June 23, 1971: Geneva’s Ken Flowers nabs only professional win on Opening Day

One professional season, one professional win.

In the pros, the ride doesn’t last long for some players, and Ken Flowers is an example. The 18-year-old lefty was chosen by the Washington Senators in the 24th round of the June 1971 amateur draft and pitched in 15 games that season – nine for Geneva in the short-season Class A New York-Penn League and six for Anderson (South Carolina) in the Class A Western Carolinas League. After posting a combined ERA of 8.14, Flowers never appeared in the professional ranks again.

Flowers’ career peaked in his first game, June 23, 1971. Making the Opening Day start for the Geneva Senators, Flowers pitched no-hit ball for 5⅔ innings and one-hit ball for seven as Geneva defeated the Batavia Trojans, 4-1. It was his only pro win.

The Senators opened the season on the road at MacArthur Stadium in Batavia, home of the Trojans, a Detroit Tigers affiliate. Geneva’s manager was Frank Gable, a former infielder whose career topped out at the Triple-A level in the Senators’ organization in 1966. The 1971 season was Gable’s only year as a minor-league skipper.

Gable told a local newspaper that Flowers, at 5-feet-11-inches and 170 pounds, “throws hard for such a little guy,” adding, “He’s aggressive and fields his position well. He has a pretty good curve ball.” The newspaper also reported that Flowers posted a 14-1 record as a high-school senior in Lumberton, North Carolina, including a no-hitter, as his team won the county and district championships.1

Flowers was far from the biggest name on Geneva’s Opening Day roster. Two other June 1971 draft choices also made their professional debuts on June 23.

Twenty-year-old third baseman Mike Cubbage had been Washington’s pick in the second round of the secondary phase of the draft out of the University of Virginia. He went on to play eight seasons in the majors, coach in the big leagues for 14 seasons, manage seven years in the Mets’ minor-league organization, and serve as interim manager of the Mets in 1991. In 1971 Cubbage led Geneva batters with a .345 average and 46 RBIs in 56 games. He also hit eight home runs, trailing only first baseman Ken Caldwell, who hit nine.

Also debuting was 21-year-old second baseman Greg Pryor, a sixth-round pick out of Florida Southern College. Pryor played parts of 10 seasons in the majors and won a World Series championship with the 1985 Kansas City Royals.2 Pryor ranked second among Geneva batters in 1971 with a .283 average, adding 4 homers, 28 RBIs, and a team-leading 11 stolen bases.

Batavia was led by former minor-league pitcher Joe Lewis, in his second of 11 seasons managing in the lower reaches of the Detroit chain. Four of the 1971 Trojans later reached the big leagues, but only one appeared on Opening Day.3 Beginning in 1967, Ron Cash was drafted six times by six different teams, finally signing with Detroit after the Tigers chose him in the third round of the secondary phase of the June 1971 draft out of Florida State University.4 He pinch-hit in the seventh inning at a key point in the game and went on to play 34 games with Detroit in 1973 and 1974.

Cash led the 1971 Trojans with a .333 average, 7 home runs, 4 triples, and 10 stolen bases in 67 games. First baseman Kim Cates and second baseman Jim Eschen, the team’s top RBI men with 34 and 31 respectively, were in the starting lineup on Opening Day. The start on the mound went to righty David Baye, a returning Trojan from the 1970 team, who’d been drafted by Detroit in the 14th round of the June 1970 amateur draft out of Southern Connecticut State University. Baye went 6-7 with a 4.68 ERA in 20 games with Batavia in 1971, his second of three pro seasons.

The New York-Penn League staffed the game with a two-man umpiring crew, one of whom also reached the major leagues. Twenty-year-old Dave Pallone, working his first game as a pro,5 served as a National League arbiter from 1979 to 1988.

With 1,840 fans on hand, Geneva started the season with a first-inning run. After Baye retired the leadoff hitter, center fielder Tommy Hayes laced a triple off the wall in right-center field. Cubbage’s first professional hit, a double to the same area of the park, scored Hayes easily for a 1-0 lead.6

Two shutout innings followed before Geneva’s future major leaguers stirred up some action in the fourth. Cubbage drew a leadoff walk. One out later, Pryor’s first pro hit – a double – put runners on second and third. Catcher Fred Grice hit next. Like Flowers, he was a one-year pro who split his season between Geneva and Anderson in 1971. Grice doubled to drive in both runners. The hit, one of five he collected as a pro, accounted for half of his career professional RBIs.

