by John Holway
Did I ever tell you about me and Satchel going twelve innings in Memphis when I played with the Claybrook Tigers in 1936? The Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Nashville Elite Giants were combined in a North-South game against us. We had a sellout, about 11,000 or 12,000. That was all the park would hold. They were all standing around the ropes just outside the line in left field and right field. Satchel went seven innings and Big Griffith went five innings. I pitched all twelve innings against them, and it ended up 0–0, called on account of darkness.
How did I hit Satchel? Sometimes I had bad days, and some days I didn’t. Just like any other good pitcher, he was overbearing. A couple of days I had perfect days against him. No, I never hit a home run off him. The longest I hit against him was a double—two singles and a double one day in California. There wasn’t anyone too tough for me to hit—the only fellow who was tough on me was Bob Feller when he was in his prime.
I played with both Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson on the Crawfords. They say Josh Gibson was the greatest catcher. Josh was not the greatest catcher; he was the greatest hitter. We had five or six men who could outcatch him. Josh couldn’t receive with Larry Brown or Frank Duncan or Biz Mackey or Roy Campanella or any of those fellows. Of course I wouldn’t include myself because that wouldn’t be right, but they thought a lot of me, because I caught more East-West games than anybody. I was catching most of the West’s games when I was there; the only game I’d miss was when I’d be somewhere like Mexico. I caught eight, pitched in four and hit four home runs. In 1942 Ed Bolden, the owner of Philadelphia, said I was the smartest catcher in the last several years.
My greatest thrill in baseball was in the East-West game of 1944 before 56,000 people in Comiskey Park. Barney Morris, a knuckle baller for the New York Cubans, had us beat 3–1. We put a man on base, my brother Alex doubled into right center, then I came up and hit a homer into the center field deck and won the game. You know what the people gave me that day? They gave me $700 for that home run.
I always had good success pitching against Josh Gibson. He never hit a home run off me, and I pitched against him nine years. I pitched him high and tight, and when I threw a curve ball, I made it bad and threw it away from him.
They usually called me the emery ball pitcher. I would cheat. They used to call me the Champion Cheater with that emery ball.
I played baseball for thirty-two years, from 1920 to 1951. I pitched and caught and never had a sore arm in my life. Well, I’ll tell you: You cannot drink and then stay up all night and play baseball—nobody. I liked the ladies, I got my share of it. But I didn’t do any drinking or dissipating much.
I was the champion pitcher in Cuba three straight years. And I was very fortunate in making good money in my day. Only one man topped me, and that was Satchel. Satchel made some money. You know, Satchel was getting 15 percent [of the gate] for seven years with the Monarchs. That’s a lot of money, ain’t it? Fifteen percent now in the big leagues would be something, wouldn’t it?
Paige was the greatest—no comparison. I caught Satchel in his heyday, when nobody was like Satchel, nobody had the control Satchel had. You could bring Satchel or myself in with three-and-two on the batter, we’d get them out. And Satchel had something on the ball. Satchel didn’t get a curve ball until 1938. He had a little wrinkle, but he didn’t develop a fair curve ball until ’38. He never did develop a good curve, but it was good enough to keep them off stride, because with that fast ball he didn’t need it. I haven’t seen anybody living with the speed Satchel had. I played against Bob Feller and all of them. I’m not saying this because he’s colored, now, but Satchel’s the greatest pitcher ever lived! You could tell Satchel was a great pitcher when he went up there and won in the big leagues in 1948.
The 1931 Homestead Grays. Radcliffe is kneeling third from right. Others: Ted Page, kneeling far right, and standing: owner Cum Posey on right, Smokey Joe Williams #5, Josh Gibson #6, and Oscar Charleston #8.
Satchel and I were born in the same town, Mobile. Satchel didn’t tell them when he was with Cleveland, but he was born in 1900. He’s a few years older than me, and I was born in 1904. Yeah, I knew Satchel around Mobile, but we didn’t play together until we came to the Crawfords in ’32. Satchel’s from Mobile; so’s Hank Aaron, Billy Williams, Willie McCovey, Cleon Jones—some pretty good ballplayers come from within fifteen miles around there. In fact, I scouted Tommy Agee and Mudcat Grant down there.
