Ki Allen was born to Chauncey and Delia Allen on February 25, 1863, in Westport, Connecticut, a small farming and shipping community on Long Island Sound. According to Willard Williams, retired sports editor of the Norwalk Hour, “Westport was full of Allens for several generations. There was an old saying that to win an election it was necessary to get the Allens, the Bakers and the Battersons on your side.”1

Exactly how Allen came to Philadelphia to play for Wright is unknown. What is evidenced, however, is that Ki was part of the reserve team experiment undertaken by major league team owners in 1884. The scions established reserve teams in their major league cities to provide a ready supply of talent. Each reserve team practiced and played its own schedule. Fresh new players were prepared for promotion to the big club when needed due to injury, trade, desertion to a competing league, or for any other reason. Desertion to a competing league was increasingly possible in 1884, given the establishment of the short-lived Union Association in 12 cities that year.

On March 17, a meeting was held at Spalding’s Wigwam in Chicago among the owners and managers of the reserve teams of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Home schedules for the first half of the season were announced.2

Although the Quakers were not among the teams at the Wigwam, plans were indeed underway in the City of Brotherly Love to establish a reserve team under Harry Wright. On March 26, Sporting Life listed the starting nines and change batteries of the Quakers (a.k.a. the Whites) and their Reserves (a.k.a. the Reds). Hezekiah Allen is listed with a pitcher named Waring as the Reds’ change battery.3

At that time, Wright spun a unique version of what defined his reserve team with the warning that his Red squad should not be called reserves, even though the press would do so anyway.

“I want it understood there is to be no reserve team in the Philadelphia Club,” Wright told the press. “There will be two nines, which, according to the color of shirt worn, will be styled Whites and Reds. My idea is that one of these teams will be about as good as the other and there will be no regular place on the team for any man of either Whites or Reds…In playing games with outside nines, for example, when the club is playing League games out of town, the nine that will play will be as strong a playing team as that which on the same day contests with the League club. But I shall have no reserve nine.”4

Wright was delivering a marketing pitch, holding up his Reds and Whites as quality talent that would both be worthy of attention. Ironically, Wright was accused in late April the same year of sending the Quakers to play exhibitions against teams such as Harrisburg and Reading while substituting his best players with ones that were even less talented than his reserve players, and collecting a $100 game guarantee.5

Ki Allen’s rise to the Philadelphia Reds and the Quakers was expedited by an acute need. The Quakers went through backstops faster than any other N.L. team in 1884. Manager Wright played thirteen different catchers in all. John Crowley caught a team-high 48 games and had the highest WAR among Quaker catchers at 0.2. 6

Compared to the rest of the National League, thirteen catchers in a season was off-the-chart. Buffalo, Boston, Providence and Cleveland used four each. The average number of catchers playing for all 8 National League teams was 6.25. Even the woeful Detroit Wolverines, with a 28-84 record, used five fewer catchers than the Quakers in 1884.7

The Reds played an exhibition game at Recreation Park on April 1 versus the Whites; the League nine won, 14-1, with Reilly catching Knight for the Reds and Ki on the bench. On April 3, after a day of rain, there was a rematch of those teams under gale force conditions, with Allen catching Waring, and the Whites nipping the Reds, 3-2, in a game called after five innings. Allen impressed with his fielding, registering 3 put outs, 1 assist and zero errors.8

On April 18, 1884, Ki was a star in extra innings. In a game between the Reading Actives and Reds, Wright’s pony nine came back from a 6-0 deficit to win. Allen replaced a defensively shaky Reilly in the 5th and hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the 10th inning, winning it, 10-9.9

Eight days later came good and bad news. The bad was that the Reds were being folded after May 1. “Manager Wright does not think it will pay to run a reserve nine during the championship season,” reported The Times.10 The Reds had turned a profit in April but not enough to justify their continued existence, it also reported.11 The good was that Allen would be retained as a substitute on the Quakers, along with outfielder Jim Fogarty and outfielder-pitcher Joe Knight. (Fogarty would be a core member of the Quakers for six years.)12

After a 28-7 drubbing of the Reds on April 27 at the hands of the Actives in which Allen did not play, the press carried another report about the demise of the Reds. It cited how Wright had hurriedly put the team together and quickly sent it on the road. In the end a few good players had been developed but others were a nuisance to watch.13

Later, the epitaph of the reserve teams in Philly and everywhere else was written in Sporting Life with precision: “It is useless to deny the fact that the reserve team plan is a failure, and sooner or later the reserves must go. The scheme looked flimsy in the outset to many experienced heads and the results have substantiated their predictions. Harry Wright, with characteristic good sense, led off by unhaltering his colts at the opening of the championship season. Cleveland and Milwaukee have followed suit, and it will not be an age before Allegheny, St. Louis and Cincinnati have filed into line.”14

It is unclear if Allen was still with the Reds on April 27, although he may have been, since Fogarty and Knight both played for the pony nine that day.

In any case, Allen made his major league debut — and played his last game — on May 16, 1884, at Recreation Park. On that day, Harry Wright decided to follow up a 25-5 victory over Buffalo the previous day15 by starting his pony battery of Joe Knight and Hezekiah Allen. The odds may have been in Philadelphia’s favor given that the Bisons were putting Billy Serad on the mound. Serad was a rookie in ’84 and the Quakers had knocked him out of the box in four innings in a previous game.

But Joe Knight was wild on the mound for Philly. He yielded a single and walked three batters in the first inning. Ki had two passed balls in the first inning, thus contributing to two Buffalo runs.

A triple and single off Knight produced a Bison run in the third. An error, a walk, two infield hits and two steals in the fifth notched two more scores. The next three Buffalo runs scored in the seventh when Knight gave up two doubles and a triple. After one last run was notched in the ninth, the final score was Buffalo 9, Philadelphia 0.16

As bad as Knight had been, Allen had been good. Billy Serad had allowed just four hits to the Quakers and Ki had two of them. A nice day at the plate combined with errorless fielding over the last eight innings made for a promising major league debut for Ki.

It is uncertain how Allen’s injury occurred but within eight days of his debut the press reported that the Quaker catchers were not healthy, Ki included.

On May 22, in a game in which the Providence Grays pounded the Quakers, 12-4, catcher John Crowley came out of the game with an injury in the third inning.17

The next day, the Grays dominated the Quakers again, 8-1. In the warmups before the game, Philly catcher Frank Ringo was on the field preparing to handle his starter, John Coleman, but withdrew when his injured hand was not yet well enough to hold the ball.18

On May 27 it was reported that Harry Wright was dealing with multiple injuries to pitchers and catchers and that Ki Allen “is still complaining.”19

Thus, at this point we know that Ki Allen was injured. Exactly what his injury was and how it occurred is a mystery, but catcher injuries in 1884 were not unusual, given the lack of protection provided by a catching glove. Judged by Spalding ads in the pages of Sporting Life, they looked not more substantial than a modern-day bicycle glove.

Ki Allen returned to Westport where he married his wife, Rebecca. They had one child, Alma Christine Allen. Alma married Frank Dennert and the couple gave Ki and Rebecca three grandchildren: Elizabeth, Marie and Frank.20

In 1909, Ki Allen lost his bid to be elected on the Democratic ticket as a constable in Westport.21 The next year he succeeded.22 In 1912, Hezekiah appeared as a candidate for constable on the Republican and Progressive tickets.23

As a constable, Ki was noted in the press for attending to the gritty chores of law enforcement by apprehending pugnacious drunks,24 arresting tax dodgers,25looters26and pressing a confession from a mail thief.”27

Although Ki Allen turned up in the papers primarily as a candidate or a constable in his later years, there was one connection to the game mentioned in the Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer on April 25, 1910. The blurb simply said: “Hezekiah Allen has organized a base ball team of his own.”28

Hezekiah Allen passed on September 21, 1916, at age 53. A short obituary appeared in the Norwalk Hour:

“Hezekiah Allen, one of the best known residents of Westport died at his house in Saugatuck this morning. The deceased had been ill for about a year. He was in his fifty-third year and besides his wife is survived by a daughter Mrs. Alma Den[n]ert, two brothers, George and John, and a sister, Mrs. Adeline Welch, all of Westport. Mr. Allen has for years been a constable of the town of Westport. Years ago he was a popular baseball player being one of the catchers of the old school in the days when masks, chest protectors and heavily padded gloves were unthought of. He was highly regarded by the fans of Westport and surrounding towns and played many games in Norwalk.”

Acute parenchymatous nephritis — a form of renal disease — was the primary cause of death according to the death certificate. Ki Allen is buried in Willowbrook Cemetery in Westport.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Chris Rainey and Norman Macht and fact-checked by Warren Corbett.

A note from the author about SABR’s Bill Haber and Ki Allen:

Birth and death records, an obituary and two letters from Willard Williams to Bill Haber were found in Hezekiah Allen’s Hall of Fame file. Haber, a founding member of SABR and a respected researcher, corresponded in the 1980s to obtain these data points about Ki Allen, one of baseball’s more obscure players. Bill Haber passed in 1995. You can read more about him by clicking Bill Haber.

Notes

1 Letter from Willard Williams to Bill Haber, Dec. 4, 1979, from Hezekiah Allen’s Hall of Fame file.

2 “The Reserves”, Sporting Life, March 26, 1884, 2.

3 “The Reserves”

4 Items of General Interest About Clubs and Players, The Phillies”, Sporting Life, March 26, 1884, 1.

5 “No Game Here To-morrow”, Harrisburg Telegraph, April 29,1884, 4.

6 https://www.baseball-reference.com/

7 https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/1884-specialpos_c-fielding.shtml, accessed Oct. 14, 2019.

8 “The Local Season, The Reds”, Sporting Life, April 9, 1884, 3.

9 “A Game of Ten Innings”, The Times, April 19, 1884, 2.

10 “Base Ball Notes”, The Times (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), April 26, 1884, 2.

11 “Base Ball Notes”.

12 “Base Ball Notes”.

13 A Dose Of Retribution”, Reading Times, April 28, 1884, 1.

14 Notes and Comments”, Sporting Life, June 4, 1884, 7.

15 “Philadelphias Defeat Badly Crippled Buffalo Nine”, The Times, May 16, 1884, 3.

16 “Philadelphia Club Badly Beaten by the Buffalo Team”, The Times, May 17, 1884, 2.

17 “Philadelphias Lose First Game to Providence”, The Times, May 23, 1884, 4.

18 “Philadelphia Club Again Defeated by the Providence Club”, The Times, May 24, 1884, 2.

19 “Base Ball notes”, The Times, May 27, 1884, 3.

20 Letter from Willard Williams to Bill Haber, Dec. 4, 1979, from Hezekiah Allen’s Hall of Fame file.

21 “Westport G.O.P Elects Ticket”, Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, Oct. 5, 1909, 3.

22 “Westport Elections”, Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, Oct. 4, 1910, 1.

23 “Westport Notes”, Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, Sept. 18, 1912, 5.

24 ‘Let Me Introduce Battling Payne”, Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, Sept. 24, 1912, 5.

25 “Arrested For Non-Payment Of Personal Tax”, Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, April 5, 1912, 15.

26 “Three Boy Burglars”, Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, May 27, 1912, 1.

27 “Held On Charge Of Stealing Mail”, Hartford Courant, July 24, 1912, 1.

28 “Westport Notes”, Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer, April 25, 1910, 10.

Walter Emmons Alston was born on December 1, 1911, in Venice, Ohio, a few miles northwest of Cincinnati. His father, Emmons Alston, was a farmer, and Walt’s mother Lenora (Neanover) was a homemaker.  Walt’s formative years were spent on a farm near Morning Sun, Ohio, but there were few neighbors nearby with which to play. Alston shared some thoughts on his childhood with John Flynn Dreyspool of Sports Illustrated magazine in 1955: “When the old man wasn’t there to play catch with me, I was bouncing the ball around on the barn door. That’s how I got my nickname, ‘Smokey,’ ‘cause I used to have a real fast fireball.”

The Alstons moved to Darrtown when Walt entered his teenage years, and that gave him the chance to play baseball more regularly on a local sandlot. At Darrtown High School “Smokey” captained the basketball and baseball teams and helped the 1928 baseball squad the Butler County championship. He graduated from high school in 1929, two years after electric power arrived in Darrtown, and enrolled at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Alston drove a laundry truck to finance part of his education, and also worked in the school cafeteria and moonlighted at a local pool hall.

In 1930 he married local girl Lela Alexander. The responsibilities of marriage forced Walt to withdraw from college for two years in order to establish a more reliable financial plan for his education. He re-enrolled in 1932, at the nadir of the Great Depression, yet was able to not only letter in both baseball and basketball all three years, but also to complete work for his degree in education. He found time to play Sunday baseball in the Clark-Butler County League, where he pitched and played both corner infield positions.

After he left college in 1935, Alston accepted a position as a high school science, biology, and industrial arts teacher, and basketball coach, in the New Madison school district. It was around this time that the St. Louis Cardinals, who were familiar with his success on the college diamond, offered Alston a contract and a chance to play third base for the Greenwood Chiefs of the class C East Dixie League. In 319 at-bats Alston hit .326 and, after an offseason of teaching and coaching, earned a move to the Huntington Red Birds of the Mid-Atlantic League. At the end of the 1936 minor league season, a year in which his batting average of .326 and his 35 home runs garnered the attention of team executives in St. Louis, Alston was called up as insurance for  what proved to be an unsuccessful September pennant run.

