Joe McCarthy died on January 13, 1978 at the age of 90. Bowie Kuhn, then commissioner of baseball, said, “I thought McCarthy was the greatest manager there ever was.” But McCarthy’s importance to Louisville baseball went virtually unnoticed in the Louisville Courier-Journal and Louisville Times. Only Israel “Izzy” Goodman, formerly one of the state’s most popular sportsmen, noted his friend’s death in a letter to the editor, in which he called Joe the most successful manager baseball had ever known. “I knew McCarthy during the years he managed the Colonels and  later the New York Yankees into one championship after another,” Izzy noted. “He was a calm man with not only an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball, but of men and how to handle them.”

Although Joe eventually counted a host of friends from coast to coast, none was more staunchly loyal than Izzy and the group from Louisville who formed the Colonels’ Brotherhood of Boosters. The years Joe spent in Louisville were some of the happiest he knew, when people such as Izzy Goodman and Mitchell Roth counted him as their friend before fame beckoned.

“Good-field-no-hit”

Joseph Vincent McCarthy was born in 1887 in the Germantown suburb of Philadelphia where he played sandlot and high school ball. A good Catholic boy, he attended Niagara University in Buffalo, New York for two years before launching his professional baseball career. Short and stocky (5-foot-8, 170 lbs.), he was a multi-talented defensive player, noted for his aggressiveness and keen knowledge of the game.

McCarthy for played briefly for Wilmington of the Tri-State League in 1907 and then for the Franklin Club of the outlaw Inter-State League. In only two years, he signed with Triple-A Toledo of the American Association (AA), where he spent three full seasons. But his bat betrayed him, and he never hit over .254 there. He also played for Indianapolis of the AA, but, by 1912, he was playing for Wilkes-Barre of the New York State League. Impressing everyone with his leadership skills, McCarthy was named playing-manager in 1913 at age 26. He hit .325 there, his best year ever at the plate.

By 1914, he was playing second base for Buffalo of the International League, managed by “Derby Day” Bill Clymer, who had been a successful skipper at Louisville in 1902-1903. While at Buffalo, McCarthy went 0-4 against  Babe Ruth in the latter’s pitching debut for Baltimore in 1914 (in front of only 200 fans). When Clymer (who earned his nickname from the long jockey-type peak of his cap) was rehired to manage Louisville’s Colonels in 1916, he needed a second baseman.

By chance, McCarthy was available. In the winter of 1915-16, Ed Barrow, president of the International League, recommended McCarthy to the Yankees. A deal was in serious negotiation when McCarthy decided to sign with Brooklyn of the Federal League. When the league folded before the season, so did McCarthy’s only chance to avoid the tag of “career minor league player.”  Joe once recalled, I was twenty years in the minor leagues as a player and manager before I made it. I think I spent more time trying to get up there than almost anybody I know of.” In any event, he wound up at Louisville, where he became a “Corncracker,” as the local papers once called the Colonels.

McCarthy blossomed in Louisville. He became one of the best fielders and “brainiest” players in the league. His popularity soared with the fans, and he was greatly appreciated. His mediocre hitting (.259) typified the “good-field-no-hit” Colonels of 1916, who won 101 games and Louisville’s second AA pennant. A news account of a Colonel shutout of Memphis in 1919 characterizes McCarthy’s play:

Another Corncracker who dazzled the Memphians with his inside play was none other than sturdy Joe McCarthy. In the 3rd, the Colonel second sacker raced into deep right field and captured Griffin’s fly. A moment later he invaded left and camped under “Slats” Slattery’s pop-up. Before he went to the showers to remove the dust from his pulchritude, Joe helped wring the necks of eight chickens. Being in a truculent mood, he slaughtered five single-handed.

By 1919, McCarthy had become a fixture at second base. And when field manager Joseph Patrick Henry “Patsy” O’Flaherty resign in mid-season that year, apparently due to differences with general manager Cap Neal, the popular McCarthy was named player-manager. The press described him as “one of the brainiest players cavorting in the minors” and the local sports page headline read: “Brainy Second Baseman Chosen.”

