His hair is salt and pepper now, and the spring is gone from his step, but Piper Davis still stands tall and straight and carries himself with a dignity becoming the three-quarters of a century that he has walked God’s good earth.  The sparkle in his eyes belies the passing of time.
 

Four and a half decades have passed since he first logged the name “Willie Mays” on his lineup as the left fielder and seventh-place hitter for his Birmingham Black Barons.  The future Hall of Famer was then a 17-year-old high school student, and Davis was like a second father to him. Davis remembers those days when he was Willie’s mentor, and even further back in time when he was a teenager himself, a time when African-American baseball players were excluded from the majors.  But as time passes, memories grow sweeter and injustices of the past grow softer.  The hardships and indignities are tempered by better days and different times, and it is more constructive to remember the good that came from bad experiences and worse circumstances, than to nurture residual

Piper Davis was like a second father to Mays..

bitterness.

When Davis was a youngster, times were never good for African-Americans, the accustomed burden was felt more intensely.  The increasing scarcity of jobs and dollars left few choices for many Americans.  A youthful Piper Davis was among the millions affected.

“After I finished high school, I went to Alabama State College at Montgomery.  My father was a miner, and the miners were on strike at the time, so he had to borrow money for me to go to school.  I had a part scholarship for playing basketball, but it came time for the next semester’s money and the miners were still on strike.  And I knew he’d have to borrow more money.

“I don’t like to owe anybody anything and I never liked to ask anybody for anything, so I left school.  I called my parents and told them, ‘Don’t borrow any more money.  I’m coming home.’  I was about 20-some miles from Birmingham, and I told them to come pick me up.  I always wanted to work for myself and earn my own money, so I got a job in the coal mines.  We were poor folks.  That’s why I went into the mines.”

The town of Piper, Alabama, had two separate functions.  It served as the source for Lorenzo Davis’s nickname that he would carry through the rest of his life.  It was also the location of two coal mines that provided employment for many of the town’s citizens.  In the coal mines, the work was hard, the pay was low and the danger was constant.  The thought of baseball, home runs, and strikeouts was far away.

Ironically, it was a strikeout of a different kind that lifted Davis from the coal mines to the baseball diamond – three different accidents in one day in 1936 killed two miners and broke the leg of a third.  Davis says the accidents were “responsible for me getting out of the mines and into baseball.  I guess you might say I struck out as a miner.”

But when Alabama lost a miner, baseball gained a diamond star.  A natural athlete, Davis excelled at baseball, basketball and football at Westfield High School.  A half-dozen years later he set the precedent for such stars as Gene Conley, Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders by playing two professional sports – baseball, with the Birmingham Black Barons, and basketball, with the Harlem Globetrotters.

The transformations, however, was slow.  After leaving the mines, Davis went to Birmingham to work at the Acipco Cast Iron and Pipe Company.  He earned $3.26 a day as a pipelifter.  He supplemented his income by playing semi-pro baseball on weekends in the Steel and Industrial League, polishing his diamond skills before getting the call from the black major leagues.  His weekend play eventually expanding to include home games with the Black Barons, where he earned $10 for a single games and $15 for a doubleheader.

In 1942, Winfield Welch became the manager of the Black Barons and in the latter part of the season he offered Davis $500 a month to travel with the team.

So he became a Black Baron.  His presence in the lineup paid immediate dividends, as Birmingham won consecutive Negro American League pennants during his first two full seasons with the club, 1943 and 1944.  Equally adept at any infield position, he moved to second base in 1946 to form a great keystone combination with Artie Wilson.  Tall and smooth, Davis had outstanding hands and a good arm.  He was a master of the double play.  Considered a premier player in the league, Davis played a season which marked the first of four consecutive starting assignments in the East-West All-Star game, where he compiled a .385 batting average.

“I didn’t class myself as a home run hitter.  I was a line-drive hitter.  But I could hit the long ball when I got ready.  I played against Jackie Robinson one year in the league and I played with Jackie in one exhibition game in California.  I was playing with a team called the Birmingham All-Stars, and Jackie borrowed me one night to play with his team.

“Now he hadn’t seen me since 1945 and this was about ’47.  Jackie got on first and I’m hitting behind him and he got time out.  He said, ‘Can you still hit a fly ball like you used to?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘See if you can wait until I get to third.’

“On the first pitch, he stole second.  And after two pitches, he stole second and third.  I hit a high fly ball to center field and he scored the winning run.”

By then Davis was a veteran and he was appointed manager of the Black Barons in 1948.  As a manager he had a commanding presence, an abundance of patience and a keen baseball mind.  That season was especially gratifying because he was at the helm from beginning to end, selecting the players and shaping them into a team.  Leading by example, he hit .353 while guiding his team to another pennant, the third championship in his six seasons with the Black Barons.

