He was, in the minds of many, a “bonus baby” who never paid his dues in the minors. A player on a National League championship club who was not voted a World Series share by his Braves teammates. A rarely used pitcher for Boston who had the gall to make more money than Warren Spahn. A relative unknown who was traded for October heroes and former batting champs. A malcontent, who at a certain point was one of the most despised players in San Francisco Giants history. A southpaw who, rather than play for an expansion team, chose to retire from baseball for good.

It would be wrong, however, to remember Antonelli in this fashion. He was a good southpaw whose pitching was masterful when he was healthy and brilliant when he was at ease. He wasn’t perfect, but the decisions he and his family made — especially the decision to take a boatload of Lou Perini’s money — are no different than those most any teenager with big league dreams and strong self-confidence would have undertaken.

John August “Johnny” Antonelli was born on April 12, 1930, in Rochester, New York, to Augustino “Gus” Antonelli and Josephina Messore. From Johnny’s first year at Rochester’s Jefferson High School, where he was a three-sport star (basketball, football, and baseball), he attracted major-league publicity and major-league scouts. Johnny’s father, Gus, a railroad construction contractor who had immigrated to the United States from Abruzzi, Italy, in 1913, was actively involved in nurturing and promoting his son’s baseball career. Johnny remembers that his father would “go down to spring training every year, and bring along my scrapbook and brag about me.”¹ The scrapbook Johnny refers to was a bulging tome, filled with newspaper clippings and pictures of the young Antonelli from his high school years. Occasionally, great ballplayers like Joe Cronin, Bobby Feller, and Leo Durocher were invited by the elder Antonelli to come to Rochester to take a look at both the scrapbook² and the loping curve that Johnny had developed in the semipro Vermont Hotel League in 1947.³

During those high school years, Johnny played baseball under coach Charley O’Brien, who converted him from a freshman first baseman to a pitcher (despite the teenager’s protests). Watching his son develop rapidly as a sophomore and junior hurler and fearing he might hurt his arm, Johnny’s father made him quit football and focus on baseball full time.⁴ The teenager threw three no-hitters and drew praise from scouts like Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell, who said that Antonelli had the best all-around stuff he had ever seen.

Gus began to see that his son might be a major leaguer in the making and eventually began taking him to spring training, where Johnny “talked and observed, but mostly…listened and absorbed all he could about talent and procedure.”⁵ After Johnny graduated from high school in 1948, Gus wrote to a number of ballclubs and then rented out Silver Stadium, home of the International League Rochester Red Wings, to showcase Johnny to the scouts. Nine scouts and 7,000 fans came, and the youngster did not disappoint, as Antonelli struck out 17 batters against a “strong semipro club” on his way to a no-hitter.⁶

Scouts were enthralled. The Braves, Red Sox, Yankees, Giants, Indians, Tigers, Cardinals, Pirates, and Reds were all interested. Braves scout Jeff Jones called Lou Perini, the club president, to come as quickly as possible. “He’s by far the best big-league prospect I’ve ever seen,” exclaimed the excited Jones. “He has the poise of a major league pitcher right now and has a curve and fastball to back it up. I think so much of this kid’s chances that if I had to pay out the money myself, I wouldn’t hesitate to do it — if I had the money.”⁷ Jones didn’t have that kind of money, but Perini did, and he got the youngster under contract on June 29, 1948, by giving him an amount reported in excess of $50,000, the largest bonus in baseball history at the time. Johnny has never stated the figure, but indicates that the figures reported in the press were often inflated.

Everyone knew that Gus Antonelli was involved and interested in his son’s future. With the ever-expanding scrapbook, the handwritten letters to scouts, and the staged exhibition games, one could argue that Gus was a bit of an overbearing father, one of those hard-driving Little League dads whom we might click our tongue at today. But the younger Antonelli had aspired to be a major-league player since he was 12 years old and eagerly and dutifully took his father’s counsel. It paid off with the huge bonus, which under the rules required the Braves to put Antonelli on their major league roster, immediately fulfilling the youngster’s dream.

Was there resentment from other Braves players? Almost certainly. Johnny Sain, the team’s gentlemanly, mild-mannered ace, made $21,000 — considerably less than Antonelli’s bonus — and was so upset about the discrepancy between him (a 20-game winner) and Antonelli (with nary a big league appearance) that he threatened to walk out on his contract. “I meant it,” Sain said later on, “I was going to walk away from the whole thing.”⁸ The club soothed the anger of its star pitcher by giving him a new contract worth $30,000 just before the All-Star break. Antonelli insists today that there wasn’t as much tension with his teammates as the press would have had one believe — that it was actually a good thing for the other players, who used his high paycheck as leverage in salary disputes with Perini.

But the Braves were in the middle of a pennant race and, according to major league rules, the size of Antonelli’s bonus required them to keep him on the major-league roster for at least two years. Consequently, Antonelli sat on the bench for months, an untried teenager with no experience under pressure, simply taking up valuable space on a club that was clawing its way in pursuit of its first National League pennant in 34 years.

The circumstances of his presence on the club sent shock waves throughout the league, and players, writers, and managers weighed in with opinions and speculation. Walker Cooper of the Giants said Antonelli should “…take the 75 gees and call it a career right now.” Jeff Heath, one of Antonelli’s teammates, reminisced about the days when his roommate, Bob Feller, was given a few thousand dollars so Feller’s father could put an addition on the barn — and it was a big deal!⁹ Mel Ott, the Giants’ Hall of Famer, recalled that for his signing bonus, he received $400 from John McGraw, but was kind enough to say that a “dollar went further” back then. But kind and supportive remarks were few and far between. Whatever the sentiments, Antonelli would battle against the “bonus baby” tag for years to come.

Johnny pitched only four innings during Boston’s historic 1948 sprint to the championship. He finished the season with a 2.25 ERA and a 0-0 record, although he got plenty of pregame activity. While manager Billy Southworth wasn’t willing to risk Antonelli giving away any ballgames, he wasn’t opposed to getting a little out of his bonus baby. So five days a week, Southworth put him to work throwing batting practice for half an hour each day.

Looking back, Antonelli says he bore a lot of disrespect from his bosses and colleagues. Johnny should have been eligible for the World Series, but his spot was instead given to first baseman Ray Sanders, technically ineligible but allowed to play by the league and team anyway out of respect for an injury he had recovered from. When the players divided World Series shares, Antonelli didn’t get a dime (while the batboys each made $380.89). That slight did steam up Antonelli, who said that though he understood Southworth’s decision not to use him during the stretch run, the fact that he had pitched batting practice each day without complaint should have warranted at least a little of the World Series money. The situation was eventually remedied by the league and Commissioner Happy Chandler, who stepped in and conferred upon him one-eighth of a share, about $571.34.

In the winter of 1948, though ineligible for collegiate baseball, Johnny enrolled at Bowling Green University, following his brother Anthony, a junior quarterback for the school. He majored in voice and was active in the choir, causing Oscar Ruhl of The Sporting News to remark that Antonelli would be the second “songbird” on the Braves, joining teammate Red Barrett.

The next season, 1949, was a bit better for Antonelli, but more difficult for the Braves. While Johnny pitched 96 innings with a 3-7 record and a 3.56 ERA, the Braves slipped to fourth place. In one of those wins, a 4-2 win over the Giants on May 1, Antonelli pitched excellently, showing his true potential and startling both teammates and opponents. Even umpire Artie Gore said there was something different about the way Antonelli presented himself on the mound; he marveled at Antonelli’s remarkable confidence in his pitching prowess, and the fact that he was self-assured enough to throw curves “when some pitchers wouldn’t dare.”¹⁰

But it was to be the one of the last flashes of brilliance Antonelli had the chance to exhibit with the Braves. In 1950 aces Vern Bickford, Johnny Sain, and Warren Spahn kept the team competitive until late August, and when the season was over those three had accounted for 60 of the team’s 83 wins. Antonelli himself only pitched 58 innings, going 2-3 while his ERA rose to 5.93. The youngster started only six games, and shared the role of fourth starting pitcher with several other players.

In March of 1951, with little fanfare in the Boston sports pages, Antonelli began an active-duty stint of two years with the Army. He spent his time at Fort Myer, Virginia, where he was once again able to flourish. Antonelli had never spent time in the minor leagues (he is one of only 17 people to have completed his major league career without spending a single day in the minors), but at Fort Myer, pitching for his Army team during 1951 and 1952, Johnny went 42-2. The Fort Myer stint resurrected his career and showed the league what he could do with regular starts. In essence, the Army team was like minor league service for Antonelli, who also found relief in the Army from allergies that had previously not been diagnosed or treated.¹¹

By the time Antonelli was discharged in 1953, the Braves had moved from Boston. He found himself a Milwaukee Brave, and when the All-Star Game rolled around, he already had a 8-4 record. Despite his large signing bonus, his salary was only $5,500. After Antonelli became a starter in 1953, general manager John Quinn had given him a raise to $9,000. The young hurler contracted pneumonia, however, and as his strength waned a bit, his record flipped over — turning from a 8-4 first half to a 4-8 second half. Despite Antonelli’s relatively strong showing (his 3.18 ERA was good for fifth best in the league), Warren Spahn suggested that three left-handers (himself, Antonelli, and Chet Nichols, a solid young pitcher returning from the Army) would be too many, and that he preferred Nichols over Antonelli. The club listened to its ace. On February 1, 1954, Antonelli was shipped to the New York Giants in a six-player deal along with pitcher Don Liddle, catcher Ebba St. Claire, infielder Billy Klaus, and $50,000 for outfielder Bobby Thomson and catcher Sammy Calderone. It would be, as Antonelli later called it, “the best break of my career.”¹²

Bobby Thomson was a hero. On October 3, 1951, he had delivered Giants fans the pennant with his famous “Shot Heard Round the World,” a ninth-inning walk-off home run off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the deciding game of a three-game playoff series. Though the Giants lost the World Series to the Yankees in six games, Thomson was forever embedded in Giants lore, and losing him to the Braves shocked and dismayed fans. Antonelli, naturally, was less than a fan favorite as the year got underway, but despite that obstacle he had his best year in 1954.

After leading off the season with a decent 5-2 record, Johnny reeled off eight victories in a row before the All-Star Game, to which he was elected for the first time.¹³ On May 16, Antonelli faced off with the Braves for the first time since his departure from the Milwaukee club. The Giants were quick and plentiful with their run support against their young southpaw’s former teammates, beating them soundly, 9-2. On June 9, Johnny had another shot at revenge, facing off against Warren Spahn in Milwaukee. Antonelli drove in one of the runs off Spahn and spun a complete game shutout in a 4-0 victory. The next day’s New York Times wrote that “30,018 disconsolate fans looked on in silence.”

By October, Antonelli was the number one starter on the team. All season long, he had been relatively consistent in his dominant pitching. He was vitally important to the Giants, and when the team began to falter in late August, losing seven of nine games, Antonelli stood tall with New York’s only two victories during that dismal streak. Behind his clutch hurling and offensive support from the likes of Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, and Alvin Dark, the Giants advanced to the World Series against the Cleveland Indians.

In Game One, which Antonelli witnessed from the bench, one of the most memorable plays in World Series history took place. With the score tied at 2-2 and two men on base, Cleveland first baseman Vic Wertz hit a fly ball to the deepest part of the cavernous Polo Grounds centerfield. Antonelli, watching from the dugout, recalls centerfielder Mays pounding his glove, sprinting with his back towards home plate, reaching up, and snaring the ball as it streaked over his shoulder. It would come to be known simply as: “The Catch.”

In Game Two, Antonelli started against future Hall of Famer Early Wynn. Johnny had a rocky beginning, giving up a home run to Al Smith on the first pitch of the game, but didn’t allow a run the rest of the game. “The Good Lord was on my side that game,” Antonelli said years later. “I don’t think I had my best stuff that day.”¹⁴ But it was good enough to hold the Indians the rest of the way, and give him a win in his first World Series appearance.

After losing Game Three, the Indians, who had gone 111-43 during the regular season, were once again humbled by Antonelli in the fourth contest. Before the game, Leo Durocher, the manager of the Giants, was told by his captain, Alvin Dark, that it was hard for hitters to pick up the ball against lefties because of sun glare off the scoreboard.¹⁵ So when Durocher noticed that reliever Hoyt Wilhelm was faltering in the eighth inning, with the Giants one win away from a World Series championship, the manager turned to his best lefty to close it out — and, dutifully, Antonelli did so, getting the last five outs of the World Series on three strikeouts and two popups. When Indians pinch hitter Dale Mitchell popped out in foul territory, Johnny could celebrate both a World Series victory and the completion of a year that transformed him from a question-mark prospect to a successful pitcher, All-Star, and valuable member of a championship team.¹⁶ He had led the league in shutouts (6), ERA (2.30), and win-loss percentage (.750). His regular season record was 21-7. Meanwhile, back in Milwaukee, Chet Nichols went 9-11.

After the World Series, Antonelli returned to Rochester, where he was given a hero’s welcome by his hometown fans — made even sweeter since he had received The Sporting News’ Pitcher of the Year award (this being two years before the establishment of the Cy Young). He was honored with a parade and spoke at an assembly at his alma mater, Jefferson High School.¹⁷ He was even given a Buick by the local Italian-American Businessmen’s Association.

In Boston he had met and married a young lady named Rosemarie Carbone.. They had made their home in Lexington, Massachusetts, during the years that Antonelli played for Boston, but after the 1954 season he went into business as a Firestone/Michelin tire distributor in Rochester and the family relocated there. He sold the business 40 years later, in 1994.

When Antonelli received a contract offer from the Giants before the ’55 season it was for the same amount as his prior deal, despite his being arguably the best pitcher in the league. Al Dark advised him to send it back to the ownership and general manager Chub Feeney, asking for double or more. He did so, receiving $28,000.

But Johnny had a tough year in 1955, and the Giants sagged as well, finishing 18 1/2 games behind the first-place Dodgers. Antonelli went 14-16, and was suspended by manager Durocher in early September when he refused to leave the mound leading 3-2 in a game against Philadelphia. In 1956, Antonelli rebounded magnificently, getting elected to his second All-Star Game and winning 20 games for the second time in three years. The Giants, however, did not recover quite as well as their ace and wound up in seventh place.

Antonelli does not keep many physical remembrances of his baseball career in his home, but one that he does keep is a three-foot-high trophy given to him by a group of diehard Giants fans who sat in Section Five at the old Polo Grounds. Those fans voted him the team’s most valuable player in 1956, something that he says means a lot to him even today.¹⁸

The 1957 season, the Giants’ last in New York, brought Antonelli another All-Star spot, even though he wasn’t dominant at all during the year, which he ended with a 12-18 record. The next year, 1958, was better in that he finished 16-13, but he failed to throw a shutout for the first time since his rookie year and gave up a league-leading 31 home runs — a career high. Then, after a 19-10 record and yet another All-Star appearance in 1959,¹⁹ Antonelli imploded.

In ’59, rumors of Antonelli’s dissatisfaction with the Giants, the media, and San Francisco in general had surfaced, and a year later those rumors proved to be solid fact. After a strong start to the 1960 season, Antonelli’s performance suffered. He was booed mercilessly by Giants fans as tension mounted in early June, and then manager Bill Rigney shocked everyone by ditching the team — with the Giants only four games behind the league-leading Pirates. When the year ended, with the Giants in fifth place and Antonelli just 6-7 and no longer even in the starting rotation, new manager Tom Sheehan proclaimed that the “controversial left-hander” would be dealt soon enough. In the offseason, Sheehan was fired, and replaced with Antonelli’s old teammate, Alvin Dark. Dark, who seemed to truly believe Antonelli was a great pitcher, promised to do all he could to keep “the stylish southpaw.”²⁰ But shortly after, Johnny and Willie Kirkland were traded to the Cleveland Indians for Harvey Kuenn.

For Antonelli, these later years with San Francisco bear certain similarities to his early career with the Boston Braves. Playing outside his home state, in a setting that was unfamiliar to him, Antonelli had found himself in a new environment where he had trouble adjusting. Thousands of miles from his hometown, he began to reach the end of his rope, and the Cleveland Indians became convinced that the only thing wrong was his unhappiness with San Francisco. His dissatisfaction with that west coast city was a sentiment that had been shared by his teammates in the Bay Area,²¹ and the tension in the clubhouse was compounded by the fact that Johnny had been moved to the bullpen for the first time since his rookie year. Expectations were high for Antonelli, and when he started to fail to meet them, the media was quick to pounce on him as a primary cause for the Giants’ failures.²² Antonelli, for his part, drew the “undying wrath of fans when he grumbled about the wind [in San Francisco].”²³ Even today, his strong feelings of discomfort are noted and remembered in the Bay Area:

The Giants played at Seals Stadium for two seasons, now fondly remembered by everybody but Johnny Antonelli, the San Francisco pitcher who disliked the place, said so and was roundly booed, a New Yorker on the wrong coast.²⁴

In any case, executive Bob Kennedy of the Indians, who had taken a keen interest in Antonelli and brokered the trade, was left with the assumption that the left-hander’s discomfort in San Francisco was the only reason he had faltered the year before. Kennedy was confident Antonelli would return to form as soon as given a chance to do so in a place where he could feel comfortable. But the high hopes at the start of 1961 turned to disappointment when Johnny entered May with a 0-4 record. He was soon dealt to the Milwaukee Braves. His impact on the Braves was minimal, and he played in just nine games winning once. In October, Antonelli was sold to the expansion New York Mets, but rather than play for a team that promised to be one of the worst in major league history, Antonelli famously decided to retire from baseball for good. “I quit baseball because I didn’t like traveling,” Johnny said in 2007. “Not for any other reason. I had no injuries or anything. I’d had my fill of traveling. I had a business to fall back on or else I would have played longer, I’m sure.”²⁵

After retirement, Antonelli worked at his tire distributorship back home in Rochester. He was never again involved in organized baseball, though some have confused him with another John Antonelli, an infielder who played in 1944-45 for the Cardinals and Phillies and later managed in the International League. For a time, pitcher Johnny did serve on the board of directors of the Rochester Red Wings, and the two Antonellis met once at an IL game in the city. Neither a fisherman nor a hunter, Johnny enjoyed an active game of golf and is a longtime member of Rochester’s noted Oak Hill Country Club.

The Antonellis had three daughters and one son. Their daughters were a schoolteacher/homemaker, a vascular nurse, and a homemaker, and their son (after working for the family business) became an executive with Starbucks who helped open stores in Europe and the Far East. As of October 2007, Johnny has 11 grandchildren and one on the way and one great-grandchild with another on the way.

Rosemarie Antonelli died in 2002. Johnny remarried in 2006 and he and his wife, Gail, enjoyed traveling together. “I enjoy it, but when you play ball, you stay in a hotel or you go to the ballpark and you never see much of the sights because you’re playing ball. Now I’m seeing sights,” he said.

Johnny Antonelli died at the age of 89 on February 28, 2020, in Rochester, New York.

Notes

1. Interview with Johnny Antonelli by Alex Edelman on March 11, 2007. Additional information in this biography comes from a brief interview by Bill Nowlin on October 24, 2007.

2. Sport Pix, June 1949

3. Total Baseball, The Biographical Encyclopedia of Baseball

4. Letarte, Richard H. That One Glorious Season. (Portsmouth NH: Peter Randell Publishers, 2006)

5. Letarte, op. cit.

6. Christian Science Monitor, June 30, 1948

7. The Sporting News, July 7, 1948, p. 6

8. Total Baseball

9. Cooper, Heath remarks in The Sporting News, 7/14/48, p. 13. Heath’s Feller reference is ironic, because in the aforementioned SportsPix article, Gus Antonelli referred to his son as “a left-handed Feller.”

10. The Sporting News, 5/11/49, p.11. Birtwell, Roger. “Braves Try Out Bonus Kid and Get Man-Sized Hill Job.”

11. The Sporting News, 3/4/53, p. 24. Antonelli was allergic to feathers in pillows, apparently something that had previously caused him to miss a start with the Braves.

12. Pitoniak, “Reluctant legend Antonelli being honored,” Rochester Democrat and Gazette, January 25, 2004.

13. In the All-Star Game, Antonelli pitched in relief, giving up three runs in an NL loss.

14. Marazzi, Baseball Players of the 1950s.

15. Boston Braves Historical Association Newsletter (2004 Annual Reunion edition), p. 5. The Pitoniak article also describes this point.

16. It is one of the greatest curiosities in baseball history…How did the Giants (89 wins) beat the mighty Indians (110 wins) in such a dominant fashion? Many attribute it to the brilliant catch of Willie Mays in Game One. A little-known fact, mentioned by Antonelli in an interview with the Boston Braves Historical Association and its members, is that the Indians and Giants, who trained near each other in Arizona, played together 18 times during Spring Training — with the Giants usually coming out on top. Thus, many Giants pitchers were well acquainted with their AL opponents. (Antonelli interview with BBHA, 10/10/2004)

17. Pitoniak.

18. Author interview with Antonelli.

19. Actually, in 1959, baseball held two All-Star Games. Antonelli was elected to both.

20. The Sporting News, “Dark Tosses Cold Water on Rumors of Antonelli Swap”, Jack McDonald, August 1, 1960. It is worth noting that Dark was kind to Antonelli during the uproar surrounding his large bonus. In The Sporting News article chronicling the reactions of players to the bonus, Dark’s was one of the few kind comments. He said he hoped Antonelli would “get more.”

21. The Sporting News. “All Giants Want To Be Traded, Says Long” by Young, Dick. August 31, 1960.

22. Los Angeles Mirror-News, by Charlie Park, August 17, 1960.

23. “Notes: Bochy sticks by Benitez.” MLB.com. Chris Haft, 5/30/2007

24. San Francisco Chronicle, “Baseball Has Been Big-Time in S.F. Since the ’30s,” Carl Nolte, April 11, 2000. The Chronicle comment isn’t entirely true, Antonelli’s dislike for Seals Stadium was minimal; it was the ballpark the Giants moved to in 1960, Candlestick, and the wind in the Bay Area that agitated him so much.

25. Interview with Johnny Antonelli, October 24, 2007.

While his lifetime record was an even 69-69, he earned a page in the record books when he threw only 58 pitches for the Braves in a complete game. It was a 2-0 win over Bucky Walters and the Cincinnati Reds in a one hour, 15 minute affair the evening of August 10, 1944, at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. During the historic outing Barrett’s pitching included 13 groundouts, five fly balls, three popups in fair territory, four foul pop outs, and two line-drive outs. Barrett threw an average of two offerings per batter faced, giving up singles to Gee Walker and Eddie Miller. Known for his fast pace on the mound, the redhead faced only 29 batters and neither walked nor struck out a man. According to his son Bob Barrett, when Red was asked how it was that this game went so fast, “He would always answer that the other pitcher was working just as fast, and without him the record would never have been set.”¹

A lesser-known fact about the fun-loving and vocally gifted Barrett is that just two pitches nine months apart may have separated him from a plaque in Cooperstown. Twice he came within a single toss of a perfect game. On September 2, 1945, in a game Barrett pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals, Lennie Merullo of the Cubs made the only hit, in the third inning, and was the only baserunner. Merullo was caught stealing; the final score was 4-0, and it was the redhead’s 20^th victory of the season. The following June 6, the Phillies’ Del Ennis celebrated his 21^st birthday by singling in the eighth inning off Red, and no other batter reached first base. Barrett had retired 22 batters in a row before the Ennis hit. The 7-0 victory was Barrett’s first win of the 1946 season.

Red Barrett was born February 14, 1915, in Santa Barbara, California, one of four children of Joe Barrett, a rancher, and Josephine Barrett. At an early age, Red excelled in track and field as well as baseball. Simi High School had only 69 students and, he told a sportswriter years later, there was no football team. “The school would not let us play football because there weren’t enough able-bodied boys,” Barrett said. “The farmers were afraid the boys would get hurt and they would have to do the chores themselves instead of their sons; consequently we played baseball.”²

After graduating, Barrett played semipro ball for a team in Reseda, California, and then competed in a tryout camp with 500 players for 17 spots on the Los Angeles Angels’ Western Association Class C team in Ponca City, Oklahoma. He made the cut, and in 1935 signed with Ponca City and registered a 15-12 record.

The next year, however, he dropped to 5-12 and was released by manager Mike Gazella, who thought “Red was too screwy.”³ Barrett wired Joe Magota, president and owner of the Muskogee Reds, a Cincinnati farm team in the same Western Association, and promised him that if signed he would help the team win the pennant. Muskogee did win the pennant in 1937, with Barrett recording 24 victories plus two more in the playoffs, chalking up 213 strikeouts against just 49 walks, and posting a 2.85 ERA. During that season, he faced Ponca City seven times and won six of the games. Barrett later commented, “It was a lucky day for me when I got away from the (Ponca City) Angels, and a lucky day for Cincinnati when it got me, because if ever there was a major league pitcher it’s Red Barrett.”⁴ In 1937 he was with Muskogee of the Class C Western Association when his contract was purchased by Cincinnati. Late that season, he made his major league debut, appearing in the second game of a September 15 doubleheader against Brooklyn. He pitched 6 1/3 innings, allowing five hits and just one earned run.

In 1938, the Reds optioned Barrett to their Syracuse team in the International League, where he won 16 games with only three losses and a league-leading ERA of 2.34. His moundmates ranked second, third, and fourth in ERA. Near season’s end, the big-league club brought him up again, and on August 31 he defeated Brooklyn, 9-3, allowing three runs and eight hits under the lights at Crosley Field. He followed that first victory with another complete game win, a seven-hitter over St. Louis.

Red started the ’39 season with Cincinnati, but after appearing in only one game he was sent to Indianapolis of the American Association, where he recorded a 16-12 record and an ERA of 3.41. The next year, 1940, was another year in the minors with a short stint in Cincinnati, where he pitched a total of three innings in three games and chalked up one victory without a defeat. During the four-year period 1937-1940, Barrett pitched 44 innings in the big leagues and won three games without a loss. From all indications, Barrett was not the most popular player with his managers; this may have led to fewer opportunities.

Barrett outlined his view on pitching to Los Angeles Times sportswriter Bob Ray in a 1938 interview: “I’m no strike-outer. These strikeout pitchers are chumps in my book. Me, I try to make them hit that first ball. After all, those other guys out there are supposed to work too. If everybody in business was like me there wouldn’t be so many people out of jobs. My idea is to throw as few pitches as possible. Even when you strike out a batter it generally takes four to seven, and sometimes even more pitches. I’d rather get that batter out on one pitch and save my arm. I am a control, and if you don’t mind my saying it, smart pitcher.”⁵

Red’s off-field work during his minor league career included a job as a guard at a Cincinnati roller skating rink and another as a salesman in a sporting goods store. He was also quick with a song, and when he appeared at Cincinnati’s Moonlight Gardens in September 1938, he was spotted in the audience by famed bandleader Tommy Dorsey, who called the right-hander up to sing “Please Be Kind” and “The One Rose” to an appreciative crowd of 3,000. The 1939 National League Green Book described Barrett as the “Sorrel thrush of the pitching mound, sweet singer in lighter moments, tough man on the twirling tee.”

Barrett’s 5-13 record in 1940 with Indianapolis was the poorest of his career, but in 1941, hurling for Birmingham of the Southern Association, he rebounded with 20 wins — tops in the Southern Association (he lost 16). On August 17, he pitched in a twin bill against Knoxville, winning both games, 9-1 and 5-2. Barrett did not reach the majors in either 1941 or 1942, even after, in 1942, duplicating his 1941 total with a league-leading 20-win season at Syracuse, this time with just 12 defeats. His 20^th victory was a one-hitter over Jersey City. Pitching his best ball to date, Red had an ERA of 2.05 in 1942, also leading the league in starts (34); shutouts (7); complete games (25); innings pitched (268); strikeouts (114); and longest winning streak (7). Not surprisingly, he was named the International League’s Most Valuable Player, the first Syracuse Chief to win the honor. Forty-six years later, on July 25, 1998, Charles Henry Barrett was posthumously voted in as a member of the first class in the Syracuse Chiefs’ Wall of Fame.

It must have been a relief to Barrett when the Boston Braves purchased his contract from the Reds on September 30, 1942. Boston gave him the shot Cincinnati never did. In 1943, at the age of 28, Barrett finally played his first full season in the majors. He pitched in 38 games with a record of 12-18 and a respectable earned run average of 3.18. The Braves finished that season in sixth place with a 68-85 record. Barrett won his first game on April 29 against the New York Giants — he gave up six singles in a 5-2, complete-game victory at the Polo Grounds. His own single aided in the win, driving in two eighth-inning runs. During the season he also bested Cincinnati ace Bucky Walters three times.

Barrett’s first year in Boston, 1943, was manager Casey Stengel’s last season at the helm of the Braves. Stengel once related a story of how he counseled Barrett on pitching to slugger Stan Musial. “Feed the eager kid a slow pitch,” Stengel instructed his right-hander. Barrett followed orders and Musial hit the pitch out of sight. An angry Barrett snarled at Casey, “You don’t know how to pitch to him.” Stengel thought a moment and then retorted, “Lemme tell you somethin’. We still don’t know how to pitch to him.”⁶

On July 12, 1943, before 12,000 spectators at Braves Field, Barrett pitched to both Ted Williams and Babe Ruth during Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin’s annual charity field day. Ruth led a military service All-Star team that faced the Braves. Before the game, won by Ruth’s All-Stars 9-8, Ruth and Williams attempted to put on a long-range batting duel for the fans, with Barrett serving up batting practice lobs. Williams sent three balls into the right-field stands, while the 48-year-old Bambino, hampered by an old knee injury, was unable to clout a ball out of the playing confines.

Barrett finished 1944 with a 9-16 tally, appearing in 42 games and pitching 230 1/3 innings during another sixth-place season. Amid the dismal record and a 4.06 ERA, his highlight was the 58-pitch win over the Reds. 

Barrett continued to pursue his off-field singing career while with the Braves, winning first prize in Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge contest with his song “So You Want to Lead a Band.”⁷ He followed this with a two-week engagement in Boston singing with the Sammy Kaye Orchestra.

The right-hander seemed headed for another losing year in 1945 — with a 2-3 record and lofty 4.74 ERA in mid-May — when he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in a “throw-in” deal, with the Braves paying $60,000 and Barrett for disgruntled Cardinals pitching ace Mort Cooper. Cooper and owner Sam Breadon had a long-festering salary dispute and the St. Louis owner was happy to exchange the high-priced Cooper for the Boston journeyman. One columnist commented on the sale, “There was nothing to do but get rid of the troublemaker, even if the Cardinals received nobody more impressive than the 30-year-old Barrett.”⁸ Barrett himself quipped, “The Cardinals should have thrown in Kurowski,” a reference to the Cardinals’ slugging third baseman Whitey Kurowski.⁹

The self-confident hurler’s shift to St. Louis proved to be a career-saving move for the redhead. He won 21 games and lost nine for the Cards, and directed them to a second-place finish with a 95-59 record behind the Chicago Cubs. He led the league in complete games (24); victories (23); and innings pitched (284 2/3). Dan Daniel, a columnist for the New York World Telegram, wrote, “Barrett is not endowed with a lot of stuff. He isn’t fast, his curve ball is not especially baffling. He has no particularly elusive delivery but he jitters the hitter into a state of agitation.” Barrett explained his newfound success by saying, “The difference between the Cardinals and the Braves is that the Cards are fast enough to catch line drives hit off me.”¹⁰ Obviously not superstitious, Barrett chose the number 13 for his uniform when he joined the Cardinals in 1945, the same number he would later wear with the pennant-winning Braves in ’48.

Barrett defeated every club in the National League at least twice in 1945, including a 4-0 record over the New York Giants. The light-hitting pitcher’s bat also came to life when he slapped a two-bagger against the left-field wall in Boston good for two RBIs to help him beat his old teammates, 8-4, on August 21. He was named to the All-Star Team and was third in the MVP voting, trailing the Cubs’ Phil Cavaretta and Boston’s Tommy Holmes. Barrett was philosophical about his All-Star status, recalling, “I made the All-Star team in 1945, the only time the All-Star team never played a game because wartime gas rationing prevented travel.”¹¹ Adding to his workload, after the season, he toured with a group of National Leaguers to play before 225,000 troops on a USO tour of islands in the South Pacific. Among the players on the 22-game journey were future 1948 Braves teammates Frank McCormick, Jim Russell, Bill Voiselle, and Ed Wright. Barrett pitched in Honolulu, Guam, and the Philippines, throwing 39 innings and striking out 23 while walking just four. He posted a 3-1 record and batted .285 at the plate, usually playing in the infield or outfield while not pitching. He didn’t hesitate to sing a few songs from the USO stage, either.

Barrett had continued his singing career while with the Cards, appearing with Dick Slack’s All Star band. They were on the radio at 5:30 a.m., “before the birds even got up,” he commented.¹² For several years during the winter season, the “amiable thrush” (The Sporting News) earned extra money by singing country music on the radio. Son Bob recalls, “Dad used to sing in nightclubs and speak at dinners. He could tell a joke better than most comedians, with a great range of dialects and had a wonderful Irish tenor voice.”¹³

The singing redhead’s fame spread beyond the diamond when the April 1, 1946, issue of Life magazine featured the 23-game winner on its cover. A newspaper in St. Petersburg, where the Cardinals held spring training, reported, “Newsstands around Central Avenue were understandably bare of copies of Life magazine shortly after the issue hit the streets. Pitcher Red Barrett…took ample precautions to see that each of his mates would receive a copy of the publication. The redhead was up at sunrise to buy every available copy in St. Petersburg. He explained, ‘Just getting them to sell to the other Cardinals so they’ll be sure to have one.’” Prophetically, the caption describing Life’s cover stated, “The 31-year-old Barrett is working hard on his tricky pitching and change of pace to meet this year’s younger and stiffer competition.”

There was a little confusion in Beantown during this time. In 1944 and 1945, both the Braves and the Red Sox had right-handed pitchers named “Red” Barrett. The Red Sox’ “Barrett” was christened Francis and served as a reliever. Adding to the confusion, Francis “Red” Barrett was picked up by the Braves in 1946 during Charles “Red” Barrett’s exile to the Cardinals. That same season, the Tribe also briefly employed an outfielder named Johnny Barrett.

Red (Charles, that is) turned up a week early for 1946 spring training, raring to go for new Cardinals manager Eddie Dyer. But although it was a great year for the Redbirds, climaxing in a thrilling seven-game World Series victory over the Boston Red Sox, Barrett’s role was relegated to 23 appearances, a total of 67 innings, and a disappointing 3-2 record (though one of them was that near-perfect game against the Phillies). Dyer had replaced Billy Southworth, who left to join the Braves for what at the time was a record-breaking contract of $50,000 a year for five years. Dyer was blessed with a young pitching staff of strong-armed hurlers led by Harry Brecheen, Murry Dickson, and Howie Pollet, diminishing Barrett’s importance to the staff. The manager told The Sporting News in April that Barrett had been “hit hard most of the spring.” Giving up 20 earned runs in his first 20 1/3 innings of the regular season, he demoted himself to low man in the rotation. In midseason, sportswriter Fred Lieb wrote that Barrett “seems to have lost his touch.” The only complete game he won during the year was a masterful 7-0 one-hitter against Philadelphia, a near-perfect game on June 8, broken up by a Del Ennis single with one out in the eighth.

Barrett’s transformation from Life cover boy to afterthought in 1946 may have been related to a perception held by manager Dyer. “He’s essentially a control pitcher but control isn’t enough this season [with war veterans back in the lineups]. A pitcher has to have more than that. I was talking about him to Mel Ott last winter and remarked that Barrett had twirled some low-hit games against the Giants. However, Ottie stopped me cold. ‘I know that,’ he said, ‘but the park still was full of line drives.’”¹⁴

The Cards used only seven pitchers during their seven-game World Series victory over the Red Sox, and Barrett did not make an appearance. The autumn classic was not a total washout for the Barrett family. Red’s wife, Margaret, was chosen as the “most chic World Series wife” and was presented with a hat valued at $1,000. Dyer, who piloted the club to a 98-56 record in his first year, was named National League Manager of the Year.

In a reversal of fortune after the season, Barrett was sold back to his old team, the Boston Braves, joining his former manager, Billy Southworth, and Mort Cooper, the pitcher he was traded for two years previously. Southworth was “hopeful that the loquacious flinger will be able to regain some of the winning form he displayed in St. Louis in 1945.”¹⁵ Boston Globe cartoonist Bob Coyne heralded the return with a drawing headlined “Back With Billy!” and a compilation of small sketches with the following captions, “Arrived in camp with a well developed front porch wearing a ten gallon hat, boots and chaps!”; “Served as a professional entertainer singing hillbilly songs during the winter months”; and “The guy has more color than a crazy quilt.”

During the 1947 season, Barrett was the third starter in Boston’s four-man rotation and the club’s third leading winner with an 11-12 record. Fellow pitchers Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain each registered 21 wins. Barrett appeared in 36 games and pitched 210 innings. Never considered a strikeout hurler, he issued 53 walks and struck out 53. He recorded three shutouts, twice defeating the Cubs’ Hank Borowy, by scores of 1-0 and 2-0, and the Dodgers’ Vic Lombardi, by 3-0. Barrett hit just .118, but five of his eight hits were doubles — including two in a 6-2 victory over the Pirates on June 13. The Braves finished in third place with an 86-68 record.

Barrett’s tendency toward braggadocio proved somewhat embarrassing toward the end of the ’47 season. The Pirates’ Ralph Kiner went on a home run tear in September, and on September 11 in Pittsburgh hit four homers in a doubleheader against the Braves. His circuit clout string stood at six in three straight games, and scheduled to face the slugger the next day, Barrett predicted that Kiner wouldn’t hit one off of him. Barrett was only partially correct. In a 4-3 victory over the Tribe on the 12th, Kiner lashed out two homers, besting the old record of seven in four consecutive games, set by Tony Lazzeri of the Yankees in 1936.

At the opening of the 1948 season, Red changed his uniform number to 13, the lucky numeral that produced 23 wins for him that year. The Braves were primed for a big year with the league’s highest paid manager, two 20-game winners and a shortstop, Alvin Dark from Louisiana State University, who was given a $50,000 signing bonus to join the Tribe. To induce fan attendance, the team offered a special night-game package that included tickets, a room at the nearby Somerset Hotel, and dinner for $4.50.¹⁶ Barrett became a sometime starter, replaced in the regular rotation by Vern Bickford. While he, Nelson Potter, Bobby Hogue, and Clyde Shoun shared the bulk of the bullpen work, Red did have several key wins as a starter. He threw a complete game six-hitter against the Dodgers on April 27, winning 3-2. This was followed by a 3-2 victory over Cincinnati on May 8. Another big win over the Reds was on August 31, 3-1, to get the Braves within two percentage points of the first-place Dodgers. And on September 5, with Boston now in first, Barrett defeated the Phillies, 5-1, allowing only five hits and retiring 15 in a row. Del Ennis, the outfielder who spoiled Barrett’s perfect game bid in 1946, broke the spell with a harmless two-out single in the ninth.

During the season, Barrett also had the dubious distinction of losing both ends of a twin-bill against Cincinnati on June 12, as a starter in the first game and in relief in the second. Reds’ pitcher Johnny Vander Meer (who’d been Barrett’s teammate with Indianapolis in 1940) hit the only home run of his career off Red in the first game. Ultimately the Braves finished in first place with a 91-62 record, and also won at the gate by drawing a franchise-record 1,445,437 fans. Barrett had just a 7-8 record, but his big wins, versatility, and solid 3.65 ERA outshined his record. In the World Series against the Indians he appeared in Games Two and Three, pitching a total of 3 2/3 innings of shutout ball, but the Braves lost in six.

The New York Times recapped the Braves offseason plans after the ’48 season:

The Braves most vociferous off-season planner was right hand pitcher Charles (Red) Barrett, proud thrower of the game’s only “mushball.”

“As usual,” Barrett said without being asked, “I will resume my musical career as soon as possible. That means as soon as anybody offers me money to sing. I’ll admit I’m not one of the world’s topflight vocalists. But I do sing loud and I’ve been able to make more money with my voice during the cold winter months than I could driving a truck.

“I’ll let you know as soon as one of the more astute Boston night club owners comes through with a professional engagement,” Barrett continued despite many raucous interruptions. “Be sure to come up and see me and bring all your friends. But be prepared to pick up the check.”¹⁷

While in the minors, Red Barrett had married Helen Margaret Knutsen on April 5, 1936. A son, Bob, was born in August 1937, followed by daughter Kathryn in January 1941. Bob recalls his family’s stay in the Boston area: “We lived in a big house in the Auburndale section of Newton and had a French couple living with us, serving as a maid and butler. Dad had a lot of friends on the club but was closest to Sibby Sisti, Earl Torgeson, and Bob Elliott. I remember when Bob Elliott was voted the league MVP and I took a picture of him holding his trophy. Basically everyone liked my dad except the management. He was kind of a rabble-rouser and got into trouble a few times. And although he did not drink, he sure knew how to party. He had great control and was probably the first pitcher to throw a slider, although he called it a nickel curve.”¹⁸

After the pennant season, 1949 was not a good year for either the Braves or Barrett as dissension wracked the club. Spring training started with a closed-door meeting in which players confronted manager Southworth, who throughout his managerial career had been a hard disciplinarian. Barrett was a Southworth supporter. He suggested taking a vote of confidence among the players but was rebuked by Eddie Stanky, who declared, “If Southworth wants a vote of confidence, let him ask for it himself.”¹⁹ Southworth, who had long struggled with alcoholism, was rumored to be drinking heavily and near nervous collapse. In August, he was persuaded by owner Lou Perini to take a leave of absence and was replaced by coach Johnny Cooney.

Despite the return of All-Stars Sain and Spahn, however, the Braves fell to a lackluster 75-79 record and a fourth-place finish in ’49. Their attendance slumped to just over 1 million, and the cross-town rival Red Sox — led by superstar Ted Williams — captured the headlines with a photo-finish finale that climaxed in their losing to the rival Yankees on the last day of the season. The 34-year-old Barrett was now used exclusively in relief, compiling a 1-1 record in 23 games and a total of 44 1/3 innings. He played his final game in a Boston uniform on September 29, 1949, hurling one shutout inning in a 9-2 loss to the pennant-bound Dodgers. It was also his final game in the majors. Evidently he didn’t feature in the Braves’ plans for 1950, and no other big league team picked him up.

Barrett remained in organized baseball for four more years with minor league teams in Los Angeles, Nashville, Buffalo, Toronto, and Tampa, and ended up in Texas with the Paris Indians of the Big State League in 1953, where, at the age of 38, he had a record of 6-4 in 15 appearances. Barrett’s playing odyssey had taken him to 11 minor league cities and three major league cities. He appeared in 253 major-league games, 149 of which he started.

Life after baseball saw a move to North Carolina and a job with Sealtest Ice Cream. He was divorced in 1951 and while managing a plant for the ice cream company in New Bern met his second wife, Libby, whom he married in 1957. Red and Libby had one son, Rick, who remains in the North Carolina area. Red never lost his love of sports, and “officiated just about every sport — baseball, softball, basketball, and football at midget through college levels.” He worked for the North Carolina High School Athletic Association and for the U.S. Slo-Pitch Softball Association, where he also served as a director. Barrett commented on officiating to a local reporter, “Officials receive a lot of kidding and criticism. Ninety-nine per cent of calls are judgment calls — the call was right, but maybe my judgment was bad.”²⁰

Barrett eventually settled in Wilson, North Carolina, where he became active in the Wilson Hot Stove League, bringing many major league players to meetings, including former teammates Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter. In 1971, he went to St. Louis to participate in a replay of the 1946 World Series between the Cardinals and the Red Sox. Another trip, in 1987, took him to an old-timers game, an event he described as a “bunch of old veterans getting together to play five innings of baseball.”²¹ His retirement also improved his golf game, and he received two hole-in-one awards from the local Willow Springs Country Club.

Under the auspices of the New England Sports Museum, Barrett returned to Boston one last time in August of 1988 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 1948 NL championship. At an onstage question-and-answer session held in an auditorium on the Boston University campus, which contains the remnants of old Braves Field, Barrett was cajoled by former Tribe publicity director Billy Sullivan to demonstrate his vocal talents and croon a tune.

