Tom Green
by William Bowen
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Tom “The Anvil” Green was a force on the mound and in the clubhouse, a fierce competitor on the field and a boisterous personality off of it. Green’s demeanor and talent served him well as one of the first stars to cross the color barrier from the Negro Leagues into the American Circuits.
Tom Green was born in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, a town of only about 400 people. Even as a child, Green was physically and athletically gifted. Tom expressed little interest in school, confident his sports prowess would lead him to where he needed to be. His classmates recall that Tom was nearly always the first pick when assembling teams for schoolyard games, and he would take it as a personal insult if he was passed over. His coaches, many of whom also served as his schoolteachers in the tiny town, noted the difference in his interest level between the classroom and on the field, several later using the phrase “night and day.” Young Tom was the town’s star athlete, known to all for excelling at every sport he tried his hand at, including wrestling, football, and baseball, where he played center field and pitched.
It was on the pitcher’s mound that Tom felt most at home and the most dominant. The left-handed Green threw only a fastball for years, but it was all he needed, being much stronger and throwing harder than any of the other children. His ball had a natural sink to it, which caused hitters to swing over it frequently, and pound it into the ground for easy outs even when they made contact. By age 17, Green had dropped out of school, convinced baseball was his destiny. He made his way to Baton Rouge, where he caught on with an amateur team at the first tryout he attended.
In Baton Rouge, Tom encountered more talented baseball players than he had in Grand Coteau, but he was pleased to find that he was still easily one of the most gifted athletes in the league. He picked up a changeup and slider during this time as well, learning the pitches from his less gifted teammates, who had to rely on deception and movement to get hitters out. Armed with these new weapons, Green mowed down the opposition, to the extent that he had clearly outgrown the league by his 19th birthday.
Green began looking to join up with a team in the Negro Leagues, being still barred from entry into the National Baseball League (NBL) because of his race. Opportunity came knocking in the 1936 offseason, when he heard word of open tryouts being held in Cincinnati for the Black Packers, Cincy’s Negro League equivalent to the AC franchise. Green had saved his meager earnings for just such a chance, and jumped at the opportunity, boarding a train to Ohio with all his belongings before he had even been seen by anyone affiliated with the team. The supremely confident Green would later say that he never doubted his ability to make the team and packed his belongings so that he would not have to go back to Louisiana and pick them up when he signed his first contract.
He was right. The Black Packers’ coaches and scouts were unanimous in their agreement that they should bring Green aboard after they saw his powerful sinker and solid secondary stuff. He took some time to sign with the team, eventually talking his way into a salary twice as high as their initial offer, which the Black Packers’ ownership later said was still a bargain.
Tom was an instant success, even against much higher-quality competition than he had faced in Louisiana. After some convincing, Green added a four-seam fastball to his repertoire to give batters a different look from his powerful sinker. This addition made Green a maddening at-bat. He still threw his sinker the majority of the time, but hitters had to adjust to a fastball that had the same velocity and a completely different path, as well as a changeup that looked identical to the fastball out of his hand, with his slider inducing many weak swings, particularly from left-handed batters who were looking for his other three pitches.
It was in his initial Negro League success that Green earned his nickname from opposing hitters like A.J. King, who is rumored to have been the first one to compare making contact with Green’s sinker to striking an anvil with a hammer, the pitch feeling so immovable and heavy that it felt like the bat would bounce backward after making contact. Tom would be called “The Anvil” for the rest of his career.
It was here that Green also gained infamy for his training regimen – or rather, his lack of one. Tom’s teammates noted that he wanted to win as badly as anyone on the field, and was a good teammate, but off the field seemed to have little interest in refining his skills, preferring to go out drinking and carousing. He would occasionally miss practice and arrive late to games, much to his managers’ chagrin. “That guy who’s early to bed and early to practice,” Green was fond of saying, “I betcha I’ll strike him out the next day.” More often than not, he was right. Green’s overwhelming talent made it so that he could still dominate hitters seemingly at will.
Tom was a star in the Negro Leagues, anchoring the Black Packers’ pitching staff and making the All-Star team year in and year out. In the offseason, Green would occasionally go barnstorming in the offseason to make some extra money with other Negro League stars, occasionally matching up against white All-Star teams from the National Baseball League (NBL). In 1942, Green famously tossed six perfect innings against a lineup that included NBL stars Melbourne Trench, John Oberg, Tom Gideon and John Warlick. After the exhibition Trench was quoted as saying that Green was as good as any white pitcher he had ever faced.
During his Negro League career, Green, perhaps due to his hard-living habits and erratic training schedule, also developed a reputation as an injury-prone player. He was known to occasionally miss starts with various aches and pains but provided such excellent pitching when he was healthy that fans and teammates didn’t mind too much.
