A Survey of Minor League Literature

This article was originally published in The SABR Review of Books, Volume III (1988).

 

If you spent most of your formative years in Nebraska, as I did, the major leagues were like a fairy tale. In the late 40’s and early 50’s the closest major league park was in St. Louis. Harry Caray’s voice filled the evening air in those days, and most people were Cardinal fans, if anything. There were exceptions, of course. I was a Cub fan, thanks for listening to Bert Wilson during the afternoons of the summer of 1948. My real penchant for masochism clearly manifested itself that season, as the Cubs finished last and I loved them

The real game in town, however, was found in Omaha Municipal Stadium, where the Western League Cardinals operated. Good baseball was played there. The home team wore uniforms which were identical to those of their famous parent, and when the Des Moines Bruins came to town, wearing Cub hand-me-downs, it was St. Louis and Chicago all over again. But that was imaginary. Our Cardinals were real. We thrilled to the heroics of Ed Lewinski and Larry Miggins; wait till these guys get to St. Louis! Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter, you better look out. I loved it when the Lincoln Athletics came to town with big Lou Limmer at first base. He was from New York, too. Talked funny, didn’t he, when he signed your autograph book. I bet he’ll be great when he gets to Connie Mack’s team. Look at Bobby Shantz. He made it, and Limmer will be there next year, just wait and see

This was real baseball as far as I was concerned. I had spent the summer of 1946 in California and there discovered the Pacific Coast League. There was a real major league. Yes, they’re better than our Western League boys, but not much. Every now and then a Western Leaguer would go out to the Coast – Cliff Aberson did that and played well. And don’t forget the Kansas City Blues. We could hear their games once in a while if you adjusted your radio just so. The American Association sounded okay. Maybe, next year we’ll go down for a Blues game.

My experiences were not unique. There is a hard core of West Coast fans who are resentful to this day that the Dodgers and Giants displaced the PCL Angels, Stars, and Seals. An annual reunion of Newark Bear alumni and fans draws a sizable turnout. The Rochester Red Wings have had a solid following. Clearly, the interest in the minor leagues runs strong and deep.

Yet, the amount of literature on the minor leagues does not reflect that involvement. I think that this is partly a result of geography. The great publishing houses of the nation center around New York, where awareness of the minor leagues, let alone interest, hardly exists. This seems to have always been true.

The minors have always been viewed negatively, as a troublesome part of Organized Baseball, and what writing there was merely reinforced that notion. As early as May, 1913 William Phelon asked, “What are we going to do about the minor leagues?” in Baseball Magazine. “What’s the Matter with the Minor Leagues?” by Ed Barrow merely rephrased that question four years later in the same publication. And E.S. Barnard wanted to know, “What is wrong with Minor League Baseball?” in November, 1930

The answer to that question should have been, “Nothing.” Minor league baseball was great and enjoyed by those who watched it. You just couldn’t read much about it outside of The Sporting News, which faithfully tabulated the results and printed all the gossip. The first book which dealt with the minor leagues, according to the Grobani Guide to Baseball Literature, was History of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues by John Foster. This was a brief history of the minor leagues printed by the National Association office in 1926 and is rare today. The Pacific Coast League put out an annual record book compiled by league statistician Leo Moriarty during the ’20s, but these were limited in scope. In 1932, William Ruggles produced his History of the Texas League in his role as secretary of that distinguished circuit

What I would consider the first real book on minor league baseball was published in early 1939, and it was original for its day. Fred Lange was a native of the San Francisco Bay Area who had played in the Western League during the 1887-88 seasons. Like so many Californians, he could not leave his native habitat and gave up a promising career to go into business in Oakland. But he remained a keen observer of the baseball scene, and at the age of sixty-nine, published his memories under the title, History of Baseball in California and Pacific Coast Leagues 1847-1938  – Memories and Musings of an Old Time Player.

Lange’s history is an important document. He covers baseball on the Pacific Coast from its inception and does so in such a way that the reader feels a sense of being there. As Lange ages, his descriptions of events are not quite as sharp, but they are still revealing. The bulk of the book is focused on the Pacific Coast League from its beginning in 1903 through the 1938 season. While Lange doesn’t devote much space to the events of each season, he includes biographical sketches of PCL luminaries throughout. The tone is strictly conversational. You learn that Jimmy Reese is engaged to marry the daughter of the Emeryville police chief, and Lange suggests that you stop by Reese’s restaurant for “good eats.” Ernie Lombardi is still living in his childhood home and has two lovely sisters who are very proud of him.

