Candy Jim Taylor had spent more than 30 years in baseball, and was managing the Washington Elite Giants, when he talked with Chester Washington from The Pittsburgh Courier in 1936:
Washington asked how Negro League players “measure up” with their major league counterparts:
“I think that we have as many good players in our league as they have in the big leagues. The one big advantage they have is that they have more men on their teams, say from 23 to 24, to our 15 or 16. As a result, our pitchers are overworked and if our men get hurt they still have to play.”
Candy Jim Taylor
Taylor also decried the “live ball,” telling Washington:
“They don’t play scientific ball today like they did in the old days. Then they played for one run, doing a lot of bunting and base running but today the ball is too lively for bunting.”
Taylor said Oscar Charleston was “the greatest player I ever saw, white or colored.”
Asked who were the greatest “showmen” of his generation and the current game, Taylor named his Chicago American Giants teammate Bill Monroe, and his current day picks were Satchel Paige and his current second baseman with the Elite Giants, Jim West.
Taylor had three recommendations for improving Negro League baseball:
“Stricter attention should be paid to the conduct of the players on the field; better umpiring is needed and fewer exhibition games between league clubs should be played. By the last point I mean that in exhibition games managers put in weaker teams, knowing that the games don’t count in the standings and as a result the fans don’t get the best that the has to offer in those games.”
Taylor told Washington that the “greatest thrill” of his career came three years earlier when he was managing the Detroit Stars:
“I was down in Laurel, Mississippi with the Detroit club when I received a telegram from (Robert A.) Cole of Chicago that I had been selected to manage the West in the first East-West game…Funds were low and I didn’t have the necessary fare to get to Chi and didn’t have time to wire Cole for it, but after telling my story to a white fellow who handled the Bogalusa, Mississippi club, and explaining that it was the biggest thing that ever happened to me in baseball, he gave me the money for my fare. Then a fellow had to drive 60 miles to catch a train to Chi. And my team won the first East-West game.”
The 52-year-old Taylor related one more highlight which happened the previous week, in July of 1936:
“’Sunday in Cleveland,’ Jim added quickly chuckling. ‘I was just about out of pinch hitters when I decided to try my own hand at it. When I walked to the plate the fans gave me a nice hand and I wanted to repay them for their good wishes. And what do you think happened? Well, I just smacked out a clean single.’”
Baseball History Daily 