Around this same time Barrett was diagnosed with cancer, and after a prolonged illness died at the age of 75 on July 28, 1990. He was buried at Evergreen Memorial Gardens in Wilson. The following year the Wilson Hot Stove League dedicated their banquet to the fun-loving redhead. Among the remembrances in the program:

• He played the quickest round of golf of anyone in the United States of America.
• He officiated every conceivable athletic contest that was ever played.
• He, year after year, led the Hot Stove League in singing “Take Me Out to The Ballgame.” In tune or out of tune made no difference.
• He was a great philosopher fond of saying, “Be careful of the words you say — keep them warm and sweet — because you never know from day to day which ones you’ll have to eat! And never complain of not getting everything you want — just pray to God you don’t get all you deserve.

Numerous photos and memorabilia from Barrett’s career are displayed at the legendary Dick’s Hot Dog Stand in Wilson, owned by Barrett’s good friend and fellow Hot Stove Leaguer Lee Gliarmis.

After Red died, son Rick, president of CityScape Builders, decided to honor his father, and in appreciation of the care he received during his illness, established the Charles “Red” Barrett Memorial golf tournament. The event has raised thousands of dollars for a local hospice.

Note

This biography originally appeared in the book Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948, edited by Bill Nowlin and published by Rounder Books in 2008.

Notes

1. Interview with Bob Barrett, May 13, 2007.

2. McCrory, Rosellen. Interview with Red Barrett sent to author.

3. Ray, Bob The Sports X-Ray, Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1938.

4. Ibid. Bob Brady located a story by Arthur Daley in the March 31, 1943 New York Times that tells how teammate Albert “Dutch” Mele led the Association in batting average (.354) and homers (30). Mele beat out “Mad Russian” Lou Novikoff of Ponca City for the batting title in the final game of the season. Red Barrett took the mound that game and told Mele, “You’ll win the title if you get a loud foul today, because I intend to take care of Novikoff myself.” He held Novikoff hitless while Mele went 4-for-4.

5. Ray, ibid.

6. Daley, Arthur, New York Times, August 16, 1962, p. 19.

⁷ McCrory, Rosellen, Wilson North Carolina Daily Times, June 18, 1990.

8. Drebinger, John, New York Times, December 8, 1946.

9. Kaese, Harold, The Boston Braves, p. 259.

10. Ibid.

11. McCrory, Rosellen, Wilson North Carolina Daily Times, June 18, 1990.

12. McCrory, Rosellen. Interview with Red Barrett. Barrett also told Rosellen McCrory that he “dated” Betty Grable while on a USO tour and that the two double-dated with Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan.

13. Interview with Bob Barrett, May 13, 2007.

14. Daley, Arthur Daley, New York Times, September 21, 1946, p. 21.

15. Drebinger, John, The New York Times, December 8, 1946.

16. Pietrusza, David, “Boston Braves Finale” at http://www.davidpietrusza.com/Boston_Braves_Finale.html

17. New York Times, October 13, 1948.

18. Interview with Bob Barrett.

19. Kaese, The Boston Braves, p. 279.

20. McCrory, Rosellen, Wilson North Carolina Daily Times, June 18, 1990.

21. Ibid.

Matt’s father Matthew was a fireman. His mother Margaret died when he was about a year old. Keeping it in the family, Matt’s father married one of his mother’s sisters, Brettie. Matt had no brothers or sisters, though a half-sister Eva came from the union of Matt Sr. and Brettie. She lives in San Antonio today.

From the sandlots, Matt progressed through the city’s schools. ”I played when I was at junior high school, I was quite a hitter. I was pretty good size, you know. Everybody that had a ball club wanted me to play. I would have my bicycle and I’d ride my bicycle across town, or any place to play baseball.” The year he started high school, though, the city discontinued its baseball program due to its expense. Unable to play high school ball, he played American Legion ball and in a few other leagues nearby. He was named to the All-State team in Texas for his Legion ball play. ”I played with a semipro team that played around San Antonio, out in the sticks. They would pay you a few bucks, five dollars or something, you know. One of the fellows that used to play with Chicago, Art Veltman, lived there in San Antonio. He is the one that got the team together.” The teams played around the city, not even traveling to nearby San Marcos, but Batts remembers one road trip when a local sportswriter arranged for a truck loaded with hay in the back and drove the team to Del Rio to play a team on the border.

He started catching in semipro ball, pretty much by accident, really the result of a little clowning around. “We were beating a team pretty bad and we started changing up, you know, different positions, and I told the catcher I wanted to catch, I wanted to see how it was catching. I picked off a runner at first and threw one out at third. I had always had a great arm. I could throw one from home plate over the left field fence.” It’s something he never tried at Fenway Park.

He still holds the high school javelin record for the state of Texas. Batts enrolled at Baylor and played on the freshman baseball team — which was good enough to beat the varsity. He left after about a year and a half. “They about run me off,” he laughs. “One of the reasons I quit at Baylor was because I had signed a major league contract and didn’t tell them about it. I didn’t realize at the time that it was against the rules and regulations. I had a deal with the Boston Red Sox that they would pay my way to school and I could still play football and baseball.”

Indeed, he had been offered a $2,500 bonus and a new car — quite large at the time — by Red Sox scout Uncle Billy Disch, the University of Texas coach. Veltman, who was a Tigers coach and had wanted to sign Matt, was upset to learn he’d left school and had been beaten out. “He was a great, great, great coach. He was one of the better coaches in the country. He had been after me for some time.” Batts signed in 1942 and was sent to Class-C Canton (Ohio) of the Middle Atlantic League. Batts caught 95 games, batting .294 in 483 at-bats, with 10 home runs and 82 RBIs.

The country was at war, and ballplayers were no more exempt than anyone else. “Mel Parnell was there at Canton with me. He was pitching and we were both friends, because he lived in New Orleans and I lived in San Antonio. It was pretty close, you know. Not too far away. We roomed together there in Canton. We became great friends. When we got back home, some boys that I knew real well that had played ball with me there in San Antonio had entered the service at Randolph Field. One of the colonels over there got them to come and get hold of me and see if I wouldn’t sign up instead of just getting drug into anything. With them being there, I said I’d go ahead and join the service.”

Matt enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Randolph Field. He became a crew chief, servicing aircraft, mostly trainer planes for the cadets coming through as prospective pilots. His job was to ensure that everything was in shape with the aircraft, ready to go each morning. He served at Randolph Field for the duration of the war, reaching the rank of sergeant. After he was discharged, the Red Sox sent him to nearby Lynn, Massachusetts, to play in the Class-B New England League in 1946. Despite having lost three years to military service, he improved his production at the higher level of play: he hit .337, drove in 86 runs, and hit 12 homers.

In 1947, he was promoted to Scranton in the Single-A Eastern League but appeared in only eight games there. He’d won the job over the first-string catcher, hitting a grand slam in the ninth inning to win one game — but then didn’t get to catch another game. “You know how politics are in baseball,” he says. ”I sat on the bench, and they let some catcher catch that had been there the year before. About two or three weeks passed, so I got hold of the manager [Eddie Popowski] and told him, ’Look, I want to play ball. I don’t give a damn where it is.’ I wanted to play. He said, well, he couldn’t do anything about it. They wanted this boy to catch and I got to let him catch. So he caught.”

As it happened, the catcher for the Red Sox International League affiliate in Toronto, Gene Desautels, got hurt. The club asked Boston for a replacement and was sent Matt Batts. When Desautels got better, the manager put him back in, but the team’s owner laid it on the line: “You get Batts to catching or you’re gone.” Matt told the manager, Elmer Yoter, that he had no idea why, that he’d never met the owner. It wasn’t the only time Toronto’s owner helped out the 24-year-old catcher. “When I was on one of the road trips, my old Chevrolet caught fire and my wife was all scared to death, called me about it. Some people got it put out for her. The owner took my car and had the durn thing all fixed and everything, and paid for it and never charged me a nickel for it.” As to the owner, Peter Campbell, Matt says even today, ”I never have met him.” Matt’s wife Arlene notes that they were so poor at the time they could hardly afford a gallon of gasoline.

Late in the season, when Toronto’s season was over (Batts hit .262, with seven homers and 40 RBIs), both he and pitcher Cot Deal were summoned to play with the Red Sox. Batts struck out in his first at-bat, pinch-hitting for Harry Dorish on September 10. The following day, he started both games of the doubleheader against the Indians. He was 2-for-4 in the first game with a double and a home run, and 3-for-3 in the second game, all singles. He made a bit of a splash, hitting .500 in 16 at-bats for manager Joe Cronin.

Batts was the backup catcher for Birdie Tebbetts in 1948 and did quite well, hitting .314 in his 118 at-bats. From the time he hit the big leagues, Batts never played anywhere other than behind the plate. He felt he saw an improvement on the team under new manager Joe McCarthy, he told Peter Golenbock in the book Red Sox Nation: “Coming back in ’48, it was more organized than the year before….The difference, in my opinion, was Joe McCarthy. He was super. Oh, yeah. He didn’t say much, but you just felt great with the man there. You had the feeling that you had to play your best at all times. Not that he was forcing you. It was just that you had that good feeling.”

As Birdie’s backup — and roommate for three seasons — had McCarthy consulted either him or Tebbetts before selecting Denny Galehouse as the playoff starter in 1948? He had not, and Batts says that McCarthy never said why he decided on Galehouse. The veteran pitcher had done very well against the Indians in an earlier relief stint, and McCarthy thought the other pitchers were, in Batts’ words, “kind of wore out.” It didn’t work out, but McCarthy was “a great manager. No doubt about it. He was the best that I ever was with.”

Batts really enjoyed the 1948 team and enthused about it to Golenbock: “When you woke up in the morning, you wanted to get to the ballpark to play ball, because you enjoyed it, and you loved the people you were with, loved the manager, loved the coaches, and of course, we had great ballplayers.” He did admit, though, the team was “upset” about McCarthy naming Galehouse: “The whole 25 ballplayers. I don’t think there was one of them that wasn’t upset…. We lost some respect for McCarthy, everybody got kind of down on him because of it.”[fn]Golenbock, Peter. Red Sox Nation, pp. 176-77[/fn]

In 1949, Batts got in more games, but didn’t hit as well (.242 in 157 at-bats.) “I just had to wait my turn,” he says. “The more someone can play, and get up to the plate, and hit every day, every day, every day he can hit better that day, rather than play one day and five or six games later, play another. You’re just hitting and missing. You’re not going to be a good hitter doing that.”

In 1950, Matt got even more work, and improved to .273, but when manager Steve O’Neill came in to take over from McCarthy, it became less enjoyable. “Steve O’Neill didn’t like me for some reason. I thought I was a friend of his, because I knew one of his sons and one of his daughters, you know. Through baseball. When they got him over there, I figured, well, everything’s going to be all right.” It was not. And early in 1951, he was traded to the St. Louis Browns in a complicated deal that saw the Red Sox acquire Les Moss, while sending the Browns $100,000, Batts, Jim Suchecki, and a player to be named later, who proved to be Jim McDonald. It was, Batts remembers, originally meant to be a three-way deal. St. Louis was supposed to trade him on to Detroit, but that didn’t happen until the following February.

He had hoped to get more playing time with St. Louis, but was blocked there by Sherm Lollar. He is blunt about playing for the Browns: ”That was the worst place I ever wanted to play.” He admits, though, that he did well, hitting .302 with St. Louis in 1951. And he had a number of experiences to look back on later — catching Satchel Paige among them. Bill Veeck was the owner and Batts was there for the Eddie Gaedel game.

After arriving in Detroit, Batts served as backup to Joe Ginsberg in 1952, struggling with a disappointing .237 average and a paltry 13 RBIs. When Ginsberg was sent to the Indians in an eight-player trade in June 1953, Batts took over as first-string catcher, and boosted his average to .278, hitting six homers and driving in 42 runs in 374 at-bats, the most he ever had in major league ball. On the flip side, he suffered the misfortune of being the catcher in the June 17, 1953 game when the Red Sox scored 17 runs in one inning. But back on August 25, 1952 he’d enjoyed being the backstop for Virgil Trucks’ second no-hitter of the season.

He missed a lot of time in 1954. He came down ill and was diagnosed as having hemorrhaging ulcers. Never having had stomach trouble of any sort, it was a mystery. “I never had had a stomach ache. I don’t know what it was. I know I bled like a stuffed hog, I know that.” After two days in the hospital, with the Tigers visiting Boston, Batts determined to check himself out. Told he couldn’t leave, he simply absented himself. “I went out the back door, caught me a train and went to Boston, and that’s where they found out that I had lost over 70 percent of my blood and they rushed me to a hospital, to the doctor, and I stayed there 30 days in bed. I had to eat baby food for gosh knows how long. About a year.”

Batts was traded to the White Sox at the end of May, then traded in early December to Baltimore which in turn sold him to Indianapolis in April 1955, before the season began. “I was going to Baltimore with Paul Richards to be his catcher. One practice in spring training, Richards come up with the idea of pitching the ball underhanded in the rundowns, between first and second, second and third, third and home. Well, old dumb-butted me, when the play got to Pesky and I, Richards asked Pesky, ‘How do you like that, Pesk?’ And of course, Pesky was smarter than I was. He said, ‘Oh yes, that’s all right.’ He said, ‘Batts, how’s that with you? Is that all right with you?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t know. They’ve been throwing the ball overhanded for 150 years. Someone’s going to get stung on this game.’ Next day, I was gone.” The Orioles sold him to Indianapolis on April 12.

Even with Indianapolis, he hit only .231, though when he got a shot with the Reds in early July when Hobie Landrith was placed on the DL and Cincinnati purchased his contract, he posted a .254 average. His career pretty much just petered out. He spent most of 1956 in the Southern Association playing for Nashville (other than three plate appearances for Cincinnati), hitting .258. He split time in 1957 between Birmingham and — back where it all began on the gravel streets — San Antonio.

“I just finally retired. I didn’t want to bum around in the minor leagues. I was getting up in age. Being sick like I had been, I didn’t feel like doing too much. I had been going to spring training all these years, and stopping over in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and helping the boys in the kids baseball clinic here. I didn’t have a job in San Antonio or anything.”

He and his wife, Arlene, have two daughters. One of them married the brother of longtime Boston sportswriter Larry Claflin. The family moved to the Louisiana state capital, Baton Rouge. Matt became friends with the sheriff, who initiated a program for juveniles — “instead of the regular deputies arresting juveniles, we would go out and pick them up and talk to them and see if we couldn’t get things straightened out.” He worked in the district attorney’s office, while his wife ran Batts Printing, a business he’d begun with an attorney friend. “We had to buy another press, and then another one. Business got to be so good that I quit the DA’s office and went in to help her, and we made it into quite of a great business. We sold it a few years ago and we just retired. We moved out here to the Country Club of Louisiana. Nicklaus built the course out here, and made it a nice subdivision. It’s all gated and everything, and I do nothing but play golf.”

Matt Batts died at home in Baton Rouge, of natural causes on July 14, 2013. His daughter Denise Claflin said his dedication to baseball was life-long. “When he was 90, he taught my daughter how to throw a baseball because she wasn’t throwing the ball right to the dog. He still threw it to exactly where he wanted.”[fn]Jennifer A. Luna, “Major league catcher Batts loved the game,” San Antonio Express-News, July 17, 2013.[/fn]

Author’s note

This biography originally appeared in the book Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948, edited by Bill Nowlin and published by Rounder Books in 2008.

Sources

Interviews done by Bill Nowlin on March 5, 2006 and April 26, 2007.

Photo Credit

The Topps Company

As a result of the era in which he pitched, John Andrew Beazley, Jr. would not benefit from the progress in medical therapies and surgical procedures for his injured arm. As a rookie in 1942, “Beaze” had pitched brilliantly for the St. Louis Cardinals during the regular season and World Series, posting two victories over a supreme New York Yankees ball club and rightly earning the nickname of “Yankee Killer” as St. Louis captured the Series. He answered the call of war shortly thereafter, and when he returned, his arm and career were on a downward trend. His lifetime 31-12 record is a most impressive one, but also leaves one wondering what could have been.

Johnny Beazley was born on May 25, 1918, in Nashville, Tennessee, the son of John Andrew and Mattie Sue Robertson Beazley, known as Sue. From 1925 to 1932, young Johnny attended the Barker School in Birmingham, Alabama. Returning to Nashville, he enrolled at Cohn Junior High in West Nashville. While he was still young, his father died.

By the age of 16, Johnny was passionate about boxing. An article by Dick Farrington in The Sporting News explained that Beazley had a friend who was a Golden Gloves champion, and Johnny frequently worked out with him. His buddy eventually won the Southern Amateur Light Heavyweight Championship, and Beazley served as his cornerman whenever he boxed. It was Johnny’s ambition to become a fighter too, but when he told his mother of these intentions, she put her foot down. “I don’t want you going around with your nose on the back of your head,” she told her young son. Earlier, Johnny’s younger brother, Felix, had died because of an injury suffered during a football game at Nashville’s Cohn High School, so her objections to “rougher” sports were understandable. Mom had her way, and when Johnny heeded her plea and forsook boxing for baseball, she had no objections.¹

Johnny did not play much baseball before high school. He always took jobs during the summer months — as a delivery boy for a local drugstore, delivering orders to customers on his bicycle, or clerking in a grocery store six days a week. It was out of necessity, as he had to find work and earn income for his mother. She had now been a widow for several years, and Johnny, her only living child, had to help provide for her.²

There was time for athletics in high school, though. At Nashville’s Hume-Fogg High, baseball coach Fred “Ox” McKibbon listened to some of Johnny’s teammates who saw a boy with pitching talent and moved him from the outfield to the mound. Beazley quickly became the team’s number one hurler, and recorded a 9-0 shutout over Franklin High in his first start. He took to other sports as well, and finished at Hume-Fogg as a four-letter man.

Upon graduation, Beazley went to a baseball school conducted at Nashville’s historic Sulphur Dell ballyard. Jimmy Hamilton, a scout for the Cincinnati Reds, managed the business office for the school (“tuition” was $25, but it was waived for Nashville residents); while the instructors, all current or former big-leaguers, were Tom Sheehan, George Kelly, Charlie Dressen, Gilly Campbell, Hub Walker, and Paul Derringer. Hamilton’s job was also to sign any decent prospects for the Reds. Of the 40 or so who attended the school, Johnny was the only player signed. He was inked to a contract with the Nashville Vols of the Southern Association in the fall of 1936, when he had just turned 17 years old. Cincinnati had a working relationship with Nashville. Beazley was sent the following spring to the Leesburg Gondoliers of the Class D Florida State League.³

Leesburg was managed by former Pirates pitcher Lee Meadows. Johnny was a mediocre 4-3 for Leesburg with a 3.96 ERA, and in midseason, he was moved to Tallahassee in the Georgia-Florida League in the hopes that he might prosper under manager Dutch Hoffman. His performance there was worse (1-7, 4.50 ERA) but Hamilton still believed in his potential and moved him to Lexington, Tennessee, in the Kitty League. Playing for his third ballclub of the year, Johnny won a couple more games but still had a mediocre record (2-5, 4.50 ERA). All told, the rookie was a disappointing 7-15 for the ’37 season.

In 1938 Beazley began the year at Greenville in the Class C Cotton States League. Reds scout Hamilton thought he looked great in exhibition games this time, but Johnny hit a roadblock when the regular season got under way. He began 2-4 with a 7.63 ERA, and not long after the season started was declared a free agent because of a technicality over his transfer from Lexington to Greenville. Disgusted with his pitching, Beazley decided to go home to Nashville. In July, he accepted a $250 bonus to sign with Abbeville in the Class D Evangeline League, but he had a hard time getting going there as well and returned home a second time. Only at the urging of Abbeville manager Jess Petty, the former Brooklyn pitcher known as “The Silver Fox,” did Johnny return and finish the season. His skipper’s confidence must have helped, as Beazley won several games and put up a better earned run average (6-8, 3.27 ERA) down the stretch.

Still more challenges were to come. After the ’38 season, Beazley’s contract was sold to the New Orleans Pelicans (scout Bob Dowie was instrumental in his acquisition) of the Class A1 Southern Association, a considerable jump in caliber.

At the end of his first month with New Orleans, Beazley injured his elbow. He had pitched just 25 innings in 10 appearances for the Pelicans, with a woeful 1-3 record and a 9.36 ERA. He walked 13 batters and allowed 27 runs on 39 hits during this brief stint, and was thus sent packing again — this time to Montgomery in the Class B Southeastern League. There he pitched only one game before being sent home yet again to rest his arm. Apparently only a fierce determination and encouragement from his coaches along the way kept Johnny in the game. Sue Beazley, his mother, also cited Vanderbilt coach Bill Schwartz, who had Johnny pitch batting practice each spring and offered a number of tips.⁴

Reporting back to New Orleans in 1940, Johnny was now a St. Louis Cardinals farmhand because the Pelicans had signed a working agreement with the Cards. After allowing 13 runs in nine innings over four games for the Pelicans with no decisions, he was moved back to in B ball and hurled only moderately more successfully for the Sally League’s Columbus Red Birds (5-3, 5.17 ERA). While with Columbus, he injured his back and returned home to Nashville to recover. Still struggling to gain his earlier promise, he was sent to the Montgomery Rebels in the Southeastern League and finally showed some real improvement — going 4-2 with a 2.04 ERA in eight games. Beazley’s rebound during his final Class B stop of the year foreshadowed his return to New Orleans and his development into a major league quality pitcher during 1941.

The ’41 season was a pivotal year for Beazley. While in New Orleans, he finally learned how to truly pitch under Pelicans manager Ray Blades. Previously, Johnny said later, he had only tried to “fog the ball past the batters. It didn’t work, but I thought I knew it all.” Blades convinced the still-young Beazley that “there was more to pitching than just throwing the ball” and taught him to pitch to locations and change speeds.⁵ He got a lot of work, pitching in 44 games (including 31 starts). Injury-free at last, Beazley went an impressive 16-12 with a 3.61 ERA over 217 innings.

When the Cardinals expanded their roster in September, he was called up to “The Show.” The Cardinals were were battling the Brooklyn Dodgers for the National League pennant, but surrendered the flag to the Bums during the final week. Beazley, now 23, made his major-league debut on the meaningless last day of the regular season, starting against the Chicago Cubs. His mound opponent was another late-season rookie call-up, Russ “Babe” Meers, also making his initial big-league appearance. Meers and Beazley had battled each other during the 1941 Southern Association season, and here they battled again. Meers lasted eight innings, allowing only five hits, but Beazley scattered 10 hits while pitching a complete game and securing his first major league win, 3-1. “I was lucky I had a manager who was so patient,” he later said in appreciation of Blades. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be up here winning in the National League.”

