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Bottled Lighning continued
"That gave me a boost," said Tucker, who had led his
Fresno State collegiate squad that year in homers and runs batted
in. A 6-foot-2, 200-pound outfielder, Tucker was among that rare
breed of player who threw left handed but batted from the right
side.
After he accepted a $3,000 offer
from Cardinals scout Ken Penner, Tucker stayed in Fresno to play
for that city's entry in the California League. In 97 games, he
hit .285 and was promoted to the Peoria Chiefs of the Three-I
League, the next rung in the Cardinals' chain.
Newspaper stories made much of his
being the "first Negro" signed by the Cardinals. But not
Tucker. '`It's kind of an insult, in a way. The first this or the
first that. Who cares?" he said.
What he cared about was showing
people he could play baseball.
He hadn't played it at all while
growing up in Mounds, Ill., on the southern tip of the state.
"No, I didn't play baseball," he said. "The first time
was when I was 16 years old, working the summer in East St. Louis.
It was on a little old pickup team."
Tucker said that when he signed
with the Cardinals' organization, he still hadn't seen a major
league game, although he had listened to Cardinals broadcasts,
first by France Laux and then a young Harry Caray. "I would
picture playing ball in my mind and think, 'I wish I could do
that."
"But that was wishful
thinking," he said. "we were trained to accept what they
had," he said of the all-white majors.
Tucker said basketball was his best
sport while growing up. He also excelled at track and field,
mirroring the allaround athleticism of Robinson, who was UCLA's
only four-sport letterman. In 1953, besides leading Fresno State
in homers and RBIs, Tucker led the basketball team with 15.5
points per game and a 50.5 percent shooting average. While
attending Douglass High, he starred in basketball and won a medal
in the high jump in the Illinois state championships in
1946.
Tucker used the speed he'd
displayed on the track to open eyes in Peoria during 1954 and '55.
He hit .292 and .288 respectively, and led the league in steals
both seasons, swiping 47 bases his first year and 31 the next.
A June 1954 newspaper account
called him "Peoria's phantom of the base lines." and
noted that he usually took a lead off second base that put him
nearly halfway to third. If the catcher threw to second hoping to
catch him retreating to the bag, Tucker took off the other way and
stole third.
"My basic philosophy was that
I could beat two throws anywhere," explained Tucker, who ran
the 100 in 9.8 seconds while in the Air Force. "If they threw
behind me, I was gone.
"But there was one catcher who
bluffed a throw to second and then ran right at me," he said,
recalling how he was trapped in no-man's land and tagged out.
Tucker said the Peoria players and
fans accepted him, as fans will of any person of color who
produces as he did. Tucker as popularly known as "Lightnin'
Len."
"I was the big
gun," he chuckled. In Tucker's first year with Peoria,
the U.S. Supreme Court also reached its landmark decision barring
racial segregation in public schools. Yet as Tucker traveled with
the Chiefs on the road, he found that hotels didn't necessarily
follow suit.
"There were one or two places
where I couldn't stay with the team," he said. "But I
wasn't about to say that if I can't stay with the team, I'm going
to take my glove and go home. I was just getting started. I
took it as I went."
In the meantime, the Cardinals had
promoted Tom Alston to be their first black major leaguer.
Expecting again to be promoted following a productive campaign in
I955, Tucker instead was released. He said the Cardinals never
gave him a formal reason, although at the time he speculated to
reporters that he'd been cut because of his age.
"I went on; I was still
determined to make it," he said of his major league quest.
But Tucker nearly gave up on his
baseball career after a frustrating spring with teams in
Sacramento and Amarillo. Instead of quitting, he caught on with
the independent Pampa, Tex., team of the Southwestern League.
After changing his grip and switching to a lighter bat, he put
some monstrous numbers on the board in 1956: a .404 batting
average, 181 runs scored and 47 stolen bases - league-high totals
in each category - with 51 home runs and 181 RBIs. In one
three-game series, he smashed 10 consecutive extra-base hits: four
homers, a triple and a double in a double-header, then a home run
and three doubles the following evening.
Since the scouting reports said he
didn't have a major league outfielder's arm, Tucker made the shift
to first base and primarily played there for clubs in the Mexican
League the next two seasons. In 1959, the Washington Senators
invited him to spring training. Things looked great when he hit a
towering home run off a Cincinnati hurler in a Grapefruit League
game that spring. "It went out there pretty good, well over
the fence," he recalled.
"They gave me the silent
treatment when I got back to the dugout," Tucker said, noting
how his teammates followed the time-honored tradition of
responding to a home run by a "rookie," even a
29-year-old rookie. "Finally, I said, `(Bleep) you
guys," Tucker said with a laugh. "Then they broke out
with laughs and said, 'Way to go, Tucker."'
When Tucker's mother called to say
she'd been sent a copy of a Washington newspaper article that was
highly praiseworthy of his accomplishments, Tucker believed he'd
finally get his chance in the show.
"Now's my time, I thought.
I've finally got a shot. But they assigned me to go to Miami. And
while there I got injured."
Cards legend Pepper Martin managed
the Miami club in the International League and tried to build up
Tucker's confidence, but by that point Tucker had decided the
teaching degree he had earned would come in handier than his ball
glove.
He began teaching social studies
and physical education in the Fresno Public Schools system and
played minor league ball after school let out for summer. In his
last season, 1963, he batted .326 with 26 homers and 113 RBIs in
92 games for Modesto in the California League. Before calling it
quits, he had the chance to play with up-and-comers such as Brooks
Robinson and Joe Morgan.
"I felt I had their
respect," he said.
Though retired. Tucker still
teaches as a substitute while helping his wife run her T&M
Supply Co.
"I've been breeding
thoroughbreds since 1974," he said. Asked if any of his mares
had made it to the Kentucky Derby, he laughed and said, "Not
yet."
Tucker keeps up with the game but
said he had no favorite teams. "I kinda look at the
Cardinals," he said, adding that the encouragement Pepper
Martin gave him long ago helped him get over his hostility toward
the club for dropping him.
"The biggest difference today
is that they don't play as hard as we did, though some do,"
Tucker said. "But you'll never have another one like Joe
DiMaggio. You just can't find anyone to measure up to him.''
Tucker believes he gave it his best
shot.
"I've always said that when
your fate is in someone else's hands, they can squash you or let
you go, and they did both to me. With all the miles I traveled and
people I met, I learned how to deal with people. I'm thankful for
that."
Jim Rygelski is a baseball
historian based in St. Louis
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In
the June, 1997 edition of the St. Louis Cardinals Game Magazine,
writer Jim Rygelski had a portrait of "Lightnin'
Len".
