Orie Edgar Arntzen was born on October 18, 1909, in Beverly, Illinois. His parents, Leopold and Kathryn Marie Arntzen, were children of German immigrants and raised five children (two others did not survive infancy). The youngest member of the family, Orie grew up on family farms in the Mississippi River basin in small rural communities in western Illinois and northeastern Missouri. Orie listed his occupation as a plumber on the 1930 census, and that year he resided with his folks in Good Hope, Walnut Grove Township, Illinois.

Arntzen was a big, 6-foot-1, 200-pound right-handed pitcher, but little is known about how he began his professional baseball career during the height of the Great Depression. Minor-league baseball offered young men a chance to travel and forget the harsh economic realities of the time; however, the low salaries often forced players to choose between a career on the diamond and more steady income. And so it was with Arntzen. In 1931 he signed with Bees of the Class D Mississippi Valley League who played their home games in Burlington, Iowa, about 40 miles from his home. However, it is not certain if he ever played a game for them. Contemporary newspapers typically reported that Arntzen’s foray into pro baseball began two years later, in 1933, with the Davenport (Iowa) Blue Sox and Peoria (Illinois) Tractors of the same league. When the league disbanded at the end of the season, Arntzen (with a combined 2-6 record and an ERA north of 6.00) returned to Good Hope, where he worked at a hardware store.

After a one-year absence, Arntzen returned to Organized Baseball in 1935 with the Norfolk Elks of the four-team Class D Nebraska State League. A hard-throwing pitcher with a lively fastball, Arntzen suffered from poor control, walking 101 in 186 innings to go along with his 10-10 record.  “I was a wild man in my early days of professional ball,” said Arntzen later in his career. “In 1935 I walked 17 batters in game.”1 He recognized that if he wanted to continue pitching, he had to harness his control. “Four or five nights a week I went to the gym and pitched at a still target – a brick wall. I could tell early when I was off my mark.”2

In 1936 and 1937 Arntzen posted records of 14-11 and 19-9 respectively and logged in excess of 200 innings each season for the Martinsville (Virginia) Manufacturers of the Class D Bi-State League and was named to the all-star team both years.3 More importantly, he caught the attention of the St. Louis Cardinals, whose legion of scouts left few prospects uncovered. The club took a chance on the 27-year-old recruit, whom they signed and placed with the Asheville (North Carolina) Tourists, one of five Class B clubs among the organization’s 27 minor-league affiliates. It was a short-lived relationship.  A 3-3 record and team-high 5.40 ERA in 50 innings earned Arntzen his release in the offseason.

Arntzen helped guide the Cedar Rapids Raiders to two consecutive first-place finishes in the Class B Illinois-Indiana-Iowa (Three-I) League in 1939 and 1940. With a staff-best 16 wins for the league champions in 1940, the 30-year-old Arntzen was purchased by the Toronto Maple Leafs, an affiliate of the Philadelphia Athletics in the International League.

Arntzen established permanent residence in Cedar Rapids, where in the offseason he worked for the Iowa Manufacturing Company, a maker of roadbuilding equipment. In October 1936 he had married Mary Murray, and together they raised three boys, Hal, Darrell, and Gary.

Assigned to the Williamsport (Pennsylvania) Grays of the Class A Eastern League in 1941, Arntzen fit in on a pitching staff which boasted five hurlers 30 or older. The mild-mannered Midwesterner was second on the club in wins (15) and innings (207) as the Grays finished second in the league.

The Sporting News reported that Arntzen “spent most of the 1942 season visiting doctors” because of his bad back.4 He remained in Cedar Rapids and worked full-time throughout most of the summer. In August he finally returned to Williamsport to enjoy the best stretch of pitching in his career, winning seven of eight decisions and posting a 1.71 ERA in 63 innings.

Often described as a “fugitive from the St. Louis Cardinals chain gang,” Arntzen saw his contract purchased by the lowly Philadelphia A’s before the 1943 season.5 His $3,000 salary was modest even for the A’s, who paid notoriously poor wages.6 At 33 years of age with only 22 of his 99 career-wins in A-ball or higher, Arntzen seemed like an unlikely candidate to participate in his first big-league camp in 1943. Classified III-C because of his bad back, Arntzen did not report to Wilmington, Delaware (where the A’s conducted their spring training due to wartime travel restrictions) until March 23. The Associated Press reported that Arntzen’s bad back was threatening to force him to quit baseball altogether.7

The A’s were arguably the worst team in the American League in this era. They had finished in last place every year since 1935 (except for seventh-place finishes in 1937 and 1939). The team’s pitching staff was especially atrocious, made even worse by the loss of staff ace Phil Marchildon (whose 17 wins the previous season were the most for an A’s pitcher since Johnny Marcum won the same number in 1935) to the military. Owner-manager Connie Mack groomed a trio of rookies, Arntzen, 26-year-old Don Black, and 28-year-old Jesse Flores (acquired in the offseason from the Chicago Cubs), as starters.

Teammates affectionately called Arntzen “Old Folks,” a not-so-subtle reminder that he was the oldest pitcher of the staff. Debuting in the A’s first game of the season, Arntzen hurled the final inning of relief in a loss to the Washington Senators in Griffith Stadium, surrendering two hits and a run. After pummelings in his first two starts, Arntzen tossed a complete-game five-hitter against the Cleveland Indians on May 15, but lost as the A’s (the AL’s lowest-scoring team in 1943) were shut out. Old Folks picked up his first big-league win his next time out by holding the St. Louis Browns to six hits and overcoming eight walks in a 2-1 victory at Sportsman’s Park. He pitched consistently throughout June, July, and August, carving out a respectable 3.36 ERA in 107 innings, yet won just two of 12 decisions as the A’s went 2-15 in the games he pitched (12 starts and five relief appearances). Both wins were complete games, the latter a six-hitter with nine strikeouts against Washington. After an unexpectedly promising start (26-24), the A’s went 23-81 after June 15. Arntzen scattered eight hits over 6⅓ innings at Fenway Park on September 3 to give the A’s just their second victory in their last 26 games. The triumph proved to be his fourth and the last one in his big-league career. Arntzen struggled in his final six appearances of season (15 earned runs in 9⅔ innings).  After the A’s 100th loss, on September 27, Arntzen was sent to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for pitcher Luke Hamlin, during a frenzied period at the conclusion of the season when Mack made wholesale changes to his roster.8 For the season, Arntzen went 4-13, completed nine of 20 starts among his 32 appearances, logged 164⅓ innings, and posted a 4.22 ERA, the second-worst in the AL among qualifiers.

Arntzen’s career in professional baseball seemed to be over after the 1944 season, during which he excelled for the Albany (New York) Senators in the Class A Eastern League (6-0), but struggled with Toronto (1-6), where he faced experienced players who had or would have big-league experience. In 1945, instead of reporting to Albany, which had acquired his contract, Arntzen remained in Cedar Rapids, worked for Iowa Manufacturing and pitched for the factory team in the city’s M&J League. He also guided Hansen Sign of Davenport, Iowa, to the state semipro baseball title.9

In 1946 Arntzen returned to Albany, where he became somewhat of a minor-league sensation and feel-good story over the next five years during a golden age of professional ball. Organized Baseball gradually emerged from the doldrums caused by three years of war when hundreds of players hung up their spikes to serve the country. The number of minor leagues expanded from 12 in 1945 to 59 in 1949 with teams in 438 cities. The minor leagues also underwent a reclassification, as the Triple-A level was established.

Arntzen’s stature as “Old Folks” grew as he faced competition that was often 10 to 15 years his junior. Relying on an effective slider, a changeup, and an occasional fastball, Arntzen ranked second in wins (17) and third in ERA (2.35), and issued a league-low 1.6 walks per innings for the second-place Senators in 1946. “That fellow can thread a needle with just about any pitch. He never beats himself,” once said a teammate.10

After a rough start in 1947, the 37-year-old Arntzen offered to quit. “I haven’t been any help to the club and I don’t like to take money under false pretenses. And that’s what I am doing now,” he explained.11 Encouraged by player-manager Pinky May to stay, the aged right-hander won nine straight decisions to finish with an 11-7 record.

While most hurlers Arntzen’s age transitioned into a post-baseball career, the Cedar Rapids resident spent the spring of 1948 wrangling with his employer over a leave of absence in order to pursue a pastime played by men young enough to be his son.12 After finally reporting in May, the Eastern League’s oldest hurler added a new pitch to his arsenal, a screwball that he learned from a teammate, grizzled 37-year-old veteran Johnny Lanning, on his way down through the minors after spending parts of 11 seasons in the big leagues. At one point Arntzen tossed 31 consecutive scoreless innings, won eight straight decisions, and finished with a 15-4 record, good for the league’s best winning percentage (.789). When asked about his fastball, Arntzen once replied incredulously, “Speed? I haven’t anything left anymore. But my control is good and I can throw the ball just about where I want it.”13 Among pitchers with 100 innings, he ranked second in ERA (2.13) and third lowest in walks per nine innings (2.0).  For the second consecutive season, the Senators finished in second place but lost the league championship series.

Arntzen’s victory over the Hartford Chiefs in the 1949 season opener in Albany’s Hawkins Stadium inaugurated a fairy-tale season for the 39-year-old hurler. Described as “ancient,” “aged,” “venerable,” and “elderly,” Arntzen garnered national headlines by winning 15 consecutive decisions (two off the league record set by Tommy Fine in 1946) and established a league record with 25 wins for the first-place Senators.14 “Against right-handed batters Arntzen aimed his big screwball at the catcher’s right knee,” wrote Pat Barnes. “The ball started wide of the plate but broke into the corner for a called strike. Against left-handed hitters he aimed at the catcher’s left knee. The phenomenon headed straight for the plate then broke wide.”15 Five days after being feted on “Orie Arntzen Night” at Hawkins Stadium (and winning the game), Arntzen won the pennant-clinching game on August 28.16 Twelve years older than the second-oldest pitcher on the team, “Old Folks” completed 21 of 25 starts, relieved eight times, and posted a 2.79 ERA in 216 innings. His 1.7 walks per nine innings and .926 winning percentage (25-2) easily topped the circuit. The Associated Press reported, “The screwball has helped make old Orie a minor league mound marvel.”17 Only Albany’s upset loss to Wilkes-Barre in the Eastern League’s playoffs tempered Arntzen’s most valuable player and pitcher of the year awards.

After the 1949 season, Arntzen won the 13th annual Minor League Player of the Year given annually by The Sporting News from 1936 to 2005.  He joined the likes of Johnny Vander Meer (1936), Phil Rizzuto (1940), Frank Howard (1959), Johnny Bench (1967), and Pedro Martinez (1991); only Ripper Collins (who won the award in 1944 after a productive albeit relatively brief big-league career) was older.

In the offseason, Arntzen capitalized on his notoriety by participating on several barnstorming tours, most notably to Huron, South Dakota, for the “Baseball Pheastival,” which entailed playing ball and hunting pheasants, though not at the same time.

Arntzen’s final season with Albany, in 1950, was as disappointing as his previous one was exhilarating. Suffering from arm pain most of the season, he limped to an 8-5 record, but posted a career-worst 6.28 ERA in 106 innings, and drew his release in the offseason.

Arntzen was not out of baseball long. Adam Pratt, former owner of the Cedar Rapids Rockets of the Class C Central Association, had purchased the Duluth (Minnesota) Dukes of the Class C Northern League and offered Arntzen a position as player-manager.  The Sporting News reported that the 41-year-old hurler was hospitalized with coronary problems in early May 1951, casting doubts on his season.18 But Arntzen returned, and won 12 of 15 decisions to lead the league in winning percentage (.800) for a seventh-place team in an eight-team league. Replaced as manager in midseason, Arntzen was given his outright release at the end of the season.

The rubber-armed Arntzen pitched for and managed Iowa Manufacturing in the M&J League in Cedar Rapids the next few seasons. After leading the team to the league title in 1952, Arntzen was given one last hurrah in Organized Baseball. He made two ineffective late-season appearances for the Cedar Rapids Indians in 1952.  In his 17-year minor-league career, Arntzen compiled an impressive 194-99 record and logged 2,385 innings.

Arntzen continued to work for Iowa Manufacturing after his career in Organized Baseball.  On January 28, 1970, he died at the age of 60 in Cedar Rapids following a short illness.19 A memorial service was held at the Trinity Lutheran Church and he was buried at the Cedar Memorial Cemetery.

Sources

Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette

The Sporting News

Ancestry.com

BaseballLibrary.com

Baseball-Reference.com

Retrosheet.com

SABR.org

Notes

1 The Sporting News, June 29, 1949, 15.

2 Ibid.

3 “Prepare for Record Crowds for Bi-State All-Star Game,” The Bee (Danville, Virginia), June 16, 1937, 8.

4 The Sporting News, March 18, 1943, 6.

5 Sid Feder, “Mack Doesn’t Expect His Athletics to Go Anywhere in Particular,” Muscatine (Iowa) Journal and News, April 6, 1943, 5.

6 The salary is according to Michael Haupert’s research on contracts, available at Baseball-Reference.com.

7 Associated Press, “Arntzen Joins A’s,” The Express (Lock Haven, Pennsylvania), March 30, 1943, 4.

8 Associated Press, “Mack Busy With New Player Deals,” Alton (Illinois) Evening Telegraph, September 28, 1943, 11.

9 Associated Press, “Davenport Entry Winner of Semi-Pro Baseball Tourney,” Mason City (Iowa) Globe-Gazette, August 6, 1945, 14.

10 The Sporting News, June 29, 1945, 15.

11 Ibid.

12 The Sporting News, March 24, 1948, 26.

13 Associated Press, “Wished He Would Have Met Up With the Screwball Earlier,” Beatrice (Nebraska) Daily Sun, August 12, 1949, 6.

14 Evening Tribune (Hornell, New York), May 24, 1949, 8; Troy (New York) Record, May 30, 1949, 10; Times Record (Troy, New York), June 9, 1949, 47; Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) Times, June 22, 1949, 3.

15 Pat Barnes, “Red Peppers,” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, September 22, 1949, 19.

16 The Sporting News, August 31, 1949, 39.

17 Associated Press, “Wishes He Would Have Met Up With Screwball Earlier,” Beatrice (Nebraska) Daily Sun, August 12, 1949, 6.

18 The Sporting News, May 23, 1951, 36.

19 “Orie E. Arntzen, Former Baseball Player Dies at 60,” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, January 29, 1970, 3.

Julius and Lena Tumicki Butka immigrated to the United States from Poland and settled in the growing town of Canonsburg, southwest of Pittsburgh, where Julius found work as a laborer in a tin mill. Edward Luke Butka was born on January 7, 1916; the family unit ultimately consisted of six boys and one girl. Young Ed went from playing sandlot ball in Canonsburg to working (and playing) for Home Furniture, later the Polish Falcons and finally the local Elks Club, where his power hitting earned him the nickname Babe. His ability on the diamond caught the eye of former major-league star Joe Tinker, a scout who brought the talented youngster to the attention of the Washington Senators.

In the spring of 1940, Nats owner Clark Griffith personally scouted Ed during a trip to Florida. Amateur baseball veteran Hymie Newman was on the mound as Griffith intently watched the right-handed-hitting Butka during a batting-practice session. Newman had taken a shine to the strong young Butka, and decided to give the kid a break by serving up a tantalizing assortment of fat pitches. Butka’s obvious hitting prowess convinced the usually tight-fisted Griffith to fork over a $400 signing bonus – “thanks to the generosity of Hymie Newman.”1

Contract in hand, Butka reported to the Newport Canners of the Class D Appalachian League, where he hit .332 with six home runs in 1940. Late in the season Butka was sent to the Salisbury Indians, a Senators affiliate in the Eastern Shore League. Facing a threatened players strike, the Indians needed manpower. Apparently a “misunderstanding arose over the belief of some players they would share gate receipts from the approaching playoffs.” Management researched the issue and apparently “there was no back pay due any of the players according to league rules.”2 Ultimately, the players returned to the field and captured the league championship, and Butka never appeared in an Eastern Shore League contest that season.

The Selective Service Act of 1940 required men between the ages of 18 and 65 to register for the draft; those from 21 to 36 were eligible to be conscripted into the armed services. By 1941 the eligibility range was increased to ages 18 to 45. Military physicians examined Butka and ruled him ineligible to serve because of a punctured eardrum. In 1941 the right-handed Butka patrolled first base for the Orlando Senators of the Class D Florida State League, hitting .267 with six home runs.

