from the WNIN Tristate Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James and this is two Main Street.

And it's time to play ball with local baseball historian Kevin Werth Warren.

Kevin's first book, Baseball in Evansville booms bust and one global Disaster, goes back to the early days of the game, when white players and teams got all the headlines.

His new book is Black Ball in Evansville Diamonds in the shadows 1900 to the 1960s.

Shining light on these incredible athletes, the black leagues and the challenges of playing America's pastime as a person of color.

We follow the long journey from segregation to the first black players joining the major leagues.

And just recently, those Negro league players now have their stats in the MLB record books.

That's great.

Kevin Worth wine and Corey Miller, executive director of the Evansville African-American Museum, are my guests on two Main Street.

So welcome, guys.

And I found out.

And you were classmates at Harrison High School.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

I graduated in 73, and, Kevin graduated in 72.

So.

Okay.

I don't think we knew each other then.

No.

However, we know a lot of the same.

But you're you're Harrison.

Harrison warriors.

And and Corey was a very good, athlete and football player.

Oh, really?

Well, you know, you play baseball.

We're talking baseball.

You guys played baseball, and, you know everything.

But baseball is about you, Kevin.

Oh, I played baseball.

I didn't play at Harrison, but I played youth league, and I played softball forever.

Oh, well.

Yeah.

So it's it's the Evansville network.

I mean, so let's put your careers on the back of a baseball card.

Here we go.

Corey, let's start with you.

Musician.

Yeah, I've played music all my life.

I, actually started in grade school.

I was in a group called, sing Out Evansville, which is a, small arm of Up With people.

Oh, yeah.

And, and, anyway, I wound up going to IU.

I was in the IU, so review for three and a half years, and we toured around college campuses and, different places, and then came back home was with another group and, and a guy from Evansville who had been living in Las Vegas.

And playing with Frank Sinatra and Louis Prima and those guys.

Incredible, guitar player who's white guy name was Greg Moore, whose brother owned Moore's music.

Yes.

He came back and asked if he found our group and asked if we want to help record his songs.

And, we wound up recording 17 originals.

And when we finished and we recorded in Nashville, when we finished, he said, so if I get a record deal, would you guys be willing to move to, Los Angeles and didn't take us for a second to say, well, hell yeah, sure.

And so actually, six months later, he called and said, I got to deal with Bumps Blackwell and can you guys be out here on May 1st, 1981?

And, sure enough, we went out there and so there's a whole lot of what brought you back to Evansville.

So, you know, I was out there 36 years and, you know, about 2016, 17, 2017 really, my mother had, my, my dad had passed in 2012, and my mom had left the house and was living at Willow Park.

And, felt it was time to come home and help take care of her.

And, it was a blessing for both of us.

And she passed in 2022.

But I still live in the family.

I live in the family house.

And, I was on the board of the African American Museum.

And when our executive director, Doctor Ashley Jordan, decided to take a better job, I was kind of volun told to step into this role, and, I've been there ever since, and, you know, so, if you know anybody that, you think could take my place, I was retired when I moved home.

But I enjoy being there at, it's really, a win win.

Well, every day is a learning experience.

I'm sure you'll learn something new now, Kevin, what's on your baseball card?

Well, I was a Harrison warrior, and I went to Butler University as a journalism major, graduated a journalism major, and the first, several years out of college, I wrote for a local newspaper in Brownsburg, Indiana.

Up there, I wrote to my advertising copy for a while, and I worked for a magazine at the Saturday Evening Post.

So I did various journalistic jobs until I needed.

I was starving, so I kind of went back and went into a management training program and, got my MBA at Butler and worked in business for, you know, 35, 40 years.

And now your passion is baseball research.

My my passion is, baseball in Evansville.

Honestly, because I, I wanted to find history books about it, and I couldn't find any.

Well, we were talking about the research involved in this book.

Black ball in Evansville.

Was it difficult finding all these stats and backstories for black ball?

Absolutely.

Very difficult.

And, you know, newspapers, whatever periodicals you could find, were articles were sparse.

As some of the black owned newspapers of the time, like one of the famous, like Saint Louis Argus and Pittsburgh Courier when they started come on.

And coming online with their digital editions, it kind of opened up the space a little bit.

But Evansville had a, black owned newspaper from 1938 to 1943 as well.

The Argus, The Argus, a weekly newspaper.