Joe began to develop managing traits which would serve him well in the future: sound tactics, stable atmosphere, ability to handle stars, an infielder’s perspective and a low-key-ego. The main feature of the end of the Colonels’ season was winning 12 out of the last 13 games, all on the road!

McCarthy’s excellent showing with the club during the latter part of that season assured his selection for the same position in 1920. He took over the Louisville team just as it was ready to go to pieces and, despite injuries, bad luck and weak pitching, made a credible showing (finishing third).

McCarthy’s last season as a player was 1921, when he hit .278 (his Louisville high) in only 11 games. (His lifetime average was .261.)  That was also the year he married his Buffalo sweetheart “Babe” (who seldom viewed a Colonels’ game). He stayed in Louisville as a manager through the 1925 season. McCarthy was widely regarded as the best manage in the minor leagues; he was popular, settled, secure and relatively well-paid.

And on his way to the Hall of Fame!

Success in Louisville

During his 6 1/2 seasons at the helm in Louisville, McCarthy won two AA pennants (1921 and 1925) and one Junior World Series (1921). His upset defeat of Jack Dunn’s 1921 Baltimore Orioles came against a team described as “the finest minor league team of that era, perhaps one of the best in organized baseball at any level.”

McCarthy’s keen mind and ability to handle players made him a superlative manager. His formula for success was: get the players and keep them happy. In later years, he bristled when Jimmy Dykes of the White Sox called him a “push-button manager.”  His friends defended McCarthy from such sniping, saying, “…it took great understanding to mold divergent temperaments of star performers into a team that could win so often.”  In Louisville, McCarthy was lighthearted and at ease with himself, perhaps due to the influence of friends around him. “It is not strange that whenever he is sitting around talking baseball so many of his stories begin with: ‘I remember when I was in Louisville one day…”, reported Frank Graham in a 1946 New York Journal American column.

When pitcher Dixie Davis paid him a 1919 pre-season salute to the press by saying, “This is going to be his banner year,” McCarthy, usually mild-mannered, yelled “Thank you, hog-head, for your compliment!”  (Team secretary Pat Clark said sarcastically, “That’s a dadblamed refined way for Joe to acknowledge gratitude!”) On July 24 of that year, a McCarthy foul ball rebounded from the grandstands and hit his friend, John Ganzel, on the head, knocking the Kansas City Blues’ manager out for several minutes before being revived. All enjoyed a good chuckle. When that season concluded, Joe formed a business partnership with former Colonel captain Roxey Roach to open a string of poolrooms and amusement emporiums in Pennsylvania.

Evidently, Joe traveled with a rather large wardrobe. He was kidded that it would take him three or four hours to pack his garments. In response, he joked that slugging first sacker Jay Kirke was never known “..to travel with heavy luggage. It usually consists of the civilian suit he has been wearing since his 21st birthday, a plug of licoriced tobacco and his diamond toggery, which he uses for a pillow when he is embraced by Morpheus.”

Reports Arthur Daley in a 1948 New York Times column:

Marse Joe McCarthy’s life is so wrapped up in baseball that he has no interest in any other sport. But he did have bets riding on four successive Derbies, and if Commissioner Chandler wants to do anything about it, he’s welcome. It happened this way. When McCarthy was at Louisville, he struck up a warm friendship with Izzy Goodman.

Just for old times’ sake, Izzy bet $2 for Joe on a Derby and, the colt winning, mailed him a check. The astonished McCarthy stuck it away in his desk and many months later mailed it back to Goodman with a note of thanks. So Izzy bet the sum on the next Derby and mailed another check. Joe returned it. The indefatigable Goodman parlayed it on the next Derby and won once more. By then the sum was up in the hundreds and McCarthy’s embarrassment grew. He sighed with relief when he lost the wad on the fourth Derby. End of McCarthy as a hoss player.

