Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues

by John Holway

  In those days $500 a month wasn’t a bad salary for a ballplayer, a real good player like Irvin. Money was very different then; it was equal to probably $1,000 now, or more.

  The first year we had a club, I felt bad that the players didn’t have a job in the winter, so I made this contact in Puerto Rico, and they agreed that if I sent the players down, they would keep them busy. I got Vic Harris of the Grays to go along with me and manage them. About half my Eagles went. On the team were thirteen men: Buck Leonard, Dick Seay, Dandridge, Sadler, a shortstop; Terris McDuffie—I think he died a couple years ago—Slim Jones. I let them have my uniforms, so they played as the Brooklyn Eagles, though some of them were from other teams. The Puerto Ricans welcomed them beautifully. I was thrilled to death. I started winter baseball for our Negro players. After that they could always find work in Puerto Rico and Cuba.

  The Cincinnati Reds trained in Puerto Rico that spring, and we beat them too and won this trophy. Bacardi Rum donated it. Since I had let the players have my uniforms, they won the trophy as the Brooklyn Eagles.

  Abe started right in fighting the booking agents. Abe’s attitude was that baseball should have been run in a completely businesslike way with the booking agents. He started an argument about promotions in Yankee Stadium. Ed Gottlieb of Philadelphia had the rights to promote the games there. Abe thought that was wrong; he thought it should be given to Sep Semler, who had the ball team in Yankee Stadium, the Black Yankees. But the fight never got anywhere. Gottlieb was able to keep the promotions.

  That was one thing I did not agree on with Abe completely. I thought those other men had experience, but when I saw what his attitude was, I didn’t pursue it any further. He was probably right, but I was thinking about the financial result. As a result of the fight, the Eagles couldn’t get any bookings. I guess the boys told you they were idle an awful lot. We were idle half the time. We played mostly weekends, occasionally a night game in the middle of the week. We never missed a payday, but we were losing much money and Abe had to go to the bank many times. No one’s happy about going to the bank every day and drawing out money, but it was his money; if he wanted to throw it away, I never complained.

  Abe and I had a magnificent partnership. He got the club together and I took care of the business details. It was a perfect partnership. I never interfered in the way he ran the club, except once. Murray Watkins was a shortstop for us, and Abe wanted to trade him to Philadelphia for Pat Patterson. The word got around, and when I went to the game, the fans got all over me: “How come you’re going to trade Watkins?” So I said to Abe, “Do you think you’re making a mistake, Abe?” He said, “Oh, there’s no comparison between the two. Patterson is sensational.” So he made the trade, and the fans all liked it too.

  Now I didn’t like the Ethiopian Clowns. I wanted baseball to be dignified. One day when they were playing in New York, I decided to go see them, and I don’t think anybody in the park laughed louder than I did. So after that I stopped complaining.

  Did you ever see a picture of me in the dugout with a cap and jacket on? This boy from the New York Post had come over to take our pictures. I refused to pose for him. I thought it wasn’t fair for me to pose. It was Abe’s money and Abe’s brains that got the Eagles together. He’s the one who deserves all the credit. But this boy from the Post just begged me. He was in tears, he said, “Oh Mrs. Manley, if I go back without a picture, I’ll just be in the doghouse with my boss.” So I said, “Well, what do you want me to do?” He said, “Would you put a cap and jacket on in the dugout ?” So I did, and if that picture has been in the newspaper once, I’ve seen it fifty times!

  Were the other owners prejudiced against a woman? Oh no. In fact, Abe took me to all the meetings, of course. The first one or two meetings they felt a little bit annoyed. One day the phone rang and it was Cum Posey of the Grays apologizing for using profane words at one of the meetings. There was Posey and Sunnyman Jackson and Semler, Ed Bolden and Gottlieb, and Tom Wilson of Baltimore. Wilson was on the playboy side; he liked to have a little drink and have a little fun. Baseball wasn’t that serious to him—and he was chairman of our league! Anyway, they finally opened up and were just wonderful to me. When Jackie Robinson criticized Negro ball and I sent a letter answering him, I got a letter from the other owners thanking me for the way I had answered him. So the owners ended up liking me very much.

