John Beckwith

Beckwith was big and strong, a right-handed slugger who weighed 230 pounds, which is very unusual for a shortstop, and he hit some of the longest and most talked about home runs in Negro Leagues baseball. “Double Duty” Radcliffe once said that nobody hit the ball farther than Beckwith, not even Josh Gibson, whose home runs were legendary.

Beckwith’s fatal flaws were a tendency to be a little lazy in the field and a fiery temper and mean disposition. I’ve heard that in one game, Beckwith made an error that cost pitcher Bill Holland a ballgame and so enraged Holland that he threw his glove on the ground in disgust. Angry that he was being shown up by a teammate, Beckwith walked over to Holland and decked him with his right hand.

“He really was mean,” Buck said. “They said he used to knock out teammates when they said something to him. Mean as a snake. But you know, that shouldn’t have anything to do with the Hall of Fame. I don’t like it when people start talking about how a man is off the field.

Baltimore also had managerial difficulties related to discipline among the players, and even the fans, because the players often acted like men who never really grew up. After John Beckwith forced the team to name him manager in 1925 to keep him from leaving, he had trouble with the players who disliked the way he ran the team. Beckwith got into further trouble when he hit an umpire during a game in Harrisburg in August 1925. Baltimore finally had to let him go to restore peace in the clubhouse and on the field.

Beckwith was a real boomer. He hit .480 in 1930, with 19 homers in 50 games; also hit 16 homers in 51 games in 1931, which still led the league. Built about like Bobby Bonilla, he was by far the biggest third baseman, and one of the biggest and strongest men in the league.

Beckwith was a right-handed hitter who pulled everything, so other teams would stack their defense against him, putting a third infielder on the left side of the infield. Babe Ruth, who played against him, said that “not only can Beckwith hit harder than any Negro ball player, but any man in the world.”

John Beckwith, dubbed “the Black Bomber” by biographer John Holway, was one of the most devastating hitters ever to play baseball. The native of Louisville, Kentucky, broke into black baseball as a catcher with the Montgomery Gray Sox at the tender age of 14.