Pioneer in Pinstripes: The Ted Washington Story

The Phillies career of Ted Washington — the first Black player signed by the club — ended before it truly began. But his remarkable story lives on.

By Kenny Ayres

The date was April 25, 1953, and Ted Washington was far from where he wanted to be. A few weeks prior, and only a few hundred miles away at Phillies minor league spring training, his life looked vastly different. Now, as he got situated in his barracks, he felt like there was something he needed to put on record. The 19-year-old took out a blue pen and began spelling his thoughts out on a large piece of paper in neat, straight handwriting. His words said everything, yet left so much unsaid.

“On the following pages are clippings which will serve as an aid in the remembrance of my sports days. From high school at Camden High in Camden, New Jersey, where I played baseball and football. My days of playing baseball with the Philadelphia Stars. My days with Dunbar in Camden. Then, of my days with the Philadelphia Phillies, with whom I started on their farm team on March 24, 1953. However, on April 12, 1953, I returned home because I was called to the Army. That is where I am now, on April 25, 1953. I wish to name certain persons to whom I am greatly indebted. Mr. Tony Alfano and Mr. Joe Papiano, who were my coaches at Camden High School. Mr. Eddie Gottlieb of the Philadelphia Stars. Mr. Oscar Charleston, manager of the Stars, and Mr. Johnstone helped many Negro boys get a start. All mentioned and others, I owe my success.”

• • • • • • • • • •

Theodore “Ted” Washington was born in 1933 in Estill, Miss., where he spent his early childhood with his brothers, Frank and Clyde, and parents, Clyde Sr. and Althea. As a young boy, the family settled in St. Louis, Mo. It was there, around age 10, that he first played baseball on the local sandlots.

In high school, Washington, his mother and Clyde moved to New Jersey, ultimately ending up in Camden. Frank and his father stayed behind in Missouri.

“He wound up on [Kossuth Street], right next to a park called Seventh and Jefferson Staley Park, which had a baseball field and a strong history of Negro League and Black baseball,” said Arnold Byrd, Washington’s friend and teammate in various Camden-area leagues.

Washington enrolled at Camden High School, where he immediately found success on the school’s football and baseball teams, playing for coaches Tony Alfano and Joe Papiano. On the gridiron, he played halfback, routinely dazzling the opponents with long touchdown runs. On the diamond, he was a slick-fielding shortstop who, according to Camden Courier-Post writer Charlie Shuck, “covered a lot of ground and threw with cannon-like force” and was “dangerous at the plate and an able hitter in the clutch.”

At 5-foot-11 and 175 pounds, it was not musculature and strength that helped Washington, who was described as a “lean and lanky kid with spindly legs,” excel in athletics.

“One of his coaches used to take him home and feed him spaghetti dinners because he said he needed to gain some weight,” joked Beverly Winters, Washington’s longtime companion.

Rather, it was his speed and athleticism. One time, he learned that Jesse Owens — albeit middle-aged at the time — was in town. They somehow met and ended up racing. Washington won.

“He was probably the fastest one playing,” Byrd said. “If I had to rate him, he’d be at the top of the list in both sports, especially in baseball. He was slender but he could hit a long ball.”

He soon found baseball outside of the high school team. Or rather, it found him. Sought after by local sandlot teams, which played on fields such as the very one by his house, Washington began his local career playing for Dunbar Athletic Club in the Gottschalk Twilight League.

“It was called the Twilight League, because it would get dark and there were no lights back then,” said John Pettigrew, who played sandlot ball and softball with Washington in the late 1950s and 1960s. “Sandlot ball was the thing back then. Back in those days, the bleachers were full and they used to pass a hat to pay the umpires. There were big crowds in wooden stands on both sides.”

It was on those fields that younger local players, such as Byrd and Pettigrew, were introduced to the budding star. They would hang around the fields during practices, and Washington always made sure to include them.

“We would spend two or three hours out in the outfield shagging fly balls when they were doing batting practice,” Byrd said. “He would always let me bat before we went in. I loved being with him. He was always respectful and would always encourage us.”

