As president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo., Bob Kendrick is plenty familiar with the players who starred for the Grays and Crawfords and made Pittsburgh an integral part of Black baseball, names like Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell or Buck Leonard rolling off his tongue like items on a grocery list.
At the same time, Kendrick is also a fan of baseball on the whole and fully aware of the Pirates' managerial history, from Fred Clarke's franchise-high 1,422 wins to Danny Murtaugh's two World Series titles to several other impressive runs.
While Kendrick would never argue against any of the aforementioned greats, he's also continuously surprised that Vic Harris doesn't get more run when it comes to some of the baseball icons who have called Pittsburgh home.
Spending nearly all of his career with the Homestead Grays (23 years), Harris was a lifetime .307 hitter and later in his career transitioned into a managerial role where he presided over the team's incredible run of success in the 1930s and 40s.
"Vic Harris is not a household name," Kendrick said. "But he should be."
The legend of Harris is as multi-faceted as his game on the field. He had a short, compact swing from the left side of the plate, made a ton of contact and thrived on driving balls to the gaps — different than the towering home runs hit by Gibson or the blazing speed displayed by Bell.
Harris, whose nickname was "Vicious Vic," had a mean streak and played with an edge, displaying a competitive spirit that caused those who know him or his game best to make some rather interesting comparisons.
"Vic and Pete Rose were just alike," said Harris' nephew, Richard Alsberry. "You know how Pete Rose was crazy on the field but a nice guy off the field? That definitely was Vic."
"People talk about Ty Cobb," Kendrick added. "Cobb had nothing on Vic Harris. He wanted to beat you, and he would do whatever it took to do that. He was as competitive an individual as you will ever meet."
There's another famous quote about Harris and it comes from Leonard, his longtime friend and teammate with the Grays: "He just undressed the opposing infielder — cut the uniform right off his back."
"That's the perfect way to describe Harris," Kendrick said, laughing.
Born Elander Victor Harris in 1905 in Pensacola, Fla., Harris moved with his family to Pittsburgh in 1914, when his father (William) took a job at a steel factory. The younger Harris attended Schenley High School from 1919-22.
Legendary owner Cum Posey tried to recruit Harris in 1923, but he played for the Cleveland Tate Stars and Chicago American Giants before finally joining the Grays in 1925.
Harris broke out by hitting .338 in 1930, the year before the Grays enjoyed one of the best Negro Leagues teams of all time along with the 1925 Kansas City Monarchs and 1935 Pittsburgh Crawfords, a group that included Gibson, Charleston, Willie Foster, Smokey Joe Williams and Jud Wilson.
As Harris hit his stride at the plate — he hit .311 in 1933 and made the first of his seven All-Star teams — the battle for talent between Posey's Grays and Gus Greenlee's Pittsburgh Crawfords reached a rolling boil.
Harris jumped ship in 1934, hit .339 on a stacked Crawfords team that included Gibson, Charleston, Judy Johnson, Bell and Paige before Posey lured Harris back in 1935 and installed him as manager the following season.
Although he led the Grays with a .351 average in 1936 — while also marrying his longtime wife, Dorothy Smith — Harris' most notable run of success started in 1937, when the Grays rattled off nine consecutive league championships while putting together lineups that regularly looked like All-Star teams.
Harris, the fiery competitor who once stopped a car to beat up a player who was mouthing off and who regularly jawed with umpires, was a constant source of intensity or inspiration.
"When you have Gibson, Leonard, Charleston and people like that surrounding you, the Vic Harrises of the world don't always get the same shot," Kendrick said. "It's great that people are starting to pay respect to Vic Harris."
It's also important to note what Harris was like off the field. Judith Harris, Vic's daughter who's now 78, said she saw a completely different person at home. She and her brother Ronnie (who's deceased) could talk to her dad about anything and never saw his notorious temper.
Vic would umpire neighborhood games of stick ball and taught Judith how to hit. Judith remembers translating for her dad whenever he managed a winter ball team (Santurce) in the late 1940s. Alsberry remembers his uncle having a warm presence whenever he told stories.
"He wasn't vicious as far as we were concerned," said Judith, who now lives in Warren, Ohio. "He was a very nice, warm person at home."
The story of Harris also has some strong geographical ties, as Harris was not alone when it comes to his family's impact on the Negro Leagues.
Rob Ruck, a Pitt professor, sports historian and accomplished author, considers the Harrises one of the first families of Pittsburgh sports, in the same category as the Bruces (Clarence, Kirk, Jennifer and more) or Gibsons (Josh, Josh Jr. and Sean).
Greenlee, the Crawfords' owner, purchased a team that was originally the mix of McKelvey High and Watt School outfits put together by Vic's brother Bill and "Teenie" Harris (no relation) and named after the Crawford Bath House. Meanwhile, another of Vic's brothers, Neal, played for the talented Edgar Thompson Steel Works team that also eventually fed into the Crawfords.
"The Harrises are absolutely at the heart of the baseball story in Pittsburgh," Ruck said.
Yet Ruck also agrees with Kendrick in that most are unaware of Vic Harris, his legacy or the fact that he was on the National Baseball Hall of Fame ballot (Early Baseball Era Committee) this past December.
They don't know that Harris compiled a record of 547-278 (.663) over 845 games, per Baseball Reference. Or that his eight pennants are by far the most in Negro Leagues history and more than twice as many as anyone other than Charleston, who has six. Or that Harris was a Negro Leagues-best 269 games over .500, or that only Monarchs skipper Bullet Rogan (.698) had a better winning percentage.
Harris also managed the '48 Grays, who defeated Willie Mays' Birmingham Barons in the last Negro World Series.
"If anyone were going to elect a manager based upon what he did during the 1920-48 period in the major Negro Leagues, I don't see how the line starts with anybody but Harris," said Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs, who wrote "The Cooperstown Casebook" and even created his own stat (JAWS) to analyze Hall of Fame candidacy.
Harris being overlooked may be a product of managing such incredible players. As Ruck joked, "I have a feeling I could have won with some of those teams." But the Pitt professor is also quick to point out the composition of all great teams across sport.
The best ones are made up of all ingredients: stars, yes, but also people like Harris with a unique style (even if it might've been nuts) and also versatility, where someone who routinely ranked among the leaders in doubles and triples and had a 113 career OPS+ could also manage because that's what his club needed.
"If you're playing with Gibson and Leonard, they overshadow everybody. And understandably so. They're larger than life," Ruck said. "But think about any great team. There are always going to be a few people who garner the publicity and the attention. It wouldn't be a great team if there weren't other people."
Alsberry, Harris' nephew, might've said it best.
Growing up, Alsberry loved spending time at his uncle Vic's house because you never knew who you might meet; Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda and even Roberto Clemente were regular guests, occasionally joining Alsberry and his buddies for a game of pickup baseball.
If some of the greatest players in the game viewed Harris as an equal, perhaps it's time for everyone else to take the same view of his career.
"He was a great man, a great player and a great manager," Alsberry said. "He needs to be recognized more than he is."
