All language subtitles for Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E05 (Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E05) (ENGLISH)

The idea of community,
the idea of coming together,

we're still not good
at that in this country.

We talk about it a lot.

In moments of crisis,
we're magnificent at it.

The depression, Franklin
Roosevelt lifting himself

from his wheelchair to lift
this nation from its knees.

At those moments, we understand
community, helping one another.

Baseball, you do
that all the time.

You can't win it alone.

You can be the best
pitcher in baseball.

Somebody has to get
you a run to win the game.

It is a community activity.

You need all nine people
helping one another.

I love bunt plays.

I love the idea of the bunt.

I love the idea
of the sacrifice.

Even the word is good.

Giving yourself up for
the good of the whole.

That's Jeremiah.

That's thousands
of years of wisdom.

You find your own good
in the good of the whole.

You find your own individual fulfillment
in the success of the community.

The Bible tried to do
that and didn't teach you.

Baseball did.

Between 1930 and 1940, Adolf Hitler
was elected Chancellor of Germany.

Mussolini conquered Ethiopia.

Mao Zedong's communists
made their long march.

The Great Depression spread
suffering throughout the world.

In America, Thomas Edison and Oliver
Wendell Holmes and Charles Comiskey died.

Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle
and Sandy Cofax were born.

Greta Garbo spoke on the screen.

The Empire State
Building went up.

And on the Elysian Bridge, the name of
the great On fields in Hoboken, New Jersey,

where the New York Knickerbockers
had once perfected the game of baseball,

Maxwell House built the world's
largest plant for roasting coffee.

One out of every four
American wage earners,

15 million men and
women, was without work.

Hundreds of thousands of homeless
men roamed the countryside or built shanty

towns along railroad tracks, in farmers'
fields, on the baseball diamonds in

Central Park, and
called them Hoovervilles.

The Depression hit the national pastime
almost as hard as it hit the nation.

Millions of fans could
no longer afford even

the 50 cents it cost
to get into a game.

Others, unwilling to give
up baseball, made the

nickel ballpark hot dog
their only meal of the day.

Attendance fell off.

The St. Louis Browns averaged
fewer than 1,500 fans a game.

The Cincinnati Reds, the
Boston Braves, and the

Philadelphia Phillies
nearly went out of business.

Organized baseball tried
desperately to fill its stadium.

The 30s saw the first All-Star
game, the spread of night baseball, the

induction of the first players into
the brand new baseball hall of fame.

Nothing seemed to work.

But in a time when,
more than ever, America

needed heroes, baseball
still provided them.

In cities and small towns all across the
country, there were other teams and other

stars that may have been the greatest of
the century, but whose deeds would live

only in the memories of
those who saw them play.

Over the years, black baseball
stars played white major league

stars at least 438 times in
off-season exhibition games.

The whites won 129 of
those post-season games.

Blacks won 309.

That's when we played the hardest,
one black veteran explained, to let them

know and to let the public
know that we had the same

talent they did, and
probably a little better at times.

To the delight of crowds
everywhere, barnstorming

black teams liked to
warm up and pantomime.

They threw an invisible ball around the
infield so fast, hit and fielded imaginary

fly balls so convincingly, and made close
plays at first and diving catches in the

outfield so dramatically that fans
could not believe it was not real.

They called it shadow ball.

I had a cousin
whose name was J.E.

J.E.

was about 9, I was about 13.

We heard that the Yankees were going to
play an exhibition game with the Chicks in

Memphis, so Uncle Roy
said, we'll go up and see them.

So the three of us got
in the car and drove up.

It was about 150 miles.

And he parked the car in back of
the Peabody Hotel early that afternoon.

And we went in the lobby
there, and Uncle Roy went

up to the desk and said,
what room is the babe in?

And the clerk told him.

So what a different time
it was 50, 60 years ago.

So we went to the elevator, went up the
elevator to the floor, went to the door.

Uncle Roy knocked on the door.

The door was open by one of the
largest men I've ever seen in my life.

He was the color of mahogany.

I never saw anyone that
dark who was a white man.

And Uncle Roy said,
here's the babe here.

And this man turned
over his shoulder and said,

babe, there's some
people out here to see you.

Then I realized who it was
that had opened the door.

It was Gehrig.

And I was amazed at Gehrig.

And Gehrig stepped back
and Babe Ruth came out.

And he had a big cigar in one
hand and a drink in the other.

And he said, hello.

And Uncle Roy said, babe, these
people, the boys, have come up to see you.

They're great fans of yours.

He said, well,
I'm glad to hear it.

And I'm glad to see you boys.

And he put his hand out.

And my little nine-year-old
cousin shook his hand.

And I shook his hand.

And he said, I've been
so glad to see you.

And shut the door
and went back in.

And that's my Babe Ruth story.

Babe Ruth is a contract
called for $80,000 for two years.

That's to be agreed upon
when you finally sign it.

Yes, sir, Colonel.

In 1930, just months after the stock
market crashed, Babe Ruth signed a

two-year contract that paid him
$80,000 a season, more money

than any player had ever been
paid in the history of the game.

A very, very successful season.

When a reporter asked him whether it was
unseemly, in the midst of the Depression,

to be getting a bigger
salary than President

Herbert Hoover, he
answered, why not?

I had a better year than he did.

Despite the Depression, baseball was still
big in New York, where Babe Ruth still

dominated the game
and filled the headlines.

He was the idol of every schoolboy,
the delight of every sports writer.

He loved drinking and eating too much,
cheerfully lighting up the half-smoked

cigars he found on the men's room
floor, doing his best to ignore the younger

sluggers who were now
overtaking him, including

his seemingly invincible
teammate, Lou Gehrig.

Come on, Jimmy, come on!

He was a young
man in the second league,

driving in runs at a
faster clip than Ruth.

But he still had to
settle for second billing.

The two men were growing increasingly
distant, and now Gehrig became obsessed

with setting a record
no one could ever match.

Since May of 1925, he had not
missed a single game, and despite aches,

sprains, and fevers, he determined
never to take himself out of the lineup.

Why don't you take a
rest, someone asked him.

There's no point to
it, Gehrig answered.

I like to play baseball.

And if I were to sit on
the bench, the worry

and fretting would
take too much out of me.

My family and
other families in the South,

religious families, would not
allow us to play on Sunday.

When I got older, we had to go to
church on Sunday, not play baseball.

But they would have Saturday games
at these churches out in the fields,

and the whole community
would turn out to see them play.

As I look back, remember now, my mother
would make a ball out of a sock and put a

rock inside of it, and
you'd play with that.

And as I got a little bit older,
the guys, when they'd break a bat,

we'd put tacks and nails in it and put tape
on it, and we'd just make up a little team.

And as I got a little bit older, all
teams, all the towns and cities had

baseball teams, factory teams and steel
mill or furniture store, because that was

basically the only thing that you could
do was play baseball in the summertime.

Black players had been shut
out of the major leagues since the 1880s.

But for half a century, they had
struggled to build leagues of their own.

Now, while most of organized white
baseball faltered in the midst of the

Depression, black baseball
flourished as never before.

Teams were points of pride in
black communities all over the country,

boosting local economies, making life
a little easier in southern towns and in

northern ghettos, stitching
black America together.

In the 1930s, Luke Foster's
old dream of a separate

but athletically equal
league finally came true.

The opening ceremonies consisted
of a parade of automobiles, some 300 in

number, led by a squad
of motorcycle police,

and a truck filled with
tutors of jazz hounds.

It was a great day
for the opening.

Warm weather and folks coming
out like a lot of bees, hidden

away all winter and getting
active when the sun shines.

Chicago Defender.

It was the
era of dress-up.

It was that era.

See, the men have on ties, hats.

The ladies had
on their fire hats.

Time dresses.

In our baseball, or Sunday baseball,
in our faith, you know, Methodist,

Baptist or whatnot, 11
o'clock service on Sunday.

But when the Monarchs were in town or when
the East-West game was on, they started

church at 10 o'clock
so they could get out an

hour earlier so they could
come to the ball game.

So they got on their finery
coming from church and

came straight to the
ball game, looking pretty.

Yes, we loved it.

Much of the drama of black baseball
was centered in Pittsburgh, where a former

basketball player named Cumberland Posey
Jr. bought a team called the Homestead

Grays and staffed it with some of
the greatest players in the league.

In 1931, Posey was suddenly confronted by
a dangerous crosstown rival, Gus Greenlee,

king of the city's numbers racket,
and creator of a brand new team,

the Pittsburgh Crawfords.

Before long, much of black baseball
would be in the hands of racketeers,

among the few members of
the black community with enough

money in the midst of the
Great Depression to pay the bills.

When his black stars weren't allowed
to use the showers in Pittsburgh's Forbes

Field, Gus Greenlee built his
Crawfords a $60,000 stadium.

Then he stole Cumberland
Posey's biggest stars,

including Oscar Charleston
and Judy Johnson.

The result was a lineup which for a time
rivaled the best white teams in history.

The Crawfords played everywhere a
player remembered in every ballpark.

And we won.

Won like we invented the game.

We had some outstanding owners.

We had some crooks.

And we had some people that was more or
less interested in us in a different way.

