Was able to pick up this Toleteros Howard Easterling in last night's Hake's auction. Easterling was a 5x Negro League All-Star and led the NNL in RBI in 1940. A mainstay of the juggarnaut Homestead Gray of the early 1940's, Easterling figures into one of the most apocryphal baseball stories of all time, as he was allegedly walked on purpose to load the bases in game 2 of the 1942 NNL World Series so Paige could pitch to - and eventually strike out - Josh Gibson. In reality although Paige and Buck O'Neil both recount Satchel purposefully walking the bases loaded, all contemporary accounts of the game show that Chester Williams, Vic Harris, and Easterling all singled off Paige to load the bases before ultimately striking out Gibson to end the inning.
