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Authors: Joe Posnanski
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M INUTE M AID B ALLPARK in Houston used to be called Enron Field before the name “Enron” suggested something dark. Minute Maid meant orange juice, which was better. As we walked in, Buck talked about the news of the day. He was particularly taken with the story of a woman who was supposed to get married in Georgia, but on her wedding day she called her fiancé from a 7-Eleven in Albuquerque and said that she had been kidnapped. Evil suspicions focused on everyone, including her husband-to-be—the family put up a $100,000 reward for her return—but it turned out she had made up the whole thing and had taken a bus across the country. Buck loved this story. He always loved the mindless chatter of the latest scandal. He read newspapers front to back every morning, international news to comics, but he lingered on the sports pages and on the scandals. He had been that way all his life, going back to his playing days. Then, he read the newspaper on those long, bumpy bus rides between games.
Other players hated those bus rides. “I lost half my life on those creaky old buses,” a tall old pitcher named Connie Johnson said. “Those buses would break down three times a week. I can still feel the rattling in my bones. Sometimes I shake in the middle of the night and I think it’s from those old rides.” Other Negro Leagues players said the same. Buck rode the same buses—he was Connie Johnson’s teammate throughout the 1940s—but he did not remember a bus ever breaking down. He did remember the Monarchs bus driver, a shady character named Murphy. Nobody knew Murphy’s first name. He had a mouthful of gold teeth and a mysterious past nobody seemed too eager to uncover.
The players only knew two things for certain about Murphy. One was that he fell asleep at the wheel just about every night. A player was assigned on each trip to jab Murphy awake when his head nodded. “What, what, I’m awake, quit poking me,” Murphy would grumble, and then his head would bob again, and one of the Monarchs would say, “Murphy’s done fallen asleep again.” And the designated player would poke him once more, starting the entire cycle over.
The second thing: Whenever a police car came into view, Murphy would panic and stomp his foot on the gas. He would drive the bus like he was transporting moonshine through the Appalachian Mountains—he almost tipped over the bus a hundred times. Of course, this was a bus filled with bored, edgy ballplayers, so five or six times a night someone would yell, “Murphy, I just saw a policeman!” And no matter how many times they pulled this trick, Murphy would hit the gas and drive like a crazy man until the coast was clear. “I looked for Murphy’s face on a poster every single day when I went to work at the post office,” Buck would say.
Between Murphy’s naps and mad dashes from the cops, Buck read newspapers. Sometimes he read the black papers—the Chicago Defender, the Kansas City Call, the Pittsburgh Courier —but more often he read the white papers. He scoured the box scores of the Major League players (“Look, Hilton,” he would say to his roommate Hilton Smith, “Ted Williams got three more hits yesterday. And you say you could get him out?”). He read about wars and elections, deaths and celebrity marriages, medical breakthroughs, mergers, murders, movies. He loved Walter Winchell’s gossip column. “How you going to know what to talk about,” he asked his players, “if you don’t know what’s going on?”
“Do you think the law should do something to that woman who pretended to be kidnapped?” Buck asked the man sitting next to him. We were in our seats in Minute Maid Ballpark before the game.
“What can the law do?” the man asked. “She’s crazy.”
“I don’t know about crazy,” Buck said. “But she sure didn’t want to get married.”
B UCK SAT IN his seat before the first pitch, and he watched the players warm up. It
M INUTE M AID B ALLPARK in Houston used to be called Enron Field before the name “Enron” suggested something dark. Minute Maid meant orange juice, which was better. As we walked in, Buck talked about the news of the day. He was particularly taken with the story of a woman who was supposed to get married in Georgia, but on her wedding day she called her fiancé from a 7-Eleven in Albuquerque and said that she had been kidnapped. Evil suspicions focused on everyone, including her husband-to-be—the family put up a $100,000 reward for her return—but it turned out she had made up the whole thing and had taken a bus across the country. Buck loved this story. He always loved the mindless chatter of the latest scandal. He read newspapers front to back every morning, international news to comics, but he lingered on the sports pages and on the scandals. He had been that way all his life, going back to his playing days. Then, he read the newspaper on those long, bumpy bus rides between games.
Other players hated those bus rides. “I lost half my life on those creaky old buses,” a tall old pitcher named Connie Johnson said. “Those buses would break down three times a week. I can still feel the rattling in my bones. Sometimes I shake in the middle of the night and I think it’s from those old rides.” Other Negro Leagues players said the same. Buck rode the same buses—he was Connie Johnson’s teammate throughout the 1940s—but he did not remember a bus ever breaking down. He did remember the Monarchs bus driver, a shady character named Murphy. Nobody knew Murphy’s first name. He had a mouthful of gold teeth and a mysterious past nobody seemed too eager to uncover.
The players only knew two things for certain about Murphy. One was that he fell asleep at the wheel just about every night. A player was assigned on each trip to jab Murphy awake when his head nodded. “What, what, I’m awake, quit poking me,” Murphy would grumble, and then his head would bob again, and one of the Monarchs would say, “Murphy’s done fallen asleep again.” And the designated player would poke him once more, starting the entire cycle over.
The second thing: Whenever a police car came into view, Murphy would panic and stomp his foot on the gas. He would drive the bus like he was transporting moonshine through the Appalachian Mountains—he almost tipped over the bus a hundred times. Of course, this was a bus filled with bored, edgy ballplayers, so five or six times a night someone would yell, “Murphy, I just saw a policeman!” And no matter how many times they pulled this trick, Murphy would hit the gas and drive like a crazy man until the coast was clear. “I looked for Murphy’s face on a poster every single day when I went to work at the post office,” Buck would say.
Between Murphy’s naps and mad dashes from the cops, Buck read newspapers. Sometimes he read the black papers—the Chicago Defender, the Kansas City Call, the Pittsburgh Courier —but more often he read the white papers. He scoured the box scores of the Major League players (“Look, Hilton,” he would say to his roommate Hilton Smith, “Ted Williams got three more hits yesterday. And you say you could get him out?”). He read about wars and elections, deaths and celebrity marriages, medical breakthroughs, mergers, murders, movies. He loved Walter Winchell’s gossip column. “How you going to know what to talk about,” he asked his players, “if you don’t know what’s going on?”
“Do you think the law should do something to that woman who pretended to be kidnapped?” Buck asked the man sitting next to him. We were in our seats in Minute Maid Ballpark before the game.
“What can the law do?” the man asked. “She’s crazy.”
“I don’t know about crazy,” Buck said. “But she sure didn’t want to get married.”
B UCK SAT IN his seat before the first pitch, and he watched the players warm up. It
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