Pumpsie Green, First Black Player on the Boston Red Sox, Laid to Rest in Oakland

Funeral services were held in Oakland on Friday for Elijah Green, Jr. — better known to baseball history as ‘Pumpsie’ Green — who died last month at the age of 85.

Green was the first Black player on the last Major League Baseball team to integrate, the Boston Red Sox. Green was born in Oklahoma, but grew up in the East Bay. He played baseball at El Cerrito High and Contra Costa Junior College before joining his first professional team, the Stockton Ports.

Green made his major league debut in 1959, some 12 years after Jackie Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It happened after the Red Sox were forced to integrate by a government agency.

Then-owner Tom Yawkey and his front office are now widely viewed as racist, and last year the Red Sox succeeded in changing the name of a street named after him in order to distance the team from its checkered history.

KQED’s Brian Watt interviewed one of Green’s contemporaries, Nate Oliver, who played for the Los Angeles Dodgers for five seasons, as well as the Giants, Cubs, and Yankees.

Oliver and Green became friends after they retired as players, and often swapped stories of their major league days. Oliver says he thinks Pumpsie Green’s challenges were even greater than Jackie Robinson’s 12 years earlier.

Because he was in a situation where not just the players, but his owner, and the general manager, and the manager, and everyone in the organization, all those people were dead-set against him ever wearing or putting on a Boston uniform or stepping on a baseball field in Boston.

When he first got to spring training (in 1959), they were training in Scottsdale, Arizona. And Pumpsie actually had to get out of Scottsdale every day after practice, and be out of Scottsdale before nightfall. His teammates resided in Scottsdale, but he had to drive back to Phoenix every night.

There were times that he would sit alone in his room and think about some of the things that were happening to him, and then he’d wonder, you know, “why me?”

It’s very difficult to be in a clubhouse for six months, seven months, and have to talk to the wall, or talk to your glove, and not have somebody else that you could express yourself, to somebody else that you could talk about things and how you felt and what was happening to you as an individual.

In an interview with the Red Sox released last year, Green described the period leading up to his debut at Fenway Park.

“Sometimes it was difficult, sometimes it was hard, sometimes it was impossible but I stuck with it,” Green said.

Green remembered his first game at Fenway as deeply nerve-wracking: “There was more pressure on me that night than I don’t know what. I couldn’t relax.”

The stands were packed with people who wanted to see him play.

“As I was approaching home plate I got a standing ovation,” Green remembered. “He threw me a slider and I hit it, I got out in front and hit it off the Green Monster in left center field, and the crowd went crazy.”

Green played shortstop and second base for the Red Sox, but said later that he “never did get comfortable, never … To me it was almost like opening night every game.”

He did praise baseball great Ted Williams as welcoming. According to the team, Williams “made a point of warming up with Green prior to games to help him feel like part of the team.”

“Pumpsie Green occupies a special place in our history,” Red Sox principal owner John Henry said, according to a news story from the team. “He was, by his own admission, a reluctant pioneer, but we will always remember him for his grace and perseverance in becoming our first African-American player. He paved the way for the many great Sox players of color who followed.”

Nate Oliver was impressed with Henry’s statement, and thought it would have made Pumpsie proud.

“I think Mr. Henry realizes what he actually went through, and how it affected him, and how it affected the Red Sox organization for all these years,” Oliver told KQED.

“People probably wondered why it took almost 80 years for them to win a World Championship. And I think it was because the Good Lord was smacking them along the way for what they allowed to happen to Pumpsie Green.”

After retiring from baseball, Green came back to the East Bay and coached at Berkeley High School.

He often called on Oliver to join him in sharing their experiences of the early days of integrated baseball with students.

“To be able to convey all of these things that have happened to us to these young people … Then I’d just watch him do what he does with his baseball program,” Oliver said.

“But the thing that impressed me more than anything else about Pumpsie is he was just low-key. Even keel, you know, no ups and downs. And I’m sure that had a tremendous effect on young people. You don’t always have to yell and rant and rave. You can still get the same results by just putting in the time, and putting in the work.”