said Drake was the trickiest pitcher they had on the team. But he didn’t throw hard. He would move the men back and fo
rth and throw something slow. I said, “I know I can hit a home run off him”—I could hit. But I didn’t hit him. I would hit the balls on my wrist, and I said, “This is a pitcher I thought I could hit.” My brother always told me what a smart pitcher Drake was, but he didn’t throw all that hard all the time. But he would trick you, you know. Finally, somebody else was pitching, and I hit the right field fence. That was my first hit. I was hitting the ball pretty good, but they were catching it. They beat me 8–1, but I struck out eight men. Anyway, the Stars made me such a good offer I decided to stick with baseball.

  The Stars had a good team. Sam Bennett used to catch, play outfield, shortstop, any position. He had a great arm. Sam Bennett told me he gave Tris Speaker pointers in the outfield. They were both from Texas. They had a white team and a black team. The white team would go out there and work out, then the colored team would go out. When the ball was hit, Bennett would turn his back, then turn around and catch it. Tris Speaker would get with Bennett and ask him, “Would you mind showing me how you play outfield?” So Bennett told him everything he knew, and Tris Speaker had the ability to be one of the greatest outfielders there was.

  For pitchers we had Deacon John Meyers, John Finner, Jimmy Oldham, Drake and Steel Arm Dickey. Dickey was a left-hander; he could throw hard. He was killed the next year. Someone stabbed him that winter and killed him. See, he was making whiskey for a guy, and the guy figured Steel Arm wasn’t turning all the money in.

  All those players were major-league players.

  When I first joined the team, our manager, Bill Gatewood, didn’t want to pitch me. The catcher said he didn’t want to catch my knuckle ball. I was just a young pitcher they brought up. Gatewood told me, “Now I want you to watch everything that those pitchers do, because we’ve got pitchers who know how to pitch.” In our league they threw the spitter, the screwball, emery ball, shine ball—that means Vaseline ball; there was so much Vaseline on it, it made you blink your eyes on a sunny day. Then they threw the mud ball—the mud on its seams made it sink. The emery ball would break either up or down, but if a sidearmer threw it and didn’t know what he was doing, it could sail right into the hitter. Ray Chapman [of the Cleveland Indians] got killed with an emery ball, that’s why they don’t throw it anymore. It was a dangerous pitch.

  After I got with the Stars, we went on the road for a month, and Gatewood said, “I might pitch you and I might not.”

  Indianapolis was the first place we went. They really had a team. They had Biz Mackey, the best catcher ever was; first baseman was Ben Taylor; Connie Day at second; Blackman at third. In the outfield was Crush Holloway and Oscar Charleston. Well, Indianapolis beat us the first three ball games, so late in the third game Gatewood said, “Well, I’m going to try you against those guys. We’re already beat anyway, you might get some experience.” He thought I’d be afraid of crowds, but I said, “Don’t worry about it, I’ve played before crowds on the sandlots”—we used to draw 10,000 or 11,000 people, more than the professional team drew. They said, “Oh that guy, he’s taking it cool, isn’t he?”

  I had a good curve ball. And I had a knuckle ball—that was my best pitch, but he wouldn’t let me throw my knuckle ball because our catcher had got hit on the finger. But I started striking out Ben Taylor and those guys—Charleston just threw his bat away. With my curve ball! I could throw sidearm, three-quarters or straight over. And I had a screw ball—I didn’t know what it was; I called it an “in-drop.” Ben Taylor started rubbing his eyes: “Something wrong with my eyes!” Gatewood said, “Well, you never seen a curve like that before.”

  I wasn’t afraid. See, we all dressed in the same clubhouse with Charleston and those guys. They’d say, “Where’d you get this new boy from?” They would push me out from under the shower, spit on me, step on me. They used to do that, see, just to try to get your goat. Well, I never did pay them any attention.

  So we went to Fort Wayne, a little old semipro team out there. Gatewood said, “Well, I’m going to let you pitch, get a little more experience.”

  We had these guys shut out at Fort Wayne. In the last of the ninth inning the outfield came in, said, “He’s going to strike out everybody anyway.” I didn’t strike everybody out in the whole ball game, but I was striking out so many, the outfield came on in. So I struck out the next two men. The third man hit a little pop fly and nobody went to get it, so he went on around and made a home run off it. I struck out the next man. Only one man hit the ball.

