| Former Negro League player Ernest Burke dies
Pikesville resident went on to become anti-drug role model for youngsters By Jacques Kelly
Baltimore Sun Staff
Originally published February 4, 2004, 1:00 PM EST Ernest Burke, a pitcher and outfielder for the Baltimore Elite Giants in the Negro League who became an anti-drug role model for young baseball players and students, died Saturday of kidney cancer complications at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 79.
After a stint as one of the first African-American Marines to serve in World War II, he played professionally for four seasons beginning in 1946 for the Elite Giants. He then played in the Canadian Provincial League, where he had a .308 batting average during one of his two seasons there. In his later years, he was a tennis professional.
"He just loved to talk to children and students. He told them of his experiences as a Negro League pitcher and as his experiences as one of the first black Marines in World War II," said his wife of four years, the former Sandra Dolan. "He told them to keep themselves up on a pedestal and don't be pulled down to a lower level. He received thousand of letters from students expressing that he made a difference in their lives."
His team, the Elite Giants were not allowed to play at the old Baltimore Stadium on 33rd Street where white teams played, which rankled Mr. Burke. Instead, he and his teammates played at Bugle Field on Federal Street and Edison Highway.
In a 2002 Sun interview, he recalled out-of-town games.
"We rode in a school bus 200, 300 miles," he said of his travels along the East Coast. "You'd get out of the bus and stretch, and your bones would crack."
He said that racial prejudice was commonplace. Some towns and cities did not allow blacks to use locker rooms at their stadiums, so his team often dressed in their uniforms behind highway billboards.
At an Atlanta restaurant, an ugly scene underlined the hostility toward African-Americans at that time, he recalled. As the players were leaving the restaurant, "We saw people break the dishes, glasses and teacups on our table," he said. That way, the dishes would never be used again.
He also recalled Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 broke the color barrier as the first African-American to play Major League Baseball as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
"There's not a pedestal high enough for Jackie Robinson, but his wife, Rachel, is the one who licked and bandaged the wounds."
After leaving baseball, Mr. Burke became a heavy equipment operator at the Henry J. Knott Construction Co. for 30 years until he retired in the early 1980s. He then became a tennis instructor.
He supplemented his pension by attending trading card shows, where he signed autographs and sold Negro League paraphernalia. Mr. Burke visited many Baltimore area schools and public gatherings. He also visited the Babe Ruth Museum.
"We never had any trainers to teach us how to slide or pitch," Mr. Burke would tell fans. "Each team was like a family. We would help and correct each other if needed. That's what made us so good. We could move mountains."
He also appeared at the Orioles 1999 Fan Fest at the Baltimore Convention Center.
"There are so many young people who have never heard of the Negro Leagues," Mr. Burke said in a story in The Sun recounting that event. "I really shock them when I say where I played and who I played for."
Robert R. Hieronimus, who served with Burke on the board of the Negro League Baseball Players Association, said, "He was a very warm person who was dedicated to educating the young. He was able to talk to children about staying off of drugs. They believed him because he was a real fighter. He would to go to schools, for free, and talk from the kindergarten all the way up through the university level."
Mr. Burke was born in Havre de Grace (although he sometimes said his birthplace was in the nearby town of Perryville) and moved to Quebec, Canada, after his parents died before he was a teen-ager. He returned to the United States, enlisted in the Marines for World War II and played on segregated Marine Corps baseball teams in the Pacific theater. He served with the Montford Point Marines on Saipan and Iwo Jima.
When in one game he got three hits off an opposing pitcher who had played major league baseball, the pitcher advised him to try out for a Negro League team.
He did just that. He played for the Havre de Grace Black Sox, a semipro team, and was scouted at Baltimore's Bugle Field by the Elite Giants, the team that featured Hall of Famers Roy Campanella and Leon Day.
"I have no bitterness for what I went through. I chalked it up to experience," he told The Sun in another interview three years ago.
A funeral Mass will be offered at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Episcopal Church of St. Mark's On The Hill, 1620 Reisterstown Road, Pikesville, where he was a communicant.
Survivors include his wife; three daughters, Valerie Hester of Stafford, Va., Janice Covington of Chicago and Rosalyn Burke of Washington, and five grandchildren. A previous marriage ended in divorce. |
