Tuesday 16thMr. Brown don't recognize rain outs, so we were planning to play but the other team says if we wait a couple of hours the weather will stay day and the field will drain. So I head off into tow, thinking maybe I'll get a paper to read. I go to the local drugstore and ask the girl behind the counter where I can find a paper. I got my uniform on, so I guess it looks a bit peculiar, and I can see her looking at me the way white folks do a fair amount, a look that says is he white or black. I'm pretty light skinned and when I got my cap on you can't tell that my hair is curly. She looks at me like, "You got to be a white, boy, 'cause a nigger with a baseball uniform on wouldn't be readin' no paper, couldn't read at all." At the same time she's lookin' like, "You is not so bad lookin', boy, I wonder if I hopes you is white or black." I see that look so I make sure to speak to her as white as I can, not dropping the ends of my word, not using colored slang. She directs me to where I can find a paper and I go on out. Thursday 9thWell, I never thought I'd travel as much as I have in my lifetime. Been all around the country and now we are going to Mexico! I'll go anywhere the money is and I can pith some ball. We hear things are pretty fine for colored players down their, and Mexicans are crazy about ball. Now I do have my doubts about Satchel running this trip. Of course, Satchel is a great pitcher, the finest control I've ever seen. And he's a great showman. He picked that stuff up when he was with the Black Lookouts. He plays the crowd, does stunts, but of course he's careful only to do them against weak hitters. Me, I like my baseball straight. I think Satchel plays up to the white folks, gives them the Stepin Fetchit act. Of course, he don't like whites, he's just in it for the money, he'd sleep with as many white women as he could. But I don't like that clown stuff. Wednesday 27thOne time we were driving through Tennessee, kind of round dusk, on this road that was so narrow that the cars had to stride ditches on either side. We had two cars. The first car hits a bump in the road and skids, ending up in the ditch. The guys crawl out, no-body hurt, but one of the wheels is out of line, and the car is pretty beat up. We stop the second car and pull it off the road. Then we sit there scratching our heads. While we are figuring out what to do a car come along with some white guys in it. They start laughing, say, "Look at those dumb niggers, run their car into a ditch." They don't offer to help, just drive on. A little while later a cop shows up. "Hey boys, get that car out of there. Somebody might run into it." We say we're trying, we got no tools to fix it. He says, " Well, if you don't get it off the road, I'm just going to have to run you in." We don't want to spend the night in a Tennessee jail, so after he leaves we push the car out of the ditch partway down a ravine in the woods. We leave it there, and we all climb into the second car, head for the nearest town. We finally find a colored guy with a truck and a rope, and the next day we get our car fixed. Meanwhile we don't show up for our game, and of course we lose the gate receipts. Another time in Oklahoma, we saw a sign for a place called the Grand Cafe. The sign said they sold "Nigger Chicken."We stopped and took a picture of the sign, and then a little on down the road was the Grand Cafe. We knew of course, that they wouldn't serve colored, but we decided to have a little fun. Both cars pull in, and we went into the restaurant. The boys liked me to talk, because I could talk real white when I wanted to. I went up to the counter and said, "We saw your sign up the road, and we would like to order some of your nigger chicken." The guy behind the counter got flustered, and mumbled that they didn't serve colored. I then said, "Well, how do you know that your chicken really tastes like "nigger chicken"unless some black folks say so? Seems like we've got some good tasters right here." He didn't think that was funny, of course, and he told me to get the hell out. There were some white guys in there, and I didn't want to get anything going, so I walked out, and as I did I said to some of the guys in a loud voice, "Boys, I was wrong. Ain't no nigger chicken here. Sign must have been for some other place." They all murmured stuff like, "Too bad," and No kidding." Then we got back in the cars , all laughing. You had to laugh at stuff like that. Saturday 16thWe was sitting around having a few drinks when Turkey Stearnes comes in with a guy who he met in another place. The guy plays the clarinet in a jazz band. He says if we go along with him he'll introduce us to some more musicians. So we head down the street to this place, really