Claremore's serious Clowns

May 10, 2008 01:04 pm

— 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.
Looking for the first time at the photo from 60-plus years ago, Riley started naming the players, along with a story for each. The picture was fading and the second row was a little out of focus, but Riley still identified 11 of the 15.
"That Big Daddy, he was something," said the smiling Gerome. "He had several businesses down in the black part of town. This included a few we shouldn't be talking about."
Located directly south of the Rogers County Court House, the area featured various businesses along with three hotels, a church, and a number of homes.
Richard LeGate agreed that “Big Daddy” was quite the businessman. The son of former Claremore grocer and city mayor Richard LeGate, he said he certainly remembered “Big Daddy” Sheppard.
“‘Shep’ had the first hardtop Chevy in Claremore," LeGate said with a laugh. “It was canary yellow, and you could always see him coming in that car. He and my dad were good friends."
Riley said Sheppard loved baseball enough to form his own team and supply uniforms and equipment.
"He would make all the arrangements for all the games," Riley said. "He had an old pickup truck he used to haul cows and pigs during the work week, but come time to take a road trip, he would wash the truck out so the players could use it.
"The games were conducted on a 60-40 basis. The home team received 60 percent of the gate. I don't know what they charged for admission, maybe 25 cents or so."
Home games were played on a field near Lincoln School on the west side of town.
A resident of Chelsea, Riley completed grade school there. Because the black students could not attend the high school, Riley and his brother started attending Lincoln. They rode the bus to school and back.
Speaking at a Claremore baseball banquet in January 2007, Ralph Terry, a Chelsea graduate and Most Valuable Player of the 1962 World Series while pitching with the Yankees, said that Gerome Riley was the best baseball player in Chelsea when they were growing up.
"I was too young to play with the Clowns when I first came here," Riley said. "But there was a younger team called the Hot Shots. We would play a game usually before the regular contest.
"We had players like Bryce Vann, Martin Coleman, Donnie Alexander, and Leonard and Henry Johnson, Maurice Willis, Floyd Grimett and Carl Wynn."
As he rattled off these names, it was almost as if he had played baseball with these fellows the week before. Telling stories about several of them, as he had done with the ones earlier, Riley said almost all of them joined the Clowns as they grew older.
"Most of the time it was good," Riley replied when asked about the receptions the team received in all-white communities. "We were always careful and never caused any problems.
"There were certain places in Arkansas we knew to take our own drinking water. In some of the towns, we were not allowed to use the water fountains or the restrooms."
Despite the caution, it was not always smooth going.
"You know, looking back, I don't remember ever playing a full nine-inning game at Vinita," he said, laughing. "It wasn't a race thing there. Vinita always had some great players and they didn't like us beating them. Of course, we didn't like to get beat, either. Usually, late in the game, a fight would break out. I think we probably won a few more times than they did, but it was close and a good rivalry. Vinita was tough."
Playing 40 to 50 games each summer, the Clowns were bound to have some wild moments.
"Because I had to work that day, I wasn't with the team on this one day when they went out of state,” Riley said. “I certainly heard all about it from the others, however. Because our pitcher felt he wasn't getting some close calls from the plate umpire, he started yelling at him to get it right. After some of this, the umpire had heard enough.
"He took off his mask and chest protector, threw them down, and told them to get someone else as he headed toward the parking lot. Then instead of getting in his vehicle and leaving, he drove out on the playing field and started chasing the pitcher, trying to run him down. No one was hurt, but the law had to be called to get him off the field."
While it has been mentioned that the Clowns played serious baseball, Riley said a pre-game activity always drew laughs from the fans.
Five or 10 minutes before games, the team would sometimes play “shadow ball.”
Riley explained. "The players would go to their positions and another would come up to bat. Then, everyone would go through the motions of playing without the benefit of an actual ball.
"The pitcher pitched, the hitter hit, and the fielders would field, all without touching a ball. This would last a few minutes and then a hitter would 'hit' the ball deep to the outfield. He would take off around the bases for an apparent inside-the-park home run. The outfielder would run after the pretend ball, 'pick it up’ and 'throw' it to home plate.
"At the very last second, the catcher would pull a real ball out of his pocket and tag the runner for an out. The fans always enjoyed watching our shadow game, no matter how many times they saw us."
As years rolled by, some of the older players would be replaced by younger ones. In several cases, sons joined their fathers on the team.
"When I was big enough to tag along, I would go with my father to the games and shag balls in the outfield while the team took batting practice," Kilpatrick, Jr. said. "Later, I helped get the field ready and worked in the concession stand. Finally, I was big enough to play."
The Clowns continued to field a team through most of the 1950s. The beginning of the end for the team came about the same time that the black community saw the end of classes at Lincoln, due to integration.
In the final years, others, including a few white players, donned the Claremore Clowns uniform.
Riley's sharp memory recalled players like John and Herbert Ryder, Leonard and Jim Keys, Charles Ray, John Hendricks, Carl Coleman, Bill Dikeman, Sonny Liggins, Curmon and Vernon Kelly, Milford Kinnard, Jr., Henry Johnson, and Charles and Billy Williams.
"In the end, most of us were getting older and a lot of the younger men were leaving Claremore for jobs elsewhere," Riley said. "I do want to say this, it was certainly a pleasure knowing all of these men. We had a lot of fun playing a game we all loved."