The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Confusing characters, discordant story hamper ‘Good Bad People’
Play’s central figure lacking real presence further skews account.
Kudos to True Colors Theatre artistic director Jamil Jude for having the courage to produce the world premiere of an unfamiliar, untested new show.
The relatively unknown playwright is Rachel Lynett, whose previous credits include projects commissioned by theater companies in Florida and Massachusetts, in addition to several staged readings and workshops of other scripts elsewhere.
But the best of intentions aren’t always enough. Lynett’s “Good Bad People,” directed for True Colors by Ibi Owolabi (Synchronicity’s “The Bluest Eye”), purports to deal with the tragedy of an unarmed young Black man senselessly shot and killed by white police officers, this time as a result of mistaken identity, and its impact on his affluent Los Angeles family.
That the play isn’t based on real people or a factual event shouldn’t make it any less gripping as a lamentable commentary on contemporary racial injustice. What does make it less gripping is that the character of the wrongfully slain Amiri Johnson remains such a curiously incidental presence in his own story.
The first indication of dysfunction among the Johnsons emerges from the outset, when the prodigal lesbian daughter, June (Veanna Black), arrives home after several years away to learn that her father has simply gone to Las Vegas. It seems he “didn’t want to deal with” any potential publicity surrounding Amiri’s death, let alone attend his son’s funeral. Alarmingly, no one in the family bothered to reach out and notify June; she heard about her brother’s death on social media.
Like their father, June’s younger sister, Audre (Asia Rogers), an environmental lobbyist engaged to a Jewish mayoral candidate, would just as soon downplay the situation. Why call attention to it by having the family issue a formal statement or take legal action, if it could jeopardize her fiance’s polit
for long enough to meet his pension needs. In case there was any doubt about what he was doing, he assigned Satchel No. 65, the age at which his retirement salary would kick in.
“Baseball would have been guilty of negligence should it not assure this legendary figure a place in the pension plan,” the owner said at the signing in 1968. Looking back 40 years on, Bartholomay said Satchel justified his faith by performing sensationally as a goodwill ambassador.
He did it partly by signing autographs and spending time with fans. The team was new to Atlanta, and its fans were new to the team and often to baseball itself. Satchel helped with the adjustment. An even richer dividend from hiring him came during the summer of 1968, when riots were raging and cities burning in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Having a bridge-builder like Satchel was reassuring to Atlanta
and to the Braves. He was not the only Black player on the team, just the bestknown and most-trusted. Satchel had suffered the Jim Crow racial segregation King railed against and embodied the preacher’s dream of an integrated America.
“He came to us four months after the King funeral in Atlanta,” Bartholomay
said. “Those were pretty tough times for African-americans and the country in its entirety. Satchel understood that. He helped in a way that went way beyond baseball.”
Life with Satchel brought new touches to Atlanta’s start-up franchise. A rocking chair was installed in front of his locker. He had young teammates toting his fishing gear and serving as gophers.
“He called me Daffy,” said Dusty Baker, now an established manager in the major leagues who guided the Houston Astros to the 2022 World Series title. “I said, ‘My name is Dusty.’ He said, ‘Daffy, I know what your name is.’”
On the bus he broke the mournful quiet after painful losses, getting the team laughing with tales of Negro League buddy Cool Papa Bell hitting a popup so high that it took a full day for it to fall back to Earth. On the plane he carried his typewriter, along with a suitcase, clothes bag and attaché case.
Phil Niekro, the world’s most accomplished knuckleballer, recalled Satchel sitting at the back of the plane by himself with his case on the pull-out tray. “I was going to the bathroom and he said, ‘Niekro, sit down for a second. Do you drink?’ I said that I have one now and then and he said, ‘What would you like?’ Anything I wanted was there in his little case.”
What impressed the Torre brothers was Satchel’s attitude about life. “He was always sort of being thankful for just being alive. He was thankful he got the opportunity to play in the majors even as late as he got it,” Frank said. “It was all about life and Satchel enjoyed living,” agreed Joe, who also became a successful manager: “He never stopped thinking young.”
They called Satchel a trainer, but “he didn’t do any training,” recalled Dave Pursley, the Braves’ former real trainer. What he wanted to do was pitch. Bartholomay was concerned about his eyesight, “which was going pretty rapidly. We worried that he wouldn’t see a line drive coming back to him.” But Satchel proved that even at the age of 62 the crack of a bat was enough to tell him where the ball was headed, and he pitched a couple of innings in an exhibition game for the Braves’ highest-level minor league team, then in Richmond.
It was a faceoff for the ages when fellow Mobilian Hank Aaron stepped to the plate: history’s greatest hurler against its greatest hitter. Satchel was smiling as he unleashed his first one, a slow-arcing pitch. Hank had stepped out of the box, but too late. Strike one. The next was slower still. Hank dropped his bat into the dirt in disgust. Strike two. The future home run champ checked his swing on the next pitch, making the count one ball, two strikes.
“Now Aaron, still glowering at his old friend, stepped forward in the box as far as rules would allow,” Wilt Browning, who covered the Braves for The Atlanta Journal, remembered years later. “Again Paige’s pitch came floating toward the plate out of the fading light of early evening. Aaron tried to time the pitch. He made a mighty swing. The ball clicked weakly against the top of Aaron’s bat and flew softly, with little arc, to the waiting third baseman for the out. The old man pounded his bony fist into his glove with the sort of youthful joy all of us could understand.”