How Citizens Rescued the Welch Miners From Financial Ruin and Brought Baseball to Marion, Virginia

Not fireworks. Not a chance to win a boat. Not even sunny evenings in the valley watching an improving ball team go on a hot streak. Not even a home-run basher nicknamed Muscles coming to town.1 None of those could bring folks out to Blakely Field to welcome and watch the Miners of Welch, West Virginia, play Appalachian League baseball in the middle of summer 1955.

“It looked like the handwriting on the wall,” an unnamed Welch baseball club official said of the town’s interest level in the Miners, a team that was suffering on and off the field.2

On July 13 the Welch Miners were playing the sluggers from Kingsport, Tennessee; the Cherokees, they were called. Almost immediately after lefty Leo Ghilardi’s masterful four-hit performance in a 5-0 nightcap, Welch baseball’s board of directors gathered in a room at the stone-built ballpark to discuss the future of the team. The daunting question facing the board was this: With all the debt on the Miners’ books, and a lack of interest from local fans, could the team continue to exist in Welch?

Already, the Miners were about $4,500 in the red for the 1955 season, and they carried another $6,500 from the previous season.3 This was a hard pill to swallow for team President H.E. “Gene” Mauck and others governing the club.

Over the past couple of seasons, the Class-D club’s debt had increased while fan interest declined. In August 1954, Miners’ general manager Quinto Bary shooed away rumors that the Welch team was on strike because of the financial difficulties; he blamed the Welch Daily News for fanning the flames of such talk.4

Later, in January 1955, four months before the season was to begin, Welch fans formed a group to support the team, raise money to settle its debt, and ultimately, the group hoped, keep the Miners playing in the small McDowell County coal town. The team had just signed an agreement to be an affiliate of the Kansas City Athletics.5 More than 40 individuals, referred to as the “certificate holders,” paid $100 each to be among the group that worked with and elected officials, including President Mauck, to govern the franchise throughout the 1955 campaign.6

On May 2, the same day the Miners played their first home game of the season, the Welch Daily News, knowing the dire financial situation facing the club, published an editorial urging fans to turn out to the hometown ballyard, no matter the quality of product displayed, printing, “All of us should back the Miners by our attendance and our moral support. … Our observation of the conduct of the grandstand managers in past seasons is that there are too many perfectionists—persons who are all for the Miners when they are winning, but criticizing and denouncing them, and even heckling them, when they are losing. Remember, many of the boys are playing their first professional ball. And remember, too, that win, lose or draw, they are our Welch Miners. Support them.”7

In the early and mid-1950s, Welch, the seat of McDowell County, boasted a population of about 6,600. In 1955 the town was yet to feel the population declines that would soon come as a result of coal-mining jobs slowly leaving the area.8 And people had money to spend.

“Prosperity is on the march in Welch with families earning more and spending more than those in most sections of the United States,” the Welch Daily News reported, citing a survey on nationwide buying power.9

The ballpark, however, was one place Welch citizens were not willing to spend their hard-earned dollars.

Before the season’s first pitch was tossed on May 1, the Welch directors held fundraisers, sold advertising, box seats, and season tickets. It all helped, but not nearly enough.

When the season was in full swing, results were less than stellar on the field and at the turnstiles. The Miners got off to a slow start and few people were paying to walk through the dark stone Blakely Field gates to watch a mediocre team play—certainly not enough to whittle down the club’s debt. In fact, the Miners organization was falling deeper into a financial pit. Mauck claimed that for every dollar the club made, it spent $3.10

All of this was all part of the late-night discussion that began that Wednesday night after the Miners’ doubleheader split with Kingsport.

The scene was set a few days earlier. The Miners were about to embark on a four-day, five-game home series; two games against the Johnson City Cardinals followed by three against Leo “Muscle” Shoals and his Kingsport mates, the “Fence-busters of the Appalachian League.” According to the Welch Daily News, the certificate holders and board of directors had worked up a do-or-die plan that would put the decision in the hands of the fans. They simply asked fans “to demonstrate whether they wanted baseball by their attendance, or lack of it, at a four-game home series—one of the season’s best home attractions.”11

It was a test, Mauck said, “As to whether baseball stays or leaves.”12 Initially, the board and certificate holders were to offer their verdict on Monday, July 11, but soon delayed the decision to Wednesday.

