WELLS, Willie James

(b. 10 August 1906 in Austin, Texas; d. 22 January 1989 in Austin), scrappy, intelligent player in baseball's Negro Leagues for more than two decades, who was the first shortstop in baseball history to combine spectacular fielding with home run power.

Wells was the youngest of five children born to Lonnie Wells, a Pullman porter, and Cisco White, a homemaker who took in laundry to earn extra money. He grew up in Austin, at the time a dusty frontier town that had one paved street and a population of 22,000. As a youngster, Wells frequented Austin's Dobbs Field, where African-American baseball teams often played. The San Antonio Aces catcher, "Biz" Mackey (who many years later would become Wells's teammate), took the youngster under his wing, getting him into games for free and letting him sit on the bench with the team. Wells honed his own baseball skills at Anderson High School, Austin's segregated school for African Americans. He briefly attended Sam Huston College in Austin, but left school when the St. Louis Stars, a formidable team in the Negro National League, offered him $300 per month to play professional baseball.

As a rookie in 1924, Wells struggled to hit the curveball, but after working diligently he eventually became one of the best curveball hitters in the game. A contact hitter who seldom struck out, Wells was fussy about the bats he used, insisting on a heavy hickory model instead of the usual white ash. A right-handed batter, he enjoyed playing in the hitter-friendly Stars Park, and he frequently found himself among the league leaders in batting average, doubles, home runs, and stolen bases. Although Wells usually batted second in the lineup, he displayed a power stroke unprecedented for a shortstop. In 1929 Wells hit twenty-seven homers in eighty-eight league games, setting a single-season record that would never be broken. His closest friend on the Stars was speedy outfielder James ("Cool Papa") Bell, with whom he often played cards to pass the time on road trips. Led by Wells and Bell, St. Louis won championships in 1928, 1930, and 1931.

The bowlegged Wells displayed such impressive range at shortstop that, as opponent Judy Johnson noted, it "looked like he had roller skates on." While with St. Louis, Wells suffered an arm injury that hampered him for the rest of his career, but he compensated for the weak throwing arm by cutting a hole in the palm of his glove to enable him to get rid of the ball more quickly. "What he lacked in arm strength he made up for in wisdom," teammate Monte Irvin remembered. "He was very smart about playing hitters. Very rarely would anyone hit a ball that he couldn't get to." After the Great Depression forced the Stars to fold in 1931, Wells drifted from team to team, eventually landing in Chicago, where he played three years for the Chicago American Giants. With Wells's help, Chicago won the pennant in 1933. The next year, fans voted Wells as the starting shortstop in the inaugural East-West All-Star game, an annual contest in which he would eventually make eight appearances. In 1937 Wells left Chicago to join the Newark Eagles, a talented young team owned by gambler Abe Manley and his wife, Effa.

In 1940, after Newark refused to meet his salary demand, Wells joined the Veracruz Blues of the Mexican League. He was an immediate hit in Mexico, where affectionate fans nicknamed him "El Diablo" (The Devil). In 1942 he rejoined Newark as player-manager, but after only a year, he returned to Mexico. "One of the main reasons I came back to Mexico is because I've found freedom and democracy here, something I never found in the United States," Wells told the Pittsburgh Courier. "Not only do I get more money playing here, but I live like a king.… I was branded a Negro in the States and had to act accordingly. Everything I did, including playing ball, was regulated by my color. They wouldn't even give me a chance in the big leagues because I was a Negro, yet they accepted every other nationality under the sun. Well, here in Mexico, I am a man. I can go as far in baseball as I am capable of going." Over his four summers in Mexico (1940, 1941, 1943, 1944), Wells batted .323 and posted a stellar .410 on-base percentage.

He had also spent many winters in Havana, where he became one of the best players in the history of the prestigious Cuban Winter League. Wells batted .320 over seven seasons in the league (1928–1930 and 1935–1940, inclusive), winning two home run titles. In the 1929–1930 season he was named Most Valuable Player (MVP) when he batted .322 to lead the underdog Cienfuegos team to its first-ever league title. Ten years later he won a second MVP trophy, batting .328 for pennant-winning Almendares.

Wells returned to Newark for a final season in 1945, again as player-manager. Wells studied opposing players meticulously to learn their tendencies, and he barked orders from his position at shortstop. He also received high marks for his teaching ability, and several of the young players he mentored later became major league stars, including Monte Irvin, Larry Doby, and Don Newcombe. Wells quit Newark in 1946 after a conflict with owner Abe Manley, and over the next several years he spent brief periods with teams in New York, Baltimore, and Memphis, where he and his son, Willie, Jr., were teammates. In 1950, along with his son, Wells went to Canada to join the Manitoba-Dakota League, an integrated independent league. In 1953, after two years managing the Winnipeg Buffaloes and two more with the Brandon (Manitoba) Greys, Wells retired from baseball.

Wells was married to Lorene Sampson and had two children. After he retired, Wells settled in New York City, where he worked for thirteen years in a delicatessen at Nassau and Liberty Streets in Lower Manhattan. He grew weary of the city's crime, however, and in 1973 he returned to his hometown of Austin to care for his ailing mother. He moved back into the modest home on Newton Street in which he had grown up and passed his later years watching baseball games on television and playing dominoes at the corner barbershop. Wells died of heart failure from complications of the diabetes that had left him legally blind, and is buried in Austin's Evergreen Cemetery. He was inducted posthumously into the Baseball Hall of Fame on 3 August 1997.

Wells seemed to save his best for exhibition games against white major leaguers, batting .392 in forty such games on record. In 1929, against a team of major league all-stars, Wells stole home on consecutive days to win both games. Although he stood just five feet, eight inches, and weighed 165 pounds, Wells was considered one of the toughest players in the game. He owned two sets of baseball shoes, one for regular play and one with longer, sharper spikes to intimidate infielders. His unrelenting style of play made him the target of frequent beanballs, or pitches thrown at a batter's head. After a hit by Baltimore's Bill Byrd in 1942, Wells pioneered a solution. In the next game, he appeared wearing a construction hard hat. It was said to be the first time a professional player had ever worn a protective batting helmet.

Wells was one of the most enduring and well-traveled players in baseball history, playing for thirty years in five countries and countless cities in the United States. His talent enabled him to make the entire Western Hemisphere his home. Wells was said to have a lifetime batting average of .332, and his slugging set the precedent for a bevy of power-hitting shortstops, including Ernie Banks and Cal Ripken. Wells determinedly overcame the racism that barred him from Major League Baseball, and his intelligence and teaching ability were admired by many. "He was always there when you needed help," one of his players, Len Pearson, remembered. "Willie Wells was a hell of a man."

A file of news clippings, correspondence, and other documents is in the archives of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, New York. James Riley, Dandy, Day, and the Devil (1987), covers Wells's career and those of his teammates Ray Dandridge and Leon Day. Significant articles about Wells appeared in the Austin American-Statesman (12 May 1973, 2 Jan. 1977, 7 Aug. 1977), Austin magazine (June 1979), the New York Times (23 Mar. 1997), and the Daily Texan (9 Feb. 1998). An obituary is in the New York Times (25 Jan. 1989). A chapter on Wells is in the seminal work of the Negro Leagues oral history, John Holway, Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues (1975).

Eric Enders