The Greatest Pitcher You've Never Heard Of -

The greatest pitcher nobody has ever heard of is buried in section 7, lot 1, row 17, grave 97 of Burr Oak Cemetery, where for more than 30 years, barely a soul knew about the man resting in an unmarked corner grave, his story buried alongside Chicago trumpeters and outfielders.

Then he had a visitor.

The first time Peter Gorton walked onto the cemetery grass, he couldn’t escape forgotten feelings of indignity. He was drawn to this quiet parcel of land and the history beneath his feet, and for years, unearthing this man’s memory has motivated him. They have little in common, but when the white 41-year old workaday dad and weekend ballplayer discovered the black left-hander who pitched his way into folklore a century ago, he found his baseball calling. Here rests John Donaldson, and nobody remembered his name.

“THE GREATEST COLORED PITCHER IN THE WORLD"

There was a time when John Donaldson was as famous as Satchel Paige. He was heralded as the “famous colored twirler,” whose only crime was playing his best years before 1920, when the Negro Leagues were officially created. Not only did Donaldson miss his chance to pitch in front of large crowds, he missed the chance to cement himself into contemporary baseball history. The pitcher who won more than 350 games and had 4,500 strikeouts has largely been lost to time.

In the days before black baseball became the economic force that motivated white baseball to integrate in 1947, Donaldson was one of its original stars. Newspaper accounts compared his change-up to that of Christy Mathewson and his fastball to that of Rube Waddell -- both dominant pitchers of the 1900s. In the early years of black baseball, Donaldson was a trailblazer for the trailblazers. And because he played his best baseball in small towns instead of big cities, he faded like his change-up.

Donaldson became famous when he pitched on diamonds carved out of farmlands in the Midwest, in front of fans sitting on picnic blankets and on the hoods of Model-Ts. Donaldson pitched off shoddy mounds and perfected a high arm angle, so that his fastball roared down a fearsome slope. The local bush leaguers had never seen anything like him before. He left thousands of strikeouts behind him.

Almost 30 years after Donaldson was laid to rest, Gorton, a Minnesota native, began hearing stories in small-town Minnesota about a smoke-throwing left-hander from the Negro Leagues. Armed with a passion for baseball and a strong sense of history, Gorton visited a historical society in Bertha, Minn. where he got his first look at Donaldson, on a yellowing advertisement for the pitcher’s barnstorming troupe:

JOHN DONALDSON; GREATEST COLORED PITCHER IN THE WORLD.

What Gorton discovered next changed his life. When he asked the curator if he could take the poster off the wall for a closer look, he noticed a familiar face -- himself. Beneath Donaldson’s feet was a photo of the 1987-88 District 24 Champion Staples Fighting Cardinals High School basketball team. The gangly Gorton is fourth from the right, almost directly below the face of the greatest pitcher nobody has ever heard of. Donaldson hadn’t been under Gorton’s feet – Gorton had been under Donaldson’s nose.

“Right then and there, I was tied to it,” Gorton says. “I felt from that day there was something I was drawn to.”

"IF I ACT THE PART OF A GENTLEMAN, AM I NOT ENTITLED TO A LITTLE RESPECT?”

Gorton discovered fans had once loved Donaldson, who was born Feb. 29, 1892 in Glasgow, Missouri, a small town near the Mason-Dixon line. Donaldson sprouted into a physical powerhouse with a positive demeanor whose options did not match his optimism. He grew up striking out the town team and joked in later years that he had been born with a ball in his hand. By the time he was a teenager, he knew his lightning left arm might take him far away from home.

A young black ballplayer’s best bet back then was to catch on with a barnstorming team. Donaldson joined the Tennessee Rats in 1911 and ventured deep into the Midwest, pitching against town teams in the rural Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. The Rats played as many games as they could book, lived in the bus, ate out of paper bags, and considered themselves lucky.

Derogatory experiences were a way of life. Even the team name was meant to convey filth to white fans. Various newspapers called them “darkies.” The Rats survived off gate percentages and passed the hat when somebody hit a home run -- sometimes courtesy of Donaldson, who played centerfield when he wasn’t pitching.

