Dismukes had a 37-year career in Negro League baseball that spanned all aspects of the game. He began in 1913 as a submarine pitcher with the Philadelphia Giants and played until the early 1930s. He then spent 20 years as a coach, manager, team business manager, and, ultimately, secretary of the Negro National League. While overseas during WWI, he reputedly taught major leaguer Carl Mays how to pitch.
One of the top black pitchers of the 1910s, Dismukes pitched the Brooklyn Royal Giants to the Eastern Negro Championship in 1914, then started three times in the four-game Black World Series against the Chicago American Giants. The Royal Giants lost the series, but no record of Dismukes’s efforts remain. His most productive years as a pitcher were spent with the Indianapolis ABC’s. He appeared with them in three games of the 1916 Black World Series, starting two and going 1-1. He was 11-6 for the ABC’s in 1920, the first year of his career five-time 20-game winner notched a career-high 30 victories in 1961. From 1958 through 1964, he never worked fewer than 44 games or 263 innings a season.
