Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1141: The Overlooked Negro Leagues Legend

Episode Date: November 24, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan profess their thanks for each other, answer listener emails about the 1890s Orioles’ field manipulations, the importance of Carlos Beltran to the 2017 Astros, and how free-agent auctions would work, then welcome researcher Peter Gorton and director Paul Irmiter to talk about little-known Negro Leagues legend and scouting pioneer John […]

Brothers! Yes! I know I'm up and down, please try to accept Apologies for the sadness that I've found the years we've spent Nothing short of grateful for our trip and those we've met Nothing short of thankful Nothing gonna change for mine I'm traveling a different highway Nothing gonna change for mine

I'm walking a different line Oh, nothing gonna change for mine You'll find what you need if you walk with Hello and welcome to episode 1141 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. That's Ben Lindberg over there of The Ringer. I'm just over here. The Fangraphs did that in backwards order, just trying to catch you off guard. And hi, we're recording this podcast in advance because we're not going to be around on Friday after the holiday. But we do have lined up for this episode a very fun and insightful and informative interview with a couple of guys here to talk about a baseball player that you and I had never heard of.

And it turns out this player is really incredible. Yes, the Negro League great John Donaldson, who had a pretty incredible career both on and off the field. And these two people we're about to talk to are trying to raise awareness of his career and his life. And they have raised our awareness of it from zero to fairly informed, I would say. So I hope that they will do the same for all of you. And yes, we are pre-recording, of course. So if there has been any big news in the last day or two, you and I currently do not know about it. Hopefully MLB has gone easy on everyone and has not made any major news in the last day or two. Looking at you, Jerry DiPoto, I know that you have, but we hope that... Was it the day before Thanksgiving last year that the top one

locker gene cigarette trade? Yep. So I hope that it's been a slow week and I hope that all of you will have had a happy Thanksgiving as you listen to this episode. So we'll get to our Donaldson interview in just a moment. I figured maybe we can lead into that with a couple of emails since our email portion of the previous episode was slightly curtailed. So we'll just do a couple and that'll be that. But I do want to say that on this Thanksgiving, I'm very thankful for your efforts on this podcast this year. And you have stepped into some big shoes. You stepped into a fairly unenviable position of inheriting a podcast

that had a thousand episodes already recorded with a beloved co-host who departed, and you had to fill those shoes, and I had no doubts that you would. You had some doubts that you would, I think, but I hope that you no longer do. You have been a pleasure to work with and a reliable email responder, and it's been a pleasure to do this with you and also to get to know you a bit better as not just someone whose work I admire and who I get mad at for taking topics that I wanted to write about, but also as an actual person whom I've spent some time with and who does not own a microwave, I now know. Well, I didn't come prepared with a statement of gratitude because it is not yet Thanksgiving, and I was just woefully left in the dark about this. But I would like to express my gratitude

for you doing... Let's just make this clear for the listeners out there who might not have an idea i would like to thank you ben lindenberg for doing everything with regard to this podcast i come on i reply to some emails and then i'll come on and i'll talk for an hour at you i'll listen to you for part of that hour but i would like to extend my gratitude for you just really i don't know how much of the burden you were responsible for beforehand, but you've been responsible for an awful lot of the burden, certainly ever since I came on, beginning with my immediate absence for two weeks when I joined as a co-host. And I might be doing that to you again here in a couple of months.

We'll talk about that another day. But it's been a pleasure. I always considered us to be, you know, internet friends, writer acquaintances, the kind of bonds you make over Twitter. But yeah, as you said, it's been a pleasure to get to know you and receive an invitation to a wedding and then have

to decline said invitation to the wedding because baseball got in the way. It's nice to be able to relate over the joys and many inconveniences of the baseball season and so i can now officially call you ben lindbergh pretty good but could be better friend yeah so yeah well hopefully we'll become better friends after another few hundred episodes of this thing so yeah sam was uh of course a pleasure to do this with also but he was also always perpetually

not so secretly hoping that the podcast would end and release him from his toil i think which uh it did for him not for me and that was a good bit for us i think his constant reluctance to actually appear on this podcast but if you share that same sentiment you have hit it well which is nice for me i don't feel like i have to twist your arm into doing this and i know that your baseball workload is heavy as it is. And every time we talk, it is delaying your two posts a day, which I'm very conscious of. So I appreciate your being willing to take on even more baseball and even more sitting in front of a computer, which I know is not your preferred activity. Sometimes the podcast can get in the way of other plans. And I felt a little guilty

because I think today I sent you a couple one-word responses in G of other plans And I felt a little guilty because I think today I sent you a couple one-word responses in Gchat And I thought that was a little snarky and sarcastic And I was just kind of in a mood But as soon as you sit down and as soon as we actually get to start talking It's always a pleasure to have a conversation with you And whoever our guests end up being And so this really ends up being a highlight of three of the seven days of my weeks

