by John Holway
“In ‘41 that’s when Greene really came into his own, Smith continues. ”That year and the next year, ’41 and ’42, you can believe it or not, that guy in my opinion was the best catcher in baseball. In ’42 we played Josh’s team for the world championship, and he would woof with Josh. He’d say, “Well, you’ve been talking ’bout the great Josh. I’m gonna let you know who’s the great one.”11 And that man hit that ball that year. And threw out everybody. He was a great catcher those two years. Then he went into the Service and he never did come back to his old form.”
Actually Greene still had a bomb or two left in his big bat, as he demonstrated in 1947 at the age of thirty-five with a long home run off Bob Feller, a hit that the Los Angeles Times described as “a resounding homer.”
Greene received me one hot summer afternoon in 1970 on the cool back porch of his frame home in Stone Mountain, the humid Georgia town where he was born and died. He greeted me in a newly starched sports shirt that showed his muscular arms, black bands of steel that he folded across his chest as we talked. He was still as lean and solid as he had been in his playing days, and he talked in a slow, deep voice, pausing frequently to search for just the right phrase to express his thoughts.
Joe Greene Speaks ...
You’ve heard about the Boudreau shift. They used that on me in the colored league, and I believe some of the big leaguers saw it and did it on Ted Williams. Jim Taylor did it against me before Boudreau was even managing. They knew I was a pull hitter. If I hit the ball back through the middle, the second baseman would get the ball on the shortstop side of second base; he’d go that far to get me out. But I never thought much of it. I hit the ball too hard for them. I hit the ball right at the third baseman’s foot and he couldn’t touch it, one step away from him. Right by him. He didn’t even have time to stoop down for it.
In Kansas City, center field was 400-something feet. Oh, my God, you’ve got to drive a ball almost 500 feet to get it out of center field over that wall. I hit one over the scoreboard in left-center field. I’ve hit lots of long home runs in Chicago’s Comiskey Park way up in the stands. I hit a couple long ones in Yankee Stadium. I’ve popped the ball in there, reach out for a curve ball, pop it, don’t hit it real good, and hit it into the left-field stands.
Josh Gibson and I were the two most powerful hitters as catchers. Josh was the toughest hitter to get out I ever saw. He was so powerful, and he was a good natural hitter. I don’t think anybody exceeded him. But Satchel could get him out, Satchel never had any trouble with him. We played Josh’s team, the Washington Homestead Grays, in the Negro World Series in 1942 and beat ’em in four straight games. Satchel just handcuffed Josh.
Satchel liked excitement, and created it. Satchel always wanted to be noticed, he was of these pitchers who wanted to attract the audience. Satchel would be down on a street corner with a big crowd around him talking about baseball—he’s always got the conversation going—and it gets late. He calls down that he wants a police escort, and sometimes our owner would be with us and Satchel doesn’t show up—and he’s got to pitch the first three innings—and it’s fifteen or twenty minutes to game time and Satchel hasn’t showed up yet. “Where’s Satchel, man?” You hear some sirens outside the park and there’d be some police on motorcycles, he’d be in a cab coming to the ball park. He did all those kind of things.
Yeah, he had a curve ball. Back in his first days, before he came to the Monarchs, they say he didn’t have a curve, but when he came to the Monarchs, he’d throw a curve ball and a slider. And he had lots of pitches of his own. He had “The Four-Day Rider,” “Midnight Creeper”—no, I don’t know what they meant either. And his Hesitation Pitch became famous. When he went to the majors they did away with it and made him pretty mad, made him pretty mad.
I was born in 1912 right here in Stone Mountain, Georgia, just down the road a short way from where I live now. I joined the Atlanta Black Crackers in 1933 when I was twenty-one years old and stayed with them until 1935. They had fellows like Donald Reed, Red Moore Pee Eye [Pee Wee] Butts, Babe Davis, Red Hatley, James Kemp, Ping Burt and Oscar Glenn. We were in the Southern League, and I was playing first base. One night we were playing in Anniston, Alabama, and a guy by the name of Tish, who had played in the colored leagues about thirteen or fourteen years, told me, “You play all right over there on first base, you’re going to make a good ballplayer. You’re big, got good weight on you, but you throw like a catcher. Can you catch?”