Donaldson understood that discrimination was part of the deal, and years later, he recalled how fans paid admission for the right to say what they wanted, but he refused to be anything less than dignified. “When I go out there to play baseball,” Donaldson said, “It is not unusual to hear some fan cry out, ‘Hit the dirty n-----.’ That hurts. For I have no recourse. I am getting paid, I suppose, to take that. But why should fans become personal? If I act the part of a gentleman, am I not entitled to a little respect?”

Donaldson’s dignity moved Gorton, who traveled to Glasgow and interviewed anybody in the town of 1,263 who said they had a memory of the hurler. Gorton read every edition of the local newspaper from 1905 until 1930. He found no descendents, but did find a rich oral history.

“He got along with everyone,” Gorton says. “People who I talked to said they didn’t see him as a black person, they saw him as a great baseball player and they wanted him to play on their team. That was remarkable to me.”

So were Donaldson’s exploits. Gorton collected what he could and then began a one-man letter-writing campaign to public libraries and historical societies throughout the Midwest, providing strangers with leads if Donaldson had been to their town, and asking for their help. One headline at a time, Donaldson’s games arrived in Gorton’s mailbox, and the lefty came back to life.

“Donaldson, the left handed colored man, registered the phenomenal record of nineteen strikeouts.”

“Struck out, by Donaldson, 16.”

“One of the greatest pitchers in the bush today.”

“Donaldson, the southpaw, did the twirling act and he had the best of them guessing.”

“Donaldson was again on the mound and those who witnessed the game say he was as strong at the end of the twelfth inning as he was at the beginning of the game the day before.”

Soon, the forgotten pitcher had a volunteer army. Gorton’s network unearthed an 18-inning, 31-strikeout game, a 27-strikeout game and four 19-strikeout outings. But a bigger world awaited Gorton when his group began unearthing Donaldson’s career with the All-Nations team, which was the forerunner to what became Negro League baseball’s most prestigious club.

"I WOULD GIVE $50,000 FOR HIM AND THINK I WAS GETTING A BARGAIN.”

The All-Nations were an inter-racial barnstorming team formed in 1912 that sold tickets on the gimmick that black, white, Latino, and even female ballplayers could play together. Donaldson teamed with a Cuban right-hander, Jose Mendez, to form one of the period’s most dominating duos. Donaldson continued to rack up strikeouts, and nearly a century later, Gorton continued piecing his career together:

“Struck out, by Donaldson, 28”

“Donaldson is credited with twenty-five strikeouts.”

“Struck out - by Donaldson, 22”

Over the past decade, Gorton’s network has uncovered about 1,900 games in which Donaldson pitched, many for the All-Nations, where Donaldson won his greatest fame and left ghosts to chase.

“He went from being this small town guy to this historically significant guy,” Gorton says. “I’d start tracking the All-Nations and found hundreds upon hundreds of games from all over. He was an automatic 10-strikeout-a-game guy.”

Gorton soon received a tip that helped put Donaldson’s physical ability in proper perspective. He heard from a man in St. Paul whose grandfather had taken motion picture film footage of Donaldson pitching. Gorton raced to the scene. The man “plopped me on the couch, told me not to say a word, and to just watch,” he says.

Gorton was stunned when he saw the greatest pitcher nobody ever heard of flicker to life, firing a few fastballs in 1925. When Gorton showed the video to a couple of veteran scouts, one said that Donaldson reminded him of a left-handed Bob Gibson.

“It’s amazing that nitrate film survived for 80 years in some moldy basement,” Gorton says. “I love watching it.” Then he offers hopefully, “There might be more! He has reels and reels.”

Still other evidence eludes Gorton, including a game against the New York Giants sometime around 1915 when Giants manager John McGraw is believed to have offered the light-skinned pitcher a contract if he would agree to pass as Cuban instead of black at a time when there were a handful of Cuban major leaguers.

Gorton can’t find the game, but he did find Donaldson’s version of the story, published in 1932. “One prominent baseball man in fact offered me a nice sum if I would go to Cuba, change my name and let him take me into this country as a Cuban,” Donaldson said. “It would mean renouncing my family. One of the agreements was that I was never again to visit my mother or have anything to do with colored people. I refused. I am not ashamed of my color.”

