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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[GeoPoto]

It could not have been easy being Pumpsie Green in 1959. Lee D. Jenkins, writing in the Chicago Defender after Green’s call-up, lamented the inevitable pressure: “It’s one thing to make a major-league team by sheer talent but to find yourself in a position where you are almost thrust down an unwilling throat makes for a most uncomfortable state. Green was a sensation with the Red Sox during their early spring training but as the season neared the pressure began to tell in his fielding and hitting.”

On the last day of July, Green had a 3-for-4 day, with a triple, and scored three runs. Usually in the leadoff position, he’d also walked seven times in the seven games in which he’d appeared, and held an on-base percentage of .522 after his first week on the job to go with his .313 average. He’d also laid down two successful sacrifice bunts. Green didn’t commit an error until his 16th game.

After the 13-game road trip, it was time for the Red Sox to return home. “Pumpsie Here Tuesday” blared the full-page headline in the Boston Record. “Green does not consider himself a crusader,” the Globe’s Clif Keane allowed, “merely a ballplayer. He does not sound as if he expected any red carpets rolled out for him. He came here to play ball. And from what he and Wilson have shown since they joined the team they can play baseball.”

Boston Celtics basketball star Bill Russell was there to greet Pumpsie when he arrived. They’d known each other since high school. Green also took a call in the Red Sox clubhouse from Jackie Robinson.

“Green Stars as Sox Divide” headlined the Herald sports section. Leading off in the bottom of the first, he was “given a nice hand when he first came to bat.” He later told Scott Ostler, “On my way up to home plate, the whole stands, blacks and whites, they stand up and gave me a standing ovation. A standing ovation, my first time up! And the umpire said, ‘Good luck, Pumpsie,’ something like that.” Pumpsie promptly tripled off the left-field wall, pouring on speed rather than pulling up at second base. He scored on Runnels’ grounder to first. In the seventh, he sacrificed to advance two runners; both scored on Runnels’ single. The Sox never lost the lead and won the first game, 4-1. The Sox lost the second game, 8-6, but Green reached base four times – a single, two walks, and on an error.

Minneapolis manager Gene Mauch predicted great things, saying that Green was “the number one ball player in the American Association, when the Red Sox called him up in July. … He could beat you so many ways … A cinch to make the grade, without any trouble – make it big, too.” Green appreciated Mauch, calling him (in 2009) “the best manager I ever played for.”

He said he felt welcomed by the Sox players. “There were a bunch of good guys on the Red Sox,” he said. “Ted Williams – he would talk to you and give you advice on any matter, even things not about baseball. The whole team was one unit when we walked out on the field. They were supportive of me whenever we played a game.” In the background, though, pitcher Frank Sullivan said, “There were a lot of teammates that had to give up calling Larry Doby rotten names. That also included some coaches.”

Bill Monbouquette remembered an incident with coach Del Baker well. “He used the ‘n’ word, and Mike Higgins used the ‘n’ word, and I told them, ‘I don’t want to hear that,’ and then (Baker) started to give me a bunch of crap, and I said, ‘I’m going to tell you something. I’ll knock you right on your ass. I don’t care if you’re the coach or not.’ I said, ‘You don’t do things like that!’”

Had there ever been a team meeting – perhaps in spring training – where the players were told the team was going to be integrated, and how to handle oneself, perhaps how to handle any newspaper inquiries? Not even close, said Ted Lepcio, “No, just cold turkey.”

Actions can speak louder than words, and Ted Williams stood head and shoulders above the rest of the ballclub in star power. He set the tone from the beginning, not speaking out but clearly signaling his acceptance of Pumpsie, who became his throwing partner before games. “He asked me to warm up with him the first day I came here, and I’ve been warming up with him ever since.” He told Herb Crehan, “He didn’t say anything beyond the invitation to play catch, and it surprised me a little bit. But I understood and appreciated the gesture.”

Green got into an even 50 games, accumulating 172 at-bats, and hit for a .233 average, which his 29 walks boosted to a .350 on-base percentage. His one home run came off Bob Turley in a rout of the Yankees on September 7. He’d already impressed Casey Stengel, going 4-for-5 in a game back on August 10. His average declined over the months, though, from .313 after he arrived in July, to .250 in August, and just .194 in September. Green ended the season going hitless in his final 24 at-bats.

After the season Pumpsie Green was named second baseman on the 1959 Major League Rookie All-Star team, chosen in balloting by 1.7 million Topps gum customers nationally. “Green’s play fell off during the last two or three weeks of the season because he was a tired player,” Jurges said. “I figured he played 260 games last year, counting the winter league, the American Association, and the big leagues. That’s too much ball for a kid.”

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[GeoPoto]

In 1960, Green played 69 games at second base and 41 games at shortstop. After June 2, he never surpassed .250 at the plate, finishing at .242. He hit three homers and drove in 21 runs, in 260 at-bats spread over 133 games – 110 of which saw him in the field. Mike Higgins returned as manager that July, and made Green the starting shortstop for the last five weeks of the season. He seemed to be improving on defense. After the season, Pumpsie barnstormed with what was meant to be an “all-star troupe” made up of two teams of Negro American and National League ballplayers on a 33-game swing across the South.

