September 14, 1962: Kinston beats Durham for Carolina League playoff title in final Class B game

A restructuring of the financially troubled minor leagues, proposed during the 1962 season and implemented after it, eliminated Classes B, C, and D – long the lowest three levels of the minors.1 By 1962 there wasn’t much left of the Class B level: It had shrunk all the way to two leagues with 14 teams, as compared to eight leagues and 62 teams a decade earlier.

The six-team Northwest League concluded its playoffs on September 9, 1962, leaving the eight-team Carolina League as the last loop playing at the Class B level.2 Five days later, the Durham Bulls and the Kinston Eagles played the last Class B game when they wrapped up their seven-game playoff series at Durham Athletic Park.

Kinston right-hander Norbert “Norb” Lewandowski3 provided the heroics on the final day. He threw his second complete-game win in four days, as the Eagles took a 3-2 victory and claimed the playoff championship. It was also Lewandowski’s last professional game. He’d already left pro baseball once to pursue an accounting career, and after the season, he walked away for good.4

The Bulls, a Houston Colt .45s farm team managed by Lou Fitzgerald, and the Eagles, a Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate led by Hardy Peterson, had been the class of the regular season in the Carolina League. Durham won the regular-season title with an 89-51 record, while Kinston took second, six games back, at 83-57. The league played a four-team Shaughnessy-style playoff; Durham bounced fourth-place Burlington in the first round, while Kinston eliminated third-place Winston-Salem.5

The Bulls led the league in several offensive categories, including home runs, RBIs, runs scored, and on-base percentage. On offense, two 18-year-olds headed for vastly different big-league careers paced the team. First baseman Rusty Staub hit .293 with 23 homers and 93 runs batted in, while shortstop Glenn Vaughan went .289/10/71 and added 15 stolen bases. Staub went on to play 23 seasons in the majors and make six All-Star teams, while Vaughan’s career consisted of nine games with Houston in September 1963. Staub, Vaughan, and Durham teammate Aaron Pointer all started in the Colt .45s’ all-rookie lineup of September 27, 1963.

Right-handers Wally Wolf and Marvin Dutt led Durham’s pitching staff with 16 and 14 wins, respectively. Also of note was righty Don Bradey, an old man of 27 in his 10th minor-league season, who won 10 games in 14 appearances after joining Durham from Triple-A Oklahoma City.6 Bradey got the start in the playoff finale.

Most of Kinston’s key offensive contributors over the full season never played in the majors. They included outfielders Ed Napoleon7 (.285/8/68) and Rodolfo “Rudy” Welch8 (.270/16/62) and second baseman Félix Santana (.270/2/41 with 50 steals). Future big-leaguers Roberto Peña and Ron Brand hit .326 and .318 in limited duty with the Eagles, though neither one appeared in the September 14 game.9

On the pitching side of the ledger, lefty Frank Bork won 19 games and righty Steve Blass 17 for a staff that had the best ERA and most shutouts in the league. Both men were two seasons away from the majors. Bork stayed there for only one season, appearing in 33 games for the ’64 Pirates. Blass stayed for 10 seasons, winning 103 regular-season games and the clinching game of the 1971 World Series before an unexplained bout of wildness derailed his career.10

But on September 14, with stakes high, Peterson gave the start to Lewandowski, a 24-year-old from Cleveland in his third pro season. After the 1961 season, the former accounting major at Kent State University had left baseball for full-time work. Married with a child on the way, he was determined not to waste time on a dead-end minor-league career. “The minors are a great life for a single fellow with only a high school education and no thought about his future,” he told an interviewer. “But a fellow who looks beyond baseball can’t afford to play in it. He’s not ready for anything when he’s through.”11

Lewandowski admitted he was “climbing the walls” to pitch again, though, and he gave in and returned to the Washington Senators’ Raleigh farm club in the Carolina League. Winless in late July, he was released. Peterson took a gamble on him, and Lewandowski won five starts down the stretch.12 He beat Durham during the regular season in a 5-2 complete game on September 1.13 And on September 11, with the Bulls holding a two-games-to-one lead in the best-of-seven series, he pitched a complete-game 8-2 win.14 (Lewandowski also won the clinching game against Winston-Salem in the first round.15)

