by John Holway
Dan Bankhead was in demand then, but you know, he was just a mediocre pitcher in our league, he wasn’t one of the aces. But he went up there and had a good year with Brooklyn.
I went barnstorming with Dan Bankhead the year he went to the Dodgers. We went on down south to Roanoke, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Mobile, New Orleans, to this town where they make Hadacol medicine somewhere in Louisiana, Natchez, Jackson, Mississippi, and back to Mobile.
When we got back to Mobile, I was tired of messing with the team. I was supposed to get $25 a game, but three or four times I had not gotten anything. At Jackson, the business manager was so far behind he wasn’t paying anybody anything. In Mobile, we had a good crowd on Sunday and I said to myself, “Now is a good chance for me to leave.” The business manager said, “Come over here to where I’m staying, we’re going to settle up this evening.” So I carried my suitcase over. I was going to leave that night. I set my suitcase down on the porch. He said, “All right, I’m going to take you all one at a time”—he didn’t want us to see what he was paying the others.
When he came to me, he said, “Whose is that suitcase out there?” I said, “Mine.” He said, “What you going to do with it?” I said, “Well, I think I’m going to leave tonight.” So he said, “Well, you’re not getting anything.”
“What about my $25?” He said, “No, you’re not getting anything. You promised to make the entire trip. We still got to go to Texarkana.” Didn’t pay me, not one nickel—not five cents. Well, you know, you always try to keep your railroad fare in your pocket. I had a little over $20, so I went down to the station and got my ticket and came home to Rocky Mount. Next spring I asked the other fellows, “Look here, how’d you all fare after I left?” They said, “Man, the bus broke down and we had to send off to get $200 to have the bus fixed. We didn’t get no more money after you left.”
We had a lot of good young players who played in the East-West game in 1948 and went to the majors: Minnie Minoso of the New York Cubans, Junior Gilliam of Baltimore, Luis Marquez and Luke Easter of the Grays.
Easter really improved as a player in ’48. Luke was big, he was strong, he was interested in the game, always played to win. We believed that if he hadn’t started out too late he would have been an even better ballplayer. He was about thirty-five when he went up to the majors. He didn’t even start playing ball in our league until late. He had been messing around with the Indianapolis Clowns before we got him.
We sold Easter to the Cleveland Indians for $10,000. They were going to pay another $5,000 if he went to the majors. But when he went to the majors, Luke wanted the other $5,000 himself. He had an argument with the Homestead Grays’ management. At that time Rufus Jackson was dead and his wife was in charge. Luke said he wasn’t going if he didn’t get the $5,000, but they got together on something and Luke went on.
When you play twenty-three years, you know, you’ve had a lot of thrills. But I think the greatest one was when we won the Negro World Series from Birmingham in 1948. That was one of our best teams—maybe our greatest team—although Josh Gibson wasn’t with us, he was dead. But we had Luke Easter, Luis Marquez and Roy Welmaker. Welmaker also went to the Cleveland Indians, and Marquez went to the Boston Braves.
Birmingham had Willie Mays with them at the time. And they really played us. Although the scores look big, the series was really close. Mays was about fifteen. He could run the fly balls and throw, but his hitting wasn’t good because he couldn’t hit a curve ball at that time. But a fifteen-year-old boy playing in our league was like a boy of fifteen playing in the major leagues. He could run and catch a fly ball and throw, but to think and hit, he just didn’t have it yet.
That was the last Negro World Series. Griffith’s prediction came true. After Negroes got in the big leagues, all the Negro fans wanted to go see the big-league teams. We’d get around 300 people to a game. We couldn’t even draw flies.
I got this diamond ring in Cuba in 1948. I was on Marinao. Don Newcombe was on our team too. We had nine foreigners on each of the Cuban teams. I hit a home run one day with the bases loaded to win the ball game for my team, and they gave me this ring. It’s got twenty-one diamonds in it. At that time it was worth about $500. I don’t know about now.
