The Cooperstown Classic Era Ballot (2027) Eligibility For: Chet Brewer

An IBWAA member makes the case for a Negro League star to be included in Cooperstown

IBWAA members love to write about baseball. So much so, we've decided to create our own newsletter about it! Subscribe to Here's the Pitch to expand your love of baseball, discover new voices, and support independent writing. Original content six days a week, straight to your inbox and straight from the hearts of baseball fans.

Pregame Pepper

Did you know…

. . . This past Saturday, Dave Parker, “Cobra,” passed away. Unfortunately, we won’t have the opportunity to hear Parker’s speech, as he was just inducted this past winter on the Classic Era Ballot. Parker appeared on 15 BBWAA ballots, never receiving less than 10% of ballots but also never reaching 25%. He appeared on three previous Veteran’s Committee ballots before being elected in December.

. . . Parker was an all-around talent who received the National League MVP in 1978. He was elected to seven All-Star games, and he received three Gold Glove awards and three Silver Slugger awards. In his career, Parker amassed 2,712 hits, 339 home runs, and 526 doubles. Parker won two World Series titles, a decade apart, with the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates and 1989 Oakland Athletics.

---

Leading Off

The Cooperstown Classic Era Ballot (2027) Eligibility For: Chet Brewer

By W. H. Johnson

Leroy “Satchel” Paige is generally considered the finest pitcher to have played in the various Negro leagues, and in 1971 he was rewarded with his induction into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. His feats are legendary, and his legend is without peer. But there were other superb pitchers in the Negro leagues, pitchers who could not only compete with Paige, but at times equal or exceed the player’s excellence.

As is the case with so many Negro league-era players, mere statistics are inadequate to convey an accurate portrait of the various players. Their game, their milieu, was somewhat different than that of those players in the segregated major leagues. The former did play a truncated, yet formal, schedule against other teams and competed for their own championship but were also compelled to seek opportunities barnstorming and by playing in foreign, integrated leagues. So telling the story of any Negro league era star demands an aggregation and assimilation of the entire body of work, accented by their attached reputation among their respective peers.

Chester Arthur “Chet” Brewer was perhaps the finest pitcher not named Paige in the Negro league era. Born in Kansas, he was raised in Des Moines, Iowa. He later returned to Missouri and for more than two decades starred for the Kansas City Monarchs. Along with his time there, he won a championship with the Cleveland Buckeyes and posted successful seasons with the New York Cubans, the Philadelphia Stars, and the Chicago American Giants. He also logged stints in the Dominican Republic and Mexico, and in the Philippines, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Cuba.

With the Monarchs, he teamed with Paige and Bullet Joe Rogan, as well as Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, and enjoyed a phenomenally successful career. In his second year in Kansas City, he won 20 games and helped propel the Monarchs to the 1926 Negro National League championship. Using what was considered a terrific fastball, a brutal curve, and a then-legal emery ball, he matched up against Negro greats like Smoky Joe Williams and John Donaldson, and pitched against established major league stars like Jimmie Foxx, and almost always prevailed.

In the winter of 1931, he travelled to Mexico and is credited as the first African-American to play organized baseball in the country. In 1934 Brewer was select to his first East-West All Star game, and delivered three scoreless innings in the West’s victory. His Negro leagues playing career ended in 1948, pitching for a championship Cleveland Buckeyes squad, but in 1952, at age 45, he pitched for two desegregated minor league teams in California. That year the old player-manager’s ERA+ mark of 1.25 meant that he pitched 25% better than league average. Notably, Brewer was the second Black manager in organized baseball after 1947.

To try to boil down Chet Brewer’s career to mere numbers is to lose sight of his actual dominance. Still, he achieved some tremendous feats:

- In 13 games against the segregated Major League players (from available box scores), he logged a 13-2 record;

- Pitched in two East-West games, 13 years apart;

- Led the California Winter League [an integrated off-season league that closed in 1946, but hosted over 25 future hall-of-fame players at various points] in wins, strikeouts, and innings pitched over the 1928-1929 season;

- Tossed no-hitters against the Chicago American Giants [1929] and two different Mexican League teams in 1939 [and played in the first-ever Mexican League All-Star game];

- Led the Negro American League in wins in 1943 and 1947;

- Played on twenty-one different championship teams during his career.

In retrospect, despite Brewer’s on-field brilliance, he remains under-appreciated. At various times in his life after professional baseball, Brewer was asked if he thought he should have been one of the desegregation pioneers in the 1940s. In 1984 Brewer told Ron Maly of the Des Moines Register, “I couldn’t have been the Jackie Robinson of big league baseball. I wouldn’t have been able to take the insults he did, and would have been kicked out of baseball.”

It turned out to be a good thing for the game that he remained active. Brewer had taken a two-year sabbatical from baseball during World War II, in order to work in a military support industry, but had returned to the game recharged and reenergized. In addition to playing out his career in the desegregated minor leagues, he later scouted for the Pittsburgh Pirates between 1957 and 1974. That team valued his work so highly that they presented him with Roberto Clemente’s uniform after the latter died on New Year’s Eve, 1972.

Chet Brewer was a leader and often the star of every team for which he played. His influence on the game ranged from subtle, in encouraging Jackie Robinson to shift from shortstop to second base when Robinson played for Brewer in 1946, to overtly serving as one of the more profound influences in the lives and careers of stars like Reggie Smith, Earl Battey, Bob Watson and Roy White. Brewer’s echoing resonance in baseball remains detectable, and his on-field excellence is absolutely undeniable.

Brewer was a finalist for election to the Hall in 2006, but did not garner the necessary votes. The Classic Era ballot in 2027 will be the next opportunity to fill in an empty spot in the figurative shrine of the greatest baseball players to have played. Chet Brewer richly deserves that consideration, and ultimately selection, into the gallery in Cooperstown.

Bill Johnson has contributed over 50 essays to SABR’s Biography Project, and presented papers at the 2011 Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture, the 2017 and 2023 Jerry Malloy Negro League Conferences, and the inaugural Southern Negro League Conference. He has published a biography of Hal Trosky (McFarland and Co., 2017) and an article about Negro American League All-Star Art “Superman” Pennington in the journal Black Ball. He is on ‘X’: @BaseballSolon

---

Extra Innings

On this day, the player with the most MLB seasons after being born in South Korea was born in 1973. Chan Ho Park. After an elite career as a high school player, Park was in his second year of college when the Dodgers signed him in 1994. He was up to the majors later that year. He moved into a swingman role in 1996 with the Dodgers, his first full season in the majors. In 2000-2001, he had a very strong run for the Dodgers, earning an All-Star nod, but injuries never allowed him to have a complete season again. He retired from MLB in 2010 before finishing his career with a year in Japan and a year in his native Korea.

Before he retired from MLB in 2010, Park recorded a win for the Pirates that made him the winningest pitcher born in Asia, a mark he still holds.