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Overview
He was told that the color of his skin would keep him out of the big leagues, but Joe Black worked his way up through the Negro Leagues and the Cuban Winter League. He burst into the Majors in 1952 when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the face of segregation, verbal harassment, and even death threats, Joe Black rose to the top of his game; he earned National League Rookie of the Year and became the first African American pitcher to win a World Series game. With the same tenacity he showed in his baseball career, Black became the first African American vice president of a transportation corporation when he went to work for Greyhound. In this first-ever biography of Joe Black, his daughter Martha Jo Black tells the story not only of a baseball great who broke through the color line, but also of the father she knew and loved.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780897337557 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Chicago Review Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| Sales rank: | 983,549 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Joe Black
More than a Dodger
By Martha Jo Black, Chuck Schoffner
Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2015 Martha Jo Black and Chuck SchoffnerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-89733-755-7
CHAPTER 1
Historic Win
October 1, 1952
* * *
The bleak, gray clouds that darkened the Brooklyn sky earlier in the day had broken up and drifted off. With the sun shining freely as it sank in the west, a large shadow crept steadily across the brown dirt of the Ebbets Field diamond.
It was the opening game of the 1952 World Series, and a tall, rangy figure dressed in the gleaming whites of the Brooklyn Dodgers strode confidently to the pitcher's mound. Seven months earlier, Joe Black had been an unheralded minor leaguer trying to make the Dodgers roster, a twenty-eight-year-old rookie who had played only one season of organized ball. But on this first day of October, facing a New York Yankees team seeking its fourth straight world championship, Joe had put himself and his team on the cusp of a historic moment.
The Dodgers, beloved by their loyal fans and pitied by others for their consistent World Series failures, led the favored Yankees 4–2 with the ninth inning coming up. Joe started the game — a move by manager Charlie Dressen that was seen as a huge gamble — and he had gone the distance. If he could get three more outs while holding the Yanks at bay, he would become the first black pitcher to win a World Series game. At a time when one school of thought held that black pitchers couldn't handle the pressure of big games like this, Joe was doing his part to put that notion to rest.
Not that there had been many opportunities like this for black pitchers. Joe was only the third black Major Leaguer to pitch in a World Series. Five years after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers and broke the Major Leagues' color barrier, baseball had made progress, but America's national pastime was still a long way from full integration.
Of the eight National League teams in 1952, only the Dodgers, New York Giants, and Boston Braves had integrated. Along with Joe, the Dodgers had Jackie at second base, catcher Roy Campanella, and pitcher Don Newcombe (who was in the army and did not throw one pitch during the season after winning twenty games in 1951).
In the American League, no teams except the Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox, and St. Louis Browns had black players. The Yankees remained as white as the cloth in their pinstriped home uniforms. They would not integrate until Elston Howard came up in 1955.
Until Joe fired his first pitch, Newcombe and Satchel Paige had been the only blacks to pitch in a World Series game. Satch, the ageless wonder who somehow won twelve games for the hapless St. Louis Browns in 1952, didn't get much chance at all in October, working two-thirds of an inning of mop-up duty for the Cleveland Indians in game five of the 1948 Series. A midseason pickup by the Indians that year, Paige had sparked the club's pennant drive with a 6–1 record, including two shutouts, and a stingy 2.47 earned run average. Yet he languished on the bench during the series, a forgotten man as the Tribe rode the pitching of Bob Lemon and Gene Bearden past the Boston Red Sox in six games.
Newcombe went 0–2 in the Dodgers' 1949 World Series loss to the Yankees, though he certainly pitched well enough to win the opener. Big Newk gave up only five hits and struck out eleven, but he lost 1–0 to Allie Reynolds, who checked the Dodgers on two hits. Dan Bankhead, the first black to pitch in the big leagues, had gotten into the 1947 World Series with the Dodgers, but only as a pinch runner.
