Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues

by John Holway

  Page’s life ended violently. He was bludgeoned to death in 1984 at the age of 78, by a handy man in an argument over pay.

  Ted Page Speaks . . .

  Monte Irvin says the greatest team he ever saw in Negro ball was the 1934 Pittsburgh Crawfords. I’m delighted to say that I was a member of that team. And another great team, which is declared the greatest that was ever put together, was the 1931 Homestead Grays, and I’m delighted to say I was a member of that team. This is a picture of Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige on the Crawfords. And this is the Grays of 1931. According to our owner, Cum Posey, according to our records, that year we won 136 ball games and lost something like 17. And I’m glad to say that this picture is going into the new Sports Hall of Fame at Three Rivers Stadium.

  Right on those two teams you could have picked out maybe half of them who could have been major league stars. During those years we had some good outstanding ballplayers besides Paige and Gibson. We had, just on those two teams, Oscar Charleston, Smoky Joe Williams, Jud Wilson, Cool Papa Bell, Judy Johnson, Double Duty Radcliffe, Jake Stephens, George Scales, Vic Harris, Jimmy Crutchfield, Bobby Williams, Rev Cannady, Bill Perkins, George Britt and a lot of other fellows. There are a lot of them on there that deserve a place in Cooperstown. Fine men, they deserve a spot.

  Now to me, Satchel wasn’t the best right-handed pitcher we had, because I killed him. Satchel told me, “I’m the worst pitcher in the world when you come up to the plate.” Why did I hit Satchel so easily? I don’t know. You had some ballplayers I couldn’t hit with a paddle or a broom. One was Leroy Matlock. I couldn’t hit him with anything; maybe it was psychological. But Satchel had nothing but a fast ball. Now why did I have to look for anything else but a fast ball? He didn’t have a curve or a change-up. And it was always our contention that you cannot throw the ball by a hitter. You know, you can get one by, but you’re not going to keep getting them all by. So I had no problem hitting Satchel. And I’d bunt Satchel too. We used to bunt one down the third base line, bunt the next one down first, make Satchel cover, keep him running. I knew I could beat Satchel covering the bag.

  These youngsters today are of the opinion that Satchel never lost a game in the Negro leagues. They’ve got this in the back of their heads: He won all his ball games. Ric Roberts [the sportswriter] has the clippings of the first game we played in Greenlee Field in Pittsburgh in 1932. That was over forty years ago. We beat Satchel 1–0.7 And the Crawfords had a good team-Oscar Charleston, Josh Gibson, Bill Perkins and those. One of the reasons I want that clipping is that I’d like to look at the score that shows I got two hits off Satchel and scored the winning run. I’ve always wanted to have this hanging on the wall somewhere.

  I went down to Pittsburgh with the New York Black Yankees—George Scales, Clint Thomas, Fats Jenkins, Bill Riggins. Jess Hubbard pitched a heck of a ball game against Satchel.

  It was the dedication of Greenlee Field, and the ball park was jammed. Satchel Paige was pitching; Satchel was the Attraction. Satchel gave up only five hits, and Jess gave up only three. He pitched a masterpiece. We only got five hits, and I got two of them. We beat him in the eighth inning. I got a bunt single at some point, early. Died.

  The next time I got a single through the box on Satchel. This was the eighth inning, getting awful late. So now I got to get to second base. Can’t score from first, because we ain’t gonna hit the ball that far, that often. So we had to figure, “How am I gonna get to second base?” Josh Gibson was catching. Now Josh could throw. I’m not going to steal on Josh, I’m going to steal on Satchel. Tubby [Scales] says, “Now Ted, when you get on, watch Satchel. He just raises up his leg and pitches.” And I stole on Satchel.

  I think Pistol—John Henry Russell—was playing second base, and I had a reputation: “Don’t get in front of him, because he might spike you.” So Russell let the ball get through him. It didn’t go any further than from here to that door. Well, you know, we didn’t just slide in there and when you get through you’re all sprawled out with your hands above your head. We slid like this —back on your feet in a second. Shoot, I was gone! Third base. They tried to get the ball to third base, to Harry Williams. I was going straight at Harry, looking right at him. You know where Harry went? He caught the ball, but he didn’t even try to tag me.

