William “Judy” Johnson: Maryland and Delaware Negro League Baseball Star(1899-1989)

Article by Dr. Clara Small, professor emerita

William Julius "Judy" Johnson
National Baseball Hall of Fame

​William Johnson was born in Snow Hill, Maryland, on October 26, 1899, the son of William Henry Johnson and Annie Lee Johnson. In 1905, around the age of five or six, his parents moved the family to Wilmington, Delaware, where he spent most of his youth, and one year of high school at Howard High School. His father was a sailor, a licensed boxing coach, and the athletic director of the Negro Settlement House in Wilmington, Delaware. William Johnson wanted “Judy” to be a boxer, but Judy was small in stature and was better suited for baseball. Johnson was exposed to baseball at an early age.  In Wilmington, he served as a batboy for his father’s local team, where he soon realized that “his greatest ambition was to play baseball.” His recollection is that he “played baseball morning, noon, and night.” He and his teammates often walked miles to play ball games. 

Judy Johnson quit school after the tenth grade and began working on the New Jersey docks during World War I.  He began his baseball career in 1918, at the age of 18, when many of the black league stars were summoned into service and he got a call to play with the Bacharach Giants, at the salary of $5 a game. In his late teens, he played with the Madison Stars of Philadelphia, a semi-pro outfit, and the Chester Giants. In 1919, he tried out for the famous Philadelphia Hilldales, but was rejected as being too small, and the coach thought that he needed more seasoning. He then joined the Madison Stars of Philadelphia, a training ground (club) for the Hilldales, that were fast developing into the top black club in the East. In 1922, he made his professional baseball debut playing for the Hilldale (Upper Darby), Pennsylvania baseball team, a charter or farm team of the Negro Eastern (Colored) League.  He signed his first contract with the Hilldales for $135 per month, compared to the $5 he had been making per game with the Bacharach Giants. While with the Hilldale team, he acquired the nickname “Judy,” because he supposedly resembled a Chicago American Giants player, Judy Gans. Even though Judy was a girl’s name, he merely laughed when someone asked him about his girl’s name. Hilldale made it to the first Negro League World Series against the Kansas City Monarchs in 1924, and Hilldale won the series in 1925.  Until 1929, Johnson had more hits than any other batter in the American Negro League. The teams William “Judy” Johnson played with for 15 years were the Bacharach Giants (1918), the Madison Stars (1919-1921), the Hilldale Daisies (1921-1929, 1931-1932), the Homestead Grays (1930, 1937), and the Pittsburgh Crawfords (1932-1936).

The Hilldale Club in 1921

Pittsburgh Crawfords featuring Judy Johnson (far right)
c. 1930s
​Nabb Research Center Online Exhibits

Judy Johnson
c. 1920s

After the 1929 season, Johnson left the Hilldale team for a season to work as the playing manager of the Homestead Grays, in Pittsburgh. There he earned a whopping $500 a month as a player-manager in the midst of the Great Depression. Johnson added Josh Gibson to the lineup as the regular catcher and with other players, such as Satchel Paige, Oscar Charleston, and Double Duty Ratcliffe, developed the best team in black baseball.  In 1931, Johnson managed the Darby Daisies.  Between 1932 and 1937, Johnson was also a player-coach with the Pittsburgh Crawfords. “Judy” Johnson was an all-around player, a clutch hitter, had a good eye for the ball at the plate, was an exceptional fielder, was a good base runner and a team player. He also served as the captain of the 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords, a team that included five future National Baseball Hall of Famers: Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Cool “Papa” Bell and Judy Johnson. Unfortunately, in the spring of 1937, Johnson and Josh Gibson were traded to the Homestead Grays for a small sum and token players, so Johnson retired. By 1936, Johnson had played in more than 3,000 professional games and was known as the best all-time third baseman.