There are some minor spelling inaccuracies, but generally speaking, Lange’s memories are reliable, and he used the newspapers to check most of his facts. As a result, the book is an invaluable source for the PCL historian. Unfortunately, it was privately published and copies are not easily found today

During the post World War II period, a number of publications were issued by the various leagues. These tended to be of the record book variety for the most part. Some clubs issued yearbooks in the fashion of the major leagues. Probably the best of this type of publication were the Rollie Tiuitt Portland Beaver yearbooks, which were full of pictures and statistics. The American Association had its own version of Who’s Who in Baseball during the 1947-51 seasons. Packed with photographs, these jewels were impressively done

In 1952 the National Association commemorated its golden anniversary by publishing The Story of Minor League Baseball. If the earlier version was too short, this 742-page volume more than corrected that oversight. It was prepared by Robert Finch, L.H. Addington and Edward Morgan. Finch and Addington had long associations with the minor league offices. Addington was Judge Bramham’s assistant for many years, while Finch was the National Association secretary for a spell. The book consists of a historical section on the National Association written by Finch and Addington and an extensive compilation of league records which was prepared by Morgan. There is very little that he left out. The record holders by league, outstanding performance by individual players, managers who made good in the majors–all of this information can be found here. A detailed index is provided as well.

I find this book to be very useful for the researcher as well as the general minor league fan. Some of the work is now dated, and there are errors in some of the numbers. It is essentially a political work, if a baseball book can be described as such. The National Association was a very fragile institution in the early ’50s, and the issuance of The Story of Minor League Baseball is partially designed to remind Organized Baseball in general how important the minor league structure was to the game. The book does not seem to be wholly intended for the general public, and a limited number of copies were published

As important as the publication of The Story of Minor League Baseball was to minor league literature, the landmark book is Bush League by Robert Obojski. Published in 1974, it is the first history of the minors to be given mass circulation. Like Gaul, Bush League is divided into three parts. Part 1 gives a story of the minors from 1877 to date in a two-chapter overview. In this section are included individual sections on the important contributions of Branch Rickey, Frank Shaughnessy and George Weiss to the minor leagues. Part 2 is devoted to individual histories of the high minor leagues with yearly highlights, league champions and records. Obojski also profiles the Middle Atlantic League, which he considers the toughest Class C league in history.

Part 3 deals with several of the great minor league players; the feats of Joe Hauser and Ike Boone are given prominence. Then there are listings of outstanding accomplishments and all of the cities known to have fielded minor league teams. Vern Luse has enlarged this list in recent years.

One of the fine features of Bush League is its upbeat tone. For the first time, we have a book that is positive about the minors. Obojski praises the leagues and the players and clearly shows how important the minor leagues are to baseball history. I think it is fair to credit the book with much of the increased interest in the minors since that time. It has led to the publication of much fine work on the minors.

Generally speaking, books on minor league baseball fall into one of two categories. They are either a history or nostalgic look at specific leagues and clubs, or they are descriptions by players of life as a minor league player. Of the latter, the message is always the same. We were young, it was tough riding the buses, we drank a lot and played practical jokes on each other, and we worked hard to get out of there. Sometimes we made the majors, sometimes we didn’t. And we almost always started in Class D.

The classic of this type is A False Spring by Pat Jordan. It is the story of a high school phenom who played three years in the Braves’ farm system beginning in 1959. Jordan was a bonus baby and as such, rated a little higher on the totem pole than some of his teammates. But he still had to suffer the same experiences as the rest.

Jordan is an exceptional writer, and his skill in painting word pictures of the teams, the players and the surroundings make this book the model of its type. It is not so much about minors as it is about a boy growing up. McCook, Davenport, Waycross — they’re all well described, and you understand what it must have been like in the lower minors almost thirty years ago.

At the other end of the spectrum is Low and Outside: The True Confessions of a Minor League Player by Jerry Kettle. This is everything that A False Spring is not. It is badly written and careless with detail; Kettle can’t seem to get anyone’s name right. Manager Benny Zientara becomes Vinny Zintera; Bill Posedel is Bill Fosdel. The least his editor could do is look up the names. Kettle comes across as a cocky unpleasant jock, and inspires no sympathy when his career is shortened by an arm injury. Kettle played in the Phillies system, and life in Mattoon, Tifton, and High Point-Thomasville is not much different from McCook.

Somewhat in between these two is What’s a Nice Harvard Boy Like You Doing in the Bushes? by Rick Wolff. Wolff, the son of announcer Bob Wolff, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1973 and spent the next two years as a Tiger farmhand. Anderson, South Carolina and Clinton, Iowa are the locales featured here. Wolff focuses on the camaraderie he found with his teammates and does a reasonably good job. The book is a bit of a lightweight, however, and I expected more, considering the Ivy League background.