  Clint Thomas was up next. When Satchel threw that fast ball, Clint just tapped it right over the top of Chester Williams’ head at shortstop. The only run we got.

  So you got to study and find a way: How’m I gonna get home? First I’m going to get on base. You got to get on base before you can get home. Now you’re on base, how you going to get where somebody can single you in? But they don’t do that now.

  I was interviewed a while ago by KDKA, the local Pittsburgh station, and one of the questions the interviewer asked me was, was I bitter because I didn’t have a chance to play in the big league? I’m certainly not bitter. But one of the things that I regret very much today is that I passed up a scholarship to Ohio State University. A football scholarship—I played halfback down in Youngstown. I would have had a scholarship, along with three other fellows. One of them was a white boy who grew up in my section of town, and the name should be familiar because he was an All-American end for Pitt—Joe Donches. He’s a doctor in Gary, Indiana, today.

  Ted Page

  I was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, in 1903 and moved to Youngstown, Ohio, when I was just about nine. I grew up there in a neighborhood with Slavs, Polish, Italian kids. This wasn’t the rich part of town, it was where the steel mill workers lived. My dad worked in the mill. My family was the only colored family. My playmates and kids that I made mud pies with were Polish kids, Italian kids. When I got around ten or eleven years old, I started to notice. I knew I was colored, but I didn’t know yet that there were some things you weren’t supposed to do.

  We had a clubhouse, played basketball there. We called it the Booker T. Washington Settlement. Today on the same site is the YMCA. We had a little clubhouse there, used to come from “Monkey’s Nest,” my neighborhood. They put us in there to keep us out of trouble. Then we started a football team of kids thirteen to fourteen years old. We had three or four white boys on the team. We became pretty good—very good. Not only we didn’t lose a ball game, but nobody scored on us from 1919 to 1921.

  The man who put us all together was a black man. He’s an attorney now for a steel company. He had gone to school, played tackle, went to college. He started to develop these kids about 1914: Sam Robertson. And we had one fantastic football team.

  Robertson used to say, “Brute strength isn’t it. It’s science.” I was only 140 pounds, I played halfback. He’d say, “How do you get around the defensive tackle? You don’t have to run over him, you can fake him out. Plan your move just before you get to him. You know what you’re going to do, but he doesn’t. Don’t try to outrun the man. Outsmart him. All the advantage is with you when you’re running open field.”

  Someone from Ohio State University contacted us; they wanted Joe Donches and myself. Donches had just completed his last year of high school. I was two years younger. I would have had to go to summer school and high school and then back to summer school in order to accept the scholarship. In the summer we went swimming, played ball. All these things I would have had to give up. To me, it wasn’t important enough. My mother felt very bad. Sometimes I think this was the greatest mistake of my life.

  Anyway, when I didn’t go and finish high school, Joe didn’t accept the scholarship. I used to kid people from Pitt. I’d say, “I’m the reason Joe Donches went to Pitt instead of Ohio State.” Joe Donches was All-American end for Pitt in 1929. In 1929 I was very busy trying to make my name in baseball.

  My first team when I left high school was Toledo in the Negro American League. This was in 1923. Rube Foster had a team in Toledo that he was just building. They played in the Mudhens’ American Association park there. This is one of the reasons I didn’t want to take time out to go finish high school and
go to college. I had a contract to play in the Negro American League, and what would I need a college education for?

  I went to Toledo—and I didn’t make the team. You say, “Well, they’ll farm you out.” There was no such thing as being farmed out to a lower club. When you don’t make the team, you try to find a way to get home. Or you get a job in that town. In my case, I went to Buffalo at the end of that season, after I’d bounced around to Meadville, Youngstown and a few of the small towns. We were playing sandlot ball, barnstorming, and we got paid. If it didn’t rain, we’d get ten to fifteen dollars a game. If it rained, well, we’d just have to cross our fingers and pray that the next game we had coming up—it might be tomorrow, it might be three or four days from then—would be good weather. These were all twilight games, six o’clock. No such things as lights then. By dusk you’d have to call the game. In most cases our games were like seven innings. But we had some good ballplayers who played on just such teams.

