Curveball (17 page)
Authors: Martha Ackmann
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The Negro Southern League, not to be confused with the Negro League, began in 1920 and reached its peak in 1932. By the late 1940s, when Toni Stone played against the Creoles, the Negro Southern League was less organized and generally considered a level below such Negro League teams as the Kansas City Monarchs. Negro Southern League teams expanded their season by playing other black teams such as the barnstorming San Francisco Sea Lions and occasionally Negro League squads including the Monarchs and the Indianapolis Clowns.
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Dr. Daddy O was Vernon Winslow, a music reporter for the
Louisiana Weekly
.
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Sam Lacy (1903–2003) began his career selling peanuts in the Jim Crow section of Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. He was one of the most outspoken critics of segregation in baseball. After writing for the
Chicago Defender
, he later exclusively covered Jackie Robinson for three years for the Baltimore
Afro-American.
He was elected to the baseball writers’ wing of the Hall of Fame in 1998. Dick Young (1918–1987) was a sportswriter for the
New York Daily News.
Known for his abrasive prose style, Young was a president of the Baseball Writers of America and was elected in 1978 to the writers’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. He also was an early advocate of women sportswriters.
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Fields pitched for the Homestead Grays in the Negro League during the 1949 Colored World Series held at Pelican Stadium. The Grays won the series 4–1 against the Birmingham Black Barons.
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The Black Pelicans were part of a long history of African American teams in New Orleans that went back to the 1860s with the Aetnas, the Fischers, the Dumonts, the Unions, and the Pinchbacks, named for the first nonwhite Louisiana governor. The Black Pelicans played in the early 1900s and claimed with pride that they were “the first professional lineup to be mowed down” by Satchel Paige. “‘We’re gonna beat ya this time, Herman,’” the manager of the Chattanooga Black Lookouts said to Herman Roth, who managed and caught for the Black Pelicans in 1926. “‘See that l-o-n-g boy out there?’ said the Chat manager pointing to a string bean pitcher loosening up.” Roth remembered that “Baby-faced Satch” beat the New Orleans team 1–0. By the end of the year, Paige jumped to the Black Pels. New Orleans also had the Caulfield Ads and the Crescent Stars in the Negro Southern League in the 1920s, the Zulus, who played in the 1930s, and a host of local teams such as Dr. Nut’s Algier Tigers in the 1940s. Later, in the 1950s, New Orleans inherited the Eagles, who moved to Houston when Effa Manley shut down the Newark-based team (Old Timers Baseball Club Collection, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA).
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Bill White hit .298 for the Danville Giants and went on to play thirteen seasons for the New York and San Francisco Giants, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Philadelphia Phillies. White served as president of the National League from 1989 to 1994, the first African American to do so.
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In 1954, Howe listed the Kansas City Monarchs in last place for both halves of the season—a record Baird disputed. Baird emphasized that poor record keeping could have disastrous results for a team if fans perceived the team as a losing enterprise and not worth supporting.
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Other accounts of Toni’s life state that she also played with the New Orleans Black Pelicans, a fact I have been unable to confirm.
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The Atlanta Crackers were known as the Yankees of the minors. An independent team, the Crackers played in the Class AA Southern Association. From 1950 to 1958 they were affiliated with the Boston and then Milwaukee Braves organization. The Atlanta Black Crackers were an independent team in the Negro Southern League. The ABCs folded in 1952.
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After Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball, he was followed in July 1947 by center fielder Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians, catcher Roy Campanella of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948, and pitcher Don Newcombe of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949.
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Edward Honeycutt was jailed on a rape charge after he was found walking alone on a road outside town. Deputies alleged that after making a lumber delivery in town, Honeycutt got drunk and raped a white housewife. Honeycutt reported that deputies beat a false confession out of him. Later, three white kidnappers scaled the courthouse, dropped through a roof, grabbed Honeycutt, and drove out to the Atchafalaya River where they tossed coins to see who would lynch him. Honeycutt broke away and jumped into the river as bullets shot over his head. The next morning, a fisherman found him on the opposite side of the river, hiding in a tree. An all-white jury found Honeycutt guilty and sentenced him to death. The NAACP stepped in and the case went to appeal. Even though some of Honeycutt’s defense team expressed doubts about his innocence, his lawyers argued that the case was also about a black citizen’s right to a fair trial. African American jurors were rare in Louisiana, and so were lawyers defending blacks. Fearful that defense attorneys would be assaulted as they drove to the courthouse, a group of blacks appealed to Governor Earl Long to provide protection. State troopers stood at every intersection for sixty miles between Baton Rouge and the courthouse in Opelousas where African Americans crammed the gallery and the courthouse lawn. When the defense objected to one potential juror described as “one of the best niggers in Opelousas,” the judge overruled. “I don’t think it is meant to be derogatory in any way,” he said. “On the contrary, he was referring to the laudable characteristics of the person.” Honeycutt lost his appeal, and on June 8, 1951, he died in the electric chair. Advocates of fair trials for African Americans said that legal lynching were as deadly as literal ones (Adam Fairclough,
Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972
, 124–129).
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The
Louisiana Weekly
(April 3, 1949) reported that Roy C. Brooks Sr. was killed by Gretna policeman Alvin Bladsacker. Dr. Oakley Johnson of Dillard spoke about white control of government.