And if if you've thumbed through those, they're probably Corey.

They're it's a great newspaper.

It just, you know, there just wasn't enough subscription based and sustain it.

Really.

Now, Corey, you've seen this book and, incredible research involved.

And did you learn a lot?

I learned a lot.

And I'm still I haven't read the whole book.

I just I, you know, try to but things that stuck out to me really, really, you know, really stuck out like Charles Charles does the last who, who missed.

They called him Mr. Everything, and he actually is in our museum as well.

We have some information, but that doesn't detail his background.

Like like the book.

Well, first, the Indiana state senator, wasn't he?

Yes.

First clerk in Indiana.

State senator.

Yes.

Amazing.

Mr.. Everything.

I mean, dusty, dusty Decker.

Yeah.

And ballplayer and, and a Negro League ball.

And he worked at the Argus.

Oh, really?

Yes, he was the sports editor at the Argus.

He was Mr.. Everything.

He really he kind of reminded me of my dad weekly.

Yeah.

And, he wrote he wrote opinion pieces, too.

I mean, he was he did it all for now.

He was the longest tenured, employee of the Argus.

Oh, really?

He was there day one.

And he was there the last day.

Now, take us back to those, days of black baseball in the early 1900s.

Lincoln School, Douglass school.

And I thought that was interesting.

Corey, that Lincoln School brought people in from other communities.

Black, youth.

Yeah.

So during segregation, of course, I mean, if you lived anywhere 30 miles around, you were black, you went to Lincoln.

And, I mean, some people even walked.

Some of the teachers actually walk from other communities to Lincoln.

Miles and miles, like, Mr. Churchill, who actually wound up living on the same street I grew up on, Bayard Park, which there were a number of teachers in fact, my mother taught at Lincoln years ago.

I mean, even if you were a teacher and you were black, you, you know, you couldn't teach at a white school.

And actually, my mother was one of the first, one of the, first black teachers in an all white school.

And she taught at Harper.

Oh, yeah.

And so, but but yeah, Lincoln has a storied history of, of communities and to pride, just with not only incredible educators but, gifted athletes and, we have, Lincoln Clark Douglass room and the Evansville African American Museum that's upstairs that where we have, like, numerous trophies and, just yearbooks and things that highlight, some of the, contributions and significance of some of the people in that community.

Now, you say, Clark, that was Clark Street School.

Yes.

Ryan Douglas High School before Lincoln.

And I thought it was interesting.

You, Lincoln opened in 1928.

There was no cafeteria.

Cafeteria?

No library.

Well, they had a librarian.

No books.

Right?

Yeah, I think it was basically all the stuff in the library was an incredible one.

Yeah.

And I knew her as well.

She was my Sunday school teacher and Liberty Baptist Church, so she had to go out and gather books for the library and ask for donations and the whole bit, and, right.

She asked for, you know, contribution, Alberta Stevenson and her, her husband was also incredible and built, helped to get Liberty, Baptist Terrace, which is across the street from Liberty built and as a kind of affordable housing for seniors back.

So no cafeteria.

Bring their lunch.

Brown bag it.

Apparently.

Well, I didn't go that far.

Yeah, and it was rough, but they managed.

And, you know, you know, in fact, they, I think, really superseded what the expectation was.

It was built as a vocational school.

Right.

But, they wound up having a planetarium and building, you know, just, you know, Latin teacher, doctor Alfred and Mr. Alfred Porter.

I knew that Doctor Porter.

Yes.

Taught Latin at Bossi High School.

Exactly.

So that just goes to show you.

And in fact, you know, I mean, even some some of my mother students had said, you know, we had a great education at Lincoln.

So your mother really taught us how to conjugate a verb.

And, I right.

And I never done that.

Me until, you know, I hear people that don't do it right.

You know, like, a lot of that's been lost or what, exactly?

Definitely.

Now, of course, they had a great athletic program at Lincoln High School in Douglas.

And let those players playing ball, didn't they, Kevin?

They sure did.

And we'll probably talk about some.

We sure will.

And I wanted to talk about, Cory, Charlie Wiggins, an interesting, guy at the, at the museum.

Tell me about Charlie Wiggins.

Yeah.

So Charlie Wiggins was, born in Evansville.

He had an aptitude for, as a mechanic, and, became, one of the famous black racecar drivers.

He wasn't allowed to compete.

