Sherwood Brewer

04/23/2003 

The Chicago Tribune

Sherwood Brewer, 79, of Chicago, an All-Star second baseman in the Negro Leagues, founded a fellowship organization that worked to make sure history remembered the players and they remembered each other.

Mr. Brewer died Wednesday, April 23, in his Chicago home.

He helped demonstrate fielding fundamentals to Jackie Robinson and Ernie Banks, his teammates on the Kansas City Monarchs.

An Army veteran of World War II and the Korean War, Mr. Brewer was raised in Downstate Centralia by an aunt and uncle after his father died when he was 11 months old. He credited his uncle with sparking his love for baseball and said his break came after he played baseball with his military unit while stationed in Guam.

"I guess someone saw me. When I got out of service and back home, I had a lot of letters from different ball clubs," Mr. Brewer told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1995.

Mr. Brewer briefly managed the Monarchs and played on two other teams, the New York Cubans and the Indianapolis Clowns, in the 1940s and 1950s. The Negro Leagues existed in various forms from 1920 until 1961.

"Players like Jackie Robinson and Ernie Banks learned the game from their teammates in the Negro League, and Mr. Brewer was one of those guys," said Dennis Biddle, president of Yesterday's Negro League Baseball Players Foundation, which Mr. Brewer founded in 1996.

Banks has said in interviews that when he was homesick on a road trip with the Monarchs, Mr. Brewer made him feel better and helped keep him in the game.

"My brother was always proud of being a part of the league," said his sister, Geanette Coleman. "He talked about it all the time. He said it was hard at first to be recognized for who they were as players because there weren't a lot of people coming to watch the games of the black players. But he always spoke highly of everyone and said he was treated fairly by the fans."

Mr. Brewer also helped keep the memory of the Negro Leagues alive after he left baseball.

"What he's mainly known for is pulling the guys together after the Negro League folded," Biddle said.

A pitcher for the Chicago American Giants in 1953 and 1954, Biddle went to spring training with the Cubs in 1955, but a broken leg ended his career.

He said 180 former Negro Leagues players are alive, and most are members of the foundation Mr. Brewer launched.

Mr. Brewer also worked at a bakery at the University of Illinois at Chicago until his retirement in 1988.

Other survivors include sons Sherwood, Dwayne and Kevin; sisters Dorothy Benjamin and Hattie Leggs; a brother, Johnny Daniel; five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Services have been held.