The Jet

[GeoPoto]

I have a modest collection of cards and photos involving Sam Jethroe, one of the significant players in the evolution of integrated major league baseball. For the next 15 days I plan to make a daily post including one of these items with a portion of Sam's excellent SABR biography written by Bill Nowlin. I hope that you will find Nowlin's treatment of Jethroe's story interesting and would love to see any odd items involving Sam that may be part of your collection.

We will kick off with Nowlin's introduction to the biography and a 1940s photo while Sam was playing in Cuba, complete with a racist nickname recorded on its reverse:

Sam Jethroe was the National League Rookie of the Year in 1950, playing for the Boston Braves, and the first African-American to play major-league baseball in Boston. Five years earlier, he’d tried out for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, along with Jackie Robinson and Marvin Williams, but the Red Sox pursued none of them. Robinson went on to break the major-league color barrier and won Rookie of the Year in 1947.

Near the end of his life, Jethroe struggled financially because he was denied a major-league pension for lack of sufficient service time.

At 6-feet-1 and 178 pounds in his prime, the switch-hitting Jethroe (who threw right-handed) was known as the “Jet” – and many considered him the fastest man in baseball in his day. He was a better than average batter, although not nearly as accomplished on defense.

After his playing career ended, when asked which year was his first in professional baseball, Jethroe told the Hall of Fame it was 1948. That was the year he first played in the minor leagues – in the outfield for the Montreal Royals, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ top farm team. He played in 76 games and hit for a .322 average, with just one homer and 25 RBIs. He wasn’t as much for driving in runs, but he got on base a lot and scored 52 runs. In Montreal again in 1949, he played a full 153 games and hit for a .326 average, with 83 RBIs and a league-leading 154 runs scored. He set a league record with 89 stolen bases. His 207 base hits and 19 triples also led the International League, and he was one of the three outfielders named to the league all-star team. Under manager Clay Hopper, Montreal won league flags in 1946, with Jackie Robinson, and in 1948 with Jethroe.

Jethroe’s speed on the base paths earned him the sobriquet “Jet Propelled Jethroe,” later shortened to “The Jet.” He was also dubbed “Larceny Legs” and “Mercury Man” and “The Colored Comet.”

Jethroe was ready for the major leagues. And for Branch Rickey, this was a chance to cash in on his outfielder’s talent.

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[ClementeFanOh]

George- this is a compelling labor of admiration, I love it. Look forward to
reading the entries! Trent King

[ALR-bishop]

Good thread. The SABR write ups on MLB players is a great resource

[GeoPoto]

(Recall from yesterday Jethroe citing 1948 as his first "in professional baseball.")

But 1948 was not truly Jethroe’s first year of professional baseball. That came a full decade earlier, when Jethroe played for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro American League. The Boston Chronicle reported he hadn’t played baseball at Lincoln High School but had been a star at softball. As was not uncommon in those days, he did not graduate from high school until he was 23, in 1940. While still in high school, he played for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro American League, in 1938; in 1940 and 1941 he played semipro ball, declining several offers from “Negro professional teams” in order to care for his mother, who was quite ill. She died on New Year’s Eve in 1941. Jethroe returned to pro ball in earnest in 1942 to play for the Cleveland Buckeyes, for whom he played into early 1948. It was a Buckeyes uniform Jethroe wore when he took part in the 1945 tryout at Fenway Park (more about this tomorrow).

Negro Leagues statistics aren’t as complete as we would like; but that Jethroe was brought back year after year speaks to good performance, and that he was signed to Montreal and fared well there also testifies to his talents as a ballplayer. Four times he was selected to the Negro Leagues’ East-West All-Star Game, playing in seven games—two games apiece in 1942, 1946, 1947, and one in 1944.

Samuel Jethroe came from a farming family in Old Zion, Lowndes County, Mississippi. His parents moved to East St. Louis, Illinois at some point, perhaps very shortly after Samuel was born. His parents were Albert “Chip” Jethroe, who at the time of the 1930 census had his own farm at East St. Louis, and Janie Jethroe, who worked as a sheller in a nut factory. She also worked some as a domestic, according to news stories contemporary to Sam’s career. Sam had a sister, Rachel, who was about a year older, and a brother, Jessie, about four years younger. According to census records, Janie had been born Mary Jannie Spruil. Sam’s notarized birth certificate said his mother’s name was Jannie Adams.

