Uncommon commons: In more than 30 years in
sportscards publishing I have thrown hundreds of notes into files about the
players – usually non-star players – who made up the majority of the baseball
and football cards I collected as a kid. Today, I keep adding to those files as
I peruse microfilms of The Sporting News from the 1880s through the
1960s. I found these tidbits brought some life to the player pictures on those
cards. I figure that if I enjoyed them, you might too.
Alvin “Jake” Powell was a professional ballplayer for two
decades (1930-43, 1948), 11 years of that span as a major leaguer. He seems to
have carved out that career through gritty, determined play, rather than
natural skills.
Rather than spend too much time on Powell's career data, I'll provide a link to his listing at baseball-reference.com:
Off and on during his time as a ballplayer he was a hero to
Yankees fans, making timely hits or brilliant plays in the outfield to help
capture a pennant or win a World Series.
At other times he was among the most hated players of the
day.
Much of the rancor against Powell, especially outside of the
baseball world, stemmed from a racist remark he made during a radio interview.
After he had taken batting practice before the July 29,
1938, game at Comiskey Park, Powell was approached in the dugout by Bob Elson
of WGN radio and asked to do an interview.
Because the live pre-game show was apparently never
recorded, 75 years later it appears Powell’s actual words have been lost to
time. Accounts of the incident disagree on the specifics.
Elson is said to have asked the Yankees outfielder what he
did in the off-season. Powell was quoted by some sources as replying “I’m a
cop, in Dayton, Ohio, during the winter.” Most accounts indicate Elson, in a
follow-up question, asked Powell what he did on the police force. While his
exact reply may be the subject of conjecture, the gist of it is not.
Dan Daniels, a newspaperman who covered the Yankees for The
Sporting News, reported in a front page story of the Aug. 4 issue that
Powell said, “I crack niggers on the head.” Ten years later, when revisiting
the incident in coverage of Powell’s suicide, TSN quoted Powell as saying, “I
spend the off-season clubbing niggers over the head.”
Daniel reported that the radio station immediately cut away
from the program and began issuing a series of on-air apologies in an effort to
stem the flood of telephoned protests.
When Powell was informed of the furor he had caused, Daniel
said the player “expressed regret and asked permission to go on the air to
apologize.” It does not appear he was given that opportunity.
Daniel’s article summarized Powell’s “defense” as that “he
merely intimated he worked in a neighborhood entirely Negro in population, that
he found some of the population tough to handle and, as cops will, had to use
his billy.”
On its editorial page on the same issue, TSN espoused this
position: “Powell was on the spot and was a victim of circumstances, which
should not be held against him by the fans. Other players, in other instances,
might offend other groups.
“The remedy, as we see it, is to relieve the players of such
assignments. Put them on the radio, assuredly, but under more propitious
conditions, where they can do themselves and the game justice, without being
forced to run the gauntlet of questions to which they cannot give some thought,
and commit further indiscretions, unconsciously.”
Yankees manager Joe McCarthy, Daniel said, “rushed to the
defense of Powell and criticized radio stations for bothering players while
they were on duty.” McCarthy immediately ordered his players not to go on the
air in similar impromptu situations.
Baseball commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis, who was ironically
an ardent segregationist, suspended Powell for 10 days, until the Yankees
returned from their road trip. There were rumors that he would seek a
prohibition against players granting dugout or on-field interviews, or indeed
any unscripted broadcasts.
A scholarly review of media coverage of Powell’s radio
gaffe, especially in comparing white and black media, was presented in a paper
at the 1997 Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture. An
anthology of 14 papers presented in that forum was published and lengthy
excerpts can be found on the internet.
An interesting sidebar revealed in that paper is that the
very few media outlets (all black) that contacted the Dayton police department
for comment found that Powell was never employed by that department. Reports
disagree as to whether Powell had applied for a job and was turned down, or was
offered a job and turned it down to concentrate on baseball.
In December, 1942, The Sporting News reported that Powell, then working an off-season job as a security guard at the Aeroproducts war plant in Dayton, had passed a civil service exam for the Dayton police department, and been placed on a waiting list.
According to the obituary in the Nov. 10, 1948, issue of The
Sporting News, Powell’s suicide on Nov. 4, “brought to a close one of the
most exciting and tempestuous baseball careers on record. Jake always played
the game ‘for keeps’ and often battled for his base hits with his fists or his
spikes.”
Among Powell most famous on-field encounters . . .
After he had been traded from the Senators to the Yankees,
Powell had a literal run-in with former teammate Joe Kuhel, slamming into the
Senators’ first baseman while trying to beat out a single. He exchanged punches
with Kuhel, then with several other Senators who leaped off the bench to get in
their licks.
When he took his place in left field, Powell was showered
with bottles from angry bleacherites. Powell waved off the groundskeepers,
picked up the bottles and fired them back at the fans.
A similar play in a game on April 29, 1936, had a
devastating effect on Hank Greenberg. The Tigers’ first baseman was waiting for
the throw on a “routine play,” when Powell, charging down the first base line,
crashed into Greenberg’s outstretched arm, breaking his wrist and putting him
out of action for the remainder of the season. Baseball writers of the time
didn’t seem so exercised at Powell’s hard-nosed play as by the fact that he
never apologized to Greenberg for the collision. He was nothing to apologize
for; he had beaten out a base hit.
One of Powell’s epic battles was with Boston player-manager Joe
Cronin on Decoration Day, 1938. Red Sox pitcher Archie McKain hit Powell on the
knee with a pitch, after twice knocking him down with brush back throws. Powell
charged the mound and was intercepted by Cronin. Fists flew around the mound.
After both had been ejected, they continued their altercation under the stands.
Powell returned to the Senators in mid-August, 1943, having
spent the 1941, 1942 and the first half of 1943 seasons relegated to the minor
leagues. When he entered the clubhouse the other players knew that his time in
the minors hadn’t mellowed him. He sported a huge black eye, the result of a
farewell fist fight with Indianapolis second baseman Eric McNair in his final
game with St. Paul.
(Continued tomorrow)
