389: The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings with Ben Railton

Dan LeFebvre

00:01

Hello, and welcome to Based on a True Story, the podcast that compares your favorite Hollywood movies with history. If you’re a baseball fan, you’ll love today’s episode because we’re going to learn about the 1976 movie called The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings. Now, in case you’re not familiar with it, or maybe it’s been a little while since you’ve seen it, Let’s get a quick synopsis of the movie.

Dan LeFebvre

00:28

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings was directed by John Badham with a screenplay by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins. It was based on the 1973 novel of the same name by William Brashler. The movie opens in the late 1930s with Bingo Long, who’s played by Billy Dee Williams.

Dan LeFebvre

00:46

And in the movie, Bingo is a talented Negro League pitcher who grows frustrated with the way team owners treat the players. He decides to break away from the league and put together his own barnstorming team and heads out on the road with players like Leon Carter, Charlie Snow and Esquire Joe. Leon Carter is played by James Earl Jones.

Dan LeFebvre

01:07

Charlie Snow is played by Richard Pryor and Esquire Joe is played by Stan Shaw. At first, the team scrapes by playing local clubs and smaller opponents, but Bingo turns their games into a lively show, mixing baseball with dancing, music and playful antics to draw crowds. As the All-Stars travel from town to town, they run into both competition and trouble.

Dan LeFebvre

01:31

They face racial hostility, pressure from Negro League owners, and constant attempts to shut them down. Charlie keeps trying to find a way into the major leagues, while the team’s success and popularity begin to threaten the owners who want to control them. The tension grows when Bingo and his teammates are forced into a winner-take-all showdown that could decide whether they stay together or return to their old teams.

Dan LeFebvre

01:54

Before that final game, Leon Carter is kidnapped by the owner’s goons, but he escapes and makes it back in time In the end, the All-Stars win the big game, proving they can compete on equal terms Their victory earns Esquire Joe a chance to break into the major leagues While Bingo looks ahead with optimism, determined to keep building a future on his own terms Joining us to separate fact from fiction in the movie is the professor of American Studies at Fitchburg State University, Ben Railton Ben has his own podcast about the history of baseball called Baseball, Bigotry and the Battle for America, which you can find along with more of his work over at black, white and red dot com. That’s not the color red, but red as in you read a book, R.E.A.D. Of course, you can also just click the link in the show notes or find all the links for this episode over at based on a true story podcast dot com slash three hundred and eighty nine.

Dan LeFebvre

02:48

OK, now it’s time to set up our game for today’s episode. Now, if you’re new to the show, since Based on a True Story is all about separating fact from fiction in the movies, you’ll get to practice your skills at separating fact from fiction in this podcast episode with a game of two truths and a lie. So I’m about to give you three little facts that we’ll talk about in this episode, but two of those are true, and that just means one of them is an all-out lie.

Dan LeFebvre

03:11

Are you ready? Okay, here they are. Number one, Bingo Long was based on Jackie Robinson.

Dan LeFebvre

03:19

Number two, barnstorming teams were tied to labor activism and workers’ rights. Number three, black barnstorming teams often played against white teams. Got them?

Dan LeFebvre

03:31

Okay, now as you’re listening to our story today, see if you can figure out which one of those is a lie. And if you’re watching the video version of this, you can see I’m holding up an envelope. This has the answer inside, so we’ll open it up at the end of the episode to see how well you did.

Dan LeFebvre

03:45

Okay, now it’s time to connect with Ben Reilton about the historical accuracy of the bingo long traveling all-stars and Motor Kings. Even though no one expects movies to be entirely accurate to history, the way each movie handles history is different. So let’s kick this off by getting an overall ballpark view of how well today’s movie is from a historical perspective.

Dan LeFebvre

04:14

If you were to give the bingo long traveling all-stars and motor kings a letter grade for its historical accuracy, what would it get?

Ben Railton

04:22

First of all, thank you so much for having me, Dan. Really, really happy to be here chatting about this really fun 70s movie on its 50th anniversary and recording anyway, right before the baseball all-star game. So great moment to be thinking about these things.

Ben Railton

04:36

And I would say this is a really strong piece of historical fiction. I think a lot about historical fiction in my work. And the main plot elements that I know we’ll get into in the conversation here are definitely fiction and are sometimes really exaggerated for effect fiction.

Ben Railton

04:53

But on the kind of the world that it creates, the world in which the story is set of 1939 and these places and times, and on a lot of the small details that kind of flesh out that world and that we’ll talk about, the House of David baseball team that we’ll get to, for example, is a really good example. I think it’s really, really strong on both the world and those details around the plot and the characters. So I would give it a strong A minus.

Ben Railton

05:21

And I just there’s a quote that I think sums it up really well that I had found in researching this movie to talk about it with you, which is from a former Negro Leagues player named Birmingham Sam Bryson. He’s in the movie. He plays the kind of clown character who sometimes kind of juggles before the games.

Ben Railton

05:38

And he had played for both the Birmingham Black Barons and then the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro Leagues. And he said about filming the movie, just making this movie is like doing my life story. This is more truth than anybody ever seen in their life.

Ben Railton

05:53

This picture scares me. And I wasn’t there with Birmingham Sam, but I’m going to say I agree with him. There’s a lot of truth in this, big and small.

Ben Railton

06:00

So I think A- for sure.

Dan LeFebvre

06:03

I mean, that’s fascinating. And I love movies that, I mean, they know they’re a movie and they know there’s the entertainment side of it. So telling a story that, you know, historical fiction, right?

Dan LeFebvre

06:13

So there’s definitely fiction and they know there’s going to be there. But it sounds like they got a lot of the details right to tell this fictional story. And, you know, sometimes that makes for the best type of entertainment movie.

