by John Holway
In 1937 I was on Martin Dihigo’s team in Cuba. Josh was down there with Havana. Early Wynn was playing with Springfield in Triple-A ball, and he only won one game down there that year. And he was going to the majors the next year! He could not win down there. Boy, it was tough.
That was 1937. In ’37, ’38 and ’39 I had tremendous years. I could pitch and hit, both. Andy Cooper’d pinch-hit me for his fourth-place hitters just as quick. Several years I hit over .400 pinch-hitting, outfield, first base and pitching.
I was pitching about four times a week, because we were playing six or seven games a week, and we only carried about four pitchers. Maybe sometimes we’d have five, that was the most. We didn’t know what it was to relieve. When you went out there, you didn’t look at the bull pen, you were expected to go the whole route.
They knew I wasn’t wild, they knew I threw strikes. We didn’t hardly walk anyone. The curve, we’d just slice it off, pfffft. And everybody threw hard. Good curve balls, and that live fast ball moved. Today you see a lot of these guys’ fast balls, just straight. But our fast balls moved. We had to have two curve balls, a big one and a small one. Now they call it a slider, but those guys were throwing it years and years back. It kind of just darted over the corner like that. Good control.
We were tremendous rivals with the Washington Homestead Grays. Tremendous rivals. A lot of those guys could have got in the majors, they were such good ballplayers. And gentlemen—Buck Leonard and them were such nice guys. We’d set and talk and jolly one another. My goodness! I pitched against them one night in New Orleans in 1939. They had Leonard, Josh and all of them, and I struck out so many that night ol’ Josh came up to me, said, “Say, fellow, look, you doctoring the ball or something?” I said, “Here it is, look at it.”
Up until ‘42 I had more trouble with Josh than I did any other ball player. Gibson had those great big old muscle arms, weighed about 205, 6’1. He would swing flat-footed, wouldn’t stride. The first time I faced him, he hit a home run off me. But in ’42 I didn’t have any trouble with him at all. No, from then on I really began to get him out.
I learned how to get Buck Leonard out too. I’d slow the ball up on him, screw-ball him, and slow curve balls. He’d ground out—oh, he’d get hits sometimes, but I mean I could get him out.
In 1942 I remember we played the Homestead Grays in Washington. Boston had played a day game against the Senators that day and drew 3,000; we played the Grays that night and drew 28,000. That’s the year we beat the Grays four straight for the Negro world championship.
We had a tremendous ball club that year. A lot of the boys had jumped to Mexico, and they all came back in ‘42. We had Joe Greene catching, John O’Neil first base, Jesse Williams short, Newt Allen second. Outfield we had Ted Strong, Willard Brown and a boy named Bill Simms—he was a ballplayer never got much publicity, but he could do anything; he could hit, oooh, he could hit. Ted Strong was just as good a ballplayer as there was in baseball, but he kind of laid on the bottle. That got him in his late years.
We had a tremendous pitching staff in ’42. We had Satchel, Jack Matchett, a boy named Connie Johnson who played in the majors. And Lefty LaMarque and a boy named Booker McDaniels. Nobody hardly beat us. That particular year, ’42, I don’t think I lost maybe one or two ball games the entire year.
This kid Connie Johnson was awful good too. He had hurt his arm when he went in the majors. I’d like to have seen him go in there before he hurt his arm. You talking about Satchel and me—Johnson and I would team up and beat anybody. I remember Baltimore came here with Campanella and all those good ballplayers. I beat them 3–1. He came back the second game and beat them 3–1. I mean we didn’t lose—he and I didn’t lose. Johnson —ooh, that guy could throw that ball. He wasn’t but about nineteen or twenty years old. He hurt his arm in ’42. He went into the Service and came back. His arm came back to him, but nothing like it had been.
That ‘42 World Series. We opened up against the Grays in Washington. I think Satchel pitched the first game, and Jack Matchett relieved him. I started the second game, Satchel relieved me. We changed around. He said, “Hilton, you’ve been relieving me all this year, let me relieve you, just see what we can do.” I pitched five innings, he pitched four. When I left the score was 5–0. They scored four runs off Satchel, and we beat ’em 8–4. Then we went over to New York. Satchel started and Matchett relieved him, and we beat ‘em 9–3. Then we went to Philadelphia and beat ’em 9–5, and I beat ’em the last ball game in Portsmouth, Virginia; I think it was 14–2. We just silenced them, just whipped em. I mean we killed their pitchers, and they didn’t do anything with our pitching.