At the beginning of the 1948 season, prospects were as plentiful as the ore Davis had dug out of the coal mines of north Alabama in his younger years.  Among those trying to earn a place on the Black Barons’ roster were aspiring phenoms who were long on promise but short on delivery and grizzled veterans on the fringe whose minds were writing checks their bodies couldn’t cash.

But Davis found one player who was special.  Very special.  He was a diamond in its rawest form, uncut and unpolished, and unrecognizable to an inexpert eye – but a diamond just the same.  It was obvious this new player could run and throw, but Davis saw beyond the basic skills of the kid who was barely 17 years old.  At the same age, Davis had played with the youngster’s father in the Industrial Leagues around Birmingham.  Davis knew what was in the genes.  The kid was a natural.

Called “Buck” by his friends, the prized pupil’s real name was Willie Howard Mays Jr.  His father, who had great respect for Piper Davis, had taken Willie to meet the Black Barons’ star a year earlier, and Davis remembered the youngster when he saw him again.

“We were in Chattanooga and we were at the hotel messing around and I saw him there.  He was with some semi-pro team.  About two weekends later, we were playing in Atlanta and I saw him again.  I said, ‘If you’re still playing ball for money, Sunday morning you tell your Daddy to call me.’

“I told him that if he got permission from his father, then I’d go ahead and let him play.  And his Daddy called, and that’s how he came to be playing with the Black Barons.  He was an infant compared to the folks he was going to be playing with, but you could see the talent in him.  He had something special inside.”

Willie’s first day in a Black Barons uniform was a Sunday doubleheader at Rickwood Field in Birmingham.  During batting practice, Davis told his recruit to shag some flies.  When the doubleheader started, Davis sat him out for the first game.  While the restless youngster observed, the Black Barons won the first game and then relaxed in the clubhouse between games.  The rookie was sitting alone in a corner when Davis approached.

He called over the equipment manager, handed him the lineup card for the second game and told him to post it in the dugout.  Listed in the seventh spot in the batting order was “Mays, lf.”  The veteran manager winked at Mays and said, “Just give it your best shot,” and then he walked away.

When the players assembled for the second game, Davis noticed that the lineup card had attracted both a crowd and more comments than the manager cared to hear.  After observing in silence for a few minutes, he decided that an immediate understanding was essential.

“I went back over there and said, ‘How’s the lineup look to you fellows?’ And I said, ‘If anybody doesn’t like it, there’s the clubhouse,’ and I pointed, ‘and you can go back in there and take off your uniform if you want to.  And you can take it with you.’  I didn’t hear anything else.  That’s how Willie got his start, and he did all right for himself.  That was in 1948, the year we won the Negro American League championship.”

Mays had two hits in the game off a tough veteran pitcher, but he was still only the fourth-best outfielder on the team.  Conveniently, fate stepped in and by the first of June, “Say Hey” Mays was the regular center fielder, taking over when starter Norman Robinson broke his leg.

When a ball was hit to the slower right or left fielders, the man next to Mays on that side would yell, “Come on, Willie!  Come on, Willie!”  Davis watched as the rookie ran his legs off covering his territory and half the other fielders’ as well – and he was not pleased.

“I was a little peeved.  Between innings, I said to the other outfielders, ‘Come here right now.  You’re going to have to earn your money.  We can get anybody to stand out there and yell, “Come on, Willie!” If you can’t make the plays, you shouldn’t be playing in this league.’  I said, ‘I don’t want you running him from foul line to foul line.  You’re not going to run his legs off.’  That’s when we started rolling.”

The message was received, and the adjustments saved the rookies legs.  “Willie can go get it, and Willie can bring it back,” Davis said, describing how Mays could run and throw, “but he couldn’t hit a curveball.”  Davis saw what the youngster needed.  He made sure that Mays learned to do the things that would earn him a ticket to the major leagues.

In the field, Mays had all the tools, but Davis taught him to charge a ground ball hit through the infield, to throw the ball on one hop to the plate and to get a quick release on his throws.

On the bases, Mays was an instinctive runner.  But Davis taught him to assert his right to the basepaths aggressively by sliding hard into fielders who tried to block him from the base.  At the plate, Mays could pull the trigger on a fastball, but Davis taught the youngster to hit a curveball by correcting a problem with his stance.  Mays had a habit of turning his front shoulder from the plate, making it harder to see the ball and more susceptible to being hit by a pitch.  Davis encouraged him to turn more towards the pitcher and straighten up more at the plate.  This enabled the young player to pick up the spin on a curveball better and avoid a beanball more easily.  Mays adopted the stance and used it throughout his career.

Before Davis corrected Mays’s stance, the youngster had been getting a large dose of breaking balls.  He was having trouble handling the assorted variety of curves and getting hit by inside pitches.  In a game soon after joining the Black Barons, a veteran player tested the new arrival.  The pitcher sent Mays a message that hurt both his body and his pride.

