Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues

by John Holway

  Those really were the good old days, huh? You know, I’d like to do it all over again.

  Chapter 19

  OTHELLO RENFROE

  Othello “Chico” Renfroe loves to talk. Old-timers laugh at the photo of him, Satchel Paige, and other veterans found on p. 343. “You know he’s going to be in front,” says Buck Leonard. Even Paige had to concede him the first row.

  Renfroe was also a scrapper. “He could fight left-handed, right-handed, uppercut, kick,” says Monarch catcher Sammy Haynes. “If there was a fight, it would be either Renfroe fighting or two girls fighting about him.”

  In 1971 Renfroe met me in his suburban split-level Atlanta home, got out his scrap books, propped his feet on the coffee table, and summed up his impressions of a chapter of American history that will never return.

  Othello Renfroe Speaks ...

  Baseball lost something when Jackie Robinson went into organized ball. Something died then—the Negro leagues. There was always so much color in the Negro League games. Now they would call it showboating, but I thought Negro baseball was so colorful.

  Oh we’ve had some great guys. The owner of the New York Black Yankees, Sep Semler. It would be nothing to see Semler when the game gets close—you’d be playing on percentage 60–40, winner gets 60—and the man would be sliding home with the winning run, and Semler would be out there at home plate sliding with him. I mean we had some color! In these days people call them showboats and clowns, but there was always so much color in the game.

  At first base it was just indescribable how Showboat Thomas could field. Or this guy Red Moore. Those guys could play first base. You know, people used to come into the ball park early to see colored teams take infield practice. They took a real lot of pride in throwing that ball around. On that double play, you know, Artie Wilson of Birmingham and Piper Davis could just make that double play look unreal. And a good fungo hitter like Winfield Welsh of the Black Barons or Frank Duncan of Kansas City could hit that sharp ground ball—oh, it was just like a show within itself. A little showboating as they call it now, but it was colorful. I enjoyed it just as much as the fans. We had some ballplayers, a lot of class about them. We used to call them “shadow men,” you know, looking down at their shadow and all.

  Take Satchel Paige. He was the most comical man you ever saw in your life. When we were warming up, he’d take infield practice at third. Just throw it over that diamond, man, flip it to second. Oh, what an attraction, what a colorful man!

  In Washington, D.C., people packed Griffith Stadium to see Satchel. He never traveled by bus, he traveled by his own car. One night we were waiting for Satchel to come and start a game, and he had gotten into an altercation with a traffic policeman because of speeding or running a red light or something. He got there late with a police escort and siren and everything! Satchel liked the fast life. He always had fast cars, Lincoln Continentals, tailor-made suits and plenty of women. But he married this girl in Kansas City and started raising a family, and he settled down. There’s not a Negro baseball player will say anything against Satchel, because he kept our league going. Anytime a team got in trouble, it sent for Satchel to pitch. So you’re talking about your bread and butter when you talk about Satchel.

  Goose Tatum was a showman all the way too. Played first base for the Indianapolis Clowns. 13 Tatum was a fair player, not major-league timber but he got the job done. Tremendous fielder around first base. Long, long arms hanging down to his knees. You ought to see him catch a baseball with that great big first-base pad and flip it up and fling the ball home. People just went crazy over him. They loved him.

  The Clowns had an act, Goose Tatum and King Tut. He’s dead now. They’d go through a tooth-pulling act where Goose was the dentist and Tut was the patient. Tut would fill his mouth up with corn, and Goose kept pulling his teeth and pulling his teeth and it never seemed to do any good. So he’d go get a firecracker and light it, and as soon as the firecracker would go off, King Tut would jump up and go hollering and spitting out all the corn, like all his teeth were coming out.

  When you played ball against them and they did the same thing every night, they still kept you in stitches laughing every night. They were a show within themselves, plus they had a good ball team. Hank Aaron, I guess, was their best ballplayer. They paid the salary for the league, because any team able to barnstorm with the Clowns made money. They packed them in—small towns or large towns, they packed them in.