I said, “I’m not scared to get back there, but I don’t know how to catch. If you teach me how to catch, I’ll catch.” It didn’t make any difference to me where I played as long as I played. I figured right quick if he was managing the ball club and if he was an ex-catcher, I’d have a better chance than anybody on that team of getting all the information that I wanted. So I told him, “Well, you teach me how to catch. If I don’t understand something, you explain it to me.” And I went up as a catcher because I always studied.
The manager of the Crackers at one time was Jones, and he was an ex-catcher. For a while Nish Williams managed the team, another catcher. He was Donn Clendenon’s stepfather. Donn was a tiny little baby then, and he raised him.
When I went to the Homestead Grays in 1936, Buck Leonard and I were roommates. Buck taught me a lot. He was a great hitter too. He helped me out and I just kept going.
The toughest base runner to throw out? I don’t know, I had a powerful arm. I found Sam Jethroe to be hardest. He was really fast because he’d take long steps, long steps—he could zoom! That’s the truth. Jethroe had a little play he’d pull on you. If he’s on first and the batter bunts the ball down the line, the third baseman’s got to field the ball. If he’d catch the shortstop asleep, he’d slide into third base. He sure would do it. Yeah, he did it once or twice after he came up with the Boston Braves. Cool Papa Bell would do the same thing on you. Sure would.
I caught Jethroe several times. I went to my manager and said, “Lookee here”—they don’t play it this way today, but we played to win—“suppose it’s a close ball game and Jethroe is on. He’s going to run, you know he’s going to run. Here’s my plan.” When I call the first off-pitch (pitchout), the manager and everybody else sees that I’ve got an off-pitch. On the second pitch I do the same thing; I’ve got his mind on an off-pitch. Now the percentage is 95 percent he goes with two balls and no strikes because it’s got to be a strike—he thinks that you won’t get behind on this hitter. But the surprising thing is getting the third off-pitch. He goes and I throw him out. I got a good arm, but there’s the percentage; I’ve got to take advantage of that too. After that you try to get the second batter. Even if you walk him, you got one man on and one out, and you stand a chance of getting a double play. That’s the percentage.
I dreamed about players stealing base on me. I always believed in putting some brains in what you do. And I watched guys. The reason guys never ran bases against me is because it took me and the pitcher to get him out. Smitty [Hilton Smith] was good at it. I’d say, “If there are two outs and Jethroe is on, you know nobody’s going to hit it until he tries to steal. You know he’s going to run, you know he can’t stay there. Now you forget about the hitter, because Jethroe is your next out, not the hitter. Don’t take a big stretch. If you think he’s too far away, make him get back. You hold the ball at your chest a little longer than usual, then step back off the mound and he’s gone. You just turn around and throw him out.” Smitty could do it many times: I wouldn’t get a chance to throw him out. When you step off the mound and turn around, he’d digging for second. You’ve got him out.
I built myself up as a curve ball hitter. If a pitcher’s got a good curve, he wants to rely on it as his best pitch because most hitters can’t hit the curve ball. The reason I could hit the white pitchers was because they pitched low, and I could hit low pitches. Sometimes they’d say, “Joe Greene, you were on your knees when you hit that.” Sometime I would go almost down on my right knee. But I’d hit
it in the stands. When they tried to pitch high, I used a 36-inch bat; I had three weights in that bat. I stood back off the plate, and I always swung fast. If I knew a pitcher would throw high, I was ready for it. I wouldn’t go up there the same way every time. That’s one thing I brand Hank Aaron for. With the kind of wrists he’s got, if he could move like Mays—Mays would come up there all stooped down like this, or he’d come up there standing straight up. You don’t know which way he’s coming up, he’s always moving, see. And he hits left-handed pitchers different from right-handed. I’ve seen those pitchers get Aaron out, make him pop that curve ball to first base. If we caught a teammate doing these things, we’d stay on him until he’d got rid of it. Do whatever is necessary to solve it.
