Gene Frenette: John Irvin Kennedy, Jacksonville's first Black MLB player, played for love of game

As Major League Baseball and its emboldened players union continue to squabble over how to divvy up the industry’s $11 billion financial pie, it makes me wonder what Jacksonville native John Irvin Kennedy would think of this money grab. 

You may not remember anything about Kennedy (he passed away in 1998), providing you are even familiar with his name or historic connection to the game. 

After all, it’s easy to forget a middle infielder who only got into five MLB games, then saw his big-league dream crushed by a combination of an untimely shoulder injury and being sent down to the minors by the Philadelphia Phillies in May, 1957, only to never return. 

Kennedy’s claim to baseball fame is that he integrated the Phillies, the last National League holdout team to employ an African-American ballplayer. He never played in the big leagues after the Phillies demoted him to the Class B Carolina League, going hitless in three at-bats.  

It’d be great if today’s players and the MLB gatekeepers — the owners have locked out the players since Dec. 2 and commissioner Rob Manfred recently cancelled the first two weeks of the regular season — were forced to negotiate a deal with someone like Kennedy acting as the arbitrator.

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If the two sides still far apart on signing a Collective Bargaining Agreement knew even half of Kennedy’s back story, they might both be shamed into hammering out a CBA resolution. They would maybe start acting grateful for their abundance of riches, instead of being caught up in blaming each other for the deadlock and trying to win a public relations war. 

Here’s what three-time MVP Mike Trout, scheduled to make $37.1 million in 2022, had to say on social media Tuesday after the league-imposed deadline passed without a CBA agreement: “I want to play. I love our game, but I know we need to get this CBA right. Players stand together. For our game, for our fans, and for every player who comes after us. We owe it to the next generation.” 

Money is the driver

Really, you love the game? Do the elite players love it enough to play for, say, $2 million per year? Will the next generation of players — Black, White, Asian or Latin-American — really care what guys like Kennedy sacrificed so many of them could reside in mansions and be financially comfortable for the rest of their lives? 

Not to suggest every MLB player suiting up is a baseball Rockefeller, but the average salary last year was a tidy $4.17 million. Kennedy didn’t play in that ballpark, likely earning no more than $400-500 for his three-week stint with the Phillies. 

Granted, it was a different baseball era, long before lucrative television deals, fancy stadiums and luxury suites allowed owners to turn massive profits. Back then, they stalled as long as they could to keep a large portion of revenue to themselves, so players were paid next to nothing. 

But given what the salaries are these days — plus all the strikes and other labor issues that have damaged the game’s reputation with the public — it should make you appreciate what Black players like Kennedy went through just to keep playing every day.

Harold “Buster” Hair, a Jacksonville native and friend of Kennedy who also played on different teams in the Negro League, is now 89 years old and living in a suburb of Atlanta. 

Hair — also the first basketball coach at Raines High when it opened in 1965 — vividly remembers Kennedy, who was six years older, in his playing days. They were never teammates, but both had stints with the Negro League Birmingham Black Barons and Kansas City Monarchs. They knew each other since kids playing ball at Durkee Field, now J.P. Small Park.  

“John was the most aggressive player when he put that uniform on,” Hair said in a phone interview. “Once he took it off, he was quiet and you would never know he was there. 

“He had a really good arm, he was a good defensive player and he could bunt. I don’t know what happened when he got to the big leagues, but that’s how he was when I saw him play in the Negro Leagues.” 

As for Kennedy’s love of the game, this is all anybody needs to know about it: until about six months before he passed away from a heart attack on April 27, 1998, he was still playing in a Jacksonville 40-and-over amateur league. At age 70.

Making MLB history 

Like many players in the Negro Leagues, the 5-foot-10, 175-pound Kennedy struggled just to get any kind of look by big-league teams. 

Even after his passing, the historical significance of being the first African-American to suit up for what many considered one of the MLB’s most racist teams brought Kennedy little fanfare. 

Until 2008, he was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Jacksonville in an unmarked grave. That terrible circumstance was rectified by the owner of an Ocala marble and granite business, Scott Harward, who donated the marker after the situation was relayed to him by a friend through an article in the Times-Union. 

The marker lists dates of his birth and death, with another significant milestone day: April 22, 1957. That was Kennedy’s MLB debut, coming in as a pinch-runner in the eighth inning for Solly Hemus during Philadelphia’s 5-1 loss to the host Brooklyn Dodgers at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, N.J. 

On that historic day, Kennedy became the third player from Jacksonville to reach the big leagues, joining former Lee High teammates Foster Castleman (1954 New York Giants) and pitcher Don Bessent (1955 Brooklyn Dodgers).

Kennedy's debut happened 10 years to the day after Phillies’ manager Ben Chapman and several players hurled racial taunts at Ebbets Field toward Dodgers’ rookie Jackie Robinson, the first player to break baseball’s color line. Unfortunately, Kennedy being the first Black player for Philadelphia to get into an MLB regular-season game didn’t lead to him becoming a six-time All-Star like Robinson. 

Michael Marsh, a former writer for several Chicago publications and now a para-legal in the same city, chronicled Kennedy’s journey to the big leagues for the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR). It outlines a path where he was seemingly destined for a lengthy MLB career, only to see it never materialize for reasons that remain somewhat of a mystery. 

