The Journal of Biddy Owens, the Negro Leagues, Birmingham, Alabama, 1948 Read online

  June 20

  Back in Birmingham. Our baseball season is divided into two halves. Whoever wins the first half plays the winner of the second half to see who wins the pennant. Then the winner of the pennant in the Negro National League plays the winner of the Negro American League in the Negro League World Series. It looks like the Barons are going to win the first half, and I think we’re going to win both halves! Yes!

  I got home, and Mama and Aunt Jack made roast turkey with oyster stuffing, deviled eggs, candied yams, spinach, and macaroni for Father’s Day. Daddy sat at one end of the table, and I got to sit at the other end because we were the men in the house. This put Rachel’s nose out of joint, which was good.

  Mama had cut out an article from the white newspaper about the planned protest over at Carroll’s. Aunt Jack said that somebody must have blabbed about the protest and that black people had to learn to keep their mouths shut.

  I read the article Mama had cut out and saw that a Mr. Eugene Connor, who used to announce some of the games at Rickwood for the white Barons, said that if the Negroes had a protest downtown, white people should arm themselves in case of trouble.

  I also bought ten pairs of wool socks from Charlie Richards for one dollar and forty cents and sold four pairs to Pepper, three to Alonzo Perry, and one to Joe Scott for twenty cents apiece. That’s already a profit of twenty cents and I still have two pairs left. Charlie also gets fifty cents per player from the white Barons for running the same errands I do for free. I will have to talk some more to Charlie about his side business.

  June 22

  Had some trouble at Hornet Stadium in Montgomery. We were playing against Alabama State University. Some white guys who were watching the game and drinking got stupid and were making remarks on the sidelines. They were saying that the National League was looking for a black ball to play with now that so many Coloreds were getting into the major leagues. All their dumb talk didn’t bother the Barons so much as it did the college kids. They wanted to play well but they kept paying attention to the guys on the side and making errors.

  Piper said that’s what they wanted, to get the players thinking about them and not the game.

  Piper put me in the game in the sixth inning and told me not to pay any attention to the guys on the side. I got up to bat and kept telling myself that I wasn’t going to pay them any mind. I was so busy thinking about how I wasn’t going to be thinking about them that I didn’t get near the ball. I really felt bad when I walked away from the plate. They had half my mind on hitting and the other half on dealing with them.

  The guys doing all the talking were standing down the third baseline. When Ed Steele got up he said something to the catcher, who ran out to the pitcher. The next pitch was slow and inside. Ed lined that ball right past the head of the guys making all the nasty remarks. You should have seen them scramble!

  June 23

  I was lying in bed thinking, and Rachel came into the room and asked me if she could borrow a dollar. I said she could take one off the dresser. She took the dollar and then she asked me what I was thinking, and I told her what had happened yesterday with the white guys at the park making remarks and how I had struck out. She said it was because I was a chump and could not hit, anyway. She told me she could hit if she had a chance. I told her it wasn’t true that I was a chump, but it was true that I was a Negro and had to think about it all the time. I had to think about it when I got on a bus, when I took a drink from a water fountain, when I walked into a store. I told Rachel it was a wonder that Negroes managed to do anything when they had to think about race all the time.

  She said I was trying to be a deep thinker but I was not making it. I asked her how it felt to be as old as she was and still be looking like an ironing board, flat on top and skinny on the bottom.

  June 24, morning

  It rained all last night, and the field at Talladega College was soggy. We were playing in Talladega, Alabama, and there were about a million girls at the game, mostly from the college. I was standing on the side and one girl, she was tall, and her skin was just the color of a ripe peach, kept looking at me. She had a nice, round face on her, and pretty eyes. She gave me a big lots-of-teeth smile, and I gave her one right back. She asked me what I was doing after the game. I told her I had to check with the manager.

  I asked Piper if it was all right if I stayed over in Talladega for a few hours, and he told me to get my butt on the bus.

