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Tuesday, July 10, 2001

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Sit beside Buck O'Neil at the Negro League Baseball Museum, and get transported back in Pittsburgh time. Back sixtysomething years to the Crawford Grill. Back to glorious days when baseball was black and white, and the black part was sure a rip-roaring time. Back, back, back.

"I remember that Hill," O'Neil was recalling with a smirk. "Gus Greenlee had a tavern there on the Hill. Oh, man, after the ballpark, we would go there and sit and talk. I remember Satchel sitting on one end of the bar and Josh would sit at the other. And Satchel would say, 'Run 'em.' They'd set bottles up at his end of the bar. And Josh would say, 'Run 'em'. . . ."

Satchel, of course, being Satchel Paige. Josh being Josh Gibson. At Gus Greenlee's ballpark and Gus Greenlee's bar, they competed fervently, if not fermentedly. Pitcher to slugger. Bottle to bottle.

Back in those days, O'Neil and Paige toiled for the Kansas City Monarchs. Gibson played for Greenlee's Pittsburgh Crawfords, named after a certain Hill District tavern, then later played for the Homestead Grays. The franchises were three of the greatest in the history of the Negro League and various similar circuits separated from Major League Baseball by pigmentation. They were black baseball's version of the Boston Celtics and Montreal Canadiens and, well, Pittsburgh Steelers.

"When you think Pittsburgh, you say 'football,' " O'Neil said. "But there was some great baseball there. A lot of history there."

Saturday afternoon at PNC Park, Major League Baseball will tip its cap to the Negro League and local baseball history. The Pirates will don the uniforms of the Homestead Grays. The Kansas City Royals will dress as the Kansas City Monarchs. Fans and players alike will be transported briefly back in Pittsburgh time.

Let O'Neil take you the rest of the way.

Let a master storyteller sit alongside and serve as tour guide through a largely forgotten 1929-48 Pittsburgh period that bears remembering as much as the homer by Maz and the grace of Clemente, for whom these predecessors made it all possible.

First, let an 89-year-old Monarch take you into the Negro League Baseball Museum's main hall.

There stand statues of the finest nine ever to play in the league - and five of them wear Pittsburgh uniforms.

The Grays' Gibson at catcher. The Grays' Cool Papa Bell and the Crawfords' Oscar Charleston in the outfield. The Crawfords' Judy Johnson at shortstop. The Grays' Buck Leonard at first base.

Paige at pitcher sports a Monarchs jersey, although he used to play for Pittsburgh and Greenlee, too. He was twice a 30-game Crawfords winner. Heck, he was the Crawfords pitcher who, on July 4, 1934, no-hit Homestead in the first game and blew a save in the second, finishing with 20 strikeouts in all.

"I believe the Crawfords in '35 had one of the best teams of all time," O'Neil began. "They could play. Good? They were better than that.

"They trained in Monroe, Louisiana," added the fellow who played for the Shreveport Acme Giants then. "That's when I first saw Josh, Satchel and all those people. We didn't have a chance.

"I can see it and hear those guys today. They would sit up at night in the rooming house, and they would talk baseball, life. . . . I was there with my mouth wide open."

Those '35 Crawfords trotted out Bell, Johnson, Charleston, Gibson and Paige - until the pitcher in perpetual contract negotiations joined a white North Dakota semi-pro team at midseason. Those Crawfords threw down their bats, and the opposition recoiled. They ventured 39-15 and defeated Luis Tiant Sr.'s New York Cubans for the pennant.

Gibson's '31 independent Grays boasted Charleston and Smokey Joe Williams and a 136-17 record against all-comers.

The '42 Monarchs boasted Paige and O'Neil and Hall of Fame inductee Hilton Smith, and they swept Gibson's Grays in a four-game championship series.

Folks around Kansas City's jazz district, 18th and Vine, and all across black baseball America used to argue which of these three clubs were the Negro League's best ever. But, to O'Neil, facts are facts. Just look at that finest nine in the museum there: Five played for Greenlee's greenbacks in '35. The numbers-running , George Steinbrenner of the Hill bought himself a team for the ages.

"On that ballclub," O'Neil said, "they had five players get into the Hall of Fame."

Not just this lovely 18th and Vine museum, but Cooperstown.

"Hey, Gus Greenlee was a good businessman. He was the one who started the Negro League All-Star game, the same year the Major Leagues started theirs, 1933. Then, around '38, Gus got in trouble there, and most of the guys left for other ballclubs."

Soon, there were no more Pennsylvania road swings: Forbes Field or Ammons Field or Greenlee Field or Munhall's West Field on Sunday, Harrisburg on Monday or Tuesday, Philadelphia and Chester on the same day in a split double-header. There were no more Sundays when the Grays were playing in Washington, D.C.'s Griffith Stadium and Pittsburgers flocked to see a Monarchs-Crawfords game. There were no more wild nights on the Hill.

In 1946, the Grays' Gibson topped the Negro League with 16 home runs and the Monarchs' O'Neil topped the American division with a .350 batting average. By the next summer, Gibson was gone, having died from a stroke, and former Monarchs player Jackie Robinson was breaking the Major League color barrier. The Negro League gradually lost its players, its zeal. Pittsburgh lost a piece of its sporting lore.

"Yeah," said O'Neil, who went on to become the Major League's first black coach, with the Chicago Cubs, and chair the Negro League museum and sit on the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee that elected Bill Mazeroski. "It was a great baseball town for the Negro teams.

"If they would have a Negro League day in Pittsburgh. . . . The home team could wear the Crawfords' uniform and the visiting team could wear the Grays' uniform, and it would draw. You have enough ex-players living, they could come in. You could have a hell of a day."

Run 'em.

In addition to The Big Picture, Chuck Finder writes a general-sports column exclusive to the http://www.post-gazette.com/ every Tuesday. He can be reached at cfinder@post-gazette.com