Now, with Joe masterfully shutting down the Yankees' hitters, the Dodgers were poised to achieve something they had never done. In five previous trips, Dem Bums had not only failed to win the World Series but never even managed to win the first game. They always started in a hole. "The Dodgers made all of Brooklyn feel on top of the world," author Michael D'Antonio wrote, "except at World Series time."
But maybe, just maybe, they could hold on and finally start the series on a winning note. Maybe they could show the Yankees and the long-suffering Dodger fans, whose lament of "Wait till next year" had become an all too familiar refrain, that this year would be different.
The fact that Joe Black was the one who had put them in this position was remarkable — even stunning.
* * *
Joe had reported to spring training in February with only one season of minor league baseball behind him. It was just a so-so season at that — a combined 11–12 record with Montreal of the International League and St. Paul of the American Association, the Dodgers' two Triple-A farm clubs. He was one of the few college graduates in the Major Leagues, having played three sports at Morgan State, though not baseball, because the all-black school in Baltimore did not field a team. Before signing with the Dodgers, he did most of his pitching for the Baltimore Elite (pronounced EEE-light) Giants in the Negro leagues, in the US Army, and in Latin America over the winter.
During spring training in Vero Beach, Florida, Joe had been just one more prospect in a long list of pitchers, hoping fervently for a chance with the big club, because his time to make it was running out. He already had seen many Negro league stars passed over because they were deemed too old to make the jump when the door to the Major Leagues opened. If he hadn't stuck with the Dodgers, Joe might well have suffered the same fate. On the train north after the Dodgers broke camp, Joe tried to explain to journalist Roger Kahn just how badly he wanted to make the team. "If I could express myself as well as Shakespeare," he said, "I still couldn't tell you how much."
Joe had to sweat out the last cuts, and when manager Charlie Dressen named the final three pitchers who would stay with the club, he included Joe, who was ticketed for relief duty. Once the season began, Joe didn't get into a game until May 1. It would be another three weeks before he earned his first victory. He didn't register his first save until May 29.
So how did this rookie reliever end up starting the first game of the World Series, a role traditionally reserved for the team's ace? Was this the result of some twisted logic by Dressen in his attempt to exorcise the Dodgers' demons from World Series past?
As it turned out, Joe Black was the staff ace. With Newcombe off serving Uncle Sam, the Dodgers desperately needed someone to step into that role, and Joe was the one who filled it. The veterans of the staff, Preacher Roe, Carl Erskine, and Ralph Branca, all had assorted ailments. That trio completed only twenty of fifty-eight starts in an era when pitchers were expected to finish what they began.
With his starters faltering, Dressen found that in Joe, he had someone who could perk them up. So he kept calling on Joe in relief, and the big right-hander responded — time and time again. Late in the season, perhaps thinking ahead to what he might do in the World Series, Dressen started Joe twice.
"I want to see if you can pitch nine innings," he told Joe.
"OK," Joe replied.
Joe figured it was simply another case of Dressen's tinkering, which was the manager's wont, so he pitched.
He pitched well, too, beating the Boston Braves 8–2 on a three-hitter to give the Dodgers at least a tie for the National League pennant. He got hammered in his second start, an 11–3 loss to the Braves, but the Dodgers had clinched by then and were merely playing out the string.
When the season ended with the Dodgers four and a half games ahead of their bitter rivals, the New York Giants, Joe had pitched in fifty-six games. He was 15–4 with a 2.15 earned run average and fifteen saves. More than any individual game he saved, Joe Black saved the Dodgers' season.
"He put us in the World Series," Carl Erskine said. "He was the main cause to get us there." No wonder that at one point late in the season, Dressen acknowledged that he whispered "a little prayer of thanks for Joe Black every day."
Dressen had said after the final regular season game that either Black or Erskine would start the series opener. The next day, Dressen held court with writers while the Dodgers and Yankees worked out at Yankee Stadium. Ol' Charlie liked to talk, especially when the discussion got around to his favorite subject: himself.
Seeing Joe in the outfield, where he was sweating under his rubber jacket, Dressen whistled for him to come over.