We believe that Sam was born on January 23, 1917 in Lowndes County, though both he himself and the Social Security Death Index gave his birthplace as East St. Louis. He gave his year of birth as 1922, and a number of contemporary accounts indicate years ranging from 1918 to 1922; however, his reported age at the time of the 1930 census was 13 years old. We assume that those later years reflected a fictional “baseball age”; they were there to make him appear younger and thus to offer longer future potential for a team that might sign him. “I was born in 1917,” he later confirmed to Rich Marazzi. When he came to the big leagues, it was with the Boston Braves in 1950. Fortunately, age wasn’t an issue to his manager, Billy Southworth. “I don’t care if he’s 50, just as long as he can do the job.”

Jethroe played semipro ball while growing up, playing for both the East St. Louis Colts and St. Louis Giants. He would hitchhike to Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis and peek through a knothole to watch Dizzy Dean and the Cardinals. And he grew up almost next door to Hank Bauer. “His backyard touched my backyard, and we’d play games, Hank Bauer’s team and my team,” Sam said. Of course, Bauer’s team was all white and he went on to the major leagues, while Jethroe “would play doubleheaders for the East St. Louis Colts, then head over to St. Louis for a night game…those teams were all black…and I made hardly nothing.”

Marazzi writes that Jethroe, while with the Buckeyes in 1942, led the Negro American League in numerous categories – batting average, base hits, runs scored, doubles, triples, and stolen bases. In 1944, his .353 average led the league.

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[GeoPoto]

It was in early 1945 that Jethroe took part in the tryout at Fenway Park. The pressure was growing on what was then known as “Organized Baseball” to desegregate, particularly because soldiers who had come back from putting their lives on the line for the country during World War II found a color bar still preventing them from playing professional baseball other than in the Negro leagues. Boston City Councilor Isadore Muchnick threatened to pull the special permit that the City of Boston accorded the Red Sox which enabled them to play baseball on one of the most lucrative days of the week – Sundays. The Sox wanted to hold onto Sunday baseball and so agreed to hold a tryout for a select three Negro Leaguers brought to Boston by Pittsburgh Courier sportswriter Wendell Smith. Jethroe, Marvin Williams, and Jackie Robinson suited up at Fenway on April 16, 1945 and worked out for coach Hugh Duffy. Red Sox manager Joe Cronin was present as well. Robinson later said of Jethroe, “He looked like a gazelle in the outfield.”

Duffy said he was impressed, but none of the three ever heard from the Red Sox again. Rather than becoming the first major-league team to integrate, the Red Sox ending up being the last – in 1959. Jethroe recalled that the Red Sox “said we had all the potential but it wasn’t the right time.” Cronin later said he told the players that since Boston’s top farm club was in Louisville, “we didn’t think they’d be interested in going there because of the racial feelings at the time.” But he also admitted, “We all thought because of the times, it was good to have separate leagues.”

Jackie Robinson was indeed bitter about the incident, at least when he spoke about it later. But as for Jethroe the Boston Globe’s Larry Whiteside wrote, “Unlike Robinson, he took life as it came.” Though they’d been told that the time wasn’t right (Muchnick said he never heard that explanation), Jethroe allowed, “The Sox were nice. I mean they didn’t take us to dinner or anything, but they were all right. It was just a workout.” He hadn’t gotten too upset, he said, because the three figured nothing was going to come of it anyway. As to the idea they might have actually been signed and brought into Organized Baseball, “I don’t think it ever dawned on any of us.” He also told Herald reporter Gerry Callahan that he’d heard no racial slurs on the field that day.

Jethroe may have been a bit more candid shortly afterward with some of his Buckeyes teammates. Willie Grace says that Jethroe told him “…‘What a joke that so-called tryout was.’ He said you just knew it was a farce” and that Cronin, although he was there, was “up in the stands with his back turned most of the time.”

Tryout over, Jethroe reported to Cleveland, put his Buckeyes uniform back on and once more led the league, this time with a .393 batting average. The Buckeyes also won the Negro World Series that year, sweeping the Homestead Grays.

Was Jethroe disappointed, or angry, that the Red Sox had turned him away? “No, I never thought about it,” he told Marazzi. “When I played in the Negro Leagues, I enjoyed it. I loved to play ball and baseball was fun then. I played against Don Newcombe, Monte Irvin, Henry Thompson, ‘Double Duty’ Radcliffe, Gentry Jessup, and many others.”

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[Harliduck]

Awesome post...thanks for taking the time. When anyone brings up a player such as this on this site I need to go look at my sets...only to find that Sam didn't have any cards in the sets I currently have complete! Thanks for the inspiration...just picked up his 51 Bowman...great card...

