The 5th Quarter Podcast with Sandy Adams
A bi-weekly podcast that delves into the lives of retired athletes as they navigate the uncharted waters of life after their competitive careers end.
Host, Sandy Adams, brings forth captivating interviews, sharing the stories of athletes who transitioned into new endeavors, discovered their purpose beyond sports, and the highs and lows along the way.
Plus a new mini series "On The Sideline" with conversations with current athletes and people working in the sports world.
The 5th Quarter Podcast with Sandy Adams
Ep. 51 On The Sideline | Dr. Keith B Wood and The Memphis Red Sox Legacy
. Ever wondered how a baseball team could intertwine itself into the fabric of a community and lift it up?
The Memphis Red Sox did just that from 1920 to 1959.
Discover the remarkable legacy of the Memphis Red Sox, one of the most influential Negro League teams, with our guest Dr. Keith B. Wood.
In this episode, you'll learn how the Red Sox created a cultural phenomenon that transcended sports during the Jim Crow era. Dr. Wood reveals untold stories and fascinating insights from his latest book, "The Memphis Red Sox: A Negro League's History," shedding light on the team's unique impact compared to more famous counterparts like the Kansas City Monarchs and Pittsburgh Crawfords.
Dr. Wood also shares his personal journey from educator and coach to historian, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and compassion in teaching. His reflections on different educational environments and coaching roles illustrate universal lessons about caring for students from all walks of life.
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Grab my new book, "The Visionary Personal Brand Playbook" and start building your brand today. Grab your copy at sandy-adams.com/playbook
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The other space were Black churches. Right, and the importance of the Black church is unquestionable. Right, it's huge, and in fact here's how prominent the Red Sox were. Most preachers in Black South Memphis on Sundays would cut their sermons short so the fans could get out to the stadium.
Speaker 2:I want you to think about this.
Speaker 2:Today on the Sideline, the author of the new book the Memphis Red Sox, dr Keith B Wood, is up next. Welcome back to the Fifth Quarter Podcast. I'm your host, sandy Adams, and this is where we dive deep into the world of sports, talking with retired athletes, current athletes and everyone that makes the sports world great. A quick reminder please go and subscribe on your favorite app. Wherever you watch the Fifth Quarter Podcast, go and subscribe so you never miss an upcoming episode. Now grab your iced tea or your coffee, because I'm from the South. Get ready to be motivated and inspired, because this is where the real stories are told.
Speaker 2:Today's guest on the sideline is a history teacher at Christian Brothers High School here in Memphis and a published author. He grew up in a diverse community in upstate New York, which shaped his appreciation for history, culture and sports. Early in his career he moved to Memphis where he has made a significant contribution as both an educator and a coach. He's the author of the book Memphis Hoops, which covers race and basketball in the Bluff City during the Larry Finch era. His latest book Out Now, the Memphis Red Sox A Negro League's History, explores the history and impact of this pivotal baseball team during the Jim Crow era. Welcome to the show, dr Keith B Wood Sandy. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm excited to have this conversation and talk a little bit about Memphis Red.
Speaker 1:Sox baseball, which I think many of your B Wood Sandy, thank you so much for having me on. I'm excited to have this conversation and talk a little bit about Memphis Red Sox baseball, which I think many of your listeners probably haven't heard much of, and I think after today's show they get a copy of the book and then you know, they'll be able to put the Red Sox in conversation with the Kansas City Monarchs, the Homestead Grays, and I think really that's what the goal is to put Memphis back on the map in a position of a major league status.
Speaker 2:I totally agree and I always like to tell people how I found you or how I know you're anything. And back when I relocated back to Memphis from Houston back in 2020, I got involved with the Memphis Rebounders. Our enrollment will open again soon or you can go ahead and join now. I found your book Memphis Hoops and that's how I discovered you. I was just Googling more information and because I actually started college when Larry Finch became a head coach, so I started in 1986 at Memphis and so I lived through, you know, the whole time he was a coach.
Speaker 2:But I wanted more history about just the topic of basketball, because we are a basketball city and I want to say that you know, and I think one thing that your book topic covers is that, yes, basketball is probably the primary thing, but Memphis is such a sports town and that's to me very intriguing about why so here in Memphis as opposed to the other cities throughout the United States. So I want to dive in first. Where did you grow up? Because I could not pronounce the city. So I and you obviously knew that when I sent you the show notes absolutely, uh, don't feel bad about that, sandy.
Speaker 1:Uh, I went. I'm from upstate new york. I was born originally in albany, which is a lot easier to pronounce. Yeah, then, when I was eight, my parents moved to schenectady, which is a very dutch sounding name I've heard of that actually, yes, all right.
Speaker 1:So general electric? Uh, it was an industrial town right on the Erie Canal, very strong immigrant neighborhood. The high school I went to had a large number of Italian, polish, jewish immigrants, also a large African-American neighborhood. So the neighborhood I grew up in everybody was different, right, and so we just appreciated each other for being each other and the labels never really stuck. We just sort of loved on each other. Right Now, there were challenges, but I think growing up in Schenectady allowed me to become the man that I am today and when I moved to Memphis, allowed me to jump into this community Memphis, my adopted hometown for the last 30 years and to really understand and appreciate this city.
Speaker 2:So you know, I discovered something when I was reading your bio. You grew up playing basketball, right, I did. Was that your main sport? Or did you play baseball? Oh, absolutely right?
Speaker 1:Was that your main sport? Or did you play baseball? Oh, absolutely so. Schenectady.
Speaker 1:Our most famous alum, so to speak, is Pat Riley. You might have heard of him, pat Riley and the LA Lakers. His high school basketball team, which was on the other side of the tracks from where I grew up, was, of the 12 guys on the team, eight of them played in the NBA. Right, so you're talking about basketball, was it right? These guys were legitimate. His high school team beat Power Memorial.
Speaker 1:A little guy played over there by the name of Lew Alcindor you may remember him as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and they buried Kareem. Now, kareem was only excuse me, lou was only a freshman at the time and Pat Riley's squad was incredibly strong, right, so you're talking about a history of basketball that, in my neighborhood, the basketball team was it which, when I moved to Memphis, carried over Because the city of Memphis, basketball is it and a lot to do with Larry Finch, which I enjoyed studying and getting to understand, and there were a lot of correlations between the love of basketball and Schenectady and the love I found in the city of Memphis, as I came down here as a 22 year old kid and then for 17 years, I coached high school basketball Right, so what a great connection and I just really enjoyed my time as a basketball coach in the city.
Speaker 2:So a quick question when you were in high school, did you have hopes of playing like professional basketball?
Speaker 1:No, I knew my abilities were not going to carry me that far. In fact, I actually considered just going to college. And one of the things in my high school basketball coach his name was Gary Dino what he said was Woody, what are you doing next? I was like, well, coach, I'm going to St John Fisher, I'm going to go to school. And he said, are you playing ball? And I was like, man, I don't think so. And he goes, why not?
Speaker 1:And the reality was many of the guys that I grew up with did not meet the NCAA qualifications and I did because my mother had been a teacher. It wasn't a question of if I was going to college, the question was where, regardless of what neighborhood I grew up in, and I think it just gave me a chance. So for two years I played on the Division III level. I wasn't getting a lot of time and after two years I decided you know what, I'll just play intramurals, I'll have fun. And I did that. But I had the experience of playing in college and you know I'm no stud, I don't have records, right. I understand my athletic ability is not what sets me apart from my peers, but my love for the game is still very strong.
Speaker 2:Well that and you know. I also think that you pick up so much more than you know. Even if you're not a starter being on a team, traveling with a team at the college level you learn things that can also help you later in life, no matter what you do, so I think that's always an asset when you graduate or when you applied. So I believe you could not get a teaching job up there.
Speaker 1:Now New York. When I graduated in 1994, there were the state of New York was putting out about one to two thousand more teachers than it needed every year, right. So there was a backlog that if you didn't have a master's degree, your chances of getting a job were slim to none, and so my mom's family had been military and so she had family in Virginia, florida, atlanta. And I just cast out a net and Memphis was one of the cities I applied to and, fortunately enough, came to the city of Memphis and the Memphis City Schools offered me a job at Sheffield High School.
