By TODD FERTIG
TopSports.news
Were it not for Topekan Dink Mothell, a lot of Negro League baseball history would have been forgotten, according to historian Phil Dixon.
Topeka baseball legend Dink Mothell will be inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame on July 18. [Kansas Sports Hall of Fame]
The late Carroll Ray Mothell was one of the top players of his era, a versatile position player for 15 years when Black men were denied entry to the Major Leagues. But what he contributed to the memory of the game in terms of photos and memorabilia is as significant as what he did on the field, Dixon said.
“I can safely say there would be no (Negro Leagues baseball) museum in Kansas City if it were not for Mr. Mothell. It was his photo collection that started it,” Dixon said. “Nobody was paying attention before that.”
In 1980, Dixon was a 23-year-old sports fan with an interest in pre-integration baseball, but without access to much history of the Negro Leagues, because there just wasn’t much out there. But when Dixon moved to Topeka for a job that year, he was told that a Negro League legend was living right here in the Capital City. Dixon jumped at the chance to meet the 82-year-old Mothell. The men spent several hours talking, and Mothell showed Dixon some mementos and photos from his career.
After that initial meeting, Dixon left town for a few days. When he returned, he learned that Mothell had passed away. But Dixon was shocked to find that, prior to his death, Mothell told his caretaker to give all his photos and memorabilia to Dixon. A decade later, Dixon used much of Mothell’s items to help found the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Mothell’s photos also made up much of Dixon’s award-winning 1992 book, The Negro Baseball Leagues, a Photographic History.
“(Mothell) was a photo guy. He would bring all his photos back and kept them together in Topeka,” Dixon said. “Since then, I’ve interviewed other guys who had photos, but nothing like his. His were the beginning. You need images to show people’s faces. So having those photos brought the history to life.”
Mothell didn’t gain the fame and fortune during his playing days that a star baseball player would today. But since his passing in 1980, he has finally been accorded some of the recognition he failed to receive in his lifetime. He was ranked No. 50 on the Topeka Capital-Journal’s Top 100 Athletes from Shawnee County in 2011. And in 2012, he was inducted into the Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame.
Mothell will add another honor on July 18 when he is enshrined in the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame. He and five other Negro Leaguers from Kansas will be inducted in conjunction with a modern-day Kansas City Monarchs game at Legends Field in Kansas City, Kan.
“I’m so thankful that Mr. Mothell continues to get recognition because of how easily he could have been forgotten,” Dixon said of the Topeka native’s many posthumous honors.
Born in Topeka on Aug. 13, 1897, Mothell was schooled through the eighth grade, then cut his teeth with the Topeka Giants before moving on to the newly-established Negro National League in 1920. He spent the majority of his career with the first iteration of the Kansas City Monarchs, one of the most successful teams of the era.
Mothell was never a superstar in the Negro Leagues, but he was considered a “super substitute,” a man who could so capably play every position on the field that he was one of the most valuable players of his time.
Negro League players barnstormed widely and often played parts of the year in Canada, Mexico and Latin America. Mothell performed in huge stadiums against the top players of his time, but he also played in small towns all over the country against amateur and semi-pro teams, black and white. He even traveled to the Far East and to South America with all-star teams.
After all his adventures, Mothell retired to Topeka in 1935. Dixon said the former ballplayer worked at a variety of jobs in his hometown for several decades without many people knowing about his athletic exploits. He never married and had no children, and aside from the memorabilia he handed over to Dixon, there was not much left to document his life and career.
But Dixon and others put in years of labor to revive the memory of the Negro Leagues, and Mothell began to be recognized as a significant actor in the story. A group of advocates worked to place a new tombstone on Mothell’s neglected Mount Hope Cemetery grave in 2011, an event that was featured on NBC Nightly News.
A business executive and musician in his youth, Dixon only lived and worked in Topeka for six months. But since that short stint in the Capital City, Dixon has dedicated almost 50 years to Negro League baseball research.
“Mr. Mothell is the key. I always tell people ‘If I don’t meet Mr. Mothell, there’s probably no Negro League baseball museum in Kansas City.' Meeting him and his collection was the whole springboard. People weren’t talking about this back then.”
This year, the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame is inducting 32 new members at three separate ceremonies. Information about the ceremonies is available online at www.kshof.org.
