BREAKING THE COLOR BARRIER
Almost everyone knows that Jackie Robinson, of Cairo, Georgia, was the first African-American to break the color barrier inin Major League baseball in 1947. From 1948 to 1953, not one of the teams in the Georgia State League. used African Americans. That all changed in 1954. And it happened in Dublin, Georgia.
On April 26, 1954, the Dublin Irishman’s manager, George Kinnamon put the names of eighteen-year-old Sammy Buell and Bill Causion on the lineup card. Buell and Causion rose to the challenge. Kinnamon remarked, “I heard a few derogatory remarks from spectators about our negro players.” Irishman’s pitcher Bob Vanasee stymied the Sandersville Wacos by retiring 14 batters in a row in the home opener at Lovett Park.
It should be noted here that the general manager of the Dublin Irish was Branch Rickey, the same Branch Rickey who brought Jackie Robinson into major league baseball.
Buell had two hits and Causion posted two inside the park home runs, a baseball rarity which has happened only 18 times in more than 125 years of major league baseball. The Irishmen won 7-2. Just days after that first game, the owner of the Sandersville team vowed to quit the league if other teams were playing Negroes. League President Bill Ostroff pointed out that the league has played “dark-skinned” Latinos in previous seasons with no objections. Sandersville’s bluff fizzled at a called league meeting.
Hub Dudley, the leading African American citizen of Dublin took the young players under his wing to get them through their first seasons here in Dublin. Dudley let them stay in his hotel, eat in his café, and treated both men as if he was their father.
Although Buell and Causion were very good players, they was forced to sit in the bus while the rest of the team went inside. Young Thurston Branch worked as a bat boy for the Irishmen. Branch noticed the fact that Sammy and Bill never went inside to eat. Branch went inside and picked up their lunches and ate with them.
Buell’s blazing speed took him to the top of runs scored (150) in the league that season. His superior base running also put him at the top of the Northern League with Grand Forks in 1956. After 1957, Buell was out of baseball. But, he remembered when he broke the color barrier in the Georgia State League, which incidentally was his best season in the minor leagues.
Bill Causion had a terrific season. In 1954, Bill was third in the league with hits (164), fourth in the league with home runs, (18), second in doubles (34), and second in RBI (116.) He made it to AAA baseball with Columbus, Denver, and Portland. Causion compiled a career batting average of .310 with 97 home runs and 374 RBI in his 1016-game career with the Fond du Lac Panthers, Dublin Irish, St. Jean Canadians, Mexico City Tigres, Hollywood Stars, Columbus Red Birds, Denver Bears, Portland Beavers, Monterrey Sultanes and Mexico City Diablos Rojos. He began playing during the 1953 season and last took the field for the last time during the 1961 campaign.
Buell and Causion finished first and second in fielding percentage in 1954. The team finished first with a record of 95.3 %. Finishing last, you guessed it, were the Wacos with 90.7.
That season, the Dublin Irish finished third in the league with a respectable record of 82-48. Sandersville finished dead last with a pitiful record of 33 and 97 - forty nine games back. The Irish finished in second place in team hitting (.279.)
After realizing the old maximum, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” The Wacos brought a young, tall, and powerful first baseman to start the 1955 season. The team was in line to play another powerful player in the farm system as well. The first baseman was none other than Willie McCovey, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. The other guy was Orlando Cepeda, also a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
It shall be remembered that two years before former Dublin Greensox manager Charley Ridgeway, then managing the Fitzgerald Pioneers of the Georgia State League, went off script and years of tradition when the Pioneers were being skunked by the Statesboro Pilots 13–0.
By the eighth inning, the crowd started chanting to "put in the batboy!" Twelve-year-old Joe Reliford stepped up to the plate and grounded out to third base. Joe took his spot in centerfield. The little boy made a fairly good catch in centerfield. Young Joe was fired on the spot. Ridgeway, a Greensox second sacker in 1951, was put on suspension for five days. His fine of $50.00 was paid by local fans. Ed Kubrick, the umpire, was quickly fired by the league. Reliford made baseball history as the youngest person to play in pro baseball and breaking the color barrier in the Georgia State League as well.
Reliford’s feat is memorialized somewhere inside the mountain of artifacts in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. His record, it safe to say, will never be broken.
And, when it comes to Dublin, the field Lovett Park was host to the breaking of the color barrier in the Georgia State League and that one former Dublin Greensox player, regardless of his motives, sent in an African American kid to play in a sure enough professional game.
To all Braves fans, we came close, but yet again our team fell short. This will be the last baseball column until next year. As we hybernate until the spring, remember these words by the late Commissioner Bart Giamatti.
“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. .... and summer is gone.”
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