Transcripts For CSPAN3 Kansas City Monarchs 20140818

Especially over the same period of time. Number one. Number two, truman was famous for being a walker. Every day he took his constitutional. Referring to the speed of the pedestrians in the competitive races, i think, and its hard to tell, we have no photographs much less moving pictures. Its a shame. Still the age of line drawings and engravings. The way people described westins walk sounds similar to what race walking is today. They said he had a wobbly walk, that he moved his hips. He swung his hips. I have a feeling that he walked fast. Much like modern race walkers do. As far as truman, you mentioned harry truman. He walked, i forget what it was. What was his old military pace of 60 steps a second or 60 steps a minute or something . He was famous for his walks. Liked to walk around washington. There is a good story where the secret service hated it. The secret service had been protecting fdr, you know, for 12 years and really didnt have to worry about fdr going on long walks. So they overall were used to sitting around smoking all day. Harry bounds out of the office. Hes got to deposit his check at the bank. It took two minutes to catch up with him. The secret service decided they were going to fix the traffic lights so he would always hit the walk signal whenever he was out on one of his walks in washington. Of course, soon as he found that out, he was furious that they would do that. He kept walking. He returned to independence, missouri, and walked right up to the very end. He died in 73. I think he was 88 years old. Right up until the end, he was still walking. He was a Firm Believer in walking. In fact, he was probably7 enough, i think he remembers the 1884 elected. At least he would have heard from his parents or other older people about the great walking matches that had taken place about ten years before he was born. Okay. One more. How did timing work in terms of when athletes would take a nap. How would they keep track of that, that no one had advantage over them . How would timing work when athletes took a nap. You were on your own when you took a nap. You could sleep as long as you wanted, but you were sacrificing all that time on the track. In the arenas, especially the major arenas, i know in new york and chicago, there was a large clock on the wall. So everybody could kind of keep track about how long people slept, how long they were on the track, that sort of thing. Nobody really kept statistics on exactly how long somebody was on the track or exactly how long somebody slept. If you took a nap, you were really taking your chances because the rest of the field could just continue walking. Its interesting. The idea of timing and timing to the second and minute. You cant really trust all the times you hear sometimes, where somebody would say, oh, i walked 500 miles in five days, 14 hours and 23 minutes. Well, how good was the clock . They didnt have quartz timing or anything. A lot of that in the book i kind of try to take with a grain of salt when people say, oh, he walked 100 miles in 19 hours. Its not always easy to be sure. Yes . [ question inaudible ] how did they eat . They ate while they walked. They were allowed to have an attendant who would help them. I dont know, cut the steak while walking. I dont know what they did they took their meals and they took their drinks while they walked. Obviously, to save time. Maybe they would have a big old piece of rare meat and just chew on it and that was it. I dont know how would you eat the greasy eel broth while walking without burning yourself. Yeah. Meals were taken while they walked. All right. Thank you so much again. I really appreciate your attention. While congress is on its summer break, we are presenting this during the day. Coming up, the history of the Kansas City Monarchs Negro League team and the impact it had on baseball. Thats followed by a discussion of racism in sports over the years. Bill russell and jim brown tell their stories. Then a look when walking was the nations most popular spectator sport. Here is a great read to add to your Summer Reading list sundays at eight a collection of stories from the most influential people over the past 25 years. There was a risk and i decided to take it. Whether its illusion or not, i dont think it is, it helped my concentration. It stopped me being bored. Stopped other people being boring, to some extent. It would keep me awake. Would make the evening go on longer for good long conversation, to enhance the moment. If i was asked, would i do it again . The answer is probably yes. Id have quit earlier, possibly, hoping to get away with the whole thing. Easy for me to say. Not very nice for my children to hear. Sounds irresponsible. If i say, yeah, id do all that again to you. The truth is, it could be hypocritical to say, no, id never touch the stuff if i didnt no. I did know. Everyone does. Soviet system in Eastern Europe contained the seeds of its own destruction. Many of the problems we saw at the end begin at the very beginning. I spoke already about the attempt to control all institutions and control all parts of the economy and political life and social life. One of the problem is when you do that, when you try to control everything, then you create opposition and potential dissidence everywhere. If you tell all artists they have to paint the same way and one artist says, no, i dont want to paint that way, i want to paint another way. You just made him into a political dissident. If you want to subsidize housing in this country, and we want to talk about it and the populous agrees that its something we should subsidize, then put it on the balanlot she and make everyone