Ben Railton

06:26

I agree. And I think what the really important thing about that with this story is that it is, as we’ll talk about in different ways, there are so many American histories that are part of this. And so that doesn’t mean you have to only represent histories, but again, the setting, the world, kind of where the story takes place as part of those histories, I think makes a big difference in making it not only entertaining, but really something that can open up windows into subjects you could keep researching, keep learning about, as I have, and I hope anybody who sees this might. So I think it really does those things well. Well, you mentioned,

Dan LeFebvre

07:03

one of the characters. And in the movie, there’s kind of an ensemble cast to fill out the baseball team. Feel free to add any more if you’d like. But I would say that there are four main characters in the movie. There’s Bingo Long, played by Billy Dee Williams, Leon Carter, who’s played by James Earl Jones, Charlie Snow, played by Richard Pryor, and then Esquire Joe, who’s played by Stan Shaw.

Dan LeFebvre

07:22

Are the characters that we see in the movie based on real people from history?

Ben Railton

07:25

The only one who I think is definitively pretty one to one, as I understand his story anyway, is Bingo, is Billy DeWayms, excuse me, Bingo Lung, who is pretty close to Satchel Page, the incredibly talented black pitching star from both the Negro Leagues and then actually, and I know we’ll get to the major leagues later in our conversation, Satchel did have a chance to pitch into majors when he was like in his late 40s and still was dominant. He was a truly, truly singular talent. And he did do a lot of barnstorming like this. He organized all-star teams. He barnstormed. He did some of the specific things that we’ll talk about as we go to make it more of a performance and a show. I think Billy’s character, Billy Dee’s character, is pretty close in a lot of ways to Satchel, although maybe more stylish. Nobody could dress like Billy Dee Williams. And I’m not sure that Satchel Paige did. That’s Billy Dee stuff, I would say. So he’s the one-to-one. But the others are interesting parallels, even with people who are actually mentioned in the movie. So James Earl Jones is clearly, I think Josh Gibson, who was a catcher, big guy, huge power hitter, really prominent Negro Leagues player. He’s mentioned at the start of the film, but I think there’s a definite Josh Gibson there.

Ben Railton

08:40

And Esquire Joe, I would say, is really interestingly a Jackie Robinson riff. Jackie, as we’ll talk about, first African-American player to have a chance to try out and make a major league team like we sense Esquire Joe is going to. And even the attempts to kind of woo him along the way by white owners and general managers while the team is still traveling. Those are things that happened with Jackie while he was playing for the Kansas City Monarchs and then for some all-star teams. So I think Esquire Joe has a Jackie Robinson vibe and Leon has a Josh Gibson vibe. But I think the only real close historical

Dan LeFebvre

09:17

parallel is Bingo to Satchel Paige. I remember growing up a huge baseball fan. I remember reading about Satchel Paige. And you mentioned, you know, late 40s. I think he even started, he played in his very early 50s too. And as I’ve started to age, I’m like, how did you play? How were you able to play at that age? It’s just fascinating. I mean, amazing talent to be able

Ben Railton

09:39

to do that. It is. And also, I think another thing that they give to Bingo in this is just this ability to sort of take these situations that are thrown his way and then kind of, you know, turn them into something else, manipulate them. And I think that that served Satchel really well on the diamond as well, even as he lost a little of that talent, like anybody would, he could sort of make the best of his situations in ways that dominated other players, even when they had more talent or youth than him. So I do think that character, Bingo, is a really interesting Satchel Paige riff in a lot of different ways. Well, something that I think is

Dan LeFebvre

10:13

a great thing to go to do is to look at a movie from from the historical context of, you know, the timeline it is. And this the whole concept of this movie kind of revolves around how Bingo Long’s team is is a barnstorming team. And there’s kind of this back and forth tension and outright violence with the owners of the Negro League teams. We’ll talk about that violence in a moment. But these days, we’re familiar with Major League Baseball. So can you set up the historical context giving us an overview of what the Negro League was and how barnstorming teams fit into the picture?

Ben Railton

10:44

Absolutely. And those are some of those histories that we started talking about that this movie does such a good job being in conversation with and that I hope anybody who sees it might keep learning about because they’re so interesting. And I’ve thought a lot about them in the last couple of years because I have a couple of seasons now of a podcast about baseball history called Baseball Bigotry and the Battle for America. I just finished the second season. And so I’ve thought a lot about the late 19th and early 20th centuries in particular. And both of those things, the Negro Leagues and Barnstorming Baseball, kind of emerge in the late 19th century because of the emergence of segregated major leagues, especially. So the major leagues kind of really started in the 1870s into the 1880s in their first forms in the United States. And pretty early, they are pretty explicitly limited to white players or players who are defined or perceived as white anyway.

Ben Railton

11:37

It’s not immediate, but it’s pretty early that that starts to be an unwritten but very definite kind of rule of the owners of these emerging major league teams. But baseball had emerged in local communities and in sort of every part of those local communities. So you’ve got a lot of players who are not then going to be able to make it to that emerging major leagues, but have as much talent and as much community support and sort of legacies that they’re building on.

Ben Railton

12:04

And one way that that evolves is into a second kind of professional league, which is really especially the Negro Leagues as they emerge in the early 20th century in particular, although there are some black baseball teams, professional teams in the 1880s and 90s that are kind of like pre-Negro Leagues on the full level examples of that. But the other way it emerges is things that can exist outside of professional leagues and that can take baseball back to those local communities, build on those local connections, allow players to play against each other who might never otherwise get to and to kind of have all star experiences. And that is the barnstorming history.

Ben Railton

12:39

And that’s the part that I find the most kind of American in me of the story because it is so local and inclusive and breaks down a lot of these boundaries a lot of the time, as we see in this movie. There are huge numbers of Japanese-American barnstorming teams in the early 20th century. There’s a team like the House of David that we’ll talk about.

