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

  September 25

  The Homestead Grays played their home games at either Forbes Field in Pittsburgh or Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., but they couldn’t get either of their home fields for the Negro League World Series because they were being used by major-league teams. That’s why the first game of the series was going to be in Kansas City. We got to Muehlebach Field in Kansas City late Thursday afternoon, and Piper was so anxious to get the series started, he wanted to have a workout right away but we couldn’t get anyone to open the stadium. Piper had faced the Homestead Grays in the Negro World Series in 1944 and 1945, and both times he lost. I knew he had those losses in the back of his mind.

  Everybody wanted to win, and most of the guys were feeling good about our chances. Jimmy Newberry started for us and he looked good warming up.

  The first inning went smoothly, with nobody scoring. But in the bottom of the second Newberry gave up a hit, and then walked the next batter. Wham! Wham! Before you knew it, they had three runs. When the team came in they were quiet, which is a bad sign.

  Newberry had his head down, and a couple of guys went over to him and touched him on the shoulder. I went over to him, too.

  The next inning he was throwing nothing but some heat and got the Grays out one two three. We started chipping away, a hit here, and a hit there, and went into the last two innings trailing by one run. We got a rally going in the eighth and got Pepper as far as third base, but he got thrown out when he tried to score on a groundout to third. They hadn’t done squat against Newberry after the second inning, but we couldn’t tie it up. After the game we were faced with an all-night ride back to Birmingham. It rained all the way, which seemed just about right.

  September 26

  Rachel put some mascara on, and it got in her eye and turned it all red. She told Mama she was getting a sty, but Mama found the mascara in her room and said she shouldn’t lie about it, especially on a Sunday.

  Church started early today so everybody could go to the game. I wanted to pray for the Barons to win but I didn’t think that was right. I did pray for Ed Steele to get a home run.

  September 26, night

  Second inning. Runners on first and third and Scott up. Bam! A double off the right-field wall. Both runners scored, and we’re up 2 to 0 with Bill Powell pitching. Everything was great until the sixth inning. Then the Grays got five runs. They are one good-hitting ball club. Luke Easter hit a low outside pitch against the left-field wall. He’s a huge dude and strong as skunk pee.

  Piper got on in the ninth with one out. Bell pinch-hit and got a double, and Piper, who was running from the crack of the bat, scored to make it 5 to 3. But then Artie Wilson struck out, and Johnny Britton grounded out to Easter at first base. We lost 5 to 3, which put them two up.

  September 28, midnight

  Perry pitched and got a wicked double in the third inning to knock in a run. In the fourth inning who gets a home run for the Grays? Right, Luke Easter. Every time he gets up, I get nervous.

  In the top of the sixth, with two outs, Buck Leonard is on first base. Clarence Bruce, who was playing second for the Grays, knocked the crap out of the ball into left center field for a base hit. Willie is out in center and he gets to the ball before it goes through to the wall. Leonard goes flying around second base and heads for third. Willie guns him down with a perfect throw to third. Couldn’t believe it. Neither could Buck, who stood up and watched Willie come in from the outfield. He was shaking his head. Willie has some arm.

  In the sixth inning we got the lead back. We got two hustle runs. A drag bunt down the first baseline, and a soft single to right field put two guys on. Then Zapp popped up for the first out, but Piper singled to drive in a run and put runners on first and third. A called third strike on Pepper made the second out, but Piper hustled down to second on a delayed steal. Then, on the next pitch, Eudie Napier, a really solid catcher for the Grays, let the ball get past him, and we scored our second run of the inning.

  In the eighth inning they tied the score when Bob Thurman hit a two-run double.

  Bottom of the ninth. One out. Bill Greason, who relieved Perry in the eighth inning, got a single. Art Wilson hit a short fly to center field. He slammed the bat down, but it was still the second out. Okay, who comes up but Willie. In the dugout nobody says anything. I sneaked a look over at Piper, who was sitting with his ankles crossed. I knew he was nervous.

  Willie took the first pitch right down the middle for a strike. The next pitch was way high. The next was a curve, which Willie started to go for and stopped his bat. The umpire called it a strike.

  It looked low to me.

  The next pitch was fast and low, and Willie hit a wicked shot right over the mound. That ball went over second base and into center field. Greason scored, and we had our first win.

  September 29

  It’s about three hundred miles from Birmingham to New Orleans, but it could have been nine hundred miles, we didn’t care, we had won our first game.

  Some of the Grays were mad that they had to play in New Orleans, because they couldn’t play in front of the fans who had supported them most of the year. They were even madder when we got to Pelican Stadium in New Orleans.

  When we played league games in the south, the audience wasn’t segregated. When the white Barons played at Rickwood, the stands would have a white section and a black section. In our league games most of the fans were black, and you could sit anywhere you wanted to sit. But when we got to Pelican Stadium, the owners decided that so many white fans were coming to the game that they were going to use the segregation rules. The black section of Pelican Stadium was divided from the white section by a wire fence.