We had two undertakers.

The owner of the Newark
Eagles was Abe Manley,

but it was his wife,
Effa, who ran the team.

Tough-minded and shrewd,
she was a power in Negro

baseball and the black
community for more than 15 years.

Sometimes donating the home
game proceeds to the most important

civil rights issue of the day,
the campaign against lynching.

Black entertainers also
sponsored their own teams.

Louis Armstrong had his
New Orleans secret nine.

Cab Callaway played on
his own team of all-stars.

Bill Bojangles Robinson was
part owner of the New York

Black Yankees and sometimes
tap-danced on the dugout roof.

We would play ball in the afternoon
and down to the auditorium that night.

We would all go down to here.

Hampton.

Duke Ellington.

That's voila.

Huh?

The best in the world.

We knew them.

You know what I mean?

Buddy-buddy.

We ate together.

We slept together.

This was actually
an exciting era.

Yeah, in the United States.

Great is baseball.

The national tonic.

The reviver of hope.

The restorer of confidence.

The sporting news.

The idea of a baseball
game on a sunny spring

or summer day is the
spontaneity of going.

Let's go to the park.

You say at 2 o'clock, when the game
was played at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

Let's go to the bleachers.

And you go and you get
a ticket and you sit down.

You hadn't thought about
it in the morning, but if

you were free, you say,
for one reason or another.

And it was the
spontaneity of it.

And sitting there in the sunshine and
watching experts, good, skilled craftsmen,

ply their trade.

For three seasons, even the mighty hitting
of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth could not deny

the American League
championship to Connie

Mack's still mightier
Philadelphia Athletics.

Finances had forced him to disband
his first championship team in 1914.

And it had taken him 15
years to climb back to the top.

His newly constituted A's
won back-to-back World

Series in 1929 and 30
and the pennant in 1931.

Mack's finest pitcher was
Robert Moses Lefty Grove.

He was so fast, a sports writer said,
he could throw a lamb chop past a wolf.

He was a savage competitor who sometimes
threw at his own teammates in batting

practice and was notorious for ripping his
clothes and smashing lockers when he lost,

something he
didn't do very often.

During the Athletics' three championship
years, he won 79 and lost just 15.

The A's hitters rivaled even
the Yankees' Murderer's Row.

Mickey Cochran
was the best-hitting,

fastest-running catcher
the game had yet seen.

But he was called Black Mike because of
the foul move that overcame him when the

Athletics suffered even
a momentary setback.

Left fielder Al Simmons
was a Polish immigrant's

son whose real name
was Aloysius Szymanski.

He drove in more than
100 runs 11 years in a row.

He just couldn't
help it, Simmons said.

He hated pitchers.

But the most frightening hitter was
first baseman Jimmy Fox, double X.

He hit 58 home runs one
season, just too short of the

record Babe Ruth had been
sure would never be broken.

He cut off his sleeves to
display his massive biceps.

Even his hair has muscles,
a pitcher complained.

Opposing players
called him the Beast.

Jimmy Fox wasn't
scouted, a pitcher said.

He was trapped.

But even the A's great lineup
could not fill the seats at Scheid Park.

And Connie Mack once
again sold off his stars, this

time to repay bank loans
incurred after the great crash.

Things changed so
fast in the United States.

All of us had the experience, even by
the time we were 40 often, of going back to

the place where we grew up
and finding everything changed.

And something about baseball seems
to tie us into that change or to link us,

to carry us across the
decades and the times.

As the new players come up and the
old, formerly new players become old,

there's a kind of continuity to it that
we don't find in our neighborhoods,

where the old factory is torn down and
the new supermarket goes up and the

supermarket is torn down
and condominiums go up.

And baseball, for all
its changes, continues.

Three strikes are still an out.

On June 3, 1932, Lou Gehrig did
something even Babe Ruth had never done.

He hit four home
runs in a single game.

But that extraordinary feat got
him few headlines the next day.

Something even more important
to baseball had happened.

John McGraw was
leaving the game.

After 30 years of continuous
services, John Joseph

McGraw has resigned
as manager of the Giants.

At the age of 59, Mr. McGraw
steps down because

of failing health with
his Giants in last place.

Mr. McGraw was a product of the old school
of baseball, when fist fights were common,

when red liquor was sold
at all the parks, when only

ladies of questionable social
standing attended the game.

To the end, he was faithful
to his truculent creed.

The last official act he performed
as manager of the Giants was to file a

protest with the league
against Bill Clinton, the umpire.

Joe Williams, New
York World Television.

Telegram.

He died two years later, mourned by many
as the greatest of all baseball managers,

the winner of ten pennants.

Not long after his death, his wife found
among his effects a list of all the black

players he had secretly wished
he could hire over the decades.

How to stay young.

One.

Avoid fried meats which
are angry up to blood.

Two.

If your stomach disputes you, lie
down and pacify with cool thoughts.

Three.

Keep the juices flowing by
jangling around gently as you move.

Four.

Go very light on the vices
such as carrying on in society.

A social ramble ain't restful.

Five.

Avoid running at all times.

Six.

Don't look back.

Something might
be gaming on you.

Satchel Paige.

The most celebrated of all
black baseball stars was a tall,

gangly pitcher of indeterminate
age, Leroy Satchel Paige.

Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama,
he honed his skills in reform school and

began his career playing for
the Mobile Tigers at a dollar a

game if attendance was up
and a keg of lemonade if it wasn't.

A natural showman, he drew black
baseball's biggest crowds for 22 years.

He may have been the
greatest pitcher of all time.

The most outstanding
pitcher I'd ever seen.

And as an individual,
Satchel was a comedian.

Satchel was a preacher.

Satchel was just about
some of everything.

He was like... we had
a good baseball team.

When Satchel pitched, we
had a great baseball team.

It was just... Satchel brought
the best out in everybody.

And the amazing part about it, he brought
the best out in the opposition, too.

On the mound, one rueful batter
remembered, Satchel Paige threw fire.

He had a whole arsenal
of distinctive pitches.

His b-ball, jump ball,
trouble ball, long tom.

His hesitation pitch.

Number one, that was a fastball.

He called that
his midnight rider.

The change-up, he
called that for the creeper.

I was afraid, ah,
for the creeper.

Number one, midnight rider.

He kicked his leg impossibly
high before pitching.

Then he'd throw
around that foot.

Half the guys, one victim
remembered, were hitting at that foot.

Coming up.

They rarely hit the ball at all.

When playing hometown
teams, Paige liked to

guarantee to strike out
the first nine men up.

Then he would call in the outfield
and make good on his promise.

I remember one time when we
was barnstorming, the guy said, well,

Satchel, he said, man, I didn't
know you still had the fastball.

He said, that wasn't a fastball.

He said, that was
my hurry-up pitch.

He said, and it got by.

Yeah, Satchel was great.

He was a great pitcher.

I was playing with Toledo
Crawford, the first team in 1940.

And I heard about Satchel.

So I said, well, I'm
going to stay up here a

whole week after the
season over and see Satchel.

Because I'd never
seen him before.

So I was up in the grandstand,
bashful like I was, you know.

I went up there by myself, and the
game started, and Satchel threw the ball.

I didn't see anything.

The man threw the ball back.

He threw it again.

I didn't see nothing.

I said, are they
playing shotter ball?

I said, the clowns don't
want to play shotter ball.

I said, there ain't
no shotter ball.

This is a real game.

So I said, well, I
don't know what to do.

Next thing I did, I'm
going down there to see.

So next thing I went down that way, behind
the stop, I just saw a little glimpse.

He was throwing the ball.

But in the grandstand,
I couldn't see him.

That was the first
time I'd seen Satchel.

Then I went home.

I said, well, I was
seeing Satchel.

People only got to see the
major leaguers in the big cities.

I believe people got a
chance to see me everywhere.

I played all over.

Farms.

Fields.

Penitentiaries.

Any place in this whole country where
there was a baseball diamond, they know me.

They see me.

Because black baseball was played in so
many places, and because few black teams

had the money to pay
someone to keep score,

no one knows precisely
how many games he won.

Page himself estimated that
he pitched in 2,500 games.

And won 2,000 of them.

Four times the
major league record.

See, Satchel did to black baseball
just what Ruth did to white baseball.

See, because Ruth
kept the franchises going.

This Ruth, after the Black Sox scandal,
here comes a Ruth, and he brings it back.

And this is the same
thing that happened to us.

This Satchel came.

This is a guy that the
people wanted to see.

And he never failed.

Any time a team got
into trouble, one player

remembered, it sent
for Satchel to pitch.

The average black player
was paid $200 to $300 a month.

Page made several
times that amount.

The majors couldn't pay me
enough to play, he once said.

Satchel Page had a good arm.

A strong arm with no muscles.

He had just like a slingshot.

I grabbed his arm one day.

I said, hey, Satchel,
you ain't got no muscles.

He said, no, but I can
sling the ball up there.

And he can.

He can stand still and
throw the ball just like that.

See, my arm had muscles.

See, my arm would get sore
quicker than Satchel would.

I've had twisted muscles,
but Satchel didn't.

He had a whip on his arm.

