New Orleanian John Wright, A Pitcher, Also Signed With The Dodgers In 1945, But He
Never Made It To The Major Leagues
Submitted By N.O.V.A.
Times Picayune 	04-13-1997


*************************************************
Copyright. All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
************************************************  


King of the hill. On the mound, with Jackie Robinson backing him up, mowing down
batters for Brooklyn's Boys of Summer.

That's the image pitcher and pioneer John Wright conceivably could have left on
the consciousness of baseball.

Instead, there is virtually no trace or remembrance of Wright in the sport at all.

Although Wright marched to the then-forbidden gates of organized baseball (the
major leagues and their developmental farm system) arm-in-arm with Robinson, and
theoretically had just as much a chance of breaking the sport's color barrier,
Wright is a forgotten man, a faded footnote, in Branch Rickey's great experiment
of a half-century ago.

Wright, from New Orleans and described by scouts as a "willowy right-handed
pitcher," was the second black player signed to a baseball contract, on Nov. 20,
1945, less than a month after Robinson and Brooklyn consummated their agreement.
Wright's credentials as a player arguably were as good as Robinson's, who had
played only one year of professional baseball and was not considered among the
best at his position of shortstop in the war-depleted Negro Leagues.

On the other hand, Wright, at 27, had spent nearly a decade in the Negro Leagues
and was an established pitching force.

As it turned out, Robinson grew into one of sports' brightest lights, and Wright
had barely enough baseball substance to make a shadow in the brilliance.

Just a year after their respective signings, as Robinson was making history with
the Dodgers, Wright, who died in 1990, was back in the relative anonymity - and
comfort - of the Homestead Grays baseball team in the Negro Leagues. In three
years he was out of baseball forever.

"Johnny was exceptional, as good as anyone we had," said George "Tex" Stephens, a
longtime local observer of Negro Leagues baseball who played against Wright as a
youth. "As good as Satchel Paige," Stephens said. "Certainly faster (than Paige)."

Walter Wright (no relation), president of the Old-Timers Club who played and
followed baseball for most of his 84 years, vividly recalls the first time he saw
John Wright, a 5-foot-11, 175-pounder, on the mound. "He was just a kid, about
18," Walter Wright said, "and he struck out the first six batters he faced. He had
a hellacious fastball and an assortment of breaking pitches." Herbert Simpson,
another Negro Leagues player, said: "He didn't have a knuckleball. But he could
throw every other kind of pitch. He dominated batters."

John Wright started pitching for the New Orleans Zulus, a novelty team, the
baseball equivalent to the Harlem Globetrotters. But he quickly became a Negro
Leagues mainstay when he joined the Newark Eagles in 1937. From there he pitched
for the Atlanta Black Crackers ('38), Pittsburgh Crawfords ('38), Toledo Crawfords
('39), Indianapolis Crawfords ('40) and the Homestead Grays ('41-'43 and '45).

With the Grays, Wright pitched in the Negro Leagues World Series of 1942, '43, and
'45. In 1943, the year before World War II service in the Navy interrupted his
baseball career, Wright had a 25-4 record and started four games in that season's
Series, including two shutout victories against the Birmingham Black Barons. When
Wright returned from the Navy - he compiled a 15-4 record, including a no-hitter,
while pitching for an all-black Great Lakes Naval Station team - at the end of the
1945 season, he pitched three games for the Grays and won them all.

The performance of 1943, topped with the finish of 1945, must have caught the
attention of Rickey, who was in the process of charting his blueprint to bring
African-Americans into Major League Baseball.

There are those who believe Wright was viewed as a worthy major-league player, but
even more importantly as a companion for Robinson, which would send the pair to
the Triple A Montreal Royals of the International League for the 1946 season.

"It would be a wise move on the part of the Brooklyn organization," The Sporting
News' Harold C. Burr wrote of a second black man being included after Robinson's
signing on Oct. 23, 1945. Wright, an affable, quiet and reserved person, was a
year younger than Robinson but mature and seasoned, components that may have been
as important to Rickey as pitching ability.

Influential black sports writer Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American seemed to
think Wright knew he was hired to help guide Robinson, writing: "Wright doesn't
boast the college background that is Jackie's, but he possesses something equally
valuable - a level head and the knack of seeing things objectively. He is a
realist in a role which demands divorce from sentimentality."

Wright said: "I am a Southerner. I have always lived in the South, so I know what
is coming. I have been black for 27 years, and I will remain like that for a long
time."

Clyde Sukeforth, who covertly scouted Robinson with the Kansas City Monarchs and
evaluated his abilities - and character - for Rickey, said: "I don't think that
the reports indicated that Johnny Wright was an outstanding pitcher, but
apparently Mr. Rickey thought he would be an excellent companion."

