Atlanta Braves history: Bill Lucas becomes baseball’s first Black GM
As the Atlanta Braves join with the rest of baseball to celebrate Jackie Robinson day, we take a look back at the franchise’s history with the African-American community.
The Atlanta Braves weren’t the first team to integrate their roster, but they were among the first to make it a priority.
Just over two years after Jackie Robinson’s first game, Boston Braves GM John Quinn sent Al Epperly, Dee Phillips, Don Thompson, and $100K to the Dodgers for two rookie outfielders, Sam Jethroe and Bob Addis. That deal made Jethroe the first African American player in the history of the franchise.
Branch Rickey later told Gus Steiger of the New York Daily Mirror, “It might be the biggest mistake I ever made in baseball.”
According to April 21, 1950: A barrier partially falls: Sam Jethroe’s first game in Boston, Jethroe first took the field in Boston for a City Series exhibition game against the Red Sox at Braves Field on April 15, 1950.
He went 2-for-4, scored one run, and drove in one run. He also played in the next day’s game at Fenway Park, in a game – albeit an exhibition game – at the same park and on the fifth anniversary of the April 16, 1945 date when he and Jackie Robinson and Marvin Williams had tried out for the Red Sox in 1945
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The 1950 season saw a 33-year-old Jethroe duplicate Robinson’s first year by winning NL Rookie of the year. Robinson finished fifth in NL MVP voting in 1947, and Jethroe finished 27th in NL MVP voting in 1950.
Injury, age, and a bigoted manager limited Jethroe’s career with the Braves, a sad fact that haunts the history of every team in baseball at that time. However, the Braves franchise continued to sign terrific African-American players.
We know about the success of other Black players like Wes Covington, Bill Bruton, and Hank Aaron in the history of the franchise, now known as the Atlanta Braves. However, the franchise has its own claim to breaking the color barrier.
In 1976, the Atlanta Braves followed in the footsteps of the Dodgers and Orioles in making baseball history, yet the moment seems lost.
William DeVaughn – Bill – Lucas graduated from Florida A&M, served in the Army then played in the Milwaukee Braves minor league system from 1957 through 1962. He joined the club’s front office staff in 1965 as they prepared to move to Atlanta.
Lucas became head of player development in 1967 and moved up to farm director in 1972. The team wasn’t good in those days, and in March of 1976, Ted turner fired his GM Eddie Robinson and took the title of GM himself.
It wasn’t until September 19 that Turner officially named Lucas vice president of player personnel and gave him all of the duties of a GM. However, Turner kept the GM title himself, perhaps because he felt it made Lucas’s new job easier.
While this sounds like typical in-house hiring, Turner new that there was one significant difference that might make it hard to deal with a few GMs: Lucas was Black.
As chronicled in The Atlantic, Turner’s choice of Lucas made him the first African-American to run a Major League team.
Nearly three decades after Jackie Robinson had become the first black player in the modern Major Leagues and two years after Frank Robinson had become the first black on-field manager, Lucas had shattered another barrier.
While the public didn’t know Bill Lucas very well, those within the Atlanta Braves organization knew and respected their new leader.
Bobby Cox told the New York Times, Lucas was the Atlanta Braves.
“When you thought of the Braves’ organization, you thought of Bill Lucas. He knew the organization inside and out and every person from the superstar to the groundskeeper.”
Dusty Baker came up through the Braves farm system when Lucas was director. He said Lucas understood how hard it was for a Black player in the south, and helped Baker learn how to “get by as a black person while maintaining your honor and dignity as a man.”
He would tell you the truth, but he couldn’t tell you everything, and you had to be smart enough to read between the lines.
By all accounts, Lucas took to a leadership role naturally. He was not only an intelligent man with a welcoming personality; he’d done his time on the buses and backroads of the minor leagues.
Lucas knew the aches and pains of playing in the minors. He related to players on a personal level, and they responded to it. Lucas and Turner had a tumultuous relationship held together by mutual respect. Lucas’ wife recalled how her husband held Turner in check when he had one of his wonderful ideas.
He would tell Turner ‘No, that’s not the way we’re going to do it. You don’t know a thing about baseball, so let me handle it.’” “He would say the things to Ted that nobody else would say,” Lucas’s daughter Wonya, a teenager during her father’s tenure as GM, tells me. “He would say, ‘I don’t care if they fire me.’ To him it was about doing the right thing, and he operated with no fear. It doesn’t matter if you’re Ted Turner, or if you’re a guy on the grounds crew.”
At first, the new Atlanta Braves GM shunned the spotlight, but soon he knew he had to step forward and lead publicly.
Just moving to the front office made Lucas a pioneer. He was the first Black man put in charge of a segment of a team’s front office. The Atlanta Braves allowed Lucas to take charge, and he did his job well.
The Atlantic describes Lucas as a bright baseball mind, who initially rejected the status of a racial icon just because he was a black GM. He felt, correctly, that he earned the job through hard work and results. His wife told the Atlantic that changed in his first spring training.
A lifelong Jackie Robinson fan, Lucas soon realized he, too, had made history. It really, really, really, really became important to us that perhaps his purpose in life was to show that African Americans could be in high positions in sports, and especially baseball
During his tenure, Lucas nurtured and promoted Dale Murphy, signed Bob Horner, and brought Bobby Cox on board the first time.
Lucas died suddenly in 1979, but Paul Snyder, who played with Lucas in the minor leagues and worked with him in the front office, says much of the credit for the success of the Atlanta Braves in the 90s belongs to Lucas.
He planted a seed, and we just carried through with it. “He wasn’t here for the good times, but . . . I think a lot of that was because of [Lucas’s] direction in the beginning.”
Lucas became a willing pioneer doing what he could to open doors to other black executives. Sadly, 45-years after Lucas opened the door; few others have entered.
That’s a wrap
Today baseball honors Jackie Robinson for being the first, but there’s no mention nationally of the Atlanta Braves selecting Bill Lucas to lead their front office.
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It’s up to Atlanta Braves fans to let everyone know the story of how their team made history on September 19, 1976.