  I finished the season with a team—I think they were called the Buffalo Giants—and they were under the managership of Home Run Johnson. You may never have come across him, but he played for the [Chicago] Leland Giants back in like 1910 and ’11. He was sixty years old, had been all over the world and was a famous ballplayer. Grant Johnson was a grand old man. He was sort of a rawboned fellow, dark complexion, not too big. And he loved to sing, had a beautiful baritone voice. In those days we weren’t riding in buses, we were riding in cars. Jimmy Reel was there—he could sing like Billy Eckstine, a beautiful voice. Johnson always wanted to get in the same car with Jimmy.

  Grant had a good ball team in Buffalo, because by him being a legend, players from all over came to play with him. And at that age he could still hit line drives. He used to say, “When you’re gonna hit the ball, you can’t hit it until it gets up to you. Don’t go out to meet it, it’s coming, it’s coming.” His philosophy was, if you reach out to hit the ball, you might swing at a bad ball, pop it up. And you don’t have to try to slug the ball, because if you meet the ball on time over the plate, it’s going to hop off your bat.

  Another thing I remember Grant saying: “Don’t ever take your eye off the ball.” Some players turn their head when they swing. They’re looking in right field. How you going to hit the ball and you’re looking in right field?

  I think any team in the major leagues who added a Negro coach, or manager, would be smart. We are wasting some of this good material that is just going to rot. Now Will Stargell and I are good friends, but Stargell is popping the ball up right now. I can tell you, “Man, you’re popping the ball up.” But heck, you know that better than anybody. But why are you popping the ball up? Stargell is turning his head just before he meets the ball, I don’t think he even sees the ball. Who am I to sit here and say something to Stargell? But I believe if they could have a slow-motion picture and let him look at that, he’d see it himself.

  Anyway, Grant Johnson was the cause of me getting started. This is how I got the recognition to play winter ball in Florida. Home Run Johnson sent me. We played in Palm Beach, Florida. We left in October or November, stayed all winter down there. There were two hotels that were rivals in baseball, the Breakers and the Poinciana. I played for the Breakers.

  Florida was the first time I had any chance to meet big-name ballplayers. I had never seen men like Bingo DeMoss and Bobby Williams and those guys.

  Down in Florida I got $30 a month, room and board, and your laundry and all. And then you hustled for the rest of your money. And you could make money! I came home one year, I remember, with $900, clear money—that I came home with. That’s three years’ salary right there! Of course, compared to these times, $900 would have been equivalent to seven or eight thousand.

  The next summer I went back to Buffalo and played with Home Run. The next winter I went back to Florida. That’s where I met Smoky Joe Williams for the first time. And Nip Winters. Nip had just set down the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro World Series. Nip and Joe were with Poinciana. Joe was a right-hander, Nip a left-hander. I was a left-hand hitter, but it didn’t mean a thing to me. I hit Nip just like I hit Joe. I mean, then I didn’t realize you were supposed to be weak on left-handers.

  And it was through my ability to hit Joe and Nip down in Florida that I got a letter from Jim Keenan of the New York Lincoln Giants and Cum Posey of the Homestead Grays, to come up here and play. But when I got a letter from a man named Andy Harris in Newark—“We’re building a team for the Negro National League”—that was the team for me. Because how was I going to play with the Homestead Grays with the guys they had? How was I going to play? So I went with a team they were just building. It may have been a mistake, I don’t know.

  So in 1926 I came up with Newark. It wasn’t the Eagles. It was another team that Colonel Ruppert, the owner of the Yankees, I think it was, was building. The team didn’t last too long, though. It folded in July, something like that. They weren’t drawing, and there was no money.

  So what do you do when there’s no money? You wind up standing on the corner of 135th Street, playing sandlot ball with somebody. Playing baseball was an easier life than carrying bricks or cleaning windows. There were no other jobs that we could get. It was very tough. Baseball was something I had to do, really, because I didn’t know how to do anything else.

