 |
|
||||||
 |
|
|||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
||||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
#1
05-10-2023, 03:52 AM
|
||||
|
||||
The Jet -- Early Days
(Recall from yesterday Jethroe citing 1948 as his first "in professional baseball.")
But 1948 was not truly Jethroe’s first year of professional baseball. That came a full decade earlier, when Jethroe played for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro American League. The Boston Chronicle reported he hadn’t played baseball at Lincoln High School but had been a star at softball. As was not uncommon in those days, he did not graduate from high school until he was 23, in 1940. While still in high school, he played for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro American League, in 1938; in 1940 and 1941 he played semipro ball, declining several offers from “Negro professional teams” in order to care for his mother, who was quite ill. She died on New Year’s Eve in 1941. Jethroe returned to pro ball in earnest in 1942 to play for the Cleveland Buckeyes, for whom he played into early 1948. It was a Buckeyes uniform Jethroe wore when he took part in the 1945 tryout at Fenway Park (more about this tomorrow). Negro Leagues statistics aren’t as complete as we would like; but that Jethroe was brought back year after year speaks to good performance, and that he was signed to Montreal and fared well there also testifies to his talents as a ballplayer. Four times he was selected to the Negro Leagues’ East-West All-Star Game, playing in seven games—two games apiece in 1942, 1946, 1947, and one in 1944. Samuel Jethroe came from a farming family in Old Zion, Lowndes County, Mississippi. His parents moved to East St. Louis, Illinois at some point, perhaps very shortly after Samuel was born. His parents were Albert “Chip” Jethroe, who at the time of the 1930 census had his own farm at East St. Louis, and Janie Jethroe, who worked as a sheller in a nut factory. She also worked some as a domestic, according to news stories contemporary to Sam’s career. Sam had a sister, Rachel, who was about a year older, and a brother, Jessie, about four years younger. According to census records, Janie had been born Mary Jannie Spruil. Sam’s notarized birth certificate said his mother’s name was Jannie Adams. We believe that Sam was born on January 23, 1917 in Lowndes County, though both he himself and the Social Security Death Index gave his birthplace as East St. Louis. He gave his year of birth as 1922, and a number of contemporary accounts indicate years ranging from 1918 to 1922; however, his reported age at the time of the 1930 census was 13 years old. We assume that those later years reflected a fictional “baseball age”; they were there to make him appear younger and thus to offer longer future potential for a team that might sign him. “I was born in 1917,” he later confirmed to Rich Marazzi. When he came to the big leagues, it was with the Boston Braves in 1950. Fortunately, age wasn’t an issue to his manager, Billy Southworth. “I don’t care if he’s 50, just as long as he can do the job.” Jethroe played semipro ball while growing up, playing for both the East St. Louis Colts and St. Louis Giants. He would hitchhike to Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis and peek through a knothole to watch Dizzy Dean and the Cardinals. And he grew up almost next door to Hank Bauer. “His backyard touched my backyard, and we’d play games, Hank Bauer’s team and my team,” Sam said. Of course, Bauer’s team was all white and he went on to the major leagues, while Jethroe “would play doubleheaders for the East St. Louis Colts, then head over to St. Louis for a night game…those teams were all black…and I made hardly nothing.” Marazzi writes that Jethroe, while with the Buckeyes in 1942, led the Negro American League in numerous categories – batting average, base hits, runs scored, doubles, triples, and stolen bases. In 1944, his .353 average led the league. https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1683708599 https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1683708603 
|
|
#2
05-11-2023, 04:05 AM
|
||||
|
||||
|
The Jet -- Boston Eyewash with Jackie
It was in early 1945 that Jethroe took part in the tryout at Fenway Park. The pressure was growing on what was then known as “Organized Baseball” to desegregate, particularly because soldiers who had come back from putting their lives on the line for the country during World War II found a color bar still preventing them from playing professional baseball other than in the Negro leagues. Boston City Councilor Isadore Muchnick threatened to pull the special permit that the City of Boston accorded the Red Sox which enabled them to play baseball on one of the most lucrative days of the week – Sundays. The Sox wanted to hold onto Sunday baseball and so agreed to hold a tryout for a select three Negro Leaguers brought to Boston by Pittsburgh Courier sportswriter Wendell Smith. Jethroe, Marvin Williams, and Jackie Robinson suited up at Fenway on April 16, 1945 and worked out for coach Hugh Duffy. Red Sox manager Joe Cronin was present as well. Robinson later said of Jethroe, “He looked like a gazelle in the outfield.”
Duffy said he was impressed, but none of the three ever heard from the Red Sox again. Rather than becoming the first major-league team to integrate, the Red Sox ending up being the last – in 1959. Jethroe recalled that the Red Sox “said we had all the potential but it wasn’t the right time.” Cronin later said he told the players that since Boston’s top farm club was in Louisville, “we didn’t think they’d be interested in going there because of the racial feelings at the time.” But he also admitted, “We all thought because of the times, it was good to have separate leagues.” Jackie Robinson was indeed bitter about the incident, at least when he spoke about it later. But as for Jethroe the Boston Globe’s Larry Whiteside wrote, “Unlike Robinson, he took life as it came.” Though they’d been told that the time wasn’t right (Muchnick said he never heard that explanation), Jethroe allowed, “The Sox were nice. I mean they didn’t take us to dinner or anything, but they were all right. It was just a workout.” He hadn’t gotten too upset, he said, because the three figured nothing was going to come of it anyway. As to the idea they might have actually been signed and brought into Organized Baseball, “I don’t think it ever dawned on any of us.” He also told Herald reporter Gerry Callahan that he’d heard no racial slurs on the field that day. Jethroe may have been a bit more candid shortly afterward with some of his Buckeyes teammates. Willie Grace says that Jethroe told him “…‘What a joke that so-called tryout was.’ He said you just knew it was a farce” and that Cronin, although he was there, was “up in the stands with his back turned most of the time.” Tryout over, Jethroe reported to Cleveland, put his Buckeyes uniform back on and once more led the league, this time with a .393 batting average. The Buckeyes also won the Negro World Series that year, sweeping the Homestead Grays. Was Jethroe disappointed, or angry, that the Red Sox had turned him away? “No, I never thought about it,” he told Marazzi. “When I played in the Negro Leagues, I enjoyed it. I loved to play ball and baseball was fun then. I played against Don Newcombe, Monte Irvin, Henry Thompson, ‘Double Duty’ Radcliffe, Gentry Jessup, and many others.” https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1683795682 https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1683795689
|
|
#3
05-11-2023, 12:35 PM
|
||||
|
||||
|
Awesome post...thanks for taking the time. When anyone brings up a player such as this on this site I need to go look at my sets...only to find that Sam didn't have any cards in the sets I currently have complete! Thanks for the inspiration...just picked up his 51 Bowman...great card...
__________________
John Otto 1963 Fleer - 1981-90 Fleer/Donruss/Score/Leaf Complete 1953 - 1990 Topps/Bowman Complete 1953-55 Dormand SGC COMPLETE SGC AVG Score - 4.03 1953 Bowman Color - 122/160 76%
|
 |
|
|
Hybrid Mode