By 1951, his junior year of high school, Washington’s exploits on the school team and in the local leagues had turned him into one of the city’s premier athletes. When he played, people took notice. Papiano had even quietly predicted Washington was “major league material.” He wasn’t the only one who thought that.

“It wasn’t long before all eyes in Camden were turned in his direction,” stated a report in the Courier-Post.

“Everybody knew him,” Winters said.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Satchel Paige was nearly three times Ted Washington’s age. He had been pitching in the Negro Leagues and the majors for more than two decades, racking up over 100 wins and 1,400.0 innings, and those are just the ones that were documented. He was weeks away from his return to Major League Baseball with St. Louis in 1951 when he faced the Stars as a member of the Chicago American Giants.

If the 17-year-old Washington, who had just completed his junior year of high school, was nervous, the screaming line drive he hit back up the middle for a single said otherwise. It was one of the first hits he ever collected in professional baseball, and he hadn’t yet officially signed a contract with the team, the Philadelphia Stars of the Negro American League.

Quite the start of Washington’s pro career, the entire duration of which occurred before he turned 20.

“That was his biggest thrill, he thought that was pretty cool,” Winters said. “It made him feel pretty good that he could go up against somebody like that. Nobody hit [Paige]. That was the one thing he was [most] proud of.”

It was Alfano, Washington’s high school coach, who tipped off Stars owner Eddie Gottlieb and manager Oscar Charleston about the young shortstop. Usually looking for players in the South, which incurred hefty travel costs, the Stars welcomed a tryout that cost the team just a “phone call and a token fare,” per Philadelphia Tribune reporter Malcolm Poindexter.

Charleston, a future Hall of Famer who is considered one of the greatest Negro Leagues players of all time, attended personally. He had been briefly familiarized with Washington when the youngster played a game for the Indianapolis Clowns against his Stars earlier in the summer, and wanted to take another look. According to Poindexter, “so brilliantly did the young prospect perform both at bat and afield, [Charleston] immediately signed him to a contract.”

The kid that hit Satchel Paige hit just about everyone else, too, finishing his rookie season with a .325 batting average for the Stars. After a shaky start defensively, he became a premier shortstop under the tutelage of veteran teammate Milton Smith. According to Poindexter, it was Smith who developed “much of the ability” shown by Washington at the position.

“He used to help him out and give him tips about playing shortstop,” Winters recalled Washington telling her.

Toward the end of the season, Charleston raved about the youngster, saying he “is possibly the most improved player on the team with his great performance at shortstop. He pivots with more ease and grace than you’ll find in the majors.”

He went on to say that he “figures him to be another Jake Stevens, Dick Lundy or John Henry Lloyd” by the end of his career. Lloyd, a Hall of Famer himself, is known as one of the greatest shortstops in Negro Leagues history. Coming from Charleston, the comparison was not light.

But professional baseball, especially for a young African American traveling to all parts of the country, had its share of difficulties. Not everything could be solved with a quick bat and a strong throwing arm. It also meant having thick skin.

“In the Negro Leagues, he ran across some tough people from all walks of life, and it got pretty rowdy,” said Terry Washington, Ted’s younger son. “But knowing my father and the way he took racism, he took it with stride. It was what he did and how he behaved himself that meant more to him than what was happening to him. I never saw him complain about racism. He commented on it, but I never saw it get to him in a way that would keep him from how he lived his life. That meant more to him than any adversity he might have faced.”

“He said it was really a lot of fun but scary because it was so much different than playing ball at the lot down the street,”

Winters added.

Washington re-signed with the Stars the following year in April, just before graduating high school. His sophomore season was even better than his rookie campaign. In early August, he was hitting over .300, and had just put together a three-hit night with a triple at Shibe Park to lead the Stars to a win over the Indianapolis Clowns. A week later, he was one of four Stars players selected to play in the East-West Game (the Negro Leagues All-Star Game) at Comiskey Park in Chicago on Aug. 17. He singled and scored a run in the contest.

Around that time, Negro American League President Dr. J.B. Martin honored Washington with a lofty comparison in The Philadelphia Tribune.

“With the Philly Stars, however, is a young fellow whose name someday may be revered just as much by baseball fans as that of Charleston.”