Ben Railton

12:58

And there are just African-American barnstorming teams throughout the 20s, especially the 30s, continuing a bit into the 40s before the start of integration of the major leagues. And those barnstorming histories to me are just really at the core of what makes baseball America’s pastime, I would say. More than the professional leagues, more than individual players or moments or stories.

Ben Railton

13:20

It’s those local connections. And so I think this film does a good job of highlighting the Negro League side, but especially of leaning into what did barnstorming look like and mean. And that to me is the most under-remembered part of American baseball history.

Ben Railton

13:33

And it, again, was so central from 1860s through at least the 1930s and 40s, the setting of this film. So I really love the barnstorming side in particular.

Dan LeFebvre

13:44

It sounds like, and correct me if I’m wrong, from what you’re saying, it sounds like you have the major leagues is kind of starting from the top down with money and overall area. And then these barnstorming teams are more of a grassroots effort kind of coming up. And then, of course, you know, we know from history at some point they meet in the middle a little bit. But it kind of sounds like that’s how they started. Would that be a pretty good interpretation?

Ben Railton

14:06

It would. And another thing I should mention is up until the early 20th century, most baseball is played on the semi-pro level, where you have sort of players who can make a couple dollars based on things like the gait of their games, as we see with Bingo Long and his team, but who also have day jobs, who are working other jobs to kind of support themselves and their families while they try to play semi-pro baseball. And particularly for Black American players, Japanese American players, these huge communities of baseball players, semi-pro is often kind of where they get their start because they’re not allowed entry to the major leagues in these periods.

Ben Railton

14:43

But semi-pro teams are a little more place limited. So then they can evolve into barnstorming to really connect to other communities and other places. So it’s a really complicated multi-part history.

Ben Railton

14:55

But I do think, yeah, there’s a grassroots communal whole set of teams and histories that are semi-pro, that are barnstorming. And the more we only focus on the professional leagues, even the Negro leagues, really interesting as they were, the harder it is to remember that that’s really where baseball happened, kind of across the country, was those semi-pro and barnstorming leagues and worlds.

Dan LeFebvre

15:17

We talked about some of the characters and their real history. Was Bingo Long’s team in the movie based on a real barnstorming team? Yeah, I think so.

Ben Railton

15:25

I think it’s pretty close to Satchel Paige’s kind of main all-star barnstorming team, which is in the 1930s. I think a little earlier than the 39 setting of this film is when Satchel starts doing that. But yeah, I think Satchel, like Bingo, was getting pretty frustrated with the limits of the Negro Leagues in terms of pay and ownership, but also just, again, kind of location, not being able to showcase his talents and connect to other communities. So he does start an all-star team, I think more than one, but certainly one in the 1930s and recruits a lot of other talented players and takes it on the road. So yeah, I think it is a specific example within that broader barnstorming history.

Dan LeFebvre

16:07

I love that idea of just not being happy with the way things are being done. So I’m just going to do it myself. I want to just start my own team and go off and do it on my own.

Ben Railton

16:15

Yeah. And there’s that great set of lines in the film right toward the start about Du Bois. I’m actually wearing a W.E.B. Du Bois shirt for this interview. I know it’s going to be audio, but I’m wearing it. And owning the means of production. And again, grassroots African-American communities, it’s a couple exchanges between Bingo and Leon, the James Earl Jones character. Leon in particular is the Du Bois fan who passes that along to Bingo. I think that’s telling because that is what these folks are trying to do. They’re trying to kind of create their own circumstances and their own opportunity in that way outside of the limits that their community faces. And I think Du Bois would, I mean, he was alive in the 30s. I hope he was a fan, but I think he would have been proud in the film of what they do on that level. Well, if we go back to the movie, the villains

Dan LeFebvre

17:05

throughout most of it are the goons sent by the Negro League team owners who are constantly harassing Bingo’s team, even to the point of committing some pretty horrific crimes. There’s one scene where the two goons catch Charlie Snow and cut him up badly, and he stumbles out onto the field, bleeding, causing the crowd to scream in horror. Did anything like that really happen?

Ben Railton

17:25

I hope not. I don’t think that specific incident, as I have tried to learn about it anyway, I don’t think it’s based on an incident. But what I would say it’s based on, besides, again, providing some plot drive and narrative for the film in that historical fiction kind of way, boiling down kind of amorphous villains like owners into something more tangible.

Ben Railton

17:48

But the other thing I would say is that in the 19-teens, 20s into the 30s, when ownership was such a dominant force in the major leagues, the professional leagues, both white and Negro leagues, teams definitely would employ hired goons, Pinkertons and the like, particularly when there was labor unrest as a possibility. And that’s really part of what leads, for example, to the Black Sox scandal was an owner like Charlie Comiskey of the White Sox, who was notorious for kind of enforcing his will, even with violence or at least the threat of violence and the threat of kind of hired bodyguards and goons, the Pinkertons, for example, I think get in that story a little bit at some point. So I do think it’s a representation, it’s a symbolism, but it’s a symbolism of the fact that owners in these leagues were, like a lot of these corporate forces, particularly in the 1920s and 30s, very willing and able to sort of make sure their will was done and keep labor strife down through violence.

Ben Railton

18:46

And at its heart, in some ways, again, barnstorming is a form of labor activism, right? It’s taking one’s work outside of that space. And so I think it really represents that set of forces that were opposed to that activism and opposed to these communities.

Ben Railton

19:01

I hope that no one got cut up on the field, but they definitely were. These owners definitely were willing and able to use the threat of violence to try to keep the players in their place. And I think that really does open up those histories.

Ben Railton

19:16

And again, a kind of historical fiction way.