Of similar quality is Five Straight Errors on Ladies Day by Walter Nagel. This is a reminiscence of the author’s career of his early days in the Pacific Coast League. Nagel played at Los Angeles and Portland in the 1905-07 era and had a brief major league career with Pittsburgh and the Red Sox. The book is really oral history, written almost sixty years after the events. The most interesting discovery is how Walter Johnson almost became an Angel.

Don Honig used his formidable interviewing skills to produce Up From the Minors in 1970, but his book falls below his usual standards. Seven prominent major leaguers of the time, including Pete Rose and Tom Seaver, recount their experiences in the minors. The accounts are very reasoned and articulate but lack any real vitality; the exceptions are Bobby Bonds and Reggie Smith. Each had the additional burden of being a young black in the South during his first year in Organized Baseball. One would think that the Giants and Red Sox would be a bit more sensitive to the problems these young players faced

In 1984 Marc Gunther used much the same approach in Basepaths. It is the story of careers from the lower minors up through the majors and beyond. The author interviews a different player at each step and then summarizes each career in his epilogue. The emphasis in this book is on career development, not life in the minors itself. A good book, though, and well worth reading

Like two peas in a pod are Wait Till I Make the Show, by Bob Ryan and Beating the Bushes by Frank Dolson. The books were written by two excellent sportswriters eight years apart, using the same format. They traveled with minor league teams to get a real flavor of life in the minor leagues. Curiously, Jim Bunning’s career as a manager in the Phillies system is featured in both books. Dolson’s was written in 1982, a bit longer and confined to the Phillies farms as one would expect from his Philadelphia Inquirer background. Ryan’s book features a wonderful description of the Termite Palace in Honolulu, where the Islanders played. If ever a park resembled Sulphur Dell in Nashville, this was it. I think that Dolson is the better of the two. Wonder if we’ll complete this trilogy in 1990?

Worthy of note is Baseball and the Cold War by Howard Senzel. This is an unusual book, somewhat autobiographical, which focuses on the infamous shooting incident at Havana in 1959. Their manager Frank Verdi of the Rochester Red Wings was wounded by a shot fired by a Castro minion at a Sugar King game.

Senzel grew up in Rochester, found baseball as a boy, abandoned it during the 60’s when he became a radical, and then returns to the game in 1975 by reliving the events of the shooting. He realizes that baseball is his rod and his staff. Sounds like a SABR member to me.

I think that the best writing on the minors falls into the league and team history category. It is not surprising, considering that some of the most illustrious SABR members have produced work in this area: Joe Overfield, Ralph LinWeber, Jim Bready, Arthur Schott. The International League has generated the most coverage by far. However, there are some excellent books on several other leagues

The best of these histories is Overfield’s The 100 Seasons of Buffalo Baseball. lt covers the entire history of the Bisons, including their years in the National League, concluding with the 1984 season. Each year is given its own summary chapter and statistics. There are numerous photographs (including several action shots in Offermann Stadium), the great Bisons are profiled, and the importance of the club to the community is given much attention.

The advantage that the author has over most minor league historians is his long association with the team. He saw his first Bison game in 1925, and with time out for World War II service, has been a faithful supporter ever since. He personally saw most of the greats and was an official of the community-owned Bisons of the ’50s; this gives his history an authenticity that is lacking in others. It’s an outstanding history of a ball club and could hardly be improved upon

Two excellent histories of the Newark Bears have been produced by SABR members. Randy Linthurst produced a three volume set: Newark Bears; Newark Bears: The Middle Years; and Newark Bears: The Final Years. They cover the Bears from 1931, when the club was purchased by Colonel Ruppert and the Yankees through the final season of 1949. It’s a year-by-year account of the club and naturally concentrates on the great 1937 team. The author provides an abundance of pictures and includes correspondence from former players and fans. The books are small, about one hundred pages each, and could have easily been consolidated into one. Linthurst presents a very thoughtful analysis of the decline and fall of the Newark franchise, giving as reasons (beyond the obvious impact of television) decline of the park neighborhood, the Yankees’ need to stock the Kansas City franchise, the recall of Bob Porterfield in 1948

Ron Mayer’s well-illustrated book, The 1937 Newark Bears, provides more extensive detail on the 1937 season and the careers of the players. He begins his account with the 1932 season, building up to the championship year. A capsule biography of each of the key Bears is included, and there is good statistical information along with an index. Mayer includes a virtual play-by-play of the Junior World series with Columbus where the Bears came from three games behind to win the championship; this is the most exciting part of the season. A very well-written book

