Fifteen minutes into the first of several conversations about his late father Sam Hairston, longtime White Sox outfielder Jerry Hairston reflected on one of the many lessons he took from the family patriarch.
Whenever his car was approaching a hill, Sam wanted his youngest son to be alert. In these moments, as his car was climbing an incline, anything lurking on the other side of the slope would be invisible to him, and Sam wanted Jerry to always be aware of an escape route. So Jerry trained himself to scan the shoulders while driving uphill. It became almost automatic.
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Jerry’s older brothers and mother always stressed the importance of listening to his father. But he already assumed that anything his dad passed onto him was vital.
Sam Hairston was the first Black American player signed out of the Negro American League (NAL) by the White Sox, and eventually the first to suit up in a Sox uniform in a game. He’s also the head of one of the biggest MLB families ever, with sons Jerry and Johnny and grandsons Jerry Jr. and Scott playing in the majors. His son Sam Jr. and three grandsons played in the minor leagues as well.
These accomplishments were not easily celebrated nor broadly accepted in their time, and are often overlooked by history now. Months before Sam Hairston was an injury replacement call-up in July 1951, the Cuban-born Minnie Miñoso integrated the White Sox. And it was Miñoso’s bat that Hairston borrowed, when a frosty reception from his own dugout left him briefly standing in the on-deck circle with nothing in his hands, for his first MLB plate appearance.
It was one of just seven plate appearances he would receive in his White Sox career.
The first Black person in a space never open to him before does not magically repair an institution’s failings. And seven plate appearances did not sum up the impact, nor even the climax, of Sam Hairston’s baseball life. It was one stop in a playing career spanning parts of four decades and four countries, and a prelude to becoming an essential White Sox franchise staple as a coach – a drop in an ocean of baseball experience, filled with endless lessons on how to make a living, how to make yourself valuable, and how to endure in a game that was never guaranteed to be played fairly.
“He was a very strong individual, both physically and mentally,” Jerry Hairston said, of why he never dismissed any of his father’s advice. “He was mentally strong to have gone through all he did and (being) able to survive. So, that in itself.“
Sam Hairston was born in 1920, in the sparsely populated Lowndes county of Mississippi as the second of 13 children. His professional baseball career originated on a Birmingham industrial company team when he was 16 years old. Such an origin story might sound foreign now, but it put him on a straightforward path to getting signed by the nearby Birmingham Black Barons of the NAL. His first statistics on Baseball Reference came in 1944, after he was traded to the Indianapolis Clowns.
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But surviving statistics of Negro Leaguers are often inadequate, reflective of a time when Black baseball players were not fixed cogs in a monopolistic league, but traveling performers stringing year-round gigs to make ends meet. They would not capture his winter ball exploits throughout the decade, in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela. A 1951 Chicago Tribune article noted of Hairston’s time in Venezuela that “some observers said he was more promising than Roy Campanella when the Brooklyn catcher played that circuit.” That article was published the same year Campanella won the first of his three National League MVP awards.
“He always had a winter ball job,” said Jerry Hairston of his father, who played — and caught — until he was 40.
Playing in disparate locations, leagues and circumstances, a consistent sketch of Sam Hairston the player emerged. He hit for averages north of .300 (.304 career average in the minor leagues), even if his contact-heavy approach yielded not much beyond gap power. But he did so at a time when, as much as ever, catchers earned their keep for throwing, blocking and stewarding a pitching staff. Without a cannon arm, he developed a technique for accurate throws out of a quick release. He counseled his pitchers on the necessity of using their off-speed pitches, and if they sank it just below the zone, he could probably make it look like a strike.
“He could get down for the lowest target I ever pitched to,” said former White Sox minor league pitcher Glen Rosenbaum, who threw to Hairston when the receiver was a 39-year-old veteran still plugging away in the minors. “He was almost flat on the ground. He was great to pitch to, and if you gave him a chance he was going to throw the guy out trying to steal. He was just a good all-around player.”
As Hairston neared 30, the plaudits started rolling in. Hairston made the first of two career Negro League All-Star teams in 1948. When famed Negro League pitcher John Donaldson was hired by the White Sox in 1949 as possibly the first Black scout in the MLB, his larger goal was developing a pipeline of young Black baseball talent to fill rosters for decades to come. But pressed for sure things that could immediately justify that investment, Donaldson recommended Hairston, who looked to be peaking in 1950.
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So dominant was Hairston that year in the NAL that he won the Triple Crown despite being signed away by the White Sox at the end of July. He followed that up by batting .375 in the Venezuelan winter league in the offseason and setting a 26-game hitting streak that stood for decades in that league. This happened as the NAL talent level began to ebb amid MLB’s efforts to raid it, but Hairston’s reputation was clear: He belonged.