crowed and smokey, where they got some jazz band playing. We go in and there's this table and sitting at the table is Lena Horne! Of course everybody knows who she is and she is one great lookin' woman. It turns out she is in town with a band, playing at some place for white folks, and she had some time between shows so she came on down to Beale Street with some friends. Now I follow jazz pretty good and I know some of Lena Horne's songs, so I strike up a conversation with her. It turns out that she follows Negro League baseball! You could have knocked off. She knows a lot of the players names, and she met some. She even has thrown out the first ball at the start of the season. I don't think she really knows much about me but she acts like she does and believe me I'm thinking of anything I can say just to keep her around. Well, we hang around there and have some more drinks and the next thing I know there's an impromptu jazz session at the place and Lena's singing some numbers and they call us on the stage to and sing with them. Well, I can follow music, but I can't sing a lick and so I just stand up there with this big grinon my face, not singing a word. So she says, " Come on _______, sing along with me," and I just keep smiling. You run into a lot of black musicians on the road but that was a real highlight for me. *These excerpts were reprinted without permission. They appeared in the magazine "The National Pastime" number 17. The article titled "A Diary of the Negro Leagues" was written by G. Edward White.*It is certainly no secret I like baseball. I have for almost as long as I can remember. When I was younger I was into the contemporary players and in particular the 1980 Phillies. I had the cards and could spew stats with best of them. As I grew up I started to take an interest in baseball history, at first I was fairly indiscriminate (this is when I became enamored by the Yanks, what was I thinking), you know soaking up what I could, when and where I could. That was before I found out about the Negro Leagues. Since that day, much of my baseball education revolved around 1920 to 1946. '46 being one year before Jackie Robinson entered the majors. Growing up in poverty in rural Pennsylvania didn't afford me much contact with blacks save two that stand out in my memory. One guy named Leon who was a good friend of the families and my friend and playmate Victor.Victor was my age and I am going to guess that was around 5 to 10 years old. He was the son of the family who lived in the house on the Schantz's Orchard property. Victor's old man worked for Schantz year round. We were poor but Vic's family was poorer and they were black. Victor rode the same bus and went to the same school as I did. He was very much the token black in my primary school days. Even though LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, bigotry and racism was very much alive in the early '70's when I was growing up. I am glad I can't remember the hateful things the other kids said to Vic, and by extension me, since I was his friend. But I digress. The diary was written by a man whom G. Edward White promised to keep a secret. In the full article, the author identified himself as person who shared the bench with likes of:Jimmy "Cool Papa" Bell (considered to be the absolute fastest base runner in the history of baseball). It was said, "If Bell hit a single, you could be sure it became a double." Andy "Pullman" Porter was a pitcher for the Baltimore Elite Giants. Got the nick name "Pullman" because at the time train travel was prevalent and the 'Pullman" car is where someone slept. A porter was the guy who carried your bags to your berth. "Pullman" Porter. Leroy 'Satchel' Paige, who got his nickname from about the same place as Porter. Paige is legend in baseball. A bigger than life personality, and if he wasn't such a great all around ball player, I think to this day he should have been the first black to play the majors. I think he was so good, that the whites running the majors were afraid to sign him, because he would show all of his teammates up. "And we can't have no darkie makin' the other players look bad." That's a quote from baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (who was a bona fide Clansmen).Norman "Turkey" Stearnes. They called him 'Turkey' cause of the funny way he ran. Leading the league in the home run standings for 7 seasons, Stearnes was another one of the all around great players. All of these cats played for the Kansas City Monarchs along with black barrier breaker Jackie Robinson. I am going to leave it at that. Enjoy Lena. One of my anonymous heroes had at one time. Here's to his memory. This track courtesy of "2Serenity":http://mog.com/2Serenity/blog_post/91912