I’m three years older than my brother Alex; he played third base for the Chicago American Giants. I started playing around Mobile, then I had an older brother that came here to Chicago in 1915, went into the Army and got out in 1918. Another brother and I had a chance to come up here on an excursion. This guy would take men to go to work in different places, like Akron, Ohio. We stayed over there three days working in a brick yard. We worked three days so we could draw an advance. I was a young fellow at that time, a pretty good dice shooter, so we’d shoot dice around there when we got off work. I won $18 shooting craps, so we hoboed over here where our older brother was. That was 1920, and we’ve been here ever since.
My people came here later, my father and all of them came up behind us. We were living at 3511 Wentworth, about four blocks from where Rube Foster’s American Giants played.
I had an aunt that lived on the third floor right side of the ball park. Never had to pay. But we’d go to the park most of the time; get in before they started selling tickets and hide. Then when they started to warm up, we’d get a glove and go out in the outfield and start shagging balls. Sometimes when I was young they’d ask me to pitch batting practice, and my reward would be a Coca Cola or lemonade or something. But I enjoyed doing it, I enjoyed to get in free. They didn’t know it, but I’d pitch batting practice and do anything to get in free. Now they pay a professional batting practice pitcher.
I started in to playing with a little team they called the Illinois Giants in 1920. A white guy from Spring Valley named Murphy had the team. There was a playground down there at 33rd and Wentworth where I’d go and play ball every day. Murphy came there one afternoon to bring his team in the spring, and I pitched against his team and struck out so many of them, he asked me, “How’d you like to go away and play with us? We need you.” I was sixteen years old then. Well, if my daddy said I could go, I would go. When you were seventeen or eighteen years old then you still had to listen to your parents, but they don’t do it anymore. My dad told me yeah, I could go. And that’s the way I started out.
We’d go out every year and make $50 for every fifteen games. Murphy would pay all our expenses, which wasn’t bad in those days.
We played all semipro white teams in different local towns. We’d leave here and stay a night in Salem, Illinois. We’d leave there and go to Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, all into Canada. Traveled in a bus like those school buses. You had fourteen ballplayers, all we carried. Seven on that side, seven on this side, luggage in the back. And the owner drove the bus. Sometimes one of us would help him. They taught me how to drive because I didn’t need sleep much, and so I had to drive most of the time. He would give me big money—$10 a week—to help him drive. Ten dollars was a lot of money in those days. You could get ham and eggs for a quarter.
I stayed with Murphy from 1920 to ’27, then I went to Detroit with Bingo DeMoss in 1928. He came and got me over there. He had some big games with the ex-big leaguers in Flint and different places. He wanted me to pitch, so he came to my house one day. I told him, “Well, I tell you what I’ll do. I don’t want anything for myself, I came here to be near my mother. You give my mother and them $100 apiece, I’ll go pitch.” He gave it to them right away.
I stayed with Detroit in ‘28 and ’29, and they had me pitching and catching. My first year with Detroit we played the major league all-stars. They had Charley Gehringer and Heinie Manush, and pitching they had George Uhle, Stanley Covaleskie and the Barnes brothers from the Giants, Virgil and Jess.
We had my brother Alex on third, Willi
e Wells at short, Jack Marshall on second and Mule Suttles on first. In the outfield we had Cool Papa Bell, center; Steel Arm Davis, left field; and Turkey Stearnes in right. Larry Brown was catching. Pitching was Willie Foster, Piggy Powell, Theodore Trent and George Harney.
We barnstormed all over southern Illinois. I started a game against them and shut them out. We didn’t lose but three out of fourteen, so you know everyone must have done all right.
After that I asked Detroit for a raise. They wouldn’t give it to me, so I went back with Gilkerson’s Union Giants. I asked Gilkerson for more money, so in ’30 he traded me to St. Louis. St. Louis traded three men to get me.
St. Louis had a great team, a hell of a team. That infield we had! George Giles was the best colored first baseman I ever saw. I’d love for you to have seen him play first base. John Henry Russell was second, Dewey Creacy third, and Willie Wells shortstop. In the outfield we had Mule Suttles and Cool Papa Bell.
Bell was center field, a terrific base runner. The man who came closest to him as a runner was Giles. Giles could bunt on the hit-and-run, and Cool Papa would go to third base and Giles would beat it out at first before they picked the ball up. You couldn’t compare Maury Wills with Bell, because they don’t have catchers now that we had in our day, and we had so many great shortstops, like Wells, that Maury Wills wouldn’t have made it in our league.
