Whites, Blacks, and the Homestead Grays

My cousin, John Charles, loved baseball as much as I did, and during the ’50s, we were both Pittsburgh Pirates fans. But since they lost so much and were always in the cellar of the National League, we both wavered in our loyalty. I followed the Cleveland Indians whose battles with the Yankees for the American League pennant made baseball much more interesting for me. John Charles lived outside of Pittsburgh in Duquesne, and rooted for the Homestead Grays, a team I never heard of.

Once when our families got together, John Charles took me on an electric streetcar to see the Grays play the Kansas City Monarchs. On the way, he said some of the players we were going to see were as good as major leaguers, and although it seemed incredible to me, he thought the Grays could beat the Pirates. He said the Grays’ catcher, Josh Gibson, could hit a ball further than the Pirates’ Ralph Kiner, who led the National League in home runs the year before. I just rolled my eyes. He also said Gibson was better than Roy Campanella. I never heard of Josh Gibson, but I sure knew of Kiner and Campanella. The comparison of the catchers was the final straw for me. No one was better than Campanella. From then on, I didn’t believe anything he said about the Grays and the Pirates; it seemed like hometown bragging. I found out much later when I was in my twenties that Gibson did play for the Grays, but not the year when we were there. I think we saw Josh Gibson Jr., the son, not the father.

When we got to the field, I was disappointed. I expected to see a much nicer ball diamond and park. One of my friends had actually gone to Forbes Field, and he described the grass as being perfect, the greenest he and his father had ever seen. He also said Forbes Field had three tiers of seats, constructed of steel girders, and were taller than any building in Clymer, our hometown, or the County Courthouse in Indiana, Pa., the tallest building in our county. Forbes Field also had a scoreboard that showed every major league game in progress, inning by inning. The outfield was so large and the fence so far away, there was a bronze statue of Honus Wagner in right-center field. He told me the seats had backs and arms, and ushers took you to them, and they actually wiped them off for you before you sat down.

This field looked dinky, just a little bigger than the ball field I played on. It didn’t look like anyplace a team that could beat the Pirates would play. The only difference I could see between this field and ours was this one had an entrance gate located behind home plate where you had to pay to get in. The seats were the same bleacher-type wooden planks bolted onto a metal skeleton framework that were exactly like those in Clymer. They didn’t have arms or backs, and there weren’t any ushers, either.

Even though seeing the Grays was not the same as watching the Pirates, still it was exciting for me. John Charles’s enthusiasm helped make it so. When we got to our seats, we sat on the red weathered numbers that matched our tickets, and watched infield practice. I noticed the players for the Grays were all African Americans. When I looked into the opposite dugout, the Monarchs were all Black, also. I wondered where were the white players? But I didn’t ask anyone.

The Grays and Monarchs hustled and chattered incessantly like birds. They whipped the ball around the infield with sharp flicks and jabbered to each other, even taunting the opposition with good-natured laughter and hooting sounds that came from somewhere deep inside their ribcages. The African American fans sitting near us would also laugh at what was being said, and bump each other with their elbows, and although John Charles and I joined in the fun, I couldn’t understand what...