After the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, Butka revisited his local induction center with the renewed hope that surely he’d now be needed to help the war effort. Once again Butka was summarily dismissed as unfit for service. Resuming his baseball career, Butka started 1942 with the Utica Braves and hit Class C pitching to the tune of a.308 clip in 53 games. This performance earned him a promotion to the Springfield Rifles in the Class A Eastern League, where he hit only .199 in 73 games.

Back with Springfield in 1943, Butka improved to.298 in 133 games, earning him a call-up by Washington. Former Nats star Ossie Bluege was the Senators’ rookie manager that season; he had replaced Bucky Harris, who was fired after the team’s disappointing 1942 season. A knowledgeable baseball man, Bluege was a disciplinarian and proponent of solid baseball fundamentals. Under his tutelage, the Senators improved to second place and a respectable 84-69 record.

Butka made his major-league debut on September 26, 1943. It was the first game of a Sunday doubleheader at Griffith Stadium, pitting Washington against the Chicago White Sox. Early Wynn started for the Senators; his opponent was Ed Smith. By the top of the seventh inning, the White Sox had built up a 15-0 lead, providing Butka an opportunity to enter the game as a pinch-hitter for first baseman Mickey Vernon. Facing Smith, “The Butka kid smacked the first big league pitch he ever saw against the center field fence on the fly for a long two-bagger,”3

The Senators added single runs in the sixth, seventh, and eighth, making the final tally 15-3. For the season, Butka had three hits in nine big-league at-bats. According to Shirley Povich of the Washington Post, Bluege “was smitten with both the size and actions of the 25-year-old lad who got a chance to play in three games.”4

Good-natured Butka quickly became a favorite among his new teammates. Veteran players honored him with a special invitation to frequent the team’s closed-door poker sessions. Other young players would attempt to crash the games, only to be turned away. If they dared ask why Butka was allowed to participate, the response was generally, “We like Butka.”5 Mickey Vernon was the Senators’ regular first baseman until he was inducted into the Navy after the season, leaving Butka as the only first baseman on the roster. Clark Griffith quickly reacted and purchased the contract of former Nat Joe Kuhel. The smooth-fielding Kuhel had been a mainstay with the Senators from 1930 to 1937. Now 38 years old, Kuhel was expected to fill the position with Butka serving as his backup.

There were also possibilities at third base, a position giving Bluege headaches. During the offseason the incumbent, veteran Harlond Clift, was thrown from a horse while working his farm, resulting in a serious injury and making him questionable for 1944. Bluege entered Butka into the mix at the hot corner. “He gets around well for a big fellow, and we could use his hitting,” Bluege said. The experiment ended when Bluege realized that “Ed played third base – like a first baseman.”6

It was all hands were on deck as dugouts emptied during a contest pitting the St. Louis Browns against Washington on August 22, 1944. The fracas at Griffith Stadium ended with American League President Will Harridge fining right-hander Nelson Potter of the Browns, along with Butka and teammate George Case. The altercation started when Case successfully executed a bunt single, upsetting a rattled Potter, who had given up five consecutive hits. Name-calling on the basepaths ensued, prompting Case to nail the pitcher with a hard right to the jaw. Players on both sides charged out to join the brouhaha. “Ed Butka waded indiscriminately into the fray, seeking to make any kind of a match for himself, and was banished from the contest, along with Case and Potter, after the umpires finally restored peace.”7 The three players were each nicked with a $100 fine. Butka wasn’t even in the game at the time, but apparently charged out to assist his buddy Case. The two were close in age and had become fast friends; the friendship continued long after their careers ended.

The good-natured Butka further endeared himself to teammates, by agreeing to (gulp) a haircut, compliments of veteran teammate Johnny Niggeling. Johnny, a barber during the offseason, sat Butka down in the locker room and started to tidy up the young player. Ed likely hoped (and prayed) the hurler’s hand was steadier than his floating knuckler.

Butka eventually split 1944 between the parent Senators and the International League Buffalo Bisons. He saw action in 15 games for Washington – 14 at first base and one in which he pinch-hit, compiling a .195 batting average. At Buffalo he hit .254 in 18 games. Butka closed out 1944 on a happy note, marrying Helen Mae Meeks on November 30.

By 1945 the war was winding down and both major- and minor-league players began returning home. Butka was shipped down to the Class A Williamsport Grays in the Eastern League (.302 in 41 games) before reporting to the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons, where he hit .260 in 57 games. The Bisons traveled to play a series in Baltimore, which was the home of the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company. The firm hosted 21 workplace teams as a means to boost morale. Wartime shortages were rampant and the dwindling supply of baseball bats curtailed playing time for company teams. Mr. Martin, a longtime baseball fan, decided to develop an improved bat based on the principles of aerodynamics.

“The final product looked at first glance just like any other bat but upon closer examination disclosed more gripping surface, a narrower lower hitting surface and a slightly tapered business end,” according to a newspaper report.8 “A little woodshop located near the plant is now turning out the bats in sufficient quantity to supply the Martin teams – and the players like them. First baseman Ed Butka of the Buffalo Bisons tried one out and liked it in batting practice, before a game in Baltimore. He used it in his first at bat and promptly hit a home run.”9

By 1946, replacement players essentially became expendable. Back home, Butka was now over 30, and he and Helen had started a family. Rather than continue a career in the nethermost levels of the minor leagues, he decided to leave the game to find work back home. In 1947 he was coaxed out of retirement to join the New London (Connecticut) Raiders in the Class B Colonial League as player-manager. The rookie manager took his club all the way to the league finals, helping out by hitting .289 in 113 games. He called it a career for good in 1948 after only 17 games (and a .259 average) with New Brunswick in the Colonial League.

Butka seguéd from the diamond into a law-enforcement career, securing a position as a police officer in his home town of Canonsburg. There, he enjoyed working with young people and became and a highly respected coach in the community. During leisure time and later in retirement, he enjoyed cooking, gardening, and golf. He was inducted into the Washington-Greene County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame on June 15, 2001.

After more than 60 years of marriage, Helen Butka died on March 6, 2005; Ed succumbed a few weeks later, on April 21, at the age of 89. They are buried at Oak Spring Cemetery in Canonsburg. They were the parents of five children, nine grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.

Notes

1 Shirley Povich, “This Morning With Shirley Povich,” Washington Post, February 28, 1944.

2 “Salisbury Players Strike Explained,” Cumberland (Maryland) Evening Times, September 9, 1940.

3 Shirley Povich, “This Morning With Shirley Povich,” Washington Post, February 28, 1944.

4 Ibid.

5 Author telephone conversation with Edward G. Butka, April 11, 2014.

6 Shirley Povich, “Fancy Player, Heavy Hitter,” Washington Post, May 5, 1944.

7 “Griff Spending to Duck Cellar,” The Sporting News, August 31, 1944.

8  “New Type Baseball Bat Developed,” Frederick Post, June 29, 1945.

9 Ibid.

Joseph John Buzas was born on October 2, 1919, in Alpha, New Jersey, a small town near the Pennsylvania coal country.  His immigrant parents, John Joseph and Anna, were born in Budapest, Hungary, and owned a grocery store where Joe worked through his school and minor-league years.  He was a three-sport star at Phillipsburg (New Jersey) High School, where he was the baseball team’s captain and leading hitter.3  At Bucknell University he majored in business and played football, basketball, and baseball, and was on the boxing team. Before attending Bucknell on a baseball scholarship, Buzas turned down an offer by the Philadelphia Athletics to pay for his education at Duke University.4  A line-drive hitter able to hit to all fields, Buzas was Bucknell’s leading hitter for three years and his .378 career average stood as one of the best in the school’s history.5  He also pitched. In one game against Temple University he struck out 16 batters. 

While at Bucknell, Buzas was invited by the Detroit Tigers to attend a workout in Detroit with other college players. He was selected as the outstanding player at the camp, but since he had grown up a Yankees fan and it was his lifelong dream to wear the Yankee pinstripes, he turned down an offer from the Tigers.6 

Buzas first attracted the attention of the Yankees while playing with a Tremont, Pennsylvania, semipro team against the Brooklyn Bushwicks. Yankees scout Paul Krichell signed him out of college in 1941 for a $7,500 bonus.7  (He completed his degree in 1942.)8 Third base was his regular position, but the Yankees intended to groom him as a middle infielder.9  Krichell believed that Buzas had great potential, a natural player who would make the grade. 

Buzas played for Yankees farm teams at Akron, Norfolk, Trenton, Binghamton, and Newark before reaching the major leagues.  He also played winter ball in California to stay in shape and worked as a safety inspector at the Navy dry dock on Terminal Island, near Los Angeles.

Playing for Norfolk in 1941, Buzas made the Piedmont League all-star team as a third baseman.  When Hall of Famer Pie Traynor was scouting for the Pirates he saw Buzas play at third in 1941 and said that Joe was the best third baseman he had ever seen in the minors.10

Playing football at Bucknell almost brought an early end to Jersey Joe’s career in baseball.  It was fall 1940 that Joe hurt his arm making a tackle.  The weakened arm kept Buzas down in the minors.  He started with Akron in the Middle Atlantic League and from there to Norfolk in the Piedmont League.  In 1942 he was with Trenton of the Inter-State League and finished up with Binghamton in the Eastern League.  When his arm improved he moved up to the Newark Bears of the Double-A International League.  Buzas led the 1943 Newark team in stolen bases with 24, and played second, third, and shortstop.

In 1944 at Newark, Buzas batted .297 and again led the team with 29 stolen bases. He was second on the team in RBIs with 65 and played mainly at second base with some stints at third.  In the league playoffs he tied an International League record with four steals in a game against Baltimore.  He then broke the record for steals in a series with a fifth steal in the final game of the playoffs as Newark lost to Baltimore.11

In 1944 Buzas had been invited to the Yankees’ spring-training camp in Atlantic City, New Jersey. New York’s Joe Gordon was about to go off to fight the war, but Buzas was 4-F because of a perforated eardrum. His throwing shoulder bothered him because it had been hurt in a baseline collision. One day manager Joe McCarthy called Buzas over to tell him, “Joe, I’m sending you home.  It hurts me to see you throw.”12 Eventually he returned to Newark and played in 125 games, batting .297. That brought him another invitation to big-league spring training in 1945. Veteran Frankie Crosetti was a holdout and owner and the Yankees were ready to write Crosetti off and give Buzas the promotion.  Buzas was the starting shortstop on Opening Day, batting sixth in the lineup.  He had one hit, an RBI, and a run scored.  “I’ll never forget the thrill of opening day.  My feet never touched the ground when I went out to take my position at shortstop,” he told a sportswriter in 1981.13

Buzas played the first 12 games of the season at shortstop for the Yankees.  He was hitting .286 (14-for-49) with an on-base percentage of .314, had knocked in six runs and stolen twice in two attempts.  The Yankees were in first place by a half-game with a record of eight wins and four losses.  Then Crosetti ended his holdout, and Buzas had played his final game at shortstop.  Over the next 47 games he appeared strictly as a pinch-hitter or pinch-runner.  As a pinch-hitter he was 3-for-16.  His played his final game in a Yankees uniform on June 28 as a pinch-runner.

It was after the June 28 game that manager McCarthy called Buzas in to tell him that he wanted him to go to Kansas City to improve as a shortstop by playing every day.14  Buzas described himself as a “hard-headed Hungarian”15 and he told Yankees general manager George Weiss that he would not go to Kansas City even for a promise on the future. Weiss replied that he would confer with team president Larry MacPhail.  While this waiting game was going on it was rumored that the Phillies were interested in Buzas.  The Yankees sought outfielder-first baseman Jimmy Wasdell in exchange. Buzas declared, “I will not play any more ball in the minor leagues, and that is definite. … I would not accept a transfer back to the [Newark] Bears any more than I am taking a shift to Stengel [in Kansas City].  It’s the big leagues or nothing.” Buzas added, “I tried hard for McCarthy.  I hustled my head off even when I was sitting on the bench.  I think Joe (McCarthy) liked me.  Sure, I couldn’t play with Crosetti.  But how many can?”16

Sportswriter Dan Daniel thought Buzas could run and he could hit left-handers, if nothing else.  His role as a pinch- hitter and pinch-runner could have been of help to the Yanks.  But Kansas City was badly in need of players.  Furthermore, as far as Daniel could discern, “Buzas could not displace any shortstop now playing regularly in the American League.  The position is fairly new to him and he needs plenty of experience in it.”17

Garry Schumacher of the New York Journal-American wrote, that “Buzas has the makeup of a great shortstop.  Critics believe he may be a sensation.”18 Schumacher added, “There is an effortless grace about him, a rhythm that reflects his fine physical co-ordination.  Body control, is what Branch Rickey called it, and Buzas defined exactly what that meant.  His big hands are strong and sure.  Joe always seems to be in front of ground ball chances, bent low to meet them, hands ready to clamp down on the ball.  With every grounder he comes up with a handful of dirt, like the twin claws of a scoop shovel.  Though there is some doubt about the strength or power of his arm, timing and accuracy will be the substitutes, particularly in double plays.”19 

Buzas eventually gave in and agreed to return to Newark (.255 in 61 games). In 1946 he started the season with Newark (.233 in 62 games) and finished up in the Pacific Coast League with the Seattle Rainiers, batting .291 in 55 games. While at Newark, Buzas was the victim of a near-fatal pitch thrown by Harry Jordan of Toronto.  This was the second time in his career that he suffered a severe beaning.  (The first occurred in 1942 and caused dizzy spells.)  The pitch by Jordan hit him behind the ear.  Joe was sent to the hospital and had his spine tapped.   The examining doctor said, “This guy is lucky if he lives to be 50.”20  Years later (in 1983) Buzas went deaf in this ear.  The statement, not the medical diagnosis, had a major impact on how Joe was to conduct his life. 

The bad shoulder and the beaning were too difficult to overcome.  According to his daughter Hilary Drammis, Buzas began suffering from severe migraines that gave him difficulty playing under the lights.21  His hopes of returning to the majors were now shattered.  But Buzas was not ready to quit.  For the 1948 and 1949 seasons he was player-manager of the Sunbury (Pennsylvania) Reds of the Class B Inter-State League. During the winters he played and managed in Puerto Rico for 12 years (1945-1951, 1953-1955, and 1963-1964) with the Mayaguez, Aguadilla, San Juan, and Ponce teams. The fans loved his aggressive and argumentative style of play and managing, so much so that they chipped in to buy him a new Oldsmobile in 1948.  Buzas remarked, “The fans called me a real Puerto Rican.  I had a temper like them.  I used to argue with the umpires and get kicked out of a lot of games.”22 After his Puerto Rico days were over, he left baseball for a short while.  He returned to his hometown of Alpha and went into the construction business with his brother and also ran a discount department store.

Buzas had married Helen Penelope McConnell, a teacher at St. Mary’s School in Alpha, in 1944. They raised two children, Jason, who became a theater director in New York City, and daughter Hilary Drammis, a clinical psychologist.

Buzas began his career as what some called a “baseball chain-store operator” in 1957 when he was asked by Eastern League President Tommy Richardson to take over a team in Syracuse that was moving to Allentown, Pennsylvania.  The cost to Buzas would be zero!23  He went on to own a reported 82 minor-league franchises over 47 years.24 The family, particularly Hilary, was very much involved in their father’s baseball operations.  After Allentown, next came teams in the New York-Penn League, the Carolina League, and the Western Carolinas League.  At the 1972-1973 winter meetings in Hawaii, Buzas acquired the Louisville franchise and moved it to Pawtucket in the International League. He said, “Owning a Triple-A team is the top thrill I have had in all my years in baseball.”25 

The move forced Buzas to search for a new site for Pawtucket’s Eastern League franchise.  He was turned down by Meriden, Connecticut, but was able to reach an agreement with Bristol, Connecticut.26  Buzas now owned three farm clubs of the Boston Red Sox – Winston Salem in the Class-A Carolina League, Double-A Bristol, and Triple-A Pawtucket.  In 1967 when he acquired the Knoxville team in the Southern League he became the first minor-league owner in baseball history to have simultaneous affiliations with three different teams.27  Knoxville was a Reds farm team, the Eastern League Pittsfield franchise was a Red Sox affiliate, and the Oneonta team in the New York-Penn League became a Yankees affiliate in 1967. 

