LARRY LARKIN Column

They were called the Claremore Clowns, but unlike the Harlem Globetrotters, there was no clowning around when it came time for a baseball game.

"When it was time to decide between winning and losing, we were serious," said 73-year-old Gerome Riley last week as he looked at an old scrapbook of pictures and newspaper articles. "The Clowns always played to win, and they were usually victorious."

Following a recent feature about Claremore's Lonnie Rogers and his long career as a semipro baseball player, several people wanted to know more about the city's black baseball history.

From the 1971 Rogers interview, I knew only two facts:

• The team of black players from the Claremore area was formed right after World War II.

• The team was good. Real good.

Thanks to Claremore’s Don Hill for starting me in the right direction toward additional information. It was through his efforts that I came in contact with Riley, a member of the Claremore Clowns.

Although he came to Claremore to attend Oklahoma Military Academy, Hill never saw the Clowns play. He later learned about them from co-worker Mac Kilpatrick, Sr.

"Mac was always coming to work and telling us about their latest game," Hill said. "He was the catcher and he told us he always smoked a cigar while catching."

It was due to Kilpatrick's stories that Hill later became acquainted with Gerome Riley, a teammate of Hill.

"Oh, yes, we had some great players," Riley said. "We would go all over the area — Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas — anywhere we could get a team to play us. It didn't matter. We would play white teams and black teams and most of the time we would beat them. A lot of them didn't like us winning, but they couldn't do much about it.

"Now, I wasn't one of the original members. When L.M. ‘Big Daddy’ Sheppard formed the team in 1945, he had Lonnie (Rogers) and the Dixon brothers, Norvett and Ollie, along with Benny Metcalf, Milford Kinnard, Roshan White, Lucious Wallace, Art Williams, Joe Coleman, Pete Hamilton, Herman Kelly, and Mac Kilpatrick."

Before going to meet with the energy-filled Riley, a telephone conversation with Mac Kilpatrick, Jr., revealed that he had an old black and white photo of his father and 14 other Clown players.