Cool Papa and Satchel tell it like it was

During my daughter Karen’s return to St. Louis in early 1974 for a spring college break, her uncle Norman R. Seay suggested that we visit next door with our uncle, Baseball Hall of Fame inductee James “Cool Papa” Bell, in order for her to become better acquainted with his baseball history. We also wanted to celebrate her birthday with Satchel Paige, another black Baseball Hall of Fame player, who was visiting with Bell. 

During the conversation, Cool Papa Bell said he had come to St. Louis from Starkville, Miss. as a teenager because Jim Crow laws prohibited him from using the baseball fields that white players performed on. In fact, blacks were arrested for playing ball on white fields.

He said that he fled Mississippi after white farmers murdered one of his uncles who owned farmland, which they had aggressively sought. They left his body straddling a fence, and seized his land. This bit of information is not mentioned in his baseball chronicles.

“They never tell it like it really was,” said my uncle, James “Cool Papa” Bell. I had asked about his hesitation in providing personal information to reporters and sportswriters for his biography.

He indicated that this attitude was a result of his career in baseball, where he played for the Birmingham Black Barons, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Chicago-American Giants and the Kansas City Monarchs, which he later coached.

He said Jackie Robinson played for him when he coached the Monarchs in Kansas City. He said Jackie was by far the most adequately educated, articulate and socially prepared black ballplayer to integrate the major leagues, and he would be more acceptable to the paying white baseball fans.

Bell referred to the white sportswriters and the newspapers for which they worked as the “Major Press.” Bell said that they never mentioned black baseball talent in their stories because they had concluded that black talent was inferior.

Quietly, black all-star teams regularly played white all-star teams after their regular seasons were over and handily defeated them. Most of these games were pitched by the legendary pitcher, Satchel Paige. These thrillers seldom received coverage in the white media.

Cool Papa Bells life-long buddy, Satchel Paige, told me that the major sports writers knew very little and had only casual interest in Negro League baseball teams, talent and performances of black players prior to the emergence of Jackie Robinson. He said that although they were assigned to report on Negro League baseball games, they seldom attended them. They would opt to spend time sipping beers in bars near the stadiums and later obtain telephone interviews and scores from the black players when they returned to their hotels rooms or other living quarters. They later used the information as eyewitness accounts in their reporting.

Satchel Paige said that the offended black players intentionally provided reporters incorrect scores, game results and descriptions of incidents, out of resentment for the reporters’ callous negligence.

Cool Papa’s face showed disgust as he recounted to me that immediately after Jackie Robinson had ascended to the majors, a prominent baseball scout for the St. Louis Cardinals visited with him and promised him a hefty bonus of $1,000 for informing him of any player on his Kansas City Monarch team that he felt had major league skills. Bell later contacted the scout and informed him that his shortstop, Ernie Banks, was superior to any player at the shortstop position in the Major Leagues.

The scout returned to Kansas City and observed the skills of Ernie Banks. He immediately signed him to a contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, who relayed him immediately to the Chicago Cubs. Banks emerged as the greatest shortstop in baseball history in hitting and fielding. Until today, Ernie Banks is known as Mr. Shortstop and is the pride of Chicago baseball fans. He could have been the very first signing of an African American by the St. Louis Cardinals, who opted to ship him out without even a customary field trial for evaluating his talent.

Bell said he never received the $1,000 discovery bonus that was promised to him.

About 10 years after his retirement, Satchel Paige, a native of Kansas City, returned to St. Louis as a guest speaker for the St. Louis Rotary Club. He made the poignant observation to them that as a player he seldom met a black writer or sportscaster for a major white newspaper or radio station covering games for a Negro League game, nor had he observed any at a St. Louis baseball event or at the Rotary Club event. Satchel said that St. Louis is slow to change and that the St. Louis audience did not take his comment kindly that day.

Later that spring, my brother Norman R. Seay, shouted with pride as we watched on television the appearance of Uncle “Cool Papa” Bell with a popular St. Louis baseball figure in Cooperstown, N.Y., where he was making a preliminary appearance prior to his introduction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

After returning to St Louis the next day, he informed us that he was shaken as he and the sportswriter walked up those Hall of Fame stairs and he overheard a gallery attendant say, “I guess it’s a day for the niggers.” He said that he was informed by the broadcaster not to mention the incident when they returned to St. Louis and appeared together on a popular St Louis Cardinal radio station.

While I strongly suggested that he mention this degrading incident in his public appearances, he felt that this information would hurt the chances of other blacks being nominated for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.