Baseball Star Who Was Denied Gets Belated Recognition

At 73, Lonnie Summers doesn’t step up to the plate anymore. Or signal the man standing 60 feet, 6 inches away on the mound. But when the former catcher and batting star picked up a bat in the living room of his Inglewood home the other day, he instinctively held it up as if ready to take a cut.

“Wait a minute,” he said in the middle of a conversation about the good old days, disappearing into another room. He came back with a team photo, disappeared again and returned with a huge stack of tattered newspaper clippings from decades ago. The mementos, and the memories they evoked, had not been hauled out for a while.

Things were different during his years behind the plate, Summers recalled. The bus rides were long, the pay was low. And, oh yeah, blacks played on different ball diamonds from whites.

Summers, an Oklahoma native who hung up his glove in 1954, is one of an estimated 140 survivors of the Negro Leagues, the sole professional baseball forum for blacks in the United States before Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey began the integration of the major leagues by signing Jackie Robinson in 1945.

“Lonnie was one of those big strong ballplayers who hit powerful line drives,” said Chico Renfroe, an Atlanta-based sportswriter. “He hit some of the most screaming line drives you’ve seen in your life.”

Summers, whose wife died recently, said it has been a long time since he’s thought about his glory days--the game in a league in Mexico in which he drove in 11 runs, or the Negro League All-Star Game in Chicago’s Comiskey Park in which he played with Jim Gilliam, a star second baseman for the Baltimore Elite Giants who went on to sign with the Dodgers and become rookie of the year in the majors in 1953.

Baseball was not on Summers’ mind, he said, when he received a phone call last month inviting him to receive a plaque from the Inglewood City Council. The recognition was part of a nationwide program organized by Renfroe, himself a former Negro League player, and sponsored by the Southern Bell telephone company of Atlanta to ensure that young people do not forget the trailblazers of the Negro League.

“It’s a part of history, and they’re dying off so fast,” Renfroe said. “People still tell me they didn’t know there was a separate league for blacks.”

Summers’ professional career began in the late 1930s when he played for the Elite Giants for a few years. Then, for the next 15 years, he played on teams in Mexico, Puerto Rico and various countries in South America before returning to the Negro League’s Chicago American Giants. He ended his career playing in a semi-professional integrated league based in San Diego.

Baseball could be an especially grueling game back then, Summers said.

“I once played a double-header in Chicago, rode all night to Philadelphia to play one game and then headed out that day to play in Chicago again. After you took a shower, you sometimes didn’t even have time to get something to eat before the bus left.”

The bus trips were long and tedious. And when the team finally reached its destination, there were segregated hotels, restaurants and water fountains to contend with.

Renfroe said gas station water fountains marked “Colored” had lukewarm water, while the ones marked “White” offerred cold water.

Summers recalled when he and his teammates entered a packed restaurant in Detroit after a game and were told by the manager that the eating establishment was closed. But they protested that the place was full. It was closed, the manager insisted.

They ate down the street.

Summers said black team members knew to stay out of certain parts of town. Meanwhile, the routine of playing and then quickly moving on to the next game kept racial incidents to a minimum, he said.

Summers said getting a chance to play in the majors did not prey on his mind during his career. Negro League baseball was competitive and its teams frequently beat major league teams during exhibition games. “I played against the best and with the best,” he said.

But looking back, Summers said, he does sometimes feel cheated out of the big time. Once Robinson broke the color line, such Negro Leaguers as Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, Ernie Banks and Hank Aaron--players whose advantage over him at the time was their youth--would go on to the majors, he noted. “It just shows that we could have done it all along,” Summers said.

Summers moved to Los Angeles after he left baseball and became a janitor in Los Angeles schools. He retired in the mid-1980s after 29 1/2 years on the job.

Baseball, once his obsession, has lost some of its charm for him over the years, he said. He has been invited to Dodger Stadium as a dignitary but has turned down the offer. He still occasionally gets to the ballpark, but prefers to sit by himself in the bleachers.

“If I go to the ballpark now I don’t let anyone know I’m there,” he said. “I go to watch the game, not to celebrate anything.”

Summers said he had second thoughts about receiving the plaque from Inglewood, but he ultimately decided to accept it. Now, next to the team pictures and other baseball snapshots lining the walls of his home is a fancy proclamation. “Read it,” he says. “It’s all true.”

“These players,” it says, “endured countless miles on the road, accommodations which were less than accommodating (and) pay which was no reflection of their talents and efforts. The strides made, the trails blazed, the sacrifices endured . . . and the heights reached will forever maintain their place in history.”