Dan LeFebvre

19:19

Yeah, it sounds like it’s kind of again, being a movie, they’re using maybe creating a scene that specifically may not have happened, but telling kind of the essence of some of this either threat of violence or for all we know, maybe there was some actual violence that happened that we don’t know about. Because you think of, you know, history being written by the winners or those with money, usually. And those are usually the ones it sounds like, you know, if they’re hiring, you mentioned the Pinkerton, you know, I think of that, you know, being back in the old West days and that element of they were hired by the people with money. And yeah, wow, that’s, that’s a fascinating aspect that I hadn’t really thought about.

Ben Railton

19:56

And one of my favorite ways to think about professional sports, besides community and the battle between inclusion and exclusion, things we’ve been talking about already, is that it is a form of labor all along, right? And so you’ve got these alternative labor spaces and these labor activisms and fights for workers’ rights and corporate forces. And it can be hard to see it that way because there’s more money involved and folks playing a game.

Ben Railton

20:22

But even in the 21st century, I think it’s still important to think about it that way. But definitely in the late 19th, early 20th centuries, there are labor histories here. And I think this movie gets at that right away with that means of production thread in the film. And I think the goons are part of that thread as well, for sure.

Dan LeFebvre

20:41

But something that we see throughout the movie is how Bingo’s team enters the town and they’re about to play in and they’re literally dancing in the streets. It’s more than just a baseball game. It’s a performance. And as I was watching that in the movie to prepare for this, I couldn’t help but think of like, you know, the Harlem Goatriders in basketball, even the Savannah Bananas and how it’s it’s not just a baseball game, but it’s more of an entertaining performance. Were barnstorming teams more of a performance show or were they more of the regular baseball game that we’re familiar with in professional leagues today?

Ben Railton

21:12

It was the first to get folks to the second, I would say. These were hugely talented baseball players and teams and they put on a show on the field, but they needed people in the audience and they needed to distinguish themselves, again, from things that already existed, like a stadium you could go to or a professional team you could see even a semi-pro team you could go see at a particular stadium. And so they did very early, again, you can see this in the late 19th century. You can see this with the House of David, who we’ll talk more about, who started in the 19-teens. They did see it as a performance art, I think, that could then draw the audience to the show on the field that was these very talented, successful baseball games. And I think the Harlem Globetrotters are a great parallel. They also start in the 1920s into the 30s and have that similar idea. They continue, of course, to have a show on the court in a lot of ways. That too is part of this barnstorming world, as we’ll keep talking about with certain things like the invite pitch. But I think even more than that, it was about drawing the audience to it. It was about telling people, this is something unique and this is going to be something fun and worth your time and money and getting them onto that diamond into that field. So it was both. It was a performance that drew them to a really high level baseball

Dan LeFebvre

22:30

game at the end of that kind of show. That’s a really great point, too, that even though I mentioned the Globetrotters, too, but, you know, why would you go see a Globetrotters game versus going to see an NBA game? There’s that performance element that gets you there. And once you get there, I mean, the players are amazingly talented to be able to do what they what they do legitimately on the court, but you’re going there for more than just the game too. You’re going there to see that performance because it is something different like you’re talking about. And if there are these other teams, again, going back to you, you have the professional leagues and then you kind of have this grassroots. It makes a lot of sense that why these teams have to do something a little bit different to get people in the stands to come to the game. They do. And just because you mentioned

Ben Railton

23:14

the Savannah Bananas, I’ll say one thing I really appreciate about them. There’s a narrative around them that they’ve kind of invented a new former baseball banana ball. And there are some really interesting new rules, but they really do try to pay tribute to these histories, including the fact that they’ve kind of relaunched a team called the Indianapolis Clowns, who were a little bit of a combo. They were kind of a Negro Leagues team, but they were also very much, again, performative and kind of barnstormy in the way. And the Savannah Bananas and the Clowns are, I think it has not yet happened, but pretty soon they’re going to play an exhibition game in Mile High Stadium.

Ben Railton

23:49

in Denver as a kind of barnstorming like redux as a relaunch of these things. So they are as a 21st century barnstorming team, really, I think, recognizing and paying tribute to these older forms as well.

Dan LeFebvre

24:04

That’s fascinating. Well, you mentioned earlier, and there is something I want to ask you about. Speaking of the performance, there’s Bingo’s invite pitch.

Dan LeFebvre

24:13

And in the movie, the way this happens, you know, the rest of the team stays kind of standing in front of the dugout while he’s on the mound for the pitch, which means nobody is in the field. And then Bingo calls out this cadence to the crowd as he’s inviting someone from the opposing team to hit his pitch when no one else is on the field. Was that a real thing?

Ben Railton

24:33

Yeah, Satchel Paige did that for sure. I don’t know if it was as consistent. I think maybe it was a kind of occasional twist and not that, you know, the movie makes it very much a communal performance, as you say, and one that they expect and kind of lean into. I’m not sure that that was the case with Page, but it could have been. He was that talented. He certainly was that confident in his stuff. And I do think it makes for this really great kind of reflection of what we were just talking about, the bridge between the performance and the game, right? And the recognition that this is not just the team that’s performing, it’s a communal atmosphere. It’s a communal performance.

Ben Railton

25:10

And the clown, played by Birmingham, Sam Bryson as well, the real player who they use as that character, I think also represents that bridge, right? That there are these moments that say, it still was this thing that brought you in, and now you’re getting into this amazing baseball. So I think the invite pitch is an example of historical fiction. It definitely happens sometimes, but the film uses it to really play up that idea of the kind of transition from performance to baseball as well.

Dan LeFebvre

25:38

Yeah, that makes sense. Again, being historical fiction, they’re going to play it up a little bit more for the entertainment factor in the movie, too. Well, you’ve mentioned him a few times throughout, and according to the movie, even though Bingo’s team starts playing other black teams, there were a few times where they play white teams. For example, we see a scene where they’re playing this all-Jewish team called the House of David, and that’s when we see Charlie Snow get cut up that we talked about. But already, considering the racial divide that was in baseball back then, was it common for the black barnstorming teams to play against white teams like we see in the movie?