away how much its costing. When you deliver it through these thirdparty enterprises, fannie mae and freddie mac, deliver it through a Public Company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot of that subsidy for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing homeownership. Christopher hitchens, anne applebaum, sundays at eight now available at your Favorite Book seller. Baseball historian phil dixon on the kansas city longest, the longestrunning baseball franchise in negro league history. Mr. Dixon discusses how the monarchs created a number of hall of famers and brought new innovations to the game, include lights for night games. The dwight d. Eisenhower president ial library and museum hosted this hour long event. First i want to say good afternoon, and i want to thank some people, of course, tim for giving me this opportunity to come down and speak with you today. Im really excited about it and samantha who handled a lot of the publicity for the event. She did just a wonderful job and without people like that, also there was a local Radio Station that did a great interview, and between newspaper, radio, im always appreciative of all the people who support your visit and so i want to thank all of them before i get started. Im going to jump right into it and tell you a little bit about why im here. The kansas city monarchs were a Negro League Baseball team and most of you have heard of them. Maybe you heard of Jackie Robinson or Satchel Paige. They were organized in 1920, 4 1924 they won the first world championship. That was 90 years ago. I was trying to figure a way to honor these great men who purely played for the love of the game because they didnt make great salaries back then, and so i decided i was going to visit 90 cities to basically commemorate the monarchs efforts as a Negro League Baseball team. Now they played in more than 90 cities, so im going to 90 cities and believe me that just scratches the is your facilitates all the places that the kansas city monarchs did. They were great ambassadors for the game. For me my journey started a long time ago. As a child i collected baseball cards and i kind of went nuts with that. So i found out about baseball and i just kept collecting, collecting, collecting and the collection kept growing, growing, growing. And my knowledge grew. And so not only did i know about the baseball statistics but the thing that captured me the most were baseball stories. So i liked to read the backs and whatever stories they had and then i gravitated to books and just kept growing. And finally, this kind of brings me home to abilene and heres what happened. I got my first full time job working for a retail store. I was out of college and they bounced me around to a few places. I was in colorado springs, albuquerque for a little while, wichita and i ended up in topeka, kansas. I always talked baseball, no matter where i went. I always talked baseball. Somebody mentioned there was a negro leaguer that had played ball who lived in topeka. And i got to know this negro leaguer, his name was carroll ray and he was on that 24 team. He later passed. But through that association i decided to do a little tribute to him. So in doing this tribute, you know, once again being that kind of person who loves to collect information, you know, i challenged myself. I said im going to find every game the kansas city monarchs ever played. That was pretty aggressive idea back in that 1980. There was no internet at that time. So if you wanted to know the name of the library say if they played in abilene, you write to the library, had to go the library. They had a big book with all the library addresses, i write them down. I would write letters. I had all these letters. It was a labor of love and a passion that just kept on growing. And needless to say, i was able to find games that were played in abilene because of that. So, as a tribute to the kansas city monarchs who were way in kansas city, what im doing now is going to towns that they played and name of my program is the kansas city monarchs and our home town. Now, give you a little bit of overview of the kansas city monarchs as i said a moment ago they were organized in 1920. And they were charter members of the Negro National league. And they won their first championship in 1923 p. M. At that time they didnt have a world series. So 1924 they played the eastern colored league, hilldale team and the monarchs won. In 1925 they returned to the world series but they didnt win. Hilldale won. They were the best team in the eastern colored league. The kansas city monarchs continued to play and by 1929 they won another championship by the leadership of another guy bullet rogan. The kansas city monarchs played exhibition games. In the negro league they had a regular schedule. You had eight teams and they had a regular schedule. But most of those games would be on the weekend when they could draw the largest audience. So they would play friday, saturday, sunday and then sometimes on monday. Well in between that if youre coming from kansas city going to st. Louis, theres a lot of cities in between and remember were talk about the golden age of town baseball. And these are grown fellows who are playing baseball and some of them were, you know, workers in the town but they loved baseball as well. These are grown men playing baseball. As you can see, the monarchs during the 1920s, this is an article from the kansas city kansas daily traveller, you see they only lost three times in over 400 exhibition games. The towns had good teams but the monarchs were hard to beat. During that time when they were barnstorming of course the first time they came to abilene was in 1923 