Ankleball Moss: Nothing good happens after one in the morning
There’s an old saying, “Nothing good happens after one in the morning.”
Round about that hour on July 16, 1944, as the Nashville to Memphis train steamed through the humid night, that time-worn phrase was playing out in the most tragic of scenes. In the baggage car, Memphis Red Sox pitcher Porter Moss lay on a makeshift bed of uniforms, his life draining from him, as his teammates comforted him in the life-or-death race to reach a city with a hospital.
Porter Moss –better known by the name “Ankleball” for his curious underhand pitching motion – had been the hero of the previous year’s East-West All-Star Game and was now reported to be the leading pitcher in the Negro American League. But a broken down bus, an overcrowded Jim Crow train car, and an angry drunk with a pistol set in motion the events that led to the tragic death of a Negro League all-star in the prime of his career.
PORTER DOUGLAS “ANKLEBALL” MOSS was born on June 10, 1910, in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was the beginning of the period known as the Great Migration, in which southern Blacks came north seeking stable industrial jobs. Moss, along with his sister and two brothers, was raised by his mother, Ida Calloway, in the section of Cincinnati known as the West End, an area that had experienced race riots throughout the 1800s. As the century turned, almost half of the black population of Cincinnati called the West End their home.
Porter Moss’s educational upbringing was rare for his time. During his youth, Moss attended the Harriett Beecher Stowe School, named for the famous Cincinnati abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The school served as a beacon to the growing number of African American families emigrating from the South. In addition to being its founder, Jennie D. Porter also served as the school’s principal, and she believed strongly that the African American students should receive the same educational experience as whites. To give Moss and other students positive role models to emulate, Porter brought in several prominent African Americans to speak at the school, including Langston Hughes, George W. Carver, and Marian Anderson.
Adjacent to the school grounds lay Sinton Park, which hosted the Sinton Twilight Softball League. The league served as an early training ground for several Negro League players, including Roy Partlow and Jesse Houston. Porter Moss was said to be the league’s leading pitcher, often striking out 15 or even 20 batters a game.
Teammates of Moss during his baseball career referred to Porter as a college-educated man, having stated that he attended West Virginia State College, a historically black college now known as West Virginia State University. The school began offering college degrees in 1915, and Moss was said to be a fastball pitcher during his time there.
STANDING AT 5 feet 11 inches, Porter Moss’s pitching prowess stemmed from his trademark unorthodox submarine delivery that baffled hitters. He threw from an arm angle so low that from the hitter’s point of view, the ball looked to be coming from his ankles, quickly earning Moss the nickname ‘Ankleball.’
In 1932, at the age of 22, right-hander Porter Moss made his professional debut, throwing five innings and allowing four runs for the Indianapolis ABCs. That would be his only appearance of the season. Due to the financial hardships of the Great Depression, the team had to shut down at the end of the season, leaving Moss to take up semi-pro ball for the Goodyear Shoe Repair, a Class A local Cincinnati community team. According to a May 8, 1933, article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, “The best game of the day was played at West End Field when Pete’s Billiards had to go 11 innings to down Goodyear Shoe Repair by a 7-6 score. For the second straight week, Porter Moss, Goodyear pitcher, struck out 15 batters yet lost the game.”
In 1934, William Dehart Hubbard, a Cincinnatian made famous by becoming the first African American to win a gold medal in an individual Olympic event, which he accomplished in track & field at the 1924 Paris Olympics, formed the Cincinnati Tigers baseball team. Hubbard recruited Moss along with the best players from local area teams, including the Cincinnati White Sox, Lockland Valley Tigers, and Excelsior Athletic Club.
The Cincinnati Tigers operated as an independent ball club, barnstorming against teams from the Negro Southern League, Negro National League, and Indiana-Ohio Independent League, until 1937 when they officially joined the Negro American League. The Tigers played their home games at Crosley Field, renting the ballpark from the Cincinnati Reds and even donning Reds’ uniforms that had been cast off from previous seasons. The Tigers were a popular club, with attendance at home games typically ranging from 5,000–10,000 per contest. Those crowd numbers would swell up to 15,000 for games against well-known opponents such as the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays.
