Tori Sheffer

Number Two: Hilton Smith

Now, most people know that Satchel Paige was one of the best pitchers in the Negro League, but many don’t know the players beyond Satch, Jackie, or any of the other few players who then went on to play in the MLB. Nicknamed “The Forgotten Star” of the Negro League, Hilton Smith was one of the best pitchers to grace the game, yet many don’t know his name. Usually eclipsed by his more boisterous teammate, Satchel Paige, Smith is often the forgotten ace of the Monarchs, but if you asked any player who faced both Smith and Paige, they would tell you that there was no denying the two of them were equal in talent. President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Bob Kendrick, went on to say, “The old-timers would all say that if you were to hit anything, you better hit it off Satchel, because you weren’t going to hit Hilton Smith.” Several players have slipped through the sands of time who once were some of the biggest names in the game, but according to many stars, both past and present, of the game, Hilton might be one of the best “forgotten gems” of all time, his professional career flourishing in tandem with the very league that allowed him to pursue what he loved.

Born February 27th, 1907, in Giddings, Texas, Hilton Smith was essentially born playing ball with his father, as long as he could remember. Cool-tempered, Smith could always keep his cool on the diamond, whether it was in the field or on the mound, which made his skills in the game even sharper. Playing throughout his youth for his school’s teams, he eventually went on to play for his university’s team, the Prairie View A&M University Panthers, in 1927. In his first year at school, he started primarily as an outfielder, having a stellar bat in addition to his insanely strong throwing arm; it was a no-brainer for his coaches to put him out there. In his second year, he started the season as a position player, continuously playing in the outfield in addition to first base while still showcasing to his teammates the power of his arm. Towards the end of his second year, one of his coaches sat him down and really started unpacking the art form of pitching with Smith, thus birthing the Hilton Smith we all know and love today. After two years of college ball, Smith decided he no longer wanted to continue his studies, but instead, wanted to leave school and pursue a career in the Negro League, which is exactly what he did.

In 1931, his first year outside of school, Hilton Smith was picked up as a pitcher by a semi-professional team, the Austin Senators. The next year, Smith moved from the Senators onto his first team of Monarchs, the Monarchs of Monroe, at the start of the 1932 season as one of the few teams in the Negro Southern League, which was recognized as a major league with an influx of players joining teams from the defunct Negro National League, officially succeeding in his wish of playing professionally; however, once he left the Monarchs of Louisiana after the ‘32 season, he began playing for teams of lesser relevance, such as the New Orleans Crescent Stars before he finally returned to a semi-pro team that could open doors for him. In 1935, he was playing with a team now known as the Churchills, but then called simply just, “The Bismarcks.” Churchill, a car salesman hailing from Bismarck, North Dakota, was proud of his team and the fact that they played independently of any league due to its mixed-race roster, and he went to some of the best players around the Negro League and cherry-picked them all to join his team. This 1935 season was when Smith met and played with some of the more well-known names of the league: Satchel Paige, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, Quincy Trouppe, Barney Morris, and Chet Brewer, some of Churchill’s other finds. That same year, Bismarck was eligible, and won, the National Baseball Conference semi-pro baseball tournament, an annual collegiate and semi-pro tournament in Wichita, Kansas. Smith was a complete star, helping lead his team to that victorious 1935 season, but still in the shadow of some of his other teammates, most notably Satchel. After that championship run, Paige, Radcliffe, and Brewer all departed from the independent semi-pro team, leaving Hilton Smith to claim the title of the team’s ace in 1936, complete with a 5-0 record on the season.

After two extremely successful seasons in North Dakota, Hilton Smith felt as though he was ready for the majors and began barnstorming with the Kansas City Monarchs. By 1937, both Smith and the Monarchs were mainstays in the new and improved Negro National League, which, as mentioned earlier, was disbanded at the beginning of Smith’s professional career in ‘32. Both fantastic hurlers and Monarchs, Satchel Paige and Hilton Smith very quickly and easily became one of the best pitching duos in baseball history, and the Monarchs knew it, too. To attract crowds, the Monarchs often would slate Satchel to pitch the first three innings of a given game; then Hilton would come on, asserting the same dominance on the mound and would complete the remaining six innings of the game, relieving Satch as he most likely would need to pitch a few innings the next day and somehow needed his arm to recover. Just to prove how dominant Smith was in comparison to Paige, another Negro League player turned Hall of Famer, by the name of Monte Irvin, said: “[Smith] had one of the finest curveballs I ever had the displeasure to try and hit. His curveball fell off the table. Sometimes you knew where it would be coming from, but you still couldn’t hit it because it was that sharp. He was just as tough as Satchel was.” In some games, Smith would get his rightful spot as a starter, but the “Master of the Curveball’s” pitching arsenal was more than just a fastball and his wicked curve; he also threw a sinker, slider, and “change of pace” pitch, all both overhand and sidearm. In his rookie season, on May 16th, 1937, Smith became one of seventeen pitchers in Negro League history to complete a no-hitter by himself as he pitched against the Chicago American Giants. Rumor has it that out of all the contact batters made throughout that game, only two balls were hit out of the infield. He could not have had a better first season in the majors: in addition to throwing his no-hitter, Smith was invited to his first (of six consecutive) East-West All-Star games, and managed to finish the season with an 11-3 record and a 2.65 ERA in twelve official Negro American League games started, all while leading the leagues in wins (his first of three times achieving that, the other two being 1938 and 1941) and in strikeouts, which he also topped in 1938, 1939, and 1941. These numbers are merely a tipping point, however, as all these stats are the ones we now know about, but realistically Smith could have, and most likely did, play in over hundreds of other games both domestically and internationally.

