Status of Integration in the American League on Opening Day, 1956 (60 Years Ago)

In contrast to the National League, where 29 black players were on the rosters of seven of the eight NL clubs at the start of the 1956 season, there were only 11 blacks who made the opening day roster on just five of the eight teams in the American League. Six were in the starting line-up in the first game on the schedule on April 17—Larry Doby and Minnie Minoso for the White Sox, Al Smith for the Indians, Vic Power and Harry Simpson for the Athletics, and Elston Howard for the Yankees. 

STATE OF INTEGRATION IN THE AMERICAN LEAGUE ON OPENING DAY APRIL 17, 1956 (SIXTY YEAR AGO)

By now it was accepted that there was no going back on the integration of major league baseball. The "great experiment"—to use historian Jules Tygiel's phrase to describe Branch Rickey's signing Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers—had proven a resounding success. Robinson and the first wave of elite black players who followed him demonstrated they were every bit as good as the best white players. Although most clubs in both leagues initially took a let's-wait-and-see attitude, the National League was more proactive in signing and promoting black players. 

Resistance might have been futile, but resistance there was in the AL outside of a handful of ball clubs. The American League had two enduring black stars of its own during the breadth of Jackie Robinson's career—Larry Doby in Cleveland and Minnie Minoso in Chicago—but was much slower to integrate at the big-league level. 

Just three American League clubs started the 1956 season with as many as two black players on their roster and two other clubs began the season with just one black player, which meant that ten years into the Jackie Robinson era, three AL teams were all-white as they took the field for the first time in 1956. In the National League, six of the eight clubs had at least three black players on their opening-day roster—including the Reds with seven, the Dodgers with six, and the Cubs with five. 

And whereas the National League had two high-profile black rookie players who were expected to be—and indeed were—in their team's opening-day starting line-up in 1956, Cincinnati's Frank Robinson and Brooklyn's Charlie Neal, the American League had none who were first-time rookies on their roster, let alone starting the first game of the year. Of the four black players who were September call-ups in the American League in 1955, only Earl Battey went north with his team, and he played in just four games for the White Sox—the last on May 8—before being sent down. And while the National League had more than a handful of dynamic, young black players starring for their teams, several of whom were superstars like Mays, Aaron, and Banks, the American League had . . . none; established veterans Doby and Minoso were both at least 30. 

The two American League teams that had been most enlightened about integration since early in the Jackie Robinson era—the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox—faced off against each other on opening day. The White Sox had the most black players to start the season of any AL team—four, with Doby, whom they acquired in an off-season trade from the Indians; Minoso; Connie Johnson, a pitcher; and Battey. Well-established as elite players, Doby (batting third in center field) and Minoso (batting fifth in left field) were in the starting line-up. Minoso scored the first run of the game after his single started a two-out rally in the fourth and went 1-for-4 in Chicago's 2-1 victory. Doby, hitless in three at bats in his first game against his old team, walked in his first plate appearance in a White Sox uniform.

Having traded Doby, the Indians now had just one black player on their roster—right fielder Al Smith in his fourth year with Cleveland. Batting third in the opening day line-up, Smith got Cleveland's first hit of the season with a first-inning single off Chicago ace Billy Pierce and went 1-for-4 on the day.

The Kansas City Athletics were the only other American League team to start the season with three black players on the roster, two of whom—first baseman Vic Power batting lead-off and center fielder Harry Simpson batting clean-up—started on opening day. Power was beginning his third-big league season, and Simpson had played three years in Cleveland from 1951 to 1953, was demoted to the minor leagues in 1954, and been traded to KC early in the 1955 season. The third black player on KC's opening day roster was their starting third baseman Hector Lopez, who did not play in either of the first two games, but started 144 of the Athletics' 154 games in 1956.

KC's opponent on opening day, who they beat 2-1, were the Detroit Tigers, who along with the Boston Red Sox were the two American League holdouts against integrating at the major league level. The Tigers did not field a black player until 1958 and the Red Sox not until 1959. 

The Red Sox were up against the Baltimore Orioles, who began the season with two black players on their roster—Bob Boyd and David Pope—neither of whom started on opening day, although both pinch hit in the ninth inning. Both had prior major league experience, but not as core regulars. Until an injury sidelined him for almost three months, however, the left-handed Boyd was used in a three-player, two-position platoon at the beginning of the season, alternating at first base with the right-handed Gus Triandos, who was an everyday player platooning with Hal Smith behind the plate; in effect, the left-handed-batting first baseman Boyd was platooned with the right-handed-batting catcher Smith. 

