by John Holway
I managed the Memphis Red Sox six years, 1937–1942, and that was one of the worst outfits ever been in baseball. They didn’t pay their ballplayers anything. When I went down there, they had ballplayers making $75 a month, which was a disgrace to baseball. When I raised them to $150, the owner got mad with me. But your ballplayer could live off that. I don’t care what kind of times it was, $75 a month was nothing for a ballplayer.
After the regular season I’d play against the big-league all-stars with Satchel Paige on the Coast. From 1941 to 1945 Satchel didn’t lose a game against them. He usually pitched five innings against men like Bob Lemon, Bobo Newson, Bob Feller. Feller, there was a fine man; he’d lend me his car, anything. A swell guy. Satchel pitched nine innings against him one day and beat him 2–1. I remember one Sunday in 1943, a benefit game for infantile paralysis. George Raft, Marlene Dietrich and a lot of other movie stars were in the stands. Buck Newsom had us beat 2–0 in the ninth, and everybody said we were laying down for bets. So we scored four runs in the ninth to win 4–2. In eighteen games they won only five. We had a hell of a team. That was the year we played the Great Lakes Naval Training team. They had Feller, Johnny Mize, John Pesky, Johnny Schmitz; they beat the St. Louis Cards, who had won the pennant that year. But we knocked Schmitz out with five runs in the first inning, hit six triples that day, beat them 11–2. They wouldn’t let us come back again.
Bob Feller was one of the straightest guys I ever came in contact with. We were playing Hollywood one Sunday. I was managing the team and Buck Leonard was the captain. This guy Joe Perrone out there, who was promoting the games, was going to take $2,500 off the top before we knew anything about it. Said he was going to give them their share, but he was going to take that much from ours. Bob Feller told us, “Don’t take a nickel, and don’t play another inning”—because we were in the fourth inning —“don’t play another inning until we get it straight about the money.” They had that park packed. Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, William Powell—a bunch of celebrities were out there that day. But we weren’t going to play another inning, give them their money back. People wanted to know what happened, but we went around and we got it straight. I think we made $227 apiece that Sunday.
In 1943 I was managing the Chicago American Giants. We won the pennant by thirteen games. We had seven .300 hitters in the starting lineup. Ducky Davenport was in the outfield. Davenport, there was another great player. He was only five feet five, weighed 147 pounds, but he could hit the ball out of any park. And field! One day, playing the big-league all-stars, Heinie Manush hit one, and that little SOB caught it with one hand going away. Manush said, “I’m glad that little SOB doesn’t play in my league. He takes too many hits away from you!”
In 1944 I went down to Birmingham with Abe Saperstein, who also owned the Harlem Globetrotters. Abe had a lot of different teams. He had the Cincinnati Clowns, he had the Birmingham Black Barons. He was part owner of Birmingham with Tom Hayes when the war broke out until ’45.
Double Duty Radcliffe, Brooklyn Eagles, 1935, back row on far right
Saperstein made his money during the war—he made the money. He’d book us where Tom Hayes couldn’t get us booked. Saperstein was a smart man. He’d book us in those big four-team doubleheaders in Yankee Stadium. Every time the Yankees would leave, Birmingham would be in Yankee Stadium with twenty-five to thirty thousand people. Saperstein would get $8-9,000 on a Sunday, then every night booking you in all those good places, making all that money. He made more money than the rest of the teams. And you know, we drew more people in Birmingham than any city in the country. That’s one of the best baseball towns in the world. We’d have twelve-fourteen thousand every Sunday. Every Sunday was a sellout.
Abe used to give me a new car practically every year. I’d tell Abe, “I’m having trouble with this one.” He’d tell them, “Give him a car,” and I’d go up there and pick it up. He just paid the note on it and never said anything about it. He just wanted me to use it, whether for baseball or anything else. It saved him a lot of money, but I wouldn’t have had the car if it hadn’t been for him. But wherever he wanted me to take him, I had to go. And it paid dividends. My mother always taught me, “You pray the bridge will carry you over safe, and always treat your fellow man as you want to be treated yourself.”