"Throw five pitches," he told Joe.
Joe complied, then looked at his manager to see if he was supposed to do anything else.
"That's my starting pitcher," Dressen declared.
"I thought Erskine," a writer said.
"No," Dressen responded. "Joe Black's starting."
That brought a laugh from Joe.
"I mean it," the little skipper insisted. "I'm serious."
Dressen's announcement was a shocker. Sure, Joe had had a great season. The Dodgers wouldn't have won the pennant without him. He already had been named the National League's Rookie of the Year by the Sporting News, known then as the "Baseball Bible." Many assumed he'd be voted the league's Most Valuable Player.
But he was a reliever, a pitcher accustomed to going two or three innings, tops. You don't start someone like that in the first game of the World Series, a rookie no less, against the most successful franchise in all of baseball.
"Dressen did the unthinkable," Erskine said. One writer at the time noted, "Never before in big league history has a champion of either circuit been forced to undertake such a desperate gamble."
But there was a precedent for Charlie's move. Two years earlier, reliever Jim Konstanty had pitched the Philadelphia Phillies to the NL pennant. Konstanty worked seventy-four games that season, all in relief, winning sixteen and saving twenty-two. Later that year, he would be voted the league's MVP.
The Phillies had a solid pitching staff that included future Hall of Famer Robin Roberts, but the starters were worn out by the end of September. Roberts had started three games over the last five days of the season and had gone the distance in the 4–1, ten-inning, pennant-clinching victory over the Dodgers on the final day. Manager Eddie Sawyer didn't feel he could ask any more of Roberts with the dangerous Yankees as the opponent. So he gave the ball to Konstanty for the series opener and the bespectacled right-hander was superb, limiting the American Leaguers to one run and four hits in eight innings. But the Yanks' Vic Raschi was even better, and the New Yorkers won 1–0 on his two-hitter.
Still, most people felt Dressen took a big risk in starting a pitcher with so little big-league experience. Konstanty, at least, was in his fifth Major League season when he started in the series. Joe was in his seventh month. But if Joe could get the job done, the Dodgers would have Carl Erskine going in game two and the crafty Preacher Roe in game three. Joe could come back for the fourth game and maybe the Dodgers would be in control of the series by then. A risk, perhaps, but in Dressen's mind, it was a calculated risk.
Not only that, it was the kind of move Dressen liked to make. He thrived on being unconventional. He liked to surprise people. Some thought Dressen would announce Erskine or Roe as the starter, then trot Joe out to begin the game. New York Times columnist Arthur Daley felt Dressen was only doing what he had to do, writing that the Dodgers manager, "a gambler by nature, has to take daring gambles." Daley then added, "In fact, every pitching choice he makes is a daring gamble." The Times scribe picked the Yanks in five.
But as Joe pointed out to reporters the day before the game, this Yankee ballclub was different from those that had ruled baseball for the three previous years. "These aren't the same Yankees I saw when they had [Joe] DiMaggio, [Tommy] Henrich, and [Charlie] Keller," Joe said. "They're wearing the same letters on their shirts, but I don't believe they frighten anybody." Before taking that thought too far, Joe noted, "They're a good ballclub. Hope nobody thinks I'm knocking them. But the Dodgers seem to me to be a pretty good ballclub, too."
That's called "bulletin board" material nowadays, remarks an opponent interprets as belittling and uses for motivation. Yet Joe wasn't out of line. Joe DiMaggio, who had gracefully roamed center field for the Yankees since 1936, retired after the 1951 season. Starting infielders Bobby Brown and Jerry Coleman were in the service. Shortstop Phil Rizzuto had turned thirty-six on September 25. Johnny Mize, a key player on the bench, was thirty-nine and just one year from his final season. These Yankees, as Joe had observed, just weren't as formidable as the Bronx Bombers of the past.
