#Shortstops: Bobo Gets Suspended

For his part, Newsom was ready to prove that he could still pitch. When a reporter asked if he was ready to help the Lookouts, he replied: “Son, I’ve been ready for 20 years. They ain’t got nuthin’ to worry ‘bout so long as Ol’ Bobo’s throwing for ‘um.”

Newsom backed up his statement by quickly becoming the ace of the team. Halfway through the season, he had a 10-7 record and was selected to pitch in the Southern Association All-Star Game. He fully expected to be recalled to the Senators but never got the call.

Believing that Engel was not trying hard enough to get him back to the majors, Newsom decided to quit the team. On July 13, as the team was about to board a train to start a road trip, Newsom told them that he was not going. Lookouts manager Fred Walters tried to talk him out of it, but Newsom wouldn’t change his mind.

Lookouts outfielder and fellow South Carolinian Junior Wooten was angered by Newsom’s refusal to get on the train. Giving him a piece of his mind, Wooten told him: “Listen, Bobo. If you’re serious about running out on us, I don’t want anything else to do with you. You’re letting us down when we need you, and I never thought that you would do that. If you don’t get on that train with us, I’m off you for life.”

Perplexed by his protest, Engel suspended Newsom indefinitely and told sportswriters: “If you can find out what he hopes to gain out of this foolish move, let me know."

Griffith supported Engel, saying: “When Newsom walked out on Chattanooga he walked out on any possible chance of recall by the Senators.”

Bobo responded to both men by saying that Engel “should have considered my side of (the story) more than he did” and that “it seems funny that (Griffith) would make that kind of remark about someone who has done what I have done for him.”

Weighing in on the situation, sports cartoonist Gene Mack drew a cartoon of Newsom that appeared in the Sporting News. A part of the Gene Mack Cartoon Collection, it is preserved at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s Library and Archives.

The cartoon depicts Newsom sitting on a suitcase at a train station looking dejected with two drops of sweat on his forehead. In his jacket pocket is a rolled-up paper saying “Suspension-Chattanooga.” The suitcase has stickers of all nine major league teams that Bobo had played for: the Senators, the Giants, the St. Louis Browns, the Philadelphia Athletics, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Detroit Tigers, the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago Cubs, and the New York Yankees. The caption says “I’se regusted,” a slang term popularized by the Amos ‘N’ Andy Show meaning “I am disgusted.”