With 1,778 fans watching – including a large contingent who had made the roughly 110-mile trip from Kinston16 – the Eagles burst out to a lead in the top of the first inning. Left fielder Tom Martz, a .297 hitter in 33 games during the regular season, singled. One batter later, Napoleon singled to center field, where the ball rolled past Pointer to the outfield fence. Martz scored on the error, and Napoleon went all the way to third. Royce McDaniel, the Eagles’ first baseman, drove in Napoleon with another single for a 2-0 Kinston lead.17

The Bulls bounced back in the fourth to tie the game, with Pointer again in the middle of the action. Second baseman Ed Richardson singled, and one batter later, Pointer doubled. Lewandowski had good control for most of the game, walking only two batters and hitting none, but a brief wild stretch at this point hurt him. A passed ball charged to catcher Larry Fidalgo let Richardson score and Pointer move to third, and a wild pitch by Lewandowski allowed Pointer to score the tying run.

The score remained 2-2 until the top of the seventh, when sloppy defense again bit the Bulls. Kinston right fielder and eighth-place hitter Welch doubled and moved to third on an error by shortstop Vaughan, who’d committed 41 errors during the regular season.18 Martz flied out to center, and Pointer made what one reporter described as a “perfect throw” to catch Welch trying to score.19 But Bulls catcher Doug Holmquist dropped the throw for still another error, and Welch crossed the plate to give Kinston a 3-2 lead.20

Lewandowski and Bradey both worked complete games, and news stories make no mention of any rallies or sustained threats after the top of the seventh. The Eagles wrapped up their championship in exactly two hours, with Lewandowski scattering seven hits and striking out 11. Bradey allowed nine hits and struck out six. The Bulls committed four errors, an uncharacteristic performance for a team whose 190 bobbles had been lowest in the league during the regular season.21

The Carolina and Northwest leagues reclassified to Class A loops for 1963. Kinston and Durham remained in the Carolina League, so for fans there, the end of Class B was not an existential change – simply a move from an old, familiar structure to a new one that would take time to get used to. Durham’s veteran Bradey landed with San Antonio in the Double-A Texas League in 1963; he kept plugging long enough to reach the majors briefly with Houston in September and October 1964.

Winning manager Peterson said he hoped to bring Lewandowski with him wherever he managed in 1963. “He is a smart pitcher and helped our pitching staff very much in the short time he was with us. He is not fast, but he is always around the plate,” Peterson said.22

Peterson returned to Kinston in 1963, but the pitcher who powered the Eagles’ pennant run did not join him. Lewandowski co-founded a certified public accounting firm in Cleveland and became a motivational speaker. He pitched amateur baseball until 1971, when he quit to support his children’s youth sports activities.23 Lewandowski retired as president of the company he founded in the fall of 1992, 30 years after his last hurrah in Class B.24

Author’s note and acknowledgments

This story is part of a three-story package about the final games played at the Class B, Class C, and Class D levels.

This story was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team and season data. Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet offers box scores for minor-league games, but the September 15, 1962, editions of the Durham (North Carolina) Morning Herald and Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer printed box scores.

Image of 1966 Houston Astros photocard of Aaron Pointer downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 The “Player Development Plan,” proposed in May 1962 and approved at baseball’s winter meetings in December, provided additional major-league funding to stabilize the minors, but reduced the number of minor-league classifications. Although contemporary stories said the revamped minors would be divided into Triple A, Double A, and Class A, two lower levels – short-season Class A and Rookie level – were also added. United Press International, “Major Leagues Adopt Plan to Aid Foundering Minors,” Allentown (Pennsylvania) Morning Call, May 19, 1962: 12; Clifford Kachline, “Majors Pick Up $10 Million Tab in Minors,” The Sporting News, December 15, 1962: 5. As of November 2025, Baseball-Reference’s incomplete minor-league records included Class B teams as early as the 1890s. The existence of Classes A, B, C, and D were confirmed and cemented in fall 1901 by the creation of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, a central organization for minor-league teams. “Independence of Minor Leagues,” New London (Connecticut) Day, September 14, 1901: 7.

