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| Roadrunners
On Deck
April
25
Baseball
vs. N.M. Highlands
3
p.m. at Regis University
April
26
Baseball
vs. N.M. Highlands
Double
Header 1 p.m.
at
Regis University
April
27
Baseball
vs. N.M. Highlands
Noon
at Regis University
May
2-4
Metro
host North Central Regional Women Tennis Tournament
May
2
Baseball
at Regis 3 p.m.
May
3
Baseball
at Regis Double Header 1 p.m
WEEKLY
RESULTS
April
22
Baseball
lost at Air Force 9-11
April
20
Baseball
at Colorado Mines
GAME
1: W 10-1
GAME
2: W 9-2
April
19
RMAC
Tennis Tournament
Men's
Tennis beat CU-Colorado Springs 5-0 (championship)
Women's
Tennis beat Mesa State 5-0 (championship)
April
18
RMAC
Tennis Tournament
Men's
Tennis beat
Colorado
Mines 5-1 (semifinal)
Women's
Tennis beat
Nebraska-Kearney
5-0
(semifinal)
April
18
Baseball
at Colorado Mines
GAME
1: L 7-8
GAME
2: L 6-8 |
|
The
atmosphere oscillates in Room 3F at the Denver Educational
Senior Citizens apartment building.
It’s
magical
It’s
historical.
Jacquelyn
Benton, Byron Johnson’s daughter, opens the door dressed
in a striped uniform with the Kansas City Monarch’s
crown symbol patched on the front. A glass case reflects
sparkles and nausea into your eyes from prized baseball
regalia and pictures.
The
Masters is on, of course. Johnson is keeping a devoted tab
on Tiger Woods. Later, he’ll flip to the Colorado
Rockies game and that’s when the phone goes unanswered,
because baseball isn’t just a past time.
Baseball
is his time.
From
1937-to-1938, Byron “Mex” Johnson played in
the Negro Leagues for the famed Kansas City Monarchs. As
black baseball’s
glamour
franchise, the Monarchs sent the most players to the Major
Leagues once the racial wall
crumbled
when Jackie Robinson made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers
in 1947.
Also,
in 1939 and 1940, Johnson traveled the nation and played
on Satchel Paige’s All-Star team, which frequently
barnstormed against white “all-star” teams put
together by Dizzy Dean or Bob Feller. Surviving records
of these contests and other exhibition games, dug up by
baseball historian John Holway, show the black stars winning
269 of the 438 contests played between 1887 and 1947.
Johnson
recalls beating Feller’s squads by scores of 11-1
and 14-2. While Feller chose
players
from both the American and National leagues from the Majors,
Satchel Paige’s All-Stars were just an extension of
the Kansas City Monarchs, says Johnson. So they had team
spirit and team unity, and that’s better than a bunch
of separate individuals patch-worked together.
“We
weren’t only as good as them, we were better,”
Johnson says. “They finally had to recognize that.
It wasn’t that we weren’t good enough, they
just never gave us a chance. That is the way we had to play—under
those conditions. I had some good days and some bad days,
because (white fans) would always come and watch us play,
but we couldn’t go to their restaurants to eat a good
meal. But that was the way we had to play if we wanted to
play at all.”
When
Robinson, formerly of the Monarchs, bashed the color line,
he brought the Negro Leagues’ electrifying style of
sheer speed and base running to the grandest stage. Millions
of Americans flocked to see Robinson. He was named Rookie-of-the-Year.
He helped the Dodgers win six pennants in his 10 seasons.
He stole home 19 times. He was named National League MVP
in 1949. What more proof is needed to show that the Negro
Leagues housed some of the greatest players of all time?
“He
was better than a lot of the players,” Johnson said.
“He made Rookie of the Year. He beat out all of them.
What does that say to you now? Somebody has been lying about
our
ability.”
What
Johnson may fail to mention is that Robinson replaced him
at shortstop when he left baseball to fight in World War
II. And Johnson’s biggest regret was not getting a
chance to play in the big leagues, because of his skin color.
He could have taken care of his family and children
better
if he had.
Johnson
has one reason, it may not be right, but he believes Kenesaw
Mountain Landis,
baseball’s
first commissioner, knew what he was doing by barring black
baseball players.
“We
took lots of white boys out of their jobs,” Johnson
said, “because as soon as Jackie made it a lot of
other teams added black players to their list.”
In addition
to Leroy “Satchel” Paige, Johnson played with
Norman “Turkey” Stearnes, Wilbur “Bullet”
Rogan, James “Cool Papa” Bell and Hilton Smith,
who Johnson believes was a better pitcher than Paige. All
five of the men are enshrined in the Major League Baseball
Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
He also
played against Theodore “Double Duty” Radcliffe
and Josh Gibson. All legends.