Covering the story thoroughly, the Welch Daily News offered a dire assessment: “Drastic action is expected to result [from the meeting] including the bleak possibility that Welch may toss in the towel with many of the organization’s bills past due.” And with the team “flat broke,” it was unlikely the Miners would make the fast-approaching July 15 payroll, especially when few fans were turning out to see the last-place Miners at the old ballpark on Stewart Street.13

To make ends meet, Mauck and the board said, the Miners must draw at least 1,000 spectators for each of the five games. As an enticement, Welch presented to its fans “Fireworks Night” after Monday’s game against Johnson City, the second contest of the test stand. A player participation night, which allowed fans to interact with the Miners, was scheduled for Wednesday’s doubleheader with Kingsport.14

None of these promotions, however, was promising. The Miners needed to make a significant amount of money in five games to keep the team in Welch. If the directors kept baseball alive, they stood to be more than $17,000 in the hole by the end of the 1955 season. However, if the Miners ceased operations at the end of the test stand on July 13, the debt would be only $11,740. Mauck expressed “extreme alarm” that the Miners could survive, prompting the July 13 meeting.15

On Wednesday night, the directors began a meeting that Mauck said “would determine the destiny of the Welch Miners.”16 “Numerous proposals were studied in a sincere attempt by the club officials to keep the Miners’ operation going as long as possible, or as long as any hope remained that baseball could be kept alive here.”17 They discussed the $3,500 of debt just from this season alone. They talked about the decreasing gate attendance, even though player-manager Herb Mancini and his club had improved in the last few weeks. At one point in the meeting, the directors, passionate about saving baseball in McDowell County, spoke as if they were willing to take on personal debt to keep the club alive as they launched yet another fundraising campaign for the next couple of days as the Miners traveled to Salem, Virginia, for two games. But as they looked over the realities of the last few days, they realized the fans had spoken. Only 1,574 fans—a little more than 300 per game—turned out for the five-game test stand, well under the number needed. The meeting went on for hours, and as the clock hands approached 2 o’clock in the early morning of what was then Thursday, July 14, the verdict was declared.

Devoted Miners fans awaited the news. So did a baseball-starved group from 65 miles south of Welch in Marion, Virginia.

The Welch Miners’ 1955 season could not have gotten off to a more promising start. Opening in Bluefield, West Virginia, before a crowd of 2,503 paid customers—the most in the Appalachian League that night—the Miners pounded rival Blue Grays’ starting pitcher Danny Abbott for six runs in the top of the first inning. Abbott never made it past the opening frame. He was pulled before he could get a third out.

The lead seemed comfortable for a while, but Bluefield, the previous season’s Appy League champions, slowly chipped away as the game wore on, scoring one run in the bottom of the first and a run each in the fifth and sixth innings. But as the walls appeared to be closing in on the Miners, Welch bats blasted open a little breathing room in the top of the seventh inning when second baseman Leo Pilibosian tripled and Ronald Glasgow drove him home for a 7-3 Miners lead. Player-manager Herb Mancini had a pair of doubles and an RBI in the contest. So did Welch’s starting pitcher, John Shelbon, who threw for 7 1/2 innings in the 7-5 triumph. It was a great way to open the season for the Miners, and the win made the hour-long bus ride through the curvy, mountainous roads of southern West Virginia a little easier to tolerate.

One win to start the season doesn’t usually call for gloating, but tell that to Welch’s daily newspaper, which wrote the next day:

Appy Champ Bluefield went to the post.
Cocky, Confident and Chock full of boast.
“We’ll lower the pennant to Half-Mast, “ they said.
“In Respect to the Welch Miners, Long Since Dead.
The statement backfired, the BG’s soon found,
It is they, not Welch, to the cellar are bound.18

To further taunt Bluefield’s players and fans, the Welch Daily News wrote: “The Miners chopped the Blue Grays down to Class D size and quickly exploded the myth that the Windy Citizens are invincible.”19

