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

  Playing so many games in a row is rough, but every time we play we make money and that’s what it’s all about. Most of the guys on the team have families and it helps a lot to make a few extra dollars. Bill Greason said that one day he would be able to tell his children about how hard he worked for them. He said they probably wouldn’t appreciate it and so I asked him why he was doing it. He leaned over real close to me and whispered in my ear. “Baseball,” he said.

  July 6

  A man got lynched in Georgia yesterday. It wasn’t in the white papers, but it was in the World. He was accused of attacking a white woman. When I read something like that it makes my stomach feel queasy.

  Daddy belongs to the Elks, and they took up a collection for the family of the man who was killed. Daddy said that people feel sorry for the man who was killed, and that was right, but the people who were left behind suffered, too.

  “It just drains you of any feeling that you’re safe in the world,” he said. “It makes you feel like you’re nothing, just helpless to stand by and watch your people get killed.”

  That was the first time Daddy had said anything that made me think him and me were feeling the exact same thing.

  July 7

  We played in a triple-header at Morehouse College in Atlanta. The first game was the Baltimore Elite Giants against Morehouse for seven innings. The second game was Morehouse against the Barons for seven innings. The last game was a night game with the Giants against us. Morehouse is a black college and pretty much a la-di-da school. They were supposed to have some cheerleaders from Spelman College, but when the girls showed up from that school they were very classy and didn’t look like cheerleaders, they looked like schoolteachers.

  Bill Greason told me to try out one of my lines on them. I gave them a look but I had already heard them talking and they were too smart for me. Also, I did not have a line.

  I got to play in the game against Morehouse and made an error. There was a fly ball to me in right field, and I tried to nonchalant it and dropped it.

  Piper got on my case real bad, even though it was just an exhibition game. He said I was trying to catch like Willie Mays. I said I wasn’t, but I guess I really was. Willie’s just about my age, and so it’s hard not to think about him when I’m on the field. He makes everything look so easy, though.

  Piper saying that to me made me feel bad.

  We talked with some of the guys from Morehouse, and they speak well. You can see that they’re the kind of guys the girls from Spelman will marry. I’d like to be like them, too.

  We played against the Baltimore Elite Giants, and their pitcher was Joe Black. He struck out everybody on our team at least once. They have a good team. Slow Robinson is their catcher and he’s good, and Joe Black is just about sensational. They beat us 4 to 0. Jimmy Gilliam, on their team, hit four doubles to right field. His fifth time up he hit a ball to center that looked like a sure hit, but Willie got it.

  July 8

  I was thinking a lot about Morehouse. I’ve never met guys like that, guys who think they’re special and smart. I think I’m smart but I don’t think I’m as smart as the guys from Morehouse. We had dinner in Atlanta with some guys from Morehouse and some Spelman girls. I got all tongue-tied and didn’t get to say much. Pepper said that the girls from Spelman were stuck up. I disagree. These are young black people that I would like to be like.

  July 10

  Durham, North Carolina. They had a beauty contest before the game, and the Birmingham Black Barons were the judges. After we picked the girl we thought was the best-looking, there was a big fight. Perry said that we were just trying to pick the most white-looking girl, and Jay Wilson said he should shut up and stop trying to make trouble. The girl didn’t look white to me.

  We played the Carolina All-Stars, and they made nine errors and two just-about errors. After the game a guy named Chris Mills from the All-Stars came over and talked to Piper about the game. He said that it was a good game but that the All-Stars were a little off. Piper got mad — you could tell that by the way the veins in his neck were showing — but he didn’t say anything.

  I know what made Piper mad. All of a sudden everybody was looking at the Negro Leagues and wondering what we were about. Some people looked at us as if we were a minor league, but our guys were as much of a major league as the National or the American League.

  July 11

  A doubleheader against the Carolina All-Stars, and Piper wanted to run the score on them but the team wasn’t interested. We won both games (we didn’t want Piper to blow up completely), but it was no big deal.

  We saw an accident and stopped the bus. A car and a truck crashed just outside of Durham. There was a white guy in the truck, and a black guy with a black girl in the car. The girl was hurt pretty bad, and so was the white guy. There was a little black hospital right near the accident, and they took them both there. If it had been a white hospital they would not have taken the black girl there.

  July 12

  We played a game against an industrial league team from Wilmington, North Carolina, and they were pretty good. Afterward we drove to a dinner where Buck Leonard was being honored. Everybody was asking Buck if he thought he would be playing white folks ball soon. Buck shrugged and said he was going to be forty-one in September. He said he had already had his time playing baseball.

  It was real sad the way he said it, and you could tell that a lot of guys were thinking that maybe they wouldn’t have a chance to play in the white leagues, either.

  July 13

  A day off.

  July 17

  In Cleveland against the Buckeyes. Sam Jethroe played center field and he looked 101 times better than Willie, who was playing center field for us. The thing with Willie is that when he’s in the field he takes off as soon as the ball is hit. I don’t know how he does that. I have to watch to see where the ball is going first and then I go after it. Willie’s a pretty nice guy and always up for a ball game. He wants to play ball all the time. I think that’s why Piper likes him. He’s hitting pretty good, too.

  July 18

  Doubleheader against the Buckeyes. We won the first, and they won the second. I called home, and Mama answered the phone. She sounded kind of sad, and when I asked her what was wrong she said that Daddy wasn’t laid off but they cut his hours back at the plant. I asked her if Daddy was down, and she said no, but he wasn’t walking around doing no whole lot of grinning, either.

  I told Mama about seeing the young people from Morehouse, and she said that I should apply if I wanted to go there.

  Mama didn’t push it, and neither did I. It takes money to go to college. I was giving Mama some of the money I was making from the Barons and I wasn’t home eating all the time, so things weren’t too bad there. Daddy made pretty good money when the hours were regular, but I knew Rachel would be going to school for a long time. Besides all that I didn’t have a burning desire to be a teacher or a preacher or anything. I want to play ball, and later, when my career is over, I want to have a nice job that isn’t just a job for a black man. I told Mama that I loved her and told her to tell Daddy that I loved him. She asked me was anything wrong and I said no, I was just thinking about some things.

  July 19

  Indianapolis. The bus halfway broke down, which meant that we had to crawl along the highway. It kept overheating, and the engine kept cutting off. The radiator was boiling off water as fast as we put it in, and Charlie said that we needed some oil. He didn’t want to drive the bus to the next service station, and the guys didn’t want to get off and walk. We ended up with Charlie driving along the highway slower than a guy walking. A police car came along, and the officer inside asked what the trouble was. Charlie told him, and he said we either had to put on some speed or get out and walk.

  We said okay, but when the policeman left we kept starting and stopping the bus some more. It took us th
irty minutes to make the five miles to the next service station, and guess who was sitting in the service station when we got there? That’s right, the policeman. Charlie told him that the bus had started and was running just fine but had stopped a few minutes before we reached the service station.

  The policeman asked Charlie if he was lying, and when Charlie said yes he got a ticket.

  The gas station didn’t have a Colored restroom, and the policeman (white) said that if anybody took out anything to pee on the highway, he was going to shoot off whatever we were going to pee with.

  July 21

  We played a game in Charleston, South Carolina, against the New York Cubans, who were traveling around the south. They were up first, and their third baseman, a guy named Minnie Minoso, bunted and got to first base, but the umpire called the ball foul. Minoso got mad and started yelling at the umpire but he was yelling in Spanish, and the umpire threw him out of the game. Their manager ran out and asked the umpire what Minoso was saying, and he said he didn’t know but it sure didn’t sound like Bible verses. It was only an exhibition game, and Piper wanted to see Minoso play, so he talked to the umpire and got Minoso back in. Then Minoso hit three home runs to beat us 7 to 2, and Piper (surprise!) was mad.

  After the game we went over to the black part of town and met a man who was one hundred years old. He looked it, too. He was small, and as black as you figure a man could get. The people from Charleston said he had been born a slave. I did some quick arithmetic and figured the man had to be born in 1848 if he was a hundred years old.

  Bill Greason got to talking to him, and he told us a story about the Civil War. He said he and his cousin had both been drummer boys with the Colored troops during the war. He said they had all white Yankee officers who drilled them from sunup until sundown. They had i went overa couple of skirmishes with the Rebs before they got into a big fight. In one fight the Rebs sent some dogs after them. He said that nearly scared the black off of him.

  The Colored soldiers shot the dogs and then they turned and started shooting at the Rebs. Some of the Rebs would just stand up and yell at them, like they were back on the plantation and the Rebs were Patty Rollers. I asked him what a Patty Roller was, and he said they were white men who used to ride around the edge of the plantation to make sure nobody was stealing off.

  He said once they were taken down to the beach and told they were going to attack a place called Fort Wagner. There were supposed to be close to two hundred Rebs in there, and at least three times more Colored troops.

  The old man had a tough-looking beard that was yellow and bristly, and he pulled on it faster and faster as he talked. He said those Colored soldiers lined up on the beach, and he and his cousin and a gap-toothed boy from Tennessee started beating their drums as they were told to do and then there was a charge. Instead of a couple of hundred Rebs in the fort there was near on to a thousand, or so it seemed, all waiting with their bayonets.

  He said the Colored troops were beat back and some of their best officers killed, but they had proved something that day. They had proved the Colored soldier was a real fighter.

  I was glad to see that old man, but it was amazing in a way, too. Here it is a hundred years later and we are still talking about how Jackie Robinson is proving that Colored people are okay at something. I told that to Bill Greason. He said if it didn’t knock me down to the ground it meant I was getting stronger. I don’t feel stronger.

