Game Over 
Sports
Color Commentary
Seguin native Smokey Joe Williams may well be the last Negro Leaguer to enter baseball’s hall of fame. Why? Good question.
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He told the truth. By 1903 Foster was the nation’s top black pitcher. Frustrated with his team’s paltry finances, he learned the business of baseball, and in 1910 he started a franchise of his own, which he eventually named the Chicago American Giants. (Many black teams called themselves the Giants as a kind of code, since newspapers refused to run their photos.) At six foot four and more than two hundred pounds, the gun-toting Foster called everyone “darlin’,” but he was no pushover. “Every year but one from 1910 to 1922, his American Giants had the championship team in the Midwest,” Riley says. “He ruled his team with an iron hand. If he gave a guy a bunt sign, the guy had better bunt.” By 1920, the year Judge Landis became commissioner, Foster had formed the Negro National League, and he presided over it in a similarly autocratic fashion. One owner awoke from a nap in a league meeting to find himself without a team. Yet Foster soon had competition: The Eastern Colored League was founded in 1923, and it became a struggle to keep his teams intact. Working twelve to fifteen hour days, overwhelmed by his responsibilities, Foster suffered a breakdown. In 1926 he was committed to a mental hospital; he died four years later.
Rube, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1981, was not the only Foster who made a contribution to the Negro Leagues. His half-brother, Willie, who was born in Calvert in 1904, learned his trade on the ball fields of Mississippi’s Alcorn College. The younger Foster was a shrewd southpaw with a large arsenal of pitches, and in 1926, after settling a feud with Rube, he played his first full season with the American Giants. That year he won 26 consecutive games, and for the decade that followed he was the team’s star pitcher, leading them to three pennants. With no bullpen to speak of, Negro League pitchers had few if any days off between outings, and Willie learned to conserve his speed for when it was most needed. The best left-hander in black baseball history would retire to become the baseball coach and the dean of men at Alcorn. His last pennant with the American Giants came in 1933, the first year of the Negro League’s all-star game, which would prove to be black baseball’s most popular and enduring event. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996.
Willie Foster played alongside a fellow Texan in that first all-star game: the slick-fielding shortstop Willie Wells, who was born in Austin in 1908. As a young man, Wells would sneak off to nearby Dobb’s Field whenever he got the opportunity to watch the local semi-pro teams. There, he befriended the star catcher for the San Antonio Aces, Biz Mackey, who would get him into the games by allowing him to carry his glove. Wells would sit on the bench and absorb it all, and in short order he had his own local reputation. In 1923 he received two invitations to join professional teams—one from Rube Foster’s American Giants, the other from the St. Louis Stars. After promising his mother that he would attend college in the off-season, Wells chose St. Louis since it was closer to home. Wells was thought by some to be too small to be any good, so he developed an aggressive style of play that years later would earn him the nickname El Diablo. “He felt he had to scrap for everything he got,” Riley says. “He would take the stuffing out of his glove and fill it with rocks. When a guy came in, he’d tag him in the face or mouth. He was one of the very few infielders who would slide spikes-out.” His tenacity made him a respected and feared opponent. Though he didn’t have a strong arm, he almost always threw batters out, if only by a step. He was just as effective at bat, with a lifetime .334 average in the Negro Leagues.
Rube Foster befriended Wells, whom he called Little Ranger, but Wells would stay with the three-time National League champion Stars until they folded in 1931. By the time he signed with the American Giants, Foster was dead. After the Giants came the Newark Eagles, a team Wells would later manage, and then a stint in the Latin leagues. “Not only do I get more money playing here,” Wells said of Mexico, “but I live like a king. I was branded a Negro in the States and had to act accordingly. They wouldn’t even give me a chance in the big leagues . . . yet they accepted every other nationality under the sun. Well, here in Mexico, I am a man.” Wells would play and manage in Canada and the U.S. until 1954, but by the time the color barrier was lifted he was too old for the majors.
After he retired, Wells worked for more than a decade in a New York deli. At age 63, he returned to Austin, where he spent his last years alone in the home in which he was reared, still following the game he loved. Unlike the other Negro Leaguers from Texas in the Hall, Wells lived long enough to be recognized in his lifetime (he died in 1989). But he wasn’t. “I think they were afraid he might not present a good impression,” Riley says. “Some days he’d wander a bit. When the Hall of Fame first started putting the black players in, they were as particular about these decisions as they were about choosing Jackie Robinson.” Wells’s daughter, Stella, says her father never dwelled on the oversight: “The only thing he would say is that one day he would be in the Hall. He might be dead, but he’d be there.” Wells was inducted in 1997.
With this year’s addition of Smokey Joe Williams, Texas can now claim one quarter of all the Negro Leaguers in the Hall of Fame—more than any other state. But four other natives, all deceased, are equally deserving of the honor, which they may never get:
Raleigh “Biz” Mackey, Eagle Pass. Played for several teams, including the Hilldale Daisies, the Baltimore Elite Giants, and the Newark Eagles; from 1923 to 1941 hit over .400 twice and never dropped below .315. Mentored Brooklyn Dodger great Roy Campanella. “He may have been the best pure defensive catcher ever,” O’Neil wrote, “and was also a hell of a hitter.”
Louis Santop, Tyler. One of the earliest black superstars, a cocky left-handed slugger with a lifetime average of .406. According to O’Neil, “black baseball’s first big home run hitter.” Nicknamed Big Bertha after a German World War I artillery cannon. Played with Smokey Joe Williams on the Lincoln Giants.
Hilton Smith, Giddings. Known as Satchel’s Shadow; Paige would start games to draw the crowd, but after three or so innings, Smith would finish them with the most deadly curve ball in the Negro Leagues. Won twenty or more games each of his twelve years with the Monarchs; had a lifetime record of 161-32 in Negro League play. Also a formidable batter.
Newt Allen, Austin. Another Monarch. “Arguably the best second baseman in the Negro Leagues,” says Riley. “The best arm I’ve ever seen in baseball,” O’Neil recalls. “He could stand at home plate and throw the ball over the centerfield fence.”
Each of these players has an uphill road to the Hall, though Riley hopes for the best. “The writers get the obvious choices,” he says, “while the Veterans Committee has to make fine distinctions between a very good ballplayer and a marginally great ballplayer—a tougher task. But when it comes to the Negro Leagues, we’re talking about the kind of players who would be put in by the writers, some on the first ballot.” Anyway, Negro Leaguers have known uphill roads before. “The source of our bitterness was the segregation, period,” O’Neil says. “Not being able to play in the major leagues was just a small thing. You had a league of your own. You were making a good living there. It was very viable. But the fact that you couldn’t go to the University of Missouri, the University of Texas—you understand? These are the things that hurt us a lot more than not going to play in the majors.”
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