  I went back and told the girl they needed me to make arrangements in the next city and I had to leave right after the game, but I got her address. Her name is Jasmine Hinton, and I am pretty sure I am deeply in love with her. Also, she is seventeen.

  June 25

  Mama’s eye is still infected, and Daddy said she needs to go to the hospital or to see Dr. Epps. I know that made Aunt Jack mad because she thinks she can heal anything. One time she made me wear a clove of garlic around my neck for a whole month so I wouldn’t catch a cold. That garlic was okay if you didn’t sweat but if you started sweating, it would start in to stinking.

  Joe Bankhead came around to Rickwood. He was still mad because Piper let him go. He said he wasn’t given a real chance and then he said he hoped we lost the rest of our games. Piper said he had an attitude problem, and I agree.

  I think I will shoot, skin, and then stuff Rachel. The first thing I did was swear her to secrecy, and she raised her right hand and said she swore. Then I told her about Jasmine. I wasn’t bragging on it or anything like that but I had called Jasmine and she had told me she thought I was good-looking. She added it was not just because I was a ballplayer, too.

  Back to Rachel. I had to go with Mama to the beauty parlor because of her bad eye. She wanted to get her hair done at Ann’s Beauty Shop over on Seventeenth Street before she went to the doctor.

  She said she looked terrible with her eye all swoll up and did not want to scare Dr. Epps into a heart attack. I said she did not look that bad, but she did.

  Rachel was going, too, and I knew she wanted to have her hair done but Mama said she just needed to get her kitchen straightened and she could do that at home with a hot comb. When we got to the beauty parlor Pearl Grant was there, and so was Lucille Davis, Elder Davis’s daughter, who made dresses. They’re all churchgoing ladies but as soon as they got together they started talking about who was sneaking around with who.

  Miss Davis said that she heard that Drusilla, Ernestine’s sister, was sitting up on a bar stool down at the Savoy for so long, her leg went numb and she fell off. Then she said that Drusilla went to church over at Metropolitan and if she spent as much time praying as she did backsliding, her knees would be as shiny as the dirty clothes she wore.

  Then Rachel just had to open her big mouth and ask if my new girlfriend looked anything like Drusilla.

  Mama gave me a look, and I made-believe I was reading a magazine as Rachel blabbed her big mouth.

  Dr. Epps said that Mama’s sty was going away and gave her something to wash her eye out with and told her to be careful it didn’t spread to the other eye. Then, all the way home, I had to hear how Mama would rather go stone-blind than see me running around with a loose woman.

  When we got home Daddy was home, and Mama told him that I had a girlfriend on the road and that he knew what kinds of girls were on the road. Daddy said he understood. Mama said she was so hurt, she had to go and lie down. Rachel said it was a shame that I hurt the woman who brought me into the world.

  I told Daddy that Jasmine is not a road girl but a college girl. He told me not to talk about it anymore. “Just put it in the corner and let it lie there until it dies,” he said.

  June 27

  Everybody’s upset. We played the Red Sox in Memphis, and the crowd was so small, the Memphis owner wanted to cancel the game. They decided to let people in off the street at half price, and then some of the people in the stands got mad because the
y had paid a full dollar to get in.

  The Memphis Red Sox have this guy named Willie Wells who everybody talks about. They call him “the Devil,” and sure enough it was he who beat us.

  We had the bases loaded in the top of the ninth with two outs and Joe Scott up with three balls and no strikes. All we needed was one more ball to walk in a run. And if Jones, who they called Casey, pitched to Scott, I knew Scott was going to tear the ball up. Okay, so Britton is on third base, and Wells, the Red Sox third baseman, is talking to him a mile a minute and when he’s not talking to him, he’s yelling at the pitcher. Britton is laughing, and Wells runs out to the pitcher and tells him to calm down.

