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Reclaimed
The Forgotten League, Ep. 1: A Gentlemen's Agreement
00:45:21
Vanessa Ivy Rose is on a quest to learn more about the legacy of her grandfather, Norman "Turkey" Stearnes. That means going back all the way to the beginning of baseball, when a covert agreement shuts Black players out of the nation's pastime —...
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Transcript89 lines
- [00:02]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Now.
- [00:02]
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- [00:13]
Minimum of 4 lines for $25 per line per month with auto pay discount using debit or bank account, $5 more per line without autopay plus taxes and fees and $10 device connection charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement due bill credits end if you pay off devices early. Ctmobile.com.
- [00:35]
Narrator
It'S game day at Comerica park in Detroit, home of the Tigers. It's June and there's rows upon rows of empty green plastic seats just beginning to be warmed by the summer sun. The pitcher's mound is covered. The perfect green of the outfield is undisturbed. This is what the ballpark is like hours before the crowd gets here. The setup is like any other baseball game during the regular season. In a few hours, those familiar players will run out to a familiar field. Hot dogs will be eaten, beer will be poured. But one thing will be different. The opening song at the edge of the field, there are two singers doing a sound check. Tonight, and for one night only, these singers will perform Lift Every Voice and Sing. Many people call it the Black National Anthem. Tonight's performance of it is part of what the Tigers call Negro Leagues Weekend, one weekend in the heart of summer to honor those who weren't allowed to play in the major leagues, those who could only play in separate leagues, all because of the color of their skin. Let it be known these singers are the daughters of one of the best Negro League players of all time, Turkey Stearns. Turkey loved the Tigers, went to every game he could, but he could never set foot on their field as a player. Now, every year, the Tigers raise the flag of his Negro League team high above the stadium and his daughters sing for the crowd. Their performance is special for me, maybe more than for anyone else in the audience. These singers are my mom and aunt. Turkey Stearns is my grandfather. And there's two stories to be told about how we got to this performance at this stadium. One is the story of how racism kept some of the best baseball players out of the major leagues. The other is about how we reconcile the game we love today with where it's been and what it's done. Because until we give those stories a home, are we just talking to an empty room or singing in an Empty stadium. From ABC Audio, this is Reclaimed the Forgotten League. I'm Vanessa ivey Rose. Episode 1 A Gentleman's Agreement all right, all right, all right. We made it inside. We are walking over to our seats, but all these awesome aromas are hitting me, so I have to get something. I'm smelling the hot hot dogs. I'm smelling the popcorn. The pretzels look good, but I think tonight is going to be a kielbasa night. So let me head up here and get one of these kielbasa so I can start the game off right. It's tradition. Listen, I don't just go to Tigers games on New York's weekend. I'm there every weekend I can in summer. I've loved baseball since I was 7 years old, and I'm originally from Detroit, so I'm used to heading downtown to Comerica park and seeing that old English D covering the heads and hearts of Tigers fans. If, you know, you know, before heading into the stadium, it's sort of a ritual for me to walk over to my granddad's plaque, which is located right outside of Comerica park behind center field, which is the position he actually used to play. Inside the stadium, the Tigers have statues of their most famous stars. There's some Detroit legends. Al Kaline, Ty Cobb, Willie Horton. In 2007, they added a plaque for Granddad. It's got his name on it and his birth and death year and some facts about the team he played for. It also shows his face, a carving that looks like bronze. But Grandad's plaque isn't where the other players are. His plaque is outside on an exterior wall on the southeast side of the stadium, which is extremely poetic, isn't it? So, Granddad, I can see you right now. I'm staring at you face to face, and we're getting ready to take on the Minnesota Twins tonight. So I hope the Tigers make you proud. I love you. I feel grateful to stand in front of the plaque. I know it's not really him, but it's the closest I can get to looking into his eyes right now. The feelings I have for him are as real as they come. He died in 1979, and I was born in 1983. And it is possible to deeply miss someone you've never met. Having that plaque there means a lot to me, but sometimes it feels like the people around me here at the stadium don't see it. And if they do, they don't see what it means. Even on Negro League's weekend, when the stadium is full, not Many people in the crowd have heard of my grandfather. In fact, one year I wore a hat that said Turkey Stearns on it. Someone stopped me to ask Turkey Stearns, what's a Turkey Stearns? Imagine asking, what's a Babe Ruth? That comparison is not an exaggeration. Turkey stats speak for themselves. He had a career batting average of.348, and his wins above replacement number was 49.5. And for anyone that doesn't speak baseball, that's good. Really good. His fellow players remember him sending that ball over to stadium fences many times. Turkey once said himself that he hit so many home runs, he stopped counting them. He should be considered one of the greatest of all time, but very few people know it. He's a forgotten legend. It's almost like I feel like if I go to a Tigers game, one day I'll see him show up out there on the field. Oh, okay, that's out of here. That's out of here. Yeah.
