Wilmer Fields

Wilmer Leon Fields (August 2, 1922 – June 4, 2004) was an American baseball player who was a household name in the Negro leagues and other baseball circuits between the 1940s and 1950s.

Born in Manassas, Virginia, Fields was a versatile two-way player in the Negro leagues, and also played in Canada and several Latin American leagues, including Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.

In most leagues, he was a pitcher but played at third base or outfield in games when he was not scheduled to pitch.

His consistent batting and pitching skills helped him capture the Most Valuable Player award on many occasions throughout the course of his distinguished career.

Fields possessed a running fastball complemented by a curve, a slider and eventually a knuckler, and he had average control of his pitches.

He was often referred to as ″Red″, ″Bill″, or ″Chinky″.

Starting in 1935, participated in the event championship teams from four continents.

Usually, the U.S. teams had Negro League players, minor leaguers and former big leaguers in their rosters.

At 6-foot 3-inches (1.92 m) and 220 pounds (100 kg), Fields played quarterback at Virginia State University in Petersburg, but left school when he was recruited to play for the Homestead Grays Negro League club in 1939.

He spent his entire Negro League career with the Grays but continued his college education in the off-seasons while also playing football and basketball.

The Grays were one of the finest teams in the Negro League, winning nine league championships before folding in the wake of desegregated professional baseball.

They played many of their home games at the old Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. and some in Homestead, a neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

In 1940 Fields joined the Grays at the age of 17, showing records of 2–1, 13-5 and 15–3 in his first three seasons, but his promising career was interrupted —but hardly harmed— by Army service in Europe during World War II.

Between the 1940s and 1950s, Fort Wayne was a strong ballclub that participated in several Global World Series organized by the National Baseball Congress.

Following his discharge in 1946, Fields posted a record of 72–17 record over the next five seasons, compiling a stunning record of 102 wins and 26 losses during his eight years in the league, helping his team clinch four pennant titles (1940–1942; 1948) and a World Series championship (1948).

After Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1947 season and broke the color line in Major League Baseball, the Negro leagues struggled, starting to die off.

The Fort Wayne team won four NBC championship titles from 1947 through 1950 and a fifth title in 1956.

In the two seasons, Fields had records of 6-1 and 5–0 on the mound, with batting averages of .432 and .387.

In 1947–1948 he had a chance to show his stuff as a pitcher/outfielder for Mayagüez, ending with a 5–5 mark, while batting .315 with five home runs and 41 runs batted in.

In 1948 he was selected for the East-West All-Star Game, which was played at Yankee Stadium.

Besides, Fields led Homestead to defeat the Baltimore Elite Giants 3–0 in the 1948 Negro National League Championship.

The Grays then defeated the Birmingham Black Barons, 4–1, to win the 1948 Negro World Series, during what turned out to be the last Series ever played in Negro league history.

After that, he became part of several championship teams and was selected as Most Valuable Player a record seven times in different baseball leagues.

Once the Grays disbanded, Fields received numerous contract offers from major league organizations, but he was content with what he was doing and refused them.

Then, he opted to play in Canadian baseball during the summer and also in the Caribbean winter leagues.

As a result, he travelled to Canada to play for the Brantford Red Sox of the competitive Intercounty Baseball League in southwestern Ontario.

The team was a member of the Michigan-Indiana League, a top notch top semipro league composed of black and white players, which had been integrated by legendary Double Duty Radcliffe in 1948.

Then, he posted a 10-4 pitching record and hit .330 with 11 homers in the 1948–1949 season, topping the league with 88 RBIs and winning MVP Award honors, to lead his team to the 1949 Caribbean Series.

Fields hit .429 as the Indios' third baseman in the Series, including two doubles, a homer and seven RBIs.

Fields played for Brantford in 1951 and from 1953 through 1955, as well as for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League in 1952.

While playing for Brantford, he posted pitching records of 11–2, 10–2, 9-3 and 8–0, and batting averages of .382, 381, .379 and .425, respectively, to win three MVP awards in the league during the 1951, 1954 and 1955 seasons.

in four campaigns there, he compiled a 38–7 record and a .392 average.

In his only season for Toronto, he hit a second best team average of .291 in 52 games while sharing duties with eight outfielders.

Besides his stay in Canada, Fields played from 1956 to 1957 with the Fort Wayne Allen Dairymen team based in Indiana.

He earned MVP honors in the 1956 NBC tournament, putting his name alongside greats such as Satchel Paige (1935), Red Barkley (1941), George Archie (1943), Cot Deal (1944–1945), Bill Ricks (1949), Pat Scantlebury (1950), Daryl Spencer (1955) and Clyde McCullough (1955).

Likewise, Fields represented a good example of a ballplayer who benefited from the opportunities created by the interdependence of Latino and black baseball.

Competition in the Caribbean Baseball has always been passionate and intense, as Fields recalled in his autobiography My Life in the Negro Leagues: «Not everyone could make it down there and you better believe if you didn't produce you didn't last long.

I was lucky that way».

In addition to eight Negro league campaigns and several minor league stints after integration, Fields also played four seasons in the Puerto Rico Baseball League for the Indios de Mayagüez.

He looked forward to supplement his income during the winter by doing what he loved most.