The Mightiest ‘Oak’: Buzz Arlett

In its “golden age” of the 1920s, Eastern baseball fans had the Great Bambino—a made-to-order superstar salesman of the game named George Herman “Babe” Ruth. Fans out west had their own American hero—a 6’3″ switch-hitting, hometown favorite named Russell “Buzz” Arlett.

During 13 seasons with the Oakland Oaks of the old Pacific Coast League, women swooned, opposing pitchers cringed and turnstiles whirled in every league city as Arlett grew bigger than life on the diamond. His play led the Society for American Baseball Research to rank Arlett, 50 years after he retired, as the outstanding minor league player of all time. His charm and consistency led Oaks fans to vote him their all-time favorite player.

Heroic figure

To those who saw him play, Arlett was “The Mightiest Oak,” “built on heroic lines,” a local sportswriter noted, and “handsome as most male movie stars are supposed to be and aren’t.”

He was born in 1899 in Elmhurst, now a district in East Oakland, one of four sons of a pioneer California family whose home at 1430 Auseon Avenue was just blocks away from Elmhurst Grounds where teams sponsored by local merchants faced off in weekend baseball games. The four Arlett brothers—Alexander, Russell, Richard and Harry Jr.—were mainstays in those games.

Alex “Pop” Arlett, the eldest, once had a streak of 24 straight wins, 17 of them shutouts, while pitching for the Elmhurst Merchants Association team. He went on to play professionally in the California State League until it folded in 1915, and later won a seat on the Oakland City Council.

In 1918, the family rented a cabin in Boyes Hot Springs near Sonoma where the Oaks were in spring training, playing scrimmages with East Bay semipros like the Arletts.

Buzz Arlett, who once threw a ball through a ballpark fence while pitching in Newark, took the mound in one spring exhibition game for the Maxwell Hardware club. Using a fastball and vicious spitter, he shut the Oaks down, 1-0, and won a spot on Oakland’s roster. He quit his job at the Oakland Traction Company, where he earned 11 cents an hour, to play ball full time, winning consistently in the PCL until 1923 when his arm gave out.

Like Babe Ruth before him, the sore-armed Arlett was moved to the outfield to keep his powerful bat in the lineup. He responded with a .330 batting average, 19 home runs and 101 runs batted in in 149 games.

His spot in the lineup secure, he became the most consistent and dangerous hitter in the league. In 1927, Arlett helped bring the Oaks a PCL championship. In honor of his performance that year, the Oaks filled the park with fans for “Buzz Arlett Day.”

The Depression brought hardship to the Oaks, forcing the team to sell the contracts of five key team members, including Arlett, who went to the Philadelphia Phillies for $15,000 cash. He left the PCL as its all-time career leader in home runs (251) and runs batted in (1,188)—two records that still stand.

Big league flop

As a 31-year-old rookie major leaguer, Arlett floundered in the outfield in front of the notoriously bilious Philadelphia fans. A Phillies teammate, who knew Arlett’s lackadaisical fielding from the PCL, saw him coming and suggested that groundskeepers put a rocking chair in right field to make Arlett more comfortable.

Bad fielding reduced his major league career to a single season. By 1932, he was back in the minor leagues with the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, where he became only the third man in history to hit four home runs in one game twice in the same season.

From Baltimore, he went to Birmingham, Alabama and finally to the Millers of Minneapolis, where he retired in 1934 to a profitable tavern business. For years, Arlett’s East Bay friends clamored for him to come home. A reprise “Buzz Arlett Day” in 1946 brought him back for a 10-day-long tribute, but he returned to Minneapolis, where he died in 1964.

Reprinted courtesy of the Oakland Tribune.