James “Red” Moore (#3) played six seasons in the Negro Major Leagues (1935-1940) and was recognized as one of the league's premier first basemen.
Born in Atlanta’s Oakland City on November 18, 1916, Moore played for the Atlanta Black Crackers in 1935, 1938, and 1946-48.
During his career, which was cut short because of military service, he played on three All-Star teams, three Second Half Championship teams and was selected to the 1938 Southern News Services All-American Negro League Baseball Team.
According to many former Negro League players, Moore could "pick it" at first base. He was a defensive whiz who often entertained crowds while warming up before games by catching the ball behind his back.
"In Red Moore, the [Negro] American League has probably the greatest retriever of scatter gun throws in America. Moore's knack for picking erratic throws out of the dust, his marvelous throwing arm and errorless play on any sort of chance, place him first."
On June 9, 2006, Moore was inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame with Evander Holyfield, Furman Bisher, Phil Neikro, Bobby Cremins and Wyomia Tyus.
On June 5, 2008, he was “drafted” by the Atlanta Braves in the Negro Leagues Player Draft, held prior to the Major League draft. Each Major League club drafted a surviving former Negro Leagues player, who represented every player who did not have the opportunity to play baseball in the major leagues.
He died at the age of 99 on February 6, 2016.
TIMELINE
1935 - Atlanta Black Crackers
1936-1937 - Newark Eagles*
1938 - Baltimore Elite Giants* & Atlanta Black Crackers*
1939-1940 - Baltimore Elite Giants
1946-1948 - Atlanta Black Crackers
*Negro Major League teams
James Red Moore Topps Baseball card. 1939 Baltimore Elite Giants. Hank Aaron (2011). President Barak Obama (2013). Greg White (2010). Hal Jacobs (2010). Decatur baseball team (2011). Mary Moore (2010).
RESOURCES
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/remembering-james-red-moore-of-the-atlanta-black-crackers
THE WRITE STUFF
In his prime, James “Red” Moore was among the finest and most agile first basemen in professional baseball. There was no ball he couldn’t dig out of the dirt, whether it was hit to him or bounced at him by a scattered-arm shortstop.
Sometimes he would catch the ball, roll it off the heel of his glove and into his other hand so fast that it looked like he was catching bare-handed. Others he would catch between his legs.
“I could pick ‘em,” Moore said, waving his large hands. “And people used to come to the games early to watch me. I could put on a show.”
[Atlanta Journal-Constitution article ("Braves celebrate Atlanta’s black baseball heritage"), May 31, 2013]
Negro League Legend Red Moore to Attend Decatur Baseball Game Friday
Bill Banks, Decatur Bulldogs Booster e-newsletter, March 17, 2010
A couple weeks back I read about the death of the last surviving World War I veteran, and it occurred to me that surviving authentic Negro League players are nearly as rare. When I say “authentic,” I’m talking about those who played in the Negro American or Negro National League prior to 1947, the year Jackie Robinson signed with the Dodgers.
Prominent Negro League historian James Riley (who lives in metro Atlanta) estimates that maybe 20 are still living. One of these is lifelong Atlanta resident James “Red” Moore who turned 94 last November. Four years ago I published a profile of Red in “Atlanta Magazine” which — and I say this with extreme humility — is a great piece of writing and should be required reading on many college campuses.
In preparing the article I spent quite a few weeks researching and talking to Red, who’s an absolute delight and also quite a bit more modest than myself. I mention this because Red will attend this Friday’s Decatur High baseball game against Greater Atlanta Christian at McKoy Park. First pitch is 6 p.m., but Mr. Moore will be on hand beginning at 5:00, talking, answering questions and signing autographs. Greg White of Decatur Active Living, who’s been close friends with Red for years, tells me that he will have a limited supply of reprints of historic photographs that Red will sign and sell.
If you get a chance, don’t miss this opportunity to hang with Red. He is a singular individual and an absolute state and, frankly, national treasure.
He played five years in the Negro Majors, a career cut short (as were those of many ballplayers) by World War II. In his definitive volume, “The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues,” James Riley writes of Red, “He was expert at handling ground balls, a master at catching bad throws and making it look easy. Described as the ‘most perfect’ first baseman ever, the slick fielder was quiet, unassuming, and practical.”
In 1936 and 1937 he played for the Newark Eagles, owned by numbers banker Abe Manley, and these teams featured several players now in Baseball’s Hall of Fame. In 1939 and 1940 he was with the Baltimore Elite (pronounced E-Light) Giants where he roomed with a teenaged prodigy named Roy Campanella, about whom Red once told me, “There was nothing I could teach him. He was only 16 or 17 and he knew more about the game than I did.”
But Red’s most indelible season was 1938, when he stayed home and played for the Atlanta Black Crackers. By all rights the ’38 Black Crackers were Atlanta’s first legitimate major league sports franchise, some 28 years before the Braves moved from Milwaukee. For most of their duration (1919-1952) the Black Crackers were members of the minor-league Negro Southern League. But in 1938, the team changed ownership, hired a number of superlative ballplayers, including Moore, and joined the Negro American League for that season only.
