Tommie and Penny Reynolds walked down the steps of the boardinghouse where they’d been staying in the month since they’d been married—the same place Tommie had lived before the wedding (such as it was). His $35-a-month rent for the room in the two-bedroom house not far from the ballpark included kitchen privileges. The room was not much more than a bed, dresser, and two chairs. Because they’d been married at the courthouse, with no teammates in attendance, there’d been no presents or even a wedding cake.
The morning sickness had passed for Penny. Having grown up in southern Georgia and gone to college in Daytona, she’d spent her whole life in the South. Birmingham didn’t feel that much different from the places she knew. She passed her time when Tommie was on the road by reading books, her passion. She usually brought a book to the games at Rickwood, too, and would read a chapter or two between her husband’s trips to the plate. Sometimes she sat with the other wives, but other nights she preferred sitting alone. Despite being married, she was still determined to complete her degree and become an English teacher.
On this day, they drove into downtown Birmingham to buy Penny a wedding ring. At the jewelry store they found the ring they wanted, but it was out of Tommie’s price range, well above what he could afford on his $600-a-month salary. But the jeweler was a Barons’ fan and recognized Tommie. “Maybe we can work out a credit arrangement,” he said.
They left with the ring they wanted. Later, Reynolds wondered if he would have been allowed to buy the ring on credit if he hadn’t played for the Barons. And when he heard Blue Moon’s account of how the Birmingham cop had let him go without a ticket, he wondered the same thing. Being a Baron, he concluded, had benefits not available to all black men in Birmingham.
In the clubhouse after another Baron victory, Tompkins approached Reynolds’s locker to offer congratulations on his collecting two hits.
“My wife said she really enjoys talking with your new bride,” said Tompkins. “How about the two of you coming over to our apartment for dinner?”
Reynolds raised his eyebrows. “Are you crazy?” he asked.
“Whattya mean?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, this is Birmingham, Alabama.”
“So.”
“Let me try to explain it to you,” said Reynolds. “Some folks around here don’t take too favorably to Negro folks going into white neighborhoods.”
“Doesn’t bother me.”
“That’s nice, but there’s also some folks around here who like it even less when white folks cotton to Negroes. Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with the news, but three civil rights workers are missing down in Mississippi. I’m guessing they’ll probably find ’em hanging from a tree.”
They agreed to get together back in San Diego.
Reynolds steered Blue Moon’s bright red Galaxy into the parking lot of the University of Alabama–Birmingham Hospital, the same lot where he’d dropped him off the day before. Now he was back to pick him up. Blue Moon had let him drive his car while he was in the hospital. Blue Moon had been admitted for tests to determine what was wrong with him. After his two-inning, four-strikeout performance against Kansas City, he had complained of fatigue and a chest cold that wouldn’t go away, similar to what had put Reynolds out of action for eighteen days. Baron general manager Glynn West had made the hospital arrangements for him, making him the hospital’s second black patient (after Campy). So far, tests had not revealed what was wrong. This was his second day in the hospital, and unless the doctor gave him a clean bill of health he would miss the team’s seven-day road trip to Knoxville and Chattanooga. He was scheduled to pitch the series opener in Knoxville.
As Reynolds shut off the engine and started to get out of the car, he eyed an armed security guard approaching.
“Can’t park here, boy,” instructed the guard.
“Whattya mean?”
“It’s private property.”
“The sign there says VISITOR PARKING,” countered Reynolds. “I’m here to pick up a friend. He’s in room 408.”
“This hospital don’t take no niggers.”
“Did I say he was a Negro?”
“Oh, a smart-ass nigger.”
Reynolds was in no mood for this guy’s shit, or anyone else’s. In last night’s game he had come up with the bases loaded and the game on the line in the bottom of the ninth. The situation seemed perfect to play hero—the team had not lost three in a row all season and had won twenty-one of twenty-five one-run games. But he whiffed, adding to the frustration of his continued failure to hit at Rickwood. It was almost as if he were two different hitters—Roadman Reynolds and Rickwood Reynolds.
“You got ten seconds to get your black ass out of here,” ordered the guard.
Reynolds eyed the guard resting his hand on his gun. His army training advised him that it was a very-big-caliber gun; common sense advised him not to mess with it.
He climbed back into Blue Moon’s car and slowly exited the parking lot.
A few blocks away, he parked on the street and walked back to the hospital, entering on the side away from the guard. Nobody stopped him as he took the elevator to the fourth floor.
In room 408, Blue Moon was dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed. The doctor had just seen him and told him they’d found nothing wrong other than some chest congestion and that he could start pitching again in a week.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“What did the doctor say?” asked Reynolds.
“Told me I could pitch in Knoxville tomorrow night,” Blue Moon replied.
“How do you feel?” asked Sullivan.
“Good,” replied Blue Moon. “Let me finish.”
It was the top of the ninth of the series opener in Knoxville, and Blue Moon was locked in a 2–2 pitchers’ duel. In eight innings, he’d held the Smokies to two runs on seven hits while striking out six.
