02/03/2021
More baseball history for Wayne County
Throughout February, as our nation celebrates Black History Month, we will highlight the rich history of Goldsboro's black community. If you have information you'd like to share, you can send a message to the Facebook inbox or email [email protected].
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Goldsboro native Hubert Wooten has a place in baseball history as a Negro League veteran. Wooten played for the Indianapolis Clowns from 1965 to 1968, but for many years he didn't talk about his accomplishments much.
"I wasn't one of those people to talk about what I had done and could do," Wooten said.
It wasn't until Wooten started participating in events with Carl Long, a Negro League all-star from Kinston, that people started to find out about his baseball glory days with the Indianapolis Clowns.
The Clowns were the last Negro League team playing; it ceased operations in 1989. Baseball legend Hank Aaron played with the Clowns briefly in 1952.
Wooten's journey to the Negro Leagues began with a tryout for the Raleigh Tigers, an all-Black semi-professional team founded in 1946. While at the tryout, someone told him about a baseball school in West Palm Beach, Fla. While in West Palm Beach, Dodgers scout Leon Hamilton wanted to see Wooten play.
"He said he wanted to send me to a place where I could play every day," Wooten said.
In his glory days with the Clowns, Wooten traveled all over the country playing baseball, riding to many of those games in a bus they named "Big Red." They played every day, and sometimes played doubleheaders on Saturdays and Sundays, Wooten said.
"We got to go places where Blacks had never been to play ball," Wooten said. It included places like Comiskey Park, Fenway Park, and Montreal and Quebec. They played in 35 states a year, and in Canada and Mexico.
Along with the usual competitive side of baseball, the Clowns had their own brand of entertainment that they brought to the game. After the 7th inning, they would play shadow ball to the tune of "Sweet Georgia Brown."
"We were the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball," Wooten said. "It was a lot of fun."
Wooten played every position except catcher. His power at bat earned him the nickname, Daddy.
"It won't that I had any children, I just hit the ball so hard," Wooten said.
For his last two years with the Clowns, Wooten also managed the team. One of the players during that time included Hall of Famer Satchel Paige, who played with the team in 1967.
In 2020 — the 100th anniversary of the Negro Leagues — Major League Baseball announced that seven Negro Leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 would receive Major League status, and the players' stats would be included with all other MLB stats. Wooten said he felt good about the recognition for these Black players.
"I've always said that there's no telling how many records the Blacks would have held in the national league," Wooten said.
Wooten, 76, still lives here in Goldsboro. We salute this hometown legend.
There have been several articles written covering Wooten's time with the Clowns over the years. You can read some of them here:
http://savannah.newsargus.com/sports/archives/2006/05/15/through_the_eyes_of_a_clown_hubert_wooten_was_among_the_last_of_the_barnstormers/
https://highlandcountypress.com/Content/Opinions/Opinion/Article/Boys-of-summers-past-The-Clowns-were-the-last-of-baseball-s-barnstormers/4/22/38157
https://highlandcountypress.com/Content/Opinions/Opinion/Article/The-Clowns-The-last-of-baseball-s-barnstormers-Part-2/4/22/38279