The Gas House Gang of the 1930s was gone, and Beazley joined a young and hungry Cardinals ballclub in 1942 spring training. Manager Billy Southworth remembered Johnny’s performance the previous year and gave him an opportunity to make the parent club. Beazley earned a spot on the Cardinals’ big league roster and later claimed a slot in the starting rotation after early success in relief.

Just two years after almost bombing out of the minors, Johnny was the top rookie pitcher in the major leagues — and one of the top pitchers, period — during the ’42 season. Compiling an impressive 21-6 record with a 2.13 ERA in 215 1/3 innings, he helped the Cardinals storm past archrival Brooklyn and win the National League pennant during the final days of the season. Beazley’s pitching repertoire included a whistling fastball and a snapping curve; his changeup was mostly off the fastball with an occasional slow curve. He recorded the second-best winning percentage in the league, along with the second-most wins. His 2.13 ERA was also second in the senior circuit; behind teammate Mort Cooper’s leading 1.77. Beazley thanked Southworth for giving him confidence and the chance to pitch, and he credited coach Mike Gonzalez for his turnaround. Apparently Gonzalez had taken a personal interest in the hard-nosed rookie.

Beazley was part of an unflattering incident during the 1942 season. The night before he was to pitch in a key game against the Phillies, he got into an argument with a porter at the train station. Beazley did not want the redcap to carry his travel bag; the porter was African-American, and Beazley reportedly did not like blacks. This was not uncommon, but Johnny’s prejudice may have been less controllable because of the fact that he was commonly known as “Nig” around Nashville after his grandfather stuck him with the nickname when he was about 3 months old. A squabble ensued at the train station, and the porter cursed him. Beazley responded by throwing the bag at him, after which the porter pulled a knife and slashed Beazley on his right thumb. Beazley raised his arm in self-defense, resulting in a deep (but not serious) cut. His Cardinals teammates didn’t know how he would be able to pitch the next day, but Johnny did pitch and carried a 1-0 lead into the ninth before Philadelphia rallied for a 2-1 victory. His teammates knew he was a cocky, hard-nosed player with a terrible temper, and, the temper did not always serve him well.⁶

Led by Beazley and Cooper on the mound and future Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Enos “Country” Slaughter at the plate, the ’42 Cardinals had an extraordinary 106-48 record for the 1942 season, setting a franchise record for wins that still stands today. In the World Series, Southworth’s Cardinals were matched against the New York Yankees of Joe McCarthy, defending Series champs and winners of five of the previous six fall classics. The Yankees took the opener at St. Louis, and Beazley was dubbed by the Cards to try to even things up at home in Game Two. Before the contest, Johnny satisfied a promise he had made to three of his former Hume-Fogg High baseball teammates. The self-assured hurler had signed a note back in school promising the trio tickets to his first World Series game, and sure enough, the three were at Sportsman’s Park to see his start.

His guests and the rest of the 34,255 on hand had plenty to cheer about most of the day, as the Cardinals spotted Beazley a two-run lead in the first and added another tally in the seventh. Johnny, meanwhile, held the Yankees scoreless until the top of the eighth, but then New York outfielder Charlie Keller tied the score with a three-run homer off the right-field roof. In the bottom of the frame, Slaughter hit a two-out double and Musial singled him home for a 4-3 lead. Despite surrendering a couple of singles in the top of the ninth, Johnny retired the side and Cardinals fans joyously tossed thousands of seat cushions onto the playing field at game’s end. Afterward, Beazley pulled a lucky brown rabbit’s foot out of his pocket and told gathered reporters that a female fan had given it to him.

A Time magazine writer noted of Beazley after the victory: “He grips the ball so hard his hand quivers for a half hour after each game. But the ‘Beaze’ has plenty on the ball. When Manager Billy Southworth chose the ‘Beaze’ for the second game of the series, even his staunchest admirers feared he would blow up with World Series jitters. The kid was walloped for ten hits, got into one jam after another, but at the last out he was still on the mound, the first rookie to win a Series game since Paul Dean trimmed the Detroit Tigers for St. Louis in 1934.”⁷

Games Three and Four went to St. Louis, too, as their pitching and hitting dominated the mighty Yankees. They held a three-games-to-one advantage over the Bronx Bombers, and with the title within reach, Southworth gave the ball to Beazley again for Game Five at Yankee Stadium. Leadoff batter Phil Rizzuto homered for New York in the first, but Slaughter tied the score with a homer of his own in the top of the fourth. The Yankees pushed another run across against Beazley in the bottom of the inning, but St. Louis tied it again it in the top of the sixth.

Both Johnny and the Yankees’ Red Ruffing were pitching well, but in the top of the ninth, with Walker Cooper on base, Whitey Kurowski crushed a line-drive home run into Yankee Stadium’s left-field bleachers. St. Louis had a 4-2 lead and New York was down to its final three outs. The first two Yankees up in the ninth reached base on a single and an error, but Joe Gordon was picked off second base by Cards catcher Cooper, and Beazley got the next two on a popup and a groundout to win his second game and clinch the Series.

In the victorious Cardinals’ locker room, Johnny was surrounded by reporters as well as a special guest. Babe Ruth burst into the proceedings and exclaimed, “Where’s that guy that whooped my Yankees?” Shaking the great Bambino’s hand was a cherished Beazley memory that lasted a lifetime.

The World Series hero returned to his native Nashville, where his achievements were celebrated and acknowledged by Mayor Tom Cummings and throngs of fans. They lavished him with gifts and awards; when asked by a reporter what he would do with his $6,100 Series share, the devoted son said he would give it to his mother. For his performance in 1942, the Chicago Chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America named Beazley the most valuable rookie of the year. (The “official” Rookie of the Year Award would not be given until 1947.) The Sporting News named him to the All Star Freshman Team along with Stan Musial and Johnny Pesky.

By the time of these honors, Johnny had become Corporal Beazley. In the midst of his whirlwind 1942 season, he had faithfully committed to military service, now that the U.S. was embroiled in World War II. The Army Air Force was waiting for him as the World Series concluded; and after graduating from Officer Candidate School, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in March of 1943.

Lieutenant Beazley was assigned to a morale-boosting unit, and spent much of his time traveling to military bases and playing baseball for the troops. The frequent service games caused an enormous strain on Beazley’s arm. He eventually injured it, which effectively ruined his baseball career.

Beazley’s oldest son, Terry, said his dad would go to a base, pitch two or three innings, then get on a bus and travel 40 miles to the next base without being able to cool down his arm. Cardinals teammate Marty Marion told author Peter Golenbock: “Beazley was in the Army, and we played his Army team in an exhibition game in Memphis. Ol’ Beazley hurt his arm pitching against us. He tried to beat us, I guess. He babied it for a couple of years, and it never did come back.”⁸

Shortly before he died in 2002, Enos Slaughter shared some reflections on his old teammate. “Johnny Beazley was an excellent pitcher for the Cardinals in his first season,” Slaughter recalled. “He was easy to get along with. He went out and did his job when he was supposed to.”

Still, initial expectations for Beazley were that he could regain his 1942 form when he returned to civilian life and the Cardinals organization after the war. It wasn’t to be. Concerns about his arm and lost velocity first arose early in spring training of 1946, and were justified when the regular season got under way. While he recorded a decent 7-5 record during the year, he made just 18 starts, and his 4.46 earned run average made it clear that the mastery he enjoyed during the ’42 season was history. That magical summer would remain his only great season, and in September Beazley actually announced his intentions to retire at the age of 28. “My arm is all right now, I think,” he told reporters, “but I feel weak and tired and just don’t have any strength anymore, so I’m quitting when the season’s over. I’d quit now, but I don’t want to let [Cards manager Eddie] Dyer down.” Dyer insisted that Johnny stay with the team down the stretch, and although he didn’t pitch again in the regular season, Beazley did appear briefly in the ’46 World Series against the Boston Red Sox — pitching one scoreless frame in Game Five after the Sox had taken a 6-1 lead after seven innings.

St. Louis won the series in seven games, and Dyer got Beazley to change his mind about retiring. He reported to spring training with the Cards in 1947 with new hope that he could regain his prior form, and had a few encouraging, headline-producing outings during the exhibition season. Most experts remained skeptical, but one man who still believed in Johnny was watching with interest. Former Cardinals manager Billy Southworth had moved to the Boston Braves in 1946 after presiding over a dominant St. Louis squad from 1940 to 1945, and immediately led the Boston club to its best season (third place) in nearly 30 years. Beazley had pitched brilliantly for Billy during the ’42 season, and Southworth — ever loyal, perhaps to a fault, to his old players — expected that Johnny would return to his prewar brilliance. He encouraged Braves owner Lou Perini to acquire Beazley, and Perini, anxious to put his own rising club into pennant contention, complied. On April 19, just as the 1947 regular season was getting under way, the Braves purchased the erstwhile ace for an undisclosed sum.

A few weeks later, on May 8, “Beaz” won his first start with the Braves — going the distance in a 12-5 victory over the Pirates that gave Boston a share of first place with the Dodgers. Southworth called Johnny’s possible revival a key to the team’s pennant hopes, but the enthusiasm was short-lived. Beazley won and completed his next start, against Cincinnati a month later, but his arm woes never really subsided. He wound up throwing just 28 2/3 innings the whole ’47 season (2-0, 4.40) and even less in 1948 (0-1, 4.50 in 16 innings of work). Johnny did get to play on his third pennant-winning club when the Braves copped the NL flag in ’48, and no doubt appreciated the bonus money, but it was likely a minor consolation. He appeared in just one game in 1949, retiring all six batters he faced in finishing a game, but his career was over. Southworth’s long comeback chance for his old ace officially ended on May 12, when Beazley was optioned to the minor leagues.

Beazley’s major-league statistics consisted of a six-year record of 31-12 in 76 appearances; along with 147 strikeouts, he finished with a career 3.01 ERA. He attempted to revive his career in 1949 by playing with his hometown Southern Association Nashville Vols, but was unable to overcome his arm injury. Meekly, he recorded a 1-3 record in five games in a Nashville uniform. In 1950, he attempted a comeback by playing for the Dallas Eagles in the Texas League finishing with a 2-2 record. In 1951, he played for the Oklahoma City Indians of the Texas League and finished with a 6-6 record. Finally, he walked off the mound for the last time and retired from baseball. In 1943, Johnny Beazley had married Carolyn Jo Frey of Springfield, Tennessee, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and he now had plenty of time for his hobbies of hunting, fishing, and golf. His post-baseball business career began with the Falstaff Brewing Company of St. Louis, for whom he was general manager of his hometown Nashville branch beginning in 1950. He later purchased the distributorship and ran the company until 1972. His wife died in 1974, but he kept busy by serving on the Metropolitan Nashville Council and as a councilman from 1974 to 1976. He also found a new bride, marrying Jacqueline Spurlock Ezell in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1975. They enjoyed 15 years together until, after being diagnosed with cancer, John Andrew Beazley, Jr. died at his home in Nashville on April 21, 1990. He was 71 years old, and was buried in the Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Nashville.

He was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 1977, and in 2005 was elected to the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools Sports Hall of Fame. And while the big one, in Cooperstown, will not be opening its doors for him, there are few men there who showed more promise in their rookie years than the hard-nosed Yankee slayer from the Volunteer State.

A version of this biography originally appeared in SABR’s “Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948” (Rounder Books, 2008), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

The John Andrew Beazley Papers (1916-1990) Manuscript Section, State of Tennessee Library, Nashville.

Nashville sports historian Bill Traughber (including his interview with Terry Beazley)

Golenbock, Peter. The Spirit of St. Louis (New York: Harper, 2001)

Rains, Rob. The St. Louis Cardinals: The 100th Anniversary History (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993)

Websites:

baseball-almanac.com, baseballhistorian.com, baseball-reference.com, cardinalshistory.com, findagrave.com, mlb.com

Nashville Tennessean Archives

New York Times Archives

Time Magazine Archives

The Sporting News

1947Boston Braves Sketchbook

1948 Boston Braves Media Guide

Assorted Associated Press stories, 1942-1947

Thanks to Bob Brady, Bill Francis, and Ray Nemec, and for research assistance from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Notes

1. Farrington, Dick. “Beazley, Cards’ Flashy Freshman,” The Sporting News, September 3, 1942.

2. Ibid.

3. O’Donnell, Red. “It Comes Out — Beazley Was Nashville High ‘Blue Devil,’” The Sporting News, October 15, 1942.

4. Ibid.

5. Farrington, op.cit.

6. Rains, Rob. The St. Louis Cardinals: The 100th Anniversary History (New York: St. Martin’s, 1993), p. 96. A contemporary report is found in the September 13, 1942, New York Times on page S3. Peter Golenbock asked Marty Marion about the incident and was told, “The porter wanted to carry his bag, and Beazley didn’t want him to. Beazley was that sort of guy. [Translation: he didn’t like blacks. All the porters were black.] He was a hard-nosed pitcher. He would knock you down.” Golenbock provided the translation, making Marion’s meaning clear.

7. Time, October 12, 1942.

8. Golenbock, Peter. The Spirit of St. Louis (New York: Harper, 2001), p. 351.
 

Before being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942, Vern Bickford scuffled for the Class D Welch Miners in the Mountain State League. He returned to baseball three years later after receiving sage advice from a host of major leaguers. “If it wasn’t for the war, I’d still be pitching in Welch, West Virginia,” Bickford told The Sporting News in 1948.

Vernon Edgell Bickford was born on August 17, 1920, in Hellier, Kentucky, on the same day that Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman died after being hit by a Carl Mays pitch. Hellier is in the coalfield country of the Cumberland Mountains near the borders of Virginia and West Virginia. Known as the location of the Hatfield-McCoy feud in the 19^th century, the region was growing in population when Bickford was born, having ballooned by more than 50 percent in 10 years.

Bickford grew up with six siblings (Estil, Raymond, Robert, James, Inez, and Irma). His father was a coal miner in Kentucky who for a short time owned a general store in a mining district until a strike by miners put him out of business.

While Vern was a child, the Bickfords moved to New Canton, Virginia, 60 miles northwest of Richmond in Central Virginia, where Bickford captained the local high school baseball, football, and basketball teams. After high school, Bickford played semipro ball for a briquette plant in Berwind, West Virginia, which is where Welch Miners manager “Sad Sam” Gray, a 20-game winner in 1928 who pitched in the majors for 10 seasons, heard about the scrawny right-hander. Bickford signed with Gray’s team in 1939, and pitched in 10 games, winning five and striking out 47 in 62 innings.

“I still didn’t know anything about pitching. I was a thrower — strictly. I could throw them by the Class D boys pretty well, but that was all I was good for,” Bickford said.

Bickford struggled with his control during his four years with the Welch Miners before being drafted into the Army. He started in the Air Corps, and ultimately was transferred to the infantry. The first bit of good fortune during the war years was when Bickford met his future wife, Jean Margaret Froyne, while he was stationed at March Field in Riverside, California. They married on November 4, 1944.

During the early years of the war, Bickford spent little time playing baseball. It was later, while stationed in the Philippines, that he picked up the horsehide again, playing for the Leyte All-Stars and the Manila Dodgers. In Manila, he threw alongside Brooklyn Dodger Kirby Higbe and Jim Hearn, and the pitching was so strong that supposedly future Hall-of-Famer Early Wynn played shortstop. Higbe talked positively about Bickford’s ability.

“‘Fifty percent of them don’t have any more stuff than you have,’ Higbe reportedly told Bickford. “But what you need is another pitch — a pitch you can throw for strikes.”

Bickford spent the closing days of the war developing a slider and controlling his changeup while getting pointers from major leaguers Roy Partee, Max Macon, and Al Milnar.

Bickford told the Boston Globe in 1950: “While I was in the low minors, we always put big-leaguers on a pedestal. But when I played with them in the service, I learned a lot…and I said to myself, ‘If those guys can play in the major leagues, so can I.’”

Bickford returned to the States after the war as the property of the Boston Braves. He threw one game for Hartford in the Eastern League before joining the Jackson team in the Southeastern League. He won 10 games that year, and was third in strikeouts and tied for first in the league with four shutouts He later recalled that it was in the middle of that 1946 season that he finally gained control.

The following year, he went to Indianapolis, where a coin flip brought him to the attention of Braves owner Lou Perini. The owner of the Indianapolis team, Frank McKinney (also a Braves stockholder), led a group, which included entertainer Bing Crosby, that bought the Pirates for $2.5 million. Faced with the question of who in fact owned the Indianapolis players, McKinney or Perini, Organized Baseball asked them to divide the squad.

They agreed upon all but eight of the players. They held a draft for the eight in the Hotel Floridian in Miami Beach, and Perini won the first pick with the coin flip.

Perini acknowledged later that he was unfamiliar with minor-league players’ names. He scanned the list of players and the name Bickford stuck out because during the war Brooklyn’s Branch Rickey tried to acquire the pitcher. He knew that if Rickey wanted Bickford, he must have been a good pitcher.

Perini selected Bickford with his first choice, and sent the righty to the Braves’ farm club in Milwaukee. Bickford did not impress over the first two months in relief, but a string of doubleheaders forced the Milwaukee club to start him. He shut out St. Paul on two hits, and over two weeks he threw four complete games and allowed only one run.

Recalling his year with the Milwaukee Brewers, Bickford said, “By that time, I was married and had a youngster to support. I had come to the conclusion that if I didn’t make good with Milwaukee and show myself a pretty good chance of moving up, I’d have to quit baseball and try to find something else to do for a living.” So 1947 was a turning point for Bickford.

“Bickford has everything — speed, a dandy change of pace, and his sidearm sailer,” said Brewers catcher Norm Schlueter. “He’s easy to catch, too, because all I have to do is put my glove where I want him to pitch the ball and he hits the bull’s-eye. He is going to be a big leaguer, that’s sure.”

On September 5, 1947, Bickford hurled eight hitless innings against Minneapolis before giving up a single to pinch-hitter Andy Gilbert to lead off the ninth. “With his curve, speed, and his great change of pace, Bickford is definitely a fine prospect,” said Brewer’s president Jake Flowers. The Braves agreed and five days later they brought Bickford to Boston.

Bickford achieved an American boy’s dream on May 19, 1948. Nine years after signing his first professional contract, he started for the Boston Braves against Rip Sewell and the Pittsburgh Pirates after scheduled starter Red Barrett complained of a sore throat.

The 27-year-old rookie was “considered little more than a relief hurler,” according to Boston Globe reporter Clif Keane. After a rough first inning, when he loaded the bases, Bickford shut down the Pirates, 4-1, handing Sewell his first loss of the year and making Barrett look like 1948’s version of Wally Pipp.

Despite fighting a sore arm, Bickford impressed not only the Braves fans; his bosses gave him a raise at the All-Star break.

Bickford won 11 games in 22 starts in 1948 and none was more important than the September 26 game against the Giants before 31,172 fans at Braves Field when Bickford won a 3-2 game to secure the franchise’s first pennant since 1914. Bickford’s 11-5 record, his team-leading winning percentage of .688, and his 3.27 ERA were a big factor in the Braves’ success.

Bickford started Game Three in the World Series for the Braves after his team’s top twirlers, Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain, split the first two games. After two scoreless innings, the Indians scored an unearned run off Bickford in the third. He gave up three hits and a walk in the fourth before manager Billy Southworth replaced him with Bill Voiselle. The Indians went on to a 2-0 win behind Gene Bearden.

That was the end of Bickford’s year as Southworth decided to start Voiselle in Game Six, which the Indians won, 4-3, and took the Series.

In 1949 Bickford had 16 wins and 11 losses, though his ERA rose by almost a full run, to 4.25. He added an All-Star Game appearance to his résumé as well. Braves ownership was still pleased with his performance; for the second straight year, the Braves gave Bickford a raise during the season. Then, in 1950, Bickford went from a reliable number three pitcher to one of the finest right-handers in the league. By August, baseball writers foresaw the possibility that the Braves trio of Spahn, Sain, and Bickford might win 20 games apiece. The Sporting News called Bickford “an aggressive, mean-eyed employee on the mound, but quite gentlemanly off the field.”

The difference for Bickford in 1950, according to his manager, was control. “Control is what has made Bickford better than ever before. He’s putting that ball where he wants it to go,” said Southworth despite the fact that Bickford was among the league-leaders in bases on balls for the second straight year.

“I’ve worked a lot with Bob Keely, our bullpen catcher, and I’ve just kept throwing and throwing. As a result, the hitters can’t ‘take’ on me the way they used to. For the pitches are going where I want them — for strikes,” said Bickford that year.

Along with his 10 wins by the middle of July, he was leading the league with 15 complete games. After 22 games, Bickford had accumulated 169 innings.

“Bickford thrives on work,” said Southworth. “He’s the type that retains his good stuff even when he gets a little tired.”

After Bickford took a ball off his elbow during batting practice, he entered his August 11 start against the Dodgers surrounded by questions.

“It is a crucial spot for the Braves because two questions need quick answering. One, Bickford’s elbow, hurt last Monday by a batting practice pitch. Two, when are the Braves going to start banging out wins in bunches?” wondered the Boston Globe prior to Bickford’s start.

Before more than 29,000 fans, Bickford answered the first question by no-hitting a Brooklyn Dodgers lineup that featured Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, and Pee Wee Reese. With an assortment of curves, sliders, fastballs, and changeups, and “the precision of a master craftsman,” Bickford kept the Dodgers off-balance for his 14^th win of the year. The nighttime no-hitter was saved by a defensive gem when Willard Marshall caught a fly ball in short right-center field after colliding with Sam Jethroe and Roy Hartsfield.

Twirling the franchise’s seventh no-hitter, Bickford faced 30 batters and didn’t allow a runner to reach second until the ninth.

In that inning, with two men on base and one out, Bickford snapped off a curve to Snider, who bounced a grounder up the middle, where Buddy Kerr grabbed the ball, stepped on second, and threw to first baseman Earl Torgeson for the double play.

“All I wanted was the game. That was all. No, I didn’t think anything about it for eight innings. But, truthfully, I did in that ninth. Especially when I walked those two hitters,” Bickford said.

The no-hitter gained Bickford a certain level of celebrity, but he settled down and won five more games over the next month. Stuck on 19 wins, though, Bickford failed six times to win number 20, finishing the season at 19-14 (Spahn won 21; Sain won 20). Bickford led the league with 27 complete games, 39 starts, 1,325 batters faced, and 311 2/3 innings pitched, and posted a 3.47 ERA. He even received MVP consideration, garnering four points in the balloting.

