Remembering Jackie's first black MLB teammate

The Negro League Baseball Museum is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the start of the Negro Leagues, and MLB.com’s Bill Ladson has written a series of articles on some of the league’s legends. This one is about Dan Bankhead, who was the first black pitcher to play in the big leagues and the second black player to join Jackie Robinson with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

NEW YORK -- Jackie Robinson made baseball history on April 15, 1947, when he became the first African American to break the color barrier in the Major Leagues. But Robinson had a black teammate later that year.

Many believe Roy Campanella or Don Newcombe were on the roster later that season, but that was not the case. The next African American to play for the Dodgers was a right-hander named Dan Bankhead, the first African American pitcher to play Major League Baseball, ahead of legendary Satchel Paige, who didn’t enter the big leagues until 1948 with the Indians. Paige was considered the best pitcher in Negro League history, but the jury was still out on how old Paige was. Many teams believed Paige was past his prime and already in his 40s.

General manager Branch Rickey had his eyes on a young Bankhead, who was in his mid-20s. The Dodgers thought he had electric stuff, dominating stuff when he pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons and Memphis Red Sox of the Negro Leagues. He was more than just a pitcher; this guy could swing a bat. According to Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro League Baseball Museum, Bankhead was a red-hot hitter with a .385 batting average when he signed with the Dodgers.

“That was the kind of athlete Bankhead was. He [even] stole bases,” Kendrick said.

However, Bankhead didn’t have the impact on the field that Robinson had. Bankhead played parts of three seasons with Brooklyn without much success in 1947, ‘50 and ’51. While Robinson had a career to remember with his skills on the diamond, Bankhead could never harness his pitching.

Bankhead was 9-5 with a 6.52 ERA during his big league career. After his first year in the big leagues, Bankhead spent the next two years in the minors, where he won a combined 44 games, but walked 316 batters in 487 innings. Bankhead was still given a chance to return to the Major Leagues, but again, it came without much success.

Years after Bankhead retired, Kendrick and the late Buck O’Neil met up with Bankhead’s son, who gave them an explanation about why his father was not successful when he broke the color line for black pitchers.

“Bankhead, who was from Alabama, was scared of what the ramifications would be if he hit a white batter,” Kendrick said. “He never got comfortable pitching to white guys. You read about his stuff. He had the kind of fastball that ran in on right-handed hitters. His stuff was electric. I think the first batter that he threw to, he hit [him] in the elbow.”

Bankhead stayed with the Dodgers organization through the 1952 season before playing for a year in the Class C Provincial League. From 1955-66, he played eight seasons with various teams in Mexico before retiring. In 1960, his only year in the Mexican League for which detailed statistics are available, he was 5-2 with a 4.50 ERA in 16 games for Pericos de Puebla. Bankhead passed away in 1976 of lung cancer.