During the 1934 season, Moss impressed fans by striking out thirteen Louisville Black Caps in a winning performance. A month later, he struck out twelve Baltimore Black Sox in another Cincinnati win. In 1935, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Porter Moss won 35 of the 39 games he started.
The Tokyo Giants Japanese All-Star team called in June of that year to take on the Cincinnati Tigers at Crosley Field. Taking advantage of the Tiger players’ nervousness, which led to a couple of errors and walks, the Tokyo Giants scored five runs right out of the gate. Ankleball Moss was rushed in to relieve starter Virgil Harris, where he proceeded to befuddle the Giants with his submarine delivery, pitching eight innings during which he dueled ace Japanese pitcher Eiji Sawamura over the final four innings. Moss gave up just four hits as the Tigers battled back for a 9-5 win.
In 1936, Porter Moss finished the season with an unspectacular 7.92 ERA in 30.2 innings yet was elected to his first East-West All-Star Game, in which he didn’t make an appearance.
COMBING THROUGH newspapers revealed all kinds of superlatives being used to describe Ankleball Moss, who was clearly becoming beloved by the press and baseball fans alike. The Times Union called him “The Midwestern Satchel Paige,” while the Delaware County Times referred to Porter as “The Negro Dizzy Dean.”
Was Porter Moss truly on par with Satchel Paige? Maybe not in pure physical stature, pitching delivery, or career statistical numbers, but, doing some digging, Porter did match the great Satchel Paige with his swagger and presence. Armed with that unusual ankleball submarine delivery, Porter was not short on self-confidence, nor, like Paige, was he afraid to tell the world how good he felt he was. According to his Cincinnati Tigers teammate, Marlin Carter, “When other teams came to town, Porter would go over to their hotel and tell them what he was gonna do to them the next day when he was pitching. They say it ain’t bragging if you can do it. Well, he wasn’t bragging.” Carter went on to describe Moss as “the life of the party on and off the field” and a “showman at heart.”
That self-confidence was rewarded during the 1937 season, both in pitching statistics and popularity, as Ankleball Moss finished the campaign with a 2.99 ERA. Moss was again elected to the East-West All-Star Game, garnering the second most votes among pitchers. Moss tossed 6 strong innings for the West All-Stars, giving up four runs, only 1 of which was earned in a 7-2 loss.
AFTER THE 1937 season, the Cincinnati Tigers were sold to J.B. Martin, owner of the Memphis Red Sox. Tigers’ player-manager Ted ‘Double Duty’ Radcliffe moved on to manage the Red Sox for the 1938 season, bringing 27-year-old Porter Moss along with him. Years later, Radcliffe would recall that “Moss’s submarine-style was murder on right-handed hitters.”
Moss led the Red Sox in games started and completed in 1938 as Memphis won the first half of the Negro American League split-season. In the league championship that fall, the Red Sox faced the Atlanta Black Crackers. The plan was for the two teams to square off in a seven-game championship series to decide the pennant.
Game one was held in the Red Sox’s home ballpark, Martin Stadium. Ted Radcliffe pitched a masterpiece, holding Atlanta to one run on five hits, while the Memphis batters tagged Felix Evans for six runs.
In the second game, Ankleball Moss faced off against Cannonball Berry. This game was much livelier, with Memphis jumping all over Cannonball for eight runs before he was relieved by Eddie Dixon in the fourth. Atlanta slowly chipped away at the deficit, eventually scoring six runs off Moss, but Memphis prevailed, 11-6.
At this point, the wheels fell off the championship series. The series was to resume the following week in Atlanta, but when game time arrived, Memphis was a no-show. According to one source, the Black Crackers showed up late for the third game and had trouble securing a field for Game 4, causing the series to be abandoned. However, the September 23, 1938, Atlanta Daily World claimed that “The Red Sox feel that they cannot win in Atlanta and that they won’t be treated ‘right.’” Whatever the reason, there would be no conclusion to the Negro American League that year.
WITH THE POSTSEASON nixed, Ankleball headed west to play in the California Winter League. First started around 1900, this informal winter league featured several teams of White major and minor leaguers who lived in Southern California, along with one all-Black team of top Negro Leaguers. Like other winter leagues in Cuba and Puerto Rico, it was a nod to a Black player’s superior talent to be awarded a spot on a California Winter League roster.