And he had control.

And he believed
what he could do.

He always believed in that.

He knew how to pitch.

See, that's... That's one thing.

And then, you know,
when he got ready to warm

up, he wouldn't look
for no plate or glove.

He'd try to find him a piece of
chewing gum or a match stem.

He said, this is
what I'm aiming at.

See, and he was told.

And then another thing
about Satchel, he, when

he was on the road,
he liked to drive fast.

So I was driving
for him, you know.

And so we was going from
Little Rock to New Orleans.

He says... He
called me home now.

He said, hey, homie.

He said, pull over.

I said, what for, Satch?

He said, there's a man
behind us in a wheelbarrow.

He said, we want to let him by.

I said, well, I was doing
about 80, you know.

And so, hey, at that rate, you know,
hey, I wasn't going fast enough for him.

I wouldn't ride with him.

We were going to Wichita,
Kansas to play in the tournament.

And he went through town
doing 85 miles an hour.

The police stopped us.

And he said, who the
hell you think you are?

He said, I'm Satchel Perry.

He said, where you come from?

He acted like he
didn't know Satchel.

He said, by you being Satchel
Perry, that would be $20.

Back in that day, a $20 fine was
a lot of money for Satchel Perry.

But I got out the car waiting for
the boss to come and got in his car.

I wouldn't ride with
Satchel no more.

Page was a shrewd self-promoter.

He pretended to be a
sort of sleepy country boy,

giving distinctive
nicknames to all his friends.

And reporters eagerly gathered
the aphorisms he loved to coin.

Satchel said, if you want to live a
long time, don't fool with nothing old but

money, nothing big but a
bankroll, nothing black but a

Cadillac, nothing over 22 years,
nothing that weighs over 130.

If you do, you're in trouble.

Because when you're
getting old, your sales are

getting low, and you need
a Delco battery to boost you.

How's that sound?

A part of Satchel that no one ever
hears about is this part of Satchel.

We in Atlanta.

We playing in Atlanta.

The next night, we gonna play
in Charleston, South Carolina.

So we left that night from
Atlanta going to Charleston.

And when we get to Charleston
that morning, the rooms weren't ready.

So he said, Nancy,
come go with me.

We riding automobiles.

I said, okay.

I had an idea
where he was going.

We went over to Drum Island.

Drum Island is where
they auction off the slaves.

During that period.

And so he said, come go with me.

And so we went to Drum Island.

And they had a plaque there, you
know, saying what had happened there.

And we stood there, he and I, maybe 10
minutes, not saying a word, just thinking.

And after about 10 minutes,
he said, you know what, Nancy?

I said, what, Satchel?

He said, seemed like
I've been here before.

I said, me too.

Because, you know, I know my
great-grandfather could have been there.

See, my great-grandmother
could have been there.

Auctioned off on that block.

This was Satchel.

This was Satchel.

It was a little deeper than
a lot of people thought.

One of the things about baseball
is the imagination of people.

And something
remarkable happens.

I was there in
their imaginations.

When Babe Ruth allegedly pointed to right
field bleachers before hitting his home

run there against the Cubs
in that World Series, I've

had at least maybe 100
people tell me, I was there.

If everybody who said
they were, they were really

there, Cubs Park would
seat a half million people.

After four years, the Yankees
were back in the World Series.

In 1932, playing
the Chicago Cubs.

The Yankees easily won the first two
games in New York, and then headed west.

There was bad blood
between the two teams.

Cub fans jeered and
spat on Babe Ruth and his

wife on the way in
and out of their hotel.

The third game at
Wrigley Field witnessed the

most hotly debated
moment in baseball history.

And Babe Ruth was
at the center of it.

In the first inning, Ruth hit a three-run
homer on Chicago pitcher Charlie Root and

rounded the bases amidst a
nonstop torrent of taunts and abuse.

It was only the beginning.

He came up again in the fifth
inning, and this was after he tried for a

shoestring catch and missed
it, and the Cubs tied the score.

Ruth came to bat the next inning,
and the crowd was all over him,

just hooting and jeering because
he'd messed up the play in the outfield.

And he was yelling
back at the Chicago Cubs.

He was on the Chicago
bench and cheering.

And he said later, he said, I
never had so much fun in my life.

It was the first time I got the crowd
and the players on me at the same time.

And he held up a
finger when he missed it.

There were two called
strikes and two called balls.

He held up a finger
saying, that's one.

And he held it up
again, that's two.

And Hartnett, the Cub catcher,
heard him say, it only takes one to hit it.

You know, a time-honored
baseball phrase.

Then Ruth waved his arm.

Whether he was merely gesturing
toward the Cub dugout or pointing

to the center field stands,
no one will ever know for sure.

And then he hit the home run.

And it wasn't just
that he hit a home run.

He hit the longest home run ever seen in
Chicago at that time to dead center field.

And you didn't get center field
home runs, weren't you, in those days?

That was a fairly rare thing.

And it was a
tremendous home run.

And it just stunned the crowd.

Ruth went down to first base.

And he told a reporter later, he said,
he was saying to himself, you lucky bum,

you lucky, lucky bum.

And he said something to the Cub first
baseman, something to the second baseman,

waved at the Cub dugout,
came across home plate.

Franklin Roosevelt was running
for president for the first time.

And he was sitting in a
box behind home plate.

And they said when Ruth
crossed home plate with a home

run, Roosevelt just put
his head back and laughed.

The pitcher Charlie Root swore
Ruth had never pointed to the fence.

If he had, I'd have put one in his
ear and knocked him on his ass.

Lou Gehrig was no
less certain that he had.

What do you think of the
nerve of that big monkey,

he asked, calling his shot
and getting away with it.

He was pointing to the bench.

Actually, if you know Wrigley Field,
he's pointing to the Cub dugout on the

third base side and center field
is way over there someplace.

So he wasn't pointing
towards center field at all.

Sure he called the shot.

No question about it.

The difficulty is, did he point?

Did he stand extravagantly
and point to center field

the way William Bendix
did in that terrible movie?

No, he didn't.

Ironically, Gehrig was the real star
of the Yankees' four-game sweep.

But few would remember his performance
in the face of all the publicity Ruth got.

Ruth himself was evasive when
asked if he really had called his shot.

It's in the papers, isn't it?

He said.

Why don't you read the papers?

One month later, Franklin
Roosevelt was elected president.

Pledged to bring his
country out of the Depression.

I have no expectation in making a hit
every time I come to bat, Roosevelt said.

What I seek is the highest possible
batting average, not only for myself,

but for my team.

The Depression was the worst crisis
in America In Harlan County, Kentucky,

where the coal industry had
died, whole communities tried

to survive on dandelions and
blackberries and pokeweed.

Farm prices collapsed and farm
families were driven off the land.

In just one day, one
quarter of the entire state

of Mississippi went under
the auctioneer's hammer.

Banks failed.

And in several bankrupt
cities, the animals in the

zoo were shot, and the
meat distributed to the poor.

Hundreds of boys and men thumbed their way
to Florida to try out for the big leagues,

hoping not for stardom,
but simply for a job.

Half starved and in rags, without money,
gloves or shoes, most were turned away.

Some who did get a tryout collapsed
on the field from exhaustion and hunger.

There is a catcher.

That any big league club
would like to buy for $200,000.

His name is Gibson.

He can do everything.

He hits the ball a mile.

And he catches so easy, he
might as well be in a rocking chair.

Throws like a rifle.

Too bad this Gibson
is a colored fella.

Walter Johnson.

Josh Gibson was black
baseball's greatest home run hitter.

And after Satchel Paige,
its biggest crowd pleaser.

A sharecropper's son
from Buena Vista, Georgia.

He was brought north
to Pittsburgh when his

father moved there to
work in the steel mills.

His first love was swimming.

And he planned to be an
electrician until he discovered

there was better money
to be made in baseball.

He broke in with the
Homestead Grays in 1930.

And quickly proved himself so good that
Gus Greenlee stole him for the Crawfords.

He hit more than 70
home runs in 1931 alone.

Some of them soaring
better than 575 feet.

And his lifetime record
may have approached 950.

Legend had it that
Gibson hit a ball so hard at

Forbes Field in Pittsburgh
that it never came down.

The next day, Gibson was playing in
Philadelphia 300 miles away when a ball

dropped from the heavens
into an outfielder's glove.

The umpire pointed at
Gibson and shouted, You're out!

Yesterday in Pittsburgh.

Once when another player handed
him a broken bat, thinking it was his,

Gibson replied, I don't
break bats, I wear them out.

Gibson was often called
the Black Babe Ruth.

But there were some who thought Ruth should
have been called the White Josh Gibson.

George Gibson was
a guy who could hit the

ball a country mile any
time he got up there.

You fool him with a
Curry ball and hit the ball

against the right field
fence or over the fence.

As we say, when you
get two strikes on Josh,

you in the hole, not
Josh is in the hole.

One of the greatest
hitters I've ever seen.

Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige
were relentless competitors.

As teammates on the Crawfords, they
were a virtually unbeatable combination.

But each believed he
was the better ball player.

You're the greatest
hitter and I'm the greatest

pitcher, Paige told Gibson
when he left the Crawfords.