Bickford spent his winter hunting, fishing, and working around the house in Virginia, and answering questions about his no-hitter.

“I’ve heard some talk that maybe I gave out too much for the no-hitter. A couple of fellows, Ed Head and Rex Barney, never did much after their no-hitters. But I know I was pitching better after that big night. I’ll be satisfied to take up where I left off, not losing, of course, but with the same stuff and strength. There’s no reason I won’t,” said Bickford.

Though he was the only one of the top three Braves hurlers who didn’t win 20 in 1950, Bickford got the ball for the season opener against the Giants in 1951– the first Braves pitcher not named Spahn or Sain to get an Opening Day start since the war.

The year 1951 looked bright for Spahn, Sain, and Bickford after they combined for 60 wins, but only Spahn maintained that level of mastery. The Braves lost 4-0 in the opener. On May 6, Bickford watched as Pirates pitcher Cliff Chambers no-hit the Braves. After the game, the reporters surrounded Bickford for some words of wisdom.

His comment: “Cliff will have to remember that this game won’t win his next start. It’s just like any other game you win. Yesterday’s no-hitter never wins tomorrow’s game for you, just as yesterday’s victory never wins your next start. No-hitters don’t happen very often. After they happen, they don’t mean a darn to you.”

During that same month, Bickford tangled in a classic pitchers’ duel with another no-hit club member, Ewell Blackwell of the Reds. Bickford kept the Reds to two hits, but one of them was a home run by catcher Johnny Pramesa, giving Blackwell, who allowed just one hit, a 1-0 win.

After becoming the first NL pitcher to win six games by the middle of May, Bickford struggled and was injured on July 5 on the same day the Braves lost their other top righty, Sain, to injury. Bickford pulled a muscle in his right shoulder and left after the fourth inning against the Phillies.

After more than two weeks off, Bickford returned and was shelled for six runs by the Pirates, but won the game 11-6 to pick up his 10^th win. He followed with a handful of inconsistent starts and then lost nearly two months after breaking his right ring finger during a game of pepper at Wrigley Field. He threw three more times in September, allowing six hits and three runs in five relief innings.

Bickford said he was pleased with his performance, and explained why he wanted to return to the Braves that year. “Now I know I won’t be worrying all winter about this hand of mine,” said Bickford, who finished the year at 11-9 with a 3.12 ERA, which was eighth best in the NL.

Bickford’s 1952 campaign was plagued with inconsistency, injury, and strife. At the beginning of the year, he took part in the new medium of television. With Tommy Holmes, Spahn, and Bucky Walters, Bickford was part of the Braves’ Baseball in Your Living Room on a Boston TV station, WNAC-TV, which provided baseball tips from the pros.

Bickford may have wondered if television was a safer bet after starting his 1952 season. Umpires tossed him from two games within three months — and he didn’t pitch in either. During an April 24 game against the Giants, umpire Art Gore threw out Bickford, who argued from the dugout after a hidden ball play in which Torgeson tagged Max Lanier. Gore told the Braves that he had stopped play before Torgeson tagged Lanier, which wiped out the hidden ball trick.

“Some of the umpires are too complacent. They’ve got these jobs for life and they know they can’t lose them unless they break a leg. So they don’t hustle,” Bickford said after the game.

Bickford was tossed out of another game on July 2 after Torgeson punched Giants catcher Sal Yvars. Bickford argued that the umpires should have ejected both Yvars and Torgeson.

Bickford’s year didn’t get any better. He finished the 1952 campaign in August after a Willie Jones liner struck his pitching hand. Not realizing the extent of the injury, Bickford pitched another 2 1/3 innings before leaving the game. X-rays showed he suffered a broken middle finger. He’d finished the year 7-12 (3.74).

Stormy weather continued to follow Bickford during the offseason. While hunting in Medford, Maine, he was part of a deer hunting party that ended in a fatality. Phil Page, former big-league pitcher and coach, was part of the group of baseball-playing hunters. The trip ended when Page and his guide, Carlton Bragg, reportedly mistook an 18-year-old Howland, Maine, resident for a deer. They fired at the brush and fatally wounded the teen.

The strange circumstances surrounding Bickford continued. Shortly before spring training, his friend Torgeson was traded to the Phillies as part of a four-team deal. Torgeson planned to fly to spring training in New Orleans, but he borrowed Bickford’s car instead. The Torgesons made it safely to New Orleans, though the plane in which he planned to fly crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, killing 46 people.

Bickford followed his disappointing 1952 season with another tough year, winning only two games while pitching mostly in relief for the Braves, now relocated in Milwaukee. But it wasn’t his pitching that made news in 1953. While the nation celebrated the end of the Korean War, there was another battle brewing in New York City. Bickford and fiery teammate Johnny Logan came to blows at a Midtown Manhattan restaurant. The cause of the fight was reportedly baseball-related.

“It was a case of a couple of tempers flaring up for a couple of minutes, but it was all over in a hurry. We swung a couple of punches and then shook hands…. We were both sorry…Johnny’s a good guy and we’re still friends,” said Bickford.

“It was a one-punch scrap. We got into an argument over something that happened in the game. We shook hands and it’s all forgotten. We’re buddies now,” said Logan.

Though Bickford called the fight a “silly little argument,” those who saw the skirmish reported otherwise. Spectators told reporters about a battle that stretched into the street.

“The fight was a beaut while it lasted,” reported Bill Mathias of the New York Daily News. “Names were called. Logan waited for Bickford to land the first punch, and they were off. But it lasted no more than a minute. I did what I could to break it up. Bickford came out of it with a slight mouse over one eye. Logan hurt his hand.”

Newspapers had some fun at the players’ expense, including one Chicago sportswriter who reportedly asked Braves manager Charlie Grimm, “Is it true that the only pitcher Logan can hit is Bickford?” Grimm did not find the aftermath amusing, saying it was a “tempest in a teapot.” Bickford reported to Ebbets Field the next day with a black eye and cuts to his face.

After a difficult season, the Braves granted Bickford’s trade request and dealt him to the new Baltimore Orioles for $10,000 and catcher Charles White Jr., who was with the Orioles’ San Antonio farm team.

Bickford impressed during the early days of spring training, outrunning Orioles rookies in wind sprints and chasing fly balls for hours. He was hopeful for a new start.

“I think I’ll have a better opportunity to show my appreciation to the fans of Baltimore,” he said. “Milwaukee had lots of pitchers and I guess Charlie Grimm wanted to use his younger men ahead of me. I pitched only 58 innings and won only two while losing five. I’m the type of fellow who needs a lot of work, and with Baltimore a little short of pitchers, I think I’ll get it. I know I’ll be a winner for the Orioles.”

Bickford was given his only start on April 24, hurling four innings in a 14-4 loss to the White Sox. After the start, Bickford complained of elbow stiffness. He was released two weeks later.

After having an elbow spur removed in the summer of 1954, Bickford gave it one more shot. He tried a comeback in 1955 with the nearby Richmond Virginians of the International League. It didn’t work out; he posted a 1-0 record but with an ERA of 8.49 over just 35 innings of work, and retired from baseball.

With his baseball career behind him, Bickford spent his remaining years as a car dealer, traveling salesman, and carpenter.

Still not yet 40 and with three boys at home (Michael, Kenneth, and Vernon Jr.), Bickford’s life came to a premature end on May 6, 1960, at McGuire Veterans Hospital in Richmond. From his hospital bed, Bickford, stricken with cancer and down to 120 pounds, spoke optimistically just days before his death about the future and possibly returning to baseball.

“The doctors tell me I’ll walk again, and that’s just what I intend to do. I believe that because of my experience I could get a coaching job. At least, I could teach my three boys something about pitching,” said Bickford.

Bickford was buried in Mount Zion Baptist Church Cemetery in Buckingham County, Virginia.

The saying of “Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain” is a popular refrain when baseball fans think back to the late-1940s Braves. But from 1948 through 1950, Vern Bickford was a strong number three hurler, accumulating 46 wins, throwing a no-hitter, and leading the league in innings pitched one year. Finding a word that rhymes with Bickford would prove a difficult task, but baseball fans should know that for those three years Bickford rivaled his more famous mound mates in the eyes of his teammates and competition.

Note

This biography originally appeared in the book Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948, edited by Bill Nowlin and published by Rounder Books in 2008.

Sources

The Boston Globe

The Sporting News

The New York Times

Coberly, Rich. The No-Hit Hall of Fame: No-Hitters of the 20^th Century (Triple Play Publications, 1985)

Wikipedia.com

City-data.com

In an era when several of the major radio stations in Boston competed nightly for the attention of sports fans, the most listened-to program on the air was “Jim Britt’s Sports Roundup” from 6:15 to 6:30 on WNAC. It consisted of a mix of straight reporting, commentary, and in-studio interviews with newsmakers, and finished up with Jim’s signature expression at the end of his program, “Remember, if you can’t take part in a sport, be one anyway, will ya.” From today’s vantage point, that tagline sounds cornball but in the pre-television era it helped accelerate him into Boston’s No. 1 sports personality on the air in the 1940s.

Jim Britt was born in San Francisco in 1911. The well-to-do family (his father was chairman of the board of the Burroughs Corporation) moved to Detroit when Jim was 11. Jim received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Detroit (where his brother, a priest, would later become president), majoring in English and philosophy with a co-minor in speech and history. After graduation, he earned a law degree at the University of Southern California but chose not to take the bar exam. Always interested in speech, singing, and sports, he returned to Detroit to teach public speaking and debating in local high schools.

His entry into radio was accidental, not in one of the many ways open to those interested in media jobs today. He accepted a dare from the university’s football coach to become better behind the mike than the current announcer, who Britt thought was horrendous and had declared emphatically as much to the coach.

Full-time radio work began in 1935 with Notre Dame football and basketball games. Then came two years of Buffalo Bisons baseball doing home games live and road games via telegraphic recreation with Leo Egan. A native Buffalonian, Egan came to Boston after the 1938 hurricane. He wrote for the Boston Herald and broadcast baseball and football for 30 years (many pigskin clashes being from atop Harvard Stadium). Ironically, Leo was the person who persuaded Jim to audition for an opening as sports director with WNAC and its Yankee Network. This network was a federation of radio stations from Maine to Connecticut and had nothing to do with the Bronx Bombers.

Britt got the job on November 10, 1939, and became Frankie Frisch’s replacement as the voice of New England baseball. During his one year at the mike, Frisch had proven unable to fill the shoes of immensely popular local broadcast legend Fred Hoey and eagerly accepted the chance to return to the diamond as manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Britt began to broadcast home games of the Braves and Red Sox in 1940 with Tom Hussey as his sidekick. Few other baseball announcers have covered two teams at the same time. Their partnership continued until the 1942 All-Star break when Britt received his induction notice from the Navy. He served as an intelligence officer in the Pacific for the next 3 1/2 years, an assignment not without risk. At one point, the bomber in which he was flying suffered a mid-air collision with another American aircraft. Britt was one of eight survivors.

Britt’s return to civilian life allowed him to go back to cover Boston baseball games, now available on WHDH. Listeners welcomed the intelligent, smooth, and fluent sound of his voice again because play-by-play announcers assigned by the station in his absence were just not in his league. Reflecting back to when he was 13 years old, Sporting News columnist Wells Twombly reminisced, “Jim Britt…makes baseball sound better than red-haired girls with freckles.” Ken Coleman, who broadcast for Boston in later years, recalls it as a treat when Britt returned to the booth. “There’s no doubt in my mind that of all the broadcasters I’ve ever heard, and this includes network newspeople, no one had more of a command of the English language than Jim.”

Both Twombly and Coleman succeed in putting into words exactly what my own sentiments were. Jim Britt represented Braves baseball for me in the late 40s and early 50s. Thanks to him, I became such a devoted fan of the team that their move to Milwaukee in 1953 was like a death in the family. I still have vivid memories of hiding my portable radio underneath the covers at night listening to him describe yet another heroic comeback staged by the Braves during their victorious pennant chase of 1948. The losses piled up progressively from 1949-52, but the drama in his voice always gave me fresh hope that the outcome of tomorrow’s contest would be better.

Just a few months before what would become the final season of National League baseball in Boston, I wrote to Britt asking how best to pursue my lifelong dream. He took time from what must have been a busy schedule to offer me this advice during my sophomore year in high school: “Most important for either a sports broadcasting or sports writing career — get a good, well-rounded education. Go to college, if you can. There’s no possible substitute. Then make the rounds of the various small radio stations and/or newspapers to get a job. It may be hard to break in. But the job is interesting and well worth all the time and trouble to get started. Good luck in whatever you do, wherever you go.”

Boston’s first baseball telecast occurred on June 15, 1948, with Britt and Hussey calling a contest between the Braves and the Cubs on Massachusetts’ pioneer television station, WBZ-TV. Channel 4, as it was known then, had transmitted its inaugural program — a 15-minute newscast — a scant week before this historic event from Braves Field.

As the new medium grew, more games on the Braves (and soon the Red Sox) schedule were carried via television. The original broadcasting tandem remained intact through 1950, although Leo Egan and Bump Hadley also appeared from time to time. Hadley came from Lynn, Massachusetts and capped a 16-year pitching career with three World Series appearances for the New York Yankees in the late 1930s. His legacy forever will be tied to fracturing Mickey Cochrane’s skull with an errant pitch that ended the future Hall of Famer’s career. Years after this incident, Bump’s trademark closing to his popular sports show on WBZ was “heads up and keep pitching.”

When Tom Yawkey announced that his ball club planned to air road games in 1951, Britt could no longer broadcast for both the Braves and the Red Sox. He was given his option as to which team to broadcast. His decision to go with the Braves was criticized by many. Even Britt second-guessed himself. However, in hindsight it arguably was not a bad choice given the remarkable success the Braves would enjoy later in the ’50s and the hard times the Red Sox had during the same period.

Did Jim evaluate the young talent in the Braves farm system in 1950 (Mathews, Logan, Buhl, Bruton, Conley) and foresee that they would benefit the team in Boston over the next decade while the Red Sox had stars who were aging (Williams, DiMaggio, Doerr, Pesky, Stephens), making the American League outfit more likely to suffer decline? I think he did and, more important, there were upcoming threats to Britt’s physical and psychological well-being that renders the Braves vs. Red Sox dilemma inconsequential.

The counter view is that the poor judgment he exercised might have been somewhat attributable to erosion in his health, making the issue vital and far from inconsequential. Without knowing either Britt’s rationale to stick with Boston’s National League entry or what the aftermath would have been had he chosen the Red Sox, there is no way to tell for sure.

The Red Sox hired Curt Gowdy, who at the time was Mel Allen’s junior partner with the Yankees, and retained Tom Hussey. With Narragansett Brewery as their chief sponsor (“Hi neighbor, have a ’Gansett”), they continued to carry their games on WHDH, where they stayed until 1975.

As for the Braves, their 154-game schedule moved to WNAC and was sponsored by Ballantine (remember the three rings?). Britt’s backup during the Tribe’s final two seasons in the Hub was Les Smith, a journeyman news and special features host at the station. Their sister station, Channel 7, showed home games periodically. The Braves broadcast duo was joined there by an always unintentionally amusing and sometimes seemingly-inebriated Bump Hadley. Bump was that generation’s answer to Ralph Kiner with gaffes like “that ball is going, going…and caught by Sam Jethroe in short center field.” This is not to say that Britt was without his own shortcomings. Leo Egan saw Britt as “sort of a Felix Unger type — quirksome, picky.” He remembers one time when three times in the same game Britt miscalled fly balls as home runs. Egan characterized Britt as “very professional, very difficult. But, God, he was articulate.”

Britt was the first broadcaster associated with a local children’s cancer charity adopted by the Braves known as the Jimmy Fund, benefiting the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation (now Dana-Farber Cancer Institute). His tireless work to help eliminate childhood cancer established a tradition among Boston broadcasters that is followed to this day. Britt’s future broadcasting colleague in Cleveland, Ken Coleman, became an especially avid advocate for the Jimmy Fund upon his return to Boston. Ken later served as executive director of the Jimmy Fund from 1978 to 1984. Current Sox play-by-play man Joe Castiglione has carried on in the tradition as a spokesman for the Jimmy Fund since first partnering with Coleman in the mid-1980s, as has Joe’s former protégé Uri Berenguer-Ramos, the Spanish radio voice of the club. A cancer survivor and former Dana-Farber patient, Uri knows the importance of the Sox-Jimmy Fund partnership better than anyone.

The size of Britt’s audience increased in scope as he did the 1946, 1948, and 1950 World Series on radio, the 1949, 1950, and 1951 Series on television, the first nationally televised football game in 1949, seven All-Star baseball games, and several major college football bowl games during this time span. But his stardom fell as quickly as it rose, mirroring the fortunes of the team with which he was affiliated most closely during the postwar era before its abrupt shift to Milwaukee.

There were four years of Indians telecasts with Ken Coleman and then back to Boston as a news anchor and bowling program host prior to being fired by WHDH-TV. Drinking problems that led to arrest more than once, and a divorce took their toll, especially when these incidents were splashed across the front page of the Boston Daily Record tabloid. Most telling was an eye injury that ended his sportscasting career.

Progressively longer periods of unemployment ensued. He drifted from Boston to Detroit to St. Petersburg to Sarasota and finally to Monterey, California, where he was found dead in his apartment by the police on December 28, 1980, at the age of 70, with no known next of kin. His brother had predeceased him about two months earlier.

In Curt Smith’s latest opus, Voices of Summer, the author ranks Britt 78th among the 101 all-time best baseball announcers. That placement is just ahead of Joe Angel (San Francisco Giants and Orioles) and right behind Bob Starr (Angels and Red Sox). Joe Morgan and Russ Hodges represent more famous benchmarks, listed 60th and 51st respectively by Smith.

Shortly after Britt’s death, Ray Fitzgerald of the Boston Globe wrote that “life had turned its back on him a long time ago.” And maybe some of his detractors who called him arrogant, uncompromising, perfectionistic, thin-skinned, or unwilling to admit mistakes were secretly tickled that it had.

In his prime, Jim Britt was the king of New England sports radio and early television. He was bright, knowledgeable, and very articulate, took pride in his professionalism, and had a dry sense of humor. He once told radio/TV sports director and announcer Ted Patterson that his credo was “report the game, don’t play it.” And that he did so objectively, although there was a hard-to-pinpoint pro-Braves and pro-Red Sox quality to his voice that hometowners could sense.

Even during his off-peak years in Cleveland, he never let serious alcohol and marital problems color his description of the game.

A mostly forgotten figure today, the final truth of the matter is that there was an admirable strength of character that defined Jim Britt’s work, although not his life.

An updated version of this biography is included in the book  “Pitching to the Pennant: The 1954 Cleveland Indians” (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), edited by Joseph Wancho. It originally appeared in “Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948” (Rounder Books, 2008), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Bloomberg, Mort, “The Voice of the Braves” in Society for American Baseball Research (Paducah KY: Turner Publications, 2000).

Britt, Jim. Letter to Mort Bloomberg, January 1952.

Buchanan, William, “Jim Britt, 70, broadcast Boston baseball games.” Boston Globe, January 1981.

Fitzgerald, Ray, “Voice from Hub’s past is stilled,” Boston Globe, January 1981.

Patterson, Ted, The Golden Voices of Baseball (Champaign IL: Sports Publishing, 2002)

Patterson, Ted, The Golden Voices of Football (Champaign IL: Sports Publishing, 2004)

Redmount, Robert, The Red Sox Encyclopedia, 2nd edition (Champaign IL: Sports Publishing, 2002)

Smith, Curt, Voices of the Game (Lanham MD: Diamond Communications, 1987)

Smith, Curt, Voices of Summer (NY: Carroll & Graf, 2005)

Twombly, Wells, “Those ’48 Braves Were the Greatest”, The Sporting News, July 11, 1970.

In 1942, Burris returned to Hickory and worked in a sandwich shop for 10 months. During this time, he placed a telephone call to the manager of the Hickory Rebels and, as a result of the call, was invited to try out for the team. After a three-day trial, Burris earned the job as backup catcher. He signed his first professional contract with the Hickory Rebels of the Class D North Carolina State League. He soon earned the role of first-string catcher.

A “burly” catcher, he weighed in at 190 pounds — a weight he maintained throughout his career — and was an even 6 feet tall; he batted right and threw right. Burris played 75 games with the Rebels in 1942 and, in 223 at-bats, averaged .176. That same year, while playing with the Rebels, Burris attracted the attention of a scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers ultimately signed him as a free agent and sent him to Durham of the Class B Piedmont League. However, due to the strong competition posed by catchers Ferrell Anderson and Bruce Edwards, Burris’ playing time with Durham was limited to fewer than 10 games. Both Anderson and Edwards would go on to the major leagues: Anderson with the Dodgers (1946) and the Cardinals (1953), and Edwards with the Dodgers where he yielded his starter’s role to Roy Campanella. Edwards would play 10 seasons and two World Series with the Dodgers.

The outbreak and escalation of World War II interrupted Burris’s career in baseball when he was drafted into the Army. In his 31 months of service, Burris “saw plenty of action” on the Pacific Front, in Guadalcanal and the Philippines. He received an honorable discharge, having achieved the rank of sergeant, in 1946.

Also in 1946, the Class D North Carolina State League resumed baseball after having suspended play during the war. Now 23 years old, Burris began playing again, in the North Carolina State League, with the High-Point-Thomasville (Hi-Toms) Dodgers. He caught 74 games and batted .198. During the 1947 season he saw action with the Class B Danville Dodgers of the Three-I League, where he played 117 games and raised his batting average to .287. At Danville, Burris caught Carl Erskine, who that season was 19-9 with a 2.94 ERA. After the season, Burris was drafted from the Dodgers farm system by the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association, a Braves affiliate. Reportedly, Bob Coleman, manager of the Evansville Bees, a Braves affiliate in the Three-I League, recommended selection of Burris to the Braves front office. Coleman himself was a former major league catcher and had managed the Braves in 1943-45.

In 1948, despite his 21 errors in 100 games (league high for catchers in the American Association) Burris was called up to the Boston Braves, who had already clinched the National League pennant. Burris made his major league debut on October 2, 1948, at the age of 25. Wearing number 11, he caught Warren Spahn in the first game of the day’s doubleheader against the Giants, going 1-for-1 at the plate. The following day’s game was the final game of the season, and Burris caught again, going 1-for-3. These games were the first two of his 69 career major league games, all played with the Braves. Although he was not eligible for the World Series, he did receive a one-eighth share ($571.34, the same amount received by Johnny Antonelli, who appeared in four games) from the Braves’ Series receipts.