Speaker 2:So I do have a question when you saw the job and you applied, did you research Memphis? What did you know about Memphis at that time?
Speaker 1:This is great, right, like. For me, this is definitely a God thing, right, Like I had no clue. What did I know about Memphis? I knew that Martin Luther King got shot here. I knew that they had this team called the Memphis Showboats. And I really did know a little bit about Penny Hardaway, because we're the same age, so I remember watching him in college on TV. But that's it right, that was the extent of my knowledge. To be honest, I'm a little ashamed of this.
Speaker 1:I had to break out the map and figure out where Memphis was in Tennessee and put that into perspective. As I, you know, and I couldn't fly to Memphis from Albany right, there's no cheap way. Albany is a small airport and for our Memphis residents, flying out of Memphis can be challenging in and of itself. So I flew to Atlanta and then I drove from Atlanta to Memphis to get this interview and when the HR guy at the Memphis City Schools heard this he goes, you really want a job. I said, yes, sir. Hr guy at the Memphis City Schools heard this he goes. You really want a job? I said yes, sir. And, to be honest, my uncle, who was military but growing up in New York, explained to me yes sir and no sir. And here I am a kid from New York and probably have a little more of a New York accent than I do now.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you don't have one now, right?
Speaker 1:So he said you better learn how to say yes sir, no sir. And remember I had to drive through Alabama and Mississippi and my rental car had Minnesota tax, so I made sure I didn't break a single speeding law. From Atlanta through Birmingham into Memphis on 78 and old 78 back in the 90s, right? So what an adventure, Right For a 22 year old kid. I had no clue where Sheffield High School was, right. My first principal, margaret Connell, she used to always used to say before you met me, wood, you didn't have a wife, you didn't have kids, you didn't have a job, you didn't have a house. And I was like but I didn't have any bills either, miss Connell. So, but that was it. I mean, I just really got an opportunity and for me growing up in Schenectady, I had to make a way for myself, right Like the neighborhood I grew up in, was impoverished.
Speaker 1:If you looked at that basketball picture from high school that I've got on my website, if you looked at that basketball picture from high school that I've got on my website, eight of those young men have been incarcerated, and so the guys on my team and in my neighborhood. We had a better chance, and people stereotyped us that we were going to be failures, and so when I came down here, I was like failure is not an option. It's not Whatever it's going to take for Keith Wood to be successful.
Speaker 2:That's what's going to happen, and I think my experiences in Mount Pleasant and on Hamilton Hill allowed me to thrive in Parkway Village. You know it's interesting because I got my master's in education to certify to teach high school history. When I applied at the city school system I couldn't get a job because I didn't coach a sport, which was which, which was kind of. If I had known what I knew now, then I would have been focusing on a sport, but I do want to talk about. So just a few more questions about you know the before time when you walked into class, that first day when your first class came in for Sheffield High School. What was that day like?
Speaker 1:I don't know Nervous, I'd student taught in inner city, rochester right. So I taught right in the heart of the city of Rochester two blocks from Kodak, right, but the communities are different, right?
Speaker 1:Let's be honest, the construction of blackness in Schenectady or Rochester, New York, is not the construction of blackness in Memphis. There were some, there were some growing curves that I had to start to understand, but the one thing I did is I stayed true to myself. Right, I'm Keith Wood, I'm from New York, I believe in you guys. I don't know what you've seen in the past. That's not me. Here's who I am, and let's just get after it. Let's see what we can do and let's have fun doing it. I started teaching seventh and eighth grade US history and, sandy, you're right, I was hired as an assistant baseball and assistant football coach. I played Little League baseball, babe Ruth baseball. I did not play in high school, I never played football, but as a coach, obviously my job was protected. And then I volunteered as a basketball coach right, so I was a coach, which is a term of endearment and provided probably some refuge and different perspective for many of the kids. Um, but you know what I found out?
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:The kids are going to find out if you're real. Are you real? Do you really care about them? If you're fake, they will see through you in a heartbeat. And I'm not just talking about Sheffield. I've taught in the inner city, at Sheffield, in the County of Millington, and I teach now at the private school level at Christian Brothers All three locations. If you're fake, it doesn't take them but two minutes to figure out. You really don't care.
Speaker 1:And I think, because of the way that I grew up and the neighborhood that I grew up in, the love is real. You're going to get 100% of Keith Wood every day Now down here in Memphis. You may not have ever experienced Keith Wood from a construction of Schenectady before, but you're going to get Keith Wood and Keith Wood is going to love on you. He's going to care about you. He's going to be tough on you. But man, the kids. I'll tell you what I tell my wife all the time I'd go back and redo those Sheffield years any day of the week, right? Just absolutely love that community, love those kids. And about two or three months in I knew I was in the right spot.
Speaker 2:Right, you know, I was talking to somebody the other day and I wholeheartedly feel that kids may not want structure, but they need structure, they need discipline and they excel in that and, no matter what they say, they want or need or like, they really do need that and they do want that subconsciously, I think.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. They need the consistency. And look, I'll tell you what people say. Well, you know, the kids of Christian Brothers don't have the same issues. They don't. But economically, a lot of their parents are, you know, moms at a country club, dads working 60 hours a week, and you find out that a lot of the time their parents are spending as little time with them as some of the kids at Sheffield, right, and kids just have this desire to be loved, to be appreciated, for someone to truly care about them. And you know, regardless of where I've been, I think that's been the main piece that makes, for me, teaching so important and so valuable. I'm not in it for the income, obviously, and it's really about the outcome, but when you truly care about the kids, then that's really what makes this profession to me paramount to all others, right?
Speaker 2:I'm going to kind of skip over the Memphis Hoops book, but, um, for those, for those out there, I just want it because I want to spend a lot of attention on the book that that just came out, the Memphis Red Sox, um. But for the Memphis Hoops, um you did, your dissertation was on the Larry Finch era, is that correct?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's correct. So, um, my directing professor, aaron Goodsuzian, who's Dr G, who's over at the University of Memphis. We had a conversation and he said you know, keith, I could do this book on Finch, but when I make phone calls for interviews it's going to be talking to some academic in a university. When you call it's going to be, hey, this is Coach Wood. Hey, do you want to sit down and talk for a minute? And because I've been in the fraternity I opened a lot of doors. You know, like Clarence Jones over at Tresmond coached against him for years, he's on that 73 team that goes to the Final Four. There's a chapter in my book on lemoyne. Owen clint jackson was two guys in front of me at sheffield high school as a head basketball coach. We sat down, we had talked before, so these conversations uh just were open. And uh, verdie sales, right, great chapter on Verde sales.
Speaker 1:Coach Sales is from Woodstock and that was the all black school before Millington desegregated and so Coach Sales had recruited my kids at Sheffield when he was at Shelby State Southwest. He recruited my kids at Millington. He spoke at my Millington basketball camp. So when Coach Sales and I sat down at the Piccadilly, down on Elvis Presley and Graceland. We had a three-hour conversation that was unreal. Everybody kept stopping by saying hi to Coach and when we got done he said Coach, I want to tell you what Thank you.
Speaker 1:I said well, coach, why are you thanking me? I should be thanking you, he goes. Today was my birthday, coach. This was the greatest gift that anybody could have given me. We just talked about Larry Finch and Ronnie Robinson and all those years and I was like just blown away by the love that coach sales has for the city, has for the game, and you know he's the godfather of the game of basketball in the city right now. When people have questions any of the high school coaches, when they really want to find out next level, they're going to deep dive with Verde Sales and it made that dissertation. It was a passion, it wasn't a job. I got to talk about what I love with my dear friends.
Speaker 2:Right? What made you want to turn that into a book and publish it? There's not much on.
Speaker 1:Memphis.
Speaker 2:There's not. You walk into the library.
