Interview: Jeffrey Copeland

Interview: Jeffrey Copeland

By Scott Bolohan

Jackie Robinson’s incredible and lasting impact on the game has been well-documented. But once Jackie broke the color barrier, each team had to have a player of their own become their first, a process that took twelve years until the Red Sox finally signed Pumpsie Green.

Jeffrey Copeland’s book, After Jackie: 15 Pioneers Who Helped Change the Face of Baseball, gives each of those players the recognition they deserve for their role in helping to change the game. Told through creative nonfiction stories about each player, the book shines a light on the struggles the other fifteen players faced. While some of these players are household names like Ernie Banks and Larry Doby others like Bob Trice and John Kennedy are probably unknown to most baseball fans.

We talked to Jeffrey about writing the book, the incredible characters, and the controversy in who even the fifteen players were.

What sparked your interest in writing this book?

This was actually my 36th book. For the last seven, which had been literary nonfiction, my wife has had a hand in the subject matter in one way or another. For this one, we were having supper at a Mexican restaurant. A large screen TV with a ballgame on and one of the players made a second error in the same inning. The announcer, who was an older guy, said, ‘Who’s this guy think he is, the second coming of Carlos Paula?’ And I started howling. My wife looked at me like I was crazy. I explained that Carlos Paulo was a fabulous hitter, but he could never get the hang of catching the darn baseball. People like Ted Williams and Stan Musial really admired his stroke. I told her he was also the first person of color to play for the Washington Senators. And she asked what I meant. And I explained that there was Jackie, and then after Jackie, each one of the other teams had to break the color barrier too, and Carlos Paolo was one of the other fifteen. She wanted to hear more, so I told her what I could. She asked why nobody has written these stories down? I said, ‘Surely somebody has.’ So I looked the next day. There was a doctoral dissertation done on the other fifteen and there was a kid’s book done on them. But most of the others really were lousy. I contacted my publisher and said I was thinking of doing this. And they said it would be something nice for the historical record and it’d probably be interesting. So and then I called the Baseball Hall of Fame and talked to one of the people I know there and asked if I could come look at some of their stuff. They said they’d let me in the deep vault.

What’s in the deep vault of the Hall of Fame?

It’s the area on the back that you don’t get to bend to unless you’re a researcher or special journalist or something like that. And when they find out what my book project was, they welcomed me with open arms. It was fabulous. All these files of the other fifteen, photographs never seen before by other people, personal letters by the individuals, journal entries, diaries, all that kind of stuff. I was just in heaven. Going to the Hall of Fame was like going to church, but then to get all this other information was fabulous. I think they gave me never before seen or published pictures of the guys too. So I was off and running.

That leads right into my next question. What went into writing the stories of each of the players?

It took about a year to do the research for all of this. I write mostly literary nonfiction. That means every event in the story is true, but you put it in the voices of the characters so that it comes to life. I insist that there be no ‘Lincoln with a boombox’ in my writings, and that is an actual literary term. Every major event has to be true. So I went to the deep vault at the Baseball Hall of Fame and I relied on the Negro League Hall of Fame in Kansas City. I interviewed relatives of the ballplayers, teammates of the ballplayers, as many people as I could find who knew them. I went through the newspaper archives, which was kind of tricky because most of these guys played in the Negro Leagues. The newspaper accounts of what they did are very sketchy at best. I contacted Major League Baseball clubs and got into their archives. I was doing all this during a pandemic, so I couldn’t do all the travel that I wanted to do. There were a lot of Zoom meetings, Skype meetings, a lot of FaceTime, a lot of BlueJeans, just about everything you could imagine. But in the end, I felt like I have really good stories. Matter of fact, I had too many. I had about a dozen stories for each one of these men.

How did you decide which one would end up in the book?

That was really tough. All of these men faced some of the things that Jackie went through, at least to some degree. But they all had a very unique path to the major leagues and I wanted to show different sides of the journeys. Not all these guys wanted to be there. I was very conscious of Bob Trice. He did not want to play for Philadelphia. He actually asked to be sent back down to the minor leagues. I wanted to do a full range of their experiences to show that, yes, Jackie was the modern-day groundbreaker, but the other fifteen also had very specific, very individual, very personal journeys to the big leagues.

But the shadow of Jackie is present in all these stories.

While they were all very conscious of what Jackie had gone through to get there, they had different motivations for getting there as well. Somebody like Monte Irvin. He would have been the first probably if he hadn’t been injured during World War II and was in shape. And then you’ve got somebody like Hank Thompson, who was all about himself. You have all these different personalities. Most of them have very different reasons for wanting to be there. Some were very conscious that they were going to pave the way for others. But for others, it was a chance to play baseball in a way they always dreamed of, and they were tickled to do that.

Undoubtedly, these guys all had talent. But there were guys who really excelled. And there were other guys who, I will admit, I had no idea who they were. Was there something special that made an Ernie Banks or an Elston Howard excel where others didn’t?

Interesting you mention those two. Ernie Banks did not want to go to the major leagues. He was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs at the time. Cool Papa Bell was there. He had Elston Howard as a teammate for a while. He loved it. He really, really did not want to go. On the other end of the spectrum, you have Elston Howard. He had this really curious mind and loved exploring the world. He looked at it as a way for him to not only play baseball at a different level, but to see the world. And he did. They all had an inner drive, but the inner drive wasn’t always to get to the major leagues. Some got there just by accident. They were just accidental tourists, more or less.

