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A baseball murder 75 years ago

As law enforcement officers tightened their dragnet on Oscar Harris in Virginia, Leon Perry's teammates on the Black Meteors baseball team carried Perry's casket as his funeral procession headed to Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, Delaware County.

It was early September 1940, 75 years ago, and Harris was fleeing authorities after he shot and killed the affable, popular Perry – whose Black Meteors were the pride of the South Philadelphia African-American population – in a South Street taproom on the night of Aug. 31.

For several years, Perry had manned first base for the top-flight semipro black team, earning a reputation as a hard-working, laid-back competitor and teammate, especially during the 1940 season, when the Meteors were at the height of their sandlot powers.

"Perry, a well-known figure in Philadelphia baseball, was one of the mainstays of the Black Meteors in their semi-pro campaign this summer," stated the Sept. 5, 1940, Philadelphia Tribune. "He was known as a quiet, unassuming chap, who seldom had much to say and hardly ever took part in the ordinary bickering so typical of a baseball game."

Meanwhile, Harris was probably a drifter who, according to police reports, set in motion a fight with Perry in Lyons Bar on the night in question when Harris suggestively brushed against a female acquaintance who was conversing with the 25-year-old Perry.

The woman took offense, and when Perry, who by all accounts wasn't drinking that night, stood up to defend her honor, a drunken Harris pulled a pistol and shot Perry in the temple.

After the murder, witnesses identified Harris out of hundreds of mugshots as the killer fled south. Police launched an all-out blitz to find the culprit, who was ultimately nabbed at his father's house in Halifax, Va., about two weeks after the crime.

Perry's short life was dogged by tragedy. He was born in Aiken, S.C., in roughly 1915, to Abraham Perry and the former Lila, or Lela, Harrison. Abraham was a farm laborer by trade, according to the 1920 census, but in November 1921, he drowned in the Santee River, possibly while toiling on one of the several bridge and other construction projects that helped modernize rural South Carolina.

After that, the widowed Lila and her son headed north to Philadelphia, but the cruel twists of fate were far from through with Leon Perry. After marrying Philadelphia native Bessie Young and having two children, Leon Jr. and Bernice, Perry watched his 22-year-old wife and their unborn third child die from a rare pregnancy disorder in April 1939.

By 1940, Leon Perry was living on Catherine Street with his two surviving children and mother and laboring at a stone quarry. He was also playing for the Black Meteors, a semipro outfit just a smidge below the top professional Negro League teams in the state, the Philadelphia Stars and Pittsburgh's Homestead Grays; in fact, the Meteors shocked the Grays in late July 1940 by tying them.

In doing so, the Meteors, with skipper Tank Nix stabilizing the team after an early-season managerial shakeup, were all the rage in black South Philly.

"If the Philadelphia Stars represent Philadelphia," the Tribune asserted on July 25, 1940,  "the Meteors take the part of South Philadelphia. Every Friday and Sunday the boys are on display and the Dixie end of the city is on hand to cheer them on.

"When we say cheer, we mean cheer," the paper added. "Such whooping and hollering you never heard before. The crowd is solidly for the Meteors and has no hesitation in telling the world who its heroes are."

Things were humming along for the Meteors and Perry until that night in Lyons Bar when Harris completed the triumvirate of tragedy that was Leon Perry's life: Perry's father, his wife, and then Leon himself.

About 300 people attended Leon's funeral, with several teammates taking part in the services at Union Baptist Church in South Philadelphia. The floral arrangements were punctuated by one bouquet in the shape of three bats and a baseball, and another shaped like a mitt with a ball in the center.

After the funeral, the Meteors played a team composed of players from the 40th and 30th wards, with Perry's old mates topping the challengers, 5-3. The game served as a benefit for Lila, Bernice and Leon Jr.; two Boy Scouts blew Taps as 600 spectators passed a hat to give the proceeds to Lila.

The killer, meanwhile, was on the lam. When caught and hauled back to Philadelphia, he initially pleaded self-defense in court. Harris asserted it was he, not Perry, who was conversing with a woman when Perry "picked up a bottle or pitcher and hit me on the head. Seeking to protect myself, I shot him." (The woman's name was never divulged.)

That was in late September, but it wasn't long before Harris confessed to the murder and received six to 20 years in prison.

As for Perry's teammates, the Meteors soldiered on for a few more weeks until their season closed in mid-September with a doubleheader on the 26th and Snyder diamond against the Curry All-Stars and an all-star club from the South Philadelphia League for the informal title of southside champs.

"The Meteors figure they can take both ends of the twinbill and are out to show that they are the classiest club in South Philly," the Tribune reported. "Despite the unfortunate death of teammate Leon Perry, the Meteors will be out doing their best, as the first baseman would have wanted them to do."