MOUNT VERNON — A Los Angeles entertainer and filmmaker who grew up hearing stories about Satchel Paige and Hank Aaron from his umpire father will talk about “Black Baseball: A History of the Negro Leagues” at Cornell College on Thursday, Feb. 14, at 7 p.m.
The lecture will be in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.
Byron Motley’s father, Bob, was a Negro Leagues umpire from 1949 to 1956. He called games pitched by Paige, witnessed three women compete with the men and was threatened by a player with a knife over a call at home plate. He plans to join his son for the lecture at Cornell.
“Growing up, I heard these stories on a daily basis,” says Motley, who also tours with Barry Manilow and performs a one-man tribute to jazz musicians and the Negro Leagues.
Motley has spent four years producing a documentary, “Oh, How They Lived: Stories of the Negro Leagues,” which he hopes to sell to PBS or a cable channel to air in 2003. His Cornell lecture will feature clips from the film, which includes interviews with Aaron, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell and the late Doris Parker, third wife of bebop musician Charlie Parker. She lived in the Cedar Rapids area in the 1940s, during the heyday of the Negro Leagues, and remembered teams barnstorming the Midwest and her sneaking out of church early to catch a Sunday game.
Although Negro League teams had talent, they often “performed” as much as they competed — much like basketball’s Harlem Globetrotters, says Cornell history professor Philip Lucas, who teaches a course called “Baseball: The American Game.” In order to draw spectators, who were predominantly white, the players and umpires appealed to fans’ desire for entertainment. After Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947, many of his fellow Negro League players followed, leaving teams with players who failed to draw the fans — if teams had enough players for a game at all. The Negro Leagues folded in 1960, 40 years after they officially organized.
Bob Motley later umpired in the Pacific Coast League. He retired from General Motors 15 years ago and lives in Kansas City, Mo., home of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.