We had a good bunch of fellows on the Monarchs. We had a good team. Frank Duncan was a good manager—he was temperamental, but we all liked him. We all got along so well. We didn’t allow anything to get between us and our baseball and winning. We liked to win. They say we had a “syndicate” there. We admitted it too. We wanted certain guys on the ball club, and if one man wasn’t the right kind of guy, five or six of us on the ball team had ways and means of getting him off the team. And he knew it. The team wasn’t going to join him, he’s going to join the team. He’s got to weave himself into the team. We had youngsters, we had good youngsters, but they had to have good discipline and everything else. Some guy would get a little money in his pocket, go out and stay all night. He can’t play ball the next day. We could tell him the things that were coming and how he should carry himself. Today you can see an example: Mays, Aaron, Banks, Irvin, all those guys.
In 1942 we played Dizzy Dean’s all-stars in Chicago, in Buffalo and in New York. We beat him in Chicago; we beat him in Buffalo too. Cecil Travis, who played third base for Washington, had gone into Service and was down in Palm Beach, Florida, and he came in on the plane to play. I beat them with a home run.
We played them in Yankee Stadium too and beat them there. I tripled. I think it was in the seventh inning. Willard Brown was hitting clean-up. Moody, who pitched for the Yankees, walked Brown to pitch to me, and I tripled and beat them 3–1.
Sure, we got a lot of white fans to our games. Our team and the Grays played in different towns in the World Series, and the white fans were coming to our games—we had our sympathizers. But the colored would stay away from white baseball. We could play in Chicago on the South Side with 30 to 35,000, and the Cubs would play on the North Side with nine to 10,000. And we could take the crowd away from the South Side if the White Sox were in. We’d have 20 to 25,000, and the White Sox would have 12 to 14,000. The same year Hank Greenberg hit fifty-eight home runs, we had 42,000 people up there in Detroit for a Negro game. But Walter Briggs, the Detroit owner, said we damaged the park and we couldn’t play in it anymore.
Joe Greene
Yes, I’ve had some unpleasant things happen in games. I remember the year I went up with the Grays. We were playing a game over in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, against a white team. The field was wet and the game was delayed. When we finally got the game started, some guy way back in the stands hollered, “Come on, niggers!” I looked back, and saw another white fellow had him by the collar and hit him, and he came tumbling down those steps. Later one of the white players hit the ball against the right-field fence, and when he went by, the second baseman had his back turned, and he stepped on his heel.
I said, “Well, there’s nothing to do but let him get on base again and play for him if he wants to play that kind of game.” So next time he came up, he hit the ball almost in the same identical place, and this time he was coming home. I got the ball way before he got there, and I moved up the line on him. He jumped in the air with those cleats in the air, and I bowled him over my head right across my back. He hit on the other side of the plate, and skinned his whole face, even his chest. Oh yeah, and he was figuring to do me in too.
But he was just a small-town player. The big leaguers didn’t do anything like that. Big fellows like Dizzy Dean and all those guys wouldn’t have a fellow on there that felt that way. Some fellows never played exhibition ball games against us. They felt that way, and they wouldn’t play.
Yes, there was a way to speed up integration at that time. I may have played a little part in this. Fay Young was sports editor of the Chicago Defender, and I went down to his office. There was something that worried my mind and I had to get it off, so I said, “Well, I’ll go down there and talk to him.” I told him I knew we were getting the runaround, we weren’t getting a fair share or a fair chance. I told him the scheme they had. I said, “If you notice, every white team in the American or National League is scouting one or two of our ballplayers”—for example, Pittsburgh was scouting Roy Campanella and Sammy T. Hughes—“but it’s nothing but a scheme.” I told him the Yankees were scouting Willard Brown and me. I said, “This is something that’s been going on for about three or four years.” I said, “Now, I don’t expect to take Bill Dickey’s job”—he and I were about the same age and we were going out of baseball the same age. I said, “Brown may be a little younger then Joe DiMaggio, and both of them are center fielders, but he doesn’t expect to take Joe DiMaggio’s job. It’s nothing but a scheme. They don’t intend to sign us. They’d be afraid of a white boycott if they really signed one of us.”