“They understood how talented he was,” said Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick. “He had the admiration of those he played with, and those he played against. And ballplayers always know. They always know if you can play or if you can’t, and usually they’re not very shy about telling you one way or the other.”
“He had two sons, and two grandsons, that were able to follow in his footsteps and have a longer career in the big leagues than he did,” said Jerry Hairston Jr., who appeared in 16 major league seasons from 1998-2013. But, he says, “my grandfather Sam was the best player of all of us. No question.”
Maybe in an era of methodical player acclimation and development, it would not raise an eyebrow that Hairston’s signing — complete with a full-page spread in the Chicago Tribune — was followed by him finishing the 1950 season in Class-A Colorado Springs, as the big-league club finished out a 64-90 season. And after allowing Hairston to report late to spring training to complete his season in Venezuela, Hairston told The Chicago Tribune in 1997, not long before his death, that spring training went smoothly.
But camp ended with Hairston being sent out to Triple-A Sacramento. Chicago Defender columnist Russ Cowans acknowledged suspicion that both Hairston and fellow NAL signee Bob Boyd were being optioned to the minors without a fair opportunity, but dismissed it. He quoted manager Paul Richards and general manager Frank Lane explaining that the players would be significant crowd draws if played in Chicago, but required more experience to be ready. The Sox had Paul Masi as their incumbent starting catcher, and Cowans reported that Hairston was receptive to the idea that it would be better for him to play every day in the minors than serve as a reserve. But he also had turned 31 in January.
“That was the plight of a lot of the older Negro League players — you’re going to toil in minor leagues forever, and nobody really gives you a real shot,” said Kendrick. “For a player of the magnitude of Sam Hairston, even as an older ballplayer, the mindset is ‘I’ll show you that I’ve still got it,’ not fully understanding that you may not get the true opportunity, because you always think that talent will ultimately supersede these other elements.”
The Sox pointed out that Hairston was being sent to Sacramento on option, where he could be recalled within 24 hours if a roster need arose. And sure enough, Masi managed just 78 games played in 1951. Six different Sox players saw time at catcher that year in the resulting shuffle. But none received less playing time than Hairston.
In 1993, Hairston told the Colorado Gazette that his five-week stint in the majors, which included four games played and just one start, was effectively ended when a sharp batting practice grounder he hit struck starting third baseman Floyd Baker in the face, damaging teeth and requiring stitches for his lip. Jerry Sr. recalls his father telling him a version of the story where an assistant coach was struck instead.
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The substance of the story is the fallout.
“He was called a bunch of names that I don’t want to repeat,” Jerry Sr. said. “The phrase that was said was, ‘We’re going to get you out of here on the next thing smoking.’ And that’s how my Dad lost his opportunity to play longer in the big leagues. Because if he had played, he would have been probably an All-Star in the American League.”
The Chicago Tribune dryly covered the incident at the time. The framing of the headline reads as telling in retrospect: “Sam Hairston joins Sox, and Baker suffers.”
Hairston’s last appearance in a White Sox uniform came more than a month later, and the intervening time included nothing resembling an opportunity. His final MLB line involved two hits and two walks in seven trips to the plate, with a ringing double on the first American League pitch he saw —.400/.571/.600.
That Hairston’s career was permanently altered by a single moment that was not his fault is tragic. But a Black player having his MLB opportunity snuffed out for seemingly no good reason was common.
“They weren’t making baseball decisions,” said Kendrick, who was familiar with the story of Hairston’s incident. “They were making decisions based on outside factors — this player’s color, primarily. And they were looking for reasons for those players to fail, as opposed to trying to create an environment that would foster success. It goes against your own self-interest as an organization.”
After spending most of the 1951 season at Triple-A Sacramento, Hairston spent four of the next five seasons playing in the Class-A Western League, becoming a mainstay at Colorado Springs. What would it look like if a veteran player with loads of higher-level experience was placed in A-ball? In 1952, Hairston batted .316 and was an All-Star. In 1953, he was named the league MVP. Such success was enough to rescue Hairston from Class A for a season, but his offensive numbers slipped in Triple-A Charleston in 1954, to a .268/.323/.345 line. He was 34 by then, still a polished and professional receiver, and playing in the southeast presented its own challenges. Jerry Sr. remembers watching his father play in South Carolina from a caged part of the stands, to protect from debris tossed at them by white spectators.