My arm went dead in 1943. I hurt it, and I played first base and outfield for two years. In ’44 I began working back into shape, so I went out on the Coast that fall and played baseball against Bob Lemon, who’s right down here as manager of Kansas City now. They had a good ball club. All those guys were in the Service. They had an all-star game, and I beat them that evening.
Biz Mackey caught me. Oooh, my goodness, I didn’t know he was such a catcher! I think I struck out fifteen of those guys. That guy was a marvelous catcher! I just—ooh, I just was on edge, and it looked like all my stuff was just working. Had the hitters looking like they didn’t know what to do. Mackey told me, “I don’t see how in the world you ever lose a ball game.”
My arm came back in 1945 or ’46, and in 1946 we played Newark for the Negro world championship. They had Larry Doby and Monte Irvin, and I beat them two games. I beat them in Chicago 5–1, and I beat them in New York 2–1. No, that’s wrong, I didn’t beat them, I had them 1–0 going into the sixth inning, and Satchel came in. We had a guy from the Coast named Hamilton to replace Jackie Robinson—a good hitter, a good-looking boy. A big boy from Newark slid into second on the double play and broke his leg. Hamilton just laid there, and before we could resume play it was almost an hour. So I cooled off, got stiff and walked a man, and Satchel came in and relieved me. They tied it up, but he went on and beat them 2–1.
Monte Irvin played shortstop for Newark, and he looked awful good. Yeah, he was a good ballplayer. There’s one guy I was really pulling for when he went to the majors.
But Doby didn’t look too good. Three straight times I struck him out in Chicago, and he started jawing with the umpire. I asked him, “Doby, why do you want to jump on the umpire?” And he said, “Man, do you see my owner sitting up there in the stands? I’ve got to look good for her.”
Roy Campanella didn’t show me anything either. Campanella and I were very good friends. I used to pitch against old Campy when he was seventeen years old. I’d strike him out all the time. In the all-star game one year I struck that boy out two times.
Campanella came down to the Polo Grounds one night when we were playing Newark in the World Series, and asked me what did I think about playing with the Dodgers. He said the front office had told him to talk to me. He asked how old I was, and I told him thirty-four. Actually, they were wondering about Jackie [Robinson]. Jackie was around twenty-seven when he went up there, and they were debating whether he was too old. They knew he had to make it within one year, because if he didn’t, he would be too old.
I figured I was too old at thirty-four. See, we were getting a pretty good salary, and we were afraid to go down to the minors and take a pay cut. With the Monarchs I was making $800 a month, and I felt like $400 would have been the best I could have got in Triple-A baseball. Don Newcombe went down to the minors from Newark and stayed for three years, and I don’t think he was getting over $250 a month.
Had it been opened up—had there been some other team beside the Dodgers—I probably would have taken a chance. I knew the Dodgers were pretty well loaded and I’d have to sit around in the minors and they’d be slow about bringing me up, and at my age that was too much. I wouldn’t have minded going down to the minors for one year, then come back up. But at that particular time I felt I was too old to have a comeback with the Monarchs if I
didn’t make it with the Dodgers right away. Campanella said, “Well, think it over and let me know.” But I couldn’t see going down there for them.
That fall I went with Satchel to play against Bob Feller’s big-league all-stars. I remember they had Sam Chapman, Jeff Heath and Charlie Keller in the outfield; Mickey Vernon, who won the batting championship, was on first; Phil Rizzuto and Kenny Keltner in the infield; pitching was Feller, Bob Lemon, Johnny Sain, Dutch Leonard and Spud Chandler. I never saw so many good pitchers. Boy! Bob Feller said, “I wish I had this ball club all year to play with!” They had a powerhouse. Man!
We played fifteen or sixteen games, and I relieved in two and pitched two complete games. I broke even with them. They beat me 6–3, and I beat Feller 3–2. I gave up four or five hits. Vernon game me the most trouble; he got two doubles.
