Hanging Curve (16 page)

“I didn’t know there were ever Negroes in pro ball,” I said. “I thought it was always separate.”

Aubury shook his head. “No, the color line in baseball is largely the doing of Cap Anson. When he saw Fleet Walker take the field against his White Stockings, he told the other team to ‘get that nigger off the field.’ Anson refused to let his team play until Walker was gone. And we’ve been off the field ever since.”

“Damn.” I recalled Anson’s death at the start of the season. It was too bad that the practice he’d instituted hadn’t died with him.

“I know there are some whites who don’t agree with segregation in baseball,” Aubury said. “John McGraw, for example, sometimes tries to pass Negroes off as Cuban or Indian to get them in. And Fred Tenney tried to sign a Negro for the Boston Braves in 1905—almost succeeded, too.”

“Who was the player?”

“William Clarence Matthews, shortstop at Harvard University. He was a damned fine ballplayer, and he
almost
became the first colored man to play major-league baseball this century. But the National League owners wouldn’t let Tenney sign him. After college, Matthews played for a while in a Vermont league, then he gave up the game. He went to law school, passed the bar, and became such an outstanding lawyer that President Taft appointed him an Assistant United States Attorney. I met him when I was in law school. William Matthews has climbed about as high as a colored man can go in the legal profession, but he told me he still would have rather been a baseball player. Now that we have our own leagues, Negroes
can
make baseball their profession.”

Aubury removed his glasses and began polishing the lenses. “I have a question for
you,”
he said. “Why would a ballplayer struggling to remain in the major leagues risk his job by playing a semipro game against a colored team? You knew you were risking suspension. What made it worth the risk?”

I thought for a moment. “Well, I always figured making the big leagues meant I was one of the best. But then I went to a few Negro League games and saw some players who were better than the average major leaguer. I got to thinking that maybe I wasn’t among the best ballplayers in the country, just the best
white
ones. So I wanted to play against a colored team to see how I’d do.” Over Aubury’s shoulder, I spotted a couple of boys running in the aisle of the colored car. “Picking teams sure was simpler when I was a kid,” I said. “The captains tossed a bat in the air, worked their hands up the handle, and whoever grabbed the knob got first pick. Then they chose up sides, taking the best players first. Nothing mattered except how good a kid played ball, ‘cause all you wanted was to field the best team.”

“It was the same way when I was a boy,” Aubury said. “Things sure change when adults get involved.”

The conductor came back to us, lugging several bulky suitcases. He put them down between Aubury and me. “We need the space,” he said.

This sap must have spent the last twenty minutes trying to come up with a way to separate us, I thought. When he left promising to return with more bags, I asked Aubury, “Any chance of getting the law changed about riding in separate cars?”

“The changes are going in the other direction,” he answered sadly. “It only recently became law in Indiana, and it hasn’t passed yet in Missouri or Illinois—separate travel statutes are only pending in those states.”

“If it’s not the law in Missouri, why didn’t you argue about it in St. Louis?”

“Because it’s considered accepted practice—and opposing it can result in worse punishment than breaking any law. If I fought over every indignity, or every time somebody called me nigger, I wouldn’t survive a year. I will not leave a widow and two fatherless children over a seat on a train.” He clipped the glasses back on his nose. “I intend to remain alive, choose my battles carefully, and perhaps someday my daughters will get to sit up front.”

When the conductor came back with more luggage, Aubury and I went back to sitting in separate cars. “Someday” hadn’t come yet.

F
or one season, in 1914, Indianapolis was home to a pennant-winning major-league baseball club. That team was the Hoosiers, champions of the upstart Federal League, and its roster included such first-rate ballplayers as Edd Roush, Benny Kauff, and Bill McKechnie. Unfortunately for the city, the franchise moved to Newark the following season, a year before the entire league folded.