Washington finished the season with a .340 average, ending his Stars career the way he began it — with a bang.

• • • • • • • • • • •

The rumors started swirling in early September 1952. The Phillies, who not only had never had a Black player in the majors, but had never signed a Black player to a contract, were poised to do just that. The player was a local kid, just out of high school, but with two tremendous seasons under his belt with the Philadelphia Stars. It was Ted Washington.

A few weeks later, the club made it official. The Stars, who would fold that offseason, unconditionally released Washington so he could join the city’s National League squad, and on Sept. 16 he was signed for a salary of $250 a month. Washington was officially the first Black player ever signed to a contract by the team.

“I was so proud that he signed with the Phillies, because at that time they had no African-American ballplayers,” Byrd said. “We were just hoping Teddy would be the first.”

The signing garnered much attention in the press, with wire reports syndicated in papers all across the country. African-American publications such as The Philadelphia Tribune had reporters covering the news with stories on the contract and on Washington’s career to that point.

He was given No. 10, the same number he wore in high school, and was assigned to the club’s Class-C affiliate in Granby, Quebec, Canada for the 1953 season. On March 7, just before minor league spring training, a story was published in the Pittsburgh Post in which Phillies secretary and public relations official George Fletcher commented that the club was “sold” on Washington and that “he would seem to be a bright prospect” and “like he can make the grade.”

On March 24, Washington journeyed to Laurinburg, N.C., where the Granby team, along with other lower-level Phillies affiliates, was training. According to a report from the local paper, all of the players except Washington, the only Black player, were housed at Laurinburg tourist homes. He was housed separately.

A few weeks later, Local Draft Boards 8 and 9 selected 63 men from Camden County to serve in the armed forces. Washington appeared on only one roster that spring, and it wasn’t Granby’s.

One Canadian writer wrote in Le Revue de Granby how “the famously talented shortstop,” who was a “very promising player,” had joined the Army, and that it would be a “huge loss” for the team.

“He was excited to be the first African-American player to be signed by the Phillies, but when he was drafted he didn’t know where it was going to go,” Winters said.

It was shortly after that when he picked up his pen and started writing.

“On the following pages…”

• • • • • • • • • • •

He may have traded his Phillies uniform in for fatigues, and had his title switched from “shortstop” to “Private First Class,” but the ballfields still managed to find Ted Washington after his minor league career was so abruptly paused before it even started.

“He got on their ball team almost immediately once they found out he could play,” Winters recalled.

Stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., and serving in the 188th Airborne Regiment as a paratrooper, Washington joined their team, called the Eagles. He mostly played second base, and his double-play partner at shortstop, coincidentally, was a man named Dolson Ayers — another Phillies farmhand who was drafted into the Army around the same time and had spent the 1952 season at Granby, where Washington was set to play in 1953. Neither man knew about the other’s baseball careers, despite spending much time together on the diamond in Kentucky.

“We never talked about the Phillies,” Ayers recalled. “We didn’t know the other was [with them]. I don’t know why.”

Washington picked up right where he left off, hitting at a high clip while adding home run power. Headlines back home referred to him as a “service star.” His team went 29–3 in 1954, easily winning the nine-team Fort Campbell Post League.

“He was a good ballplayer,” Ayers said. “I enjoyed playing next to him. He did a very good job for us at second base. We could turn a double play. I never knew what happened to him after the service.”

“When I followed him in the service, he still had a reputation of being one of the best baseball players to ever play in the [armed forces],” Byrd said. “I remember playing in a couple areas and they’d say, ‘You’re from Camden? Do you know Ted Washington?’ He had the reputation, and well earned.”

Eighteen months into his service, while enjoying his latest successful baseball venture, Washington and Miss Ann Greene got married. Even with his pro career halted, the future looked as bright as it ever had.

Until the jump.

“He mentioned that is where he possibly got hurt,” Terry Washington said. “I remember a conversation with him about that.”

It was a training exercise, and he was supposed to make three jumps off a tower.

“You had to make a [certain number] of jumps a month to keep your pay,” Ayers, a fellow paratrooper, said. “They had a jump tower you jumped out of, over what they called the training course. It was easy enough to hurt yourself. Sometimes you came down a little hard on the ground. You’re supposed to roll, and he might have rolled a bit badly. Paratroopers could be dangerous.”

