A Tale of Two Cities: Former Scribe Recalls High Jinks in Kansas City and Louisville

In an official visit to the town of the big bat factory in 1960, could there be forgiveness to their hostile invaders who ruined the first trip to a professional ballpark in 1924 for an innocent kid of 11?

These haughty marauders, who called themselves Colonels and were heavily armed with weapons from that factory, came to a brand new facility and mercilessly mistreated the defending league champion Kansas City Blues, 9 to 1.

A timely intervention by a dove of peace provided evidence that they deserved to lose and the first impulse to throw the KC BLUES KNOTHOLE GAME PIN NO. 2495 into the nearby Kaw River was vetoed. That dove, also called Mom, knew what she was doing. Good thing, too, because it is still worn proudly on occasions, alongside another as a lifetime member of the Baseball Writers of America, class of 1937.

Along the way in that lifetime there were some fabulous side trips into that wondrously phony hoopla of horn-tooting called Public Relations and/or Promotion. And so here came Louisville in 1960. And a super good guy, Joe Burke — who had sales-pitched and won Louisville as the convention city for the annual winter baseball meetings — always one of the sparkling events on the annual diamond calendar. It was in December but this was a preparation session, alerting the townfolks that always “IT’S FUN TO BE A FAN.”

As the PR rep from minor league headquarters in Columbus, another troublesome town in the American Association, I had instant rapport with guys and dolls, happy to call themselves old-timers who remembered past heroes with the other teams, the Toledo Mudhens, Columbus Senators, Indianapolis Indians, St. Paul Saints, Minneapolis Millers, Milwaukee Brewers and those hometown Blues.

There was an energetic No. 2 man with top honcho Burke, a Notre Dame grad, Dan O’Brien, who eventually succeeded this drummer in the minor league jazz section.

Amidst all the foofaraw there was a well-kept secret but we got in because of proximity. Sequestered away while the Colonels were on a road tip were 21 brand new 1961 model Edsels, the car for everybody’s future. We were shamelessly secretive. It had a grill that looked like a horse collar and was so creatively bad it might well have taken the auto industry back to horse and buggy days. Well, you couldn’t blame the Colonels. They weren’t in town.

Louisville was just a spoke in the big-wheel Edsel caper. That stash, inside Parkway Field, was one of many across the land where on a designated date there was a mass unveiling to auto critics who mainly gave them a rating of 4-knocks.

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In no particular sequence, because memories do not come in numerical order, call 1939 a vintage year in this Tale of Two Cities.

Kansas City was the site for the American Association All-Star Game and on a rainy night in Louisville provided the lightning.

The game was washed away and created a session of unbridled sociability in the Hotel Muehlebach, owned by George Muehlebach, also the proprietor of the ballpark of the same name. The drinks kept tinkling with no curfew, not even a seventh inning stretch, and out of a not quite clear-blue sky, here came Larry MacPhail, a red-haired arsonist.

MacPhail, top honcho for the Brooklyn Dodgers, upstaged the storm-struck all-stars with spectacular details of the big deal in which he acquired shortstop Pee Wee Reese from the Louisville Colonels, a sure-fire prospect for the Baseball Hall of Fame, which had just been opened that very year.

In the wettened atmosphere of the Muehlebach hospitality suite, there was some negative reaction that leaned on MacPhail’s renowned touchiness. Harold (Spike) Claassen of the Associated Press observed that there was a bumper crop of shortstops budding in the Association that season, and that frail Pee Wee was not the best. He noted that his pallor indicated he might be a “lung job and maybe you just bought him a spot on the Brooklyn bench.”

The comments from the 6-foot-8 Claassen, who might well have been a varsity basketball center for the Iowa Hawkeyes, where he studied diplomacy before joining AP, brought instant action.