Donaldson’s dignity moves Gorton as much as Donaldson’s stuff moved McGraw, who is quoted as saying, “If Donaldson were a white man or if the unwritten law of baseball didn’t bar Negroes from the major leagues, I would give $50,000 for him and think I was getting a bargain.”

Gorton admires Donaldson’s vibrant elegance as much as All-Nations owner J. L. Wilkinson did. When he decided he wanted to rename the All-Nations, Donaldson suggested a title that would befit the grace and class he strove to inspire.

“Donaldson suggested the name ‘Monarchs’ one day when we were feeling around for a name,” Wilkinson told the Kansas City Call in 1948. “Right away, the name sounded good and we adopted it.”

Thus were born the legendary Kansas City Monarchs.

Satchel Paige became the most famous Monarch, but Wilkinson always believed that Paige would have to wait for his turn if he was in the same rotation with his former ace. “John Donaldson was the most amazing pitcher I ever saw,” Wilkinson said.

"HOPEFULLY THIS WILL END WITH DONALDSON IN THE HALL OF FAME"

After years of research, Gorton’s path finally led him to section 7, lot 1, row 17, grave 97. It was the first time he visited Donaldson’s unmarked gravesite at Burr Oak Cemetery. Gorton arrived with the conviction that began driving him a decade ago.

“From a modern perspective I still can’t understand how it could have ended up the way it did,” Gorton says. “It’s not right. Thousands of newspaper articles say how famous this guy was. How could somebody who was as prominent and at the front of an incredible period of change in this country end up in that situation?”

Donaldson finally gained a small measure of respect in 2004. Researcher Dr. Jeremy Krock, who leads the Negro League Baseball Grave Marker Project, learned that Donaldson was buried at Burr Oak. Krock credits Gorton’s work for bringing Donaldson’s career to light. A donation was made to purchase a head stone. The greatest pitcher nobody has ever heard of finally had a name again.

“Pete Gorton has single-handedly kept the John Donaldson name alive,” Krock says. “Pete championed the case for [Donaldson’s inclusion on] the Hall of Fame ballot in 2006 and started the Donaldson network going with a large number of dedicated volunteers. Hopefully this will end with Donaldson in the Hall of Fame.”

Gorton doesn’t consider the work done. Donaldson wasn’t elected in 2006, but Gorton firmly believes Donaldson belongs enshrined with half-brothers Rube and Willie Foster, both Hall of Fame Negro League left-handed pitchers. He wants Donaldson to be included more often in discussions of the best pitchers in Negro League -- and baseball -- history.

“We may never finish digging,” he says.

Gorton’s network discovered that Donaldson was the first fulltime black scout in baseball history when the White Sox hired him in 1949. When the White Sox learned that Donaldson had been one of their own, they paid $2,000 for the headstone.

Donaldson signed Negro Leaguer veterans Sam Hairston, Bob Boyd and Connie Johnson for the White Sox, but he couldn’t get the front office to commit to signing Birmingham Black Barons outfielder Willie Mays in 1950. Donaldson also knew about Henry Aaron and Ernie Banks when they were rookie Negro Leaguers, but couldn’t get the White Sox to let him sign younger black players. Frustrated, he resigned, and worked for the Post Office until his death in Chicago in 1970.

While researching in Memphis, a member of Gorton’s network saw a handwritten letter Donaldson wrote about Mays. Donaldson never lost his dignity even when he lost the player who would have made him famous all over again.

In the letter, he thanked the Black Barons owner for the opportunity to scout Mays. The closing of the letter speaks to Donaldson’s pride, in words he could have spoken just as easily to the visitor at grave 97, Peter Gorton, the man who trumpeted his forgotten name:

I am respectfully your friend,
John W. Donaldson

Journalist, author and scout John Klima is a regular contributor to ThePostGame.com and the author of Willie’s Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, The Last Negro League World Series and the Making of a Baseball Legend. To learn more about pitcher John Donaldson or to contact the Donaldson Research Network, visit http://johndonaldson.bravehost.com.

Boy, 4, shot in car during US road rage attack

A four-year-old boy has been shot by a crazed driver in the US while strapped into a child seat in the back of his mother's car.

The shocking road rage attack in Atlanta apparently occurred after an impatient driver became enraged when a mini van did not move quickly enough when the traffic lights turned green, ABC News reports.

