John McGraw and the Negro Leagues

By David Marasco

"The other day Willie Mays hit his five hundred and twenty-second home run. He has gone past me, and he's pushing, and I say to him 'go get'em Willie.' Baseball gives every American boy a chance to excel. Not just to be as good as anybody else, but to be better. This is the nature of man and the name of the game. I hope some day Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro players who are not here only because they weren't given the chance." - Ted Williams, Hall of Fame acceptance speech, 1966.

Sooner or later the doors to Cooperstown would have swung open to the legends of the Negro Leagues. The changes in American society that took place in the 1950's and 60's combined with with rise in interest in black culture by people of all colors meant that the likes of Paige and Gibson would not have forever stood on the outside looking in. Yet undoubtably one of the reasons that we can claim sooner rather than later is because Ted Williams went to bat for these men in 1966. The history of the Negro Leagues often focusses on the Cap Ansons of the world. Without argument, the landscape of baseball and race has had many ugly characters. But to discuss only the villains would be to turn a blind eye to many good men. Men like DIzzy Dean and Bob Feller travelled uncountable miles with Negro Leaguers on popular barnstorming tours. Jimmie Foxx and the Waner brothers would often add their names to the playbill of talent that would criss-cross the nation, putting money in their pockets and the Negro Leaguer's pockets. Many many players were willing to look past race and see only baseball players, worthy opponents who played the same game on different terms. Yet from the early parts of this century one name seems to loom out of the darkness like no other. That name is John McGraw.

It really shouldn't come as a surprise that McGraw's imprint is found here. John McGraw was almost synonymous with baseball for the first thirty years of the 1900's. Over that span he won ten pennants and almost never finished in the second division. The Giants have more players in the Hall of Fame than any other franchise, a fact based mainly on the weight of McGraw's excellent teams.

McGraw was a man ahead of his time. He tried to sneak a man past baseball's Color Barrier nearly fifty years before Branch Rickey. In 1901 as a manager of the old Baltimore Oriole McGraw brought second baseman Charlie Grant to training camp. Claiming that Grant was actually "Chief Tokohama," a Native American, McGraw hoped to use Grant's talents in the coming year's pennant chase. The problem with this was that Grant was by no means a Native American. He had played the previous year for the Columbia Giants, a Negro Leagues outfit. Charles Comiskey caught wind of this and the hammer came down. That season Charlie Grant again played for the Columbia Giants.

As the manager of the New York Giants McGraw arranged many exhibitions between his squad and Negro League teams. This would provide a share of the gate for the Negro Leaguers, but perhaps just as important, it would gave them a good deal of prestige. This was especially true when they would beat the Giants, something that happened on a fairly common basis. It was one thing when Joe Williams dominated another Negro League team, but when he no-hit the Giants with 20 strikeouts in ten innings, that turned people's heads. A lot of the data we use for comparisons between major leaguers and black teams before the 1920's comes from these Giant games.

McGraw was a friend to the Negro Leagues even when his prospects for making money or winning the pennant were not involved. He attended Negro League games when he had the chance. From time to time you'll find accounts of Negro League games in the papers that mention that John McGraw was in the stands taking in the goings on. Maybe he just liked watching baseball at a high level, or perhaps he was trying to pick up a thing or two.

As it now seems, one of those tricks that McGraw was supposed to have imported from the Negro Leagues wasn't. According to legend Christy Mathewson learned his famous "Fadeaway" pitch from Rube Foster when McGraw brought in the Negro League Renaissence Man as an unofficial pitching coach. The current thinking holds that this is just a myth. Another legend that may or may not be true is that when McGraw died his wife found a list amongst his possesions - the list was made up of Negro Leaguers that McGraw had wanted to sign. Whether or not these stories are true, they do point towards an attitude held in the Negro Leagues towards McGraw. He was seen as a man who could hire Rube Foster, who would contemplate putting together a team of forbidden fruit. From a certain time period, it seems as if every Negro Leaguer was worth several tens of thousands dollars. Always this market value is justified by "according to John McGraw." One forms the picture of McGraw as a later-day Johnny Appleseed, travelling the country assigning a dollar value to black talent.

John McGraw was a man who could see past the prejudices of his day. At times one is tempted to condemn the people who instead simply stood by. It is important to remember that these men and women lived in a very different world that ours. As an example, look to an account of a Sam Crawford homerun on a 1913 barnstorming contest: "Wahoo Sam slammed the ball over the rightfield fence, far over the heads of the crowds, the automobiles, and the darkies." Today the proper thing to do would be to castigate the writer for using an unthinkable racial slur. But look at the context. Not only were the blacks not allowed in the stadium, they were also banned from the parking lot. Cars had a better view of the game than they did. That was the way things worked in those times, and one needs to remember that context when judging the attitudes of the players of that era. The writer who used the offensive phrase? Our good friend John McGraw.