Othello Renfroe was the cause of me going to Mexico to play a few years later. He was playing down there and called me up and wanted me to come down. They paid me $450 a month and all expenses, plus transportation. They paid us enough to stay in a second- or third-class hotel, and I paid the difference and stayed in a nice hotel. They’d pay enough for your board, but you always had to put something to it if you wanted to eat a decent meal.
In Mexico I would hit the ball, come back to the bench, say, “What do you mean giving that guy an error? Didn’t you see, he couldn’t handle that?” He’d erase it, put down a hit. I bought that guy a box of seegars. They would have sent me home if I couldn’t hit. I couldn’t afford to go home, so I bought him a box of seegars.
When Bill Veeck went out to the St. Louis Browns with Satchel Paige in 1952, I was in Mexico, and they called down there and wanted to know when I got back home would I get in touch with them. So I got in touch with them, and they wanted to know whether I would come to some town in California to spring training. But I was forty-five then. I knew I was over the hill, wasn’t any use of me going out there. I knew I couldn’t play ball every day. They said they wanted me to hit mostly, but I just told ‘em no. Then they called again that evening about five o’clock and said they were going to send the money. I told ’em, “No, don’t send any money.” I didn’t want to come.
I knew I couldn’t play baseball every day, and I didn’t even want to attempt it. I didn’t want to fool myself—or try to fool myself. I could have gone out there and said I was maybe five, six, seven years younger, but I still would be through to my legs. You know, your legs will act their age. You can get glasses and you can see a little better, but what you going to do about your legs? That’s what tells on you. You can wear glasses to improve your sight and build yourself up to think you’re a little younger, but you can’t do anything with your legs.
When age comes on you, you get tired quicker. You go out today, get a three-base hit, slide into third base, the ball is overthrown, you’ve got to get up and go home, maybe have to slide into the plate. When you play hard one day, the night is not long enough for you to rest. When it’s time to play tomorrow, you haven’t rested enough. It takes you longer to rest. That’s what tells on the old ballplayers. You can’t get enough rest overnight to take care of you for tomorrow. If you play a doubleheader today, you’re out for two or three days. You spend a whole lot of energy and you don’t get it back like you used to. You take an old man my age staying up all night, hot dog, he’s out—out for two days. It’s a young man’s game, rather than a game for an old man. When you realize that, stop.
I played a few games with the Portsmouth Merrimacs in the Piedmont League in 1953. They asked me if I wanted to join their retirement plan!
I was down in Durango, Mexico, playing ball in 1954 or ’55. Martin Dihigo was the manager at Durango. But the team wasn’t winning, and down there if you’re not winning, you can just figure on not being there long. He was fired one week and I was fired the next. I was forty-eight years old.
I work quite a bit with kids now. I teach a Bible class on Sunday, and I was a physical ed teacher and truant officer in the high school. But I retired. I retired early. The children have got so you can’t discipline them at all now. It was getting on my nerves. I just decided I would retire. Of course, when you retire at sixty-two, your pension is way down, but when you get so you don’t enjoy your work, it’s time to quit.
I’m vice-president of the Rocky Mount Leafs in the Class-A Carolina League. In 1962 I went down and talked to Frank Walker, the man I was telling you about who was my favorite player as a boy. He said he was trying to get a team and wondered if I would help him, selling tickets and selling stock in the team. At that time Ro
cky Mount would work with the Cincinnati Reds. We stayed with Cincinnati a couple of years, then with Washington one year, and now we’re with Detroit. Cesar Tovar, Tony Perez and Lee May all came up through Rocky Mount. Also Ron Woods of the Yankees.
Our manager asked me to go to the ball park and tell the guys what we used to do and how we used to do it. They’d say, “You don’t have to tell me, man.” They don’t want to know what you did, they want to know what’s going to happen. These young people say, “Who are they? When did they play? I never knew anything about them. What book is it in? What’s his record?” It would be a problem straightening that person out, telling him when Negroes played, how many teams in each league and all that.