Here is a partial list of Buzas’s ownership interests: Red Sox Eastern League franchises in Allentown from 1957-1960, Johnstown 1961, York 1962, Reading 1963-1964, and Pittsfield 1965-1969; the Oneonta Red Sox (New York-Penn League) in 1966 and the Oneonta Yankees (New York-Penn League) in 1967; the Knoxville Reds (Southern League) in 1967; the Savannah Senators (Southern League) in 1968-69); the Pawtucket Red Sox (Eastern League) 1970-1972; the Pawtucket Red Sox (International League) 1973-1974; the Winston-Salem Red Sox (Carolina League) 1970-1974; the Sumter Indians (Western Carolinas League) 1970; the Bristol Red Sox (Eastern League) 1973-1982; the New Britain Red Sox (Eastern League) 1983-1994; the Hardware City Rock Cats (New Britain, Eastern League), 1995-1996; the Elmira Pioneers (New York-Penn League) 1977-1978; and the Reading Phillies (Eastern League) 1977- 1985. 

In 1977 Buzas placed the New Britain team in his daughter Hilary’s name.  It was the only way he could own two teams in the Eastern League at the same time.  In 1986 Buzas purchased the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League, a Phillies Triple-A franchise.  In 1992 and 1993 the Beavers became a Twins affiliate.  He then moved the team to Salt Lake City.  The Salt Lake Buzz, a Twins franchise, changed its name to the Stingers in 2001 because of a trademark dilution lawsuit brought by Georgia Tech.  In 2001 the Stingers became an Angels franchise.  In 1996 Buzas received the John J. Johnson President’s Trophy, minor-league baseball’s top award, as “Owner of the Year.” In New Britain a plaque outside New Britain Stadium honors Buzas.28 

The key to success as a minor-league club owner, Buzas said, is “common sense, strong promotions, improvising as you go along, getting to know the fans and, above all, hard work.  But if you don’t love baseball, you’re not going to make it as a club owner in the minor leagues.”29

As a baseball executive, Buzas was extremely cost-conscious.  He was known to personally clean baseballs to save a buck.30  “When I die, I want my epitaph to read:  ‘Here lies Joe Buzas.  He cleaned more than one million baseballs while owning more baseball clubs than anyone else in the game’s history,’” he said.31 

In order to cut costs in operating his ballclubs, Buzas would enlist the members of his family to work the concession stands and turnstiles.  Joe himself could be seen serving hot dogs or taking tickets.  He became a supersalesman, selling fence and program advertising.  When his teams were not playing at home and during the offseason, Buzas would put on promotional and other events – boxing or wrestling matches, for example – to make use of the ballparks. While driving from team to team he would use a tape recorder for the ideas that popped into his head. He always drove a Cadillac, trading in for a new one every two years.

Buzas wrote a 12-page pamphlet on how to run a minor-league baseball team.  He could at times be gruff and overbearing, but he was compassionate and understanding.  He would never allow someone to suffer needlessly, his daughter said.  All one had to do was ask and Joe would give money, if necessary, or somehow make sure that the person’s basic needs were met.  He never turned his back on anyone.32  He would treat everyone as an equal.  He was a volunteer fireman and loved to hang out at the fire station playing pinochle.  According to daughter Hilary, he would come home thrilled if he had won 50 bucks.

Joe Buzas’s major-league profile card read reads 3B, throws right, bats right, 6-feet-1/2 inch, 180 pounds, and lists football as his second favorite sport.  In 1995 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and won the battle.  At that time he continued to operate his baseball business with daughter Hilary, who became a co-owner of the Salt Lake team, until he came down with a long illness that resulted in extreme weight loss.  He died on March 19, 2003, in Salt Lake City and was cremated. Hilary Drammis continued to own and operate the Stingers until she sold the team in January 2005.

Sources:

In addition to the sources cited in the notes, the author relied on the Joe Buzas player file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Notes

1 Dan Daniel, “It’s Big Leagues or Nothing, Says Joe (no-Budge) Buzas,” The Sporting News, July 19, 1945.

2 Ibid.

3 Terese Karmel, “He’s No Bush Leaguer,” Hartford Courant, September 4, 1983.

4 Many Athletics had come from Duke, and former A’s pitcher Jack Coombs was the Duke baseball coach. Connie Mack Jr. had also played Duke Blue Devils baseball. http://www.heraldsun.com/durhamherald/x27232291/Duke-Blue-Devil-s-one-of-a-kind-baseball-matchup-in-1939

5 Karmel.

6 Doyle Dietz, Reading Eagle, February 1981. Otherwise undated clipping from Joe Buzas Hall of Fame player file.

7 Jack Cavanaugh, “Minor Leagues ’86:  Joe Buzas a Baseball Man Who Is in a League All by Himself,” New York Times, August 10, 1986.

8 Rud Rennie, “Yankees Test Buzas as Second Baseman,” New York Herald-Tribune, undated 1944 clipping found in Buzas’s Hall of Fame player file.

9 1973 Pawtucket Baseball Club newsletter –“Meet Joe Buzas.”

10 Hall of Fame player file clipping dated August 19, 1986.

11 Dietz.

12 Hall of Fame player file clipping dated August 19, 1986.

13 Dietz.

14 Daniel.

15 Dietz.

16 Daniel.

17 Daniel.

18 Garry Schumacher, New York Journal-American, undated 1945 clipping found in the Joe Buzas player file at the Hall of Fame.

19 Ibid.

20 Hall of Fame player file clipping dated August 19, 1986, and as retold by daughter Hilary Drammis in telephone interview on July 21, 2014.

21 Hilary Drammis interview.on July 21, 2014

22 Thomas E. Van Hyning, Puerto Rico’s Winter League:  A History of Major League Baseball’s Launching Pad (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1995).

23 Cavanaugh.

24 Cavanaugh.

25 1973 Pawtucket newsletter – “Meet Joe Buzas.”

26 Bill Troberman, “Buzas Becomes Top Minor League Farmer,” The Sporting News, February 10, 1973.

27 Roger O’Gara, “Buzas Expands Minor-Loop Domain,” Berkshire Eagle, December 21, 1967.

28 Hartford Courant obituary, March 20, 2003.

29 Cavanaugh.

30 Karmel.

31 Cavanaugh.

32 Drammis interview; Karmel.

Byrnes was born in St. Louis on November 15, 1916, making him truly a hometown ballplayer.  A Sporting News article in 1945 about Browns hometown players said Byrnes was of German-Irish extraction.1  He was the son of Sophie and John Byrnes. John is listed as a cooper with Union Cooperage on his draft card in World War I.2  

The Sporting News article described Byrnes as playing ball at Fairground Park, a former race track, now a municipal park.  He played football in high school as well as American Legion baseball, throwing two no-hitters for St. Louis Post No. 4.  Later he played in a local Muny League.  Scouted by the Cardinals’ Charlie Barrett, he failed to catch on. Subsequently the Browns’ Ray Cahill brought Byrnes into the Browns organization after he had asked for a tryout.3  (Cahill’s playing career had ended after he was gassed in World War I and developed chronic asthma, the same ailment Byrnes developed, which kept him out of the service during World War II.4 

Byrnes broke in with the Lafayette White Sox of the Class D Evangeline League in 1936, hitting .335.  Moving up to the Texas League the next season with the San Antonio Missions, he hit .313 in 1937, but failed to distinguish himself over the following several years, usually batting in the .250’s. Over the years Byrnes acquired the nickname Skippy from the popular comic strip about the adventures of an unruly young boy named Skippy Skinner.5

In 1940 Byrnes joined the Toledo Mud Hens of the American Association, the Brpwns’ top minor-league club, mostly continuing to hit in the .250 range with little power.  By the end of the 1942 season he seemed destined to end his career as a career minor leaguer.

The early 1940s, however, were hardly typical times for baseball. World War II changed the nature of the game.  Prime major-league prospects were highly susceptible to the military draft and were called to serve in ever-increasing numbers.  Former major leaguers recalled from the minors or players with medical deferments keeping them out of the service replaced those drafted.

Byrnes was part of this latter group.  St. Louis lost outfielders Walt Judnich to the Army Air Force and Glenn McQuillen to the Navy, giving Byrnes his opportunity to make the team.  Preseason hype made the most of Byrnes being a hometown product.  The Browns frequently compared him to Jack Tobin, a St. Louis native who played for the Browns in the 1920s.  General manager Bill DeWitt, seeking to excite hometown fans, waxed eloquently on Byrnes: “Why, Byrnes is the nearest replica of Tobin I’ve ever seen.  Bats left-handed, throws left-handed, a drag bunter and fast as a deer.  Great fly-chaser and has a good arm.  Wouldn’t that give fans here something to cheer about if we’d wind up with a home-town boy in our outfield?”6                        

Byrnes vied with Mike Kreevich for the center-field job vacated by Judnich.  While DeWitt may have been trying to elicit enthusiasm over Byrnes’s potential, Browns manager Luke Sewell did not share it.  Although Sewell understandably kept quiet, Byrnes did not impress him favorably.  Years later in the book Even the Browns, Sewell was quoted as saying, “To show you how the scouting was, the reports on Byrnes were that he was one of the better center fielders in the minor leagues but he couldn’t hit.  When he got to the majors, we found it was just reversed.  He was a good hitter but couldn’t field.” 7 

Sewell’s lack of enthusiasm notwithstanding, Byrnes made the team.  He appeared in his first game on Opening Day, April 21, 1943. Batting seventh, he went 0-for-3 with a sacrifice in a contest that saw pitcher Al Hollingsworth four-hit the Chicago White Sox, 3-0, at Sportsman’s Park.8  Hits were sparse for Byrnes the first few months.  Playing sporadically, he was at .172 by the end of May; the Browns, after a third-place finish the year before, a dead last.  Both Byrnes and St. Louis picked up as the season progressed.  On June 27 he hit his first major-league home run, off Detroit Tigers pitcher Hal White; by the end of the month Byrnes was up to .250 as St. Louis escaped the cellar.        

By August 1 Byrnes was playing almost every day. Making the most of his opportunity, he hit .317 the rest of the way, ending at a solid .280 as the Browns improved to sixth place. He hit only four home runs but had 28 doubles and 7 triples.  Despite Sewell’s concern about Byrnes’s defensive ability, he led American League outfielders in fielding average at .997, a lone error early in the season keeping him from a perfect record.  With 13 assists, Byrnes was fourth in the league.    

A sixth-place finish usually does not augur well for a team’s prospects the next season.  But escalating demands of the military draft continued to destabilize rosters. An article in Major League Baseball, handicapping the 1944 race, underscored their picks, noting, “[A]ny expert in his right mind would hesitate to call the turn, especially in advance of spring training capers and without knowing what effect the continuing drafting of players may have on team rosters.”9  With that considerably limiting caveat, the article went on to suggest the Yankees would win their fourth consecutive pennant.  The Browns were picked to finish fifth.

Thus, it was a great surprise to virtually every baseball prognosticator when St. Louis opened the season with a record-setting nine straight victories. Byrnes started the season in left field after having held out for better pay during spring training.10 As was the case in 1943, he started slowly, batting just .118 during the winning streak. Eventually Byrnes began to hit as the Browns found themselves in a tight pennant race, in which it became increasingly apparent that the military draft would play a major role in determining the teams’ fortunes.

Each team contending with the Browns lost key players for the 1944 season.  Major contributors to the New York Yankees’ success in 1943 were third baseman Billy Johnson and pitcher Spud Chandler, the ’43 Most Valuable Player. Save a lone appearance by Chandler, both players were lost to the military in 1944.  Prominent losses for other teams expected to contend for the pennant in 1944 included Mickey Vernon and Jerry Priddy of the Washington Senators, defending American League batting champion Luke Appling of the Chicago White Sox, Detroit pitcher Virgil Trucks, and for the first half of the season, Tigers 1943 outfield sensation Dick Wakefield. 

By way of comparison, the Browns’ loss of 15-game winner Steve Sundra was countered by the acquisition of starting pitcher Sig Jakucki who went on to pitch as well as Sundra had pitched.  St. Louis had 18 4-F players on its roster, the most of any American League team.11  One of them was Byrnes, rejected for service because of his bronchial asthma.12

Byrnes played all three outfield positions in 1944, appearing mostly against right-handed pitching and alternating in the outfield with Kreevich, Gene Moore, Al Zarilla, and Chet Laabs.  Despite Sewell’s characterization of Byrnes as just a wartime replacement player, his performance was more than adequate. After his slow start, he picked up the pace, batting over .300 until the last week of the season, and getting clutch hits on several occasions.  On June 25, his 10th-inning single beat Detroit; on July 5 he hit a key single to help prolong a game-winning rally against the Philadelphia Athletics; and on July 8 he scored the decisive run in a victory over Washington.13  On September 26 Byrnes singled in the only run in a 1-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox to keep the Browns tied with Detroit for first place.14 

It turned out to be Byrnes’s last hit of the year. He went hitless in next three games and was benched, missing the last two games of the season as St. Louis beat the Yankees to win their sole American League pennant. For the season, he hit .295, and showed a proclivity to get on base via walks, finishing ninth in the league in that department.

Despite his solid performance during the season, Byrnes found himself on the bench as the Browns squared off in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Browns’ tenants at Sportman’s Park. Perhaps it was because Byrnes had slumped in September, hitting only .241, that Sewell went with Kreevich, Moore, Zarilla, and Laabs as outfielders against the Cardinals.  Byrnes made three pinch-hit appearances, walking once and striking out twice as the Browns lost to the Cardinals in six hard-fought games. Byrnes received a full World Series losers’ share of $2,743.79.15             

During the offseason, Byrnes was again subject to physical examination for military service and failed to pass because of his bronchial condition.  He also had an operation for a hernia.16  Ailments seemed to follow Byrnes; he missed some playing time with a pulled leg muscles during spring training and, still later in the 1945 season, was out with a pulled tendon.17   Whether these physical setbacks hampered his play is uncertain, but he did fall off from his first two years, slumping to .245. The Browns, sluggish most of the season, finished third behind Detroit and Washington, six games out. Byrnes had a few clutch hits for the Browns during the season; perhaps the most remarkable was a home run against the Washington Senators on May 31 at Griffith Stadium. It was one of only six hit in the Senators’ ballpark that season.18 On September 30, the last day of the season, Byrnes started in center field against the Detroit Tigers at Sportsman Park with the pennant on the line for Detroit. Hank Greenberg’s ninth-inning grand slam secured the victory, and the league championship for Detroit.  It was Byrnes’s last major-league game.

What little is known of Byrnes’s ability came from comments made by his manager, Luke Sewell, who besides the comment mentioned above about Byrnes’s fielding ability made other observations that he was just a wartime replacement.19 Sewell was often a keen judge of players; and the 1944 team was primarily composed of men he had acquired or brought up from the minors. Yet his assessment of Byrnes does not quite jibe with his major-league performance.  Byrnes played in  390 games and hit .274. Considered one of the fastest players on the team, he led American League outfielders in fielding in 1943, and was second in 1945.  Byrnes finished in the top 10 in walks in 1944 and 1945. He generated better-than-average ability to get on base, ranking fifth in the league in on-base percentage in 1944. 

Perhaps Sewell’s attitude toward Byrnes can be seen in an observation he made about another Browns player who showed the same aptitude for getting on base via walks. One of the more curious comments attributed to Sewell in Even the Browns was his dislike of an outfielder he inherited when he took over the club in 1941, Roy Cullenbine: “Cullenbine wouldn’t swing the bat. Laziest human being you ever saw.”20 Yet between 1941 and 1947 Cullenbine never finished lower than fifth in the league in walks and ranked high in the subsequently developed on-base percentage statistic. Sewell’s lack of respect for Cullenbine culminated in his being traded to the Senators in early 1942 despite having hit .317 in 1941 and finishing second in the league only to Ted Williams in getting walks.

Regardless, Sewell had the ability to make player transactions and in early April 1946 he sent Byrnes to the New York Yankees for catcher Ken Sears. A few days later the Yankees sent Byrnes to their farm team in Kansas City. He stayed in the minor leagues until 1951, bouncing around to play for nine different teams, never putting up good enough numbers to warrant a return to the majors.     

Little is known of Byrnes’s personal life.  His player questionnaire at the Baseball Hall of Fame, prepared in 1961, shows he married June Henderson on February 25, 1937.  His obituary listed a wife, Melva, and a daughter, Gloria.  A 1958 St. Louis city directory noted his occupation as a salesman, his questionnaire further notes that Byrnes was a route salesman for a local St. Louis bottling company.21 When Byrnes died on February 1, 1979, obituaries in St. Louis newspapers were cursory, giving just the names of surviving relatives. The Sporting News’s equally brief obituary noted his having played for the Browns and leading outfielders in fielding in 1943.  He is buried at Our Redeemer Cemetery in Affton, Missouri, along with Melva, who died 22 years to the day after his death.