  Wilmer Fields was pitching for the Grays. He’s a hard thrower but he usually doesn’t have too much on his ball. Piper said we could hit him if we concentrated. What happened was that everybody on the Grays was on their game. They hit everything and everybody we put into the game. We didn’t do a thing against Fields. We lost 14 to 1.

  I felt bad for Piper. He wanted to win the series and I wanted to win the series, but it was looking bad.

  Charlie Rudd took the bus down Canal Street before turning onto the highway. We wanted to leave Louisiana, and our loss, as fast as we could. A few black people saw the bus on the road and waved, but nobody felt like waving back.

  October 1

  We did our best. We played like champions, but it wasn’t enough. We lost the fifth game, at home, in ten innings, 10 to 6. We’ve lost the series four games to one. I feel terrible.

  October 2

  Mr. Hayes gave a party at Rush’s Hotel for the Black Barons and anyone in their families who wished to come. All of the Black Barons came, and some of the Homestead Grays who were still in town. Mama came, and Daddy came because he wanted to meet Buck Leonard. I introduced them, and Daddy shook Buck’s hand and said that he was pleased to meet him.

  Buck said that he was worried about winning the series until the last Baron was out. “You guys know how to play this game,” he said.

  Alonzo Perry asked me what I was going to do over the winter. He’s tall and leaned over me when he talked. I told him I was thinking about going to college.

  He told me that him, Willie Mays, Bobby Robinson, and Pepper were going to start driving down to Florida next week. He knew a guy down there who could hook them up with a team in Puerto Rico and wanted to know if I wanted to go with them.

  It hurt me to say no, it really did. Maybe I will be all right at college, I don’t know. I know I cannot play baseball well enough to be in the Negro Leagues.

  I wasn’t going to give baseball up, just the dream of being a professional. I would always root for the Black Barons and love watching them and being around them.

  October 3

  After church Aunt Jack and Mama were in the kitchen snapping beans for supper. Rachel was doing homework, a
nd Daddy was sitting out on the front porch. I went out and sat with him. He asked me if I wanted to catch a few. He saw I was surprised and told me that he had his own glove somewhere in the shed out in back of the house. I said fine.

  Daddy went to the shed and came back with the most raggedy glove I have ever seen in my life. It was so stiff from not having any oil on it for years that I could hardly get my hand in it. I got my glove, and we went into the backyard and started throwing the ball around. We had only been doing it for five minutes or so when Bill Greason came by. He watched us and smiled.

  Rachel, who was watching us from the window, called down to Bill and asked him if he thought me and Daddy looked like ballplayers. Bill said we did and if a few more guys showed up it would be a perfect day for a doubleheader.

  After completing high school, Rachel Owens worked in a beauty parlor in Birmingham. Noticing that there were few cosmetics designed for black women, she started a company that manufactured face powders, lipsticks, and other cosmetics. She married Frank Lopez, an accountant. The couple had two children, a boy and a girl. The boy was one of the children injured when racists bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963. Presently Rachel spends her time flying around the country promoting her company’s products.

  Aunt Jack became increasingly active in the church and in 1970 moved to Hooper, Alabama. There she joined the church at Berney Points, where the Reverend Bill Greason, formerly of the Birmingham Black Barons, was pastor. Aunt Jack started a mentoring program for young women, which she maintained for over fifteen years.

  Biddy’s parents, Macon and Janie Owens, continued to live in Birmingham. Both became active in the civil rights movement of the sixties, Macon working through his church to increase voter registration. Both Macon and Janie also worked with a relief organization for those people injured or put out of work during the protest movements.

  Biddy Owens started at Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama, two weeks after what turned out to be the last Negro League World Series. He coached the Talladega baseball team for the four years he attended school as a business major. After graduating he worked in the purchasing department at Miles College in Birmingham and, later, for the Birmingham office of the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company. He married the former Jasmine Hinton. They have three children: two sons who teach in Birmingham and a daughter who is a sportscaster for a news conglomerate in Atlanta, Georgia. Biddy is now retired and is working to expand the Little League baseball program in Birmingham.

  Baseball has been played in America, by whites and blacks, since long before the Civil War. In the years of peace after the war, baseball grew and in 1884, Moses Fleetwood Walker became the first black man to play in an organized major league when he signed with a team in Toledo, Ohio. His brother, Welday Walker, also played briefly for Toledo. But racial attitudes were such that these black players were soon banned from organized baseball. It was not until the signing of Jackie Robinson some sixty-two years later that America’s favorite game was again openly integrated.

  In response to the segregation practices, black players began to form their own leagues. Many of these leagues were made up of company teams. Some played against white minor-league teams, while others played only against black teams. In 1920, Andrew “Rube” Foster, a black baseball player and team owner, organized the Negro National League. This league attracted the best black ballplayers in the country. They played with the same rules as the white leagues, but the teams often struggled just to remain financially viable. Few black teams had their own stadiums, and were sometimes forced to play on open fields, hoping to attract whatever fans they could. After the game the teams’ managers would pass the hat, hoping to make enough money to pay the players.