You know, ballplayers now, they think they know it all. So you let ’em go. Baseball men say, “You don’t change his style of batting if he’s producing. Let him go on until he finds out he can’t produce, then maybe you can tell him something.”
But I could tell them how to hit the ball and the ball will go farther, and tell them how to hold the bat while you hit. You’ve got to learn how to hit standing away from the plate. As long as you’re on that plate, close to the plate like Frank Robinson, you get hit a lot. You take Clemente for the Pirates. Now he stands away from the plate, but he still hits and wins batting championships.
I used to bat with my hands open a little, like Ty Cobb. They changed that, said I couldn’t hit a breaking ball as well.
That curve ball has sent more youngsters back than any other thing. That’s right—that curve ball! George Scales knew how to hit it to a T! Josh Gibson knew it to a T. They hit a curve ball farther than they hit a fast ball. I saw George Scales hit a curve ball four miles! Rev Cannady was the same way. They wouldn’t even swing at a fast ball. Wait until you throw your curve ball. They would set it afire. The way you learn to hit a curve ball is they keep throwing it at you. You know you got to learn how to hit it. You get interested in it then. I’ll tell you one man’s been in the major leagues twenty years and still can’t hit that curve—Al Kaline.
A change of pace was my weakness.
We had a boy named Red Bass on the Grays, asked me how to hit a left-hander. I said, “Bass, I can tell you from now until doomsday, but you got to learn how to hit a left-handed pitcher. I’m going to tell you how I hit them, but for you, you got to learn how to hit’em.” So I told him.
The first thing I used to do, if I was the first batter, I’d go up to the plate and look at his ball while he was warming up. Fellows don’t do that now. And I guessed some. If you play ball long enough, you’ve got to guess. Then I opened up on left-handers, used an open stance. Face him a little. When he throws that curve ball, you can see it all the way. The main thing about hitting is watching the ball. That’s the main thing: Keep your eye on the ball. They can say what they want to about batting, but you keep your eye on the ball, you’re going to get a piece of it. As soon as he turns it loose, you’ve got to observe the spin on the ball. That’s what I used to do. And I used a thirty-six-inch bat. I knew if he threw me that curve, I was going to have to bend my back to hit it.
We had to send Bass back home though, because he couldn’t hit that curve. He never did come back.
I think the old players would make good coaches. Of course baseball is played a little different now. But the bat’s still round and the ball is still round, the pitching distance is the same. But the thinking is a little different now. By that I mean, we used to try to teach a little more baseball, we tried to change them to do like we were doing. But now you don’t change them so much, you let them do what they’re doing so long as they get results. Well, we didn’t even permit a boy to start out that way.
They say they’ve improved the game, and I believe it has improved. A lot of things they know how to do now that we didn’t know how to do, like fundamentals. They know all the cut-offs and so on, because they’re taught it. In our day they didn’t have time to teach us that. We’d play ourselves into shape, we’d be playing as soon as spring training started and then played every day from then on; we didn’t have any time for calisthenics or drilling on fundamentals. We had to learn by playing.
You can’t compare a ballplayer now with twenty years ago. Everything’s just right now. Of course twenty years from now maybe it will be just as different as it was twenty years past. But in order to compare, things got to be equal. That’s why I always try to compare fellows who were playing under the same conditions at the same time.
I went down to spring training this year [1970]. Detroit didn’t have any black players at Rocky Mount last year. We went down to tell them unless they give us some black players, we’re going to have to find another club. The fans, black and white, said we need some Negroes.
I talked to Ted Williams, Frank Howard, Nellie Fox, all of them. That was the first time I’d ever met Williams. Williams named a few fellows that he saw play. ’Course he didn’t ever barnstorm. He didn’t know the old ballplayers, because he asked me about some that he had read about. He said, “Josh Gibson must have been a terror of a hitter, everybody talks about him.” Then he wanted to know, “How did you fellows play ball riding around in buses?” I told him we did the best we could under the conditions.
