Baseball History Podcast

Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities.  I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.

This is game 09 of the 2009 baseball season

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 1 week of March.

March 1

1909 The Pirates begin construction of new stadium near Schenley Park near the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. The state-of-the-art stadium was named Forbes Field in honor of a pre-Revolutionary British general.

Ernest Judson Wilson, nicknamed “Boojum”, was born February 28, 1894 in Remington, Virginia.

Wilson was an intense, no-holds-barred dynamo on Negro League baseball fields, intimidating opposing pitchers and umpires with his potent bat and powerful fists.  He was built like a wrestler, and his fights with umpires and players were as legendary as his will to win.  His nickname, Boojum, derived from the sound of his line drives slamming off the fences.

A pure hitter who hit with power and was at his best in the clutch, Wilson could hit anything thrown to him and would have been an ideal designated hitter.  Cum Posey considered him to be the most dangerous and consistent hitter in black baseball.

So intense was his disdain and lack of respect for pitchers that he actually dared them to throw the ball.  The left-handed slugger hit all varieties of pitching styles and all pitchers, including Satchel Paige, who considered him one of the two best hitters ever in black baseball.

The records bear this out as he consistently hit in the high.300s and even topped the .400 level on occasion.

His career covered a quarter of a century, ending after the 1945 season.  His lifetime statistics in the Negro Leagues show an impressive .345 batting average, and against major-leaguers in exhibitions the ledger shows a .442 average.

A product of the Washington, D.C. sandlots in the Foggy Bottom section of town, Wilson had a big upper body, a small waist, and was slightly bowlegged and pigeon-toed.  Although he was awkward, he was fast and sure afield and, while lacking form, could play adequately at either corner.  The rugged Wilson played third base by keeping everything in front of him, knocking the ball down with his chest, and then throwing the batter out, and was described as “a crude but effective workman.”

A fierce competitor, hard loser, and habitual brawler, the bull-necked Wilson was fearless, ill-tempered, and known for his fighting almost as well as he is known for his hitting.  Teammates, opponents, and umpires all feared the fury of the fiery-eyed, quick-tempered strongman.

Although his on-field conduct improved slightly as he got older, he never eliminated his need to exercise greater restraint in his behavior.

He had the reputation as “the toughest man to handle in baseball.”  In 1925 this reputation led to his arrest on a “frame-up” assault charge.  He was mean and nasty on the field, but when the uniform came off, he was a genial person off the field.  He roomed with little Jake Stephens on the Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, and Philadelphia Stars, and they became very good friends.  When he was in the last days of his life and unable to recognize anyone else, he recognized Jake by name.

But his good friend and roommate sometimes caused him problems.  Once, when the pair were playing together with the Philadelphia Stars, Stephens was arguing with an umpire about a call, and Wilson intervened by positioning himself between the two parties as a buffer, keeping Stephens behind him and away from the ump.  Stephens reached around him and hit the ump in the face, but the umpire thought it was Wilson and kicked him out of the game.

Wilson exploded, and the police had to come onto the field to subdue his fury.  It took three policemen, freely using their blackjacks, to put him inside the patrol wagon and take him to jail.  After being released he threatened to kill his little friend, and Stephens was so scared that he left town.

Wilson hated the bench almost as much as he hated umpires, and often refused to leave the lineup, even continuing to play with injuries that should have kept him out of action.  In June 1924 he was playing first base for the Baltimore Black sox and was hobbled by a bad ankle, but he insisted on playing.

He crowded the plate when batting and was frequently hit by pitches.  In the late summer of 1926 he was hit by pitched ball and suffered a cracked bone in his right elbow and was declared to be out for the season.  But against his doctor’s advice, he was back in the lineup two weeks later and slammed 2 hits.

A year later he suffered cuts when he and other Baltimore Black Sox players were in an automobile accident, but he refused to stay out of the lineup.  But in June 1937 he failed to “dodge the bullet” when the Philadelphia Stars’ team bus was hit by a car and his injury necessitated him missing an extended amount of playing time.  Consequently his swing was impaired through the early part of the 1938 season.