Someday we're going to meet up
and we're going to see who's best.

It looks so easy.

You get a little Texas leaguer
out there and you're on first base.

And you sort of wonder why somebody doesn't
hit one every time he gets up to play.

It looks so easy
when it's done right.

And it looks so god-awful
when it's done wrong.

The 30s were a time
of clowning in baseball,

particularly in the
National League.

You had two forms of the clown.

At one end you had
the St. Louis Cardinals.

At the other, more inept
level, you had the Brooklyn

Dodgers, the Daphnis
Boys, led by Wilbert Robinson.

The boys, now you're all
practically here, I want to get

you together to give a few
instructions this morning.

It's up to all you boys to put
your shoulder to the wheel.

Do the best you can and I'm sure
we'll get out of that second division.

Which we should do.

Been in there long enough.

Now about the rules of the club
for the year, I haven't got any rules.

I think in the past that...

certainly Brooklyn's character was
defined by the Brooklyn Dodgers.

And even just the name
Dodgers, coming from

these trolley cars that
everybody had to dodge.

The idea that Brooklyn felt a stepchild
to New York City, and that somehow the

Dodgers, the bums, were stepchilds too,
that were going to show the hottie-tottie

New Yorkers that we were really better
than them, defined who Brooklyn was.

And even in Long Island, where I
grew up, I felt that sense of Brooklyn.

And it was all part
of the Dodgers.

I don't know that
that exists today.

In the same way that you define who you are
through your team and through your city.

And I think it's a loss.

It means that people
are more fragmented.

They've got themselves
and a few friends, but they

don't have that group
sense unless there's a win.

But that's not the same.

That's not what this was all
about when I was growing up.

We hardly ever won,
and it didn't matter.

Brooklyn had last
won a pennant in 1920.

But the Dodgers had
never won a World Series.

And with players like P. Ridge Day and
Hot Potato Hamlin, they were best known for

what one of their own
managers called bonehead plays.

The most celebrated Dodger star
was Babe Herman, who hit .393 in 1930.

An all-time Dodger record.

But he was famously
inept in the field.

Carried lit cigars
in his pockets.

And once boasted that if a fly ball
ever hit him on the head, he'd quit.

When a reporter asked if that also
held for being hit on the shoulders,

he said, no, only the head.

Shoulders don't count.

It was an even bet that Babe
would either catch it or get killed by it.

His general practice was to
run up when the ball was hit, and

then turn and run back, and
then circle about uncertainly.

All this time the ball was descending,
the spectators were petrified with fear,

and Mr. Herman was
chewing gum, unconcerned.

At the proper moment,
he stuck out his glove.

If he found the ball there, he was
greatly surprised and very happy.

Collier's Magazine.

Babe, here's a new ball
we're going to use this year.

It looks like it's going to be
kind of tough for you hitters.

The Dodgers' best pitcher was Dazzy Vance,
a hefty right-hander with an 83-inch reach.

Who had been the dominant
strikeout pitcher of the 1920s.

He literally had a
trick up his sleeve.

You couldn't hit
him on a Monday.

He'd cut the sleeve of his undershirt to
the elbow, and on that part of it he'd use

lye to make it white, and the
rest he didn't care how dirty it was.

Then he'd pitch overhand
out of the apartment

houses in the background
at Ebbets Field.

Between the bleached sleeve of his
undershirt waving and the Monday wash

hanging out to dry, the diapers and undies
and sheets flapping on the clothesline,

you lost the ball entirely.

He threw balls by
me I never even saw.

Rube Bristler.

Looks like July.

Feel like September.

Hey, hey, hey!

Brooklyn rarely rose
above sixth place.

Even their die-hard fans
called the Dodgers Dem Bums.

The Dem Bums became the Dodgers.

That was the big name for them,
our bums, our beloved bums.

But the term, when it was
first used, was pejorative.

In the 20s and 30s, people in Brooklyn
needed the Dodgers to win, and they'd go

out to the ball game and the Dodgers
would lose, and they'd lose stupidly and

carelessly and dumbly, and people
would come out of Ebbets Field saying,

those bums, those lousy
bums, they lost again.

How'd those bums do today?

And it wasn't until
they started to win that

the nickname became
an admirable nickname.

It became capitalized.

How many games are you
going to win this year, Dad?

We'll have to count anyway.

For you and the
rest of the boys.

Okay.

How are you?

Back in those days, we
rode all night in the buses.

Sometimes we played
four games a day in one day.

Nobody ever
heard of that before.

We'd play 9.45 in the morning,
1 o'clock a doubleheader,

then go 50 or 60 miles
that night and play a game.

And driving all
night in those buses?

That's the thing.

I was driving in
those buses 31 years.

Was torn over full time.

And you know what?

Somebody upstart like me,
because I never got a scratch.

Now we are traveling
all over the country.

We could be in, say,
Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

And we're playing Hattiesburg.

When we drive the bus up, people
would say, where did you come from?

And say, well, we're
coming in from Memphis.

Say, I've got a sister.

My grandmother lived in Memphis.

You know, people, they wanted to
know what's happening on Beale Street.

And we were actually a part of, we were
carrying the news of what's happening.

Black players excelled under
conditions big leaguers never had to face.

Their season was longer.

Their pay, far less.

And to keep their teams afloat during
hard times, they were always on the road.

The brand of baseball they played wherever
they stopped was faster, more daring than

that in the majors,
and just as competitive.

We played in a rough league.

When I say a rough league, I notice
nowadays every time you, a youngster,

get a sprain, 15 days on the disabled
list and all this, uh, we didn't go home.

We were on the disabled list.

Unless we were broken and in a
wheelchair and on two crutches.

If we get hurt, we played.

We don't have no relief pitcher.

You go out there,
you go for nine.

That's it.

You were paid for nine, and that's
the way they wanted you to pitch.

Nine innings.

Spit balls, shine
balls, emery balls.

Catcher Roy
Campanella remembered.

I never knew what the ball would
do once it left the pitcher's hand.

Some pitchers used a bottle
cap hidden in their gloves

to scuff up the ball to
make it break more sharply.

As a result, Negro League batters
learned how to hit everything.

For years, the major
leagues had scorned the bunt.

But black players
turned it into an art.

The league we win,
you had to produce.

Don't they want
to send you home?

There were lots of black guys,
cotton patches in the south and other

places that could play just
as good as we could play.

It was just a lucky few
that was given a chance.

We were worked, Satchel Paige remembered,
like the mule that plows the fields all

week and then drives the
carriage to church on Sunday.

As the depression deepened,
black teams were forced to innovate.

In 1930, the Kansas City
Monarchs began carrying

lights so that they
could play at night.

And some clubs expanded
their schedules still further to

play for white fans in small
towns starved for baseball.

They had a sizable following,
especially among the fellow blacks.

But also white people used
to turn out to watch them.

They were always
sort of scrappy affairs.

They all had a grandstand
or anything else.

And they were not often offered
the use of the stadium, you see.

So they had to play in all
kinds of sandlot situations.

I really don't see how they played
baseball traveling the way they did in

those ramshackle buses without any sleep
or bone-jarring trips over those bad roads.

In much of the country,
roadside restaurants would

not allow black ballplayers
into the dining rooms.

Gas stations closed
their restrooms.

White hotels would
not rent them rooms.

But when I first started
in 1920 with a traveling

team, I was making $100
and 150 cents a day to eat on.

In the southern part
of Illinois and southern

Indiana, it was just
as bad as it is today.

Mississippi and Georgia.

We didn't get a chance
sometimes to take a bath for

three or four days because
there wasn't a lot of...

Only time you might catch
a man with a good heart at a

barbershop, they'd let you
take a bath for a quarter.

But most of the time,
we'd go into town.

Down there, we'd have to sleep
on the floor in the railroad station.

And they'd put a
policeman there.

They wouldn't trust
you to watch you.

We knew what the situation was.

So you couldn't change them
people's, I mean, ideas down there.

Down that part of the country.

So why go down
there and try to fight it?

I mean, if you say, come to the back
for a sandwich, well, we were hungry.

Well, hey, we would go
to the back for a sandwich.

Because there's no use
in us saying that we could

sit up there in front of his
cafe, which we couldn't.

Well, see, we knew that.

And we wasn't trying to go down there and
change rules because you can't change...

You know, when the government
can't change, can't break the rules now,

what could a ball player do?

So we knew that.

Oh, Lord.

The lie of baseball is that it's a
level playing field, that there's equality,

that all the inequalities in American
life check their hat at the door, that they

don't go into the stadium, that once
you're there, there's a sort of bleacher

democracy, that the banker
can sit in the bleachers

and converse with the
working man next to him.

This is a falsehood.

You have class and race issues
that mirror the struggle of American life,

playing themselves
out on the ball fields.

We like to think that baseball
exists under a kind of bell jar, that it's

impervious to change.

And it's not so.

By 1933, as Franklin Roosevelt began to
implement his New Deal for the American

people, the Depression had
devastated organized baseball.

Attendance dipped to its
lowest levels in decades.

Only the Yankees and a handful
of other teams were profitable.

And club owners everywhere
scrambled to save their businesses.