Byrnes played strictly during the war years, and his minor-league career before and after was of average quality, yet during his stay in the majors his record indicates a respectable level of play, Sewell’s comments notwithstanding.  While his stay in the majors lasted only three years, Byrnes accomplished a rarity.  He was a member of the only St. Louis Browns team to win a pennant.     

  Notes 

1 Frederick G. Lieb, “Browns Set New High for Home-Town Players,” The Sporting News, April 26, 1945, 5.

2 Ancestry.com, 1920, 1930, and 1940 census reports and John Byrnes Registration Card.

3 Lieb, “Browns Set New High for Home-Town Players.”

4 baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Ray_Cahill.

5 baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Milt_Byrnes; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skippy_(comic_strip).

6 Ray J. Gillespie, “It’s 1943, So Byrnes of Browns Follows Traditional Footsteps of Tobin and Mueller,” unidentified publication, Byrnes’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

7 William B. Mead, Even the Browns, The Zany, True Story of Baseball in the Early Forties (Chicago:  Contemporary Books, Inc., 1978), 112.

8 All statistical data unless otherwise noted comes from Baseball Reference or Retrosheet.

9 Don H. Black, “Looking Fore and Aft,” Major League Baseball, 1944, 105-106.

10 Mead, 131. Baseball Reference shows Byrnes’s salary increasing from $3,000 in 1943 to $5,000 in 1944.  

11 Bill Borst, The Best of Seasons:  The 1944 St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1995), 37.

12 “Milt Byrnes of Browns Turned Down by Army,” undated, unidentified publication, Byrnes’s Hall of Fame file.

13 Borst, 110, 123, 125.

14 Borst, 212.

15 Joe Marcin, ed., Official Baseball Guide for 1979 (St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1979), 286.

16 Frederick G. Lieb, “Walk Cooper Makes Grade on U.S. Team,” The Sporting News, March 1, 1945, 4.

17 “Major League Notes,” The Sporting News, April 26, 1945, 12; Frederick G. Lieb, “Browns Climbing at Gate While Dropping in Race,” The Sporting News, June 28, 1945, 4.

18 John Duxbury, “Your Question Please,” The Sporting News, November 3, 179, 59.

19 Mead, 160. Sewell’s quote on Byrnes: “Byrnes was just a fill-in player.”

20 Mead, 71.

21 Byrnes’ player questionnaire at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The son of Italian immigrants Alfonso Cardoni, a coal miner, and Adelle (Mezzanotte) Cardoni, Armand Joseph Cardoni was born on August 21, 1920, in Jessup, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles east of Scranton.  The 1940 Census showed Ben, older brother Aldo, younger sister Norma, and both parents still living in Lackawanna County.

Cardoni took a roundabout route to the big leagues.  According to an obituary, “He spent the last six weeks of the 1937 season with Scranton in the then New York-Pennsylvania League. …  He pitched during the 1938-39 campaigns with Evansville, Ind., in the Three-I League, and in 1940 was with Charleston of the Middle Atlantic League.  He was out of action in 1941 due to an elbow injury [and] was with Bradford of the Pony League in 1942 and joined Hartford in the Eastern League for the 1943 season.”2

A right-hander, listed at 6-feet-3 and 195 pounds, Cardoni jumped straight to the majors without ever pitching at the Double-A level (today’s Triple-A). With Hartford of the Class A Eastern League, Cardoni went 8-10, according to contemporary sources (although Baseball-reference.com says he went 10-8).3  A day after his 23rd birthday, he debuted on August 22, 1943, with a scoreless ninth in the second game of a doubleheader sweep by the visiting St. Louis Cardinals, the defending World Series champions who would soon win the second of three consecutive National League pennants.  Cardoni yielded a hit and a walk but did not allow a run.

Cardoni pitched in the next game against St. Louis, too, but fared far worse in long-relief duty.  He came in for the top of the fourth inning with the Cardinals ahead 6-2.  After retiring the first four hitters, Cardoni collapsed and gave up 12 hits and eight runs over the final six innings.  He did not miss many bats, although he did record his first career strikeout.4

Boston manager Casey Stengel sat Cardoni for nearly two weeks after this rout, but Cardoni made nine more appearances in September.  He ended up finishing 10 of the 11 games in which he appeared in 1943 and earned his lone career save against St. Louis.  Even here, however, Cardoni hardly pitched well.  He entered the September 28 game in the bottom of the 10th inning with a two-run lead and gave up two hits and a run as Boston held on to win 6-5. Cardoni ended the season with no wins or losses and a bloated ERA of 6.43, mostly in mop-up duty.

In 1944 Cardoni recorded all six of his major-league decisions and all five of his starts.  His first loss came to Brooklyn in arguably his finest performance.  With the Dodgers leading 6-5 going into the bottom of the fifth, Cardoni came on to hurl six innings of scoreless ball and even pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the 10th inning.  He began the 11th, however, by walking Paul Waner, who would come around to score the winning run.  In his 6⅔ innings, Cardoni gave up just four hits and struck out three, but his lack of control (a career-high five walks) led to defeat.

In spite of giving up four homers, Cardoni pitched reasonably well as a starter (0-4 but a solid 3.67 ERA with only one dud).  In July alone he had three notable performances.   He went seven innings with only two earned runs5 against the Cubs; suffered a complete-game 4-2 loss to the Cubs again when Dom Dallessandro broke a tie with a two-run homer in the eighth; and began promisingly against the Reds, opening with five shutout frames in his third career start before giving up two runs each in the sixth and seventh innings. Embarrassingly for Cardoni, Cincinnati starter Arnold Carter opened the Cincinnati scoring with his first career home run. (Carter also homered in his next game, too, for his only two home runs in 65 at-bats over two seasons.)

On August 15 Cardoni earned his lone RBI, in a 7-5 loss at Pittsburgh. In the second inning, with runners on first and third and nobody out, he laid down a squeeze bunt and drove in Buck Etchison while reaching base himself on the throw to the plate. Cardoni started the game but did not figure in the decision.  His record for the season was 0-6, but his 3.93 ERA was just a tick below league average.

Cardoni closed his big-league career in 1945 with two early-season appearances and one swan song in late September.  He escaped unscathed in only the first game, in which he got two outs but hit a batter, walked a batter, and threw a wild pitch.  The second game went far worse, as Cardoni contributed to what the always brutal and occasionally sarcastic Boston press called “a nightmare” attributable in part to his “nice pitching” when in one-third of an inning he gave up a single followed by two walks, both of which forced in runs.6

A few days later, the Braves loaned Cardoni to Indianapolis, although Boston manager Bob Coleman, who had succeeded Stengel, complimented Cardoni on the way out of town by saying, “Cardoni has a big league arm and he ought to be a great pitcher.”7

Back in the minors, Cardoni could win again.  Having made his way from Indianapolis to Milwaukee, he won a 5-1 game from St. Paul to clinch the American Association pennant for the Brewers.8

By the time Cardoni returned for his final cup of coffee in the big leagues, Coleman had departed, so manager Del Bissonette gave Cardoni, one of “his best pitching prospects for 1946,”9 a look on the season’s last day.  The New York Giants had edged the Braves, 1-0 in 13 innings, in the first game of the day’s doubleheader.   Relieving Mort Cooper with a 1-0 lead after two innings and with a chance to earn his elusive first win, Cardoni gave up New York’s only two runs in a three-inning stint that ended in a seven-inning, 2-2 tie.

The end of World War II meant good news for baseball fans but meant tougher times ahead for marginal players like Cardoni, who could not or did not get into optimal shape to battle stiffer major-league competition in 1946.  During spring training the Boston Globe observed, “Ben Cardoni looks heavier and says he has not touched a baseball in months.”10

In March Cardoni decided to go home after Boston demoted him to Little Rock of the Southern Association. But the machinations of a baseball immortal had plans for him.  In June Brooklyn general manager Branch Rickey traded second baseman Billy Herman to Boston for catcher Stew Hofferth and got Cardoni as a player-to-be-named-later throw-in.  Rickey “was so high on the pitcher at one time that he was prepared to give up $25,000 for him. …”11

Thanks to the trade of a Hall of Fame player by a Hall of Fame general manager, Cardoni got to play with another Hall of Fame player in his first season in the Brooklyn organization: Jackie Robinson.  In his only Triple-A season, with the Montreal Royals, Cardoni went just 3-4 for a powerhouse squad that won 100 games. Montreal won the Junior World Series in six games.  Cardoni appeared once, in Game Three, which Montreal lost 15-6.

No record exists of Cardoni pitching in 1947,12 but Brooklyn retained his rights and demoted him to Double-A Mobile in 1948.  That August he “asked to be placed on the voluntarily retired list.  Cardoni had been bothered by a sore arm most of the season.”13

Cardoni would never play above A ball again.  He resurfaced in the Class D Pony League with Bradford in 1949 and “won a steak dinner offered by a Bee fan”14 for striking out nine.

Returning to Boston but to the American League this time, Cardoni pitched Single-A ball in the Red Sox system from 1950 to 1953.  He did face major-league hitters during a midseason exhibition game, but failed to take advantage of the opportunity to showcase his talents, giving up nine hits and eight runs in five innings.15

After struggling to a 6-12 record in his first two seasons for the Scranton Red Sox, Cardoni starred for the Albany Senators in 1952 (the new Red Sox Class A team, as the Browns had taken over the Scranton franchise).  Converted to relief, he went 14-2 and won a trophy as the Eastern League’s most valuable pitcher.  The 32-year-old Cardoni received his release from Albany in 1953 after a preseason injury to his neck.16  The Scranton Miners, by then the Class A team of the Washington Senators, picked him up and returned him to starting duties, and two days later Cardoni blanked his former Albany teammates and struck out 10.17

In 1954 the Class A Wilkes-Barre Barons, bought Cardoni for $750,18 a far cry from the $25,000 Branch Rickey had supposedly contemplated offering for him eight years earlier.  Cardoni closed his career back in the bullpen with a fine 8-2 campaign.

Ben Cardoni owned and ran a tavern, but lived just 15 more years, dying in Jessup on April 2, 1969.  Only 48, he passed away after suffering a heart attack in a car.  He is buried in Jessup’s St. John Cemetery.  His wife, Julia, son, and four siblings survived him.  Although he struggled in the National League, Cardoni exhibited courage in playing his sport at its highest level in spite of having a heart so weak that it would eventually kill him at a young age.

Notes

1  Cardoni had “what was said to be ‘a bad heart.’”  Charley Young, “Cardoni, Relief Star in ’52, Now Ace Starter, Too,” The Sporting News, July 1, 1953, 15.

2  Cardoni’s Hall of Fame file clip entitled “Former Pitching Star Found Dead in His Car,” April 2, 1969.  By contrast, baseball-reference.com has Cardoni at Bradford in 1939-1942 albeit with no 1940 statistics whatsoever.

3  Harold Kaese, “Reds Sink Braves, 7 to 5,” Boston Globe, August 20, 1943, 6; “Reds Halt Braves with 3 in 6th, 7 to 5,” New York Times, August 20, 1943.

4  “Cardoni’s prize feat was striking out Walker Cooper in the seventh.”  Harold Kaese, “Cards Flatten Braves, 14 to 5,” Boston Globe, August 24, 1943: 6.  

5  Cardoni’s error accounted for an unearned run.  He also turned his lone double play in this game on a 1-6-3 play.  See retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1944/B07042CHN1944.htm.

6  Melville Webb, “Giants Hand Braves Double Jolt, 15-5, 6-4,” Boston Globe, May 6, 1945, D28.

7  Roger Birtwell, “Braves Buy 35-Year-Old Minor League Southpaw,” Boston Globe, May 9, 1945, 21.

8  Associated Press, “Milwaukee Wins Flag,” Boston Globe, September 9, 1945, D33.

9  Melville Webb, “Braves End Season in Two Twin Bills Against the Giants,” Boston Globe, September 29, 1945, 2.

10  Melville Webb, “Braves Plan 20 Arc Light Home Games,” Boston Globe, February 14, 1946, 8.

11  Harold C. Burr, “Dodgers Spear Cardoni as Part of Herman Deal,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 23, 1946, 13.  A similar version of this story appears in an unsigned article in The Sporting News, “Rickey Gets His Man, Nabs Cardoni in Herman Deal,” July 31, 1946,  7.  A list of transactions in Cardoni’s Hall of Fame file says he was released outright to Montreal, Brooklyn’s Triple-A team, on June 27, 1946.  

12  “In 1947, the well-known Midvalley hurler was forced to retire temporarily due to illness.”  Scranton Tribune, “Find Armond Cardoni Dead; Pitched for Hartford Laurels,” April 3, 1969, 12.  

13  The Sporting News, August 11, 1948, 28.

14 Cardoni’s Hall of Fame file clip date-stamped July 16, 1949.  Baseball-reference.com has no record for Cardoni in 1949.  “He managed Hazleton in the North Atlantic League in 1949, but did no pitching.”    Charley Young, “Vet Cardoni, 32, Rolls Up 9 Wins in Rescue Roles,” The Sporting News, August 6, 1952, 15.

15  Hy Hurwitz, “Sox Trying Hard to Make Pitcher Deal,” Boston Globe, June 13, 1950, 10.  

16  “[T]he day before the 1953 season opened he was hit on the neck by a batted ball and a blood clot formed.  It moved into his pitching arm and he was sidelined for virtually the first half of the campaign.”  Charley Young, “Eastern’s Big Ben May Punch Out at Close of ’54 Race,” The Sporting News, July 21, 1954, 38.

17  “Cardoni Shows Up Old Mates,” The Sporting News, June 10, 1953, 33.

18  The Sporting News, February 24, 1954, 30.

Castino signed his first professional contract with the Portsmouth (Ohio) Pirates of the Class-C Middle Atlantic League right after graduating from high school in May of 1936. Despite boasting a 20-year-old Eddie Stanky, the Pirates finished dead last in the eight-team league with a 40-88 record.  The young Castino was not on the team long, getting into only 10 games and going 4-for-21, all singles, before being released on July 6.

Castino signed with the Eau Claire Bears of the Class-D Northern League in late May of 1937 and put up some good numbers, playing in 32 games and hitting .318 in 107 at-bats, but the Bears released him in late July.  Castino then hooked up with the Moline Plow Boys of the Class-B Three-I League late in the season.  He started the 1938 season as property of the Plow Boys but still did not get any game time before being sent back to Eau Claire in early May. 

Castino finally got a chance to play regularly in Eau Claire in 1938.  He appeared in 115 games for the Bears, hitting .255, and given Eau Claire’s last-place record of 39-84, it is not surprising that Castino was the only member of the club ever to play in the major leagues. Castino returned to Eau Claire in 1939 but was released in August. He signed with league rival Grand Forks and finished the season with the Chiefs.  After the season, he was selected and subsequently released by St. Paul of the Double-A American Association.

At this point, things started changing for Castino.  First, he got married to Wanda (no maiden name available) on February 15, 1940. Two months later, he signed a contract with the Lubbock Hubbers of the Class-D West Texas-New Mexico League. He played parts of the next three seasons for the Hubbers, along with the Waterloo Hawks of the Class-B Three-I League in 1940, the Wilmington (Delaware) Blue Rocks of the Class-B Interstate League in 1941, and the Norfolk Tars of the Class-B Piedmont League in 1942. Right after returning from Wilmington, Castino was suspended for two months by Lubbock in 1941, for reasons we do not know today. Still, 1942 was a better season for Castino. 

Not only did he hit .375 for the Hubbers in 1942, but he was named player-manager on May 13 of that year.  The manager had been Monty Stratton, the pitcher whose right leg was amputated in 1938 after a hunting accident.  Stratton said that because of the artificial leg he could not handle the rigors of managing.  (Stratton later returned to pitch in the minors and became the subject of a 1949 movie, The Stratton Story, in which he was played by Jimmy Stewart.) 

The West Texas-New Mexico League folded after the 1942 season, making Castino a free agent.  He signed with the White Sox in February 1943.  Lubbock had been a White Sox farm club so the team was already familiar with him.  Castino started the 1943 season with the St. Paul Saints of the American Association, but was recalled by the White Sox on June 22.