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“He never let on about the struggles — obviously we knew a little bit about it, but he never made that a point of emphasis,” said Jerry Hairston Jr. “He always had great stories to tell: the bus rides, sometimes playing two or three games per day, him saying how fun it was to travel and see the country and see the world. So the stories that he had, that he provided for me and Scott (Hairston), that made us want to play this game. I wanted to have stories like that at the dinner table.”
For his career, Sam Hairston hit .263/.326/.351 across 313 Triple-A games. The opportunities were disparate. After the season in Charleston, Hairston spent two more seasons dominating in Colorado Springs, where he earned the nickname “Sam The Man,” and was given a brand new Pontiac during a night in his honor in 1955, a year in which he batted .350. Kendrick said older, former Negro Leaguers becoming perennial stars in minor league towns was a common phenomenon throughout the decade. But looking at Hairston through the lens of his offensive stats elides the primary way he, and the catchers who played in Chicago over him, were evaluated 70 years ago.
“He was just a smart catcher,” said Rosenbaum. “You can tell (with) a teammate right away, how sincere he is with everything.”
Sam Hairston did not tell his son how his major league tenure ended until he had already made the majors, not wanting to discourage him. He tried to qualify the incidents that befell him as the actions of individuals, rather than something that would dissuade his son from playing. Hairston did not belong in the Western League, but he managed those A-ball pitchers, cajoled them to trust their pitches, dragged them through the necessities of winning and rode the bus for long enough that when his playing days ended at age 40, his value seemed to be gaining the appreciation it lacked in 1951.
By then, Chuck Comiskey was preparing to sell the White Sox. Jerry Hairston, who was given a series of 15 audio tapes that his father recorded about his life for a possible book, said Comiskey’s deal to sell the club to the Allyn brothers included a request/stipulation that a job should exist for Sam Hairston for as long as he lived. In 1981, when Jerry Reinsdorf purchased the club, the instruction was passed onto him. But he did not require much convincing.
“When you have a guy like that in your organization that can help with young players, you want to keep him,” said Reinsdorf. “I can just tell you that I loved him. He was just the kind of person that everybody who came in contact with him, felt good. You felt good when you were around him.”
Transitioning immediately to scouting in the southeastern region of the country, Hairston was the signing scout for two-time All-Star Carlos May, the first Black player selected by the Sox with a first-round pick. After three seasons of scouting, Jerry Hairston said his father added coaching at minor league spring training in Sarasota to his responsibilities, which he continued for decades even when he became an assistant coach for the Double-A Birmingham Barons for the final 12 years of his life. As someone who was driven out of the White Sox, Hairston’s countermove was never leaving.
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“He was there until the day he died,” Jerry Sr. said.
As a former catcher, Hairston demonstrated the feel for when to impart advice, and when to sit back and let players work through things on their own. He could also impart the realities of long hours of travel, a grueling play schedule, and the financial dance needed to make baseball a sustainable lifestyle. Reinsdorf regarded Hairston’s role as a life coach as much as anything else, and nowadays his title might have included some acknowledgment of his gift for aiding acculturation.
Most of Hairston’s White teammates and players professed little knowledge of the ordeals of his playing career, though respect came simply from the trials that his resume implied. He conjured universal regard, in a sport that continues to be marked by segregation.
“You know how hard it is for everybody to like a coach?” said former White Sox All-Star Bill Melton, with a laugh.
“It did give us a lot of teaching moments with our young players,” said Terry Francona, who managed the Barons in the 1990s. “You’re able to maybe pull a player aside and say ‘That man sitting there, this is what he has been through,’ and I think that was really powerful for the young players.”
A common descriptor placed upon Hairston in his post-playing career is that he was “not bitter,” which can be a loaded compliment for a number of reasons. For one, it suggests a wide understanding that he had plenty of reason to be bitter. And more troublingly, it’s praise that can double as gratitude that Hairston did not discomfort others by reminding them of the horrors of racism. Reinsdorf related a conversation with Hairston where he asked him why he didn’t get a longer shot to play for the White Sox, and the venerable catcher replied that it was because he was Black. He was not trying to convince Reinsdorf of that, but stated it matter of factly. He was not denying his reality. But he focused on what was necessary to move forward — for everyone.
“He understood that you’ve got to be twice as good,” said Jerry Hairston Jr. “He understood that I and Scott (Hairston), and the people after him would have a better opportunity. So he didn’t focus on the negative concerning his career.”