On September 27, 1936, Cardinal star rookie Johnny Mize was ejected in the final game of the season, a Sunday tilt against the Cubs, and manager Frankie Frisch sent Alston in to make his major league debut. It was hardly the stuff of legend. In three innings at first base behind pitcher Dizzy Dean, Alston had two chances in the field and made an error on one of them. At the plate in what turned out to be his sole major league at-bat and facing Cub ace Lon Warneke, Walt whiffed on three pitches.  The next spring the Cardinals, having Mize ensconced at first base, assigned Alston to the Houston Buffaloes of the Texas League. The slugger never played in the majors again.

Smokey had given up teaching, but with daughter Dorothy to look after, he and Lela spent the next decade in the minor leagues, in cities like Rochester (New York), Portsmouth (Ohio), Columbus (Georgia), and Springfield (Ohio), chasing another shot at the majors. They would return to Ohio after every offseason until his retirement in 1976, but each spring he would try again to prove his worth. His offensive production never again equaled that 1936 season, however. Eventually the Cardinals, having observed him closely, suggested Walt try managing. In 1940 he replaced Fred “Dutch” Dorman at the helm and served out the season as player-manager for Portsmouth in the Mid-Atlantic League. On the field he knocked 28 home runs, but on the bench managed just well enough to keep the Red Birds out of the cellar.

Alston played and managed the next two seasons at Class C Springfield, in 1941 hammering 25 more homers and guiding the team to a 69-51 record and the playoffs before losing in the first round. In 1943 Walt relinquished the reins and returned to full-time playing for Rochester in the International League, but his batting average dipped to .240. It was the last season that he would not manage a team. Walt started the 1944 Rochester season with only three hits in the team’s first thirteen games. The Cardinals, reasonably assuming that the shelf life on the 32-year-old minor league slugger was nearing expiration, released him.    

The Brooklyn Dodgers jumped at the opportunity afforded by the Cardinals’ decision and signed Alston as player-manager of the Trenton Packers in the Class B Interstate League on July 28. Alston replaced Joe Bird as skipper and led the team, with a record of 32-57 when he arrived, to a 31-18 mark over the final 49 games. Two years later Alston managed the Nashua Dodgers to the 1946 New England League title, and repeated the feat with the Pueblo Dodgers in the Western League the following season. Walt was promoted to manage the Dodgers’ AAA American Association team in St. Paul, and then moved to Montreal in 1950.

In his six years managing at the AAA level, between 1948 and 1953, Alston’s teams won three league titles, one Junior World Series championship (1949), and posted a composite 544-373 record. When Brooklyn owner Walter O’Malley decided he would not meet Dodger manager Charlie Dressen’s request for a multi-year contract, the owner chose his AAA skipper to manage the big-league club. O’Malley gave Alston a one-year contract, the first of 23 that the manager would eventually sign.

“Who’s he?” New York Times sportswriters queried as spring training began in 1954.  Alston was taking over a team that had been riding a wave of success. Since Bobby Thomson’s home run in the 1951 playoff with the Giants, the Dodgers had won consecutive National League pennants in 1952 and 1953, losing to the Yankees both years in the World Series. It was a roster filled with talented players like Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Duke Snider, so expectations were high. In Alston’s first year in the dugout, 1954, the team won 92 games. But lost the pennant to the cross-town rival Giants, a team that rode the shoulders of Willie Mays in defeating the heavily favored Indians in the World Series, but the new manager endured public criticism for failing to meet expectations.

The team was only one game out of first place on June 27, but within three weeks had slumped to seven games back. The Dodgers rallied back to within a game of the lead, but another slump in September scuttled their chances. There was scuttlebutt that Jackie Robinson did not respect Alston. In Rudy Marzano’s book The Last Years of the Brooklyn Dodgers: A History, 1950-1957, he quoted Robinson in the aftermath of an early September loss in Chicago, a game in which Duke Snider had been awarded a double on a fly ball that should have been ruled a home run, yet Alston did not contest the call. “The team might be moving somewhere if Alston had not been standing at third base like a wooden Indian,” Robinson said. Between the slumps and comments such as those from Robinson and Billy Loes, the daily sports pages became a daily workshop for dissecting the manager.

Following the next season, after 98 wins and a World Series victory over Mickey Mantle and the Yankees, Alston went all the way from “bush leaguer” to Sport magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1955.  It was a turnaround possible only in a media capital like New York City.

Alston’s Dodgers followed in 1956 with another National League pennant but lost to the Yankees in a World Series rematch. It took the American Leaguers seven games, including a perfect game by Don Larsen, to wrest the title from Brooklyn, and it proved to be the Dodgers’ final title shot before moving to Los Angeles.

Walter O’Malley’s move, along with Horace Stoneham’s Giants, to the West Coast created a tectonic shift in the baseball landscape. Both teams arrived in their new cities to play in interim ballparks. The Dodgers made camp in the Los Angeles Coliseum, a single-tiered, oval edifice constructed in the 1920s that was well suited to track and field, most visibly during the 1932 Olympic Games, and football, as home to the University of Southern California, but required some creative adaptation as a baseball facility. For a team constructed to exploit the dimensions and nuances of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the new home offered a schizophrenic challenge to pitchers, hitters and managers. There was virtually no foul territory on the first- base side, yet the area behind the plate and on the third-base side was vast. Conversely, the left-field foul pole was a mere 251 feet from home plate, and Commissioner Frick demanded that the Dodgers put up a 42-foot-high fence in left field to minimize, as much as possible, cheap home runs. The Dodgers fell to seventh place in their new home.

Alston, with a pitching staff that included youngsters Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, as well as veterans Johnny Podres and Roger Craig, led his 1959 team to the National League pennant, their first in Los Angeles, and a World Series win over the “Go Go” White Sox. The seeds of the team’s future were also faintly visible on the 1959 champions. Along with Brooklyn transplants like Snider, Hodges, Podres, and Craig, there were a number of new Los Angeles Dodger faces on the roster. Names like Ron Fairly, Maury Wills, Tommy Davis, Frank Howard, and Stan Williams began to show up in box scores. Those players formed the core of the team that would open Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine in 1962.

The 1961 Dodgers finished only four games off the pace, behind the Cincinnati Reds, a favorable portent for 1962. It was that year, however, that provided another test of Alston as a major league manager.  The team was ahead of the Giants by four games with only seven to play yet fell into a tie with their long-time rivals at the end of the regular season. San Francisco won the three-game playoff two-games-to-one and went on to the World Series against the Yankees while the Dodgers went home. There were heated calls in the Southern California press for Alston’s ouster, and some rumored dissent in the locker room, but Smokey never panicked, never wavered. He had told Sports Illustrated in 1955, “I think I learned my lesson in St. Paul. One year we had a six-game lead and nine games to play and we end up winning the pennant by one-half game and we had to win a double-header the last day of the season to do it.” For Alston, it was paramount to play the next game and not worry about the game next week, or next season. In 1963 the Dodgers won 99 times en route to another National League pennant, and then swept the defending champion Yankees 4-0 in the World Series.

In 1965, the Dodgers defeated the Minnesota Twins in the Fall Classic, but Alston again fell under the media microscope the following year when the Dodgers fell to the Baltimore Orioles in a four-game World Series sweep. The team spent the next decade re-inventing itself a third time.

The “Boys of Summer” had won in 1955 with a veteran roster laden with power hitters and adequate pitching. By the end of the 1965 championship, the team was clearly built around pitching prowess and the physical advantage provided in the wide open spaces of Dodger Stadium. In 1974, the year of Alston’s final National League championship, the team had shifted to a balance of pitching (Don Sutton, Tommy John, and Mike Marshall) and all-around offense (Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, and Jimmy Wynn, among many). In each iteration, the colors of the uniforms remained constant but the names on the backs changed and the managerial approach necessary for success altered dramatically.

Walt Alston, clearly, handled those changes well. On July 17, 1976, he became the fifth manager ever to reach 2,000 career wins (in 2011 he remains ninth all-time). Two months later—after his final game as Dodger manager, a 1-0 loss to J.R. Richard and the Houston Astros on September 28, 1976–his season’s record stood at 90-68.  Following that game the 64-year old Alston handed the team over to third-base coach Tommy Lasorda, a long time ally since their days in Montreal, and walked away.

He and Lela returned to Darrtown, their home until Walt passed away on October 1, 1984, in Oxford, Ohio. He is buried in Darrtown Cemetery. In 2000 the proud town erected a statue of Alston, in the center of the town.

Walter Alston’s legacy is dazzling, even decades after his retirement, and choosing his second-most impressive achievement, after the 1955 championship, is nearly impossible. His Dodger teams, over 23 years, suffered but four losing seasons despite franchise relocation and three different home parks. His teams won 90 or more games in 10 different years, and he was three times named Major League Manager-of-the-Year, and six times National League Manager-of-the-Year. He managed eight National League All-Star teams, winning seven of those games, and even found time to co-author a book, the Complete Baseball Handbook: Strategies and Techniques for Winning, with Don Weiskopf, along with his autobiography, A Year at a Time, with Jack Tobin. His Dodgers won 2,040 games under his leadership, and in 1983 the Veteran’s Committee elected him to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Widely acclaimed sportswriter Jim Murray wrote a column–it appeared in the Hamilton (Ohio) Journal-News, among many outlets—about Alston following the manager’s retirement. “I don’t know whether you’re Republican or Democrat or Catholic or Protestant and I’ve known you for 18 years.” He continued, “You were as Middle-Western as a pitchfork. Black players who have a sure instinct for the closet bigot recognized immediately you didn’t know what prejudice was…There was no ‘side’ to Walter Alston. What you saw was what you got.”

Photo credit

Walter Alston, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

Alston, Walter, and Jack Tobin. A Year At A Time. Waco: Word Books, 1976.

Alston, Walter, and Don Weiskopf. Complete Baseball Handbook: Strategies and Techniques for Winning. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1972.

Dreyspool, John Flynn. “Subject: Walter Alston.” Sports Illustrated, July 11, 1955.

Fiztgerald, Ed. “Man of the Year.” Sport, March 1956.

Hamilton Journal-News (Ohio). October 8, 1976.

Marzano, Rudy. The Last Years of the Brooklyn Dodgers: A History, 1950-1957. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007

New York Times. October 1, 1956.

www.baseball-reference.com

www.thebaseballpage.com/players/alstowa01.php

William Wyman Andrus was born October 14, 1858, in the village of Orono, Ontario, Canada. He was the son of a New Yorker in the lumber and sawmill business, Edson, and his wife Mary Ann Wiman. Edson had moved his family to Canada while the Grand Trunk Railway was under construction.

Learning the game on the ball diamonds of Canada, Andrus got his first professional experience in 1883 with an Indianapolis club of which no records could be found.1 He was then with the Minneapolis Dudes of the Northwestern League in 1884. Typically batting second and playing shortstop, Andrus appeared in 45 games, scoring 41 runs on 48 hits.

Andrus’ first mention in the prominent sporting papers of the day came less than two weeks before his single cup of big league joe under the heading, “Canadian Base Ballists,” and read, “Andrus is hitting and playing short second to none.”2 Indeed, the Hamilton Clippers’ young star would lead the Canadian League in games played and at-bats, and was second in doubles, runs, hits, batting average, and total bases, the last four to teammate “Old Reliable” John Rainey.

But back to Andrus’s cup of coffee. On September 15, 1885, before 1,500 cranks at Seventh Street Park in Indianapolis, Frank Bancroft’s Providence Grays faced the St. Louis Maroons, and pitcher Egyptian Healy. Andrus, listed as Andrews in the box score and batting sixth, filled in at third base for a suspended Jerry Denny. Denny, an excellent ambidextrous fielder with a penchant for the bottle, is possibly best known for being one of the last men to play his entire career without the aid of a fielding glove. Fellow Grays on the day included: Paul Hines, Cliff Carroll, Jack “Moose” Farrell, Joe “Rocks” Start, Paul “Shorty” Radford, and Lon Knight, with a battery of Dupee Shaw and Barney “Mouse” Gilligan. Andrus played a clean third base, errorless in five chances, completing two putouts with three assists. At the plate, he would go 0-for-4 on the day with a strikeout. Providence won 6-0, and that was that. Andrus finished out the season with Hamilton and was one of the few returning Clippers in 1886 when they absorbed much of the Syracuse team.

Andrus moved to the outfield that year and again finished in the top ten in runs and stolen bases. On June 19, against Oswego, Andrus hit a home run off Mike Mattimore, who would eventually be one of three major leaguers buried in Butte, Montana. In mid-July, Andrus hit another dinger in a close game with Buffalo. Hamilton plated a pair in the ninth before Rainey hit a round-tripper that would have tied the game, but he was declared out by an ump named “Harrington” for not touching second base thus ending the game. In the subsequent squabble, Andrus struck the umpire setting off a near riot that the paper called, “an indescribable scene.”3 Shortstop Nate Kellogg was mistakenly arrested for the assault but released later that evening.

In the following season, Andrus suited up for Portland of the New England League, covering the keystone sack as well as right field where he showed a knack for outfield assists, doubling-up many a greedy baserunner. W. Clifford writing for Sporting Life had this to say as the season got underway: “Andrus is a good one judging from the showing he makes in practice, and although slight and youthful in appearance [Andrus is listed at 5’6”, 155 pounds] he can slug a ball as hard as any man on the team.”4 The team captain and leadoff man generated much of Portland’s offense with a hitting streak that lasted at least through May 25. Andrus wound up leading the league in runs (165), hits (233), and walks (77) — adding 122 stolen bases in 103 games. Andrus belted his only round-tripper of the season on September 24 at home versus Lowell. The same two clubs were pitted in a best of five series to decide the league championship. Andrus managed just two hits in the three games as Lowell swept. He was back with Hamilton for 1888, signing on November 10.