Speaker 1:I'd worked the Larry Finch basketball camp, good friends with Eric Sullivan um, whose father, rick Sullivan, was at Haywood County forever, and he got me on staff at the camp a couple years. And here is this icon in the city that at a time right after the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis, we're pretty divided, and here's a guy that brought us together through basketball. But there's no book, no one has the foresight, and I'm talking about I'm in grad school in 2015, 2016. No one's done this. Are you serious? So what a joy it is to add to the narrative. And I'll tell you what. Sandy, I know you don't want to spend much time in this Memphis book for the hoops, but seriously, every time I come up with somebody and we talk about the Memphis hoops book, they share.
Speaker 1:I was at the K Kiel Center in St Louis. I remember being at the Mid-South Coliseum. I was there when they came home from the Final Four. I was at the airport and their stories. I couldn't revise this enough to include where everybody was, but Larry Finch touched everybody in this city and, man, what a joy it is for me as an author to share something and people have a connection with. So that was the joy of that book.
Speaker 2:You know, and it's you know when I was going to college, and especially in the early nineties, you, just, you know, basketball just goes out, it goes out into the entire community, no matter your age, your ethnicity, your religion, how much you, you know, make where you live, everything it goes out to everybody.
Speaker 2:And I think everybody at some point has a story about basketball and especially, through a certain age bracket, about Larry Finch whether as a player or a coach, and I think that you know, when you talk about what brings the city together and we talked about this before we got on, and I talk about this at Rebounders events as well you know, basketball is just the best thing to bring everybody together and I love that you can just talk to anyone and they have some story to tell you that's connected to basketball.
Speaker 1:That's it, you know. I mean I've coached against Keith Lee's son, dwayne Lee, when he was at Cordova. I've met Keith Lee Talking with Coach Sales in the gym in Sheffield when you're in the community and you're going to basketball games. One of my assistant coaches, randy Forrester, when he was at.
Speaker 2:He's one of my good friends. I went to college with him.
Speaker 1:Randy talks about. His stories are when Penny was at Shredwell, him and his buddies would go watch Penny play high school basketball. And for when Larry Finch landed Penny you know I don't think the young kids today truly understand what Finch means and the recruitment of Penny Hardaway and how much Coach Finch took care of Penny. And when Penny cries when they lose, it's his heart Because what Coach Finch did for him. If you don't know the story then you don't understand why Penny's doing what he's doing. He doesn't need our accolades, he doesn't need our money, he doesn't need the headache from the Memphis Boo Birds, but he keeps doing it because of what Coach Finch did for him. And if you noticed, when they won the NIT tournament, one of the first people who gave a championship ring to was.
Speaker 1:Vicki Finch yeah and I cried that's basketball and that's why Penny does what he does, and I love that storyline. I love this city, you know. That's why book Memphis Hoops and I hope people keep going out and buying more copies, because if you do, you're going to find a connection to yourself right wherever you went, where you were at college or whether you were at the games when Larry took us to the final four, right.
Speaker 2:So you know, and you know I talked about that's how I found you is, because that was the only book that I could find on it, and just everything. So so now let's dive into baseball. I would love to know what inspired you to write about the Memphis Red Sox.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, interesting enough, in my grad school, before I decided to land on the basketball story that we've just dissected, I looked at an article or a dissertation on the Memphis Red Sox and so I piggybacked off that and I wrote a journal article for Black Ball, which is a Negro Leagues journal, and it talked about when Boss Crump ran one of the owners out of Memphis in 1940 because he supported a Republican candidate, not FDR, because back in the 1940s white Memphians are what we refer to as yellow dog Democrats. I'm going to vote for a yellow dog before I ever think about voting for a Republican Right, about voting for a Republican, and that intrigued me. Here I am trying to figure out constructions of race and I'm like, hold on, this doesn't make any sense Because since I've been in Memphis in the 1990s, most African Americans are Democrats, most white Southerners are Republicans and it doesn't hold all over. But for the most part and I just jumped in and it really I contemplated doing my dissertation but I would have to take it and make an incredible spin and I was like you know what the basketball thing is more of my passion. So when I get my dissertation done, I'm going to come back and revisit the baseball story, and I did.
Speaker 1:I picked up. There's a great documentary called Blue City, black Diamonds, or Black Diamonds. Blue City, by Stephen Ross over the University of Memphis came out in 1995. I watched that video. It's on VHS. You're going to have to find a VCR player somewhere, sandy. If you got one in the attic, pull it out, check it out.
Speaker 2:Why don't they go and transfer that to CD or something?
Speaker 1:I'm working on that right now. The last time I talked to Professor Ross, who is huge in opening up all the interviews in McWhorter Library so I could get to them. We're working on that. The University of Memphis owns the properties to that and it's going to take paperwork is really what it announced to you and so I'm in conversation with Professor Ross, who now is Professor Amoretis, who has since retired, and so hopefully we can get that done.
Speaker 1:But, man, those interviews, sandy, these guys were so excitable, right, everybody talks about you. Know, well, you missed your chance, aren't you mad? Not one of the guys was upset. Man, the joy on their faces in these interviews talked about get. Man, I was like this is incredible and this spoke to the pride that black Memphis had in South Memphis, in black Memphis, even in the strictest times of Jim Crow, under Boss Crump. Right, you say the wrong thing. You could be run out of town and that's not even the worst thing that could happen, right? So this story has long been left out of the narrative, right, you know Jackie Robinson played one year for the Kansas City Monarchs. Everybody knows the Monarch story. Josh Gibson, homestead Grades, right, pittsburgh Crawfords you know those stories. You know Willie Mays. Right, you know the Birmingham Black Barons. Did you know that the Birmingham Black Barons were owned by the man by the name of Thomas Hayes, who's from Memphis?
Speaker 2:I didn't know, that.
Speaker 1:So because we don't know the Memphis Red Sox story we miss so much. And the Memphis Red Sox story is about a team owned by four African-Americans. Most Negro League teams were owned by white men who were booking agents simply making money, grown by white men who were booking agents simply making money off the backs of black labor, whereas in Memphis our team, our stadium, was owned by black men who were playing black athletes in a game on the other side of the railroad tracks that most of us in Memphis that lived on the other side of the tracks probably didn't know much about, but was played on the major league level.
Speaker 2:So why do you think the Memphis Red Sox did not receive the same attention as, say, kansas City, chicago and Pittsburgh?
Speaker 1:Right. I think the big question there is what happened to the red socks after Jackie Robinson signs and reintegrates baseball, Because I need the for your, for your listeners Bud Fowler and guys like Ron Higgins in from Memphis but Fowler's not from Memphis, but there were blacks that played professional major league baseball before the color line was redrawn in the 1890s and turn of the century, Right. So when Jackie comes back in 47, he's not the first black guy to play in the major leagues, he's reintegrating. Now when he does reintegrateate, it sort of spells the end for the negro leagues. From 47 to the.
Speaker 1:The baron sold on like 61 or 62. Uh, most of the negro league teams fold. The newark eagles go out in like 48 or 49. Um, it's just a downward descent as organized baseball is taking the Negro League's best players and reintegrating them into the major and minor league system. And because in 1959, one of the Martin brothers, BB Martin, sells the team, the stadium and all of its equipment and nobody remembers that was it. And when he sells the team he sells the stadium to a distribution center on what is today Danny Thomas and Crump.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And it cost the owners more money to tear the stadium down than it did to buy the land. That's crazy. So this is how quickly BB Martin gets out and so the story dissipates. And it's really sad because the Barron story keeps going and in the 1970s Rob Peterson comes out. Only the ball was white. And that gets us into looking at the Negro Leagues again. Ted Williams, when he gets inducted into the Hall of Fame, says the best two guys I ever played against were Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. So now folks are like what do you mean? And Ted Williams is like Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. So now folks are like what do you mean? And Ted Williams is like Satchel Paige is the best pitcher I've ever faced.
Speaker 1:And so now in the 1990s, buck O'Neill, the former monarch. Right Few people know that Buck O'Neill's first year in Major League Baseball was in Memphis as a Memphis Red Sox, spent one year here and went to Kansas City. So yeah, his whole story really is the Kansas City Monarchs and how he shares that story People forget. If you go to the Hall of Fame and you look on Buck O'Neill's plaque, the first team it says is the Memphis Red Sox, right? So because of Buck O'Neill, jackie Robinson, willie Mays. We become a story that's left out, a story forgotten, and I think one of the things I think I've been called to do as an author is to get this story out there. To take Memphis, and just as Jackie Robinson reintegrated the major leagues, my job is to reintegrate the Memphis Red Sox story into the Negro Leagues narrative.
