Mrs. Ashburn’s Rooming House

Harry Walker was the Phillies’ starting center-fielder heading into 1948, and as the defending National League batting champion, seemed to have a lock on the job.  But he was a holdout and that opened the door for rookie Richie Ashburn to win the center-fielder position.  Once it became pretty certain that he would, Ashburn’s parents, Genevieve and Neil Ashburn of Tilden, Nebraska, decided to head to Philadelphia for the summer to watch their son play.  Mr. Ashburn went so far as to sell his machine shop in Tilden to a son-in-law and in early June the Ashburn’s rented a sizeable house in suburban Bala Cynwyd near Philadelphia. 

Thanks to the bonuses that Phillies’ owner Bob Carpenter doled out, the Phillies youth movement was in full swing by early 1948.  Mrs. Ashburn was known as a terrific cook and soon the Ashburns had three “bonus baby” boarders on hand in addition to their 21-year-old son.  They were Robin Roberts, also 21, and Curt Simmons and Charlie Bicknell, who were both 19-year-old teenagers.  The young ballplayers generally hung around the house together, playing pool or cards or just relaxing and talking baseball.  They often rode to the ballpark together.  If the Phillies had a night game, Mrs. Ashburn served them a hearty pregame meal about 4 PM.  In fact, Robin Roberts recalled sometimes feeling sluggish in pregame workouts since the food was so good and he had eaten so much. 

For the 1949 season the Ashburns rented a house in Bryn Mawr on the Main Line from some schoolteachers who were away for the summer.  Rookie outfielder Jack Mayo joined the four returning borders and, when Mayo broke his ankle late in the year and went home to Youngstown, Ohio, to recuperate, Mike Goliat, who was called up from the minors, took his spot in the rooming house. 

The players didn’t venture out much except to an occasional afternoon movie, and were content to just play baseball and not worry about their lack of a night life.  The entire rooming house was very low key except during the first year when a local newspaper ran a feature on the boarding house and included the street address.  Afterwards, the doorbell rang frequently, forcing Mr. and Mrs. Ashburn to frequently run interference for their lodgers. 

According to one story, the players consumed 10 to 12 quarts of milk a day but were such lightweight drinkers that it took them all season to get through a half a case of beer. 

Richie Ashburn and Robin Roberts each married the winter after the ’49 season and the others were not far behind to the altar, and so, like all good things, Mrs. Ashburn’s rooming house was no more.  But for the summers of 1948 and 1949, it provided an idyllic residence for a number of Whiz Kids in training for their break-through 1950 season.

PAUL ROGERS is co-author of several baseball books including The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant (Temple University Press, 1996) with boyhood hero Robin Roberts, and Lucky Me: My 65 Years in Baseball (SMU Press 2011) with Eddie Robinson. Paul is president of the Ernie Banks – Bobby Bragan DFW Chapter of SABR and a frequent contributor to the SABR BioProject, but his real job is as a law professor at Southern Methodist University, where he served as dean of the law school for nine years. He has also served as SMU’s faculty athletic representative for 30 years.

 

Sources

Paxton, Harry T., “That House Where the Ballplayers Live,” Saturday Evening Post, September 10, 1949.

Roberts, Robin with C. Paul Rogers III, “Fifty Years with Whitey,” Elysian Fields Quarterly, Vol. 16, no. 2 (1999).

Roberts, Robin, and C. Paul Rogers III, The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).