US Airways - June 2013 - (Page 186)

Must Read Around midnight the plane took off and banked westward, bound for Bismarck, North Dakota. Troupe carried with him a leather case containing his ukulele. The first spare moment in Bismarck he intended to buy sheet music for a new song he’d heard, a melancholy ballad called “Moonglow” that Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington would soon grab hold of and turn into dueling hit records. Quincy Troupe wasn’t a traveling musician. He was a professional baseball player; a black professional baseball player, which meant he wasn’t going to be appearing in an All-Star Game anytime soon. There were gaping holes in the “Century of Progress” when it came to race relations. To be black in America was to be a secondclass citizen and, in some corners, viewed as less human than Willie the Robot. The United States was a nation cleaved in half. Segregated restrooms, whites-only restaurants, poll taxes, and voter literacy tests were the law across much of the land. Baseball contorted itself like the rest of society. The major and minor leagues had been purewhite enterprises for nearly 50 years. Up until that morning, Troupe had been a switch-hitting backup catcher for the Chicago American Giants of the Negro National League. Raw meat, but Grade A quality. In June, the American Giants had gone on the road to face the Pittsburgh Crawfords. The Crawfords’ starting pitcher for game two of a Sunday doubleheader happened to be Satchel Paige. There arguably was no one better in all of baseball, black or white. Paige was roughly in his midtwenties (part of his mystique being a missing birth certificate) and already considered a legend in the making. He had a whooping crane’s physique and an unorthodox high-kick delivery. He drew upon an array of pitches, mostly variations on a ferocious fastball and good-enough-to-get-by curve. He gave those pitches nicknames as if they were old friends, which they were: Be Ball, 186 JUNE 2013 usairwaysmag.com Jump Ball, Trouble Ball, and Two-Hoop Blooper, not to mention a signature Hesitation Pitch, where his body momentarily froze mid-motion, confounding hitters. Most batters dreaded having to stand in against “Ol’ Satch.” Troupe showed no fear that day in Pittsburgh. His second time up he pulverized a knee-high fastball. It cleared the right field fence as if shot from a cannon, landing more than 400 feet from home plate. Paige stared in disbelief as the boy-catcher circled the bases. Legends are seldom stunned into silence. That night Troupe and Paige ran into each other at a local bar-and-grill. Paige someone told him about a baseball opportunity worth investigating. In Nowhere, North Dakota. Troupe — the youngest of ten children raised in baseball-crazy St. Louis — was as unique in his own way as Paige and Babe Ruth were in theirs. The closest he came to cussing was “doggone” and he wrote letters home to his mother on a steady basis, almost saintly behavior for a professional athlete. He’d begun baseball life playing for his hometown heroes, the Negro League’s St. Louis Stars, another team short of cash. In the waning days of the 1931 season, Troupe had asked Stars’ owner Dick Kent about an overdue Segregation waS the law acroSS much of the land. BaSeBall contorted itSelf like the reSt of Society. broke into a grin, then lowered his voice and turned uncharacteristically avuncular. “I’ve got a tip for you, Quincy,” he said. “You can go a long way in this game if you just listen to what the other players tell you. Don’t be a knowit-all, take it easy with the girls, and lay off the liquor.” This was odd counsel coming from Satch, a man with a hard-earned reputation for bending every rule that had ever gotten in his way. He was no stranger to a stiff highball. Nonetheless, Troupe swooned. The great Satchel Paige had gone out of his way to impart some wisdom. To him! That home run off Paige proved to be the highlight of Quincy Troupe’s tenure with the Chicago American Giants. In truth, there weren’t many big moments from which to choose. He was glued to the bench, an understudy to an older, established catcher. Limited playing time wasn’t his only frustration, though. The Giants were having financial difficulties and missing payrolls. As a result, his ears pricked up shortly after that Pittsburgh trip when paycheck. Kent pulled a gun on him. “I’ll whip your head flat if you say another word about money!” he growled. Within a few days the team ceased operations. It was now two years later and Troupe, marginally wiser to the ways of the world, sat gazing out the window of a pipsqueak airplane as the twinkling lights of Chicago faded away. He’d decided to sign on with a semipro team in Bismarck, swapping office towers for grain silos, trading the glare of neon for the glimmer of a million stars. Team manager Neil Churchill was an automobile dealer with a runaway passion for baseball. And baseball, Troupe would soon learn, provided a welcome outlet for community pride in Depression-battered North Dakota; the weapon of choice for grudge matches between rival towns. Churchill had visions of building a powerhouse lineup capable of holding its own against the best minor league teams, and maybe a few in the major leagues. That kind of building material didn’t exist in North Dakota. Finding http://www.usairwaysmag.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of US Airways - June 2013

US Airways - June 2013
Table of Contents
CEO Letter
From the Editor
Did You Know?
Making It Happen
Hot Spots: Best Outdoor Music Venues
Hub Crawl: Los Angeles International Airport
Wine & Dine: Infused Spirits
Great Tastes: B.B. King's Blues Clubs
Diversions: Beer Gardens
Great Escapes: Hard Rock Hotels
Great Escapes: Universal Orlando Resort
Diversions: Seven Super Spas
Adventure: Sebasco Harbor Resort, Maine
Golf: Billy Casper
Gear Up: Family Games
Travel Feature: The Lure of the Lake
US Airways: All in the Family
Chefs Tell: Sea Fire Grill
Charlotte, NC
Special Section: Los Angeles Arts
Must Read: Color Blind
Great Dates
Puzzles
Readers Resource Index
Your US Airways Guide
Video Entertainment
Audio Entertainment
U.S. and Caribbean Service Map
International Service Map
Airport Terminal Maps
US Airways Fleet/Customs & Immigration
Passenger Info/Contact US Airways
US Airways MarketPlace®
Window or Aisle?

US Airways - June 2013