What messed us up was Jackie Robinson had an all-star team that fall—Monte Irvin went with him, and that left us with no outfielders. We had a pickup outfield—and Sam Jethroe had to catch when Quincy Trouppe got hurt. That really weakened our ball club defensively; we picked up a boy named Gene Benson to play center field. Artie Wilson played short, Hank Thompson played second, Buck O’Neill first. Catching, Quincy Trouppe started off, then he got his finger hurt.
We started off in Pittsburgh and went to Youngstown, played in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago—just overflow crowds. We really lost a lot of money in Chicago. We had 30-some thousand there and thought we’d get ten or fifteen. They weren’t expecting so many people, and Bob Feller himself had to go and try to help the ticket taker. They just rushed us. The policemen were taking up tickets and taking up money. My goodness. I don’t know how much money we lost. Everywhere we went, just overflow crowds. They really poured out to see us that year. And we played some great baseball.
Hank Thompson just wore out that Bob Feller on that tour. I mean he just wore him out! He hit a home run and a double in Wichita, another home run off him somewhere else. Hit a home run in New York, because we beat Bob Feller 4–0 in New York. We had around 40,000 people, and our cut was $300 that day, each player.
Bob Feller’s people made around $6,000 apiece for that trip. Ken Keltner said, “Hilton, my goodness!” I think his salary was $12,000 that year, and he cleared $6,000 for that trip.
But that was the end of it. They broke it up after that; the commissioner stopped it. Stan Musial was supposed to be on that club from the start, but that’s the year St. Louis played Boston in the World Series in those little bandboxes they had for parks. Musial got in the World Series instead of coming with us, and he must have made a little over $2,000 for winning the Series. My goodness, he raised all kind of heck about it. Some of those players said, “The heck with the World Series when we can make this kind of money here.” And that was the end of it.
I guess one of my greatest thrills was pitching againt the New York Yankees in 1947—March 17—in Caracas, Venezuela. That was the first time I pitched against a whole major league ball club. And they had quite a club too, believe you me. Dr. [Bobby] Brown was about as good a hitter as I’ve been. Boy! He was playing third base. Rizzuto was at shortstop, Stirnweiss was playing second, first base was Tommy Henrich and Nick Etten. Outfield was Keller, big Cliff Mapes, Johnny Lindell and Yogi Berra. I think Ralph Houck was catching. Pitching they had Allie Reynolds. They had quite a ball club. I pitched six innings, didn’t give up any runs and gave up one hit, to Rizzuto. We won 4–3.
So I pitched against enough major leaguers to see if I was on the level. You know, naturally if you never compete with those people, you’re always in doubt in your mind whether you’re good enough to play against them. But I played against them enough, and they never did hit me. So I feel that had I had a chance, I could have pitched in the big leagues.
All our source of guys being developed was through the Negro League. Yeah, they were taking them, and I don’t think any of the clubs got much out of it—Doby, Irvin, Newcombe, Campanella, Ernie Banks. And they were great attractions. You could see it in ‘46, the first year Jackie went to Montreal. Then in ’47 Negro baseball began to go back. All the people started to go Brooklynites, everybody who had never known anything about baseball. Even if we were playing here in Kansas City, everybody wanted to go over to St. Louis to see Jackie. So our league really began to go down, down, down.
It looked like it was dead, so I played in Fulda, Minnesota, in ‘49, and in ’50 I went out to Armco-Sheffield Steel here in Kansas City. They had a ball club and they wanted me to manage it. So I said, “Well, maybe I better get on out of here.” So I gave it up. I could have pitched a little more. But I’d seen so many ballplayers that just kept a-hanging around when they were over the hill, so I’d always made up my mind when I got to the place where I was going down, I’d just give it up. I’m a supervisor with Armco now. I’m lucky, I got a real good job.
A young girl asked me one day, “Did you ever play ball? I’ve heard my father and a lot of them talk about you. How did you get started?” and one thing and another. I told her, and she said, “Funny, there’s no literature or anything. We would like to read about some of the older ballplayers, so we’d know something about them.” I said, “Well, maybe eventually there will be a book or something.” She said, “If you ever run across one, let us know.”
