The patriarch rarely spoke of his previous life. Henry Kimbro, a workaholic dad of three who ran a gas station and cab company in his native Nashville, had no time for chit-chat or reminiscing.
Even his own kids, throughout prepubesence, were unaware they lived with one of the most feared leadoff hitters in the rich history of the Negro Leagues.
“I didn’t find out until I was in high school, and he wouldn’t tell me,” said Dr. Harriet Kimbro-Hamilton, the second-oldest of three children born to Kimbro and his Cuban wife, Erbia.
“I was at his gas station that he had ... and a lot of the older ballplayers, all of his old cronies that he played with, they would come by. So one of them named Butch McCord came up to me and said, ‘Did you know your dad was a hell of a ball player?’ I was like, ‘Who are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Your dad.’ ”
In a sense, Kimbro’s lack of pretension reflected the league in which he flourished for a dozen years — understated and woefully under-represented.
Until now.
In May, Major League Baseball announced that Negro Leagues stats — specifically from seven different Negro Leagues from 1920-1948 — officially have been added to its historical record. As a result, Josh Gibson, arguably the best-known Negro League player, is the all-time major-league batting champion (.372) and career leader in slugging percentage (.718).
And Henry Kimbro? A quarter-century after his death, he is recognized as the MLB batting champion for 1947, when he hit .385 for the Baltimore Elite Giants. A dude named Ted Williams is fifth (.343).
“It does (mean something) because they’re finally getting the recognition that they deserved,” said Maria Drew, Kimbro’s youngest daughter and the assistant director of admissions at St. Petersburg College. “It’s kind of twofold because it’s sad, because most of these guys have passed on and they will never know that that is the case.”
But at least posterity will know. For Drew and her siblings, that’s a significant step for at least two generations of Black players who statistically were marginalized, segregated and often subject to harsh discrimination.
“That means that a wrong has been corrected, because of course the greatest thing that came out of this move was Josh Gibson,” said Kimbro-Hamilton, 70, who published a book on her father’s life and career. “That’s a major, major move for Major League Baseball to recognize the greatness that was already there, side by side.
“All the biggies that everybody knows about, but not only them, but people like my father who were not known, they were baseball greats. And they were very, very gifted. And if it had not been for the barrier of segregation, then they would’ve taken their place in baseball history long before this. ... So that has been corrected.”
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Explore all your optionsA man of few words
Drew, 58, recalls her father — whose five kids include two older children from previous relationships — as a humble, hard-working paradox: a chain smoker who remained athletic and trim, a victim of the Jim Crow South who bore no long-term bitterness, and a living, breathing reservoir of baseball memories who had little time for nostalgia.
“I’m learning it almost as everybody else because, I’ll be honest, when I was a kid he was very modest,” said Drew, a widow who has resided in St. Petersburg since 2000. “He never talked about baseball. It wasn’t really until I got into middle school and high school that I realized he was a baseball player in another life. And only when I would ask him about it, he would tell me about it.”
Through probing and prodding, Drew and her siblings learned that Henry Kimbro was a sleek, stocky (5-foot-8, 175 pounds) slap hitter who amassed a .300 career batting average (per baseball-reference.com) with three clubs over a dozen Negro League seasons (1937-1948). Most of his career was spent with the Baltimore Elite Giants, who pronounced the middle word as “e-LIGHT.”
Though not noted for his power, he was one of the few players to launch a home run over Briggs Stadium in Detroit. He ultimately started in five East-West All-Star games (and was a late substitute in another), and hit .300 or better four times.
But hardship seemed to accompany every hit. Kimbro and his teammates often were denied entry to hotels or restaurants, and were forced to sleep and eat inside the vehicles transporting them from town to town.
In one of his rare revelations, he told his daughter about his team’s sprawling station wagon that couldn’t quite accommodate every player.
“Everyone, their stuff, the equipment, everything fit in the car except for one person,” Drew recalled her dad telling her.
“And they would draw straws to see who literally would ride on the hood of the car. And they weren’t going from say, St. Pete to Clearwater. These guys were going from New York to Birmingham to Kansas City to Baltimore. ... And back then, cars didn’t go like, 80 miles an hour. ... And it wasn’t always a nice day either. I mean, that’s ridiculous.”
A bad rap
Equally ridiculous, according to Kimbro-Hamilton, was the reputation Kimbro acquired over time. One of the oldest of 10 children born in Nashville, Kimbro’s father died at an early age. That tragedy, coupled with the fact that the nearest segregated school was 12 miles one way, resulted in Kimbro dropping out in the sixth grade to help his family survive.
Because he had a limited education, Kimbro felt he couldn’t communicate well, Kimbro-Hamilton said. That fact, along with an incendiary sense of self-pride, led to him being labeled as aloof, sullen and often difficult to manage.
“That was just a farce. He was one of the smartest men I ever met, and I’ve met quite a few smart men in my time,” said Kimbro-Hamilton, who earned a doctorate in sports administration at Temple and became the first women’s basketball coach at Bethune-Cookman.
“My father was a very smart man. He was an astute businessman. ... He was way more than he thought he was.”
But he possessed the self-awareness to realize he never could have silently withstood the discrimination and death threats leveled against Jackie Robinson when he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947. By then, Kimbro was 35, his window for big-league entry virtually shut.
“He was a man that had a great heart, he was a very good man. But you couldn’t step on his toes,” Kimbro-Hamilton said.
“I said, ‘Daddy, could you have done what Robinson did?’ He said, ‘Oh, hell no.’ And this is what he said, ‘Because somebody would’ve been in the jail, and somebody would’ve been under the jail.’ And you knew what that meant. White players, all they had to do was step on his toes, or look like they were going to step on his toes, and it would’ve been over.”
Kimbro seemed to soften as he approached his septuagenarian years, evolving into an ambassador of his marginalized pastime who would spend hours at a Negro League memorabilia shop in Nashville swapping memories with old peers or sharing them with strangers. He died in the summer of 1999 at age 87 and was inducted posthumously into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame five years later.
Today’s he is enshrined in Major League Baseball annals. Call it validation arriving in increments, generation by generation.
“He was a huge influence in my life,” Drew said. “I love my mother to death, but you have certain bonds with certain parents, and he was mine. ... I used to say, ‘Didn’t you used to get angry (at the discrimination)?’ He was like, ‘No, that’s just the way it was.’ ”
Contact Joey Knight at jknight@tampabay.com. Follow @TBTimes_Bulls.
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