[Lucas00]

What a beautiful photo! Great piece

[Marckus99]

‘55 Gilbert Studio - Toronto

Very Scarce Team Issue

[GeoPoto]

Great photo Markus!

After the 1946 season, Jethroe joined the Satchel Paige All-Stars and barnstormed through 17 games, playing against a team of major leaguers headed by the entrepreneurial Bob Feller. Paige’s team won seven of them. Jethroe gave Feller credit for helping black players into the majors. “He gave us a chance to show what we could do against major leaguers.”

Jethroe was courted by Mexican League head honcho Jorge Pasquel to play ball in the Mexican League, but declined. He did go to Venezuela for a while and was there when the news broke that Jackie Robinson had been signed. Jethroe played in the Cuban Winter League in 1947-48 and again in 1948-49. Playing center field for Almendares, Jethroe hit a team-leading .308 and led the league with 53 runs scored and 22 stolen bases. He again led the league in stolen bases (with 32) for the 1948-49 Almendares team, though his 37 strikeouts also led the league. He hit .320 in that year’s Caribbean Series.

In his quest for a better Brooklyn team and to desegregate the majors, Dodgers GM Branch Rickey reportedly interviewed Jethroe as well as Robinson. But Jethroe acknowledged that he smoked and drank, and Rickey felt he needed to go with a more clean-cut pioneer. He selected Robinson. “He had everything Mr. Rickey wanted,” Jethroe said, “He was a college man who had experienced the white world, and I wasn’t.”

But Fresco Thompson scouted Jethroe and the Dodgers did purchase Jethroe’s contract from the Buckeyes for a reported $5,000, and in July 1948 assigned him to Montreal. He had the two exceptional years noted above, and there were those who called him “the man who made Montreal forget about Jackie Robinson.” For instance, in the first 11 games he played against the Buffalo Bisons, Jethroe put together a different sort of streak – he stole at least one base in each game. Buffalo manager Paul Richards, Bob Dolgan wrote, “was so fearful of leadoff man Jethroe’s speed, he would intentionally walk the pitcher in front of him, blocking Jethroe’s running.” When they did pitch to Jethroe in the Negro Leagues, Buck O’Neil recalled, “the infield would have to come in a few steps or you’d never throw him out.”

During spring training in 1949, Jethroe was clocked in a 60-yard sprint at 5.9 seconds—two -tenths of a second faster than the world’s record at the time. Stunned as to what his stopwatch showed, the Dodgers’ Arthur Mann later helped arrange an exhibition 75-yard dash against Olympian Bunny Ewell. Jethroe beat Ewell by a few yards. Another race that spring clocked Jethroe at 6.1 seconds, tying the world record. He could run fast in games, too, of course. Arthur Daley of the New York Times noted the time Jethroe had scored from second – standing up – on an infield dribbler.

Rickey had Duke Snider in center field and really had no place in the big leagues for Jethroe. He may also have decided that Jethroe lacked power in his bat; Jethroe had hit just the one home run for the Royals. During a phone call with Boston Braves GM John Quinn on September 30, Rickey sold Jethroe’s contract to the Braves. It was a big deal, said to have been for at least $100,000. New York sportswriter Dan Daniel said the Jethroe sale – one of several Rickey made in a flurry that netted the Dodgers well over half a million dollars – brought Brooklyn $125,000 and Clint Conatser and Don Thompson. The caption for the AP wirephoto that ran in the October 12, 1949 Boston Herald said Jethroe was “regarded as the greatest base runner since Ty Cobb was in his prime.”

As Harliduck showed, the 1951 Bowman is a great card. Note the odd righthanded pose, with hands reversed:

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[GeoPoto]

It was a big deal (Jethroe's sale in 1949 by Branch Rickey to the Boston Braves for $100K+) in other ways, of course, and it’s interesting that more than 10 years earlier, John Quinn’s father Bob Quinn, Sr. had talked with Boston journalist Doc Kountze and envisioned the end of segregation in baseball. Quinn felt it only right that the color line should be breached in Boston, which had fashioned itself the “Cradle of Liberty” at the time of the American Revolution. Quinn knew that major-league owners would have voted him down in 1938, but he did predict the change would happen with the National League Braves (they were the Boston Bees in 1938) before it would happen with the Red Sox.

