In Kentucky: A Baseball Reunion

By Peter Ainslie

The hour was late and the motel parking lot was a jumble of cars, but they were out there anyway, a group of time-worn black men whipping a baseball around with sweet abandon, razzing and wisecracking and carrying on like kids. It had always been like this: the joy of the game transcending rock-hard diamonds and fading light.

Four decades ago, they worked their magic in the Negro Baseball Leagues, playing their own game while white men ruled the sport. Tonight they were back together again in Ashland, Ky. (pop. 29,000), for the third annual reunion of the Negro Leagues. It was the first time that some of them had seen one another since the old days, and they had a lot of catching up to do. The splendid second baseman Piper Davis fired a ball across the lot, popping it in a mitt loud enough to wake the entire motel. Davis, who managed Willie Mays when he played for the Birmingham Black Barons, had turned 64 this year and was obviously pleased with himself. "Boy, I still got it," he said with a grin. Across the way a gnarled old man with a bat on his shoulder stooped over an imaginary home plate while a pitcher grooved a hardball precious inches away. Near by, Chet Brewer, 74, pitching ace for the Kansas City Monarchs, was telling how Luis Tiant Sr., who pitched for the Cuban Stars with the same herky-jerky motion that his son made famous in the majors, once got a third strike without throwing a pitch. Fooled by Tiant's delivery, the batter took a mighty swing --only to discover that the crafty mounds-man had thrown to first base in a pick-off attempt.

Black baseball had been around for years when the Negro Leagues were born in the early 1920s. Barnstorming the countryside in ramshackle buses, black teams played 60 or so league games each season, as well as 140 or more pickup affairs against any team, white or black, that promised to pay. They were second-class citizens with first-class talent, sleeping in ballparks when no lodging was available, eating on their buses when restaurants wouldn't seat them, playing two and even three games a day before driving all night to the next one. The end came shortly after Jackie Robinson ascended to the majors in 1947. Other black stars soon followed, taking their fans with them, and by 1950 the leading Negro League clubs were but of business.

The idea for a reunion was born three years ago when the town of Greenup, Ky., a few miles down the Ohio River, discovered that one of its native sons, Clinton Thomas, was known as "the Black Joe DiMaggio" when he played for the New York Black Yankees in the '30s. Greenup feted Thomas with an 80th birthday party and invited a group of old-timers from the black leagues. Twelve of them came, and before the party was over, they vowed to do it again the next year. With help from organizers in Ashland, the event doubled in size the second time around, and this year, thanks to a $25,000 grant from the Schlitz Brewing Co., 52 veterans turned up.

At the keynote banquet at the Elks Lodge on the edge of town, 550 or so baseball fans paid $12 apiece for baked steak, iced tea and a generous portion of vanishing American history. The special honorees were James ("Cool Papa") Bell, 78, the fleet-footed outfielder for the St. Louis Stars, and Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher. Paige suffers from emphysema and had plastic tubes in his nose to supplement his oxygen supply. But it was soon apparent that his eggshell ego and whipsaw wit were very much intact, especially on the subject of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. He is a member of this pantheon, but he is nonetheless outraged at the way it has treated black players over the years.

"When I told them in Cooperstown that we had men who didn't have to go to their farm clubs to play in the majors, they told me to sit down. That's the reason I don't go back to Coopers-town." Nor does Paige have kind words for Cleveland, even though his longtime dream of playing in the majors began there the year after Jackie Robinson was called up by the Brooklyn Dodgers. A rookie pitcher at 42, Paige turned in a 6-1 season and helped the Indians to their first pennant in 28 years. "I hadn't started a game in 15 years," he recalled, "and when I did, I won six out of seven. And they pitched everybody in the World Series but me.* I ain't been back to Cleveland either."

What rankles after all this time is what might have occurred had he been allowed to play the major leagues in his prime. All the awards and testimonials in the world cannot make up for what he lost, both athletically and economically. "I've got trophies all over my house," Paige mused. "Anybody ever try to bite one of them things? I tried and I had to go back to the dentist."

Time has tempered the bitterness for most of the graying, dignified men who came to Ashland. "A lot of things happened, and you've got to try to get it out of your mind," said Judy Johnson, a Hall of Fame third baseman for the Pittsburgh Crawfords and other teams. Johnson, looking more like 60 than his actual age of 80, was holding an impromptu batting clinic in the parking lot outside the building that may one day house a fancy new Negro Baseball Hall of History. A group in Ashland is currently raising $3 million for that purpose, and no one is more pleased about it than Buck Leonard, a hard-hitting Hall of Famer who owns a real estate business in Rocky Mount, N.C. "We were kind of hoping something like this might happen, but we never had any idea it would," said Leonard. "It's like a Christmas present in the middle of summer," added Joe Black, a Greyhound Corp. vice president who played with the Baltimore Elite Giants before signing with the Dodgers.

The stories the old players told transported listeners to a time when baseball was played between the lines, not in the offices of lawyers and agents. Willie Mays, now 50, was a 15-year-old centerfielder for the Birmingham Black Barons when tie had his first and only confrontation with Paige: "I hit a double off him and he went to the first baseman and says, Who is that young fellow?' Then Satch says, and I heard this, 'Let me know when he comes back up.' I come to the plate next time and the first baseman says, There he is.' Being 15, I'm not sure what's going on ... All I can tell you is that I didn't come close to hitting anything."

Bell explained for the first time why Paige always said that Cool Papa could turn out the lights and be in bed before the room got dark. "We stayed in old hotels and one night Satchel and I were rooming together and I got back to the room before him. Well this light switch on the wall must have had a short in it because I went over and flipped it and got in bed, and after I got in bed the lights went out. I said, 'Oh, I'm gonna tell Satchel something now.' Satchel comes in and I said, 'Satchel, you know that I can turn this switch out and get in bed before the light goes out.' Satchel says, 'You can't do nothing like that.' So I wait till he gets undressed and in bed and I said, 'Watch this.' I flipped the lights, dropped down in the bed and the lights went out. So Satchel was telling the truth all the time and he didn't know it."

During the shameful era of segregated baseball, the biggest loser was the game itself, which was deprived of these great players. That much was clear as they talked into the night, savoring past glories. "We had wonderful times out there, we most certainly did," said Buck O'Neil, first baseman for the Kansas City Monarchs. "Don't feel sorry for nobody you see here. They could play the game as well as anyone who ever played. I don't care how far they go today. However high George Brett goes, or however far Reggie Jackson hits the ball, these fellows have all been there." --By Peter Ainslie

* Paige actually made a token appearance in the 1948 Series, pitching two-thirds of an inning.

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