Lost Voices: Bob Boyd

Closing in on 40 when he became the first Black player to crack the Orioles’ everyday lineup, he was nicknamed "The Rope" because he hit so many line drives.

(Commemorating Black History Month, this is the latest in a series of articles highlighting former Orioles whom I interviewed for my oral history a quarter-century ago, but only on the phone, depriving me of a recording that I could play now as part of the Bird Tapes.)

Robert Richard Boyd could hit a baseball. His numbers tell that tale.

While playing in the Negro leagues after World War II, he never hit less than .352 in a full season. After becoming the first Black player ever to sign with the White Sox (in 1950), he hit .373 in Single A and never less than .310 in four seasons at Triple A— a stellar performance that still didn’t lead to a real opportunity in the major leagues.

His chance finally came in 1956, with the Orioles, after they took him in the Rule 5 draft. Boyd hit .311 that year, emerging as an everyday first baseman despite missing 10 weeks with a broken arm. He then hit .318 in 1957 and .309 in 1958.

Yup, Robert Richard Boyd could hit a baseball.

“I was a pretty good hitter,” he told me when I interviewed him for my book on Orioles history in 1999. “I was a spray hitter, not a long ball man, but I could hit it in the gap in that big outfield and run.”

Orioles manager Paul Richards brought him to Baltimore. Richards knew Boyd from when both were with the White Sox in the early ‘50s, Richards as the major leaguer manager, Boyd as a minor leaguer stuck at Triple A. Richards understood that Boyd was a solid all-around performer with speed and a quality glove as well as a useful bat.

“Boyd may not drive in a lot of guys, but he sure does drive them a lot from first to third,” Richards told reporters.

Growing up in Potts Camp, Mississippi, during the Depression, Boyd had tagged along to his father’s weekend pickup games; his father, a cook, taught him to hit left-handed. According to a Society of American Baseball Research profile, Boyd then worked on his swing by tossing a piece of crumpled paper in the air and hitting it with a stick.

Those countless hours of childhood amusement produced a natural hitter. During spring training with the Orioles in 1957, Boyd, in a typical batting-practice performance, cracked a slew of hard line drives right up the middle, narrowly missing Luman Harris, a coach who was on the mound.

“Hey, Boyd, watch them frozen ropes!” Harris shouted, using the baseball term for a hard liner.

Boyd’s teammates laughed and a nickname was born: Bob “The Rope” Boyd.

He embraced it. One day, he found a piece of rope in the clubhouse and stuffed it in his back pocket. The next time he reached base on a hit, he brought out the rope and waved it over his head.

“He would do it in a game,” laughed Ernie Harwell, an Orioles broadcaster in the ‘50s, in his Bird Tapes interview. “They called him ‘The Rope’ because he hit so many liners. He was a fine line-drive hitter. He’d have that rope in his back pocket and pull it out and wave it when he got to first base … you know, just hit another rope.”

The nickname followed him to winter ball, which Boyd played every year. When he reached base and waved the rope over his head, the Spanish-speaking fans in Puerto Rico and elsewhere called him “El Ropo.”

Boyd was the first Black player to earn an everyday role with the Orioles. That Richards made it happen was unusual, for while Richards was a baseball savant who helped build the Orioles into a contender, he didn’t use many Black players. “He would say a lot of things in the locker room about Blacks and things like that. But he let me play and was helpful to me,” Boyd said in the SABR profile.

When I interviewed him for my book, Boyd said, “I really liked (Richards). He really knew baseball. One time I was running the bases and missed a bag and he had a fit. We were in Washington. He shouted, ‘How could you miss a bag, as big as it is?’ But I enjoyed it in Baltimore. The fans treated me great. They were the best fans I ever played for. I had no problems there. None at all.”

In the end, Boyd, who died in 2004 at age 83, was destined not to last that long with the Orioles.

For starters, he was old. Like so many in the first generation of Black players to reach the majors, his start in organized “white” baseball had been delayed by skepticism in the industry about his talent, a dearth of opportunities and, in his case, a military commitment. He was 36 when the Orioles took him in the Rule 5 draft.

Boyd also was relatively small and didn't have the power that teams want from a first baseman. He hit just four home runs in 552 plate appearances in 1957 and just three in 1959. Looking for more power, the Orioles acquired Jim Gentile, a slugger whose arrival spelled the end of Boyd’s days as a regular. He was relegated to a pinch-hitting role in 1960.

Gentile hit 46 home runs for the Orioles in 1961, which was more than twice as many as Boyd hit in his entire career (21).

“When I got there, Luman Harris told me. ‘What we need is a power-hitting first baseman,’” Gentile said in his Bird Tapes interview. “Luman said, ‘Bobby Boyd is a great hitter, but he doesn’t drive in runs.’”

Boyd was 40 when the Orioles traded him to Kansas City after the 1960 season. He spent one more year in the majors and two years in the minors before he retired, having realized another call-up wasn’t coming. He settled in Wichita, Kansas, took a job driving a bus and played semipro baseball on national-caliber teams. Some years, no surprise, he batted close to .500. Because at any age, in any league, Robert Richard Boyd could hit.