He was a star just waiting to hit it big in the game that drove his soul throughout his life, and with only one season in the league, he managed to make himself a household name. After an extremely successful year in “the bigs,” Smith’s notoriety only grew when in the 1938 season, Smith went on to tie Ray Brown as just the second player in Negro League history to win the Pitching Triple Crown with 9 wins, 88 strikeouts, and an ERA of 1.92. The years in which Smith made the All-Star team, he managed to compile a 129-28 record, with his best years being from 1939-1942, which were, in turn, the best years of his major league career, and not to mention some of the most formative years of the Negro League at large. After the disbanded Negro National League at the beginning of Smith’s rise to stardom, he and the few other players, like Satchel, were the reason the Negro American League grew to the notoriety it received in addition to the reason why the Negro National League was revived and revitalized to the success it saw, hence the creation of the Negro League World Series in ‘42. If it weren’t for players out there like Hilton Smith, the game wouldn’t have grown to the fame it did, and in turn would’ve probably led to a longer segregation period in the sport altogether, much longer than when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

However, Hilton Smith’s success didn’t end when the league was disbanded or even when the regular season ended; no, he excelled even further in the postseason. Within his years of being in the majors, he led his Kansas City Monarchs to the Negro League World Series, which was established at the height of Smith’s career in 1942. On four separate occasions, Mr. Smith led his team to play in a variation of the Fall Classic, claiming the Negro American League Championship title twice in both 1937 and 1939, and onwards even further in 1942 and 1946. In the 1942 Negro League World Series, Smith and the Monarchs swept the Homestead Grays, and truly put up a battle in 1946 when they went all the way to game seven during that series against the Newark Eagles. While many wish there were visual evidence of Smith’s brilliance during the postseason, we can only rest on the metrics, which are masterful in their own right. Smith’s career postseason ERA is 1.49, his record out of all four series he saw as a professional player in the Negro League is 6-0, but most notably, his 45 strikeouts in 148 batters faced can speak for itself. He was brilliant.

After what many deem the best year of his career, 1943 led to another successful season for Hilton. He suffered a severe injury to his pitching arm and recovered gracefully, pitching several one-hit gems, getting credited with at least eight strikeouts per game, and posting a 2.74 ERA. If the “Comeback Player of the Year” award existed in that time, Smith would’ve taken the cake, no questions; however, after the ‘43 season, there was a decline in Smith’s pitching game. Between his area of expertise not being as sharp, his bat consistently remaining hot, and several of his Monarch teammates going off to fight in World War II, fans were able to give a warm welcome to Hilton Smith, the position player, in addition to Hilton Smith, the pitcher, which was equally as exciting. Playing both outfield and first base, he truly was an “everywhere man” and still managed to lead the Monarchs to some success without the majority of their stars, and come 1946 when they all returned, it was kismet. Smith led his boys to another trip to the World Series, though it did not end up the way they had hoped, as mentioned previously.

The winter following the 1946 season, Smith finally got the long-awaited call from Major League Baseball when the Brooklyn Dodgers invited him to join their team; however, Smith knew this invitation came about a decade too late. Age was the key factor why Hilton didn’t follow suit like some of the other notable stars of the Negro League who went on to a major league club, so he couldn’t accept the offer despite his 6-1 exhibition game record against MLB talent throughout his career. He had two seasons of professional play after the offer, having a semi-successful 1947 season, but after a terrible start to his 1948 season, he knew it was time for him to hang up his cleats and retire from the professional game of baseball (despite still playing on an exhibition team in New Mexico for a few years after he retired from the Negro League). While being mild-mannered, Hilton Smith was no stranger to being a proud and vocal activist for his fellow players from the Negro League, as there was a strong favor to induct white players, not fully recognizing the Negro League for what it was: a professional baseball league for men who were not welcomed in the MLB. After retiring, Smith also went on to continue his passion for education by becoming a school teacher and additionally was a foreman at a steel plant as well. He couldn’t stay away from baseball, though, as he was hired by the Chicago Cubs as a scout for a few years until he passed away in 1983. His hard work and advocacy in the latter half of his career was not for naught, though, because in 2001 the Hall of Fame committee finally inducted Hilton Smith into Cooperstown, forever immortalizing him and his incredible career.