Even though I don't always think of it that way in the beforehand. All right. Well, now that we have expressed our mutual appreciation for each other, a couple of quick emails. This one's from Dirk, and this was not unknown to me, but I think it's always worth a refresher here. We like talking about unusual parks and ways that teams construct their parks to suit their roster and vice versa. So Dirk writes, I was doing some research on the 1894 Orioles. Of course, the 1890s Orioles, John McGraw, et cetera, they're notorious for finding every way they could to bend the baseball rule book, which was probably slimmer at that point than it is now. So Dirk says he was doing

this research. He found a passage in the book, Uncle Robbie by Jack Cavanaugh and Norman Mocked that seemed worth transcribing to you. I agree. Here it is. To aid their game, the head groundskeeper, Thomas J. Murphy, doctored the field with the skill of a John Hopkins surgeon. Murphy banked the baselines to keep bunts from rolling foul. He stirred a binding substance into the dirt around home plate, wetted it down until it became a concrete launching pad for Wee Willie Keeler to swing down on the ball and bound it high in the air, the Baltimore Chop. The pitcher's box, which was supposed to be flat, was a foot higher than home plate. Murphy spread soap flakes around

it. When the unsuspecting enemy pitcher scooped up some dirt, he wound up with slippery fingers. Orioles pitchers kept dry dirt in their back pockets. Rosin bags were more than 30 years in the future. The entire playing field was skewed. It was downhill to first base and second, up a steep incline to third, and downhill to home. Right field was ragged, full of weeds, rough spots, hollows, and hills. It sloped toward a fence, behind which a stream flowed, forming a perpetual bog. Keeler knew every rabbit path and gully, but the Orioles were not satisfied to leave

bad enough alone. Murphy let the outfield grass grow until it resembled a wheat field. Keeler, Kelly, and Steve Brody hid balls in the gullies covered with grass. When a fly ball fell between them or went over their heads, they could pluck one from its hiding place and cut down batters who thought they had a sure double. One day, a batter hit a line drive into right center field. Keeler dove onto the grass and emerged with a stashed away ball, which he threw to second. Meanwhile, Brody flagged down the real ball and threw it in. After making sure that he was not seeing double, the umpire called the runner safe. The league ordered the Orioles give their outfield a regular haircut after that. So some of that is famous, some of it possibly apocryphal. I don't know,

but we talk about some very slim advantages that teams could try to derive from time to time in this podcast and this is a lot i wonder how much if any of this teams could get away with today i guess the soap flakes strategy has been foiled but some of these probably still somewhat in play maybe you could even extend the fence to go around the bog you just have i know that sam had written about having a pit in the field, but maybe not enough has been written about having a bog in the field. I don't know the difference personally between a bog and a swamp. I'm sure saying that will result in at least a half dozen emails coming our way.

Do you happen to know the difference between a bog and a swamp? I would say that their synonyms are close enough. I feel like maybe a bog is, you know thicker like a maybe more more viscous in average consistency yeah uh we've got wet muddy ground too soft to support a heavy body that is a bog okay and uh i i think of a swamp as like you know just standing disgusting water yes right yeah we're less viscous okay yeah although here in the Google dictionary, it does say that a swamp is words, words, words, semicolon, a bog or marsh. So, you know, I guess maybe all swamps are bogs, but maybe not all bogs are swamps. Anyway. Yeah. I don't know how much of those stories are

apocryphal, but that's one of the reasons that I'm glad that we don't have full granular data for the entire history of baseball because it's fun to believe in the legends. Yeah. All right. Question from Evan. This week, Alex Cora was interviewed on the Baseball Tonight podcast with Buster Olney and Cora said, signing Carlos Beltran was the most important thing that happened to the Astros in 2017. Evan says, really? If you could do a draft of the most important things that happened in the Astros championship season, how far down would signing Beltran rank?

Examples of things I would take ahead of signing Beltran, trading forin verlander signing charlie morton rallying together after the flooding curious what you think i mean carl's beltron is great and all but the most important double question mark 127th maybe on the list and i think number one number one would probably be make you darvish suck twice in the world series that was kind of like that kind of put the astros over the top i get i think i if i had to guess i think what the message is here i don't i don't think alex cora believes that signing carlos beltran was actually the most impactful thing to the astros i don't think any of the astros would necessarily agree with that if you if you put a slingshot to their heads. But I think that it's a statement that the significance of the

statement is such that you're not supposed to necessarily take it literally. And I think the idea is that Carlos Beltran was very important. He was a leader. Of course, he didn't, you know, hit and he didn't play the field and they buried his glove in the outfield grass. So I think that the idea is just to convey that beltron was a leader and he was important for a young ball club of course last offseason the astros made a point of going out and bringing in some veterans to replace some younger players and i think it's certainly easy enough to credit that for why they won the world series this year it's easy to credit anything that happened for the eventual results because they can't be disproven. But yeah, I think that's a

pretty egregious overstatement, but I'm not going to be too upset by it. I'm just going to move right past it. Yeah, I think there's a tendency probably if you're someone who's been in the game and you're brought on a podcast to talk about your experience in the game, there is a temptation to overemphasize the sort of sock factors because that's the stuff that you know that you can speak about with some authority that someone on the outside can't anyone can look and say getting justin rolander was big but not everyone can speak with authority and say well getting a veteran mentor totally changes everything so i agree probably cora does not actually believe this but i think it's just one of those things you say to

sort of justify the fact that you have this firsthand experience of being on a baseball team and you've seen how this sort of thing works which is not to say that there is no value to that off the field and in the clubhouse aspect of Beltran's presence I'm sure there was so there's that all right one more maybe this is from. You actually answered it when it was sent two months ago. I don't know if you remember this, but it is now timely, more timely than it was then. Brandon says, I've got a question about free agency and whether players could do better in a true auction scenario. So let's suppose that I'm a player who only cares about average annual value and years. I'm indifferent to whether my destination is a contender or any other market factor. How would I do if I just auctioned myself off, Sotheby's style? All teams