Ben Railton

26:12

It definitely was. And I want to talk more about the House of David in a sec, because they’re one of my very favorite American histories and stories. So more on them in a moment.

Ben Railton

26:20

But in general, yeah. One of the things that barnstorming did was allow for the crossing of those boundaries really consistently. on practical levels, because there weren’t often teams of exactly identical types in different communities around the country, unlike, say, the Negro Leagues, where you could count on there being this group of professional teams in particular cities. But also, I do think it’s the ethos of barnstorming is that we have a community team, your community team arrives, and we’re going to meet on the field. We’re going to figure it out. And that doesn’t mean there aren’t prejudices and the harder sides of histories.

Ben Railton

26:57

And I know we’ll talk a little about them in a second. But I do think the ethos of barnstorming is that the sport transcends those things. It can cross those things.

Ben Railton

27:06

And I know Satchel Paige’s team definitely played white teams frequently. A lot of the Japanese-American barnstorming teams I mentioned played white teams pretty consistently. There’s a famous game in Fresno where Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig show up in 1927 and take part in a game with Japanese-American barnstorming players and teams.

Ben Railton

27:23

So they did cross those boundaries really frequently. And then the House of David, incredibly fascinating set of histories. They’re actually, despite all appearances, at least as far as I’ve learned about, not Jewish American. They’re part of a cult kind of community in Michigan. It’s a kind of commune founded called the House of David. And they do, they grow out their beards, they grow out their hair.

Ben Railton

27:45

The film, I think, blurs it because they have a guy selling bagels with lox in the audience. It certainly is representing as Jewish American. But my understanding is they were just this really unique, interesting, religiously based commune in Michigan who started a baseball team, become maybe the most famous barnstorming team in the 1920s. They started in 1916. 1920s and 30s, really, really famous.

Ben Railton

28:08

They Satchel Paige actually plays for them for a brief time. Former major leaguers play for them. A young woman named Jackie. I think Wilson is her last name. I’m blanking for sure. Jackie, somebody pitches for them.

Ben Railton

28:22

She’s a superstar, teenage phenom, young woman, incredibly interesting team. And what they do when they travel very frequently is they travel with black teams and they get to their game and then they demand of the local hosts that they are allowed to eat and room with those black teams, breaking down whatever the segregated boundaries were in that particular community, or they won’t play their game. And usually, as I understand it, the hosts acquiesce because they want to see the game.

Ben Railton

28:54

And so they really represent that ethos of barnstorming, breaking down boundaries through these kind of implicit requirements that they have as they barnstorm, often with black players and teams. So I really, really love the House of David story. If I do a third season of my podcast, I might talk about them more because I just think it opens up so much, including even these kind of questions of representation, because they do look like Orthodox Jewish players in a lot of ways.

Ben Railton

29:18

and the film leans into that. I don’t think that they were, but what they definitely were was a representation of the real ethos of barnstorming. And I’m so glad that they’re in this movie.

Ben Railton

29:27

I had forgotten that until I was watching it for this conversation. And I just love that the film finds a way to make them part of it.

Dan LeFebvre

29:35

Well, you mentioned something that I hadn’t even thought about, but with a woman playing on The House of David, were there female players on many of the barnstorming teams? I mean, because we think in professional major leagues today, I mean, there hasn’t really been anybody that’s broken that element.

Ben Railton

29:55

Yeah, there were. And one reason for, I think, the lack of memory of that is that we think of women playing softball, specifically in U.S. sports history.

Ben Railton

30:04

And that’s already starting to be a possibility, particularly in schools, secondary schools and colleges and universities in the 30s and 40s, but not yet the dominant possibility that it would become. And there are lots of women’s baseball players and teams. And we’re familiar with the World War II version of it from A League of Their Own, that wonderful movie from the 90s about that short-lived women’s baseball professional league during World War II.

Ben Railton

30:28

But there’s a much deeper history and a longer history of women playing baseball. Semi-pro, professional, barnstorming, Japanese-American women, for example. There’s a number of really prominent semi-pro and barnstorming teams, all of which continue to be part of the World War II incarceration camps, which was the subject of my recent podcast season, baseball at the incarceration camps, both men’s and women’s. So there’s definitely a through line of women playing baseball in these different settings, barnstorming, semi-pro, even at times professional. And yeah, it wasn’t as ubiquitous as men’s barnstorming teams for sure, but it happened and there were players who crossed those gender lines as well as the racial and ethnic ones that we were talking about a second ago. So it’s another part of what makes it so much an inclusive, communal alternative to the professional leagues and the major leagues. And all those histories

Dan LeFebvre

31:20

are kind of there for us to try to keep learning about for sure. Yeah. And that’s, I mean, that’s fascinating because when I was watching the movie, I definitely did get the con. I mean, of course it focuses on being along being along his team. So that makes sense. But I got the concept that these barnstorming teams were primarily coming out of the Negro League, but it sounds like what you’re saying is there were just so many more from all walks of life throughout the entire country that were coming together.

Dan LeFebvre

31:49

And it wasn’t necessarily just this one story from Bingo Long’s team, kind of ex-Negro League players forming their own team, but there were barnstorming teams all over.

Ben Railton

32:03

There were. And so any one team which has its own amazing story always, whether it’s Satchel Pages or The House of David or this historical fiction one, again, then becomes this window into that. And of course, the heart of that is that these are team sports.

Ben Railton

32:19

And so if you have your barnstorming team, you then need these opponents. And the film does a good job representing that question, I think, and reflecting that there’s always going to then be these other communal connections that you need if you’re going to succeed as a team like this. You can’t just show up at a town and play yourselves.