- [07:58]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Okay.
- [07:59]
Narrator
Okay. It was my grandma who introduced me to the game. I remember sitting on her living room floor watching the Tigers with her all the time. She told me that I reminded her of Grandpa Turkey. She told me that my light was like his. She brought him closer to me in a way that I'd never thought about before and started a quest to get to know this person who loomed so large in our family history. Grandma Nettie isn't around anymore, but there are still people in my life who knew my grandfather.
- [08:36]
Joyce Stearns Thompson
He was a very quiet person.
- [08:39]
Narrator
That's my Auntie Roz. Not talkative at all, like me and my mom Joyce. And my mom's right, my mom, my aunt and me, when it comes to being talkative, we definitely take more after my grandma than Grandpa Turkey. Now, I want to clear something up right here. Turkey is not his birth name.
- [09:03]
Joyce Stearns Thompson
Oh. Dad's name is his real name. He was born Norman Thomas Stearns on May 8, 1901, in Nashville, Tennessee. And he got his nickname Turkey when he started playing baseball because they used to have races before the game and dad would always win. And so they said he was fast.
- [09:23]
Narrator
Everyone seems to have a different story for why Turkey is called Turkey even in our own family.
- [09:30]
Rosalind Stearns Brown
Now, I asked him, and he said, cause he had a pot belly. But people said he stuck his chest out when he ran and he flapped his wings.
- [09:38]
Joyce Stearns Thompson
Some people said it was cause of his pot belly, but I've never seen dad with a pot belly, so I don't think that's true. I think my version is better.
- [09:46]
Narrator
And not to side with either one on this sister's debate here. But my mom's right. Grandpa Turkey did tell people he got his nickname from having a potbelly as a kid. Aside from the nickname, my family doesn't know a whole lot about Turkey's early life. He once said that his father died when he was a teenager, leaving his mother to raise him and his siblings alone.
- [10:09]
Rosalind Stearns Brown
He had to help out, so he worked in grocery stores and on the farm.
- [10:15]
Joyce Stearns Thompson
And then they found out that dad could play baseball. Once he started playing ball, that was it.
- [10:22]
Narrator
When my aunt says that was it, what she means is kind of, you know, that's all she wrote. Like, Turkey found baseball and never looked back, as if he set the first foot onto a path that provided opportunity and growth and excitement. And that's true, but in some ways that's barely scratching the surface because the path he found was already well worn by people like him, black men who were playing long before Turkey's big break, men with a talent for baseball, trying to let that talent shine for as big an audience as possible.
- [11:04]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
People tend to believe that black baseball started with Jackie Robinson, but we can go back pretty far with it.
- [11:13]
Narrator
This is Shakia Taylor, a sports and culture editor at the Chicago Tribune.
- [11:18]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
In the 1800s, baseball played a vital role in African American communities even before the Civil War. It was an important part of camp life during the war, and it was tied to African American agitation for civil and political rights. During the 1840s and 1850s, there was a kind of baseball mania spreading in the Northeast, and African Americans who could afford the time and expense formed and join their own ball clubs.