Castino made his major-league debut two days later, in the second game of a doubleheader in St. Louis.  He went 1-for-4, scoring a run and knocking in two (one on a bases-loaded walk). 

A month later, Castino had his biggest game in the big leagues and the moment he called his biggest thrill.1  The White Sox were up 1-0 against the Boston Red Sox in the fourth, but a walk to Luke Appling, a single by Ralph Hodgin, and a walk to Joe Kuhel loaded the bases.  Castino deposited the second pitch from Dick Newsome into the screen above the left-field wall and the White Sox were suddenly up 5-0 in a game they won, 5-1. That was one of only four grand slams in the American League in 1943 (the others: Joe Gordon of New York, Rudy York of Detroit, and Frank Skaff of Philadelphia).

Castino’s other major-league home run came on August 15, 1943, as the second of back-to-back home runs (the first being by Kuhel) off the Yankees’ Marius Russo to break a 2-2 tie in the seventh inning of a game the White Sox eventually won 4-3. On August 21 Castino scored from second on a Wally Moses single with two outs in the ninth in the White Sox’ 5-4 walk-off win.

Castino played in 33 games for the White Sox in 1943, coming to the plate 113 times.  He had two home runs (the only ones of his major-league career), 16 runs batted in, and a .228 batting average.  It was Castino’s most active big-league season.  Later that fall he participated in a game played in Seneca, Illinois, that gave shipbuilders working on the war effort the opportunity to see big-league ballplayers in action.

Castino was exempt from the military draft because he had a 4-F status, so he was free to play baseball.  In 1944 he was with the White Sox all season, but got up to the plate only 90 times, with no home runs and three runs batted in to go with a .231 average.   However, he was part of an historic event on Saturday, April 29, 1944.  The usually terrible St. Louis Browns had started the season 9-0 on the way to their only American League pennant.  The Browns were up 3-2 in the bottom of the eighth when Mike Tresh singled and Castino, sent up as a pinch-hitter for pitcher Gordon Maltzberger, laced a double to drive in Tresh with the tying run.  The White Sox got another run in the bottom of the ninth to win the game, 4-3, and ended the Browns’ undefeated start to the season.

Castino tallied the eventual winning run on June 25, 1944, against the Indians when he scored from second base on Skeeter Webb’s sixth-inning double.  On the negative side, his throwing error in the bottom of the ninth on July 2, 1944, handed the Yankees a 7-6 victory.  Back on the positive side, Castino went 3-for-3 and drove in the tying run on August 12, 1944, in a game Chicago eventually lost to Boston, 5-4. 

The year 1945 started on a down note for Castino.  His divorce from Wanda was granted on January 26, 1945.  The grounds for the divorce were desertion, as the pleadings claimed that she had left him on September 26, 1943. Castino was examined again by his draft board but remained classified 4-F, physically unfit for military service. He was with Chicago all of the 1945 season but played in only 26 games and batted only 39 times. He did not start a game behind the plate. (Mike Tresh caught 150 games for the White Sox.)  Castino drove in four runs and hit .222 in his final major-league season.

Castino went to the White Sox camp in 1946 but was sold to the Toledo Mud Hens of the Triple-A American Association that spring. He hit .163 for the Mud Hens and was optioned to the Class-A Elmira Pioneers, with whom he finished the season, hitting .203. Castino split the 1947 season between Toledo, Elmira, and the San Antonio Missions of the Double-A Texas League. 

The 1948 season was another turning point for Castino, as he joined the Sacramento Solons.  The move only returned him to Triple-A, it brought him to the place where he would live for the rest of his life.  He played in 85 games for Sacramento and spent the whole season with the club, the first time that had happened in his minor-league career.  One of Castino’s fellow catchers on the Solons was one of the greatest catchers in history, Ernie Lombardi.  Castino’s only home run that season was a big one, a grand slam against the Hollywood Stars in the seventh inning of a 10-8 win.  The slam lengthened the Solons’ lead from 3-2 to 7-2, but the Stars came back with six in the bottom of the seventh.  Sacramento countered with three in the top of the eighth to take back the lead. Sacramento finished last in the Pacific Coast League with a 75-113 record. That summer Castino was one of five players who struck out against Betty Evans, a star women’s softball pitcher in Portland, Oregon, in an exhibition before a PCL game.  Four other players did manage to get the bat on the ball. 

The season was capped by Castino’s marriage to Lois Jeanne Imholz on November 19, 1948, a marriage that lasted the rest of Castino’s life.

Castino went to camp with Sacramento in 1949 but was sold to the Beaumont Exporters of the Double-A Texas League on April 3, 1949.  He spent the whole 1949 season with Beaumont, playing in 84 games.  The Exporters finished last in the league with a 55-97 record.

Sacramento purchased Castino back from Beaumont on January 19, 1950, but after only six games, the Solons sent him to the Little Rock Travelers of the Double-A Southern Association.  He played in 33 games for the Travelers, but after a dispute with club officials, he was optioned to the Amarillo Gold Sox of the Class D West Texas-New Mexico League, the same circuit where he had managed and played for the Lubbock Hubbers early in his career.  He finished the season there, playing 41 games for the Gold Sox.

Castino split his final season in pro ball between the Colorado Springs Sky Sox of the Class-A Western League and the Fargo-Moorhead Twins of the Class C-Northern League.  Castino had his final big moment in a game against the Aberdeen Pheasants.  Fargo-Moorhead was down 7-6 going into the ninth inning.  Castino led off the ninth with a single and scored after a triple by Bill Rapacki that in reality was a single that took an odd hop past an outfielder.

Castino retired from Organized Baseball after the 1951 season but stayed active in the game for the rest of his life. He caught for the Oroville Olives of the Sacramento Valley League from 1952 to 1954, the same years that he was instructor at the Bee-KFBK Baseball School (the “Bee” was the Sacramento Bee newspaper.)  He played in an old-timer’s game between the Solons and the San Francisco Seals on August 28, 1954.  He scouted for the Solons, was active in youth baseball, and was a regular guest at area baseball dinners such as the annual Woodbridge Country Club event.  He was also a district manager in the Bee’s circulation department for 13 years. 

On March 6, 1967, Castino died of lung cancer in Sacramento at the age of 49 and was interred at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in Sacramento.

Sources

Vince Castino’s player file and player questionnaire at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Aberdeen (South Dakota) Daily News

Boston Herald

Canton (Ohio) Repository

Chicago Tribune

Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield, Illinois)

Dallas Morning News

Ellensburg (Washington) Daily Record

Idaho Statesman (Boise)

Lewiston (Maine) Evening Journal

Lodi (California) News-Sentinel

Marietta (Ohio) Journal

New Orleans Times-Picayune

Omaha World Herald

The Oregonian (Portland)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Rockford (Illinois) Register-Republic

Sacramento Bee

The Sporting News

St. Petersburg (Florida) Times

San Francisco Chronicle

State Times Advocate (Baton Rouge)

Toledo Blade

Washington Evening Star

Notes

1 The Sporting News, March 16, 1967. 

Clark was born in Boscobel, Wisconsin – the birthplace of the Gideon Bible. It’s in the southwestern part of the state, on the Lower Wisconsin River. He was born as William Otis Clark on May 22, 1915.  His parents were farmers at the time – John J. “Jack” Clark and Cora (Gobin) Clark. The 1920 US census lists the family as living in Marietta, Wisconsin, but provides William’s middle name as “Oats.” He was always called Otey as a kid, by his parents and by others. Ten years later, the family was living in Boscobel once more and Jack Clark was working as a trainer of race horses. William was the oldest of their seven children at the time. In 1940 he was a “common laborer” working at the city’s sewage-disposal plant, and at least one more child had joined the family.

William grew up as a Chicago Cubs fan. He graduated from Boscobel High School, where he played first base and then, after taking over for a pitcher who had developed a sore arm, reportedly pitched on the high-school team with great success. “I played freshman, four years, straight through. I never got beat. Never lost a game,” he said. “Then I started pitching for a semipro club at Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin. I guess it was more or less 22 miles from here. I pitched there during the summer while I was still in high school and I won 43 and lost 3 over three years. We played the House of David, Pine Grove Colored Giants out of Mississippi, teams out of La Crosse. Whoever come along.  There was traveling teams in those days.”1 

Clark had pitched for both Brown’s All Stars of Woodman, Wisconsin, and the Soldiers Grove Cardinals.2 He also drove a delivery truck for the three years, selling “candy and pop in little towns around there.”

“We were in La Crosse playing the Heileman Brewing Company with this team and a Minneapolis Millers scout asked me if he could talk to me that fall when the ball season was over and he did, and I signed a contract.   Big Ed Konetchy.  He was a scout for the Minneapolis Millers, and the reason I talked to him is because he was going to manage the La Crosse team in Wisconsin, Class D, that fall.   And so I went there with him and pitched my first year for La Crosse in the Wisconsin State League. 

“And then the Millers sent me to Eau Claire in the Northern League the next year.”

Clark was 11-7 (4.50 ERA) for the La Crosse Blackhawks in 1940. In 1941, working for the Class C Eau Claire Bears, he was 14-6 (3.76), and achieved a personal best by striking out 15 batters from Fargo-Moorhead on July 1. On a Moline Plow Boys contract from February on, he pitched in six games for the Class B team, but was 0-2.

He went to spring training with the Millers in 1942, in New Braunfels, Texas. The team played in Dallas and Fort Worth, and Clark and two other players were placed with the Fort Worth Cats of the Class A1 Texas League and manager Rogers Hornsby for 1942. Clark was 4-7 but with a 2.82 earned-run average. He’d pitched his way onto the Millers for 1943.

Asked about Hornsby as a manager, Clark was polite: “He was a terrific ballplayer.  He was a great man for hitters and so forth. He hated pitchers.  And maybe even his own pitchers, I don’t know, but he didn’t like pitchers.” 

Clark was 4-F, exempt from military service. He explained: “In our area here, when I was in high school and stuff, we took iodine pills. It was a goiter area here. We lacked iodine. When I went to get examination for the draft to go, the doctor here in La Crosse said, ‘I can’t make you 4-F.  I can’t make a decision on this at all.  You have to go to a military doctor.’ So I went to Fort Snelling in Minneapolis and [the doctor there] said, ‘You are 4-F. You have a toxic goiter.  You cannot go overseas.  The shots would be very fatal for you.’”  The condition was not something that bothered him in later life. 

Pitching 213 innings in Double-A for Minneapolis was harder work. Clark’s ERA for 1943 was 4.44.  His 11 wins put him one behind Lefty Lefebvre for tops on the team. Part of the reason was the bases on balls; he struck out 59 but walked 98. He split 1944 between the Millers (23 games) and the Louisville Colonels (nine games); the Boston Red Sox bought his contract during the season and assigned him to their own Double-A club, in Louisville. His combined ERA is listed as 4.01. It was largely a bookkeeping move, but Boston formally purchased Clark’s contract from Louisville on the last day of August 1944. Clark pitched in the Junior World Series that year and showed some grit. Facing Baltimore, the International League champs, in Game Three, he was struck smack in the kneecap by a fourth-inning line drive. A doctor snapped his dislocated kneecap back into place and he pitched until he was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the 13th inning.3 The Orioles won the game, 7-4, in 14 innings and won the series itself three days later.

In 1945 Clark was with the Red Sox throughout spring training (based in Pleasantville, New Jersey) and came to Boston with the ballclub. He played in the City Series against the Braves. The Red Sox season opened in New York on April 17, and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia threw out the first pitch, standing next to his guest, Fulgencio Batista, president of Cuba. Clark worked in that Opening Day game, taking over from starter Rex Cecil, who had been staked to a 3-0 lead in the top of the first. Cecil was ahead 3-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh while working on a two-hitter, but then New York scored seven runs – in large part thanks to first baseman Catfish Metkovich, who committed a record three errors in the same inning. After Cecil gave up his fourth hit in the inning, a grand slam, Clark was brought in and put out the fire. He threw 1⅔ innings of hitless relief, striking out one. Then he was sent back to the Colonels, not returning until August 12. “There was some guys coming back from service and so forth, you know, in those days.  I guess I wasn’t quite ready for it, or whatever, so they sent me back to Louisville.”

The day before he was sent out, however, Clark played a role in the famous sham tryout. “We had a guy come in. … When we got back to Boston, there was news in the paper, like the Christian Science Monitor and stuff, there was a university student in town, a very good baseball player, and the Boston Red Sox should give him a look-and-see, see if he was a good enough ballplayer to play pro.  His name was Jackie Robinson.  So we did it.  I had good control, so Joe Cronin (then the Red Sox manager) asked me to pitch batting practice to this kid, and I did, and he hit the ball all over Fenway Park. He hit the ball all over the ballpark, but then they worked him out at shortstop, of course. That’s where he played in college. And I felt that he couldn’t throw from over in the hole by third base.  He didn’t have quite the arm to throw from the hole at shortstop. And I said so the next morning to the press, and Joe Cronin said he’d never make it.” 

Clark had a very good year at Louisville (11-6, 4.06) and was recalled by the Red Sox in August, while catcher Fred Walters was sent down. Clark started nine games for Boston, with an 8-2 loss in the first one and then an 8-2 win in the second. His third was a 2-1 loss to the St. Louis Browns. On September 5 he beat Bob Feller, 2-1, though he gave up 11 hits to the seven Feller surrendered. “I got a hit off him but I won’t tell you where I hit it!” “A little dribbler?,” he was asked.  Laughing, Clark said, “It was a dribbler.”

Clark’s best game was a 3-0 seven-hit shutout of Philadelphia on September 19.  His last two games were in relief, both against the Yankees. On September 23, he threw 6⅓ innings of long relief and surrendered only two hits and one (unearned) run, but on September 30 in five full innings, he gave up seven earned runs on seven hits. Even with that, Clark’s ERA for his even dozen appearances in the majors came to just 3.06.  In 82 innings, he’d struck out 20 and walked only 19, but he’d given up six home runs.

The Louisville Colonels finished third in the American Association, but they won in the playoffs. Clark told of a time during spring training 1946, in Sarasota, when the bus carried the team to St. Petersburg to play the Yankees, and as they approached the park, there was a church within walking distance of the hotel. “Cronin said to the bussie, he said, ‘You stop here at the Catholic church.  Some of us want to stop there, and we’ll meet you at the hotel.’”  Everyone got out except the bus driver, Ted Williams, Rudy York, and Clark. 

Clark worked out with the Red Sox during spring training and even pitched in the City Series against the Boston Braves. He was on the bench for the first week and a half of the season, though he didn’t appear in a game and was optioned to Louisville on April 25. There wasn’t really room for him on the Red Sox. The 1946 team won 104 games, with a 17-game winner in Mickey Harris, a 20-game winner in Tex Hughson and a 25-game winner in Boo Ferriss. The Red Sox had a strong farm system, too, and Clark’s Louisville club won the American Association pennant and blazed through the playoffs, winning four of five in the first round and then sweeping all four games in the final. They played the Montreal Royals for the Junior World Series, and won then, too. Montreal was the team for which Jackie Robinson played second base in 1946. “We just said hello. Just passed. Kind of nodded.”

Not everyone was as friendly, as Clark recalled. “He was scared to death.  We opened in Louisville, that series.  He was booed.  He was throwed at.  Jim Wilson could throw hard.  He was our starting pitcher.  He floored him a couple of times, and he just got right up and brushed himself off a couple of times.  He just got right back in there. He’s the only one I think could have made [successful integration of baseball] happen He had the right personality and the guts, you might say.” Clark had also been quoted in the papers at the time: “He showed lots of speed and plenty of nerve. … When we saw he didn’t scare, we let him alone.”4

Clark spent spring training with Boston again in 1947, but – as in 1946 – never appeared in a regular-season game. When the team headed north, he was left behind in Sarasota and was assigned once more to Louisville. Partway through the 1947 season, the Red Sox traded him to the Cardinals for another right-hander, Jack Griffore, and Clark pitched his final 17 games of 1947 for Columbus. Minneapolis, by then a Giants affiliate, traded to bring him back for 1948.

Clark played three more seasons in Organized Baseball – 1948 and part of 1949 with Minneapolis, and then the other part of 1949 and six appearances in 1950 with the Toledo Mud Hens. On May 8 or 9, he was released outright. He continued to live in Minneapolis, and then for a couple of years afterward managed in semipro ball for Rochester in the Southern Minny League.

Clark worked as a men’s clothing buyer and salesman for J.C. Penney and then for 25 years he sold Buicks in Minneapolis.

