Down Memory Lane With San Diego’s Vintage PCL Padres

Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt of an article that appeared in an issue of Baseball Gold.

 

SAN DIEGO — Trivia question: Who hit the longest homer in Padres history?

A. Dave Winfield  B. Al Ferrara  C. Nate Colbert  D. Ted Williams.

(Hint: His salary, in the days before Southern California inflation hit 25%, was $150 a month.)

Answer: Collect one free Big Mac if you said Ted Williams. This was at Lane Field, the Padres’ first home, down at the foot of Broadway, next to the railroad station.  The ball landed in a freight car and got a free ride to Los Angeles.

If you didn’t realize Williams was once a Padre, perhaps you didn’t know the following were also: Bobby Doerr, Pepper Martin, Bob Lemon, Tony Perez, Rocky Colavito, Vince DiMaggio, Herb Score, Luke Easter, Minnie Miñoso and Al Rosen.

These were vintage Padres, the Pacific Coast League version.

Rosen, a Padre for half of 1949, spent a lot of time on the seat of his flannel uniform. Batting behind slugger Max West, Rosen was often a target of retaliation for irate pitchers.  During a game at Oakland, West connected for one of his 48 homers that year, and down went Rosen.

But this time Rosen decided to exact a little retaliation of his own, and he charged angrily toward the mound.

Waiting for him, fists up, ready to defend his pitcher, was none other than that noted pugilist, Billy Martin. Rosen and Martin embraced, then rolled around the mound a little. But evidently Martin was saving his best uppercut for a future marshmallow salesman, and Rosen escaped without so much as a scratch.

The Padres of the Depression and post-War years are in their sixties now, and none too happy with the state of affairs in baseball. But most of them remember their time in the Pacific Coast League fondly, if only infrequently.

The pay was modest, the season stretched to 184 games and beyond, but something drove a man like Al Olsen to devote 11 years of his youth to the pursuit  of… what?  Camaraderie? Survival?

Johnny Ritchey, the first black in the Coast League and the Padre catcher in ’48 and ’49, says he endured racial slurs and harassment that made his life almost intolerable. Yet he hung on in the minors for nearly a decade. Why?

“Oh, I couldn’t begin to tell you now, too many years have passed,” Ritchey said.  “Maybe it was pride. Or just the need to make a buck.”

There were no six-figure salaries and no unions to enhance the bargaining power of athletes 40 years ago. By merely mentioning the word “union” a player would find himself discarded from the roster. Of course, Marvin Miller hasn’t done much to enrich today’s Triple-A farmhands, either, and that bothers ex-Padre Johnny (Swede) Jensen.

Now a semi-retired building contractor in Escondido, Jensen, 63, thinks today’s minor leaguers are “neglected.”  He wouldn’t want his son to go into baseball, although if he had it to do over again, he would probably choose the same career.

What would make Jensen relive his days with the Padres was the kind of juvenile fun exemplified by a stunt he and catcher Del Ballinger perpetrated one day on umpire Jack Powell.

In those days, baseballs were supplied to the plate umpire simply by tossing them from the home team’s dugout.  At the suggestion of the prankster Ballinger, Jensen obtained a length of twine from trainer Les Cook and nailed one end to a ball.

When Powell called for a new baseball, Jensen unlimbered his arm and rolled the doctored ball into foul territory. Ballinger rose from his crouch behind the plate and signaled to Jensen each time Powell bent over to pick up the ball. Jensen would yank on the string, and Powell would wind up empty-handed as the ball danced back toward the dugout.

After about the fourth attempt to retrieve the ball, Powell ejected Ballinger from the game. Jensen went undetected.

Del Ballinger was always getting into mischief. A boyhood buddy of Ted Williams, Ballinger caught for the Padres from 1941-46. He was probably more accomplished as a flaky character than as a catcher.

Although he often accompanied Williams on fishing trips around San Diego County, Ballinger, a short, stocky fellow with virtually no neck, never learned to swim. The failing almost cost him his life one time when, in pursuit of a foul ball, he tumbled into a foreign dugout four feet deep in water. Incidentally, Ballinger made the catch.

Mention Ballinger’s name to any former Padre over the age of 40 and you’ll immediately be told the classic tale of how the man once pulled a gun on an umpire. But Ballinger, now a bartender in East San Diego, recounts the story with more attention to detail than anyone else.

“I was sitting beside Pepper Martin (the Padres manager in 1946 and a legend unto himself) in the dugout when we heard this loud noise from the tunnel leading to the dressing room. So Pepper sends me to check it out, and there’s the kid holding a big pistol that looks like a .45, only he’s firing caps.

“I ask the kid if I can keep the gun for him, and he lets me, I go back to dugout. Along about the seventh inning, we’re losing, and Pep sends me up to pinch hit. Naturally, the gun is in my back pocket when I go up to the plate.

“Well, the first pitch knocks me down, and I get up kind of upset, y’know? The next pitch, I’m takin’ all the way, and the umpire calls it a strike. All I can think to do is turn and argue, and so I go to my hip pocket to get my point across.

“I put the gun up to the ump’s chest and he starts retreating toward the backstop. I start firing off the caps, and it sounds real, and the fans in the stand behind the plate are all scattering and knocking each other down trying to get out of the way. I happen to glance over in the other dugout — we’re playing against Oakland — and there’s old Casey (Stengel, the Oakland manager) lying on the bench, laughing his head off and kicking his feet up in the air.

“The umpire decides he’s had enough and throws me out, and when our next hitter, Jack Angle, comes up to the plate, he has to be searched by the umpire to see it he’s clean. I wind up being fined $300.”