In his usual spot atop of the batting order, Andrus, “[a man] not afraid to slide into a base,”5 appeared in all but two games for the Hams, touching the plate for 102 runs while swiping 89 bags in 110 games. In an early May game versus Buffalo, the opposing captain, Jack Remsen, was badly injured when he collided with Andrus on a close play at second. Andrus hit his sixth career home run on May 16 against Albany, and in a June 14 contest with London, Andrus teamed up with fellow Canadian Pete Wood for a triple play. Sporting Life reported that “Andrus is playing a good game at second, but that is not his position. He should be played in right field, where he has no superior in the league.”6 As the season wound down, officials of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railway, “The Hojack Line”, proposed a sprinting match of 100 yards at Windsor Beach along Lake St. Claire in which Andrus was a contestant. It is unknown how he did, but speed must have ran in the family as Wyman’s son, Edson — known as the Custer County Comet — would be an alternate on the 1924 Olympic team. The elder Andrus was on the Hamilton reserve list at season’s end, but he was released on December 5 and played with Buffalo for the ’89 season.

“Andrus got his release from the Hamilton Club last season in a somewhat novel way, says the Toronto Mail,” Sporting Life explained before the outset of the 1889 campaign. “The club owed him several weeks’ salary, and he got his release in lieu thereof.” Buffalo later made it good, so Andrus didn’t lose any money. “The only club that is indebted to Andrus is the Minneapolis club he played in 1884, when Ben Tuthill was its manager.”7 Captain Andrus suited up for 108 games with the Bisons, contributing 88 runs, on 114 hits combined with 45 steals. He made the top ten in doubles, and his 18 triples were good for second best. Andrus again started games at second base and right field, and again hit leadoff, getting his 100th safe hit on August 14. At season’s end there was talk of organizing a Canadian professional team to make a tour of the Caribbean, and Andrus was among those listed alongside Chub Collins, Dennis Connors, Joseph Knight, James Purvis, Alfred Sheppard, and Pete Wood as a possible member. No record of this tour could be found.

Andrus was reserved by Buffalo for 1890, and he signed on January 10. Sporting Life devoted some ink about the news:

Wallace [sic] W. Andrus has been signed by Manager Jack Rowe to play short next season. Andrus is a well-known player. He played right field for Hamilton in 1886, and in 1887 he went to Portland, playing right field and second base. He was captain of the team which forced the pace in one of the closest races ever seen in this country, only being forced to second place by three games. He stood third in the League in batting although his aptitude in patient waiting, for which he has few if any peers, gave him that rank. He was second in base-running, being over forty basses above his nearest neighbor in line. This last season he played in such a way as to cause many to regard him as one of the best all-around players in the League. He is intelligent, (he teaches a Canadian school during the winter) is a good but not noisy coacher, has a faculty of run-getting that will come in handy for us, a steady infielder, and, above all, a daring and successful base-runner—what Buffalo always needed. I can forsee that he will be a great favorite here.8

After vacating his coaching role at Toronto University in late April, Andrus was named team captain and pocketed $175 a month.

A tumultuous row over territory claimed by the Buffalo team of the upstart Players’ League forced the smaller budget International League franchise, already $2,500 in debt, to relocate to Montreal in early June.9 Sporting News had the following write-up on Andrus, “He is a very fine ‘keystone-of-the-diamond’ guardian, but in right field he would, dare I say, overtop all of them in the Atlantic. The way he used to cut down [Cupid] Childs, Sandy Griffin, and [Jack] Virtue at the plate was very alluring. We all wanted to see him do it again. As a gentleman, fast runner, excellent emergency hitter, Andrus is sure to please.”10

Sometimes, though, he only pleased the opposition. In a game at home on May 31, Andrus was caught by the London Tecumsehs second basemen with “the old hide-the-ball-under-the-arm trick.”11 The thirty-one year-old Andrus appeared in 41 International Association games, splitting time between Buffalo, then Montreal until the team folded, dispersing him to the Grand Rapids Shamrocks before the league finally disbanded. His 59 hits were second best in the short-lived season, and he contributed 39 runs and 18 swipes while compiling a .339 average and .408 slugging that were good for second and third in the league, respectively.

By mid-July Andrus had hooked up with Minneapolis of the Western Association, gathering 16 hits in his first eight games. “Andrus is a medium-sized man and looks like a ball player from the ground up. He is a hard left-handed batter, a very speedy base-runner and a good fielder. He is also a good coacher, just the kind of man Minneapolis needed. Everyone who has seen him play say that he will do.”12 By August the Minneapolis club had absorbed much of the Milwaukee club, leaving Andrus without a roster spot. He’d eventually land in the Tri-State league, suiting up for the Youngstown (Ohio) Giants in 48 games to close out the season. Andrus picked up 54 hits in 204 at-bats with a fielding percentage of .895 (fourth among left fielders).

Andrus appeared on the diamond for the Manchester Amskoegs of the New England League and then with Jamestown in the New York-Penn League in 1891, almost always as the leadoff man occupying a corner outfield position. On June 8 with Manchester, Andrus hit a two-run walk-off homer off George Henry with two out in the ninth to beat Salem. But with each of the eight teams of the league citing financial losses due to distances travelled (4,417 miles by Manchester alone), sub-par athletic grounds, as well as apathetic fan bases, the Manchester club disbanded in early August. The Manchester team was in such tough shape that in addition to owing players’ wages, it also owed substitute umpire J.T.H. Gillis $26. After selling its best players management still owed for the grandstand and fences. Captain Andrus attempted to re-organize the team as an independent club, but when that failed, he signed with Jamestown playing in 22 games scoring 17 runs off 29 hits.13

Though signed in early February by Abner Powell with the Seattle Hustlers, Andrus probably never set foot in the Evergreen State, as he was dropped by March 15. Andrus instead made it into 58 games for the 1892 Kansas City Cowboys of the Western League. His outfield prowess had preceded him though. In early season action it was noted that he was “not acquainted with the many peculiarities of Kansas City’s right field and it will probably take him some time to get accustomed to the slope and the sun. He is a very fast man, though, and will cover plenty of ground.”14 On June 27, Andrus lost a race to Count Campau for a $50 purse. A sign, perhaps, that at 33 his skill set may have been deteriorating. His numbers were in the middle of the pack, and by mid-season the papers were calling him dead weight. By the end of July Andrus declined an offer to manage the Wichita club, electing instead to finish his medical schooling.

In May of 1893, while wrapping up his degree, he and fellow physician and co-triple play infielder Pete Wood were playing for the Toronto University team. By June his studies were finished, and so were his playing days.

Dr. Andrus moved the same year to Billings, MT, before settling in the truly wild west town of Miles City—to this day the home of the largest bucking horse sale on the planet. A bustling trade destination at the confluence of the Tongue and Yellowstone rivers, Miles City, incorporated just six years before Andrus’s arrival, had been founded sixteen years earlier, in 1877, as a military outpost before the Battle of Little Big Horn. Andrus wed Sarah Corma Ireland, daughter of a prominent Montana pioneer family, on November 20, 1895. Their union would produce a son, Edson, and a daughter, Kathleen.

Apparently Andrus made it back to Canada on occasion. “Dr. W. W. Andrus,” Sporting Life reported in December 1895, “one of the best-known and most popular of Canadian base ball players of a few years ago, is at present in [Toronto] staying at the Rossin House. Everyone knew Andy in the days of the old International and Canadian Leagues. … His great forte was in run-getting. He was a terrific hitter and base-runner, and, thanks to a careful mode of living, is still in the front ranks of the diamond. … and is now a flourishing physician in Myles [sic] City, Montana.”15

In addition to serving as the town doctor, Andrus, a Republican, was elected alderman and then mayor, serving five successive terms from 1899 -1909. He then spent two terms representing Custer County in the state legislature, was named president in 1922 of the Montana State Medical Association, and also served as the surgeon for the Northern Pacific Railway. In 1915 he was a member of the Montana commission for the Panama Pacific Exposition. He also served as the official Custer County physician for two terms and the county health officer for three. Perhaps more notably, he was the first person in Miles City to own an automobile.16

“Among the many eminent names to be found in the rolls of Montana’s professional men, none is more worthy of mention than that of William Wiman Andrus,” wrote Helen Fitzgerald Sanders. “A man of scholarly tastes and able to throw light on almost any subject connected with his profession, yet drawing from a fund of rich experience and ripened knowledge, Dr. Andrus is also a man of rare sympathy, great kindness of heart and magnetic personality.”17

Even with his many other pursuits, Andrus still found time for baseball, umping local games and serving as the president of the Miles City club while mayor in 1902. A history of his adopted home noted, “Andrus had not entirely forgotten his first love, as it is not an uncommon sight for the people of Miles City to see their trusted medical advisor and worthy mayor in the regulation flannel suit stopping hot grounders and ‘lining them out’ when the local club is in a tight place.”18

A 2009 inductee into the Clarington Sports Hall of Fame, Andrus died in 1935 at the age of 76 after an attack of erysipelas and is buried in the town he basically presided over for most of his adult life. Regarding his various political, medical and athletic pursuits, Andrus was frequently quoted as saying, “Gentleman, it’s a poor horse that can’t change directions.”19

Acknowledgements

This biography was reviewed by Tom Schott and fact-checked by Alan Cohen.

Sources

In preparing this biography, the authors relied primarily on online newspaper archives including The Sporting News offered at The Paper of Record, SABR’s collection of The Sporting Life, as well as the Library of Congress hosted Chronicling America newspapers and the online archives of the Montana Historical Society. The authors partially-excerpted their book, Montana Baseball History, The History Press and Arcadia Publishing, 2015. Additional information was obtained from the player’s file at the Hall of Fame Museum and Library in Cooperstown. Census data was acquired from familysearch.org.

The photo above is courtesy of Dr. Malcolm Winter’s self-published book, Miles City Medical History, 1995.

Notes

Albert Autry Jr. was born in Modesto, California on February 29, 1952. It was then a town of about 17,000. His was a stable family in which he was one of five children, three of them sisters. Asked, “When did you first dream about becoming a major league ballplayer?” his surprising answer was that he never really did. He played baseball because it was fun, he was good at it, and his friends were into it. Starting with Little League at the age of 8, he had always been a fastball pitcher and a star on his various teams. Success continued through Babe Ruth and American Legion ball during his adolescence.

Actually, he liked basketball better than baseball, and with his tall and husky frame, he was very good at that, too. However, pro basketball scouts generally recruit college stars, while the baseball scouts begin earlier. A good student, Autry skipped fourth grade, and later scored good SAT numbers. He was barely 17 when he graduated from high school and baseball scouts were already impressed with him. He was drafted by the Kansas City Royals as their fourth choice in the summer of 1969. From the perspective of his family, which was by no means wealthy, the money he was offered on his first minor league contract loomed large. So in 1969 he went immediately into professional ball with Winnipeg of the Class A Northern League. Subsequently he pitched for Waterloo of the Class A Midwest League, San Jose of the Class A California League, Jacksonville of the Double-A Southern League, and Omaha of the Triple-A American Association. At the end of the 1975 minor league season, while driving with his father from Omaha to their home in California, they heard on the radio that Al had been traded to the Atlanta Braves organization. He was invited to join the Braves as a non-roster player for the final ten days of the major league season, which was a great joy for him.

After spring training in 1976, the Braves sent him to Richmond of the Triple-A International League, where he finished with eleven wins, six losses, and an earned run average of 2.85. He recalls that he never had a bad start during that season. Although Richmond finished a game under .500, the team made the playoffs and entered the finals against the Rochester Red Wings—a team that had finished 34 games above the break-even mark—and beat them. Ted Turner, owner of the Braves, was in the stands throughout the playoffs, perhaps because observing the minor league action was more fun than watching the Atlanta Braves struggle through the last weeks of a dismal, last-place season. On Turner’s orders, none of the Richmond players were to be called up until after the playoffs. At the conclusion of the final playoff game, manager Jack McKeon announced that he had some good news. Catcher Dale Murphy and pitchers Autry and Rick Camp, among others, were being called up to finish the major league season with the Braves. Autry was in no way surprised by the news. At the peak of his form, he felt his time had come. Few major league hurlers on the shady side of 25 have had minor league experience as extensive as Autry’s before being summoned to the big show. By this time the six-foot, six-inch pitcher weighed in at 225 pounds and seemed to be reaching his full potential.

When the International League playoffs concluded, Atlanta was playing on the West Coast. After a 4-3 loss to San Diego on September 9, the Braves suffered an incredible double rainout on the 10th and 11th in Los Angeles. This necessitated successive doubleheaders on Sunday the 12th and Monday the 13th. Murphy had been summoned to join the Braves in Los Angeles, where he caught the second game on Monday, his major league debut. Autry and his good friend Camp, on the other hand, had been instructed to delay reporting until the Braves came home on Tuesday, when a third straight doubleheader (a twi-night affair) was scheduled without benefit of a travel day. While waiting, Autry and Camp did a little dove shooting near Camp’s home in Trion, Georgia.

Dick Ruthven and Frank LaCorte were listed in the newspapers as the starting pitchers for the Tuesday doubleheader. When he checked in at Fulton County Stadium to sign his contract, Autry was surprised when general manager Bill Lucas casually told him: “You’re going to start the second game of tonight’s doubleheader against the Astros. Go back to your hotel, relax, and come out to the park in time to suit up and begin your warm-ups for the second game.” Autry followed these instructions, and says that with his wife, Paula, helping him to stay calm, he was not particularly nervous while waiting. Later, while warming up, he felt a bit stiff, probably because he hadn’t thrown for several days, but this did not worry him because he knew from experience that his stuff in the bullpen was a very poor predictor of game performance. Also, the assemblage of 960 fans was not very intimidating.