Washington Park remained, however, now serving as home to both the American Association Indians, one of the best minor-league clubs in the country, and the Negro League ABCs, who were allowed use of the field when the Indians were out of town. The ballpark was on the west side of Indianapolis, near the White River. A slaughterhouse between the river and the ballpark contributed an interesting aroma to the warm summer air, and beyond the outfield fence was a railroad roundhouse where heavy machinery clanged and thundered.

Franklin Aubury and I were among the first to arrive for the game. He was my kind of baseball fan; not only did we have to be at the park for the start of batting practice, it was preferable that we be there early enough to watch the groundskeepers groom the field.

When we entered the park, I briefly wondered if I would have to sit in the right-field bleachers, the same way Negroes were limited to that section of Sportsman’s Park. It turned out we were both able to get box seats, but not exactly together: Ropes were strung between seating sections, and fans of different races were not permitted on the same side of a rope. Aubury, though, had arranged to get us seats on one of the borderlines. If we could ignore the rope railing between us, it was the same as sitting next to each other.

Once the two of us started talking baseball, I found it fairly easy to ignore the seating arrangement—at least we were able to sit, unlike on the train. What I couldn’t ignore was that I was one of only a handful of whites in the park, and I felt uncomfortably conspicuous. As the crowd kept filing in, growing to several thousand, I remained part of a tiny minority.

“Gonna be a pretty good crowd,” I said to Aubury. The Browns had played quite a few games before smaller ones this season.

“This is nothing compared to what they draw on weekends.” Aubury pointed toward the railroad sidings behind the right-field fence. “Switchmen will park freight cars out there so even kids who can’t afford tickets can watch from the roofs.”

When the Stars and ABCs trotted out for warm-ups, I asked, “Which team you gonna root for?”

“I have no particular allegiance,” he said. “I generally root for whichever team is losing to make a comeback.”

Aubury must share Karl Landfors’s fondness for underdogs and hopeless causes, I thought.

After the teams had completed practice, a two-man umpiring crew came onto the field. To my surprise, they were both white, and I commented on it to Aubury.

“We don’t have many qualified Negro umpires yet. Whites have the training and the professional experience. And Rube Foster is giving higher priority to having good umpires than colored ones.”

From his tone, I got the impression that the lawyer objected to Foster’s policy. “You don’t agree with that?”

“No, I don’t. If Foster only hires experienced umpires, and only white men have been given the opportunity to become experienced, then colored umpires will never get a chance. Negro baseball is something of
ours;
we should have our own people officiating the game, even if it takes them a while to become proficient at it.”

I was happy when the game started, and hitting and pitching became the focus of our attention, instead of racial issues.

Through the first couple of innings, there was more to admire in the pitching than in the hitting, as Dizzy Dismukes of the ABCs and the St. Louis Stars’ Jimmy Bell were both hurling shutouts. I had assumed that since Bell ran so fast, his pitches would also have lightning speed, but he didn’t have much of a fastball, instead relying on a nasty curve and a dancing knuckleball. Dismukes threw harder, submarine style, and with pinpoint control. I suspected that I would be unlikely to hit either of them.

I said to Aubury, “Bell’s slow curve reminds me of Slip Crawford’s.”

“There are a lot of good curveball pitchers in the Negro Leagues,” he replied. “They have to work so many games that fastball pitchers tend to burn out their arms.” He marked down Bell’s latest strikeout on his scorecard.

I noticed Aubury used a fountain pen, instead of a pencil, which prompted me to ask, “What if you make a mistake?”

He smiled, apparently amused at the notion that he could make a scoring error.

I hailed a passing vendor and bought two soda pops, handing one of them to Aubury. The vendor gave me a disapproving stare. Maybe I violated some kind of rule by crossing the rope barrier, I thought. But no one came to throw me out of the park for the infraction, and I went back to watching the game.

As the innings went by, Aubury told me stories and statistics about most of the players on the field. Many of the Stars had once played for the ABCs, and vice versa. It sounded like Negro League players changed teams more often than I did.

