Now Batting, George Crowe
Now Batting, George Crowe
By Con Chapman
Late at night, in the waning innings,
with the score tied or the Cardinals behind,
there was hope, the prospect of a new beginning
if you heard the announcer say
“Now batting for St. Louis, George Crowe.”
No one had ever hit as many pinch
hit homers as he did; fourteen in all.
The bespectacled black man with the
college degree could tie a game–
or win it–with a single stroke.
He was the savior of lost games;
how had the Redlegs ever let him go?
Maybe they knew what the Cardinals didn’t;
that he’d hurt his knee in 1957 and couldn’t
play every day. He’d missed his shot at fame.
Everywhere he went there was
someone ahead of him, whatever the cause;
first the Braves, where he waited behind
Earl Torgeson, then Joe Adock, then Frank Torre.
Then Cincy, where Ted Kluszewski started;
Dee Fondy, Steve Bilko, Walt Dropo–
he platooned at first with them all.
An All-Star in ’58 after Ford Frick ruled him
out of the starting line-up in ‘57
because Reds fans had stuffed the ballot box,
he never made it to the plate. And so
he came to St. Louis in ’59, a battery
that had been charged over the years
by the slights he’d endured. He was passed
over by sportswriters who named a white
inferior the best basketball player in the
Indiana high school tournament, but fans
rallied to his cause and named him the
first Mr. Basketball in the state. He played
college ball at Indiana Central, a school
too small for anyone to notice. He served
in the Army in World War II but when he
came back a movie usher in his own home
town asked George and his wife to leave their
seats and go to the balcony, where blacks had to sit.
He refused, and the policy changed then and there.
He tried basketball first, playing with Jackie Robinson
for the Los Angeles Red Devils, and when they failed
the New York Harlem Renaissance Five, the Rens.
Back then you couldn’t make a living playing hoops, though,
so he got a tryout with the New York Black Yankees
in 1947. His old Red Devils teammate
Jackie Robinson made it to the bigs that year, and so
the Negro National League disbanded. The Braves
gave him a tryout and signed him. He was 28 but began
to claim he was two years younger, beginning to feel
his time running out even then. When he got to St. Louis
in 1959 there were three first baseman ahead of him;
Joe Cunningham, Bill White and a guy named Musial,
so he became a pinch hitter, the best ever.
In 1961, forty years old, he got just one hit in the spring
and was released. He became a scout, but gave it up
after two years. He tried life insurance and teaching and
coaching, got divorced, developed an ulcer from the
stress of trying to teach kids who didn’t care.
And then, when he hit fifty, he went back into the woods,
to a cabin in the Catskills he called “the Jackass Inn.”
He became a hermit; no heat, electricity, running water or
telephone. He was seven miles from a paved road.
“In these hills I’m free,” he said, and he lived that way
for thirty years; he gave up drinking and white flour and
sugar, and the powerful torso of the pinch hitter became
the skinny frame of an ascetic. His beard turned white
but he survived on his baseball pension until he died.
“Crowe,” he said, “isn’t anybody’s slave anymore.”
Con Chapman is the author of The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever. His most recent work is Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges (Oxford University Press). His young adult novel Kimiko Chou: Girl Samurai, is forthcoming from Atmosphere Press.