Recently, Major League Baseball did what should have been done over 100 years ago. MLB finally honored the accomplishments and history of the Negro Leagues and the great Black and Hispanic players who had been denied for so long.

I mention Hispanic because if your skin color was dark, you were considered Black and denied the right to play white Major League Baseball. Today, when we think about Hall of Fame players, we can begin with names like Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Ernie Banks and so many more who, given what they have done for this game, leave us only to speculate how great this game could have been had it not been filled with prejudice.

I watched on Fox Sports as we honored these men in the 110-year-old Rickwood Ballpark in Birmingham, Alabama, and it broke my heart to see these men, now 90 or older, finally given the respect and adulation they should have received some 80-plus years ago when they played.

In 1974, I was a rookie playing winter baseball in San Juan, Puerto Rico. My manager was Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. It was early October, and the season hadn’t started. One day after practice, Frank tells us to empty out our lockers because there was an old-timers’ game scheduled later that day, and these men needed the space. He said that the native Puerto Rican players from the past were playing old-timer imports from up here. Many of them were stars from the Negro Leagues.

After we emptied out our lockers, I went into Frank’s office, and I asked him if I could stick around. We had just finished running around in 90-degree heat, so he seemed curious as to why I wanted to stay. I told him that I would be honored to meet and help out these men with anything they might need. I was the only player who wanted to do this; the rest of the guys went home. He says “come with me” and introduces me to the old-timer managing the imports, Larry Doby.

Larry Doby was the first Black man to play in the American League. He had suffered all of the prejudices Jackie Robinson had suffered when he started playing in Brooklyn. Here I am, a 25-year-old white rookie, standing with two gifted Black Hall of Famers, and being treated like one of their own.

Frank says to Larry, “This kid wants to know if you guys can use some help.” Larry looks up to the sky: “There’s a god above.” Yes, yes, he says, can you throw batting practice? I don’t know if any of these guys can reach the plate from the mound anymore.

I told him I’d be honored. Frank leaves, and Larry takes me into the visiting clubhouse across the way. The first player he introduces me to is Leon Day. He tells Leon that I’m there to throw BP for them, and to introduce me around. Leon was nearly 60 at the time. He was one of the nicest men I’ve ever met. He takes me over to a small group of Black players sitting in a circle, talking about The Old Days.

He introduces me to them and asks me if I’d like to join them before they dressed. Here I am sitting with Leon Day, Buck Leonard, Ray Dandridge, Buster Clarkson, Johnny Hayes, Sam Jethroe and Bob Thurman, Frank Robinson’s roommate in the Negro Leagues. These men actually invited me to sit with them. Then the stories started.

Leon asks a few who he played with: Remember that game in (some park down South)? We hadn’t taken a shower in three days. We stunk so bad that the bus driver wanted to quit. He sees a pond about 5 miles up the road; he pulls over and tells us to get the hell out of the bus and take a bath. We all jump in, we take a bath, and we wash our uniforms at the same time.

The laughter was contagious. In most ballparks, they couldn’t use the locker rooms or take a shower. Bob Thurman tells me when they were barnstorming, there were times they had to lose purposely, or they would face mob violence. “Doug, we could have beaten them with our eyes closed, but the consequences just weren’t worth it, and we wouldn’t have gotten paid. Sometimes we weren’t paid for weeks.”

He said they had to hire a white boy to ride on the bus with them if they wanted to eat. Barnstorming in some of these Southern towns, they weren’t allowed in most restaurants. “So we’d send him in, and if they served him, he’d bring the food out of back door, so no one would see us. We had to drive away, because we weren’t allowed to eat where we could be seen. Sometimes they wouldn’t even serve him, because they saw that bus full of (N-words). Some places gave us food that wasn’t eatable, and if we complained, they would come out with guns. They always had guns.”

I think people have always known this kind of behavior existed, but to hear it from the mouths of the men who lived through it is a whole different story. As I looked around at them, laughing at things that would have killed most men, I wondered: How can you hate people like these men, who you’ve never even met, men you’ve never even spoken to? I sat there in shame listening to these stories.

For the first time in my life, I was ashamed to be white. When I had a chance to speak, I asked them, “Fellas, putting aside race, who’s the best hitter you’ve ever seen or played with?” Without hesitation, they all yelled out, “Josh Gibson.”

Now, listen, Dougie, they chided, that chubby little white boy with the skinny legs (Babe Ruth)? He could hit, but that 60 home runs he had? Gibson would have had 60 before the All-Star break. He was the only man to ever hit a ball out of old Yankee Stadium, and he had an arm like a rifle. He was the best catcher ever! Offense and defense, he was the best.

On the mound, nobody could come close to Satchel Paige, they said. He was throwing 100 mph when everybody else was around the mid-80s. I couldn’t imagine how much prejudice had stolen from all of us.

Later that day, I threw some soft-toss BP to these legends, and you know what? They could still hit, especially Larry Doby.

I look back at my baseball years with wonder. No, I never did make it to The Show, but how many people have memories like these? I am 81 years old now, and I still revel in the memories and the friends that baseball brought into my life. Born and raised in the streets of NYC, where 50 cents got me into Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds or Ebbets Field, I got to see Willie, Mickey and the Duke. I saw Hank hit them out of the park. I saw Jackie steal second and Willie’s basket catch.

I was blessed to have had that experience.

Copy the Story Link

« Previous

Opinion: Are the Ten Commandments the basis of our moral system?

Next »

Opinion: Law students demand solutions to Maine’s Sixth Amendment crisis