BASEBALL'S BLACK HERITAGE

CHESTER ARTHUR BREWER (1907-1990)

He had talent on the mound that would have made him millions if he had been born in a later era. Yet, Chet Brewer had an influence on baseball that stretched far beyond his presence on the mound. With an assortment of devastating breaking balls, including one that opponents swore was illegally doctored with an emery board, Brewer befuddled hitters for more than a quarter century. Chester Arthur Brewer was born to William and Minnie Brewer in the racially tense town of Leavenworth, Kansas on January 14, 1907. As a small child, he moved with his family to the calmer, more tolerant environment of Des Moines, Iowa. It turned out to be a move that would have a profound impact on the rest of his life. When addressing the importance of growing up in Iowa, Brewer said, “Des Moines was like a breath of fresh air to us. We got rid of a lot of the racial prejudice we found in Kansas. Everything there (Kansas) was either all-white or all-black. We lived in an integrated neighborhood and I went to integrated schools in Des Moines. We blacks could go to movies in Des Moines and not have to sit back with the projector. I have very fond memories of Des Moines and West High School.”

A child prodigy on the pitcher’s mound, Brewer was nearly impossible to hit in the youth leagues of Des Moines. By the age of fifteen, he had begun making appearances for traveling black semi-pro teams . Brewer attended the now closed Des Moines West High School, where he starred in football, baseball, and basketball. In 1924, Brewer signed on with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro National League, joining a pitching staff that was anchored by future Hall of Famer Bullet Joe Rogan. Once he was on the scene, it did not take him long to showcase his dominance as a professional. In his rookie year with the Monarchs, Brewer went 12-1, and in his first full season, he compiled a 13-2 record, giving up only 34 runs in 140 innings pitched. Tall and rangy, Brewer was a 6’4″ 188 pound athlete who relied on a variety of off-speed pitches, most notably, a sharp-breaking overhand curveball that he consistently used as an out pitch. His success on the mound was built on a sturdy foundation of pinpoint control, an ability to change speeds at will, and proficiency in getting constant movement on every pitch. Besides his long tenure with the Monarchs, Brewer won games for the Cleveland Buckeyes, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Birmingham Black Barons, the Chattanooga Black Lookouts, the Baltimore Elite Giants, and the New Orleans Black Pelicans.

Chet Brewer won games for professional teams on three continents during 25 years of pitching.

A fierce competitor, Brewer was often at his best when the spotlight was brightest. In the Negro League’s 1934 East-West All-Star Game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, Brewer was one of three pitchers to hold a powerful East lineup, which featured Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, and Jimmy Crutchfield, to one run on seven hits, only to be outdone by Satchel Paige and Slim Jones who shutout the West for a 1-0 victory. Another memorable performance came in August of 1930 when Brewer, as a member of the Kansas City Monarchs, hooked up in a pitching duel with Hall of Famer Smokey Joe Williams in a game against the Homestead Grays. In a 12-inning nail-biter, Williams, 44 years old at the time, struck out 27 while allowing only one hit in a 1-0 victory. Brewer, equally brilliant in defeat, struck out 19, including a stretch of 10 in a row, before allowing the game-winning run on an extra-base hit by another future Hall of Famer, Oscar Charleston. Yet, the game that sticks out most in his mind came in the winter of 1937 in the Dominican Republic. Facing an all-star team funded by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, and featuring Bell, Gibson, and a number of other top Negro League competitors, Brewer shutout his opponents in a one-hit masterpiece, outgunning his more publicized Monarchs teammate Satchel Paige for the win.

Chet Brewer (far right) with the Tampico Alijadores in the Mexican Winter League, 1939.

For much of his career, Brewer was a year-round performer, playing winter baseball in Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. During his career, he won thirty games in a single season with the Monarchs, and in 1938, he became the first African-American player to compete in the Mexican Leagues after signing with the Tampico Alijadores. In his first Mexican League season, Brewer was particularly dominant, putting together a stretch of 40 scoreless innings and two n0-hitters. Like many other Negro Leaguers, however, what gave him the greatest joy was competing against, and beating, teams from the Major Leagues. In the winter of 1935, Brewer and a group of Negro League stars faced a Major League all-star team assembled by Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack in a five game series. Facing a lineup that included such future Hall-of-Famers as Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Charlie Gehringer, Lou Gehrig, and Earl Averill, Brewer saw action in every game, and allowed only two runs and seven hits, while collecting forty-two strikeouts. A teammate of Brewer’s, Newt Allen, said of him, “There was no better teammate than Chet Brewer. He wanted to win so bad. He’ll do anything to win. All the fellows respected him for that. There’s no one like him. There were games he just refused to lose. He was so strong-willed. He had total concentration on the mound.”

After several years of pitching in the California Winter League, Brewer ended his playing career after the 1945 season, and settled permanently in Los Angeles with his first wife Mary. In 1952, he reentered the game, becoming the first African-American to manage an integrated professional baseball team, when he was selected to manage the Porterville (CA) Comets, a Class C minor league franchise in the Southwest-International League. In 1957, Brewer joined former Kansas City Monarchs player and manager Buck O’Neil (Chicago Cubs) as one of the first African-American scouts in Major League Baseball when he was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates to a position as a West Coast talent scout.

As great as he was on the baseball field, Chet Brewer possessed an even greater personal quality that proved to be much more important than his gift for throwing a baseball, and that was an ability to influence and connect with young men. In the 1950s, he established a youth baseball program to teach young men both the fine points of the game, and strategies for successfully navigating through the difficulties of life. It was here that Brewer’s influence had an impact not only on the young men under his tutelage, but also on the future of Major League Baseball with the long roster of players he sent to big league careers. When asked about his talent for working with youth, Brewer said, “I always have time to work with kids. I like to work with dropouts. Some kids have dropped out of school, and they don’t have any direction. I try to stay close to them, and see if I can help them with their problems. I’ve been quite successful. The kids seem to have confidence in me, and respect me, and that is all I ask. I don’t ask for any money or anything. I want to try to make good citizens.”

"Papa Chet" Brewer in his later years.

In 1978, the City of Los Angeles renamed the baseball field at South Central’s Ross Snyder Recreation Center, Chet Brewer Field, and a Los Angeles-based youth baseball tournament, the Chet Brewer Classic, is annually staged by Major League Baseball’s RBI Program. After a lifetime of contributions to baseball and decades of dedication to the youth of South Central, the man known to generations of young African-American ballplayers as “Papa Chet,” passed away on March 26, 1990, at the age of 83.

CHET BREWER’S MAJOR LEAGUE ALUMNI

During his long career as a coach and mentor to young baseball players in South-Central Los Angeles, Chet Brewer sent a large contingent of talented competitors to the Major Leagues. Here are a few members of the Brewer Alumni association: