Ted Radcliffe

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Ted Radcliffe in 1941

Theodore Roosevelt "Double Duty" Radcliffe (born July 7, 1902 in Mobile, Mobile County; died August 11, 2005 in Chicago, Illinois) was a pitcher, catcher, and manager in Negro League baseball. He played with the Birmingham Black Barons in the 1940s and appeared in 6 East-West All Star Games.

Radcliffe was one of 10 children raised in Mobile by a contractor for a shipbuilding company. He attended Booker T. Washington Elementary School up to 7th grade. He and his brother Alex Radcliffe played neighborhood games with a group of friends that included Satchel Paige and Bobby Robinson. After a flirtation with the Mobile Black Bears, he and Alex hitchhiked to the South Side of Chicago, Illinois in 1919, joining an older brother who had settled there after returning from World War I. The rest of the family soon followed. Ted attended classes at Wendell Phillips High School and snuck into nearby South Side Park to shag fly balls and throw warm-up pitches for the American Giants before games.

Within a year, Ted signed with the semi-professional Illinois Giants, roaming the upper midwest and Wyoming by bus. He moved over to Gilkerson's Union Giants for a few seasons, where Clarence "Pops" Coleman taught him the finer points of catching. He signed with Bingo DeMoss's Detroit Stars of the Negro National League in 1928. He spent the next 18 years as a prominent Negro Leaguer. He and Paige often jumped from team to team, chasing better offers. and in one season he appeared with five different teams. His career included stints with the St Louis Stars, Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Columbus Blue Birds, New York Black Yankees, Brooklyn Eagles, Cincinnati Tigers, Memphis Red Sox, Chicago American Giants, Louisville Buckeyes and Kansas City Monarchs. He was among a number of players enticed to the Dakotas for higher-paying jobs on semi-professional barnstorming teams int he mid-1930s, a circuit booked by Abe Sapertstein.

He was manager for the Tigers in 1937, the Red Sox in 1938. In the winters he found work in the Mexican League and South America. He appeared on the Birmingham Black Barons roster for at least parts of every season between 1942 and 1945. In 1943 he left to manage the Chicago American Giants, who lost to the Black Barons in the Negro American League playoffs. After that series, Radcliffe returned to the Birmingham roster to help out in the Negro World Series against the Homestead Grays. Saperstein, then co-owner of the Barons, stood out as a generous patron, giving Radcliffe cars, watches and suits as rewards, as well as cash bonuses. When Sapertstein left, Radcliffe moved to Kansas City, where he roomed with Jackie Robinson. In 1946 he was hired by Saperstein again as manager of the Harlem Globetrotters baseball team, and also earned $850 a month coaching pitchers for the Grays. He closed his career with another season as player manager for the American Giants in Chicago in 1950. HeAl returned to the Black Barons as a part-time manager in the 1950s, and continued to find work as a scout for the Cleveland Indians in the 1960s.

Radcliffe was known as a cunning and capable player. As a pitcher, he built on his regular arsenal of pitches by throwing breaking balls and "spitballs", the latter of which were phased out of Major League play beginning in 1919. He was also known for keeping up a regular stream of banter which drove some hitters to distraction. Radcliffe was also an excellent batter, with an estimated career batting average of .271. He batted .403 in 22 exhibition games against Major League pitchers. He was invited to six East–West All-Star Games, pitching in three and catching in the other three. His last All-Star appearance was highlighted by a home run into the upper deck of Comiskey Park in 1943.

Radcliffe claimed to have earned his nickname "Double-Duty" from writer Damon Runyon while he was playing for the 1932 Pittsburgh Crawfords. After catching a 4-0 shutout game for Paige in the first game of a double header at Yankee Stadium, he came back for the second game and pitched his own 5-0 shutout. This account is unsubstantiated.

In 1934 Radcliffe became the first Black manager of white players as he took charge of the independent, racially-integrated Jamestown Red Sox in North Dakota. He went on to manage newly-integrated semi-professional teams in the Southern Minnesota League and Michigan-Indiana League. In 1950 he recruited the first non-Black players to the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League.

Radcliffe retired in Chicago, moving into a housing project. He and his second wife Alberta were victims of robbery in 1990, which brought attention to his poverty and prompted the Baseball Assistance Team and the Mayor's Richard M. Daley's office to find him space in an assisted living facility and sign him up for a $10,000/year pension offered to former Negro League players. Kyle McNary began interviewing him in 1992 for what became his published biography. Growing respect for Negro League players led to three White House invitations, and an Emmy-winning television documentary on WGN. Beginning with his 100th birthday in 2002, Radcliffe threw out a ceremonial first pitch to Buck O'Neil before a White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field. In July 2005 he returned to Birmingham to throw a first pitch for the 2005 Birmingham Barons at the Hoover Metropolitan Stadium. He died from cancer at home in Chicago two weeks later. He is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery there.

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