Ben Railton

32:37

You need that opponent. You need those teammates in a broader sense, teammates in the world of barnstorming. And I think any one team opens that up, and Bingos definitely does.

Dan LeFebvre

32:51

Was it the Washington generals that the Globetrotters always play? Well, one of the plot points in the movie involves Bingo losing one of their cars. So they have to harvest potatoes to earn money to win it back at auction, only to find that the opening bid is way above what they earn.

Dan LeFebvre

33:08

And certainly there’s no coincidence that the auctioneer just happens to own a car lot and he just happens to be the winning bidder himself. So Bingo tries to steal one of the cars from the lot. Can you break down some of the hardships that barnstorming teams actually face compared to what we’re seeing here in the movie?

Ben Railton

33:27

Yeah. And I appreciate that question right now, because I do want to say I was just talking about how, you know, any one barnstorming team is connected to others and teams of black players have these connections to other teams. But that doesn’t mean that the experiences were identical across these different teams and communities. And so, for example, when you learn about Japanese American teams, you read about a lot of the prejudice and limits they often encountered in different communities, in different settings, from different audiences.

Ben Railton

33:56

And that’s definitely the case with black barnstorming teams, as it was for black athletes in so many ways across at least the century of American history from the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights era, and of course didn’t end there. And so, yeah, there are specific challenges that black barnstorming teams and black players and teams in general faced. And they’re not limited to segregation, although, of course, that was a constant question of accommodations, of food, of all of those aspects of segregation around the country, Baptist and the South.

Ben Railton

34:28

And it’s not limited to the threat of violence, although, again, of course, that was a very real concern. And I know when you read the accounts from people like Satchel Paige, they talk about certain communities that they definitely would never have barnstormed at, right? Places that were known as sundown towns, for example, as communities that had that explicit threat of violence.

Ben Railton

34:48

So both of those things, segregation and the threat of violence on the most sort of broad and crucial historical level were real realities. But I think that sequence in the movie also just captures, A, how much barnstorming was kind of about having to scramble a lot of the time to kind of make things keep working. And B, how much that scramble had a different tone for athletes of color.

Ben Railton

35:12

And I think the potato scene, it’s still played for laughs in a lot of ways. This is a comic movie. It’s a PG rated movie. And I appreciate that tone. But there’s an undercurrent there, right? At least some of these folks, Rainbow, as an example, had been laborers in the fields before they had their chance at baseball. We know that from their story.

Ben Railton

35:32

And when they have to send Randall away, they’re sending him potentially back to work in the fields again. They know that. And so when they have to kind of go back to work in the fields in order to try to pay enough to keep going, to raise enough money to keep going, there’s an undertone there. There’s an undertone that reminds us of some of these challenges.

Ben Railton

35:51

And again, it’s exaggerated. It’s played for effect in a film, but it does get at, as does the need potentially to commit crimes, which, of course, if they get caught by the authorities in the town where they have stolen that car, where Bingo has stolen that car, it’s anybody’s guess, or perhaps it’s not even a guess, what might happen to them. So I think the film, despite its comic side and tones and exaggerated effects, does really nicely remind us barnstorming wasn’t just an equal or inclusive world for these athletes of color and for black athletes like this.

Ben Railton

36:24

There are undercurrents that they’re connected to of the biggest historical traumas and also just of day to day realities of things like work and the limits of their financial situation. So I think that was all in there. I think barnstorming was a way past some of those things a lot of the time, but it also continued to feature those things. And I’m glad the film gets them in there, particularly in that sequence.

Dan LeFebvre

36:47

Yeah, it’s one of those things, too, in my mind, as you’re talking about that, you know, putting yourself in the historical context of that time period compared to today. When we think of today, you know, these these athletes making millions and millions of dollars and off the field, their focus, their focus is training for the next game and training this and this. And it’s so very different from the experiences that these players had on the barnstorming teams to, I mean, the focus is the next game, but it’s also really the focus is surviving to the next game or, you know, whatever that may be. It’s just so very different. And it makes me appreciate the talent that they had on field and being able to put on that performance and being able to do that despite all of these extra hardships that players these days, thankfully, don’t have nearly as much of.

Ben Railton

37:41

Yeah, I agree. And I think the character who maybe best captures that in the film for me is James Earl Jones’ Leon, who is the one who is worried about getting arrested in that sequence, even though Bingo is the one who stole the car. but just in general, I think because of the gravitas that Jones brought to literally any role he ever performed. And my wife pointed out actually that this is a reunion, actually a preceding of The Empire Strikes Back, right? Darth Vader and Lando Calrissian before they were Darth and Lando are in a film together. And any role that Jones played, including the voice of Darth, of course, he brought that gravitas. But in this film, I think it adds that note for sure, that this is a guy who recognizes some of those realities. Bingo is the flashy frontman, but Leon is the kind of more grounded kind of reality on the other side of that coin. And he’s known those experiences and he knows kind of what they’re up against at times, while he also can be having the barnstorming fun of this delightful comic film with Bingo. So I

Dan LeFebvre

38:49

think he’s a great part of it for that reason well if we go back to the movie the climax of the movie surrounds around a game with bingo’s team and sally’s team he’s kind of the villain owner from the negro leagues and and the deal between bingo and sally basically boils down to if bingo’s team wins they’ll be accepted back into the league as their own team but if sally’s team wins then all the players have to go back to their original teams at half salary did this sort of high stakes baseball game ever happened? Not to my knowledge. The closest one I know

Ben Railton

39:23

is actually the one in Fresno involving Japanese American players and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. There’s some kind of narrative in the write-up of that, that the Japanese American players were sort of auditioning. There was no unspoken rule quite as explicit for Japanese American players not being able to play in the major leagues, although the first ones don’t until the 1960s. so spoken or unspoken, it doesn’t happen for a long, long time. That game is written about sometimes as a kind of audition, though, as a possibility of the stakes being inclusion versus exclusion. I don’t know of one that had the same layer when it came to black players, certainly not in terms of the Negro Leagues themselves. Compared to barnstorming, I think those remained a little more separate and parallel. And somebody like Satchel Paige was still playing, at least officially, in the Negro Leagues while he was also barnstorming.

