Biz Mackey: The Influencer

Of all the great Negro League catchers, none of them mentored more players nor influenced the game on an international scale more than Biz Mackey.

Of all the great Negro League catchers – from Bruce Petway and “Double Duty” Radcliffe to Josh Gibson and Roy Campanella – none of them mentored more players nor influenced the game on an international scale more than Biz Mackey.

JAMES RALEIGH MACKEY was born on a Texas cotton farm on July 27, 1897. The family had two sons and two daughters when James came along to complete the clan. Each evening when the day’s farm work was done, the Mackey boys played baseball.

Eventually James, now going by his middle name Raleigh, joined his two older brothers on the semipro Luling Oilers. As a teen, Raleigh was an inch or two above six feet, powerfully built, with a cannon for an arm. He was usually behind the plate, but his athletic prowess meant he could play anywhere he was needed, including pitcher.

Around 1914, Mackey fathered a daughter, Narcissus. I have been unable to find who the mother was, but it was not Ora Lee Dorn, whom he married in 1917. The couple moved to Dallas, where Mackey worked as a laborer and played semipro ball. The two would divorce in 1919, just as Mackey began his long pro baseball career.

THE FIRST CLUB Mackey joined was the Waco Black Navigators of the Texas Colored League. In June, Mackey and five of his teammates jumped to the San Antonio Black Aces of the same league. He caught and pitched out of the bullpen as the Black Aces cruised to a 45-10 record.

In the Texas Colored League Championship, San Antonio faced the Dallas Black Marines in a hotly contested series that came down to a decisive Game 5. Coming in as a late-inning reliever, Mackey used an assortment of underhand curves and overhand drop balls to shut down the Black Marines and win the Championship for San Antonio.

Though he was just beginning his career, Mackey was already displaying the kind of talent that inspired and the personality that attracted admirers wherever he went. One of those early devotees was an Austin teenager who volunteered to carry Mackey’s equipment bag into the ballpark so he could watch his hero play for free. Years later, the pair would be reunited in the Negro Leagues, where the teen had become a star in his own right – future Hall of Famer Willie Wells.

Mackey began the 1920 season with San Antonio, but he and five teammates left in June to make the leap to the big leagues of Black baseball.

THE NEGRO NATIONAL LEAGUE was formed in 1920, featuring the best Black clubs from the Midwest and the East Coast. Among the elite was C.I. Taylor’s Indianapolis ABCs. Though he’s not well-remembered today, C.I. Taylor was one of the smartest and successful Negro League owners. Built around his brother, first baseman Ben Taylor, and featuring stars Oscar Charleston, Dizzy Dismukes, and Crush Holloway, the ABCs battled the Chicago American Giants in the pre-WWI days for the title of best team in Blackball.

Playing alongside established stars benefited the burly young catcher, and he batted .300 for 1920. Mackey’s catching skills were already winning him praise, as can be seen from a flattering passage in the July 18, 1920, Muncie Sunday Star: “He does as clever a job of backstopping as is ever seen, and his throwing is nothing less than marvelous. Base runners have no business monkeying with his arm. To make would-be base-stealers look worse, he waits until they are half-way to the objective and then his whip catches them several feet away.”

ABC’s teammate Crush Holloway agreed, adding that the big catcher enjoyed showing off his skills: “He was jolly, especially with those fast men who said they were gonna steal on him. When he’d throw them out, he’d get such a kick out of it, he’d fall down laughing.”

The fortunes of the ABCs began to wane after 1921. The team’s marquee player, Oscar Charleston, left, and C.I. Taylor passed away before the 1922 season began. Despite his team’s declining success, Mackey hit a very nice .375 in 1922. He was also able to showcase his versatility by pitching and playing every position in addition to his usual place behind the plate.

IN 1923, the Eastern Colored League, a rival to the Negro National League, was formed. Comprising mainly of East Coast teams, the ECL lured many National Leaguers away with higher salaries. Mackey joined the Hilldale Club out of Darby, Pennsylvania. Hilldale was the classiest and most dominant of the eastern Blackball outfits and was about to embark on a tear of three consecutive ECL pennants.

Because Hilldale already had slugger Louis Santop behind the plate, Mackey often played in the infield so both his and Santop’s bats could be in the lineup. It says a lot about Mackey’s athleticism that a man his size could regularly play shortstop and third base with the same ease as he could catcher.