Moss joined his Memphis teammate Willie Jefferson, and Elite Giants ace Johnny “Schoolboy” Griffith to give the Royal Giants a first-class pitching staff. Powered by the bats of Wild Bill Wright, Felton Snow, Biz Mackey, and Sammy T. Hughes, the Royal Giants dominated the six-team league with an 11-2-1 record. Moss was the pitching leader of the short season with a 3-0 tab.
Whether overwork or bad luck, 1939 did not go well statistically for Moss. He sported a swollen 7.36 ERA and at the end of the season he stepped away from the Red Sox.
Ankleball signed on with the Alijadores de Tampico (Tampico Lightermen) of the la Liga Mexicana de Béisbol. While baseball had been played in Mexico since the 1840s, the country’s first functioning league did not start until 1925. By 1940, the league’s leading benefactor was Jorge Pasquel, a rich import-exporter from Monterrey and baseball fiend. Pasquel knew that to have a thriving league, he needed to import established stars to attract fans and help native players elevate their game. Inducing the better-paid White players to come to Mexico was not feasible, but Negro League and Cuban-based players, who drew less pay and faced racial discrimination up north, could.
Moss’s record in the California Winter League made him ripe for Mexican League recruitment. However, if Ankleball thought playing south of the border was going to be as easy as the CWL, he was very wrong. Besides the best Latin players of the day, the 1940 Liga Mexicana was a veritable who’s who of Negro League superstars, including future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Leon Day, Martin Dihigo, Cool Papa Bell, Ray Dandridge and Willard Brown. Against this star-studded Outsider Baseball congregation, Moss lost his only decision in three games pitched. He walked more batters than he whiffed, but on the bright side, Moss gave up just two runs in those three appearances.
After the Mexican League season ended, Moss headed to Cuba. Immigration records show that he traveled with fellow Negro Leaguers Cool Papa Bell, Sam Bankhead, and Quincy Barbee. While those three did indeed play in the Cuban League that winter, no record could be found of Porter Moss appearing in any games.
ANKLEBALL’S MEXICAN sojourn reinvigorated the 31-year-old, and he returned to the Memphis Red Sox for 1941. He spun a 4-2 record with a 3.91 ERA, punctuated by a September complete-game shutout with 11 strikeouts against the New York Black Yankees.
By 1942, it seemed like things were really starting to catch fire for Ankleball. Moss finished the year with a sparkling 2.95 ERA in 55 innings and was again selected to the East-West All-Star Game, where he gave up one run in two innings of relief.
In 1943, the good times continued to roll for Porter. In spring training, he tossed two exhibition game no-hitters against the New York Black Yankees and Cincinnati Clowns. He posted a 3.39 ERA for the Red Sox and the fans again voted Ankleball to the East-West All-Star team. In his third trip to the mid-summer classic, Ankleball Moss was thrust into a situation most pitchers could only imagine.
The scenario couldn’t have been more Hollywood-esque: The fiery sun was starting to set among the late afternoon shadows in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. 51,723 fans watched Satchel Paige, Gready McKinnis, and Theolic “Fireball” Smith hold the East batters to a single hit through eight frames.
Now, it was the bottom of the ninth, the score 2-0. Fireball Smith got two quick outs to bring the West one out away from victory. Then Buck Leonard hit a booming solo home run into the rightfield stands. Josh Gibson followed with a single and moved over to second when Howard Easterling blasted a whistler to rightfield. The East’s mighty bats had come alive with the tying and winning runs on base. That brought up Vic Harris –absolutely the last guy a pitcher wanted to see come to the plate when there were runners on base. Frank Duncan, the West’s manager, called time and walked to the mound. After conferring with his pitcher and catcher, Duncan motioned to the bullpen for Ankleball Moss.
Moss took his warmup pitches and settled down to face Harris. His first pitch was low and outside—ball one. Ankleball tugged at his belt, checked the runners, and pitched again. Harris swung mightily and connected. The ball sailed out to centerfield, but Willard Brown pulled it in for the third out and game. The West players mobbed Moss and were joined by ecstatic fans who streamed onto the field. Ankleball Moss had thrown two pitches, but he saved the game for the West. No one could remember a more dramatic moment in East-West Game history.