and they were on trains but in 1925 there was a highway act and they started building up the highways, connecting all the major cities and some not so major together and so the owner of the kansas city monarchs being this Creative Genius he was, his name was j. L. Wilkinson decided he would use a bus to transport his players and they could go places on a different schedule than the railroad, get more games in, they could go to cities who werent along the railroad lines. So in that he became the first in the kansas city monarchs first team to travel exclusively by bus. The other thing that i think is always interesting is that the kansas city monarchs in 1930, they popularized night baseball. You think of night baseball you dont think of the monarchs. Most people remember the date, i think it was may 24th, 1935, when they talk about cincinnati lighting up its park. Thats the date i learned as a child. This is when night baseball started in the major leagues. But actually with the kansas city monarchs it started in 1930. Wilkinson being the baseball innovator and genius he was he wanted to make night baseball popular. He patterned it after what he had seen with carnivals and circuses who had lights. He worked on it and he created some towers he could take on trucks from city to city and he popularized this night baseball. Now the major leagues were skeptical of the night baseball, so its been recorded that ben johnson president of the American League said it was a passing fad, it would never last. And wilkinson said that lights will be to baseball what talkies are to movies. Another bit of interesting bit of history is that the first all night world series where all the games were played in the night was 1985 when the Kansas City Royals played the st. Louis cardinals. So it took that long. As a matter of fact, the first weekends game at night wasnt until 1971 and back in the 1930s the monarchs were popularizing that. As a matter of fact, their pitcher, one of them pitched the first nohitter back in 1930 under the lights. Ip so this is one of his greatest innovations and one he doesnt get credit for but he should because it revolutionized major baseball and baseball every where. The monarchs spent a lot of time barnstorming. And in 1930, the depression had pretty much hit most of the major cities that were in the league. So st. Louis, st. Louis, chicago, all those cities were in depressions. And so wilkinson decided to pull his team out of the league and go 100 barnstorming. So what he was able to do through that is to take the monarchs to places that they couldnt go in between their schedule. So like in between their schedule he could come out to western kansas, take a week, take a few days and come back to kansas city. Well, when he went, got out of the league they went as far as the pacific coast, they went to portland, washington state, idaho, they went down to mexico, went over the border into mexico. They went up to canada. They went all the way to saskatchewan, alberta. They were in canada. They went all over the place. Going to all those places you can see they rarely lost. This was an awfully good team. But the barnstorming is the part that most people had the opportunity to see the kansas city monarchs. This is the way that most baseball fans had a chance to see the kansas city monarchs especially outside of the major cities. This picture here is a barnstorming picture. You can see the towns teams they knew how great the monarchs were and most a ball player can recognize another ball player, no doubt about it. So when they saw the kansas city monarchs they recognized how good these players were. And this picture right here, this game was played in blue rapids kansas. Thats the 1939 and that shows how popular they were, teams were willing to pose with the kansas city monarchs and this is at a time when racial divide could be pretty tough. But the kansas city monarchs were welcomed almost every place they went. So because of his great innovations, j. L. Wilkinson we have pictured here is now a member of the Baseball Hall of fame in cooperstown, new york. One of his pitchers i might mention wilkinson also when they organized the Negro National league he was the only white manager in the league or white owner in the league and how that came about was because in 1911 he organized a team called the all nations. And the all nations had many nationalities on one team traveling together. So jose mendez was them. And he was cuban. They had John Donaldson an africanamerican out of missouri, one of the greatest lefthanders that ever lived. They had an italian guy, they had a couple of guys that played formerly in the major league. They had whites, blacks, a native american that played with them, and the first professional japanese player played on wilkinsons team. So that team played right up until world war i and they were pretty much decimated by the draft in world war i. So when the opportunity comes in 1920 because of his goodwill and friendliness and his relationships with various races, he was picked to organize a team and thats how he became the only white owner in the negro league. Mendez, outstanding player. Monarchs first manager. He started with wilkinson years ago. He also has been enshrined in cooperstown, new york. Also, along the way they had other players that joined them. This gentleman by the name of andy cooper. Andy cooper was born in waco, texas, but raised in wichita, kansas. 