In the top of the first inning, with Dale Murphy as his battery mate, Al easily retired the first hitter, Alex Taveras, but after Enos Cabell walked, César Cedeño doubled him home to give the Astros a 1-0 lead. The Braves came back with a run of their own in the bottom of the first and then, after Houston had failed to score in the second and third innings, the Braves took a 4-1 lead when Willie Montañez poled a three-run homer in the bottom of the third. In the fourth inning, Autry faced Cedeno again, this time with the bases empty. Fifteen years later, Autry recalled that his pitching strategy had been unaltered by Cedeno’s earlier double. Autry fired a good pitch, one that should have been tough to hit and especially difficult to pull, a tad high and just outside the strike zone. Yet Cedeño, a righthanded batter, was able to pull the ball over the fence in left-center field. Cedeño’s home run was a shocking “welcome to the big leagues” kind of experience. In the fifth inning, José Cruz also hit a solo home run; Autry feels that this did not result from a “mistake” pitch, either.

By the middle of the fifth inning, despite the home runs by Cedeño and Cruz, Autry had held the opposing Astros to only five hits, while walking three, and the Braves were leading, 4-3. Throughout his career, Autry had been a strong finisher, usually giving up most of his runs in the early innings. Therefore, when he came back to the dugout after retiring the Astros in the fifth inning, he was surprised to hear Dave Bristol, the manager, say, “Good, rookie, but we’re taking you out.” Autry’s feelings at the time were mixed. On the one hand he realized that, by having completed five innings and leaving the game with the Braves ahead, he stood a chance to win his first major league game. On the other hand, he says he “didn’t feel really good” about being removed from the contest. As it turned out, the Braves’ lead held up, and Autry was the winning pitcher.

When asked whether he could possibly have imagined that this would be his only major league appearance, he replied, without hesitation, “Absolutely not.” After all, his season with Richmond had been a great one, he had acquitted himself well enough in his first major league start, and the last-place Braves seemingly could use his talent. Nevertheless, he was unaccountably forced to sit out the remaining 2½ weeks of the season without being called upon the throw even one pitch during a ballgame. On Sunday, September 19, five days after Autry’s debut (although he was unaware of it), the papers listed him as the starting pitcher. For some reason, lost in the dustbin of history, Dick Ruthven started instead. Autry claims to have been discriminated against because of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” referring to an incident involving his buddy Rick Camp, who had made his major league debut one day after Autry. As the starting pitcher one day, Camp gave up four runs on eight hits in 5+ innings, lost the game, and did not start again that season, although he appeared four times in relief, all in losing causes. (Camp subsequently appeared in 410 more games during nine years with the Braves.)

In one of Camp’s relief appearances, which Autry recalls as occurring a few days after each of them had started (September 19, actually) an incident occurred that may have spelled the end of his major league career, trivial as it seemed at the time. During that game, while trying to pick a runner off first, Camp threw the ball “about 200 feet” into the nearly empty stands. After the game, while tunneling back to the locker room from the dugout, Autry hollered in good-spirited jest, “Holy shit – Camp couldn’t have thrown that ball any farther if he had been trying to set a long-distance record!” Unfortunately, manager Bristol gave Al the “evil eye,” and according to what Autry told Dennis Snelling, Bristol added “It wasn’t that fucking funny.” Perhaps Bristol didn’t know that Autry and Camp were close friends, well accustomed to needling one another.

Despite the awful frustration of those season-ending days with the Braves, Autry was elated around Christmastime in 1976 when he found a contract in his mailbox calling for somewhat more than the major league minimum. Quite reasonably, this was taken as a strong positive signal that the Braves were seriously interested in him as a possible pitcher in their starting rotation. But the elation was not destined to last. The Braves’ spring training was at Florida’s West Palm Beach in 1977, Al’s sixth major league camp. By the rules that prevailed, this probably would be the Braves’ last chance to keep him on their major league roster. Were they to release him to the minors again and then attempt to recall him later, any other major league team could claim him at the waiver price, with the condition that the claimant would be required to keep Autry on its major league roster for a minimum of 60 days.

Yet three weeks of spring training passed, and Autry was still not being used. Bristol behaved as if Al didn’t exist. The agony of the previous September was rekindled. Understandably distressed, Autry consulted with veteran pitchers Phil Niekro and Andy Messersmith, and followed their suggestion that he seek out Bristol to discuss the situation. Autry knocked on the door of the manager’s office one day, and after politely requesting permission to speak, said, “I want to make this club bad, and I deserve the chance. I’ve been in the minors long enough to deserve the break.” Bristol’s reaction was both stunning and crude: “I run this fuckin’ team and you’ll pitch when I say so!” said the man with the evil eye. Later that spring, Autry got into a B-squad game against Texas, but after he had retired nine consecutive batters he was taken out. A few more innings followed in games against Baltimore and Texas, but after that he was returned to Richmond.

At Richmond, Autry became a “frozen” player. Theoretically, the only route back to the big leagues would involve waivers. Al became sufficiently frustrated that it began to affect his pitching, and he lost his first six decisions. But when he turned things around and won the next six, the parent Braves decided they could use him, and they checked by phone to see if any other team was interested in him. If not, they could safely recall Al to Atlanta. It turned out that the Cardinals wanted Autry, but only for one of their farm teams. To accomplish this, and to circumvent the need to keep Autry on their major league roster for 60 days, the Cardinals agreed to purchase his contract outright for the waiver price and then dispatched Autry to their Triple-A farm team at New Orleans for the remainder of the 1977 season. In 1978, Autry was transferred to Springfield of the American Association, where he appeared in 25 games, mostly in relief, with limited duty because of a knee injury from which he had recovered by the end of the season.

By this time Al and Paula, who had married young, already had two children, Monica (born January 16, 1975) and Paul (born February 19, 1978), and the rigors of minor league baseball were taking their toll. Completely frustrated, while still in possession of a major league fastball clocked at 94 mph, Autry requested his release after realizing that the Cardinals were not planning to use him on the parent club. Autry left the game forever at the age of 27.

After quitting baseball, Autry returned to Modesto (a city of about 200,000 by the end of the century), where he resides today. He was never tempted to resume a career in any aspect of baseball, but he still likes to play slow-pitch softball in the City league. After starting as an advertising solicitor for the local newspaper, the Modesto Bee, he rose to the position of advertising director. A third child, Jared, was born on June 17, 1984, long after Al’s baseball days were over. Both boys were active in Little League baseball, but their father did not push them at all. He has preferred to let his children make their own decisions.

Al Autry has never been a hero worshipper. He is not today a baseball fan, and probably never was. He told Dennis Snelling, “It’s a great game, it’s a lot of fun. I never had a bad day at the ball park. Oh, there were days I wish I were fishing and those kind of things. But, sitting in the bullpen and playing grab ass, and giving a hot foot, and eating hot dogs and peanuts while the game was going on, knowing you weren’t gonna play ’cause you were a starting pitcher—that’s a great life. And if you can make big money doing it, that’s really neat.”

Al Autry comes across as outgoing, friendly, and articulate. He claims no bitterness about what might have been, and does not regret having given baseball his best shot. Quite possibly he has led a fuller and more satisfying life in the years after baseball, back in his hometown with a challenging job that he likes. Also, he has been able to spend much more time with his family than if he had become a successful major league starting pitcher. The fact that he made it to the majors, even for a day, is important to him and makes him seem special in his own eyes, and those of his friends. That he was the winning pitcher that September night in Atlanta adds a special luster to his brief major league experience.

Source Notes

Much of this essay (written April 2004) is based on an unpublished text that was the basis of a presentation that I gave at a meeting of the Allan Roth Chapter of SABR in Los Angeles on November 14, 1992. Prior to that talk, I had enjoyed two extended telephone interviews with Autry, the second after he had had an opportunity to read a draft of my talk. In 2003, after I had dug a copy of the manuscript out of my files, I sent it to Autry for further comment and updating, after which we had another telephone conversation and he told me of two books in which his career was described.

The year following my talk in Los Angeles, Dennis Snelling published A Glimpse of Fame: Brilliant But Fleeting Major League Careers (McFarland, 1993). A chapter about Autry (pp. 75-88) is one of fifteen in his book. Although there are minor discrepancies in our versions, the overall story is the same. In 1998 Richard Tellis published Once Around the Bases: Bittersweet Memories of Only One Game in the Majors (Chicago: Triumph Books) in which he describes the careers of forty one-game players. Autry appears in Chapter 37, pp. 290-302. Like Snelling and myself, Tellis also interviewed Autry and did additional research, while relying heavily on Snelling’s work.

For the statistics on one-game players, I am indebted to Wayne McElreavy who immediately sent me a list of them after I had issued a SABR-L request.

Baker played for the Boston Red Sox that day, for manager Patsy Donovan. The Red Sox were in New York, playing the Highlanders (a couple of years before they took on the name Yankees). Boston was 28-25 on the season, in fifth place, eight games behind the league-leading Detroit Tigers and only percentage points behind the Chicago White Sox. New York was a game and a half above them in the standings.

The Red Sox might have been in a bad mood. They’d been in third place a few days earlier, then dropped three in a row to the Cleveland Indians at Boston’s home Huntington Avenue Grounds. Baker had been signed to a contract with the Red Sox, one that was first announced in the May 14 Boston Globe. He was a first baseman playing for a college team in Spokane, Washington – not exactly next door, but team owner John I. Taylor seemed to have a penchant for West Coast players at the time, a century ago. In fact, Baker played for the University of Washington baseball team. He was expected to join the Red Sox once college got out on May 20.

The Globe reported that Taylor “wants to have it stated that Baker is not coming to take the place of [Alva “Rip”] Williams, who has been making good with a vengeance, but rather to have a promising young man on hand, and he could not pass up such a promising player as the Pacific coast boy is.”i Taylor seems to have attracted a good sum, an offer reported by the Seattle Times as $2,000 for the season. The Seattle paper said that the “husky young giant” was “boosted by Bill Hurley, the gingery coach of the Washington team. Tim O’Rourke, the old big leaguer who now lives here, also tried to land Baker for the Philadelphia Americans. … Tacoma also offered Baker $300 per month. … Baker is a hard hitter and he is getting better around first base every day.”ii The Philadelphia Athletics’ Connie Mack was said to have sent Baker a telegram saying he would offer more than the Red Sox had, but by then Baker had signed with Boston.iii

He joined the Red Sox in Washington at the end of May.iv

But come mid-June, Williams wasn’t hitting well and neither was the team in general; they were in a “batting and fielding slump.”v When the the Red Sox set out on the road, manager Donovan left four players home – Carrigan, due to a minor finger injury, and Williams, Moser, and Collins.

Taylor was in New York and watched the game on the 19th from a private box. Smoky Joe Wood was on the mound for the Red Sox, and he’d shut the New Yorkers out twice in one series the last time he’d faced them in New York. It was presumably a moment Baker had looked forward to. He started the game at first base, batting seventh in the order.

Trace Lee Baker had been born on November 7, 1891, in Pendleton, Oregon. His father, William, was a second-generation Missourian who had moved to Oregon and met his wife, Catherine, there. In 1900 William worked as a “stock-raiser,” in Pendleton, presumably. Trace’s grandfather Thomas had established a farm there as early as 1870. By 1910, the year before Trace made the majors, William Baker was more simply listed as a farmer. Catherine worked out of the house as a seamstress. Trace was 6-feet-1 and was listed as 180 pounds. He went through the Pendleton schools and then had two years at the University of Washington.

There was a report that Baker had actually played professionally as early as 1908, when he was 16 years old, for a Class D team in Pendleton, presumably the Pendleton Pets in the Inland Empire League.vi

In the game for the Red Sox, Baker recorded four putouts at first base over the first two innings, while the Red Sox built up a 4-0 lead. He’d handled all four chances cleanly. At the plate, his first plate appearance was a sacrifice and helped in the three-run second. Heinie Wagner had walked to lead off the inning, the Red Sox up just 1-0 at the time, and Baker sacrificed him to second. Les Nunamaker then hit a ball to the left of the shortstop, John Knight, but the ball struck Wagner so the sacrifice had been somewhat in vain and – with Wagner out – there were two down and a man on first. Joe Wood was up and he hit a ball hard down into Hilltop Park’s right-field corner, an easy double, scoring Nunamaker from first. Then Harry Hooper followed with an inside-the-park home run over right fielder Harry Wolter’s head, with Hooper sliding across the plate to make it 4-0.

Baker’s record doesn’t show it, but he must have looked quite green on the field. Veteran sportswriter Tim Murnane wrote, “Baker looked good until he played Wagner’s fast throw in poor form, failing to show any knowledge of good work.”vii It must have been a pretty egregious failure since Murnane wrote, “(A) yell from the Boston players caused manager Donovan to make a quick change” and he brought in Clyde Engle to finish the game at first. What were the players so upset about? We don’t have advantage of video replay, but not only was Baker yanked from the game, he was never given another chance, even in a blowout 11-3 win just two days later, on June 21.

The throw from Wagner was fired so hard and fast from short that Baker couldn’t handle it and the ball shot all the way to the stands. He wasn’t actually charged with an error (the Boston Post’s Paul Shannon called it a “savage throw”), but apparently the other players were vocal in their complaint.viii

The Boston Journal was the most forgiving of all. It offered an image of what happened, but also acknowledged that his was a “neat sacrifice” and that “he looks as if he might be as good as Williams some day.” But we do begin to understand what the yelling was about. “Baker demonstrated that his feet needed training. … [He] nearly butted Cree’s head off in the third, taking the throw on the wrong side, and he had given himself the foot on a throw from Heinie, falling flat, the ball rolling to the bleachers.”ix

Baker wasn’t pulled on the spot. He played through the bottom of the third inning, but was replaced before his next time at bat. Boston won the game, and Smoky Joe Wood notched another victory. He was on his way to a 23-17 season. The Red Sox were on their way to a 78-75 year and a fourth-place finish. Tracy Baker had had his day, though.