That winter Porter Moss was again recruited to play in the California Winter League. Ankleball joined pitchers Satchel Paige and Terris McDuffie to lead the all-Black Baltimore Elite Giants to the league championship.
ENTERING 1944, for Porter Ankleball Moss, life was indeed sweet. Moss was in his proverbial baseball prime and became an instant family man when he wed Orbul Cooper and became stepfather to her son Sammie. Through mid-July, Moss was spectacular, sporting a tidy 2.42 ERA across nine games for the Memphis Red Sox. He had the best pitching record in the Negro American League and looked to be well on his way to another East-West All-Star Game selection.
On Friday, July 14, The Red Sox split a doubleheader with the Clowns in Indianapolis. Their next game was a Sunday two-fer back in Memphis. This meant a grueling 500-mile bus ride. The team made it as far as the outskirts of Nashville when their bus died. Negro League bus drivers were the unsung heroes that kept teams moving from one town to another. Many were expert mechanics able to deal with any issues that arose, and Memphis’ driver Sam Thomas was no exception. However, this time, Thomas could not repair the bus.
This was the height of World War II, and replacement parts for automobiles, let alone buses, were nearly impossible to find. Fortunately, the Nashville Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway ran from Nashville to Memphis, with one more run scheduled for that day. The team met the train at McEwen, Tennessee, around midnight. The players loaded their equipment and luggage and took their place in the segregated Jim Crow car.
The night was hot and steamy. The air in the car was thick with smoke and raucously loud despite the late hour. Those not lucky enough to have snagged a seat were forced to stand in the aisle or perch on the arms of the chairs. The train was scheduled to make Memphis around dawn on Sunday morning.
Among the passengers was Johnny Easley, who newspapers later described as an “erstwhile bad boy of Benton County.” Easley, who was traveling with his three sisters, was said to have been drunk and causing a disturbance long before Moss and the Red Sox boarded the train.
Easley began roaming up and down the aisle, pestering the women and trying to get the men to start up a craps game. When the drunk got to Moss, teammate Verdell Mathis heard the pitcher say, “Why don’t you sit down and leave the women alone?” That’s when Mathis noticed the pistol tucked in Easley’s waistband.
The train slowed as it reached the town of Camden. As Easley made his way to the vestibule at the back of the car, Moss and several other players followed. There, Easley was confronted by a White train conductor and a Black porter. An argument broke out. The arrival of the ballplayers in the tight vestibule only heightened the tension.
Easley snapped, leaping off the train as it pulled into the station. After he helped his three sisters out of the car, he pulled his piece from his waistband and fired a single shot at the group standing in the doorway. Easley then abandoned his sisters on the station platform and ran off into the night as the train pulled out of the station.
Porter Moss staggered back into the car and announced he had been shot. The bullet had entered his left side, just below his heart, perforating his large intestine before lodging in his spine. He gasped for air and a doctor. The players carried Moss into the baggage car, where he was gently laid on a makeshift bed of old uniforms provided by the porter. Moss was in great pain, repeatedly asking for a doctor. Though no one knew it, the ballplayer was bleeding internally.
At the next stop, Bruceton, a doctor boarded the train to tend to a passenger injured in a fight in the White section of the train. The Red Sox players asked the doctor, who was White, to take a look at Moss.
Now, this is where the story of Ankleball Moss gets a little convoluted. Memphis Red Sox teammate Verdell Mathis told the Cincinnati Enquirer in a 1993 article, “We were told there was a doctor at the next station. When we got there, he said he wouldn’t treat Moss because he was colored.”
Here, we must tread lightly. Verdell Mathis was there, on that train, and watched his teammate’s life slipping away. That a White doctor would refuse to treat a Black man is not hard to imagine in rural 1944 Jim Crow Tennessee. However, there was another man on that train that night who published an eyewitness account seven days after the incident.