  I always was a nut for baseball. I was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1923. Did anybody ever tell you about the great colored team in Jacksonville, called the Jacksonville Redcaps? Well, let me tell you just how great they were. These big-league teams would come to Jacksonville to train—Elite Giants and New York Cubans, Chicago American Giants and Newark Eagles—and they would play this team made up of redcaps. The guy that owned the team gave them jobs working at Terminal Station as redcaps.

  At shortstop they had Philip Holmes, who’s here in Atlanta now scouting for the Braves; second base a guy named Skindown Robinson; a great first baseman who’s dead now named Mint Jones—oh, he could stretch, he was beautiful. And they had a pitcher by the name of Preacher Henry. Preacher Henry had the premier drop ball. And they could win ball games. You had a lot of 1–0 games in those days because the ball wasn’t alive. And gosh, Preacher Henry shut out many a team down there. Preacher Henry, what a great one.

  This was during the Thirties, anywhere from 1935–36 up until around World War II. They went up and took the franchise in Cleveland one year and played under the name Cleveland Buckeyes. They had a tragic automobile accident: parked on the side of the road fixing a flat tire and two of the players were killed—Buster Brown a catcher and Smoky Owens a pitcher—and that just about ended the team.

  In 1936 when I was thirteen, the great colored teams came down to Jacksonville to train—the Newark Eagles, the New York Cubans, the Elite Giants, the Chicago American Giants. I was bat boy for all of them. After going to high school and being a bat boy for all those guys, I tell you what I did: I ran away from home in ’38 to be bat boy for the Chicago American Giants. I was fifteen. My mother had remarried, I had a stepfather, so I used that as an excuse. She said, “Well, you’ve got to be a man someday. When you need me, call me.”

  When we got to Nashville, the manager, Candy Jim Taylor, said this was about as far as he could carry me, because the owners of the team were getting on him for spending too much money. One guy was particularly kind to me. I talked to Alex Radcliff, Double Duty’s brother, and told him that I was going to hitchhike, do anything, to get to Chicago. He told me when I got there to go to see an old-timer named Bingo DeMoss. So I hoboed my way, and when the team got there, I was already there ahead of them. Bingo DeMoss took me in just like his own son all during the baseball season. His son had gotten killed riding on the back of a truck. You know how Chicago is, he used to run with a gang. Well, DeMoss kind of took me as his boy. I also worked for Louie the groundkeeper—the old-timers will remember him—a big black old fellow, lazy, just drug around. He also took care of me just like I was his own boy.

  I lived with DeMoss, and I bet he kept me up until two or three o’clock in the morning talking baseball. He’d talk to me about a great center fielder, Jelly Gardner. He’d tell me stories about the great pitcher Smoky Joe Williams, and of course Dizzy Dismukes. Cristobel Torrienti—aha, some of the tales they tell on that guy. He must have been something! They say Torrienti hit the ball farther than anybody.

  And DeMoss was always talking about the great Indianapolis ABC team which was managed by C. I. Taylor. And the great Kansas City Monarch team—the old Monarch team of 1922–23 —Bullet Rogan, José Mendez, John Donaldson, Frank Duncan, Dobey Moore.

  The Monarchs had another great team in ‘38. Buck O’Neil played first; they had a great second baseman by the name of Barney Serrell who’s in Mexico now; shortstop was Jewbaby Johnson, a kid out of Little Rock; Duncan catching. And here’s another great one: Willard �
�Home Run” Brown. Another outfielder was Ted Strong, a basketball player, one of the original Globetrotters. And Hilton Smith—what a pitcher, one of the great ones.

  Well, when the season was over, I hitchhiked back down South, and my folks took me back in just like nothing had happened. But as I say, I always was a nut for baseball. And it paid off, because I played ten years of professional baseball—all the islands, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico.

  I played a little football in high school—that’s where I got my nickname “Gangster,” because I was a pretty hard player. I graduated from high school in 1942, went to Carr College for a year, and then I went to Honolulu and worked at Pearl Harbor. I got a chance to play there, and it gave me a few indications that I had a chance to stay in baseball. I decided to go out and play a little professional baseball myself, went out to Los Angeles and Texas and ended up with the Kansas City Monarchs in ’45. Of course this was a wartime team, but we did have Jackie Robinson.