“Does every player end up playing for every team?” I joked.

Aubury’s answer was serious. “Almost. That is one of the problems that has always plagued colored teams: instability. The clubs are always strapped for cash. If they miss a paycheck, their players go elsewhere; if they miss a rent payment, they have to find another park to play in. There are a couple of teams who play their entire schedules on the road.”

“Any Negro League clubs have their own ballparks?”

“No, the closest is Rube Foster’s American Giants; they own their grandstand, but not the field. When Stars Park opens in St. Louis, it will be the first to be wholly owned by a colored ball club.”

The score was tied 1-1 in the sixth, when Stars’ catcher Dan Kennard lifted a long fly to right field, and we both stood up to cheer.

“Go! Go!” yelled Aubury in a most unlawyerly squawk. When the ball carried over the fence for a home run, he screamed, “Yes!” Hometown partisans hurled a few taunts at Aubury, and he sat back down. To me, he said sheepishly, “The Stars are ahead, so now I’ll root for the ABCs.”

The next couple of innings were quiet, and Aubury returned to the subject of league organization. “Rube Foster is doing his best to bring stability to the game, but the Eastern owners will have a definite advantage in that regard.”

“How so?”

“They have more ready access to ballparks. And it’s easier to travel in the East; all of the cities have large enough colored populations that players can find places to eat and sleep. In the Midwest, a team can go hundreds of miles with no bed or food, and where the only toilet is the bushes and the only bathtub is a pond. If they—”

An explosion of cheering drowned him out as the ABC’s Crush Holloway led off the bottom of the ninth with a line-drive double. Indianapolis now had the tying run on second base. Ben Taylor tried to sacrifice him to third, but Kennard pounced on the bunt so quickly that Holloway couldn’t advance. Bell struck out the next batter, but walked the man after that.

With two on and two out, the powerfully built Oscar Charleston strode confidently to the plate. The crowd was on its feet, screaming wildly for the Indianapolis slugger to win the game with one swing of his bat.

Aubury held out his scorecard for me to see. With his pen, he marked a home run for Charleston. “That is how certain I am,” he said.

But he forgot to tell Jimmy Bell about his prediction. The wily kid slipped a couple of slow curves past Charleston for strikes, then wasted two pitches. Needing one more strike, Bell went into a twisting windup and delivered a knuckleball that took about five minutes to reach home plate. Charleston swung mightily, but missed, ending the game and giving Bell and the Stars the victory.

Aubury was about to tear up his scorecard, but I asked for it, and he gave it to me. I wasn’t going to read about these players in
The Sporting News
or in most daily newspapers, and I wanted something with a record of their names.

“How about dinner later?” I asked as we filed out of the park.

“I’d better pass,” Aubury said. “I’m going to try to set up a meeting with some of the players for you.”

“The ABCs?”

“We’d better try for the Stars tonight. They won, so they’ll be in a better mood.”

“All right. Gimme a call.”

We then parted to go to our separate hotels in different parts of the city.

 

The speakeasy on Indiana Avenue, in the heart of Indianapolis’s most prominent colored neighborhood, might as well have had a sign posted on its front door. Although its brick walls were completely unadorned, anyone walking within half a block of the place could tell what was going on inside. The sound of a jazz band rumbled from within, and automobiles were parked in tight formation all along the curb. Stylishly dressed men and women were clustered outside the club’s entrance, waiting to be admitted; several made the wait more tolerable by sipping from pocket flasks.

Franklin Aubury led the way past the crowd, and said a few words to an enormous black doorman. Despite some loud protests from those who still had to wait, we were immediately ushered through the door.

The dimly lit interior was hazy with smoke and sweet with the mingled scents of perfume and hair tonic. A dapper maître d’ led Aubury and me across the crowded dance floor to a polished round table near the bandstand. I was acutely conscious of eyes upon me; the low lighting couldn’t obscure the fact that I was the only Caucasian in the place.