1920 he plays for the detroit stars in the Negro National league and in 1920 wilkinson traded two players to get him and he comes to the kansas city month marks and remains there and died while he was the manager of the monarchs in 1940. But he comes. And because he was such an outstanding player, he too is in the major League Baseball hall of fame at cooperstown, new york. But of all the greatest players, especially during the 1920s, there was none greater than wi willber bullet roga ber bulb. Many people to this day have not heard of rogans name. If i had the same group of people here in 1920 and i was to mention rogans name they would know exactly who i was talking about. He was widely publicized and heres the reason why i personally think he was the greatest all around baseball player that ever lived. You know right before, you know, we went and started this whole new decade and new century they did all these polls of the greatest Baseball Players of our time. Of course everybody picks babe ruth. Let me tell you what rogan was able to do. First of all rogan like ruth was a pitcher. He actually invented a pitch, rogan did called the palm ball which is change of pace. Rogan was a great pitcher. As a pitcher he won over 400 games. As a pitcher. Also he was a great batter. And he hit with home run power and he was 57. He hit over 400 home runs as a batter. He was a consistent. 300 hitter. As for average, he also played the outfield when he wasnt pitching, and was a gold glove outfielder, tremendous arm. He was a fast runner. He could run a 100 yard dash in less than ten seconds or right in ten seconds in that area. And on top of that he managed the monarchs and he led them to the pennant in 1929 and in 1934 they had a record of 134 wins and 14 losses and he managed that team and when he wasnt doing all of that he drove the bus. [ laughter ] so, there are lots of games i could talk about that happened here in abilene and this is kind of this is one of the things i do when i go to cities. I talk about the games in that particular town. And there was one interesting game in Junction City i would like to add. Well get to that. The first time the monarchs came as i said was in 1923, august 17th. And one thing that was unique, this didnt happen too often, in 1925 they came to abilene twice in the same year. That was rare that they would go back to barnstorming city twice. I tell you that says something for abilene right there. And, of course, in i jumped to 1938. There were some other games along the way. 1926 they came here in august and got rained out. Then they came back in september 15th of 1927, they got rained out again. Theres another game i know in 1939, im still trying to find information on so i cant give you much detail on that one. But we got some interesting games i do want to talk to. Now keep in mind, integration in the area of blacks being on teams with whites in kansas was not new and so people were kind of already prepared long before the kansas city monarchs came. This is a pitcher here of the humbolt team. In the 1880s. Bud fowler, the first africanamerican to play minor League Baseball played in topeka in 1886 and another gentleman by the name of Burt Wakefield out of troy, kansas and his name was jones, burt jones and he was from atchison and they played in the kansas state league. So kansas was one of the last leagues to include africanamerican players and a lot of people werent aware of this knowledge, but this is the earliest picture i ever found of the integrated team in the state of kansas. Now these games there were always scouts from other cities trying to figure out how they could beat the monarchs. In this particular article here that appeared in the manhattan morning chronicle, i saw a reference that the manager coming over from manhattan to scout the kansas city monarchs because they were going to be playing them and he wanted to see how he could beat the monarchs. He comes over and scouts the monarchs which is kind of interesting because you wouldnt think that people were scouting teams at that time. Of course when he got over here this is what he saw. The kansas city monarchs, the first time they came through they pretty much handled the local team, beat them 102. As you notice, mendez is in the game. The guy who was in the hall of fame. And hes probably one of the earliest hall of famers and bullet rogan in the hall of fame was also there that day. Wilkinson their owner was there as well. In that game there was a guy by the name of swede. His name was pearson. He pitched the final innings of that game. He was a local player. He was a heck of a good pitcher and good enough to go the big leagues but in times like those big leagues didnt pay the larger amount of money so some guys if they had a good enough job they didnt leave and could get work in town teams. So they come to abilene, pretty much beat abilene. Because the score was 102 would you believe abilene was proud of that . In the paper they printed that theres some mean satisfaction knowing that the kansas city monarchs defeated Junction City 131, clay center 131 and abilene only 102. I thought that was interesting. That happened all the time. If you couldnt beat them maybe you could look better than the surrounding towns. Whats interesting about this game, when the monarchs organized in 1929, the first League President was andrew rube foster. Rube foster had been managing teams. Actually, he had four teams. The cubans and the detroit stars, and himself which is the chicago american giants. There was another team called the chicago american giants. He was booking those teams and getting either 5 or 10 of the gate wherever they played. So they needed rube foster to come in to the league to be a part of the league because he controlled five or four of the best teams. They had to convince him to give up his booking money to come in to the league and join the new league. So in order to satisfy him they said that we will