Speaker 2:Right, and you know what a did. Did you? Did you plan for your book to be published about the time that the Negro League stats were included into Major League Baseball?
Speaker 1:That was a pure piece of luck.
Speaker 2:That was awesome, like that was the best thing.
Speaker 1:Marketing genius on my part or pure luck.
Speaker 2:Whichever one you want to go with, sandy.
Speaker 1:I'll take both. Writing a book is a glacial process, right. Writing a book is a a glacial process, right. I had done a chapter or so, uh, while I was doing my dissertation, and so most of the research was pretty simple. So I think the the memphis hoops books comes out in 21 and, uh, the red sox book comes comes out June 5th of this year. So there's three years in between, and from the time I sent it to the publisher there was a solid year. It's just the way the system works. It's glacial.
Speaker 2:A solid year before you sent in the final transcript, the final manuscript, until it was published yes, wow, it goes to editing.
Speaker 1:I spent an entire summer looking for pictures for the book right and uh man digging deep digital archives, then you gotta get permission. There's a great uh museum on Beale Street. For your Memphis listeners, they need to go down to Beale Street. The Withers Museum is the is an incredible repository of black history in Memphis, of actually history of Memphis is that one of the pictures?
Speaker 2:is it right on Beale Street?
Speaker 1:absolutely right. Um, right across from the New Daisy, if you go across the New Daisy, there's the Winters Museum and the entire back wall is nothing but Red Sox pictures. Elvis Presley would play Martin Stadium, colonel would have him over there. Um, there there are there's pictures of jackie robinson, right, uh, numerous times. The jackie robinson all-stars, uh, the roy campanella all-stars um, once they reintegrated baseball they would bring their all-star teams to memphis and pack the stadium out. You know, those connections are there, right, and you can see those at the Withers Museum. Big shout out to Connor Scanlon. Miss Rosalyn, ernest Withers' daughter, who made many of the pictures, including the cover of the book, reach back here, got a copy. The cover is a withers picture and they just made the process seamless, right, right, and without the pictures couldn't tell the story, right so so thankful for them and please, like I said, go down and visit the withers museum.
Speaker 1:About five to ten years ago, I took one of my friends from the neighborhood down and um grew up in the same neighborhood. She grew up in the housing projects um african-american friend of mine and as we toured the museum and we're I'm sharing pictures and histories, she walked out of there in tears because a lot of times you know, know, when we were growing up, sandy, we didn't get the whole history Right. We got bits and pieces. What?
Speaker 1:we can do today is share more of the story, and the Withers Museum does a great job of that, and that's what I'm hoping my book does. It shares more of the stories. This isn't isn't negative connotations. It tells the truth. This isn't negative connotations. It tells the truth, it rounds out the story for the readers and it opens our eyes to, maybe things that we didn't know about, and that's what makes it for me fun.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely so. When the Memphis Red Sox were here, how did they influence the local black community in Memphis?
Speaker 1:You got to understand in the boss crump, the Jim Crow era in Memphis, you could speak out, but that became dangerous. Sure, or you sought out a space where you felt safe, right, space where you felt safe, right. So if you're on Beale Street, do you know? If you go east, on Beale Street there's the First Baptist Church, which is a huge white church right next to the Ida B Wells Memorial. On the other side, the east side of the church, was Church Auditorium named after Robert Church Jr, the most prominent African-American in the history of the Republican Party in the country, not in Memphis, in the country, and he's a Memphian.
Speaker 1:And so Robert Church Jr, as a Republican because, remember, african-americans at the time remembered Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, so African Americans up through the 1940s voted Republican. And so Robert Church Jr would bring Republican presidents Warren G Harding, teddy Roosevelt to Memphis and speak to the Black community, teddy Roosevelt to Memphis and speak to the black community, right. And so this is huge. And so when the Red Sox have their own stadium, church Auditorium is the biggest black constructed space in Memphis. When the Red Sox open up their stadium of Lewis Park in 1922, open up their stadium of Lewis Park in 1922, it becomes the biggest space, the largest space for Black African Americans to gather and on opening day you would see Robert Church Jr, jb Martin right, the who's, who, lieutenant George Lee of Memphis prominence that are Republicans speaking to the community and they didn't have to fear retribution because it's a black owned team. The original owner was RS Lewis. Many of your listeners may know the Lewis funeral home.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:All right. So RS Lewis was the first owner, and so that place was there, and so Robert Church, JB Martin are two gentlemen who were part of the first group of Memphians to establish an NAACP chapter in Memphis. So you played baseball, you had a political space. Now the other space were black churches. Right, and the importance of the black church is unquestionable. Right, it's huge. And in fact, here's how prominent the Red Sox were. Most preachers in black South Memphis on Sundays would cut their sermons short so the fans could get out to the stadium. I want you to think about this, Sandy. I've always prided myself as a coach in going to worship with my players. If you've worshiped in a black church in Memphis right Now I've worshiped some white churches. I go to Christ Methodist over on Poplar. We're in and out in an hour.
Speaker 1:They're not doing that? In the black church in Memphis, they're just getting warmed up. In fact, that plate's only come around one time. If you've been to the right church, that's coming around twice, right. So for black pastors to shorten their sermons, get their parishioners out to the game. How important is baseball in the community? Very, very much so and so now, not only that, now think about this when you went to that church, how do people dress? They dress up In the community. It's called dress to the nines.
Speaker 1:And so they would dress to the nines. They come out looking tight, all right. When I was a kid, fresh to death, you know what I'm saying. We look good and so they would go to these games looking clean. Now Ernest Withers we talked about the Withers Museum. He would go to these games and he'd take his camera and because families look so good, he would charge a quarter 50 cents for a family photograph. His wife would run home, develop the pictures, put them in the oven to speed up the process and by the ninth inning, bring those pictures back for families. Welcome to black economic nationalism at martin stadium that is amazing nobody knows these stories.
Speaker 1:How did right so to make money as a photographer in the great depression, even in the world war ii era? Right is going to be challenging in black memphis. So the stadium, the team provided the impetus for the withers family and, uh, you know, to do that at the red sox game and that's why there's there are eight pictures in the book from the withers collection. I couldn't get through the thousands of pictures that are there, but if you look there's some great pictures. Let's jump to July 4th. We just passed the 4th of July.
Speaker 1:July 4th is a huge day and in the black community we celebrate Juneteenth today. But in the black community back in the 20s and 30s the 4th of July was still huge, right, abraham Lincoln, independence Day, right. So the games on the 4th of July were so big that it had standing room only crowds. If you look in the book, there's a couple pictures. If you look down the first baseline or the third baseline, eight to ten rows of fans sitting on the dirt or the grass in front of the stands and the entire warning track in the outfield is nothing but fans.
Speaker 1:Wow, you tell me how popular were the Memphis Red Sox. Very so this is a piece of Memphis. This is a piece of Memphis. And look, this was before Larry Finch took basketball and put Memphis on the map. If you were a young black kid growing up in Memphis, you wanted to play baseball. Let me give you an example Verdell Mathis. Verdell Mathis is one of the best pictures ever to don the flannels for the Memphis Red Sox. He's a BTW alumni. Sandy, you know where BTW is.
Speaker 2:I couldn't tell you the address.
Speaker 1:So it's in South Memphis, yes, and it's by a ton of railroad tracks. Now for my listening fans from South Memphis if you go to BTW today to get across the railroad tracks, there's a bridge that you have to walk up and over to get to the other side on the way to Danny Thomas, can I?
Speaker 2:interrupt for the non-Memphis people. It's Booker T, Washington High School. Oh thank you.
Speaker 1:I apologize.
Speaker 2:That's my senior Memphis.
Speaker 1:Been here for 30 years, I just sort of see myself as a Memphian. So, booker T Washington High School, right, right. So in the 30s you just crossed the railroad tracks, there was Broadway, coal and Ice and then there was Martin Stadium. So Martin Stadium sits today at what is Danny, thomas and Crump, my old school, memphis folks, that's Iowa and Wellington.