It was a rough life—ride, ride, ride and ride. I remember many a day, ride a bus, get out and get you a little bit to eat, go to the ball park, go out there and pitch nine innings, play a doubleheader, play outfield the second game. But I enjoyed baseball, I really did. It was spoiling me. I loved it, and it was sweet. We had some great moments. I enjoyed every bit of it.
Here’s the thing of it: I know we were playing better ball than some of the lower teams in the big leagues. The only difference was, they had a better bench, more people sitting on the bench. See, if we had one shortstop, we had one shortstop, and our guys just played, day in and day out. The majors had more replacements, more pitchers and reserves. Just man-for-man, we were tremendous. We’d put our ball club on the field and something’s got to give; those guys could hit that ball, I don’t care who was pitching. And we had pitchers could get anybody out, and could throw the ball over the plate.
I look at these eighteen- and nineteen-year-old kids today—wild, can’t get the ball over to save their lives. They have good coaches who talk to ’em, tell ’em things, but one thing, I don’t think they have that desire to want to play, to want to develop, to want to learn. They just take it for granted: “Oh, I can go out and play golf.” A lot of them quit. All this opportunity they’ve got. But we played because we loved it. I didn’t care if I never got a dime, I just loved it that well. I just used to eat and sleep baseball. And I always had a desire.
I enjoyed baseball, I really did. I tell these kids, “You wouldn’t believe I made my living for thirteen or fourteen years at baseball.” They say, “You did!” I say, “Yeah, that’s the only job I had. And here you all are just monkeying around here.” See, I always wanted to win, and it’s hard, you know—I just can’t hardly take it the way these kids play ball. I always wanted to win, and I gave it my best.
I’d pick Buck Leonard as the best first baseman I ever saw. Martin Dihigo at second. Willie Wells shortstop. At third base I’d pick Kenny Keltner of Cleveland. In the outfield I’d put Sam Chapman, and Charlie Keller of the Yankees. Catcher of course is Josh Gibson. Pitching staff? I’d have to go with Lon Warneke of the Cubs. Ooh, that boy could pitch! And Bobby Feller, of course, and Bob Lemon, and Raymond Brown of the Homestead Grays. And yeah, oh yeah, I’d put Satchel in there too.
Hilton Smith
Hilton Smith, left, with his catchers, Frank Duncan and Joe Greene
Joe Greene at Muhlebach Field, Kansas City.
Chapter 16
JAMES “JOE” GREENE
One of the unsung stars of the “blackball” decades was James “Joe” Greene, for eight years Satchel Paige’s hard-hitting catcher on the old Kansas City Monarchs.
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bsp; Greene came up from Atlanta in 1936 to join the Washington Homestead Grays. “I was his roommate,” Grays’ first baseman Buck Leonard recalls. “He was big, strong, had a great arm. He couldn’t hit a curve ball, but he could hit a fast ball four miles. So we bought him an extra-long bat, a thirty-seven-inch bat. Then he could just get a piece of that curve ball. But his hands got sore between his thumb and his first finger. Some young ballplayers, when they develop an ailment, they want to go home, they don’t have that stickability. But we talked to Greene, and he stayed with us a pretty long time.” Then the incomparable Josh Gibson joined the Grays as catcher, and Greene was traded to the Monarchs, which starred the one and only Paige. It was the best break of Greene’s life. “We gave up on him too early,” Leonard now admits. “His best years were when he was with Kansas City. He turned out to be a great ballplayer.”
One of the Monarchs’ star pitchers was right-hander Hilton Smith, who toiled in Satchel Paige’s shadow much as Greene was forced to play in Josh Gibson’s. “We picked Joe Greene up as catcher in ‘39,” Smith says, “and about the middle of the season he was really hitting that ball. In ’40 he really whipped that ball. I was telling a fellow today about Greene when we used to play Cleveland when Sam Jethroe was there. They told Greene, ‘Well, we’re going to steal on you today. We’re going to beat you, we’re going to bunt and get on, then we’re going to steal second, we’re going to steal third, we’re going to bunt in runs. We gonna beat you.’ I was pitching, and only six men got on that day—I I think I gave up four hits—six of them tried to steal and he threw out five out of six. I shut them out 6–0. They’d get on, they’d try to go down, that’s as far as they’d get. That guy could sure throw.