"Prince" Joe Henry (October 4, 1930 – January 2, 2009) was an American

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

player. He played for several

Negro league The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be ...

teams in the 1950s.

Life and sports

Henry was born and raised in

Brooklyn, Illinois Brooklyn (popularly known as Lovejoy), is a village in St. Clair County, Illinois, United States. Located two miles north of East St. Louis, Illinois and three miles northeast of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, it is the oldest town incorporated ...

, where he played

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

as a youngster. He was discovered by catcher Josh Johnson, who encouraged him to try baseball.

Goose Curry Homer Curry (May 19, 1905 – March 30, 1974), nicknamed "Goose", was an American Negro league outfielder and manager from the 1920s to the 1940s. A native of Mexia, Texas, Curry made his Negro leagues debut in 1928 with the Cleveland Tiger ...

scouted him to play in the

Negro leagues The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be ...

, starting him off in a

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

baseball school. He played for three years with the

Memphis Red Sox The Memphis Red Sox were an American Negro league baseball team that was active from 1920 to 1959. Originally named the Barber College Baseball Club, the team was initially owned and operated by Arthur P. Martin, a local Memphis barber. In the la ...

, then signed a

minor league Minor leagues are professional sports leagues which are not regarded as the premier leagues in those sports. Minor league teams tend to play in smaller, less elaborate venues, often competing in smaller cities/markets. This term is used in Nor ...

contract, playing in 1952 in the

Mississippi–Ohio Valley League The Mississippi–Ohio Valley League was a Class-D American minor league baseball league. Evolving from the renamed Illinois State League (1947-1948), the Mississippi–Ohio Valley League operated for seven seasons, from 1949 through 1955. In 195 ...

for Canton and in 1953 for Mount Vernon. During these years he sustained injuries that prevented him from playing further in the minors. He returned to the Negro leagues in 1955–56 with the

Indianapolis Clowns The Indianapolis Clowns were a professional baseball team in the Negro American League. Tracing their origins back to the 1930s, the Clowns were the last of the Negro league teams to disband, continuing to play exhibition games into the 1980s. The ...

, but did not play for most of 1957 until he was convinced to return and play with the

Detroit Stars The Detroit Stars were an American baseball team in the Negro leagues and played at historic Mack Park. The Stars had winning seasons every year but two, but were never able to secure any championships. Among their best players was Baseball Hall of ...

. In 1958 he was selected as an All-Star for the East-West All Star Game. His last year in the Negro leagues was 1959. Late in his life, Henry fought a long battle with

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

to secure pension benefits that the league promised Negro league players in the 1990s. In the 2000s, Henry began authoring a

newspaper column A column is a recurring piece or article in a newspaper, magazine or other publication, where a writer expresses their own opinion in few columns allotted to them by the newspaper organisation. Columns are written by columnists. What different ...

for the

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

, ''

Riverfront Times The ''Riverfront Times'' (''RFT'') is a free progressive weekly newspaper in St. Louis, in the U.S. state of Missouri, that consists of local politics, music, arts, and dining news in the print edition, and daily updates to blogs and photo galler ...

'' (with the help of his grandson, Sean R. Muhammad) called "Ask a Negro Leaguer". He died January 2, 2009, after a sustained illness.R.I.P. Prince Joe Henry: The Passing of a Sports Legend
''

'' (January 3, 2009)

References

;Footnotes

External links

Joe Henry
at the Negro League Baseball Players Association
Article
from

{{DEFAULTSORT:Henry, Joe 1930 births 2009 deaths Memphis Red Sox players Indianapolis Clowns players Detroit Stars players People from Brooklyn, Illinois African-American writers American writers Writers from Illinois Baseball infielders Baseball players from Illinois 20th-century African-American sportspeople 21st-century African-American people