Negro Leagues
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, he began playing on a local semi-pro team at age 14 and dropped out of high school in his senior year to pursue his career. He was nicknamed "Junior" during his time playing in the Negro leagues with the Baltimore Elite Giants, where he was voted an All-Star three straight years from 1948 to 1950; veteran George Scales taught him to switch hit.
Read more about this topic: Jim Gilliam
Famous quotes containing the words negro and/or leagues:
“There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom—against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)