The man allegedly followed the car driven by mother Tammitha Willians before shooting through the rear door.

The bullet pierced the boot and the back seat, injuring toddler Korda in the buttocks.

His traumatised mother, Tammitha Williams, said she was joking with her children in the car when the lights changed, and did not pull away immediately.

"Once he blew his horn, I blew my horn back like, ok I hear you," she said.

"The next thing I know, he's behind me, he's weaving back and forth in traffic like coming beside my car and I'm like, what's wrong with this man? He jumped back behind me and that's when I heard the gunshot.

"I was panicking, I was praying because I didn't know where he got hit or anything, so I'm just praying, asking God to make sure he's OK.

"He didn't cry at all, he was a big boy...I cried like a baby myself."

Police are continuing to hunt the driver and senior officers said it was "extremely lucky" they were not investigating a homicide.

"I got a big hole in my van, not only in my van. I got it in my heart because they really hurt my baby," Ms Williams said.

"I don't know this person, but he hurt me...it could have been a whole different outcome, he could have been dead and gone, I could have been burying a 4-year-old."

Doctors say the bullet hit the boy's soft tissue and he is likely to fully recover.

Philadelphia Mayor Partners to Save Young Black Men

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By Cord Jefferson

African-American heavy hitters from some of Philly's top offices are teaming up to fight crime, unemployment and poor health amongst young Black men.

A powerful group of African-American male leaders are banding together in Philadelphia in order to try and help fight the wide rage of problems currently facing young Black men in the city.

Led by Mayor Michael Nutter and District Attorney Seth Williams, the 60-man-strong group stood before a crowd at the Martin Luther King Recreation Center on Tuesday and professed their commitment to helping young people.

Community activist Bilal Qayyum introduced the collective, saying, “We are Black men concerned about the crisis.”

The crisis of which Qayyum speaks is a combination of many things: unemployment, crime, poor educational prospects, poor health and violence. “More than 50 percent of Black males in Philadelphia are jobless,” said Qayyum. "When I use the term jobless, I'm not talking about unemployed. I'm talking about folks who have been out of work, can't find work and are not being counted by the government.”

In order to help combat the problems, Qayyum and the group introduced a plan called “The Agenda: A Cooperative Approach Towards Addressing Critical Issues Among Black Males in Philadelphia.” The goal is to get young Black men off the street and into positions that will grant them opportunities at success.

The 16-page document recommends, among other things, implementing “student success centers” in schools and hiring more Black male counselors, implementing community review committees to evaluate the work of judges and creating mentoring programs for Black males.

"We have decided we are going to take ownership of this crisis," Qayyum told the crowd of young Black men.

"People always ask, what are Black men going to do?" added Seth Williams. "So I am just here as another Black man, putting my shoulder with these men to make a positive statement to say that hopefully, collectively and collaboratively ... that we will do all that we can to change the economic opportunities, the educational opportunities and the public health opportunities for Black men."

Unsafe sleeping conditions claiming lives of more African American babies

According to a recently released report, unsafe sleeping practices, like sharing a bed with an adult, are to blame for more of the reported infant deaths in the state, particularly among minorities.

The Child Death, Near Death and Stillbirth Commission (CDNDSC) released its fiscal year 2010 report Monday. Statistics show unsafe infant sleeping practice deaths have dramatically increased to 18, 15 involving African American babies -- that's 83 percent. Among the 18 deaths, the report states only one infant was sleeping in a crib. Experts believe cultural practices and economic reasons could explain for the disparity.

Among the 18 cases reviewed, six of the infants were not sleeping on their back. Four of the cases had unsafe bedding for the infant’s sleep, two cases involved a mother who fell asleep while breastfeeding the infant.

"What I like to tell parents about the safest sleep enviroment is the ABC's. The baby should be sleeping Alone. B is for on sleeping on his or her back, and the Baby should be sleeping in a Crib," said Dr. Kate Cronan, an ER doctor at A.I. duPont Hospital.

Preventable deaths, according to CDNDSC. Consequently, the state agency has made several recommendations to help prevent unsafe infant sleeping deaths, including harsher penalties for parents who blatantly disregard education on safe sleeping practices, through programs like Cribs for Kids, which provides low-income parents with free cribs and safe sleeping tips to keep their babies safe.