A lot of Mackey’s infield success can be attributed to being a former pitcher. As he so often demonstrated from behind the plate, pinpoint accuracy was one of his strong suits. Hilldale third baseman Judy Johnson was on the receiving end of many such Mackey throws and could attest to the big man’s accuracy: “You wouldn’t have to move your glove six inches. He could throw it right on a dime.”

When he did displace Santop behind the plate, Mackey’s mastery of the position became legendary. His arm was so strong and accurate that he didn’t have to stand up to throw a base runner out at second. And remarkably, Mackey’s cannon arm served up a surprisingly soft, smooth throw. Hilldale’s Webster McDonald said, “You ever been catching when somebody threw a heavy ball, keep your hands sore? That’s a heavy ball. Mackey’s was just like a feather. It was a pleasure for infielders when Mackey was catching.” Shortstop Jake Stephenson concurred: “You could catch him bare-handed.”

MACKEY’S REPUTATION around Philadelphia inevitably earned him comparisons to his White counterpart on the Philadelphia A’s, catcher Mickey Cochrane. Cochrane was thought by many to be the best catcher in baseball at the time, but those who were fortunate to see him and Biz Mackey at work thought otherwise.

Roy Campanella had this to say about the comparison: “In my opinion, Biz Mackey was the master of defense of all catchers. When I was a kid in Philadelphia, I saw both Mackey and Mickey Cochrane in their primes, but for real catching skills, I didn’t think Cochrane was the master of defense that Mackey was. When I was under his direction at Baltimore, I was 15 years old. I gathered quite a bit from Mackey, watching how he did things, how he blocked low pitches, how he shifted his feet for an outside pitch, how he threw with a short, quick, accurate throw without drawing back.”

Between innings, Mackey and Hilldale second baseman Frank Warfield would put on a show for the fans and to psych out the other team. Crouched behind the plate, Mackey would fire a ball to second base and Warfield would exclaim loud enough so the crowd could hear, “Ow! Mackey, you’re gonna kill somebody.”

And it was during his first season with Hilldale that he received the colorful nickname “Biz.” The name derives from his propensity to give batters “the business” as they tried to concentrate at the plate. Hall of Famer Buck Leonard described what it was like to try to hit while Mackey gave a player “the business”: “You’d go up to bat, ‘Well,’ he’d say, ‘you’re hitting .400, let’s see how much you can hit today.’ Or he’d say, ‘You’re standing too close to the plate.’ Anything to upset the batter, throw him off. ‘What kind of bat are you using?’ He’d tell the umpire: ‘Look at his bat there, I don’t believe his bat is legal.’ Just anything to upset you.”

This jabbering might have gotten other catchers into some trouble, but not Biz Mackey. His gregarious disposition and overall personality made it hard to get sore at the guy. Mackey loved the nightlife, too. Blackball players were treated like royalty in the still-segregated cities, and the big catcher took full advantage of all it had to offer. Fond of his spirits, Mackey was renowned for his epic nights on the town. But, while other ball players eventually succumbed to its debilitating effects, Mackey avoided the slippery slope to alcoholism. While known to show up at a ball game still showing the effects of the night before, once Mackey put on his uniform and crouched behind the plate, he was all business.

BECAUSE BIZ MACKEY was known as one of the best players outside the White majors, he was much in demand to play during the winter months. Besides Cuba, which was a popular destination for many Black players since the turn of the century, by the 1920s, Southern California had its own burgeoning winter baseball season. The California Winter League usually featured a few teams made up of White major and minor leaguers, along with a single entry stocked with the best players the Negro Leagues had to offer.

In the winter of 1926-1927, promoter Lonnie Goodwin assembled the Philadelphia Royal Giants, which may have been one of, if not the greatest single-season team of Black players ever. Joining Biz Mackey were the Kansas City Monarchs’ ace Bullet Joe Rogan, Turkey Stearnes, Willie Wells, Andy Cooper, and Bill Foster – all Hall of Famers today. Slugger Rap Dixon, who deserves his own plaque in Cooperstown, also played on this club. With this all-star lineup, the Royal Giants buzz-sawed their way through the Winter League and took the pennant with a 26-11-1 record.