Sullivan refused to be persuaded by Blue Moon’s appeal. “I’m going to pinch-hit Hoss for you,” he said.
With a month to go in the season, no Baron had played more games and innings than Hoss. He was exhausted. Since his surgery, he had never totally regained his strength, and he was still ten pounds under his playing weight. On some nights, his uniform felt as if it were made of Bessemer steel. This was the first game since April that he hadn’t started. It would also be his first pinch-hitting appearance.
He walked on four pitches. When the next hitter, Ossie Chavarria, lashed a line drive into the gap in left center, Hoss forgot about being exhausted and raced around the bases to score standing up. By the time the inning was over, the Barons had scored four more runs, the big blow a towering homer by Reynolds… and once again, Sullivan looked like the Einstein of the Southern League. It was Blue Moon’s third win in a row.
With Reynolds continuing his hot hitting on the road, the Barons took three of four in Knoxville. Although Knoxville had integrated a downtown theater and several restaurants prior to the passage of the civil rights bill, the black players still had to stay in separate accommodations, with the motel room that Blue Moon and Reynolds shared so stifling hot that they didn’t get to sleep until sunrise. It didn’t affect Reynolds’s hitting the next night—he stroked two more hits and scored the go-ahead run in a 5–3 win. The Barons won the next night, too, with Larry Stahl extending his hitting streak to ten games. The lead over Lynchburg held steady at three and a half games.
After winning three of four in Knoxville, Reynolds and Blue Moon teamed up again in a 5–1 victory in the second game in Chattanooga, with Reynolds going 2 for 3, stealing a base, and driving in a run as Blue Moon allowed only three hits and struck out ten.
“Moon, that’s your best game of the year,” offered Sullivan.
Blue Moon’s swagger was all the way back, and so was his control. He now looked at each batter stepping to the plate with that you-can’t-hit-me glare that he had possessed back in high school.
Despite Blue Moon’s and Reynolds’s heroics, as well as the Barons leading the league for two and a half months, it was doubtful whether any Baron would be chosen as a league All-Star when the Southern League Sportswriters Association made its picks at the end of the season. Campaneris and Sanders would’ve been locks, and so would Tompkins six weeks earlier, but now, unless somebody went Babe Ruth in the last three weeks, the Barons would likely be a championship team without an All-Star. Lately, Stahl had been on fire, and he was a good outfielder, but it was probably too late for him to attract votes. Reynolds had hit some of the longest home runs, but he didn’t join the team until May and had spent almost three weeks on the disabled list. Plus, he was only average in the outfield.
Although Barons beat reporter Van Hoose couldn’t vote for players on the home team, he believed Hoss deserved consideration based on his excellent defense, grit, and steady hitting:
Hoss is one of those players you have to see every day to appreciate, so I don’t think he’ll get the votes.
Even with Finley having snatched away the team’s two surefire All-Stars, the Barons kept winning, taking the first three of a four-game set against the Columbus Yankees back at Rickwood.
The next day, they won again, 7–0, behind Lindblad’s five-hit shutout, extending Columbus’s losing streak on Sunday games to thirteen. The key blow for the Barons was a first-inning grand slam by Reynolds, his first homer of the year at Rickwood.
Sullivan offered a theory on why Reynolds hit better on the road: “Tommie is a serious guy and intense competitor,” he said. “He understands what has happened here in Birmingham over the last year. He’s married to a Southern girl. He feels the pressure to do well and wants us to win, not just for the team, but for the city. I think sometimes he just tries too damn hard at home.”
Neither Sullivan nor any of the Barons could explain how Reynolds, so well respected by his teammates, was the target of so much vile on the road. Over the course of the season, no Baron had been knocked down at the plate more often. Was it because he was the team’s best power hitter? Or was it because he had the blackest skin? Reynolds knew that both were plausible explanations. He’d been told before coming to Birmingham that he’d be treated like a dog, and that he needed to ignore the racial slurs and knockdown pitches. And that’s exactly what he’d done. Several times after being knocked down, his impulse was to charge the mound. But he knew that would only fuel the haters and the bigots. He’d learned to control those impulses in the army when he listened to “hillybillies” ranting about the “niggers.”
In the bottom of the eighth in the series finale against Macon, with the Barons leading 4–1, Reynolds dug in, crowding the plate. The first pitch to him from Marv Fodor was a fastball, up and in. Reynolds tried to duck, but it was too late, the ball hitting him square in the face. He collapsed, blood gushing everywhere.
Sullivan rushed to the plate, certain that Reynolds was seriously hurt. But the baseball gods were smiling on Birmingham that day. Reynolds slowly got to his feet, wiped the blood on his sleeve, and then trotted to first. Later, he received eleven stitches to sew up his lip, but luckily he lost no teeth.
The Barons held on to win, 4–1, taking the series four games to two, increasing their lead over second-place Lynchburg to five and a half.