In, like, the Indy 500, because, of course, it was segregated, but created an event called the Golden Glory sweepstakes.

And he won that, like four times.

And they they called him the Speed King.

He he moved to Indianapolis in 1922.

And, you know, really, I really wanted to to race in the Indy 500.

Of course, they wouldn't allow him, but, he wound up working with Bill Cummins and and the pit crew, but couldn't be in the pit crew there, so.

But he did help them to, to win one of the, Indy 502 years ago.

He's, we have a marker about him out front, and I have actually met his his some of his descendants, his family.

They've come to the museum to see the marker in the museum.

And he was also just recently inducted into the, the Detroit Hall of Fame.

Oh, really?

And I think in 2022, just recently, just a phenomenal, race car driver and mechanic.

Gifted is known worldwide, and they're working on a documentary and a movie about him.

Oh, that'd be good.

It'd be good.

Now, how important is a book like Black Ball in Evansville to, the museum?

It's important.

I mean, just thumbing through the book.

I mean, there's so much research and, you know, like I said, Charles Decker, was stuck out to me because, I mean, he it was kind of, indicative of a lot of people back then and had more than one gift.

I mean, there was just talented, and I mean, we've had and we've had many people like that in, in this community, in the community, a Baptist town, particularly, and well spoken about Baptist.

And one of the I think the interesting exhibits at the museum is the the apartment from Lincoln Gardens that's been preserved that can go in there, go back into time, back into the 1930s.

Yes.

Circa 1940 303.

I'm sorry.

It's called the William Miller apartment.

Actually, my dad was the construction chair for the museum.

He was, And so, you know, he was able to find a lot of the, artifacts that to make it look like it looked back in the 40s.

And, even though Lincoln Gardens was built in 1936, well, started in 36.

And then we had the flood and took him out another year.

So it actually wasn't completed until 38.

But, it really is, looks like, you know, the 1940s and how an apartment look with the coal furnace, the boob tube, the, black and white TV and a lot of the other artifacts in there.

It's just very, takes you back.

Well, Kevin's book takes us back to that time.

The Jim Crow era, when these ballplayers, had to endure and, well, to travel.

I'm sure they had some travel restrictions.

And where could they eat?

And they had restrictions everywhere they went, where they could stay, where they could eat, where they could travel.

I mean, it it's indescribable, really.

And, I probably could have done a whole book on that.

Maybe.

Yeah.

But they were successful.

They had big crowds and they had following and these guys were good.

These guys were good.

And I point out in there that during some of the years when they were opposite the white teams, Evansville hubs and in the 20s they outdrew them.

I mean, they, they played a better brand of ball and they had a bigger following to the point where, they finally got to play in Bossy Field when the white teams were out of town, because when they played opposite the white teams, nobody came to the white team's games.

I mean, the crowd disparity was because they wanted to see talent.

Yeah, definitely.

Now, in May of 2024, Major League Baseball added the statistics of more than 2300 Negro league players from 1920 to 1948 to the MLB record book.

That had to be a major, announcement.

Really?

Yeah.

It's amazing.

And, I had nothing to do with it.

The timing was incredible.

It came out, my book came out, almost simultaneously with that announcement, but I can't take everyone.

Once you get it, I'm happy about it.

That was great.

And some Hall of Fame players, of course, in that and that group, sure.

They came from the Negro Leagues into the major leagues.

Yes, absolutely.

Many of it's several, future MLB Hall of Fame members, came from the Negro Leagues and played in Evansville, right?

Yeah.

And a couple actually put on a uniform of an Evansville team for some late season, exhibitions.

Now, a lot of team names in the book in those early days, we have the Black Hawks, Miracle Stars, Evansville Colored Braves.

These were Barnes storming teams that, like Morocco stars, colored Braves played and in a league, but it disintegrated.

So mostly barnstorming.

And that's how they made a living.

They went from town to town, playing local teams, good teams, often playing major league, Negro league teams.

But they, they live off the gate receipts.

Right.

So they, they wanted to put on a good show.

Now, there were some home fields in Evansville.

Sure.

There's there's Lake Park, which is Louisiana Street.

Park where, where they played along with the white teams.

There was Eagle, Eagle, Athletic field down on the corner of Weinbach and Washington, which was where they drew huge crowds and almost forced the white teams out down.

And you said once when the when Bossy Field was opened and when the white teams were out of town, they were able to play in ball field.

