Nate Colbert of the San Diego Padres
tied a Major League record on August 1, 1972 by hitting five home runs in
doubleheader. The story surrounding the
first baseman’s feat reflects how the baseball dreams of African-American boys
changed as a result of Jackie Robinson erasing Major League baseball’s
“invisible color line” in 1947.
On May 2, 1954 in a doubleheader
against the New York Giants; St. Louis Cardinal right fielder Stan Musial hit
five home runs. There were 26,662 in attendance that Sunday afternoon at
St. Louis’ Busch Stadium to see him do what no other Major League player had
accomplished. In the first game, Musial hit three home runs and
drove in six runs in the Cardinal’s 10 – 6 victory. He hit 2 homers and
drove in three runs in the nightcap, but the Giants won 9 – 7.
In the stadium that spring afternoon
with his father was eight year old African-American Nate Colbert. I can
visualize the excitement on little Nate’s face in seeing his favorite Cardinal
ballplayer, “Stan the Man”, hit those five home runs. But Colbert that day also
saw Cardinal rookie first baseman Tom Alston, the first African American to
appear in a Major League game for the St. Louis Cardinals.
For the first time in the
franchise’s history, the 1954 Cardinal team had African-American players. The
28-year-old Alston made his Major League debut on April 13, earlier than Brooks
Lawrence (June 24) and Bill Greason (May 31), the other two African Americans
on the team. A good defensive first baseman, he had a hot bat against the
Giants in the doubleheader witnessed by little Nate. In the first game
Alston got four hits including a home run, his third of the young season, and
two RBIs. The second game he hit a bases loaded double (3 RBIs) in the
Cardinals’ first inning. He ended the day batting .313.
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| Wally Moon, Stan Musial, and Tom Alston |
Little Nate also saw that
day three former Negro League baseball players who appeared in both games
for the Giants: Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, and Hank Thompson. Irvin and Thompson
in 1949 were the first African-Americans to play for the Giants.
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| Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, and Hank Thompson |
Fast forward this story to 1964. 18
year old Nate Colbert is signed by the Cardinals, but they lose him to the
Houston Astros in the 1965 Rule Five draft and he never plays a game in the
uniform of his hometown team. The Astros then traded him to the San Diego
Padres in 1969.
On August 1, 1972; in Colbert’s
fourth season with the Padres, he ties the record he saw Stan Musial set in
1954. Colbert hits five home runs in a doubleheader against the Atlanta
Braves at Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta. He hits two home runs and
drives in five runs as the Padres win the first game 9-0 and hits three homers
driving in eight runs in his team’s 11 -7 victory in the nightcap. For
the second time in his six years with the Padres, Colbert hits 38 home runs in
1972.
Little Nate Colbert’s Major League
career did not come close to that of Stan Musial a 1969 Hall of Fame inductee. To tie or
break a record in baseball; however, is considered a great
accomplishment. And Colbert being present to see the record set
that he would eventually tie makes this a unique circumstance. In addition, Colbert got the opportunity to be able to do what he saw his childhood
favorite Cardinal ballplayer do because of what he also witnessed that May
afternoon.
By seeing Tom Alston, Willie Mays,
Hank Thompson, and Monte Irvin play that day; Colbert witnessed the new day in
Major League baseball that was occurring. It had dawned in 1947 when Jackie
Robinson became the first African-American in the 20th Century to
play Major League baseball. It was a new day in which the baseball dreams
of little Nate Colbert and other African-American boys were no longer confined
to Negro League baseball. A new day that would produce stories like Nate
Colbert’s and others as the racial barriers in professional baseball were
pulled down in the 1950s and 1960s.
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