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Journalist A. S. “Doc” Young believed criticism of Louis Armstrong was shortsighted. In a 1971 oral history, Young said, “It’s easy to be pointed [to] as an Uncle Tom. It was Louie Armstrong, as little as anybody knows, who was responsible for President Eisenhower sending the troops to Little Rock [in 1957–1958 to protect black students at Central High School]. A lot of young black people didn’t know…. Just because he had that white handkerchief and was smiling all the time didn’t mean he was an Uncle Tom. He refused to play New Orleans as long as he couldn’t play for an integrated audience…. They didn’t appreciate him because they didn’t take the time to find out” (Jim Reisler,
Black Writers/Black Baseball: An Anthology of Articles from Black Sportswriters Who Covered the Negro Leagues
, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2007, 177).
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When the Clowns joined the Negro League in 1943, they split their home games between Cincinnati and Indianapolis. In 1946, they became known solely as the Indianapolis Clowns.
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Teams in the 1949 Negro Southern League were the Atlanta Brown Crackers, the Chattanooga Choo Choos, the Delta Giants, the Gadesen Tigers, the Memphis Red Caps, the New Orleans Creoles, and the Owensboro Dodgers. Managers for the New Orleans Creoles included A. Hill (1948), formerly with the Negro League’s Newark Eagles, Wesley Barrows, who took over in August 1949, and Felton Snow, of the Negro League’s Cleveland Buckeyes, who began managing the Creoles in May 1950.
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Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor (1897–1973) later became police commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama, and came to national attention when he used fire hoses and attack dogs against civil rights protestors.
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In a 1993 interview with Kyle McNary, Stone said she completed study for her high school GED while living in California after World War II. The Minneapolis–Saint Paul
Twin City Leader
on July 19, 1941, reported that Toni was attending West Virginia State University. Officials at the University have no record of Stone’s attendance, although the institution was known for its outstanding athletic program and several young people from Toni’s Rondo neighborhood in Saint Paul were enrolled at West Virginia State. I have been unable to confirm or deny that Stone attended any California college.
On DeckNo one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time…. Everyone seemed to be waiting, as I was waiting.
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AMES
B
ALDWIN
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s much as she loved the game, Toni put her baseball dreams on hold. She left New Orleans after the 1950 Creoles season ended and returned to Oakland. No one—not her teammates, not her friends back in San Francisco at Jack’s Tavern, not her sister Bunny, and not her family in Saint Paul—could have predicted what she was about to do. Toni Stone was getting married.
Toni had given no indication that marriage was in her future. She displayed little romantic interest in men and rebuffed teammates who tried to make passes. When one player sexually harassed her on a team bus, she asked her manager to intervene. He told her to settle the matter herself, so Toni grabbed a baseball bat. She “hit that kid in the name of the Father and the Son,” she said. “I thought I was going to have to go to jail, but I got away with it. I had to prove I was tough.”
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When Toni did socialize with men, she usually went out with a group, joining other players for drinks and cigarettes after a game. “Saturday night was good for the soul,” she said.
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She enjoyed the camaraderie, although some wives and girlfriends found Toni’s friendships with the men inappropriate. They could not understand why a woman wanted to be “one of the guys” and assumed she was out to steal their men. Most of the Creole players, like her Twin City Colored Giants teammates, admitted that they did not regard Toni in romantic terms. “We didn’t think of her as a girl,” one said.
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If she dated, Toni didn’t let her team know. She kept that information to herself. “Dan Cupid will have to wait,” she told reporters.
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Family members said Toni rarely dressed up, put on makeup, or tried to appear conventionally attractive. Toni would wear a dress or skirt, if asked, for special occasions such as weddings or holidays. She would pose for a group photograph, and then slip out to her car where she had trousers and a shirt stashed in the trunk for a quick change.
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Dressing as she did in men’s trousers, shirts, and shoes, many people assumed Toni was a lesbian. Cross-dressing women were commonly thought to be gay. While many considered the Bay Area a more liberal environment than other parts of the country, a cross-dressing woman still could be threatened, harassed, or even arrested by San Francisco vice squads. Local ordinances forbade anyone from impersonating with intent to deceive a member of the opposite sex. One woman admired clever cross-dressing lesbians who found a way to avoid being thrown in jail: they always wore women’s underwear. “If you wore one article of feminine apparel,” she said, vice squads “couldn’t book you.”
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The same was true for men in drag. Men got around the ordinance by wearing “I am a boy” tags pinned to their clothing.
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But anyone who knew Toni well would tell you that she rarely had close relationships with women. Friends and family could not recall one woman with whom Toni appeared especially intimate. She thought all women looked down on her, like her teammates’ girlfriends and the stylish girls from Rondo.
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Above all, Toni preferred the company of older men—the old-timers who hung out at the meatpacking plants in Saint Paul, veteran ballplayers who shared baseball history with her, elderly gentlemen who frequented her father’s barbershop. Toni felt at ease around them, comfortable talking about the past, and comforted, perhaps, in assuming that older men would have no sexual interest in her. Perhaps that’s why she enjoyed Aurelious Pescia Alberga so much. The conversations they shared at Jack’s Tavern, the way he found a place for her on the American Legion team, and his admiration for her modest celebrity all made Toni feel important. When he asked, Toni accepted Alberga’s marriage proposal. The couple was married in San Francisco on December 23, 1950, at the city’s Municipal Court. Alberga was sixty-seven and Toni was twenty-nine. They settled into Alberga’s small Victorian home at 844 Isabella Street in Oakland.
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Toni took the large first-floor bedroom and Alberga occupied a smaller one next to it. Toni called her husband “Pa.” He called her “dear sweetheart.”
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Having a husband “gave me respectability,” Toni said.
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