Several organizations have been handing out free cribs as shown on a February broadcast of First.  The idea is the free cribs give health and community officials a chance to remind parents about child sleeping habits.

CDC: U.S. Teen Birth Rate Fell to Record Low in 2009

By KATIE MOISSE, ABC News Medical Unit

Despite Drop, 400,000 Teen Girls Give Birth Each Year

Fewer teens are having babies in the United States -- but not few enough, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although teen births dropped 37 percent nationwide over the last two decades to an all-time low in 2009, the rate is still 9 times higher than in other developed countries.
"Though we have made progress in reducing teen pregnancy over the past 20 years, still far too many teens are having babies," CDC director Dr. Thomas R. Frieden said in a statement. "Preventing teen pregnancy can protect the health and quality of life of teenagers, their children, and their families throughout the United States."
Despite the plunge, roughly 410,000 teen girls gave birth in 2009 at an estimated cost of $9 billion to U.S. taxpayers, according to the report.
"I don't think teens really understand the cost," said Dr. Amy Thompson, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology specializing in teen pregnancy at the University of Cincinnati. "Many are enrolled in the Medicaid and WIC [Women, Infants and Children] programs to help them during pregnancy. But teen pregnancy is associated with poor high school performance or dropout and decreased earnings later on in life."
Only half of teen moms earn a high school diploma by age 22 compared with 90 percent of teens who don't have children, according to the report.
Black and Hispanic teens are 2 to 3 times more likely to give birth than white teens, according to the report. And girls born to teen parents are nearly 33 percent more likely to become teen moms themselves.
Thompson said the higher rates for blacks and Hispanics could reflect lack of access to care or cultural issues.
"We don't know if there are other socioeconomic factors at play here. Are they less likely to talk to their parents about sex? Or if they do, are the next steps taken? Do the parents say, 'OK, let's get you on birth control'?"

Numbers Moving in Right DirectionThe report suggests fewer high school students are having sex (46 percent compared with 54 percent in 1991), and more of them are using at least one method of birth control (12 percent reported not using contraception compared with 16 percent in 1991).
The proportion of students who reported using two methods of contraception, such as condoms and the birth control pill, almost doubled from 5 percent in 1991 to 9 percent in 2009.
"Even though we are making process, there's still work to do," Thompson said.
Thompson said she often sees teen moms who are pregnant again, which means they have had access to a doctor and likely had been educated about birth control.
"I think that speaks more to having them use [long-acting reversible contraceptives]," Thompson said, referring to contraceptive implants like intrauterine devices. "Those would provide really good birth control as opposed to birth control pills."

Education is Key

The report highlights the importance of sex and birth control education -- a curriculum that varies widely between states.
"I think we definitely need a more formal approach to how we implement education strategies, whether they're for parents or in the school system," Thompson said.
Between 2006 and 2008, 65 percent of teen girls and 53 percent of teen boys learned about abstinence and birth control during formal sex education. Fewer had spoken to their parents about sex.
Based on teen birth rates in individual states, school systems in the Northeast and upper Midwest may be doing a better job at educating than those in the South, Thompson said.
We need to look at what they're doing there and implement those strategies in other states," Thompson said. "However, this is a very charged issue. And in the face of school budget cuts, it's a challenge for many school systems."

Should CBS replace Katie Couric with a black anchor?

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The news arrived like a thunderclap, one news junkies had been anticipating for months: Katie Couric, for almost five years the anchor of the "CBS Evening News," would step down from the post later this year, in the wake of declining ratings and some frustration with the evening-news format she inherited.

From almost the moment the news of her imminent exit was announced, speculations began about who'd succeed her. That puff-of-smoke-at-the-Vatican waiting game is now underway; the early prospects include the three leading internal candidates, Russ Mitchell, Scott Pelley and Harry Smith.

As CBS makes its decision, we can expect those who monitor the progress of black and minority journalists in television news to get behind Mitchell, a frequent CBS fixture and one of broadcast television's most recognizable African-American faces.