For 1949, Burris was initially penciled in as third catcher on the Braves’ staff. However, Del Crandall, Bill Salkeld, and Phil Masi wound up sharing the backstop duties. Burris was returned to the Brewers and played with them for the entire 1949 season. He continued his steady play behind the plate while hitting for a .263 average.

The Braves again called on Burris in 1950, keeping him with the team throughout the season, and playing him in 10 games as the backup catcher to Walker Cooper and Del Crandall.

Although his batting average in 1950 was only .174, Burris continued what would be a streak of errorless games — by the end of his major league career, in 69 games, he had a 1.000 fielding average, handling 271 chances without an error. Burris was known to have a strong arm (Nick Cullop, the Brewers’ manager said his throws “travel down to second base with the speed of a rifle shot”), but his weak hitting and relative lack of power limited his playing time and kept him in the role of bullpen catcher for most of his career. The Braves had hopes for Burris. Cullop said he would be a regular in the major leagues if he could learn to hit the curveball. “All he needs is to hit around .275 and he’ll stay in the Big Show for a long time,” Cullop said. “He’s a conscientious player, the type Billy Southworth prefers.” Cullop said Burris “was sent to us with orders that he work regularly. Billy Southworth is figuring on him to be a full-time receiver for the Braves next season. One more full campaign in the American Association will prepare him for such purposes.”

Following an offseason operating a soda shop near Charlotte, Burris began his third stint with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1951, where he was the backup catcher to Al Unser, who caught 115 games, batting .293 with 17 home runs. Unser, in organized baseball since 1933, and with major league experience (Tigers and the Reds) appeared in 122 games overall that season, which limited Burris to 48 games. Burris was called up to Boston on September 4, but didn’t get into any games. This season, however, prepared him for 1952, when he would have his most productive major league season. In that season, he played in 55 games for the Braves, with two of his 37 hits representing his entire major league career home run production. His first, a solo shot in the fifth inning of the second game of a doubleheader, came off Carl Erskine, his old Three-I League batterymate, on May 30, 1952, at Ebbets Field. The homer was the only hit Erskine gave up in seven innings of relief. Burris’s second home run, a two-run blast, came on June 12. and was part of Burris’s biggest day in baseball — he was 4-for-5 with a home run, a double, two singles, and six RBIs.

Burris also saw 1952 as an important year personally as he married Bette Burgess. He and Bette had their first daughter, Paula, in 1953.

Burris was in the Braves’ spring training camp when, on March 18, 1953, the franchise was transferred to Milwaukee. Notably, in a hastily taken team photograph, Burris is seen between Billy Bruton and Lew Burdette wearing a Milwaukee cap while others sport their old “B” hats. Many years later a collector would issue a black and white “Boston/Milwaukee” team set of baseball cards made up of pre-move player shots, with Burris receiving his own pasteboard after having retired.

On June 22, 1953, Burris broke his left elbow in a collision at home plate during an exhibition game with the Braves’ Class C farm club in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Up to then, he had played in only two games, with just one at-bat. He was placed on the disabled list on July 3 and remained on the DL until September 18. On December 2, 1953, Burris was assigned outright to Toledo of the American Association but Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick ordered that the Braves give him another trial. If he was not retained, the Braves would need to obtain waivers on him before sending him to the minor leagues. Ultimately, Burris was optioned to Toledo of the American Association (the Milwaukee Brewers had moved there after the Braves moved to Milwaukee) and assigned outright on September 20, 1954. He had played his final major league game in Milwaukee on June 4, 1953. He was 30 years old.

Burris played well at Toledo in 1954. In 108 games, he batted .265. His playing time, however, began to decrease. Through 1955 and 1956, he saw action with a number of other teams, including: the Jacksonville Braves of the South Atlantic League, the Columbus Clippers of the American Association, the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern Association, the Austin Senators of the Texas League, and the Louisville Colonels of the American Association. At Austin, where he played 13 games, his manager was a 1948 Braves teammate, Connie Ryan.

Although the life of a professional baseball player was challenging for Burris’s young family, they had been looking forward to his continued play with the Braves in 1954. His broken elbow and his assignment to Toledo had, unfortunately, affected his career plans. He did stay in the game until 1956 but as he was being used less frequently, he must have recognized that his professional career was coming to a close. He and his family returned to North Carolina to Huntersville, about 10 miles from Charlotte. There he was employed by the Douglas Aircraft Co. and the Duff Norton Co. until his retirement in 1985.

Paul Burris died in Huntersville on October 3, 1999, at the age of 76. His obituary in the Charlotte Observer said he “will especially be remembered for his dedication to his family and great love of seeing his grandchildren [Erin and Paul Taylor, Katie and Phillip Carter] play ball.” The obituary also noted that he had once “thrown out Mickey Mantle at second base”, without explaining when that happened. A lifelong member of the Presbyterian Church, Burris was laid to rest in Williams Memorial Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Charlotte on October 6, 1999.

Note

This biography originally appeared in the book Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948, edited by Bill Nowlin and published by Rounder Books in 2008.

Sources

Johnson, Richard A. Boston Braves (Images of America: Massachusetts). Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2001.

Kaese, Harold. Boston Braves 1871-1953. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004.

Peeler, Tim and Brian McLawhorn. Baseball in Catawba County. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

Podoll, Brian A. The Minor League Milwaukee Braves 1859-1952. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2003.

A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Library. National Baseball Hall of Fame. Cooperstown, NY. http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/library/research.htm

Baseball Almanac.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=burripa01

Catawba County Historical Association. Newton, N.C.

http://www.catawbahistory.org/contact.org/contact_the_ccha.php

Charlotte/Mecklenberg Public Library

http://www.plcmc.org

Hickory Public Library. Hickory, N.C.

http://www.hickorygov.com/library

Milwaukee Braves Historical Association. http://webpages.charter.net/milwaukeebravesha/mbha_001.htm

Reference and Information Services. Widener Library. Harvard University. Cambridge, MA. http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/at_hcl/#widener

University of North Carolina. The North Carolina Collection. Chapel Hill, N.C.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/index.html

State Library of North Carolina. Information Services Branch.

http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/

Wisconsin Historical Society.

http://www.wisconhistory.org/museum/exhibits/braves.asp

In 1924, while at Holland High School in Holland, Texas, Caldwell responded to the principal’s recruitment call for baseball players, thinking that his 6-foot frame would suit him well to try out at first base. The principal, though, who also served as the baseball coach, was desperate for pitching. He took a hoop from an apple barrel and set it on the side of a barn, saying that whoever was the most accurate at throwing balls inside the hoop would be the pitcher on the team. Caldwell threw eight of 10 pitches inside the hoop and, by doing so, set in motion his pitching career.¹

In 1926, after finishing two years at Thorp Spring College, he took a teaching/principal position in Rogers, Texas. To be eligible for the position, he had to be 21 years of age; he told them that he was born in 1905 which explains why he is sometimes listed as older than he actually was.² However, after pitching an exhibition game against Temple/Mexia of the Class D Texas Association, Caldwell left the teaching profession to become a professional baseball player. His performance that day had impressed the Temple manager so much that he signed Earl immediately. Caldwell pitched well for Temple and, within a month, was signed by Waco of the Class-A Texas League. At Waco, from 1926 to 1928, Caldwell compiled a 21–24 record with 24 complete games, earning him a call-up to the major leagues with the National League’s last-place Philadelphia Phillies, who purchased him from Waco.

On September 8, 1928, the slow, easy-going Texan made his major league debut against the Boston Braves, scattering six hits in a 4-0 complete game shutout in the second game of a doubleheader. The Associated Press summary of the game described Caldwell as having a “sweeping curve flung with a side-arm delivery.”³ Reports from the mid-1930s described him as pitching “underhanded.” However, his second start, against the Brooklyn Robins, was not as successful, as he gave up 12 hits and nine runs in a 10-0 loss. He followed that up with a 5-2 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, giving up 11 hits in seven innings while issuing four walks. Despite a promise from manager Burt Shotton that he would be brought back the following year, the Phillies returned Caldwell to Waco in March 1929, where he spent the season earning 21 wins in 291 innings pitched. During the winter of 1928, he began work as plant manager for the Harlingen Citrus Association.

In 1930, “Teach” Caldwell began pitching with Waco once more before going to the Wichita Falls team, also of the Texas League, where he had a 12-game winning streak. In December, his contract was purchased by the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association. Caldwell spent three seasons in Milwaukee, from 1931 through 1933, during which he lost more games than he won, with an ERA of almost 5.00. In 1934, the Brewers sent him to his third Texas League team, San Antonio. Caldwell had two impressive years there, winning 19 games in 1935, with a 2.27 ERA. After six years out of major league ball, he was summoned to the Browns later that season, appearing in six more major league games and winning three, including a 1-0 three-hit win against Schoolboy Rowe and the American League champion Tigers on September 22.

Caldwell spent the 1936 season with a dismal Browns team, winning only seven games while losing 16. After pitching in nine games in 1937 without a decision, Caldwell was sold by the Browns to Toronto of the International League on June 1, posting a 10-12 record for the season there. He spent the next two full seasons and part of a third in Toronto before being sold to Indianapolis of the American Association in May, 1940. Despite a 5-12 win-loss record at Indianapolis, Caldwell had a respectable ERA of 3.56 with six complete games. When asked about his record in the minors after being sent down by the Browns, Caldwell later admitted, “I had an arm that felt like a toothache every time I pitched for the Browns and after I had drifted back to the minors, I was at the point of giving up baseball as a bad job at the end of the 1940 season.” However, after playing the next season for a semipro club in Harlingen, Texas, he felt no pain in his arm. “The weather was warm and I suppose that the adhesions in my arm had broken,” Caldwell related.

After his stint with the semi-pro Harlingen club, Caldwell signed with Fort Worth, yet another Texas League team. The move proved to be a good one since he had two stellar seasons in which he led the league in innings pitched in both 1941 and 1942. In addition, he posted victory totals of 22 and 21, respectively, with ERAs of 1.57 and 2.33 and placed third in league MVP voting. His former team, Milwaukee, took note of his success and acquired him for the 1943 season. Caldwell continued his winning ways for the Brewers, especially in the 1944 season, when he won 19 games. During the season, Caldwell opined about what he would look for in a young pitcher, saying, “If I were looking for a young pitcher, I’d pick a good-sized man, loose, not awkward, who can throw hard. I don’t care whether or not he knows how to hold the ball for a curve. You can teach him everything else if he has speed. Remember Bob Feller?”

Caldwell’s success in Milwaukee earned him a contract with the Chicago White Sox for the 1945 and 1946 seasons, during which he showed a knack for winning games played under the lights.⁴ He didn’t lack confidence; at age 38 — apparently — he told the Associated Press in February 1945 that he was a better pitcher than ever before and predicted he’d win 15 for the White Sox. He also felt that pitching in the American League would be as easy as pitching in the American Association, declaring that “In the big leagues, each team has more good hitters than in the minors but you always have better fielders and I have always been a big winner when I played on teams with strong infields.” Red Sox scout Billy Disch agreed he was good: “Caldwell is a much faster and much better pitcher than when he was with the Browns. Now he would help any big league club.”

Caldwell was 6-7 in 1945, but threw over 100 innings, and he blossomed in 1946, when his 13 wins and 2.08 ERA (he was 13-4, used exclusively in relief, and finished a league-leading 37 games) earned him enough votes to finish in 14^th place in the AL’s Most Valuable Player balloting. Using his puzzling sidearm delivery, he accomplished this despite suffering a badly swollen thumb that hampered him towards the end of the season. He was, of course, well behind winner Ted Williams, but it was certainly the crowning achievement of his major league career.

During the season, Caldwell, in his practical way of looking at his baseball experience, related, “I feel now like I could pitch nine innings easy, but I probably will last a couple of years longer as a relief pitcher and that suits me. I enjoy the life in major league baseball so until I fade out again, I’ll stay at it.” When asked to explain how he was doing so well now in the major leagues after so many years in the minors, he stated, “Well, my fast ball — while not fast — has got more stuff on it than it ever had. It’s a sinker and makes the hitters top it often and hit on the ground, so there’s a better chance for double plays. I don’t know why it breaks better than it ever did. I just tinkered with it through the years and finally stumbled on the knack of doing it.

An unimpressive 1947 season began with an uncontested divorce granted his wife Myrtle on grounds of infidelity and was hampered by injuries during the season, but the White Sox kept him on their roster. His poor 1-5 start in the 1948 campaign dampened White Sox interest in him and he was placed on waivers, claimed by the Boston Red Sox for $10,000 on July 26, 1948. Boston sent Mike Palm to Birmingham to make room for the veteran Methuselah of the mound. Upon arriving in Boston, Caldwell was given number 20 for his uniform, after which he remarked, “Glad they gave me a smaller number. They always kidded me in Chicago that number 46 was not only my number, but also my age.” At a later time, when asked about why he has lasted in baseball for so long, he replied, “You remember baseball thrills, old and new; that’s why it’s such a great game and I guess why I remain young.”

After bouncing around the minors for so many years and pitching for so many hapless teams, Caldwell was finally with a team involved in a pennant race. But in a season that would again end in disappointment for Red Sox fans, with a playoff loss to Cleveland, Caldwell appeared in eight games with a 1-1 record and an ERA of 13.00 — statistics that signaled the end of his major league career. One shining moment in his dismal year was the attainment of five years in the majors, which qualified him for the players’ pension plan.

The 1949 season found Caldwell, by now 42 years old, pitching for the Birmingham Barons of the Southern Association, after being sold by the Red Sox. After a second season there, he moved on to Harlingen of the Class B Gulf Coast League for the 1951 and 1952 seasons, where he won 19 and 20 games respectively; to Lafayette of the Evangeline League as a player-manager in 1953 (still strong, there was one day where he pitched two games in a doubleheader, losing 2-1, then winning, 5-1) and as player-manager for Harlingen/Corpus Christi of the Class-B Big State League in 1954, after which he finally retired from baseball and took a position as manager of the Mission (Texas) Citrus Growers, a co-operative farm association. He served as an agent between the association and wholesale buyers in the North and East. He played his last game on August 2 and threw four-plus innings of relief, yielding only two unearned runs, getting the win — and singling, to spark the come-from-behind rally that saw Corpus Christi win the game.

Author Lloyd Johnson notes one interesting aspect of the 1953 season; Caldwell’s son, Earl Jr., served as catcher for his father on the Lafayette team. The two figured in an unusual play where Earl, as the pitcher, was called for a balk on a pitch that Earl, Jr., as the catcher, was called for catcher’s interference.⁵

Caldwell died on September 15, 1981, leaving behind his wife, Naomi; three sons, James, Larry and Jon; and a daughter, Charlene; Earl Jr. predeceased his father, dying in 1979.

Persistence, determination, and a love for the game seem to be what motivated Earl Caldwell to stay in baseball. In an era when professional baseball players feel slighted when they are sent down for more seasoning, Caldwell survived many trips to the minor leagues without complaint. His attitude toward the game is reflected in this quote by him: “My only wish is that all young players give baseball the best there is in them while playing the game.”⁶

Note

This biography originally appeared in the book Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948, edited by Bill Nowlin and published by Rounder Books in 2008.

Notes

1. “Caldwell Back in Big Time at 39” — Sam Levy, The Sporting News, February 15, 1945.

2. “Pitcher Caldwell Quits at 47 in B League; Winner of 391,” Washington Post and Times Herald, August 3, 1954, p.23. He noted the irony in baseball that most players made themselves out to be younger. “But I was born April 9, 1907, and am 46.”

3. “Phillies Upset Braves Twice,” Associated Press. September 9, 1928.

4. “Sox Fireman Caldwell Goes Like Blazes at 41,” Milt Woodard, The Sporting News, August 28, 1946.

5. Johnson, Lloyd, The Minor League Registry (Baseball America, 2000)

6. “Earl Caldwell Still Hurling Well at 48,” Washington Post, June 16, 1953, p.19.

Conatser, however, didn’t get those extra feet. His pinch-hit smash off Indians hurler Gene Bearden wound up as a helpful but inglorious sacrifice fly that scored Tommy Holmes from third and cut the score to 4-2. Phil Masi followed with a pinch-double to bring Boston one run closer, but Bearden stopped the rally there. After he shut down the Braves in the ninth as well, the victory and the championship went to Cleveland. Bearden (who also pitched a shutout in Game Three) was the hero, and Conatser merely a footnote in the box score – long forgotten to history.

The easygoing Californian has always pondered what could have been. “[Cleveland manager Lou] Boudreau had taken Larry Doby out and put Thurman Tucker in center field,” said Conatser. “If you look at the reports, it says I hit a long fly. Well, I hit a SHOT, on 3-and-2, that Tucker made a hell of a play on in left-center. Tucker hit the fence – it was just a great play. Doby played everybody shallow and never would have made the catch. Boudreau said that was the determining play of the World Series right there. If that ball goes in, we win, and come back with Sain the next day.”

Incredibly, as he recalled in another interview, Conatser didn’t even see where the ball went after leaving his bat. He’s heard the radio reports that “it was a well-hit ball, a line shot that was really kissed hard. But I didn’t see it because I had my head down. A ballplayer should never look at the ball until he rounds first base, at which time you can see the play in front of you.” As frustrating as it may be to speculate on the possibilities, however, the veteran who played just 143 big-league games has always maintained a sense of humor about the whole thing. “I always say, if it had been Musial batting, the ball would have gone in. But with rinky-dinks like me, somebody always makes the play.”

Being close to glory was nothing new to Clinton Astor Conatser. Growing up in Los Angeles, where he was born on July 24, 1921, he lived within shouting distance of a local legend who made it all the way to Boston’s other team – the Red Sox – and the Hall of Fame: Bobby Doerr. “He lived on 85th street, I lived on 84th, and I could walk over to his house maybe 300-400 feet away,” recalled Conatser. “I went to school with his sister and his brother Hal, who was a heck of a ballplayer. His sister played football and softball, and Hal caught in the Pacific Coast League and was an outstanding ballplayer. He just didn’t hit enough to make it to the big leagues.”

Conatser’s dad and Doerr’s father were fishing buddies, but Bobby was more an idol to Clint than a friend. “Bobby was my hero as a kid; that’s why I started out as a second baseman,” said Conatser. “He was never recognized for being as great as he was until after he was through, but what a credit he was to the game. If he had played in New York, they would never have heard of Flash Gordon. Joe Gordon was a good ballplayer, but Bobby Doerr was a great ballplayer. He made everything look easy, just quietly going along.”

As strong a player as Doerr was, however, Conatser says he wasn’t even the best in the neighborhood. “On our American Legion team we had [George] Catfish Metkovich, who played first and the outfield for the Red Sox and other teams; Dick Conger, who pitched for the Tigers, Pirates and Phillies; and Merrill Combs, a third baseman for the Red Sox. We were representing John C. Fremont High School, where Doerr and George McDonald had gone before us. McDonald was the big star, and hit great in the Pacific Coast League, but he never made it in the majors.”

Fremont’s opposition in those days was equally impressive. Rival George Washington High School had a Legion team that included Eddie Malone, who later caught for the White Sox; Louis Stringer, a future second baseman for the Cubs and Red Sox; Jerry Priddy, a second baseman for years in the American League; and Bryan Stephens, a Coast League star. Conatser says a catcher named Al Montgomery might well have been the best of them all, but he was killed in World War II while stationed in the Philippines. “The last of the bunch to come out of Fremont High was Gene Mauch, who came up with the Dodgers and later played with the Braves.” [Mauch, also a Red Sox, would eventually achieve greater fame as a longtime big-league manager.]

It was a terrific environment for a young athlete to grow up in. Although his father had been a semipro ballplayer for the L.A. Creamers, it was with and against his peers that right-handed Conatser honed his skills. “We all played over at the Manchester Playground – all year round, nothing but baseball. We had no coaches or organized teams until we got to Legion ball, but we had a playground director named Bill DeVernet who would make out lists of ‘teams’ like the Cardinals, Braves, and Yankees. Then we’d just go out and play. We watched the older pro players when they came back home and practiced. Kids are pretty good mimics.” Among the guys they imitated were Cardinals catcher Mickey Owen, later Reds third baseman Steve Mesner, and Red Sox star Doerr.

A 1948 article would later confirm that 73 players who graced the four diamonds at Manchester Playground had gone on to play professionally over the previous 20 years – including 28 in the majors – so it goes without saying that scouts came around regularly. After the “big-shot” representatives for clubs like the Yankees and Tigers had made their signings, “all of us little guys were left running around,” Conatser recalled. “There was a guy named Johnny Angel who scouted for Cleveland and signed guys that nobody else wanted. One of them was Bob Lemon, one of them was Cliff Mapes, and one of them was myself. Lemon got $500 to sign, Mapes got $200, but I only got $100 – plus $75 a month salary. Angel just signed guys who he saw had potential, and was probably the most successful scout back then for judging talent.”

Conatser, fast with a strong arm, was 16 when Angel started scouting him and 17 when he signed. He quit high school and in 1939 reported to spring training in Springfield, Ohio, of the Middle Atlantic League – Class C ball. “I walk out on the field the first day,” he remembered, “and here’s who they’ve got on the roster: Jim Hegan catching, Jack Conway at shortstop, Bob Lemon at shortstop where he had played the year before, Billy Southworth Jr. in center field, and a guy named Andy Skurski in right field. Here’s the pitching: Red Embree, Pete Sutter, Allie Reynolds, and a guy named Ray Bessom – who could throw harder than Feller. I can remember standing at home plate watching him throw, and thinking, ‘Jeez, if Feller throws harder than this guy, I’m in trouble.’ I’d stand there and the ball would just go whoosh right past me. I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’”

It was a formidable roster indeed; Lemon (a future Hall of Famer) would star in the majors, as would Hegan and Reynolds. Conway and Embree were also future big-leaguers, and with such talent to choose from, 17-year-old Conatser, a 5-foot-11 outfielder and second baseman, was sent down to Class D Fargo-Moorhead in the Northern League when the season started. Before the year was out he would play for Class D Logan (in the Mountain State League) and Johnstown (in the Pennsylvania State Association) as well, and all told he hit .261 with nine homers and 57 RBIs in 107 games. The next spring he was rewarded for this solid debut with a $10 raise to $85 per month and a spot with Class C Flint in the Michigan State League. By this point he had been converted to a full-time outfielder.