The next night, Welch welcomed the Blue Grays to their ballpark, Blakely Field, a rustic, not-yet-30-year-old place ensconced deep in a valley and surrounded by towering mountains. To welcome back their Miners and begin a fresh new season, Welch held a parade though its downtown before the game at 5 o’clock. The local high-school marching band led the way, with manager Mancini and his ballplayers following in open convertibles, tossing foam baseballs to the crowd lining the streets. The parade route traveled all the way to Blakely Field, where the players climbed out of the vehicles and began their pregame warmups. Representatives from the Air Force, Army, and Marines provided the color guard for a flag-raising ceremony on the field, and Welch Mayor Beno F. Harris tossed out the ceremonial first pitch before Miners starter Evans Killeen took the mound for the 7:30 RM. first pitch.20

After all the hype and pregame festivities, Welch fans quickly felt the excitement drain all around Blakely Field. Killeen loaded the bases in the top of the first before walking home a run and allowing another to score. He gave up another run in the third. The Blue Grays picked up two more tallies in the fifth and one in the seventh in strolling to a 6-4 win over Welch. Bluefield lefty starter Tom Anglehart pitched the full nine innings and struck out five. The four runs he allowed came from six timely Miners’ hits that took advantage of the six walks Anglehart allowed.21

The Miners dropped another game to the Blue Grays the next night, 9-3, at Blakely, but recovered the following evening for a decisive 12-2 pounding on Bluefield’s home grounds.

The Miners split the next two games at Salem, Virginia, before traveling to Pulaski, Virginia, for a quick two-game set at Calfee Park. The hometown Phillies took Miners pitching to the woodshed that night. Pulaski totaled 17 hits in the contest, 12 for extra bases. Two home runs. Five doubles. Five triples. Five singles. Welch pitchers Bill George, Ray Giannelli, and Jerry Brehem walked 15 Phillies in the game, which lasted only seven innings because of a league curfew.22

The loss sparked a four-game losing streak in which Welch pitching gave up a total of 61 runs. The Miners continued to struggle, winning only two of their next seven games. Then they hit a modest three-game winning streak, winning two, 9-2 and 15-3, against the Twins in Bristol, Virginia, and a close 9-8 contest in Wytheville, Virginia.

Any good vibes the Miners and their few loyal fans might have been feeling quickly disappeared over the next two weeks. Welch won only two of its 14 games in that stretch, which included an eight-game losing streak in Kingsport and Johnson City and back home in Welch against Pulaski. Those losses dropped the Miners to 10-21, giving little reason for Welch citizens to turn out to Blakely.

June was a terrible month on the field for the Miners. From June 1 to June 27, they were 8-18. Then the ballclub picked up the pace slightly. Their bats remained productive, and the pitching, it seemed, was beginning to take shape. From June 29 to July 2, Welch won six of seven games; with a five-game winning streak and doubleheader sweeps on consecutive days at Wytheville and at home against Bristol.

The winning didn’t hold up, however, but the Miners were playing better and keeping games closer, picking up wins on a more consistent pace.

Still, many empty seats remained for games at Blakely Field, with just a few hundred people paying to get into the ballpark for each contest. Those dismal attendance numbers and the mounting, crushing debt led the board of directors and certificate holders to give fans the ultimatum: Fans had to show their support in a test run over four days and five home games against two of the better teams in the league, Johnson City and Kingsport, which had on its roster Leo “Muscle” Shoals, one of the most prolific home-run hitters in the Appalachian League.

But Muscle and fireworks and chances to win a boat and a car failed to draw enough fans to the ballpark. Only 405 came out on a pleasant Sunday summer evening for the first game against Johnson City—“the weather was A-l for baseball”23—and only 460 attended the “gigantic display of pyrotechnics.”24

“Several directors pointed out that the average draw of 300 during the season did not justify the unhealthy financial risk that less than a dozen men would have to face for the remainder of the season.”25 With all things considered, the board and the shareholders who provided financial support to the club came to a difficult but final decision inside that room at Blakely Field, just short of two hours past midnight on July 14, 1955. The Welch Miners called it quits.

Years later, Shoals said what many fans, and even opposing players, knew. “Welch just couldn’t hack it. Nobody was coming to their games and the front office couldn’t make ends meet.”26

Although Welch couldn’t hack it in the tough Class-D circuit, folks from Marion, Virginia, were willing to give it a shot.

