Stealing Home

John Holway remembers the interview he did with James "Joe" Greene.

It had to be around 1970. It was summertime. They sat on the screened-in porch outside Greene's suburban home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, with Holway's reel-to-reel tape recorder running. Greene wasn't a classic storyteller like Satchel Paige or some of the other Negro Leagues players. He just recounted, simply, his version of one of the greatest moments in baseball history, a moment that Buck O'Neil would describe on Ken Burns' documentary on baseball years later.

In 1942, O'Neil was the first baseman and Greene was the catcher for the Kansas City Monarchs, which also included the legendary Paige. The team had earned its way into the Negro League World Series against the heavily favored Homestead Grays.

The Grays included a legend of their own in slugger Josh Gibson, a one-time teammate turned friendly rival to Paige. With a man on base, Gibson was due to be the third man up. To the frustration of his team and the amazement of the crowd, Paige walked the next two batters in order to pitch to Gibson with the bases loaded.

Paige then proceeded to throw three fastballs, strikes, boldly announcing each one before he let fly. After Gibson watched the third strike, Paige walked off the mound in triumph.

But no one will get to hear Greene's version of the story or 59 other interviews Holway recorded between 1969 and 1985, because Holway entrusted them to Kansas City's Negro Leagues Museum.

Holway planned to write a book but was distracted by another project. He figured the museum might get some use from the tapes, so in 1993, he mailed them to Kansas City.

"They accepted them on loan. They signed for them," he says.

Holway had been a museum supporter and agreed to be listed on the board of directors. He didn't attend meetings and hasn't spent much time here since then, but Holway has a reputation as a respected baseball scholar. "Maybe my name helped," he says. "I hope so."

Years later, when Holway was ready to do something with the interviews, the museum couldn't find them. The tapes had vanished.

Holway says the museum has lost an irreplaceable oral history of the Negro Leagues that made heroes of the African-American athletes who were shut out of major-league baseball until Jackie Robinson suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

"We don't have any record that would indicate we received the tapes that John says he loaned to the museum," says museum attorney Thomas Busch. "We don't have any minutes. We don't have any staff who remember."

Holway is suing the museum for $1.25 million, a figure that may be low. Negro Leagues baseball is today a hot commodity.

"I'm trying to be as amiable as I can. I'm not trying to hurt the museum," Holway says. "I can't just let them lose my tapes like that."

Holway wonders if the box was misplaced when the museum moved across the street to its new space in 1997. He also wonders if someone took the tapes.

That's what the museum alleges. They've responded to Holway's suit with a court filing of their own, pointing the finger at a man named Larry Lester.

Lester denies taking the tapes. But the museum's accusation against him is an ironic footnote to the history of the institution itself. Lester may have done more than anyone else to get the museum started.

The lawsuit only underscores the bitter, 10-year split that has divided Lester from the museum he helped create.

Lester remains one of the most respected Negro Leagues researchers, particularly among many of the former players themselves. But his long feud with Kansas City's museum raises questions about what role the institution should play in preserving, interpreting and marketing the Negro Leagues. Critics, including Lester, say the museum could be doing more not only to attract visitors to its 18th and Vine exhibit hall but also to advocate for former players and promote new research.

The museum is a terrific experience for first-time visitors. But should it strive to be more?

Should it instead be more like Larry Lester's Raytown basement?

The cream-colored rooms beneathLarry Lester's unassuming south Raytown home are a civic treasure. They hold a bank of file cabinets with a manila folder for most every Negro Leagues player who ever picked up a bat. The files, however, are superfluous compared with what's in Lester's head.

Try him. Pull out a file, any file, and read the name.

Goose Tatum?

"He played for the Indianapolis Clowns."

Lester recounts that Tatum played first base during the 1950s but was more famous for his years with the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.

How about Curly Williams?

He played outfield for the Birmingham Black Barons in the 1940s. "He's still around. He lives in Florida -- Sarasota, Buck's hometown."

George Talliaferro?

He was a black quarterback with a football team called the New York Yanks in the 1950s. "I don't just do baseball."

Lester might know more about the Negro Leagues and their players than anyone else. He's certainly among the top five scholars. In addition to the basement files, Lester maintains a database of Negro Leagues box scores that he works on through a contract with the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Lester rents a storage facility for the overflow of files, photos and memorabilia collected over 30 years of research on the Negro Leagues.