- [11:53]
Narrator
Shakia says that black baseball has always been political, always more than just a game. Teams were formed for and by black players. It gave them a chance to play their sport, sure to be sociable, but they were also a place to share ideas. One example of this, Shakia says, was the Pythian Baseball Club, formed in Philadelphia in the mid-1860s by Jacob White and Octavius Catto.
- [12:23]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
They were educators, intellectuals and civil rights activists, and the team was comprised of middle class professionals. But Octavius Catto, he used the team for his own sort of political agenda, if you will, his civil rights agenda. And he served on a committee that recruited soldiers for the Union Army. But he also campaigned for the desegregation of streetcars in Philadelphia as well as for the rights of black men to vote. So he used baseball to drive those efforts, and he challenged white ball clubs to play the Pythians.
- [13:05]
Narrator
And in the late 1860s, a team took up the challenge, the Olympics. Some describe it as the first recorded interracial game. And apart from being an interesting moment in baseball history, it's worth remembering for one of the wildest final scores I've ever seen. The white team, the Olympics, beat the Pythians 44 to 23.
- [13:31]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
That was the actual score. I don't think baseball of old had the kind of defensive strategy that we see today.
- [13:42]
Narrator
The Civil War spread baseball like wildfire. Northern, southern, black or white, you either took the game to war with you or you took it home. Games between black and white teams like the Pythians and the Olympics and even integrated teams of black and white players didn't seem like such an unusual idea anymore. We also have to remember this is the Reconstruction era. Baseball isn't the only place that we're seeing a possibility of change occurring. But this window doesn't stay open for long. There's something creeping over the horizon. It is an MLB not as we know it these days, but there are what we might think of as precursors to a major league system appearing. We could call them proto leagues, baseball associations that try to formalize the game, write down the rules, and even begin paying their players.
- [14:41]
Leslie Heaphy
Most people say that the first, you know, true professional team is the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings.
- [14:49]
Narrator
This is Leslie Heaphy. She's an associate professor of history at Kent State University. She's also a member of Sabre Society of American Baseball Research, who are responsible for a huge amount of research into the Negro leagues and players like my grandfather.
- [15:07]
Leslie Heaphy
So as you move forward, Cincinnati Red Stockings proved to everybody that, wow, if you pay people to play, they're going to be really good and you're going to make a lot of money. And so, because the Cincinnati Red Stockings, in that first, they didn't lose a game. There were professional teams playing before that. But that's the recognized one that said, all right, every player on that team. And that really changed the nature of the game moving forward, because you're going to separate out this new professional, very organized white baseball from everything else that's going to get played.
- [15:41]
Narrator
And that's the catch. Soon these white baseball organizations were springing up all over. The first major league, the National League, is founded in 1876, along with a host of others. These new leagues were more far reaching, more prestigious, and more exclusive.
- [16:01]
Leslie Heaphy
And one of those very first organizations basically refused admittance to the Philadelphia Pythians. And the denial of admission said that no team with any player with one drop of Negro blood would be admitted into the national organization. And so, of course, that kept the Pythians out.
- [16:26]
Narrator
A barrier was being placed around white baseball. We call it the color line. It wasn't a line you could see, but you could always feel it. The rule that excluded the Pythians was only written for one year, one season, but its effect lingered. People call it a gentleman's agreement. This agreement could be codified without being mentioned, enacted without being written down. It was de facto segregation, and it was woven into the fabric of the new leagues. As the Pythians had discovered, it was entirely at the discretion of the white leagues to allow or deny entry to black teams. But this line wasn't absolute. Not yet. Play between black and white teams persisted, and integrated teams were still in some places able to continue. That was until one day in the summer of 1887. It's mid July in Newark, New Jersey. The Stadium of the local integrated team, the Little Giants, is packed with 3,000 fans waiting for the game. It's been a good season to be a Little Giants fan, and today's game promises to be an exciting match. Their opponents have traveled all the way from Chicago, the White Stockings. This team, whose lineup was as white as their stockings, was a major league team and minor league level. Newark was definitely going to be the underdog. But the home team had a secret weapon. Two actually. Their pitcher and their catcher. The catcher was a brother named Moses Fleetwood Walker, and the pitcher was a brother named George Stovey. With these star players, Newark had the chance to send the visitors crying all the way home to Chicago. But the White Stockings had their own trick up their sleeve. Their captain, Cap Anson. Cap Anson was a superstar. Before, there were superstars. Blond, blue eyed, a mustache that defied gravity. A future hall of Famer, Anson was the first player to cross the 3,000 hit line. He was a player's player and a respected manager. He was also a racist.