Ben Railton

40:15

So the division isn’t quite as clear as it is here. I think this is historical fiction kind of using these symbolic moments and symbolic teams. But what I will say is, as we talked a lot about, that what barnstorming was, was a chance for players to create a different space and a different community and a different reality.

Ben Railton

40:33

And the owners did, I think, recognize that that was a potential threat. And so they did have to respond to that. And they did respond, as I understand it, by doing things like raising salaries and making other kinds of accommodations in their corporate mentality for the players and their rights. So I do think barnstorming offered that and kind of allowed that to happen, not in one game or one moment, but it did force the owners to adjust the way that they responded to players and teams to recognize their contributions and their role. So I think it’s a nice symbolic statement of that and of the owner’s perspective and the player’s perspective, but I don’t think it boiled down to one game in that way.

Dan LeFebvre

41:14

I mean that makes a lot of sense too because history is a lot longer than a movie and so for a movie you do have to condense a lot of things down to gather that sort of essence but it sounds like even if it’s not just one game it sounds like the concept of that was still pretty accurate considering for a much bigger picture trying to squeeze years and years where that contacts into a single game for the sake of the movie

Ben Railton

41:41

Yeah. And I know we’re going to talk in a second about the transition moment that the movie ends with. But I think it’s really important to think about this 1939 kind of representative moment as also really capturing sort of like the first half of the 20th century that baseball begins to integrate in the late 40s, as we’ll get to in a second.

Ben Railton

42:03

But up until that point, these are the worlds of baseball for any athletes who are not able or allowed to be part of the major leagues are these levels of Negro Leagues, barnstorming, semi-pro. And so this one 1939 year, which is a kind of evocative year, right? It allows them to talk about World War II happening over there and beginning over there, the end of the Depression kind of coming, right?

Ben Railton

42:28

there’s a lot that 1939 can capture, but I think it’s also a stand in here for like 40 plus years of histories in really powerful ways that historical fiction can achieve as we’ve been talking about.

Dan LeFebvre

42:40

Well, you touched on that. And at the end of the movie, we see Esquire Joe getting recruited by some scouts from the Brooklyn Dodgers, and that couldn’t help but made me think of Jackie Robinson. Meanwhile, Leon tells Bingo that it’s the beginning of the end for the Negro Leagues because everyone will want to watch black players in the white league instead. Now, we know the story of Jackie Robinson breaking the race barrier, but I’ll admit that most of the stories I’ve heard of that tend to be from the official Major League Baseball documents and not so much the history from other black baseball players who might have known that at the time. So can you give us some historical context around what other black baseball players thought of Jackie Robinson’s breaking the racial

Ben Railton

43:21

barrier into the major leagues? I can. And it’s a really complicated moment and a multilayered question. And I think it gets at, again, how much these things are not just black and white in American history, right? Literally or figuratively. And so Robinson in particular, again, he is playing in the Negro Leagues. He’s also at least partly part of that semi-pro period because he’s a He’s in the army for a time while he’s playing.

Ben Railton

43:53

He has multiple kind of connections to the things that we’ve talked about that this movie opens up. But he’s also, like Esquire Joe, is represented to be a singular talent, right? And one who, an owner like a Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who’s not mentioned by name in this film, but is kind of pretty clearly implied as present here, sees as beyond those implicit rules and those unspoken segregations. That was true of Jackie, and it was true, it seems, of Esquire Joe in the film. But for quite a while, that, of course, didn’t mean that that was going to be true for many other players or teams. It didn’t mean that the integration was just going to proceed for everybody, and it didn’t, right? It took some years for it to really begin to open up for multiple players. And again, many more years still for, for example, Japanese American players or other players. It’s a very slow process compared to kind of the Jackie moment, powerful as it was. And so I really like that the film has that sort of bittersweet tone. And yeah, my understanding is that for a lot of African American players, it was bittersweet not only in terms of the end of an era, but also in terms of the what ifs in their own careers, in their own teams and stories that remained the case for many years after 1947 as well. I think that’s partly why Satchel Paige demanded the chance to play even into his late 40s and 50s, because he didn’t want those what-ifs to sort of be the only story when it came to the major leagues. But for most players, that wasn’t the case. That was never the case. It remained these sort of sets of bittersweet questions. But the flip side of that coin is that the barnstorming teams, the Negro Leagues teams, the semi-pro teams, to me, again, are not in any way lesser than white-dominated Major League Baseball through 1950 or so, or even after.

Ben Railton

45:51

And they continue for at least a time, both Negro Leagues and barnstorming certainly continue into the 1950s at least, and then again are being rejuvenated these days in their own ways as well. So if we can not think of it as just a hierarchy, as much as that is a part of the story, it then opens up kind of remembering these alternatives and these other opportunities and communities. And I hope that that remained part of what folks felt as they watched those games, as they played in those games, as they took part in those communities.

Ben Railton

46:22

But this is a bittersweet moment. It is. And the film ending on that note, while still featuring the camaraderie between the two of them at the end, as they imagined their own future and the team’s future.

Ben Railton

46:32

I really like that it includes those multiple tones for that really complicated moment for Joe, for the older players, and for kind of these larger communal questions as well.

Dan LeFebvre

46:43

Well, I’m curious, because you’re talking with Bingo Long kind of being Satchel Paige, and then we see Jackie Robinson, his version moving off too. But then as you’re talking about Leon Carter in the movie being more grounded, but him kind of being like Josh Gibson, Did Josh Gibson actually make the transition to the league? I don’t believe he did.