During Joe’s tenure as manager, fire claimed Eclipse Park at 7th and Kentucky streets after the 1922 season. This led to the construction of concrete Parkway Field, which opened on May 1, 1923, and which was used by the Colonels for 33 years until all home games were moved to Fairgrounds Stadium in 1957.

The Brotherhood of Boosters was continually organizing support for McCarthy and the “Corncrackers”. When Louisville clinched the 1925 Association pennant in Columbus, the Boosters met them upon the Colonels’ return at 7:30 a.m. with breakfast. On September 25, 1925, a glorious “Joe McCarthy Day” was planned at Parkway Field by the Boosters, apparently the only such major public Gabby Hartnett with McCarthy recognition he received in Louisville during his 10 seasons there. A crowd of up to 15,000 was expected, but the next day’s headline read, “Rain Undermines McCarthy Day, But Not For McCarthy.” The rain, which began at noon, held attendance to 5,260 fans, and it also decreased the sales of the souvenir programs, the proceeds of which went into a pot of gold and silver given to Joe by the Boosters. Even though the Boosters were depressed over the rain-caused low turnout, McCarthy was extremely gracious in his remarks. He thought the day was an “unbounding success” and said that “the day could not have been any better … the goodness of everyone stunned me.” Joe further commented that the remembrances and speeches made him blush for the first time in his life!

McCarthy also reminisced about Kentuckian Combs: “I had Earle Combs playing for me when I was managing Louisville. The Yankees wanted to buy him – that was around 1924. We told them that we’d make the deal if they would throw in this kid they had at Hartford named Gehrig … but they wouldn’t turn him loose. We made the deal anyway.”

As Joe matured as a manager, he began to perfect his managerial philosophy: always Think Baseball; no petty rules but no complacency or frivolous behavior; all-out effort; pride in appearance; respect older players and develop young ones, but have no favorites; lead by example; be willing to experiment; and, choose a lineup and let it play. And, contrary to some reports, he was not tagged with the moniker “Marse Joe” until after his Louisville years.

Thinking back on the days when Joe was managing the Colonels, Izzy Goodman later said,

” … we knew we had a big league manager here before anybody in the big leagues tumbled to him. He was just the same then as he is now. If a player didn’t hustle for him or gave him any trouble, Joe would get rid of him, no matter how good he was. And those he kept played ball like the big leaguers. I don’t mean they were as good as big leaguers but they played smart. You never saw a pitcher McCarthy had who didn’t know how to field his position and never saw anybody throw to the wrong base.

He sent up some pretty good players, too. The best player he ever had here was Earle Combs, and Joe sent him up to the Yankees — and then caught up with him seven years later. The best pitcher he had, in my book, was Wayland Dean — you remember him? Well, most people up there in the big leagues don’t, I guess, because he went up 20 years or so ago, but we remember him around here. Joe thought he was going to be a great pitcher some day when he sent him up to the Giants and I thought so, too, but the poor kid got sick and died in a couple of years, as you know.”

Joe Leaves Louisville

On September 4, 1925, toward the conclusion of the Colonels’ pennant-winning season, a small article in the sports pages of the Courier-Journal presaged change. It reported that George C. Gibson would manage the Chicago Cubs for the remainder of the season, taking Rabbit Maranville’s place. (Maranville had been hastily selected to succeed Bill Killefer in July.) “Reports were current that Joe McCarthy, manager of the Louisville club, is under consideration as manager of the Cubs next year.”

In spite of their first-place finish, and a chance to again defeat the mighty Baltimore Orioles of the International League, McCarthy and the Colonels faced postseason problems. Sale of seats was termed “distressingly sluggish,” and the team averaged only 6,788 fans during its split of four home games in the series. Then, Pel Ballenger, the Colonels’ veteran third baseman who was hitting .437 in the series, was kicked off the team following an incident on the train to Baltimore. Refusing to return to his berth when halted while walking in his underwear near a McCarthy card game, Ballenger publicly insulted Joe with owner William Knebelkamp nearby.