And we had some good pitchers—Ted Trent, Eggy Hensly, Duo Davis. Trent had a curve ball out of this world, one of the greatest curve ball pitchers ever lived. Oh, we had a ball club, I tell you, we won so many games. We won the pennant going away, by seventeen games. We came out and played the Chicago American Giants a whole season, didn’t lose a game. We played them eighteen games that season and beat ‘em eighteen. We beat the Homestead Grays five out of six. And we beat Kansas City eighteen out of twenty. That’s the kind of team we had. We beat Kansas City so bad, I never will forget what Newt Joseph, their third baseman, said to me: “Well, goddamn it, you won’t beat us anymore, ’cause we ain’t playin’ you anymore.”
But the man that had the Stars was so cheap. You know what top salary was in those days? Two-fifty a month was tops. I was making top money my third year in the league, ’cause I would leave. If they didn’t pay me, I would go.
In fact, the next year I did leave. I went to the Homestead Grays in Pittsburgh, and that was the greatest team of all time. That was the year Josh Gibson hit the seventy-two home runs, and we won thirty-seven straight. In 1930 St. Louis had beat the Grays five out of six, but when I went to the Grays we beat St. Louis seven straight!
For pitchers we had Smoky Joe Williams, George Britt, Lefty Williams., Oscar Owens, Bill Foster and myself. We had a pitching staff! You got a team with a man like Oscar Charleston leading off at his age. That’s right, he was leading off. Charleston was leading off because we had Vic Harris batting second, Jud Wilson third, Josh fourth, George Scales fifth. Oh, we had power to spare!
That was the year I hit the longest home run I ever hit. We were playing the American Giants in Columbus, Ohio. They walked George Scales to pitch to me. I don’t know how far the ball went. There was a playground for kids in back of the fence, and the left fielder didn’t even bother to go get it. That was the most terrific ball I ever hit in my life.
In 1932 most of us jumped over to the Pittsburgh Crawfords. The man gave us so much more money. Gus Greenlee, you’ve heard of him, he was a big policy guy in the town. He wanted a team, and at that time they wouldn’t let him in the league, so the first one he called was me, and I told him to get Charleston for the manager. So he took me, Charleston, Josh Gibson and Ted Page. I’ll show you how bad he wanted us: He sent us to Hot Springs, Arkansas—the only time in my life I went to spring training on the eighteenth of February—went before the big leaguers would go there. He had plenty of money, he didn’t care. Greenlee was one of the best.
Of course he got Satchel too. That was the year Damon Runyon saw us.
In 1934 I went out to Jamestown, North Dakota, to manage a white team, and we played the big league all-stars all the way through Canada. They had Jimmy Foxx, Luke Appling, Jimmy Dykes in the infield. Pitching was Earl Whitehill of Washington; Rube Walberg from the Athletics; George Uhle, Willis Hudlin and his boy who pitched so good with Detroit—Tommy Bridges. He won twenty-two games that year. We played them in James City, North Dakota, and Chet Brewer of the Monarchs pitched and beat ’em 6–1. I caught him that day. I pitched the next day in Bismarck against Earl Whitehill and Willis Hudlin, and I beat them 8–2. They didn’t get but five hits, and we got eleven. No, Foxx didn’t get any home runs. The only home runs, we hit them: I hit one, Quincy Trouppe hit one and Red Haley hit one.
Then we went to Winnipeg. Barney Brown was pitching and they beat us. Jimmy Foxx got hit on the head with a pitched ball, and they canceled the rest of the games.
The next year I played in Bismarck, North Dakota, with Satchel. He had a sore arm, and for a whole month he couldn’t pitch. I said, “Just roll it up there. They’re ascared of your name, they ain’t going to hit it.” Every game I caught four innings and pitched the last five. I remember one time we were playing out in Nebraska against all those Western League teams. I had to pitch five days in a row, relieving while he went fishing with some rich man and didn’t show up till the next Sunday. You couldn’t fine him cause he’d quit. That’s a bitch, ain’t it? I used to say, “He’s bigger than the game. You can’t find him and you can’t fine him. What do you want with him?” I don’t care if he could throw the ball so hard you couldn’t see it. If he couldn’t take orders, I wouldn’t want him, would you?