“Pow” was the one-punch response, knocking Claassen slightly sideways, and effectively ending the hilarities as every one committed to a typewriter quickly departed for their own interlude of punching. And supporting Spike’s research on abundant shortstops, the Blues had a nice little fellow, Phil Rizzuto, who followed Pee Wee into the Hall of Fame. There were two others of quality. Jimmy Pofahl of the Millers, and Huck Geary, a rover and early drop-out because he had a quirk involving departures that earned him the nickname of homesick Huck.

Of anticlimactic consequence, the All-Stars inundated the Blues, 19-7, the following afternoon, July 19.

Ah, but there were monumental consequences for back-to-back afternoons in 1927, when mighty Joe Hauser hit a couple of $100-plus home runs. Hauser, who earned recognition as the home run king of the minors, was with the Blues for this single season and was not happy with the enormous dimensions of the park, especially right field. Not only was it a toll call from home plate, there also was a steep terrace and a right field wall which never had been conquered in a league game.

In an exhibition benefit for Mercy Hospital, shortly after the park was opened, Babe Ruth hit one out with a fungo bat but it didn’t count.

The first of the Hauser howitzers was on a Saturday. The ball cleared the wall with room to spare and the fans were delirious. Various hats were passed and there was a time-out while the grounds crew plucked coins thrown on the field. It was no big deal for Joe and so he duplicated his feat the next day. This time the ball bounced against a sign-board across the street. There was no time for counting the second deluge of money because the Blues were racing to catch a train for a road trip.

Ernie Mehl, columnist for the Kansas City Star, sat with Hauser on the floor of the lurching train and toted up more than $100 as he recalled it.

The park, a thing of beauty, was an early day monster and produced a dead last finish after the 1923 season, in which the Blues won the pennant and set various hitting records. The pennant team, involving such authentic fence-busters as Bunny Brief and manager Wilbur Good, had been developed for little old Association Park, a hit-hippodrome where balls crashed over and against the fences with ear-splitting regularity. In the first full season in the new spread of cattle ranch dimensions, those homers became routine catches and the Blues finished dead last.

Long gone from the old hometown when the Athletics came in 1955 with all their white elephants, the most notable link with the past was in 1964. The so-called Major League A’s got involved with an authentic genius who also was a borderline madman.

Charley Finley, who dyed sheep various colors and leased grazing space on that mountainous terrace, tired of such gimmicks, as did the fans, and he sought greener pastures.

This time, the Tale of Two Cities originated in a third city, and the comic opera aspect defiled the memory of Charles Dickens. Even in New York, a haven for literary impostors, it was difficult to recall anything much weirder.

Finley, who had nourished the “blue grass roots” of Kentucky fandom with not much notice, had announced that he was ready to move the Kansas City franchise to Louisville in time for the 1964 major league season, though it was in mid-January of that year.

This scribe, after two decades as a staffer for the United Press, had taken over as the Eastern Manager for The Sporting News in New York, and was totally surprised, as was another Hall of Fame shortstop, president Joe Cronin of the American League. Joe even had Kansas City roots on those 1927 Blues.

Now, notably steamed up, because the American League schedule had been completed and no procedures had been developed, even in Louisville, he called a full-house press conference to denounce Finley’s contemplations.

Cronin informed Finley that the league had voted almost unanimously against his proposal and gave him a February 1 deadline to renew with Kansas City or be expelled from baseball. Finley, in turn, declared that he would test the legality of Cronin’s edict “as soon as I can get the case into court.”

The he sprinted away with a dozen or more scribes in pursuit.

“Follow the elevator,” was the rally cry as just one scribe, Joe Reichler of the AP, managed to squeeze in. When he resurfaced, he noted that it wasn’t worth the trip, because Finley had nothing more to say.

Cronin, ever the politically correct ambassador, noted that he had nothing against Louisville and that he had enjoyable trips there when he played with the Blues, adding that “I’m sure they aren’t ready for us.”

Ah, memories. How sweet they are!

CARL LUNDQUIST was a United Press staffer 1937-56 and a lifetime member of Baseball Writers Association of America.