[GeoPoto]

. . . (In) The Sporting News, news of Angel Scull leaving the team surfaced. Ossie Bluege, Washington farm club director, had been told by an official in Winter Garden, Florida, where the Senators’ farmhands were training, to “get his Cuban Negroes out of town.” The Cuban players were incensed. Scull played in a couple more exhibition games but was then sold on April 10 to the Havana Sugar Kings of the Class AA International League. He would never reach the majors in a regular-season contest.

When pressed as to why he didn’t pull all of his farm teams out of Winter Garden, 84-year-old team president Clark Griffith remarked, “That would be as discriminatory as the people who started this in the first place. You don’t solve anything by running away from it. Negroes have demonstrated that they have a place in baseball and the Washington club will go all-out in giving them fair treatment.”

In even further irony, the same TSN edition touted the precedent of Nat Peeples of the Atlanta Crackers being the first Black player under contract within the Southern Association. The league’s prior segregation had made it impossible for Paula to go to the Senators’ Class AA affiliate in Chattanooga.

Paula was sent down to the Class A Charlotte Hornets of the South Atlantic League at the end of camp. He became the “first Negro to wear a Hornets’ uniform.” First baseman Becquer was sent to Havana, as was shortstop Delis. Paula was thus the sole Black player in the organization playing for a team domiciled in the United States. Paula collected the Hornets’ first homer and triple, along with two singles, in the team’s sixth game of the season, a 13-inning win against Jacksonville. By the end of the first month, it was reported that Paula was “thumping the ball…and will be recalled at the first sign of compelling need for him.”

As the Senators floundered, Paula languished in Charlotte. In May, Paula blasted a homer against Montgomery, estimated by two sportswriters to have traveled 559 feet. As the month ended, Paula led the Sally League with 33 RBI, two more than 18-year-old rookie Frank Robinson of Columbia (South Carolina). Heading into June, Paula had a 13-game hitting streak for the seventh-place Hornets. Meanwhile, the parent Senators were 10-and-a-half games back, mired in fifth place.

Even with Paula boasting a .352 average with nine home runs and 43 RBIs in June, Senators Vice President Calvin Griffith was leery of promoting Paula. “We’ve been debating the possibility of bringing him up right away. I don’t know if it would be a good gamble. He might be able to help us. On the other hand, if he isn’t ready, we rush him along too fast and he fails with us, it could wreck his confidence. We’ll wait until we get a complete report from Sherry (Robertson) before deciding.”

Two days later, Robertson — ex-major leaguer, nephew of Clark Griffith, and assistant to farm director Ossie Bluege– recommended that the Senators keep Paula in the Sally League rather promote him. Robertson claimed he was skeptical about “Paula’s ability to hit major league pitching now and feels he needs more seasoning.”

A local Black sports organization, the Charlotte Fullback Club, honored Paula, the “star Negro outfielder of the Hornets,” before a Charlotte home game in mid-June. Paula batted third, played the whole game, and collected two hits as the lone Hornet representative in the South Atlantic League All Star game on July 5.

Paula batted .309 at Charlotte with 14 home runs, 83 RBIs, and 51 extra-base hits, good for a .495 slugging percentage. He was finally promoted to the Senators on September 2, along with outfielder Jim Lemon, second baseman Roy Dietzel, and catcher Steve Korcheck. With Washington now 39 games out of first place, Carlos Paula became “Baseball’s First Black Senator,” making his debut on September 6, in the same Griffith Stadium that had previously housed the Homestead Grays, the Washington Pilots, the Washington Black Senators, and the Washington Elite Giants.

Paula collected a double and single in nine at-bats as the starting left fielder in both games of a doubleheader against the seventh-place Philadelphia Athletics. Paula played in nine games for the Senators in September 1954, hitting .167. The initial reports were enthusiastic for Lemon, but “less impressive has been the showing of Paula, who still bears traces of the over-eagerness he showed in the spring camp, when he went groping for bad balls, to the detriment of his average.” Some thought that Paula’s promotion was simply a token gesture, or “giving in to agitators.”