When the Welch baseball organization folded, D.D. “Spud” Query and his contingent from Marion pounced on the opportunity to bring the struggling ballclub across the mountains south to the small southwest Virginia town. Query, a former semipro player who became an automobile dealer in Marion and was the president of the town’s stadium corporation, was willing to settle the team’s losses.27

For decades, Marion had lobbied to get a minor-league team, sending representatives to Appalachian League meetings only to be voted down. Marion had always been a baseball town, fielding popular semipro teams like the Bucks and Cuckoos (the latter a team that played in the 1930s and ‘40s on the grounds of the town’s mental health institute). Appy League officials were skeptical about whether a minor-league team could compete with those squads made up mostly of homegrown ballplayers.

But Marion jumped at the chance to get the Miners, even though they were a subpar team and only a couple of months remained on the 1955 schedule. “Marion has taken over lock, stock and barrel,” Welch Miners President Mauck told a reporter from the Roanoke World-News.28

From the Marion side, Query, a great promoter, assured the people in his town that they were getting a team, despite its record, worthy of turning out for at the ballpark. The major-league Athletics organization, which had just moved in 1955 from Philadelphia to Kansas City, wanted, Query astutely noted, to build a solid team for its new city. “Kansas City officials realize they must get the best possible youngsters in order to build up their team,” he declared. “They will be seasoning many of these boys here in Marion, which will give us the cream of the crop.”29

If Marionites weren’t excited enough to see pro baseball in their town, Query’s words offered further enticement to visit the ballpark for a chance to peek at future major leaguers.

The newly minted Marion Athletics played their first game on a Thursday night in Salem, Virginia, with results similar to those they had experienced in Welch. But there was plenty of fight in this team before it lost 6-5 to the front-running Rebels. Trailing 5-0 after six innings, Marion scored two runs in the top of the seventh and threatened more in the eighth and drove Salem starting pitcher Warren Rutledge out of the contest. Reliever Carmon Gugger squelched the rally but surrendered three runs in the top of the ninth to let Marion tie the game. Marion’s hopes faded quickly, however, when Salem’s Bob McKeirman dropped a blooper just over the outstretched glove of Marion third baseman-manager Herb Mancini in the bottom of the ninth for the Rebel victory.

The next night, Salem ripped into Marion starting pitcher Stephen Schuster, hitting three home runs off the righty. Two of those blasts popped off the bat of the Rebels’ Charley Weatherspoon. He hit a solo shot in the second inning to tie the game at 1-1, and then broke a 4-4 tie with a two-run blast in the sixth inning. Both homers soared over the left-center field fence.

The Athletics were 0-2 and still in last place after having switched towns smack-dab in the middle of the season, but none of that mattered to people in Marion, who were starved to have a professional team to call their own.

Before the first game in their new town, the Athletics were treated to a welcome party near the lake at Marion’s Hungry Mother State Park, about three miles from Marion Stadium, the town’s new ballpark. Even though there was short notice of the team’s official arrival, a group of women gathered Wednesday morning at the Marion Chamber of Commerce offices to plan the gathering. They spent that afternoon and Thursday morning spreading the word, mostly by telephone, hoping to get as many people as possible to the welcoming.30

“We want them to know they are now members of our community,” an unidentified party organizer told the Smyth County News.31 “We did not have time to plan a big welcome party, as Thursday night is their only night off in the immediate future. So we decided that a quick notice picnic would be our best way of welcoming them to town.” About 100 people showed up for the picnic, and the players were delighted. “I’ve played a lot of baseball, but I’ve never seen a more wonderful town than this,” one of the players told a reporter. “Just look at all that food.”32

Though the Miners were cellar-dwellers in the eight-team Appalachian League, the skipper, Mancini, who was also one of the league’s best fielding shortstops, promised to field a competitive and entertaining team. “We’re just beginning to hit our stride,” the Youngstown, Ohio, native said. “I hear the lights at Marion Stadium are as good as any in Class D baseball, and I’m sure the fans want us.”33 Mancini was right.

