Negro Leaguer of the Month
April, 2000

Sam Bankhead
positions: ss, 2b, 3b, rf
career: 1930-1950
Teams: Birmingham Black Barons, Homestead Grays, Pittsburgh Crawfords, Memphis Red Sox, Ciudad Trujillo

HT: 5'-8"; WT: 175 lbs
batted and threw right
Born: 9/18/05 in Empire, Alabama
Died: 7/24/76 in Pittsburgh, PA

Sam Bankhead was a player every team coveted. Besides his incredible physical talents, he had the craving to win of players like Jackie Robinson and Pete Rose.

He could play virtually any position well; he played in 7 East-West All-Star games at 5 different positions. And in a 1952 Pittsburgh Courier poll, he was named on the first team as a utility player.

His best positions, though, were right field and shortstop. In right Bankhead had one of the strongest arms to ever play; many compared his arm to Roberto Clemente's and Carl Furillo's. At shortstop he had soft hands and the same rocket arm.

He wasn't just a great defensive player, though. Sam Bankhead, the best of five brothers who played in the Negro Leagues, was a fine hitter with great speed and the knack of coming through in the clutch. He was an above-.300 hitter lifetime, with a .342 average in games uncovered against major-leaguers.

His greatest moment on a baseball diamond may have come in 1937 when he joined Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson, among others, and journeyed to the Dominican Republic to play for Dictator Rafael Trujillo who hoped that winning the country's baseball championship would save his political career. The players were under great pressure; they were surrounded by armed guards and were made to believe that their lives depended on winning (which might have been true!)
In the 7th inning of the championship game, down by a run, with Cool Papa Bell on base with two outs, facing Chet Brewer, one of baseball's greatest pitchers, Bankhead blasted a 3-2 pitch into the stands and Satchel shut out Santiago the rest of the way to win the championship.

Unfortunately, Sam Bankhead's story ended tragically. His brother Dan, a pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers, died of throat cancer in May of 1976. Two months later, brother Fred died in a car accident and several days later, on July 24th, Sam, got into an argument with a friend and was fatally shot in the back. In 1991, brother Garnett's life was also ended by gunshot wounds.