- [19:01]
Leslie Heaphy
Anson made no bones that he didn't want to play against black players and have black players, certainly not on his team. And so on more than one occasion, he would threaten teams to say, if you've got a black, we're not going to play, we're going to forfeit. And that clout that you could use, right? In a time when, well, if you're not playing, you don't get paid.
- [19:25]
Narrator
In fact, unknown to the fans, the day before the game, Cap Anson had played his hand. He sent a telegram to the manager of the Little Giants. He said his team would refuse to take the field If Stovey and Walker were present, the manager had a choice to make. As the crowds waited in the heat for the game to begin, an announcement was made. Stovey wouldn't be playing today and a flimsy excuse was given. Walker didn't play either, but no announcement explained why. Clearly, Cap got his way. The very same day as the Little Giants in white stockings were scheduled to play, there was a meeting held by the International League executives. This was the league the Little Giants played in an important minor league like organization. By astonishing coincidence or design, while the fans waited in the stands to hear whether Stovey and Walker would play, the league voted to ban all future contracts with black players. Soon, major and minor league teams stopped signing or renewing black players. Some teams were so reluctant to let their black players go that they described them publicly as Cuban or Native American. A light skinned player called Charlie Grant was rechristened Chief Tokohama in an attempt by the Orioles manager to have him in their major league lineup. But he was quickly discovered and sent back to play on a black team. Leslie Heaphy says people often point to that moment with Cap Anson as the moment the color line was drawn. But really this was all just a sign of the times.
- [21:21]
Leslie Heaphy
And in history, timing is very important, as I tell my students all the time, because during Reconstruction, right, this country attempted to try to make things, see things improve, right? We see African Americans elected to Congress, all kinds of things. But with the ending of reconstruction in 1877, all of that progress starts to disappear. If you're the wrong color, you don't get to play.
- [21:45]
Narrator
We're going to hear this idea a lot in the series that baseball is the reflection of what's happening around it. We can say it about the late 1800s and we can say it today, but every once in a while there are these moments where baseball isn't just a reflection of the society it exists in, but a reaction to it. That's the story of the founding of the Negro Leagues. To find out how that league began, the one that shaped Turkey's life and by extension mine, we'll have to talk about what happened a winter day in 1920 in Kansas City, Missouri.
- [22:34]
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- [23:09]
Narrator
In Kansas City, Missouri, there's a neighborhood centered around the cross street of 18th and Vine. If you've heard good things about barbecue and jazz in this city, it's probably from this area. There's a building there just off the main street. It's a big red brick rectangle that looks like an old school house or something. No frills, no fuss. Built for purpose 100 years ago, this building was a community YMCA run for and by the black community. And it also just so happened to be where a pivotal moment in Negro League history took place. The founding of the Negro National League in 1920. Just around the corner is the Negro League Baseball Museum, run by President Bob Kendrick. His museum actually has a small section dedicated to Grandpa Turkey, or as Bob calls him, the Gobbler.
- [24:08]
Bob Kendrick
Oh, the Gobbler. Oh, yeah. No, no. The Gobbler was one of the greatest of all time. And of course, he got his nickname Turkey because of the way that it he kind of stood at the plate, a little pigeon toed and he ran and his arm flapped like a turkey. But as I tell people all the time, this Turkey could flat out fly.
