"sloppy seconds" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Wilson Gray]

I remember that. Black St. Louisans were fans of the Browns.
Sportsman's Park, the local professional baseball venue, was owned by
the Browns and the Cardinals leased it for their home games. When the
Browns played, there was open seating. When the Cardinals played, the
venue was Jim-Crowed and black fans were restricted to the bleachers.
Whites could sit in the bleachers, too, if they chose. But blacks had
no choice as to where they sat.

I could never understand this, because the Cardinals weren't owned by
some absentee, mint-julep-sipping, racist grandee from Mississippi,
but by a local Arab-American named Fred Saigh, who segregated the
stadium for Cardinals games by personal fiat. I have no idea what he
had against the colored. The Jim-Crowing of the Cardinals games
certainly wasn't demanded by a hostile, racist, local white
population, either, Saint Louis in the 'Forties and 'Fifties being no
more racist than Boston in the 'Seventies and 'Eighties. As no less a
light than the great Bill Russell once noted, WRT those days:

"I'd rather be in jail in Sacramento than sheriff in Boston."

And white Bostonian *loved* him!

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
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> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: "sloppy seconds" (UNCLASSIFIED)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
>
>> >
>>   In fact,
>> it's been claimed (on some sports blog I was reading) that
>> Avery is the only player of a major sport whose actions in a
>> game one day that, while legal, so antagonized everyone
>> involved that a rule was created the very next day to make
>> the practice in question illegal.
>
> Eddie Gaedel was a midget who had one at-bat with the St. Louis Browns
> on Sunday, 8/19/1951.
> He drew a walk.
>
> Two days later, AL president Will Harridge voided his contract.
> (Wikipedia wrongly says that it was on "the next day", the 20th, when
> Harridge did so.)
>
> Later that year, he made a plate appearance in Syracuse as a paid player
> in an amateur game.  He struck out, leading to the wonderful headline
> "Midget Fans upset as Midget Fans".  They don't write them like they
> used to . . . .
>
> Bill Mullins
> Classification:  UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
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>

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