6

5.

"I was working my way through school, and at the time I
was there they were tearing down old buildings and putting up new
ones. Until I got to where I could use a trowel myself, I waited
on the other boys that had already gotten more training. My first
work was laying brick, and the whole time I was there my earnings
were from work on the buildings on Tuskegee campus.

"It was while I was a student at Tuskegee that I really
learned to play baseball. I had always liked it, but I found there
was a whole lot more class to college baseball than to the scrub
games I had been used to playing in vacant lots or just anywhere a
bunch of boys could get together with room enough. Once when the
Tuskegee team was playing Atlanta University I got my collar bone
broken. When I come back home I was captain of the Athens Red
Socks team, and we were considered the best in the South. We played
all over Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. I haven't forgotten
the game we played at Acworth, Georgia, once, and the Acworth team
had hired a white pitcher from some big baseball league. Well, we
beat 'em, and did we feel like we were big stuff! For a fact, we
won every game we played that year but two. We played four games in
Chattanooga, losing two and winning two. Wherever the Red Socks went
to play ball the white people were mighty nice to the members of the
team and turned out in good crowds to the games. When I was playing
baseball I weighed a hundred and sixty-two pounds; now I just weigh
a hundred and forty-two pounds.

"I'm so fond of football that till this good day I go to

1863