The incident received nationwide attention as McCarthy received praise for his “courageous” actions. The Louisville press supported the discharge, stating that Ballenger was “kicked off the ball team, in miserable disgrace, forever and a day, by the kindly Joe McCarthy.” Meanwhile, some players pleaded for Ballenger’s reinstatement, but McCarthy said, “It is better for us to lose with our heads up, then to win with our heads down.”

In the meantime, while McCarthy was “meriting the respect and admiration of the nation” and “placing virtue over victory,” Ballenger showed up at the Baltimore ball park and, although not in uniform, indulged in part of the Colonels’ practice after initially watching from the stands1 The Colonels won their next game, 7-1, but McCarthy was still under severe pressure to reinstate Ballenger after they dropped the sixth game 5-3, evening the best-of-nine series. In the midst of this squabble, on October 10, 1925 a small news article reported: “Here it is again! Reports persist that Joe McCarthy would be named Cubs manager, but Cubs’ president Veeck would have no comment until after the series.”

Prior to the seventh game, McCarthy reinstated Ballenger, illogically claiming that the International League should not have reinstated a suspended Baltimore player; therefore, McCarthy would not continue to punish his player. Whatever the reason for his return, Ballenger did his club no favors as they lost to the Orioles 10-9 in 11 innings. Ballenger dropped a fly ball and later failed to run out a dropped pop-up and was thrown out by 60 feet. McCarthy was incensed! On October 11, 1925 the Orioles wrapped up the Junior World Series with a 5-2 win. The Colonels immediately began a barnstorming tour across the country to San Francisco, where they were to begin a series with the Pacific Coast League champs on October 22.

Strangely enough, McCarthy’s heroic persona seems to dissipate in the Louisville press when it becomes clear that he will sign to manage the Cubs. On October 14, a small story appears telling that the Cubs won the city championship “in the presence of their new boss, Joe McCarthy, defeating the White Sox.” No feature story of his signing appears and it is not until October 17 that a photograph appears with the title “When McCarthy Signed to Manage Cubs,” and stating that “all Louisville will watch with keen interest the work of Joe McCarthy as manager of the Cubs.” Joe was pictured signing his two-year contract with owner William Wrigley, Jr. and president William Veeck.

Thus, McCarthy’s glorious ten years in Louisville came to a bittersweet ending, somewhat ignored in the press.

McCarthy After Louisville

Although Joe McCarthy never played a single game in the major leagues, his superlative managerial genius would carry him to the Hall of Fame. Remembering his idol, Connie Mack, McCarthy said it took “just about three things to be a manager: a good memory, patience and being able to recognize ability and then know what to do with it.”

In his rookie year in Chicago, he fired veteran Grover Cleveland Alexander and was congratulated by owner William Wrigley for his nerve. He was greatly responsible for the development and success of Hack Wilson and Riggs Stephenson. Never failing to finish out of the first division during 24 years, he became the first manager without major league playing experience to win a pennant (1929), but he lost to the great Philadelphia A’s in the World Series. He was given one year to avenge the embarrassment, but failed and was fired by Wrigley four days prior to the end of the 1930 season. Rogers Hornsby replaced him.

Quickly scooped up by the New York Yankees for the 1931 season, McCarthy inherited the touchy situation of Babe Ruth, who had been rebuffed for the managerial post. “Be prompt” was Joe’s only request to Babe, who usually complied. With his 1932 American League pennant success, Joe became the first manager to win championships in both leagues. His World Series success in ’32 was even sweeter since he swept his old Cubs team.

McCarthy stayed with the Yankees until he resigned in 1946, ostensibly for health reasons, although front-office conflicts may have existed. He had won eight American League pennants and seven World Series, including four consecutive in 1936-39! Joe managed the Yankees longer than anyone, before or since.

Sometime during his life Joe had become a heavy drinker, who was able to hide his alcoholism from the public, but not from his players. He was unable to control it as well during the mid-1940s and it began to interfere with his ability.

