“Whenever we would go down into Texas to play, there would always be some really hard competition. Those boys down there in Texas could really play! I mean, it wasn’t just the organized professional teams. There were a lot of colleges that had serious teams, places like Wylie and Tillotson College down in Austin. Texas College had some really good college boys playing for them. They gave us good games all the time we were down there,” recalled George Giles, the late Kansas City Monarchs star. “You know, Willie Wells was from Texas. So was Rube Foster. Texas has always had a reputation for putting out good ballplayers.”
From 1920 through the late 1940s black baseball flourished in the Lone Star State, from the sandlot level to the diamonds of the Texas Negro League and Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana League. High school baseball in east and central Texas too a back seat to none, and semi-pro black squads represented towns as large as Houston and as small as Pittsburgh.
From this environment came many of the brightest stars of the Negro National and American leagues – stars like Willie Wells, Ernie Banks, Newt Allen and Hilton Smith. While these stars made their reputations in the urban centers of the East and Midwest, Marlin Carter, another Texan, was establishing himself as the premier third baseman in Southern Negro baseball.
In a professional career spanning 22 seasons, Marlin Carter earned his place as one of Negro baseball’s finest and most durable infielders. From the rugged competition of the Texas Negro Leagues in the 1920s, through Negro baseball’s golden era in the 1940s, Carter lived a dream formed on the sandlots of East Texas.
Marlin Carter is only a month shy of his 80th birthday. Since 1933, when he joined the Memphis Red Sox as a flashy, young infielder, Carter has spent most of his birthdays in the town where he built a reputation as one of Negro baseball’s best. But, when the topic comes up, he is quick to point out that, despite his long absence from the Lone Star State, he will always be a Texan.
“My father is buried in Marshal, Texas, just a few miles from the little town of Haslam, where I was born,” Marlin points out. “I lived most of my life away from East Texas, but I was born there, and I guess I will always think of myself as a Texan.
“Haslam was right there by the Louisiana line, only 48 miles from Shreveport, Louisiana. My father was a carpenter, and he moved the family to Shreveport, where he could find work, when I was just a kid. But, I spent a lot of time in East Texas. And, since I was born there, I’m a Texan.”
Growing up in Shreveport, Carter found himself surrounded by baseball, and in a family where baseball was taken seriously. “I was always involved in sports when I was growing up. My older brother, T. C. Carter, started me playing baseball,” Carter recalled. “My brother was a good player, and he was set on being a professional. During the 1920s, when I was in school, T. C. started playing ball with the Little Rock Stars. I guess I wanted to follow my older brother, so I was hoping to make it as a ballplayer too. It wasn’t just baseball for me, though. When I was in school, I played football and baseball. I was always into whatever sports came along.”
As a high school player, Carter found stiff competition in Shreveport. During those years he struck up friendships with numerous rival players – friendships that would follow him from Shreveport through more than twenty years in professional baseball. “When I was going to high school,” Carter recounts, “there were a lot of good players in Shreveport. I got to know several of them pretty well – made some good friends. When we started out in professional baseball, we all went in together.”
“I went to L.C.I. High School in Shreveport and played on the school team. Willard Brown, who was a big star in with the Kansas City Monarchs and played with the St. Louis Browns later, was going to school across town at Central High School. We played against each other and got to be friends. When my brother, T. C., got us a chance to try out for Shreveport’s professional team, Willard and I, and a couple of other Shreveport boys, like Barney Morris (later a New York Cubans star) went together.”
“I started out,” Carter remembers aloud, “with the Shreveport Black Sports. T. C. had been playing over in Little Rock with the Stars. Then in 1926 he moved over to the Black Sports. That was the last year that Shreveport was in the Texas Negro League. Anyway, Willard Brown and I got a tryout with the team, and even though I was only fifteen years old at that time, I made the team. So did Willard.”
Many modern sports historians have regarded the Texas Negro League as a minor league caliber circuit. On this point, the historians will get an argument from Carter. “Competition in the league was always tough. Some of the best black players at that time were down in Texas. It’s hard to say that the teams in that league weren’t as good as the teams that were playing in the Negro National League. Back then the Negro National League, Rube Foster’s league, didn’t have a whole lot of teams. There were a lot more great players than could play on just those teams. There were great players, many who later became stars in the Negro National and American leagues, that were playing in the Texas Negro League and the Southern League back then.”