  Gatewood said, “Well, you’re doing so well, we’re going to Chicago, I think I’m going to pitch you against Chicago.” We got to Chicago on a Saturday and he pitched Meyers, our ace pitcher. They beat Meyers, and Sunday they beat John Finner. So he said, “Well, I’m going to pitch you tomorrow,” and I beat them 6–3. They had Jimmy Lyons, could drag the ball down the first base line; I’d get the ball and touch him out. He’d look around: “Now who touched me out?” They’d say, “The pitcher.” See, they had the infield built up with high ridges on the foul line, so the ball would roll fair when they bunted it. But I stopped them from bunting. Every time they’d bunt, I’d throw them out, and beat them 6–3.

  Jimmy Lyons was supposed to be the fastest man in the league. Charleston was fast too, but Jimmy Lyons was supposed to be the fastest man in the league. Rube Foster [the Chicago manager] wanted us to race. So we went out and raced, and I beat Jimmy Lyons. Maybe 75 or 100 yards, something like that. I just ran off from Jimmy Lyons. That’s when I got my reputation as a fast runner.

  You know that outfield in Chicago was soft, just like a carpet. I used to play in way close the way I saw Charleston play, and those hitters like Cristobel Torrienti would hit that ball way out there. I’d run and run and take that ball over my head. Rube liked that. He kept trying to get me on his team.

  I was pitching against him once and the score was tied—I think it was 2–2 or 1–1, something like that. I had two strikes on me and I laid this bunt down. Frog Redus was on third base, and he scored and we beat ‘em. Rube Foster kept those guys out there until nine o’clock that night talking about a ballplayer thinking. He said, “Look at this young guy, just coming into baseball, doing this.”

  So Rube Foster wanted me on his team. He said, “If I had you with Jimmy Lyons and all, I would have one of the best teams”—he already had one of the best teams. He offered seven men for me, but they wouldn’t trade me. And the Kansas City Monarchs tried to get me too. But St. Louis wouldn’t let me go.

  We left there and went to Detroit. We would charter a Pullman then, and I was back there asleep, and those guys came in there with a newspaper about this new pitcher, this young pitcher, going to open up the game in Detroit. They said, “Wake up, wake up. Lookee here, you’re on this train sleeping and this headline says you’re going to pitch in Detroit.” I didn’t pay it much attention.

  I guess that had something to do with my name, “Cool.” They said, “He’s so cool he don’t get excited.” They started calling me Cool Bell, but Gatewood said, “We’ve got to add something to it. We’ll call him Cool Papa.”

  We got into Detroit on a Saturday. I opened up the game, beat a guy name of Jack Marshall 5–4. I hit a home run off him. I could hit them.

  I hit quite a few home runs. When I first came into baseball, I could hit that ball a long ways. I would hit twelve or fifteen home runs a year. One year I hit twenty-one. A lot of them wouldn’t be over the fence, they’d be between the fielders. When I was pitching, they would say, “They think he’s just another pitcher, but they ain’t going to strike him out. Watch how far he’s going to hit this ball.” I was a right-handed hitter; I hit the ball to the opposite field too, I hit it down the right field line.

  The first time I saw big leaguers was when we played the Detroit Tigers in 1922. I didn’t play, I was nineteen then. Cobb and Heilmann wouldn’t play us. Cobb had played a Negro team in Cuba in 1910 and got beat and said he’d never play against us again. But Howard Ehmke pitched. We beat them two out of three
. After that Judge Landis, the commissioner, wouldn’t let them play a Negro team under their team names. They had to call themselves all-stars. Then if they got beat, we couldn’t say we beat a big-league team. Sometimes they’d play under an assumed name. Landis saw some of them out there and stopped them from playing under an assumed name.

  I went to California that winter on the pitching staff to play in the winter league. We got rooms at a little hotel down by the station—a big room, had two beds. My brother Fred Bell and I slept in one. Turkey Stearnes slept in the other. He was from Knoxville, Tennessee, hit thirty-five home runs the first year he was with the Detroit Stars. He went to Cuba and they needed an outfielder, so they put me out there. I played left field. One Saturday we were playing in Pasadena and a lot of balls were hit over the center fielder’s head. I’d run over behind him and catch them. So from then on I played center field. I wasn’t a pitcher anymore.

  When Gatewood saw how I could run and throw, he made me an outfielder and made me change over to the left side of the plate. He said, “If you would hit the ball slow to the infield, make the third baseman or shortstop move over, you’d beat it out.” At first it was a little tough on me, but they couldn’t throw me out. Joe Hewitt taught me that. Joe Hewitt, Jimmy Lyons, Sam Bennett, and Jelly Gardner taught me a lot about how to hit to the infield. After those guys saw I was interested in playing ball and was trying, and I had the ability to do these things, they helped me out. I got to the point where—nobody’s perfect, but they said I could do it better than the one who taught me.