The Integration of Major League Baseball: The Off-the-Field Story

Part 2: Wendell Smith – Events leading to the 1939 National League Survey

Part 2: Wendell Smith – Events leading to the 1939 National League Survey

In attempting to tell the off-the-field story, the getting negroes on-the-field must be touched upon. The same mechanism the press used to help these players integrate “white” baseball would be used over time to seek integrated living conditions not just in the South but in some major league cities as well. St. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, and Baltimore had some southern cultural influences running through them. Chicago had been the hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activities in the 20’s & 30’s. Some hotels in “the City of Brotherly Love”, Philadelphia, weren’t so loving for their “brothers” across racial lines.

During the 1939 National League season, Wendell Smith had press credentials to cover the Pittsburgh Pirates. He interviewed all eight National League managers and an assortment (40 total) of regular players on basically two questions. Are there negro players good enough to play in the major leagues? Do you think negro players will ever be admitted to the major leagues? The results: they could and they should. Smith’s information aligned with previous input by sports writers.

The first story of the series was published in the Pittsburgh Courrier on July 15, 1939, an interview with the Cincinnati Reds squad. The article begins by previewing the series and mentioning the contributions of writers in the past, both African American and mostly white. Here are the mentions and their contributions to the topic.

• Jimmy Powers (New York Daily News) – Lewis Dial in his column “The Sports Dial”, of February 18. 1933 mentions Powers “started agitation for Negro ballplayers in the big leagues.” That same Day in The Afro-American, Bill Gibson noted that Powers and Heywood Broun “have been outspoken against the injustice of Jim Crow policies of the big leagues…”

While Broun was a speaker honoring John McGraw at a Baseball Writers’ dinner, Powers circulated amongst the audience polling guests on their integration thoughts. “I was amazed at the sentiment in favor of the idea. The only important man present vetoing it was the guest of honor, John J. Mcgraw.” In 1901, McGraw attempted to pass Charlie Grant, a negro, off as a Native-American to play for his Baltimore Orioles, a plan that soon got snuffed out before Grant actually got to take the field in a major league game.

• Heywood Broun (Scripps-Howard papers) – In February,1933 at the above-mentioned banquet, Broun spoke out to the audience by stating that the color line was silly and should be abolished. He pointed out that some of the negro race had likely appeared in recent seasons being billed as Portuguese, Mexican or Hawaiian. He went on to say he even suspected one or two billed as Indians were actually negroes. He pointed out the contribution of negroes in other professional sports (most were already integrated). He pointed out that “The introduction of a few star Negro ball players would do a great deal to revivify interest in the big leagues… And it would be a fair and square thing. If baseball really is the national game, let the club owners go out and prove it.”
• Lloyd Lewis (Chicago Daily News) – In August 1938 upon watching the Negro Leagues All-Star game, lauds the negro players as playing a faster game than what is shown in the major leagues. He marvels at the risk taking of runners seeking to take extra bases and fielders attempting throws that Lewis declares are almost a thing of the past in the “white” man’s game. He declares only the batting is inferior, which in time does not prove to be.
• Shirley Povich (Washington Post) – Claims there are Negro pitchers who would win 20 games. He rates Josh Gibson as “probably superior” to Bill Dickey who was regarded as the best catcher in the major leagues. Povich quotes the great Walter Johnson while watching Gibson play as “There is a catcher that any big-league club would like to buy for $200,000.” That would have been an unheard of sum to pay in 1939. Povich also makes an attempt to knock down the then conventional wisdom that Negro players would be “detrimental” to the game.

Smith also mentions Bill Corum (New York Evening Journal) and Dan Parker (Daily Mirror) as advocating for the integration of baseball. Parker in 1936 invokes the negro role in embarrassing Hitler in the 1936 Olympics. He says, “There is no place for discrimination in the American national game.” Corum’s contribution is more elusive, but apparently Smith read something he liked.

Next up: Smith’s actual survey series of his interviews with managers, coaches and players of the National League in 1939.