give you 5 from every game thats played in the Negro National league. So the new teams plus the teams he used to book, they were going to give him 5 . Detroit they had an agreement with foster had to pay 10 to foster. He kept immaculate records and so i was able to come across his record book and what i was able on the find out exactly how much money they made in abilene. And so if you look here, abilene, according to the newspaper account, had 1,000 people at the game. And the monarchs share, once again they got a share, the monarchs charged 65 of the gate, if you booked them in your town. They made 341 playing in abilene. You can see the gate receipt from the other cities that they played in Junction City. Made 4067, over at burlington, 406. Leroy, they couldnt get a , ov 406. Leroy, they couldnt get a crowd, 75. But it just kind of gives you a view of how important these games were from a profit stance. The monarchs had pretty much handled abilene but abilene still had their great pitcher swede. They invited the monarchs back twice in 1925. Is this lineup that appeared here in 1925 when the monarchs came through. Some of these names like bullet rogan, he was in left field that day. Didnt pitch that day. And so they come through and some of the players like gerard swit he was born in humbolt. Group up around the isle of hum bolt area. Sylvester foreman is buried in coffeyville, kansas. Bill drake, chet brewer born and raised in leavenworth. Clifford bale was a texan. This is the team that they played. Bullet rogan wasnt pitching that day but pearson for the local team struck out the end of the kansas city monarchs and that was going some back then. Bullet rogan played outfield and went one for three. He hit the only home run of the game. So when they came, once again, how much money did they make, right . So we go back to fosters ledger. And there were 900 people in that first game. And the monarchs for their take of the game made 260. Now whats interesting, if you look, the monarchs are in abilene on the 9th. If you go down to the 20th you can see they were in birmingham, alabama and you could see they made 160 playing on the first day they went to birmingham. So they made more in abilene than they made in birmingham and birmingham was a league town so you can see why these games are pretty important and thats why the monarchs continued barnstorming. I guess the people in abilene were not satisfied because they had never seen bullet rogan pitch. So they had to invite them back to see bullet rogan pitch. Bullet rogan comes to town and this is the final score, 114 and bullet rogan pitches and abilene scores four runs off of them. nmi2 n there were 15,000 people at this game, and i think that day the public got their moneys worth seeing that game. The monarchs get four home runs. And wouldnt you know it, bullet rogan added another home run to his already dominant list of home runs and once again when people talk about the home runs that rogan hit, you go online and look at the books these are not the home runs they talk about. These are games people generally dont know about. And so this is kind of research i specialize in. Of course we mentioned gerard swit. He went to pittsburgh state college, also played football and was a great player and he was from the humbolt area. Wayne johnston and the box score they put johnson but it was wade johnston. He live d was Wayne Johnston and he lived in steubenville, ohio. D was Wayne Johnston and he lived in steubenville, ohio. Actually after he refrird baseball, an older guy he ran a store, a bait and tackle store and specialized in selling worms. So thats what he did after his living. In addition to hitting a home run rogan struck out 12 that day. This is a pretty good player. Abilene finally got a chance to see bullet rogan. But abilene did something that was quite a feat as well. A guy named haas and taylor first name unknown hit a home run off of rogan and the newspaper thought that was a great feat and they wrote it up. They said it is something to be proud of because he is considered one of the worlds best pitchers. Not the best pitcher in kansas or missouri, the worlds best pitcher. They knew Something Back then about baseball. And once again, we can go back to fosters ledger and this is what we find. The monarchs take that day with bullet rogan, 420. And once again, if you take a closer look you see that the monarchs left here and once again this had to be a different secretary because the way they spelled abilene is completely different than the first secretary. We know the date and thats definitely abilene. So if you noticed that on august 2nd, there in abilene they dont play again until the 8th and then in st. Louis playing against the st. Louis stars. You notice abilene made more money than a league team the st. Louis stars. I keep stressing that. People wonder why would they play these exhibition games when you have a league. The reason why is one thing it was income. So, one other game i would like to talk about i usually talk about three or four games in every city. I try to pick some of the more interesting games to talk about. So one of the games i want to talk about i might mention the other games that i have in abilene were rainouts and things like that. Theres one in 1939 still trying to pull all the details to. There could be other times they came as late as 1955, usually when i go somewhere to speak theres an old baseball player in the audience that say hey they were here in 1952 and, you know, we played against them. So im always finding new information everywhere i go and thats quite exciting to me because i go instantly and start digging that information out and trying to see how