are invited to bid live, the bid process is open, and I'm 100% committed to sign with the winning bidder. For some players, this wouldn't matter or be helpful, such as minor league free agents or very marginal big leaguers, but for good players, I'm less sure, and I know that the November 21st Lintz-Linn auction would be interesting as heck. From MLB's position, I'm pretty sure, and I know that the November 21st Lance Lynn auction would be interesting as heck. From MLB's position, I'm pretty sure that the Bryce Harper or Manny Machado auction live on ESPN would do better ratings than a World Series game. Do you think this is true? And if the players were able to sell their rights to this auction, would that push them over the top of what he would get in terms of money? So I certainly don't remember how i responded to this email it was more than

two minutes ago so i have no recollection but i'm going to guess that my answer was something along the lines of this is almost how things already work yeah in a certain sense you already have players for the most part going to the high bidder there are exceptions like what kenley jansen returning to the dodgers instead of going to the marlins last offseason but players are already kind of out there as auction pieces. It's not all done in public, but I don't think that agents are hiding how much the high bids are from other teams because their whole purpose is to drive the price up. So there are some complications and I'm sure some variables that I'm kind of glossing over. But for the most part,

I don't think the market would look all that different, but it's possible that you disagree with me. No, I don't think I do. But this would be a lot of fun. I would enjoy it. I mean, this is, you know, sort of like the LeBron decision. Obviously, that was enormous ratings and a spectacle. And it kind of came back on LeBron because it made him look even more like a mercenary who was trying to promote himself. mercenary who was trying to promote himself. And so if a single player did this, I think the ratings would be big, but he would also be pilloried to some extent. But if lots of players

did this, then you wouldn't be singled out for that behavior and everyone would watch. This would be fun. I would like this. This would be, I mean, my preference is for no news to happen in the winter and then every team shows up in spring training and we find out on that day what happened. That is my preference, although that would be bad for baseball. But I think it would be fun on that day and it would save us from a lot of rumor mills stuff around the winter. Actually, I'm not sure that's true. Maybe you'd still have rumors. You just wouldn't have it all confirmed.

So if you can't have the every team shows up in spring training and then we find out, then my preference is for auctions. Just get it out of the way. Don't string it along. Just make it all happen. Put your best offer out there and we'll get this done in an efficient manner. All right. Well, let's not delay our guests any longer. We will be back in just a moment with Peter Gorton and Paul Ermiter, who will tell us about a player you should know, John Donaldson.

You know it ain't easy. You've got to hold on. She was an unknown legend in her time. Now she's dressing two kids Looking for a magic kiss She gets the far away look in her eyes So about two months ago, Jeff and I got an email about a researcher named Peter Gordon who's been looking into a pitcher named John

Donaldson. And Jeff and I both looked at the link to John Donaldson's Wikipedia page, and it's not a short page. And as we worked our way down it, I think we grew more and more incredulous to think that not only did John Donaldson have the career that he had, but somehow Jeff and I had never heard of John Donaldson or his career, which was even harder to believe. And that is what Peter is trying to change. So we're about to talk to not only Peter Gorton, who is part of the so-called Donaldson Network that is trying to research Donaldson's life and career and also help publicize it. And also Paul Ermiter, who is a director who is attached to a project, a documentary that is being made now about John Donaldson called 39 Seconds.

So they're both on the line now. I will say hello first to Peter. Hi, Peter. Hi there, guys. Thanks for having me on today. Our pleasure. And hello, Paul. Hi, Peter. Hi there, guys. Thanks for having me on today. Our pleasure. And hello, Paul. Hey, guys.

So I guess we'll start by asking about Donaldson and we'll transition into the movie project too. But we just described our origin story with John Donaldson, much more recent than yours. Peter, how did you find out about Donaldson? How did you become motivated to bring more of his career and life to light? Well, guys, I mean, one of the key things you need to understand about this is you're not the only ones who say, who's John Donaldson? It's really a part of, major part of what we're trying to talk about all the time is it is possible that you don't know who he is. The systematic way the color line was structured, what happened to African-American

ballplayers and players of color at that time systematically sent them to places where people wouldn't remember who they are. And so John Donaldson's career was an exemplary one, one that for many, many reasons has been lost to history. I first became involved in it when we were doing a small book project here in Minneapolis or in Minnesota about black baseball players in Minnesota. They needed somebody to cover an era of time from 1910 to 1930. And everybody thought John Donaldson would be a good idea. And the editor went to several established writers and said, could you cover John Donaldson? They said, no way, he's too hard. I had a relationship with the editor and he called me and said, could you cover John Donaldson? They said, no way, he's too hard. I had a relationship with the editor

and he called me and said, can you give me anything on John Donaldson? And so I started researching his career starting in about the year 2000 and have been doing it for 17 years straight. So what we're doing is we put that piece, that book together. And then about time that book came out,

they found his unmarked grave in Chicago and they invited me down there as somebody who knew something about him. And I stood around with a bunch of Negro League historians over this green grass where John Donaldson was laid to rest in 1970. And I asked them, does anybody really know who this guy is? And they all universally said, no, we need somebody to figure out who he is. And so that was 2004. I started amassing wins for him and calling around and built this Donaldson network of people to be able to assist me in collecting research. So what ended up happening was to date, we found John Donaldson in over 550 cities in the United States. He spread all over in 25 different states and Canada. And so it wasn't