The Washington Senators also opened the 1956 campaign without any black players on their roster. Carlos Paula, who integrated the Senators in September 1954 and played all of the 1955 season with them, rejoined the team in mid-May. He would be the only black to play for the Senators in 1956. After hitting just .188 in 33 games, mostly as a defensive replacement, Paula was back in the minor leagues by July, never again to resurface in the majors, and the 1956 Senators were back to no black players for the rest of the year. 

Of historical note, none of the four blacks who had played so far for the Washington Senators were African American. Paula and Juan Delis, who also spent all of 1955 in Washington but was not invited back, were both from Cuba, and 1955 September call-ups Webbo Clark and Julio Becquer were from Panama and Cuba.

The Senators hosted the New York Yankees on opening day. One of the clubs most staunchly opposed to integration, the Yankees had long taken the so-called principled position of refusing to be pressured into promoting the black players in their stellar minor league season—who had once included Vic Power—just for the sake of appearances. It wasn't until 1955, eight years after Jackie Robinson made his debut over in Brooklyn, that the Yankees finally put a black player on their roster. That was Elston Howard, who stayed all year and played 97 games in his rookie season with 10 home runs, 43 RBIs, and a .290 batting average. The Yankees did not call up another black player all that season.

Nor did they in 1956, when Howard was once again the only black player in New York pinstripes the entire year. Howard was in the starting line-up on opening day and had one hit in five trips to the plate. His lead-off single in the sixth with the Yankees ahead of the Senators, 4-2, started a 4-run rally that was capped by Mickey Mantle's 3-run home run. 

Mantle was 2-for-3 on opening day, with two home runs and four runs batted in. That was nothing. Reigning AL Most Valuable Player Yogi Berra went 4-for-4 with a home run and 5 RBIs as the Yankees clobbered the Senators, 10-4. With one game down and 153 to go, the New York Yankees had set the tone for the American League in 1956.

The following is a link to the status of integration in the American League in 1955:

http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2015/04/opening-day-60-years-ago-status-report.html

   

Sixty Years Ago: Fueled by Mantle, the 1955 Yankees Make Their Move

While the Dodgers were running away with the 1955 National League pennant, their lead at 7½ games on June 2, the New York Yankees were threatening to do the same in the American League. After being swept at home by the Indians in a two-game series on May 10 and 11, which put them four games back of Cleveland in third place with a 14-10 record, the Yankees won 19 of their next 22 games against mostly second-rate teams to put themselves up in the standings by three games over the Clevelanders. Mickey Mantle, the Yankees' emerging superstar, broke out of a two-week batting funk to fuel his team's drive into first place.

Fueled by Mantle, the 1955 Yankees Make Their Move

So far in 1955, the Yankees' season pretty much tracked with both Mickey Mantle's batting average and the quality of teams that they played. They won 7 of their first 10 games, all against teams with losing records in 1954—the Senators, Orioles, and Red Sox—in which their burgeoning young superstar center fielder hit .353. Over the next thirteen games, the Yankees had a pedestrian 7-6 record while Mantle hit only .167 with 8 hits in 48 at bats, although half of his hits were home runs. Three of his four long balls helped the Yankees to victory as they struggled to get untracked but fell behind both the Indians and White Sox. 

Against the three other American League teams that had winning records as of May 10—the Indians, White Sox, and Tigers—New York had lost four of seven. Chicago, meanwhile, had won seven of eleven against the Indians, Tigers, and Yankees and Cleveland had won seven of twelve against the White Sox, Tigers, and Yankees.

When the Yankees took the field in their home stadium on May 11 for the second of their two-game set with the Indians, they trailed Cleveland by three and Mickey Mantle's slump had diminished his batting average to .244 with six home runs and 14 RBIs through the first 23 games of the season. Early Wynn ran his record to 3-0 while handing Yankee flamethrower Bob Turley his first loss of the year against five victories, but Mantle came out his his slump in a losing cause, driving in a run with a first-inning single and tagging Wynn for a home run in the eighth. 

The Detroit Tigers, whose 15-11 record on May 11 put them in a virtual tie with the Yankees in third place, came next to Yankee Stadium. And Mickey Mantle reached deep to recover his inner superstar. Suggesting his batting slump was an anomaly, in the first game of the series the Mick went 4-for-4 with three home runs. It was the first and only time in his career Mantle hit as many as three home runs in a single game. Right-handed Detroit starter Steve Gromek was the victim for two and southpaw reliever Bob Miller for one.

The next day, the Yankees went into the bottom of the ninth trailing the Tigers, 6-4, with Detroit starter southpaw Billy Hoeft still on the mound. Down to their last out with two runners on, Mickey Mantle singled to score one, and right-hander Al Aber was brought in to face to the right-handed-batting Elston Howard, who already had one hit for the day. Howard lashed a triple to win the game, Mantle crossing the plate with the winning run.

