From the desk of: 100th Anniversary Negro League Baseball
DANIEL FRAWLEY STADIUM
Wilmington, Delaware
HOME of the BLUE ROCKS
William Julius "Judy" Johnson
1921 ~ Third Baseman ~ 1937
Hilldale Daisies ~ Pittsburgh Crawfords ~ Homestead Grays
HALL of FAME
Passes Away June 15, 1989
Wilmington, Delaware
Johnson was well respected by his fellow players for his quiet, unassuming leadership and his grasp of the intricacies of the game. He was quiet, shy, but mentally tough. - Negro League historian Leslie Heaphy.
Judy Johnson bats .300 or better six times and retires with a lifetime .298 average over a seventeen-year career. In 1925 he bats a career-high .378, but his best season comes in 1929 when he wins the Negro League MVP after slashing .365/.404/.518, with seven home runs, 72 runs batted in, and 24 stolen bases through 84 independent circuit and Negro American League games. He is best known for his twelve seasons with Hilldale, for whom he bats .309, with 208 extra-base hits, 427 runs batted in, and 65 stolen bases over 673 games and 2,477 at-bats. He also spends five years with the Pittsburgh Crawfords and two seasons with the Homestead Grays, where he plays with an 18-year old rookie catcher named Josh Gibson.
FROM: Black Diamonds: Cool Papa Bell, Judy Johnson, Full Interviews on YouTube
On barnstorming versus white players, Judy Johnson recounts how one year the Negro Team defeated Team Dizzy Dean nine games to seven:
Interviewer Stephen Banker asks: "Did they try?"
"They always try. They didn't like the negro to beat them doing anything. It's ... if you're digging a cesspool he don't want you to do that, he don't want you to beat him doing that. But they were all gentlemen as far as I know. They all act very nicely - most all - I say most all. Some people regardless what they are ... they're gonna have a chip on their shoulder about something. You know that." - Judy Johnson.
On crowds, rooting, and partisanship:
"They were mixed ("integrated?"), yeah. Of course the negro was gonna vote for the negro, and root for him, and the white would root for the white. Between the two races it never got to the point that they would want to fight, cause, we would only have a losing cause ... you couldn't win them there (the south)." - Judy Johnson.
On playing Pepper, aka "Clowning":
"We would practice, we would always put a show on, (Stephen Banker interjects, "Clowning"..) ... yeah, fun! Well the white people down there liked that because they'd call negros monkeys anyhow, with the tails cut off. We'd pass the ball so fast you could hardly keep up with it, and they liked that. But the thing that got me, in the grandstand, they had cover over the white side, and the negros side didn't have anything to keep the sun off of them, but they paid the same price." - Judy Johnson.
Starting in 1923, Judy Johnson and the Hilldale Club win three straight Eastern Colored League championships, and in 1925 go on to defeat the Kansas City Monarchs in the Colored World Series. Johnson leads all hitters with a .364 average. It is the first-ever World Series between respective Eastern Colored League and Negro National League champions. Fifty years later, in 1975, William "Judy" Johnson becomes the sixth Negro League player selected to the Hall of Fame.
ICYMI:
- Brooklyn to Newark Part One: Negro National League Eagles Take Flight
- Brooklyn to Newark Part Two: Where Negro National League Eagles Dare
Sources:
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