July 29, 1938: A baseball player seals his doom as a member of the New York Yankees, and ruins his life, all because he decided that racism was funny.
It isn't.
Alvin Jacob Powell was born on July 15, 1908, just outside Washington, D.C. in Silver Spring, Maryland. Maryland is a "Border State," meaning that it borders the South, so that, while it remained in the Union during the American Civil War, it had a lot of characteristics of Southern States, including, into the 1960s, racial segregation in many things.
He briefly reached the major leagues with the Washington Senators in 1930, and got there to stay in 1934. In 1935, he hit .312 and had 98 runs batted in. But by the next year, the Senators wanted to trade him. He was unpopular with his teammates, and he deliberately collided with Detroit Tigers 1st baseman Hank Greenberg, who was Jewish, breaking Greenberg's wrist and ending his 1936 season after 12 games. That may have cost the Tigers a 3rd straight American League Pennant.
But it got worse: Powell's creditors had threatened to sue the Senators to settle his gambling debts. Baseball has always been skittish about the possibility of its players gambling, and it had been only 16 years since the Black Sox Scandal broke.
So on June 14, 1936, the Senators traded Powell to the Yankees, for their left fielder, Ben Chapman. He'd been a good hitter, had led the American League in stolen bases, and helped the Yankees win the 1932 World Series. It was not widely known at the time that Chapman was also a bigot, but he made that absolutely clear in 1947, as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, with his ugly taunting of Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Powell batted .302 for the Yankees the rest of the way, and helped the Yankees win the World Series in 1936 and 1937. But he angered Yankee Fans with his non-game actions: Seeing fans at Yankee Stadium wearing yarmulkes, indicating that they were Jewish, he yelled anti-Semitic slurs, and even gave Nazi salutes.
He was not hitting as well in 1938, as the Yankees went on a Western roadtrip. On July 29, before a game between the Yankees and the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park, Powell was interviewed by White Sox announcer Bob Elson, live on radio station WGN. Elson asked Powell, a Yankees outfielder, what he did during the off-season. Powell replied that he was a policeman in Dayton, Ohio. When Elson asked him how he stayed in shape, Powell said, "By cracking (N-word)s over the head with my blackjack."
It wasn't just a disgustingly racist remark: It was a lie. Powell had never worked in law enforcement, in any capacity, in any place, and never would.
Not knowing about this, Yankee manager Joe McCarthy saw no issue with playing Powell in the game. He went 1-for-3 with a walk. So did Lou Gehrig. Joe DiMaggio 2-for-4 with a walk. In the top of the 9th inning, Myril Hoag singled home 2 runs. Luke Sewell doubled home 1 run in the bottom of the 9th, but it wasn't enough, as the Yankees held on for a 4-3 win. Lefty Gomez outpitched Thornton Lee.
It was a good game, but it got lost in the shadows over the controversy that developed over Powell's comment. WGN's switchboard lit up like Times Square. Calls were made to the Commissioner of Baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, whose office was in Chicago, where he'd been a federal Judge. (Hence, he was usually called "Judge Landis," not "Commissioner Landis," and he liked that.) Before the next day's game, a delegation of black leaders presented a petition to umpires demanding that Powell be barred from baseball for life.
Landis was a racist, too. He always insisted that there was nothing that officially barred black men from playing in the major leagues, or the minor leagues, over which he also had control. But since 1887, the team owners had maintained a so-called "gentlemen's agreement" that none would be allowed to do so. And, on those rare occasions where an attempt was made, Landis squashed it.
But Landis knew that if he ignored this controversy, it would get bigger and bigger. He had to nip it in the bud, for the good of the game. He suspended Powell for 10 days -- that's days, not games. The Sporting News, the publication known as "The Bible of Baseball," reported that it was the 1st time that a major league player had been suspended for a bigoted remark. In addition, Yankee general manager Ed Barrow ordered him to walk through Harlem and apologize to people on the street. He did.
Even after his suspension ended, Powell was not returned to the starting lineup by McCarthy until August 16. He only appeared in 8 of the Yankees' last 67 games, and 3 of those were in doubleheaders, as McCarthy began to use Hoag as the team's starting left fielder. He appeared in only 1 game of the World Series sweep of the Chicago Cubs, as a late-inning defensive replacement, without coming to bat. He was used in only 31 games in 1939, and was not put on the World Series roster. He was used in only 12 games in 1940, and was finally released.
He spent the 1941 and 1942 seasons in the minor leagues, before the manpower drain of World War II led the Senators to bring him back. In the middle of the 1945 season, they traded him to the Phillies -- managed by Chapman. If Chapman appreciated Powell's hustle -- or his bigotry -- it didn't help him stay in the major leagues. He was released after the season, and never played another major league game. His lifetime batting average was .271.
He sat out the 1946 and 1947 seasons. In 1948, he played for the Gainesville G-Men of the Florida State League, but, 40 years old, batted just .228. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, he was done. We don't know if he was willing to admit it because, on November 4, having gone from suburban Silver Spring, Maryland into Washington, D.C., he was arrested, for writing checks on a false back account. Taken to a police station, he grabbed a cop's gun, and shot and killed himself.
"He died in Washington, D.C.," Powell's obituary in The Dayton Daily News read, "not as a cop as he often dreamed of being, but as a man arrested on a bad-check charge, the last of a series of his madcap adventures."
*
July 29, 1938 was a Friday. Peter Jennings, longtime anchor of ABC World News Tonight, was born on this day.
These other baseball games were played:
* The New York Giants beat the Cincinnati Reds, 5-4 at the Polo Grounds. Mel Ott and Bob Seeds hit home runs.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-6 at Ebbets Field. Cookie Lavagetto hit a 3-run home run for Dem Bums, and the brothers Paul and Lloyd Waner went 0-for-8 between them. But the Bucs still beat the Brooks.
* The Boston Bees beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-1 at National League Park in Boston. This was during the rebranding of the Boston team of the NL, after a terrible 1935 season. But it never caught on, and, in 1941, the names were changed back: The team to the Boston Braves, and the ballpark to Braves Field.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-4 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Cub shortstop Billy Jurges mishandled Chuck Klein's grounder in the bottom of the 12th inning, giving the Phils the win.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Washington Senators, 12-4 at League Park in Cleveland.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 9-2 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Hank Greenberg went 3-for-4 with 2 home runs and 4 RBIs. He would finish the season with 58 home runs. At the time, this was tied with Jimmie Foxx of the 1932 Philadelphia Athletics for the most home runs in a season by anyone other than Babe Ruth.
* And the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Browns were supposed to play each other at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, but the game was moved to the following Sunday, July 31, probably to give the cash-poor Browns a big Sunday doubleheader attendance. It didn't work: Only 5,779 fans came out to see the twinbill.
The Browns did, however, win both games, taking the opener, 7-6; and were leading the nightcap, 10-2 after 7 innings, when it was called due to darkness. Over the 2 games, Foxx, now with the Red Sox, went 3-for-5, with a home run, 3 walks, and an RBI. He would hit 50 home runs, and was still 8 behind Greenberg.
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