It’s perhaps a bit ironic – or at least overly optimistic – that the Seattle Times had written back in May that Baker “stands an excellent chance to stick in the big show, for he is young and has the size and is getting shiftier on his feet with every game. And he surely can slap that horsehide when he lands right. If he can pickle the pill, he will stay, and the big leaguers will give him time to develop in other departments of the game.”x

Baker doesn’t even show up in any minor-league statistics, before or after his time with the Red Sox. He was, for at least a while, on the roster of the Brockton Shoemakers (New England League) later in 1911. A brief note in Sporting Life said, “For Hendrickson and Lonergan, the Red Sox gave White, the Princeton pitcher; Giannini, the California college infielder, and Baker, the Northwestern first baseman.”xi He doesn’t seem to have played for Brockton. The September 16 issue said that he “will go back to one of the teams in the Northwestern League.” The publication confirmed a September 8 story that Taylor had wired Bob Brown of the Vancouver Beavers that he was sending Baker back to the league, but subject to recall to Boston in 1912.xii And indeed he’s seen in a September 23 box score, batting second (he was 0-for-3) for Vancouver, with a sacrifice and a stolen base. He had no errors attributable to shifting feet, or anything else.

Baker had entered a claim against the Red Sox for compensation. On November 16 the National Commission, then baseball’s ruling body, found that Baker’s claim against the Red Sox held merit and ruled that he be awarded back salary in the amount of $523.28.xiii

In 1912 the Red Sox moved into brand-new Fenway Park, which they must have hoped would last them longer than the 11 years they’d played at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. We were at first unable to find any indication that Baker ever played baseball again, but he is found on the reserve list of the Winnipeg club at the end of the 1912 season. The Grand Forks Herald of September 4 does refer to Tracy Baker, the hard hitting first baseman” and that is surely the same man.xiv SABR researcher Kent Morgan was able to find some mentions in the Winnipeg Free Press during the course of the season, referring to “Baker” but (as was often the case in the era) not providing Baker with a first name. “An early season report seemed to indicate that Baker was an experienced player, but did not say where he had played,” reports Morgan, adding that later reports say he was the team’s cleanup hitter and played first base, second base, and right field.xv The Winnipeg Maroons season ended on September 2. Grand Forks and the Maroons played a split doubleheader, morning and afternoon, in Winnipeg with the visitors winning both games. The losses knocked Winnipeg into last place, at 50-59, in the four-team Central International League. Baker placed first base in both games.

In November 1913 Baker married Nellie Jane Colvin.

We don’t know a lot from that time a century ago. Baker served in the US Army doing ordnance work from November 1917 to February 1919. In 1920 he was living in Pendleton with Nellie, working as a laborer on a farm, and in 1940 he was living in Sausalito, California, in Marin County as a truck foreman in highway construction, with his mother, Catherine, and second spouse, Lillian Ann Johnson; they had married in September 1929.

During the Second World War, Baker was living in Mill Valley, California, and working in the Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond. He reportedly retired after 35 years working in construction. Looking back on his career in baseball in completing his player questionnaire for the Hall of Fame, he was asked, “If you had it all to do over, would you play professional baseball?” His response: “I think so.”

Baker died of heart failure in Placerville, California, on March 14, 1975 at the age of 83.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Baker’s player file and player questionnaire from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Baseball Necrology, the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Reference.com. Thanks to Kent Morgan for researching Baker’s year in Winnipeg in 1912.

Notes

Balas was a shortening of the anglicized pronunciation of his family’s Polish surname, which was spelled several ways in various venues, including as Balasa and Bolaski, but more often as Balaski. Mitchell Francis Balaski was born on May 9, 1910, in Lowell, Massachusetts, one of four children of Joseph and Carolina (Wojtowicz) Balaski. He had an older brother, Louis, and two sisters, Caroline and Elaine. After immigrating to the United States from Poland in 1904, his father labored as a weaver in the woolen textile mills of Lowell. In the early 1920s, the Balaski family moved from a tenement-building apartment on First Street in the gritty, urban environment of Lowell to a house on Holt Street in the rural town of Billerica, just south of the city. Balas attended public schools in Billerica. In 1928 he graduated from Howe High School (now Billerica Memorial High School), where he was a pitcher on the school’s baseball team.

The first stop in his professional baseball career was the Brockton, Massachusetts, ballclub in the New England League in 1929, where Balas—known as Mike Balaski—posted an uninspiring 5-14 record on the mound for the Shoemakers. In addition to the challenges of following his minor-league career because of the various spellings of his last name (primarily Balaski or Bolaski), he was also referred to as Mike, Mickey, and Mitchell at various times during his baseball career. In 1930 he pitched a few games for the Lynn, Massachusetts, ballclub in the New England League before that league disbanded six weeks into the season. For the rest of the 1930 season, he played for the Bridgeport, Connecticut, team in the Eastern League. Balas—now called Mike Bolaski—posted a 7-6 record for the Bridgeport Bears, who won the second half of the 1930 split season before bowing to first-half-winner Allentown in the playoffs.

Since the New York Giants had a working arrangement with the Bridgeport club (it was not yet a “farm team”), Giants manager John McGraw invited the 6-foot, 195-pound right-hander and two other Bridgeport pitchers to spring training with the Giants in San Antonio, Texas. On January 22, 1931, the New York Times reported that Balas—now referred to as Mitchell Bolaski—was one of several pitchers whom McGraw had included on his 40-man spring-training roster; on February 22, 1931, the Times reported that he had boarded a train headed to San Antonio. Balas, however, was far too raw to be a serious contender for a pitching spot on the Giants roster. “All three are prospects, no mistake about this, but not one of the trio appears to be ready for a steady job in the majors,” the Albany Evening Journal commented about the three Bridgeport pitchers headed to Giants spring training. “Bolaski is the youngest of the three. He did some very good pitching for the Bears, in fact he just about won the second half pennant for [Hans] Lobert’s club. But he needs much more experience before he can hang around the majors.” After pitching a lot of batting practice in San Antonio, the three Bridgeport pitchers headed north with a team of reserves (the “second team”) that played a separate set of exhibition games apart from the regular New York Giants. Balas got his one chance with the Giants reserves in a game in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 8; however, he was shelled in six innings of relief, giving up 12 hits and 11 runs in a 15-8 loss to the Atlanta team of the Southern Association. When the Giants’ second team stopped in Bridgeport on April 12, the New York Times reported that Balas remained there to play with the Bears again for the 1931 season.

Balas pitched for Bridgeport in both the 1931 and 1932 seasons, until the Eastern League disbanded in July 1932. He then caught on with the Binghamton, New York, team in the New York-Penn League for the remainder of the 1932 season. However, the harsh economic reality of baseball during the Great Depression impeded Balas’s progress in professional baseball. With reduced roster sizes and decreased support of farm teams by the major-league clubs, Balas was released by Binghamton on May 15, 1933. Later that year he pitched several games for the York, Pennsylvania, team in the New York-Penn League and for Dayton, Ohio, in the Middle Atlantic League. In December 1933 he was with the Albany Senators of the International League when he was traded to the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Southern Association in a four-player deal that brought catcher Howard Maple to Albany. After pitching for Richmond, Virginia, in the Piedmont League during the 1934 season and briefly for Elmira, New York, in the New York-Penn League in 1935, Balas took a break from Organized Baseball.

During the 1936 season, Balas—now known as Mickey Balaski—pitched for the Laurier team in his birthplace of Lowell, Massachusetts. The Lauriers, once affiliated with minor leagues in 1933 and 1934, were an independent semipro ballclub in 1936 that played an assortment of industrial, Negro, and twilight-league teams. Balas pitched well enough to impress George “Lefty” Tyler, a former major-league pitcher with the Boston Braves who lived in Lowell and umpired local games. Tyler recommended the Laurier pitcher to the Boston organization, now called the Bees, not the Braves, under new president Bob Quinn, who sought to rebuild the team to winning ways. Sometime during his two-year hiatus from Organized Baseball, the big right-handed pitcher from Lowell decided to legally make “Balas” his last name.

The itinerant pitcher Mike/Mickey Bolaski/Balaski got his second chance at professional baseball when the Bees signed him to play with their Scranton, Pennsylvania, farm team in the New York-Penn League for the 1937 season. He continued to be Bolaski in the Scranton box scores until mid-July, when suddenly he was referred to as Balas. “Hereafter, pitcher Mike Bolaski of the Scranton Miners will be Mitchell ‘Mike’ Balas in organized baseball,” the Binghamton Press reported on July 23 after an investigation by the league. “With Balas on the contract and Bolaski in the box scores, league President Perry Farrell inquired into the situation, with a forfeiture of games won by Bolaski for Scranton being threatened,” The Sporting News reported. “Satisfied that Balas and Bolaski are the same person, Farrell has ordered that only the former name be used.” After posting a respectable 9-8 record in 23 games with Scranton, Balas was invited to spring training with the Boston Bees in 1938.

At spring training in Bradenton, Florida, Balas caught the eye of Casey Stengel, the newly hired Boston manager, as he assembled the Bees squad for the 1938 season. In a March 28 exhibition game against the Detroit Tigers, Balas pitched well in 7 2/3 innings of long relief after the Tigers had clobbered Billy Weir in the first inning. Stengel put four rookie pitchers on his Opening Day roster: Balas along with Dick Errickson, Milt Shoffner, and John Niggeling. Balas got his one chance on the major-league diamond on April 27 in an afternoon game in Boston against the Brooklyn Dodgers. With Brooklyn ahead by nine runs with two outs in the top of the eighth inning, Stengel waved in Balas as the fourth Boston pitcher of the day. Balas got the last out of the eighth inning, but Brooklyn reached him for three hits and three runs in the ninth inning before he left the big leagues for good. Only one of the three runs was earned, though, as errors committed by the Bees led to two runs. “When Mike Balas, the Billerica boy, did get his shot at the hurling job, Roy Johnson fumbled a punt out in left field and attempted to boot a field goal on a grounder,” the Lowell Courier-Citizen reported on Balas’s 1 1/3 innings pitched for the Bees. “Too bad Mike Balas had to get such ragged support in that ninth inning,” the Courier-Citizen added. “He really looked better than the box score would indicate.”

Soon after the disappointing pitching performance against Brooklyn, Boston shipped Balas to its farm club in Hartford, Connecticut, in the Eastern League. Things didn’t improve much at Hartford, as Balas chalked up a 3-8 record with the Senators; in July he was demoted to the Bees farm club in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the Middle Atlantic League. That was the last of his opportunities with the Boston Bees. When the owner of the Erie ballclub sold it to the owner of the Indianapolis team in the American Association, Balas became part of the Cincinnati Reds organization. He pitched in 29 games for Indianapolis during the 1939 season, notching a 5-7 record. However, with the Reds winning the 1939 National League pennant and Indianapolis having an established starting pitching staff, there was little room for Balas to move up. One potential shot at promotion came on June 29, when Balas pitched an exhibition game against the Reds; however, he couldn’t hold a 2-0 lead and gave up three runs in the eighth inning to lose the game, 3-2. In 1940, after he was ineffective with both Indianapolis and Birmingham of the Southern Association, the Reds released him. In 1941 Balas tried to make the Elmira team of the New York-Penn League, but was released before the season began.

With his baseball career over, Balas returned to Billerica, Massachusetts, where he had grown up. He married Ruth Nelson in August 1942, only a few months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, to propel the United States into World War II and severely test Balas’s antiwar beliefs as a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religious denomination. Unlike his father and older brother, Louis, who both registered under the Selective Service Act for possible military duty (Louis enlisted in the Army in July 1942), Balas pursued the status of conscientious objector.

With the United States feverishly preparing to engage in military operations in early 1942 and patriotic spirit among its citizenry at a high point, conscientious objectors like Balas were barely tolerated. The general attitude of the country was portrayed in a New York Times article in May 1942 in which Robert Van Gelder wrote about the view of conscientious objectors “to accept safety instead of service in the midst of a war for survival” and their belief “that they know better than their government how a man should meet the Axis attack.” At the time, there were only about 3,500 conscientious objectors compared with 2.5 million servicemen in uniform. The objectors were typically assigned to work camps where they engaged in soil conservation, forestry, and other work activities. As for Organized Baseball, there was no sympathy for the objectors. In an editorial just after the Pearl Harbor attack, The Sporting News wrote, “In all the history of baseball there never was a conscientious objector, or a slacker in its ranks.” Tom Ananicz, a minor-league pitcher, is the most noted conscientious objector among professional baseball players, having declared his status in March 1941 but also saying that he’d work in a munitions factory if necessary (he continued to play minor-league ball during the war years).

Attitudes toward members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses were also not very tolerant in 1942, as some of the Witnesses’ beliefs were viewed as anti-patriotic. In 1940 the US Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by a Jehovah’s Witness that a public school could compel its students to say the Pledge of Allegiance, an act that the Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to do. After much persecution and mob violence against the Witnesses, the Supreme Court uncharacteristically reversed its ruling in 1943. By the end of the war, there were about 31,000 official conscientious objectors. “25,000 men opted to serve in the military in a noncombat capacity as ‘conscientious cooperators,’” authors Heather Frazer and John O’Sullivan wrote in their book We Have Just Begun to Not Fight. “Another 6,000 refused service of any kind and ended up in prison. About three-quarters of these prison objectors were Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

Balas appeared in court on November 10, 1942, on charges that he had violated the Selective Service Act by his failure to report to a conscientious objectors’ camp. The timing of the court date on the day before the Armistice Day holiday (now called Veterans Day) seemed to preordain the verdict. However, Balas’s testimony exacerbated the sensitive wartime situation relative to both conscientious objectors and members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Balas “created a sensation in Boston federal court yesterday when he told Judge George C. Sweeney that the conversion of Adolf Hitler to the Jehovah Witnesses sect will be only a matter of time,” the Lowell Sun reported. When asked if he believed Hitler would recognize the rights of Jehovah Witnesses to not bear arms, Balas replied, “At the proper time Jehovah will take care of Hitler and will convert him.” Judge Sweeney responded, “I think it’s still a better idea to pass the ammunition,” and then sentenced Balas “to three years in a federal penitentiary to think it over.” The New York Times also carried a short report on the Balas sentence in its Armistice Day edition. How much of the three years of prison time Balas actually served is not known.