- [24:27]
Narrator
So as you may have noticed, this is another version of the origin story of Turkey's nickname. Maybe it was because he was quiet and rarely clarified for people. Maybe it's all part of the mythical qualities of these great players that make them hard to pin down in the real world. In any case, Bob's not wrong. Turkey's stance at the plate was so awkward, it made him stand out. Now, the meeting in Kansas City in 1920 was in February. It was a cold day with the winds whipping in from the plains. But the weather had to be endured, Bob says, because what happened here was a long time coming.
- [25:10]
Bob Kendrick
The Negro Leagues were born out of the ashes of American segregation, an era in this country when black and brown athletes were denied an opportunity to play major league baseball. So they came together and they created a league of their own. This organized effort was really the first to succeed because there were others who had attempted, but they had failed.
- [25:33]
Narrator
Between Cap Anson's Big Stand in 1887 and this winter day in 1920, it wasn't like black baseball wasn't being played, but it had been limited. It couldn't draw the Resources the white major leagues could. The blossoming white major leagues had created a system of mutual support that helped them weather the bad times and excel in the good. In 1920, they elected their first commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who arbitrated disputes between owners and kept baseball's reputation squeaky clean. Black baseball had none of those things. Each black team was independent. They were islands out on their own. Black teams would play each other and even occasionally, their white counterparts, but their profits would be drained by just keeping their heads above water, always moving on, always looking for the next profitable game. It wasn't a reliable income. And all the prestige of the game, the trophies, the acclaim, it belonged to the majors out of reach, behind the barrier the white leagues had built and maintained. Setting up a black lead would be difficult. All the team owners would have to agree on how it would work, and it would be a cultural shift. The teams would have to go from the mindset of just surviving to thriving, being able to build something from scratch, and that could be daunting. Leslie Heaphy, again, if you're going to.
- [27:09]
Leslie Heaphy
Have a league, for example, where do you play? One of the problems for a lot of black teams was they didn't have their own stadiums. And so if you're going to have a league, how do you set that up when you don't have stadiums to play in?
- [27:22]
Narrator
Black teams often ended up paying for the privilege of borrowing white team stadiums and paid big chunks of their profits to white booking agents.
- [27:30]
Leslie Heaphy
If you're going to have try to establish a league, you have to have some kind of employees. You have to have some kind of structure. Most black teams didn't have any money. Barely, you know, you pay your payroll, but do you have extra to pay for a commissioner? Do you have extra to pay membership into a league? Is it really worth it? I would argue that the real missing piece was the right person to be able to convince people that this was a good idea, that this was a good investment, that it could work.
- [28:00]
Narrator
This person who can unite the teams, it would have to be someone special, someone with vision.
- [28:10]
Leslie Heaphy
So the someone with vision he literally is referred to as the father of the negro leagues is Andrew Rube Foster.
- [28:18]
Narrator
Andrew Foster, known by his nickname Rube, was born in Texas just after the end of reconstruction and long before Foster became the father of black baseball. There were moments that seemed to define him, that molded him into what he would become. Rube had experience playing on both black and integrated teams early in his career. At 5 foot 9 and 230 pounds, he was big and powerful, yet somehow had lightning in his pitching arm. His official record is spotty, but he claimed to have won 51 out of 55 games in the pitching season, which I believe for the record, when the doors to white baseball were being closed one by one, white owners told him, man, if you were white, you'd be on my team in a heartbeat. In 1907, he moved north to Chicago to play for a black team. But before long, Rube went from being a player to a player manager. Then team owner.
- [29:29]
Bob Kendrick
Rube Foster had the juice. He had the know how. He was absolutely brilliant. I make the case that Rube Foster was the most brilliant baseball mind this sport has ever seen, and no one really knows who he is, but he was light years ahead of his time.
