Baseball Way Back: Joe Black answered call on, off field

Every now and then, a reader who happens to be a New York transplant will ask me to write something about the Brooklyn Dodgers.

That perpetual World Series underdog had a special relationship with its fans, including one young rooter, future White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who would take the subway to cozy Ebbets Field to see the games and then walk a mile-and-a-half home afterward.

Another Chicagoan, Martha Jo Black, holds a special connection to the Brooklyn Dodgers, although she was born long after the Dodgers packed up for Los Angeles.

In 2015, Black, who works for the White Sox, an association that began in 1993, wrote a book with Chuck Schoffner about her dad, "Joe Black: More Than a Dodger."

I spoke recently with Martha about her father, who, in 1952, was not only "the most inexperienced pitcher ever to start the first game of a World Series," but also the first Black pitcher to win a World Series game.

Before he faced Yankees pitcher Allie Reynolds in game one, Black had only two major league starts. But the 28-year-old rookie carried the Dodgers pitching staff on his back during a season when it was dogged by injuries and hobbled by the loss of ace Don Newcombe to the military.

Black pitched in 56 games, with a 15-4 record, 15 saves and a 2.15 ERA in 142.1 innings, leading the majors with 41 games finished. He would be named the National League Rookie of the Year and finish third in the NL MVP voting - the honor went to the Cubs' Hank Sauer.

But Joe Black didn't become an overnight sensation overnight. And the odds were overwhelmingly against him.

Although he displayed potential as a high schooler in Plainfield, New Jersey, a scout told him, "Colored guys don't play baseball."

It was a shock to the young man, who grew up, Martha said, in a mixed neighborhood where the common denominator was poverty.

"He had to play baseball with rocks," she said.

He deferred his dream by playing football and basketball at Morgan State, a historically Black college in Baltimore.

But Black and baseball were meant for each other, and soon he was suiting up with the Baltimore Elite Giants of the Negro National League, a team that would boast future Dodger teammates Roy Campanella and Jim Gilliam.

The 6-2, 220-pound right-hander with the blazing fastball would encounter the reality of segregation in the Jim Crow South - hotels so infested with bedbugs you had to keep the light on at night and restaurants that would refuse to serve Black customers.

Even before Jackie Robinson integrated the major leagues, Joe was already playing with white teammates during his World War II service - his Army team at Camp Crowder, Missouri, was coached by Detroit Tigers pitcher Tommy Bridges.

Playing in Cuba for the Cienfuegos Elefantes during the winters of 1950-51 and 1951-52, he made an important connection with former Cubs great Billy Herman, the Cienfuegos manager and future Dodgers coach, who helped make him major league ready.

The Dodgers purchased Black from the Elite Giants in 1951 and brought him up in 1952. Used primarily as a reliever that first year, he led the team with 15 wins. Manager Chuck Dressen said without Black, "I would've been dead."

In game one of the series, Black outdueled Reynolds, pitching a complete game 4-2 victory.

He also pitched games four and seven, but the Dodgers lost his last two starts 2-0 and 4-2. In game seven, Mickey Mantle, making an adjustment by moving his feet away from the plate, hit a tiebreaking homer in the sixth that scaled the Ebbets Field scoreboard.

Black's career fizzled after 1952, but he would enjoy an enormously successful life after baseball. He returned to his hometown, Plainfield, New Jersey, to teach school before joining Greyhound in Chicago, where he became, according to Martha's book, "the first black executive to hold a vice president's position with a major transportation company." Through Greyhound, he arranged scholarships to historically black colleges.

He also wrote a column, "By the Way," which appeared in Ebony and Jet magazines and Black newspapers.

Martha's father, in his mid-40s when she was born, won custody of her during her parents' divorce.

She remembers growing up around such athletic celebrities as her godfather, "Uncle Jesse," 1936 Olympics hero Jesse Owens, who urged her to eat her vegetables.

Black was very much a hands-on dad, coaching her in track and even teaching her about the facts of life while traveling on a Greyhound bus trip to the west coast.

Before his death in 2002, Joe Black continued to contribute to baseball, becoming a vice president of the Baseball Assistance Team (BAT) and pushing for pensions and medical benefits for Negro League players.

There would also be one more moment of World Series glory. Sitting with National League President Len Coleman near the on-deck circle at game seven of the 1997 World Series, he noticed the Marlins' Bobby Bonilla struggling in game seven against Cleveland's Jaret Wright's inside pitching.

Martha said he called Bonilla over and told him to move his feet back, "Because the pitcher is looking at your hands, not looking at your feet. That's how Mantle hit that home run off me."

The homer off Wright helped lead the Marlins to their first title. Once again, Joe came through in relief.