After the war ended, Balas and his wife, Ruth, raised two sons in Westford, Massachusetts, a small town ten miles west of Lowell. He became a carpenter and eventually formed the Mitchell Balas Construction Company. His wife, a bookkeeper by training, helped to run the business, which was renowned for building houses in the Nabnassett section of town. Despite his tribulations as a conscientious objector during World War II, Balas retained his faith in the Jehovah’s Witnesses until his death. After he died on October 15, 1996, at his home in Westford, his obituary in the local newspaper noted that he was “an active member of the Chelmsford Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses” in addition to having been a professional baseball player. His remains were cremated.

Sources

Albany Evening Journal. December 30, 1930, and December 25, 1933.

Bedingfield, Gary. “1941.” Baseball in Wartime web site. January 2010.

Binghamton Press, May 16, 1933; June 29, 1933; and July 23, 1937.

Boston Globe. March 29, 1938, and April 28, 1938.

Burr, Harold. “Every Boy’s Baseball Dream May Come True for Giant Youngsters.” Brooklyn Eagle. February 1, 1931.

Frazer, Heather, and John O’Sullivan. We Have Just Begun to Not Fight. New York: Twayne, 1996.

Lowell City Directory and Lowell Suburban Directory. 1920-1980

Lowell Courier-Citizen. April 28, 1938.

Lowell Sun. July 6, 1936; December 21, 1937; and April 1, 1938.

“Mike Balas Gets Three Years.” New York Times. November 11, 1942.

“Mike Balas Minor League Statistics & History.” Baseball-Reference.com.

“Mitchell F. ‘Mickey’ Balas.” Westford Eagle. October 24, 1996. 

New York Times. January 22, 1931; February 22, 1931; April 13, 1931.

The Sporting News. July 29, 1937.

U.S. Census Bureau. 1920 and 1930 census records.

U.S. Military Records. World War I and World War II.

“Uncle Sam, We Are At Your Command!” The Sporting News. December 11, 1941.

Van Gelder, Robert. “The Men Who Refuse to Fight.” New York Times. May 10, 1942.

“Westford Athlete Thinks Hitler Can Be Won to Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Lowell Sun. November 11, 1942.

Jeffery Todd Banister was born on January 15, 1964, to Verda and Bob Banister in Weatherford, Oklahoma. The family lived in Weatherford until 1970 when, along with older sister Carey, they moved to La Marque, Texas. La Marque is a city in Galveston County, just south of Houston, and in 1970 was a residential community for employees of nearby refineries and chemical plants. Jeff’s father, Bob, was a football coach at La Marque High School and his mother was an algebra teacher at the school. Jeff’s father was busy with his coaching schedule and Verda played a pivotal role in Jeff’s early athletic career. “She was the one that made sure I got to every Little League game, every practice,” Jeff said. And “when coaches were late, she would step in.”2

Jeff excelled at athletics and was a three-sport athlete at La Marque High School, where his father was still the football coach. He played baseball, football, and basketball, being coached by his father in football and basketball. It was at this time, in his sophomore year, that Banister noticed that his ankle was swollen. It caused enough discomfort to warrant a doctor’s visit. The doctor, family physician Dr. Lockhardt, discovered that Jeff had bone cancer and told him that if he did not get his leg amputated, he could possibly die. It was also found that day that he had cysts on the same leg, which had developed into osteomyelitis, which is an infection caused by bacteria eating away at bone marrow. Jeff and his family decided that taking the leg was the right course of action.3

Luckily for Jeff, the decision to amputate never came to pass. He persuaded the doctor to try to save the leg. Five months and seven operations later, Jeff came out of the hospital having beaten cancer and osteomyelitis.4 The year was 1981, he was 16, and his dreams of playing major-league baseball were still intact. But that was not the end of his physical complications in high school. After a comparatively uneventful junior year, Banister injured his knee during his senior year and was almost cut from the team because the injury impeded his mobility. His father suggested that he try a different position, catching. Jeff took the advice.5

After finishing high school, Banister attended Lee Community College in Baytown, Texas. He caught for the Lee baseball team and during his freshman year was once again faced with adversity. On a play at the plate in a game in which Banister was catching, the baserunner tried to hurdle him to avoid his tag. The baserunner’s knee hit Banister in the head, breaking three of his vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed for three days.6 The accident led to another lengthy stay in the hospital, nearly six months. After three operations, a year of rehabilitation, and being told that he would never play ball again, Banister was back on the field with the baseball team. He finished out another year with Lee, and was named a Junior College All-American, before earning a scholarship to the University of Houston in 1986.

Banister stayed at the University of Houston for a brief period. It was there that he met his future wife, Karen Stanton. Shortly afterward, he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 25th round of the 1986 draft.7 His first stop in the Pirates’ minor-league system was with the Watertown Pirates in the Class-A short-season New York-Penn League in 1986. He put up dismal offensive numbers over 41 games, batting just .145.

In 1987 Banister moved to the Macon Pirates of the Class-A South Atlantic League. Playing in 101 games, he put up a more solid line of .254/.316/.378. His improved numbers and solid defense were enough to move him up to the Double-A Harrisburg Senators for the 1988 season. His hitting stayed consistent with the Senators: .259/.296/.376. His defense suffered, though, and he wound up with 17 errors in 71 games, tied for the league lead among catchers.

For the 1989 season, Banister returned to Harrisburg and even though his batting average dropped to .238, he was named the Eastern League All-Star catcher. The 1990 season began in Harrisburg again and improved offensive numbers, .269/.313.386, were enough to get him called up to the Buffalo Bisons of the Triple-A American Association. His hot bat continued with Buffalo: a .320 average in 12 games.

Banister’s cup of coffee came in 1991. While he was with Buffalo, Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Don Slaught was injured. The Pirates called up Banister on July 23 to fill Slaught’s spot on the roster. Banister’s moment in the sun came that same day when Pirates manager Jim Leyland had him pinch-hit for pitcher Doug Drabek with one out in the seventh inning in a game against the Atlanta Braves. On the hill for the Braves was Dan Petry. Banister laced a 1-and-1 pitch from Petry in the hole between short and third. Braves shortstop Jeff Blauser managed to field the grounder and make the throw to first. But Banister beat it out.8 But neither of the next two batters could advance Banister.

After a series of roster moves, the Pirates sent Banister back to Buffalo after that one appearance. He finished the season with a .244 average in 79 games. While playing winter ball in the offseason, Banister blew out his elbow and needed surgery. He missed the entire 1992 season.9 In ’93 he joined the Carolina Mudcats of the Double-A Southern League as a player-coach. He played in only eight games and batted .333 (5-for-15). After the season, Banister retired as a player.

Although his playing days were finished, Banister remained with the Pirates organization. In 1994 he managed the Welland Pirates of the short-season New York-Penn League. The Pirates finished with a 30-44 record. In 1995 he managed the Augusta GreenJackets of the Class-A South Atlantic League to a 76-62 record. In 1996 and ’98 he managed the Carolina Mudcats of the Double-A Southern League; between those two seasons he led the Lynchburg Hillcats of the Class-A Carolina League.

After the 1998 season, Banister worked from 1999 to 2001 as the Pirates’ major-league field coordinator. In 2002 he was reassigned as Pittsburgh’s minor-league field coordinator, a position he held until 2010. Banister briefly returned to managing with the Scottsdale Scorpions of the Arizona Fall League in 2009.

In the middle of the 2010 season, the Pirates fired their bench coach, Gary Varsho, and brought Banister in as the interim. After the season, Pirates manager John Russell was also fired. Banister and Clint Hurdle were interviewed for the position. Hurdle was hired; Banister retained the bench-coach position.10 Along the way Banister learned about sabermetrics from Mike Fitzgerald, a quantitative analyst who was employed by the Pirates.11

After the 2014 season, Banister interviewed for manager positions with the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers. The Astros passed, but the Rangers on October 16 signed him Banister to a three-year contract with an option for a fourth year.

In his first season with the Rangers, Banister took them from a last-place finish in 2014 to a division title in 2015. Although, they lost to the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Division Series, Banister’s about-face with Texas earned him American League Manager of the Year Award. The Rangers again won their division in 2016, but were swept by the Blue Jays in the ALDS. The 2017 and 2018 seasons were disappointing: fourth place and then last in the AL Central Division, and Banister was fired on September 21, 2018, just shy of the season’s close. 

In 2019 Banister briefly returned to the Pirates as aspecial assistant in baseball operations.12 He held the position for only one season because the Pirates were in the midst of a restructuring that did not include Banister and 14 others. Banister interviewed with the Houston Astros after A.J. Hinch was fired, but lost out to Dusty Baker.13 On September 2, 2020, the University of Southern Colorado announced that Banister would become its director of player development.

Last revised: September 6, 2022

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes 

1 Anthony Castovince, “They Had 1 Career AB, 1 Career Hit. Nothing Else,” MLB.com, August 29, 2019. mlb.com/news/featured/mlb-ultimate-one-hit-wonders.

2 Stefan Stevenson, “Banister’s Mom Played as Vital a Role in Athletics as Coaching Dad,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 13, 2017.

3 Brett Barnett, “The Story of Jeff Banister,” Bucs Dugout May 8, 2020. bucsdugout.com/2020/5/8/21249547/the-story-of-jeff-banister.

4 Richard Justice, “Banister Cancer Scare Evokes Teenage Ordeal,” MLB.com, February 24, 2016. mlb.com/news/jeff-banister-s-cancer-scare-evokes-ordeal-c165322978.

5 Barnett.

6 Barnett.

7 Barnett.

8 Castrovince.

9 Castrovince.

10 Associated Press, “Nick Leyva Hired as Third Base Coach,” Espn.com, November 24, 2010. espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=5847952.

11 Ben Lindbergh, “The Pirates Sabermetrics Road Show,” Grantland, September 23, 2014. grantland.com/the-triangle/pittsburgh-pirates-mike-fitzgerald-mit-sabermetric-road-show/.

12 Adam Berry, “Pirates Hire Jeff Banister as Special Assistant,” MLB.com, January 6, 2019.  mlb.com/pirates/press-release/pirates-hire-jeff-banister-as-special-assistant-302428658.

13 Jason Mackey, “Jeff Banister Among Pirates’ 15 Layoffs in Baseball Operations,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 26, 2020. post-gazette.com/sports/pirates/2020/06/26/Jeff-Banister-among-Pirates-15-layoffs-in-baseball-operations/stories/202006260146.

Alfred L. Barker was born on January 18, 1839, in Indiana – sources differ as to whether the location was Terre Haute or the nearby community of Lost Creek, but the latter seems more likely. His parents, Ira Barker and the former Margaret Stewart, brought their family of four boys and two girls to Illinois in 1848, initially settling in the rural community of Daysville, Ogle County. In January of 1853 the family moved twenty-five miles north to Rockford, where Al Barker lived for the remainder of his life.

As a young man Barker held jobs as a paper hanger, decorator, and store clerk. At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted as a private in Company D of the 11th Illinois. Barker was mustered out after three months, but in September 1862 he reenlisted as a second lieutenant in Company A of the 74th Illinois, where he fought alongside his brother Henry. Al Barker’s Civil War service ended with his resignation on March 9, 1863, and he appears to have escaped the war unscathed. Sadly, Henry Barker was not as fortunate, losing his life on June 27, 1864, at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain.

When the devastating war finally came to an end, the young men of Rockford turned their attention to the still-young sport of baseball. The Forest City Club was formed on June 7, 1865, with Al Barker one of its original directors. He also played on the club’s first nine that year, primarily at catcher, as the Forest Citys emerged as the strongest team in the region. Despite the success, however, the new baseball club was nothing more than a successful town team, and there was no way to predict a glorious future.

The ensuing years saw the original core members of the Forest City Club slowly but surely nudged aside in favor of younger and more talented ballplayers from Rockford and the surrounding region. Before long, only Barker remained on the first nine, and even he had a precarious hold on his spot. He played a variety of positions and from time to time his name would be absent from the lineup for unknown reasons – perhaps Barker was unavailable due to other obligations, but he too may have been asked to step aside to strengthen the lineup.

What is clear is that Al Barker embraced the role of leader and elder statesman on a young team. When a team reunion was held in 1896 to commemorate Harry Wright Day, Al Spalding recalled how Barker “always used to remind us of practice days, and who always saw that the necessary paraphernalia was at hand.” He was also credited with having served as captain of the Forest Citys for the 1867 game in Chicago in which the club pulled its historic upset of the Nationals of Washington. 

Al Barker’s pride in the Forest City Club was especially evident. For two days after the memorable victory over the Nationals, Barker wore his uniform everywhere he went so that the people of Chicago would know he was part of the club that was the talk of the baseball world. At the 1896 reunion banquet, Rockford city attorney George M. Blake recalled how he first heard of Rockford while growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts. The Forest Citys came to Springfield for a game and “Al Barker confidently informed [Blake] that the Forest Citys could knock the spots off the best club that lived … [Barker] threw the ball from one end of the ball park to the other, and did numerous other feats to make the eyes of the youngsters stick out.” Blake concluded his remarks by declaring that he “had had the honor of meeting many distinguished men since that time, but that he never saw a man who impressed him as being so much bigger than old [Ulysses S.] Grant as Al Barker.”   