If Mitchell took over the anchor post, it would be not only a break with CBS News' past practices but also another milestone for black journalists in American media. Mitchell would take the torch passed on by trailblazers from Ed Bradley and Harold Dow, two late and legendary Emmy-winning CBS correspondents, to Carole Simpson (the first African-American woman anchor of a nightly network news program, ABC's "World News Tonight Saturday," in 1988) to the late Max Robinson, the black Chicago newscaster who made history in 1978, when he was named co-anchor of ABC's weekday "World News Tonight," the first black American journalist to reach that pinnacle.

Milestones like that are slow to happen. According to the latest annual survey of TV and radio news directors and general managers, conducted by Hofstra University and the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), "the percentage of minority TV news directors increased last year, but overall the percentage of minorities in TV news fell for the third straight year."

Joe Papper, a Hofstra journalism professor and the survey director, writes: "In the last 20 years, the minority population in the U.S. has risen 9.4 percent; but the minority workforce in TV news is up 2.4 percent, and the minority workforce in radio is actually half what it was two decades ago."

"In fact, we end the decade with no gains whatsoever for minorities in TV news, and the percentage of minorities in radio news is down substantially," Papper writes in the survey.

In some ways, Mitchell would be a natural for the CBS anchor slot. He's co-hosted the Saturday edition of "The Early Show," anchors Saturday's "Evening News," and has even filled in for Couric on the weekday "Evening News."

For Robert J. Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, "the natural choices would be Harry Smith and Russ Mitchell, simply because they've been doing the job when Katie was out. They've already done that anchor spot, just doing it at times when Katie was not."

But the debate over who'll succeed Couric comes amid a sea change in viewer habits, a continuing fall-off in broadcast evening-news viewers, and a corresponding increase in black and minority faces in the cable news space -- the wild frontier where CBS News has a marginal presence.

The Pew Research Center's latest State of the Media report finds the important numbers for the CBS Evening News -- viewers, ratings and audience share -- all on the decline. Those numbers aren't just a network issue; the Pew report shows that the audience for all the evening news programs of the Big Three (ABC, CBS and NBC) has been eroding since 1980.

For that reason, whoever gets Couric's job will be asked to catch a falling knife: to take the helm of the perennially third-rated evening-news program and turn it around -- a tall order for the next CBS News anchor, regardless of race or gender.

At The Huffington Post, hjo4, a commenter on a Couric-related story, expressed a preference: "It should go to Russ Mitchell he's been a Team player and loyal soldier to CBS, but that's not going to happen. For some reason News execs believe America does not want to see a Black man or woman reading them the nightly news on a regular basis. It will be the same old, same old and CBS will have the same problems they always had."

That view may or may not be a cynical one, but it does reflect the belief that, with respect to staffing at the highest levels, networks are willing captives of the "same old" reliance on personal and professional relationships as any other business. For the fortunate few black and minority journalists able to breathe the rarefied air of television news, those relationships are the exception to the rule.

Richard Prince, who edits the online Journal-Isms column for the non-profit Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, said the choice of Couric's successor will come down to a known unknown:

"The question is, what is CBS looking for? This slot will be filled by a different executive team than was in place when Katie Couric was chosen. David Rhodes was named president of CBS News in February," Prince said. "In March, he named Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, who is Latina, as vice president news. The new team may be more sensitive to diversity and to the nation's changing demographics.

"But are they looking for someone who'll create buzz, with a high Q factor, who can shine in multiple platforms, who can appeal to a different demographic than the competition? Those are some of the factors that will influence who is chosen, apart from how good a journalist the candidate is," Prince said.

In an interview with Ebony in August 2007, Mitchell showed that he understood the challenges faced by black journalists.

"I think that we have come a long way in this industry," he told Ebony's Kevin Chappell. "However, we have a long way to go ... Blacks are leaving the business at a much faster rate than our White counterparts. A lot of that is because of frustration ... The industry has to do so much better at addressing that problem. And people like me who have been very fortunate need to reach out to younger African-Americans in this business and say, 'Look I know it's frustrating, there are going to be people along the way who tell you that you can't do this, or you can't do that, but hang in there, work hard and hopefully some day that will pay off.'"

Three and a half years later, with both his network's ratings and its news format under siege like never before, Mitchell waits -- with other black and minority journalists -- to see if that patience bears fruit.