Kennedy broke into professional ball a few years after an honorable discharge in 1946 from the Army, where he served in the Philippines following his graduation from a high school branch of Edward Waters College. He played baseball for a few years at local Jacksonville parks before Buck O’Neil, a legendary Negro League star from Florida, saw him play and recruited him to the startup Manitoba-Dakota (ManDak) League in 1950. 

For seven seasons, from age 23-29, Kennedy barnstormed all over North America to play for whichever teams gave him a uniform. He collected modest salaries from the Winnipeg Buffaloes, St. Cloud Rox, Minot Mallards, Kansas City Monarchs and Birmingham Black Barons, where he played briefly with future country music star Charley Pride. 

Brief fling with glory 

After the Monarchs sold his contract to the Phillies in 1956 — assigning Kennedy to Schenectady in the Eastern League — he got invited to a spring training tryout in Clearwater. That looked to be his big break, as Kennedy was one of five players invited to the big-league camp, which included future Phillies’ World Series-winning manager Dallas Green (1979-81). 

According to Marsh’s research, Kennedy led the Phillies with a .409 batting average in spring training and was strong on defense, but he fell and bruised his right shoulder on March 29, missing several exhibition games. Still, just before the regular season started in mid-April, Kennedy was promoted to the big leagues. 

It generated a lot of media coverage in the Philadelphia media. Just being informed he was going to spring training so excited Kennedy, he told the Philadelphia Inquirer: “No doubt, this is my biggest thrill. I feel I am better than I’ve done so far, particularly with the bat. I’ll be giving everything I can to stick as long as I can.” 

Sadly, just 14 days after his MLB debut, Kennedy was optioned down to a Class B Carolina League team in Thomasville, N.C. The demotion left many to speculate why he fell out of favor so quickly. 

Whether it was the injury, being a 30-year-old rookie at the time, the Phillies trading away five players before the season opener to acquire Dodgers’ shortstop Chico Fernandez, or the color of Kennedy’s skin, he spent the next three years toiling in the Phillies’ minor-league system, including with the Triple-A Miami Marlins. 

The Phillies released him after his 1960 season with the Class A Asheville Tourists. One year later, Kennedy suited up one game for the South Atlantic League Jacksonville Jets, his last day in pro baseball. 

In 1997, a year before his death, Kennedy was asked by the Philadelphia Daily News about his brief time with the Phillies, and he replied: “Disappointed, well, yes, but not bitter. I just wish I had gotten a chance to prove myself one way or another.” 

A man of perseverance 

If MLB had more ballplayers and owners with Kennedy’s mindset, the game surely wouldn’t be embroiled in so much controversy every time it tries to hammer out a CBA agreement. 

Rather than each side trying to get the best of the other in a labor dispute, they should do what’s in the best interest of the game and make a better effort at reaching a true compromise. 

It’s hard to imagine any pro ballplayer who never reached the big leagues, or a cup-of-coffee type like Kennedy, having an ounce of empathy for Manfred, who comes across as cold and callous as any previous commissioner. 

Nor is it any easier to side with the union’s main players, especially New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, who will have to sacrifice at least part or a good chunk of his gargantuan $43.3 million salary, depending on when this mess gets resolved and how many more games are eliminated. 

How differently would Scherzer, Trout or any of these players at the top of the MLB food chain feel about this impasse if they had been born two generations earlier, making a pittance from what players earn now? 

Imagine the road Kennedy had to navigate, raising four kids after his baseball dream fell short of fulfillment and with just a high school education. To support his family, he took a job at Armco Steel Corporation in Middleton, Ohio, for 16 years, traveling back to Jacksonville on long weekends.

Midway through that, an unimaginable tragedy struck when his wife, Betty Jean Corbett, died in a car accident at age 34. The youngest of their four children, Tazena Kennedy, was only 11 when her mother passed. 

Luckily, John had enough of a family support system to help raise the three of four kids who were still not grown. He kept working in Ohio until age 63, living in retirement on his pension and in a house left to him and his siblings by an uncle and aunt. 

When Tazena reflects on the setbacks her father endured — both in and out of baseball — she is filled with pride over how he handled it all. 

“I look at him as a hero, someone who persevered through challenging times,” said Tazena. “He was just the type of person that whatever he did, he did to the best of his ability and he instilled that in his children. 

“My Dad was not the type of person who held grudges. Whatever a person’s reason for doing what they did, it didn’t put a damper on what he wanted to accomplish. He still had his health and family to fall back on and he made the best of it.” 

A worthy baseball life 

As for his MLB career not working out, maybe the tradeoff for Kennedy is he remained fit enough to keep playing in Jacksonville or Ohio almost another four decades after his last pro game. 

John Rosette, his manager with the Jacksonville Vikings when Kennedy was 60, told the T-U in 2008: “He just wanted to play baseball so bad that we took him on our team. Then when he came out and we watched him play, it was amazing. I couldn’t imagine how he was in his prime.” 

Marsh, a diehard Cubs fan and baseball card collector, thinks there’s a lot of lessons to be gleaned from Kennedy’s time on earth.  

“Some part of his story is sad, but it’s also about an opportunity to achieve a dream and what happens in the aftermath when the dream fails,” said Marsh. “It's quite a life. I hope he got some sort of fulfillment.” 

One thing is certain: John Irvin Kennedy may have seen his ultimate dream last only three weeks, but he truly played baseball purely for the love of the game. 

How many MLB players and owners bickering over wanting a bigger share of an $11 billion industry can say the same thing? 

Gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540 

Gene Frenette Sports columnist at Florida Times-Union, follow him on Twitter @genefrenette