The “Greatest” Scout In Baseball History
My friend Larry Hogan has made great contributions to our appreciation of the Negro Leagues that have led to their inclusion as major leagues, equal and no longer separate. He wrote about another “Pop,” John Henry Lloyd, in this space (https://bit.ly/33Goc5B).
When I interviewed former Philadelphia Stars outfielder Gene Benson at Hinchliffe Stadium in Patterson, New Jersey in midsummer 1986, he stated with considerable emphasis that “baseball is suppose to be a fun game. They make it too much of a business today.”
When in my research I first met Pop Watkins my first reaction was, no way! The Greatest Baseball Scout in the World? The sportswriter who tells this tale must be exaggerating. Or we must be missing the meaning of what he is saying. Whatever: There can be little doubt that what we do have in this lifetime baseball man adds up to more than a bit of exuberance — a good touch of elegance and a sprinkling of nonsense thrown in for good measure.
John McCreary Watkins, known to thousands of baseball followers as just plain “Pop,” was said to have been born on a plantation near Durham, NC, on May 18, 1857 (other sources place his birth — more reasonably given his documented playing career — in Augusta, GA in 1870). Shortly after the close of the Civil War, when baseball began to gain in popularity, “Pop,” who was fascinated by the outdoor game, started on his career as a player.
Out of the ranks of the Original Cuban Giants team, often termed Black baseball’s first professional club, came a player who would be dubbed toward the end of his long career in colored baseball as “the greatest baseball scout in the world.” He was someone who Harry Hairstone recalled as having “the fight” in him, and one of a “game lot.”
Hairstone’s recollection came from his breaking-in years, well before he became a mainstay with the original Baltimore Black Sox. He was playing for a white club, the Rochester Big Horns. The Horns were locked in a contentious game with a Black squad anchored by John “Pop” Watkins at first base. In his first time at bat the young Hairstone hit a sharp line drive down the first base line headed for two-base territory. The ball never reached the outfield as old Pop made a one hand stab while falling over the bag.
“Gee old man, you’re lucky,” yelled the disappointed Hairstone.
“Hit them right, son” Pop yelled back, “and if I get within a mile of them they’re in the well.”
Watkins’ Negro baseball “well” was deep and wide — so wide and deep that he came to be called the “greatest baseball scout” in the world. That judgment was based on a definition of the term baseball scout by the sports editor of the Baltimore Afro-American that is well worth hearing.
A scout is a man, usually an old baseball player engaged by the manager of a team to go out through the country and look over the work of the young amateurs in what is known in baseball parlance as the ‘bush leagues’ or sometimes dubbed ‘the sandlotters.’ The qualifications of a scout include a high degree of baseball knowledge, a more than ordinary ability to read character, and something of the gift of prophecy.
That is to say he must be able to size up a candidate to the extent of judging whether he has the intelligence to submit to the discipline of organized baseball management, and at the same time be amenable to instruction so that the manager will be able to bring out the best that is in him. And above all this is the scout’s ability to see whether there is anything to be brought out.
If the testimony found in the report of his death in 1924 can be taken at face, Pop Watkins clearly qualified as scout extraordinaire when it came to judging Negro baseball talent in the bud. The roster of his “discoveries” whom he managed reads like a who’s who of early 20th century Negro professional baseball. Among them were “Duncan, Wallace, Forrest, McDonald, Lander, Scotland, Walters, Richardson, Miller, and many others.” No less a testifier than Sol White in 1919 called Watkins the “dean of the Colored baseball profession,” and acknowledged his role in the development of the fine players George Dixon of the American Giants, and Phil Cockrell of Hilldale.
By the time the Afro-American sports editor of our “scout definition” caught up with Watkins in the summer of 1923, the revered Pop had been in baseball 44 years. Born in the South, as a youngster he moved to Brooklyn, where baseball of the backlot variety was a natural avocation for a young man. His youth and young manhood years were spent in a city where baseball on an infant professional level had established itself as a vital community presence. These were years when Black baseball was marked by organized clubs in Brooklyn like the Colored Unions, the Monitors, the Uniques, and the Weeksville Unknowns. These teams cbegan to build intercity rivalries against Black teams from other communities. For this lifetime baseball man who would be “Pop” in his mature years, these formative years had to be the preparation period for the caliber of talent he brought to his long catching tenure with the Cuban Giants.
John “Pop” Watkins was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.