He was glad he’d played baseball, felt he’d been given a fair chance, and had no regrets. “I met a lot of nice people and saw a lot of nice country. My wife went with me and we had a good time.”

Back before he left Boscobel, Otey Clark had married his high-school sweetheart, Hilda Irene Swenson, on June 1, 1938. They both loved to country dance and taught it in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. Otey liked to hunt and fish as well.

The Clarks never had any children. He died in Boscobel on October 20, 2010. He was 95, survived by Hilda and four of his sisters.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Clark’s player file and player questionnaire from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 Author interviews with Otey Clark on September 24 and October 23, 2003.  All quotations attributed to Clark come from these interviews unless otherwise noted.

2 Player questionnaire in Clark’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

3 Associated Press story, October 9, 1944, and Clark’s player questionnaire.

4 Boston Globe, March 28, 1947.

Jorge Vivino Comellas y Pous was born on December 7, 1916, in the Luyanó neighborhood of Havana, Cuba.  A sportswriter who interviewed Comellas in 1944 reported that he was of Spanish descent and had won two medals and a trophy cup on his high-school baseball team.  While attending the University of Havana he played both baseball and volleyball.  During his amateur days he hurled six shutouts and a one-hitter while being coached by longtime major-league pitcher Adolfo “Dolf” Luque, later a member of the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame.  Comellas called Luque “a real teacher and master.”1 

Revolutionary activity by college students in 1934 led to the University of Havana being shut down the next year, and Comellas never graduated.2  In fact, Florida sportswriter John Strothard, who called the young man “Machine Gun George Comellas” later that decade, said that the pitcher had “carried a Tommy gun for one side or the other in one or more of the recent Cuban revolutions, while he was a student at the University of Havana”; Strothard may have been writing with tongue in cheek.3  In any case, while still a teenager Comellas made his professional debut on the Marianao team of Cuba’s winter league during its 1935-36 season.  He would pitch for various teams in that league each winter through 1948-49.

Before the 1936 American League season, Comellas was one of the first nine Cuban players signed to a contract by Joe Cambria, the renowned scout of the Washington Senators.  According to a sports columnist in 1937, Comellas had impressed at a “tryout school.”4  On March 10, 1936, Comellas arrived in Tampa bound for spring training in Winter Garden, Florida.5  Passport records for that date show Comellas traveling with seven other Cuban ballplayers, including Fermin “Mike” Guerra, who would play for three American League teams.  Comellas would travel with a few other ballplayers on annual springtime boat trips to the States through 1939.

Comellas was assigned to York in the Class-A New York-Pennsylvania League, skipping over lower-level, Class D, C, and B leagues.  Comellas didn’t speak any English when he arrived in the United States, and on his first trip to New York City he was trapped by the language barrier for four hours at Grand Central Station.  As panic was starting to eat at Comellas, a policeman managed to help him out of his predicament.6 

The York franchise relocated to Trenton, New Jersey, in early July of 1936.  Over the course of the season Comellas won only six games while losing 15.  Afterwards he returned to Cuba and spent the winter playing for the Santa Clara team.  On April 12, 1937, he and Guerra made another trip together to Florida, to join the Salisbury (Maryland) Indians in the Class-D Eastern Shore League.  Cambria helped the two acclimate.  For example, they were given pocket cards containing such essential information as how to order various meals in English.7

Salisbury’s 1937 season was quite remarkable, and Comellas played a key role.  The team got off to a blistering start, winning 21 of its first 26 games. At that point league Commissioner J. Thomas Kibler issued what was presumed to be a devastating ruling.  Teams were allowed to have up to three players with experience at higher levels but Kibler ruled that Salisbury had four, even though one player had merely signed with a Class-C team at one point without actually playing for it.  Salisbury lost its appeals, and its official record became 0-26.8

Rather than throw in the towel, the Salisbury squad went all out.  Comellas and mound mate Joe Kohlman resumed impressive winning streaks, and after a while the team miraculously re-entered the pennant race.

Years later, Comellas’s effort was still vivid to Ernie Foskey, who served as the Salisbury team’s trainer, groundskeeper, and bus driver.  “Never will I forget one night of that season at Cambridge,” Foskey said.  “It was a bitter fight for the league lead during the last week of the schedule.  I used nine buckets of hot water on Jorge Comellas’ arm that night.  Hot towels were necessary to keep the circulation flowing, expecially [sic] in his forearm which was cold as ice.”9

Salisbury did win the pennant, thanks in part to Comellas winning his first 20 decisions and finishing with a record of 22-1.  During his startling streak he once struck out 21 batters in a nine-inning game.  Kohlman finished at 25-1, giving Salisbury the winningest duo in the history of Organized Baseball.10  Shortly after the season concluded, sportswriter Paul Michelson summarized Comellas’s effectiveness.  “Even though he telegraphs his pitches, batters can’t do much with him,” Michelson wrote.11

Lester Biederman of the Pittsburgh Press provided some additional insight around the same time, observing that Comellas “weighs only 156 pounds but has a nifty fast ball.”  Biederman noted that Comellas struck out 16 batters in his lone loss, and seemed sold on his promotion to the Senators for the close of the American League season.12  Comellas was indeed promoted but didn’t see any action for Washington. (Kohlman also joined the Senators, and started two games.)

That offseason Comellas pitched a second season for Cuba’s Santa Clara team, which won the pennant.  In the United States from 1938 to 1942 he bounced around, usually pitching for at least two teams each season.  He returned to Salisbury for parts of 1938 through 1940 but also spent time with Washington affiliates in Class A and Class B before eventually slipping out of the Senators’ system.  Comellas was the winning pitcher in the game that won Salisbury its second consecutive pennant, in 1938.13

Comellas began the 1938-39 season in Cuba with Luque’s Almendares team, and he was the starting pitcher in a game of historic significance on October 12, 1938. Visiting were the Homestead Grays of the Negro National League.  Comellas yielded only two hits to a strong lineup that featured future Hall of Famer Josh Gibson batting cleanup, but Almendares managed only three hits itself and lost, 1-0.14

With Salisbury again in 1940, Comellas figured in another controversy about eligible players, which arose in June after the team tied the league record with 14 consecutive wins.  This time the issue wasn’t about players’ experience.  “The chief bone of contention,” according to a newspaper account at the time, was “the listing of four Spanish-Cuban names in the daily box scores” in violation of the league’s limit on foreign-born players. In response, Salisbury’s business manager, Melvin E. Murphy, obtained “birth certificates and racial credentials on his players.”  Murphy had conceded that a limit on foreign players applied to Comellas but the reporter noted that “Ray Rodriguez, Manuel Menendez, and Al Torre are all naturalized Americans, having been reared in Tampa, Fla.”15  Comellas finished with a record of 21-10 as Salisbury finished fourth in the standings.

The early 1940s were happy times for Jorge Comellas off the field, particularly during his stints in Cuba.  On March 9, 1940, he married Dolores Luisa Rodríguez y Ávila (born August 19, 1918, in Batabano, Cuba), and on April 26 she joined him on his next springtime trip to the United States.  Their daughter Barbara was born on the eve of their first anniversary, and their daughter Daisy was born just before Christmas in 1943.  Meanwhile, in 1942 Comellas achieved a 19-11 record for Utica in the Class-C Canadian-American League and in 1943 he had a 15-8 record for Portsmouth, an affiliate of the Cubs in the Class-B Piedmont League that won the pennant that year. Around that time, a newspaper profile of Comellas noted that he had “exceptionally long fingers, being able to hold seven baseballs in one hand,” and that his Utica teammates referred to him by the nickname Choppy.16

For 1944 Comellas was elevated to the Los Angeles Angels in the Double-A Pacific Coast League. He pitched a seven-inning no-hitter on May 7 and was rewarded with a regular spot in the starting rotation. Comellas finished with a solid record of 18-14, going 11-5 from July onward. The Angels won the pennant comfortably, and life for Comellas continued to be good.  He had filled out physically, carrying 180 pounds on his 6-foot frame, and had become bilingual enough to admit to reading romance novels in English.17  Along the way he had picked up two more nicknames, the plain Pancho and the honorific El Curveador del Pacifico.

The year 1945 started on an upbeat note for Comellas.  The Cubs had purchased him from Los Angeles, and in the first half of January it was announced that he would get a tryout with Chicago.  It turned out that by the beginning of spring training the Cubs had neither heard from Comellas nor knew where he was.  He finally arrived from his home in Havana shortly before the Cubs were preparing to break camp in French Lick, Indiana.18 However, manager Charlie Grimm had reportedly seen enough potential in Comellas to consider him a possible starting pitcher.19

The Cubs opened at home on April 17, and Paul Derringer pitched a complete game in defeating the Cardinals, 3-2.  Comellas made his major-league debut in the next game, on April 19.  The starting pitcher for the Cubs that day was 38-year-old Ray Prim, who had pitched with the Los Angeles Angels since the mid-1930s, except for 1943, which he spent with the Cubs. After three scoreless innings he was bruised for five runs by the Cardinals in the fourth, and was charged with three more in the fifth without retiring a batter. Prim was relieved by Mack Stewart, who gave up two hits before ending the inning.  Stewart was lifted for a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the fifth, so Comellas was summoned to take over on the hill.  Wearing uniform number 36, he pitched the sixth and seventh innings without allowing a run.  Comellas faced seven batters, balancing a hit and a walk with two strikeouts.  His relief stint ended when Grimm pinch-hit for him in the bottom of the seventh.  Cubs batters didn’t do much all afternoon, and the home team lost 8-2. 

From April 20 through the 28th, there were few opportunities for Comellas to make a second appearance.  The Cubs didn’t play on three of those dates, and they had a six-game winning streak on the strength of five complete games from their regular starters. (Prim picked up the other win in relief.)  The winning streak ended on April 29, when the Cubs lost to the Pirates, 6-2, at Wrigley Field in the first game of a doubleheader.  In the second game Comellas made his first major-league start. The Pirates scored once in each of the first two innings but the Cubs tied the score in the bottom of the second.  Comellas and the Pirates’ pitcher, Nick Strincevich, who had won 14 games for Pittsburgh the previous season, conceded no additional runs through the fifth inning.  However, in the top of the sixth Comellas was charged with three runs without recording an out and was relieved by Hy Vandenberg.  Comellas wasn’t hit hard in the inning, giving up an infield single, a walk, and a bunt single to load the bases before exiting. The final score was 5-4 with Comellas the losing pitcher. One of the Pirates’ five runs was unearned. Comellas was touched for only four singles before exiting in the sixth inning, but he issued four walks, which contributed to his downfall. On offense, Chicago had six doubles among its 13 hits, but left 10 men on base.

It was 10 days before Comellas pitched again, though during that span the Cubs played only twice. He wasn’t charged with any runs in three short relief appearances on the road, against the Philadelphia Phillies on May 9, the Boston Braves on May 12, and the New York Giants on May 16, allowing one hit in each stint. But in one inning of relief on May 18 in Brooklyn, he surrendered the only home run he gave up in the major leagues, to Dodgers center fielder Goody Rosen. The Cubs wound up on the wrong end of a 15-12 slugfest. Though starter Paul Erickson gave up three runs without retiring a batter, Prim surrendered six more and Vandenberg five, the home run Comellas yielded was enough to tag him with the loss.

Comellas made his final major-league appearance 11 days later, on May 29.  He reportedly was AWOL during that time, which annoyed the team’s management,20 though during his absence Chicago used its bullpen in only one game.  On the 29th Comellas faced the Dodgers again, this time in Wrigley Field. He was charged with a run in an inning and two-thirds of relief. In his seven appearances in April and May, he pitched 12 innings and had a 4.50 earned-run average.

On May 31 Comellas lost his spot on Chicago’s roster (as well as his uniform number, 36) to five-time All-Star Lon Warneke, who had come out of retirement. Comellas was optioned to the Angels.

On May 30 the Cubs had a record of 18-16 and were in fourth place, 6½ games out of first place.  If they weren’t targeting Comellas specifically but simply wanted to make room for Warneke, then Prim may also have been at risk due to some very rocky outings but he had just helped his cause with a complete-game victory.  Also, Vandenberg had a much higher ERA than Comellas, at 7.50, but he had pitched reasonably well for the Cubs in 1944 and would validate their faith in him by the end of 1945 by lowering his ERA to 3.49 while compiling a record of 7-3.  Prim fared even better, by managing to lead all NL pitchers with a 2.40 ERA.

Even if Comellas, a rookie facing lineups missing many NL regulars who were in the military, he had to be aware of the importance of making an impact quickly.  Germany had surrendered to the Allies shortly after his lone start, so it was a matter of time before many high-caliber players would crowd out fill-ins like him. An unusual number of Cuban players helped to round out major-league rosters during the war because they weren’t subject to the US military draft and Cuba played only a limited military role in the war. The Washington Senators finished within two games of winning the AL pennant in 1945 with considerable help from several Cuban players, and other Cuban players that year enjoyed brief opportunities in the majors.  “There were many players in 1945 who if not for the war would likely never have played major league baseball,” wrote James D. Szalontai in a book devoted to that season; the first player he named was Jorge Comellas.21

Within a month of his return to Los Angeles, there was evidence that Comellas hadn’t been affected negatively by his middling stint with the Cubs, most notably on June 24 when he won an 11-inning two-hitter against the Oakland Oaks.  However, as Richard Beverage noted in his history of the minor-league Angels, “a glandular disorder sapped his strength and ruined his season.  After pitching well for a month, he lost his last 11 decisions to finish at 6-16.”22

In the spring of 1946, Comellas’s career took a distinct turn.  A millionaire in Mexico, Jorge Pasquel, had been working with his brothers to attract talent to the Mexican League and challenge Major League Baseball. A number of players who had seen major-league action in 1945 jumped to the Mexican League for 1946, among them Sal Maglie, Lou Klein, Max Lanier, and Mickey Owen. Comellas did likewise. He wasn’t brand-new to Mexican baseball, having spent a little time with the Torreon team in 1941 (in addition to pitching in 28 games for Class-C Pittsfield and Class-A Springfield that year).  For 1946 he joined a new franchise in the eight-team Mexican League, the Tuneros of San Luis Potosi.

By early May it was reported that Comellas was taking over as the team’s manager after Felix Arguelles quit.23  Comellas, in turn, was replaced by Antonio Rodriguez. The Tuneros finished last.

In mid-July of 1946 Pittsfield sportswriter John Flynn reported that Comellas had signed to play winter ball with Almendares in Cuba.24 In August Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler imposed a five-year ban on most of the players who had jumped to the Mexican League. The ban eventually applied to the Cuban Winter League, but not before a significant game for Comellas.

Gran Stadium, a 34,000-seat ballpark had been built in the Havana suburb of El Cerro. The first game there was played on October 26. Adolfo Luque’s Almendares Blues faced Martin Dihigo’s Cienfuegos Elefantes, and Jorge Comellas started for the Blues.  He was quite effective, and the Blues won comfortably, 9-1.25

The Mexican League, meanwhile, had financial troubles, and it was announced that the salaries of the American players would have to be cut in half. There were threats of holdouts in response.  On February 19, 1947, Jorge Pasquel flew to Havana because many of those Americans were playing in Cuba that winter. Pasquel was fairly successful in obtaining commitments to return, and at the same time he signed Comellas to a new contract.26

However, in March there was talk of the Mexican League needing to drop two of its eight franchises.  Nuevo Laredo was expected to be one, and the second was to be either Torreon or San Luis Potosi, Comellas’s team. San Luis Potosi was indeed targeted for eliminaton, but just two days before the season was to start, the Torreon franchise – and its players – were shifted to San Luis Potosi.27  Comellas ended up out in the cold, and there’s no indication that he played in Mexico during 1947.

A second winter league was formed in Cuba for 1947-48 because Chandler’s ban was being applied to the island, and Comellas joined the Alacranes Blue Sox, managed by Adolfo Luque.  Just before Christmas, John Flynn reported that Comellas was among players who had been offered amnesty by Chandler, and as a result Jorge quit the Blue Sox to rejoin the Almendares club, for which he had pitched the previous winter.28

In January of 1948, the Los Angeles Angels sold Comellas’s contract to Portsmouth of the Class-B Piedmont League, for which he had performed well in 1943. He enjoyed another productive season there, with a record of 14-9.  The next few years saw Comellas play for a hometown team in a Florida-based circuit, the Havana Cubans of the Class-B Florida International League, and he finished his pro career in 1951 with Fort Lauderdale in the same league.  His US minor-league statistics are incomplete, but records from at least parts of 12 seasons indicate that Comellas won at least 149 games and lost 117, with an ERA of about 3.20.