After I explained this to Fay Young, he said, “You know, Greene, you’ve probably got something there.”
Well, at that time a protest wouldn’t have helped, it would have slowed things down. Because we had to be intelligent enough to use the theories and the methods that the white man had used against us. We relied on the system of this country, but in a peaceful way, because we knew all the time that we had sympathizers. If it wasn’t for Bob Feller, Early Wynn and Bob Lemon, the Indians probably wouldn’t have signed Satchel. People came out to see Cleveland who had never been to the ball game before, especially colored people—and white too. And they couldn’t have won the pennant without Paige. And those guys could see it beforehand. They said, “We need him.” If there’s something you want, you speak up for it. Not every player on that team spoke like that, but when the time was come, they reached down and got their share of the World Series money. That’s what it meant, but some players couldn’t see that far.
In 1942 I went into the Army; I was in the 92nd Division, all colored. But we were all put together with different nationalities as allies, and I found myself in company sometimes with four or five different nationalities. I was in Oran, Algiers and Italy. I was on the front line eight months and had two battle stars. I was in a 57mm antitank company.
We opened up the third front, in Italy. The 92nd Division took over between Via Reggio and Pisa, where the leaning tower is. The 370th were up near the Arno River, and we joined them just above Leghorn on the Mediterranean side.
I got some decorations and things. I was in Company B. Company L was attacking and they were going to take a pillbox. I always was a good observer, and I had my binoculars and I could see shells falling all around the pillbox on the tops of the hill. Two Germans came out with a machine gun. One had the barrel and some ammunition, the other one had the tripod. They were going to come around and get a good field of fire. They probably would have wiped out that whole company before they realized what was happening. So I called the OP [observation post]. He said, “Are you sure they’re Germans?” I said, “Yes, I can tell by their hats, their uniforms. I can see ‘em good.” He said, “We got men right up there under them.” I said, “I know it, but they can’t see ’em. I can.” He said, “Well, if you’re sure they’re Germans, you fire.”
I told the guy to load, and he loaded the gun. I said, “Give me two rounds of HE [high-explosive] rapid fire.” I fired two rounds and reached for my binoculars. The two Germans were pretty close together, and the first round hit right between them. Of course both of them went up in the air. By the time they came back down, the other one hit in there, and they went back in the air.
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p; The guy said, “You get ’em?” I said, “Yeah, I got both of them. One shot was enough.” Company L went on to take the mountain, and three days later when the reports came in, they said they found two dead Germans and a machine gun. Three or four weeks they called me down to headquarters. I wondered what they wanted. I went down and they gave me the combat infantry badge and wrote my mother and my wife. They knew I was overseas, but they didn’t know I was in combat. I had written my wife a letter and it was raining and I folded it up like it was and sent it on to her. That’s why she thought I was on the front line. I was. I stayed there eight months. That’s a long time.
I went on a special mission over there. It was a church, an outpost for the Germans. There was one squad, about eight of us. We worked all night long, all night long, digging in for that gun. We had to get down low to where the shells wouldn’t dig us out, you know, and get that gun up there and get it in position, ’cause once we got it up there, they could see it for God knows how far. The lieutenant and I went up there the night before, and that was the only place we could find to get a field of fire on our target. Next morning, sure enough, those shells started falling in there. We’d get in our holes, but they hit all around, busted both tires on the gun, knocked the shield off, cut a hole in it.
I had a pretty close call from a sniper—and from a shell too. I had a shell come in our hole and hit right on me, six or seven feet from me. I came up off the ground just like that from the concussion. They sent me back to the hospital, and I stayed there about three weeks.