“The Texas Negro League was tough in several ways,”, Marlin continued. “The competition was tough, but the life was pretty tough, too. We didn’t always have the best means of getting around from place to place. The traveling was hard. But, the parks we played in were good places for playing baseball. We mainly played in the parks owned by the Texas League teams – the white teams. We would use those parks for most of the league games. Raising his voice sharply to emphasize the point, Carter insists, “The toughest thing about the Texas Negro League, though, was being a rookie!”
“The older players could make it pretty hard on you if you were just coming in,” Marlin explains. “When I was with Shreveport, and then when I went to San Antonio, I was considered a rookie in both places. After the 1926 season, the Shreveport team dropped out of the league. The next season I went to the San Antonio Black Indians. At first, it was really a hard situation in San Antonio. The team had a lot of older players who saw any young player as a threat – a threat to their jobs. They weren’t about to welcome someone who might challenge them for their positions. So, it wasn’t a good situation there at first.”
“Reuben Jones, who was managing the Black Indians in 1927, made it easier than it would have been otherwise,” Carter continues. “He was a good manager, and a good fellow. After playing under him at San Antonio, I played on two other teams that he managed. He always treated the ballplayers well.” “The other thing that was hard,” Carter remembers with a laugh, “was getting paid. There was never a lot of money, and getting your share of it wasn’t easy. I had a couple of bad experiences with not being paid what I had coming, but I got through them and continued on. I wanted to lay baseball.”
His arrival in San Antonio in 1927 began a five year stint in the Alamo city for Carter. During that time, the league was composed of the Dallas Black Giants, Houston Black Buffaloes, Austin Black Senators and an Oklahoma City team that was awarded the franchise of the defunct Shreveport club. In addition to regular league games, the Black Indians often played exhibition contests against the Little Rock Black Travelers, and such independent black teams as the Fort Worth Wonders.
“I left the San Antonio team,” Carter relates, “in the spring of 1932 to accept an offer from the Monroe (La.) Monarchs. The Monroe team was paying more money, and playing with that team had a lot of advantages. In Monroe,” Carter remembers with fondness, “we even had our own casino! That’s right. The owner of the team, a wealthy plantation owner named Fred Stovall, put up a casino on his property.”
“Fred Stovall was a very wealth man. On his plantation he built a ballpark for his team. He also built a recreation center where the players relaxed when we weren’t playing. Stovall spent a lot of money on his ball team,” Carter says enthusiastically. “The players lived in houses on Stovallïs plantation, and our meals were prepared by a cook that Stovall employed. In ’32, he bought three brand new Fords for the team to travel in. But, most important,” an emphatic Carter continues, “I always got paid! You know, that was the main thing when you played baseball back then – were you going to get paid? All the way around, the Monarchs was a pretty classy operation.”
During the early 1930s, when the onset of the Depression was causing the collapse of the Negro National League, Fred Stovall and other monied white Southerners like him, were reviving the long lived, but always financially pressured, Negro Southern League. In 1932, the NSL attracted several of the former member teams of the defunct original Negro National League.
During the 1932 season, the NSL included the best professional teams in the South and Midwest, from Montgomery to Chicago. The league was made up of the Chicago American Giants, Montgomery Grey Sox, Memphis Red Sox, Louisville Black Caps, Indianapolis ABCs, Nashville Elite Giants, and, of course, Stovall’s Monroe Monarchs. It was during the early thirties, as well, that another Southern plantation owner with a passion for baseball devoted his financial resources to assembling a powerhouse entry for the Negro Souther League – the Claybrook Tigers. J. C. Claybrook, whose Tigers operated from the unlikely town of Claybrook Arkansas, put together an impressive series of teams during the early 1930s, attracting some of Negro baseball’s best talent with solid salaries and uncommonly appealing fringe benefits. Marlin Carter remembers his Negro Southern League rivals as the equal of Stovall’s Monarchs.
“J. C. Claybrook,” Carter declares with a hint of wonderment in his voice. “there was an interesting man! Like Fred Stovall, Claybrook was willing to spend a lot of money on his baseball team. When it came to the baseball team, he did everything first class!”