Unable to react quickly, Mays was hit in the arm by a pitch, and as he lay sprawled in the dirt with his mind on the pain, a shadow loomed over him.  He opened his eyes and looked up to see Davis glowering down at him.  The expression on the manager’s face quickly dispelled any expectations of sympathy.  Instead, the eyes boring down on Mays conveyed anything but approval.

“Skip, they’re throwing at me!” he whined in his high-pitched voice.  Mental toughness was an attribute Davis demanded in his players.

“Boy, can you see first base?” he asked.

“Yessir,” Mays answered.

“Point to it.”

“It’s right down there,” Mays said, motioning towards first base.

“Then get up and go on down there.”

The rookie scrambled to his feet and Davis added, “And when you get there, steal second.”

Davis then turned and walked back to the dugout as the young Black Baron trotted down to first base without even rubbing his arm.

The young ballplayer learned two lessons that day, one from the pitcher and the other from his manager.  No. 1: The inside of the plate belongs to the pitcher; and No. 2, from the manager: Never let the pitcher have the satisfaction of knowing he has hurt you.  Instead, turn the play around on him.  Make putting you on base come back to haunt him.  That is exactly what Mays did, promptly stealing second base.

Mays credits Davis as being the most important person in his baseball career.  Davis told a player something only once and expected the instructions to become a permanent part of a player’s psyche.  The Birmingham rookie learned his lessons well, a major reason why the young center fielder matured so quickly.

Jackie Robinson won the Rookie of the Year award in the National League the previous season, 1947, and things were beginning to change for African-American ballplayers.  The Negro Leagues’ death knell had come with the stroke of a pen, when Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The same pen’s stroke that closed one door opened another, however, and the door to the major leagues was now ajar.  Waiting to get a foot inside was a multitude of hopeful African-Americans; and for many the stepping stone would be through the gradually declining Negro Leagues.  Davis’s protégé was one of the fortunate ones.  Within three years he was playing at the Polo Grounds.

Mays was signed by the Giants organization in 1950, and after blistering the ball at Minneapolis for the first month of the 1951 season, he was quickly sent to the parent club in New York.

But while his prize pupil sizzled on his way to major league stardom, Piper Davis was still on the outside looking in.  He was destined to sustain his vigil while playing in the Pacific Coast League, waiting for a chance at the “bigs” that never came.  Any player of his ability would have been disappointed at the unfulfilled promise.

Davis was a hardnosed ballplayer and had been considered for the pioneering role in which Jackie Robinson was ultimately cast.  His contract had been acquired in 1947 by the St. Louis at the same time that Willard Brown and Hank Thompson were signed, but the Brownies wanted to option Davis to Elmira and he wanted to play in the major leagues, so the option was not exercised.

After guiding his Birmingham team to the 1948 Negro World Series with his teenage prodigy in center field, Davis’s hope of playing in the major when he was renewed when he became the first African-American signed by the Boston Red Sox.  The Sox assigned him to Scranton.

“I signed with Scranton and we trained in Cocoa, Florida.  After we got there, I would stay with one of the waiters at the Brevard Hotel, and I found out I was supposed to eat in the servants’ quarters.  So I would go ‘round in the back door at the hotel and eat in the waiters’ quarters and then go ‘round out front and get in the bus where it was parked.  And when we played spring exhibition games, I wasn’t allowed to play in the South.”

Davis waited patiently for a chance to prove himself in the major leagues as a first baseman, but Walt Dropo’s super season in 1950 destroyed whatever hopes the former Black Baron skipper had.  He knew he was good enough for the big time, but as the years passed in the Pacific Coast League, he also knew his chance to make it would never come and, even if it did, he was to old to walk through that magic door to his field of dreams.  In his last season, 1958, Davis hit .282 to wind down his baseball career.

After his baseball career, the old warhorse returned to Birmingham, where for a while he stirred the hearts of baseball fans for another decade on the city’s sandlots, near the place where he first abandoned the dark future of life in the coal mines for the sunshine and fresh air of the baseball diamond.  Baseball was a good life, Davis says, adding that he doesn’t regret anything about it – except that he was never afforded a chance to play in the major leagues.

In February he was honored with induction into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, joining his protégé, Willie Mays.  Belated recognition is better than the continued obscurity that has been the destiny of most Negro League players.

When a discussion comes up about an All-Time Baseball Dream Team, the name of Willie Mays frequently heads the list of center fielders.  On reflection, it is disquieting to realize that if “Say Hey” had been born a decade earlier, fans would have never known about him.  Piper Davis discovered and salvaged this rough, uncut diamond, that, when polished, shone with the magnificence of a supernova.

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