  The players? They weren’t my department. All I did was pay their salaries. I didn’t travel with them. Only one trip to Trenton I went along on. I would have curbed their style. They liked to sing and carry on and all, and I wouldn’t have been conducive to their style.

  But Abe went everywhere with them. He stayed right in the hotel with them. They always were colored hotels. In those days you didn’t think too much about it, it was sort of a way of life. But they were very nice hotels.

  Abe didn’t go out to scout players. Usually he got tips from his friends. Monte Irvin was playing right there in the town where we played. East Orange and Newark were right next to each other, and he was the star of the East Orange high school team. So was Larry Doby the star of Paterson High School.

  Monte Irvin played shortstop and outfield. There’s few ballplayers can do all five things—hit, field, run, throw and think. Even the great stars, many have weak arms. That was one of Irvin’s outstanding characteristics. What an arm he had! He could throw a ball from deep in the outfield straight to the catcher on a line drive. Nobody tried to take an extra base on him.

  One boy Abe heard about was up in New York State, so he went up to investigate. Abe found he was on parole, he’d had some trouble. We tried to get the parole board to let us have him, but they absolutely refused. The man who had the team where he was playing didn’t want to let him go, he was such a good ballplayer. So I went to the parole board in New Jersey and got them to agree to take him, and they contacted the New York board. And he was a magnificent player, and one of the nicest boys. He married a New Jersey girl and you couldn’t find anybody nicer. I have a little picture of him, and I often wonder how many other boys if given the chance would turn out the same.

  We had another little pitcher. The ballplayers all laughed about him, but he turned out to be a terrific pitcher—Jimmy Hill, about 5’ 5”, a sensational young pitcher. Abe had friends all through the South. He was a very well-liked man. They used to call him Honest Abe. One of his friends told him about this kid who was pitching batting practice for a white team in Lakeland, Florida. Abe went to see him and signed him. You never hear much about Jimmy. He was quite a pitcher!

  Some of the boys came looking for us. I never will forget the day Don Newcombe came looking for a job. It was during the war, and I was very patriotic. We were leaving for spring training camp so short of men; Irvin and others were in Europe fighting. You know how word gets around, there was always a big crowd at the hotel when we left. Well, this man brought Newcombe, said, “Mrs. Manley, this boy wants to go to camp with the Eagles. He’s a pitcher.”

  My first words to Newcombe were: “Well, how is it a big fine-looking boy like you isn’t in the Service?”

  Newcombe’s first words to me were: “I’ve been in and out.”

  But we never considered him a great pitcher. It was quite a little while before he got to be a pitcher. When Rickey took him, he saw something we didn’t, I guess.

  The first inkling I had that Branch Rickey was interested in black players was at a press conference in New York. I received a call from Mr. Rickey, asking me to come to a meeting. When I got there all the black and white press was there. I was the only owner of a black team there. Mr. Rickey announced that he was going to start a Negro baseball league called the United States League. This statement knocked me out. I asked him, if he was so interested in Negro baseball, why hadn’t he contacted the two Negro leagues that had been operating so long?

  Mr. Rickey tried to take our parks, but he couldn’t take them. I begged the owners of the Negro leagues to try to find out what was on
his mind. I felt he was too smart to ignore. The owners said he couldn’t take the parks and they weren’t concerned. Well, they were right. He couldn’t take the parks, but he did take our ballplayers. He outmaneuvered us completely.

  When Branch Rickey took Newcombe, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, the fans deserted us. That was understandable. Some of my Newark fans used to go all the way to Baltimore to see Robinson play in the International League.

  We won the pennant in 1946. And that was the year after Rickey had taken Newcombe from us; we didn’t have Newcombe that year. We beat the Kansas City Monarchs in the World Series. It went the whole seven games, and we beat Satchel the game he pitched. The boys were kind of anxious to beat Satchel. The one who won the last game: Rufus Lewis. I think if we’d had a chance to play the white champions that year, we’d have beaten them too.