  He had a different baseball background from most of us in the Negro American League, because he had played under white coaches. He never was the shortstop that Pee Eye Butts was or Willie Wells. But he had the fundamentals, made all the plays and a terrific base runner. He ran the catchers crazy in our league. Ran ’em crazy.

  Othello Renfroe, left, at reunion of old ballplayers

  Our salaries ranged from $250 a month to 500. I don’t think we had anybody making much more than $500 on our ball club. I know Jackie Robinson raised Sam about his salary. Boy, you talk about a negotiator, it was that Robinson. I tell you, he’d give our general manager, Dizzy Dismukes, gray hairs.

  I can recall as if it was yesterday the night Jackie Robinson was picked out for organized baseball—the night he knew he was picked out. We were playing in Chicago and Jackie had a bad shoulder, couldn’t play short. He talked them into playing first base. He told us before the game that scouts were there watching us and for everybody to hustle. But Jackie always talked organized baseball, so we didn’t pay him any attention. I think he had had a shot with the Chicago White Sox back when he was in college—he and a pitcher named Nate Moreland out on the West Coast. And in ’45 the Red Sox called him, Marvin Williams and Sam Jethroe up to Boston for a tryout, but they didn’t keep any of them. So anyway, Jackie told us to hustle and we all laughed. We always laughed at him because he was so serious, you know.

  So the game was over and we got ready to leave for Kansas City and we waited on Jackie for an hour. Dismukes decided he wouldn’t wait on Jackie, and we took off. Next day Jackie showed up at the ball park for practice. Dismukes wanted to fine Jackie for missing the bus. Jackie was a terrific curser, the guy could curse. Jackie told them they could have the ball team. He left and went back to California.

  We went to the West Coast that winter to play with Satchel Paige, and Jackie played a couple games with us. They signed him that winter of 1945.

  We never had any doubt about Jackie’s ability, but we wondered whether or not he could take the stuff that he took in the majors. We never thought he could take it. We have pulled up in service stations in Mississippi where drinking fountains said Black and White, and a couple of times we had to leave without our change he’d get so mad.

  He had intelligence, but if Mr. Rickey had known about Jackie’s temperament, I don’t think he would have signed him. A highly intelligent guy, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t run after any women, very much in love with the girl he’s married to now, Rachel. He didn’t like ballplayers carousing at night—not Jackie. He liked to play pinochle, a little cards, but no night life.

  They picked him for his intelligence. But we had a lot of ballplayers we thought were better ballplayers. Jackie had only played in our league one year. Willard Brown, who played for us, could hit the ball and outrun anybody in any league. But he’d only play hard on Sunday; he’d loaf the rest of the time.

  We always thought that Ted Strong was about the most ideal ballplayer. Had all the tools. A switch hitter and could play just about anywhere. Anywhere you put Ted, Ted was at home—Brst base, shortstop, outfield. From outfield he could really throw; you couldn’t take a turn from first to third on him. He wound up in the Texas League as Brown did. Getting old, fat, out of shape, but he was up around the home run leaders in the Texas League.

  Hank Thompson of the Monarchs was another one who was a real fine ballplayer, but Hank always had trouble drinking, plus he was mean as hell, a mean, mean guy. Kept some kind of weapon on him all the time. Thompson and Brown both left us in ’47 to go to the St. Louis Browns. They were among the first Negroes in the American League.

  They could tell some tall tales about ballplayers they picked up in these little country towns who would come out and pitch with football shoes on or tennis shoes, and they could throw a ball so hard. The Kansas City Monarchs were very good at that, picking up guys in little small towns in Texas and Arkansas and taking them to town and buying them clothes—you know, guys who didn’t even know what a suit of clothes was. But I tell you, those guys could step out of those clubhouses Sunday sharp as a tack, good dressers, good-timers, no curfew. If you had a guy on the team who drank, he drank.

  We got $2 a day to eat on, and we had some guys so stingy they’d save some of the eating money. When we traveled through the South, a lot of places we couldn’t get a decent meal. We ate out of grocery stores, sardines and cheese and cinnamon buns. A lot of towns we went in we couldn’t shower in the dressing room, but it didn’t matter. When we hit the field, we played ball. I mean we had some heated ball games.