After the Tigers left town, essentially having been eliminated from the pennant race (although they didn't know it yet), the Yankees had the privilege of playing 18 of their next 20 games against losing teams that were not expected to be remotely competitive.

Robert Creamer wrote in his 1955 forecast for the American League in Sports Illustrated's first-ever preview of a major league season that the key to which of the three most-likely contenders—the defending champion Cleveland Indians, the New York Yankees, whose bid for six championships in a row was derailed by the Indians' 111 wins in 1954, and the up-and-coming Chicago White Sox—would win the pennant was likely to come down to which team had the best record "against the other five teams." In 1954, for example, the Indians' final eight-game margin over the 103-win Yankees was more than accounted for by their 89 wins against "the weak clubs," twelve more than the Yankees managed against those same teams. The Yankees and Indians had played each other to a draw in their 22 meetings during the 1954 season.

The Yankees lost the first game in their window of scheduling-opportunity to the Athletics, but then won seven straight—one against Kansas City, both games against the visiting White Sox, and a four-game sweep of the Orioles. Mantle was instrumental in both Yankee wins against pennant-race rival Chicago: on May 17, Mantle (who also had a single) walked in the sixth inning, advanced to second on a walk to Yogi Berra, stole third, and scored the only run of the game as Yankees ace Whitey Ford (now 5-1) outdueled White Sox ace Billy Pierce (now 2-2); and the next day, with the Yankees ahead 7-6, Mantle hit a seventh-inning grand slam to break open the game.

Up by three over Cleveland after sweeping the Orioles, the Yankees lost to the Senators before winning the next three against them, then went on the road where they took three straight in Baltimore, split two in Washington, and trounced the Athletics three times in Kansas City. 

The Yankees won all four games they played against winning teams during their 19-3 stretch from May 12 to June 2—two against the Tigers and two against the White Sox—but, just as important and in a long-established Yankee tradition, beat up on losing teams. They were 4-2 against the Senators, 4-1 against the Athletics, and 7-0 against the Orioles—the teams that were sixth, seventh, and eighth all with winning percentages below .400 by the time the Yankees were through with them. They did what Creamer said they must.

Mantle got a hit in sixteen straight games beginning in the second game of the Indians series at Yankee Stadium, during which he batted nearly .500 with 26 hits in 53 at bats, boosting his average up to .341 on May 27. His .340 batting average for the month of May was his best for the 1955 season. 

Mickey Mantle ended the year with a .306 average, but got on base in 43 percent of his plate appearances, leading the league. The Mick also led the league in home runs for the first time with 37 and in triples with 11, and in slugging (.671) and on-base plus slugging percentage (1.042). His 9.5 wins above replacement was the best in all of major league baseball—better even than Willie Mays who had a 9.0 WAR and was Mantle's rival for the apple of The Big Apple's eye. Next year, Mantle would win the Triple Crown.

With 46 down and 108 games to go, the Yankees record stood at 33-13, largely the result of having beaten up on second-tier competition in the American League. The Yankees, however, still had 18 to left to play against the team that had dethroned them in 1954. They had played arch-rival Cleveland just four times in having completed nearly 30 percent of their 1955 schedule, and had lost three of those games. 

Tougher competition was just ahead, beginning the next day, June 3, with the first of four games against the 27-16 White Sox (4½ games behind in third), followed by four games against the 24-20 Tigers, followed by four games against the defending AL-champion Indians, then three more against the Tigers and four more against the White Sox.

If anyone was going to catch the Yankees, the beginning of June would be the time.

Opening Day 60 Years Ago: Status Report on Integration--The American League

Sixty year ago, when the 1955 season opened on April 11, there were 36 blacks on the opening day rosters of the sixteen major league teams, but only nine on five American League teams. This is the second of four articles on the status of integration in the major leagues nine long years into the Jackie Robinson era—"long" because baseball careers are so short. Nine years is virtually akin to a full generation of players.

Opening Day 60 Years Ago: Status Report on Integration—The American League

Notwithstanding that by now black players had certainly proven they could play at the major league level, American League teams for the most part remained stubborn holdouts when it came to integration, although they all had blacks playing in their minor league systems. Going into the 1955 season, Larry Doby, Cleveland's center fielder since 1948, and Cuban-born Minnie Minoso, an outfielder for the Chicago White Sox since 1951, were the only black players with any longevity in the AL. Doby and Minoso were two of only four black players written by their managers into the line-up card for the the first game of the season, along with 68 white players. 