- [29:48]
Narrator
Rube sidestepped the problems that most black independent baseball teams had at that time. Nowhere to play, Rube made a deal to use the white Sox old stadium. Struggling to attract talent, Rube assembled an outstanding team made up of the best of his former colleagues. He taught his team a new style of play. Every batter had to perfect the bunt and run to sneak numbers on the board whenever they could. It was scrappy, but it worked. Opposing teams didn't seem to stand a chance against Rube. Chicago American Giants. And Rube wasn't shy. He made himself known both on and off the field. He was constantly getting into it with other team owners, with officials, anyone. But he wasn't a street fighter. He clapped back by writing columns in black newspapers, and he didn't bite his tongue. In one of these essays, he called a fellow team owner an ingrate. He called his old manager dirty and undermining and a detriment to the game of baseball. Rube didn't hesitate to speak his mind, but he had a bigger mission. He wanted to change everything about the way black baseball was being played. About a year before the league's founding, he began writing a series of essays in the Chicago Defender.
- [31:12]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
And he just went on this very lengthy explanation, if you will, of things that were wrong with black baseball. And he explained how organizing as a league would benefit everyone involved.
- [31:29]
Narrator
Shakia Taylor.
- [31:30]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Again, he wrote, for anything to be successful, we must do it as a whole. Which meant he was urging the owners of that time to come together to save their clubs. He even urged the owners to put their issues with each other to the side, that this was, you know, for the greater good of the game, but also for their bank accounts, for their pockets. You make more money as a unit.
- [31:59]
Narrator
What they needed, argued Rube. Was consistency security. No more surviving on scraps. They could create a system that secured their future existence, but they needed to do it together. Apart from the hypocrisy of Rube urging people to waste less time on pettiness, the essays had a point, and their timing seemed to be intentional.
- [32:26]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
I would be willing to guess he was affected a lot by what was happening around him because he was affected by the intellectuals of his time who were talking about the advancement of black people. And so I can only imagine if those things affected him, that so would being in Chicago in 1919.
- [32:57]
Narrator
In the summer of 1919, a color line crossed not in baseball, but at the shoreline of Lake Michigan. In Chicago, the segregated swimming beaches were packed with people cooling off in the scorching summer heat wave. On the white beach, someone cried out. A raft holding some black teenagers had accidentally crossed the invisible line between the swimming areas. Outraged, the white beachgoers threw rocks at the black teenage boys. One, Eugene Williams, was hit and drowned. When the stone throwers were not arrested, anger and confusion spilled over into a race riot. It began 13 days of violence and destruction in the city called the Red Summer that left dozens dead, hundreds injured, and a thousand black families homeless. We'll never know exactly what Rupe thought when he saw what was happening to his city, but events like that, the ones that bring out the very worst in us, they're bound to have consequences.
- [34:08]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
I think in order to make the decision of, if they won't let us, we'll make our own, you have to have experienced something, you had to have seen something, you know? And the desire to want more for black baseball, I definitely think is rooted in witnessing and being a part of that era.
- [34:32]
Narrator
Enough was enough. After years of writing essays to unify black baseball, it was only six months after Chicago's Red Summer that Rube Foster called a meeting with seven other team owners at the YMCA in Kansas City in February 1920. They'd all made the journey to see what he had to say from as far away as Detroit to as close as the other side of Kansas City.
- [34:57]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
He showed up with an official charter for the Negro National League already in hand. This was someone who was determined. He knew that he was gonna get what he wanted. He had already convinced them to show up to a meeting in Kansas City, Missouri. And I think, if I had to guess, he just knew, there's no way they're going to come all the way here and walk away empty handed.
- [35:23]
Narrator
These team owners have been bitter rivals. Bob Kendrick says that Rube had some persuading to do.
- [35:30]
Bob Kendrick
When Rube Foster organized the Negro Leagues in 1920, not only was he a master salesman, he had to convince the other owners because Rube had either booking rights or ownership of four of the original eight Negro league franchises that formed the Negro National League in 1920.