  We had a good, tough league, man. Any ballplayer who left the Negro leagues went either directly to the majors or to Triple-A. Of course, Branch Rickey had the audacity to send Campanella and Newcombe to Nashua. You know, that was a joke.

  The Washington Homestead Grays had a great team. The best hitter I ever saw was on that club—Buck Leonard. Yes, he was better than Josh Gibson, average-wise. I always get an argument on that, because a lot of people think Josh was a better hitter.

  The longest home run I ever saw Josh Gibson hit was in Shibe Park. He hit it over everything. Didn’t even bounce. Left-center. Over the roof—clear over.

  In the outfield Cool Papa Bell. What a gentleman. What a lead-off man. Oh this guy, he went to the West Coast to play with me and Satchel in 1947, and the people out there just fell in love with him. Very neat dresser, quiet, a fine fellow. He slapped the ball when he hit it, slapped it and could outrun it. Run? You’re telling me. I saw him score from first on a sacrifice against the big leaguers. Yeah, let me tell you about that. They got him in a chase. How did that thing happen? Anyway, when they got finished throwing at him, he ended up scoring. That was in California. I was on that ball club. That had to be 1947 or ’48. I was there.

  Jud Wilson played third for the Grays. Ooh, he’d fight you too. Jud was an old man too, he was bald-headed, built like a wrestler.

  I tell you, just about everybody would fight. Very seldom you played a ball game—a really close ball game, two teams fighting for a pennant or for second place or something—you didn’t have a fight. The game was just that heated. The manager didn’t want you out there if you didn’t have some fight in you. You’d fight your own teammates if they were loafing.

  In Baltimore, Roy Campanella was fifteen in 1938—great big —biggest fifteen-year-old boy I ever saw in my life. But at fifteen he could throw that ball to second base! They talk about Bench throwing now. You should talk to Pee Eye Butts. When Butts and those guys would take infield practice, they’d get mad at Campanella for throwing the ball so hard. And he was strong. He struck out a lot in his younger days. The old-timers were tough. I mean, they weren’t college boys and they weren’t too stuck on youngsters going out and taking their jobs. But everybody took Campanella as if he was their own son when he first came up. He was always a likeable guy.

  Barney Serrell of Kansas City or Piper Davis of Birmingham, I guess those were the premier second basemen. Davis could make all the
plays, he was tall, smooth. Oh yeah, better than Gilliam. Gilliam didn’t blossom until later, and he didn’t play in our league long.

  Shortstop’s where you get your biggest argument—Wells or Butts. Also Sam Bankhead and a guy from Cuba—Garcia. Wells could hit. Butts was a .275–.280 hitter, a tremendous ballplayer. He was good-I think better than Reese, but I wouldn’t say better than Rizzuto. The year I barnstormed against Rizzuto, the plays he made, I’d just have to put him in a class by himself.

  We played the 1946 Series against the Newark Eagles. Went seven games. Let me give you a little idea about the World Series. First game: We got 30,000 people in the Polo Grounds and beat Newark 3–1. A guy named Hamilton beat me out at shortstop, a tall guy. I’m on the bench. On a double play Bob Henrey, the big right fielder for the Eagles, slid into second to break up a double play and broke Hamilton’s leg almost in two. So I got an opportunity to play. And of all the hitters in the ’46 World Series, I outhit everybody including Larry Doby and Monte Irvin.

  Next game, Kansas City, then back to Newark, and we split those two ball games. And we came to the seventh and deciding game, Hilton Smith against Rufus Lewis. Lewis gave up three hits and they beat us 3–2. That ball park in Newark was nothing but a bandbox; oh man, for a guy to pitch a three-hitter in that old Newark ball park was really something. Pat Patterson at third for Newark had to go back to his high-school coaching job in Texas and a little boy took over and helped beat us—Half a Pint Israel, that was his name. Lives in Bowie, Maryland.

  I made the mistake in ’46, when I had my best year, of accepting a job in the off-season as a bartender in Kansas City. I started drinking that beer, and when I went to spring training next season, I was roly-poly.