Yeah.

After a while they were they were even stymied playing there at all until and I mentioned it earlier, the black teams were played down at Eagle Park and out draw the white teams at Mansfield by a thousand 3000 people.

And there was a world championship game in Evansville ball field with these, Negro players.

Yeah, there was a it was actually a World Championship Series.

They played three games here.

And it was, the Indianapolis ABCs was one of the teams, and they featured, two future Hall of Famers.

They played three games at Boston Field, and then they move up to Indianapolis and were supposed to finish out with three more games, four more games.

And I found the first three games up there.

I never found the the fourth game, the deciding game.

I looked everywhere and someday I may, uncover.

Okay, well, that's something.

That's something in your research.

Okay.

Now, there were company sponsors for a lot of these teams, weren't there?

Well, specifically, one of them was, the the Louis record Giants, named after Lewis Reichard, who was the father of Mansa and Reichard, who later became Evans of mayor.

The records were, were owned Reichard Construction Company and, kind of off topic later, Lawndale was built by the records.

Oh, if everyone remembers.

Sure.

Lawndale Wasserman's.

All they owned stores there.

So they they did.

And, well, didn't didn't these companies, like surveil have a team now?

Okay, okay.

Surveil had great semi-pro teams.

And they played, tough schedules.

They often played against teams led in here by Satchel Paige.

So yes, baseball was, the biggest thing around really before basketball became big in Evansville.

But.

Well, that was before, televisions.

And it was a big entertainment social event.

Now, were there, rivalries among the black teams locally?

Oh, yeah.

Many one of the first ones was a rivalry between a team called the PBS.

Which people later found out it was named after the.

But it was called the Varsity Posse Boosters.

Oh.

Sponsored by their boss.

Yeah, against the Harlem and All Stars, who were part of Harlem Hillman.

Charles Hillman, who was mayor at the time, and Bossie was running for mayor.

Oh, and they were both all black teams, and they clashed a lot.

Oh, beyond that, I know in the, in the 40s and 50s were big rivalries between there were the Evansville Dodgers, the right Giants were still around Evansville Royal, Royal Giants.

I guess I could rattle off teams closer.

Have any specifically they know.

Well, listen.

Well, I let's go back to when I first interview, you about your first book.

We talked about a 15 year old pitcher who played in Evansville.

We Willie McGill, who pitched a no hitter in his first season.

Now, your new book on black baseball, there's another 15 year old phenom on the mound in Evansville, William Steel Arm.

Tyler, tell me about Steel Arm.

The steel arm.

Everybody knew him as Steel Arm.

I'm not sure they knew his first and last name.

He was a phenomenon.

15 year old.

Started, pitching for, the Crescent Arm, which later became the, Riker Giants at 15.

And he was phenomenal.

He, he was he was said to be signed by the Indianapolis ABCs after his first year as a 15 year old, but he came back, played in Evansville, when he was 16.

And at 17, he ended up in the Negro major leagues with the Memphis Red Sox, at age 17, and set some records as a 17 year old in what is now Major League Baseball.

Well, so his records are major league records.

Oh that's right out now we go from a steel arm to one arm for us to one wing.

Maddox Forrest Maddox another remarkable story.

He lost his arm early in life at the shoulder I mean he had nothing on, on the, on the left side of his body.

He's a balance issue right.

There is a balance issue, a handsome guy.

I've got a picture in there of him, but he he actually visited Evansville and played here, and there was some faulty reporting that said he actually played for the Evansville team when he did.

And he played for the Chattanooga team.

And that that was kind of kind of the haphazard reporting on black baseball back then.

But he was remarkable.

He was featured in the Washington Washington Post a few years earlier before he came here.

And he had, since he not only pitched, but he played the outfield and he had this amazing way.

If a fly ball came to him, he'd catch it, flip the ball up into the air, throw his glove aside, catch it with his right hand and throw it in and almost one motion.

And that was one of the stories in the Washington Post.

So we had to hit two Disney.

He hit he, I believe he led the Negro Southern League in the early 20s when you're in hitting.

Oh my gosh, which is remarkable.

All right.

I mean, he just and it just to go on about it.

He was remarkable in many ways.

He graduated from Morehouse College put himself through working in a flower shop.

And when he left baseball in the late 1920s, he went back and taught at Morehouse College.

I believe it's in Atlanta.

As a history teacher.