“They agreed to let him only do one jump because he played ball for them and they didn’t want him to get hurt,” Winters explained.

He did get hurt on that jump, though he didn’t realize the severity of it right away. In the spring of 1955, his wife reported to the local paper that he was due home shortly and would soon after report to minor league spring training with the Phillies, with whom he was still under contract.

On March 18, he signed his contract for the 1955 season, for $325 a month. The team wanted him to have surgery to repair his injured arm. Washington did not even consider it. His mother passed away on the operating table when he was younger, and he was terrified of surgery.

On April 26, three years and a day from the date he reported to the armed forces, he was released by the Phillies.

“He had to shot put the ball. Before he hurt his arm, he had one of the strongest arms in the world,” Byrd said. “He’d go into deep shortstop and you were in trouble. I was hurt when Ted came back from the war and his arm was bad. It’s my opinion, but my God, that was the only thing that stopped him being the first [Black player to play for the Phillies].”

“It must have been a blow,” said Terry Washington. “Number one, to get drafted and have to go into the service. Then to come back and his arm not be where it was before. I can imagine him being disappointed, but knowing the way he handled disappointment, he would have shaken it off and kept going.”

That’s exactly what he did. With his arm healed at least enough to play locally, Washington regained his status as one of the top players in the South Jersey area in 1956–57. He played for the Travelers in the Gottschalk Twilight League, the Moffa’s in the Camden County League and an all-Black team called Onyx, where he was teammates with Arnold Byrd.

“For about two years, that was the best semi-pro team in the area,” Byrd said. “We played everywhere. We would win and Ted was instrumental.

“I would not be ashamed to say that he was the best African-American baseball player that I have ever seen on a personal basis and played with. He didn’t play long, but for about three or four years, he was the best in that area to do it.”

• • • • • • • • • • •

Terry Washington did not always know his father was a Negro League All-Star, or that he recorded a hit off Satchel Paige when he was barely old enough to drive. Even some of the more granular details of his father’s playing career, he discovered only recently after seeking out those who played with his father or watched him.

He did know that his father was the first Black player signed by the Phillies, but only found that out because his uncle brought it up at a gathering, and his mother showed him the clippings. The same clippings that later accompanied Washington’s handwritten note in a scrapbook from the day he joined the service.

“He was a humble guy. He didn’t talk about himself at all, to tell you the truth,” his son said. “You had to usually find out from someone else, or ask questions. And I didn’t ask too many questions back then.”

“He never acted like he was good at it,” Winters said. “The first time I saw the book his mom had made for him with all the articles, he was kind of embarrassed by it. I was like, ‘You were really good!’ I was shocked. He said, ‘Eh, a long time ago.’ He didn’t brag about anything he did.”

But he wasn’t withdrawn. In fact, he was the contrary. His son recalls him enjoying spending time with his family and great friends, and his dedication to his job at Radio Corporation of America (RCA), where he started immediately after his release from the Phillies and worked for 44 years until retirement, first as a circuit tester and later in management roles. It was at one of the company happy hours that he met Beverly Winters.

“He liked to be the life of the party, he talked to everybody,” Winters said. “He was very friendly, loved to dance, always seemed to be happy and wanted to have a good time. He was a good bowler, too. He had his own bowling team at one point called Teddy’s Angels. He just liked being around people.”

It’s for those reasons, as much as his skill on the diamond, that his family and friends believe he had what it would take to become the first Black player in the majors for the Phillies. Only six years had passed since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and it was by no means an easy road for African-American players who did make the majors. How one dealt with adversity meant a great deal, perhaps as much as skill itself. Nearly two decades after his passing in 2005, those who were closest to him still believe Washington had both the makeup and physical gifts to thrive at the game’s highest level and during its most tumultuous time for Black players.

“I’m pretty confident,” Terry Washington said. “I think he would have done well. I’d like to think so… I was always impressed with his life. He left a legacy of class.”

“He didn’t think that he was anything special, “Winters said. “But believe me, he was special.”