what happened in the game. The next game i want to mention was rogans last season in 1938, and the monarchs came down and they were going to play in Junction City. This is what the newspaper wrote about rogans name. Rogan is the most famous one in negro baseball in this or any other day despite being a fiendish hitter and playing the outfield when hes not a pitcher. He was second to none on the mound in his heyday. He has speed. His fadeaway was that of christy matherston and his control was almost perfect. Major league batters who batted against him said he was as good as any pitcher they ever faced. This is what they are writing about rogan in his final season hes going back to all these places that the monarchs played and hes basically making that last round trip around the league. And that just kind of shows the popularity he had. When the monarchs showed up in Junction City, things had changed in baseball. The golden era of town baseball had begun to die. At this particular point most teams had like College Players and young guys and they would have these band Johnson Leagues and be all over kansas, these band Johnson Leagues would be. So one of the things the monarchs pretty much handled those band Johnson League teams. So they started to book other Negro League Teams to play against the kansas city monarchs in cities throughout kansas. So in the later years starting maybe 1937, you start to see the monarchs playing other Negro League Teams outside of kansas city and in communities like this. The monarchs came to town with four hall of famers, which is pretty unique. The name that is not shown was the manager, andy cooper who did not play. Of course we know hes in the hall of fame. They picked up another guy named norman turkey stearns. He had been with detroit and he came over. Wilkinson always would try to get turkey. In fact he had him for a little bit in 1934 when they played the denver posttournament. He was a fantastic player. He was a guy that used to talk to his bats. Buck oneal told me the story he always carried a 33 ounce and 34 ounce bat, and buck said that he was rooming with him and he said he went out and came back and turkey was in there and had the 34 and the 33 ounce bat and he carried his bats. He slept with his bats. Took them to the room. And the monarchs had lost a game that day and he used the 33 bat and it went about this far from going over the fence and buck said he was talking to his bats and talking to the 33. He said, i used you today and i didnt hit the home run. If i had to use you the 34 ounce bat i would have hit that home run and we would have won the game. Turkey when they interviewed him years later they asked him how many home runs did you hit. He said i have no idea because i only counted them when they won the ball game. So he was just a great player. Hes on that team. Of course, got bullet rogan in his final season. Hes on that team. You have another guy called Willard Brown. Brown was playing shortstop. Actually hes playing third base in this particular game but played a lot of shortstop. He ended up being a great player. He went to the major leagues. Most people know about Jackie Robinson being the first africanamerican in the major leagues. He was in the national league. And you know about larry dobey. Two monarchs were the third and fourth. They signed the same day. They went to the st. Louis browns. Willard brown was one of them. The other was Hank Thompson later played with the giants. They signed third and fourth africanamerican players and Willard Brown goes out and hits a home run on august 13th against newsome, hits a home run and he becomes the first black player to hit a home run in the major leagues. Not jackie, not larry dobie, Willard Brown. Willard brown is coming back to the monarchs and never gets back to the major leagues. He played minor League Baseball and had 400 home runs playing with the Negro League Teams. I think he had another couple of home runs playing in the Minor League Ball in the texas league, and he also holds the Current Record for the most home runs hit in the puerto rican winter league, 27 in the puerto rican winter league. This was a good ball player. They come to town with four negro leaguers. To show you how much ability was in the negro leagues they lost. They had all those hall of famers and they lost. I might also mention bibs. Most africanamericans at that time went to black colleges. Bibs went to indiana state. He was out of terra haute, indiana. So bibs was there and because of his great play at the college and some of the work that i was able to do to bring recognition to him and people started to Pay Attention to him, today hes in the indiana sports hall of fame and also the indiana state hall of fame as well. I thought you might want to take at that look at a few of these guys. Theres turkey stearns. They called him turkey because of the way he looked when he ran. Back then they used to pick really good nicknames. Nowadays if you listen to the games they just shorten up the names. Back then they watched the player, watched how far you act. Bell, people remember his name, he got his nickname. He becomes cool papa bell. Turkey got his name because of the way he ran. Theres bell with his son playing for the monarchs. The player in the background has an alphabet not a number. That was one of wilkinsons innovations that did not work. Of course, this gentleman here, you probably heard his name, buck oneal. 