KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The crowd gathered on the corner of 22nd and Brooklyn. Shades of white, red and navy blue caught the eye in every direction. There were baseball jerseys and caps, T-shirts and flags. This was a Saturday morning at what was once Municipal Stadium, at what is now known as Monarch Plaza. And this was a celebration.
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As Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, hugged gatherers, Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas posed for pictures.
“This is amazing,” one man said. Another showed his son the commemorative Leroy “Satchel” Paige kiosk.
All at once, a whistle pierced through the air, and the Marching Cobras, an African American drill team of more than 50 years in the city, lined the street. A rhythmic beat clued the gatherers to the beginning of the March of the Monarchs. Down Brooklyn Avenue they went, the same route Negro League baseball players would take toward Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque 80 years ago. The rumble of the Cobras’ drums continued.
Kendrick was present for the entirety of the march. Lucas, too, and seemingly 100 more: City council members, Royals staffers, locals. They turned left down 18th Street and marched past the former home of the Kansas City Call newspaper, past the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and all the way to the end of the street. Behind the museum, marchers listened to jazz music, bought hot dogs and basked in weather fit for the occasion: an 80th anniversary celebration of the Monarchs sweeping the vaunted Homestead Grays to win the 1942 Negro Leagues World Series.
“We hope that this will become an annual tradition,” Kendrick said, “as we remember the great Kansas City Monarchs.”
Later on, Kendrick told a story the way only he can, about what happened one night after a Monarchs game inside the one-time jazz joint, the Subway Club. Players sat around sipping sweet tea, according to Kendrick, and a 17-year-old kid hopped up on stage and began blowing a horn in a way they’d never heard before. The kid, according to Kendrick’s story? Charlie Parker.
As is typically the case with Kendrick’s stories, you can close your eyes and picture it — almost drift back into the past, if you will. You can envision 1942, and you can imagine the kind of spirit this local baseball team stimulated for its community.
In May 1942, the Monarchs played their first home games against the Memphis Red Sox at what was then referred to as Ruppert Stadium, named after Yankees owner and one-time colonel Jacob Ruppert Jr.
A 50-piece band, composed of local high school students and many local bugle corps, signaled the season’s beginning. Dr. J.B. Martin, president of the Negro American League, was present. The Kansas City Star wrote about the event: “Satchel Paige, outstanding Negro hurler, will hurl the second game.”
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The Monarchs split the doubleheader in front of 8,964 fans. By July, though, the club had begun to flash its potential. On July 16, the Kansas City Times described the Monarchs as “the most entertaining as well as the most successful team in the Negro American League.”
Four reasons for the intrigue: Paige, right-hander Hilton Smith, outfielder Willard Brown and first baseman Buck O’Neil — four members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Fast forward to September, when the Monarchs won the Negro American League. Their opponent in the World Series? The Homestead Grays, who boasted Josh Gibson, Jud Wilson, Ray Brown and Buck Leonard.
Wendell Smith, who became the first African American recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award in 1993, outlined the series expectations like this in The Pittsburgh Courier: “The Grays had beaten the Monarchs four times in exhibition games before the series. … On paper, the Grays looked like a sure bet. But, unfortunately, they don’t play such important items as World Serieses on paper.”
They played the first game in Washington, D.C., at Griffith Stadium. Paige pitched five scoreless innings in front of 25,000 fans. The Associated Press wrote about the Monarchs’ 8-0 win this way: “The Monarchs clouted 13 blows off southpaw Roy Welmaker and capitalized off six Washington errors.” The next game was set for Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Once again, Paige took the mound with something to prove.
“I don’t suppose any ball club in the country has been so much trouble to the pride of Birmingham and the star of Kansas City as the galloping Grays from Homestead,” Wendell Smith wrote in the Courier. “Well, as they say among the mountain folk, ‘Satch’ is a-comin’ back Thursday night to get even and show citizens in these parts that that last tragedy was just one of those fateful nights in the career of a great pitcher.”
Paige, though, did not start the game for reasons not explained. Instead, Hilton Smith pitched five scoreless innings. Paige relieved. And the Monarchs won 8-4, taking the 2-0 series lead.
Next up was a game in New York City in front of 30,000 fans. Wendell Smith detailed the pregame atmosphere in which “the Grays started out with blood in their eyes.” They scored two runs off Paige in the first inning, but the climax, according to Smith, apparently occurred in the third. Paige struck out, but the ball rolled away from Gibson behind the plate, and Paige, in the words of Wendell Smith, “romped to first safely.” The Monarchs scored three runs that inning and won the game 9-3.
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The series’ most memorable game might have been the fourth in Kansas City at Ruppert Stadium. The Grays were dealing with injuries — Sam Bankhead, their shortstop, broke his arm — and started four new players in their lineup. They won 4-1, but the Monarchs protested, “charging the Grays with using ‘ringers,’” the Courier wrote. The Grays argued they had no alternative, but Kansas City won its appeal.
“And that, according to John Clark, Gray’s secretary, is the ‘inside story’ on the 1942 World Series,” the Courier wrote.
The Monarchs won the final game 9-5, at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Afterward, Wendell Smith complimented the Monarchs’ pitching corps, noting Paige in particular. He laid out the statistics — Paige struck out 18 and walked four in 16 2/3 innings — and completed his column: “And that, boys and girls, is the complete story of how the underdogs from Kansas City rose up and struck down the unsuspecting Giants from Homestead, Pa.”
Almost 80 years since the victory, you could smell charcoal on the smoker outside of the Negro Leagues Museum. Kendrick stood before the many in attendance and said into his microphone: “My friend Buck would be so proud.”
The night before, dignitaries had gathered at the newly rededicated Monarch Plaza, a project led by Kendrick and Kiona Sinks, the community engagement manager for the museum.
The museum received a $10,000 grant from local energy company Evergy to revitalize the area commemorating the stadium that was once home to the Monarchs, among so many other local teams.
Now, a day later, the city’s mayor was walking behind the Marching Cobras and bouncing back and forth to the beat of their drums. Young boys and girls were listening to their parents tell them stories about the meaning behind the day, and what the Monarchs and the Negro Leagues stood for.
The scene was vibrant. It felt like a party. It felt right.
(Top photo of Quinton Lucas, left, and Bob Kendrick: Alec Lewis / The Athletic)