“I believe the hardest transition is going from high school to professional ball,” Conatser said of those days. “Instead of playing 10 or 12 games a year, you’re playing every day. You have to play sick, and you’re just a kid. You’re staying in fleabag motels, getting $2 for meal money, and eating in grease joints. You play doubleheaders on holidays in one town, keep your uniform on, and go on to the next town. If you have a long trip, you try to sleep – and those were old, old buses that shook an awful lot. I remember in the Northern League, we went from Fargo to Wausau, an all-night trip, and we slept sitting up. It was tough, but when you’re a kid it’s fun. You’re playing ball.”

After hitting .327 for Flint with excellent power (10 homers and 44 RBIs in 54 games), Conatser was sent back to Fargo-Moorhead midway through 1940 and fell off to .236 the remainder of the year. This kept him at the Class C level in ’41, predominantly at Charleston of the Middle Atlantic League, where in addition to the outfield he also saw time at shortstop and third base but hit .248 with just three homers. Although he remembers some scouts from other big-league clubs showing interest, Clint decided to put himself on the voluntary retired list and enlist in the Coast Guard after Pearl Harbor. He would eventually serve his country from 1942-45, including a stint in the South Pacific.

“After the war, it would have cost Cleveland $150 to pick up my option, but they figured I had retired and didn’t bother,” explained Conatser. “So I became a free agent while I was still over in the Philippines. I started getting letters from teams in South Carolina, Georgia, everywhere. I was keeping myself in shape by pumping iron. I was probably one of the first ballplayers to be really into weightlifting. I came out of the service weighing 185; when I went in, I had weighed 165. I was pretty strong.”

Deciding to give pro baseball one more shot, Clint went home to Los Angeles and tapped the skills of Bobby Doerr – by then one of the American League’s top stars with the Red Sox. “I started working out with Bobby, and he was telling me, ‘Boy, you can really hit,’” Conatser remembered. “And I really could. I was whacking it pretty good. Bobby told this Tigers scout named Dan Crowley about me, but the scout who had signed me for Cleveland seven years before – Johnny Angel – was all upset because now all of a sudden I was gaining people’s interest. I had a better than average arm, better than average speed, and better than average power.”

Scout Dan Crowley, at Doerr’s recommendation, signed Conatser to the Tigers for a $3,000 bonus. No doubt rejuvenated, Clint went out and hit .280 for Dallas of the Texas League in 1946 with 30 doubles, 13 homers, 70 RBIs and 20 steals. He recalled also performing well with Detroit in big-league training camp the next spring, but manager Steve O’Neill still sent him down to Buffalo of the International League. “I had three options left in the minor leagues before they had to decide whether to keep me or leave me open for the draft. That’s how they saved money when they had extra ballplayers. So they optioned me to Buffalo, then on to Seattle [of the highly competitive Pacific Coast League].”

Clint had a strong year in 1947 split almost equally between the two coasts, batting .287 with 14 homers in 120 games (.279 with Buffalo, .298 with Seattle). He figured he had earned another invite to Tigers training camp, but now out of options, he was left on the Buffalo roster – and was promptly plucked up by the Boston Braves organization in November of ‘47. This time he was determined to stick on a big-league club come spring, and prepared accordingly.

“I had a good spring in 1948, because after I heard I had been signed, I spent a month and a half getting in shape. When I got there, brother was I ready. I stood out. The first day of spring training, I was out there hitting, and the other guys were just worried about losing weight. I was a rookie, and I wasn’t supposed to make the team. Danny Litwhiler was kind of a fixture there, but [manager] Billy Southworth liked me. That’s the way Billy did things – he had judgments on what was good for the team, and he went with them. I think Billy had a special touch. Of course, the players didn’t like him, because you could never make any money platooning. They didn’t pay you unless they played you.”

With an overflow of outfielders in camp, Conatser was a long-shot to make the club. In addition to Southworth, however, he had another big backer: old pal Bobby Doerr. In a March 30, 1948 article appearing in the Christian Science Monitor under the headline “Rookie Clint Conatser May Make Grade in NL,” the Red Sox All-Star second baseman recounted winters spent tossing the ball around in LA with his friend and neighbor. “He has good wrists and gets around pretty good in the outfield,” Doerr told the Monitor’s Ed Rumill. “He has a good arm, too. I’d sure like to see him make it. He’s a nice fellow.”

In addition to his strong showing in exhibition play – which included a home run to help defeat the Red Sox – Conatser was involved in an incident of a near-calamitous nature as the Braves were barnstorming north through Virginia. During warm-ups before an April 12 game with the Richmond Colts, he hit a “savage line drive” that struck teammate Warren Spahn in his left (pitching) shoulder. Spahn quickly recovered, however, and Conatser made the club.

The Braves traded off Litwhiler to the Reds on May 11, but this didn’t make Conatser a regular starter. Although Tommy Holmes was a fixture in right, Southworth kept his other four outfielders shuttling in and out of the lineup based on the opposing pitcher. Only Holmes played more than 110 games, with Conatser, Jeff Heath, Mike McCormick, and Jim Russell all getting into 75 or more. Right-handed Clint hit primarily against lefties; so insistent was Southworth in his righty-lefty swaps that he had Conatser regularly switching with his left-handed roommate, Heath, even though one could make a good case that Heath – who hit .319 with 20 home runs and 76 RBIs in just 364 at-bats – deserved to be in the lineup every day as the team’s best power threat.

Conatser hit .277 with just three homers and 23 RBIs himself in his first big-league season, but he made several key contributions to the Braves’ pennant-winning campaign. He went into the starting lineup for a stretch when Jim Russell got hurt, and hit all three of his home runs in a one-month span as Boston battled for the top spot in the National League. His first homer, one of three hits Clint had vs. the Pirates on July 27, helped pace the club to a 5-1 win before 29,031 at Braves Field. On Aug. 17 he had a single, triple, and homer as Boston beat the Giants at the Polo Grounds, and five days later he delivered his biggest long ball of all – a two-run, eighth inning blast off Erv Palica into the left-field stands at Ebbets Field that provided the winning runs in a 4-3 win that moved the Braves two games in front of the second-place Brooklyn Dodgers.

“The Dodgers were making their move that night – they stole eight bases on us – but I hit that one off Palica, and that took the wind out of their sails,” recalled Conatser, looking at a wire service photo of him crossing the plate after the shot. “We were only ahead by a game at the time, but after that we widened the gap.”

Clint haunted the Dodgers with more than homers in August. The day before his clutch shot off Palica, he had collected a key fifth-inning RBI double as the Braves won 2-1 to gain a split of a doubleheader at Ebbets Field and stay one game ahead of the Bums. And in a 4-3 win at Braves Field a week before that, he had kept a three-run, ninth inning rally against Brooklyn alive with a bunt hit down the third-base line, then finished it by scoring the winning run on a sacrifice fly. Once the Cardinals moved into second place, Conatser helped beat them as well – going 4-for-9 with a pair of doubles in back-to-back road wins on August 24 and 25.

Such performances earned Clint respect from teammates on the veteran-laden club, and likely spared him some of the usual rookie hazing. “The veterans were very good to me. I was 27, not like an 18-year-old rookie. They had some fun with me, but nothing malicious. I remember Bob Elliott helping me with my hitting, and I appreciated it. Tommy Holmes, Phil Masi, Jeff Heath – they were all good guys. They all really tried to make me feel at home and tried to help me. There was no jealousy or anything among ballplayers, not even the old timers.”

And although many Braves players reportedly grumbled about Southworth’s platooning, Conatser – who benefited from the system as much as anyone – had nothing but praise for his manager. “I’ll tell you, Southworth had a lot of respect from the ballplayers. I think there was some talk that he grabbed all the headlines, but I think the papers did that. The sportswriters worshipped him, and called him the ‘Little General.’ He was outstanding as a manager, and he did outstanding things.

“Tommy Holmes had told me what I could expect from Southworth when I joined the club. He said, ‘Clint, you’re going to see something this year that you’ve never seen before. This man is uncanny. He’ll pull things that are against all logic, and they’ll work for him.’ And he did. He’d get up on top of that batting cage, and he’d look for something in a guy’s timing or whatever. Then he’d make a move. Tommy was right. Once he pulled Bobby Sturgeon off the bench when there were three or four other guys on the bench doing a better job, and Sturgeon hit a triple down the line.”

Conatser had strong memories of his teammates as well, but was not shy to tell it as he saw it. “They talk about Spahn and Sain and two days of rain. I always get a kick out of that, because Spahnie won 15 games that year – one of the few times he didn’t win 20. It was one of his worst years, but he did lose some tough games. It seemed like every game I played in was a one-run game, or something like 3-1, and Spahnie was in a lot of those games coming up on the short end.

 “Spahnie was a good hitter, too. He started as a first baseman, and he could hit it out of the ballpark. Sain was not a power hitter, but Spahn could jerk it out of there. He hit one out in Philadelphia – beat the hell out of it – using my bat. Back then, so many players played so many positions before they found where they belonged. Generally, as a kid, the pitcher is the best athlete. He pitches, and maybe plays shortstop. They lose their focus on hitting later on, because pitching takes a special focus where you need to blank every thing else out. But both Spahn and Sain could hit. Sain would just wait all day for a curve ball, and poke it to right field. [For the record, Sain hit .245 lifetime, Spahn .194 with 35 homers.]

“All our pitchers came through. We don’t win it without Nellie Potter and that screwball. All the managers then were into platooning no matter what — and you don’t put a left-handed hitter up against a right-handed screwball pitcher. He’d strike them out or get them to hit the ground ball, and he’d do it time after time after time. I got to thinking – this is stupid! Why not hit a right-hander against a screwball pitcher? They just wouldn’t do it. But he did a hell of a job for us, even though nobody gave him much credit.”

Conatser’s biggest admiration, however, was reserved for his roommate. “Jeff Heath was quite a guy. On those hot nights when we couldn’t get to sleep, we’d stay up until three or four in the morning, just talking. He’d tell me about how they had blamed him for all that stuff in Cleveland – some of the things they pulled on him. [When Heath was with the Indians in 1940, he and other star players were blamed for costing manager Ossie Vitt his job by complaining about him to ownership, and were lambasted as the “Crybaby Indians” in the newspapers.] We would have won the World Series against the Indians if he didn’t break his ankle at the end of the year. I think he would have set a record for everything in that Series, he wanted to beat Cleveland so much.”

Clint helped Heath get through some of the early pain from his late September injury by sneaking over two bottles of pennant-clinching champagne to his roommate’s Brooklyn hospital bed. Heath’s absence left Conatser as the natural man to take over in center field fulltime for the World Series, but the Braves instead received special permission from the National League to bring up veteran left-handed batter Marv Rickert – who that year had 27 homers and 117 RBIs for minor league Milwaukee and had also played in the majors. Rickert went in to left field, Mike McCormick moved to center, and Conatser stayed on the bench. “After he got hurt, Jeff said it was up to me,” Conatser recalled, “and I would have loved to play more in the Series. But then the Braves brought Rickert up, and I only played in two games – hitting against [Gene] Bearden when he started and relieved.” [Rickert, meanwhile, would go 4-for-19 with a home run.]

The results of Conatser’s limited series appearances were mixed. Playing center in place of Rickert during the third game, he went 0-for-3 against Bearden in the fellow rookie’s 2-0 shutout victory for the Indians at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. Clint didn’t get in again until the fateful eighth inning of the sixth and final game back at Braves Field, when he hit his near-grand slam/sac fly. “We thought we were going to win the Series; we felt we had a better ballclub,” he reflected. “There were just a few dumb plays here and there. My kids gave me a videotape of about 30 minutes of Series highlights, and you can see watching it the mistakes we made. Sisti popped that ball up and they got a double play out of it, Torgie [Earl Torgeson] made a few bad plays. It just wasn’t typical of us; we didn’t play that way all year.”

There was some consolation to go with the postseason setback – a record loser’s share of about $4,600 thanks to the crowds of 80,000-plus in Cleveland. “I took my money and paid cash for a house in Gardenia [California], which cost me $6,500,” said Conatser. “My mother raised me that you didn’t charge anything and you don’t owe anybody, so I bought a little house. Trouble was, we didn’t get the money until December, so I came back and went right to work at Santa Anita racetrack as an usher and ticket-taker with Bob Dillinger [of the St. Louis Browns].” An amusing Associated Press photo ran nationwide on February 13, 1949 that showed the pair in their “other” caps and uniforms and played up the fact Dillinger had sent back his latest Browns contract unsigned. The caption read: Bob Dillinger, bespectacled third baseman of the St. Louis Browns, is shown discussing his baseball salary problems with Clint Conatser, Boston Braves outfielder, at Santa Anita Park, where both are clubhouse attendants.

With Heath’s availability for the 1949 season up in the air, Conatser was expected to compete for a starting job in spring training. But on March 27, facing rookie Frank Fanovich of the Reds in an exhibition game, Clint was hit in the back of the head and taken from the field on a stretcher. “We didn’t have helmets, and I was in the hospital for three days,” he recalled. “I came out the fourth day, and Southworth put me right back in – like a guy falling off a horse.”

Conatser recovered quickly to make the club, and was a starter in left field for many of the season’s early games. The Braves started slow, but took over first in May and were still in the top spot when they headed to Philadelphia at month’s end. Boston won two of three, and Clint was on fire – going 8-for-10 including three doubles, two home runs, and eight RBIs. Despite this output, part of a 14-day stretch on the road in which Clint hit .486 (18-for-37), Southworth amazingly had him platooning again with Russell when the team returned home June 1. Clint fell cold at the plate, and his average, once comfortably above .300, dropped well below this mark during the next month.

Ironically, it was the return of his old roommate that signaled the end of Clint Conatser’s big league career. On July 8 newspapers reported that Heath would be ready to resume playing within two weeks after a 10-month recovery from his broken ankle; his return to the roster would give the Braves one too many outfielders, and shortly after the All-Star break, on July 15, Clint was sent to minor league Milwaukee. He was hitting .263 with three home runs at the time, and his last hit in the majors had not even counted – a homer slugged over the left-field wall at Fenway Park in a mid-season exhibition game with the Red Sox on July 11 to benefit charity.

His departure from the Braves was unceremonious. “I was the only player who had any options left, so they optioned me out,” Conatser recalled. “I was 28 years old at the time, and I just said to myself, ‘Hey, you gave it your best shot. Just get out of it.’ So I quit [after the season].” The player recalled by Boston to replace him on the roster was none other than Heath, who after an unsuccessful comeback would be gone from the majors himself by year’s end.

Clint figured he was done with baseball, but it wasn’t quite done with him. “That fall, the Dodgers bought me in the Sam Jethroe trade, because I had hit well against Brooklyn. Supposedly the Braves gave them $100,000 and me for Jethroe. [Newspaper accounts don’t mention Conatser as part of the deal, but it did occur around the same time.] The Dodgers had tried to get me the year before, but Boston had traded them Mike McCormick instead. I was working on a ranch down in Texas, and [Dodgers GM] Branch Rickey came down there and asked me to play again. So I came out here and played with Hollywood a couple of years.”

Back in the Pacific Coast League after a three-year hiatus, Conatser could not duplicate his 1947 PCL success at Seattle. He hit .231 with Hollywood in both 1950 and ’51, appearing in fewer than 100 games both seasons and peaking at nine home runs for manager Fred Haney (who would later distinguish himself as pilot of the 1957 World Champion Braves). It was during this period that Stars management tried to boost sagging attendance by having its players wear shorts, a novelty that made for intriguing photo ops but also plenty of cut-up legs. In 1952, then with the Portland Beavers, Clint was doing much better (a .268 average playing every day) when he surprised the team by quitting abruptly on July 6. He was still just 30 years old.

“There was just no financial incentive. I gave it my best shot, but eventually I figured I just had to go make some money,” said Conatser. “It’s wonderful to be a ballplayer, but you’ve got to make a living. My father made me learn a trade when I was 14 – sheet metal. I took shop 14 hours a day for two years. I didn’t learn much, but it was all I knew how to do. He had an air conditioning business, so I got into it too. The years I played in Hollywood really opened the doors for me. That was in ‘52, when all the building out here [in Los Angeles] was just getting started. I was very, very lucky. I met people that ended up getting me business all over the country. I think people believe that ballplayers are basically honest, and I think that carries over after you retire. You learn to speak to people, and it helps you become a successful salesman.”

The only time Conatser’s name popped up in the sports pages after this was when he would join other former ballplayers living on the West Coast at fishing derbies and golf tournaments (he was among the best of the old-timers at both pursuits). His air conditioning business prospered, and he later spent more than 30 years buying and breeding race horses – often partnering with another old Brave, Joe Adcock, who raised Clint’s mares on his Louisiana farm. As the decades passed, Conatser’s alma mater, Fremont High, continued turning out big leaguers like Bob Watson, George Hendrick, and Chet Lemon.

By the 1990s photos of horses shared space with old baseball pictures on the walls of Clint’s comfortable condo, located just off Route 5, 30 minutes from Anaheim Stadium. He stayed ruggedly handsome into his 80s, and came back to Boston a few times for Braves reunions. By the summer of 2007 he was one of the last living players from the 1948 NL champions, and when his daughters gave him a copy of the ‘48 World Series on videocassette, he enjoyed playing back his Game Six at-bat in slow motion and adding his own commentary with a sly grin.

“If that ball had just been an inch or two more inside, I’d of put it out!”

Note

This biography originally appeared in the book Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948, edited by Bill Nowlin and published by Rounder Books in 2008.

Sources

Author interviews with Clint Conatser, 1991 and 2004.

Mort Bloomberg interview with Clint Conatser, 2007.

“Manchester ‘Alma Mater’ of Many Stars,” by John De La Vega, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1948.

“Rookie Clint Conatser May Make Grade in NL,” by Ed Rumill, Christian Science Monitor, March 30, 1948.

Other assorted Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Hartford Courant, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Associated Press, and United Press International articles, 1946-1984.

“Looking Back at a Few Diamond Memories,” by Mort Bloomberg, Boston Braves Historical Association Newsletter, summer 2007.

Retrosheet.org

Baseball-reference.com

President John F. Kennedy was said to have correctly answered a trivia question that had been floating around for years: Who is the only man to ever hit a home run off Sandy Koufax and catch a pass from Y.A. Tittle? The guess was always Alvin Dark. “It’s not quite accurate, however,” Dark always said. “Tittle played at LSU after I did.”1

That JFK’s answer was presumed true said it all about Dark – a terrific three-sport athlete at Louisiana State University who in baseball excelled at each phase of the game. Joe DiMaggio called him the “Red Rolfe type of hitter,” meaning that he was ideal for the No. 2 spot, the type of batter who could “bunt or drag, hit behind the runner, or push the ball to the opposite field.”2

One of the best shortstops in Giants history, Dark played in 14 major-league seasons with the Boston Braves, New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, and Philadelphia Phillies before returning to the Braves, then in Milwaukee, to finish his career. A three-time All-Star, he started at shortstop for the National League in the 1951 and ’54 contests. He was 24 years old when he broke into the big leagues with the Boston Braves on July 14, 1946, but was already nationally known for his collegiate exploits on the diamond and gridiron. A lifetime .289 hitter with 126 home runs and 757 RBIs, Dark, nicknamed the Swamp Fox, played on pennant winners with the 1948 Braves and ’51 Giants, and also helped win a World Series title for New York in 1954. He was the Rookie of the Year in 1948 and was captain of the strong Giants teams of the 1950s.

Dark also had a successful managing career. He won a pennant with the 1962 San Francisco Giants just after his playing days, a world championship with the Oakland A’s in 1974, and a division title for the A’s in 1975. Accordingly, he became the first man to manage All-Star teams for both leagues: the National League in 1963 and the American League in 1975. It was not quite a Hall of Fame career either on the field or in the dugout, but Dark was still one of the few men to reach the top of the heap in both roles.

Born on January 7, 1922, in Comanche, Oklahoma, Alvin Ralph Dark was the third of four children born to Ralph and Cordia Dark. Ralph was a drilling supervisor for the Magnolia Oil Company and a part-time barber. An amateur baseball star, he declined an opportunity to play in the Texas League to marry Cordia. Work brought the family, which also included son Lanier and daughters Margaret and Juanita, to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Young Alvin battled malaria and diphtheria as a child, rendering him unable to attend school until he was 7. His athletic career blossomed at Lake Charles High School, where he made all-state and all-Southern football teams as a football tailback; and his skills as a basketball guard were superlative enough to earn him the team captaincy. Lake Charles High lacked a baseball team, and Alvin played American Legion ball.

Dark reconsidered a basketball scholarship from Texas A&M University to play football at Louisiana State in 1940. Playing halfback as a sophomore for the Tigers in 1942, he carried 60 times for 433 yards and a 7.2-yard rushing average. He also played basketball and baseball for LSU that year, lettering in all three sports.

With World War II raging, Dark in 1943 joined the Marine Corps’ V-12 program, which allowed him to continue his education for another year. The Marines sent him to the Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette, where he played for the greatest football team in the school’s history. Undefeated at 4-0-1 (most Southern schools did not play a full schedule during the war), SLI beat Arkansas A&M University 24-7 to capture the inaugural Oil Bowl. In that game, played in Houston, Dark ran for a touchdown, passed for another from his tailback slot, and kicked three extra points and a field goal.3

In addition to playing football in the 1943-44 school year, Dark was a member of SLI’s track, basketball, baseball, and even golf teams. His Marine V-12 obligations prevented him from playing the entire baseball season, but he made the most of his limited at-bats, going 12-for-26 (.462). After completing basic training at Parris Island and Camp Lejeune, Dark was commissioned at Quantico in January 1945 and was destined for service in the Pacific Theater. As he awaited orders at Pearl Harbor, he tried out for the Marine Corps baseball team, earning a berth on the lower-division squad.

In the end Dark never saw combat, but he still faced a pretty dicey situation. After the declaration of an Allied victory in the summer of 1945, he was sent to China that December to support the Nationalists against the Communists. He was dispatched to an outpost south of Peking (now Beijing) to guard the railroad and help transfer supplies to another station. Although his platoon did not know it, they had to pass through a Communist-controlled town to complete their mission. “Our group ran the supply line for four months before being relieved,” said Dark. “A month after I got back to the United States, I received word that the Marines who took our place were ambushed in the Communist town and massacred.”4

When he returned home to Lake Charles, Dark learned that he had been drafted to play pro football for the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles. His first love was baseball, however, and Ted McGrew, a scout for the Boston Braves, had been watching Dark play in college. McGrew, who had helped engineer the trade of Pee Wee Reese from the Red Sox to the Dodgers, admired young Dark for his tenacity and competitive spirit in all sports. Spurning reported interest from several clubs, Dark signed with the Braves for $50,000: a $45,000 bonus and $5,000 to complete the season with Boston. The date was July 4, 1946.