“I remember,” Carter continues, “when Claybrook hired Double Duty Radcliffe to manage his team. I think it was in 1937. Now, Double Duty was never one to be bashful about what he wanted, and one of the things he wanted was for the ballplayers to dress sharp. Radcliffe thought that all the players should wear nice suits whenever they were out in public. So, right after he arrived at Claybrook’s plantation, Double duty went to see Mr. Claybrook and told him, ïI don’t want to manage no raggedy looking ballplayers. If I’m going to manage this team, you are going to have to buy these guys some clothes.’ Well, most team owners wouldn’t have gone for that kind of demand. They would have told the players to buy their own clothes with their salary. But, J. C. wanted a good looking team, too. So, he sent Radcliffe to town, telling him to go to the men’s store, buy some suits for all the players, and have the bill sent back to the plantation. That’s the kind of treatment the players got from Claybrook.”
As for Claybrook’s ability to field a quality baseball team, Carter observes, “The Claybrook Tigers were a first class team. They won the Negro Southern League championship a couple of times. But, we had a good team in Monroe, too,” Carter continues. “The Monarchs drew big crowds in Monroe, even though it wasn’t such a big place. In fact,” Carter adds, “when the teams from the North would come to the South for their spring training and exhibition games, they would always want to stay in Monroe because Stovall had such a good setup. And, the people in the Monroe area always treated the visiting teams so well!”
It was in Monroe that Carter had one of his first big thrills in professional baseball – an opportunity to bat against the legendary Satchel Paige. For Carter, the event ranks as one of his most cherished baseball memories.
“In 1932,” Carter starts, “the Pittsburgh Crawfords were the biggest thing in Negro baseball. Everybody knew that the Crawfords had a team that you couldn’t hardly beat. For their spring training and early games, the Crawfords came down South. When they came, Satchel Paige was with them. That was the first time I saw Satchel.”
“It was Good Friday when the Monarchs played against the Crawfords for the first time,” Carter continues with obvious delight in the telling. “I didn’t get in the starting lineup that day, and I was really anxious to get in the game and bat against Satchel. Late in the game, I was called to pinch hit for Leroy Morney, and I was determined that I was going to get a hit off Satchel. Well, like you might have known, he struck me out!”
Recalling the event, Carter bursts into laughter, then continues, “I got my revenge, though, a week later. We played the Crawfords, and Satchel was pitching again. I hit a bullet right back at the mound. Satchel had to dodge, and the ball went through for a hit. I guess I’ll always remember that. It was one of the best moments in my career.”
Revived by the infusion of money and determination from Pittsburgh rackets man, Gus Greenlee, the Negro National League was resurrected in 1933. The Negro Southern League lost some of its strongest members, the Nashville Elite Giants and the Chicago American Giants. With the restructuring of the leagues, many players scattered to new teams. Marlin Carter was among them.
“In 1933, when the Negro National League started out, I went to Memphis to play for the Red Sox. The Red Sox were doing well in the Negro Southern League,” Carter explains. “So, the team owners didn’t want to leave that league. Memphis was a good place to play, and it was a pretty good place to live. All the Northern players wanted to come to Memphis to mess around Beale Street! That was quite a place then.”
After playing two seasons in Memphis, I moved again to Cincinnati. The team up in Cincinnati, the Tigers, had some of the best players around, and the money was pretty good. “Neil Robinson, Jelly Taylor, Mule Suttles, Ted Radcliffeƒthat’s just some of the players that we had in Cincinnati when I was there. We played home games in Crosley Field, where the Reds played. It was a big league type operation. I stayed with Cincinnati for three years, 1935 through 1937, then went back home to Texas, to Haslam.”
“Over the winter of ’37 I decided that I would go back to Memphis in the spring. When spring came, there were some contract problems with Memphis, so I looked around for somewhere else to play.” The place Carter found was with a now legendary Texas barnstorming team based in the little, East Texas town of Mineola.
“There was a team over in Mineola, Texas,” Carter recollects, “called the Black Spiders. The team was owned by a white man named Klingaman. It was a barnstorming team that went all over Texas and Oklahoma, and even down to Mexico. Later in the year they would go up North through the Midwest and Iowa. The Spiders played in tournaments all over the country, too.”
