SAM JETHROE
Sam Jethroe was a very smooth-looking dude and a pretty fair ballplayer to boot.
Nicknamed “The Jet,” because of his other-worldly acceleration and flat-out speed, one of his peers wryly remarked that Jethroe could “outrun the word of God.”
(This is vaguely reminiscent of Satchel Paige’s legendary quip that James “Cool Papa” Bell was so fast, he could turn off the light in his hotel room and be back in bed and under the covers before the room got dark. In those days it was a foregone conclusion that ballplayers shared a room).
In 1949 “The Jet” swiped 89 bags for the Montreal Royals, setting an International League record; he batted .326 with 83 RBI and a league-leading 154 runs scored.
Don Newcombe, the first outstanding pitcher of color in the major leagues and a one-time teammate of “The Jet” with Montreal, said with conviction in a 2001 interview that the man “…was the fastest human being I’ve ever seen.”
He was exciting, talented and ready for the big leagues.
Back in April of 1945, the Red Sox apparently begged to differ.
Students of the game’s history as well as baseball aficionados everywhere know that the Boston Red Sox hold the dubious distinction of being the last team in the Major Leagues to desegregate when, buckling under the weight of enormous pressure, they promoted Elijah “Pumpsie” Green to the big club in the middle of the 1959 season.
What is not as widely known is that they could have been the first.
The opportunity was presented to them on a silver platter when Boston City Councilman Isadore Muchnick exercised his right to force a tryout at Fenway Park in that fateful April of ’45.
Three Negro League Players attended — Jackie Robinson, then with the Kansas City Monarchs; Marvin Williams of the Philadelphia Stars; and Sam Jethroe of the Cleveland Buckeyes — and all performed admirably, with — no surprise — Robinson leading the pack.
None of them ever heard another word from the Red Sox.
The team had passed on the man who would become the National League’s Rookie of the Year in 1947 — only two years later — and the Senior Circuit’s MVP in ’49, as well as the National League’s Rookie of the Year in 1950, one Sam Jethroe.
The tryout was a sham.
In the height of twisted irony, Jethroe won the prestigious rookie award as a member of Boston’s other Major League team at the time, the Boston Braves who acquired his rights in October of ‘49.
As early as 1938, Braves owner Bob Quinn, Sr. pontificated that to breach baseball’s color line in Boston was only right since the city, dubbed the “Cradle of Liberty” after the American Revolution, was the perfect place to embrace this historical milestone.
He added in the form of a prediction however and with a measure of intellectual acuity, that the Boston Bees would take the leap before the Red Sox would.
It is interesting to know that Jethroe won the Negro American League batting title in 1945, hitting an eye-popping .393, but it was Robinson whom the Dodgers’ Branch Rickey selected to break organized baseball’s color line with Montreal in 1946.
The sagacious and wily Rickey hardly forgot about Jethroe; he bought him from the Buckeyes for $5,000 in the midsummer of 1948 and assigned him to the Royals. “The Jet” starred for Montreal for a season and a half before Rickey turned around and sold him to the Braves for a reported $150,000 and several players.
Sam Jethroe, the fleet and accomplished center fielder — a Negro League star — was named Rookie of the Year while with the Boston Braves at age 32, the oldest player in the game’s one-hundred-plus-year storied past to receive the award.
He led the major leagues in steals that season with 35, eighteen more than any other and his 70 thefts in his first two campaigns were 27 more than the second-highest total recorded during that time frame. He batted .273, hit 18 homers and scored 100 runs in his glorious 1950 MLB debut, three years after Robinson broke the big-league color barrier.
“When he came to bat, the infield would have to come in a few steps or you’d never throw him out,” recalled Buck O’Neil, who played against Jethroe while a member of the Negro League’s Monarchs. Unfortunately though, his prime years were behind him.
The first African-American player in franchise history and the first black major leaguer in Boston, he was the Braves’ starting center fielder for three seasons, but was sent to the minors in ’53 and played two games with the Pittsburgh Pirates — run by Rickey then — in 1954, joining Curt Roberts as one of Pittsburgh’s first two black players.
Nearly sixty-five years after his brief career with the Braves concluded, the legacy of Sam Jethroe pales by comparison to the Tyrannosaurus rex-sized footprint left by Robinson.
Although he managed to hit .276 with a commendable .798 OPS during his first two seasons with the Braves, his career numbers over just 442 Major League games — .261 BA; .337 OPS and 98 stolen bases — were more pedestrian than sensational.
(His paltry numbers in 1952 — .232 BA and .318 OPS — earned him his return ticket to the minor leagues where he spent most of his final seven seasons, the ’54 two-game audition with the Pirates notwithstanding).
Current Atlanta Braves first-base coach and former NL MVP (1991) Terry Pendleton sheepishly admitted that he didn’t “know anything about him at all,” and that he was “honestly ashamed that I don’t.”
More contemporary one-time Braves players including Jason Heyward and Michael Bourn count themselves among the many who know next to nothing about the contributions and sacrifices Jethroe made for them and scores of other African-American ballplayers who have made it to the Major Leagues.
As Heyward reflected, “We’re all quick to judge or have our opinions in the sports world, but we haven’t done enough research to know what all happened to get where we are.”
The sad fact remains that Jethroe (and others of course) encountered and dealt with the same cruelty, bigotry and racism which plagued Robinson, all the while clearing the path and thereby helping to afford opportunity to those who chose to follow their lead in the world of baseball.
Because he played fewer than four full big league seasons, “The Jet” did not qualify for a pension.
Not easily deterred, he filed a class-action suit against Major League Baseball and its players association alleging that racism had prevented him from breaking into the bigs earlier.
A federal judge ruled that the statute of limitations had expired in the case but the unbridled determination of Sam Jethroe, who died at 83 in June of 2001, catalyzed Major League Baseball in 1997 to begin paying more than 100 Negro League players, including “The Jet” himself, annual pensions of around $10,000.
“I’m not the type of person to be bitter,” the self-effacing Jethroe once said. “I was honored to play. I’m thankful that I was able to do what I did.”
Including blasting a three-run moonshot over the famed left-field wall at Fenway Park in an April 1952 Braves-Red Sox exhibition game.
But that didn’t count.
What is indelibly etched is the impact Sam Jethroe had on the city of Boston and our country’s national pastime.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in September 2017.]
