Radcliffe played every chance he got. Besides the Negro leagues, he joined other black players on barnstorming tours involving games against the best major leaguers. He played during the winters on teams in California. He played a few seasons in North Dakota. He played in Mexico. "We had a good team in Mexico. We took names." He played in Cuba and says he saw Fidel Castro play. But over a peach cobbler for dessert, and a second glass of lemonade, Duty all but dismisses the Cuban dictator's baseball ability: "He wasn't much."
Radcliffe played in several Negro leagues East-West all-star games, either as a pitcher or a catcher.
Ted Radcliffe, a Chicago White Sox fan who attended Opening Day, once tried to rekindle people's love for baseball after the shady scandal of 1919.
(Dudley M. Brooks -- The Washington Post)
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On the 1945 Kansas City Monarchs, he roomed with Robinson, who broke the major league color barrier with Brooklyn in 1947. "He was a good fellow," Duty says. "If he asked a question, he'd listen to you."
Over the years, Baseball Hall of Fame voters have failed to elect "Double Duty," but he still has a chance to be enshrined. An independent research project on the Negro leagues, initiated by the Hall of Fame, is in the process of compiling facts and figures on the black players of yesteryear. One of the panel's objectives, a Hall official said, is to make sure no player has been overlooked for possible induction.
Even as the work goes on, one historian involved in the statistics gathering already has formed an opinion about "Double Duty."
"I'm not sure he's a Hall of Famer as a pitcher or as a catcher or as a manager, but as far as a whole career, there's no doubt about it," said Dick Clark of Ypsilanti, Mich.
"He's been a wonderful exponent of the Negro leagues," Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, a standout with the Negro leagues' Newark Eagles and later the New York Giants, said from his home in Florida. "He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame as a player and an ambassador of the game."
Duty isn't campaigning. When asked about his absence from the Hall, he says: "I don't care about it anymore. It's all right. It's all right."
Meanwhile, Duty keeps active, despite needing a wheelchair and suffering from asthma. A White Sox fan, he plans to attend many of the team's home games this season, including the opener the next afternoon at nearby U.S. Cellular Field.
"Are you going to the game? Are you coming with us?" he asks two visitors from Washington as he gets up to leave the cafe. "Okay. Come see me at noon tomorrow. We'll talk it over."
Celebrity Sightings
Duty has lived in the same senior citizens residence, on 38th Street, since 1990. Alberta, his wife of 58 years, died in 1992. They had no children.
Duty remains the resident celebrity.
"How ya feelin', Duty?" an employee inquires as Radcliffe sits in his wheelchair in front of a picture window in the lobby. He has on a brown leather jacket with a Negro Leagues Baseball Museum patch. He's wearing a White Sox cap. It's past noon, and he is waiting for Debra to pick him up and take him to the game. The Sox are playing Cleveland. Until just a few years ago, Duty would drive himself. But she and others persuaded him to turn over the keys to his Mercury Grand Marquis.
"What's up, Duty?" someone asks.