Speaker 1:Sandy, do you know where the old bridge is in Memphis? You know the new bridge and the old bridge, right? Yes, I do know where the old bridge is. If you come off the old bridge from Arkansas and you're coming into Memphis, if you went straight, you ran into Martin Stadium in South Memphis. Really, that's where you were. So you're right there, like you could look out, thomas, and look straight down the street and you're going to see the old bridge and it's in a lot of pictures, right? So it's in the heart of Black Moms and in fact you're probably a five minute walk from Beale Street. So on opening day they would have a parade and kids could get out of school and for 5 cents they could be in the parade and get into the opening day. Double header, 5 cents, right. So kids look forward to these games, right? And so Verdell, mathis, mathis, uh, talks about when he was a kid. They played sandlot baseball. Not as much pickup basketball, sandlot baseball. They go to the red sox game, catch a foul ball.
Speaker 1:Now you had two choices. One, take the foul ball back because baseballs were expensive, right, and get into the game for free. Or two, keep the baseball and have a ball for your sandlot game, and this is how these young kids did it. Just think about that, so yeah no, no.
Speaker 2:Well, what I was going to say is you know, I sit there and I look at. Was it because the redx slowly went away that baseball did not continue its prominence in Memphis and now we have basketball? Because to me, basketball is not very big at all in Memphis, oh no.
Speaker 1:You know I'd have to agree with you there. You know, when the Red Sox were here, we had a major league team and for the black community, josh Gibson came through Memphis. Satchel Paige came through Memphis, right, jackie Robinson played in Memphis. Willie Mays played in Memphis. Cool Papa Bell played in Memphis. The names go on and on. Right, we got Turkey Starnes, who's in the Hall of Fame, played in Memphis as a Red Sox.
Speaker 1:Willie Foster, Rube Foster, his older brother, started the Negro American League, negro National League, in 1920. Willie Foster played in Memphis. He's in the Hall of Fame. You name any of the names of the great Negro league players that are sitting in the hall of fame? They played in Memphis, right. So just like today.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm going to go to Bush Stadium. I'm going to Kauffman Stadium. Right, I'm going to what the Braves call their park. I'm going to watch the Braves play. I'm going to see the best players. That's what we had in Memphis and when that disappeared in 1959, the young black kids in the community didn't have anywhere to look right, there were no more black heroes that looked like them. And you know, when you went to a Memphis Chicks game, they don't look like the kids in South Memphis or North Memphis. And so you know, and that's what you know. When Larry Finch and Ronnie Robinson go to Memphis State right in 1969. Remember a large part of Orange Mound told them not to go. A large part of Orange Mound told them not to go. But when they do, even when I got here in 1994, the kids I coached all wanted to go to Memphis because they remember Penny.
Speaker 1:They remember Keith Lee. They remember Larry Finch, ronnie Robinson. Memphis State had always been Memphis. Kids playing at Memphis State and the Red Sox did that in the 30s, 40s and 50s for baseball. Take the baseball away now, by the 60s and the 70s. Now now the young black kids are looking at basketball and I think that's a great correlation. It's a great question. It's sad for the game of baseball but it calls us to look back and to go OK, let's look at baseball, let's look at the Red Sox. How can we get that back? How can we remember that time to get young kids, young kids, orange Mound, south Memphis, north Memphis back?
Speaker 2:into baseball Right, and you know, get them into, you know what was prominent in this city when the Red Sox were here. So what? Okay? So what I see is the Red Sox started going away in what?
Speaker 1:57? Yeah, I think 50,. 47 is when Jackie goes to the Dodgers Over the next 10 years it's probably waning.
Speaker 2:When did they stop playing in Memphis 57?
Speaker 1:Oh, 59. 59 is the last year that the Red Sox play in Memphis.
Speaker 2:And when did Larry Finch start playing in high school?
Speaker 1:He graduates in 69, 65.
Speaker 2:So just a few short years, and he basically gave Memphians something else to focus on Without baseball. There was a vacuum, there was a hole there and he filled that. Absolutely a vacuum. There was a hole there and he filled that absolutely. And then they had such a phenomenal like him through high school and then memphis state they just kind of and then you have dr king and basketball just really just kind of lifted up the community and brought them together and healed them after king was killed here. That's such an interesting line of events.
Speaker 1:I think that the tough thing for many of us to understand is during the Jim Crow era, the black community thrived Economically within its own community. Major League Baseball they had pride. Right, when you're going to these games, dress to the nines, right. This speaks to a level of respectability. Buck O'Neill talks about what was something unique about Memphis? Right, so he said. When he got to Memphis as a rookie he said it was the first time I ever saw black folks vote In Memphis. Under Jim Crow, black folks voted. So if you go back to your high school history lesson, there's these black codes, the grandfather clause used by many southern cities, blacks from voting, poll taxes, literacy clauses right, memphis had a poll tax, yet Boss Crump played the game. Boss Crump paid the poll tax for African Americans and so they voted for Crump candidates locally. And as long long as and if we think about this um following woodrow wilson um, you got uh warren g harding's a republican um. Then you got calvin coolidge and then herbert hoover, you have three straight republican presidents. Crump is playing the game. He's getting his guys locally. The Republican Party in Memphis is very strong and so there's many African-Americans, like Blair T Hunt, who is the minister lead minister at Mississippi Boulevard, christian, one of the largest black churches in Memphis, who plays the game with Crump and is the principal of BTW. You realize that Crump paid for football lights at BTW Stadium. Btw had the finest biology lab in the city next to Christian Brothers. Crump paid for that so long as Blair Hunt, when he preached on Sundays, told his parishioners to vote for Crump candidates Right. So there's some interesting dynamics.
Speaker 1:One of the owners, when RS Lewis sells the Red Sox to the Martin brothers in 1929, following the great flood of the Mississippi River. Right, four brothers by the team, ws Martin, jb Martin, at Martin and BB Martin. Three of the brothers stay active. Right, ws runs Collins Chapel, which is the black hospital in North Memphis, funded by ready Crump. So as long as you play the game, you are good, right, and JB Martin plays the game for the most part until 1940. Doesn't want to play the game anymore and he pays the price. And so, to give you some insight to what happens when you didn't play the game with Crump, jb Martin's main field was he was a pharmacist, and so what Crump did is the police chief, clifford Davis, who was an avowed KKK member, placed police in front of the South Memphis drugstore.
Speaker 1:And now that drugstore was immaculate, tile flooring, soda jerk malt shop post office in South Memphis, right. So he places police officers and searches everybody in and out. What does the MPD, memphis Police Department, what do you think? They charged JB Martin with Possession and intent to sell drugs. He's a pharmacist. Welcome to Memphis, 1940.
Speaker 1:He didn't play the game of boss crump. There's a reason. He was called the redheaded snapper. He was your friend until you got him mad, sure. And so just the year before boss Crump had been upset with church and to get church out of town, crump foreclosed on his house on Lauderdale and said I've got this brand new fire truck, I want to see if its new hose works. So he burned down Church's house. Oh my God, church got the message and he moved to DC. Jb Martin got the message in 1940. He moves to Chicago.
Speaker 1:Now what's interesting is JB Martin sells his piece of the Red Sox to his brothers, and WS Martin runs the team until he passes away in 54. And then, when he passes away in 54, the baby brother, bb Martin, runs the team until 59. So these guys don't miss this. The owners of the Red Sox were all graduates of Mejere Institute, which is the medical school at Tennessee State University in Nashville. They're all doctors, they're all respectable, they've all got money. The Red Sox never once missed a paycheck. You look at some of the other Negro League teams. They folded. They may have had higher salaries, but they missed payroll a lot Not the Red Sox. These were respectable men that played the game and kept Memphis in the major leagues.
Speaker 2:You know and everything about that, it shows that economically the Red Sox were very vital to Memphis, the Memphis community, especially South Memphis, and just the whole. You know when you're describing those game days it reminds me of. Basically, it was like the Kentucky Derby every day, with everybody dressed to the nines and just this big celebration, absolutely, and I think, a game and see the baseball game for the Negro Leagues is a little different than watching organized baseball, right, so there's a first baseman.