Once again, in 1961, Green hit well in spring training, leading the club in hitting with a spectacular .478 average, earning the starting shortstop role at the start of the season. Pumpsie struggled at the plate, failing to get a hit his first 10 times up. Finally, he had a 2-for-5 game on April 22; his second hit was the game-winning homer in the top of the 11th, beating the White Sox, 7-6. His average hovered around .200 almost the entire season, until a 3-for-3 game on August 20 seemed to kick-start things. He wound up getting into 88 games, closing out the 1961 campaign at .260, with six home runs and 27 RBIs.

The biggest headlines Green earned in 1962 were when he and Gene Conley went AWOL, walking off the team bus as it was stuck in heavy New York traffic. It was July 26, and the team had just lost to the Yankees, 13-3, and the players were hot. They thought they might get a drink, and seem to have “done the town in style.” Conley apparently also tried to talk Pumpsie into going to Bethlehem with him “to be nearer to God.” Pumpsie preferred rejoining the team in Washington and turned up a little more than 24 hours later. Conley returned on the 29th. Pumpsie appeared in 56 games (fielding in only 23 of them), hitting .231 in 91 at-bats. He drove in 11 runs.

On December 11, 1962, the Red Sox traded Pumpsie and pitcher Tracy Stallard to the New York Mets for infielder Felix Mantilla. The Mets had just completed their first season, finishing in 10th place, 60½ games behind the San Francisco Giants. Unfortunately, Pumpsie didn’t make the Mets in the springtime. Green “reported overweight … a roly-poly 205 … and never could get going.” He hit .308 for Buffalo, with 17 homers, before being called up at the tail end of the season. He hit what proved to be his final home run, a two-run job off Ray Culp of the Philadelphia Phillies at the Polo Grounds on September 17. He hit. 278 in just 54 at-bats; the home run was his 13th major-league four-bagger.

In 1964, Pumpsie had “reported trim and ready.” Manager Stengel gave him a shot at third base, but Green had to contend with a lingering hip problem and, in the end, didn’t sufficiently impress. He was again shuffled off to Buffalo before the major-league season began, and this year he dipped to .281 with eight homers. After the season he played winter ball again, with Cinco Estrellas in Nicaragua.

Green hurt his left hip in 1965 spring training and saw only limited action at Buffalo as a pinch-hitter, batting .259 in the season before being released on July 16. Though he signed on with the Syracuse Chiefs, his combined average for the year was .247 and he added only two more RBIs with the Chiefs before leaving the game for good.

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[GeoPoto]

After baseball, Green earned a physical-education degree from San Francisco State University and then accepted a position with the Berkeley Unified School District, where he ran the baseball program, coached baseball for 25 years, served as dean of boys for a while, taught mathematics, and did some security work at the school. He finally retired in 1997. Players who came through Berkeley and made it to the majors include Glenn Burke, Ruppert Jones, and Claudell Washington.

After retirement, he took to working out at his local YMCA and doting on his granddaughter, Brittany. Pumpsie and Marie had two children: Jerry, a mechanical engineer for A.C. Transit, and Heidi Keisha, a schoolteacher and principal.

Looking back, Pumpsie was frank about Boston and his time in the major leagues. It was a bit of a mixed blessing of sorts, he told Jon Goode: “Sometimes it would get on my nerves. Sometimes I wonder if I would have even made it to the major leagues if it had not been for this Boston thing. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off it was not for the Boston thing. Things like that you can never answer.”

Green told Danny Peary, “When I was playing, being the first black on the Red Sox wasn’t nearly as big a source of pride as it would be once I was out of the game. At the time I never put much stock in it, or thought about it. Later I understood my place in history. I don’t know if I would have been better in another organization with more black players. But as it turned out, I became increasingly proud to have been with the Red Sox as their first black.”

While he acknowledged becoming more comfortable over time with the role he played, Pumpsie told Harvey Frommer several years after speaking to Peary, “There’s really nothing that interesting about me. I am just an everyday person happy with what I did,” adding, “I take a lot of pride in having played for the Red Sox.” He summed up, in his self-effacing fashion, “I would like to be remembered in Red Sox history as just another ballplayer.” That was what it was really all about, from the beginning.

His last visit to the Red Sox was in April 2012, when he attended the Fenway Park’s 100th anniversary celebrations. Two days later, he threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Red Sox game on Jackie Robinson Day.

Pumpsie Green died at San Leandro (California) Hospital on July 17, 2019, at the age of 85. He was survived by his wife of 62 years, Marie, their daughter Heidi, three brothers, and several grandchildren, nieces, nephews. He was preceded in death by his son, Jerry, who passed away in February 2018.

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[laughlinfan]

Thanks for a great thread, George! RIP, Pumpsie, and thanks for the contributions to the game!

[Chris-Counts]

I second the compliment George! If only Pumpsie had played longer, I could enjoy more of your posts about him.

[jingram058]

Absolutely. Great thread. Thanks for taking the time, and thanks for introducing me to Pumpsie Green.