Saperstein was my man, he was my man. He was the greatest friend to the colored athlete of anybody I know today. He’s the great man in the history of Negroes, for helping Negroes. He got ’em up. I was connected with him twenty-eight years. Later on I had to take the Harlem Globetrotters out for him. I had to manage them. No matter where I’d be, I’d go.
And we won the pennant my first year in Birmingham. I got my finger broke, but they had a boy pitching for the Clowns called Peanuts Davis. I guess you’ve heard of Davis? He used to scratch the ball. We didn’t have anyone on our team could scratch it but me, so Saperstein went to the dresser and got a plastic bag to go over my finger. He said, “We can’t go to war without a gun, and Double Duty’s got a gun.” So I had to pitch for them with a broken finger. I had to pitch with these three fingers, and I pitched the last six innings and won the ball game 3–1. And I had to catch the last fourteen games with my finger in a cast. That’s how we won the championship.
I left Birmingham in ‘45. When Saperstein couldn’t get the team by himself, he just pulled out, and me and Tom Hayes got in a disagreement. In those days you couldn’t get much gas, and I knew a fellow around here that had ration stamps, and I was the only one could get them. Hayes was paying me $750 a month for managing, but he was supposed to pay me $400 a month for my car, ’cause they couldn’t use the buses. So I told him I wasn’t going to play anymore, I’d play where I want.
So I went out and managed the Globetrotters the last three months. We played the House of David ball club, and did we make the money! Saperstein gave me $2500 at the end of the season. He was the greatest.
We were beating the House of David pretty bad, when we got to Seattle, Washington. They had this boy pitched for the Giants —he’s a coach for them now—Larry Jansen; they had Frank McCormick, the first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, and Frank McQuillen, an outfielder played for the Browns. They were in Fort Lewis in the Army. Abe got that team and got Larry Jansen to pitch against us.
When we got to the park in Seattle the police had to make a line for us, we couldn’t get in the park, so many people. The park was a sellout. Billy Mulligan, used to play third base for the White Sox, he was president of the Seattle club. So I told him, “We’ve had these uniforms two months and they’re dirty. I’d hate to play before a crowd like that without new uniforms.” So he let me have some; he sold me sixteen uniforms for $350. They were beautiful; my ball club looked good.
We had a good little young team, but I was the only one had experience. I had announced in the paper another boy, named Lee, was going to pitch. But they all came running up to me after I went up to the office to check up on the tickets and everything. They said, “They got all them big leaguers against us today, Double Duty.” I said, “Okay, they’re just men like everybody else.”
After we got through taking batting practice, I called a meeting in the dugout. I said, “You all don’t have to worry, I’m going to pitch.” And that relieved them: “You gonna pitch, Skip? We’ll get ‘em then, we’ll get ’em then!” The big leaguers didn’t know I had to cheat, you know. They didn’t know I could throw that scratch ball. Anyway, God was with me. We were 0–0 in the sixth inning, I caught two men on base and hit a home run off Jansen, and we beat ’em 3–0.
I went to Mexico in 1946. Jorge Pasquel, the owner of the Mexican League, came right here and unwrapped $3,000, just like that, for me to sign. I was very fortunate. I was in the twilight innings of going out, and I was getting $750 a month and all expenses. I didn’t do much catching. I was relieving and saved quite a few ball games. Then every time I hit a home run they gave me a watch and a suit of clothes. I hit seventeen home runs, batted .344
and made the all-star team at the age of forty-six! Sal Maglie and Max Lanier were playing with me, and we walked to the pennant.
In 1947 the Grays came got me from Mexico, and we won the pennant and drew fifteen-twenty thousand a game, better than the Senators. Clark Griffith was looking at me. He said if I had been white, he’d pay me so much to catch, so much to pitch and so much to pinch-hit. If Early Wynn could get $1,000 to pinch-hit, no telling how much I’d get for pinch-hitting.
Sam Bankhead got up in the bus one night—I never will forget this. Bankhead was captain. He said, “You young son of a guns better wake up. Old Man Duty getting all the glory. Duty ought to be paid all your salary, cause he’s doing all the work.”