“The Spiders were managed by Reuben Jones, who had been my manager at San Antonio. He wanted me to play with Mineola, so I agreed to play with the Spiders until things got straightened out with Memphis. Klingaman was a nice fellow, but he couldn’t pay much money. I stayed there just a few weeks before I got back with the Red Sox, but I had a good time while I was there. They had a lot of young platers – a lot of boys from the small towns in that part of Texas. Jones made them into a pretty good team.”
Like most players, Carter’s season didn’t always end with the close of the regular baseball season. After the league season came to an end, there were usually fall tournament teams or exhibition teams waiting. During the 1930s, the Baltimore Elite Giants regularly assembled one of the best winter baseball teams to compete in California’s winter league. In 1939, Carter joined a group of black baseball’s best and trekked to California to play with the Baltimore Elite Giants winter squad.
“The team that played in the winter as the Baltimore Elite Giants,” Carter explains, wasn’t really the regular Baltimore team. Tom Wilson, who owned the Elites, would put together good players from a lot of different teams, a sort of all-star team, and enter them in the California Winter League.”
“Vernon Green, who was the Elite Giants’ business manager, would take the team to California for the winter. Green was a good businessman, and he ran the team just like he ran the Elite Giants during the regular season. It was serious baseball. We all called Green “Fat Pappy” because he was the one you saw about getting your money. Everybody liked him. He was a good fellow.”
“The team we had in California in 1939 was, really, and all-star team. We had Pepper Bassett, Bill Wright, Hesse Walker, William Harvey, Mule Suttles, James Westƒa lot of the best players. That winter was the first time I saw Bob Feller.” “Feller pitched against us, I think it was in Los Angeles. It was a very close game. After several scoreless innings William Harvey tripled off Feller, then scored on my single. The final score was 1Ü0. We wound up winning the league championship that year in California.”
Like most fans who followed Negro baseball and its players, Carter marks his career mainly by his years with the Memphis Red Sox. “I was there with Memphis,” Carter declares, “longer than just about anybody, except Larry Brown and Verdell Mathis. I was with the Red Sox the second time from 1938 through the end of 1942, when I was drafted into the Coast Guard. I was with the Red Sox when I made the all-star team in 1942., and that’s what most people remember about my career.”
Like many players, white and black, Carter’s career was interrupted in 1942 by military service. From late 1942 through 1945 Carter served in the Coast Guard. at the end of the war, he migrated to st. Louis with a group of other ballplayers, wondering if he could get his baseball career back on track.
“Somehow, after the war, I wound up in St. Louis,” Carter recounts. “Fred Bankhead was there. So was Ted Radcliffe and some other guys. We were just waiting around, hoping that we could get back into baseball. I wasn’t there too long before Jelly Taylor came up from Memphis to talk about getting me back with the Red Sox. He wanted to bring Bankhead and Radcliffe back to Memphis, too. So, we all went with him down to Hot Springs for a couple of weeks to get ready to play again. Then, I was back with the Red Sox.”
Carter’s post-war stay in Memphis was short lived. In 1947 he migrated to the Chicago American Giants, where he played only two seasons. With the Rochester Royals, a Class A white team, Carter played his last season in 1950.
“By 1950, I had been playing baseball for nearly twenty-five years,” Carter reflected, pausing for a moment to formulate his thoughts,. “By the time they began to integrate the major leagues, like so many of the best Negro Leagues players, I was way past my prime. They were looking for young players. I was too old to be considered. I was nearly forty.”
Summing up his thoughts o his career in the game, Carter slowed his pace, thoughtfully choosing his words. “Like everything else, playing baseball had its high points and its low points. The low points were mostly about being poor, not getting paid what you were due. And, we had to play in some really terrible places in Negro baseball.”
“But, I got to play in some really great places, too. I got to play in some of the biggest and best ballparks in the country – Yankee Stadium, Comiskey Park and others – with major league size crowds. I got to play against and along side some of the best players that every played. I got to play against Satchel Paige. And, there were a lot of fun times – funny things that happened,”
“I made a lot of friends in baseball, a lot of them here in Memphis. I played here (in Memphis) a long time, and I have lived here a long time. But, I was born in Texas, and yeah, I’m a Texan.”