Some sold off their
stars to survive.

Clark Griffith of the
Washington Senators even

sold his own son-in-law,
shortstop Joe Cronin.

The minor leagues
were hit even harder.

More than half
went out of business.

Desperate to lure back
paying customers, minor league

owners tried dozens of
innovations and promotions.

Mortgage nights, beauty
contests, grocery giveaways,

raffles, night baseball,
and cow milking contests.

In 1933, the majors
got into the act.

Staging a game in Chicago's
Comiskey Park between the best

players in each league to try
to revive interest in baseball.

Fans across the country were
encouraged to vote for their favorites.

It was the very
first all-star game.

And fittingly, Babe Ruth was
the hero, hitting a dramatic

two-run home run that gave
the American League the edge.

Soon after, it was
announced that the first black

all-star game would also
be held in Comiskey Park.

This was a gala event,
and people would come.

Yes, people would come, like
we used to say, two to a million.

They would come to
see the East-West game.

Now, this is the weekend.

And Chicago's
South Side was lit up.

And everybody came
to that ball game.

You would look up
here at Joe Lewis and

Marva Lewis sitting in
a box seat down front.

You understand?

And all of the great entertainers in
Chicago down there, they would come.

And we had something
to show them.

Yeah, we had
something to show them.

Black fans also picked
their favorites, voting in

the pages of the country's
top black newspapers.

The East-West all-star
game quickly became

the biggest event of the
Negro League season.

That was the glory part of our
baseball, one player remembered.

The huge crowds
sometimes reached 50,000.

They say that we
were not organized.

We were organized.

We had two leagues.

We had a 140-game schedule.

We played an all-star
game every year in Chicago.

We had sellouts.

We had a World Series
at the end of the season.

That's not organized.

I don't want to organize things.

That's not organized.

That's not organized.

They don't look like a major league ball
club, or as major league ball clubs are

supposed to look in this era
of the well-dressed athlete.

Their uniforms are stained and
dirty and patched and ill-fitting.

They don't shave before a game,
and most of them shoot a backup.

They spit out of the sides
of their mouths and then

wipe the backs of their
hands across their shirt fronts.

They're not afraid of anybody.

Frank Graham, New York Sun.

Baseball had never seen a team quite
like the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals of the

National League, a perfect symbol
for a country down on its luck.

They were daring, hot-headed,
raucous, unstoppable.

The carefully crafted
creation of general manager

Branch Rickey and his
revolutionary farm system.

In a time when people were
forced to make do with less,

the poorly paid Cardinals
were everybody's heroes.

They were led by Frankie
Frisch, the Fordham Flash, who

was celebrated for his
furious reactions to bad calls.

And he considered any call
against the Cardinals bad.

He hurled his glove into
the air, leaped up and

down on his cap until
his spikes had shredded.

At least once this proved
so persuasive that the umpire

actually reversed himself and
called for a game to be replayed.

Shortstop Leo the Lip de Rocher, was
brash and cocky and good in the field,

but so bad at bat that Babe Ruth
named him the All-American Out.

Left fielder Joe Medwick, called Ducky
because he ran like one, swung at almost

everything, but connected often enough
to lead the league in runs batted in,

three seasons running.

And to win the National
League Triple Crown,

something no one else
has managed since.

Third baseman Pepper Martin, the
wild horse of the Osage, was a fierce

competitor and former
hobo who liked to drop

sneezing powder into
hotel ventilation systems.

He was said to be so fast, that back home
in Oklahoma, he liked to run down rabbits.

I was in the top 10% of
my class in law school.

I'm a doctor of jurisprudence.

I'm an honorary doctor of laws.

And I like to believe
I'm an intelligent man.

Then will you please tell me, why in the
name of common sense, I spent four mortal

hours today conversing with
a person named Dizzy Dean?

Branch Rickey.

The most famous member
of the Cardinals was a cocky

right-handed pitcher from
Arkansas, Jerome Hannah Dean.

A farm boy who had dropped
out of school in the second grade.

I didn't do so well in the
first grade either, Dean said.

He was an 18-year-old
itinerant cotton picker when

Rickey's scouts discovered
him playing sandlot ball.

Right from the start, Dean was
convinced of his own greatness.

I'll put more people in
the park than Babe Ruth,

he told Branch Rickey,
even before he was hired.

Anybody who's had the
pleasure of seeing me play

knows that I am the
greatest pitcher in the world.

He was very nearly as
good as he said he was.

He averaged 24 wins
a year for five seasons.

Son, he liked to ask a
batter to whom he hadn't

pitched before, what kind
of pitch would you like?

He was a master at
drumming up publicity.

Before the 1934 season began, Dizzy
announced that he and his younger brother

Paul, whom the press insisted on calling
Daffy, would together win 45 to 50 games.

And they did.

Dizzy won 30, and Paul won 19.

Navin Field, Detroit.

Baseball's mighty drama
draws a throng of 48,000.

More than ever, the Cardinals faced the
Detroit Tigers in the 1934 World Series.

Dizzy Dean, pitching his first World
Series, sent one down the groove to meet.

Dean won the first game 8-3.

Afterwards, he wired Rickey that
this American League is a pushover.

I think if they pitched me the whole
four days, he said, I'd win all of them.

...put one over the plate to
Medway, and it's a homer!

At the plate, Ducky
Medway was well on his way

to setting a World Series
record for most hits.

Martin singles the shot,
and Dizzy Dean cleaning up.

In the fourth game, Dizzy
Dean, running to second, was

hit in the head with a ball
fielded by the shortstop.

In throwing to first, struck the Dean
squarely in the forehead with the ball.

The throw knocked Dean senseless,
and he was rushed to the hospital.

Headlines the next day said, X-rays
of Dean's head, showed nothing.

In the seventh and deciding game,
Dean and the Cardinals were already ahead

by seven runs, when Ducky Medway,
star of the series, came to the plate.

Joe Medway, slugger of
St. Louis, meets one on

the end of his bat,
and a good for a triple.

Cardinals lands that loose
a ball that rocks the stand.

...broke out between
Medway and the third baseman.

The Detroit crowd turned ugly.

When Medway later said,
he took his position in left field,

the Detroit fans pelted him
with eggs, fruit, and bottles.

Moving

Medway for his own protection, Landis
had also deprived him of the chance

to set the record for most
hits in a World Series.

The Cardinals won the game anyway,
11 to nothing, and the World Series,

four games to three.

Afterwards, Medway was puzzled.

I knew why they threw all
that garbage at me, he said.

What I could never figure out is why they
brought it to the park in the first place.

The Cardinals' aggressive play in
the series earned them the nickname,

the Gas House Game.

He was unrivaled, they won
the first time, and it was a banae.

I was sorry about it.

I'm always nervous.

You know what?

I was, You're the
one that's nervous.

We'll get that back in there.

you'll also be an outside coach.

All right.

And a shout-out and they're
all the best players I know.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Without a break, we could make a
double play Can you picture me pitching you

kisses When the morning train is
due And when day is done, if it's raining,

hun I'll come sliding back to you You
better play ball with me What a manager

you could be Let's
give love a cloud, honey

don't hold out You better
play ball with me, yeah

He was, according to
the Associated Press,

still the most photographed
man in the world.

But by 1934 Babe Ruth was
growing increasingly unhappy.

He knew his best days were behind
him, and he had glumly absorbed a series of

humiliating pay cuts as
his averages dropped.

He no longer spoke to
Lou Gehrig, because of a

misunderstanding between
his wife and Gehrig's mother.

And he couldn't stand the new
Yankee manager, Joe McCarthy.

Ruth desperately wanted
to be manager himself.

But how can you manage a team,
Yankee owner Jacob Rupert asked him,

when you can't even
manage yourself?

That's sort of a myth
that came around.

Ruth couldn't handle himself.

How could he
handle other players?

Well, that's nonsense.

I mean, the man drank a
lot, and he raised hell, and he

caroused, but he was a major
league player for 22 years.

He must have taken
care of himself pretty well.

And could he have managed?

Who knows?

Some terrible people have
become great managers.

Some likely people
were terrible managers.

He certainly
deserved the chance.

He didn't get it.

Now new heroes emerged
from Ruth's shadow.

Luke Applin.

Johnny Mize.

Earl Averill.

Chuck Klein.

Mel Ott of the Giants was
so feared at the plate that

he was once intentionally
walked with the bases loaded.

Hack Wilson of the
Cubs hit even harder

than he drank, one
year batting in 190 runs.

Still a major league record.

One writer said that Wilson
was built along the lines

of a beer keg, and not
unfamiliar with its contents.

Though it was a hitter's decade,
one of the most admired players was a

dominating screwball
pitcher named Carl Hubbell.

Well, I was always
fascinated by Carl Hubbell.

Mr. Highpockets.

He was a left-handed pitcher
for the New York Giants.

And his most famous
pitch was the screwball.

And he'd thrown so many of these
things that his arm was literally deformed.

And you could see it when
he walked out to the pitchers.

Man, his arm, the screwball
is a reverse curve like that.

He'd thrown so many that the palm was
almost out when he walked out and curious.