In 1948 Saperstein signed me with the Globetrotters to play the House of David. All those players that the big teams, like the American Giants, would cut loose, why the best ones Abe would pick up for the Globetrotters. We won 105 games and lost 10. In one stretch I pitched four or five innings a day for twenty-four straight days.
In 1950 I was managing the Chicago American Giants. Ernie Banks was in our league then. You should have seen him—so skinny and little. That was my last year in colored baseball. In ’51 I went up to Winnipeg managing, and we won the pennant. That was one of my greatest dreams, managing up there, because we only played three or four games a week, and they were paying me good money, and conditions were good. Stayed at the best hotels. They were great people up there, but all at once it folded up. Canada was the end of the line for me. After thirty-two years.
I played ball thirty-two years in all—managed twenty-two of them—and I never had a sore arm in my life. I never was prone to injuries. I don’t understand these ballplayers now. This finger’s been broke four times. This finger was split two or three times. You see that? The ball hit between the fingers and busted it clean down to here. And I wasn’t out but a month. Nowadays it’s a disgrace.
You see, by me being big and rugged, that’s how I never was out much with injuries. I was pretty hefty, see, I weighed around 210, 215. With all that padding and stuff on, they couldn’t buffalo me. You got to be ready for anything they do. When they come in, all you got to do is brace yourself, like a bull. You know if I played thirty-two years I had to take care of myself.
And the catchers nowadays, they don’t know how to tag, that’s the reason they get hurt so much. You’ve got to get the ball in this hand, the right hand. When the runner jumps, you just step aside: I used to hit them up under their chin with it. Yeah, I had a ball out there catching. Out here one day there was one player—I won’t talk about him ’cause he married my niece—but I hit him on the chin, knocked him clean out. He tried to jump at me, I stepped aside and he went by and I hit him.
I’m going to tell you the truth now, I’m not going to tell you no lies: I never had any trouble guarding the plate. The roughest sliders were men like Turkey Stearnes and Newt Allen, but I never did get cut by them. Now the greatest slider there ever was in baseball was this Crush Holloway. He jumped at me once, and then when I caught him at the bat when I was pitching in Cleveland, I knocked him down twice. He said, “Are you trying to kill me?” I said, “I’m trying to make a living out there, but you tried to kill me when you came home.” That night we went out and had some beer. That ended it. He never jumped any more, I never threw at him any more. He was a good ballplayer too.
I was secretary for the Globetrotters for two years. I went to Mexico with them, Hawaii, Honolulu—I’d like to go back to Honolulu one time. We had 33,000 in the bull arena in Mexico City for basketball, 75,000 in Brazil. I didn’t go to Brazil. I was ascared to fly, that’s why I’m not still with them. I had a heart attack flying. I don’t like to fly.
Saperstein got me my job scouting with Cleveland in 1962. He just called up the man, said, “I got a good man that knows as much about baseball as anybody living today and I’m going to send him out to scout for you.”
They said, “Who is he?”
He said, “Double Duty Radcliffe.”
They said, “Send him on.”
I stayed with them from ’62 to ’66. Everybody I sent in, they’d get him. We got Tommy Agee, Mudcat Grant—I didn’t sign them, but I’m the one scouted them and recommended them, so they signed them. They wouldn’t let me sign them, ’cause they figured they’d get them a lot cheaper than me.
The Montreal Expo’s wrote me a letter a while back to bird-dog scout for them. I told them I haven’t got to the point where I’d lower my prestige that much to be a bird dog. If I’m good enough to be a bird dog, I want to be full-time scout or nothing. Who the hell wants to work for two or three hundred a month? If you want to get somebody, go out and pay them, ain’t that right?
We had quite a few ballplayers could have made the major leagues in my day. But in the Thirties and Forties I’d have called Negro baseball about Triple-A. The big leaguers were strong in every position, where most of the colored teams had a few stars but they weren’t strong in every position. But after the Grays got Josh, we didn’t have any weakness. And the American Giants, with my brother, Willie Wells, Mule Suttles—they had a hell of a ball team. They had six or seven good starting pitchers; they could have held their own in the majors, I believe. I’m telling you, you take from 1932 until Jackie went into the big leagues, oh there were some powerful ballplayers.