In 1870 the inevitable finally occurred and Barker was replaced as a regular. He left Rockford for a brief stint with the Mutuals of Janesville, but soon returned and saw duty as a substitute in 11 of the team’s 56 games. When the Forest City Club joined the National Association in 1871, Barker was again left out of the starting nine. So he accepted a role as substitute and accompanied the team on its long Eastern trip, seeing action in five contests. Four of those games were exhibitions, but he was also called on to start in a game in New York on June 1, 1871, thus earning Al Barker a spot in the baseball record books as a major leaguer. He acquitted himself very creditably, cleanly handling two chances in left field and collecting a walk and a single that drove in two of his team’s three runs.  

The end of a baseball career is a difficult time for many men, but Al Barker made the transition with ease. Between his two stints in the Union Army, Barker had married a young Rockford woman named Narcissa Tripp, but the marriage had not been a success. (Narcissa Tripp soon reverted to using her maiden name, suggesting an annulment.) On June 26, 1872, Barker was remarried to a young divorcee named Sarah Matilda “Tillie” Converse, and the couple spent the remainder of their lives indulging a joint passion for the fine arts.

Within a few years of their wedding, the Barkers opened a dancing school at the hall of the Christian Union church. For more than a quarter of a century Al Barker gave lessons there to Rockford youngsters and gained considerable local acclaim. An editorial written to commemorate his death explained that his secret was that “youth remained so long in his heart.” As a result, “his care for the thousand of little charges who filled his classes … was delightful to look upon. Mr. Barker followed a high ideal in his teaching of dancing, regarding it in the light of a profession, and his instruction was ever marked by methods dictated by dignity.”

Al Barker’s passion for music was nurtured in the choirs of the Episcopal and Second Congregational churches of Rockford. In 1877, he joined a quartet that became so well known around Rockford that it came to be known simply as the “Old Quartet.” Barker also sang in a foursome known as the Amphyon Quartet, played the tuba in the Forest City Band, and served as prompter and manager of the Benedict Orchestra.

Despite his love of these pursuits, Al Barker never lost his affection for baseball. He umpired three National League games in 1881 and became known for his inexhaustible fount of memories. Coverage of the 1896 Harry Wright Day celebrations noted that Barker possessed “more reminiscences about the old times than any member of the team and can tell them in a peculiarly happy manner.” At the grand banquet, A. G. Spalding recalled how Barker and Mart Wheeler often sang their teammates to sleep with a rendition of a song called “Larboard Watch.” By popular demand, Barker and Wheeler closed the festivities by performing the old favorite once more.

The thirty-four-year marriage of Al and Tillie Barker, which produced no children, came to an end with Tillie’s death on October 29, 1906. Until well into his sixties, Al Barker retained the vivacity and agility of a much younger man. But in 1912 he contracted stomach cancer, and the disease claimed his life on September 15, 1912.

The death of Alfred Barker prompted lengthy obituaries in both Rockford papers and an editorial in the Rockford Register-Gazette. Naturally, the obituaries gave prominent coverage to his role as one of the last surviving members of the club that put Rockford on the national baseball map. That distinction caused news of Barker’s death to run in newspapers across the country, with the Buffalo Morning Express running the piece under the headline “Famous Ball Player Dead.”

But in Rockford, Al Barker was remembered as much more than just a man who had once won glory on the baseball diamond. As the editorial in the Register-Gazette explained, “Hundreds of people heard with more than momentary regret the announcement of the passing yesterday of Alfred Barker. His life was so much a part of Rockford’s life, the social side of it, that few of the city’s residents were more widely known. His kindly qualities, which forbade him speaking ill of any man, his abounding good humor, his wit and his love for little children, these were the things in his make-up which caused people to like him. For fifty years as a band member, orchestra manager, singer and dancing teacher he had held in Rockford’s social and musical world a place which came to be peculiarly his own.” 

Sources

The primary sources of biographical information are two obituaries of Al Barker: “Alfred Barker Passed Away Sunday,” Rockford Republic, September 16, 1912, 9, “Al Barker in Death’s Sleep,” Rockford Register-Gazette, September 16, 1912, 3. The editorial that is quoted from on several occasions was entitled “‘Al’ Barker,” and was published in the Rockford Register-Gazette on September 16, 1912. The coverage of the 1896 Harry Wright Day event appeared in the Rockford Register-Gazette on April 13 and 14, 1896. The main sources of information about the Forest City Club are Horace E. Buker’s forty-four-part history that appeared serially in the Rockford Republic in 1922 and a five-part series by John Molyneaux that appeared in Nuggets of History, a publication of the Rockford Historical Society (“The Sinnissippi Base Ball Club,” 43:1 (March 2005); “The Forest City Base Ball Club: The Amateur Years,” 45:1 (March 2007); “No Longer Amateurs: The Forest City Base Ball Club in 1868,” 46:2 (June 2008); “‘We Can Beat the Spots Off the Best Club That Ever Lived’: The Forest City Base Ball Club in 1869,” 46:3 (September 2008); “The Eastern Tour – The 1870 Season of the Forest City Baseball Club,” 47:3 (September 2009)).

Richard William Bass was born in Rogersville, Tennessee, on July 7, 1906. His height is listed in Total Baseball as 6 feet 2 inches and his weight as 175 pounds (they were listed as 6 feet 1 inch and 210 pounds in 1954 when he applied for a position in the Recreation Department at Kingsport, Tennessee). Right-handed all the way, Bass graduated from Miami University of Ohio in 1932, where he was named to the All-Buckeye baseball teams during his junior and senior years. He signed with the St. Louis Cardinals organization and remained in professional baseball through 1947 with the exception of four years during World War II.

In total, Bass pitched for eight different teams in fourteen minor league seasons and compiled a record distinguished primarily for durability. His reputation as an “iron man” began in college at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) when he pitched an entire 21-inning game against the University of Cincinnati and he was still going strong in 1939, his second season with Chattanooga, where he pitched 261 innings before making his only major league appearance. In an average professional season, Bass appeared in 36 games, won 10, lost 11, and allowed 86 earned runs in 178 innings for an ERA of 4.68.

Although known for his fastball in college, Bass was basically a control and knuckleball pitcher in the minors. He walked approximately one batter every four innings, and on average he required three innings to get a strikeout. The 1936 edition of the American Association Who’s Who shaved two years from his age and noted that he had brown hair and blue eyes. It also revealed his marriage the previous year to Margaret Stewart Blake of Dayton, Ohio. The former Miss Blake turned out to be the first of Dick’s four wives, and in 1938 she gave birth to his only child, a son they named Richard Keith.

At Griffith Stadium on Thursday, September 21, 1939, the Washington Senators hosted the Cleveland Indians. Cleveland was in a dogfight with Boston and Chicago for second place money, whereas Washington had clinched sixth place. The starting lineups:

Cleveland

Lou Boudreau, ss
Roy Weatherly, lf
Ben Chapman, cf
Sammy Hale, 2b
Bruce Campbell, rf
Ken Keltner, 3b
Oscar Grimes, 1b
Rollie Hemsley, c
Al Milnar, p

Washington

Eddie Leip, 2b
Hal Quick, ss
Alex Pitko, rf
Taft Wright, lf
Charlie Gelbert, 3b
Mickey Vernon, lb
Elmer Gedeon, cf
Rick Ferrell, c
Dick Bass, p

For Washington, Leip, Quick, and Pitko would finish their big league careers by participating in an average of only 16 games each. This was the only year in the big leagues for Gedeon, who appeared in only five games and was killed in France during World War II. Although they were destined to have long and solid careers, Mickey Vernon was playing in his first season and Taft Wright, only his second. Cecil Travis, Buddy Lewis, and George W. Case — veterans who were collectively batting over .300 — warmed the bench all afternoon. By contrast, the eight Cleveland position players eventually completed an average of 13 years in the major leagues.

The next morning, the following account of what happened to Bass was provided by Gordon Cobbledick in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

“The game was a scoreless pitching duel between Al Milnar and a 31-year-old [actually 33] rookie named Dick Bass for six innings and then things began to happen.

“Taft Wright led off the Washington seventh with the Nats’ fourth hit, a single to right. Charlie Gelbert, the old National Leaguer, caught one on the nose and drove it toward the left field corner.

“The blow was ticketed for two bases, but Roy Weatherly had other ideas. In a desperate effort to make the catch, Roy hurled himself headlong toward the foul line at the point where the field boxes come out to meet it. He got his hands on the ball just as his head crashed into the concrete boxes. He was knocked cold and Gelbert made the circuit of the bases, scoring behind Wright, and the Nats were two runs to the good.

“Milnar retired them without further damage and the Indians came to bat in the eighth, with Weatherly leading off.

“Just to prove that a little thing like a knockout was nothing in his life, he slammed Bass’ first pitch to left for a single and before the rookie pitcher could get an Indian out the tribe had scored four runs and had the game put away.

“Ben Chapman followed Weatherly’s blow with another that put Roy on third. Sammy Hale’s reliable bat, the greatest single factor in the Indians’ sensational spurt in the east [they won nine of eleven games] then boomed again, stroking a single to center that put Chapman on second base. A curve ball that cracked Bruce Campbell on the shins filled the bases.

“And then Keltner whacked one against the top of the bleacher wall in left center, nearly 400 feet from the plate, for a double, scoring Hale and Chapman and putting the Indians in the lead.

“An intentional pass to Oscar Grimes loaded the bases again. Rollie Hemsley laid down a bunt, which scored Campbell, and because first baseman Mickey Vernon fumbled it, the bases were still jammed and no one was out. Fielder’s choices by Milnar and Lou Boudreau sent in two more runs before Bass got Weatherly to end the inning.”

An unusual feature of this game is that a recording of the radio broadcast of the last 51/2 innings has survived. Although Cobbledick didn’t mention it, the broadcast makes it evident that no visit to the mound was made (or ordered) by manager Bucky Harris as Bass labored through the unfortunate eighth inning, throwing 33 pitches. The broadcast reveals that from the fifth through the eighth inning, Bass threw 62 pitches. At the start of the broadcast, announcer Walter Johnson (the former Big Train himself) commented that Bass (who had walked five and given up two hits) “has gone 3 and 2 on most of the batters.” Assuming, conservatively, four pitches per batter for the first four innings, when the Indians batted around twice, he would have thrown 134 pitches by the time Weatherly flied out to terminate Bass’s major-league career. Had he been removed after seven innings, with the Senators leading 2-0 (after throwing about 100 pitches), or even
after his first two pitches in the eighth were hit for singles, Bass could have emerged as the winning pitcher.

At Chattanooga of the Southern Association in 1939, Bass had won 19 games and lost 10 with an ERA of 3.21. He evidently had expected to be retained on the Senators’ major league roster after 1939, because he filed a protest with Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis when this did not happen. There is no record of what Bass wrote, but Landis replied that his transfer to Washington had been disapproved “because it exceeded Washington’s player limit.” Instead, Bass’s contract was sold to the Chicago Cubs and in 1940 he went with them to spring training on Catalina Island, off the Southern California coast. But Bass didn’t make the team and was sent to Montreal of the International League, where he appeared in only five games before being returned to Chattanooga, where he won a total of 21 games and lost exactly the same number during 1940 and 1941, his last pre-war seasons.

During the war years, Bass was employed by Acme Aluminum Alloys, of Dayton, Ohio, as a purchasing agent. He also assisted in the company’s recreational program for employees. He managed their Class A amateur baseball team from 1942 through 1945, winning the city championship every year. In 1944, their team won the World’s Amateur Championship at Youngstown, Ohio.

In 1945, with the war ended, Bass was hired to manage and pitch for the Gainesville G-Men of the Class D Florida State League. During the first part of the season, his wife kept a scrapbook which she later abandoned as the G-Men sank deep into the standings, eventually finishing last. From there Bass went to Kingsport of the Appalachian League. Joe Engle, one-time president of the Chattanooga Lookouts, who was known as the “Baron of Ballyhoo and the Barnum of Baloney,” probably planted the following gem
in the Chattanooga Times-News:

“Bass, a former Chattanooga Lookout, is being sent to Kingsport highly recommended by Joe Engle, President of the Chattanooga Lookouts with whom the Cherokees have a working agreement. ‘I believe Bass will make a good manager,’ Engle told Joe Hagins, President of the Kingsport club, after assigning the 33-year-old manager to Kingsport. ‘He has a good record as a manager as well as a player.'”

In 1947 at Kingsport, the allegedly 33-year-old manager, who was actually 41, was still pitching in what turned out to be his last minor league season. For the Cherokees he won 16 and lost only 3, easily the best winning percentage of his long minor league career. But Kingsport of the Class D Appalachian League was a very long way from major league baseball. Once again, his wife optimistically began a scrapbook, and once again she quit in midseason as the team finished sixth with a .454 record.

Bass’ career in baseball was not quite over. In 1948, he managed the Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball league (a team earlier managed by Jimmie Foxx). After a disappointing season during which the Daisies finished eighth among the league’s ten teams, Bass’ career as a manager nevertheless concluded on a relatively high note. The league had been split into two divisions and despite finishing fourth in the five-team Eastern Division, the Daisies qualified for the playoffs. However, in the showdown series, they were defeated by the Western Division winners, the Rockford Peaches. Although the league continued for a few more years, this was Bass’ only season as a manager of a girls’ baseball team.