- [35:46]
Narrator
With booking rights, Rube had a lot of power. He could decide who got to play who and where. Decisions like that were where the money was. Rube could, for example, decide to play all of his Chicago American Giants games on a Friday night, meaning that he could draw the biggest crowd. From an outsider's perspective, it looked like the league would be stacked in Rube's favor. A league of his own personal projects. During the Kansas City meeting, the team owners raised their concerns. Rube relented. He agreed to give up ownership of three of his four teams as long as he got 5% of what was collected at the entrance gate.
- [36:30]
Bob Kendrick
Of course, well, some upward 400,000 people attended Negro League games in his inaugural season. Now, I'm a country boy from Georgia. I ain't that great at man, but if you getting 5% of that 400,000, you're doing pretty doggone good.
- [36:45]
Narrator
Somehow, Rube persuaded the other team owners that this unified black baseball league was how they could protect themselves, how they could thrive. After two days of negotiations, Rube left the YMCA with the same document he arrived with. Now it had eight signatures at the bottom.
- [37:04]
Leslie Heaphy
And when Foster created the league, what a lot of people don't realize was he never intended it and thought that it was a permanent thing. He wanted to create this league to give opportunity to show what was possible and hope that it would only last until Major League Baseball was willing to take in, in his view, entire teams.
- [37:29]
Narrator
Sadly, we know that Rube was mistaken on that score. We're going to get to this in future episodes, but let me give you a spoiler. The major leagues did not see the potential in the Negro leagues that Rube did. No matter their successes, the league and its players would always be categorized as lesser than, right up to today. On that Winter's Day in 1920, Rube couldn't have known exactly what the future had in store. But as he and the other team owners left the Kansas City ymca, they had agreed on more than just founding a league. They had also chosen their league president, Rube Foster. So it was Rube's job to share their motto, A phrase borrowed from Frederick Douglass. We are the ship, all else the sea. We are the only thing that matters. We are rising above the choppy waters. We are bound together to keep ourselves afloat. And this is where my story and Rube's meet. Because little did my grandfather know, Rube Foster's ship was about to find him. In early 1923, 21 year old Turkey took an offer to travel north. The Detroit Stars had seen him play in the south and offered him a place on their roster. The Stars were relatively new. They'd been founded in 1919 by Tenney Blount and his business partner, an ex player turned manager by the name of Rube Foster. Turkey's journey had Rube's fingerprints all over it. Without Rube, there would be no Stars. Without the Stars, there would be no team for Grandpa Turkey to join in Detroit. Without the league, there wouldn't be the structure for Turkey's career to flourish.
- [39:39]
Leslie Heaphy
Detroit becomes his, as he said, his home away from home. And you know, his rookie season in 1923, he sort of set the tone for what was going to happen. You know, it's kind of like watching a major league in the major league as a rookie coming in today, and you can immediately tell this is going to be somebody. They make a splash right from the start. Turkey's first season with the Detroit Stars by all accounts was unbelievable. If you look up pictures of Turkey, if people want to, he says himself that the highest he probably ever weighed was 175, but most of the time it was in the 160s. He's 6ft tall. He's a skinny, scrawny and yet moonshot home runs. He's credited in the 1920s, along with mule subtles, as being the two most prominent home run hitters. And Mule Subtles is enormous. Mule looks like he could crush Turkey with one hand, right? He just does. And what became apparent was not only could he hit and hit for power, he also could field, and he was fast.
- [40:48]
Narrator
Turkey hit 18 home runs in his rookie year and helped push the Stars to second place in the league.
- [40:54]
Joyce Stearns Thompson
When you hear stories like that, you want to actually see what they did, you know, Cause you just, you can imagine. But imagination is fine. But I would just love see dad.
- [41:06]
Narrator
In action because my grandfather was quiet. His kids didn't even know he was a star until they were almost grown. My mom and aunt, they never saw their dad play.
- [41:19]
Rosalind Stearns Brown
My father didn't brag. I tell people that all the time. He didn't brag.