Dark’s obligations to the Marines prevented him from joining the Braves until July 14. That day, in the second game of a doubleheader against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Forbes Field, he pinch-ran for catcher Don Padgett in the ninth inning of a 5-2 loss. A month later, on August 8, Dark got his first hit, a double off Phillies’ pitcher Lefty Hoerst at Philadelphia. Once again the Braves were defeated, as the Phillies triumphed, 9-8.

Dark played 15 games for the fourth-place Braves in 1946. Although he had just three hits in 13 at-bats, all were doubles – a nice harbinger of things to come (he wound up hitting 358 big league two-baggers). At spring training in 1947, Dark pleaded with manager Billy Southworth to retain him as a regular player. Southworth preferred to keep veteran Sibby Sisti as his starting shortstop, however, and optioned Dark to Milwaukee.

That summer, his only season in the minors, Dark hit .303 with 10 home runs, 7 triples, 49 doubles, 186 hits, and 66 RBIs. He earned American Association honors as All-Star shortstop and Rookie of the Year, and finished third in the Most Valuable Player balloting. Playing for manager Nick Cullop, Dark led the league in at-bats, runs, putouts, assists, and, dubiously, errors. His fielding, however, was considered solid; while not the flashiest of shortstops, he had good range and would become a good double-play man.

After the 1947 season Dark returned to Southwest Louisiana Institute to complete his degree in physical education. Although he wanted to compete in collegiate athletics, his request was denied because he had signed a professional contract. He did, however, serve briefly as the football coach’s athletic assistant.

Dark made the Opening Day varsity for the Braves in 1948, but was relegated to the bench as veteran Sisti continued as the regular shortstop. Nevertheless, Dark persevered. His contributions as a reserve player eventually won him the starting job, and he wound up fourth in the National League in batting with a .322 average. He contributed 3 home runs, 39 doubles (third in the NL), and 48 RBIs from his No. 2 spot in the order, while fielding his position strongly (a .963 fielding mark, well above the league average). Initially, his tenure in 1946 disqualified him from the Rookie of the Year ballot. However, the Baseball Writers Association of America ruled that year that players with 25 games or less in previous seasons would qualify for the ballot. This allowed Dark to win Rookie of the Year honors for 1948, the last season both leagues combined to acknowledge one freshman player. He also finished third in the vote for NL Most Valuable Player, but was a letdown in his first World Series by batting just .167 with one double in 24 at-bats. The Braves lost to the Cleveland Indians in six games.

Dark’s outstanding rookie campaign was augmented by the exploits of his keystone partner, second baseman Eddie Stanky. Known as “The Brat,” Stanky had been traded to the Braves by the Dodgers during spring training. Not only were Dark and Stanky a great double-play combination for years to come, but they became close friends and roommates. Dark considered Stanky and Danny Murtaugh as his greatest mentors; as Dark remarked in his autobiography, “Stanky knew so much more about the game than anybody else. If there were ten possible percentage plays to make, most guys would know four or five. Stanky would know ten.”5

Their strong double-play duo notwithstanding, the Braves had a disappointing 1949. They fell to 75 wins against 79 losses, good for just fourth place. Dark’s batting average fell as well – to .276.

Just behind the Braves in the 1949 standings were the New York Giants, who finished a pedestrian fifth place at 73-81. New York manager Leo Durocher and team president Horace Stoneham attributed the shortcoming to inadequate speed and defense. To improve in these areas, the Giants traded outfielders Willard Marshall and Sid Gordon, shortstop Buddy Kerr, and pitcher Sam Webb to the Braves on December 14 for Dark and Stanky. The blockbuster deal was panned in Gotham, as the trade cost the Giants power hitters Marshall and Gordon – the latter a particularly strong fan favorite as one of the league’s foremost Jewish sluggers. Fans at the Polo Grounds were also initially lukewarm to accepting Stanky, as he had previously played for the archrival Dodgers.

Dark, however, came with no such baggage, and Durocher immediately took to his new shortstop. As Dark later wrote, “Leo stuck by me in the early part of 1950, when I first came to the Giants and couldn’t seem to get started … yet Durocher stood by and kept telling me not to worry, that I would seem to come out of it.”6

Durocher surprised Dark once again that first season by declaring the shortstop his team captain. Most sportswriters assumed that Stanky, not Dark, would get the nod. After all, it was the extroverted Stanky who emulated Durocher, in speaking his mind to the press and in the clubhouse. Yet Leo chose Dark, speculating that the position could easily build confidence in the mild-mannered infielder and help him emerge as a team leader.

“In my first year [as captain], all I did was take the lineup to home plate. After the success we had in 1951, I began taking on some responsibilities – automatic things, like consoling a guy after a bad day. After a while some of the younger players came around, and some of them, like (Willie) Mays, still call me ‘Cap.’”7

In 1950 the Giants improved to third place with a record of 86-68. Playing in all 154 games, Dark batted .279 with 16 homers and 67 RBIs – by far his best power numbers to that point. It was in that season that the Giants made history.

Early in the campaign, the Giants promoted rookie outfielder Willie Mays from Minneapolis, and he was soon dazzling the league with his graceful catches and power. The Giants also boasted clutch-hitting outfielder Monte Irvin, who had 121 RBIs that year, 32-homer man Bobby Thomson in the third outfield slot, and pitchers Sal Maglie and Larry Jansen, each a 23-game winner. Dark, for his part, had a terrific year, hitting .303 with a career-high 196 hits, a league-best 41 doubles, 114 runs scored, and 14 homers. Defensively he led the league with 45 errors at shortstop, but he also was tops in assists (465) and double plays (114) in making his first All-Star team. Still, the Giants trailed the Dodgers by 13½ games as late as August 11. How was anyone to guess that they were about to complete one of the greatest pennant races in baseball history? The Giants won 37 of their last 44 games to tie the Dodgers at the end of the season and force a best-of-three playoff.

In the third game, with the teams tied, 1-1, Brooklyn had a 4-1 lead going into the bottom of the ninth at the Polo Grounds. With Dodgers ace Don Newcombe on the mound, Dark led off the inning with a single off the glove of first baseman Gil Hodges. “I must have fouled off six or seven pitches with two strikes before getting that hit,” Dark recalled.8 Four batters later, after Dark had scored, Bobby Thomson hit his legendary three-run homer to cap the “Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff” and win the pennant, 5-4. Dark hit .417 with three doubles, a home run, and four RBIs in the World Series that followed, but the Yankees reigned supreme, winning in six games.

After the 1951 season, Dark’s friend and teammate Eddie Stanky was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. Without this sparkplug, and with Willie Mays in the Army most of the year, the Giants finished 1952 in second place, 4½ games behind the Dodgers. Meanwhile, Durocher had become impressed with farmhand Daryl Spencer, who dazzled at shortstop while playing for Minneapolis. Durocher wanted to play Spencer at shortstop and move Dark to second or third base. Dark expressed his displeasure by intruding on a press conference orchestrated by Durocher. Things smoothed over, however, and Spencer departed for military service after the 1953 season. After his greatest season at the plate, in 1953, batting .300 with 23 home runs and 88 RBIs, Dark emerged as the undisputed shortstop for the New York Giants.

Perhaps the resolution of this conflict helped the club. After a disastrous 1953 season in which the Giants finished fifth, the team went on a roll the next spring. The press began referring to the squad as “Happy Heroes, Inc.,” because they would always find a way to beat you, whether it was a pinch-hit home run or solid pitching.9 Dark was reunited with erstwhile Braves teammate Johnny Antonelli, and the starting pitcher won 21 games after the Giants acquired him in a trade for Bobby Thomson. Center fielder Mays returned from the Army and emerged as a superstar, leading the National League with a .345 average while slugging 41 home runs and driving in 110 runs. The Giants finished five games ahead of the Dodgers, winning the pennant with a record of 97-57.

This time the Giants faced the Cleveland Indians, winners of 111 games, in the World Series. After hitting a solid .293 with 20 home runs and 70 RBIs during the year, Dark had another outstanding postseason with a .412 batting average on seven hits and a walk in 18 plate appearances. Boosted by his output and the incredible pinch-hitting of Dusty Rhodes (two homers, seven RBIs), the Giants surprised by sweeping the Indians. While Mays was the runaway choice as league MVP, Dark finished fifth in the balloting and even got one first-place vote.

An injury-plagued 1955 campaign was Dark’s last full season as a Giant. After fracturing his rib in a game against Cincinnati on August 7, he separated his right shoulder against the Phillies on September 2. Dark’s injuries limited him to 115 games, and he ended the year hitting .282 with 9 homers and 45 RBIs. New York finished 18½ games behind the Dodgers, in third place.

The 1956 season started off dismally for the club, and by early June the Giants were settled into seventh place with a record well under .500. A shakeup was in order, and in an eight-player deal on June 14 the Giants sent Dark, Ray Katt, Don Liddle, and Whitey Lockman to the St. Louis Cardinals for Dick Littlefield, Jackie Brandt, Red Schoendienst, and Bill Sarni. New York wanted a second baseman (Schoendienst), and the Cardinals wanted a shortstop (Dark). It was initially a good move for Dark; the 1957 season, his last as a regular shortstop, was also his final pennant race as a player. He hit .290 as the Cardinals finished in second place, eight games behind the Milwaukee Braves.

Dark now became a third baseman – and a “traveling man.” On May 20, 1958, the Cardinals traded him to the Chicago Cubs for pitcher Jim Brosnan; in his two seasons in Chicago, he hit .295 and .264 while playing alongside another standout shortstop, Ernie Banks. On January 11, 1960, Dark was swapped again, along with pitcher John Buzhardt and infielder Jim Woods, to the dismal Philadelphia Phillies for outfielder Richie Ashburn. Dark’s first hit of the season in Philadelphia’s home opener against the Braves on April 14, 1960, was the 2,000th of his major-league career. He played 53 games at third base (hitting .242) before a June 23 trade for infielder Joe Morgan (later the Boston Red Sox manager) sent him to the Milwaukee Braves. Now 38, he was used primarily as a utility infielder, pinch-hitter, and occasional outfielder. Appearing in 50 games for the second-place Braves, Dark upped his productivity, batting .298 with one homer and 18 RBIs.

Still, it wasn’t long before Dark was sent packing again. On October 31, 1960, he was traded for the sixth and last time when the Braves dealt him to the San Francisco Giants for infielder André Rodgers. With his future uncertain, Dark accepted a sales position with the Magabar Mud Company in Louisiana. He did not peddle mud for long, however, as he was named to replace Tom Sheehan as the Giants manager for 1961.

In his first press conference as skipper, Dark was asked if he retained any memento from the 1951 Miracle at Coogan’s Bluff. “Yeah,” the manager replied humorously. “Willie Mays!”10 He demonstrated very quickly his ability and fortitude to make bold moves with his roster and in game situations, thereby emulating his mentor Leo Durocher. He intended to eliminate any racial cliques by reassigning clubhouse lockers that integrated whites with blacks. “We’re all together and fighting for the same cause. This way we’ll all get to know each other better,” he said. 11 Dark also moved the Giants’ bullpen across the field to better monitor pitchers who might not be focused on the game.

Although Dark earned a reputation for avoiding controversy as a player, he embraced it as a manager. Despite his strong religious views as a Baptist fundamentalist, he was prone to temper tantrums. To ventilate his anger after a 1-0 loss to Philadelphia on June 26, 1961, for instance, he flung a metal stool against the wall. In the process, he lost the tip of his little finger, requiring hospitalization for its repair. “I made up my mind two weeks ago not to take my anger out on the players. So, I guess I took it out on myself tonight,” he said in jest. 12

In his first season as manager, Dark guided the Giants to a third-place finish at 85-69, eight games behind pennant-winning Cincinnati. The next season, 1962, he led the Giants to a sparkling 103-62 record and their first National League championship in San Francisco. Mays, Felipe Alou, Orlando Cepeda, and Willie McCovey combined to hit 129 homers, and Jack Sanford led the pitching rotation with 24 wins.

The Giants’ 1962 campaign was not without its controversy. Even as West Coast transplants, they retained their rivalry with the Los Angeles Dodgers. LA shortstop Maury Wills was en route to a then-record 104 stolen bases, and according to the Dodgers, the Giants were trying to slow him down. At one point during a three-game series at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in August, the infield was soaking wet around first base. The umpires had no choice but to douse the wet surface with sand, thereby preventing baserunners from stealing. For his alleged role in the situation, Dark earned the nickname “Swamp Fox.” Dark responded to the incident with a “Who, me?” attitude. As he remarked to Baseball Digest some 40 years later, “I just remember that one day they had trouble with a hose that broke.”13

Just as in 1951, the ’62 NL pennant race came down to a tie finish and a three-game playoff with the Dodgers to decide a champion. The Giants triumphed again, and in another ’51 rematch, they faced the Yankees in the World Series. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, sparked the Yankees’ offense, complementing a rotation led by Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry. San Francisco took New York to the limit, but fell 1-0 in Game Seven at Candlestick Park. After this near-miss, the Giants returned to third place under Dark in 1963, posting an 88-74 record to finish 11 games behind Los Angeles.

Dark has been linked to a great urban legend involving Gaylord Perry, who pitched for the Giants’ teams from 1962 to 1964 and was a notoriously weak hitter (.131 career batting average). Dark was said to respond to sportswriter Harry Jupiter’s comments on Perry showing some pop in batting practice by saying, “There would be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry would hit a home run.” Sure enough, on July 20, 1969, Perry hit a home run in the third inning off Dodgers pitcher Claude Osteen. How long the home run came after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface when the home run came is debatable. In any event, Perry hit five more homers before retiring.14

On June 7, 1964, during the last of a three-game series with the Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium Dark exemplified why the Bay Area had dubbed him the “Mad Genius” when he used four pitchers in the first inning. 15 He sent starter Bob Henley to the showers for surrendering two runs without retiring a batter, and when reliever Bob Bolin walked one man, he, too, was replaced, by Ken MacKenzie. MacKenzie retired a pinch-hitter before Gaylord Perry was summoned to record the final two outs of the frame. The craziness worked; 10 innings later, the Giants beat the Phillies 4-3.

Dark’s Giants completed the 1964 season with a fine 90-72 record and a fourth-place finish. However, his role at the center of a controversial article numbered his days in San Francisco. Midway through the season, Stan Isaacs of Long Island Newsday asked Dark about the Giants’ performance. The manager responded by accusing his players of making recent “dumb” plays.16 Although he later insisted that his comments were specific to baserunning mistakes by Orlando Cepeda and Jesús Alou, it was already too late; because his team was made up primarily of African-American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican players, Dark was unfairly painted as a racist.

On August 4, 1964, Dark called a press conference at Shea Stadium in New York to explain that the newspapers had misinterpreted him, but it mattered not; Horace Stoneham fired him at the end of the season. Several high-ranking baseball officials declared their support for Dark, including Commissioner Ford Frick. Perhaps most significantly, former Dodgers great Jackie Robinson quickly rushed to Dark’s defense. The two had been friends since their playing days, and Robinson told the New York Times that he had “known Dark for many years, and my relationships with him have always been exceptional. I have found him to be a gentleman, and above all, unbiased. Our relationship has not only been on the baseball field but off it. We played golf together.”17

Surely boosted by this vote of confidence, Dark moved beyond the Giants and was subsequently hired as the third-base coach for the Chicago Cubs. Then, at the end of the 1965 season, Charlie Finley hired him to manage the Kansas City Athletics. Dark was already the sixth manager hired by the maverick Finley in the six years he had owned the team. The A’s boasted an unknown young club with Catfish Hunter, Blue Moon Odom, and Lew Krausse in the starting rotation. After losing 103 games in 1965, the A’s went 74-86 in 1966 during Dark’s first season as skipper.

Despite considerable talent, lackluster baseball and personality issues caused the A’s to fall back into the cellar in 1967. After an incident that alleged player rowdiness on an airline flight, Dark had the distinction of being fired, rehired, and fired again on August 20. Not even Hall of Famer Luke Appling could resurrect the A’s as Dark’s replacement. With two All-Star shortstops at the helm, the A’s finished with a record of 62-99.

After the 1967 season, the Cleveland Indians hired Dark as manager and general manager. He led the team to its best record in nine years in 1968, with 86 wins and 75 losses. But in 1969 the Indians finished last, at 62-99. Without a substantial budget, they improved a bit in 1970 but returned to last place in 1971. With the team’s record 42-61 on July 30, 1971, Dark was fired as manager and general manager, completing his four years at the Cleveland helm with a lackluster .453 winning percentage (in San Francisco, he had won at a .569 clip).

For the next two years, Dark lived in Miami, where he excelled as a regular golfer by winning local tournaments. He supplemented his savings as an after-dinner speaker at churches, lecturing on baseball and the Bible. By 1974, however, Dark missed managing. As spring training dawned on February 20, he accepted old pal Charlie Finley’s offer to return to the A’s, by now in Oakland, as their skipper.

Dark faced enormous pressure assuming the reins of baseball’s most combative and successful team. Under Dick Williams the A’s had won the World Series in 1972 and 1973. Although one year remained on Williams’s contract, differences with Finley led him to resign. Dark accepted a one-year, $50,000 contract as Williams’s successor, with incentive bonuses if he won the pennant or World Series. An Oakland reporter heralded Dark’s arrival by writing, “The only thing worse than being hired by Charlie Finley [is] being hired by him a second time.”18

Dark claimed that his renewed religious faith had made him a changed man. No longer would he berate his players or belittle them publicly. He vowed to accept Finley’s suggestions, avoiding a renewal of their feud. Certain players, like Reggie Jackson, accepted Dark’s new personality, while others, such as Vida Blue, were rather critical. A fellow Louisianan, Blue “knew Alvin Dark was a religious man, but he’s worshipping the wrong god – Charles O. Finley.”19

The Oakland team Dark managed in 1974 had few weak spots. Catfish Hunter posted a record of 25-12, led the league with a 2.49 ERA, and won the Cy Young Award. Powered by a lineup featuring the likes of Jackson, Sal Bando, and Joe Rudi, the club captured its fourth consecutive division title by five games over the Texas Rangers. The A’s pitchers proved dominant over the Baltimore Orioles in the League Championship Series, at one point tossing 30 consecutive scoreless innings. Oakland won the series, three games to one.

The 1974 World Series was the first to feature only California teams: the A’s and manager Walter Alston’s Dodgers. After defeating Los Angeles in five games for his first Series title as a skipper, Dark agreed to return to Oakland in 1975. And despite losing Hunter as a free agent, he guided the A’s to yet another divisional title. With a record of 98-64, the A’s paced the division with a comfortable seven-game lead over the Kansas City Royals, but the 1975 Red Sox swept Oakland in three games in the playoffs.

On October 17, 1975, Charlie Finley announced that Dark’s contract would not be renewed. Dark returned to the Cubs as a coach for manager Herman Franks in 1977 before replacing John McNamara as the San Diego Padres’ manager on May 28. Although the Padres played well under Dark, their second-half record could not lift them beyond a final mark of 69-93. Citing a “communication problem,” Padres general manager Bob Fontaine fired Dark on March 21, 1978.20 He was only the second manager in major-league history to be released during spring training.

Dark was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, the Louisiana State University Sports Hall of Fame, and the New York Giants Baseball Hall of Fame. Dark married his childhood sweetheart, Adrienne Managan, in 1946, and the couple had four children, Allison, Gene, Eve, and Margaret. They divorced in 1969, and Dark was remarried a year later, to Jackie Rockwood, and adopted her children, Lori and Rusty. He returned to baseball as the farm-system evaluator for the Cubs in 1981, and in 1986 was hired as director of minor leagues and player development for the Chicago White Sox.

Dark was 92 years old in 2014, with 20 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. He moved from San Diego to Easley, South Carolina, in 1983. He became involved with the Alvin Dark Foundation, which financially supports ministries,

As of January 2014, Dark was the oldest living manager of a World Series-winning, pennant-winning or postseason team.

On November 13, 2014, Dark died at home in Easley, South Carolina.

This biography has appeared in “The Team That Time Won’t Forget: The 1951 New York Giants” (SABR, 2015), edited by Bill Nowlin and C. Paul Rogers III; “Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O’s Three Time Champions: The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74” (SABR, 2015), edited by Chip Greene; and “Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston’s (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948” (Rounder Books, 2008), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

Dark, Alvin, and John Underwood, When in Doubt, Fire the Manager. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1980).

Markusen, Bruce, A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s. (Haworth, New Jersey: Saint Johann Press, 2002).

Meany, Tom, The Incredible Giants. (New York: A.S. Barnes, 1955).

Stein, Fred, and Nick Peters, Giants Diary: A Century of Giants Baseball in New York and San Francisco (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1987).

Boyle, Robert, “Time of Trial for Dark,” Sports Illustrated, July 6, 1964, 26-31.

Bush, David, “Turn Back the Clock 1962: When the Giants Lost a Heartbreaker to the Yankees,” Baseball Digest. October 2002.

Dark, Alvin, and John Underwood, “Rhubarbs, Hassles, Other Hazards,” Sports Illustrated, May 13, 1974, 42-48.

McDonald, Jack, “Alvin Assigns New Lockers in Effort to Kill Cliques,” The Sporting News, April 19, 1961, 26.

Stevens, Bob, “Dark Blows Stack – Loses Finger-Tip on Metal Stool,” The Sporting News, July 5, 1961, 9.

Tourangeau, Dixie, “Spahn, Sain, and the ’48 Braves,” The National Pastime (SABR), 1998, 17-20.

“Dark’s First Hit of the Season No. 2,000 for His Career,” The Sporting News, April 27, 1960, 8.

Newell, Sean, “Did Neil Armstrong Help Perry Get His First Home Run?,” Deadspin.com, August 12, 2010 (deadspin.com/5937875/did-neil-armstrong-help-gaylord-perry-get-his-first-career-home-run.)

Louisiana’s Ragin’ Cajuns Athletic Network, athleticnetwork.net

Notes