And I was so impressed
by this pitcher that I used to

walk around like that when
I was about nine years old.

My mother used
to say, what is this?

What's wrong with that
arm of yours anyway?

They finally made me stop it.

It looked as though I'd fallen out a
window or something and my parents hadn't

had enough money
to give me the right

operation to get the
thing twisted back right.

Coach, score is yet in the
first half of the first inning.

In the 1934 All-Star Game, Hubbell
astonished the baseball world by striking

out in succession Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig,
Jimmy Fox, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin.

Oh, boy!

Hubbell!

I saw so many great pitchers, and
maybe it's because of an early impression,

but of all the pitchers I saw,
thinking in terms of their control of

themselves spiritually, as well as their
ability to throw the ball, to manipulate

the pitch, I would say, let's put it this
way, if I had a ball game to be pitched in

my life hung on the balance,
I'd want Carl Hubbell to pitch it.

Every known nationality, including
Indians, Cubans, Filipinos, Jews,

Italians, Greeks, with the lone
exception of the American black

man, have played in both the
national and American leagues.

The white sporting public
wants to see a good ball game.

They do not raise the
question of nationality of a

player who can knock a home
run or can pitch a good game.

There was no Hitler moment.

There was no movement created
in America when John McGraw of

the New York Giants put Andy
Cohen, a Jew, on second base.

It was up to Cohen
to make good or go.

What is the matter
with baseball?

The answer is plain prejudice.

That's all.

Chicago Defender.

It was called American Pastime.

We read about
other ball players.

Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, a
little boy read about them.

But ah, as I might say none of these
were idols for mine and I don't think not

anybody in Negro league because
they all knew they could play just as good.

They proved that later.

But they knew they
could play just as good.

And when they got the chance.

Ah, they proved it completely.

Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson were
the biggest stars of the Negro League,

but they had plenty of rivals.

Buck Leonard, first
baseman for the Homestead

Grays, was billed as
the Black Lou Gehrig.

His steady, dependable
hitting helped lead the

Grays to nine Negro
League pennants in a row.

The most versatile of all Negro League
stars was Martín Dejigo, el Maestro,

a Cuban too dark-skinned to be considered
for the majors, who played brilliantly at

every position, and during
one season in Mexico,

simultaneously led his league
in both pitching and hitting.

James Cool Papa Bell may have been
the fastest runner in baseball history,

so fast, that, he once scored
from first on a sacrifice punt.

Satchel Paige liked to say that Cool Papa
could snap off the light, get into bed,

and pull the covers up
before the room was dark.

Despite their pride in the Negro
Leagues, African Americans

yearned to show what they
could do in the major leagues.

But the old gentleman's agreement
among the owners still kept them out.

It's a trade-off.

I think that the Negro Leagues were
a wonderful institution in American life,

but they had the stigma of reminding
black people that they were separated from,

and not a part of American life.

And that was the problem with all
segregated institutions that we had,

was that they were important in enriching
the black community's life on one level,

but they were stigmatized
in telling us that we could

not be a part of everything
else that was going on.

So it was a very, you're talking about
a very limited kind of life on the whole.

By 1934, the world economy was
in ruins, and fascism was on the rise.

In Germany, the National Socialists
had come to power and begun to institute

exclusionary laws
against Jews in an eerie

echo of Jim Crow statutes
in the United States.

After the 1934 season, Babe Ruth
toured Japan with an all-star team.

Half a million fans
turned out in Tokyo to

cheer the mythic hero
they called Bebu Rusu.

The Babes' big bulk, reported the New York
Times, today blotted out such unimportant

things as international
squabbles over oil and navies.

We like to believe, said the sporting
news, that countries having a common

interest in a great
sport would rather fight

it out on the diamond
than on the battlefield.

The Americans won 17 of 18
games, and Ruth hit 13 home runs.

But in one game, a high school boy
named Eiji Sawamura struck out Ruth,

Charlie Geringer, Lou
Gehrig, and Jimmy Fox before

the Americans managed
to get a single winning run.

Sawamura became a national
hero, and the tour sparked

the formation of the first
Japanese professional league.

I will say that I've
had thrills before.

A number of them.

Something like hitting a
home run in Chicago that time.

The Lord was with me
when I called the shots.

If he hadn't been with me,
why, I'd have been just too bad.

I can't go on forever.

Somebody's got to take
my shoes and take my place.

But you can bet your sweet
life that I won't play until I drop.

But I'll play until I
damn near drop.

Thank you.

What do you think of Babe
Ruth going to Boston, Tony?

I'm sorry the Yankees lost him, and I
wish that he'd come back to the Yankees.

Babe Ruth deserves a break like that,
and I think he'll make good in Boston,

because he's been
such a great character,

and I think he'll suck
plenty over in Boston.

I like about Babe Ruth,
he's a nice man, and I

like about him because
he's a nice baseball player.

Well, I hope my old man moves
up to Boston so I can see him play.

Ruth's Far Eastern
tour was a triumph.

But when he got back, he learned that
the Yankees, the team that he had built,

had decided to
dispense with his services

and had no intention of
making him a manager.

He turned down an offer to run their
best farm team as beneath his dignity.

Instead, he joined the worst club in
the National League, the Boston Braves,

lured by a vague promise of
becoming manager the following season.

The Braves never really meant
to give him the manager's job.

The main hope was that his mere
presence would boost receipts.

On

the last Sunday night, the first day of
his career, when he was 40 years old,

playing for the Boston
Braves, heartbroken that

he'd left the Yankees,
couldn't sign on with them.

Changed leagues,
trying to prolong, trying to

stay on in baseball, which
all players want to do.

Fat, worn out.

Near the end, he played,
the Boston Braves played in

Pittsburgh, and that last
Sunday, he hit three home runs.

And the third home
run, the last of his

career, number 714,
went out of the ballpark.

He was over the
roof in Forbes Field.

No one had ever hit a ball out
of there up to that point, ever.

That is a farewell.

Goodbye, baseball.

From then on, until the day he died,
Clare Ruth remembered, he sat by the

telephone, waiting for a call
to manage that never came.

My father and
mother brought me up.

I knew where the
stakes were set.

And I concentrated on my game.

I was very conscientious, good
night's sleep, good nutrition.

I practiced hard, worked hard.

I did it as a kid on the farm.

And my baseball
career was number one.

So I just didn't exactly
say, fall off the turnip trunk.

In 1936, two new
stars made their debut.

Their first appearances
in the big leagues.

The first was a 17-year-old
fastball pitcher from Iowa,

whose father had built
him his own practice field.

He was signed by
the Cleveland Indians.

And in his very first start, he
struck out 15 St. Louis Browns.

A few weeks later, he set an American
League record by striking out 17 A's.

Then, he went back
home to finish high school.

His name was Bob Feller.

We went to the World Series in 1934 in
St. Louis and saw the Gas House Gang.

And I thought right then
and there that I was only

15, that Major League
Baseball wasn't that far away.

And not being cocky, I
had a lot of confidence.

My father gave me
a lot of confidence.

I never was afraid
of a batter on my own.

They may hit me well, but
I was never afraid of them.

Imagine Bob Feller, 17 years old, in
the small farming town of Van Meter,

Iowa, throwing against the proverbial
wall of the barn and having a fastball that

could beat any in the
Major League at that time.

What was particularly extraordinary when
the young Feller at 17 came into the Major

Leagues, and what people
forget is that his fastball was

so great because his
curveball was extraordinary, too.

Baseball stories are so
various, and they swap places.

There are a lot of characters in them,
but the way I heard it left to Gomez

himself a picture, faced
the 18-year-old Bobby Feller.

The first one came over, and the umpire
called it a strike, and the second one

came over, called it a strike, and
the third one came over, and the

umpire called it a
strike, and Gomez said, I

thought that last one
sounded a little low.

Always you look for heroes.

Always the people look up to see something
that represents them, that is larger than

they are, and if it's perfect,
that they might become.

As a young boy when I was taken to my
first game at Yankee Stadium, my God,

Yankee Stadium, talk
about awesome sights.

To see Joe DiMaggio, whose name had that
happy combination of vowels that mine had,

to whom you could relate without knowing
anything about San Francisco, or anything

else about him, but he was an
Italian-American, he was a baseball player.

He didn't seem to have any other
credential but his ability, and that was

sufficient to make him
a great hero, and a great

success, and therefore
a great inspiration.

The second rookie that
summer of 1936 was a young

Yankee outfielder from San
Francisco, Joe DiMaggio.

At 17, he had broken in with the San
Francisco Seals at shortstop, and was

moved to center field after committing
11 wild throws in a single exhibition game.

But he hit safely in 61
straight games in his first

year in the minors, and
batted .398 in his third.

The press was ready when he joined
the majors, and he did not disappoint,

hitting 29 homers, and knocking
in 125 runs in his rookie season.

DiMaggio was the perfect
complement to Lou Gehrig.

He would help lead the Yankees to
four consecutive world championships,

an accomplishment Babe Ruth and
Murderer's Row had never even approached.

Now, freed from Ruth's
shadow, Gehrig was spectacular.

In 1936, he hit 49 home
runs, drove in 152 runs,

and was named the
league's most valuable player.

