The Sporkball Journals

Meet Joe Black

June 15th, 2008

June 15, 2008 — If you did NOT think Brad Pitt, then I will venture you are either a Baby Boomer or baseball nut, or perhaps both. In that case, you might recall Game #1 of the 1952 World Series—Brooklyn Dodgers versus New York Yankees (who else?). Sadly, I arrived on this planet just a few years too late to watch the first African-American pitcher to win a World Series game. His name? Joe Black.

In fact, I didn’t even know who Joe Black was (the real one) until decades later. I had just discovered the joys of baseball. Being a woman of color, my interest quickly turned to the before-and-after history of integrated baseball. My personal library quickly swelled with volumes about the Negro Leagues along with the beginnings of integrated MLB, circa the years 0-10 A.J. (After Jackie).

Sometime during that maiden summer, I discovered The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn. And I fell in love—deeply, passionately—with baseball. Kahn did something unusual for a baseball book of the time; he talked about the human beings under the flannels. And that’s how I “met” Joe Black.

As I read about Black’s high-school days, memories came flooding back of my own childhood. I was one of a handful of minority kids in a conservative, predominantly blue-collar, historically anti-Jap neighborhood. I actually got a bit nauseous reading about when Black first felt the shock of cold, hard reality being shoved right into his face.

[All block quotes from “Black is What You Make It,” The Boys of Summer, Roger Kahn, 1971]

“How come you sign up all these guys and don’t sign me?”

The scout blinked. “Colored guys don’t play baseball.”

“What? You crazy? You’ve seen me playing for three years.”

“I mean Organized Baseball.”

“This is organized. We got a coach and uniforms.”

“I mean there’s no colored in the Big Leagues.”

That night he took his scrapbook from a drawer and studied it. Every face, Gehrig, Ott, Waner, Derringer, the others, all were white. Without tears, Joe began to shred the book in his big hands. But before his did, he carefully clipped a picture of Hank Greenberg, crashing out a home run. He could not bear both, to have the dream dead and to have nothing, nothing at all to show from the scrapbook of his boyhood.

Kahn did something else unusual for a baseball book; he told the story of what happens to ballplayers after they stopped playing. Certainly, I admired what Black did on the field—pitching 3 out of 7 World Series games before the age of relievers and closers, winning World Series Game 1, getting named NL Rookie of the Year. His MLB career, however, was a short one. After 1952, Manager Charlie Dressen decided Black needed more than two pitches and started fiddling with his mechanics. In the process, Black lost control of his fastball and curve. Five years after realizing his dream of being a major leaguer, he was out. Just like that.

Black was a fascinating man. And it was what he did after baseball that made him unforgettable for yours truly. Thoughtful and easygoing, he spoke about race relations with the same measured confidence he had as elite athlete. He was an usher at the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was Vice President of Special Markets (aka ethnic and cultural minorities) for the Greyhound Corporation at a time when African-Americans were still struggling to find their voices in society as a whole, much less acceptance in the ruling class of white, corporate executives. He handled executive life like he handled Game #1 of the World Series, with incredible grace under the pressure of being the “lone raisin in a pan of milk.”

Looking for a home to buy for his growing family, Black made an appointment with a R.E. agent. When he showed up for the meeting, he was turned away by the R.E. agent, who was suddenly and literally faced with the “problem” of a black family moving into an upscale New Jersey suburb. Joe’s response?

“Something like that happens to you every day in your life if you’re black.”

No angry diatribes about the social injustice or stickin’ to the man. Instead, he would visit schools and talk to inner-city parents and kids, using his own black experience to make his point.

“This reawakening of racial pride,” he tells black adults, “is a fine thing. African styles in clothing, jewelry and hairdos are important. But what’s more important is what we do to solve community problems. The future is the young; it’s in the schools. A new hairdo solves no problems, but wearing the new hairdo to PTA meetings is something else. That’s feeling racial identity and trying to make the ghetto school a better place. But if you had to pick one to skip, skip the hairdo. Make the PTA.”

“Our efforts have to be more positive than shouting, ‘Sock it to him, Soul Brother,’ or, ‘We are victims of a racist society,’ or, ‘Honkey!’ . . .By now some of you may be saying I’m a Tom, a window-dressing Negro. But I learned two things early. A minority cannot defeat a majority in physical combat and you’ve got to let some things roll off your back. Because my name is Joe Black, whites called me ‘Old Black Joe.’ After a few years of scuffling, I still hadn’t silenced all of them and throwing all of those punches made me a weary young man. Call me ‘Old Black Joe’ today and you agitate nobody but yourself.”

The chapter ends with a simple exchange between Black and Kahn that distills everything into one poem.

At lunch, [Black] handed [Kahn] a sheet of paper, “This is part of my philosophy,” [Black] said. “And by the way, notice the use of English vocabulary.”

[Kahn] read:		blackball,
		black book,
		black eye,
		black Friday,
		black hand,
		black heart,
		blackjack,
		black magic,
		blackmail,
		black market,
		black maria,
		black mark,
	aaaaaaaaalittlei	black sambo.
		i
		white lies.
		Black is Beautiful.
		aaa

“If that’s what you make it, Joe,” [Kahn] said.

“Well,” [Black] said. “You got the point.”

A few years later, I took a chance. I looked up the corporate address of Greyhound. I knew that Joe had since left; perhaps if the gods were smiling upon me, someone might know where he went. The proverbial note in a bottle sent, I promptly chalked up the experience to having at least tried.

Several months later, a letter showed up in my mailbox with a return address I didn’t recognize. I opened it up and read the following handwritten note:

Dear Ms. Tsuchiya:
As you know you purchased a mailing address from a collector. Greyhound Towers was demolished in 1989. A bundle of mail was forwarded to me recently and yours was included. My uniform number for the Baltimore Elite Giants was #. Thanks for the interest.

It was unsigned. A sad reminder of how a signature will be valued more than an act of kindness. I quickly penned an enthusiastic ‘thank you’ note and sent it to the address on the envelope. Just a couple years later, I learned of Joe Black’s death from cancer.

Thanks Joe. Because of you, I’ll keeping trying to make the best of it. Bye for now!

Entry Filed under: Game of Life, Major League Baseball