Willie Wells was born in Austin and died in Austin. His life was spent in South Austin in what is now the expensive chic area between First Street and Congress Ave. north of the Death School for the Deaf and south of Oltorf. 1705 Newton Street his house has been torn down.
This was an article written in a newspaper but I do not know which one. The author was William Rogosin. He died in1989 at the age of 83 so it was written in the late 1970’s
Willie Wells is the greatest player of Negro League baseball alive who isn’t in the Hall of Fame. According to Monte Irvin Assistant to the Commissioner of Baseball and Hall of Fame member. When Roy Campanella picked his all-time all Star League team, he included Willie Wells. “Shortstop has to be Willie Wells.”
Buck Leonard, one of the greatest first baseman in the history of the game, called Wells the best shortstop he’d played against.
Wells now lives just a good third to first throw from South Congress Avenue after a baseball career that took him all over the United States and to Cuba, Canada, Mexico and Japan. He was nominated for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, but wasn’t elected in the spring’s balloting. Recognizing that the quality of play in the old black professional league was equal to that in the pre integration national and American leagues, the Hall of Fame recently agreed to admit black league standouts.
When young Wells was growing up in South Austin, the area was mostly rural and plenty of open space for pickup baseball games. After attending Breckenridge Elementary, he would rush home, complete his chores and play baseball until dark. On days when the Austin Black Senators members of the Texas Negro League, which also included teams from Dallas, San Antonio, Galveston and Houston played a home game at their field near Lake Austin Dam. Wells caught the trolley on Lake Austin Blvd and help the players carry their equipment into the park. He was the unofficial and unpaid batboy for the Senators, but the duties got him into the games for free and allowed him to rub elbows with some of the best pro ball players in the country. As a star athlete in both baseball and basketball at Anderson High School, Wells was considered the best young shortstop in Austin.
At the age of 19, his future in baseball was dramatically sealed after a series of games in which Wells and other All Stars played the St Louis Stars and Chicago American Giants. Both teams, members of the Negro National League that came to Austin for spring training, were impressed by Wells potential and wanted to sign him immediately. Entrepreneur Andrew ‘Ruby’ Foster wooed Willie for his Chicago team, but Wells mother favored St Louis since it was only a day’s train ride from Austin. The young shortstop signed with the Stars for $300 a month.
Though Wells mother was recipient of part of his salary, she was not entirely happy with his baseball career. She wanted her son to get a college education. After his first season with the Stars, Wells returned and enrolled in Huston College. His future in pro ball appeared bleak, Wells couldn’t hit the curveball.
“I could field, but I couldn’t hit”, Walls remembers, “that curveball was disastrous to me, and every pitcher in the league knew it. When I come up to bat, the guys in the other dugout would stand up and yell, hey Wells, here comes that curveball. Why? I’d just about run up into the stands to try to hit it”.
Another opportunity to get back into professional baseball crossed Wells’s path while he was still a student at Huston. After the regular season ended, the best black players went to California and barnstormed against teams comprised of white major leagues, the regular black shortstop had broken his leg, and Wells was offered $400 a month if he would come to California immediately.
That was like 4000 today. Wells says. My mother wanted me to finish college, but I looked at her taking in wash and working so hard and saw that I had a chance to help her.
In California, the young shortstop learned to hit those elusive curveballs. According to Wells, “Hurley McNair, an established Black League star, tied my leg to a stake near the home plate so I couldn’t run. And then curveball, curveball and more curveball. I learned to wait for the curveball, then I could hit it”.
Wells polished his talents through practice and emerged as the premier shortstop in black pro baseball in the 1930s and early 1940s. His contemporaries and friends were players like Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell. Wells missed only three Black All Star games from 1933 to 1945. One year he was injured and twice was playing out of the country. In the All-Star Games, Wells batted before slugger Josh Gibson because they wanted men on the base for Josh.
Exceptional black players were invited to play during the offseason in leagues in Central America. Wells played for 13 seasons in Cuba and several more in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
During the annual barnstorming tours of black and white major leagues, Wells proved he had the ability to play against the best of the major leagues had to offer. Depending on the source, that one consults, Wells that it either 392 or 410 against regular Major League pitching. The stretchy nature of black league record keeping is one of the reasons Wells isn’t in the Hall of Fame today, according to Roy Campanella. In 25 years of playing Black League baseball, Wells lifetime average was 320, a statistic that would qualify him for superstar status and a six figure salary today.
One of greatest achievements in baseball was his success in the role of player coach. With a reputation as a heady ball player and coach, he led the Newark Eagles to several Negro League pennants in the 1940s and in the process helped develop several black players who went on to stardom in the majors.
Larry Doby, the first black in the American League an All-Star Cleveland Indians outfielder, was one of Wells Wells’s proteges. The coach helped convert Dobie from an infielder. Don Newcombe also flowered under Wells tutelage. Jackie Robinson never played four Wells, but when the Dodgers wanted to put Robinson on second base, he turned to Wells to teach him the infielder’s techniques.
Today, Wells is a spry 70-year-old., and follows baseball on the radio and is particularly fond of the Texas Rangers. Until recent eye trouble, he was a frequent participant in the domino game at Marshall’s barbershop on East 12th Street. While playing dominoes at the barbershop one day, Wells was surprised to find Mayor Carol McClelland and Congressman JJ pickle there to greet him. It seems that Wells was more famous in Washington DC than in Austin. An alert member of Pickle’s staff discovered that Wells was being considered for the Baseball Hall of Fame. A resolution was subsequently passed by the Austin City Council saluting one of the countries and Austin’s best athletes. As far as the Hall of Fame is concerned, both Urban and Campanella insist that Willie will get in eventually. Austin is certainly rooting for him.