Walter Wright strenuously disagrees that the pitcher was viewed as anything but a
legitimate prospect and makes a salient point: "John would not have been any help
to Jackie. John had grown up under Jim Crow laws. Jackie came from a completely
different background, and, if anything, would have been more help to John."

Some saw Wright, not Robinson, as the breakthrough player. Author Jules Tygiel
wrote in "Baseball's Great Experiment," the definitive history of the breaking of
baseball's color barrier, that several major-leaguers who played against both
rated Wright a better prospect than Robinson, and that Alex Pompez, owner of the
Cuban Stars, doubted that Robinson was ready for the "fast company" of the Triple
A International League, but predicted Wright would win 15 games for the Montreal
Royals. Later, numerous reports emanating from Florida touted Wright as the
"sleeper" of spring training.

But unlike Robinson, who rose to the challenge during spring training, Wright
seemed suddenly intimidated by the daunting task. In an intrasquad game against
the Dodgers, Wright gave up eight runs and 10 hits in five innings. In another
intrasquad game, he walked four men in four innings and gave up two runs on three
hits, including a single by Robinson. In his last Florida appearance, Wright
walked four batters and hit another in the only inning he pitched.

Wright's chief strength as a pitcher was control, but suddenly control became his
major problem. At the start of Montreal's opening International League series
against Syracuse, Wendell Smith, the famed black sports writer of the Pittsburgh
Courier and the man who recommended Robinson to Rickey, described Wright as
"modest and inconspicuous," and "more or less in the shadows of the dugout and
bullpen."

Against Syracuse in his first appearance, Wright came in relief, and in 3 1/3
innings gave up four runs on five hits.

The next time Wright pitched was in Baltimore, the Southern-most city in the
International League and in a park filled with jeering fans. He came in the sixth
inning with his team five runs down, no outs and the bases loaded. Wright retired
the side without further damage and completed the game without allowing a hit in a
losing cause.

It was his last hurrah for Montreal.

For two weeks, Wright didn't pitch, with the pitcher himself never showing "an
inkling of resentment or jealousy," Smith wrote.

On May 14, barely a month after the season started, the Royals demoted Wright to
Three Rivers in the Canadian-American League. Wright's performance was a mystery
to those who had seen him earlier.

"Wright did not have the chance many of us had hoped he would have," Lacy wrote,
"nor did he prove any ball of fire when the opportunity presented itself."

Wright was 12-8 and became the pitcher of record in winning the deciding game of
the Canadian-American championship series. "I would just like to get another shot
at Montreal," Wright told Wendell Smith. "I don't know just what I'll be doing
next season, however."

That, however, was the end of Wright's shot at the major leagues. He did play with
Robinson again, barnstorming with the Jackie Robinson All-Stars, before rejoining
the Homestead Grays, compiling an 8-4 record in 1947 and making the Negro Leagues
All-Star team - yielding three hits in the only inning he pitched. After one more
season, Wright was done with baseball.

"John had all the ability in the world," said Robinson, quoted in Robert
Peterson's "Only the Ball was White." "But John couldn't stand the pressure of
going up into this new league and being one of the first. The things that went on
up there were too much for him, and John was not able to perform up to his
capabilities. Every time he stepped out there, he seemed to lose that fineness,
and he tried a little bit harder than he was capable of playing. If he had come
two or three years later when the pressure was off, John could have made it in the
major leagues."

Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, who played with and against Wright in the Negro
Leagues, feels strongly that Wright's curveball was of major-league quality.

But in his autobiography "Nice Guys Finish First," Irvin said Robinson had one
advantage in spring training - Rachel, his wife, who accompanied her spouse to the
South in what she knew would be a trial by fire. Wright was married with two
children, but he was alone in Daytona Beach, where the Dodgers trained.

"He didn't have as much formal education (as Robinson)," Irvin said of Wright,
"and no one to talk to, like Jackie did. . . . I think being around white people
would sometimes scare him, and he never did overcome it. Johnny was not like
Jackie. He was kind of timid, and you could hurt John's feelings. He would go into
a shell and not pitch as well as he could. Jackie was aggressive and outgoing, so
things like that would not bother him. (Jackie) would just take it out on the
ball, or opposing players. Jackie had a mental toughness that seemed to bring out
the best in him when he encountered adversity."

Wright returned to New Orleans, where he worked for National Gypsum Company - and
never publicly spoke of his foray into the major leagues again. "I'm sure most of
his co-workers at the gypsum plant never even knew he was a ballplayer," said
Walter Wright.

Wilmer Fields, a teammate with the Grays, said: "John never talked much about his
experience with the Dodgers. He was a happy-go-lucky person who was in the wrong
place at the wrong time."

While giving the eulogy at John Wright's funeral, Walter Wright said he reminded
the mourners that the life of the deceased had intersected with history.

"And I when I looked over at his casket," Walter Wright said, "I couldn't help
wondering how many stories it contained - stories that now would never be told."