RetroSimba

(Updated Aug. 7, 2020)

The Cardinals gave Elston Howard a chance to become the first black broadcaster of a major-league team.

Howard rejected the offer because he had hopes of becoming the first black big-league manager.

Manager material

Howard, a St. Louis native who played against the Cardinals in the 1964 and 1967 World Series, retired after the 1968 season, ending a 14-year major-league playing career as a catcher and outfielder with the Yankees and Red Sox.

He joined the Yankees coaching staff in 1969. After that season, the Cardinals offered him a chance to join Jack Buck on their broadcasting team, replacing Harry Caray. Howard had broadcast high school football games in 1969 for a New York television station.

Howard thought he had a good chance to eventually replace Ralph Houk as Yankees manager, so he opted to remain a coach rather than take the Cardinals’ offer.

Jim Woods, who had been on the Pirates broadcast team with Bob Prince, replaced Caray in St. Louis. It wasn’t until two years later that Howard revealed the Cardinals’ offer.

“Yankees coach Elston Howard said he was offered a job on the Cardinals play-by-play broadcast team after the 1969 season, but decided against it,” The Sporting News reported in February 1971.

In the book “Elston and Me: The Story of the First Black Yankee,” authors Arlene Howard (Elston’s widow) and Ralph Wimbish wrote, “Someone from the Cardinals called and asked if he was interested in becoming a broadcaster … He (Howard) turned down an offer to work with Jack Buck doing St. Louis Cardinals games.”

Bill White, the former Cardinals first baseman and a friend of Howard, became the first black broadcaster of a big-league team, joining the Yankees crew in 1971. White told me in a 2011 interview he also was offered a broadcasting job with the Cardinals when Caray was fired after the 1969 season. White said he initially accepted the offer but reconsidered.

In the “Elston and Me” book, the authors said White and Howard were friends. When White became the Yankees’ broadcaster, he turned to Howard, the Yankees’ coach, for advice.

“Elston made my job much easier because he had great knowledge of the players,” White said in the book. “I had to depend on him. He was my eyes and ears on the field.”

When Houk stepped down as manager after the 1973 season, the Yankees bypassed Howard and hired former Cardinals outfielder Bill Virdon as manager for 1974.

“I knew Ellie wanted to manage,” White said in the Howard biography. “He should have. He had as much experience as anybody out there. There is no reason he couldn’t have been a manager.”

In 1975, Frank Robinson became the first black big-league manager, with the Cleveland Indians.

Cardinals tryout

Howard had hoped, even expected, to begin his big-league playing career with his hometown Cardinals. After graduating from Vashon High School in the late 1940s, he attended a four-day tryout camp at St. Louis’ Sportsman’s Park and performed well, but the Cardinals never made an offer.

“The Cardinals once had Howard all set for signing,” The Sporting News reported in 1971, “but that was just before they began signing Negroes.”

In the “Elston and Me” book, Howard recalled, “I did as good as anybody else at the tryout. I pumped about three of them out of the park and I made it to the final day of the tryout, then they said they’d send me a letter.”

According to the book, “Elston would have signed with the Cardinals, but he never heard back from them. They were not ready to sign any black players.”

After playing for the Negro American League Kansas City Monarchs, Howard signed with the Yankees in 1950. When he made it to the big leagues with them in 1955 at 26, he was the first black Yankees player _ eight years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier with the Dodgers and one year after the first black, Tom Alston, played for the Cardinals.

Howard played in 10 World Series (nine with the Yankees) and won the American League Most Valuable Player Award in 1963.