1938 he was playing his first season with the kansas city monarchs. Another interesting thing about this pitcher, Baseball Players go through certain phases. Right now in the major leagues were in the beard phase. A lot of guys have beards, facial hair. This guy had no facial hair. That was the phase that they were in at that particular time, the clean cut kind of look. This is very young buck oneal, by the way. And the first africanamerican to come in the major leagues or had been playing with a mustache was Satchel Paige. You find pictures of Satchel Paige youll find he has a mustache in the 1930s which was kind of rare. Once again Satchel Paige was rare himself. So, you know, in going around and giving talks on the negro leagues and trying to go back to as many cities as i can, and talk about various games and that they played in those cities, you know, occasionally, you know, you hear something that really summarizes the experience. I was listening to a song. A lady by the name of kim harrison was singing a song. I heard it. I said, thats a great song. You know what . Im halfway decent poet let me change it. So i kind of adapted it and so i would like to say it four here today and ill close with that. It goes Something Like this. My name is bullet rogan. My name is turkey stearns. My name is buck oneal. But my age is way beyond. I spread my prime in baseball shoes but my sporting days are gone. Im just one more forgotten face among the black face teams an old dark horse that came the course they called the negro leagues. I worked the fields in tennessee but i dreamed of better days. So i left the plow, the picking bag to join the homestead grays. And all summer long we played the states and then headed south for fall through rain and dust we load the bus so we can play baseball. We played for love and we played for pride and we seldom made much more. The bread, the hotel bugs, the roads where crowds dont roar. The allnight rides, the citisides were the life i chose, but we made do and we came through because damn it, we were pros. We played in the shadow of babe and lou gehrig and the rest and stood behind the big league fence while they were called the best. We played them well and gave them hell with every hidden pitch and stayed behind that colored line and watch those guys get rich. Did they see josh gibson swing or see satchel throw his stuff or you know how bad it feels when your best is not good enough. When clouds roll in across the sky to hide the brightest moon youll find some stars dont shine some folks were born too soon. God bless you, Jackie Robinson and willie mays and all you wore our numbers on your backs when you played big league ball and every time you hit one out slid or laid one down you carried us from that old bus to the halls of cooperstown. My name is drake, my name is newt allen, but you wont remember that. Im just one more along the score who played with ball and bat. But when you seek out heroes and praise the great pastime, remember those old brown face pros, the stars that did not shine. [ applause ] so with that conclusion what i would like to do is open it up for any questions you might have related to the negro leagues and i want to thank everybody for coming, hitting Junction City tomorrow and believe it or not sunday im in salisbury, missouri. So im jumping across the state and just having a ball talking baseball and talking local baseball that doesnt get talked about very much but having fun bringing the history of the kansas city monarchs and the town ball alive again. I think they want you to yes. This has been very interesting. I thank you very much for your presentation. u people here to enjoy this and to learn more about the monarchs. I would like to know has there ever been or do you think there ever will be a movie that goes back and delves into the history of the monarchs because they were a great inspiration, a foothold to all of the black players in the American Leagues today, in fact all sports, i think. Yeah. Thats an excellent question. I think, you know, im a person who grew up watching baseball movies, and i would say that theres been some attempts to write a few movies. There was one called the soul of the game and it wasnt that great of a movie. Even 42, it came out last year, they have one little part in the front that talks about the kansas city monarchs and, you know, you dont see any footage. I think not only the kansas city monarchs, a really good movie could be written about the whole black baseball experience. I think you would need somebody who knew what was going on to write a good movie about it. And i might mention too, when i first started doing research on the negro leagues, going back to the early 80s, ive just seen so many things change. When i first started doing Research People said oh, you wont find photographs. And, of course, after i found 600 of them, actually i found close to 1,000, 600 in the book, called the Negro Baseball League photographic history, people thought you couldnt find pictures. I killed that myth. Im also trying to popularize the fact that the monarchs and these teams in the negro leagues played in all these cities. Theres so many Great Stories that could be told. Hopefully i would like to see it in my lifetime as well. Thank you. I had a coach and a teacher when i was in junior high that played early days of pro football. And they got paid, if they got in the game. They had to get themselves to the game and had to buy their uniforms. Are you aware of how the players got paid . Oh, sure. The fortunate thing if you were playing for the kansas city monarchs you were essentially playing for the new york yankees in the negro league. Wilkinson always paid his players. Now i have run into players over the years who told me that they are still waiting for third check for a game they played in 1928. But that wasnt the case with wilkinson. And foster as well, kept immaculate records. Players made money playing