Speaker 1:We had Alan Jelly Taylor. There's a first baseman, we had Alan Jelly Taylor. Nickname is Jelly, right, so I mean, if you understand the community, even Larry Finch, everybody had a nickname, right, tubby, sure, right so Jelly. Why'd they call him Jelly? Well, when Jelly was on first base, backhand behind the back, between the legs, wow, he had a little Jelly on it, it. And so when you went to see the game, man, it was fun, cool. Papa bell, I mean, when he came to memphis, satchel page said he was so fast he'd get up, turn the light switch off and be back under the covers before the light went out. Right like the game was fun at Martin Stadium.
Speaker 1:The Martins would bring in Jesse Owens following his 36th showing in the Olympics and he would race the fastest guys on the Red Sox. Now here's a good one for you. When the race was from the right field pole to the left field pole, jesse Owens won every time. Hands down Fastest base stealers on the Red Sox. They beat Jesse Owens around the bases, wow, and so fans would come out. Here's the great Jesse Owens in Memphis at Martin Stadium, not on the other side of the tracks. Right At Martin Stadium in South Memphis. First stadium to have a lighted game Martin Stadium in South Memphis. First stadium to have a lighted game Martin Stadium 1930.
Speaker 1:Kansas City Monarchs owner Wilkerson had lights that he would bring and they go up about 20 feet. They were all connected on little trailers and the generators would pump lights. So now the Red Sox played night games well before Major League Baseball. Right, the House of David is a religious group out of Michigan. They had long hair, beards, satchel, pitch form. Babe Dickerson, I heard of her. She pitched for the House of David. Oh boy, ruth played with the House of David in the offseason when he was barnstorming. These guys would come to Memphis.
Speaker 1:Now, interesting enough, when the House of David or lights came, white Memphis came out. It was in the newspapers and if you would enter two different entrances, jim Crow was still in effect. Right, white Memphians had the first baseline side. Black Memphians had the third baseline side, even at Martin Stadium. Right, white Memphians had the first baseline side. Black Memphians had the third baseline side, even at Martin Stadium, right. So Jim Crow was still the norm of the day Right, but inside of that paradigm the Red Sox thrived. I'm trying to think Ron Polk, who coached the Mississippi State Bulldogs for years and made them into a powerhouse.
Speaker 1:Some of his earliest memories Coming to Memphis with his dad and watching the Red Sox, because his dad taught him these guys can play, these guys are good. When people say they're not as good, it's just considered minor league baseball I think that's a bunch of phooey right. And in this moment we're in right now, and where they've reintegrated Manfield, or Manfred has the commissioner has reintegrated the stats there's some people that aren't as sure. Let me share a story with you, one of my favorite Red Sox of all time. You ready, I'm ready. Catcher Larry Brown. Right, catcher Larry Brown. First off, he started playing professional baseball at 14. He's 14.
Speaker 2:That's pretty old.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so now I'm talking about professionally. He played.
Speaker 1:I'm talking professionally, he played oh, I'm talking he didn't pick up the game he was playing professionally in minor league baseball at 14. Wow, that, picked up by the knoxville giants right, ends up playing for the pittsburgh keystones. Comes back in place for the memphis red sox right, uh, ends up getting picked up by Rube Foster in 24. Wins a Negro League World Series with the Chicago American Giants. Plays for the Detroit Stars, new York Black Yankees. This dude is a dude. The majority of his career is spent in Memphis. Now, because of the reserve clause white players and black players when the season was over, nobody really made money, not the millions of dollars that Juan Soto and Aaron Judge are making today, right? So at the end of the season they go play. Where'd they go? The Caribbean, cuba, the Dominican, puerto Rico? Well, let's go to Cuba. I'm going to take you to Cuba in the 1920s.
Speaker 1:In the 1920s, larry Brown, who's a bright-skinned, about 5'9", probably weighs a good 190-200. He's thick. Brothers would call him Stout, 5'9" Stout brother. He had a cannon girl I'm talking about. When he threw the ball to second, there were two players that threw it. One was at your knees and the other one was at your shins and he never missed right and if? For the folks that play baseball out there. When you're a catcher, the first thing they teach you is to take your mask and flip it off and on a pop fly. Larry Brown was so good never took his mask off and never on a pop fly. Larry Brown was so good, never took his mask off and never dropped a pop fly, explaining to John Holloway, the Negro League historian. Years later, john asked him, larry, how come you never dropped a pop fly? He said look, john, when the ball goes up it makes a figure eight. So I'm watching the figure eight and he would catch it with his mask on underhand all the time and never dropped a ball Right. And so he's down in Cuba and they're playing, and in Cuba there's no Jim Crow, so he's playing against Ty Cobb because the best players Cuban teams could only have either four or five Americans Right. So they took the four or five best players, whether they're black or white, and they played.
Speaker 1:Well, down in Cuba, ty Cobb, he's pretty solid right and he gets on, obviously, and he tries to steal second. Larry Brown cuts him down. Not one time in this game. Larry Brown cuts down Ty Cobb five straight times. The great Ty Cobb. And in fact Ty Cobb was so mad Actually, I wouldn't say mad, I'd say impressed. This is the Georgia peach that many people say. Oh well, he had racial issues because he was from Georgia. So then why did Ty Cobb call his manager, send a telegram to his manager in Detroit? We need to sign this dude. He's the light-skinned brother and he speaks fluent Spanish. We're going to pass him off as Cuban. Larry Brown is like oh hell, no, I can't do that. Everybody knows I'm black.
Speaker 1:Now, I was chasing this story because I was like all right, a lot of the Negro League stories are embellished, you know, like the fish stories. Grandpa went fishing in 1956. It was this big by 1975, you're hanging it on your wall. It's got a plaque right Setting world records. So I chased it.
Speaker 1:The Detroit papers and the Pittsburgh Courier Wendell Smith's paper say the exact same thing that Detroit was willing to sign Larry Brown. That Detroit was willing to sign Larry Brown because he was that good. So when people tell me Memphis Red Sox players weren't good enough to play in organized baseball, it's rubbish, it's ridiculous, because these guys did play in places that would allow them to play against white players and succeed, right. So you know, I think that's important, these stories in the book and and for, uh, memphians, and especially kids, right to get a hold of these stories. Um, I'm working with larry brown's daughter-in-law and she lives in houston. We're working. We're working to get this book inside of BTW High School Booker T Washington, hamilton High School, melrose High School, manassas High School. We want these stories inside of the communities where once the Memphis Red Sox baseball ruled and her family is willing to bankroll because they believe it's so important that Memphians have missed out so much. And so if anyone has connections or like to help funding, please jump on my website we're going to talk about later and pitch in, because this is a story that needs to be shared.
Speaker 1:And here's the other thing people miss Larry Brown has been on the Hall of Fame ballot three times. Hasn't gotten in, but he's that good and they don't put Negro Leaguers on the ballot that often. He's so good he's been on that ballot three times. And so when you're talking about how good are these players? Larry brown is a prime example of. I could name neil shadow robinson right out slugged josh gibson in the negro leagues in the 40s and two years hit more home runs than josh gibson, right, uh, verdell mathis has as many wins in the east West All-Star game as Satchel Page and in fact Verdell Mathis, the kid from BTW, beat Satchel Page at Wrigley field in Chicago on Satchel Page day.
Speaker 2:These guys are good, but no one knows their name. So a couple of things first. Okay, but no one knows their name. So a couple of things First. Wouldn't it be cool to have a Memphis sports history class required in Memphis high schools?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:To me it teaches pride about the community. Kids engaged.
Speaker 1:You know I think that we're missing a whole list of people that that they can learn about. To keep that going, I think you know you take a class and maybe you take one chapter and and you look at what it was like at the stadium I want my stadium on the chapter on the Martin stadium right, or maybe two. Maybe you look at the ejection of JB Martin so you learn about politics in the city during Jim Crow. And then maybe you jump over to the Memphis Hoops book and you read the chapter on the 72-73 team and you get this incredible lesson of who Larry Finch is. And then you read the chapter with Penny Hardaway in it Right, and you can use sports as a hook.
