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BEYOND THE SHADOW OF THE SENATORS This page intentionally left blank. Want to learn more? , We hope you enjoy this McGraw-Hill eBook! If you d like more information about this book, its author, or related books and websites, please click here. For Harry, Linda, and Ivan Snyder This page intentionally left blank. INTRODUC TION Between the Babe and Jackie July 5, 1924 Griffith Stadium is packed for a doubleheader between the Washington Senators and the New York Yankees. The two teams are battling for first place, and the atmosphere at the stadium, located in the heart of Washington’s black community, is electric. In the first game, while chasing a foul ball off the bat of Senators first baseman Joe Judge, Yankees legend Babe Ruth knocks himself unconscious running into the right-field retaining wall—directly in front of the pavilion reserved for the Senators’ black fans. A photographer perched in foul territory captures a classic image of the black fans peering down at the sprawled-out slugger. Trainers rush from both dugouts with water buckets and black medical bags. Players from both teams look on anxiously. Police Captain Doyle, a caricature of an Irish cop, stretches out a white hand to keep a sea of black faces at bay. Buck Leonard, a husky, sixteen-year-old railroad worker, almost certainly stands among the multitude of concerned fans. A future Negro League star, Leonard is attending his first major league baseball game. Sam Lacy, an eighteen-year-old stadium vendor and future sportswriter, is selling soft drinks and making comparisons between the white players in major league baseball and the black ix Copyright 2003 by Brad Snyder. Click Here for Terms of Use. Introduction During the first half of the twentieth century, Washington, D.C., was a segregated Southern town. Racial discrimination in the nation’s capital prevented blacks and whites from attending the same schools, living on the same streets, eating in the same restaurants, shopping in the same stores, playing on the same playgrounds, and frequenting the same movie theaters. As a result, black and white Washingtonians lived in separate social worlds. Those worlds collided at Senators games. Griffith Stadium was one of the few outdoor places in segregated Washington where blacks could enjoy themselves with whites. The ballpark, located at Seventh Street and Florida Avenue in northwest Washington, stood in the heart of a thriving black residential and commercial district. It also was just down the street from Howard University, the “Capstone of Negro Education.” The educational opportunities at Howard and the job opportunities in the federal government had lured many of the country’s best and brightest black residents to the nation’s capital. Many of them lived near the ballpark in neighborhoods such as LeDroit Park, which was just beyond Griffith Stadium’s right-field wall. With an affluent black population in their own backyard, the Senators boasted one of major league baseball’s largest and most loyal black fan bases. The Senators’ black fans sat in the right-field pavilion—Griffith Stadium was one of only two segregated major league ballparks (Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis was the other). Segregated seating, however, did not deter the Senators’ black fans from attending games. On the contrary, black Washingtonians were so enamored of the Senators that they refused to support any of the Negro League teams that played at Griffith Stadium during the 1920s and 1930s. The Senators enjoyed unprecedented success during this period—winning the World Series in 1924 and returning to the Fall Classic in 1925 and 1933—as well as unwavering support from their black fans. Only one player during the 1920s and ’30s tested the loyalty of the Senators’ black fans—Babe Ruth. The Babe’s big lips and broad, flat nose often triggered racial epithets from white players and fans but endeared him to black ones. “Ruth was called ‘nigger’ so often that xi Introduction xii many people assumed that he was indeed partly black and that at some point in time he, or an immediate ancestor, had managed to cross the color line,” wrote Ruth biographer Robert W. Creamer. “Even players in the Negro baseball leagues that flourished then believed this and generally wished the Babe, whom they considered a secret brother, well in his conquest of white baseball.”1 With their “secret brother’s” retirement in 1935 and the Senators’ nosedive after the 1933 season, the calls for a “real brother” on the Senators came from the team’s black fans. One of those fans was a Washington native and young journalist named Sam Lacy. During the mid-1930s, Lacy began lobbying Senators owner Clark Griffith to integrate his team. But from Ruth’s retirement until Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, Lacy and other black Washingtonians waited in vain for another major league hero. During World War II, the Homestead Grays ended the longstanding love affair between black Washingtonians and the Senators. Blacks flocked to Grays games, not out of some social obligation but because they thirsted for recreational outlets during the war and they loved good baseball. While such major league stars as Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, and the Senators’ Cecil Travis were off serving in the military, the Grays maintained a team of talented yet aging players led by Gibson and Leonard. Satchel Paige, the star pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs, also was too old to serve in the military, but not too old to compete. The Grays-Monarchs clashes were the best show in town. Although white fans never caught on, more than twenty-eight thousand black fans attended a 1942 GraysMonarchs game at Griffith Stadium. They sat wherever they wanted. And they saw top-notch professional baseball. The Grays’ popularity and on-field success transformed Washington into the front lines of the campaign to integrate major league baseball. The city was a natural forum for social protest. Segregation thrived in the nation’s capital while the United States fought a war against Nazi white supremacy. The city’s sophisticated black population was ready to embrace a black major league player. The best team in the Negro Leagues played in the same ballpark as one of the worst teams in the major leagues, highlighting the illogic of main- one SAM, BUCK, a n d GRIFFITH STADIUM The day the Babe crashed into the right-field pavilion at Griffith Stadium was one of many afternoons Sam Lacy spent at the ballpark. The eighteen-year-old stadium vendor had grown up five blocks from the ballpark—it was his second home. An aspiring young ballplayer, Lacy would shag balls in the outfield for the Senators while they took batting practice. He befriended several players, including first baseman Chick Gandil, shortstop George McBride, and center fielder Clyde Milan, and, after batting practice, he would run errands for them such as picking up their laundry and taking their shirts to the cleaners. Even after these players left the team, the Senators rewarded Lacy for his pregame work with the most profitable items to sell in the stands: coffee in the spring, cold drinks in the summer, and scorecards when the Senators defeated the New York Giants in the 1924 World Series.1 Lacy discovered an added benefit from shagging flies and selling scorecards: He learned how to make comparisons between the white major leaguers and the black professional players who took the field at Griffith Stadium when the Senators were out of town. Lacy knew that Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were good, but the future Hall of Fame sportswriter also knew that contemporary Negro League stars Oscar Charleston and John Henry Lloyd should be playing on the same teams as Ruth and Cobb. 1 Copyright 2003 by Brad Snyder. Click Here for Terms of Use.