Black baseball pioneer Don Newcombe's time living in Montreal

    Strapping 6'4" fastballer Don Newcombe, who died this week at age 92 after a stellar baseball career, starred for the Montreal Royals in 1948 before going on to baseball glory as one of the first black major league players.
  Here are some little-known facts about the former Montrealer.

1-Newcombe claims that he, not Jackie Robinson, was slated to be the first African-American major leaguer. Newcombe later said that Brooklyn Dodgers brass preferred the infielder Robinson because he was older and not a pitcher. “(Dodger GM) Buzzie Bavasi said in a book that they were thinking about me as the first. I was 19, brash and uneducated. I could throw, but I didn’t always know where the ball was going to go. I might have started a riot."

2- Newcombe almost quit baseball. For a time he wished to leave Montreal to return back to New Jersey and likely work as a trucker. According a September 1948 interview with longtime Habs and Royals trainer Ernie Cook. "One day last spring Newcombe wanted to give it all up and go home. That's when his arm was sore and he said he wasn't any use to the club. I kept telling him to hang out and we'd keep working on his arm and the heat would bake the soreness out." Newcombe went on to have a dominating season in Montreal going 17-6 with a 3.14 ERA and three shutouts.

3-Playing in Montreal cost Newcombe a spot in the Hall of Fame. The Baseball Hall of Fame gives credit for Negro League play and major league play, but not minor league play. Had Newcombe stayed in the Negro League rather than joining the Dodgers minor league system (in Nashua, New Hampshire and Montreal) his totals would likely have been sufficient for him to be honoured in the hall. Newcombe also missed time by spending two years in military service in the 1950s and also lost a few years due to an alcohol addiction, as he later recounted.

4 - Newcombe signed his first pro baseball deal with the Negro Leagues Newark Eagles, owned by Effa Manley, (1897-1981) the first woman voted into the baseball hall of fame, a woman who some compared to Rachel Dolezal, as she was white who passed as black. Newcombe had considerable praise for Manley. “I’ll never forget Effa Manley. She was an outstanding woman. She offered me $175 a month to play for the Eagles in 1944. We trained on a college campus in Richmond, Va. When I got to training camp, I put on my uniform, and Willie Wells, the manager, said, ‘You’re not going to throw for 10 days. All I want you to do is run. You’re only 17 but you’re going to be a big man. If your legs are in shape, you’ll be in shape.’ Ten days. No throwing. Just running. I never hurt my arm, all because of Willie Wells.”