All in the Thirties and the first part of the Forties we were drawing good crowds. Sap tried to tell the owners they should have told the big leagues to have colored farm teams. Then the Negro teams could have gone on a little longer. And if they’d done that, the majors would have more players now. It’s Triple-A baseball now. Makes me sick to look at the game now.
I’ve had a good life. Of course, we didn’t have as much luck as the people got today, ’cause we couldn’t stay in the white hotels then. The only place we stayed in a white hotel was up around North Dakota or Canada. We couldn’t do it around here. But then some people never had the opportunity we had. Some people come along and dig ditches all their lives.
I’m too old to move now, but you know where I’d like to live if I could? New Orleans. There’s a few good ballplayers back in those woods around Mobile. The best ones come from the carney leagues. The white scouts only go to the colleges. But out in the woods the kids are tough as bricks.
Double Duty Radcliffe (left) with Chicago American Giants manager Candy Jim Taylor (right) in the Memphis Red Sox park, opening day 1939. (Photo courtesy of Phil Dixon).
Bill Foster at the American Giants’ park, former home of the 1906 “Hitless Wonder” White Sox.
Chapter 10
BILL FOSTER
Willie Foster was the Cy Young of the Negro leagues. The lanky left-handed younger brother of league pioneer Rube Foster, won 138 lifetime victories, tops among all pitchers. Lefty Andy Cooper is second with 123 and Satchel Paige third at 122.
In 1927 Big Bill posted a record of 21-3 to lead the Chicago American Giants to the black world championship. Only two men, Ray Brown and Slim Jones, have ever won more in a single year. Bill leads all pitchers, including Paige, in lifetime shutouts, and ranks second to Satchel in strikeouts. And if Foster hadn’t retired at the age of 33 in the midst of the Depression, he would have rung up even higher numbers.
Big Bill was a money pitcher. His 15 victories in post-season play are more than any man in blackball annals.
His manager, Dave Malarcher, says Bill was a carbon copy of his brother on the pitching mound. Pictures of the two, side-by-side, show them both with identical moves—ball held behind the head—just before they take their stride.
“Bill Foster was my star pitcher, the greatest pitcher of our time, not even barring Satchel,” declares Malarcher. “Rube taught him, I didn’t teach him. The art of pitching he learned from Rube.”
Many a black veteran—outfielder Nat Rogers is one —insists that Foster was better than Satchel Paige, and the long pitching rivalry between these two was one of the most exciting in black ball annals.
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Perhaps the most exciting rivalry in the Negro leagues was Foster against Paige, the best black left-hander against the best righty. In one double-header, Rogers remembers, Satchel was scheduled to pitch the first game against Foster but pulled out at the last minute. Bill pitched anyway and won. “When they announced Satchel to pitch the second game, Bill said, ‘Shucks, give me that ball. I want to beat him.’ When the game ended, Bill had ’em 6–2.”
After retiring from baseball, Bill Foster moved to North Carolina as an insurance agent. He eventually settled in Lorman, Mississippi, not far from Charles Evers’ Fayette, where he coached baseball and served as dean of men. That’s where I met him in 1970, a tall, lean man well over six feet, with the hard stomach of a man still physically active, and sunken eye sockets and cheeks that gave him almost a death’s-head look. He spoke eloquently, thoughtfully, in a deep baritone, struggling to summon back to memory a chapter in history too long neglected.
Bill Foster Speaks . . .
I think, as near as I can remember, that Satchel and I faced each other around thirteen or fourteen times. And I think I got the edge on Satchel when I beat him a doubleheader in Pittsburgh one Saturday, 5–0 and 1–0. I think that put me one ball game ahead of him in our careers. Terrific ballplayer! Terrific. I tell you, if you get a chance to talk to him, tell him I asked you to ask him how many times did we beat each other. But I’ll tell you something: If Satchel got one run first, he would beat you; if I got one run first, he was beat. Because we didn’t tire back then. I never remember being tired out there. Now that’s the truth. I remember getting blasted and getting hit hard, but I never remember getting tired.