Jethroe wasn’t the only black player in the Braves organization. Announcing the acquisition, the Boston Herald wrote, “He is the first Negro signed to a Braves contract, though there are several Negroes in the organization.” There was a rumor a few days later that the Braves had also purchased Jackie Robinson. That was quickly denied, but it was clear that Jethroe, more than the also-acquired Bob Addis, had been the Braves’ target in their dealings.

There was some early thought that Rickey had discarded Jethroe; New York writer Joe Williams had dubbed him a “gold-brick…who doesn’t seem to be able to throw at all.” But Rickey himself said, “It might be the biggest mistake I ever made in baseball.”

In any case, come 1950 Sam Jethroe, the first black ballplayer for the Boston Braves, was indeed a 33-year-old rookie in the major leagues. But he had a resume in professional baseball dating back into the 1930s.

Jethroe felt welcome immediately, although things did not always go smoothly as the season wore on. First, though, there was spring training. The Braves trained in Bradenton, Florida, and while perhaps Bostonians would welcome him – a proposition yet to be tested – this was less likely to be the case in those days in Florida.

A year earlier, Jethroe had trained with the Dodgers at Vero Beach in 1949. Though there were communities that were resistant to “race-mixing” in baseball, the Dodgers had been pleased with Robinson’s reception and his being named Rookie of the Year in 1947. The 1948 Dodgers had welcomed future Hall of Famer Roy Campanella, and the Cleveland Indians added Larry Doby, who helped them win the 1948 World Series. In January 1949, several Southern cities that had previously barred black and white ballplayers from playing in the same games actually reached out with invitations to the Dodgers to come and play in their locales during spring training. They included Miami and West Palm Beach in Florida, Atlanta and Macon in Georgia, Greenville in South Carolina, and Houston and San Antonio in Texas. The Dodgers trained at Vero Beach, although at the Naval Training base that was outside the city limits.

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[GeoPoto]

Jethroe played against the Cardinals (March 13) and Yankees (March 21) at St. Petersburg – the first time the color bar had been dropped there — and “caused no stir whatever…produced no reaction except insofar as a small mention in the local Independent. “The St. Petersburg Times did not even mention that Jethroe was a “Negro.” About 300 Negroes were among the 3,157 who came out to the Cardinals game.

There actually had been an incident, but a very quiet one the newspaper apparently had not heard about. Jethroe remembered it years later: “John Quinn met me at the airport and asked me questions about what things might bother me and he told the players about how I felt. One time, at a restaurant in Florida that spring, they refused to serve me and the team said, `Sam, if they don’t serve you, they won’t serve us.’ I told them to go on in, that I wasn’t hungry.”

Right from the start, questions were raised about Jethroe’s defense. Under the headline “$100,000 Jethroe May Be Flop in Outfield,” Bob Ajemian wrote in The Sporting News that while there was no doubt whatsoever about his being faster than anyone in the majors, and that he ought to be able to hit major-league pitching from either side of the plate, he “cannot throw with a major league arm” and “cannot field well enough to hold down a vital center field post satisfactorily.” He didn’t seem to get a good jump on the ball and counted on his speed to enable him to play more deeply than might otherwise be wise; he saw a few balls drop in front of him that a better center fielder may have caught.

Harold Kaese of the Boston Globe agreed. He wrote that “he cannot throw or judge a fly well enough to play center field…This Jethroe looks so fast and his arm looks so weak that it’s even money he can carry the ball in from center field as fast as he can throw it in.”

The Brave's brass was worried. Jethroe himself was a little discouraged and said, “Don’t know but what I ought to pack up and go home, if they really have quit on me.” Bob Holbrook wrote after the 1950 season was over that Jethroe had put together “one of the finest comeback epics in recent years.” How could player mount a comeback when he’d never played in the majors before? That’s because, Holbrook said, Jethroe had been “washed up before he played a game. Writers took one look at him and gasped. He couldn’t throw, he couldn’t hit and he couldn’t field. Fly balls dropped around him so profusely that people were afraid he’d get hit on the head.” Jethroe himself had let one ball drop during a night game, and reportedly joshed, “I lost it in the moon.”

He “isn’t living up to his pre-training camp raves,” wrote Frank Santos of the Boston Chronicle, an African American newspaper, “finding it rather hard to adjust himself to the so-called big league.” But Santos added that Jethroe had recently begun to find himself. Manager Billy Southworth stuck with Jethroe, counseling patience. And Santos seemed to have little doubt that Jethroe would get a good reception in Boston, writing, “One thing is certain, that the hometown fans of the Boston Braves will be rooting for him.”

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