Right fielder Bob Spinner singled Grice to third, and Grice scored on a passed ball charged to Batavia catcher Terry Mappin, giving Geneva a 4-0 advantage. Batavia righty reliever Spencer Horn, a second-year pro, finally worked out of the inning and pitched a shutout fifth. Two additional Batavia relievers, Daniel Maluzhinsky and Steven Knowlton, pitched two shutout innings apiece to hold Geneva off the scoreboard the rest of the way.

Batavia’s bats couldn’t get anything started off Flowers over the same period, as the young lefty surrendered walks but no hits. The Trojans’ first offensive glimmer arose in the fifth inning, when Flowers walked the first two hitters. Gable later said he could tell Flowers was tiring, and Gable considered pulling him despite his no-hitter in progress. But Flowers bounced back: He got second baseman Eschen to ground to Cubbage, who stepped on third base and threw to first for a double play. Flowers then struck out pinch-hitter Greg Gromek to escape the inning.7

Flowers picked up the first two outs in the sixth before losing his no-hitter on a double to left field by left fielder Jim Veryzer, the only ball Batavia hit out of the infield against him.8

Flowers lost his shutout in the seventh without allowing another hit. Cates drew a leadoff walk and Geneva shortstop David McClain – yet another one-year pro who divided 1971 between Geneva and Anderson – made an error on an apparent double-play ball to put runners on first and second. A groundout to first moved the runners ahead to second and third, and Flowers struck out Eschen for the second out. Pinch-hitter Cash grounded to McClain, who again misplayed the ball, allowing a run to score.9 Flowers got out of the inning without additional damage.

Gable finally yanked Flowers after he walked shortstop Andy Kanoza to start the eighth. It was Flowers’ sixth free pass of the night against six strikeouts. Reliever Alberto “Chi Chi” Zamora got Batavia center fielder Jim Newhook to ground to McClain, who redeemed himself by starting a double play. Zamora yielded a single to Veryzer – the only Trojan to collect more than one hit – then got Mappin to ground out to end the inning.

In the ninth, right fielder Bob Flanders and Eschen singled for Batavia, bringing the tying run to the plate with two out. Zamora struck out pinch-hitter Bob LaFrance to end the game in 2 hours and 45 minutes. A game roundup from the Batavia paper said that Geneva’s pitching “was the dominant factor in the contest,” adding that Flowers “kept the Trojans well shackled.”10 The paper also praised Trojans pitchers for their control, noting that the home pitchers allowed just one walk against eight strikeouts. Batavia, however, allowed 10 hits; Hayes led the way for Geneva with three.

Flowers could not keep up the pace in future appearances. In his next start, against Jamestown on June 28, Flowers “had trouble from the start,” lasting 2⅔ innings and giving up six hits and four runs, two earned.11 In mid-July, the Senators dispatched Flowers, McClain, and Grice to Anderson.12 The Geneva paper noted that Flowers “was never again as effective” as he was on Opening Day. He left town with a 1-0 record and a 3.97 ERA.13

Things went even more poorly for Flowers at Anderson, where he racked up an 0-1 record and a 12.38 ERA in six games, giving up 20 hits and 4 walks in eight innings. He rejoined the Geneva team for the last week of the season.14 He was again hit hard, as his ERA in Geneva ballooned to 5.54 at season’s end. Both Geneva and Batavia finished the season out of the running. Geneva placed fifth in an eight-team league at 34-36, 12 games behind first-place Oneonta; Batavia finished seventh at 30-40, 16 games out.

Internet searches suggest that Flowers returned to the Lumberton area and pitched local amateur ball.15 His career may have been brief, but he can always say he made the pros, and his single pro win puts him one ahead of most people who have ever stood on a pitcher’s mound.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Gary Belleville and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general player, team and season data.

Neither Baseball-Reference nor Retrosheet provides box scores of minor-league games, but the June 24, 1971, editions of the Geneva (New York) Times and Batavia (New York) Daily News published box scores.

