Degrees of Separation: Pumpsie Green and the Integration of the Boston Red Sox by Russell Streur

Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier when Branch Rickey ushered him onto the field in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform in April of 1947.  None of Rickey’s 15 fellow owners applauded the move.  Most damned it.  Tom Yawkey of the Boston Red Sox probably cursed it the loudest.

 

Only two clubs followed the Dodgers that season by integrating their line-ups.  No team integrated in 1948, and only one each in the following three years.   

 

Six of the earliest players to cross the line are in the Hall of Fame:  Robinson, Larry Doby, Willard Brown, Roy Campanella, Satchel Paige and Monte Irvin.

(Produced in the style of the 1964 Topps set, this Paige/Doby card was issued in 2009 by the Monarch Corona Printing Company.  Jackie Robinson is pictured as a member of the 1945 Kansas City Monarchs in a 2011 Monarch Corona edition.  Monarch Corona cards are professionally printed on solid card stock with complete backs.  With one or two possible exceptions, the company limits printing of an item to a one-time run of 200 cards.      A blog about the cards and the company can be found at ( http://monarch-corona.com/ ).  Monarch Corona cards are sold independently by the Grouchy Old Man on E-bay.  Grouchy’s facebook page can be found at ( https://www.facebook.com/CardsThatNeverWere/  ).  It’s a fun tour and worth the time.)

 

Brown’s major league career lasted a month with the St. Louis Browns.  Josh Gibson, who knew a thing or two about the subject, gave Brown the nickname Home Run. Willard Brown.  Home Run Brown.  The official records only attest for 67 homers for Brown in his 14 seasons with the Kansas City Monarchs, and those seasons earned him a plaque in Cooperstown, so there has to be more to the story than the box scores tell.  Somewhere north of 500 home runs more to the story, The Bible of Baseball says.

(Willard Brown is featured in a 1994 set of baseball cards issued by the short-lived Ted Williams Card Company (left).  Yes, that Ted Williams; the company was run by a son until an exclusive deal signed by Ted with Upper Deck doomed the filial venture.  He is also included in the Stars of the Negro Leagues set issued by Eclipse Enterprises in 1990 (right).  The text on the back of the card describes him as “an inpatient free-swinger who never waited for strikes” and credits him with ten home run titles in the Negro Leagues between 1935 and 1956.)

Hank Thompson integrated the St. Louis Browns alongside Brown in 1947.  His term in the American League ended just as quickly as his partner’s.   Both players suited up for the Kansas City Monarchs in 1948.  Brown stayed with the team until he retired in 1950.  Thompson caught on with the New York Giants and became the first Black player on that team in July of 1949, a few innings ahead of Monte Irvin.

(These two cards are part of a 2018 set consisting of the first Black players to integrate each of the 16 major league teams between 1947 and 1959.  The set of trailblazers was created by MaxCards, an Etsy merchant located at https://www.etsy.com/shop/HomeTeamSports.  The company says “Our Cards That Could Have Been’ feature players who did not have a proper card in a given year between 1957 and 1974. Either the player did not appear on a card at all, was shown on the wrong team, was wearing the wrong uniform, or shared space on a rookie stars card when he should have had card of his own. Our cards are NOT reprints. They are cards that were never made (but should have been).” The players who crossed the color line in this special set can found on e-bay using the search description “custom baseball art card 1st black player’. A caveat: the cards have blank backs.



Thompson fell on hard times after baseball with the seasons punctuated by divorce, petty crime and heavy drinking. He was convicted of armed robbery in Texas in 1963 and served four years of a ten-year term before being paroled in 1967. He died at the age of 43 on September 30, 1969, exactly 13 years after the date of his last game played in the majors.)

 

Damon Runyon gave Ted Radcliffe the title Double Duty when he caught one game of a doubleheader and pitched the second.  Give the title Double Shift to Thompson.   No other player integrated two teams.  Once was enough in those days.

 

Most clubs remained all white until the Chicago Cubs purchased Ernie Banks from the Monarchs for $10,000 in September of 1953.  Four teams integrated in 1954, and the New York Yankees next.

 

That left the hold-outs.  The Philadelphia Phillies stayed white until 1957 and the Detroit Tigers until 1958.  Under the remorselessly racist tutelage of Tom Yawkey, the Boston Red Sox didn’t open their locker room to a Black player until 1959.  It wasn’t voluntary—the Red Sox were the only team forced to integrate after a government investigation found them in violation of state anti-discrimination regulations.

 

Desperate to escape a court date, the Red Sox called up infielder Elijah “Pumpsie” Green in July from the Minneapolis Millers of the old American Association.  Green owned an MVP award from the California League but was largely a journeyman in the minors.  A good spring training camp in 1959 earned him a following among Boston’s sportswriters, and the bandwagon grew louder when Green got off to a hot start with the Millers.   

 

Green’s hitting fell off after his call-up.  An 0 for 24 string at the end of the season dropped his average to .233.   Buyers of Topps gum overlooked the slump and some shaky fieldling to vote Pumpsie onto the baseball card company’s Rookie All Star team for the season.

