South Jersey’s Chuck Randall never made it to the Phillies, but the team says he’s one of their ‘pioneers’

The Phillies did not yet have a Black player when Chuck Randall drove to North Philadelphia from his home in Glassboro.

He played two seasons in the Phillies’ minor-league system but didn’t feel he was climbing fast enough toward Connie Mack Stadium. Randall hit .351 as an 18-year-old in 1955 and hit 19 homers the next season but still could not graduate past the lowest rung of the minors.

So he met with one of the Phillies’ executives inside the old ballpark at 21st and Lehigh and aired his frustration.

“He said, ‘We know you can do it, but it’s just not the time,’ ” Randall said. “That’s the way that went.”

And that — a meeting at Connie Mack — was the closest Randall ever came to the major leagues. He was one of the first Black minor leaguers to sign with the Phillies, joining them eight years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. Randall dreamed of being the team’s first Black player, but his career soon faded. Randall left the Phillies after the 1958 season and spent time in Detroit’s and Washington’s systems before retiring in relative anonymity.

“I guess I was the guy for the moment,” Randall, 86, said.

John Middleton grew up going to Connie Mack, listening to his father and grandfather talk about the Phils they grew up watching. His grandfather could recall as far back as the early 1900s while his father’s memories started with the 1930s. Middleton, a history buff and baseball nut, loved it.

So celebrating the team’s past — Middleton is the Phillies’ managing partner — has become personal. The Phillies retired Dick Allen’s No. 15 in 2020, added a few overlooked figures to the Wall of Fame, and refreshed their Hall of Fame Club.

“I think there’s this focus on the here and now and a tendency in the organization to forget all of the people who have contributed over a century to the success of the team,” Middleton said. “We need to be honoring our past, championing it, and holding it up as an example for us to follow.”

That led Middleton a year ago to realize that a small display for the Philadelphia Stars — the city’s former Negro Leagues team — wasn’t quite enough. The display was tucked away on the suite level, an area not accessible for most fans, and did not acknowledge the Phils’ Black history. So Middleton told Rob Holiday — the team’s director of amateur scouting administration — that he wanted something more.

“It was important to recognize these men who really helped pave the way to get us to diversity,” Holiday said. “To tell their stories, that was the most important thing. Just to bring it all together because it’s never really been told in one place. We wanted to salute these guys.”

Holiday and a team of Phils employees — including director of promotions Scott Brandreth, director of publications Christine Negley, and former baseball communications staffer Kenny Ayres — became researchers as they dug into the team’s Black history, most of which had long been forgotten. The Phillies were the last National League team to integrate, which is usually all anyone knows about the team’s history.

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They learned about players like Randall, who starred in football at Glassboro High before joining the Phillies. They discovered Camden’s Ted Washington, who was the first Black player to sign with the Phils and may have been their first Black major leaguer if it was not for an arm injury he suffered as an Army paratrooper. And they learned about Bill Yancey, a former Negro Leagues star who became a scout and helped sign Black players.

“They’re part of our family,” Holiday said. “We just didn’t know where they were until now.”

Randall was just 16 years old when he signed with the Phillies after legendary scout Jocko Collin watched his practice.

“He took a look at me and I didn’t even know it, which was probably better,” Randall said.

He was a star athlete at Glassboro and played under the lights in a men’s league in Vineland, which he said helped prepare him for the night games in the minors. Randall soon turned 17 and took a train to Florida, where he trained alongside major league stars like Del Ennis and Richie Ashburn.

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“It was quite exciting,” Randall said. “But I tried to keep my feet on the ground, otherwise you can’t function very well.”

Randall became friends with Ashburn — “a down to earth guy from Nebraska,” he said — and was gifted one of his bats with a bottleneck knob.

Randall used Whitey’s bat to hit .351 for the Bradford Phillies, a Pony League club in McKean County. A season later, he wanted to hit more homers, so he swapped out Ashburn’s lumber for a bat with a more traditional knob and was one of the league’s top sluggers for the Mattoon Phillies in Illinois.

Randall’s success on the field came while he navigated racism off it. In Bradford, the manager made a teammate apologize to the entire team after using a racial slur on the team’s bus. There were motels that refused to let Randall’s team stay since it had Black players and restaurants that would not seat them. Fans jeered him — “They asked me what ship I came over in,” Randall said — but he kept moving.

“That ran off me,” Randall said. “It was different from high school, but you have to play with those issues if you’re going to play at all. I guess I had the makeup for that.”

Randall was sitting outside his home one offseason when he realized the bark on a tree did not look as sharp as it normally did. His vision was declining and he soon needed glasses. Randall missed time with an ankle injury and a sore shoulder soon affected the way he threw from the outfield. Everything seemed to pile up, stalling a once-promising career. Randall moved on, worked for 40 years at Pepsi, and watched teammates — players like Art Mahaffey and Dallas Green — reach the majors.

“It would’ve meant a lot to me,” Randall said. “But as time went by, I realized it wasn’t everything. But it was important. I wanted to get there.”

Randall still isn’t sure if that Phillies executive was hinting about his race when he told him he wasn’t yet ready. Maybe he was too young. Or maybe the team needed to see more from the kid from Glassboro.

That was the closest his career came to Philadelphia until now. Randall is one of the players included in a new ballpark exhibit on the Hall of Fame Club titled “Pioneers In Pinstripes.” It’s the result of all that work Holiday and his team did as they dug into the team’s Black history. Players like Randall, once forgotten, are now remembered. Randall’s photo is just a few feet from those of Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins. He made it to the major leagues.

“People like Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard, who everyone knows about, these other people paved the way for these guys,” Middleton said. “They even paved the way a little bit for Dick Allen, although Dick might say, ‘Well, they didn’t pave the road as much as I would’ve liked.’ But all those guys — including Dick Allen — paved the way for all the later players. All of those guys benefited from what these people did and we should celebrate them and honor them.

“You’re giving people life. You’re giving their families life. It would be really cool to walk out there into the Hall of Fame Club and see your grandfather’s image there and read about him and know that it’s always going to be there.”

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