Pumpsie Green

[GeoPoto]

(I'm back with another attempt to showcase one of the significant players in the evolution of integrated major league baseball. Our star of this thread is:

Elijah J. "Pumpsie" Green. Infielder with the Boston Red Sox in 1959-1962. 196 hits and 13 home runs in 5 MLB seasons. His best season was 1961 with Boston as he posted a .376 OBP with 33 runs scored and 27 RBIs in 264 plate appearances. He was the first black player to play for the Red Sox. He is a member of the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame.

For the next 7 days I plan to make a post including an item from my collection with a portion of Pumpsie's excellent SABR biography written by Bill Nowlin. I hope that you find Nowlin's treatment of Green's role in the national embarrassment that accompanied Boston's status as the final integrated MLB club interesting and would love to see any pieces involving Pumpsie that may be part of your collection.

My Pumpsie Green collection only encompasses six items from his limited career, and I have elected to include Nowlin's biography of Pumpsie in its entirety rather than try to condense it. As such, I apologize in advance for the wordiness of the thread. Here we go.)

He’s been termed a “reluctant pioneer.” All Pumpsie Green wanted to do was play professional baseball. He didn’t even aspire to the major leagues at first, and would have been content playing for his hometown Oakland Oaks in the Pacific Coast League. That said, Pumpsie Green took pride in the fact that he helped accomplish the integration of the Boston Red Sox, the last team in the majors to field an African American ballplayer.

Green did play 13 years of professional baseball, including four seasons in the American League (with the Red Sox) and one in the National League (with the New York Mets). A family man, he lived the rest of his life quietly in El Cerrito, California, not far from where he grew up in Richmond. “We were just an average family living in an apartment,” he said.

He was born on October 27, 1933, as Elijah Jerry Green Jr. All the standard reference books listed his place of birth as Oakland, but he himself said, “I wasn’t born in Oakland. I was born in Boley, Oklahoma. We was all born in Oklahoma.”

The elder Elijah Green was reportedly a pretty good athlete, but had a family to care for during the Depression and work took precedence. “He was a farmer,” Green said in a 2009 interview, “We came out here to California when I was eight or nine years old. He worked at the Oakland Army Base.” After the war, Mr. Green worked for the city of Richmond, in the public works department. “He was a garbageman,” Pumpsie explained. Elijah Green’s wife, Gladys, worked mostly as a homemaker before World War II, and during the war as a welder on the docks in Oakland. As the children grew older, she became a nurse in a convalescent home.

The Greens raised five boys, and in 2009, Gladys was still going strong, in very good health at the age of 95. Pumpsie was the oldest, but Cornell Green was the biggest athletic name in the family, as cornerback-safety for the NFL Dallas Cowboys from 1962 to 1974 and a regular Pro Bowler. Credell Green was a running back, an 18th-round Green Bay Packers draft pick in 1957, but never advanced to the big time. Two other brothers, Travis and Eddie Joe, completed the family.

Pumpsie played baseball from grade school on up and became a switch-hitter at an early age. He was 13 when Jackie Robinson broke into the major leagues in 1947, but Brooklyn was a long way from California. The Pacific Coast League integrated in 1948, and, to top it off, the barnstorming Jackie Robinson All-Stars came to Oakland after the ’48 season was over. Pumpsie said, “I scraped up every nickel and dime together I could find. And I was there. I had to see that game…I still remember how exciting it was.” Green was a big Oaks fan, getting to the Emeryville ballpark as often as he could, and listening on the radio when he couldn’t: “I followed a whole bunch of people on that team. It was almost a daily ritual. ….When I got old enough to wish, I wished I could play for the Oakland Oaks.” Pumpsie began to model his play after Artie Wilson, the left-handed-hitting shortstop who in 1949 became the first Black player on the Oaks, and led the league both in hitting and stolen bases.

Pumpsie caught and played first base at El Cerrito High under coach Gene Corr.

He was offered a college scholarship, but Corr had begun coaching at Contra Costa Junior College and asked Pumpsie to come play shortstop. Pumpsie and his future wife, Marie Presley, met at college, introduced by a friend of Marie’s. She didn’t know he was a ballplayer, didn’t know a thing about him, but a lifelong marriage ensued.

By college, Pumpsie’s favorite player was Lorenzo “Piper” Davis, an outfielder/infielder for the Oaks (1951-55). Davis had himself been the first Black prospect signed by the Boston Red Sox, back in 1950, but been let go without reaching the major leagues, just before the Sox would have had to pay the second part of his bonus.

Pumpsie Green was signed by the Oaks upon graduation in 1953, at the age of 19, but never played for Oakland. There was no bonus, just a salary on the order of $300 or $400 a month. His first assignment was to travel to Washington state, to play for Oakland’s Single-A affiliate, the Wenatchee Chiefs (Western International League). “It was a small town, the apple capital of the world,” he told Herb Crehan with a chuckle. Green got into 88 games and hit .244, playing third base, where he committed an unfortunate 13 errors for a disappointing fielding percentage of .921. Switched to shortstop for 1954, Green batted .297 in a full 135-game season, with a .407 slugging average.

Green played in 1955 for Stockton (Class C, California League), down the ladder for a player who seemed to be on the way up. Green batted .319, with 12 homers, and the Ports made it to the playoffs, losing to Fresno. By this time, he was property of the Boston Red Sox, receiving word in midyear that Boston had purchased his contract and that he was to join the Montgomery Rebels (South Atlantic League). Green is officially listed as signed by scout Charlie Wallgren and farm director Johnny Murphy.

