<&lack baseball veterans reeaii ~ the past at annual SABR meeting

By ANDREW MILNER Staff Writer COOPERSTOWN - A roommate of Jackie Robinson during a Negro League All-Star tour of South America in 1945 remembers the baseball pioneer as a fighter, but also as a man who kept a tight lid on his emotions once he entered the big .leagues Gene Benson, a lifetime .319 hitter with the Philadelphia Stars and Homestead Grays of the black baseball leagues, spoke Sunday night in Cooperstown a*, a regional meeting of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). . - Benson, credited with introducing the basket catch to o-ganized 'baseball years before Willie Mays, was told in Caracas, Venezuela by All-Star manager Felton Snow to room with Robinson, who had been signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers only days before the trip. "(Snow) said, 'I .want you to help him get some confidence,'" Benson said. Benson told Robinson, "Where you're coming from (the Negro Leagues) is harder than where you're going to." In black baseball, spitballs and brushbacks were the rule, and Benson was certain that any player who could succeed in the volatile Negro Leagues would have to do even better in the more conservative major leagues. Robinson had a reputation as a fighter in the Negro Leagues, but Benson said he had to sublimate his aggression to succeed as the first black in major league history. Robinson died of a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 53. "I think he selfdestructed," Benson said. Robinson's roommate in the Dodger organization was John Wright, a black who had been signed so that Robinson would not have to room with a white. Sy Morton, a veteran of the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Newark Eagles, recalled that whereas Robinson had a wife and family to support hiir- during his early years in the whce leagues, Wright, a bachelor, had no one to comfort him. Morton said that Wright lost his pitching control as a result of having to take much of the Ian and teammate abuse unguarded, and did not join Robinson in Brooklyn. Benson, Morton and Larry Kimbrough, a Negro League pitcher, discussed the rough style of Negro League ball of the 1930s and 1940s. Kimbrough, who hurled for the Philadelphia Stars, the Grays, and the Richmond Giants, said, "There were no holds barred. If you were told to knock a batter down, you knocked him down or it cost you money. If you gave up a home run, the next batter was automatically (knocked down)." When Benson entered the Negro Leagues, he was chastised by teammates for not sharpening his spikes, to better cut infielders' legs. "I didn't see any advantage in h u r t i n g anybody," he said, recognizing the ample opportunity for injury in a roughhouse era where "nothing was outlawed." Pitchers and batters had no love lost: Morton said, "Pitchers wouldn't let you dig a hole in the batter's box." "And if you did," Benson added, "you'd better not get in it...I don't care how much (pitchers) threw at me, I could duck." Willie Wells, a legendary basestealer of the era, wore a batting helmet as early as 1938, to avoid being beaned. According to Benson, the first time he went to bat with the foreign headgear, the opposing pitcher simply threw the first pitch at his ribs. Kimbrough, a natural born lefthander, lost the use of that arm as a boy when it went through a wringer. He subsequently learned to throw just as well with his right arm. When his left arm healed, Kimbrough became a rarity in organized baseball - on occasion he pitched ambidextrously. The first time he did so, the batter protested. "If (the batter) can turn around and bat left," he replied, "why can't I throw both ways?" Benson said that too many hitters are impatient and will swing at anything without studying a pitcher's collection of pitches. And, Benson said, "You cannot bat the same against every pitch. You can't hit against someone who throws junk like you do against someone who throws fast." Early in his career, Benson learned how to master every sort of pitching by warming up with his team's pitchers.