Wilmer Fields
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Wilmer Leon Fields (August 2, 1922 - June 4, 2004) was a professional ballplayer in Negro League Baseball.
Fields was born in Manassas, Virginia. The son of a farmer, he and other neighborhood children took fence boards and other improvised materials to play baseball. He also asked for divine intervention.
At 6 feet 3 and 220 pounds, Fields played quarterback at Virginia State University in Petersburg but eagerly left school when he was recruited to play for the Washington Homestead Grays in 1939.
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. The Grays played many of their home games at the old Griffith Stadium in Washington and some in Homestead, a neighborhood of Pittsburgh. After Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and broke the color line in major league baseball, the Negro Leagues began to shutter.
Fields's 11-year career with the Grays was interrupted -- but hardly harmed -- by Army service in Europe during World War II. Returning from the War, he found 1946 his best year as a right-handed pitcher. He was part of eight championship teams and was selected as Most Valuable Player an unprecedented eight times in various baseball leagues. Fields, who also had been an outfielder and third baseman, accepted offers from teams in Latin America and Canada.
As an outfielder for the Cervecerķa Caracas club in the Venezuelan Winter League, Fields helped his team to win the championship title in the 1951-52 season in route to the Caribbean World Series. He won the batting title with 74 hits in 207 at bat for a .357 BA; led the league in RBI (45), runs (48), hits and doubles (21), and was second in home runs (8). In the series, Fields won the home runs (2), RBI (7) and hits (9) titles, and finished second in BA (.333).
Fields left baseball in 1958 and initially took a job as a bricklayer's helper. Disappointed by the low pay, he found more promising work as an alcohol counselor with the District government. His work took him to reform schools and prisons. At the Lorton Correctional Complex, he organized baseball games between inmates and young Prince William County players. He retired in the mid-1980s, worked briefly as a security guard and then became part of the new Negro League Baseball Players Association. As president since the mid-1990s, Fields organized autograph shows and held benefit auctions to raise money for many of his former colleagues from the diamond. He also wrote a memoir, My Life in the Negro Leagues (1992).
Wilmer Fields died of a heart ailment at his home in Manassas. He was 81.
External links
- Obituary at Historic Baseball (http://www.historicbaseball.com/players/f/fields_wilmer.html)
- Negro League Baseball Players Association official web site (http://www.nlbpa.com/)