The Canadian members of the International League receive attention in Bill Humber’s Cheering for the Home Team. Although this book is not exclusively about the minors, it is an historical overview of baseball in Canada and naturally devotes much attention to the Canadian minor league teams. A more complete report on the Toronto Maple Leafs is found in Baseball’s Back in Town, by Louis Cauz. This book was issued in 1977 to commemorate the creation of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Cauz has produced a very fine book. Its emphasis is on the Maple Leafs, and the history of that club is presented in a summary form, decade by decade. The photographs in this book are remarkable. There are pictures of all of the Toronto ballparks, team pictures, good action shots and prominent Maple Leafs, some of which are in color. No statistics to speak of but there is a brief bibliography. The photography by itself makes this one a great buy

Jim Bready profiles the minor league orioles in The Home Team, a history of baseball in Baltimore from 1858. This small volume of 124 pages allocates a mere nine pages to the minor league team, but they are good ones. Bready includes several good mini-biographies of the stars of the 1919-25 pennant winners along with many rare photographs. Although I enjoyed this book very much, I think the author could have given more space to the International League team. After all, Baltimore was a league member for 51 years.

The successor team to the Orioles, the Richmond Virginians, is memorialized by Elliott Irving in Remembering the Vees. This is a history of the club during the 1954-64 period before it became the Richmond Braves. The author gives a brief year-by-year account and then adds a unique touch by reporting on the post-playing careers of the Vees. He tracked down everyone who played for the Virginians to learn of their post-playing careers. He received responses from virtually every player, and these vignettes fill almost two-thirds of the book. There are many photographs, but the quality of reproduction is not good.

It seems that International League fans had love affairs with their teams. Joe Overfield had his with the Bisons, and John Remington had a similar relationship with the Rochester Red Wings. His The Red Wings: A Love Affair is a short nostalgic piece on his favorite team. This book resembles a yearbook in its format, and concentrates on the many fine players who were Red Wings over the years. The great championship teams of 1929-31 are highlighted, and there are many pictures. Remington relied heavily on a previous book Rochester Diamond Echoes, which was more detailed. He could have included more statistics.

A definitive history of the International League has yet to be written. Although David Chrisman made an effort to do so in his three-volume History of the International League 1919-60, he falls well short of the mark. The series is a year-by-year compendium of the league results. The lineup of each club, the pitching staffs and the position in the league standings are recapped, and a brief description of the pennant race is given. At the end of Volume Three, an appendix lists the league leaders in the various categories. The books are useful for quick reference, but there are numerous factual errors which severely detract from the work. The most egregious mistake is identifying first baseman Iggy Walters of the 1939 Syracuse Chiefs as Bucky Walters during the finest season of the Reds’ pitcher’s career! The author seemed to recap the player names from the Guides without regard to who they really were; they are simply names in type and as lifeless as names in a property tax ledger. 

This is a case of a self-published book strongly in need of editorial assistance. The many errors should have been caught, and if they had been, the series would have been far more useful. Chrisman is at his best when dealing in general descriptions. The sections on the great Oriole teams in the ’20s and the Red Wings of 1929-31 are well done.

In contrast to the abundance of work on the International League, the other two Triple A leagues are not well covered at all. There is no general history on either the American Association of the Pacific Coast League, and team histories are few. Of the original members of the Association, which was the most stable of minor leagues, only Toledo and Louisville can boast of their own history. Ralph LinWeber produced his Toledo Baseball Guide in 1943; A.H. Tarvin authored 75 Years on Louisville Diamonds in 1940. Obviously, both works need considerable updating.

One of the newer Association clubs has its own history, however, and it is a good one. Mark Foster’s The Denver Bears covers the history of baseball in Denver from its earliest days through the 1982 season. Most of the attention is given to the Bears in the post-World War II period as members of the ‘Western League, the American Association and a five year sojourn in the Pacific Coast League. Foster is a Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Denver, and his work reflects his profession. It is well-researched and well-written without the pedantry that is sometimes found in baseball books by scholars. The book contains many fine photographs, including a large number of action shots. The bibliography is somewhat lacking, and the author could have included more player profiles and statistics

The Pacific Coast League is also lacking a general history. In 1984 Ken Stadler wrote his memoirs in The Pacific Coast League: One Man’s Memories. Stadler grew up in Los Angeles during the ’30s and ’40s, where he was a devout fan of the Hollywood Stars. He began watching the games in 1938, when the Stars first came to town, and stayed with them through the 1957 season, their last. Much of the book is devoted to life at Gilmore Field from the viewpoint of the fan. The author gives the reader a real feel for the park, the players and the era. Stadler relies very heavily on his memory, which at times is faulty. Nevertheless, this is a very useful little book, which gives a good overview of the PCL