During
his short stint, Johnson played to generally effusive reviews
himself. He was hailed as the best shortstop in the league
and perhaps the best shortstop in any league. He was The
Wizard (Ozzie Smith) of his day, a nimble infielder with
cat-like feet, unmatchable range to both sides and a bullwhip
arm that would snap the ball to first to complete a textbook
4-6-3 double play.
 |
Courtesy
photo by - Jacquelyn Benton |
| A recent photo of Byron Johnson at his apartment
in downtown Denver. Johnson played for the Kansas
City Monarchs from 1937-38, earning the distinction
as the top shortstop in the Negro Leagues. |
|
Born
in Little Rock, Ark., on Sept. 19, 1911, Johnson didn’t
have a baseball rolled to him when he was an infant. It
went against American etiquette in sport at the time to
sell a white ball with red stitches to a black person. When
Johnson was old enough to stroll the neighborhood to the
vacant baseball diamonds, which were as frequent as basketball
hoops are today, he carried a “Broom-hound”
bat, apparently with the broom amputated, while a baseball
took on several forms as did the base pads, which could
have been a tin can, a rock, an old shoe or hubcap.
“My
first ball is the same Coca-Cola bottle cap you see today,”
Johnson said. “People ask me when did I start to play
baseball. I tell them,
I don’t
ever remember not playing baseball.”
He’d
play the day away, bringing home to his mother Elizabeth,
who died when he was
9-years-old,
and his father Joe blisters, scuffed clothing and swollen
hands from playing catch without a mitt He also tugged
around a pet goat in a homemade, all-wood wagon with nervous
wheels, while wearing a large sombrero on his head, which
created the nickname Mex.
Johnson
played semi-pro ball in 1932 for the Little Rock Stars.
But it was in Shreveport, La., where the Monarchs spotted
him playing and kept track of him when he headed to Wiley
College in Texas on a football scholarship, where he caught
footballs with one hand. At Wiley, Johnson earned a teaching
degree and immediately got a job teaching at his high school
alma mater—Dunbar High in Little Rock. Just when he
was getting settled that’s when the Monarchs came
calling and wanted him to tryout.
“I
had heard of the Monarchs,” Johnson said. “I
knew they were one of the greats in baseball. But they were
really over what I figured to have ever made. It’s
just like a youngster now thinking they could make the Rockies.
It was a privilege for me to try out for the Monarchs and
I was so thankful that I did as well as I did.”
On his
first day in a Kansas City uniform in 1937 and after a long
bus ride, Johnson met the man who already played shortstop
for the Monarchs. Willard Brown was a power hitter, averaging
two homers a game. Johnson didn’t think he had a chance
to replace him. But the Monarch’s white owner, J.L.
Wilkinson, still wanted to take a look at Johnson’s
abilities and asked him to tryout during the middle of a
game. Player-manager Andy Cooper obliged by
inserting
Johnson into the lineup, where the Cool-Whip smooth shortstop
gobbled a hard grounder and instantly started a double play
with a quick flip to the second baseman.
It was
easy to him, but the crowd lapped it up. By the time he
got back to the dugout, he had the job stolen from Brown
who moved to the
outfield.
It was evidence of the athleticism Johnson has displayed
since he was a toddler.
“What
I didn’t know and the owner told me later, was that
they had been looking for a
shortstop
for over a year that could make the
double
play,” Johnson said. “And that’s how I
made Kansas City Monarch baseball team.”
There
are other prisms through which the “Jim Crow”
era of baseball and of the United States can be refracted.
But the real players—players like Johnson—know
better than to
swallow
the Hollywood version. No amount of stirring music can change
it into a completely positive experience.
As a
child, Johnson had to swim in the creek. It was water not
fenced off and water no one cared about. The whites swam
in a clean public pool.
Johnson
watched movies with a squint from row dead last, and that
was if they let him through the theatre doors. The whites
sat up front, on the lower level; going back and forth with
butter popcorn silos, cool sodas and American dreams.
Johnson
had to stand next to the
COLOREDS
ONLY sign waiting for the spigot’s dry heaves to moisten,
gurgle and spit. While the WHITES ONLY fountain freely flowed.
“It
was hard to understand why they hated us,” Johnson
said. “I had never done anything to them. I never
got into a fight with no white person. They tried to pick
a fight with me. I just think these people hated me before
I was born. I didn’t have a chance before I was born.”
While
playing for the Monarchs and Satchel Paige’s All-Stars,
white fans would come and watch the black players play,
especially in the 1930s when the stock market collapsed.
With The Great Depression gripping the nation, people could
barely afford to eat, so they were not spending money to
see ball games.
But
with Paige working his magic on the mound—using antics
like telling his defenders to sit on their gloves for an
inning—and with the invention of night baseball, the
Monarchs still drew an adequate number of fans and in some
sense kept the game alive.
