Pitching for Respect
Former player Ernie Westfield is still going the distance for the Negro League.
URBANA, ILLINOIS
Former Negro League pitcher Ernie Westfield can still throw a baseball 80 mph. At 57, however, the courtly, soft-spoken man isn’t looking to relive his glory days — he’s trying to document them.
"It all started when my sons told me to go look in the University of Illinois archives and see if there was anything about me," Westfield says. "I had to go through a lot of microfilm to get to it, but there was my name across a headline: Westfield."
An employment counselor and a member of AFSCME Local 2971 (Council 31), Westfield pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons during the league’s last years, 1960 to 1964. Founded in 1920, when the major leagues refused to allow any African-American players on the field, the Negro League offered these men a chance to play baseball outside their hometowns. But when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, the league began to decline, and the careers of thousands of Negro League players went unrecognized and unrecorded.
The tragedy of those unsung men and games, Westfield argues, is in part historical. "I don’t know why America and major league baseball have been slow to apologize to those black ball-players," he says. "They deprived them of history."
Another facet of this loss, however, is economic. What memorabilia there is — bats, balls, photos — has no great value. And even if the recent surge of public interest in the Negro League creates a market, there are no baseball cards, no programs — not even pay stubs or team rosters.
TRAVELING HISTORIAN. Westfield is trying to change all that. Acting as historian, teacher and mentor, he is gathering information and memorabilia, speaking at schools and libraries — and even coaching an African-American little league team, the Birmingham Black Barons. He recently bought a minivan to carry the caps and uniforms, clippings and calendars that make up his traveling presentation.
Part of that presentation includes a discussion of his own baseball career. Westfield was recruited by the Chicago Cubs organization in 1959, a dozen years after baseball began integrating its teams, but before the sport had stopped using a quota system that excluded many African Americans. The team released him the following year, a decision that still pains and puzzles the former player.
"I don’t know why the Cubs released me," he says at one point. Another time, he says, "They used to say you didn’t make it because you weren’t good enough, but now we know we didn’t make it because we were black."
Soon after leaving the Cubs organization, however, Westfield pitched a local game in his hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., against the Birmingham Black Barons. The Barons liked his style and Westfield left with them the next day, playing with them for the next four years.
Though he doesn’t recall ever seeing the $250 a month he was promised when he signed, Westfield calls these years "the best time of my life." He liked the other men on the team and credits them with "teaching me how to survive."
"The worst thing that could happen to a Negro League team was rain," Westfield explains. The team lived on the money from ticket sales. "You didn’t play, you didn’t eat."
He also loved the freedom and the travel. He says, "I went places I never would have gone on my own and I didn’t have to pay a dime to get there."
Over 30 years later, he is settled in one of those places — a college town in central Illinois. Here, married to a woman he spotted from the bus when his team first came to town, Westfield says he sees his efforts making a difference. "Just by living here, I’m keeping that history alive," he says. "Just by talking to people."
By Alison S. Lebwohl
