After celebrating their win, the team, minus Cooper, headed back to their hotel. A telegram had summoned him to Chicago, so he planned to rejoin the team a few days later in St. Louis. Alone, he found his way to the station for the overnight train ride.
Had Wedgie, Chesterfield, and the rest of the team known what was in store for Cooper at his destination, there's no doubt they would have accompanied him, despite his predictable protests.
The next morning, he arrived at Chicago's Grand Central Station. By ten o’clock he found the downtown office door he was looking for; the one with a single word stenciled upon it: BASEBALL.
Cooper entered a sparsely furnished room occupied by a woman seated at a small desk. Behind the woman was a door to another room.
Working through a stack of papers, she sat ramrod straight, as if propped up like a scarecrow, and looked like she hadn’t smiled since the World’s Fair graced her city three decades earlier. Considering the demeanor of her boss and the musty aura of the room, her unhappy countenance was unsurprising.
Without looking up, the woman dryly offered, “Please sit Mr. Cooper.”
Cooper sat. The room offered only one option, a plain wooden chair positioned next to the entry door. Other than the woman and the contents of her desk, the room was barren. No flowers, no pictures, no coffee table, no coffee. This waiting area was not designed for waiting.
They sat in silence.
Ten minutes passed without a signal from the room beyond. Again, without looking up, “He’ll see you now.”
Cooper rose, slowly walked past the woman who never made eye contact with him, and entered the office beyond her station.
Unlike the so-called waiting area, the inner office was enormous. A colossal desk occupied its center. Ornate shelves extended from the floor to the 14-foot high ceilings, completely covering opposing walls. Positioned behind the desk was an executive’s chair; leather-clad with brass rivets outlining its frame. Its back faced Cooper.
Again, only one seating option. This time it was an oversized chair featuring a high back, high arms, and a seat so deep that if Cooper sat all the way back his feet would be pulled off the ground. Its intent was clear: make its occupant feel small.
Cooper stood close to the door.
From the invisible side of the executive’s chair came a high-pitched, Southern, and overly deliberate voice. “We’ve had our eyes on you for some time now.”
A long pause, and then, “Please sit.”
Cooper found his way into the seat, but did not take its bait. He sat at the edge, feet firmly planted.
The chair swiveled. Facing Cooper was Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the commissioner of baseball. Dressed in a heavy wool three-piece suit, he looked as unhappy as a vegetarian at a pig roast. His very white and very crisp shirt underscored his long and deeply creased face.
Landis was a former judge who still preferred to be called one; his ego and unchecked authority conveying ‘and Jury’ as well. The team owners hired him in 1920 as the league’s first commissioner, with a directive to eliminate the corruption that culminated in the game-fixing scandal of the 1919 World Series. Ultimately, he found eight White Sox players guilty of taking bribes and banned them for life. Over time, he fined, suspended, or permanently expelled dozens of other players for a variety of transgressions. The common themes were Landis’s single-handedness and the imbalance between crime and punishment.
The commissioner maintained his deliberate tone, “Mr. Cooper, it’s unusual for a man of your talent to come from nowhere; and that gives me some concern," pausing and blankly staring at the player.
“You see, when a player displays greatness on the field, people want to know more about him. And everything they learn is a reflection of major league baseball; an institution, I’m sure you know, that I am deeply committed to protect.
If he’s a good man, I think to myself, that’s good for baseball. And I say, let’s have more of him. Let’s have little boys imitate his swing in the sandlots and in the streets; and if he’s better than good, let’s see him in all-star games and on the front page.”
Then his voice turned grave, “On the other hand, if he’s a bad man, or worse, if he’s a man with a dark secret; well son… that’s dangerous for baseball. And I don’t want him to be seen at all.”
“Do you understand what I’m saying Mr. Cooper?” Landis paused for a full ten seconds, and then, “Or should I call you Cornelius?”
The hair on Cooper’s neck stood up. Nobody had called him Cornelius since he was eight years old. Not since the fire that destroyed his hometown in South Carolina and took the lives of thirty-eight people, including his natural parents, had he heard the word Cornelius spoken in his direction.
*********
Cooper was an only child who lived with his parents on a small plot of land at the edge of town. His mother managed the home while his father worked at the nearby paper mill. Like most country kids of that era, Cooper was taught in a one-room schoolhouse, did chores without being asked, swam in the creek when it was warm, and every Sunday played hide-and-seek with the local boys after church.
Until the fire, there was nothing unusual about his childhood, with two exceptions: his mother was black while his father was not; and nobody seemed to care.