“Baseball
was dying in America in the ‘30’s and who brought
it back more than anyone man, I would have to say it was
Satchel Paige,” Johnson said. “Bob Feller didn’t
draw any crowd like Satchel Paige.”
But
Feller was never shooed away by white hotel and restaurant
owners.
In the
Army during World War II, race lines were no different from
that in the states. Out of all the things he remembers from
the war—from landing at the site of D-Day just days
after the initial assault on Normandy and 18 days of combat—what
Johnson remembers most is watching German prisoners enter
a make-shift cafeteria through the front door, while he
still had to go through the back way.
“That
was one of the roughest times in my life,” Johnson
said. “I’m going to fight for my country and
I have to go through the backdoor, but then my enemy is
walking in the front door….
“I
don’t try to sugar coat nothing. I’ll talk about
the good, and the bad. I have some great white friends….
But I don’t like to dwell on it, because it’s
making me angry now and I get all upset. I have white kids
ask me questions. They say ‘Byron how is it that you
don’t hate anybody?’ I say, ‘Well, I guess
it was the training of my parents, what they taught me is
what I believe.’ I don’t hate anybody.”
It was
baseball that winched Johnson through the segregation period.
Playing the game was like pulling a blanket over his head.
After it was over, the veil was removed to show things were
still the same. But for those nine innings, Johnson didn’t
see color or worry about where he was going to sleep that
night. All he saw was a
baseball
and he had to get it and hit it and rip it across the diamond
to the first baseman.
In 1938,
Johnson gained recognition for his defensive talent and
base running ability when fans voted him to the East-West
Game (the equivalent to the Major League All-Star game)
at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Before he left to
represent
the West, Stearnes let Johnson borrow his bat for the game
and challenged Johnson. The deal was if Johnson got a hit,
he could keep the bat. If he didn’t, then Stearnes
wanted it back. Many years later, Johnson walked into the
Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., to donate
the bat.
This
February, John “Buck” O’Neal, who was
also the Monarch’s player-manager and was in town
to speak at Coors Field about Negro League baseball, stopped
to visit Johnson. And when those two get together to reminisce
they don’t bother counting words before spending them.
Benton, who is an instructor for African American studies
at Metro and whom Johnson has passed down all this history,
sat down and admired more historical grandeur.
“I
can remember Satchel Paige from when I was a little girl,
meeting him when he came to play in Little Rock,”
Benton recalled. “My father took me out to a game
with Satchel Paige. I knew he played with Satchel Paige,
but that was before we moved here (to Colorado)….
I’ve known Buck O’Neal practically all my life
too. I still call him Uncle O’Neal, because that is
how I always referred to him.
“When
I was a teenager and older, I knew about that history. I
guess I didn’t really start thinking about it a lot
myself until a lot of
attention
started coming to my father, which of course wasn’t
until he was in his 80s, which of course has been about
10 years ago.
“And
I think it wasn’t probably until then that I did really
recognize the fact that this is
history.
He’s history. Of course, I’m fortunate, because
I’m with him, so I get to hear the stories all the
time about when he played in the Negro Leagues, about all
those great players he played with and played against. When
Buck O’Neal comes in it is just wonderful to be in
the room and hear them talking. I’ve had a chance
to met Double Duty Radcliffe too and I got to hear him talk
about his memories of my father. He called him a couple
of things from what I can remember. He called him ‘The
Man With The Arm.’ He also called him ‘The Vacuum
Cleaner,’ because he said he snatched up every ball
that tried to get passed him on the field.”
Benton
now takes care of her 92-year-old father. She rarely allows
reporters to visit her father as often as before. Since
December, Johnson’s motion has been reduced to a painful
walker-aided shuffle. A nasty winter fall broke part of
his hip, which has kept him from visiting Dr. Tom Altherr’s
American Baseball History class at Metro for the first time
in seven years.
He now
sits gingerly watching the Rockies, shifting from time-to-time
to relieve the pressure on his hip. A Budweiser can sits
on the eating tray that strides his walker, along with peeled
orange slices. His hands shake a little as he places his
hearing aids. An ever-present baseball cap casts shadows
on the light-brown polka-a-dot freckles on his cheeks and
a smile for the ages.
His
small, gnomic stature (5-feet 8-inches, no more than 120
pounds) belies the aura that surrounds him and the magnitude
of the era he lived through, an era forgotten in many circles,
an era where he says the best and most entertaining baseball
was played.
And
if history ever unravels all the statistics, a feeble prospect
considering the lack of coverage from the white newspapers
and defunct black publications, the proof will be hard to
deny.
 |
Courtesy
photo by - Jacquelyn Benton |
| The 1940 Satchel Paige All-Star team, which
was an extension of the Negro Leagues’ Kansas
City Monarchs. Byron Johnson is pictured in front
row, far left. |
|
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