Negro League star Gerald Sazon celebrates 86th birthday
16th May 2022 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
The sounds of baseball are part of what makes America’s pastime so unique, and for those who love the game, the sounds become indelibly seared into one’s memories.
The crack of the bat on a home run; the roar of the crowd when a team scores in the bottom of the ninth inning; the guy walking up and down and through the stands, hawking hot dogs and popcorn and beer. For Gerald Sazon of New Orleans, the auditory stimulus came with his fastball’s arrival at home plate.
“I used to love to hear that sound of the ball hitting the mitt – pow!” Sazon said. And Sazon’s fastball, he’s proud to say, had enough zip to it to vex hitters and battery mates alike.
“I used to throw it so hard, you wouldn’t see it until it hit the catcher’s mitt,” Sazon said. “Catchers had to put extra rubber in their mitts” to protect their hands.
Although Sazon celebrated his 86th birthday recently, such memories linger clearly in his mind for the man who played in the segregated Negro Leagues in the 1940s and ’50s. As a member of local pro outfits like the New Orleans Black Pelicans and the New Orleans Creoles, as well as the national touring team, the famed Indianapolis Clowns, who in the 1950s launched the careers of players who made the jump from Black baseball to the Majors, particularly the legendary Henry Aaron.
On April 28, Sazon was feted with a birthday party at St. Margaret’s at Mercy nursing home, where the ex-pitcher now lives in his golden years. Dozens of fellow residents joined St. Margaret’s staff, members of Sazon’s family, other loved ones and baseball enthusiasts to celebrate the occasion.
Prior to the event, the members of the Xavier University baseball team personally visited the ex-Negro Leaguer and gave Sazon a signed ball, bat and shirt, a gesture that carried extra significance because of Xavier’s status as an HBCU.
“It was overwhelming,” Sazon later said of the party and the support he received.
“We often hear stories about different trailblazers throughout history on TV and in newspapers, but to have one of these trailblazers living in our home is truly an honor,” Amy Sprout, central intake coordinator for St. Margaret’s, said. “We are grateful to be in a position to help share his story and create connections with today’s generations, particularly today’s athletes, who are directly benefiting from the efforts of Mr. Sazon and his likes.“
Unfortunately, the number of African-American players of Sazon’s generation continues to dwindle, much like the fortunes of Negro League baseball following Jackie Robinson’s barrier-shattering debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Over the past few years, several prominent New Orleans Negro Leaguers have passed away; in 2019, former Black Pelican Paul Lewis Jr. died at the age of 92, and before that the city in 2015 said farewell to 94-year-old Herb Simpson, who played on several local teams before stints with national-level Negro Leagues teams and in the integrated Minor Leagues.
Because of this inevitable, bittersweet march of time, those who played the game and those acolytes who study the Negro Leagues and work to preserve and enrich the legacy, segregation-era Black players and managers are constantly working to cherish the few remaining survivors and burnish their memories.
“We have come to a point in our history where many players from the ‘heyday’ of the Negro Leagues are gone, and now we are seeing those who played near the end of the Negro Leagues leave us as well,” said Dr. Ray Doswell, vice president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Seeing these men ‘going home,’ in many spiritual traditions, is a time to rejoice, but bittersweet for those of us racing to preserve these stories and histories.”
Doswell added that Sazon remains a bright light in the legacy of the Negro Leagues.
Many of those New Orleans legends who have passed were friends, teammates and opponents of Sazon. Simpson used to playfully call Sazon “Junior” because of the latter’s relative youth, and Sazon knew well the slugging Bissant brothers – Bob and John, who played with the great Chicago American Giants.
There was also the Skipper, Wesley Barrow, the crusty, gruff, endlessly experienced manager who piloted many teams, including the Creoles with unmatched passion and skill. And of course there was pitcher Robert “Black Diamond” Pipkins, an eccentric character whose legend has reached almost mythical status in the South. The Diamond, Sazon said, had a mouthful of gold teeth that glinted in the sun while Pipkins pitched.
Not a bad memory to have, all these years – and fastballs – later. As he sat outside in the nursing home’s back courtyard recently, a gentle breeze swaying the landscaped bushes and trees and a bright blue sky overhead, Sazon – who began playing professionally at the age of 16 – recounts that and other tales that made his life exhilarating, rewarding and satisfying.
“I think about [his career] all the time,” he said.
Despite all the challenges and rigors he and his teammates faced almost daily – racist police in small Southern towns, having to scrape up food whenever they could, sleeping in fleabag hotels or on the bus all night as they plunged toward their next game – Sazon recalls it as the thrill of his life.
“Hell,” he said with a sly grin, “I was young. That was all fun to me.”
This article originally published in the May 16, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
