Stars Finally Shine

The design for David McShane's mural.

The surviving members of Philadelphia's Negro League team The Stars gather in anticipation of a commemorative mural.

by J.F. Pirro

As spring showers fall on the heavily landscaped corner of Belmont and Parkside avenues in West Philly, Harold Gould, 80, explains how he and his Philadelphia Stars teammates used to call the rain "Zeke" over half a century ago.

"We used to say, "Zeke's gonna pitch a no-hitter today,' which meant we weren't playing," says Gould, a Stars pitcher between 1946 and 1948. For him and the three other surviving members of the team — Bill "Ready" Cash and Stanley "Doc" Glenn, who are both here today with Gould, and Mahlon Duckett, who couldn't make it to this gathering because his wife was recovering from surgery — a little rain was the least of the foes and frustrations endured playing in the Negro Leagues, where players of color toiled before major league baseball reluctantly began to integrate in 1947.

Their spirits have been lifted in the wake of last month's dedication of the Philadelphia Stars Negro League Memorial Park at the former site of Parkside Field at 44th Street and Parkside Avenue. The centerpiece, a 7-foot, 1,000-pound bronze statue of a Negro League player, is mounted on a 4-foot pedestal.

When the Business Association of West Parkside pitched the community project two and a half years ago, 50 years had passed since the Stars (1933-52) folded: "We thought they forgot about us," Cash, 86, says.

Immortalized: (L-R) Bill "Ready" Cash, Harold Gould and Stanley "Doc" Glenn.
Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The next order of business at the site is a mural honoring black baseball in the city, scheduled to be unveiled in late June. Some players, like 83-year-old Duckett, who was the Negro National League's Rookie of the Year in 1940, are featured. Future plans at the site include a Little League ball field and a Philadelphia Stars museum.

"I hope the mural will be a visual reminder of how far we've come since the days of the blatant racial injustices," says muralist David McShane, who's also on hand today.

So how bad was it? "We don't say "bad,'" Cash stresses. "It was worse than that."

On a 28-day road trip in 1949, he says the team slept just four hours in beds and the rest of the time on the team bus. They weren't allowed to sleep in hotels, eat in restaurants or use restrooms. They'd dress under bleachers, not in team rooms.

"Everything was off-limits to us," says Glenn, a strong-armed Stars catcher from 1944 to 1950 who signed out of John Bartram High and caught the legendary Satchel Paige when he played for the Stars in 1946 and 1950.

In Southern towns like Meridian and Clarksdale, Miss., they'd contend with curfews.

"There'd be signs on the streets that said, "No niggers on the streets after 9 p.m.â'" explains Cash, a 1936 Overbrook High alum who was inducted into the school's athletic Hall of Fame on May 20.

Each time the conversation turns controversial, Glenn, 78, stands up, lights a cigarette and lectures while he paces. He talks about how Parkside Field was often "dirty" and lacked sufficient lighting. Trains making the stop at Belmont and Girard avenues often bellowed sooty coal smoke onto the field. There's still a nagging dissatisfaction with the inhumane treatment, the lack of press coverage, and the slipshod statistics of that era, which may conspire to keep many deserving black players out of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. (Paige and 17 other players who played most or all of their careers in the Negro Leagues have been named to the Hall of Fame, based partly on their reputations.)

Yet, all Glenn will admit to is a sadness that some Stars didn't live long enough to see the memorial. He thinks of Gene Benson, Larry Kimbrough, Al Wilmore and Wilmer Harris, the left-handed pitcher featured in the center of McShane's mural who died at the end of last year. Fewer than 40 former players from the Negro Leagues are still living.

"We were all like brothers," says Glenn, president of the Negro League Baseball Players Association, an organization devoted to preserving and honoring the legacy of the Negro Leagues. (The other three remaining Stars are also officers.) "Maybe they're looking down from above and seeing it."

Black baseball in Philly lasted 85 years. It began with the amateur Pythians and the Excelsiors in 1867. The city's first black pro team was the Philadelphia Giants (1902-16). Two successors, the Darby-based Hilldale Club (1910-32) — "colored World Series" champs in 1925 — and the Stars, followed. In 1934, the Stars won their only Negro League title.

In 1943, the Stars were finally permitted to play at Shibe Park — home of the American League's Athletics and the National League's Phillies — but only on Monday nights. Cash says the A's and Phils drew 10,000 fans to the park per game while the Stars attracted 30,000. By 1947, Parkside Field was abandoned. Stars owner Ed Bolden died in 1950; the team disbanded in 1952. The emphasis shifted to integration in the major leagues, although the A's left town in 1954 and the Phils didn't field a black player until John Kennedy, who played in all of five games and received two at-bats in 1957. The Phils didn't develop a black star until Richie Allen broke into the bigs in 1963.

"I could have won against those A's," boasts Gould, still a big South Jersey farm boy who tills 80 acres for soybean and alfalfa when he's not raising and racing half a dozen thoroughbreds. "If we'd have played 10 games, we'd have won six — but we weren't allowed to play them [or the Phils] because we would have threatened their positions. I blame [segregation] more on the players than management."

One of the first things always said about black players was that they couldn't play. For years, Glenn's stock response has been this rhetorical question: "Well, how, then, in two months did Jackie Robinson totally change the way major league baseball is still played today?"