(To illustrate how slow Boston was to integrate, we introduce an image from 1954. By 1954, many things in baseball had changed but others were still woefully stuck in the past. As expected, the south lagged behind in integration both on the field and in the stands, but things were starting to change. Social pressure from Civil Rights organizations started the ball rolling and boycotts led both to black players being allowed on the Norfolk Tars baseball team, and the complete desegregation of the seating in the stands! Here is an image of six new black players on the Tars roster pictured in uniform for the first time with their manager Skeeter Scalzi and posing at the new integrated stadium!

Meanwhile, Boston would not field a black player until 1959.)

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1699880349

[ALBB]

quite interesting !

[Kutcher55]

[sealmark41]

Very nice and well done George. As an old Bay Area transplant and PCL fan myself I can relate and remember Pumpsie well.
Sealmark

[JollyElm]

Since we all wanna know how he got the moniker "Pumpsie," here's how it's (not) answered via Wikipedia:

"Green was named Elijah, after his father, but his mother called him "Pumpsie" from an early age, although Green related that he did not know the origin of the name. Green grew up in Richmond, California, and was a three-sport athlete at El Cerrito High School."

[ALR-bishop]

The Pumpsie that never was...at least I have not found one

[jingram058]

I was going to take out my 62 Topps Pumpsie Green card and post a photo of it here, but I thought the entire page from my set would be better. He definitely occupies a place of honor, right next to Carl Yastrzemski (look, Jolly! Thanks to you, I think I spelled his name right! And I'm not trying to be funny).

[GeoPoto]

(Thanks to everybody for the responses.)

There wouldn’t be too many Black men in 1955 who’d want to go to Alabama and join a team named the Rebels. Pumpsie understood that, perhaps as much as anything, the Red Sox wanted their pitcher there, Earl Wilson, to have a roommate with the same color skin. Pumpsie preferred to stay put. The Ports were in first place, and Pumpsie managed to finish the season with Stockton rather than head to Montgomery. He was the shortstop on that year’s All-Star team and was named the California League’s Most Valuable Player, after which, Green later told Danny Peary, the Red Sox gave him a signing bonus of $3,000 to $4,000 and maintained the $300 to $400-a-month salary, fairly standard for the day.

In 1956 Pumpsie went to Boston’s minor-league camp in Deland, Florida, for spring training, and was placed with the Red Sox Single-A affiliate Albany (New York) Senators for the season, playing in the Eastern League under Warren “Sheriff” Robinson.

He hit .274 with Albany and Red Sox general manager Joe Cronin later said that Sox farm director Johnny Murphy “was very high on Pumpsie and urged his advance in the Boston farm system.”

In the spring of 1957, Green and young Black pitcher Earl Wilson both trained with the San Francisco Seals, and in a series of three exhibition games in San Francisco between the Red Sox and the Seals, the Boston honchos had a chance to watch them play. Pumpsie was 0-for-7 with an error, hitting into two double plays. Cronin was not impressed with him as a major-league prospect. He spent most of the season playing under “The Sheriff,” now managing the Double-A Oklahoma City Indians (Texas League).

Playing in the Texas League was not without its problems. Texas and Oklahoma weren’t as bad, but one of the league teams was the Shreveport (Louisiana) Sports. “When the team went to Shreveport,” Pumpsie said, “I didn’t go, because they didn’t allow blacks to play in Louisiana. So I had a three- or four-day vacation.” Green amassed 519 at-bats in 1957, hitting for a .258 average. Starting on September 9, he was promoted to San Francisco, but appeared in only nine games (and never faced his hometown Oaks). Green was 11-for-33 in PCL play.

His 1957 work was sufficient to help him move up to the new top team in Boston’s minor-league system, the Minneapolis Millers. As of June 1958, every other major-league team had integrated. Green emphasized that he really felt little pressure as he moved up through the Red Sox system. “I was confident because I didn’t skip two or three minor-league levels at a time, but moved up gradually. I always was comfortable because I kept seeing the same players on the way up.”

Don Buddin’s shortstop play was being mocked in Boston, but most baseball people thought Green remained a year or two away. The Millers played a June 16 exhibition game and beat the Red Sox with Green leading off and going 3-for-5 with a double, a bases-clearing triple in the fifth inning, and—batting left-handed—a single to left field. The Red Sox hadn’t had an “every day” switch-hitter since Jack Rothrock in the early 1930s.

Green hit .253 for the 1958 Millers – essentially the same average as the prior year but at the higher level of play. He showed versatility in playing several positions, infield and outfield, but he still had by no means convinced the Red Sox that he was ready for the majors. Pumpsie batted 5-for-12 to help win the American Association playoffs, with three runs batted in and four runs scored. On September 21, the day after the playoffs, Pumpsie Green was added to the Red Sox’ 40-man roster – a move the Sox were compelled to take rather than risk losing him (he’d now been in their system for four years) in the coming player draft.

That fall, Pumpsie went to Panama to play winter ball with the Azucareros Sugar Kings and the “flashy young Negro shortstop” reeled off a 19-game hitting streak. The Azucareros won the league flag, with Pumpsie hitting .356. He led the team in the Caribbean Series, batting .306.

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1699957577
https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1699957581

[laughlinfan]

Picked this up a few years back. Even though not used for a card, a very nice Topps flexichrome of Pumpsie. Always tried to figure out what year this was painted - maybe for a 59 card that they never issued? Or maybe they decided to go with a different picture for the 1960 rookie or his 1961 card? Anyway, love this and Pumpsie's place in baseball history.