Thompson had hit .256 in 78 at-bats with the Browns, with just two extra-base hits. But he was still only 21, and retained a chance to return to the bigs, where the money was. That winter, Thompson made a sizable chunk of change barnstorming and playing ball in Cuba, where he also met his future wife, Maria Quesada.
The world was still wide open for Hank, then, far more so than it was to the great majority of black people of the era. But upon returning to Kansas City, Hank made a fateful decision—he bought a gun, a .32 automatic that he purchased on the street for $26. “Some older players were carrying guns and I always liked to do what the older guys did,” Thompson said in the Sport magazine story. “I carried it in my pocket. It made me feel like a man.”
This explains why Hank was armed when he went out drinking with his sister Margaret and her husband on the early spring night of April 4, 1948. He was back in Dallas, en route to San Antonio, where the Monarchs held spring training. After “half a beer,” he bumped into an old acquaintance from his youth baseball days, a black man with the highly ironic name of Jim Crow, whom everyone called “Buddy.” He was a “feisty drunk,” according to Hank. “I saw him cut another boy with a knife and the boy stood there holding his intestines in his hands.”
Like many guys from Hank's old neighborhood, Crow resented Hank’s success at the sport they both grew up playing, and especially resented the financial aspect of that success. “Hello, Mr. Moneyman,” Crow sneered to Hank. As a peace gesture, Hank bought him a beer, but moments later, Crow had overturned a nearby table and stormed toward Hank, knife in hand.
“I’m gonna get you,” Crow snarled.
Hank pulled his gun, yelled “Stop!” two or three times, and when Crow got within stabbing range, Thompson shot Buddy Crow three times in the chest.
Margaret got her brother out of there fast, not that police in mid-century Texas were worried much about responding swiftly to incidents of black-on-black crime. Hank figured Crow had not left him any choice, but remorse broke through anyway. “I could have turned and run, or I could have let him cut my throat,” he later wrote. “Either one would have been better.” When he was told the next morning that Crow was dead, Hank turned himself in to the police.