People, Locations, Episodes

Hilton Smith, Baseball Player born

Hilton Smith

*On this date in 1907, Hilton Smith was born. He was a Black baseball player with the Negro Leagues.  A native of Giddings, Texas, Smith played baseball as a student at Prairie View A&M College and on his father's local team.

Following a short stretch with the Austin Senators in 1931, the 20-year-old Smith joined the Monroe Monarchs of the Negro Southern League in 1932. He joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the newly formed Negro American League in 1937. Smith was a mainstay of the Kansas City Monarchs' pitching staff from 1936 until 1948 when the Monarchs were one of the dominant teams in the Negro Baseball Leagues.

Although he was well known in the baseball world, the quiet, workmanlike Smith was greatly overshadowed by Satchel Paige, his flamboyant teammate, and Smith never got the public acclaim he deserved. During his years with the Monarchs, Smith established himself as one of the premier pitchers in the Negro American League.

Armed with the best curveball in all of Black baseball, Smith won more than 20 games in each season with the Monarchs and went undefeated in league games in 1938 and 1941. He pitched a no-hitter in 1937 and made six consecutive appearances in the East-West Game, the Negro Leagues' annual all-star game, between 1937 and 1942.

Smith was also a good hitter and frequently played in the outfield or at first base when he wasn't on the mound. He was later approached by the Brooklyn Dodgers but turned down their offer, believing he was too far past his prime. "Hilton never got the credit he deserved," teammate Allen "Lefty" Bryant once remarked. "We never told him, but Hilton was our best pitcher, including Satchel."

Buck O'Neil, his teammate and close friend, summed up Smith's career this way: "From 1940 to 1946, Hilton Smith might have been the greatest pitcher in the world." Smith became a schoolteacher and coach in Kansas City after 1948 and later worked for Armco Steel. He was an associate scout for the Chicago Cubs at the time of his death on November 18, 1983, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, NY, in 2001.

To become a Professional Athlete.