Jake Powell was an outfielder who spent 11 years in the major leagues and played in three World Series for the Yankees, but after his baseball career was over he got involved in unlawful behavior and it led to a stunning and tragic conclusion.
On Nov. 4, 1948, Powell was at police headquarters in Washington, D.C., being questioned on charges of writing bogus checks, when he pulled a gun from his pocket and shot himself to death.
Powell’s suicide was a grisly close to a life filled with athletic achievement but marred by personal irresponsibility.
Reaching the top
Alvin Jacob Powell was born in Silver Spring, Md., in 1908, played sandlot baseball in Washington, D.C., and was signed by the hometown Senators.
Powell made his major-league debut with the Senators in 1930, spent the next three seasons in the minors and got back to the big leagues in 1934.
United Press described Powell as “a player of outstanding ability who used rough-and-ready tactics on the field and frequently did not observe training rules to the letter.”
In a game against the Tigers, Powell hit a groundball, sprinted toward the bag and crashed into Hank Greenberg, breaking the first baseman’s wrist.
On June 14, 1936, the Senators traded Powell to the Yankees for outfielder Ben Chapman. Powell hit .302 for the 1936 Yankees and achieved his greatest success in the World Series that year against the Giants.
In Game 6, with the Giants ahead, 2-0, Powell hit a two-run home run against Freddie Fitzsimmons, tying the score. Powell was 3-for-5 with four RBI and three runs scored in the game, pacing the Yankees to a 13-5 championship-clinching victory. Boxscore
Playing in a World Series lineup with Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri, Powell batted .455 with eight runs scored in six games. He produced a .538 on-base percentage with 10 hits and four walks in 26 plate appearances.
Powell also appeared in the 1937 and 1938 World Series for the Yankees.
In 1938, Powell was suspended 10 days by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis for making a racist comment during a radio interview in Chicago.
Head case
On April 10, 1940, the Yankees were working their way north after spring training in Florida and stopped in Ashland, Ky., to play an exhibition game. Powell was pursuing a fly ball when he crashed into an iron light pole and suffered a head injury, most likely a concussion and possibly a fractured skull.
Powell was sidelined until July 15 and was limited to playing in 12 games for the 1940 Yankees.
Powell spent the next two seasons (1941-42) in the minors before he returned to the big leagues with the Senators in 1943.
In July 1945, the Senators sent Powell to the Phillies. He had a hit and a RBI in each game of a doubleheader against the Cardinals on Sept. 16, 1945, at St. Louis.
Comeback try
Powell was out of baseball in 1946 and 1947. He and his wife and daughter resided in Dayton, Ohio, and Powell worked as a factory guard. He wasted most of his baseball earnings “betting horses and on wine and song,” the Dayton Daily News reported, and “gambled away” his first World Series check.
“He became bitter and was subject to fits of brooding which led him to drink,” Los Angeles Examiner columnist Vincent X. Flaherty reported. “He faded rapidly after that and the downward path became increasingly tragic.”
In 1948, Powell, 40, attempted a baseball comeback in the Florida State League with the Gainesville G-Men, who were managed by his former Yankees teammate, Myril Hoag. Powell hit .220 in 31 games and met Josephine Amber, 34, co-owner of a nightclub in Deland, Fla.
In late October 1948, Powell and Amber traveled to Washington, D.C., and checked into the Ambassador Hotel, registering as Mr. and Mrs. Powell. They stayed at the hotel for three days and Powell cashed about $300 in personal checks drawn on a bank in Dayton, according to the New York Daily News.
On Nov. 4, 1948, Powell and Amber checked out of the hotel and paid with a check. A hotel manager became suspicious and told another employee to follow the pair, the Baltimore Evening Sun reported. The manager called the Dayton bank and learned Powell had no account there. The hotel employee followed Powell and Amber to Union Station and police met them there as the couple waited to board a train to New York.
Powell was arrested on suspicion of writing bogus checks and taken to police headquarters. Amber went with them.
Deadly decision
At headquarters, police learned a warrant was issued a few weeks earlier charging Powell with passing a bogus check at a drugstore in Washington, D.C. Police also discovered Powell was wanted in Florida on bad check charges and Dayton police said Powell “had been in trouble numerous times in recent years on charges of passing bad checks.”
While being questioned about the charges, Powell asked to speak to Amber, “a tall blonde in a red dress,” according to the Baltimore newspaper.
The request was granted and Powell stepped a few paces away and outside the door, though two detectives stood nearby and kept watch with the door open, the Associated Press reported.
Amber suddenly shouted, “You’d better frisk him.”
“To hell with it,” Powell said. “I’m going to end it all.”
Powell took a .25-caliber revolver from his pocket, fired a shot in his chest and another in his right temple. He was pronounced dead 10 minutes later.
Police didn’t customarily search suspects arrested on bad check charges, the Dayton Daily News reported.
Wedding plans
Amber told police she and Powell planned to get married that day, but canceled the plan and decided to go to New York and get married there, the Baltimore newspaper reported.
Powell’s wife, Elizabeth, told reporters she and Powell were not divorced and had been married since 1932.
Amber told police she’d known Powell for about four months and knew nothing about the charges against him.
In a column for the New York Herald Tribune after Powell’s death, Red Smith described him as “a guy who never knew fear and never knew what was good for him, a guy who always acted on impulse and was wrong more often than not.”
Good lord, what a tragic story.
Yes, I didn’t know about Jake Powell and decided to do this post after coming across a line about his death while researching another story.
No McCovey thread?
Thanks for asking. Here’s a link to my post on Willie McCovey’s mammoth home run vs. the Cardinals: https://retrosimba.com/2012/08/17/willie-mccovey-and-his-legendary-st-louis-home-run/ Also, check out the tweets on the right side of the home page for info I tweeted about McCovey.
Jake Powell was suspended from baseball for 10 days after being interviewed live on WGN by Bob Elson. Upon being asked how he kept in shape during the off season, Powell, who claimed to be a policeman in his home town in Dayton, Ohio, replied that he kept in shape by “cracking niggers over the head with my blackjack.”
Jake Powell was a loathsome bigot. ESPN.com did a piece on the incident you cite and I linked to it within my story.