He also kept alive his extraordinary
record of consecutive games played.

The Yankees looked unbeatable.

We were the attraction.

In our baseball, the Kansas
City Monarchs, we liked

the New York Yankees
and Major League Baseball.

Very tough.

Very tough.

We had the stars, and so to make
a living, we showed it to the world.

Founded in 1920, the Monarchs dominated
black baseball for more than 25 years.

They won three pennants in
a row between 1923 and 1925.

And even in the darkest
years of the Depression, they

were the most profitable
of all the black ball clubs.

One east side bartender
remembered that they made

Kansas City the talk of
the town all over the world.

At the heart of the Monarchs
was their hard-hitting

first baseman, John
Jordan Buck O'Neal.

We knew everybody
in Kansas City.

Everybody in
Kansas City knew us.

Not just to say by the paper.

They'd walk up to me,
hello, Buck, how you doing?

I'd say, hey, Joe,
good to see you.

Well, what happened, you
were part of the community.

The baseball park, you was in
close, you walked right by the stands,

and everybody knew
your name, and you talked

to them before the
game and after the game.

And the fans looked at the
guys in our league as heroes.

But nobody had a big head.

Everybody was always there, ready
to go out to dinner with the fans, sign

autographs, whatever they
wanted, we were part of it.

We were happy to do it because we
all really loved and respect each other.

With the Kansas City Monarchs, we
stayed in the best hotels in the world.

They just happened
to be black hotels.

We ate at the best
restaurants in the world.

They just happened to be
black-owned and operated.

Well organized.

Kansas City Monarchs was a major
league, just happened to be black.

O'Neal would stay with the Monarchs for
nearly 20 years, becoming their manager,

leading them to five more
Negro League pennants

and two championships
in the Black World Series.

On the evening of May 24, 1935,
Larry McPhail, general manager of the

Cincinnati Reds, arranged
for President Franklin D.

Roosevelt to push a button in the
White House that lit up Crosley Field in

Cincinnati for a game between the
Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Although the Kansas City
Monarchs had used portable lights for

years, this was the first night
game in major league football.

The Reds won 2-1.

The other owners were appalled.

They were sure
no one would come.

Then they saw the money
McPhail was beginning to make.

Larry McPhail was a banker's hard-drinking
son, a born promoter, impatient with

tradition, desperate to find new
ways to boost attendance and

rescue his club from bankruptcy
in the midst of the Depression.

He was also a champion of radio.

Broadcasters had covered the World Series
since 1922, but most owners feared that

regular broadcasting
would hurt ticket sales.

Larry McPhail was sure broadcasting would
increase profits and went into partnership

with the owner of two local
radio stations to prove it.

And he hired a young southerner
named Walter Barber, who had

never even seen a major league
game, to do the play-by-play.

Anything new has to establish
itself and gain its own credentials.

When radio came along, some of the
entrenched conservative owners said,

wait a minute, why give away something
that you're trying to sell for your living

to try and keep your
enterprise afloat?

And especially on days of threatening
weather, when people would say,

well, it looks like it may rain, I'll
just listen to the radio and I won't go.

They did not realize at that
time that it would be creating

new fans, that it would
be making families of fans.

Before radio, by and large, the people
who came into a ballpark were men.

Once radio came along and came into the
homes, women began to understand the game.

They didn't have to have
somebody explain it to them.

The play-by-play
broadcaster was doing it.

And attendance visibly went
up when you had families

coming instead of single
members of the family.

This is the old
redhead, Red Barber.

And that's the beginning
of the impact of radio.

Radio made new fans.

In 1938, MacPhail left
Cincinnati and moved

to New York to take over
the Brooklyn Dodgers.

He brought Red Barber with him.

No one ever came up with the
expressions that Red Barber had.

And so what he brought to New York,
to the metropolitan area, was that country

flavor that they were
not familiar with at all.

I mean, when he said rhubarb,
everybody thought, wow, rhubarb.

And so he became
part of the language.

Ducks on the pond,
sitting in the tall cotton.

I mean, there were
just a million of them.

You would suddenly say, I wonder what that
looks like when somebody leaps up against

the wall or dives head first into
second or bowls over the catcher.

So they would come out to
see what they had been listening.

My first memory of
baseball was radio.

Listening on the car radio to Red Barber
talking from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

My father wanted to know
how the games were going on.

He was following Brooklyn.

My mother and I, I was
an only child, driving in the

car, began to listen, I
suppose, out of self-defense.

And both of us, at about
the same time, my mother

and I, became caught up
in the drama of the game.

...roughly between
the palms of his hands.

He works.

DiMaggio swinging
at the whistling line.

Drive to left center.

And he's going to start the
game and he's going to get it.

Once during a radio interview,
Yankee outfielder Jake Powell cheerfully

explained that he kept in shape during
the off season by cracking niggers over the

head while serving as a
policeman back home in Ohio.

The white press
paid little attention.

But the black press was
outraged and threatened to boycott.

Yankee management
suspended Powell ...for ten days

and sent him on a tour of
bars in Harlem to apologize.

As the depression began to ease, the
international triumphs of Joe Lewis in

boxing and Jesse Owens in track made
many question their own racial attitudes.

But for black baseball players
in America, nothing had changed.

For most, the season
didn't end in October.

When the weather turned cold, they headed
south to Latin America, Cuba, and Mexico,

where they found a warm
welcome playing wintertime baseball.

Not only do I get more money playing here,
shortstop Willie Wells wrote after leaving

the Newark Eagles for the
Mexican League, but I live like a king.

I've found freedom
and democracy here,

something I never found
in the United States.

Here in Mexico, I am a man.

Black and white in Cuba suffered that the
blacks could not play in the big leagues,

because we had many
Cuban stars who were black.

And we said, what a waste it
was, the feeling, what a waste.

And when the black athletes came to
play in Cuba, they were lionized, they were

heroes, and they felt
very comfortable in Cuba.

And in the middle of the 1937
season, Satchel Paige and

nineteen other Negro League
players suddenly left Cuba.

They turned up in the Dominican Republic,
playing on a team organized by the

dictator, General Rafael Trujillo,
a man who could not bear to lose.

Their assignment was to win the
national championship for the general.

Trujillo had Page's team put under armed
guard the night before the big game and

gave orders that anyone who sold
the players whiskey would be shot.

By the seventh inning,
we were a run behind,

and you could see
Trujillo lining up his army.

It began to look
like a firing squad.

In the last of the seventh,
we scored two runs.

You never saw old Sacks
throw harder than that.

I shut them out the last
two innings, and we won.

But I hustled back to
our hotel, and the next

morning, we blowed
out of there in a hurry.

We never did see Trujillo again.

And I ain't sorry.

Baseball is the
great American sport.

And as the Jew is thoroughly Americanized,
there is no reason why his name should not

be prominently found upon
the baseball roll of honor.

The American Hebrew.

The first great Jewish baseball
star was Hank Greenwald.

Hard hitting first baseman
for the Detroit Tigers.

In 1934, he led the Tigers to
the American League pennant.

The next year, he was the unanimous
choice for MVP, driving in 170 runs.

There had been Jewish
major leaguers before him,

including Andy Cohen and
the Giants, but few did well.

And the anti-Semitism of the times had
forced many of them to change their names.

Hank Greenberg never
even considered it.

Born in Greenwich Village, the son of a
garment manufacturer who initially found

his boy's interest in baseball bizarre,
Greenberg broke into the minors playing in

little southern towns, where
crowds were said to be as

curious to see a Jew as
they were to watch the game.

His power hitting brought him to the
majors, where he soon faced a torrent of

anti-Semitic abuse from
players and fans alike.

Greenberg's willingness
to fight back eventually

earned him the grudging
respect of his fellow players.

But Jewish fans, many of whom were recent
immigrants and anxious to embrace the

national pastime of their adopted
country, worshipped him as a hero.

What better marriage of national
aspiration and national passion that one

of their own could rise to become
one of the great ballplayers of the time.

He wouldn't play on the Jewish holidays,
but he would hit a lot of home runs for

the Detroit Tigers every
other day of the year.

I came to feel, Hank Greenberg
said, that if I, as a Jew, hit a home run,

I was hitting one
against Hitler.

On October 2nd, 1938, the last day of the
season, Newsreel crews were dispatched

from New York to cover
what might possibly be a

historic confrontation
between Cleveland and Detroit.

Greenberg had already
hit fifty-eight home runs that

summer, tying Jimi Foxx's
record for right-handed hitting.

If his luck held, he might tie or even
break Babe Ruth's record of sixty.

The cameramen wanted to
be there to record the action.

The date, October the 2nd,
1938, closing day of the season.

But facing him on the mound
that afternoon was Bob Feller.

Feller starts that line up, here's
the pitch for the second strike.

Here's the pitch, swings on a
low pass ball for strike three.

It was Feller's turn
to make history.

He set a new
strikeout record of 18.

And Hank Greenberg
struck out twice.

The next day, Adolf Hitler's
army invaded Czechoslovakia.

March 16, 1939, St. Petersburg.