(In 1960, buyers of Topps cards voted for Rookies of the Year by fielding position.  Pumpsie took honors for second base.  He was joined in the infield by Jim Baxes at third, Joe Koppe at short, and Willie McCovey at first.   Bob Allison, Ron Fairly and Willie Tasby were voted as outfielders.  Johnny Romano won the catcher’s spot.  Jim Perry and Jim O’Toole took mound duties.  The right- hand panels of the cards featured a variety of color schemes.)

Green told a Boston reporter he never felt comfortable at the plate with the Red Sox, and the numbers show it.  After relegating Green to a part-time role in 1962, the Red Sox exiled him to the New York Mets.  Green lasted a single season at the Polo Grounds and played three years in the International League before retiring from the game.

 

(Pumpsie’s Topps cards from 1961 through 1964 cards are pictured above, the top row as a Red Sox player (1961, 1962), the bottom row as a Met (1963, 1964).   Though a card was issued for him as a Met in 1964, he did not play for the team that season.)

Clubs often signed a pair of Black players when integrating.  The Red Sox left Green on his own.  “A long time ago I learned how to live with myself and by myself. I don’t say I like it. I just know how I do it,” he said once.

 

Green always said he wasn’t a crusader, that all he ever wanted to do was play the game.

 

"Sometimes it was difficult, sometimes it was hard, sometimes it was impossible,” Green described breaking the Boston color line, “but I stuck with it."

 

Branch Rickey was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1967.Tom Yawkey was elected  in 1980.  

(These two cards are included in a colorful and elegantly designed card set titled Baseball Immortals.  The cards do not carry a manufacturer name or copyright mark.   According to the good folks at Trading Card Central ( http://www.tradingcardcentral.com/articles/2004/12/28_001_001.php ), the manufacturer is generally considered to be the Sports Stars Publishing Co. (SSPC), which is closely connected to The Card Memorabilia Associates (TCMA).  Four issues were produced.  The first consisted of 173 cards representing each Hall of Fame inductee from 1936 through 1980.  Tom Yawkey is represented on card number 173. Updates were issued in 1984, 1986 and 1987 to include new inductees and bringing the total set size to 199 cards.) 

 

It took decades and the social justice movement for the Red Sox to begin to distance themselves from Yawkey’s legacy.   Pumpsie Green was elected to the team’s Hall of Fame in 2018.

 

Pumpsie’s mother gave him his nickname.  Neither how nor why is remembered.  He wasn’t the only athlete in the family.  A younger brother, Cornell M. Green, was an All-American basketball forward at Utah.  He was drafted by the NBA Chicago Zephyrs in 1962 but caught the eye of the Dallas Cowboys somewhere along the way.  Although Cornell had never played a down of football at college, the Cowboys offered him $1,000 for a tryout.  Cornell took the offer on a lark.  The Cowboys liked what they saw and signed him to the club as a defensive back.   Cornell never missed a game and earned All-Pro honors four times during 13 seasons with the Cowboys. 

(Pumpsie’s brother Cornell Green spent his entire NFL career with the Dallas Cowboys.  A member of the famed Doomsday Defense, Green won a championship ring in 1972 when the Cowboys defeated the Miami Dolphins 24 to 3 in Super Bowl VI.  His card from the 1967 Philadelphia Gum set is pictured here.  From 1964 through 1967, Philadelphia Gum held the right to produce cards of players in the National Football League.  Topps held the rights to American Football League players during the period.)  

In 1962 with the Red Sox, Pumpsie was teammates with pitcher Gene Conley.  Both were Oklahoma natives, and The Bible of Baseball has a story about the pair.   With the Red Sox bus stuck in a New York traffic jam after a loss to the Yankees, the two players jumped off to relieve themselves in a Bronx bar.  When the two came out of the tavern, the bus was gone.  The players returned to the bar and shared a round or two before parting company.  Pumpsie turned one way and rejoined the team the next day.  Conley turned the other way and went missing in the summer dusk.  Four days later, a reporter found him at Idlewild International Airport, trying to board a flight to Israel without the benefit of luggage or a passport.

(The 6’ 8” Conley led a double life in Boston, one on the mound for the Braves and later the Red Sox, and the other on the hardwood floor with the Celtics.  Conley is the only athlete to have won a World Series (with the Milwaukee Braves in 1957) and a championship in another major sport (with the Celtics three times running from 1959 to1961).  He is also the only person to have played on three professional teams in the same city (the Boston Braves 1952, the Red Sox 1961-1963 and the Celtics 1952, 1958-1961.)  Conley was widely represented on baseball cards during his baseball career (one example is his 1958 Topps card with the Milwaukee Braves, above left), but never on a basketball card.  For the 1989-1990 season, Upper Deck produced subsets of numerous basketball dynasties, and Conley was included in the picks for the Celtics (above right). )

                                                                                                                                                                    Baseball is a testament.

---Russell Streur

Thanks for Reading! Happy Collecting!

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