a research effort that could be easily done by one person. And so what I did was try and find as many people out there who could find in their hometowns, their own hometowns, the instance when John Donaldson was there. And so we put the network together and that's really what the network is. It's about 600 people now who are, I've been able to send a date or a general month and they could go to their hometown library or wherever their newspapers are stored and figure out when John Donaldson was there. Since then we found 403 wins for him, over 5,000 strikeouts, placing him on a short list of some of the greatest black baseball players of all time. There's probably not going to be a sexy answer to this, but tell me a little more about the actual research process. Because of course you have these general outlines, but

there's so little, looking up old box scores, if there even were box scores or play, but play is nothing like it is now. We're talking a 100 years ago or thereabouts and certainly to this extent i'm sure when you're getting started you can find a few hundred wins there are records of john donaldson but you've discovered just incremental new win after new win after new win there are old strikeout records that you're just starting to uncover how do you find these i guess needles in the haystack? How are you able to narrow in on even knowing where to start looking for additional games in the first place? Well, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. And John Donaldson's career spanned from 1908 to 1930. And in the beginning of his career, the first 10 years or so, barnstorming baseball teams traveled exclusively by rail. And so it was

pretty, it was an idea that I had to work the railroad lines of the upper Midwest. So you could find him playing in Bismarck, North Dakota, and then you could find a circle around there of how far a train could go in a day. And then he was going to be within that circle. And so we kind of narrowed it all down and were able to do that for the first 10, 12 years of his career. The advent of the first world war and the railway control act, which changed the way that people traveled and made it accessible for car travel was something that was really important in our research. So once you get to that sort of car time, which was sometime around 1920, it got a lot harder. But for the

initial 10 years of his career, we were able to travel and follow the rail lines because that was the only way you could get from one place to another. And so that's how we started with that. But people know their backyards best. in Butte, Montana, who knows more about Butte, Montana than I do, and can narrow this down and give them some really good marching orders so that they understand that we're not just looking for a needle in a haystack. And so identifying where somebody could go and where he, it was almost like establishing where he wasn't was easier in some cases, but it takes a lot of diligence. You have to be able to understand that not only were records kept and it was printed in newspapers when he came to town, which is a myth. People

think that none of the Negro League stuff is available or could ever be found. It's just not true. When John Donaldson came to your small town or wherever he was, they wrote about it in the newspaper almost every time. And so you come up with that. So in order to fill up, and I found somewhere around 2,200 games, you're doing that in that fashion. It took a long time, and it was a well-refined research effort. But to answer your question, I think you get really good at it once you realize that I'm sticking to John Donaldson.

And then that's really what opened up and was the discovery of the whole thing was they wrote about him all the time. He was famous in his time period. He was renowned and people wanted him to come to their towns. They knew he was a major leaguer and they knew they were seeing a major league baseball player when he came to their town and that's what they wanted. And he brought all sorts of economic prosperity to towns because of his drawing power as a baseball player. And so one of the things that we always tried to do is not think we knew what the end of the story was,

but in the 18 years since then, the backstory has filled in and we've been able to come up with a really solid way to acquire one game at a time. So for people who are mid-commute right now, can't pull up his Wikipedia page and scan the highlights, can you give us kind of the bullet points of Donaldson's career? What made him so great? And really, he was not only a great player, but apparently a pioneer in his post-playing life as well. Yes, John Donaldson, after his playing career was over, was the first black scout in Major League Baseball history. He was the first scout to be in the room during the integration time for the Chicago White Sox.

But they hired him based on his reputation as a traveling baseball player. He knew everybody. And if you look back over John Donaldson's resume, you'll see him playing with guys like Joe Williams, Oscar Charleston. I mean, you name the great African-American baseball player, and John Donaldson played with him. So that was one of the big parts of it. He knew everybody, and he knew how to get around,

and he knew how to find baseball talent, and the Chicago White Sox knew that. But as I said before, his career started around 1908. In his first game, he was pitching to a catcher, and the catcher couldn't catch him. He was throwing the ball so hard, and it's a known fact that he broke the catcher's hand in his first known game. And this is in 1908, and his career just kind of takes off from there. He starts traveling around the Midwest with a team called the Tennessee Rats in 1911, has a 30 strikeout game that season in the middle of Iowa, is becoming a great player. Then he's taken on by J.L. Wilkinson, who would ultimately become the

owner of the Kansas City Monarchs and start the Monarchs in 1912. And he proceeds to have three seasons where we know he has more than 500 strikeouts in every season. So that's amazing numbers that he had, but the career highlights that he has are, it's really important to know that his number of wins and his number of strikeouts continues to grow. We just got a game in a week or so ago from Butte, Montana, July 1st, 1939. He's pitching in Butte, Montana, and he pitches seven innings, gives up four hits, is relieved by the great Satchel Paige. Paige gives up a home run and made sure they made an announcement in the crowd that they'd be back again tomorrow. So John Donaldson's signature

win in Butte, Montana, July 1st, 1939. So he's playing with some of the greats. And to bring up Satchel Paige is important because many of the things that Satchel Paige is known for today can really be attributed back to John Donaldson. Some of the things like loading the bases and calling in the outfielders. John Donaldson was doing that in the 19-teens. Many of the things that Satchel Paige became famous for, John Donaldson had done years and years before. And so some of the highlights that we know about his career, obviously people who can get on the Wikipedia page can find those, but he's a groundbreaking, trailblazing athlete who pitched all over the United States and