It isn’t often that a reviewer has the opportunity to mention his own books, but this report would not be complete were I to omit discussion of The Angels: Los Angeles in the Pacific Coast League 1919-57 and The Hollywood Stars: Baseball in Movieland 1926-57. These two books are informal histories of the two Southern California clubs in the Pacific Coast League and have been reviewed elsewhere. They preceded the Stadler book and were the first works on the PCL since Lange’s work in 1938. 

Just off the presses is Gary Waddingham’s The Seattle Rainiers 1938-42. This is a detailed account of the best years in the history of that franchise, beginning with the year that Emil Sick bought the decrepit Seattle Indians and saw them win three straight pennants in 1939-41. Waddingham was there for many of those games but relies on his research rather than his memory. There are a few pictures and season statistics. The last chapter is the best. The author recounts what it was like to attend a ball game in Seattle during the summer of 1941. It’s an extremely vivid recreation and worth the price of the book by itself.

The Texas League has been blessed with two fine league histories, which were written fifty-five years apart. William Ruggles was the Texas League statistician beginning in 1920, and he made the league his life’s work. His History of the Texas League was first published in 1932 and revised through the 1950 season. An official publication of the league itself, the book is a year-by-year history with an incredible amount of detail. Complete rosters are shown for each club and each year as well as listings of all the managers and umpires. In addition, there is a complete alphabetical player index and many team pictures. It’s a tremendous source for the Texas League researcher.

It would seem difficult to improve on Ruggles’ work, but Bill O’Neal has done just that. He commemorates the league’s centennial with The Texas League: A Century of Baseball 1888-1987. This book should be used as a model for other league histories. It gives a decade-by-decade account of the Texas League as a whole, then follows with brief histories of each of the clubs. The author includes a section on the ballparks and profiles the great players. As a grand finale, he includes an appendix which lists the league leaders year by year in all major categories. As part of his work, O’Neal visited each of the league cities and many of the old ballpark sites. He is a third-generation Texas League fan who probably knows the league better than anyone ever did. Simply an exceptional bit of history.

Club histories of the Texas League are few. The Wichita Falls Spudders are well described by Al Parker in his Baseball Giant Killers. The Spudders had a short thirteen-year existence 1920-32, a time when Parker was sports editor of the local newspaper. He probably saw this team more than anyone else, and the book is essentially one of reminiscence. Parker used Ruggles as his major reference and includes a number of good photographs. Do you know what a Spudder is?

The Oklahoma City 89ers published Old Times to the Good Times: Oklahoma City Baseball. The book covers the history of Oklahoma City through five leagues beginning in 1905. Written in the style of a sports publicist, the book summarizes the seasons of Oklahoma City baseball, most of which were spent in the Texas League. There are many pictures and reproduced newspaper headlines. Records are primarily for the American Association 89ers, through the 1980 season.

Histories of the Southern Association are limited to brief booklets on individual clubs. The best of these is Seventy Years with The Pelicans by Arthur Schott, the distinguished baseball historian of the state of Louisiana. This was published originally in 1957 by the New Orleans Pelicans and reissued by Mr. Schott in 1987. It is a description of baseball in New Orleans from 1887 through the 1956 season. The performance of the club is summarized, there are brief profiles of club officials and managers and the box scores of famous games are included. An interesting feature is the opening day Pelican lineup for each season 1901-56. Highlights of the Dixie Series are included along with important club records. This is a nicely done volume which is very useful to the researcher.

League and club history is very sparse below the Double A level, consisting of short monographs for the most part. Randy Linthurst did such a work on the 1947 Trenton Giants of the Interstate League, and James Maywar wrote a brief essay on the 1926 Port Huron Saints of the Michigan-Ontario league. David Chrisman produced The History of the Piedmont League in 1986, that resembles closely his earlier work on the International League. Unfortunately, it has some of the same problems of inaccuracy, and its usefulness is limited. Merritt Clifton’s Disorganized Baseball, a history of the Quebec Provincial League, is more anecdotal. The Last Rebel Yell by Ken Brooks gives a brief look at the Alabama-Florida League. None of these works is essential to one’s library. 

While it is certainly true that the amount of minor league literature is small compared to books on other subjects, the number of books is on the rise. SABR members have contributed more than their share, and there are more to come. I think we have only scratched the surface.