A look back on Harry Simpson
Have Suitcase, will travel
I don’t think there’s much debate that baseball players today are better than they were 50 or 100 years ago. For one thing, MLB is now integrated. It’s truly an international sport. The second thing is players at nearly all levels now play and work out year-round. With AAU and traveling teams, pre-teen ballplayers probably play more games in a summer than I played in the five years I played ball. At higher levels, players have access to trainers and dieticians, as well as cutting-edge technology. The gloves are better. The bats are multiple times better. We used to use whatever wooden bat we could get our hands on. Young players today have the very best aluminum bats. The only thing I can absolutely say was better about ballplayers of old was they had the best nicknames. Today’s nicknames are plain vanilla: K-rod. A-rod. J-rod. Gordo. You get the idea.
When someone says the following names, you know who they’re talking about: The Big Train. Say Hey Kid. Hammer. The Penguin. The human rain delay. Double Duty. Oil Can. Toy Cannon. Crime Dog. Spaceman. The Mad Hungarian. The Baby Bull. Big Poison. Little Poison. Cakes. The Big Cat. The Professor.
Baseball has always been a haven for creative nicknames. One of my all-time favorite nicknames is Suitcase. That moniker belonged to former Kansas City Athletics outfielder Harry Simpson. Like most black men of his era, Simpson got his start in the Negro Leagues. There was a time in his life when he doubted that professional baseball was in his future, what with roadblocks like Kenesaw Landis in the way. Simpson’s first nickname was Goody, given to him for his polite personality and his willingness to help anyone in need.
Simpson enlisted in the Army just shy of his 17th birthday in 1941 and served until World War Two ended in 1945. He signed with the Philadelphia Stars and hit .333 in 52 games. He had a rough 1947 season and considered quitting baseball, but encouraged by his wife Johnnie, stuck with it.
About that nickname. I originally thought it was due to his playing for several different teams, seven over an eleven-year career, which includes two stints in Kansas City. I checked in with my father on this, who informed me that the name came from his size 13 shoe and comparisons made to a comic strip character of the time, Toonerville Folks, which had a character named Suitcase Simpson. I looked at some of the Toonerville comics and just didn’t see it. Different generations see different things. When I think of big feet, I think of the Keep on Truckin’ guy. That guy had some big feet. Someday when my father is gone, this is one of the things I will miss, being able to pick his brain about memories of these long-ago ballplayers.
Simpson eventually got a tryout with the Cleveland Indians, one of the early teams to sign Negro League players. After starring in a split-squad spring training game, owner Bill Veeck and General Manager Hank Greenberg signed Simpson. By my calculations, Simpson was the 16th player to make the jump from the Negro Leagues. He was assigned to Class A Wilkes-Barre, where he hit .305 with 31 home runs and 120 RBI in 139 games. That production prompted a promotion in 1950 to the AAA San Diego Padres. During an incredible 178-game season, Simpson slashed .323/.367/.578 with 33 home runs and 156 RBI.
Going into the 1951 season, the Indians had four black players: Larry Doby, Simpson, Luke Easter, and Minnie Minoso. Yielding to the pressures of the times, the Indians brass thought fans might take that as too many black players, so they dealt Minoso to the White Sox. That’s how highly they thought of Simpson. Unfortunately, it ended up being one of the worst trades in Indians history, which is saying something, though no fault of Simpson’s. Simpson struggled under the pressure of being in the majors and only hit .229 in 122 games. Meanwhile, on the South Side, Minoso blossomed into a star, which only increased the pressure on Simpson.
Simpson was a little better in 1952, hitting .266 while seeing action at first base and right field in 146 games. He caught a bad break in the 1954 season, breaking his wrist on March 24 while sliding into home plate. He missed six weeks and upon his return was assigned to the Indians AAA team in Indianapolis. That Indians squad won 111 games before falling to the Willie Mays led New York Giants in the World Series. Simpson was left off the Indians post-season roster.
The Indians acquired Ralph Kiner prior to the 1955 season which spelled an end to Simpson’s time in Cleveland. The team sold him to the new Kansas City Athletics, who were managed by former Indian great, Lou Boudreau.
Freed from the heavy expectations of Cleveland, Simpson blossomed in Kansas City. Over the next two and a half seasons, he hit .296. He was exceptional in 1956, slashing .293/.347/.490 with 21 home runs, 105 RBI and a league-leading 11 triples. He made his only All-Star team and finished 11th in the MVP vote. Simpson was the first Kansas City ballplayer to eclipse 100 RBI in a season.
He also provided highlight reel plays in the outfield and on June 24, 1956, gave fans a thrill when he blasted a solo home run off the Red Sox Dave Sisler over the 40-foot barrier in right field and onto Brooklyn Avenue. It remains one of the longer home runs ever hit at Municipal.
The longest appears to be a May 11, 1966, blast by the Athletics Jerry Stahl. That home run, also against the Red Sox, traveled an estimated 503 feet.
As often was the case with those Athletic teams, they couldn’t abide any outstanding play. In June of 1957, Billy Martin and Yankee teammates Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and Hank Bauer, were in the famed Copacabana club to celebrate Martin’s birthday. While Sammy Davis Jr. was on stage, a fight broke out between the Yankee players and a nearby table. The Yankee brass decided that Martin had to go, so who did they call? The Athletics, of course. KC sent Simpson and pitcher Ryne Duren to New York for Martin, Woodie Held, Bob Martyn, and Ralph Terry. It really wasn’t a bad trade for the Athletics, compared to some of the other trades with New York. It wasn’t a great trade for Simpson though. He struggled under the bright lights of New York, hitting only .244 in 99 games before the Yanks sent him back to KC, this time for pitchers Duke Maas and Virgil “Fire” Trucks. He did get to play in the 1957 World Series with New York, but only hit .083 in the Yankees loss to Milwaukee.
His second stint in Kansas City lasted 86 games over the next two seasons, in which Simpson hit a respectable .265. Players in Kansas City never seemed to stay for long.
Early in the 1959 season, the Athletics sent Simpson to the White Sox for Ray Boone. This move reunited Suitcase with Veeck and Greenberg, who had assumed ownership and General Manager duties of the Sox. Simpson barely had time to unpack his bags, 38 games to be exact, before Veeck sent him to Pittsburgh in exchange for Ted Kluszewski. For the second time in his career, Simpson was on the wrong side of a trade. The 1959 White Sox won the pennant, before losing the World Series to the Dodgers in six games. To make matters worse, the White Sox bought Simpson back after the season ended, which was a bitter pill as World Series checks were a nice supplement to players in those days.
Simpson spent the next three seasons playing for the Sox AAA affiliates without getting another shot in the majors. He appeared in 11 games for AAA Indianapolis in 1963 before moving to the Mexican League. He spent 1963 and 1964 in Mexico, where he starred for the Diablo Rojos.
He collected his last big league hit on September 27, 1959, at Crosley Field as a member of the Pirates. Batting in front of Roberto Clemente, Simpson stroked a seventh inning single off Joe Nuxhall, part of a two-hit day.
His last major league home run was also a memorable one. On June 27, 1959, in a game against the Yankees at old Comisky Park, Simpson blasted an eighth inning grand slam off Bob Turley, providing the winning runs in a 5 to 4 White Sox victory.
In retirement, Simpson worked as a machinist for Goodyear Aerospace in Akron, Ohio. On April 3, 1979, he was stricken by a heart attack, dead at the young age of 53. Simpson was buried in his hometown of Dalton, Georgia.