After going through three managers in a matter of weeks, owner John Harden gave the job to his spirited, impulsive 19-year-old second baseman Gabby Kemp―”they called him that,” Moore recalled, “because he done a lot of talking”―and the Black Crackers won the NAL’s second half championship.
Relatively little is known about that team―Moore has long been the squad’s only surviving member. For several years Riley’s been researching a book on that team, and when he’s finally ready to publish it should prove a vital addition to Negro Leagues scholarship.
The Black Crackers played most home games at white-owned Ponce de Leon Park, but were prohibited from using its locker facilities and showers. Practices, and perhaps even some league games, were held at Booker T. Washington High School. The team was covered regularly by Rick Roberts of The Atlanta Daily World, but hardly a word was written in the three white-owned newspapers of the period, and not much has been written since.
Incidentally, it was around 1938 when Moore became the first―or at least one of the earliest―players ever to wear a batting glove. “I wore it on my top hand―my left hand―because it stung good when I hit an inside pitch,” he told me. “I just wore an ordinary winter glove, and I cut the finger tips off so I could feel the bat.” By season’s end Moore was selected to the Southern News Service’s NAL All-Star team, and fans even held a special day for him at Ponce de Leon Park, awarding him with $350 worth of gifts and merchandise.
One of the joys of writing this article was that it gave me a chance to talk with Red’s famous contemporary, Buck O’ Neill, just a few months before he died. It seemed to me, from my own research, that many Negro League first basemen of the 1920s through 1940s, Red included, were deft-fielding showmen who loved slight-of-hand and catching balls behind their backs and all that. Take, for instance, Good Tatum, who played for the Indianapolis Clowns, but later became the single most important and innovative Harlem Globetrotter of them all.
Anyway, my thinking about Negro League first basemen as compared to contemporary first basemen led to a rather awkward exchange over the phone between O’Neill and myself. I made the point to Buck that first basemen, though often premier power hitters, haven’t always been the most gifted athletes. I said something to the effect that first base is often a home for “mediocre” defense, and almost immediately I regretted ever opening my mouth.
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone before Buck answered, suddenly turning very formal. “You have to remember, sir, I saw Lou Gehrig play. Nothing mediocre about him. I remember Red Moore and Jelly Taylor who could pick ’em one handed. Superior athletes, both of them. I remember Goose Tatum and Buck Leonard. Uh-huh. I remember Buck O’ Neill [referring to himself] who, in 1946, made one error the whole season. Yeah. That”s right!”
When I later recounted this conversation to Red, I didn’t think he’d ever stop laughing. “That Buck, ain’t he something,” Moore says. “You can’t slip anything past Buck.”
I remember another time, when we were at book signing at Decatur’s Little Shop of Stories, and a very young Raymond Glier -- he now pitches for the Decatur High varsity -- asked Red when he played. Red patted Raymond on his head and replied, “Young man, I played when only the ball was white.”
Although the article I wound up writing was over 5,000 words, I could only include a fraction of the many great anecdotes Red pulled from his remarkable memory. Here are two of my favorites:
“I’ll never forget this one game Leon [Day, a New Jersey teammate now in the Hall of Fame] was pitching,” Moore said. “It was a league game, and it was late innings and it was tight. The batter hit a foul pop, and I go toward the stands and try to make a behind-the-back catch. Don’t ask me why. I would do those things, catch it between my legs and all that, during exhibitions and warm-ups. I admit, I was known as a showman. But I’d never do it in a league game, except I did that day.
“So it hit off the heel of my glove and rolled out,” he said. “That ballpark sounded like a funeral parlor. Well, Leon got the batter out, and we won the game. But after the game he came up to me and said, ‘Red, if we’d lost that game I was gonna whup you good boy.’ “
The second anecdote concerns two of the greatest all-time Negro Leaguers, whom Red never tires of talking about. Satchel Paige, perhaps the greatest of Negro League pitchers, was blessed with such immaculate control he’d warm up throwing fastballs over sticks of chewing gum. Meantime Josh Gibson, born in Buena Vista, Ga., was not only the Negro Leagues greatest catcher, he was probably their best all-around hitter.
“My rookie year with Newark we were playing against Pittsburgh [Crawfords],” Moore said. “Josh was catching and Satch was pitching. So I come to bat and Josh says to me, ‘hey little red boy, Satch don’t like rookies. Only thing he likes about ‘em is to knock ‘em down.’ So I feel this pitch – I sure enough don’t see it – somewhere around my chin and when it hit Josh’s mitt it sounded like a pistol shot.
“I waved at it,” he said, “and Josh tells me, ‘That nearly got you, son. If I was you I wouldn’t dig in too deep.’ Then there were two more like the first one. I never saw any of those balls. I struck out, I go back to the dugout and the manager says, ‘seems like you was in a rush to get back here and sit next to me.’
“Well,” Red added, “people ask me all the time how I hit against Satch, and I tell them I sure enough hit against him plenty. But I never hit him.”