Deja Vu

September 8, 2008

Difficult Circumstances

Tags:

basketball,

civil liberties,

Don Haskins,

racism,

sports,

Texas

“Heart Failure Claims Basketball Legend,” by Bill Knight, El Paso Times, Sept. 8, 2008.

EL PASO -- Don Haskins, Hall of Fame basketball coach and El Paso's own legend, died in his sleep late Sunday afternoon at his West Side home….

"You're talking about a Hall of Fame coach here," current UTEP coach Tony Barbee said. "The impact he had on this program and this school is special."

Haskins most recently received national recognition in the movie "Glory Road," the story of Texas Western's 1966 national championship run.

That team, the first to start five African-American players against five whites (from the University of Kentucky), is widely heralded as the team that opened up college scholarships for black athletes in the South and around the nation.

"He did what he did because it was the right thing to do," Barbee said. "Yet he opened the doors for people like myself, an African American, to play the game and become a head coach in the NCAA. The players now may not have felt his presence during the games and practices. But they know how much of an impact he's had on this program. They play in the building that has his name, after all."

“I Was Blessed to Have the Support of Bill Veeck,” by Larry Doby, from Tim McCarver’s Diamond Gems, 2008.
Eleven weeks after Branch Rickey embarked on his “Great Experiment” with Jackie Robinson, Bill Veeck signed Larry Doby to play centerfield for the Cleveland Indians, thus integrating the American League. One year later, Veeck signed legendary Negro League pitcher Satchel Paige, making the 42-year-old the oldest rookie in baseball history.

I never met anyone like Bill Veeck. I met him July 5, 1947, when I walked into his office to sign a contract to play with Cleveland. Right away I felt comfortable, because when I addressed him as Mr. Veeck, he said, “You call me Bill, and I’ll call you Lawrence.” His next statement was, “We’re in this together.” Here’s a person I didn’t know saying that to me. I didn’t really know what I was involved in, becoming the first Afro-American to play in the American League. On Veeck’s desk was a thick notebook full of information about me dating back to the day I was born in Camden, South Carolina, till I got off the train. It had the good stuff I’d done and the bad stuff. Thank God, there weren’t too many bad things. After we went through the notebook, he said, “Now you have to go out and perform under difficult circumstances. Do you think that you can?”

I said, “Sure, baseball is baseball.” I was twenty-two, and all I was thinking about was playing baseball, which I’d done all my life, in high school, college, semipro, and the Negro Leagues with the Newark Eagles. But I’d never given a thought to the history I was going to be a part of. I’d learn what it meant over the years. To have Veeck with me most of the time to give me the courage and help me adjust to the different situations was a blessing. I lost my father when I was eight years old, and I have said many times that I would have liked my father to be the same kind of man Bill Veeck was.

Not only was Veeck the first owner to integrate the American League, but also, from a creative standpoint, he was ahead of his time. He was the first to have promotions at the ballpark, including the first funeral for a World Series flag. We won the Series in 1948, and we expected to win it again in 1949. But we finished second, so on Opening Day in 1950, he placed the ’49 Series flag in a casket and had a hearse take it out to center field, where at the end of the ceremony, the casket containing the flag was buried.

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