Hubert Wooten
Courtesy of
The News Argus
Through the eyes of a Clown: Hubert Wooten was among
the last of the barnstormers.
Hubert Wooten doesn't have any
photos of himself from the old days, when times were tough and glorious
all rolled into one. He has no baseball cards that captured the likeness
of a much younger Wooten -- Daddy Wooten -- as he was called four decades
ago, and no statistics showing that the kid could hit, run and throw.
What he does have are golden
memories.
Memories of the long nights on
the old bus, Big Red. Memories of the four years he was with the "Harlem
Globetrotters of baseball." Memories of playing with and managing baseball
great Satchel Paige, the ageless Hall of Famer who was perhaps 50 years
his senior.
And memories of a dream.
"If we had any sense, we would
have kept stats, and we would have taken pictures of the guys," says
Wooten, now 61. "But we were out there just trying to get to the next
level. We wanted to make it to the big leagues, and the rest of it didn't
matter.
"As long as we played that
day."
Wooten, who was born in
Goldsboro on Sept. 6, 1944, and graduated from Carver High School, played
from 1965-68 with the last of the barnstormers, the Indianapolis Clowns.
The Clowns, best known for
their comedy routine, were the longest-running franchise in the Negro
League. By the mid-1960s, they were the only team left. So they were
always on the move, taking seemingly endless road trips.
"We had this bus called Big
Red, I'll tell you we slept on it," he recalls. "We'd play a game, say in
Milwaukee, then we'd go like 300 miles, check into a motel long enough to
take a shower and go to the field for a doubleheader. We'd play one at
two, then played another that started at seven that night. We'd go back to
the motel, go to sleep, check out early that morning, get back on Big Red
and jump 200, 300 more miles.
"Always on the bus."
Like the Globetrotters, the
Clowns always had a big following.
"When we pulled up in a town,
people were all around Big Red, wanting to see the Clowns," he says with a
smile.
They were there to see the
talented players, and they were there for the show. A show where the
catcher would perhaps play his position from a rocking chair, where
buckets of confetti were thrown into the stands, and where firecrackers
found their way behind an unsuspecting umpire.
And there was the world-famous
shadow ball, where the Clowns would play the game in slow motion -- with
crazy antics, at times -- with an imaginary ball.
"We'd put on a show," Daddy
Wooten recalls. "After seven innings, we'd do the shadow ball, we'd do a
little dance to the Harlem Globetrotters music, 'Sweet Georgia Brown.' We
had special guys who were really good at that, like Nature Boy, Birmingham
Sam, Bobo, Steve Anderson, the one-armed fellow. We had firecrackers that
we'd light behind an ump, they would explode and he'd jump up.
"It was really comical and
people really enjoyed it. We also had a good time, and we had a chance to
play every day."
He always
had power
Daddy Wooten wasn't a big man
by any means -- he stands just 5-foot-8 ("maybe 5-foot-8 1/2," he laughs).
But there wasn't a ballpark that could hold him if he got into a pitch.
"I've always had power and
people wonder how," he says. "And I'd tell them, 'It happens when you work
on a farm.' When I was a youngster, I had to cut wood, I had to walk
behind that mule, and I had to take two 50-pound bags of fertilizer, one
in this hand and one in the other, and carry them across the field. I
didn't get my power in the gym, I got my power on the farm."
Wooten played ball his junior
and senior seasons when Carver High started a baseball program.
When he graduated, he went to a
baseball school in West Palm Beach, Fla.
He signed a minor league
contract with the Vero Beach Dodgers in 1964 where he pitched and played
in the outfield.
"I went over there and they
said, 'You're raw, you have good talent but you need to play every day,'"
he said. "Then they sent a letter to Ed Hamman, who owned the Clowns, and
he sent me a ticket to meet me in Chicago.
"After meeting Ed, I signed
with the Clowns."
With the Clowns, Hamman helped
Hubert Wooten get his nickname.
"Daddy Wooten, that's what they
called me," he says. "One time, I hit a ball off the wall, and Ed was
standing over there, he was laughing and said, 'That's the daddy.' And
Sandy Perkins said, 'Yeah, we're going to name him Daddy Wooten.' And that
name just stuck."
Daddy Wooten loved to play
every position. Well, almost every position.
"I played all positions except
one, and that was catcher," he says with a smile. "They made a mistake
once and I had to get back there. All our catchers were hurt and they had
one coming in, and I had to get back there. We had a fellow on the mound
that day who was about 6-foot-6 and he could throw 95-96 mph and we were
in Nebraska. And I'll tell you, he'd throw, they'd swing, I'd close my
eyes and the ball would go by. I walked all night. I told Ed, 'The only
plate I want to get behind is one with food on it. And when it's gone, I'm
gone.'
"So I played all positions in
the infield, I'd play outfield and I could come in and relief pitch every
night -- It didn't bother my arm."
At the plate, Daddy Wooten was
a good hitter with some pop.
"I had good power, good speed,
good arm," he said. "There was no park that we played in I couldn't hit it
out of. In Pittsburgh, at old Forbes Field, I hit one over the scoreboard
in left field, which was about 75-feet high."
He doesn't know what his stats
were during his tenure with the Clowns, but Wooten has a pretty good idea.
"If I was rounding it off, I
probably batted about .310, .315 in my four years there," he said. "I hit
maybe 12, 14 home runs a year. We played a lot of local clubs who were
loaded up with All-Stars -- you were going against the best."
But the Clowns were no
slouches, either. In fact, Wooten says he can only remember the team
losing four times -- in four years.
"We had a good team ourselves,
I'd say it would have been a good Double-A or Triple-A ballclub," Wooten
says. "We had some outstanding ballplayers."
Managing Satch
During his final two years with
the Clowns, Daddy Wooten served as player/manager of the team.
In his first season of
managing, one of the biggest names in baseball hooked on with the Clowns
-- ageless pitcher Satchel Paige.
The Hall of Famer's birthday is
often listed as July 7, 1906 -- which would have made Paige 61 (the age
Wooten is now) in 1967 -- but no one really knew for sure.
Not even Daddy Wooten.
"I asked him one time, 'Satch,
how old are you?' And he said, 'I'm a good way from 100, but I'm older
than 75,'" Wooten recalls.
"He wouldn't tell me."
But no matter how old Paige
was, the man could still play.
"He could still throw the
ball," Daddy Wooten said. "We were at old Comiskey Park and he told me to
get behind the plate and a photographer was standing behind me. He was
throwing strikes on the corner and the man said, 'Can you believe his
eyesight is that good to see this far?' I said, 'That old man never ceases
to amaze me.'
"He had a pretty good fastball
still, he could throw the scrooge and he showed that hesitation pitch he
was famous for. And he was very knowledgeable about the game, he'd try to
help you -- and that was the good thing about him."
Satch had respect for his young
manager, too.
"My problem was they were
saying I wasn't tall enough," Wooten said. "Matter of fact, Satch told me
one time, 'I'll tell you what, if you had been about 6-feet with your
power, your speed and your arm, there's no way in the world you'd be out
here, you'd be gone. The only thing you weren't gifted with was height."
Paige even compared Wooten with
another Negro League legend and a Hall of Famer.
"Another time, Satch and I were
sitting on the bus, he took his teeth out and he said, 'Boy, let me tell
you something, you are built about like Josh Gibson was,'" Wooten says.
"He said, 'But you ain't going to hit as hard as he did.'"
Living on peanut
butter and jelly
