Last week we started our journey through the long, slow process that spread integration from the Brooklyn Dodgers throughout the league with that first year, 1947.
That year obviously ended with Jackie Robinson winning the first ever Rookie of the Year Award, and his team going all the way to Game 7 of the World Series. But only two other teams integrated over the course of that season, and one of those two cut its Black players within a month.
The next three years would not get much easier.
1948
Remarkably, given Robinson’s success in 1947, not a single new team integrated in 1948. Not a single owner looked at what the Dodgers accomplished with Robinson and thought, “Hmm, maybe our team could benefit from this new huge pool of talent.” The mixed record of the other Black players to debut in 1947 was an easy excuse. People kept telling themselves that Robinson’s performance wasn’t replicable.
But a few things happened in 1948 to speed the pace of desegregation. The first was that, as mentioned in last week’s post, Larry Doby finally got a chance to play regularly for Cleveland, and quickly emerged as an elite center fielder. Now suddenly Robinson wasn’t the only star Black player in the league. Robinson and Doby would be joined by Roy Campanella, who made his debut in April of 1948 and became Brooklyn’s regular catcher in July—around the same time Satchel Paige made his first appearance for Cleveland.
That made four great Black players in the MLB by the end of the season, including two members of the Indians team that won the World Series. Not to mention that Robinson himself was even better in 1948, getting more extra base hits and moving to his natural position, at second base, where he was a better fielder. His 1947 season could no longer be dismissed as a fluke or a gimmick.
The other thing that happened in 1948 was that the Negro National League folded. Most of its teams simply joined the Negro American League (NAL), which would hang around until 1962, but people could see the writing on the wall. Both the NAL and the NNL had been in talks with the MLB about being recognized as Triple AAA leagues since 1945, but by 1948 those talks had stalled, and attendance was down. Throughout 1948, Black newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier ran stories with headlines like “Don’t Turn Your Back on the Negro Leagues,” imploring Black fans to support the Negro league teams that had been home to Black stars for decades. But with the future of Negro league baseball uncertain, it was clear to a new crop of talent that the future of Black baseball was in the MLB.
1949
July 8th: Hank Thompson and Monte Irvin of the New York Giants
After being released by the St. Louis Browns in 1947, as we detailed last week, Thompson went back to the Kansas City Monarchs and tore the cover off the ball. In 1948, he slashed .344/.437/.558 in the NAL. Meanwhile, that same year the New York Giants made an odd midseason deal to hire manager Leo Durocher away from their crosstown rival Brooklyn Dodgers. Durocher was tasked with turning around a Giants team that had finished above fourth place only once in the last decade, and he quickly announced, “We gotta get rid of most of these guys. Back up the truck. I'm gonna build my kind of team.”
Durocher, of course, had been the Dodgers’ manager in the run up to Robinson’s debut (although he was suspended for the 1947 season for associating with gamblers) and he had been an important figure in silencing any doubt within the team about Robinson’s right to play. Durocher was no civil rights advocate, but he was colorblind in his pursuit of talent. As such, in his first offseason with the Giants, the team signed Thompson, Irvin, and pitcher Ford Smith to minor league deals.
Irvin and Thompson were called up in July for a series in Brooklyn. The starting pitcher for the Dodgers in their first game was, fittingly, Don Newcombe. Newcombe was in the middle of the first great season for a Black pitcher in the MLB. He would win the Rookie of the Year that year and, four days after this, pitch in the All-Star Game.
Thompson led off against Newcombe and flew out to third base. He didn’t get a hit that day, but a walk he drew in the fifth sparked a three-run rally that tied the game and chased Newcombe. The Dodgers took the lead back in the sixth, and in the eighth, Monte Irvin entered the game as a pinch-hitter. Irvin was older than Thompson, and had been a longtime star in the Negro Leagues, but the Giants didn’t really have a spot for him. They used him as a utility guy; he played some games at first, some at third, and some in the outfield. Often, he was used as a pinch-hitter—the same way Larry Doby had been used in 1947—which was not a role he was comfortable with, having spent a decade as one of the best hitters in the Negro leagues. He wasn’t used to coming off the bench, and would not get a hit in any of his 14 pinch-hit appearances.
He would, however, draw four walks, and one came in that very first game. This brought Hank Thompson up with two runners on and nobody out. He bunted back to pitcher Erv Palica who turned around and threw to second. Irvin was an exceptional athlete, but even in his prime he wasn’t known for his speed. And by now he was 30, and by his own admission, “I’m not even half the ballplayer I was then”—the throw was in time and he was out at second. The tying run was thrown out at home on the next play, and the rally ended. The Giants lost 4-3.