The author thanks FultonHistory.com for making many of the cited newspapers available online, and also thanks John Fredland for research assistance.

The author has no personal connection to Ken Flowers but chose to write about him as an example of the many players who have achieved brief success in the minor leagues.

Photo of Ken Flowers from the Geneva Times, June 24, 1971: 22.

Notes

1 Gable quote: “NY-P Baseball Returns to Geneva as Auburn Visits,” Geneva (New York) Times, June 24, 1971: 20. Other information: “Nine Pitchers to Hurl for Senators,” Geneva Times, June 24, 1971: 22. In a survey filled out for publicist and historian William J. Weiss in 1971, Flowers also mentioned throwing a no-hitter, two two-hitters, and a four-hitter in 1970 as his team won the North Carolina Senior League championship, and that he struck out 20 hitters in his final high-school game.

2 Two other players who appeared for the 1971 Geneva team, Dave Criscione and Stan Thomas, also went on to the majors, but they did not play on Opening Day and might not have been on the team’s roster at that point.

3 Batavia players who reached the majors but did not play on June 23 were Danny Fife, Gary Ignasiak, and Phil Mankowski. Not all of them may have been on the roster on Opening Day.

4 The full litany, as per Baseball-Reference: Drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 5th round of the 1967 MLB June Amateur Draft from Lakeside HS (Atlanta), the Baltimore Orioles in the 2nd round of the 1968 MLB January Draft-Secondary Phase from State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota (Bradenton, Florida), the Atlanta Braves in the 4th round of the 1968 MLB June Draft-Secondary Phase from State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota (Bradenton), the San Diego Padres in the 2nd round of the 1969 MLB January Draft-Secondary Phase from State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota (Bradenton), the Minnesota Twins in the 6th round of the 1969 MLB June Draft-Secondary Phase from State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota (Bradenton) and the Detroit Tigers in the 3rd round of the 1971 MLB June Draft-Secondary Phase from Florida State University (Tallahassee).

5 Pallone’s Sporting News umpire card confirms that the 1971 New York-Penn League season was his first as a professional arbiter.

6 Play-by-play descriptions throughout this story are taken from Bob Beswick, “Trojan Bats Are Stifled as They Bow to Geneva in NY-P League Opener,” Batavia (New York) Daily News, June 24, 1971: 8, and Norm Jollow, “Senators Get Strong Pitching, Hitting in Opener,” Geneva Times, June 24, 1971. The page number of the latter story is cut off in the available online version of the story.

7 Greg Gromek was the son of former Indians and Tigers pitcher Steve Gromek. The younger Gromek, playing mainly at shortstop and in the outfield, hit .213 in 49 games with Batavia in 1971. He then switched to pitching and played three more minor-league seasons, peaking at Double-A.

8 Jim Veryzer, who never reached the majors, was the brother of Tom Veryzer, who did.

9 McClain committed seven errors in 71 chances at shortstop with Geneva in 1971, for a .901 fielding percentage.

10 Beswick.

11 Norm Jollow, “‘Bat Night’ Ends Quickly When Relievers Appear,” Geneva Times, June 29, 1971: 23. Flowers pitched a shutout inning of relief between his first two starts.

12 The Geneva Times reported jokingly that Polly Gable, wife of manager Frank, might have predicted Flowers’ departure when she looked at the Senators’ roster and noted that Flowers was the only pitcher on it whose last name was not six letters long. This witticism made it into the Class A Leagues column of The Sporting News, August 14, 1971: 45. Both the Geneva Times and The Sporting News noted that Flowers was notified of his transfer to Anderson at 2:30 A.M.

13 “Rained Out Senators Make Roster Changes,” Geneva Times, July 16, 1971: 20.

14 Norm Jollow, “Ginter’s No-Hit Game First for Geneva Since 1961,” Geneva Times, August 25, 1971; 24.

15 “Kenny Flowers” is listed as pitching in a local baseball game in “Fairgrove Tops Lumberton 3-1,” Lumberton (North Carolina) Robesonian, July 14, 1976: 11. He also appears in a photo of a local champion team in the Robesonian of August 3, 1975: 2B.