  July 22

  Indianapolis, Indiana. We arrived at 1:30 p.m. and my back is just about broken from riding all night. Sam Hairston of the Clowns said that they had three games cancelled so far this month. A couple of their players said they were thinking of joining the army. Here is the current standing of the Negro American League:

  Kansas City

  Birmingham Black Barons

  Memphis

  Cleveland

  Chicago

  Indianapolis

  Artie Wilson is the top hitter on the team. He’s hitting .400, according to the World, but Artie said he was really hitting about .350.

  The World gets its statistics from the team, but sometimes we forget to turn them in or somebody misplaces them.

  They have a nice five-and-dime store in Indianapolis, and John Britton bought a statue of the Eiffel Tower for his mother and I bought one for Mama. One day I would like to go to Paris, where the real Eiffel Tower is. After the game (which we won 5 to 4) we went to a restaurant with some of the Clowns. I sat with Willie Mays, Bill Greason, and Luis Caballero of the Clowns.

  After we had dinner, me and Willie walked around Indianapolis. We stopped at a coffee shop downtown and sat down at the counter and each of us had a soda. It was good not to have to look around to see if they had any WHITE and COLORED signs.

  July 23

  Willie got a humongous home run against Newark. The Eagles, which is what the Newark players are called, say they don’t play nearly as many games as we do. The Barons play somewhere every day, but the Eagles say there aren’t many teams to play up in the New Jersey area. The Eagles play their regular league games and a few games against Jersey City, and an occasional game out on Long Island, but they aren’t drawing crowds.

  Piper threw us a copy of the World, which had a big headline about Jackie Robinson and a small article about the Barons. There was also a lot of coverage of the Olympics, which are coming up pretty soon.

  July 24

  Home again and trouble. Daddy’s job is still cutting back hours. What he does is work in a machine tool shop in the mill. His job is to clean the metal shavings out of the machine and to keep them oiled.

  They had laid off some of the guys who worked on the lathes and when they did that, everybody else got their hours cut.

  Mama has been talking about getting a new sewing machine and she told Daddy that she needed it because Rachel was down to next to nothing for clothes. He told Mama to take her down to the New Ideal and buy her one of those fancy dresses that the white girls wear.

  Aunt Jack asked Daddy what he was doing looking at what the white girls were wearing, but Mama said she didn’t care what the white girls were wearing. A lot of the fancier white stores would not let black people try on the dresses, and if they did not fit when you got it home you could not take them back, either.

  Mama said maybe she would take Rachel over to Miss Pool, who used to make her dresses.

  “She still got that little piece of fake hair on her head?” Aunt Jack asked.

  Mama said she did, but then she went on about how she needed to have her own sewing machine.

  Rachel came in and started talking about how she wanted a store-bought dress, and Aunt Jack said that Rachel reminded her of an oxtail in a butcher’s shop. She said she was probably good for seasoning something, but not for much more. I liked that.

  July 25

  Me and Rachel got into hot water and had the most fun we have had together in years. It all started at church this morning when there was a funeral. Mama said that Elder Lucas, who died last Wednesday, had not wanted to have his funeral on a Sunday, but the folks at Smith and Gaston Funeral Parlor were going on vacation the next day and so they had to have it right then. Daddy said Elder Lucas should have fixed it so he could have died on a Sunday, and then they could have buried him during the week. Mama got mad about that and said that he should not speak ill of the dead. Then Daddy said, “Humph!” Then Mama said not to be “humphing” her. Daddy said he was grown and he would “humph” who he wanted to. Then Mama “humphed” him, and he gave her two back. Just about that time I cracked up and so did Rachel, and we were both chased out of the kitchen.

  July 25, night

  We lost a doubleheader to the Newark Eagles. That’s three out of four games we’ve lost against them. Jimmy Newberry came into the clubhouse and told Piper that one of the white owners of Rickwood wanted to see him right away. As soon
as Piper left, the rest of us sneaked out because we didn’t want to hear his mouth about losing the doubleheader.

  Also, I got into a regular league game against Newark. Right after Monte Irvin put the game out of reach for us, Piper put me in. I got to bat against their relief pitcher, who is right-handed. He threw a ball sidearmed, and I jumped back from it just as the umpire called strike one. Then I stood in for the second pitch, which I really didn’t see, and that was strike two. I missed the next pitch. Jimmy Zapp said that I looked like a southern white lady fanning herself. It made me feel bad because Willie Mays came up right after me and got a line drive single.

  July 26

  The big news is that President Truman has issued an order to integrate the armed forces. Everybody is talking about how that might mean the end of having to sit in the back of the bus or drink from a dirty drinking fountain under a COLORED sign. Most of the talk about how things are going to change is coming from young people. Older people say they’ll just wait and see what happens.

  Memphis is in town. The guys on the team were talking about the reports that the attendance was dropping off at the games. Piper said that the trouble with the black community is that we pay too much attention to what white people are doing.

  Even the Birmingham World is just writing about what Jackie Robinson and Campanella and Doby are doing in the big leagues. I sent a scorecard to the World, but they didn’t even print it.