The league will compensate some former Negro League players who were left out because of de facto segregation.
By BRADY DENNIS
Published May 18, 2004
[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys]
Robert "Peach Head" Mitchell is a former Negro League pitcher.
TAMPA - Robert "Peach Head" Mitchell stood Monday morning in his driveway on Elmwood Avenue wearing the smile of a dream realized.
The 71-year-old former Negro League pitcher faced plenty of batters during his time with the Kansas City Monarchs in the 1950s. But his toughest pitch has come in recent years to Major League Baseball officials.
On Monday, he stood beside Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to announce a new charitable program in which Major League Baseball will give monthly payments to dozens of former Negro League players who were left out of an original compensation plan seven years ago.
The previous plan, implemented in 1997, gave $10,000 a year to players who played at least four seasons in the Major League or in the Negro League before 1947, the year Jackie Robinson integrated baseball.
But many Major League teams remained segregated throughout the 1950s, and some black players say they never were given the opportunity to play in the majors and earn a Major League pension.
The new program will extend benefits to players who meet the four-year requirement but never played in the majors. Those who qualify - currently 27 former players - will receive either $375 a month for life or $833.33 a month in a four-year period.
Mitchell has campaigned for years to extend more benefits to aging ballplayers, and he attracted Nelson's attention in a letter in 2001. Since then, the senator has joined Mitchell in lobbying Major League Baseball officials for the change.
In March, Major League commissioner Bud Selig vowed to deliver a proposal to Nelson within a month.
"We saw that there was something we could do," Nelson said Monday. "This is one of the great satisfactions of public service."
Lucy Calautti, director of government relations for Major League Baseball, said the organization will do everything it can to make sure former Negro League players, many of whom now live on fixed salaries, receive the new benefits.
"It's something we're very proud of," Calautti said of the program. "We will seek out every one of these Negro League players (who qualify). We'll try with all our heart and soul to find every one."
The announcement came on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education, which ordered an end to segregated schools.
"That principle is chiseled into stone with this agreement," Nelson said.
Inside his house, Mitchell put out shrimp on the dining room table to celebrate. He walked through his living room, under framed pictures of Duke Ellington and Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He showed Nelson pictures of himself as a barrel-chested young pitcher in Kansas City.
Mitchell said he felt glad to have won the battle to help aging black ballplayers, but then he stopped to correct himself.
"When I say the battle is done, I mean the main game is over," he said. "We still have some extra innings to go. We still have some guys left behind."
That will be work for another day. Monday offered time to rejoice, or at least take a sigh of relief.
Mitchell's friend, 76-year-old Lefty Bo Maddix, sat in the living room talking about his days as a pitcher with the Indianapolis Clowns. He recalled the season he led the league in strikeouts and said he might have found his way to the big leagues if not for a tour of military duty in Korea.
Now he has a check coming anyway, all these years later.
"I've been dreaming about that check for 40 years," he said. "It really eases your mind that at least somebody cares."
Maddix plans to buy a big-screen TV, better to watch the ball games on. And this:
