A Certain Grace: Reflections on the Negro Leagues by Philip Martin

There is something in the way old ballplayers carry themselves that suggests nobility. Even 20 or 30 years after their time, even when they are old men, they move with an animal economy and a physical confidence that manifests itself as grace.

Football and basketball hobble and grind their players; short brutal careers chew knees to gristle, gnarl knuckles and snap tendons. Baseball players get hurt too, but not so often and not so dramatically. And even the crippled Mickey Mantle—the only player who was a bigger hero to his teammates than to the fans—drags himself from the oldtimer dugout with a king quiet dignity and forbearance.

It might have something to do with having played a game that requires, more than brute strength or speed, a certain litheness and precision. No other sport demands so much of those who would play it, even on a ordinary level. Baseball is too difficult a game for recreational players; slow-pitch softball, with its lobbed pitches and mighty muscular cuts is the domesticated, playable version.

To throw a strike, or even come close to throwing a strike, a pitcher must release his pitch at a certain point. An instant early or late produces embarrassing disaster. In baseball, the tolerances are extraordinarily close. It requires a kind of visceral genius to make the spatial and temporal coincidences necessary for a superbly batted ball occur; those who doubt the difficulty need only look to Birmingham last season, where a genius athlete, perhaps the finest specimen in the world, could barely hit his weight.

And, at that, Michael Jordan did not disgrace himself. Most of those who truly know the game are surprised he did so well.

So, if you have ever played the game at a high level, you know that you are capable. You might, indeed, hold yourself a little more erect, and level your eyes at those who approach you. You might know that you were always good enough to play against the white boys, even though they never let you in the major leagues.

* * *

Verdell Mathis played the game. He is nearly 80 years old, but there is, in the looseness of his stride and the dangle of his long arms, a quality that gives him away. He was left-handed, always an advantage in the game, a pitcher mostly but he played a little in the outfield and at first base, mainly for the Memphis Red Sox. He is a quiet gentleman, an aristocrat born in Crawfordsville, Arkansas.

They called him "Lefty," naturally, and he was one of the best in the old Negro League. He played with and against men like Satchel Paige and young Henry Aaron (then a 16-year-old shortstop) and Jackie Robinson and Cool Papa Bell and Willie Mays. He faced the white boys too, playing for Paige’s barnstorming All-Stars against a team led by Bob Feller. By the time Robinson broke the line in 1947, he was too old to think about the majors, but then, he had nothing to prove anyway, he had tested himself against the best.

* * *

Timing is everything in baseball

Robinson got his chance not because he was the best player in the Negro League, Mathis says, but because he had the right education and maturity. Robinson was better known as a football player at UCLA. He was also an All-Pac 8 basketball player and an expert tennis player.

"He was known," Mathis says. "He wasn't the best player, but he was a good player. He was agile. When he was with the Kansas City Monarchs, he had never played professional baseball before. But he could bunt, he could drag it down both lines and beat it out for a hit. And he could hit too—they said he couldn’t hit a fastball at the letters, but he showed them he could."

He sure did.

* * *

Joe B. Scott—another former Red Sox—was the first black man to play in Chicago’s Wrigley Field. In 1937, his high school played there, for the Illinois state championship. Scott was a freshman, and the only black boy on either squad. He played with and against major leaguers in the service, there no doubt he too could have enjoyed a long and relatively lucrative career in the bigs.

“Toughest pitcher I ever faced was Detroit Tiger ace Virgil Trucks,” he says, without too much deliberation. “When he threw the ball, it was like a pea, and it twisted all around. First time I faced him, he struck me out. Next time up, I doubled. But he was tough. Satchel was tough. This guy behind me—Lefty—he was sure tough. They all were tough. It weren’t never easy.”

Their stories are gentle stories, told by gentle men. They look back not in regret or horror that our society could have at one time, not 50 years ago, considered their ghettoization normal and proper.

I think maybe it is because the game they played is so humbling, so difficult and demanding that they are now able to maintain themselves with such Buddha-like composure.

They waste no gestures, their eyes are clear of hate.

— Philip Martin

Originally published April 1995
Vol. 2/Issue 1