Marion, decked out in white and blue Kansas City A’s hand-me-down uniforms, made its first appearance in the town’s new ballpark and was greeted by 1,062 paying fans, roaring their approval for the new squad. Among them was Appalachian League President Chauncey DeVault, Miners’ President Mauck, and a group of loyal supporters from Welch, who traveled more than two hours to cheer on their team in its new location.34

Mancini’s team lived up to the hype, at least on this midsummer Sunday afternoon. Marion pitcher Leo Ghilardi gave up a run in the first that put his team behind early, but the A’s leadoff hitter, Sid Smithdeal, got his team going in the bottom half. The Elizabethton, Tennessee, native smacked a single down the third-base line to further rev up the crowd and jump-start a three-run inning.35 The Athletics tallied 13 hits against the Pulaski (Virginia) Phillies. The big hit came in the bottom of the fifth when second sacker Leo Pilibosian, a right-handed hitter from La Habana, Cuba, smacked a long drive over the center-field fence, just short of the railroad tracks, for a grand slam. The crowd roared louder as the scoreboard tallied up nine Marion runs against Pulaski’s four.

The Phillies, however, didn’t roll over, collecting timely hits to rally from behind. They got the tying run on second base in each of the last two innings, but the fresh-start A’s refused to disappoint their new fans. Sid SmithdeaTs single in the sixth, followed by a Glasgow sacrifice fly and an RBI double by Art Oody gave Marion enough runs to squeak out a 10-9 victory.36 “Everything went all right, I reckon,” Oody said on the phone nearly 67 years later from his home in Harriman, Tennessee.37

Despite a thrilling victory in their home debut, the Marion Athletics won only 14 more games, finishing 45-77 with a couple of ties, good for dead last in the Appalachian League, 39 games behind first-place Salem.

Still, Marion citizens were overjoyed with having a minor-league team playing in their hometown. On the final night of the season, the team held a player appreciation night. Fans were asked to leave donations and gifts for the ballplayers at the offices of the Smyth County News and a local radio station. Buckets were placed at the Marion Stadium ticket gates to give fans another donation option. Baseball comedian Max Patkin was there, too, to deliver smiles to the faces of fans and players alike after a long, strange season.

Soon, however, it was over. Not just the season, but the Marion franchise, too. The Appalachian League ceased operations after the season—but came back in 1957 without a team in Marion. It had been a tough year overall, DeVault, the league president, said. Welch wasn’t the only town that struggled. Officials in Kingsport asked for league approval to move to Morristown, Tennessee, and the Pulaski franchise had to raise more than $1,800 to keep the team in town.38

Marion got a second chance at minor-league baseball 10 years later when the New York Mets placed a rookie-league affiliate in Marion Stadium. Townspeople were just as excited to see the Marion Mets—perhaps even more so knowing they had a full season to root for the club.

With the exception of Evans Killeen’s four games with the Kansas City A’s in 1959, the 1955 edition of the Welch Miners/Marion A’s did not feature a future major-league player. The Marion Mets, however, did. During the team’s 12-year existence (1965-1976), several future big-leaguers donned Marion uniforms, including Nolan Ryan, Jim Bibby, Mike Jorgensen, Ernie McAnally, Tim Foli, John Milner, Alex Trevino, and Jody Davis. Former major-league catcher and skipper Birdie Tebbetts managed Marion in 1967—Life magazine sent a writer and photographer to feature the “big-leaguer big in the boondocks”39—and Whitey Herzog, before becoming the manager of the great St. Louis Cardinals teams in the ‘80s, spent many summers in Marion as New York’s director of minor-league development. In 1971 Yogi Berra paid a visit to Marion to help raise money for the Baby Mets, as they were affectionately called, while his son, Larry, was a catcher on the squad.

Marion “was a small community that was very excited about the fact they had professional baseball,” Nolan Ryan said in early 2021. “They made the players feel very welcome.”40

CHAD OSBORNE is a media relations specialist at Radford University in Virginia and has worked in higher education communications for more than 20 years. He researches and writes a Substack newsletter about the Marion Mets, a now-defunct rookie league affiliate of the New York Mets that played in the small Virginia town from 1965 to 1976 and was Nolan Ryan’s first professional team. You can find Chad’s newsletter at marionmets.substack.com.

Notes

1 “Only 405 See Miners’ Sunday Contest; First of Crucial Four-Day ‘Test Stand,”‘ Welch (WestVirginia) Daily News, July 11, 1955: 6.