Ben Railton

47:09

I don’t think he had a chance to. I think he was a little older, like Jones is depicted as here. He had been playing for at least 20 years, probably by the time of Jackie’s opportunity, if I’m remembering his career right.

Ben Railton

47:25

And so I don’t think he had a chance. And he is someone who is seen as the Babe Ruth of the Negro League. in terms of his singular talent as a power hitter and a hitter.

Ben Railton

47:34

And he was a catcher, which is an incredibly difficult position to play as well. And so he is an example. And he’s an example of, A, the bittersweet side of this transition moment.

Ben Railton

47:46

But B, as we’ve started to be better at doing over the last few decades, if we get outside of the one frame of, say, the major leagues and this pretty white-dominated story, of just thinking about his career and his story as its own amazing thing. And I would say the same about, like, I’ve got a lot about this guy who was called the Dean of the Diamond in Japanese-American baseball, Kenichi Zenomura, probably the most famous single Japanese-American player of the first half of the 20th century. He also plays semi-pro ball into his 50s and plays really well at an era when Japanese-American players still couldn’t have a chance at the major leagues in the 1950s, post-World War II.

Ben Railton

48:25

And so if we could just think about a Joss Gipson or a Kenichi Zenimura as equally compelling baseball and American stories, kind of full stop, I hope that that then can break down the hierarchy like these teams and communities kind of worked to break down the hierarchy of it.

Dan LeFebvre

48:42

Yeah, I love that. Baseball is much more than Major League Baseball. There was a much bigger story to it, much bigger history to it, for sure.

Ben Railton

48:49

Yeah, and this film is, of the ones I’m familiar with anyway, the one that opens those up the best. Obviously, there are plenty of baseball movies and stories, including ones that are set way outside of just the major leagues. But they’re often either about kids or about sort of like fandom, like, say, Field of Dreams. But this is a story about those other layers of baseball. And there’s lots of other great stories worth telling from those histories, but I’m really glad that we have this one.

Dan LeFebvre

49:19

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for helping us learn more about the true story behind the movie. I know you’ve written a number of different books and articles and you mentioned your podcast as well. So for my audience that wants to learn more about your work, can you share how they can find it and maybe give them a recommendation for where they can start first?

Ben Railton

49:34

I appreciate that. And I do always say my favorite phrase, my sons make fun of me for it all the time. My favorite phrase is keep the conversation going. And I really do think that’s true. Whenever we have a chance to talk about anything, it’s one piece of a much longer conversation. Any writing is, any podcast is, and I really hope people will. My wife and I have a public scholarly website, which is a great place to start. It’s called Black and White and Red, R-E-A-D, all over.

Ben Railton

49:59

The web address is blackwhiteandredred.com, blackwhiteandred.com. Both of our public scholarship is sort of starts there in a lot of ways these days. There’s a page about my podcast, there’s my daily American Studies blog, and then there’s info about a lot of the other work that I’ve had a chance to do. So that’s a great place to start, both for my work overall and for those two seasons of my Baseball in American History podcast, which is linked to on a page on that website as well. And then the other one I’ll just quickly mention because it feels so relevant and not unrelated to this film and this story. My most recent book, which is from 2021, but it’s about the history of patriotism in America and specifically about sort of alternatives to how we often think about patriotism, which I call mythic patriotism, and which can be pretty top-down and pretty exclusionary. I think this film kind of reminds us of those alternative histories, those alternative stories that could be seen as kind of essentially American. So that book is called Of The I Sing, about these different versions of patriotism and American identity.

Ben Railton

51:00

And if people have a chance or are interested, they can shoot me an email. I have an electronic version of it that I’m happy to send. Folks, you don’t have to buy it if you want to check it out.

Ben Railton

51:09

It’s another way to think about how we tell these American stories.

Dan LeFebvre

51:12

Fantastic. I’ll make sure to add those links in the show notes for this as well. Thank you so much for your time, Ben.

Ben Railton

51:16

Thanks so much for chatting, Dan. Really appreciate it.

Dan LeFebvre

51:28

This episode of Based on a True Story was produced by me, Dan LeFebvre. If you want even more baseball history, pull up the podcast app that you’re using to listen to this right now and search for Ben’s baseball history podcast called Baseball, Bigotry, and the Battle for America to queue it up right after we’re done here. And don’t forget, you can find more of Ben’s work at blackwhiteandred.com, that’s R-E-A-D.com, or find those links in the show notes.

Dan LeFebvre

51:54

And of course, everything we talked about today will be linked over at basehuntatruestorypodcast.com slash 389. While you queue up Ben’s podcast in your podcast app, let’s find out the answer to our two trues and a lie game from the beginning of the episode. And as a quick refresher, here are the two trues and one lie again.

Dan LeFebvre

52:11

Number one, Bingo Long was based on Jackie Robinson. Number two, barnstorming teams were tied to labor activism and workers’ rights. Number three, black barnstorming teams often played white teams.

Dan LeFebvre

52:27

Did you figure out which one is a lie? I’ve got the envelope right here. So let’s open that up and find out.

Dan LeFebvre

52:34

And the lie is number one. Ben explained that Bingo Long’s closest real-life match, not Jackie Robinson, but the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige. That’s the closest one-to-one match for Bingo Long and Satchel Paige.

Dan LeFebvre

52:49

But Ben did explain that Jackie Robinson’s influence can be seen in the character of Esquire Joe in the movie. As always, thank you for your continued support listening to. And if you have a baseball fan in your family or friends group, Feel free to share this episode of Based on a True Story so they know a little bit more about the real history of baseball.

Dan LeFebvre

53:10

If you’re watching the video version of this, stick around for the credits. And if you can find out my cat’s name and email it to me, I’ll send you a Based on a True Story sticker. Thanks again for watching, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Dan LeFebvre

53:47

Thank you.