Died at age 30 of tuberculosis.

Right now.

Another another early star on the black diamond, in Evansville, Otto Mitchell called the Babe Ruth of the crescents.

And when they named him that, it was the courier or the press or whatever it was in the early 20s.

And Babe Ruth, Ruth had just burst on the scene about then as a home run hitter.

So if Babe Ruth was just coming into his own and we were calling Otto the Babe Ruth of the Crescent because he could hit the ball a mile and he was clearly their best outfielder infielder, and he went on to play in the Negro major leagues.

He was a vagabond.

He played everywhere, really.

He played up in Minnesota, in, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and for a team called the McCoy.

Nolan Giants, which was a another, company step answer team that barnstormed the country.

He went anywhere to play.

We're talking to Kevin Worthen.

He's the author of Black Ball in Evansville, diamonds in the shadows.

Tell me about that title.

It just Came to Me and diamonds in the shadow.

Well, it, it's kind of nuanced in that there were all these diamonds that were not uncovered, and they played on diamonds.

All right, all right.

And they were in obscurity for so long.

Tell me about the cover of your book.

Oh, I love the cover.

It was designed by Empty Publishing here in town.

When I first saw it, I got chills, because they they designed so well.

But on the cover, I have four mug shots.

On the left is speedball cannon, Richard Cannon, in his picture with the 1928 Saint Louis Stars who won the Negro World Series.

He's an Evansville guy.

The next one to the right is Horace Garner.

And then Felix Mantilla, who broke the, color barrier, in Evansville professional baseball with the Evansville Braves in 1952.

And, then we have Ike Brown with the triplets, who was the last player from the Negro Leagues to make the major leagues.

Oh, and he finished his career his last year with the triplets here in Evansville.

And you had the Indianapolis Clowns.

I have the clowns on there because it's such a cool picture.

And it wraps around the book spot.

But second from the right is Horace Garner, who played for the clowns, and he he's one of the guys up top who, broke the the color barrier with the Evansville Braves.

Now the clowns, were they entertainers?

They were entertainers.

That's what made a good barnstorming team back then.

And they they carried on, into the late 80s.

Really, just doing comedy shows, kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball.

They absolutely were that, and I, in the epilog, I have a the cover of one of their, programs in the early 60s.

What was their stick?

What did they do?

Oh, okay.

Well, they had a little person who played for him, and they had, If you've ever seen, Oh, I am shocked.

Or the clown princes of baseball guys who visit major league games.

And were they they did all that stuff.

I mean, they they did juggling acts.

They did crazy things and warm ups with, the bat and ball.

And they were just generally clowns during the game, too much like going to, Globetrotters.

So they play a local team, the local team, or often they bring in and a traveling team like the Globetrotters always had the Washington cast.

Sure, sure.

But they were also a formidable team during the late years of the Negro American League when it kind of went down and went away.

But they continue to play because they had this gift of, entertaining.

We talked about the, the white, I guess, benefactors of black baseball in Evansville.

You mentioned, the Reichert family.

And, so and that was the first professional team, the Louis Reichert Giants flew professional team, the first team that played in a professional Negro league Negro southern right.

Okay.

It was it was sort of a minor league, the Negro National League, which was formed in 1920.

Okay.

But it was a big deal.

I mean, in my research, they, they played on par with the Negro nationally, and we had many players for the record, Giants who played in the the Negro Major leagues, who were on the roster than the, record Giants.

They were formidable and they beat a lot of good teams.

We talked about earlier about Satchel Paige was a boss, a field regular.

Pages all stars played the local civil team at Bossy Field.

Big crowd for that.

Big crowd.

Always.

Big crowd, I think, I actually had a, a short interview, when, Dusty Decker as the editor, sports editor of the, Evansville Argus, interviewed at satchel, about Evansville.

And satchel said he he had a kindred relationship with Evansville, and he came here many times, always to good crowds, sometimes to criticism from white sportswriters in town.

We didn't like his style of play.

He was too cocky.

Oh, all that stuff.

And he was slow moving and, you know, it was a sign of the times, but, well, he was an entertainer, too, as an entertainer, but they didn't play, you know, baseball according to Hoyle.

Right?

Yes.

Chapter five of your book, desegregation of the minor leagues, the road through Evansville.

The minor leagues in baseball desegregated at a slow pace, and there were several players who who either played for, the Evansville Braves, specifically in the class B, three league, who went on to, break color barriers at minor league teams in the early mid and mid 1950s in some really hostile environments.

