William Randall (baseball)

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William Talton “Sonny” Randall (August 5, 1915 – February 13, 2013) was an American baseball outfielder who played in the Negro leagues during the 1940s. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed. Born in Phoebus, Virginia, he moved with his family to Washington, D.C., as a child and left school during the Depression to help his family. In the 1930s he played on local semi-pro teams, including the Washington Indians, Black Sox, and Aztecs.

Randall made his Negro leagues debut in 1942 with the Homestead Grays and also played for the Washington Homestead Grays in 1942 and 1946. During World War II he played for the U.S. Navy’s Great Lakes Training Center team, the Blue Jackets. After the war he sometimes played for the Grays but often avoided long road trips because of the hardships of travel in segregated America, so he mostly played at home games. He still faced racism from fans and in many towns, where hotels and restaurants were whites-only.

Outside baseball, he had a long career as a federal employee with the Navy and NASA for 31 years. After retirement he worked as a chauffeur for U.S. Senators Milton Young, Howard Baker, and Ted Stevens and for DC-area law firms, finally retiring in 2001 after more than 70 years of work. He lived in Temple Hills, Maryland with his wife of 55 years, Ann Turner Randall. Randall died on February 13, 2013, in Columbia, Maryland after complications from a stroke.