Welcome to Baseball History Podcast, featuring baseball biographies. I’m your announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 09 of the 2012 baseball season.
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 1 week of February.
February 27
2001 The 1960 World Series hero, former Pirate second baseman Bill Mazeroski, is elected by the Veterans’ Committee into the Hall of Fame along with Hilton Smith, a pitching standout with the Kansas City Monarchs.
Hilton Lee Smith was born February 27, 1907 in Giddings, Texas.
Smith was an outstanding pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. He had an excellent curveball and used a variety of pitches intelligently.
Smith was under the shadow of Satchel Paige, his flamboyant teammate on the Monarchs. Try as he might, he couldn’t get out from under Paige’s luminous figure. Even so, Hilton Smith quietly stayed within himself and achieved the goals he set for himself.
Satchel, having pitched his mandatory three innings, graciously acknowledged the hurrahs of the crowd and left to take his shower. Smith, a quiet unassuming person, settled down to his task and pitched a strong game. It was his fate to follow the celebrated Paige and thereby not receive the accolades he deserved. Many fans only knew Smith as Paige’s shadow. He deserved better. Bob Feller felt that Smith was a better pitcher than Paige, and that Smith had probably the best curveball in the Negro leagues.
Smith’s father regarded education highly and sent Hilton to Prairie View A&M while encouraging him to play baseball. Smith stayed there for two years and pitched on the baseball team. His father encouraged him to pursue a baseball career. The Depression was in full swing when Smith entered professional baseball, and he was happy to have a job playing baseball.
Smith joined the Austin Black Senators in 1931. The Austin team was considered a farm team for the Negro leagues. He was noticed when he pitched the Black Senators team to a 4-3 victory over the Chicago American Giants. In 1932 Smith took his talent to the Southern Negro League, where he pitched for the Monroe (Louisiana) Monarchs until 1935.
In 1935 and 1936 Smith pitched in the National Baseball Congress League, compiling an unbeaten record of 5-0. In the fall of 1936 he barnstormed with the Kansas City Monarchs, who became charter members of the Negro American League in 1937.
Smith became a regular on the Kansas City Monarchs in 1937 and in his first start in the Negro American League pitched a perfect game against the Chicago American Giants.
From 1939 until 1942 he had extraordinary won/loss records of 25-2, 21-3, 25-1, and 22-5. He pitched in six consecutive East-West games, striking out 13 batters.
Smith was also a good hitter; he sometimes played the infield and outfield. He had a .326 batting average in 1944 and 1948 and in 1946 had a .431 batting average. Against barnstorming major leaguers he had a 6-1 record.
Bill James in The New Historical Baseball Abstract called Hilton Smith the best Negro leagues player in 1939, 1941, and 1942, while naming Paige only once, in 1936. One hopes James was merely echoing what perceptive observers of Negro league ball knew at the time. No wonder that Smith could become bitter at times. Nevertheless, he continued to star for the Monarchs until his retirement from the Negro leagues in 1948.
Smith and Paige were the standout pitchers on the Monarchs when the Monarchs won five pennants in the first six years of the American Negro League. Like the white American League, the Negro American League was the junior circuit. In 1942 the first World Series between the National Negro League and the upstart Negro American League was played. Smith pitched once in the 1942 series and twice in the 1946 series. He won one game in each series with a 1.29 earned run average.
A sore arm bothered Smith in 1943, but he recovered from the problem and became a stellar pitcher again.
In 1945 Smith, now a lieutenant in the Army, went to his old boss, J.L. Wilkinson, and urged him to sign Jackie Robinson for the Kansas City Monarchs. Robinson and Smith were not permitted to play on the white army baseball teams. But Robinson, a star halfback at UCLA, was accepted to play on the mostly white army football team. After leaving the army Smith was asked to play minor league baseball in the Dodgers farm system. He refused because he said the Dodgers were a decade too late and he would have been paid less.
Buck O’Neil, a teammate and close friend of Smith, praised him as the greatest pitcher from 1940-1946. O’Neil said, “My land, he would have been a 20-game winner in the Major Leagues with the stuff he had.” O’Neil recounted Smith’s pitching against the likes of Johnny Mize and Stan Musial, who said they had never seen a curveball as good as Smith’s. Teammate Allen Bryant said, “We never told him but he was the best pitcher we had including Satchel Paige.”
Smith became a schoolteacher after his playing days were over,
Smith sometimes felt unhappy about constantly being Paige’s shadow; indeed, a number of ballplayers were none too enchanted with Paige. However, to keep things going smoothly, they never said so in public. An unwritten rule pervaded the Negro leagues that no one should diminish the other. Smith followed that rule and was sufficiently intelligent and grounded to endure the vagaries of baseball life even though the limelight fell on Satchel Paige.
Actually, there were times when Hilton Smith and Booker McDaniel actually pretended to be Paige when Paige for some reason or other failed to show up to pitch. Finally, Smith and McDaniel, fed up with this act, refused to take further part in the charade. Paige’s joining the Kansas City Monarchs in 1940 seemingly undermined the roles of Hilton Smith and Chet Brewer. The Monarchs, a solid team with Midwest moorings, suddenly morphed into the Satchel Paige all-stars and became more like an Eastern Negro League team. But to those knowledgeable about the game Hilton Smith was still the “Money Pitcher.”
“I won 161 games and lost only 32 but most people do not even know of me. I took my baseball seriously. Doing the job and being the best pitcher I could be was my aim. I’m taking nothing away from Satch, he produced and could clown around and get away with it. Being in the shadow of Paige really hurt me but there was nothing I could do about it. My personality was opposite of that of Satch. I never did crawl out from under his shadow.”
Hilton Smith was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2001.
Unlike Satchel Paige, who has been written about greatly, it is hard to find much material on Smith. He is mentioned in all the books about Negro baseball but only in small comments scattered throughout the books. His life is still somewhat sparsely accounted for. He was a quiet, studious man in baseball and life after baseball. He spent the last years of his life writing to the appropriate committees at Cooperstown urging them not to forget him and other great black ballplayers he felt belonged in the Hall of Fame.
Hilton Smith died on November 18, 1983 in Kansas City, MO.
A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Ralph Berger. It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org
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Well, that’s it for today’s Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