Speaker 2:Sure, you can.
Speaker 1:To do that. Sandy, let me be honest. I remember being in fifth grade and ESPN had just come out. I'm in upstate New York, I'm probably like two hours from Bristol, Connecticut and man, I was so into it and I had teachers tell me what are you going to do with sports? You can't get a degree in that. I had to break it to them. I've got a PhD in modern African-American history at the intersection of race and sport, and what are we doing right now? Talking about what Sports there it is and what will hook these kids right.
Speaker 2:And you can teach them about religion. You can teach them about economics, you can teach them about politics, you can teach them about fashion. You can teach about so many things when it comes to sports.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Everything's right there. You know the culture right. So one of the great things that the Martin brothers did to get fans out, they'd have a bathing suit contest and the guy's coming out, and whichever young lady won the bathing suit competition got what they would refer to as an excursion train fair to Chicago over Labor Day for the East West All-Star game.
Speaker 2:That's a that's a huge thing.
Speaker 1:There's actually a picture in the in the book A train trip to Chicago.
Speaker 1:There it is. I just think about it, right. So you know this there's. You know, when people talk about the black community, just in the great migration, memphis's black community dwindled, not really. The in-migration from Mississippi, rural West Tennessee and Arkansas is huge. Northside High School there's a new Chicago. It's part of that process. People in the Great Migration went up and then they came back. That's right, Right, and so the unique Southern culture you mentioned at the beginning of your of your podcast. Make sure you get your sweet tea, right, yeah. So, um, memphis is unique and a lot of folks that were black from the community went to Chicago and went. It's not for me, yeah. You came back home, uh, and you know, there's just, there's something special about this city, right, like so when you went to the stadium you could get sweet tea. You could get your coca-cola, your local, uh, I would for dr bepper, all right, the beverage of your choice, right, but you get chitlins, can't get chitlins up there in chicago.
Speaker 1:I'm up in cooperstown and I'm explaining to a couple of my friends. I'm marketing the book.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I was like do you guys know what chitterlings is? And there's a couple of guys from South goes, I go. You know it's not pronounced Chitterlings comes in a big red box. And you better have two scoops of hot sauce on your chitterlings and you can smell it a mile away. But, man, you go to Martin Stadium a barbecue I mean Memphis Q, forget that Kansas City nonsense, oh exactly.
Speaker 2:You need some Memphis barbecue.
Speaker 1:Girl, you can't have that. Kansas City oh, that stuff is trash. Right, I've been down here for 30 years, right? So the smells, the auras, all the things you could do at Martin Stadium, right, I mean, it was the place to be.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm hungry now there you go, I'm really hungry. Okay, so the other thing, quickly, is when it comes to and I'm going to be honest, I didn't do a whole lot of research because I wanted to be more interested into what you were saying. I mean, I do know some baseball when it comes to the Negro League stats being integrated into MLB, what was the biggest or the one person that it really like showcased from the Negro Leagues?
Speaker 1:Well, I think the easiest one is Josh Gibson. Right, he's going to surpass Ty Cobb with RBIs, hits, you know, home runs, right, like these things, and really the it's. And I think that's a great question, right? So we talked about in the seventies, when Rob Peterson comes in with only the ball was white. And then in the 90s you've got this Jerry Malloy conference that comes out through SABR, which is a society of American baseball researchers that are opening questions. And so a few years back, two, three years ago, commissioner Manfred made six Negro Leagues major leagues, among them the Negro American League. The Red Sox played in the Negro National League, eastern Color League. This opened the door. Now what we're doing posthumously Is now Including those statistics, and one of the challenges has always been this For organized baseball, for white baseball, one of the things that makes baseball so Intriguing is statistics. It's all about numbers.
Speaker 1:And every game there's a box score. Every newspaper, in every city, Minor league, major league all the box scores are there. It's problematic in the Negro Leagues. Here's why I'll give you an example. The Martins are great dudes, but to quote Ted Double Duty Ratcliffe, who was the manager in 1938, Double Duty would catch one game, pitch the next game and a doubleheader. Think about that.
Speaker 2:He coached.
Speaker 1:Yep, absolutely On a major league level. He'd catch the first game and throw the second game from the bump as the pitcher. Who does that today? These guys don't do that. So Ted Double Duty, radcliffe, the 38 Red Sox that won the Negro American League. Talking about the Red Sox, the Martin brothers quote unquote he called them the cheapest sons of a bitches I've ever met, because they wouldn't pay me squat. That's why I kept leaving. Now, why were they so cheap? They never missed a payday. How did they stay cheap? They wouldn missed a payday. How did they stay cheap? They wouldn't put the box score in the paper. They'd put the final score. They'd talk about who had a couple of hits, but they wouldn't put the numbers as exactly as Major League Baseball and the Cardinals or the Tigers or the Pirates were doing. Why not Major League Baseball and the Cardinals or the Tigers or the Pirates were doing? Why not? And in this way, when it came contract time, they could pay their players less money.
Speaker 2:But did they keep those stats? No, the box scores no.
Speaker 1:So I see but WS Martin's wife, common law wife, Eva Cartman.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:She helped run the hospital and she did the books for the Red Sox in the forties, late forties, early fifties, right All the way through. When BB sold the team her paper. I've seen the record she kept. I've got about three or four years and you can tell when baby came in, the owner that would travel with the team, the youngest brother, the money came in. Um, it wasn't always the the best records right right. So if they showed they made less money when the players asked for more money?
Speaker 2:they wouldn't get it.
Speaker 1:So there were some strategies that DeMartin used, that Radcliffe called him on, and in fact Larry Brown, the great catcher for the Red Sox, jumps the Red Sox and goes to New York to play with the New York Black Yankees, and when he does that he had been the catcher and the manager in the late 20s and the reason he leaves, according to his family, had nothing to do with the issues he had on Beale Street. Although Larry Brown closed down a bar or two on Beale Street during his A-Day had everything to do with the Martins wouldn't play the players. So I was like, if you're not going to pay these guys, I'm going to New York where I can make some money. And that's what he did. So he doesn't return until 38. So for about 10 years he plays on the east coast where he can make more money.
Speaker 1:And it's just the business principles of negro league baseball. But some of the teams that brown played for shut down. Uh, the new York Blank Yankees closed shop. They're sold two times while he's there, right? So because our team is managed quite shrewdly, we never miss a paycheck and we never shut down, but we really don't pay the players what they deserve either, right? So it's an interesting story, right.
Speaker 2:So we, we actually hurt ourselves, even though we help the community and we helped everything going on in South Memphis. We actually hurt ourselves because we weren't keeping the talent here, right?
Speaker 1:And I think that's why we've won the Negro Southern League. We've tied for that two or three times in the 20s, which was considered a minor league. Even MLB today is considering making the Negro Southern League major. My argument is that for at least one year they were the only Negro League running. I think it was like 28. But with that being said, for the most part we're very frugal.
Speaker 1:But Major League Ty Cobb, outside of Babe Ruth, was really making money and in fact Babe Ruth made more money barnstorming than he did for playing for Colonel Rupert with the Yankees, right. So I mean think about it. Satchel Paige was asked for years if he was upset about not being the first black baseball player to go into Major League Baseball. He's like why? I made more money than Dizzy Dean, than Bob Feller you made the highest played player when I was playing. I made more money and played in more cities, going from town to town, and so it's a really interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 1:You know the Red Sox barnstormed as well. Not only did they play in their league when they weren't playing league games on the weekend they did this thing called going around the horn. They'd go to Batesville, mississippi, then down to Clarksdale, then over to Oxford, then up to Tupelo and then, when they were done, they'd slide over to Birmingham, play a weekend series in Birmingham. On the way from Birmingham they're going to Leeds, they're going to Hoover, they're going to Scottsboro. They're playing in three or four different cities and then jumping to play the Atlanta Black Crackers Right and then jumping to play the Atlanta Black Crackers right.