I could give him hell, ’cause he and I were buddies. See, if he’d been a man that took baseball serious, with any kind of common sense, he might be a coach now, wouldn’t he? With the reputation he had—and the Cubs need a pitching coach bad. They got a coach over there called Becker. Never played a lick of big-league ball, never pitched in his life—he was a first baseman when he did play in the minors. What does he know about pitching? I can’t understand these things, can you? Baseball is mostly politics.
Churchill was the mayor at Bismarck, and boy did we have a pitching staff: Satchel Paige, Hilton Smith, Barney Morris and myself.
I never will forget when we played in that semipro tournament over there in Wichita, Kansas. Churchill wired for reservations for thirty people. The guy wired back okay. When we got there, me and Satchel walked in with the rest of them whites. He said, “Oh, I didn’t know you had those colored boys. We can’t take them all.” Churchill said, “I got your telegram. Goddamn it, I’ll sue you.” So I spoke up and took him off the hook. We could have let him sue the man, but I told him, “Well, the man didn’t know. Mrs. Jones got a nice rooming house up here, we’ll go up there and stay.” (‘Course, I knew they weren’t going to let me bring those girls in the hotel—I had some friends there I knew years before.) So we went up to Mrs. Jones’ house, a very nice place. She even cooked for us. I’ll tell you how good things were back in those days, ’35. We stayed there for $3 a day, two meals a day. Churchill would come out every day and give us some money, thought we were mad and everything. Heck, we weren’t mad.
Well, we won the tournament in seven straight games. Satchel pitched five games, I caught two and pitched two. In those days we got $1,000 a game, so that gave us $7,000 for the tournament. Those teams from Texas and Oklahoma and Georgia said they weren’t going to come back and play anymore, because they didn’t have a chance with me and Satchel. They said, “Those are big-league players—they’re niggers, but they’re big-league players.” So they wouldn’t come back and play any more in the tournament. Satchel had bought one of those cars·from Churchill. He owed him $970, I think, on it. Churchill gave Satchel the car. And gave Satchel $500 to go out to California to play winter ball.
Next year we had some young country boys from Minneapolis, Rochester, Minnesota and all up through there. I was manager. He had me drilling them young kids. They weren’
t known, but they could play—they were white boys, but they could play! They went to the Denver tournament in ’36, and we won our first six games—I pitched until I just got tired. So we sent here and got Ted Trent to pitch, gave him $500 to pitch one game. He went out there, got drunk and throwed the game to them.
I also managed the Claybrook Tigers in ’36, a little team out in Memphis. They were owned by a rich colored guy, had a town named after him down in Claybrook, Arkansas. He told me he would get me $500 a month, what I was making up in North Dakota, if I’d come down there, and twenty percent of the gate. Well, you know I couldn’t turn that down.
We were playing in the white park in Memphis and we outdrew the white teams. We made so much money, the first week I made $1,200 for my part. We broke the record. We put 18,000 in there with the Cubans. Next week I made a little better than $800, so the third week he called me into his office, had the chief of police there, had the man from the Southern League Memphis Chicks, and he had two or three women secretaries dictating, and he says, “Double Duty”—these are the words he said to me—“Good morning, how are you?”
I said, “Fine. This is my wife.”
He said, “How are you, Mrs. Radcliffe?” He didn’t care who heard, he said, “You are a smarter nigger than I thought you was.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
He says, “You making all the money, I’m paying all the bills. As soon as I pay all the ballplayers, I don’t have anything left. We got to get together here and straighten that out.” He said, “What we’ll do, I’ll just give you $750 a month.”
I said, “No, the contract . . .”
He said, “I tore that son of a bitch up.”
So we got together. I wouldn’t take the $750 a month. I told him just like I’m telling you now: “I tell you what I’ll do: You just give me $1,000 bonus at the end of the season. Write it down here, let them type it here and we’ll notarize it right here in this office.” So he gave me $1,000. I treated him nice. I could have taken more, ’cause I was manager and secretary and everything. But I said I’d do right by him, because he was a nice fellow. When he died, he left that boy of his about seven hundred acres of land, about fifty mules and all of those tractors, and that boy blowed that money in less than five years. I was reading the other day where he got ten years in Sing Sing for dope in New York.