But both Thompson and Irvin would become key contributors for the Giants. Thompson immediately became the team’s starting second baseman, and by the end of the year was one of its best hitters. In 1950, he moved to third to make room for Eddie Stanky, and received MVP votes. It took Irvin a little while to adjust to his new role, but by 1950 he was also putting up big numbers. In 1951, when the Giants had their historic, pennant-winning season, Irvin led the team in WAR and finished 3rd in MVP voting. By then, the Giants had become one of the most integrated teams in baseball, that April adding catcher Ray Noble and infielder Artie Wilson to Thompson and Irvin, which gave them four of the first 15 Black players in the MLB. Then, in May of 1951, they called up the seventeenth: some kid named Willie Mays.
1950
April 18th: Sam Jethroe of the Boston Braves
I don’t think I’m spoiling this series for many people when I say that the last MLB team to integrate was the Boston Red Sox, who didn’t play a Black player until 1959. It’s a pretty famous stain on the franchise’s legacy, and one that often gets attributed to the racism of Boston. The city no doubt has a checkered history of racial strife… but its OTHER baseball team integrated almost a full decade earlier, and did so without much turmoil.
In the years after World War II, thanks to Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain, the Boston Braves emerged as contenders after a decade of mediocrity, even making the World Series in 1948. But then in 1949, they regressed, in part because of a less productive outfield: An injury to Jeff Heath just days before the World Series in ’48 more or less ended his career, and Tommy Holmes’ batting average fell more than 50 points. The other thing the team lacked was speed. Throughout the 1940s, only one player had stolen more than 20 bases in a season for Boston.
Enter Sam Jethroe. Jethroe had been a star center fielder for the Cleveland Buckeyes in the Negro National League, and he was known as “The Jet.” Don Newcombe called him the fastest human being he’d ever seen. Jethroe had actually come close to breaking the color barrier a couple of times: In 1945, he joined Jackie Robinson and Marvin Williams for a tryout with the Boston Red Sox—but the tryout turned out to be a sham. Then Jethroe interviewed with Branch Rickey before Rickey ultimately went with Robinson.
The Dodgers eventually did sign Jethroe from the Buckeyes in 1948, and he played two seasons in their minor league system. But Brooklyn already had Duke Snider in center field, so before the 1950 season, Jethroe was traded to Boston, where the Braves desperately needed a player like him.
The press in Boston was somewhat hostile to Jethroe before the 1950 season. They rarely mentioned his race, but excoriated his defense in spring training. One headline declared him a “flop” before the season even started, saying he didn’t have a “major league arm.” Insisting a Black player’s skills weren’t “major league” enough was a common dog whistle for the era, but even Black newspapers acknowledged that Jethroe was struggling that spring.
Once the season started, though, Jethroe silenced his doubters. On Opening Day, he hit a go-ahead single in the fifth and homered in the eighth. By the end of April he was slashing .320/.414/.540. His hitting would cool off, but by then he became he force on the basepaths. He stole only one base April and four in May, but then swiped 14 in June, and finished the year with a league-leading 35 steals. On top of his on-field success, Jethroe also won over the press and the fans. As his spring play suggested, his defense was subpar—he was 33 by then, after all—but the media highlighted his speed and effort in the outfield.
Boston’s Black population was negligible at the time (just 5% of the city, according to the 1950 Census), but Jethroe would always tell reporters that he never had a problem with Boston fans, despite the city’s reputation. Indeed, the organization hosted a “Sam Jethroe Night” that September, which drew more fans than all but one of the team’s last 14 home games. The Mayor was on hand to award Jethroe several gifts. A few weeks later, after the season ended, Jethroe became the third Black player to win Rookie of the Year; to date, he is the oldest player to ever win the award.
Jethroe was even better in 1951, but he had surgery before the 1952 season, got off to a slow start, and never recovered. By then, the Braves had hired Charlie Grimm as their manager. “Charlie Grimm was a prejudiced man and he didn’t like me,” Jethroe would tell a reporter in the 1970s. And that was all it took. By then Jethroe was 35, and so one down year plus an unsympathetic manager was enough to end his MLB career. He stuck around in the minors for a few seasons and got a single at-bat with the Pirates in 1954, but that was it.
Years later, Jethroe would struggle financially. His house burned down and he needed to support his grandchildren. But he wasn’t eligible for an MLB pension because the league’s racism had kept him out of the league before he could earn enough service time to qualify. So he sued. The lawsuit was dismissed by a judge, but a spate of suits like it eventually pressured baseball to grant pensions to former Negro Leaguers, including Jethroe.
When we think about Jethroe, and players like him, we would do well to remember materialist grievances like this one. Despite playing in Boston, a city known for its poor treatment of Black athletes, Jethroe never complained about abuse from fans. He downplayed the indignities of staying in separate hotels. When we think about desegregation as a matter of winning over hearts and minds, these are things we remember. But Jethroe could handle that stuff. What’s harder to handle is that nearly 50 years later, after all those hearts and minds were presumably won over, Jethroe still had to sue to get his fucking pension…
1. Why did the American League integrate so much more slowly? Is there any particular reason, or is that just how it worked out?
2. It's wild that Branch Rickey picked Jackie Robinson over Jethroe apparently because Jethroe was too cool...