As was then the tradition, so the President could throw out the first ball (which President Eisenhower dutifully did), the American League season opened in Washington's Griffith Stadium, where the Senators played host to the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles started the season without any black player in their dugout until they obtained outfielder David Pope from the Indians in a trade in mid-June. 

After becoming the twelfth major league team to introduce a black player in a September call-up the previous year, the Senators opened a season for the first time with blacks on their roster—outfielder Carlos Paula, who was the September 1954 call-up, and Juan Delis, who could play both third and the outfield. Neither was African American. Both were born in Cuba, where the Senators had an advantage because they were the only major league team to have been scouting players there, white Hispanics to be sure, since the 1930s.

Neither Paula nor Delis were in manager Charlie Dressen's starting line-up, and neither got into the game. After appearing in seven games as a pinch hitter or pinch runner, Delis made the first of his 29 starts in Washington's 15th game of the year. He appeared in only 54 games for the Senators, batting .189 in what would be his only major league season. Paula played in 115 games for the Senators in 1955, getting only 374 plate appearances, and did not make his first start in the outfield until their 23rd game of the season. 

The following day, April 12, the Orioles played their home opener in Baltimore against the Boston Red Sox—major league baseball's most notorious team when it came to holding out against integration. It would be another four years, three months, and nine days—July 21, 1959, to be exact—before a black player, Pumpsie Green, would take the field for Boston. 

Also on April 12, the Detroit Tigers opened the 1955 season against the Athletics, playing their first season in Kansas City. The Tigers were as staunchly opposed to integration at the big league level as the Red Sox, and it would be another three years before they did so with Ozzie Virgil taking the field at third base on June 6, 1958, making Detroit the next-to-last major league team to integrate


For the second year in a row, the Athletics had one black—and one black only—on their opening day roster. He was Vic Power, who started in center field in 1954 and hit .255 in his rookie season. Power played first base and batted lead-off on this opening day, but manager Lou Boudreau pinch hit for him in the sixth inning, the A's up by 3-2, and the bases loaded. Power had been hitless in three at bats. Power went on to hit .319 for the season—second in the American League, although far behind Al Kaline's .340 average.

The third AL opening-day game on April 12 was Chicago at Cleveland. The Indians and White Sox were the only two American League teams that had an early commitment to integration. Minnie Minoso, however, was the only black player on the White Sox opening day roster, coming off a terrific season in which he was the best player in the league based on the wins above replacement metric, with a league-leading 304 total bases, 116 runs batted in, and a .320 batting average in 1954. Batting third and playing left field, Minoso drove in the only run in Chicago's 5-1 loss to the Indians with a sixth-inning single. 

The Indians started the year with four black players on their roster. Lead-off batter Al Smith went 2-for-4 and Larry Doby went 1-for-3. Smith was Cleveland's batting star for the day; he reached base on an infield hit leading off the Indians' first and scored their first run of the year, then crashed a two-run home run off Chicago starter Virgil Trucks to give Cleveland a 4-0 lead in the second. Both Harry Simpson and David Pope, who were outfield reserves, were traded soon after the season began.

The New York Yankees did not open their season until the next day, April 13, at home against Washington. If there was any team as notorious as the Red Sox and Tigers for their opposition to integration, it was the Yankees, whose excuse was that they were looking for a black player who could play up to their standard of excellence, and whose line was that they would not be pressured into integrating their dugout at Yankee Stadium. 

Vic Power somehow failed to meet that standard of excellence, despite batting .331 and .349 (winning the batting title) for their Kansas City Triple-A affiliate in 1952 and 1953, and notwithstanding that first base was a position of weakness those years for the Big Club in New York. Power played with a certain amount of flair that was anything but Yankee-regal; rather than keep him down on the farm, the Yankees traded Power to the Athletics, with whom he began his big league career in 1954.

On opening day in 1955, however, the Yankees finally did have a black on their major league roster. Casey Stengel may have jokingly complained that he had the only African American player who couldn't run, but Elston Howard was nothing if not versatile—a catcher who could also play the outfield, and even corner infield positions. Despite the Yankees' 19-1 drubbing of the Senators on opening day, Stengel did not find an opportunity to put Howard into the game. 

Howard got into his first big league game in the sixth inning the next day in Boston and singled in his first at bat with two on to drive in Mickey Mantle with the first RBI of his career. He would not make his first start (catching) until the Yankees played their 14th game of the season in Kansas City on April 28, and was not in the starting line-up of a game at Yankee Stadium until May 14 (in left field)—the Yankees' 26th game of the year and their 10th at home.

The next article will examine the state of integration in the National League on opening day in 1955.