2 “Only 405 See Miners’ Sunday Contest; First of Crucial Four-Day ‘Test Stand.’”

3 “Cherokees Split Twin Bill with Welch,” Kingsport (Tennessee) News, July 14, 1955: 13.

4 “Highlights on Area Sports Scene During 1954, “ Johnson City (Tennessee) Press, January 2, 1955: C-2.

5 “Athletics Make Tie With Welch Miners,” Johnson City Press, January 26, 1955:10.

6 “Directors Elect H.E. Mauck President of Welch Miners,” Welch Daily News, April 5, 1955: 6.

7 “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” Welch Daily News, May 2, 1955: 4.

8 “Revitalization in Welch, WV,” Found online at https://seor.vse.gmu.edu/~klaskey/Capstone/MSSEORProjectsSpringi8/Welch_Revitalization/index.html.

9 “Welch Families Earn, Spend More Than in Most of Country,” Welch Daily News, July 14, 1955: 9.

10 “Miner Directors Delay Fold-Up Action Until Wednesday,” Welch Daily News, July 9, 1955: 5.

11 “Debt-Ridden Miners Quit; Marion, Va., May Get Franchise,” Welch Daily News, July 14, 1955: 6.

12 “Miner Directors Delay Fold-Up Action Until Wednesday.”

13 “Welch Miners on Verge of Folding: Directors to Decide Fate Tonight,” Welch Daily News, July 8, 1955: 6.

14 “Kingsport Moves In for What Looms as Last Miners Series,” Welch Daily News, July 12, 1955: 6.

15 “Miner Directors Delay Fold-Up Action Until Wednesday,” Welch Daily News, July 9, 1955, 5.

16 “Welch Miners on Verge of Folding: Directors to Decide Fate Tonight.”

17 “Debt-Ridden Miners Quit; Marion, Va., May Get Franchise.”

18 “Parade to Get ‘55 Appy Season Started Here,” Welch Daily News, May 2, 1955: 6.

19 “Parade to Get ‘55 Appy Season Started Here.”

20 “Parade to Get ‘55 Appy Season Started Here.”

21 “Bluefield Bumps Welch,” Johnson City Press, May 3, 1955: 6.

22 “Phils Wallop Welch Miners in 24-12 Tilt,” Kingsport News, May 8, 1955: 20.

23 “Only 405 See Miners’ Sunday Contest: First of Crucial Four-Day ‘Test Stand. ‘”; “Miner Directors Delay Fold-Up Action Until Wednesday.”

24 “Only 405 See Miners’ Sunday Contest: First of Crucial Four-Day ‘Test Stand.’”

25 “Debt-Ridden Miners Quit; Marion, Va., May Get Franchise,” Welch Daily News, July 14, 1955: 6.

26 George Stone, ‘Muscle “: A Minor League Legend (Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: Infinity Publishing Company, 2010), 295.

27 Bob Roemer, “Marion Getting Better Team Than Record Indicates,” Roanoke (Virginia) Times, July 17, 1955: 22.

28 “Marion Takes Over Franchise,” Hagerstown (Maryland) Morning Herald, July 15, 1955: 32.

29 “Pro Baseball Comes to Marion,” Smyth County News (Marion Virginia), July 14, 1955: 1.

30 “Spontaneous Party for Newcomers in Is? Planned Tonight,” Smyth County News, July 21,1955:1.???? How should headline read?

31 “Spontaneous Party for Newcomers in Is? Planned Tonight.”

32 “Man, that’s Eatin’,” Bristol (Tennessee) Herald Courier, July 25, 1955: 6.

33 Roemer.

34 Alex Crockett, “Marion Athletics Win Home Debut 10-9 Before 1,062 Fans,” Bristol Herald Courier, July 18, 1955: 6.

35 Crockett.

36 Crockett.

37 Art Oody, telephone interview, June 16, 2022.

38 “Pulaski to Stay in Appy Circuit,” Bristol Herald Courier, July 10, 1955: 19.

39 “ABig-Leaguer Big in the Boondocks,” Life, September 1, 1967: 28.

40 Nolan Ryan, telephone interview, January 15, 2021.