For instance, outfielder named peoples who, broke the color barrier in the Southern Association in a game in Atlanta.

And no, black player even dared to play in the Southern Association at the time.

And I think it scarred him for life.

But he was a he played two years for the eventual Braves here.

There was a, player named George Handy who almost became the first black player in Evansville, but he got beat out by Kentucky basketball star for the second base job in spring training.

He went on to break the color barrier in a couple of leagues in the South.

And there was, a really ubiquitous guy named Rufus Hatton who managed teams here, played for teams, black teams here.

Who ended up breaking the color league, in one of the Carolina leagues for the first time.

So we, we shuffled some players through here who, went on to do great things, but they were in the shadows.

In the shadows.

And the slow desegregation in the minor leagues, I, I don't think people realize that when Jackie Robinson came in, that's when, white owners started just literally stealing all the black stars from the Negro Leagues.

But they didn't start populating the minor leagues until later.

Okay?

They took all the great talent.

Oh, and it took a while.

You know, Hank Aaron, the one that got away?

He did sign with the Evansville Braves in 1953.

He did.

He had played he had played for the Indianapolis Clowns for a few, three few games in 52.

Went to Oklahoma.

Wisconsin tore up the league, and he was so good.

That was a class C league.

They put him on the roster of the Evansville Braves for spring training in 1953.

The Braves were class B, so it was a move up for him.

But when they rolled the roster out, you know, he was just a kid, a second baseman.

But there were such great reports about him, and he performed so well in spring training and 53, the class AA team of the Milwaukee Braves said, yeah, we you know, we have seniority here.

We're taking him.

So those scouts, knew that.

They knew those players.

He was he was on in Jacksonville about a year.

But, which reminds me, he he played at Jacksonville with, Horace Gardner and Felix Mantilla, who broke the color barrier in 52 here.

And they all broke the color barrier with Jacksonville when they moved there.

And they had some rough times, I think I have some short stories.

Yeah.

And you mentioned Larry Doby, of course, Larry Doby, American League, the first, player in the American League.

And he did it a short time after Jackie Robinson, not nearly the accolades, but he had that as tough road as Jackie Robinson.

As far as, not being embraced.

So what's been the reaction to the book?

Well, everyone that's read it.

I've had a friend who said, boy, I like this better than your first one.

And, I think it's the reaction is, wow.

This really all went on.

And, that's what my reaction was when I was researching it.

Everything was new to me.

Sure.

Which when I did my other book, that son was new.

Some, every single thing I found, it was new.

And I think the people around you heard Corey, who's obviously a black historian in his own right.

Right.

Say, wow, I learned a lot.

I'm glad I saw it.

I think that's the general reaction besides the cover, which I And Kevin, you are a member of the society for American Baseball Research.

That's certainly helps you in your research and no doubt, I mean, they have an incredible archives and researchers.

I mean, they're just filled with researchers.

And that organization, is that right at the forefront?

Uncovering, statistics for baseball, for Negro league baseball players, which are now incorporated into the major league.

Correct.

You know, now, in your first book, we learned about the ill fated Global Baseball League and its flamboyant founder, Walter Dill.

Bank of Evansville, A Global Firsts was the signing of Arnold Edward Davis to me about that.

But that was pretty incredible because it was featured in The Sporting News, with a picture of, Davis with Happy Chandler.

Happy Chandler, former, Kentucky government governor, senator and Major League Baseball commissioner.

Davis was kind of an obscure, except he played, for a lot of tailback semi-pro teams back back in the day and Walter Dell back kind of knew him.

He was an Evansville guy.

He was an Evansville guy.

He worked for the city, okay, at the time, and he played for various teams.

In, Dale Becks.

Stan Musial league, which he, he supported.

And he played for the Evansville Tigers, another team I mentioned in the book, there was an all black team that played in the early to late 50s and Evansville Semi-Pro.

So, unfortunately, you know, the story about the globe globally that's mentioned in your first book.

It, it was very ambitious and but it just didn't go anywhere.

And, you know, and he wanted to be a rival to the major league teams.

And they had a spring training in, Florida, 69 the year they tried to get it going.

And I could not find anything about, about him pitching or anything.

Ended up dying in Richmond, Indiana, at an early age.

So.

Right now, who was Dick Mills?

