Pumpsie Green

[GeoPoto]

On the date of the final exhibition game, April 7 at Victoria, Texas, to the surprise of many, Pumpsie was optioned to Minneapolis. This action prompted a front-page story in the Boston Globe.

The Red Sox said he needed further seasoning, Higgins declaring that he wasn’t ready for the majors yet. Better that he have a chance to play than sit on the Boston bench. Green agreed with this view, then and later. But the decision to send him back to the minors seemed sudden and unexpected, almost a rude shock to fans back in Boston. Even with his late slump, he still held the fifth highest average on the team during the spring, batting .327 (18-for-55) with four home runs and 10 RBIs.

Harold Kaese kicked off his Globe column the day after the demotion by writing, “The Red Sox won no prizes this spring for the way they treated Pumpsie Green. From a strict baseball point of view they may have been doing the wise thing when they optioned their first Negro player to the Minneapolis farm club yesterday. From every other point of view, they undoubtedly have pulled a colossal boner.”

The Boston chapter of the NAACP asked the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination (MCAD) to look into the team’s overall hiring practices. (A spokesman for the ballclub who wisely wished to remain anonymous said that “no Negroes had applied for jobs as groundskeepers or maintenance workers in several years.”)

Green downplayed the charges of discrimination. Speaking from Minneapolis, he candidly declared, “I want to be judged like any other ballplayer. I don’t want to be a crusader. I just want to play ball.” He added that he was sure the Red Sox would give him another shot.

The Red Sox tried to defend themselves before the MCAD and in the press, but clumsily. It was a PR nightmare, prompted because of their segregated status. Business manager Dick O’Connell realistically admitted that the team would be accused of racism “until we have a Negro on our roster.”

On June 12, the MCAD reported that it had unanimously voted to accept a pledge from general manager Bucky Harris that a Red Sox executive would visit Scottsdale to get guarantees of integrated housing for 1960, and that the club would “continue to scout Negro players as in the past,” making scouting records available to the MCAD, and would not discriminate in hiring at Fenway Park. It was a tepid report, but an action that resulted in misleading headlines such as “Red Sox Cleared of Bias Charges.”

After 98 games with the Millers, Green was batting .320 with seven homers and again elected a league All-Star. On July 4, apparently suffering in his personal struggle with alcoholism, Mike Higgins was replaced as Boston’s manager, with Billy Jurges taking over.

Green was finally recalled by the Red Sox and debuted in Chicago on July 21. He came in as a pinch-runner and stayed in the game at shortstop. Boston lost the game (Buddin’s homer was their only run). It was an uneventful debut but press coverage was extremely positive. Several Boston newspapers ran an AP photograph showing Red Sox icon Ted Williams giving Green some pointers on hitting. The Herald ran it on the front page, under a banner eight-column headline: “Green Joins Red Sox in Chicago.” The Globe ran four stories on Green, and one on the game. The paper radiated excitement. One story was headlined “Everyone Pleased Pumpsie Returning.”

There was a touch of restrained euphoria to the coverage. American League president Joe Cronin, who had been the Red Sox GM just seven months earlier, commented, “I’m happy over Green’s elevation. I hope his play has improved sufficiently so that he can stay up here for a long time. His advance has been part of a long-range program in the Red Sox organization. Through it all, Pumpsie has conducted himself as a very fine young man.”

After the game, Green was able to stay in the same Chicago hotel as the rest of the team. Sportswriter Bob Holbrook reported that in the lobby, “Players chatted and joked with him and by the time the team boarded a chartered airliner for Kansas City, he was thinking one team is just like another. He had a gin rummy game with Mike Fornieles and cracked a joke now and then.” The Red Sox showed some thoughtfulness and made arrangements to fly Marie Green to Boston to join her husband when the team returned home 10 days later. However awkwardly the Red Sox had handled the situation in the spring, here they went the extra mile.

Pumpsie’s first base hit came off Jim Perry in the second game of a July 28 doubleheader in Cleveland. He singled to left field (batting left-handed) and scored his first run, coming home on Pete Runnels’ home run. The day’s first game had seen the debut of Boston’s second Black ballplayer, pitcher Earl Wilson, who threw one inning in relief, retiring all three batters he faced on six pitches.

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