Speaker 1:So all these teams barnstormed and did whatever they did to make the system financially feasible and to stay afloat. It's easy to sit back and go. Well, they were too frugal. They should have played their players more. They were making a ton of money. I don't think they were making that much money. Did they make money? Yes, yes, right, but in the economic structure of the Negro League leagues, the Red Sox were doing pretty much what everybody else were doing, and they were doing it as good, if not better.
Speaker 2:So back a few weeks ago, back in June, MLB had the historic game in Birmingham.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Did you get to go?
Speaker 1:I was actually in Memphis at the Withers Museum doing a book signing.
Speaker 2:Oh, I had I really for me, I really wanted to go, but I waited too late, and that that I love those type of things as well. So do you think that there is any chance and I think I already know the answer to this do you see any chance of baseball coming back into Memphis with as much popularity as it had before?
Speaker 1:Well, I think one to talk about the game down at Rickwood. When my son played baseball at Christian Brothers High School, coach Kelso took the team to Birmingham and one of the games we played was at Rickwood. Oh my God, my son's an outfielder and he got to play center field and left field in Rickwood and I told him I said you just roamed center field.
Speaker 2:Oh, that gives me chills. The same place where.
Speaker 1:Willie Mays played.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And at 17,. He probably wasn't as attuned but he placated the old man and the stadium. Even before the MLB came back and redid, everything was a walking museum and we looked at the pennants for the Birmingham Black Barons. What major league players Ty Cobb, babe Ruth, reggie Jackson, I mean, the list goes on and on. So playing at Rickwood was an incredible experience. So I've been there, had the experience. I'd love to see what it looks like now, because I'm sure the major leagues, mlb, did it right and I think that was great for the game. Do I think the game is going to come back? Here's my hope. I've got an interview coming up with the Redbirds and AutoZone Park next week. My hope is that there will be on August 10th, a Memphis Red Sox day. The Redbirds are all going to don jerseys that's so cool.
Speaker 1:They're going to wear the lid. I just bought this. It just came out, that's the lid that they'll wear.
Speaker 2:That's so cool.
Speaker 1:I'm super psyched. I'm going to have a book signing at AutoZone Stadium that day and they're doing some great things right and my hope number one is that they raise the 1938 Negro American League banner. We won. We defeated the Atlanta Black Crackers in the playoffs. Every historical record shows that Memphis won a championship and we should recognize that here in Memphis at our stadium. And you know, maybe and this is down the road with wishful thinking and maybe some sponsorship in the community put a Memphis Red Sox museum at AutoZone Park, open up a room somewhere in the administrative building, maybe next to the store and the stadium. It's a small room and the Withers Museum we've talked is more than willing to provide the pictures. And I'm connected enough with some of the players' families to whatever memorabilia that remains actual jerseys, some things that are still lingering around in families. Put those there so when fans come in they can take a walk back into time.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Just like you would in Pittsburgh for the Homestead Grays, in St Louis for the St Louis Stars, in Detroit, right for the Detroit Stars there, we can do that here in Memphis and I think for me that would be a huge step forward. And I think you know Major League Baseball has the RBI program which puts baseball back in the inner cities. I think they need to reinvigorate that program, invest in these youngsters Because, like I said, my son played college baseball. I spent on average a thousand dollars a year. I'm a teacher. Right, this hurt, trust me, for my son. Bats, gloves, batting gloves, sliding mitts Lord knows what he needs. That for Cleats.
Speaker 1:Sure and the fees to get on a team. Right over the 10-year period of time. Right over the 10 year period of time, my wife and I calculated that we spent over a hundred thousand dollars to give my son an opportunity to play college baseball and his scholarship, which was a one fourth scholarship to this college, was $9,000 a year. If you do the math, $9,000 a year. If you do the math, he got $36,000. I'm upside down $64,000. Right, Right. So how do kids in South Memphis and coming from a family with two working parents here myself and my wife both work right, we made it happen so my son could chase his dreams how do we do that? For kids in South Memphis who can't afford a $200 bat or a $300 glove, Basketball becomes yeah, it's cost prohibitive yeah.
Speaker 1:Now I'll tell you what. There's a young African-American player who went to St Benedict what's his kid's name? Kaylin Culpepper who just played at Kansas State, who just got drafted. He was by far when my son he's the same age as my son he was by far one of the best players, but his dad had played collegially. I think he got a cup of water in the minor leagues so he knew how to navigate those steps. We need black players, players that played in the minor league, white or black, to come back into the community and help these young kids who are talented get that opportunity. That would be huge, but first, you know, let's raise the banner at AutoZone, get awareness, get a museum going.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Little steps, little steps, little baby steps at a time and you know baseball players have a longer career they do. Their longevity is far outlast football or NBA basketball players and there's more professional spots on rosters in baseball. That's true, then there is in football and definitely more than there is in the NBA. Look at the number of Europeans in the in the draft this past.
Speaker 2:Oh, exactly, I mean the six French guys. Yeah, and the top first round, yeah, right. So think past month, oh exactly, I mean With six French guys. Yeah, in the top ten In the first round, yeah Right.
Speaker 1:So think about it Like we're telling these youths and I taught at Sheffield my eighth graders half the boys I'm going to the NBA. They're not asking to be doctors, lawyers, I'm going to go hoop, I'm balling, I got game. You want a game to play? Baseball gives you better odds. We just have to find a way to fund that, and I think that'd be something that'd be huge.
Speaker 2:I agree. So last question before we get into where they can buy the book. Sure, I want to skip forward. Are you working on your next book?
Speaker 1:I am Very. The project is on the Memphis showboats. Oh, the USFL team from 84 and 85. Willie Donovan Donovan enterprise, huge cotton distributor, owned the team. Logan Young, alabama fame misfortune, I guess, with the Albermeese scandal Originally sets a team. Steve Earhart, who's the president of the Liberty Bowl I've got an interview set up with him in the next week or so and so I'm about 70,000 words in. I've got probably two or three more chapters to go, so within about two or three more years.
Speaker 1:It's a glacial process. I wish I could say this book will be out next year, sandy, but it won't.
Speaker 2:You know, I think people don't necessarily realize, like how long that process is to get to get out there. Okay, so for those that want to buy the book and you should buy the book give it as gifts, buy it for your kids, buy it for your parents, buy it for whoever.
Speaker 1:where can they buy the book online first, okay, so on line they can go to wwwkeithbwoodauthorcom or they can go to amazon, barnes and noble. They all have it online, and if they're in town I'd suggest either Oxbow, which is right off of Poplar and Novel Bookstores. And there's a third option Head back down to the Withers Museum. They've got copies there as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, and another reason to go down there buy the book and see the museum.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's the best way to get it.
Speaker 1:And, Sandy, I appreciate you so much for having me on today. I hope your listeners got as excited about the Red Sox as I am. We're like you know what this is a beast of Memphis history. I don't know when can I find more out? When I teach, I want my kids walking out of class wanting to know more, so I hope your listeners today are excited about learning more about the Memphis Red Sox.
Speaker 2:That's. That's exactly right, and if you are, if you have any comments, don't hesitate to put them wherever you're listening to share. Obviously, I always want you guys to go and review and let us know what you liked. Obviously, I always want you guys to go and review and let us know what you liked. I will put all of those links and where you can find Keith and everything about his website and where you can buy the books. I'll put that into the show notes as well. So, keith, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited. It's an incredible story of the Memphis Red Sox and just a great tribute to Memphis history. I believe. Just wonderful into sports history.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you for having me on again. Sandy, Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You're quite welcome, listeners. Don't forget that Keith's book is on sale Now. You can purchase it online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as through Keith's website at Keith B Wood authorcom. If you're in Memphis, you can find it locally at Novel Bookstores and Oxbow. Follow Keith on social media for more insights and updates and, where he might be doing an autograph session, you can also get autograph copies through his website as well. As we wrap up this episode on the sideline, thank you all for watching or listening and, especially if you've made it all the way to this part of the show, be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you watch or listen, so you don't miss any episodes. Until next time, remember, change is our ally and it paves the way for greatness. Stay inspired. Have a great rest of the week, thank you.
