The Villages Daily Sun

THE VILLAGES — Like most American cities, Baltimore experienced significant racial tension in the summer of 1963.

The unrest wasn’t as frightful as events in the Deep South, where churches were bombed and protesters beaten, attacked by police dogs, arrested and cut down by violent torrents from fire hoses, but Baltimore was far from harmonious. Mass arrests were made at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park, which steadfastly continued to exclude blacks. Meanwhile, 12 black students arrested for a sit-in protest at Hooper’s Restaurant were appealing to the United States Supreme Court.

Race relations were so strained that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Baltimore to urge continued nonviolent demonstrations opposing segregation.

There were problems, to be sure, but some developments were also encouraging. After eight years of protest, the Northwood movie theater began admitting blacks. And across town, Tom Shaw, a bespectacled 32-year-old white man, was making history by integrating a baseball team in the Monumental Unlimited League.

“Baltimore was never quick to grasp national trends,” recalled Shaw, who lives in The Villages. “I thought it important to show respect to those in the black community who deserved to be assimilated and treated as equals.”

No media was present when Shaw penciled the names “Curtis Crawley” and “Andy Lockett” onto a lineup card, making them the first blacks to play on a white team in Baltimore. The historic event occurred 16 years after the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball.

“I had played with Crawley in a doubleheader the year before, and he had really impressed me. He hustled. So I asked him and Andy Lockett to play for us the next year. I said, ‘Now is the time to integrate.’ Not even Little League was integrated,” Shaw recalled.

All eyes on Shaw’s guys

The time may have been right in Shaw’s mind, but not everyone agreed. Opponents of integration would be looking for an incident to show that blacks and whites didn’t belong in the same dugout. Shaw needed his new centerfielder and shortstop to play as hard, as intelligently, and as well as any white player.

Crawley didn’t initially realize how much was riding on his performance and demeanor.

“One time I was on first base and Tom was trying to give me a sign, but I wasn’t paying attention. When I got back to the dugout, he chewed me out real bad. He said, ‘We play a team sport here,’” said Crawley, now 68.

Crawley accepted the criticism because he respected the man it came from.

“He was something like a Pete Rose, hustle-type of player,” Crawley said. “He was a very good person, and a heck of a ballplayer. He never took anything for granted. He kept everyone hustling.”

Shaw’s no-nonsense approach rubbed off. A focused Crawley tore up the league with a .397 batting average and cracked a team-best four home runs, according to statistics kept by 72-year-old Roland King, a white teammate who hit .390 for the ’63 Barrett A.C. team.

King was one of the more enlightened players when it came to matters of race. He had been around; he had seen change creeping into America’s Pastime ... and he welcomed it.

“It was a time of transition, of course. When I played ball in the mid-’50s, even in the minor leagues, we were segregated. It was getting better, but that’s relative,” King said.

In Baltimore, the racial climate varied from ballpark to ballpark. Most fans were cordial to Barrett A.C.’s blacks. But there were exceptions.

“We were playing up in Spring Grove, in Catonville,” Crawley remembered. “We played this team and I heard a lot of bad stuff. I was 3-for-3 when I went up to the plate and this nasty guy who had played for a Yankees farm team hit me in the head with the ball. I woke up in St. Augustine Hospital.”

Crawley says he and Lockett didn’t have any racial trouble with teammates.

“The only thing I heard came from the stands,” he said. “I didn’t have any trouble with anyone on the field.”

There could easily have been resentment, especially from players the newcomers bumped from the starting lineup. Barrett A.C. had done fine as an all-white team in ’62, winning the Unlimited League championship behind King’s .359 batting average and Shaw’s .343.

So why did Shaw shake things up? Simply because it was the right thing to do, the right time to do it, and he was in a unique position to push for change.

“Given my 20 years on the sandlots, I had some influence with the Baltimore Department of Recreation that allowed me to implement some rule changes that made the transition to integration rather smooth for many other previously all-white teams,” Shaw said.

Keeping the door open

Blacks and whites already were sharing the field before Shaw took his stand, but there were no mixed squads, only all-white teams and all-black teams.

King says most white vs. black games were played without incident.

“It was respect for ability,” he said. “Color didn’t matter, just what a player could do on the field. I can only recall one altercation of any substance. We had one bad fight with a black team in the late ’50s. Our catcher got into it with a batter. It turned ugly real quick. That might have been the catalyst. That brought everybody together. It embarrassed both sides.”

There were no black/white altercations for King and his teammates in ’63, just lots of victories. Barrett A.C. put together a 14-game winning streak and won the Unlimited League championship, then bettered Interstate League winner Fitzberger’s to become city champion.

It was the 14th consecutive winning season for Shaw, who batted lead-off in ’62, but yielded the top spot to Crawley in ’63, a move that surely impressed his players.

The following year, Barrett A.C. disbanded. Its players drifted to other teams, but the door Shaw had kicked wide open stayed open. Previously all-white teams began adding black players in ’64.

Shaw ended up playing for, and managing, the Towsontown Baseball Club, which obtained sponsorship from Shaw’s employer, the Avalon Hill game company, in ’68.

Avalon Hill won the league championship in its first year, but Shaw felt something was lacking. He fixed the problem by adding two black players for the postseason tournament.

Gary Corsair is a senior writer with the Daily Sun. He can be reached at 753-1119, ext. 7907, or gary.corsair@thevillagesmedia.com.