  Then Wells came back to third base and said something to Britton, which made him laugh even more. Then Britton stepped off the base, Wells tagged him out with the ball he had hidden in his glove, and the game was over. Guess who was mad after the game?

  June 28

  On the way to Atlanta, Pepper was driving the bus to give Charlie Rudd a rest. Pepper went through a red light, and a highway patrolman pulled us over. The patrolman asked Pepper if had seen the red light. Pepper said he had seen it but since he was from up north he was not sure what it meant. He said he thought maybe green lights were for white folks and black folks had to go with the red light.

  The patrolman stuck his thumbs in his belt, then figured out Pepper was making a joke, and started laughing. Then he told Pepper to get moving.

  Atlanta is a pretty city and about as busy a place as you can get. We parked the bus, and some of us just walked around and looked at what there was to see. Piper asked me to pick up some film for him, and that was why I walked into the five-and-dime. I wasn’t even thinking about anything except for Piper telling me to pick up some film for his camera. He said there were two kinds of film, number 120 and number 620, and for me to get the 620 film.

  That was what was on my mind. I went in and asked if they had any film number 620. The clerk said to wait and she would go ask the manager. I sat down at the counter and was thinking about that film when a woman behind the counter asked me what I wanted. I looked up and saw that she had a bottle of pop in her hand, so I asked her for a bottle of pop and a doughnut.

  “We don’t serve no nigras here,” she said. “Get on up off that seat.”

  She was a big woman with stringy white hair and a tooth missing. When I looked around, two white kids sitting at the counter were looking at me and I felt really ashamed. I got up and stood off from the counter. The white woman behind the counter came around and wiped off the seat where I had been sitting. She looked at me like I was dirt or something before she went back around the counter.

  I looked at the white kids, and they were still looking at me. I think they felt as bad for me as I did for me. Also, nigra was a name I had forgot about.

  Fourth of July

  Rickwood Field. I don’t ever get completely rested anymore. Soon as we play in one city it’s pile on the bus and get to the next one.

  Pepper hurt his finger blocking the plate against the Clowns. He’s got big fat fingers to begin with, and when one of them is swollen it’s about as big as my wrist.

  The big thing was that Aunt Jack, Mama, and Daddy came to the ball game. I told Piper my family was there and asked if I could get into the game. Aunt Jack almost never came to a game, and Daddy said that she wasn’t going to enjoy herself no matter what. I knew that was right because as far as I could tell, church women, especially the saved ones, did not like to show themselves having too much fun.

  Piper gave the team a big lecture about how we needed to play hard and give the folks a good show because the league was in trouble. He was saying that people wanted to follow the Colored players in the major leagues. He said if we weren’t going to play good ball we might as well fold up the league. Some teams were having a hard time even meeting the payroll.

  That was all right for Piper to say, but the guys sitting on the bench were mostly thinking about playing in the major leagues, too. I could not help but go through the Birmingham World and look for stories on Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, and Satchel Paige. It was just a natural thing to do.

  I had seen most of them play and, except for Satchel Paige, they just about fit into the same category as the rest of the players in the Negro Leagues. Then I started thinking that maybe I would play on a team in the major leagues. If I did I thought I would most like to play on the New York Yankees. I could play right field if DiMaggio was playing center. That would work.

  Mays, the new guy, was playing in Bobby Robinson’s place in the outfield because Bobby had hurt his leg sliding. It was a break but not a bad break, and we expected him back soon.

  We played a doubleheader and won the first and lost the second game. After the games Mama asked me if I wanted to go on a picnic with the church, and I told her the team was going to Memphis that night. She told Daddy maybe I shouldn’t go. Daddy didn’t answer, and I knew he was letting it lie till it died.

  Mama said that playing baseball wasn’t a real job and that I was still her son and she still had some say-so when it came to her flesh and blood. Daddy said it paid real money and so it was a real job and that was that.