1931 Homestead Grays
National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

However, during his career, Johnson “never received a chance to compete in the higher echelons of the game.”  His career batting average was .309 in the Negro National League.  He was named the Negro League’s Most Valuable Player in 1929, by the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier newspapers.  He was named a member to the Negro League’s East-West All Star Game in 1933 and 1936, and his lifetime batting average was .344, but he batted an overage of .416 in 1929. He had a career batting average of .331 in six seasons in the Cuban League, because during the off-season, Johnson played in Cuba, or played in the Florida Winter Hotel League, as well as in the Breaker Hotel and Poinciana Hotel baseball teams.  The rival hotels signed Judy Johnson and the best black professional ball players to wait on tables and to entertain guests on the baseball diamonds. The rivalry between the hotels was an opportunity for the players to make money, and it lured many of the players to Florida during the off-season because the pay and tips were exceptional. Nine years after Johnson stopped playing, Jackie Robinson became the first black player to compete in the major leagues when he became a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Sadly, Judy Johnson and the members of the Negro Leagues played great baseball, often beating the best White players and some of the White players were known as super stars.  However, few people outside African American communities, other than the most avid baseball fans knew the best players in the Negro Leagues.

Brooklyn Dodgers baseball player Jackie Robinson
1950 
Department of Defense/National Archives

Upon retirement from baseball, William “Judy” Johnson returned to Wilmington, worked as a supervisor for the Continental Cab Company, and operated a general store with his brother. He later scouted for Major League Baseball teams, such as the Philadelphia Athletics, the Philadelphia Phillies, and Milwaukee Braves, for over a decade. In February of 1954, Judy Johnson, the former great Negro League infielder was signed as an assistant coach for the Philadelphia Athletics, now the Phillies, from 1954 until he retired in 1973.   He was the first African American to serve in that capacity for a major league baseball club. Through the efforts of the Committee on Negro Baseball Leagues, “Judy” Johnson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. On February 10, 1975, at the age of 75, William “Judy” Johnson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York, and was the first Delawarean to enter Baseball’s Hall of Fame. Johnson was the sixth player to be selected by the Negro Committee following Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Monte Irvin and James “Cool Papa” Bell. In 1976, William “Judy” Johnson was the first athlete ever inducted into the Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame.

Judy Johnson accepting his plaque from Commissioner Bowie Kuhn during the 1975 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
1975
National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

William Julius "Judy" Johnson Plaque
National Baseball Hall of Fame

William “Judy” Johnson was a well-respected player on and off the field. He and Connie Mack, the owner of the Philadelphia A’s had become friends over time. On his days off from playing baseball, Judy Johnson often visited the Philadelphia A’s and with Connie Mack.  Mack once commented after having watched Judy Johnson dance around the bag at Shibe Park in the 1920s, that “If Johnson were only white, he could write his own price.” That statement in itself, was a testament to Judy Johnson’s talents as a skilled player. One of Johnson’s peers, “Cool Papa” Bell, once bragged that “Johnson was the best hitter among the four top third basemen in the Negro Leagues, but no one would drive in as many clutch runs as he would. He was a solid ballplayer, real smart, but he was the kind of fellow who could ‘just get it done.’ He was dependable, quiet, not flashy at all, but could handle anything that came up.  No matter how much pressure, no matter how important the play or the throw or the hit, Judy could do it when it counted.” Ex-outfielder Jimmy Crutchfield referred to Johnson, by stating that [he] “had a great brain, could anticipate a play, knew what his opponents were going to do,” and he was “a steadying influence on the club.” Ted Page, another former Negro League standout, once said, “he believed the major leagues squandered one of their most valuable resources by not employing Johnson as a manager or at least as a coach. He had the ability to see the qualities, the faults, of ball players and had the corrections for them.”  …’Judy should have been in the major leagues 15 or 20 years as a coach.  He was a scout, but he would have done the major leagues a lot more good as someone who could help develop players.”

William “Judy” Johnson died of a stroke in Marshallton, Delaware, at the age of 88, on June 15, 1989, and his home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A statue in his honor is located at the home field of the Blue Rocks baseball team at Daniel S. Frawley Stadium, in Wilmington, Delaware, but the field is named separately as Judy Johnson Field. His legacy is of his playing abilities, as well as his legacy of never complaining about the harsh conditions under which African Americans played. He never complained. William “Judy” Johnson is remembered as “Delaware’s Folk Hero of the Diamond,” but he is also claimed by Maryland because he was born on the Eastern Shore, in Snow Hill, Maryland. In 2019, a memorial statute was erected and dedicated to William “Judy” Johnson in Snow Hill, Maryland in front of the town’s library.  

The Home of William Julius "Judy" Johnson Marker
Photographed by Ian Lefkowitz, May 3, 2024
The Historical Marker Database

Judy Johnson Memorial Statue Outside of the Snow Hill Library