Ohio native Ted Toles passed away on Monday (April 4) at the age of 90. Ted played in the Negro Leagues in their waning years and went on to the minor leagues. A multi-sport standout in high school (he was a Golden Gloves champion for the Warren/Youngstown Ohio region), Ted was offered a contract with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in 1946. The southpaw had already had some arm trouble (he had had his teeth taken out at 18 because he'd been told that calcium deposits would damage his pitching arm), another player in the league recommended a hot liniment treatment and that seemed to do the trick. He went 18-7 for the Crawfords that year while batting .350. That was good enough to get Ted a spot on the Jackie Robinson All-Stars, a barnstorming team that played, among others, several major league teams.
Ted also played for the Newark Eagles and Cleveland Buckeyes but, following Jackie Robinson's major league debut, interest in Negro League baseball began to fall away. Players with little time in the league, such as Ted, couldn't get a contract in the league anymore. They were paid as "percentage players" (the baseball equivalent of day laborers). As Ted had a military deferment, that wasn't going to work for him.
Fortunately, he impressed the Cleveland Indians at an open tryout and was signed. Racism was at its worst in the south, so many of the black players being signed by major league franchises were assigned to minor league clubs on one side or the other of the Canadian border. That didn't mean there was no racism in those northern leagues and Ted saw his share. Of course, if you reacted to any of it, you'd soon be out of a job, so Ted took it in stride and played his game.
Ted had one of his favorite baseball memories with the New Castle Indians in July 1951. As the Indians swept a double header, Ted went 4 for 9 with a homerun and 6 RBIs. In 1952, Ted played for the Magic Valley Cowboys. At one point in the middle of the season, the switch-hitter was batting .400, though he finished the year batting .278. Twice during the season, Ted was called upon to race a horse as part of the ballpark festivities. He won both races (as it turns out, horses are notoriously bad at rounding the bases...just sayin'). Ted's final season of minor league ball was split between the St. Hyacinthe A's and the Trois-Rivieres Yankees. By that time, he'd been reduced to part-time play. Still just 27, Ted left the pros after the 1953 season to take a job in an Ohio steel mill. Then he was largely forgotten until more recent times when Negro League history gained interest. Since then, Ted has been honored across the country. In 2007, Topps included a card of Ted in their Allen & Ginter's product. Ted Toles Bobbleheads (showing him with the Crawfords) were produced and sold through quickly. And he's attended a number of Ted Toles nights in the minor league cities where he played and many where he didn't.
"Never made a million dollars," Ted
says,
"I had a million thrills."
Ted's biography,
Living on Borrowed Time: The Life and Times of Negro League Player Ted Toles Jr., was published in 2014.
Cusick had
earlier posted an image of Ted with the Eston Ramblers in the Negro League thread. This image shows Ted with the Magic Valley Cowboys in 1952 where the face is not as inflicted with shadows. I colorized the image for one of my tribute cards though, to be honest, I've got no clue what the team's color scheme was. For that, I relied upon what was posted among the minor league logos and such
elsewhere on this site. Because I can, I'm also attaching an image (such as it is) of 3 African-Americans who played with Magic Valley in 1952--Ted Toles, Maurice "Pete" Peatros and Jimmy Sampson--from the May 8, 1952 edition of
The Ogden Standard-Examiner. The heading above the picture reads "Colored Stars With The Cowboys".