The Curious Case of Dan Bankhead
Quite sadly, the name of Dan Bankhead is lost in the mists of baseball history, despite the fact that he was the first African-American pitcher in the Major Leagues, debuting just four months after Jackie Robinson, and he was Jackie’s first black teammate on the Brooklyn Dodgers. Bankhead had been a stellar pitcher for the Birmingham Black Barons and the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro Leagues. However, as if foreshadowing his fate, his first taste of the Majors did not go well. In four games that autumn, over the span of 10 innings, the twenty-seven-year-old right-hander gave up 15 hits, walked 8 batters, hit a batter, and uncorked a wild pitch, resulting in 8 runs. It could have been worse; there were 16 runners stranded. After the season concluded, he was sent to the minors.
In the minors Bankhead instantly regained success. In 1948, playing mostly for the Nashua Dodgers of the New England League, he went 24-6 with a sparkling 2.53 ERA. The following season he was promoted to Montreal of the Triple-A International League, where he went 20-6 with a 3.76 ERA. Over these two years he tossed 487 innings while yielding an unbelievably meager 346 hits. Furthermore, in both campaigns he led his league in strikeouts, 419 total. But he was crazy wild, issuing a whopping 316 free passes.
In the spring of 1950 Bankhead nailed down a roster spot on Brooklyn’s big league pitching staff, and he remained on the team throughout the season. He managed a respectable 9-4 won-loss record, but this belies a less-than-respectable 5.50 ERA and a glaring 88 walks over 129 â…“ innings. The following year, his final stint in the Majors, he completely fell apart. Over 14 innings scattered throughout seven games, he walked 14 batters while surrendering 27 hits, 5 of them leaving the yard, culminating in 24 runs. Ouch! During his MLB career, over 153 â…“ innings Bankhead walked 110 batters, a primary source of his dreadful 6.52 ERA. He had a high-octane fastball, but simply could not control it.
So that begs the question: Why was he so successful in the Negro leagues and the minors, yet so lousy in the Majors? There were rumors from people around the sport at the time, blacks included, that Bankhead choked when facing white hitters.
Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, had this to say: “Bankhead, who was from Alabama, was scared of what the ramifications would be if he hit a white batter…. He never got comfortable pitching to white guys…. He had the kind of fastball that ran in on right-handed hitters…. I think the first batter that he threw to, he hit in the elbow.”
Well, not quite. It was the fourteenth batter, but indeed it was his inaugural game. Bankhead eventually faced 706 batters in his brief MLB career, and he hit three of them, yet surely none as significant as the first.
On August 26, 1947, Daniel Robert Bankhead, raised in Jim Crow-era Alabama, made his Major League debut before 24,069 Dodger fans at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. An estimated one-third of the crowd was black. Bankhead entered in the second inning, replacing the starting pitcher who was getting shellacked. He was nervous and he allowed hits to three of the first four batters that he faced, but then settled down, retiring the side in order in the third. Then, in the fourth, a blazing fastball bore in on Pirates rookie sensation Wally Westlake and whacked him hard on the elbow. “I couldn’t get away from it,” Westlake later said. “He just about took my left arm off.” Racial tension was running high, and to add to the anxiety Westlake had belted a three-run homer earlier in the game. Was this retribution? Westlake calmly strolled to first base. Meanwhile, Bankhead unraveled. In the fifth inning he gave up a triple, a run-scoring single, a two-run homer, a walk with a stolen base, a run-scoring single, and another single before being pulled. Over 3 â…“ interminably brutal innings, he was on the hook for 10 hits and 8 earned runs.
Buck O’Neil, the legendary first baseman of the Negro Leagues and eminently engaging raconteur had this to say: “See, here’s what I always heard. Dan was scared to death that he was going to hit a white boy with a pitch. He thought there might be some sort of riot if he did it. Dan was from Alabama…. Dan was always from Alabama, you know what I mean? He heard all those people calling him names, making those threats, and he was scared. He’d seen black men get lynched.”
Toss this into the mix. In only 48 plate appearances as a batter, mostly in 1950, Bankhead was laid out twice. It’s certainly a small sample, but it is exceedingly out of line. In 1950, the average Major League player was hit twice over 434 plate appearances. This is certainly not getting lynched, but the message is clear.
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Sources
The statement that Bankhead choked when facing white hitters is supported in Jackie Robinson: A Biography, by Arnold Rampersad, Ballantine Publishing Group, 1997
Bob Kendrick’s quotes come from a MLB.com article by Bill Ladson appearing in April of 2020.
The Buck O’Neil quote comes from The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America, by Joe Posnanski, HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.