  In 1947 my husband told me Bill Veeck’s head scout at Cleveland was talking to him about Doby. Sure enough, when the phone rang, it was Bill Veeck calling from Cleveland, and he wanted Doby. I said, “What had you planned to give me?” He said, “$10,000.” I said, “You know very well that if he was a white boy you’d give me $100,000.” But I was in no position to bargain. He said, “Well, I’ll send you five more if he sticks.” I said, “Anything you send me I’ll appreciate.” So he sent me $15,000.

  My last words to Mr. Veeck were to make a promise never to pay Larry less than $5,000. He made that promise. I think that’s why he put Larry right on the team. He never had to spend a day on the farm.

  But after that Negroes started going into the major leagues. When the fans deserted us, I finally persuaded my husband to quit and sell our franchise. Several other Eastern teams quit too. The same year we quit, three other teams in our Negro National League quit. I went to the Negro American League and asked them to take in the remaining teams in our league. At the same time I got this Negro dentist, Dr. H. W. Young, to buy my team, including all the contracts, the new bus, the equipment and all the uniforms.

  I had just gotten home from the meeting when I picked up a paper and saw that Branch Rickey had signed Monte Irvin for St. Paul, the Dodgers’ farm. He was one of the players whose contract I had just sold to the doctor. There was a young Jewish lawyer, Jerome Kesler, who had helped finance his law school training handling publicity for the Eagles. He was now a practicing attorney, and I called him in and told him Mr. Rickey had no business taking all these people. I asked him if he would gamble with me on making an issue of it.

  So he wrote to Rickey. As soon as Mr. Rickey got this letter from a lawyer, he just turned Monte Irvin loose. Wrote him a letter, said he was sorry. And did the Negro papers jump on me! They claimed I didn’t have anywhere else for Irvin to work. So Kesler contacted the Yankees to take Irvin. We played in their ball park in Newark, but they weren’t ready yet to take the Negro; they turned Kesler down. So we went to the Giants, and they decided to get on the bandwagon, and they paid us $5,000 for Monte. I split it with the doctor. Irvin was happy because he was right near home. The first year they brought him to the Giants, they won the pennant. I was glad to have it resolved that way. But that started the bargain basement. All the teams started grabbing the Negro players for $5,000.

  So for our three men—Newcombe, Doby and Irvin—we got a total of $20,000. I thought the majors could have handled it differently. But all’s well that ends well.

  But Abe never felt he had been robbed of anything. He felt that by letting the boys go for such a small amount he was helping the boys, and that was enough for him. Abe died feeling he had made a great contribution to major-league baseball—and he was more interested in that than in anything else.

  My husband died in 1952. Twenty years ago! I can’t believe it. Where do these years go? Last month [1973] I was seventy-three years old!

  When Monte was appointed to the Hall of Fame, I received this phone call from Clifford Kachline in Cooperstown about my Puerto Rico trophy. The Hall of Fame asked me if I’d send it to them. I was thrilled, because I wondered what would happen to the trophy after I die. So I shipped it to them. Air mail, express. It cost me $103.20! But now that they are at last ready to inform the public how great the Negro players were, I’m glad to cooperate, though I was unhappy about how the majors treated us before.

  I’ve been out in Los Angeles now for fifteen years. They brought Doby by to see me. Irvin comes too. My three boys who made the majors did very well: Doby is coaching for Montreal, Monte is in the commissioner’s office and Newcombe is connected with the game too.

  I think the boys like us too. Abe and I were the godparents of Doby’s first baby. We always did favors and tried to help when any of the boys needed us. Before Monte went to the Giants, he wanted to buy an apartment house in Orange. He was a little short of the down payment, two or three thousand dollars, I forget how much, but we were happy to lend it to him.

  The thing that Abe was proudest of is the fact that most of our boys made good.

  I constantly look in my scrapbook. That scrapbook is fascinating. People say, “Don’t live in the past.” But I guess it depends on how interesting your past is.

  Chapter 18

  TOM “PEE WEE” BUTTS

  Those who saw Tom “Pee Wee” Butts play shortstop like to compare him to Pee Wee Reese or Phil Rizzuto, his two contemporaries in the white majors. “I’d compare Butts with Reese or Rizzuto or anyone I’ve seen in the big leagues,” says Roy Campanella, who played with both Reese in Brooklyn and with Butts on the old Baltimore Elite Giants. “Butts could do everything,” Roy says. “He just didn’t get the opportunity to go to the majors.”

