| Mark17 |
08-23-2021 07:00 PM |
1 Attachment(s)
I won the George Crowe 1953 Milwaukee Braves GU jersey.
Braves shirts of that era are probably my favorite design of all time, '53 was their first year in Milwaukee, the shirt is in all original condition, close to 70 years old, and the player was a very nice, highly respected, and intelligent fellow, a great natural athlete, and instrumental in the integration movement. For under $2100 I thought it was a steal. Excerpts from the SABR article on him:
George Crowe was Indiana’s first Mr. Basketball and became a “Big Daddy” to early black players in major league baseball. “Crowe was the most articulate and far-sighted Negro then in the majors,” Jackie Robinson wrote. “Young Negroes turned to him for advice.”
He tried out for the Los Angeles Red Devils, a touring basketball team, and made the squad. He played forward opposite Jackie Robinson, who had just finished his first year in white baseball at Montreal. Future major leaguer Irv Noren was in the backcourt. When the Devils went broke after a few months, Crowe joined the New York Rens, a storied black basketball power since the 1920s. The team was originally known as the Harlem Renaissance Five because they played at the Renaissance Ballroom in Harlem. He said, “The Harlem Globetrotters got the publicity, but the Rens had the team.”
Baseball was Crowe’s year-round job during the 1950s. He barnstormed in the fall with teams headlined by Roy Campanella and Willie Mays, then moved on to the Caribbean during the winter. In the 1954-1955 season he played for Santurce, Puerto Rico, on one of the strongest winter league teams in history. The outfield included Mays, 20-year-old Roberto Clemente, and Negro League veteran Bob Thurman. Don Zimmer played shortstop, Negro League star Bus Clarkson was at third, and Sam Jones and local hero Ruben Gomez led the pitching staff.
Wherever he went, Crowe was the acknowledged leader of the African American players, most of them much younger than he. Vada Pinson, a rookie with Cincinnati in 1958, said Crowe “took me right under his wing. He came up to me and said, ‘If there are any problems, you come to me. I’m your father, your big daddy up here.’” Bob Gibson remembered that Crowe “was more like a dad and teacher than teammate, and most of what he counseled me on had nothing to do with playing the game.”
Crowe told Sports Illustrated’s Robert Boyle, “I like to see everybody keep their nose clean. And when you have fellows who are coming along who are new to this, I’m glad to give guidance.” He watched out for young black men no matter what uniform they wore: “If I knew a kid coming up with the Braves, I’d say to [Bill] Bruton, ‘Look out for this kid. Show him the places to eat. Don’t leave him stand in the hotel. Take him to the movies. Find out what he likes to do.’ “
Bill White said Crowe “was a very wise fellow who’d been through it all and, in the background, he led us in the integration movement [of spring training cities] in Florida before the Civil Rights Act.” In 1961, when Crowe was entering his final season, black Cardinals players seethed when their white teammates were invited to a Chamber of Commerce breakfast at a whites-only hotel in St. Petersburg. The next spring the team rented a motel where all the players and their families could stay together. Decades later Crowe reflected on the racism he had endured: “Even though you wanted to put it aside, you couldn’t. It couldn’t be put aside. Putting it aside was doing your best to ignore it, and that wasn’t easy, either. That’s what you had to do. You had to play through it.”
Crowe commanded respect from white teammates as well. By popular consent, he served as the judge of the Cardinals’ kangaroo court, meting out small fines for offenses such as missing the team bus or missing the cutoff man. He impressed Musial with how hard he worked to stay in shape. He told Musial, “The more time you spend on the bench the harder you’ve got to work to be ready when you’re called.”
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