The balls that we played with weren’t major-league balls. They were Wilson balls. They didn’t go as far, they didn’t last as long, they didn’t stay in uniform shape like the major-league balls do. And we would bat from one background in Griffith Stadium on Sunday, then Monday night we were down here in Rocky Mount batting against just any background, sometimes on an open field.
Frank Howard said, “Heh, Buck, if we find it tough to hit up here now, I can imagine how you boys found it, the conditions you were in.” I told him, “Yeah.”
In order to play major-league ball, you’ve got to play it under major-league conditions, on a major-league field. Now these fellows today, they’ve always played on good diamonds. The diamonds are excellent now. So there are not many bad hops. Us, we didn’t have any astroturf. If you want to be a good fielder—outfielder or infielder—you’ve got to be playing on a good diamond. You playing on a diamond with rocks on it and you expecting a bad hop from the ball at any minute, you don’t go for it with the same zip that you would on a good diamond. You’d see pebbles on the field, you’d be shaky about fielding balls.
Detroit, at Lakeland, they got four big ball fields. Rocky Mount team playing here, Toledo here, Montgomery here, Lakeland there. Now that’s four teams playing, and the coach up here in this tower, right in the middle. He can stand up there and watch four teams play. All right, they got a big dormitory down there that will hold 200 ballplayers. They got a mess hall there will feed about 300 or 400. Now look, if ballplayers had had those conditions way back when Ty Cobb was playing, they’d have been better ballplayers.
So you have to figure out: What would we have done if we had come up under these conditions today? We feel like we would have done it just like they’re doing it. Do just as good as they are.
One thing I believe though: What we could do, we were a little more able to do than they are today. We could throw the ball over the plate a little bit better than they can today. We played our games quicker. At that time no game hardly lasted over two hours and fifteen minutes. And look how many three-hour games you got now. We put a pitcher out there could throw the ball over the plate and could pitch nine innings. If you couldn’t pitch nine innings, you didn’t stay on the team. And we didn’t have a lot of walks and we didn’t have a lot of players who couldn’t hit. There’s a lot of players nowadays just can’t hit. They go up to the bat and they wait around and step in the box, step out, step in the box, step out, the pitcher on the rubber, the manager walking out to the mound to talk to his pitcher, going back, coming back out there again. We had pitchers could go out there and stay, didn’t need a lot of talking to. We had fellows at the bat could hit the ball, and they didn’t need a lot of talking to. We had fellows on the bench could run, and you didn’t
have a lot of signals to give.
We used to lose a ball game and we’d talk about it all night the rest of the night, riding. We’d spend all night discussing it: “If I had done this, we could have scored another run, maybe won the ball game.” And you didn’t go to sleep until you satisfied yourself that you’re going to do better tomorrow and you’re going to improve on what you did tonight.
But now these ballplayers, when they leave a game, they leave it right on the field. They’re talking about something else when they’re together. When they leave the ball field, man, they talk about business!
We were playing for the fun of it. We got little pay. They said it wasn’t too much fun, but we thought it was fun, because we were doing what we wanted to do.
I was in Cooperstown the day Satchel Paige was inducted, and I stayed awake almost all night that night thinking about it. You know, a day like that stays with you a long time. It’s something you never had any dream you’d ever see. Like men walking on the moon. I always wanted to go up there to Cooperstown. You felt like you had a reason, because it’s the home of baseball, but you didn’t have a special reason. We never thought we’d get in the Hall of Fame. It was so far from us, we didn’t even consider it, we didn’t even think it would someday come to reality. We thought the way we were playing was the way it was going to continue. I never had any dream it would come. But that night I felt like I was part of it at last.
Buck Leonard, right, with pitcher Dave Barnhill in Cuba.
The Buck Leonard swing (Cool Papa Bell is sliding in the middle picture). The park is Washington’s Griffith Stadium.