  Around New York there were quite a number of teams. There were the Lincoln Giants, the Brooklyn Royal Giants and some semipro teams. Baseball was good around New York. You went out to play in Brooklyn, a twilight game, why, you could come back with 25 or 30 dollars. And this was a good week’s pay during those years, because bacon and eggs was twenty-five cents, including coffee and everything else.

  Chappie Johnson had baseball teams up around Schenectady, Utica, Saratoga, Albany—up in that section—and in 1928 he came to New York and got some ballplayers to take to Montreal. He swiped ballplayers off the Lincoln Giants, off the Brooklyn Royals, anywhere he could get them from, it didn’t matter. And we played in 1928 in Montreal.

  Dick Seay was on that ball club, the best defensive second baseman I have ever seen, and I’ve seen Bill Mazeroski. I played a lot of years with Dick Seay. I was his type: no cussin’, no drinkin’. Those other guys would get them a bottle of whiskey and they’d go out to the racetrack. Dick and I would get some ice cream, go back to the hotel, play pinochle.

  I guess I liked Chappie better than any manager I played under. Chappie could look at a ballplayer, watch him play, be around him a little while, and discover if he had ability. I give Chappie credit for bringing me into the position where I could hold a job as a ballplayer. Everyone has slumps. I could hit the ball, sure; I could hit the ball a long ways at times. But then there are some times when you get to the place where you can’t hit it, or it doesn’t go safe. Then what do you do? Somehow Chappie was a good con man. He could look in your pocket, and if you had a dollar, before you knew it, you were handing it to him. And you know, Chappie conned me. He conned me into realizing that I was very fast. Chappie would say, “If I was your age”—this is where he got to me, see?—“if I was your age and could run like you can, nobody would ever stop me from getting on base.” He taught me one thing for sure: If you’re not hitting the ball—and who can hit every time, consistently, without running into a slump?—there is another way to get on. Bunt and push the ball if you’re able to run. He taught me how to drag or push the ball, and I had a double offense, whether the ball was going down the third base line or the first base line.

  I used to just take my bat like this and “carry” the ball to first base with me. When I got ready, I’d drop it down. Wouldn’t drop it until I got two steps to first. By the time the ball hits the bat, they like to say, you’ve got two steps to first. I had five steps—I could be that far down the first base line. This is one of the things that Chappie taught me.

  I don’t see much bunting today. I often wonder why, but ballplayers today don’t drag the ball and don’t push the ball. We’ve got Willie Davis on the Do
dgers and some good left-handed hitters on the Pirates, and I don’t see why they don’t push and bunt the ball, because there is not much defense for a man who can hit hard and bunt too.

  If you’re playing infield, I certainly would not want to play up close to Al Oliver—he can hit the ball awful hard. I wouldn’t want to be in on him and have him hit the ball down my throat. But at the same time, I would have to do something if he can bunt or push the ball or drag the ball. A left-handed hitter who can drag the ball, and then can slug it with authority, he is a triple threat.

  My style of hitting was to meet the ball and hit it on the line. From the same position I could bunt, I could push the ball to third. The ball is hit down the third base line and it would just die. Wouldn’t go any place. Or I could turn the bat the other way, take the ball down the first base line. One of my biggest enjoyments as a baseball player was being able to bunt the ball down to Judy Johnson. He was one of our real great third basemen. I used to bunt a lot to Judy and beat him to first base. I got a big kick out of it. Or I’d give a sign that I was going to bunt and then I’d hit the ball by that third baseman, because he’s charging in. All I wanted him to do was to get started with his momentum coming forward, and I’d hit it past him. I could get a double standing up.

  All I wanted to do was get me on base. I felt like my job was to get on base. Long ball? I didn’t hit the long ball much. I used to hit the ball on the clubhouse in Philadelphia—the clubhouse in right field was a long ways, and I hit the clubhouse. But I got more enjoyment out of just bunting the ball to third base—or first base —and beating the guy to the base.

  I got to be on base. I don’t mean hit the ball against the fence. I got to be on base, otherwise I can’t score. Now if I don’t get on base and score, I’m not going to have a job by next month. And I like this job better than I do washing those windows out there.