But their pitching looked far more reliable than what the Dodgers could offer. They had stalwarts in Yogi Berra, Joe Collins, and Gil McDougald, and they had a twenty-year-old slugger with blond hair and boyishly handsome features to replace DiMaggio in center field: Mickey Mantle. Then, there was all that history. The Yankees had been in the World Series eighteen times, winning all but four. And they had the "Old Perfessor" himself, wily Casey Stengel, calling the shots as manager. Thus they started off as nine-to-five favorites to win it all — again.
Even with all of that stacked against him, Joe insisted he had not lost any sleep over what he was about to face. "I don't know how it'll be around game time ... but this is the way I feel right now," he told the writers. "It's just another ballgame, and Charlie has told me to go ahead and pitch the same as I've been doing."
With the Dodgers starting a rookie against them, the Yankees had every reason to feel confident. Besides, they'd have Allie Reynolds on the mound, and no pitcher at the time had enjoyed more success in the World Series than had the solidly built right-hander, known as "Chief" or "Super Chief" because he was part Creek Indian. Reynolds had pitched in eight World Series games, compiling a 4–1 record with one save and a 2.57 earned run average. That mark included the victory over Newcombe in game one back in 1949 and a 10–3 win over the Dodgers in game two of the 1947 series.
Reynolds threw a wicked curve, he could bring his fastball at 100 miles an hour, and he wouldn't hesitate to knock down a hitter to demonstrate who was in charge. Though he was thirty-five years old, Reynolds was at the top of his game in 1952. He went 20–8 — the only time in a thirteen-year big-league career that he'd win twenty games — and led the American League in earned run average (2.06), strikeouts (160), and shutouts (six). The year before, he'd pitched not one but two no-hitters. One magazine writer described Reynolds as getting on in years but "bold as any burglar." Clearly, the Yankees appeared to have the best of the pitching matchup.
Dressen, though, was undeterred. Pointing to Joe as he ran sprints in center field the day before the series, the Dodgers skipper told his audience of writers, "If that guy pitches the way he has pitched all season, our chance is as good as theirs."
If Joe faltered, Dressen figured he could call on Preacher Roe, Billy Loes, or Johnny Rutherford in relief. And Dressen apparently reasoned that by starting Joe in game one, he could bring him back not only in game four but also in game seven, if the series ran that long. He must have believed that Joe was the only pitcher on the staff who could handlethree starts in seven days. "He needs lots of work," Charlie said. "The only time they hit him good all year was when he had lots of rest."
* * *
Joe tried to follow his usual routine on game day. He lived on the top floor of a house on Decatur Avenue in Brooklyn with his wife, Doris, their four-month-old son, Chico, and Chico's ten-year-old half-sister, Carolyn Ann Bonds. He ate breakfast and read the newspaper, which, naturally, was filled with stories about his upcoming start on the mound. Before heading for Ebbets Field, Joe wrapped his long fingers around Chico, hoisted him to his shoulder, and walked him around the apartment, enjoying a last few moments of calm.
* * *
Throughout his life, my father would relish his responsibilities as a parent and cherish his time with Chico and me. He was always involved in Chico's life, from infancy through adulthood. At age forty-five, he became a father again when I was born. Five years later, he fought for and gained custody of me as a single parent after he and my mother divorced.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Joe Black by Martha Jo Black, Chuck Schoffner. Copyright © 2015 Martha Jo Black and Chuck Schoffner. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by Peter O'Malley,Introduction,
1 Historic Win,
2 A Shattered Dream,
3 A Second Newcombe?,
4 Joe College,
5 A Dodger at Last,
6 A Dream Reawakened,
7 Dizzy Dean Speaks Up,
8 GI Joe,
9 Joe to the Rescue,
10 Throwing Heat in Havana,
11 Dominating in the Dog Days,
12 From a Royal to a Saint,
13 First a Threat, Then a Pennant,
14 Career Change,
15 Dodger Disappointment — Again,
16 Mr. Greyhound,
17 A Question of Value,
18 A Single Parent,
19 A Star Fades,
20 Going to BAT for Others,
21 Playing on a Rep,
22 The Final Inning,
Bibliography,
Index,