At the table were three men I’d watched play that afternoon. They’d swapped their baggy uniforms for fashionable suits, and were now celebrating their win over ABCs. Aubury asked if we could join them, and at their assent, the maître d’ brought us two extra chairs. The lawyer then introduced me to the Stars: Big Bill Gatewood, manager and part-time pitcher; veteran pitcher Plunk Drake; and young Jimmy Bell.

Gatewood, a round-faced man who fully merited the “Big” in “Big Bill,” corrected the lawyer, “It’s
Cool Papa
Bell now. I never seen a pitcher so cool as he was facing Charleston. I thought Oscar was gonna break his back swinging at that knuckleball!”

I had to strain to hear Gatewood’s words. The proximity to the bandstand was a place of honor, no doubt given to the Stars because of their celebrity status, but it was also deafeningly loud. The old-fashioned jazz band had a tuba instead of a string bass, and the big horn was so close to my ear that it felt like one hard blast would send me to the floor.

Plunk Drake, smiling broadly, brushed a hand over his high forehead. “Sure was sweet seeing Oscar go down like that. He was with us last year, and was always complaining we didn’t have no pitchers.”

Gatewood playfully punched Bell in the shoulder. “Well, we got one now.” Turning to Drake, he added, “I mean we got
another
one, of course.”

It didn’t appear that Drake needed any mollifying. He seemed to have a perpetual grin on his face, and his eyes had a squint that I expected was more from smiling and laughing than from any difficulty seeing.

The two veterans proceeded to heap compliments on the rookie, who quietly sipped a soda pop and visibly glowed in the praise. He looked so young, I was tempted to ask if his mother knew he was there.

A waiter came with tall beers for Aubury and me, and we added our own congratulations on that day’s game.

Bell spoke up, telling Gatewood, “I’d do even better if you’d let me throw my knuckler more. It’s the best pitch I got.”

“I told you before,” the manager replied firmly, “don’t matter how good a pitch you throw if the catcher can’t catch it.”

Drake said to the youngster, “Bill will teach you some new pitches, same as he taught me.” He jerked his thumb at Gatewood, and explained, “This man only got three pitches: spitball, emory ball, and bean ball. And he taught me that last one real well. He’d pick out a spot on a batter’s body, and tell me I got to hit that spot or pay a dollar fine.”

Gatewood roared above the music, “Hell, I was just teaching you
control.
A little target practice is the best way to learn it!”

Bell tilted his head toward Drake. “He sure learned it good—they don’t call him Plunk for nothing. If he don’t hit you, he’ll keep you dancing. First game I was with the team, I saw him throw at a batter’s head, knee, and hip, to go 3–0 on the count—and then he struck him out on three straight strikes.”

I could have listened to them talk baseball all night, but I forced myself to get to the point of the visit. “You had another pitcher on the Stars who was real good,” I said. “Slip Crawford.”

They all grew somber, even the jovial Plunk Drake, and I was sorry that I’d put a damper on the party. I felt especially bad for Bell; he’d gotten his spot in the Stars’ rotation because of Crawford’s death, and he squirmed uneasily, as if I’d just reminded him of that fact.

Drake said, “It was a damn shame about Slip.”

“A goddamn
crime,
is what it was,” said Gatewood.

Aubury and I exchanged glances, but neither of us pointed out that technically lynching
wasn’t
a crime.

“You know,” Drake said, “he had the best curveball I ever seen.” The pitcher started to smile again as his thoughts turned to Crawford’s talents instead of his death. “He’d just slip that ball right around your bat. Hitting Slip was like trying to catch a greased pig.”

“He sure slipped his curve around my bat,” I said. “I couldn’t get one hit off him.”

The colored players looked at me quizzically.

Aubury spoke up, “Mickey played against Crawford last month in East St. Louis.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And he made me look as bad at the plate as you”—I pointed to Bell—“made me look in the field with your base running.”