Dick Mills, he was a bossy high school graduate.

Okay.

And he, right out of the Army.

I think it might have been the Navy.

So white player, a white player.

After he finished his tour in 1946, he actually signed with the Evansville Braves in Class B, three league and pitched a few games early in the season with them.

And he was cut loose because he was okay, but not good enough to to that standards.

But he ended up pitching for, the record Giants in some games in 46.

Actually pitched a no hitter for them.

Looking for players.

I think at that point, you know, with Manson, Riker back in the team and it's like, let's do this little experiment to see, black leagues were integrated.

Yeah, a year after Dick Mills.

And there were there was another, pitcher, that, was in his name right now, but he, he actually, also appeared for them as well.

But he not only pitched for the Giants, he pitched well.

He pitched the no hitter against Cincinnati Tigers, which was a prominent black name, and later in the season pitched a one hitter.

So, you know, you want to groundbreaking, possibly in reverse, right?

So.

Right.

And we talked about, Ike Brown, play for the Evansville Triplets.

Evans, triplets in his last year in 1974.

Previous to that, he had played maybe seven years with the Detroit Tigers, but it took forever for him to get to the Tigers.

He started in the Negro Leagues around, 1960 and was signed, if I remember correctly, by Saint Louis Cardinals, but never made it to camp.

So he went back to his Negro Negro League roots until, Until he was spotted by a Tigers scout inside by the Detroit Tigers and and played in the minor league system for way too long.

He was just outstanding player.

And even in Jim Bolton's book ball for, one of the players who knew him said he didn't make it because he was black.

Until too late.

But he finally made it to the big leagues and he was the last Negro league player to make it to the big leagues in the major leagues at the time.

No, you were talking about you're doing your research in these moments.

What really got you.

You found something and you as Eureka.

I thought there were no trick questions.

Oh.

Sorry, sir.

Well, probably a lot of eureka moments when you.

When there's gems.

They were all eureka moments.

I mean, I, I got to say, steel arm.

Oh, the steel steel arm was an amazing.

The other one was a guy named Richard, cannon, who was actually born in Mount Vernon but went through the Evansville black school system, you know, and he had a tragic end, and he had a very tragic death.

And but, as a senior before he graduated from, from high school, and it was Douglass in his senior year in his previous year, he had pitched a no hitter against Memorial High School for Douglass.

And at the time, baseball was the only t only sport that, black schools could compete against white schools was baseball, because it was a non-contact okay, but he pitched a no hitter against Memorial.

He was a fiend.

The next year, even before graduation, the Ryker Giants, who were a professional team, signed him.

And he pitched, right for his, high school graduation for the Giants and against the Saint Louis Stars, who were a fabulous team in the Negro National League.

They saw him, signed him.

He finished out his.

He went to graduation.

He finished out his year with the Saint of Stars, who eventually won the Negro World Series that year.

And he was a pitcher for as an 18 year old.

Right out of high school.

Wow.

So I, I know there are more eureka moments, but, Richard Cannon went on to pitch, he was kind of a vagabond pitcher for a bunch of teams.

Ended up, I think he ended up living in Louisville and pitching for a lot of teams around Kentucky.

And Ohio was his shot, was he?

And he came to a tragic death and and, he was in his early 30s, and he was shot outside of a dance club in Louisville in February.

And on a cold day in February, shot to death.

Yeah.

And originally, the person who shot him was apprehended and arraigned on first degree murder charges.

Slater downgraded to manslaughter.

And when he came to trial, he was acquitted, with a self-defense.

Well, you've got all these great stories in the book.

A lot of great characters and, twists and turns that you probably don't expect is going to happen with these players.

And, the people that came through Bossie Field, it's just amazing, amazing history of that place.

The ghosts of Bossie Field.

Definitely.

Well, Kevin, a black ball in Evansville is a great read.

It's filled with a lot of photographs and trivia, and it does shine light in the on the shadows of Evansville's, little known baseball past with these black leagues.

Kevin.

So any new books in the works?

I have ideas in the works.

Book writing's hard, even when I want to do this one thing.

I started this immediately after, my last one was published.

So three and a half years.

Really?

Oh, it could have gone faster, but, you know, I'm retired and I'm kind of lazy.

Well, Kevin, keep him coming.

And, thanks for being my guest on two Main Street, and it's great being here.

Thanks again.

Thank you.