According to a resume he prepared while seeking employment in 1954, Bass described postwar jobs as a bowling alley manager and as an assistant to his father in the operation of the Lake Santa Fe fishing camp in Earleton, Florida. He stated: “I feel that I am best qualified by education, training, experience, personality, and temperament to work in industrial recreation.” Sadly, according to his son, he was unable to fulfill this ambition.

Dick Bass died at the age of 82 on February 3, 1989, in Graceville, Florida. He had been in a convalescent home for two years after suffering a broken hip in a fall.

Source Notes

Most of what is reported above is taken, some of it verbatim, from an article I published in NINE in 1994 (Vol. 3, No. 1, 189-203) where nineteen endnotes fully document my sources. My interest in Dick Bass began with the radio broadcast, which was inadvertently part of the electrical transcription of an entire broadcast day of station WJSV in Washington, D.C., created as a historical document. I purchased the tapes in 1989 from a WIRELESS catalog without having any idea that a baseball broadcast was included. The cassettes carry a copyright by GREATAPES in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Paul Brennecke, a GREATAPES archivist with whom I spoke in 1990, the master transcription had become part of a private collection from which reel-to-reel tapes were made and it was from these tapes that the cassettes were manufactured.

The broadcast is notable for several reasons. It is one of the earliest regular-season broadcast for which a recording exists. The date of the recording was chosen because President Roosevelt was scheduled to speak to a joint session of Congress that afternoon; his speech is included. The primary announcer of the baseball game, Walter Johnson, was near the end of his only season in the booth. Dick Bass’ first name was never mentioned during the broadcast and the only statistic reported, Bass’ won-and-lost record at Chattanooga that season, was incorrectly given. It is unclear why the broadcast of the ballgame did not begin until 4 o’clock, by which time the last half of the fourth inning had begun. Some other aspects of the radio broadcast are described in endnotes 5, 6, and 8 of my article in NINE.

For the statistics on one-game players, I am indebted to Wayne McElreavy who sent me a list through 2002 a day or two after I had issued a SABR-L request. Baseball Almanac (http://www.baseball-almanac.com) was consulted for 2003 data. I also thank Bob Hoie, who supplied Bass’s minor league record, and Barbara Gregorich, who provided information about the Fort Wayne Daisies’ post-season play.

I thank SABR member Dennis VanLangen who, in response to my SABR-L request, cited the following radio broadcasts of regular-season games that were made earlier in the 1930s and for which audiocassette tapes exist.

Sept. 20, 1934. New York (AL) 11, Detroit 7. Oldest known game broadcast. Announcer: Tyson.

July 30, 1936. Chicago (AL) 7, Philadelphia (AL) 4. A vintage old-timers game featuring Connie Mack’s A’s. Announcer: Totten.

Aug. 2, 1936. Chicago (AL) 9, Boston 1. Oldest known Red Sox broadcast. Announcer: Totten.

I am especially indebted to Dick Bass’ son, Keith, and his wife, who welcomed me into their home in Greenwood, Florida, in May, 1991, where they encouraged me to peruse the scrapbooks that Dick Bass’ wife had kept during his father’s two seasons as a minor league manager. Keith Bass also provided information about his father’s occupation during the war, his stint as manager of the Fort Wayne Daisies, and his life after baseball.

Charles Richard “Dick” Bates was born on October 7, 1945, the second son of Austin and Zella (Nickels) Bates. Along with his older brother, Daniel, Dick was born and raised in McArthur, Ohio, a small town 75 miles southeast of Columbus. Austin worked at the coincidentally-named Austin Powder Company, and Zella was a homemaker. Dick got his first ball glove at an early age, and the father and son played catch most nights after Austin came home from work. Austin, a former semipro ballplayer, coached Dick’s Little League teams and remained a source of knowledge and encouragement throughout high school. “He was very persistent,” recalled Dick. “He’d run me a lot and work with me on my pitches. If he hadn’t stayed on me, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it as long as I did.”1

Sports was a way of life in McArthur. “It was the only thing to do in McArthur. You played some kind of sport year ‘round,” Bates remembered.2 As a freshman at McArthur High School in 1960, he made the varsity team in football, basketball, and baseball. Bates earned All-State Honorable Mention accolades in football and basketball, but it was on the pitching mound where he shined the most. “He just looked so smooth throwing the ball. He made it look like he wasn’t trying, yet that thing would really come in there,” recalled Bates’s football coach, Ron Fenik. “I remember it being February, there’d be snow on the ground, and he’d be out there after basketball throwing pitches.”3 During his junior year, Bates threw two no-hitters in one week.4 As a senior, he led the Generals to the district finals with a 6-1 record while batting .421 and striking out nearly two batters per inning.5 “I had a good fastball. My fastball was probably around 90-95, and I had a good slider and curveball,” recalled Bates.6

Scouts from the Pirates and Reds showed interest, but it was Tommy Thompson of the Washington Senators who signed Bates the day after his high school graduation in the spring of 1964. The pact included a signing bonus of $2,500 and salary of $400 per month.7

Within a few days, Bates left for rookie ball with the Wytheville Athletics of the Appalachian League. Only 18 years old and away from home for the first time, he grew up quickly. “Being out in the world was probably the best education I got, more than if I would have got to college,” Bates reflected in a 2018 interview. “That’s one thing I can always thank baseball for.”8 In nine appearances with Wytheville, including three starts, Bates posted a 1-0 record with a 5.28 record.

In August, he was promoted to the Single-A Geneva Senators of the New York-Pennsylvania League to help bolster an ailing pitching staff. Bates, the youngest player on Geneva’s squad, held his own against older competition. He pitched in six games, all starts, and finished the campaign with a 5-1 record and 3.89 ERA. His teammates, most of whom were single and college graduates, took him under their wing on and off the field. “In New York, the drinking age was 18 years old,” said Bates. “These guys would take me out with them. I’d never really drank, but you got broke in real quick. It was rowdy times growing up in baseball.”9

Bates spent 1965 toiling the mound for the Burlington (North Carolina) Senators in the Single-A Carolina League. In 26 starts and one relief appearance, he logged 151 innings while posting an 11-10 record and 3.81 ERA. He then went south and pitched in 10 games (four starts) with the Senators’ Florida International League outfit.

In 1966, Bates advanced to the Double-A York (Pennsylvania) White Roses, a Senators affiliate in the Eastern League. He pitched 197 innings in 31 contests (26 starts). He tossed 11 complete games, including three shutouts, tallied a record of 11-11, and had an ERA of 3.61.

Bates returned to York at the start of the 1967 season. In 11 games (six starts), he struggled to a 1-5 record with a 5.15 ERA. On June 9, he was demoted back to Burlington. He regained form in his first outing, tossing a two-hitter against the Durham Bulls.10 His second victory was a 12-inning complete game versus Lynchburg in which he scattered four hits, allowing only one unearned run.11 In 15 starts and one relief appearance with Burlington, he went 6-5 with a 2.35 ERA.

Bates spent the entire 1968 campaign with the Double-A Savannah Senators in the Southern League. During one successful stretch, he threw three consecutive shutouts, the last of which came against Sparky Anderson’s Asheville Tourists. Overall, Bates pitched in 33 contests (16 starts) and compiled a 9-10 record and 2.78 ERA. When it came time for the expansion draft that fall, Anderson got the word out about Bates. The Pilots selected the 22-year-old hurler with the 30th pick of the American League portion of the draft.

Bates, one of the younger players on the Pilots roster, had an excellent Cactus League showing in the spring of 1969. Much to his disappointment, however, he did not survive the final cut at the end of camp. He was assigned to the Vancouver Mounties, the Pilots’ Triple-A affiliate in the Pacific Coast League. Bates won his first two starts, allowing only two earned runs in 13 innings, before the Mounties traveled to Hawaii for a series against the Islanders. Bates took the loss in the series opener on April 20. Following the team’s contest on Saturday, April 26, several players were imbibing drinks at Don Ho’s bar when Vancouver’s manager, Bob Lemon, barged in and gave Bates the news: he was going to the big leagues and needed to get on the next plane to Seattle.

After quickly packing his bags, Bates caught a red-eye flight and arrived in the Emerald City the next morning. Sleep-deprived but full of excitement, he reported to Sick’s Stadium for Seattle’s noon game against the Oakland Athletics. Bates, who was told by Lemon he that wouldn’t pitch that day, watched from the bullpen as Pilots starter Mike Marshall got into trouble in the top of the sixth inning. Bates was shocked when he was told to start getting loose. After Sal Bando’s three-run homer off Marshall gave Oakland a 5-0 lead, Seattle manager Joe Schultz summoned the youngster from McArthur.

The first batter Bates faced was Danny Cater, who walked on five pitches. Rick Monday then came to the plate and homered, extending Oakland’s lead to 7-0. As Bates recalled, “It was a fastball in the middle of the plate.”12 He settled in and struck out the next two batters, Dick Green and Dave Duncan, before retiring Oakland starter Rollie Fingers on a groundout to end the frame. Bates returned to the mound for the top of the seventh. He walked the leadoff man, Bert Campaneris, who stole second. Bates struck out Tommie Reynolds and retired future Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson on a ground ball to second. After Bando drew a walk, Cater and Monday each doubled, scoring three more runs and making it a 10-0 shellacking. Schultz had seen enough and brought in reliever John Morris. Bates was charged with five earned runs in 1 innings pitched, giving him an ERA of 27.00.

Bates remained with the Pilots for a few more days but did not appear in another game before being optioned back to Vancouver. He was part of a constant roster churn that season by the Pilots, who set a single-season record at the time of 53 players used.

There are several mentions of Bates in Ball Four, Jim Bouton’s tell-all memoir about the Pilots’ lone season. In one, Bouton expressed annoyance that Bates had been called up rather than him. Another ran as follows: “Dick Bates was sent back down to make room for Darrell Brandon. I’m not sure what they think they’re doing, but at a guess front offices are more interested in players who are far than those who are near. They were more interested in Bates than in Brandon or Bouton, but only until they saw Bates up close.”13 Bates’s reaction when he read the unflattering passage: “Ouch.”14

On May 19, Bates, a left-handed hitter, hit his first and only professional home run in a game against Tucson. “I don’t think it cleared the wall by much,” Bates humbly recalled.15 His homer provided all of the run support he needed in the complete-game victory.

However, he soon experienced arm trouble that would derail his career. He felt a pop in his arm one day while throwing, an injury he believes was a torn deltoid muscle. After that, Bates felt like he was being poked with a hot iron whenever he tried to throw hard. Cortisone injections failed to provide relief. He remained in Triple-A for the rest of the ’69 season, finishing with a 6-9 record and 3.93 ERA in 23 games (21 starts).

The Pilots were in a dire financial situation following their inaugural season. In the spring of 1970, ownership declared bankruptcy, paving the way for the team to be sold to Bud Selig and relocated to Milwaukee. Bates started the season with the Portland Beavers, Milwaukee’s Triple-A affiliate. He appeared in three games out of the bullpen, lost his only decision, and allowed five runs, all earned, in seven innings. He was then sent back to the Southern League to pitch for the Double-A Jacksonville Suns. In 18 games (15 starts), Bates had a record of 7-6 and recorded an ERA of 3.87. Hampered by persistent arm troubles, he decided to call it quits on his baseball career. “I just couldn’t throw, it hurt me so bad.”16 In 177 games across seven minor-league seasons, Bates compiled a record of 57-58 with a 3.60 ERA.

Following his playing career, Bates got a job in the resort business with the help of J.W. Marriott, who he had met when he was in the Senators organization. He completed a management program at Camelback Golf Club in Phoenix, Arizona, and worked there during the 1970s. Dick met his wife, the former Leslie McKinley, shortly after his baseball career ended. Leslie is a descendent of President William McKinley. The couple have twin daughters (Kim and Steph) and a son (Mark). As of 2021, Dick was the general manager of the Arizona Biltmore Golf Club. He has been in this position for more than three decades. He tried to retire in February 2021 but was talked into staying on for a while longer.

Bates maintains a connection to his former franchise. He has attended Pilots reunions, and his golf club hosts the Milwaukee Brewers’ executives for a tournament every spring. Despite the brevity of his major-league career, Bates has no regrets. “Everything worked out great,” he said in 2021. “I wouldn’t change a thing with how everything went, getting out of baseball and getting in the golf business.”17

Last revised: September 21, 2021 (zp)

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Dick Bates for verifying information and providing memories of his career in a July 2021 telephone interview.

This biography was reviewed by Gregory H. Wolf and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Kevin Larkin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author relied on Baseball-Reference.com.

Notes

1 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part One,” Timestop podcast, Published April 4, 2018. https://m.soundcloud.com/timestop-pod/episode-one, Accessed August 20, 2021.

2 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part One.”

3 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part One.”

4 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part One.”

5 “Dick Bates Named to East Squad for All-Star Series,” Logan Daily News (Logan, Ohio), June 6, 1964: 6.

6 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part One.”

7 “Washington Signs Ohioan to Pact,” Daily Reporter (Dover, Ohio), June 25, 1964: 18.

8 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part One.”

9 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part One.”

10 “Bates Tames Bulls on 2-Hitter,” Daily Times-News (Burlington, North Carolina), June 20, 1967: 8.

11 Bill Hunter, “Bates Nips LynSox in 12, 2-1; Penalver Bows in 13,” Daily Times-News, July 5, 1967: 14.

12 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part One.”

13 Jim Bouton, Ball Four (New York, Dell Publishing, 1971), 47.

14 “The Fireball Pitcher McArthur, Ohio, Almost Forgot, Part Two,” Timestop podcast, Published April 4, 2018. https://m.soundcloud.com/timestop-pod/episode-two, Accessed August 20, 2021.

15 Telephone interview between Dick Bates and Eric Vickrey, August 25, 2021.

16 Bates Interview.

17 Bates interview.