In the Cuban Winter League Comellas is seventh all-time in games pitched, with 239.  He led the league in ERA in 1944-45 and in complete games in 1945-46. In both of those seasons he led the league in shutouts.

The Comellas family eventually settled in Miami. Jorge was officially declared a permanent resident of the United States in 1964 (his daughters had acquired that status in 1950, perhaps to minimize disruption during the American school year), and he became a naturalized citizen in 1973.  For the last three decades of his life he lived at the same home.

Comellas continued to at least dabble in baseball.  Around 1974 he led the Mambises Baseball Academy in Miami,29 and from 1980 to 1982 he coached at the Caribes Baseball Academy there with Andrés Fleitas, another old-time Cuban ballplayer. 

Jorge’s wife, Dolores, died in September of 1997.  He died on September 13, 2001, at the age of 84. He is buried at Woodlawn Park North Cemetery and Mausoleum in Miami.

Notes

1 Rodney Guilfoil, “Coasting Along in Sport World,” Bend (Oregon) Bulletin, May 8, 1944, 2.

2 “Meet the Braves,” Utica (New York) Observer, July 20, 1942.

3 John Strothard, “Millers,” Daytona Beach (Florida) Morning Journal , April 6, 1938, 3.

4 Paul Michelson, “Down the Sports Trail,” Titusville (Pennsylvania) Herald, September 6, 1937, 6.

5 Luis Pérez López, “La Curva de Comellas Hizo Estragos en Ligas Menores,” Nuevo Herald (Miami, Florida), July 6, 1985, 9. The headline can be translated as “Comellas’s curve ravaged minor leagues.”

6 Guilfoil, Bend Bulletin, 2.

7 Ed Nichols, “Shore Sports,” Salisbury (Maryland) Times, September 26, 1962, 25.

8 “In some other leagues the games were simply thrown out of the standings, but in the Eastern Shore, the offending team was charged with a loss and the opponent credited with a win. Individual statistics, such as wins and losses for pitchers, were not affected.” –Bill Weiss & Marshall Wright, at www.milb.com/milb/history/top100.jsp?idx=8.

9 Ed Nichols, “Shore Sports,” Salisbury (Maryland) Times, July 23, 1953, 14.

10 David Nemec and Scott Flatow, This Day in Baseball: A Day-by-Day Record of the Events That Shaped the Game (Lanham, Maryland: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2008), 184.

11 Michelson, Titusville Herald, 6.

12 Lester Biederman, “Sports Stew – Served Hot,” Pittsburgh Press, August 31, 1937, 28. 

13 “Salisbury Takes Eastern Sho’ Title,” Chester (Pennsylvania) Times, September 17, 1938, 11.

14 Severo Nieto, Early U.S. Blackball Teams in Cuba:  Box Scores, Rosters and Statistics from the Files of Cuba’s Foremost Baseball Researcher (Jefferson, North Carolina:  McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008), 167. Nieto provided the game’s box score (though it incorrectly shows a Grays pinch-hitter batting for one of Comellas’s teammates in the ninth inning).

15 “Salisbury Denies Any Class Charges,” Sunday Morning Star (Wilmington, Delaware), June 9, 1940, 28.

16 “Meet the Braves.”

17 Guilfoil, Bend Bulletin, 2.

18 Charles N. Billington, Wrigley Field’s Last World Series: The Wartime Chicago Cubs and the Pennant of 1945 (Chicago: Lake Claremont Press, 2005), 118, 124.

19 “Comellas Off to Fine Start,” Berkshire County Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), April 11, 1945, 14.

20 Billington, 156.

21 James D. Szalontai, Teenager on First, Geezer at Bat, 4-F on Deck: Major League Baseball in 1945 (Jefferson, North Carolina:  McFarland & Company, Inc., ‎2009 ), 2.

22 Richard Beverage, The Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League: A History, 1903-1957 (Jefferson, North Carolina:  McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011), 121.

23 The hiring of Comellas as manager was news far north of Mexico.  For example, see “Sports in Short,” Milwaukee Journal, May 6, 1946, 5.

24 John M. Flynn, “The Referee’s Sporting Chat,” Berkshire Evening Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), July 16, 1946, 12.  Comellas had already spent part of the 1945-46 season with Almendares.

25 William McNeil, Black Baseball Out of Season: Pay for Play Outside of the Negro Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina:  McFarland & Company, Inc., 2007), 48.  McNeil provided the game’s box score. 

26 John Virtue, South of the Color Barrier: How Jorge Pasquel and the Mexican League Pushed Baseball Toward Racial Integration (Jefferson, North Carolina:  McFarland & Company, Inc., 2007), 184.

27 “Ex-Missions Off to Mexico,” San Antonio Light, March 26, 1947, 6-B.

28 John M. Flynn, “The Referee’s Sporting Chat,” Berkshire County Eagle (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), December 24, 1947, 18.  For more on the rival Cuban leagues, and Comellas’s place within that situation, see Lou Hernández, The Rise of the Latin American Baseball Leagues, 1947-1961: Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico and Venezuela (Jefferson, North Carolina:  McFarland & Company, Inc., ‎2011), 100.

29 Emilio Arechaederra, “Cortos Deportivos,” Diario Las Americas (Miami, Florida), January 25, 1974, 15.

“Last year in Newport News, Va., we had the opportunity of watching one of the minor league baseball’s most colorful figures. He’s Chet Covington, a very portly southpaw who this season is serving his 18th year in OB. With Portsmouth last season, Chet had a 10-5 record. During the game that we saw between Newport News and Portsmouth, Chet went in to relieve the starting pitcher in the fifth inning. Very nonchalantly he strolled to the mound and with great dignity, surveyed his domain – including the stands, for there lies Chet’s greatest joy. He loves to perform before the fans, and between batters the huge portsider would toss the ball high in the air, roll it down his arm and in general keep the folks amused while the next batter got ready.  In short he’s a combination of Bobo Newsom, Pappy Williams and Al Schacht. What amazed us about Chet was his refusal to field a ball. He just ignored such trifles as grounders, bunts, etc. Perhaps his huge girth wouldn’t permit such strenuous activities as picking up grounders, but whatever the reason he was a great drawing card. 

“Seemingly, Chet never took his pitching duties seriously, but when he was in a clutch, the affable chunker was mean.  As we recall, Newport News got two singles off Chet during the rest of the game. And from where we sat it appeared as if Chester just loafed.” 

— Bill Rumfelt, Rocky Mount (North Carolina) Evening Telegram, May 30, 1950

Chet Covington was a very talented left-handed pitcher who didn’t begin his career in Organized Baseball until he was 28. Even with the late start, he won more than 200 games in the minor leagues in an odyssey with 20 different teams over 15 seasons. But he spent only part of one season in the major leagues. Why didn’t a pitcher of this caliber stick in the majors? Why did he constantly move from one team to another? Maybe it was because of his mouth, into which he was always sticking his foot. Maybe it was his penchant for disliking his teammates (when he didn’t think they were hustling) as well as managers and front-office guys. Maybe it was because he often thought he was the manager as well as a player. Maybe it was because of his numerous suspensions over his career. Or maybe it was because he was never known to withhold an opinion on any given subject. Maybe it was because he didn’t field those groundballs or sometimes didn’t warm up between innings.

It wasn’t because of Covington’s pitching ability. Despite all his potential shortcomings, the guy could pitch and pitch not just very well but often great, as his perfect game in 1943 and a 31-9 record in 1946 attest.1 Maybe, in fact, he was ahead of his time – he felt he should be fairly compensated by owners for his abilities. Or maybe it was as simple as what Covington himself believed: “He was the most misunderstood gent in baseball.” Take your pick.

Chester (also known at various times as Chet, Lefty, Chesty, Chester the Great, and Tex) Covington was a man who went everywhere and back again over a nine-year prizefighting career and a 15-year baseball career spent entirely in the minors except for a little over three months with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1944. In the minors he was with 20 clubs in 12 leagues over those 15 seasons.

Chester Rogers Covington was born on November 6, 1910, in Cairo, Illinois, the son of David Mark and Mattie Belle Covington.2 He moved to Jackson, Tennessee, with his family a year later. He was one of ten children of a railroad conductor who abused him.3 He became a prizefighter at the age of 13, and for nine years he earned his living in the ring. Starting as a lightweight and retiring as a middleweight, he fought 216 times, ending with a record of 187-19-10.4 He stopped only at his new bride’s insistence.5 (In 1934 Covington married Angela Pugliese, whom he had met while playing amateur baseball in Miami before beginning his professional baseball career. The marriage lasted until his death 42 years later. They had one daughter, Carolyn.)

During this period Covington still loved baseball and often pitched for a sandlot team in the afternoon and fought at night. Why did he fight? “Minor-league ballplayers were starving and I had to make a living fighting. Why, in 1935 the Sanford club of the Florida State League (Class D) had the nerve to offer me $75 a month to pitch.”6

Covington switched to baseball full time with Portsmouth, Virginia, of the Class B Piedmont League in 1939 at the age of 28 and was quickly shunted to Tarboro7 and then Goldsboro of the Class D Coastal Plain League that season, winding up with a combined record of 7-9, one of the few years he lost more than he won.

In 1940 Covington went to the Hollywood (Florida) Chiefs of the Class D Florida East Coast League and went 21-7; in 1941 he was with the Fort Pierce Bombers of the same league before being promoted to Jacksonville of the Class B South Atlantic League in July, and then returning to Fort Pierce at the end of the season. He went 22-7 with Fort Pierce8 and 2-5 for Jacksonville for a combined 24-12 season record.

After his back-to-back 20-plus-win seasons in 1940 and 1941, Fort Pierce sold Covington’s contract to the Springfield (Massachusetts) Rifles of the Eastern League. In July Springfield sent him to Birmingham of the Southern Association, where he appeared in only four games. It was there that Covington first exhibited resistance against management; he left the Birmingham team and returned home for reasons unknown, whereupon Springfield sold him to Louisville of the Double-A (the equivalent of today’s Triple-A) American Association.9

Covington went 3-2 for Louisville the balance of the 1942 season, began the 1943 season there, and in May was optioned to Scranton of the Class A Eastern League. On May 23 he hurled a perfect game against his old Springfield teammates. Covington was outstanding for Scranton, going 21-7, and was named The Sporting News’ Minor League Player of the Year. He pitched 251 innings that season, had the lowest ERA (1.51) in Organized Baseball, and hurled nine shutouts. At one point during the season, Covington had a string of 45 consecutive scoreless innings, including the perfect game.10 “I guess my smartest manager was Nemo Leibold at Scranton,” he said. “Maybe it was because I had a fine year with him.” Louisville recalled him from Scranton on September 1.11

After he collided with Hartford catcher Johnny Stats, Covington became involved in a riot at Hartford, Connecticut, during an Eastern League playoff game. The fans were so mad at him that two Hartford policemen had to escort him back to Scranton on the train.12

Covington was a burly man – 6-feet-2, 195 pounds. A newspaper writer once referred to him as a behemoth. He would win more than 200 games with the classic windup of the day – right leg way out, glove hand high.13 He was said to use fastballs on 80 percent of his pitches.14

On April 15, 1944, Covington was purchased by the Philadelphia Phillies and he began the 1944 season on the major-league roster.15 He went 1-0 in 15 relief appearances for the Phillies before being released to the Utica Blue Sox on June 29. Why was he cut by the Phillies? Not because of his pitching. Covington appeared to be the proverbial “clubhouse lawyer.” General manager Herb Pennock said there was “one troublesome player” on the Phillies club. Many reports claimed that Covington was the “disturbing element,” to which the pitcher replied that that was “a bunch of hooey.” He said that when he was sent to the minor leagues by the Phillies he was glad to go because “Those Phillies had a defeatist attitude.”16 On September 7, Covington returned to the Phillies and went 0-1 in four relief appearances over the rest of the season. He never started a game in the major leagues.

According to his obituary in The Sporting News, “Covington was ordered to walk Stan Musial in a tight situation. After the game Covington grumbled, ‘Imagine telling a fellow with my stuff to walk Musial.’ The next day he was on his way to Utica.” The story may reflect the essence of Covington’s personality but the details are not supportable, as a review in Retrosheet.org of the games Covington pitched against St. Louis does not show that he ever walked Musial.

Covington continued his antics at Utica, where he was ejected from a game after tossing his glove to the ground.17 He held up a game by refusing to pitch until the grounds crew had raked the mound to his specifications.18 On the night he was recalled to Philadelphia, he got into a clubhouse scuffle in which he reportedly struck several teammates.19

Covington went to spring training with the Phillies in 1945 but on April 5 was placed on the voluntarily retired list as he was working in Miami with Eastern Airlines and claimed he was making more money there and couldn’t afford to play baseball. In fact, he, along with some other minor leaguers, was playing semipro ball for the Eastern Airlines team in Miami.20

Whatever the reason why Covington was sent to Utica and was later placed on the voluntarily retired list, he never returned to the majors. He pitched another nine years in the minors with some outstanding seasons although the suspensions and the run-ins with players (including teammates) managers, and owners began to pile up. It was apparent that Covington was persona non grata in the major leagues.

In August 1945 Covington returned to Organized Baseball when the Phillies optioned him to the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Southern Association, where he went 4-3. He went to spring training with the Phillies in 1946 but was released to Tampa of the Florida International League. In that Class C league, Covington was outstanding, going 28-8 during the season and 3-1 in the playoffs to lead Tampa to the league championship over West Palm Beach. In June Covington was suspended for “insubordination and indifference after refusing to warm up before a game he pitched and declining to chase down a grounder.”21 Upon his reinstatement, he shut out Havana.22 During the season, Covington also sold pots and pans for the Kitchen Kraft Corporation.23

After the 1946 season, Covington declared that he wouldn’t play for Tampa again because of a dispute over the division of postseason money.24 Complying with Covington’s request, Tampa sold him to Pensacola of the Class B Southeastern League in January 1947. Covington refused to report and, apparently reversing his decision not to play for Tampa, returned there for the 1947 season. He began the season 12-2 for Tampa and in June was sold to Montgomery of the Southeastern League, where he went 13-6 for a combined season record of 25-8.25 Covington also continued his quest for outside employment. He refereed a wrestling match in Montgomery on September 19.26

Montgomery sold Covington to Miami for the 1948 season. In early May, with a 5-4 record, he was suspended by Miami for “leaving his club’s bench in Havana, donning his street clothes and going into the stands.”27 He went 9-6 before being sold to Port Chester of the Class B Colonial League.28 After a month in Port Chester, Covington was returned to Miami, which sold him to Portsmouth of the Class B Piedmont League, where he had begun his career nine years earlier.29 He got into a fight with a teammate in 1948 after looking at him and tactfully dropping a hint that “Somebody’s giving our signals to the other team.”30 He diplomatically handled a situation that year by threatening to clunk Tiny Parker, Miami club president, on the head with a chair after Parker accused him of “lying down” in a game.31

Covington re-signed with Tampa for the 1949 season and went 11-9 with a 1.46 ERA.32 He had strings of 35 and 27 innings pitched without the Tampa team scoring a run for him.33 Lefty “walked into the front office and told business manager Milton Kerr to send me somewhere. I wasn’t gonna stay with no ballclub that wouldn’t get me no runs. The (Tampa) Smokers weren’t hustling.”34 He was promptly shipped to Palatka of the Florida State League on option (a demotion from Class B to Class D), where he won 11 and lost 2 the rest of the season. (Covington likely would have been the starting pitcher in the Florida International League All-Star Game had he not been sent to Palatka.35) Covington also had a public chauffeur’s license and drove the bus for Palatka. On August 30, 1949, it was announced that he had been advised by his doctors to give up baseball for the rest of the season because of high blood pressure and fatigue.36 But then it was also reported by The Sporting News that the reason he moved on was that he had had a row with the Palatka business manager.37

During the 1949 season Covington was fined by Tampa owner Tom Spicola for “not trying,” to which Covington responded, “I only struck out 15 men. They were just mad because I didn’t warm up before each inning.”38 This was during his “nobody scores runs for me” obsession.

