Earlier this week, in Part Three, we saw the story of Carlos Bernier, the forgotten outfielder who integrated the Pirates. Bernier’s story is a sad one for many reasons, but maybe the saddest is the frustrating uncertainty. It’s just not obvious what could have been. On some level, Bernier’s numbers are not that inspiring—he was a weak hitting outfielder his one year in the majors. So maybe he just wasn’t good enough, no matter the era or circumstances. Or maybe those numbers were only low because of the barriers he faced. We just don’t know.
If you look back on the players who integrated the big leagues, this kind of uncertainty is everywhere. At first glance, it would seem like the most tragic segregation stories are the obvious Could Have Beens: Monte Irvin, who played his whole prime in the Negro leagues before nearly win an MLB MVP in the twilight of his career clear; or Satchel Paige, possibly the greatest pitcher who ever lived but didn’t make his major league debut until his 40s. But in some ways, those are easier to take, because we can see clearly what segregation cost baseball. We know what we missed.
But to me, the sadder stories are the ones we don’t have clear answers for. Was Sam Jethroe really too old for the Braves in 1953? Were Dan Bankhead’s control issues really due to racism? Could Bernier have fixed his anger issues in a less racist era?
Two teams integrated in September of 1953, and both leave us with infuriatingly unclear questions about what could have been…
1953
September 13: Bob Trice of the Philadelphia Athletics
Over 16 months after the White Sox integrated, Bob Trice took the mound for the Athletics. For 50 years, the A’s had been run by Connie Mack, the “Grand Old Man of Baseball.” Mack (whose real name was Cornelius McGillicuddy, which has nothing to do with anything but is too good to leave out) was forward-thinking on a lot of baseball things, but not on integration. He showed no interest in signing Black players, even after Robinson broke the color barrier.
But by then Mack was already in his mid-80s, and by 1950 he was supposedly falling asleep in the dugout during games. He was finally pressured to step down at the end of that season, which set off a power struggle among his kids over control of his team. Two sons from Mack’s first marriage borrowed $1.75 million to buy out a third son, in one of baseball’s first leveraged buyouts. The team was thus saddled with debt, resorting to pinching pennies everywhere they could. At which point General Manager Arthur Ehlers went looking for some affordable prospects in the Provincial League.
The Provincial League was based in Quebec, and had existed in some form or another since 1935. By 1950, it had become an affiliated minor league for the MLB. Notably, the Provincial League was pretty integrated, in part because it was Canadian and in part because it hadn’t long been an affiliated league. In fact, Sam Bankhead became the first Black manager of a majority-white team in the Provincial League in 1951, over ten years before Major League Baseball would even have a Black coach.
You might remember Sam Bankhead’s brother Dan, from Part One of this series—he was the first Black pitcher in the MLB. The Bankheads were a prominent baseball family, and Sam had become something of a mentor to Bob Trice when they were both on the Homestead Grays. Bankhead brought Trice to Quebec, where he pitched and played the field. The next year, he focused on pitching, and excelled enough that he was one of four Black players from the Provincial League signed by Ehlers.
In 1953, Trice played for the A’s’ AAA team in Ottawa and had an amazing run, going 21-10 with a 3.10 ERA, including four shutouts. By September, Philadelphia basically had to call him up. His first two starts were not good—his ERA was 7.71 after them. But he threw a complete game in his final start of the year, and the A’s had high hopes for him in 1954. And he got off to a great start: His first four starts were all complete game victories, including a shutout against the defending world champion Yankees.
But then he fell apart. He couldn’t get through the fourth inning in any of his next four starts, and gave up at least four runs in 12 of his next 14 starts. Things were so bad that in July, Trice did something very strange: He asked to be sent back to Ottawa.
It’s important to be clear here: Trice had been bad, but not THAT bad. Yes, he was 7-8 with a 5.60 ERA by July—but Philadelphia was so bad that year that those numbers made him their second-best pitcher. Even though he only pitched half the season for the A’s, he finished the year second on the team in wins. Johnny Gray, who they called up to replace Trice, would go 3-12 with a 6.51 ERA. So it wasn’t like Trice was holding Philadelphia back.
Trice would tell the Philadelphia Inquirer:“It just wasn’t fun anymore; it was work. So I decided to ask to be sent back to Ottawa, where I had a lot of fun last year.” It’s certainly easy to believe that playing for the A’s that year wasn’t fun. They lost 103 games; the team was essentially bankrupt; the owners were constantly fighting with their family members. That offseason, the A’s would be sold and moved to Kansas City.
But when the player you called up to break the color barrier announces he would rather go back to Canada, it’s hard not think that the root causes are not about baseball…
Trice could not recapture the magic in Ottawa, and he never again started a game in the majors. He had four relief appearances in 1955, but spent most of the rest of his career in Mexico.
Meanwhile, the best player on the A’s for their first year in Kansas City was Vic Power (who you may remember for his brawl with fellow Black Puerto Rican Carlos Bernier, mentioned in Part Three; Power will pop up again later in our story as well). But the team never had a winning season in Kansas City, and relocated to Oakland in 1968, where they quickly put together a dynasty around guys like Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, and Bill North.
September 17: Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs
In March of 1950, the Cubs signed a young player from the Negro Leagues to be their first Black player and shortstop of the future. His name was Gene Baker. Baker had been a star shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs, and in 1950, he quickly made his way through the Cubs’ minor league system, spending most of the year in AAA, where he hit .280. But the Cubs didn’t call him up to the majors to start 1951… or 1952… or 1953. They just kept him in the Pacific Coast League, where he collected 640 hits, 48 home runs, and 228 walks over four seasons. During this time, the Cubs’ starting shortstop was Roy Smalley, who hit .232 over those four years.
Of course, in retrospect it looks like fate, because at the end of the 1953 season, the Cubs signed another shortstop from the Monarchs, Ernie Banks, and played him right away. In his first game, Banks went 0-3 with an error. In his second, he got his first hits and first RBIs. In his third, he hit his first home run; that was also the day Gene Baker finally made his MLB debut.
Baker ended up moving to second to make room for Banks. After all, Baker was good, but he was no Ernie Banks. Banks would quickly take the city by storm, becoming “Mr. Cub” and Chicago’s biggest sports icon, probably until Michael Jordan. He played in nearly every game, was happy and affable, and he hit more home runs than anybody had seen a shortstop hit before. He won two MVPs, even though the Cubs were terrible in the 1950s and winning MVP on a losing team was a rarity then. There is not much left to be said about the Hall of Fame career of Ernie Banks.
Instead, I keep thinking about Gene Baker, and the four years he spent in the minor leagues. Baker was 28 by the time the Cubs called him up, and likely past his prime. He’s not exactly a tragic figure—Baker had a decent career, making an All-Star Game in 1955 and winning the World Series with the Pirates in 1960. But those four years he spent in the PCL leave you wondering what could have been. It likely was not only racism that kept Baker down there. There’s always some other reason to hide behind, and Baker was not Banks—he wasn’t the kind of transcendent talent who you HAD to put on the major league roster. But it’s a reminder of just how many steps came between “integration” and Black players actually playing in Major League Baseball, and how many Could Have Been stories were lost in those steps.