was welcomed wherever he was. He was obviously, he was desired by Major League Baseball. He was forced to go somewhere where no one would find him, which was primarily in the upper Midwest, because he was a problem for Major League Baseball teams. Everyone who had a subpar record or didn't have quite the pitching staff they wanted to have, their fans wanted John Donaldson to play for them. And obviously the Major League owners would not do that at that time he was a known commodity he was a barnstorming money maker and that was coveted at that time unlike any pitcher of his time period so much of the research that you're doing is maybe finding some headlines or play-by-play

or box scores but what do you know about what john donaldson actually threw you have a an anecdote of donaldson breaking a catcher's hand, for example. And there's the other anecdote that he could throw a ball around a hitter and still throw it for a strike. Now, you know, that could be a little bit exaggerated. But if you were asked to give like a John Donaldson prime peak career scouting report, because he also played center field, how would you respond? How would you respond? Well, I can tell you that in 1914, the major league leader for innings pitched at 370, 375, I believe, innings pitched, right? John Donaldson was out in the Midwest and traveling across the United States

and threw 378 known innings. The guy was playing baseball and going nine innings, three outs every time. He finished 92% of his games. It's an astounding figure. He pitched nine innings, three outs every time. He finished 92% of his games. It's an astounding figure. He pitched nine innings. They didn't have relief pitching back then. He was out there taking care of himself and he didn't smoke or drink. He was a very religious guy. He took care of his body. One of the great anecdotes that we have about that, he played in, like I said, 550 cities. One of his rituals every day was to get up and take a morning walk before breakfast. So he not only was traveling to all

these places, he was walking around in all these places. He knew America at that time. And it's really a fascinating thing for me and people who get hooked by this story to understand that he saw America at that time and fit himself into that and exceeded and excelled as much as anybody could at that time. So he was playing at a time even before there was an organized Negro leagues that people are probably familiar with. Do we know much about the conditions, about the adversity, about the quality of competition that he faced. I'm sure that it varied wildly from one game to the next. But how much do we know about organized or semi-organized baseball at the time?

I can tell you this. And the competition question always comes up. Yeah, well, you know, Pete, you're really smart and got a lot of different things going for you about John Donaldson and everything. But let's face it. The guy played against farmers and whoever anybody could throw onto the field. That is an undeniable fact. There's no way around that. I can tell you that John Donaldson's body of work, as many games as we found for him, he was pitching up at a level that was major league quality.

And he needs to be remembered as somebody who would have been a great major leaguer. They just didn't give him an opportunity to do that. But to answer your question, there's documented evidence of they take the mound out in some places when John Donaldson would come, make him throw from flat ground, try and stop him. There was different ways that they cut the field. There was all sorts of shenanigans. You know, baseball, they're all about how they can get an advantage over somebody. But the great thing that John Donaldson did was he brought money to towns. A town that he played in, in central Minnesota,

had 500 people in it, and they'd have 5,000 people for a baseball game. And that everyone, everyone benefited when John Donaldson was around. And so at different times of the year, different communities would have extra money. Think about it from a farming standpoint, right? Your crop of wheat comes in two, three times a year. There were different times when there was spendable money in towns, expendable money, right? Getting John Donaldson to your town when everybody had money was really important because then they'd buy ice cream cones and they'd buy popcorn and scorecards and they'd support the local town. Teams would operate in the red the entire season knowing they had John Donaldson coming sometime in September, August or September, because they would change all their debts into profits in one game. And that was a really

important part of baseball was it was the entertainment for people. This is what they did. They went to watch games on Sundays and throughout the week, but primarily those Sunday crowds were the huge money makers for everyone in town. And so John Donaldson was known as a guy who could save a baseball team. Even if they lost to him, they'd still make enough money to have enough subscription, enough money to survive the next season. And then they didn't graciously invite him back. And so it was really important that what he was doing at that time was supporting baseball in general, all the way across the Midwest primarily, but cities all the way from Palm

Springs, all the way to Palm Beach, Florida. So, I mean, he was all over the United States and supporting baseball everywhere. So, Paul, I'm sorry to sideline you here. That's okay. I can hear the story a hundred times. Yeah. So, how did you hear about the story for the first time? How did you get involved and what made you think that Donaldson would make good movie material? I honestly was looking for a new project, had a few things and have a few things in the works. And mutual acquaintance introduced me to Peter. We got together and talked and talked. And I heard about this and I was, to be honest with you, much more

of a casual baseball fan. I didn't know, I don't have as deep a knowledge as, you know, more serious baseball fans do. And so it was, took me a while to get up to speed, but what was really fascinating was that I had never heard of this guy and had no understanding past the Monarchs or a satchel page, anything about Negro League baseball. And I didn't really realize these guys were out playing and doing this. And it became more than a sports story to me. It started to become kind of a piece of American history that has just been lost to time. And that's something that's really piqued my interest. Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And so I assume that the title 39 Seconds is a reference to the only existing footage of Donaldson that was discovered some years ago. So as a filmmaker, what do you have to work with? Because, of course, you know, Donaldson's contemporaries are gone. So you can't sit them down and say, what was he like? What was it like to play against him? And you have this brief bit of footage. And then I imagine it's something of a challenge. And I don't know how much is known about

Donaldson's early life and family and his kind of, you know, life away from the field. So what kind of primary materials do you have to draw on? And how are you sort of channeling your efforts into making the movie so far? Yeah, you're exactly right. I have 39 seconds to work with. Honestly, that became a little bit even more interesting when that challenge surfaced. And I am sort of chasing a ghost to some degree, because there are no living relatives. I met a guy in his hometown that knew his brother from walking around, and that's about it. But outside of that, there's not a lot to go off of. As far as his athletic abilities, we have Peter's research and all of the statistical things, which is a blessing from baseball, because baseball keeps really good stats, and that's been helpful.