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Sam Hairston was convinced of his grandson’s career prospects from an early age. When Jerry Jr. was no older than 3, Jerry Sr. was playing winter ball in Mexico, and Sam had picked up another coaching gig. Dressed in Hermosillo Naranjeros jerseys, Sam cajoled his youngest son to have them all pose for a photo, declaring it a chance to document the first three-generation Black family of major league players. The confidence did not come with rose-colored glasses. He believed that his grandsons were serious enough to respond when asked to do more, just as their fathers had.
“They were around every day, and they were serious about it,” Rosenbaum said of Hairston’s practice with his sons. “The boys were there, and they would come out before batting practice. And he’d hit them groundballs and stuff like that, and they would shag during batting practice.”
Jerry Jr. recalled being as young as 8, and his grandfather lecturing him during a youth baseball doubleheader that he was bailing out of his swing, and effectively was doing little more than “waving your behind at the other team.” Positional versatility is a trend in baseball now, but it’s been a multi-generational requirement for the Hairstons, where the family patriarch noted from experience that opportunities were scarce, and that finding ways to be vital was a necessity. Maybe 16-year-old Landon Hairston, Scott’s son, who recently committed to play baseball at Arizona State, will one day fashion both outfield and infield gloves as well.
“The next game after we had lunch, I hit three rockets,” Jerry Hairston Jr. said “Because my grandfather told me to swing it like I mean it. Don’t be up there just swinging, go up there swinging like you mean it. And that was motivation, just a little bit of tough love. But I love that about him. I was around eight, nine or 10 at the time. But he was thinking about raising a young man, not just a boy, and I love him for that. He was on my behind, just like he was on his other grandsons. He pushed us to be better.”
A year before Jerry Jr. debuted for the Baltimore Orioles and made his three-generation prediction a reality, Sam Hairston died in Birmingham in late 1997. In his waning years with the Barons, pitching coach Kirk Champion recalled a functional ritual the coaching staff had worked out. Hairston would sit on a bench on the top level of the dugout, a wholly unprotected position in those days, locked in on every pitch as always. While his lengthy baseball resume was well-known and respected, he was also well into his 70s with a mounting list of health issues, and his colleagues saw the potential danger of an errant foul ball. So they worked out an assignment that a player who was off that day would sit next to Hairston and keep him company through the game.
While young reflexes were paired with the aging backstop for protection, the larger benefit was that a rotating cast of young baseball players spent a day watching the game with Hairston, seeing what he saw in every pitch, and listening to what it made him recall from his history. And at the end of his career, Sam Hairston spent his summer in uniform, involved in the game he loved, with his experience and expertise valued. His stories were not always easy, but they had an audience.
“Because of those stories — good stories, and the funny stories and stories about him, performing on the field,” said Jerry Hairston Sr. “It made me want to do that, and made me have the courage to play this game. Because you have to have courage. You cannot play major league baseball and not have courage.”
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Jerry Sr. has said that it would’ve been a dream come true for Sam to see his grandsons enjoy long careers in the majors, playing the game he fought so hard to play and using the lessons he passed down to thrive in spaces where he once was unwelcome. But his family also doesn’t want to reduce his legacy to paving the road for his family, or even Black players in baseball. Perhaps it would be just as meaningful to hear Reinsdorf speak appreciatively of how much Hairston’s work supporting Latin American players’ acclimation — serving as their interpreter and guide, and even taking a young Wilson Alvarez into his home years before he was part of a division-winning starting rotation — helped him realize the necessity of the robust support network the White Sox offer to foreign-born players today. That was never an explicit goal of Hairston’s work, but it wouldn’t be the first time that seeds planted in Hairston’s life and words bloomed years later.
On Dec. 7, 1973, Jerry Hairston and his wife Esperanza were married in Nogales, Arizona, right on the US-Mexico border, before heading back to Mexico — where they had first met — so Jerry could finish the final month of the winter ball season. At just 21 years old, with his entire 14-year major league career ahead of him, Jerry held his new bride’s hand in his as he cruised back toward Hermosillo at 70 mph on a single-lane road, when he approached a hill. As their car breezed toward the summit, waiting for them on the other side was a large camper van suddenly bearing down on them in their lane, attempting to pass. In the final moment before a potentially devastating impact, Jerry heard his wife gasp and felt her squeeze his hand, and he saw the driver of the camper take his hands off the wheel and shield his face.
With one hand, Jerry gripped the wheel and guided his car onto the shoulder in an instant, keeping the driver’s side wheels of his vehicle gripping the asphalt for traction while weathering the grassy terrain on the other end to avoid catastrophe. The whole maneuver took about two seconds. It was just what his father had taught him to do.
(Top image: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Courtesy of Jerry Hairston Sr.; Denver Post, Joel Auerbach, Lisa Blumenfeld / Getty Images)
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