  As white baseball prospered and became the national pastime, the Negro National League, under the guidance of Foster, also began to prosper. The white leagues had such legendary players as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Lou Gehrig. The Negro Leagues had Oscar Charleston, Rube Foster, Satchel Paige, Martin Dihigo, Buck Leonard, and Josh Gibson.

  How good were the black players? Since the records of the white major leaguers are the standard of excellence, and they never played official league games against Negro teams, it is hard to make a direct comparison between the two leagues. In the 1930s and early 1940s, white major leaguers, in the off season, would often travel with an All-Star team and play against black All-Stars. In these games the black players did well, winning as many games as they lost. Records of the Negro Leagues are scant and often inaccurate. Few newspapers covered the games. Even black newspapers would cover only home games, and rarely printed box scores. But the truest barometer of the skills of the Negro League players came when the major leagues began to accept black players. Their play against white major leaguers left no doubt as to their ability.

  The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons played a total of seventy-six regular season league games. In between the league games they played nonleague games, sometimes as many as three games in a day. In one day they might face a professional pitcher, destined to move on to the major leagues, in a day game, and then face an amateur pitcher in a night contest. It was not unusual for teams to travel hundreds of miles at night and arrive at a ball field with just enough time to change into their uniforms and run out onto the field.

  One of the highlights of the season for black baseball was the East-West All-Star game, an annual event starting in 1933, usually held in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. These games, as well as many of the league games, often attracted a larger attendance than white major-league games.

  In 1937 the Negro American League was formed. This set up the possibility of a Negro American League and Negro National League World Series. By this time, all baseball fans knew about the Negro League stars. Fans, both white and black, would travel miles to see the legendary Satchel Paige or the daring base running of Cool Papa Bell. But major-league owners still resisted the integration of baseball. There was never an official rule that major-league teams could not hire a black player, but it was understood that no one would.

  During World War II baseball suffered from a lack of available players. Black organizations such as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) asked why, if blacks in the army could throw grenades for America in wartime, they couldn’t throw baseballs in peacetime?

  When the war ended, baseball attendance for white teams was down. Many of the black teams were drawing larger crowds than their white counterparts. The Negro Leagues often rented the same fields used by white major leaguers. So when Josh Gibson hit one of his mighty shots into the bleachers at Comiskey Park, it could be measured against the hits that Babe Ruth hit in the same park. When a black outfielder threw a runner out, the distances were easily measured. Many fans thought that some of the Negro League teams, such as the Kansas City Monarchs, the Birmingham Black Barons, or the Homestead Grays, could have competed in either white major league.

  Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers organization, understood that major-league baseball would eventually be forced to accept black players. He began looking at the Negro Leagues for potential players for the Dodgers. On October 23, 1945, the Dodgers announced that a Negro player, Jack Roosevelt (Jackie) Robinson, had been signed to play for their farm club, the Montreal Royals. As predicted, many southerners objected to the hiring of a black in the all-white world of major-league ball. Other baseball fans, white and black, knew it was about time.

  Robinson’s selection had been carefully thought out by Rickey. Robinson, who had been a football and track star at UCLA before the war, was a conservative, well-spoken man. His older brother, Mack, had been a silver medalist in the 1936 Olympics. Robinson had also been an officer in the U.S. Army during the war. He had only played one season for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues and was not considered an outstanding player according to Negro Leagues standards. But Rickey had assessed that
Robinson could withstand the racism he would face and would handle himself well if he encountered racial problems. In other words, he would represent his race well.

  Another reason for selecting Robinson for the Dodgers was that the Dodger farm club played in Montreal, Canada, where there was no segregation. Robinson went to Montreal in 1946 and became the first black player of the century in the major leagues in April 1947. Robinson did receive the taunts of racist players and fans, but Rickey had been right: He was able to handle the pressure and had an outstanding rookie season. Larry Doby, of the Newark Eagles, was taken on by the Cleveland Indians in July 1947, and Hank Thompson, also from the Kansas City team, was called up by the St. Louis Browns.

  By the end of the 1948 season the white major-league teams had staged an onslaught on the Negro Leagues. They took the players they wanted, signing the stars they had shunned for years and assigning them to either major-league teams or to their farm clubs in the minors.

  Black fans wanted to see how the players from the Negro Leagues did against the white stars. Attendance at Negro League games began to drop drastically in 1948. The sports pages of black newspapers would headline what Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, who had played for the Baltimore Elite Giants, were doing. Negro League games received less and less coverage as interest waned in favor of integrated baseball. Another blow was the growth of television. In 1948, baseball fans could, for the first time, sit in the comfort of their own homes and see major-league stars. The result was that the 1948 League World Series between the Birmingham Black Barons and the Homestead Grays was the last ever played in the Negro Leagues.