Then we have the newspaper clippings to work from. And when I read the stories, I probably read them a little bit differently than Peter does. I'm thinking about just the language of the time and trying to get an understanding of what it would feel like to be a ballplayer back then and why you would make that choice. And to really understand that if you're a group of guys that time in American history and you came to a small town in the middle of Iowa or Minnesota, you were probably the only Black people, maybe the people in that town have ever seen. And maybe you always didn't get the best reception when you came to town.

And you certainly didn't just walk in and when you came to town. And you certainly didn't just walk in and check into any hotel or walk into a restaurant. So you had to figure all these things out beforehand. And I think that for me is a very interesting part of the day-to-day part of these guys traveling around the Midwest and trying to make a living playing baseball. Obviously, you're working with a limited amount of primary knowledge regarding John Donaldson. But I think one of the most interesting parts of the story is that I'll just quote here, basically, but from between 1912 and 1917, there existed a club known as the World All Nations Team. And it included a female player named Carrie Nation. And it was a it was an

experiment of an interracial ball club. and it was fairly successful in the Midwest and upper Midwest. And that's something, that's another part of the story that I had never heard of and didn't even consider having necessarily happened 100 years ago. So how much have you been able to learn about the history of that team with Donaldson as part of it? You know, I've already started a lot of the filming and been doing interviews. And every time I do an interview, it leads me to another interview. And it's like putting together a giant puzzle. Or as I say to people, a lot of time, it's almost like we're on an archaeological dig, and we have a piece of a vertebrae, and we have a piece of a toe, and we have to reconstruct this

thing from nothing. And that's what we're doing. So when we get to the all nations era, obviously, there's a lot of interesting pieces in that. And there's a little bit more known. My research is ongoing. So we're learning something every day. But there's crazy antidotes and things that pop up like the Schmelzer's mail order company was a sponsor of the all nations. Do I have that right? That's right.

And that's an interest. a sponsor of the All Nations. Do I have that right? That's right. And that's an interest. We've talked to their family in Kansas City and they were in tears. They were so amazed. It's like, do you realize that your family sponsored this team, put uniforms on them with your company name, would send them into a small town in the Midwest to represent their mail order company. And their star player was John Donaldson, this guy that nobody's ever heard of. And he was basically the Michael Jordan to your Nike back then. And it's astounding to think that in that era, that their choice of the person they really wanted to connect to their company was a black baseball pitcher from Glasgow, Missouri. It's just fascinating. So Peter, I'm sure you're aware of the Seamheads Negro Leagues database that is

powered by Baseball Gauge, one of our favorite baseball stats. Absolutely. Love those guys. Yep. Yeah. And so John Donaldson's stats are really only a fraction of his career is covered by that database. It looks like they have some of his stats from 1915 to 1924, and it's just 1,216 plate appearances and 440 innings, which is really just a snapshot of part of his performance over his very long career. And so I wonder if you can say with any kind of confidence how he compared to his contemporaries because of course we don't have great statistical records for that time and he's playing in all sorts of levels and leagues

and barnstorming tours so can we say well he was the greatest pitcher of his era he was you know the greatest behind this guy is it possible even really to make that kind of distinction? Well, here's an interesting thing about that. We can say whatever we want. I get that. But they said he was great back then. John Donaldson is on all time lists, 10 consecutive decades. Find anybody else who's on that. It isn't just me, some guy in Minneapolis who thinks that he's found a whole bunch of stuff about John Donaldson and thinks that he should be remembered more than he is. They've been saying this for years and years. The Pittsburgh Courier poll of 1952 has 13 players on it, and 11 of them are in the Hall of Fame, and one of them is John Donaldson. He's not. Great polls like that that are just filled up with the greatest of all time, John Donaldson's in there almost every time. And that's because

people knew he was great. In terms of the seam heads part of it, that's really important. And research is ongoing in terms of that. But John Donaldson was meant to be the starting ace pitcher of the Kansas City Monarchs in 1920, the team's manager and its starting center fielder when he wasn't pitching. About a week or so before the season started, J.L. Wilkinson took John Donaldson away from the managerial spot because nobody really, and the research is going on, but nobody really thought the Negro National League was going to work. Everybody, leagues had come and gone many, many times before. Nobody thought that this was actually going to stand out. One of the tenants

of the league was 15% of every dollar that you made went straight to the league office in Chicago. That was a big cut in the profits for ownership of Negro League baseball teams at that time. So Wilkinson took John Donaldson away from the managerial job and put Jose Mendez in there, who since went to the Hall of Fame. Part of his resume on the Hall of Fame was he was the manager of the Kansas City Monarchs. John Donaldson was meant to be that, but what John Donaldson was and what really cost his legacy at that time was a moneymaker for J.L. Wilkinson. And he was a known moneymaker throughout the Midwest. He could go to Omaha and come home with $1,000 in cash any weekend that he wanted to go there, and hundreds of other places. And so John Donaldson's legacy, and one of the

reasons that you don't know who he is, is because he was pulled out to support the rest of them, to support the rest of the Kansas City Monarchs and make money for that franchise. You go to the Negro League Museum and maybe you've been there, but there's iconic pictures of the Kansas City Monarchs standing shoulder to shoulder on opening day. And you say, well, John Donaldson, if he was that good, he would be standing in that picture. Well, John Donaldson was off making money for those guys so that J.L. Wilkinson could make the payroll. It's really important for people to understand

that he was supporting everything else that was going on in Negro League baseball. And what Wilkinson knew was he didn't have to give 15% of the profits or 15% of his gross to the league office to get John Donaldson out playing for the All Nations team. And he knew that. And it was a money-making venture. It wasn't a legacy-building venture.