those teams. Thats one of the reasons why the monarchs were so successful because they had players, bullet rogan there was from 1920 to 1938 when he retired. Newt joseph was there from 1922 to 1937. Newt allen was there from 1922 to 1946. The players came and they loved playing for j. L. Wilkinson. And they got paid well and so they stayed. They worked for their money but they got paid well and so, but, yeah, these werent pick up games. If they came to abilene there was a promoter and the promoter knew he would would get x amount of the gate, and i have to pay the monarchs 65 of the gate. It was pretty tough going for some depending on the own but wilkinson paid his players well. This kind of ties in with that question. When you showed a couple of shots, one of the records where they played it looked like you had maybe eight, maybe nine games in a row where they played days in a row and also you showed the picture of the town team when they are barn storming the town team along with the monarchs and unless i miscounted it looked like ten guys. Typically how many traveled on the team and were they that limited on players. I know in 1929 they had to cut their roster down and they carried 13 players. So you could play over 100 games with 13 players. You need a guy like bullet rogan who could play the outfield at the same time he could pitch. So he was like two players in one. So they could carry a smaller roster like that and still play. It just depends. Sometimes some of the players might not have gotten into the picture but they used to carry about 15 players. As a matter of fact, that picture was taken right before a fair. I might mens too, when the monarchs were supposed to come here in 1927, it got rained out. I know they played a lot of fairs and events like that which helped to draw people to the fair. A lot of county fairs. A lot of county fairs. Given the discrimination of the day where they would stay when they would tour areas like this. Would they stay on the bus or could they get accommodation . Accommodation and eating could be tough. I interviewed one player and asked him what he remembered the best about barnstorming and he said hunger. You couldnt pull up to a mcdonalds or a restaurant and go in and get your food. They had to go around to the back of the building to get their food. Wilkinson, to his credit, some places wouldnt feed the monarchs so he wouldnt eat there either. So he tried to fight for good treatment for his players. So, it was tough. If they were playing where they could come and play the game and get back to kansas city the same day thats what they did. If they are out and say they are not able to stay there, there were a number of rooming houses as a matter of fact there was lady i know she was from south dakota, africanamerican lady and later moved to kansas city and she said that the only black people that she saw from outside her community were musician, circus people and Baseball Players because those were the only ones that came in and room with her. She knew lots of circus and musicians and athletes but didnt know anybody else. Boardinghouses would take up the slack and some places they would have, you know, some of the larger cities they would have blackowned hotels. But out in this part of the country, if they played in, you know, if they played in, say, sioux falls, south dakota, or omaha and they could get back the same day, they came back the same day. One thing i may mention they played almost every single day. So they were on that bus all the time. One last thing ill mention there was a lady she was married to a ball player who played for the memphis red sox, his name was larry brown and this was his wife and i interviewed her. She married him and then went with the team on the trip. And she was on the bus with the team and she said we were gone for a month and we stayed in a hotel two times. Thank you. Most of us know that the first black player that went to the major leagues was not 100 chosen on talent alone. In your research and what you look at, would that same person be chosen by you, or would somebody else have been chosen, just in retrospect . In retrospect, somebody else probably would have been chosen. Are you going to tell us who . Here is the reason why i say that. Jackie robinson was chosen during world war ii. The best africanamerican Baseball Players were in the war. They werent even here. Maybe he was one of the better players. I cant deny one thing. He was an excellent choice when you look back on it. I mean, you couldnt get a better choice. I know he needed someone comfortable with playing with white players. Jackie had that. Funny thing is, willy brown becomes the third player. He was left the browns and never came back. His wife said, did he pretty much what he always did. One of the things, he complained. When he got to the st. Louis browns, he complained because he used 40 hours at bat and their players were playing with 32. He said i dont have bats. How do you play with 32ounce bats . Wheres your real bats . That didnt make him too popular. He hit a home run with a 32. The other thing was when he got to the hotel, he would go out at night. He liked to take a drink every now and then. His wife said, they are watching you. He couldnt be anybody but himself. Even though he was a great ballplayer, he probably wasnt the best pick and the best fit. I could think of some other people there were a lot of great Young Players who ended up coming up later. Even doby. Irvin as a possibility coming up. They wanted older players. There were great older players around. Roy campanella who came up with the dodgers, he would have been an excellent choice. Later on he was. I might mention one thing