That same year, 1946, the Padres were playing a day game in Sacramento, and Ballinger was penciled into the lineup to catch the opener of a double-header. As pitcher Ed Vitalich remembers it, one inning was all Ballinger could hold up in the brutal heat.

“He came out to catch the second with nothing but his mitt,” said Vitalich, now 60 and an optometrist in San Diego. “He had taken off his mask and his chest protector and his shin guards, and he caught the whole inning that way. I think somebody else relieved him in the third.”

Vitalich, like a number of former Padres who were contacted, doesn’t enjoy watching or contemplating the game of baseball these days. For one thing, says Vitalich, the pace of the game seems slow compared to football, “I was a fast worker when I was out there on the mound,” he said.  “I’d get the ball and fire.  Otherwise, your fielders would get fidgety.”

Vitalich was watching television recently and happened to tune in a show called “It’s Incredible.” One of the segments featured a gentleman with trained dogs, and Vitalich thought the face looked familiar.  “Turned out to be Chuck Eisenmann, our first baseman in ’46,” Vitalich said.

“I hadn’t seen the guy in more than 30 years, but I surely wouldn’t forget the name or the face. He was a real flake. We used to call him ‘Maj.’ He’d walk down the street in his major’s uniform, looking for broads. I’m not surprised he wound up in Hollywood.”

Where some other Padres wound up:

• Al Olson, 60, who put in 11 years with the team, later became athletic director at San Diego State. Now he teaches physical education.
• Frank Kerr, 62, who caught for the Padres in ’47, later became a Coast League umpire, and then put in 20 years as a draftsman for San Diego County.  Retired.
• Jimmy Reese, 74, former teammate of Babe Ruth, played in San Diego in 1937 and 38. Hasn’t been out of baseball since.
• Al Rosen, who starred with the Cleveland Indians in the 1950s, later became an executive with the New York Yankees. He’s now an executive at an Atlantic City casino. “A prolonged strike would have a disastrous effect on baseball,” he said. “you know, out of sight, out of mind. Baseball is competing for entertainment dollars, like any other enterprise.”
• Bob Kerringan, who pitched the pennant-clincher for the Padres in 1954, is now operations manager for the San Diego Convention and Performing Arts Center. Infielders’ wives wore black and. outfielders kidded them by practicing over-the-fence catches before games he pitched.

For Johnny Ritchey, 56, there are no lighthearted moments to remember. His career in baseball was anything but pleasant. He broke the color barrier in the Pacific Coast League. He thinks the pressure ruined his chances of making it to the big leagues.

“I was born in San Diego, and I didn’t know racism existed until I entered baseball,’ said Ritchey, now a salesman. “I always thought prejudice was just a fairy tale, but in my first game with the Padres, I got my chest protector cut off when a guy slid into home with his spikes high. The only consolation was that I walked away from that collision. The other guy, Bill Shuster, was out of the lineup for three weeks,”

Ritchey said he was treated more cruelly by other ballplayers than by fans. “Nigger” was the nicest thing he was called. He ate and roomed alone. His only friend was trainer Les Cook. He is proud of his role as a trailblazer, but he would rather not have experienced the things that went with being first.

Ritchey, a good-natured man who says he never hated any of his tormentors (“I never wasted any time thinking about them”), believes the pressure made him into a fringe player. ” I always believed I had as much or more ability as Jackie Robinson,” Ritchey said. “I had my shot and I blew it. I had a chance a lot of white guys never get. I’m not bitter.”

From the wooden bench outside the shop, he could see them hitting.

The kid was obsessed. Impatiently he waited for his turn. An hour passed, then two. Finally the coach told him to grab a bat. On the first pitch the kid connected. The ball soared more than 300 feet, the longest hit of the day by any of the 15-year-olds.

What’s your name, kid?” asked the Herbert Hoover High School coach, Wofford Caldwell. The kid said, “Ted Williams.”

This was the spring of 1934. Williams was trying for a spot on the Hoover team. He had just transferred to the school from junior high.

The kid was so skinny that he wore up to three pairs of socks to make his legs look more muscular. But he loved to hit. At recess, he made the other kids shag while he took his cuts.

He paid no attention to girls. He liked to hunt for rabbits in Mission Valley and would ride the streetcar to Ocean Beach to fish for perch (the conductor would make him and his frequent companion, Del Ballinger, sit in back because the fish smelled). But his main interest was hitting.

The playground director at University Heights, near the Williams residence, was Rod Luscomb. More than anyone, he helped the kid learn to hit. Luscomb would toss balls at the kid on a handball court, to develop a more level swing. Then they would go out on the diamond for hours. The kid had exceptional vision ‘he later claimed he could see the ball flatten against the bat at impact — and he practiced endlessly. He became so adept that by his senior year at Hoover, they wouldn’t pitch to him, and tears would roll down the kid’s face.

Years later, when Rod Luscomb lay dying in a hospital in San Diego, a letter from Williams was taped to the wall beside his bed, describing how much his help meant to Williams.

As Luscomb drifted in and out of unconsciousness, he would look at the letter and talk about Ted Williams. He didn’t want to see anything but that letter from Ted Williams.

The kid signed with the Padres in June of He got $150 a month. In his first game, the kid volunteered to work in relief of the starting pitcher, who was getting bombed. The kid got a couple of quick outs, then the hitters started timing his fastball. He never pitched again.

The kid played for the Padres in 36 and 37 before being sold to the Boston Red Sox before the 1938 season. He invited the father of one of his closest companions, named Les Cassie, to make the cross-country bus trip with him to Florida.

“Ted had been really close to my parents because his own home life wasn’t too good,” said Cassie, 52, retired supervisor of athletics for San Diego schools. “Ted’s dad was a shirttail politician and was rarely around. His mother worked for the Salvation Army. Without baseball Ted would have been in trouble.”