Everybody already knew who John Donaldson was at that time. There wasn't a, let's look back 100 years and think about how that's going to matter in 100 years from now. And so I agree with you that there is a limited number of things that are known in the CMEDS database. And those guys are working hard all the time. And putting in statistics where there previously wasn't any is a very difficult thing to do. And so I don't want to knock them whatsoever. But the reason that you can Google search the CMEDS database and see that John Donaldson only has, I think, 69 games listed in there is because he's out making money somewhere else.

And this isn't about a hundred year afterwards legacy. This is about making money in 1915. And so I think the point is that John Donaldson was a major league player. Everybody knew that he was. Black baseball teams desired him all across the United States, from Los Angeles to Palm Beach. New York City, he played in one year. The key to remembering John Donaldson's legacy is at that time, they weren't concerned about what we were going to think 100 years later. And so some of the things that have survived and some of the reasons that

he has potentially fewer numbers that are able to be known by you and anyone is that he was out making money for somebody somewhere else, which is a really important part of the story. The other part of the story that I can tell you that is different now, and it has a lot to do with what Paul's doing in the film footage that we found, we know John Donaldson's physical ability. I can't sell you John Donaldson if I can give you 250 headlines that say he was a great baseball player. I can sell you John Donaldson because you can see John Donaldson. You can see how he throws the ball. You can see how he hits the ball.

You can see him play on the film footage. This is a gift to be able to rebuild his legacy. We have the ability to get major league scouts to say what is important about how he throws the ball. His physical ability is known. And there's many, many other great Negro League baseball players that had to rely on headlines only or people who saw them play. We have film footage and we know his physical ability set him apart at that time. And if you ever look at it, I hope you time and if you ever look at it i hope you guys get a chance to look at it he looks as though he's pitching in 2017 you look at a

night it was the film was shot on august 16th 1925 it looks as though he was pitching just yesterday and that's really important he had a modern day delivery and he was sought after by major leaguers at that time and all the film footage obviously is going to be in the film it's a major part of what we're working on in terms of that the ability to not have legendary status wouldn't you really like to know what smoky joe williams or rube foster how they threw the ball all you can really do is take historians accounts and their word for it i'm not asking you to take my word for it on John Donaldson, anything. Go look at the film footage and you'll see he threw like nobody else at his time. So, of course, when you have a playing

career versus a scouting career, the playing career is going to be more high profile, but John Donaldson's scouting career is also more recent. So, in theory, that makes it at least easier to research. But how much have you been able to find out about maybe whether there's any resistance or just the openness that that embraced Donaldson as he worked for the White Sox it says here he he pursued Willie Mays and Ernie Banks and he was credited with the signing of players like Bob Boyd and Sam Hairston out of the the Negro League so how much have you been able to learn about Donaldson as the first full-time black talent scout in the big leagues? Because that seems like

that's just another incredible part of the story that gets lost when you're just talking about someone who was a phenomenal player for about three decades. One of the most important things you need to remember from a modern standpoint is eight of the first 10 most valuable players were African American players when John Donaldson was scouting. There was a rush. Major league teams, when the color barrier was broken, we got to find these black baseball players. These guys are great, and they're going to make us great. And all those most valuable player awards and home run titles and World Series championships that players like Jackie Robinson and Don Newcomb and all those great players that came up in the late 1940s and early 1950s,

Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, all these great ballplayers, that talent pool was out there. One of the great parts that we've been able to find about his scouting career is handwritten letters that he wrote to people, ones that he was out across the United States trying to find the next baseball player to play for the White Sox. He had many things going for him, but I don't think the White Sox really wanted to sign any African-American players. He was bringing all these players to them, but there were different things and different kind of excuses that they gave for not doing that. If he brought you Willie Mays, which he did, they just couldn't seem to schedule him a tryout.

It was always one thing after another. Ultimately, John Donaldson got Ernie Banks to come to Chicago. He was waiting for the train to pick him up to take him to the south side. The general manager for the Chicago Cubs was on the other side of the train platform, got Ernie Banks and took him to the north side of Chicago. It's an incredible story. John Donaldson standing there on the train platform waiting for this guy to come from Kansas City. And it really changed baseball history.

And then about a week later, the general manager for the White Sox went and said that he heard from John Donaldson that he didn't think Ernie Banks was going to make it. And so he undercut his scout in the press, which you still don't hear about. But I think that's a residual fact of trying to blame somebody. And that happens time and time again. So John Donaldson's scouting career was really important. I argue that it was harder to be an African-American scout than it was to be an African-American player. People didn't know John Donaldson was coming to town to see great ballplayers. They didn't know if he was there or not. It's really hard. You couldn't go back and ask somebody, do you remember John Donaldson coming to scout you? These are 18-year-old kids who don't remember.