  Butts is the man who made Junior Gilliam into a big-league second baseman, the old-timers say. The two played side by side at Baltimore, Butts at shortstop and the younger Gilliam at second. “They were out of sight as a double-play combination,” says Lenny Pearson, who managed Baltimore in 1949, the year they won the pennant. “Good hands, both of them, and both of them loved the game. I always thought Butts would make it big. He was a tremendous shortstop and a pesky hitter, sprayed the ball everywhere. In fact, Adolph Luque in Cuba [former Cincinnati pitching star] rated Butts even better than Rizzuto. He had tremendous range, could go behind second better than any man I ever saw in my life.”

  “What a fielder,” agrees Kansas City shortstop Othello Renfroe. “Nothing flashy, he just made the plays, he’d just get you at first. Everything two hands, everything cool. Down in Cuba and Puerto Rico they called him Cool Breeze.”

  “Gilliam went to the majors,” says Monarch pitcher Hilton Smith, “but he didn’t look anything like the ballplayer that Pee Wee Butts was. Butts was the type of shortstop that Jake Stephens was. In other words, he’d remind you of Phil Rizzuto. He was a good little hitter. In the majors he would probably hit around .285–275. Wouldn’t hit no home runs, but he’d double on you, single and double on you all day long. And catch everything. Yeah, the majors just worked right around him. Sure did.”

  Gilliam joined the club in 1945, Renfroe says. “He was just a little kid they used to carry around with them. They just picked him up in Nashville and carried him around. But by the time I looked up again, he had developed into a top-notch second baseman. Butts is responsible. I don’t know what kind of credit Junior Gilliam might give anybody, but Butts worked with him just like he was his own son and developed him into one of the top infielders of the Negro National League.”

  “It broke Butts up when Gilliam went up to the big leagues and he didn’t,” Pearson adds. “He wasn’t too old for the majors. But he loved life, and when I say he loved life, I mean he loved life, especially women. After a game Butts had a tendency to go off on the town, while Gilliam would stay around and listen to the old-timers talk and soak up that knowledge of baseball.”

  When I met Butts in 1970 in his mother’s Atlanta home, a neat frame house in a pleasant neighborhood, he looked as though he hadn’t added an ounce of weight since his playing days. He spoke quietly, a bit nervously, in shor
t staccato sentences and a low voice. It was our first and only meeting. Butts died in Atlanta in January 1973 at the age of fifty-three.

  Tom “Pee Wee” Butts Speaks ...

  If I’d been ten years younger, I think I could have made the major leagues. My two roommates, Roy Campanella and Junior Gilliam, both went to the majors. I was glad to see them get the chance, but if the doors had opened up a little earlier, I think I’d have done pretty good. I could have been up there too.

  I remember one particular night, I saw Camp leaving the hotel with his bags, so I said, “Where you going, Pooch?”—that’s what I called him, Pooch. He said, “I’m going to Nashua to the Dodgers’ farm.” He said, “Pee Wee, come on with me.” I thought he was just slipping away from the team, so I said, “No, I signed a contract with Baltimore.” But he had talked to the owner and got permission to go. Camp said, “No, you can go.” I said, “No, Pooch, I’m not going to go.” So he left. I was twenty-seven then.

  I was born in 1919, so I was nineteen when I went up to Baltimore to play with the Elite Giants in 1938. I think Campanella was sixteen. He was there the year before. He was my roomie, and he was a talker. You know, you just can’t go to sleep. He’d say, “Come on, Pee Wee, let’s talk about this.” I’d say “Okay, go ahead,” and he would talk me to sleep. He’d wake up in the morning fresh as a daisy.

  I think he was a little of a “pugger” there—a fighter. We had it out one day, you know. We used to jive each other, and I think he got a little peeved off at me. I think I said something a little wrong, and I repeated it. But I wish I hadn’t. He knocked me down. He was built, he was built. But I was all right. He shook my hand and said, “All over,” and brushed me off.