Ted Radcliffe

Theodore Roosevelt Radcliffe ( Ted Radcliffe ) called Double Duty (* July 7, 1902 in Mobile, Alabama; † August 11, 2005 ) was a professional baseball player and a former star of the Negro Leagues.

Life

Ted Radcliffe grew up as one of ten children in Mobile. Along with his brother Alex Radcliffe and her friends Satchel Paige and Bobby Robinson, they learned the baseball game with a ball made ​​of rags even as a teenager, the brothers hitchhiked to Chicago in 1919, where already lived an older brother. The rest of the family followed them a short time later. A year later, Radcliffe signed his first semi-professional contract with the Illinois Giants, in which he received $ 50 each for 15 games and 50 cents lunch money per day. So he got a monthly income of about $ 100. A few seasons he remained with the Giants before he joined the also semi-professional team Gilkerson 's Union Giants.

His professional career began in 1928 at the Detroit Stars in the Negro National League. After that he played with the St. Louis Stars (1930 ), Homestead Grays (1931 ), Pittsburgh Crawfords (1932 ), Columbus Blue Birds ( 1933), New York Yankees Black, Brooklyn Eagles, Cincinnati Tigers, Memphis Red Sox, Birmingham Black Barons, Chicago American Giants, Louisville Buckeyes and the Kansas City Monarchs. In 1937 he took over the training of the Cleveland Tigers, 1938, the Memphis Red Sox and finally in 1943 the Chicago American Giants.

He played for 30 different teams, had more than 4,000 hits, 400 home runs, won about 500 games with 4000 strikeouts. He played as a pitcher and catcher, coach and was popular in later years an ambassador for baseball sport. Most recently, he lived in Chicago.

Damon Runyon coined the nickname " Double Duty " Radcliffe because the 1932er Negro League World Series played in the Double Header games between the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Monroe Monarchs both as a catcher and as a pitcher.

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