A new historic marker in Hockessin memorializes a baseball star most locals probably never heard of. 

During his prime in the 1920s, James “Nip” Winters dominated batters across the Negro Leagues. Following his career in baseball, the Washington, D.C., native lived a quiet life in Hockessin until his death.  

“He was known as a baseball player, but the magnitude of his ability was not highly recognized because communication was not like it is now,” said James “Sonny” Knott, who grew up in Hockessin and used to see Winters walking down the road to work. “He was quiet and wasn’t one to brag.” 

A plaque honoring Winters’ baseball achievements was placed last month at the corner of Evanson and Valley roads. The marker is to become a signpost among others noting the rich history of blacks in Hockessin. 

Winters was born in 1899. He started his professional career with Virginia’s Norfolk Stars. A southpaw, Winters stood 6 feet, 5 inches, towering over most batters.

“He was known as a fastball pitcher, but sometimes it could be wild,” said Knott, who was also friends with Judy Johnson, a more well-known Negro League star from Wilmington. 

Decades before Jackie Robinson shattered professional baseball’s color divide in the 1940s, black players would take rickety buses from town to town as far west as Kansas City, playing against other teams of blacks for crowds sometimes topping 25,000, said Ron Whittington, an instructor who teaches about the the cultural impact of sports at the University of Delaware. 

It was not glamorous. With segregation in full bloom, Negro League teams would sometimes have trouble finding a place to stay. A white man usually accompanied the team bus and he would go into restaurants to get the players food. 

“They lived pretty much in hardship on the road,” Whittington said.

Like many other players, Winters would spent some offseasons in Florida. There he split time between working at resort hotels and playing for the local hotel leagues, according to research conducted by Dr. Layton Revel, who runs the nonprofit Center for Negro League Baseball Research. He also played some offseasons in Cuba. 

“He was one of the great pitchers of early black baseball. In the early ’20s, there was not a more dominant pitcher in baseball,” said Revel, whose organization compiles statistics and artifacts from the Negro Leagues and organizes reunions for former players. 

Winters saw the best years of his career with the Hilldale Athletic Club, based south of Philadelphia in Darby. The club was informally known as the Darby Daisies and would often play games at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park. 

Winters competed in the first ever Negro League World Series in 1923 with his Daisies losing to Kansas City. That began a run of five years in which Winters led the Eastern Negro League in wins, games pitched, strikeouts and complete games. He led Hilldale to the Negro League World Series crown in 1924, according to Revel.

But Winters then began a nomadic phase of his career in 1928 leaving Hilldale for New York. Revel said a combination of losing control of his fastball and a drinking problem contributed to the loss of his elite status. 

“He was one of the unsung heroes of the Negro League,” Revel said. “Some people characterize him as a drunk. He probably drank more than most people but lived a respectable life … In 1923 he was the best black pitcher in baseball.” 

He went on to play for no fewer than seven teams in the United States and Canada for the balance of his career and never again reached his Hilldale highs

“Nip was kind of a nomad. He never really had a home until he moved here to Delaware,” Whittington said. 

Nobody is quite sure exactly how Winters came to be in Delaware.

Sometime in the 1930s, he married Sarah Smith, the daughter of a black farmer in Hockessin named Jake Smith. The two lived in Smith’s two-story farmhouse at the corner of Valley and Evanson Roads, according to Joe Lake, head of the Hockessin Historical Society, which helped organize the marker commemorating Winters. 

It was the height of the Great Depression and agriculture was still a large employer in Hockessin. Winters found a job at the Hockessin Supply Company, a farm supplier now home to the Hockessin Corner shopping center. There, his muscular frame hurled 100-pound bags and coal or feed instead of baseballs. 

“He was a tall, slim man who always had a smile. He was a highly respectable man. You learned a lot about being a gentleman just by seeing him,” Knott said.

With his career behind him, Jean Fleming, a family friend of Winters’, said the former professional could sometimes be seen playing for the Hockessin Hornets, the local neighborhood team. She said he rarely spoke about his professional days.

“He would tell us stories about his time in South America, but he wasn’t a bragger. You wouldn’t have known he was a professional player from him talking,” Fleming said.

Winters died in 1971. His home was demolished by New Castle County to make way for a park that today houses a baseball field.

“They played the game because they loved it,” Knott said. “I’m proud to see this plaque here now because who knows about Nip Winters.”

The plaque is eventually going to be a way-point on a walking trail of Hockessin’s black history. The trail, most of which already exists, will pass by a marker for Tweeds Tavern. The tavern was built around 1790 and is notable because it housed slaves just a few miles away from the freedom of Pennsylvania.

The trail will also pass the old home of state Sen. John Jackson, who was a civil engineer for the Wilmington and Western Railroad and station manager for the underground railroad. A marker has been proposed for that site, Lake said. 

A short distance away from Jackson’s home, is the site where the first black school in Delaware once stood. That school was built in 1800s when it was illegal to teach blacks, Lake said. From there, a walk up Evanson Road leads to Hockessin School 107C, the center of Delaware’s piece of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case. A marker also notes the home of Shirley Bulah, who prompted Delaware’s involvement in that landmark case.

“It is all there, you go from slavery to the underground railroad to the education of blacks to a black baseball player,” Lake said. “It is all within a walk or a nice bicycle ride. It is a lot of history.”

Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com. Follow @Ber_Xerxes on Twitter.