They're just trying to play ball. And at that time, they're trying to survive in baseball. And the opportunity to have a career where you're going to get paid to play the game was very attractive to them. It's very important. But John Donaldson's scouting career is the crown jewel of him as a ballplayer. Everybody knew who he was. Everybody recommended players to him.

He was the network that could bring in great players. And like I said before, he played with all the great Negro League players. He knew all of them. And they all knew who he was. It's amazing that we don't remember who he is today. So Donaldson was up for Hall of Fame induction in 2006. That was maybe before your efforts have brought a lot of his career to light. He was passed over at the time. Are there any prospects of his being up for induction again? Well, let me say this about the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame is going to do what the Hall of Fame is going to do. I can't go to the steps of the library with a bullhorn and start yelling, you should put John Donaldson in this building. It's

just not going to work that way. What I can do is I can tell you that what we've uncovered since 2006 is relevatory. In 2006, they had 146 wins to judge him on in his worthiness for induction at that time. 2,245 strikeouts we had at that time. Well, that's now up to 403 wins and over 5,000 strikeouts. We've brought a significant change in the data to the table. And that is something that will be interesting to see what happens. Until last summer, the Hall of Fame was not going to even have the opportunity for anybody pre-1947 to be elected ever again after the 2006 election process was finished. They just decided that in 2020, that was a possibility again. I don't know what's going to happen in 2020. I don't know. I do know

that we have a lot more information to be able to talk about John Donaldson's significance now than we knew 10, 12 years ago. It's important that we just keep teaching people who he was and how important he was to the sport of black baseball. You did earlier this year through, I think, a lot of your hard work, managing at John Donaldson and trying to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. So how encouraged are you by that process? Because that is something that would have come out of your more recent work, as opposed to this Hall of Fame non-selection that took place 11 years ago. Well, it goes right back to the same thing that I first said. This is a process of explaining to you how you don't know this. I put a proposal together, a hard looked at proposal. We edited it many times to get him

into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. There were somewhere around 40 or 50 people who decide who goes in there, right? Not any of them knew who he was. How could somebody come to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame people with a candidate no one had ever heard of before? And not much less, we got him in on the first try. We made a significant case for him because we had that. But this was a process in educating people who had no idea about this. I stood in front of 800 people at the induction ceremony. And I always say, how many of you have ever, before today, had ever heard of John Donaldson,

and only five people raised their hand, and three of them were my wife and two kids? There's 800 people in this room. And there was also an inductee at the same time who had been coaching baseball for 63 years in Missouri, right? His whole life is baseball, and everyone in that room was baseball. They all had a vested interest in the game, and yet still, no hands went up. It's important that we educate people how important he was to the game of baseball, to black baseball, if it's in our film project or if it's in Hall of Fame inductions or if it's into however we can tell the story, we need to tell it because John Donaldson was significant. John Donaldson was forced out of the major leagues. John Donaldson was completely and systematically forgotten.

And that is something that we can't have anymore. And we need to know about this guy. All right. So Paul, how can people find out about and support the movie project and to either or both of you, what should they do to find out about John Donaldson in ways that we haven't talked about today? First step is we have a film website, 39secondsfilm.com. And you can go there and there's a trailer, there'll be continuing clips as we make the movie, production photos of all the places we travel to. And there is obviously a support this film button, which we would love everybody to click on and send us a few bucks if they feel like they want to get behind and support this effort.

So I really appreciate that. The thing that's interesting, as I got to this project, and I've only known Peter a relatively short time, it just feels like it's John Donaldson's time. And all of this information about the where's and the why's and the how's will be in the film, and it's kind of why we're making it. film and it's kind of why we're making it. And even since I began conducting interviews, his hometown of Glasgow, Missouri is dedicating a baseball park in his name and is commissioning a statue to be the centerpiece of the middle of their town. It's pretty amazing that, and it feels very fortunate for me as a filmmaker to kind of arrive at this right time and all these pieces are clicking together so it's um it should be an interesting journey all right well we really appreciate you guys coming on and

sharing this story with us now i feel like a smarter baseball fan good was before that was our plan you know and it's really important it's really important that you understand that it is possible you don't know this and it yes and it is possible that you can learn more about this. This did happen. It's important that people realize that how it happened, why it happened, and what we can do about it now. All right. Well, Peter Gorton and Paul Ermiter, thank you very much for joining us and bringing all of this to light. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. All right. Ben, Jeff, thank you so much. Thanks, guys bringing all of this to light. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

All right, Ben, Jeff, thank you so much. Thanks, guys. Thank you. All right, that will do it for today and this week. Again, that website where you can find out about the documentary and support the documentary and see those 39 seconds of footage of John Donaldson is 39secondsfilm.com. I expressed my gratitude toward Jeff earlier in the episode. I now want to express it to all of you. Without your support and your feedback and your listening, we would not still be doing this podcast. So it is all up to you. Thanks to those of you who have pledged to support the podcast on Patreon. And Marvin Cortez, Ronald Janiszewski, Jim, and Jeff Gilbert.

So thank you to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes. Please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Jeff via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. I must also express my gratitude to Dylan Higgins, who has really helped out a ton with the editing of the show this year. I was very reluctant to outsource any of the editing before Dylan. I did it all myself for the first thousand plus episodes, but I now trust Dylan to do it.

He is very diligent. He is a longtime listener, so he cares what it sounds like. And I appreciate that. So thank you to him for this episode and also for this year. So thanks, everyone. Have a wonderful holiday weekend. We will talk to you next week. And fall to your maker For the rose, the red rose blooms for all to know