Hooks & Runs · A podcast about baseball, music and culture.

280 - Texans in the Hall: Joe Williams, Andy Cooper and Hilton Smith w/ Thomas Kern

·1 hr 4 min·4 clips

Smokey Joe Williams struck out 27 Kansas City Monarchs at age 44.

Hooks and Runs opens with Craig and Rex checking in, as usual, before turning back to the Native Texans in the Hall of Fame series. The hosts note that they have been working through a long list of Hall of Fame players with Texas roots. This time, the focus is on three Negro Leagues pitchers. Thomas Kern joins to help sort through their careers and significance. The conversation treats the three pitchers as men who were often talked about among the best of their era. That matters because the episode is interested in how those reputations were formed. The discussion does not stay at the level of praise. It asks what these pitchers actually did on the mound. Andy Cooper comes into particular focus. The hosts and guest talk through his left-handed delivery and the edge that could give him. Buck O'Neill's descriptions are folded in as a way of reconstructing Cooper's arsenal and temperament. The report card language gives him a live arm, a running fastball, a three-quarter arm action delivery, a tight curveball, and total command of all pitches. O'Neill also pointed out that it was said that Cooper had a keen knowledge of batters. He really was very cerebral about approaching the hitters. He knew the weakness of every batter in the league and would pitch to that weakness when he was on the mound. That approach fits the show's broader habit of treating baseball history as something you can study from the ground up. The talk then places Cooper within the Detroit Stars rotation in the mid-twenties. The team was kind of mediocre, which makes his work stand out more sharply. From there, the episode follows the move that helped change his career. JL Wilkinson of the Monarchs traded for him between 1927 and 1928. That brought Cooper from a middling club to one of the class teams in the Negro Leagues. The conversation keeps showing how setting and opportunity shaped careers. It also connects baseball to broader culture. Toward the close, the hosts and guest talk about places like Pittsburgh's Hill District as a kind of mini Harlem. They link team ownership, community presence, music, and sport into one shared cultural landscape. The episode ends with that larger view intact. It presents baseball not as a sealed-off record book, but as part of community life and historical memory.

As heard by us

A careful tour of Negro Leagues pitching and the wider baseball and cultural world around it.

Hooks and Runs uses its Native Texans in the Hall of Fame series to follow three Negro Leagues pitchers who were regarded as among the best of their time. Thomas Kern gives each career its own shape, while Craig and Rex keep the talk loose and easy to follow.

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Why you'd press play

You want a calm baseball listen about three Negro Leagues pitchers, with music and culture in the mix.

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