In February 1950 Tampa sold Covington to Fort Lauderdale. Covington responded: “Last winter I offered owner Tom Spicola $500 for my contract so that I could make a deal for myself. Tom wanted to know if I was kidding. He said that he could get more for me than that. So what happened? Spicola sells me to Fort Lauderdale for $300. I still like Tom personally but I’m gonna beat the brains out of his club every time I face the Smokers.”39 Covington went 18-11 with Fort Lauderdale before being suspended. On August 28 he got in a fight during a game with teammate Joe Tuminelli after allegedly accusing the third baseman of failing to go all out on an attempted pickoff play. Manager Chuck Aleno removed Covington from the game and suspended him for the season.40

Covington returned to Fort Lauderdale in 1951 with the intention of pitching only home games and at nearby Miami, Miami Beach, and West Palm Beach while continuing to work as a warehouse supervisor. The club president objected to the arrangement and suspended Covington, who then asked to be placed on the voluntary retirement list.41 Another reason that Covington may have been suspended was that he was flirting with pitching in the Dominican Republic League, but on June 6, 1951, announced that the salary he was offered was not enough.42 In a 1952 interview Covington said the reason he retired was a leg injury.43 While on the voluntarily retired list, Covington umpired softball games but could not stay away from confrontation and controversy. On August 18 he was charged with assault and battery after punching a softball player and breaking his jaw during an argument over balls and strikes.44

In 1952 Covington again re-signed with Tampa. On May 31 he took on a unique assignment. Since he held a Florida notary public’s license, he conducted a pregame home-plate wedding for teammate Lenny Pecou.45 Later he was sold to Lakeland, going 6-10 for his Florida International League season before being sold to Greensboro (Carolina League) for the balance of the season.46

With his skills clearly eroding, Covington re-signed with Fort Lauderdale for 1953, went 1-1 and retired from Organized Baseball. He finished with a minor-league record of 220-126 and that 1-1 major-league mark. Covington did not quit playing baseball, though. In 1954 he pitched for a semipro team, the Stuart Sailfishers of the South Florida Coast-Glades League.47

Covington was often called garrulous, belligerent, and loquacious. An episode in Miami says a lot about him. As he went to the mound to warm up for the game he placed the ball on the pitching rubber, yanked a yo-yo from his back pocket and yo-yoed for five minutes to demonstrate the nonchalance with which he regarded the opposing lineup as the crowd howled and jeered.48 An article in the Spring 1953 issue of Baseball Magazine called him a “bush-league Dizzy Dean.”

Covington worked as a radio announcer, a salesman, a truck driver for the Terminal Transport Corporation (he was a member of the Teamsters union), a shipping and receiving clerk, a hillbilly disc jockey, a deputy sheriff at the Tampa dog track, a plumbing-supply distributor, and a salesman of Hadacol, a patent medicine of questionable provenance that was briefly popular after World War II. He loved to fish in his spare time.

Covington also had his thoughts on players. “Baseball is as inferior as it can get and still survive,” he said in 1950. “The boys play better scientifically but they ain’t got that old hustle.”49

So who was Chet Covington? Why did a man with his talent not play longer in the majors? Obviously his irascible personality was a prime factor. But in a Miami Herald interview in 1997, his wife, Angela, said, “He wanted to be the big fish in the little pond.” Even though his Phillies contract was $700 a month he actually asked to be sent down. The Phillies had used him only in middle relief. “He wanted to play,” she said. “Please let people know there’s a ballplayer out there who loved baseball better than money” Said Covington himself, “Them Phillies jus’ didn’t pitch ol’ Covington enough.” Because of his success in the minors, he saw his big-league assignment as an insult.50

When asked by a reporter why he was always getting into trouble, Covington responded, “I would like to be man enough to do the things I have been accused of and if I was I’d have to be 100 years old.”51

Covington died on June 11, 1976, in Pembroke Park, Florida, after suffering a heart attack. He was 65. He is buried in Vista Memorial Gardens in Hialeah, Florida.

Last revised: May 23, 2022 (zp)

This biography originally appeared in “Who’s on First: Replacement Players in World War II” (SABR, 2015), edited by Marc Z. Aaron and Bill Nowlin.

Notes

Jack Dalton Creel was born on April 23, 1916, in Buda, then a small town (and now a commuter suburb) located about 13 miles southwest of Austin, Texas.  His parents, Alford and Nora Creel, were both originally from nearby Kyle, and like most of the neighboring families were farmers. According to the player’s son, Creel attended Buda’s Hays High School, but left after the ninth grade as the increasingly harsh economic conditions of the Great Depression required the teenager to work and help support the family. By the time Creel was 16, he was playing baseball on town and semipro teams in Buda and Kyle, and also in San Marcos, where he was a teammate of his cousin the future big-league pitcher, Tex Hughson. Despite his fingers, J.D. (as he was often called) began as a third baseman and outfielder, and was later moved to the mound because of his strong right arm.

In 1938 the 22-year-old Creel began his 16-year career in Organized Baseball with the Taft (Texas) Cardinals in the inaugural season of the re-formed Texas Valley League. The rookie acquitted himself well with a team-best 15 wins and 3.79 ERA (in 183 innings); he also occasionally played in the outfield and batted .253.  When the league disbanded at the end of the season, the Houston Buffaloes, the St. Louis Cardinals’ affiliate in the Class A1 Texas League, purchased Creel’s contract.2  They assigned him to the New Iberia (Louisiana) Cardinals of the Evangeline League, one of the Cardinals’ 16 Class D affiliates in 1939. Creel (15-11) along with 18-year-old phenom Howie Pollet (14-5) led New Iberia to the league championship series, which the team lost in seven games.

Cardinals president and GM Branch Rickey had built a minor-league farm system unparalleled in baseball history. By 1940 the empire consisted of 31 teams with more than 700 players (including more than 200 pitchers) on the “chain gang,” a derisive term commonly used to describe the shackled and indentured feeling of so many of the players under contract. With a surfeit of pitching prospects, a player needed luck and timing just to move up a class. Creel began the 1940 season with the Columbus (Georgia) Red Birds of the Class B South Atlantic (Sally) League. After a few rough outings and with the deadline approaching for teams to reach the 16-player roster limit, Creel was reassigned to the Daytona Beach Islanders, yet another Class D team, in the Florida State League. Creel and his roommate, a 19-year-old southpaw and hot prospect in his third year of Class D ball, Stan Musial (18-5), formed the circuit’s best righty-lefty duo. Described by The Sporting News as a “fastballer,” Creel won a career-high 22 games, including ten in a row in midseason, completed 23 of 28 starts, and posted the league’s best ERA (1.51).3 Creel, nicknamed “Texas Jack” and “Tex,” possessed impeccable control, issuing just 44 walks in 245 innings. “[Creel is] largely responsible for the Islanders’ first pennant in five years,” wrote The Sporting News.4 Musial and Creel also regularly played in the outfield (57 and 38 games respectively); however, an arm injury ended Musial’s pitching career and a .209 average in 235 at-bats terminated Creel’s outfield aspirations.

In 1941 Creel went from the lowest minor-league classification to the highest when he was promoted to the Columbus (Ohio) Red Birds of the American Association, one of the St. Louis Cardinals’ traditional springboards to a big-league career.  But the 25-year-old had little chance to crack a starting rotation anchored by future big leaguers Harry Brecheen, Murry Dickson, Preacher Roe, and hard-throwing Johnny Grodzicki. After 11 relief appearances, Creel was sent back to Columbus, Georgia, to play in the Sally League.

Sold to the Houston Buffaloes in the Class A1 Texas League in the offseason, Creel enjoyed being close to home and pitching in the scorching, unforgiving climate in 1942. For a fifth-place club, he went 13-6 and posted a stellar 1.92 ERA in 197 innings as a starter and reliever.

Creel spent the following two seasons, 1943 and ’44, with Columbus in the American Association during a time when the parent club saw its roster increasingly depleted by the war. A fifth starter behind Ken Burkhart, George Dockins, Preacher Roe, and Ted Wilks, Creel won just eight of 21 decisions and posted a disappointing ERA (3.99) in 185 innings for the league and Junior World Series champions.  Despite an 11-15 record and 4.25 ERA (highest among starters on the team) in 1944, Creel was acquired by the St. Louis Cardinals at the conclusion of the season.

An even 6 feet tall, Creel was willowy and weighed about 165 pounds. Good-looking with wavy, coal-black hair and brown eyes, the easy-going Creel was known as much for his big smile as he was for his modest personality. Friends and teammates (especially during his years in the Texas League) affectionately called him the “Squire of Buda, Texas.” He married Francis Lucille Capps, from Kyle, Texas, and had two children, Jack and Kaye. His son recalled that his father was a superstitious player who often told a story about leading late in a game while pitching for Houston when a black cat suddenly ran in front of home plate. The pitcher came unraveled and lost the game. “My father loved to go to the traveling carnivals and play games,” said his son with a laugh. “They finally banned him and wouldn’t let him throw at the bottles or anything else because he kept winning everything.”

Creel joined St. Louis at the Cardinals’ spring-training camp which due to wartime travel restrictions was held in Cairo, Illinois, 150 miles southeast of the Mound City. The reigning three-time pennant winners and 1944 World Series champions had lost pitchers Johnny Beazley, Al Brazle, Murry Dickson, Howie Krist, Red Munger, Pollet, and Ernie White to the war. “I have a better pitching staff in the service than [manager] Billy Southworth can put on the field,” said Cardinals owner Sam Breadon.5 Creel, Burkhart, and Dockins were expected to pick up the slack. “He has everything to he needs to be a winner in the majors,” said Southworth about Creel during camp.6

Relegated to the far end of bullpen as the 1945 season commenced, Creel made his big-league debut on April 22, 1945, by tossing one scoreless and hitless inning of relief in a Cardinals loss at Sportsman’s Park. He picked up his first win on May 15 despite yielding three hits, two walks, and a run in two innings in a slugfest with the Boston Braves. But the following day the Texan “showed amazing stuff” by holding the Braves to just one hit over 7⅓ innings of relief in Boston.7 Creel’s showing occurred at an opportune time: The Cardinals were on the verge of losing two starters, Max Lanier (to the war) and Mort Cooper (traded to the Braves), while starters Brecheen and Wilks were fighting arm pain.

The 29-year-old Creel finally got his chance. With the Cardinals struggling and just a game over .500, Creel tossed a six-hitter to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 11-1, on May 23 in his debut start. Described as a “great competitor” and “smart” by syndicated writer Frederick G. Lieb, Creel won two of his next three starts to push his record to 4-1 accompanied by a 2.30 ERA.8 An Associated Press report praised Creel for being “cool under fire” and noted that he “takes plenty of time between pitches.”9 But Creel struggled in his next three starts and was ushered back to the bullpen. Given a spot start on July 19, Creel was forced to leave the mound in the seventh inning with excruciating pain in his shoulder. He returned three weeks later, but made only five relief appearances between August 11 and September 3, when he was shut down for the season.  Plagued with shoulder pain for the rest of his career, Creel was never the same pitcher after the injury. In his sole season on the big stage, Creel won five of nine decisions and posted a 4.14 ERA in 87 innings.

An early cut from the Cardinals camp in 1946, Creel was assigned to Columbus in the American Association, which had been reclassified to Triple-A status during a reorganization of the minor leagues. He suffered from “sore muscles in his pitching arm” throughout the campaign and struggled with his control, once walking ten in a complete-game, two-hit loss.10 A disappointing 8-11 record from the Texan whom the team considered to be “a sure-fire ace” resulted in his demotion to Houston in the Texas League in the offseason.11

Creel spent the next three seasons (1947-1949) with the Buffaloes in what became his adopted hometown of Houston. In his second stint with the club, he “made a sensational start on the comeback trail.”12 He tossed 25⅓ consecutive scoreless innings, earning praise as “a fan’s dream pitcher [whose] picture curve and live fastball draw ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’ from the crowd” in Buffalo Stadium.13 With a 14-10 record and a stellar 2.63 ERA in 250 innings, Creel teamed with pitchers Clarence Beers (25-8) and Al Papai (21-10) to lead Houston to the league title and the 1947 Dixie Series championship over the Mobile Bears of the Southern Association.

After a 12-10 season marred by back pain in 1948, Creel had an offseason elbow operation to remove bone chips.14 He recovered sufficiently to earn an invitation to the Cardinals’ spring training from Houston native Eddie Dyer, who had skippered the team since 1946. With the sale of workhorse Murry Dickson to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the offseason, Dyer envisioned Creel as an ideal reliever.15 It appeared as though the 33-year-old had won a spot on the club when the Cardinals broke camp in Phoenix en route to St. Louis. However, when the team arrived in Houston to play the Buffaloes, Dyer informed the hopeful hurler that he didn’t make the team.16 Assigned to the Buffaloes, the elder statesman on the staff overcame his disappointment to pace the team in wins (16) and logged in excess of 200 innings for the fourth and last time in his career. Having played most of his career in the Deep South, Creel enjoyed pitching in hot weather. “He often pitched on Sundays,” reminisced his son in an interview with the author. “I remember how my mother would always make fried chicken before those games, then he’d go and pitch. He could handle the heat.”

After two seasons with the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League (1950-1951), Creel was back with Houston in 1952. At 36 years of age, he was slowing down and had been gradually converted to a reliever by manager Bill Sweeney in Portland. After appearing in a career-high 44 games (including nine starts) and posting a 6-12 record for the last-place Buffaloes, he announced his retirement at the conclusion of the season. But former Buffaloes president Allen Russell, who had purchased the Beaumont (Texas) Exporters of the Texas League after the 1952 season, lured the aging hurler out of retirement. On a talent-poor, last-place team, Creel was moved back into the starting rotation. An 8-15 record and 5.20 ERA in 166 innings signaled that Creel had reached the end of the road.

Creel participated in the Exporters’ spring training the following season, but retired before the start of the season. The fun-loving Texan posted a 179-159 record, logged 2,804 innings, and appeared in 516 games during his 15 years in the minors. “He never made much money playing baseball,” said his son, “but he loved it.”

For 16 years Creel had zigzagged across the country, going from one spring training and team to another, his wife and children always in tow. But he was ready to settle down permanently in Houston, his offseason home since the late 1940s. With experience as a pipefitter in oil fields, Creel enjoyed a long and successful career as a salesman for Valley Steel and later Metcoat Paint in Houston.

According to his son, Creel was a natural athlete who picked up sports easily. He was an avid hunter, an enthusiastic golfer, and an expert in horseshoes, washers (a game similar to beanbag in which the player tries to throw metal objects into tall cylinders), and ping-pong. He also enjoyed playing the accordion and harmonica, and was a well-known tomato gardener.

After his playing days, Creel remained close with the Houston Buffaloes. He regularly participated in old-timer’s games and various reunions. He maintained friendships with several Buffalo teammates, including Clarence Beers, Billy Costa, Solly Hemus, and Jerry Witte. He also coached his son’s youth league baseball team and occasionally conducted baseball clinics in the early 1950s.

Jack Creel died of natural causes at the age of 86 on August 13, 2002, in Houston. He was buried in Memorial Oaks Cemetery.

Sources

The Sporting News

Ancestry.com

BaseballLibrary.com

Baseball-Reference.com

Retrosheet.com

SABR.org

The author interviewed Jack Creel (player’s son) on March 11, 2014.

Notes

1 The author extends his gratitude to Jack Creel, the player’s son, for his interview conducted on March 11, 2014. All quotations from the son are from this interview.

2 The Sporting News, February 16, 1939, 6.

3 The Sporting News, September 5, 1940. 7.

4 The Sporting News, October 17, 1940, 8.

5 The Sporting News, May 31, 1945, 8.

6 Ted Meier, “Pirate Hopes Decline With Draft Reports,” Burlington (North Carolina) Daily Times-News, April 4, 1945, 6.

7 Jack Hand, “Embarrassed Cards Slip to Fifth,” Mason City (Iowa) Globe-Gazette, May 17, 1945, 13.

8 The Sporting News, June 7, 1945, 8.

9 Associated Press, “Jack Creel Second Big League Hill Find Contributed by Tiny Kyle, Texas,” Athens (Ohio) Sunday Messenger, June 3, 1945, 9.

10 The Sporting News, June 12, 1946, 20.

11 Ibid.

12 The Sporting News, May 7, 1946, 28.

13 The Sporting News, May 21, 1946, 27.

14 Associated Press, “Buff Hurler Gets Arm Operation,” Abilene (Texas) Reporter-News, January 30, 1945, 5.

15 The Sporting News, February 9, 1949, 4.

16 Associated Press, “Jack Creel Back With Houston Nine,” Galveston (Texas) Daily News, April 10, 1949, 13.