The biggest problem I noticed when I first started doing the research is so many of these men were already past their prime when they got the call-up. Classic story. Take Sam Jethro. He is still considered the oldest Rookie of the Year. They said he was 28 years old. When he made his debut, he was 32 years old. They had to fib about his age, otherwise, the major leagues would not have taken a chance. There are so many different stories like that. John Kennedy is listed by Major League Baseball as the first person of color to play for the Philadelphia Phillies, which he really isn’t. He played in five games, got two at-bats, no hits his lifetime batting average is .000. And when he was in the field, he made an error. His fielding percentage is hideous.

In the book, you mention there are a number of lists of who is considered the player to break the color barrier for each team.

Nobody agreed on who the other fifteen men were. You get something different if you look at what Major League Baseball says, as opposed to the Library of Congress, as opposed to the Hall of Fame, opposed to even the teams themselves. That was really a challenge. In the end, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to please everybody. Some people were going to jump up and say, ‘Now wait a minute here. You know Monte Irvin really wasn’t the first to play for the New York Giants.’ So I went with the list used by Major League Baseball. I figured I could blame it on them when people complain. Take the Pittsburgh Pirates, for example. You’ve got Curt Roberts listed as breaking the color barrier in 1954. The year before, Carlos Bernier, who was from Cuba but also of African ancestry, almost played the whole year for the Pirates. So I’m thinking, how come Pittsburgh didn’t list him? And how come Major League Baseball didn’t list him? Well, let’s take a look for a minute. He punched an umpire in the face while he was on the field during a game. He went into the stands with a bat to beat up a bunch of fans. His teammates hated his guts. So Pittsburgh sort of conveniently shoved him under the rug and said, ‘Let’s use Curt Roberts.’ There were many, many cases of that in the list.

Was there anything you’re surprised by in your research?

Every day there was something new. I was surprised by whether it was another aspect of an individual’s journey to the major leagues, or whether it was accounts in the newspapers of the era. One day, I was doing some research on Carlos Paula. I was into the newspaper archives and I noticed that the Washington newspapers presented him in caricature, gave him huge features on his face to play upon his ethnicity and even poked fun at his English. They would say things like, ‘Me Carlos, me from Cuba,’ things like that. Every day there was something like that. Overt racism, yes. Unconscious racism, yes. But then on the other side of the coin, I read a lot of the African American newspapers that covered the Negro Leagues and they exaggerated a lot in their accounts. They had a never-ending problem with finances and they had to tell a story to get people out to the parks. So every day there was something new. That was something that tickled me. I also remember the day I discovered that Elston Howard invented the batting donut. I thought, are you kidding me? And then invented the chin strap underneath the catcher’s mask to protect the throat.

I didn’t know Pumpsie Green became a math teacher either.

A beloved teacher. One of the highlights of doing this book is I got to visit with Pumpsie Green’s wife quite a bit. He had passed a couple of months before, unfortunately. I called her up and introduce myself. She said she was so grateful that somebody was going to talk about him. One of the things that I never read anywhere was when he played his first home game in Boston, she was in the stands. She said when he came to the plate, he got a rousing standing ovation. She was expecting people to throw fruit or boo or things like that. She just broke down and cried like a baby. Every day it was a story like that. I talked to John Kennedy’s children, and they were talking about their dad playing in senior leagues. He never let up. Seventy years old, going jaw-to-jaw with umpires and kicking dirt and all this kind of stuff. It was just such a fun experience doing this book.

Did you find yourself taking a particular liking to any of the guys?

I think Minnie Miñoso, and that’s how he pronounced his name himself, with the eñe.

I didn’t know that.

I didn’t either until I did this. And I got to see some film clips of him speaking at the Hall of Fame. He basically said people have been pronouncing his name incorrectly forever. But I really took a shine to him, because before doing this project—like many people—I kind of figured he was more a baseball clown because he played in seven decades. But that really wasn’t for any other reason other than the fact he dearly loved the game. When he was finally let go, his manager told him, ‘That’s it, Minnie, I’m sorry, your services are no longer required.’ He basically said, ‘Do you mean I have to go home?’ And the manager said, ‘Well, yes, Minnie, go ahead.’ And he says, ‘Can I work the younger players out first?’ He just loved being around the stadium.

And Carlos, Paula. Bless his heart. He really was a good player. But one day, he’s playing first base. they didn’t know where to put him. He made errors every place he played. So a hot dog wrapper blows by he reaches down and he shags it. He gets a standing ovation. [Laughs] Such a hoot. For every player, there were heartwarming and horrifying stories.

One of my favorite stories was when Carlos Paula was at spring training. He said that his mother was deathly ill and the manager reminded him that his mother had died three times already. He changed the story real fast. He said he needed to go get a suit. He showed up a week later. He went to Havana and bought a suit, and then came back to Florida.

Recently baseball has incorporated Negro League stats. Minnie Miñoso and Buck O’Neil just got in the Hall of Fame. It seems like baseball is recognizing this history more now. Is there anything else that you want to see them do?

What I would like to see more than anything else is an expansion of the Negro League Hall of Fame in Kansas City. It is magnificent but they don’t have the staff. They don’t have the resources. If they had more personnel or more resources, they could do more or less what SABR has done for Major League Baseball and do a games project and more biographies of the players. I think it’s more awareness too, digging a little bit deeper and finding the true stories of these people. For Monte Irvin, I discovered oral history stories at the University of Kentucky. Go figure. So it would be great if the Negro League Hall of Fame had enough funds where they could start doing the type of gathering of knowledge that really needs to be done. Of all of these individuals, only Ozzie Virgil is alive. As most of these people are gone, we need to get in touch with their relatives, their spouses, their teammates, and get as much knowledge as we can, while we can. The clock is ticking.

Jeffrey Copeland’s After Jackie: The 15 Pioneers Who Helped Change the Face of Baseball is available now.

Scott Bolohan is the founder of The Twin Bill and would like you to donate to help support their work.