An interracial marriage in the American South at any time, let alone the early twentieth century, is a dangerous proposition. But dangerous or not, Jimmy and Millie Cooper were deeply in love and determined to be married. How they found a place like Franklin’s Cove, where not a word was uttered about their uncommon union, would forever remain a mystery.
On that fateful day in late September, the same year the White Sox were ruining the World Series and indirectly arranging the meeting between Landis and Cooper, his mother left the farm to bring lunch to his father. As she walked through the front door of the house she called back, “Please don’t forget to feed the chickens… I love you Cornelius.”
Cooper was on the back porch reading Call of the Wild, deeply immersed in Buck’s transformation. By the time he yelled goodbye to his mother, she was out of earshot.
Wives delivering lunch was a common occurrence at the mill, so when an errant spark from a blade sharpener ignited a container of formaldehyde, the explosion – which could be heard more than ten miles away – made orphans out of seventeen children, and destroyed several buildings, including the one that housed Cooper’s birth certificate.
At the sound of the blast, Cooper bolted from the porch, shoeless, and ran to the mill until his lungs and legs burned as hot as the fire itself. Of course there was nothing he could have done, but in the mind of a young boy, he was too late.
Two weeks later, after a series of telegrams, Jimmy’s brother came from Nebraska to claim him. During the long journey to Kearney, Cooper buried his first name in the mill’s ashes. Now, more than a decade later, the commissioner of baseball exhumed the last word his mother said to him.
He flatly replied, “Nobody has called me Cornelius in a long time.”
*********
Landis had always opposed baseball’s integration. He gave no indication, public nor private, that he would ever change his mind on the topic.
“I understand your parents died in a fire a long time ago, and that your mother was a Negro. Is that true?”
“Both are true,” replied Cooper.
The commissioner’s legendary temper was outweighed only by his cruelty. He began to raise the volume and pitch of his voice, “Please explain to me, Mr. Cooper, why you never shared such important information about your mother, knowing that a Negro has never played major league baseball?”
Landis lifted his bony frame from the chair and started yelling, “Do you think it’s in your hands alone to decide that a colored man should be permitted to play in this league! To be a member of this most exclusive fraternity!”
“No sir, I don’t,” said Cooper, who remained calm and motionless.
Landis began pacing. “Well,” he barked with extra emphasis, “if it’s not in yours, then in whose hands was this monumental decision placed!”
Without a hint of emotion, Cooper simply offered, "God's."
The color of Landis’s face was now miles away from the whiteness of his shirt. “Unfortunately for you young man, GOD IS NOT THE COMMISSIONER OF BASEBALL! I AM!”
He breathlessly continued; his cadence more dramatic, “You have embarrassed our nation’s pastime and made a fool of me. Such audacity is intolerable! You are hereby permanently and irrevocably banned from professional baseball! Furthermore, your statistics and any record of your participation in this great game will be expunged! FOREVER!”
The last word hung in the air like a hummingbird.
The commissioner stopped pacing, leaned across his desk, and was unnervingly close to Cooper’s face. The ballplayer got a clear view of Landis’s turn-of-the-century dental work, and on his breath he could smell the morning coffee he was never offered. “As far as I’m concerned,” Landis seethed, “from this day forward it will be as if you never existed!”
Cooper remained unflappable. He loved baseball even though he just learned that baseball didn’t love him back. He had played his heart out in every practice and in every game for the respect of his teammates, the honor of his parents – both natural and adoptive, and the singular idea that the effort is its own reward. He had no regrets.
He was secure in his faith and his identity; and he knew he could leave the game at any time. That time was upon him.
As if he were in the least bit unclear, Landis bellowed, “Am I making myself clear to you Cannon Cooper?”
Already on his way out of the room, Cooper shot back, “You can call me Cornelius.”
*********
After exiting the commissioner’s office and finding his way to the street, Cooper started walking south. It was a warm day, and periodically, Cooper would shed a piece of clothing. First his hat, then his coat, then his tie, then his vest.
Deep into the second hour of his exile, his long strides landed him at Comiskey Park. Even though the season was over for the White Sox, the gates were unlocked. He surveyed the steel and brick façade, and then entered the home field of his new brotherhood and the site of many Negro League All-Star Games. Cooper walked through the grand concourse toward the stands, eventually found his way down to the box seats, and then climbed over the short retaining wall to reach the field.
When he found his familiar spot on the right field line, he stopped and slowly removed his shoes and socks. The ground felt warm and soft. He closed his eyes and took a long deep breath through his nose. When the sun and wind are just right, like they were that day, nothing smells as glorious as a baseball field. Not a rose, not the back of a woman’s neck, not even the leather of your own glove. He held onto it as long as he could.
As Cooper exhaled, he started striding slowly toward centerfield, gripping the grass with his toes.
*********