  The truth was that playing baseball did pay good. Not many jobs paid three hundred dollars a month, which is what most of the Barons make, and that didn’t even take in the extra games where we just made whatever we could and split it up between us. My grandfather on my mama’s side, Booker T. Smith, told me he never made more than forty dollars a week in his life. I know Daddy makes seventy-four dollars a week, not counting overtime. Sometimes with overtime he makes close to ninety dollars.

  Aunt Jack gave me a bag with fried chicken with pepper and lemon sauce wrapped up in a waxed paper, and also a jar of potato salad. A lot of the guys had food in bags, and when we got on the bus it was smelling like a picnic. I tried to wait until we got to Memphis to eat, but when everybody else started eating, I did, too. That chicken was some good.

  It took four and a half hours to reach Memphis, and everybody was tired. When we got to the motel we were supposed to be staying in, the owner said he didn’t have any more room because a church group had come in. Piper said if he didn’t find us some room he was going to let the ballplayers tear his motel apart. The owner, a little fat man with thick glasses and a shiny suit, told us to go down the road and tear up the white man’s motel.

  Piper calmed down and asked the guy in the shiny suit about some other places that rented to Coloreds, and he told us of a place. We got back in the bus, and Charlie drove us over to the new place. It was in a quiet neighborhood, and the owner said she was glad to have the business. We found out that she owned a bar, a restaurant, and an undertaker parlor. Since nobody was being buried, we could use the parlor.

  July 5

  It is now official. We have won the first half of the season and we got a telegram from the Birmingham World congratulating us. It’s going to be announced in the next paper. Willie Morgan, who hardly ever said anything, brought a sign and put it up in the dugout.

  RULES FOR ALL GUESTS

  1. KEEP THIS HOUSE RESPECTABLE.

  2. NO LOUD TALKING.

  3. NO DRINKING.

  4. NO GAMBLING.

  5. NO SHOWING YOUR COLOR.

  It was one of those signs you see on some Colored motels, and Pijo and Will Morgan got into a fight when Pijo said some black people were not going to be happy with integration because it was just going to make it hard on them. Will said that only ignorant fools like Pijo would have a hard time, and Pijo smacked him. Then Pepper jumped into it to separate them and hurt his finger again. Piper said he was going to fine everybody, and Pijo said he didn’t care because he didn’t have any money, anyway.

  Will Morgan had thought the sign was funny, but I did not think it was funny at all. If black people did not think much of themselv
es, I don’t know how we should expect white people to think we are as good as they are. I do not think I should be ashamed to show my color.

  We played against the Clowns and beat them easy. I don’t think the Clowns were trying too hard.

  After the second game in Memphis we got on the bus again and rode 110 miles to Greenwood, Mississippi, to play a night game. The Clowns, who we were playing in Greenwood, borrowed an old bus from the city to get there. It was a pretty good bus with plenty of room. When they were getting on the bus Piper made some remarks that they weren’t much of a ball team and he wondered if they minded getting beat three times in one day.

  I told Bill Greason that I thought Piper was getting touchy. Bill said the times were touchy. He said that if the white folks took all the best players from our league, we could fold up. The interesting part of it for me was that for years people were saying that white folks only wanted to see white ballplayers. But nobody ever said that black folks only wanted to see black ballplayers. I thought about it on the bus and figured out that what was happening was that we were trying to prove to white people that we could do things as well as they could. I thought that was pretty good and said it to Bill Greason, who has more sense than most people. Bill asked me how the black ballplayers in the majors were doing. I said they were doing great, and he said he guessed the white folks must have known all along what they could do, and where to find them.

  It took three hours to get to Greenwood, and Piper said we weren’t going to stay. So we played the Clowns again, beat them again with Bill Greason pitching, and then drove all the way back to Birmingham. The bus went off the road once when Charlie fell asleep. Lucky for us he just went up a little embankment, and nobody was hurt. Jimmy Zapp said not to wake him up for an almost-accident. “Just shake me if I get killed,” he said.