Return of the Clowns: How Banana Ball creator revived Indy's lost history in Negro Leagues
· Yahoo Sports
INDIANAPOLIS — Goose Tatum was a 6-foot, 6-inch, 190-pound spark of lanky athleticism — a smooth-fielding first baseman for the Indianapolis Clowns with an 84-inch wing span, creating a massive target while thrilling fans as he exaggerated his long limbs with big stretches.
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That's what the Clowns were known for in the 1930s and 1940s, thrilling fans as they mixed elite athletic talent with slapstick, vaudeville comedy and theatrics. More importantly, the Clowns were giving Black players a professional option at a time when Major League Baseball didn't welcome them.
The rosters of the Clowns over the team's 60 years of existence were eclectic, diverse, inclusive and filled with a large cast of leading characters, exactly what this team competing in the Negro Leagues needed to stand out.
Over more than six decades, the Clowns welcomed white players, women, people with disabilities and people of small stature. The Clowns were a renegade, barnstorming team that was unapologetic and unashamed of who they were.
And they were ahead of their time.
ESPN's "Return of the Clowns," which debuts 9 p.m. Friday, reveals the early years of the team from its founding in 1936 to its folding in 1989 to its revival in May with the Banana Ball league. The film airs after the modern-day Clowns take on the Savannah Bananas in Cincinnati.
The documentary tells the fascinating tale of a team of trailblazers who entertained a nation while facing discrimination, yet persevering.
When Banana Ball creator Jesse Cole learned the history of the Clowns, he couldn't just let their story fade away.
"I just became fascinated," Cole says in the documentary. "What if? What if we brought this team back?"
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'The most famous clown of them all'
The origins of the Clowns dates back to the Miami Ethiopian Clowns, a legendary, independent Black baseball team founded in Miami, Florida, in 1936, says Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
By 1943, the Clowns joined the Negro American League. Three years later, they relocated to Indiana and officially became the Indianapolis Clowns.
"The Clowns brought the Negro league to a whole other level," Kendrick says.
Take Goose Tatum, whose baseball antics weren't all he was known for in the 1940s. He also had a famous 11-year run as the "Clown Prince of Basketball" for the Harlem Globetrotters. Tatum was an outright sports superstar.
When Major League Baseball signed its first Black player, Jackie Robinson, in April 1947, and as other Black players went to the MLB, the Clowns franchise started searching for elite talent.
In 1952, the Clowns landed Hank Aaron, "the most famous Clown of them all," Kendrick says.
"Leaving home to go join the Indianapolis Clowns was probably one of the hardest things that ever happened to me," Aaron says in the documentary in a 1998 interview. "An 18-year-old kid, Black kid leaving Mobile, Alabama, don't know where you're going with $2 in your pocket."
Aaron's history with the Clowns was short lived. Just three months after his debut, he was signed to the major leagues where he would go on to break the sport's most hallowed record as the all-time home run leader.
"He validates the Indianapolis Clowns for those who think it was just a farce, that they only entertained," Kendrick says. "And then you learn that a Henry Aaron played there and the rest, as they say, is history."
While there had been some critics of the Clowns who said the team promoted the stereotype of Black athletes and could not be taken seriously when it came to getting into the big leagues, Aaron proved the naysayers wrong, Kendrick says.
But with Aaron gone, Clowns owner Syd Pollock had to find a new way to stand out.
He did what no team had ever done. He added a woman to the Clowns roster, second baseman Toni Stone, the first female to play in the Negro American League.
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'So, I struck him out'
Stone was the first of three pioneering baseball women to call the Clowns home. Connie Morgan and Mamie "Peanut" Johnson made their own marks.
In Johnson's first game against the Kansas City Monarchs on the mound in 1953, Hank Baylis stepped into the batter's box, stared Johnson down and said something to her in what she remembers as "a very condescending fashion."
"He hollered out and said, 'How do you expect to strike anybody out? You're not big as a peanut,'" Johnson says in the documentary. "So I just looked at him, you know. So I struck him out, and the name stuck. Everybody started calling me Peanut."
Johnson and the other women Clowns players kept the stands filled up for the next few years. Women taking on men in a pro sport was a novelty.
But when the Negro Leagues folded in 1960, the Clowns left Indianapolis to travel the country and make their mark in cities and towns, big and small.
Russell "Crazy Legs" Patterson remembers landing in towns with populations of 200 to play ball.
"But 1,000 came to watch," Patterson, who played for the Clowns that first 1960-61 season, says in the documentary.
Patterson was paid $150 a month to play for the Clowns, traveling the country in the 1960s during the height of segregation, and it wasn't always easy. Patterson says the Black Clowns players were turned away from hotels and would have to sleep under the bus.
"It was bad," he says. "Those were some hard times to get where I'm at today."
In 1970, the Clowns made a strategic and "smart move" to bring white players onto the team, Kendrick says.
One of those players was Bill Heward, who said he felt honored to be playing for the Clowns and who noticed something. This historically Black team was a wonderful welcoming crew to everyone.
The Clowns were making a difference in players lives, but they were also making an impact on culture and diffusing stereotypes, Heward says.
There was Clowns first baseman Steve Anderson, who lost his left arm in a truck accident as a child and played with his right, going by the nickname "Nub."
Despite his disability, Anderson had elite fielding skills and showmanship. He would catch the ball then tuck his glove under his chin so he could throw with his right arm.
"You could stand 20 feet from Steve and play catch, and you could throw it back as quickly as you wanted to and Steve (would) catch it," Heward, a teammate of Anderson's, says in the documentary, "and he'd roll the ball out ... in just the blink of an eye."
Heward had so many great memories of his time with Clowns, but he thought they were all in his past. Until, he got the call not long ago.
The Indianapolis Clowns were coming back.
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'Give honor where honor's due'
Cole's vision to revive the Clowns as part of the Banana Ball league came to fruition and then in May, 37 years after last playing in Indianapolis, the Clowns returned home to Victory Field.
"I absolutely had chills," says Heward, who was at the game. "It's like, the Clowns are back. And really back. I mean what a show."
Kendrick knew exactly where that show originated from. "What the Bananas are doing today, the Clowns were doing that in the 30s and 40s," he says.
One of the team's earliest players, Goose Tatum, has been an example for modern-day Clowns players, including Mat Wolf.
"I'm a guy that wants to give honor where honor's due, and that's what I'm trying to do here with the Indianapolis Clowns," Wolf says in the documentary. "Goose Tatum and the Clowns doing different ball tricks ... I got a lot of my inspiration from what those guys did."
The newly-founded Clowns have been honoring former players from years past on their tour.
"The foundation they laid for us to be able to do this, I think it's important," says Clowns infielder Correlle Prime. "That's what we kind of fixate ourselves on. We are very grateful thankful and blessed that that team existed."
The mantra of the modern-day Clowns is to play for the guys who didn't get to go to the major leagues because of segregation, and to carry on their legacy.
"I think the fear of anybody of doing anything in life is that you become irrelevant," Cole says. "And for many of these Clowns players, their story has not been known."
"Return of the Clowns" premieres Friday, June 19, at 9 p.m. on ESPN and is available for on-demand streaming afterward on the ESPN app.
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Return of the Clowns, on Banana Ball’s revival of Indy's Negro League team, to air on ESPN