The older newspaper men sit in the chicken
coop press boxes around the circuit and

watch Lou Gehrig go through the laborious
movements of playing first base and wonder

if they're seeing one
of the institutions of

the American League
crumble before their eyes.

They watch him at the bat and
note he isn't hitting the ball well.

They watch him around
the bag and it's plain

he isn't getting the
balls he used to get.

They watch him run and they
fancy they can hear his bones

creak and his lungs wheeze
as he lumbers around the bases.

On eyewitness testimony
alone, the verdict must

be that of a battle-scarred
veteran falling apart.

Joe Williams, New
York World Television.

On May 1st, 1939,
something that had not

happened for 14 years
happened to the Yankees.

Lou Gehrig took
himself out of the lineup.

He had played in a record
2,130 consecutive games

and earned himself the
nickname the Iron Horse.

But now, something
was terribly wrong.

He was only 34.

He was only 5, but had begun to play like
an old man, dropping balls, missing again

and again at bat, sliding his
feet along rather than lifting them.

During batting practice one afternoon,
Joe DiMaggio watched in astonishment as

the Yankees' hitting star
missed 10 fat pitches in a row.

Gehrig could not
understand what was wrong.

Neither could his teammates.

But he could not stand the
thought of letting them down.

He was benching himself, he
said, for the good of the team.

To whom it may concern.

This is to certify that Mr. Lou
Gehrig has been under

examination at the Mayo Clinic
from June 13th to June 19th, 1939.

After a careful and complete
examination, it was found

that he is suffering from
amyotropic lateral sclerosis.

This type of illness
involves the motor pathways

and cells of the
central nervous system.

The nature of this trouble makes it such
that Mr. Gehrig will be unable to continue

his active participation
as a baseball player.

Signed, Dr. Harold H.

Habian.

The road may come to an
end here, Gehrig wrote his wife.

Seems like our
backs are to the wall.

But there usually
comes a way out.

Where and what, I know not.

But who can tell that it might
lead right on to greater things?

The news of the
death of Dr. Harold H.

Habian and the news of Gehrig's
illness stunned the country.

And on July 4th, a huge,
sad crowd packed Yankee

Stadium to pay tribute
to their beloved hero.

Babe Ruth came back, and the two
old teammates ended their long feud.

Manager Joe McCarthy
presented him with a trophy.

He was the first man to speak.

For the past two weeks, you've
been reading about a bad brag.

Today, I consider myself the
luckiest man on the face of the earth.

That I might have been given a bad break,
but I've got an awful lot to live for.

Thank you.

He died two years later of what is
now called Lou Gehrig's disease.

In 1907, Albert Goodwill Spalding
insisted that Abner Doubleday

had invented baseball at
Cooperstown, New York in 1839.

It wasn't true.

But on June 12th, 1939, the game's dubious
centennial, the National Baseball Hall of

Fame officially opened
its doors in Cooperstown.

Twelve great figures from the game's
past, selected by the baseball writers of

America, were to be inducted, including
Christie Mathewson, who had died in 1925,

and Ty Cobb, who refused to
appear in the official photograph,

just despite his ancient enemy,
Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

Babe Ruth waited to make a grand entrance,
sweeping in to huge applause, just as the

band began to play Take
Me Out to the Ballgame.

He had forgotten his time.

Cy Young.

Honus Wagner.

Grover Cleveland Alexander.

Tris Speaker.

Napoleon Lajoie.

George Sissler.

The belief

that baseball is loved by an
entire nation, Commissioner

Kennesaw-Mountainlandis said, that it
is the very backbone of America itself.

This week, the 100th
anniversary of our, pardon

us, national pastime
is being celebrated.

During this century of diamond doings,
however, Negro baseballers, in spite of

their undoubted ability to bat,
run, pitch, snare gargantuan flies,

cavort around shortstop and the keystone
sack, and think baseball, haven't reached

first base insofar as getting
into the big leagues is concerned.

Amsterdam News.

Back in 1938, Major League
players were polled as to

whether they would object
to playing alongside blacks.

Four-fifths said they
had no objections.

A small band of black sports
writers now began actively

campaigning for integration
of the big leagues.

But the club owners
were not interested.

That winter, Chester Washington of the
Pittsburgh Courier sent a telegram to the

manager of the struggling
Pittsburgh Pirates.

To PI Trainer, Pittsburgh
Pirates, Congress Hotel.

Know your club needs players.

Stop.

Have answers to your
prayers right here in Pittsburgh.

Stop.

Josh Gibson, catcher.

Buck Leonard, first base.

S.

Page, pitcher.

And cool Papa Bell.

All available at
reasonable figures.

Stop.

Would make Pirates
formidable pennant contenders.

Stop.

What is your attitude?

Stop.

Wire answer.

Chester Washington.

There was no answer.

I would like to think of the Negro Leagues
and the tragedy of the Negro Leagues.

The fact that these men
were excluded from baseball

the way that Buck O'Neill
thought about them.

That nobody owed
him any apology.

He had his career.

But I can't think
of it that way.

I don't think any of us can.

And that O'Neill has
a generosity of spirit

that perhaps goes
above and beyond the call.

Systematically, for six decades, black
Americans were excluded from playing

in the major leagues
and the minor leagues.

In the organized wing
of the national pastime.

One thing one could say is that it
was therefore not the national pastime.

It was a closed society.

One could also point out to those
people who would say that the best...

Baseball was at its best in
the 20s in the time of Ruth and

Gehrig or in the 30s when
DiMaggio and Williams came along.

Impossible.

Impossible.

When part of the national
population was being systematically

excluded from baseball, it
couldn't have been the best.

What we are left with
from the black leagues is...

Memory, legend, and an endless series
of what-ifs with the names attached to them

of Josh Gibson and Ray Dandridge and Cool
Papa Bell and Willie Wells and what might

have been, what if these men had been
there to play in the majors against the

Rouths and the Cobbs
and the Walter Johnsons and

back farther against Cap
Anson who started it all.

Piano music

Piano music Piano music Piano music
In September of 1942, Satchel Paige was

pitching for the Kansas City Monarchs and
Josh Gibson was playing for the Homestead

Grays in the second game of
the Negro League World Series.

Fans held their breath
as black baseball's

two biggest stars faced
one another at last.

Satchel Paige always thought he was
the greatest pitcher in the world and Josh

Gibson thought he was the greatest
hitter in the world and we did too.

And Satchel and Josh
in this World Series ball

game, Satchel's pitching
and we got a ball game one.

The Kansas City Monarchs
went two out in the ninth inning.

The first place hitter,
he tripled on Satchel.

We got two outs so that
didn't bother us in at all.

So Satchel called me and
said, hey Nancy, come in.

I said, what do
you want Satchel?

He said, let me tell
you what I'm fixing to do.

I said, what are
you fixing to do?

He said, I'm going to
walk Howard Easterland.

I'm going to walk Buckley.

I'm going to walk Leonard.

I'm going to pitch
to Josh Gibson.

I said, man, don't be facetious.

He said, that's
what I'm going to do.

I said, time.

I called the manager who was Frank
Duncan, great ball player himself.

I said, Frank, you got to
listen to what Satchel said.

And so Satchel told him
what was going to happen.

And so in walking Easterland and
walking Buck Leonard to fill the bases.

Now, when he was walking
Buck, Josh was in the center.

He was in the circle, you know, where
the guy's standing next to the other.

And he's talking
to Josh all the time.

He said, Josh, do you remember the day
when we were playing on the same team and

I told you that one day
we were going to meet

and we were going to
see who was the best?

He said, yeah, I know what
you're talking about, Satchel.

I said, all right.

He said, now is the
time to prove this thing.

So when Josh comes up to the bat,
listen, let me tell you what this man did.

He said, time.

He called the trainer, who
our trainer was Jew Baby Floyd.

And I don't know why they called him
Jew Baby because he was black as me.

But anyway, when Jew Baby comes out
with his, you know, like the smock that the

doctor would wear and he's
got a concoction in a glass.

He's got a glass.

He's got some water.

And he puts this, I guess
Alka-Seltzer or something.

He pulls this in that water and it
fizzes and Satchel drinks it down.

He lets out a belch.

I can hear it, but
nobody else heard it.

And so he said, now I'm ready.

So the fans, now they
know what's happening.

Now everybody, we got
to have 40,000 people.

They're standing.

And here comes Satchel.

Satchel said, you know, Josh, say,
I'm going to throw you some fastball.

I'm going to throw you a
fastball, belt high, boom.

Strike one.

Josh didn't move the bat.

He said, now I'm going to show you
another, throw you another fastball.

But this is going to be
faster than the other fastball.

Boom.

Strike two.

He said, now, Josh, I've got
you two strikes and no balls.

You know, in this
situation, I'm supposed to

knock you down, you
know, brush your back.

He said, but uh-uh, I'm not going
to throw any smoke at your yoke.

I'm going to throw
a pee at your knee.

Boom.

Strike three.

And when he struck him out, he,
you know, Satchel must be 6'5".

Satchel stretched out, looked
like he was seven feet tall.

And he walked off the field and walked
by me and said, you know what, Nancy?

Nobody hit Satchel.

That was the end of that story.

© BF-WATCH TV 2021

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