Sam Brown was the Memphis Red Sox’s press secretary and sportswriter for the Black-owned Memphis Call newspaper. In his July 21, 1944 article about the shooting, syndicated to several Black newspapers by the Scott News Syndicate (SNS), Brown reported that the White doctor did indeed see Moss – not only that, but he gave the pitcher an injection from his bag and informed his teammates that there was no hospital in Bruceton or at any other stop before Jackson, still more than an hour away by train.
In some retellings of this story, the “injection” administered is inferred to be less than what a medical doctor should have done. The authors of this article consulted with a doctor who has an interest in medical history. We presented the relevant facts of the story, including Moss’s death certificate and contemporary descriptions of his injury. It was the doctor’s opinion that the injection Moss was given was most likely morphine. This would have been to help with the pain and make Moss as comfortable as possible until they reached Jackson. When asked what other medical attention Moss could have received that night, our doctor stated that in 1944 there was nothing that could have been done short of immediate emergency treatment in a large hospital.
With the amount of blood Moss had lost, a transfusion would have been needed, and the only facility in the entire state was in Memphis, 134 miles away. The internal bleeding, perforated intestines and colon, and spinal injury would not have been something a country doctor could have treated in the baggage car of a moving train in 1944, even if he had wanted to.
Some modern-day versions of this tragedy add the detail that other hospitals and ambulance services along the train line refused to take Moss in due to his color. Before writing this story, the authors obtained a 1944 Nashville Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway timetable and route map, which identified all the stations between Camden and Jackson. After inquiring at the historical society or library at each location, we were able to determine that there was, in fact, no hospital between Camden and Jackson in 1944. How this became part of Porter Moss’s story is unknown, but the authors have determined that detail is inaccurate.
Here, we need to add that although the way this story has come to be accepted is inaccurate, the scenario would not have been out of the ordinary for the time and place. It is well documented that some White doctors and medical facilities did refuse to treat Black patients. In fact, just a few weeks before Porter Moss’s murder, teammate Verdell Mathis had been injured in a bus accident in Missouri. According to Montgomery Kurt McBee’s 2001 dissertation, They Also Played the Game: A Historical Examination of the Memphis Red Sox Organization, 1922-1959, “The extent of his injuries were so bad he had to lie on his stomach. Unable to find a black doctor, they took Mathis to a white doctor in Missouri. The doctor refused to treat him because he was black and Mathis was forced to wait until their arrival in Kansas City hours later before he received treatment.”
WHEN THE TRAIN pulled into Jackson at 3 am, a White ambulance crew was standing by to rush Porter Moss to Memorial Hospital. At 6 am doctors performed an emergency operation, but he had lost too much blood from internal bleeding. At 4 pm, Porter Moss was pronounced dead.
After Moss had been taken off the train, the rest of the Red Sox continued on to Memphis for the Sunday doubleheader against Cleveland. The first game was in progress when the announcement was made that Porter Moss had passed away. Play was halted as the ballpark stood silently at attention as a tribute of respect to the pitcher.
Orbul Moss accompanied her husband’s body back to Cincinnati, where he was laid to rest at the United American Cemetery, a historic African American burial ground. The following month, it was announced that Ankleball Moss had been selected to represent the West in that year’s East-West Game. The bittersweet honor was coupled with him finishing third in ERA and fourth in the Negro American League in strikeouts. Unfortunately, Moss’s talent and personality had been extinguished too soon.
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This story was co-written with Russ Speiller. A newcomer to baseball history writing, in just over a year, Russ has authored close to a dozen stories and biographies for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and is currently preparing a book about baseball in the Manzanar Japanese internment camp during World War II. A year ago, Russ had introduced me to Ankleball’s story and suggested that I should write it. However, once I heard Russ’s passion as he told me the story, I felt that he should be the one to write it. In the end, we compromised by sharing the writing and research duties.
Since the story of Ankleball Moss had been told many times over the years in articles and podcasts, Russ and I figured our retelling would be a straightforward endeavor. However, the more we looked into it, we both came to realize that some of the accepted facts surrounding the events leading to Moss’s death were inaccurate.
This led to our checking and re-checking every source available. One of the significant finds was an original 1944 Nashville Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway map and timetable that allowed us to accurately recreate the timeline of the tragic early hours of Sunday, July 16, 1944.
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