After the Winter League season ended, most of the players headed back east to start the 1927 season. However, Biz Mackey, Frank Duncan, Rap Dixon, Andy Cooper, and O’Neal Pullen joined a group of local semipro Black players for a three-month barnstorming tour of the Far East. Touring baseball teams were not uncommon in Japan and other Pacific locales – American universities, Japanese-American semipro teams, and White professional teams had been doing it since the turn of the century – but this would be the first major tour of Black professional ballplayers.

In Japan, the Royal Giants won 47 of their 48 games. The exception was a game against the Daimai Club, where a bad call by the local umpire disallowed a run by the Americans, resulting in a 1-0 win for the Japanese. What particularly impressed was that the Royal Giants did not argue the call; they just resumed play, something the Japanese deeply appreciated.

In the past, American teams had embarrassed the locals by racking up excessively one-sided scores. Back in America, touring White semipro and Negro League teams learned to keep scores close when playing teams of lesser quality. That way, no one was humiliated, and the fans remained interested in watching more games. The major league team that toured Japan in 1922 realized this too late, and gate receipts waned due to the fans’ lack of interest in seeing a blowout. When the big leaguers allowed the Japanese to win a game, it was such a farce that it only embarrassed the locals even more.

After some games, the Royal Giants entertained the crowd by showing off their big league skills. Rap Dixon demonstrated his howitzer of an arm by throwing balls from home plate to the far reaches of the outfield, players staged base running races, and Mackey wowed the crowd by throwing to second base from a catching crouch.

When the Royal Giants played in Tokyo’s brand new Meiji Shrine Stadium, Mackey became the first man to hit a ball out of its massive environs. The blast was estimated at 427 feet, and during the next two games, he hit two more out of the ballpark, each to a different field.

The Japanese deeply appreciated the kindness shown by the Royal Giants, and the tour did much to spread the game’s popularity. Some of the college players who faced the Royal Giants in 1927 went on to have roles in the founding of the Japanese Baseball League in 1936. One of those college players, Japanese Baseball Hall of Famer Shinji Hamazaki, was able to pay it forward to the Americans years later when, as manager the Hankyu Braves in the 1950s, he recruited four Black Americans for his team: John Britton, Jimmie Newberry, Larry Raines, and Jonas Gaines.

The tour made stops in Korea, China, the Philippines, and Hawaii before heading home. Mackey returned to Hilldale halfway through the 1927 season. In his absence, the team had finished dead-last in the league’s first half but climbed back to 3rd place in the second with him behind the plate. (This split-season record is based on contemporary newspaper accounts. Modern databases only record 1927 in a single-season format.)

If the catcher had been a major leaguer who abandoned his team to barnstorm for half a season, he’d have been banned from the game indefinitely. However, the Negro Leagues were a different story. Because of the precarious nature of the league, Mackey’s punishment amounted to little more than a scolding. Biz Mackey was a superstar who drew fans to the park, and Black baseball needed him.

He remained with Hilldale for the next four seasons. Though the team did not repeat their pennant-winning ways of the mid-1920s, Biz Mackey cemented his reputation as the best backstop in the game. He batted .338 or better through 1931, including a massive .414 in 1930.

AFTER SPENDING the winter of 1931 playing in the California Winter League, Mackey declined a contract to play the 1932 season for Hilldale, instead, he signed on for another of Lonnie Goodwin’s Far East exhibition tours. This time, the tour stretched from July to January of 1933. The team, named the “Philadelphia Giants,” played games in Hawaii, Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines. According to the book Gentle Black Giants, the team played 46 games, while a 1933 Baltimore Afro-American article reports two defeats and one tie in 52 games. Mackey led the team in batting, hitting around .380.

In his absence, the Hilldale Club had ceased operations. The team’s original owner, Ed Bolden, formed a new outfit he named the Philadelphia Stars and enticed Mackey to take on the catching duties.

AT THIS TIME, Biz Mackey was thirty-five and had been playing ball year-round for more than fifteen years. At an age when many players slowed down or retired, Mackey showed he had much more left in the tank. He hit .275 and anchored the team’s staff of young pitchers. He remained a fan favorite, as evidenced by his selection as the starting catcher for the inaugural East-West All-Star Game. This was significant in that Mackey garnered more votes than superstar catcher Josh Gibson. This doesn’t take anything away from Gibson, who has gone down as one of the greatest sluggers in the game’s history. However, players and fans opine that while Gibson was the better hitter, Biz Mackey was a far superior catcher and all-around ballplayer.