- [41:22]
Leslie Heaphy
He just didn't.
- [41:23]
Rosalind Stearns Brown
You know, he'd talk about games and people and things that happened during the game, and that was interesting to hear him. But no, he wasn't the word braggadocious. He didn't do that. I always tell people that he and the Negro Leaguers were what I consider. You hear the word goat, but I added an S to it. Goats, the greatest of all time. Superstars.
- [41:45]
Narrator
Mom and Auntie Roz were born after he retired. And there's no footage of his games. There's no footage of any of the Negro Leaguers of his era. And the people who saw them play firsthand are in their 90s or above. And there's precious few of them left to tell these stories. Here's Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
- [42:09]
Bob Kendrick
I go back to something that my late mother would say. You don't know what you don't know. And honestly, I don't think there was ever a time that people didn't want to know about the history of the Negro Leagues. They just simply had no way to know about the history of the Negro Leagues. This is not in the pages of American history books. And so countless generations of us went through our own formal educations without knowing one of the most significant chapters not in baseball history, but in American history.
- [42:39]
Narrator
Their stories were hidden. It was as though after the major Leagues integrated in 1947, it was better for everyone to keep moving forward, to not talk about things that made some feel uncomfortable. So the stories of the Negro Leaguers became an oral history passed from family member to family member. It's no accident that I heard a lot of my grandfather's story from my grandmother. But when my grandmother passed, I wondered if the story she carried would melt away. When will be the proper time and place to have an honest conversation about our past? Now, 100 years after Rube Foster proclaimed all else the sea, there's a new opportunity for that conversation. The move long overdue.
- [43:28]
Leslie Heaphy
The baseball record books about to be forever changed. With spring training just around the corner, we're taking a closer look at major change by Major League Baseball, which announces.
- [43:37]
T-Mobile Representative
It'Ll start arguments which is what baseball is all about.
- [43:40]
Narrator
That is one way to put it. There was a big announcement by Major League Baseball in 2020 that could change the way Turkey's story is told. And not just Turkey, all of the Negro Leaguers. It could quite literally rewrite American history. We are going to get to that announcement and what's happened since. But first we have to understand the journey that led us there. In this season of Reclaim, we'll explore how Negro League players search to find their place at home and abroad.
- [44:20]
Bob Kendrick
One of the players on that team.
- [44:22]
Narrator
Failed to say sir to an officer.
- [44:24]
Joyce Stearns Thompson
And sure enough, they were beating up pretty badly.
- [44:28]
Narrator
El Presidente didn't bring you down here to lose. El Presidente brought you down here to win. Also, what changed after Jackie Robinson broke the color line and what didn't?
- [44:41]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
He didn't want to be the person to integrate a team because why would he?
- [44:46]
Narrator
Why?
- [44:47]
Vanessa Ivey Rose
Why would anyone willingly put themselves in a position to deal with, you know, threats of violence and name calling when you just want to play a game?
- [44:58]
Bob Kendrick
Last year's World Series, not one player on both teams was a native born African American player. Not one.
- [45:15]
Narrator
Reclaimed the Forgotten League is an original production of ABC Audio hosted by me, Vanessa Ivey Rose. This episode was written by Madeline Wood. The series was produced by Madeline Wood, Cameron Chertavian, IRU Akpanobe, Camille Peterson and Amira Williams. Our senior producers on this project were Suzy Liu and Lakia Brown. Music and scoring by Evan Viola. A big shout out to our ABC Audio team. Liz Alessi, Josh Cohan, Ariel Chester, Sasha Aslanian, Marwa Mawaki, Audrey Mostek and Erin Farrer. Special thanks to Chris Donovan, Rick Klein, Eric Fayel, Anthony Fanek, Mara Bush and of course my mom, Joyce Stearns Thompson and my aunt, Rosalind Stearns Brown. Laura Mayer is our executive producer.
- [46:22]
T-Mobile Representative
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