His distaste for being away from the action never abated, and on another occasion he played with three broken ribs.  As late in his career as May 1940 he was injured and impatiently hurried his return to the lineup.

Wilson was the Eastern Colored League’s batting champ in 1927 when he batted.408. In 1929 he led the league in stolen bases and in 1930 led the league in doubles while batting .372.

When Wilson had his tryout with the Baltimore Black sox, he earned the nickname “Boojum” because of the sound his line drives made when they hit the fence during bating practice.  In later years he was described by the press as “probably the hardest hitter Negro baseball has seen.”

In 1922, his first year with the Black Sox, they were the champions of the South with a record 49 wins and 12 loses, and he peppered the walls with base hits, batting a fantastic .522 through mid-August.  Although the youngster was homesick and wanted to go back to Foggy Bottom at one point in the season, he stayed with the club for nine years.

During his career he was an integral part of teams that are easily identifiable as some of the greatest teams in black baseball history.  During a six-year stretch he starred with the 1929 Baltimore Black Sox, the 1931 homestead Grays, the 1932 Pittsburgh Crawfords, and the 1934 Philadelphia Stars.  Al four were championship teams, with the Black Sox winning the American Negro League pennant, the Stars taking the Negro National League pennant, the Crawfords claiming an unofficial championship, and the Grays winning a playoff for their championship.

Wilson was briefly a Homestead Gray before he and most of his teammates jumped to the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1932.

In 1933 he joined the Philadelphia Stars. Webster McDonald, the team’s pitcher-manager, appointed him team captain in order to constructively channel Wilson’s competitive spirit. While this tactic was somewhat successful, it did not prevent the pugnacious slugger from punching an umpire in the 1934 playoffs.

The demand for his baseball talents is exemplified by the 1932 season, when he began the year as the playing manager of the Homestead Grays but switched in turn to the Baltimore Black Sox and the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the regular season.  Then, in the latter part of the season, he played with Black Sox again in a series of exhibitions against a major-league all-star team.

He was appointed playing manager of the Stars in 1937 and, as would be expected, was a strict disciplinarian who did not tolerate loafing or grandstanding on the field.

He hit a home run off the center-field fence to break a tie and win his first game as manager, and at the end of the first half of the season he was hitting .356.

As a player he gave his best performance regardless of who was the manager, and he expected the same from the players under his authority.

After a .373 batting average in 1939 and three seasons under his belt as a manager, he left the Stars and joined the Homestead Grays during their glory years of the ’40s.  The grizzled veteran was past his prime and didn’t play full time in the latter years, but still hit for averages of, .340,  .350, and.417 between 1940 and 1945, as the Grays captured Negro National League pennants every year after his arrival.

The Homestead Grays had won three straight pennants when Wilson joined them in 1940.

In the latter stages of his career he was afflicted with epilepsy and had to be hospitalized.  In one World Series contest, the game had to be halted because he was in the field at third base, drawing little circles in the dirt with his finger and completely oblivious to his surroundings.

After retiring from baseball, he worked for a road crew building Washington, D.C.’s Whitehurst Freeway.

With a thirst for victory and a hunger for hitting, on the playing field Jud Wilson took a backseat to no one.  His intense will to win and aggressiveness on the diamond added another dimension to his team value..

He holds the third highest average in Negro League history, and ranks 10th in lifetime home runs. He hit .356 in 26 games against white major leaguers.

One of the Negro Leagues’ most powerful hitters, his career batting average of .351 ranks him among the top five players.

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.

Jud Wilson died June 24, 1963 at age 69 in Washington, D.C.

In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary

Under the letter: C

center fielder

The defensive player who is posi­tioned in center field.  Because of the size of the area the center fielder must patrol, the player in this position is usually quite fast and has a strong, accurate arm.

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Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast.  I’ll see you later at the ballpark.