Cum Posey, who both owned and managed Josh Gibson’s team, the Homestead Grays, later said, “For combined hitting, thinking, throwing, and physical endowment, there has never been another Biz Mackey. A tremendous hitter, a fierce competitor, although slow afoot he is the standout among catchers who have shown their wares in this nation.”

Hall of Famer Cool Papa Bell, whose career coincided with Mackey’s, said, “Actually, as much as I admired Campanella as a catcher, all-around, and Gibson as a hitter, I believe Biz Mackey was the best catcher I ever saw.”

As the big catcher aged, his importance as a valued mentor increased. In 1934, Mackey mentored a fireballing young lefthander named Slim Jones. Under the veteran catcher’s tutelage, Jones turned in one of the greatest single-seasons in baseball history as the Philly Stars won the Negro National League Championship.

After he was traded to the Washington Elite Giants in 1937, he was introduced to a chubby Philadelphia teenager who wanted to be a pro catcher. Though the boy was only fifteen, Mackey could see that he had raw talent. He took the kid under his wing and allowed him to catch in exhibition games. When the Elites moved to Baltimore in 1938, Mackey made sure the kid followed. Veterans said that unless the kid took the mask off, you swore it was the ol’ Biz himself behind the plate. When Mackey moved on to the Newark Eagles in 1939, the Elite Giants’ catching was left in the able hands of that chubby kid: Roy Campanella.

In Newark, Biz Mackey mentored a whole new generation of ballplayers. Over the next decade he brought the skills of Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, and Don Newcombe up to major league standards. As manager of the Eagles for five seasons, he piloted the team to its only World Championship in 1946.

And it wasn’t just baseball that he taught his pupils. As Don Newcombe told author Peter Golenbeck, “We got along famously. He tried to counsel me like a father about taking care of myself and not cursing too much… He always used to be on me, on the bus, in the clubhouse, on the field, and in the hotels: ‘Newcombe, you gotta stop cursing so much.’”

JACKIE ROBINSON’S integration of the Major Leagues in 1947 coincided with the end of the 50-year-old catcher’s career. In 24 years of Negro League competition, Biz Mackey posted a lifetime .326 average and hit over .350 in documented games against White major leaguers. He also played ball year-round in the California Winter League for an unsurpassed 26 seasons. His lifetime CWL average is .366, and he holds the career record for most doubles and triples and ranks third in homers.

Biz Mackey returned to California, his off-season home since the 1920s. He drove a forklift and lived in anonymity with Lucille, a mixed-race woman whom he had befriended on his trips to Japan. The two reconnected after the war when she emigrated to America, and the couple would spend the rest of their lives together.

The old catcher was thrust into the spotlight one final time on the evening of May 7, 1959. Over 93,000 fans packed into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for a Dodgers-Yankees exhibition game. The occasion was a tribute to the Dodgers’ beloved catcher, who had been paralyzed in a car accident. That night, Roy Campanella introduced his old mentor as the man who had made him who he was. It was a well-deserved compliment to a man whose generosity and kindness helped mentor countless players and influence the game on an international scale.

The old catcher’s death on September 22, 1965, passed unnoticed by the sporting press. When the Hall of Fame began enshrining the great Negro League players, Mackey’s former pupils Monte Irvin, Roy Campanella, and Willie Wells received their plaques. Finally, in 2006, the Hall of Fame’s Special Committee on the Negro Leagues succeeded in giving Biz Mackey his long-overdue recognition as one of the greatest ballplayers, teachers, and influencers the game has ever seen.

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I tried my best to bring Biz Mackey’s mischievous personality to life in my portrait. I wanted it to look like he was captured right in the middle of giving someone “the business.”

For more on Biz Mackey, read Chris Rainey’s biography that is part of SABR’s BioProject at SABR.org. Most of the quotes sprinkled throughout this story were found in John Holway’s groundbreaking books Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues and Blackball Stars: Negro League Pioneers. The definitive book on the 1927 Philadelphia Royal Giants is Gentle Black Giants: A History of Negro Leaguers in Japan by Bill Staples Jr. and Kazuo Sayama.

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This story is Number 84 in a series of collectible booklets

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