2 “Wenatchee Defeats Braves to Win NWL Flag,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland, Washington), September 10, 1962: 11.

3 Some wire-service accounts of the game call him Norm Lewandowski. Baseball-Reference lists him as Norbert J. Lewandowski, and news stories that focused exclusively on him called him Norb, such as Hal Lebovitz, “No Future in Minor League Baseball, Clevelander Finds,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 10, 1962: 26.

4 Lebovitz. Research for this story did not find any news items in which Lewandowski formally announced his retirement. But Baseball-Reference lists no pro appearances by the pitcher after 1962, and several Cleveland Plain Dealer stories from 1963 have him playing amateur ball in Cleveland, including “Sullivan is New Class A Threat,” May 12, 1963: 8C.

5 Associated Press, “Kinston vs. Durham in Carolina Finals,” Washington (North Carolina) Daily News, September 7, 1962: 7; “Carolina League” (standings), Winston-Salem (North Carolina) Journal, September 6, 1962: 13.

6 Bradey, born October 4, 1934, was a few weeks away from turning 28. The average age of the Bulls’ pitching staff, Bradey included, was 22.1 years.

7 Napoleon reached the majors as a coach with five different teams between 1983 and 2000 but never played in the bigs.

8 As of November 2025, Baseball-Reference listed the player as Rodolfo Welch; in 1962 game accounts, he was Rudy Welch.

9 Peña was unavailable due to a broken ankle, while Brand had been called up to Pittsburgh’s Triple-A farm club in Columbus, Ohio. Walt Riddle, “Shot in Dark Netted Playoff Crown for Kinston’s Eagles,” Asheville (North Carolina) Citizen, September 18, 1962: 14; “Columbus, Asheville Farm Clubs of Pirates Improve,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 21, 1962: 32.

10 After his playing career ended, Blass was also a member of the Pirates’ broadcast team for many years.

11 Lebovitz, “No Future in Minor League Baseball, Clevelander Finds.”

12 Lebovitz; Riddle, “Shot in Dark Netted Playoff Crown for Kinston’s Eagles.”

13 “Kinston Stops Durham, 5-2,” Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer, September 2, 1962: II:2.

14 Associated Press, “Bulls Lose 8-2 to Lewandowski,” Burlington (North Carolina) Daily Times-News, September 12, 1962: 7B.

15 Associated Press, “Kinston vs. Durham in Carolina Finals.”

16 “Bulls Beaten in Play-Offs,” Durham (North Carolina) Sun, September 15, 1962: 8. Mileage calculated in Google Maps, November 2025.

17 Unless otherwise noted, all game action is taken from Associated Press, “Eagles Top Durham, 3-2, in 7th Tilt,” Raleigh News and Observer, September 15, 1962: 10, and Allan McDuff, “Bulls’ Defense Collapses, Eagles Win Playoffs, 3 to 2,” Durham (North Carolina) Morning Herald, September 15, 1962: 2B.

18 Game accounts do not specify the nature of Vaughan’s error. Vaughan might have misplayed the return throw from the outfield to allow Welch to advance, or perhaps he made a throwing or fielding error on a ball hit by a subsequent batter. Two Kinston hitters came to the plate between Welch and Martz – pitcher Lewandowski and shortstop Gene Michael.

19 McDuff, “Bulls’ Defense Collapses, Eagles Win Playoffs, 3 to 2.”

20 The two game accounts cited above say that all three Kinston runs were unearned. However, box scores printed in the Durham Morning Herald and Raleigh News and Observer list Bradey as surrendering two earned runs.

21 In addition to his error during the seventh-inning Kinston rally, Vaughan committed a second error at another point in the game that was not mentioned in game stories. The Carolina League average for errors per team in 1962 was about 220.

22 Riddle, “Shot in Dark Netted Playoff Crown for Kinston’s Eagles.”

23 “Lewandowski Quits ‘A’ Ball,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 9, 1971: 48D; Terry Pluto, “Safe at Home,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 11, 2024: B1.

24 “Ohio Chamber of Commerce Replaces Retiring Chairman,” Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, October 26, 1992: D6.