In 1943, Green was drafted into military service and spent the next three years overseas with the Army, where he continued playing baseball and never saw combat. While stationed in France, Green found that among locals he was subject to less racial discrimination than he was accustomed to, having grown up in the Jim Crow South. This experience shaped Green’s views when he returned to the United States, and his belief that he should be allowed to compete with and against white players solidified.
Luckily for Green, the All-America Baseball Conference was established upon his return at the end of 1945, forcing the NBL’s hand in breaking baseball’s color barrier. A bidding war for the services of top Negro League stars commenced, and the New York Empires came away with Green’s services with an offer of over $30,000.
Tom was joined on the Empires by fellow Negro League stars like third baseman Don Green (no relation) and catcher A.J. King, the one who had given Tom his “Anvil” nickname. King said during Spring Training that first season that Green’s sinker was almost as difficult to catch as it was to hit – almost. Also joining the Empires was 40 year-old future Hall of Famer Toothbrush Terrigan, making him the only player to date to appear for all three New York teams.
In the inaugural AABC season, the Empires won their division, led by a spectacular campaign by King and a strong one from both Greens. Tom’s body refused to cooperate, limiting him to only 22 starts, but those were enough to post 9 WAR and a miniscule 1.31 ERA. Had Green stayed healthy, he and King might have competed for the Royal Ricketts and MVP awards, respectively, but they were overshadowed by two other former Negro League giants now playing in San Francisco, Paul Burke and Robert Bolen. The Empires met San Francisco in the first AABC Championship Series, and though King and Green played just as well as Burke and Bolen (King was named the Series MVP), the Seagulls prevailed in seven games.
In 1947, the Empires repeated as division champions with largely the same team as the year before, and Green stayed healthy, winning the pitching Triple Crown – leading the league in wins, strikeouts, and ERA. For good measure, Tom also led the field in games started, innings pitched, and WAR, posting a jaw-dropping mark of 15.2. On the back of this performance, the Empires’ pitching staff allowed the fewest runs in the league, which helped them fend off the Montreal Habitants by a single game. In the postseason, the Empires rematched with the Seagulls and won, advancing to their first World Series to face the Chicago Traders. Far from overmatched against one of the NBL’s most storied franchises, the Empires pushed the series to the limit. It took a Game Seven shutout from Joe Shannon, the NBL’s own pitching Triple Crown winner, for the Traders to win the championship. Green took home the Royal Ricketts Award at the end of the year.
In 1948, Green put together perhaps his best campaign, repeating as the pitching Triple Crown and Royal Ricketts winner and leading the league in every category he led in the previous year while also allowing the fewest home runs per 9 innings. Green also topped 300 strikeouts, making him only the second pitcher in the modern era to do so. The Empires were unable to support this otherworldly performance, though, losing 95 games and finishing in last place.
In 1949, Green struggled with injuries but still posted excellent numbers. Even in a diminished state, he posted 9.7 WAR and made the All-Star team. Unfortunately, New York once again finished last. Over the next few years, Green continued to suffer from aches and pains but made the bulk of his starts, leading the league in ERA twice more in 1950 and 1951, including his only career no-hitter, a 9-strikeout masterpiece in 1950 against the Los Angeles Pobladores. The 1951 Empires made a run at competitiveness with an influx of young talent, including Wayne Gibbs, a fellow left-handed sinkerballer who paired with Green atop the rotation. Ultimately, though, the Empires finished four games back after Green tore a ligament in his elbow in September.
In 1952, Green returned with a solid season, but was limited to 28 starts. As Green’s 35th birthday passed in August, years of nagging injuries and hard living began to take their toll. By 1953, it became clear Green’s career was winding down. He was limited to less than half a season by injuries and was below average when he did pitch. In 1954, Green managed just four starts for the Empires, striking out only two hitters while walking 17, before he tore a tendon in his pitching arm and was released by New York, who were back in contention and couldn’t justify rostering an underperforming veteran. Green garnered some light interest on the open market and signed a contract with the Philadelphia Quakers. He pitched through pain, making five starts with Philadelphia before a comebacker fractured his pitching elbow, ending his season and his career. Green hung up his spikes at the end of the year, satisfied that he had gotten all he could out of the game he had grown up playing. At the end of the season the Empires announced that Green’s uniform number 0 would be their first retired number.
Tom Green finished with a 139-75 career won-lost record in the American Circuits. His 2.31 career ERA translated to a 171 ERA+, and he struck out 1,408 hitters, finishing with 76.5 WAR in the AC alone. He made five consecutive All-Star teams, won Player of the Week four times, Pitcher of the Month four times, and the Royal Ricketts Award twice. He led the league in wins twice (1947, 1948) ERA four times (1947, 1948, 1950, 1951), game started twice (1947, 1948), innings twice (1947, 1948) strikeouts twice (1947-1948), WAR twice (1947, 1948), and home runs per 9 once (1948).
Congratulations to Tom “The Anvil” Green, one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history and the first Black Hall of Fame inductee!