McCarthy returned to his home in Tonawanda, a suburb of Buffalo. When his health improved he accepted an offer to lead the Boston Red Sox in 1948. He finally retired in 1950 with the Red Sox in second place.

McCarthy, Manager of the Year three times, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1957. In 1976, a plaque honoring him was placed alongside monuments to Miller Huggins, Col. Jacob Ruppert, Ruth, Gehrig and Ed Barrow in the rebuilt Yankee Stadium. His career-winning percentages of .615 in 24 years and .698 in nine World Series are the highest among all managers.

Even after his departure from Louisville, Joe remained in close and constant contact with his pals in Louisville. They corresponded frequently and reminisced about old times. Whenever Joe was with his major league team nearby, his Louisville friends managed to be there also. But they never referred to the “Cubs” or “Yankees.” It was always “Joe’s team.”

Later Years

In 1971, shortly after Joe had eye surgery, his wife, Elizabeth (“Babe”) died in suburban Buffalo at the age of 84. She had been an invalid for six years and required constant nursing care.

McCarthy’s favorite pursuits of golf, hunting and fishing became limited as he aged, but he remained mentally alert, and virtually every player under his tutelage still held him in the highest esteem. Joe DiMaggio said, “Never a day went by that you didn’t learn something from McCarthy,” and Phil Rizzuto complimented him by stating, “He had more respect than anyone in the game.”

Joe had been in good health until he broke his hip in mid-1977 and subsequently developed lung problems and hearing difficulties. He lost touch with baseball and the Yankees in his last years, and his main joy was the cadre of friends who visited his Tonawanda farm.

In a 1977 interview, McCarthy reflected, “I quit in 1950. I’d gotten tired and I wasn’t feeling well. I still follow the game today. I read the box scores, but I don’t know the names of half those players. It’s a whole new generation in there now. Sometimes I look back and I find it hard to believe it’s all so long ago.”

Joe McCarthy died of pneumonia at age 90 while holding the hand of his friend, sportscaster Ralph Hubbell. He had no children, and he left no known survivors.

The baseball season of 1890 was a tumultuous season on and off the field. It was the year of open battled in the Brotherhood War, with the players forming their own league and fielding a full schedule of games in competition with the established National League and American Association. Franchises shifted leagues, cities hosted multiple teams, and new cities joined the ranks of the major leagues. It was great for fans. The surfeit of baseball games gave them many choices in attending games and lower ticket prices as the competing organizations vied for fan support.

On the field, rosters were shuffled as never before. Many major leaguers jumped to the Players League and the National League. In addition to trying to reacquire some of their stars, clubs made raids on Association teams. But one team was relatively immune to all this—the lowly Louisville Colonels.

Louisville had a mixed history in organized baseball going back to 1876 when they were a charter member of the fledgling National League. Some of the luster dimmed two years later when they quietly dropped out of the league in the wake of the gambling scandal that shook the franchise in 1877. But in 1882 the Kentucky city was again a charter member of a new major league, the American Association. For several years Louisville was a respectable club that occasionally contended for the pennant. But by the end of the 1880s they were a perennial second division club, typically out of the race by the Fourth of July.

Until 1890. That crazy year of three major leagues—players jumping from roster to roster and baseball wars being fought on the field and in the press—ended with Louisville’s capturing their first and only big league pennant. The story of Louisville’s rise to the top of the American Association was all the more remarkable since they rose from the cellar in 1889. This is not the story of a bad team catching a few breaks, it is the tale of a woeful squad catching lightning in the bottle for one glorious season.

The opening day roster contained past-their-prime veterans Pete Browning, Guy Heckler, and Dude Esterbrook along with pitchers Red Ehret and Scott Stratton and a cast of unknowns, except for Chicken Wolf, a solid performer in the outfield. Stratton and Browning had contentious dealings with owner Mordecai Davidson before signing their 1889 contracts. Davidson had assumed the club presidency the previous season when he bought out several other club directors over a disagreement about spending money to acquire better ball players to improve the club.

Davidson was against it. His tight-fisted approach toward players and club fiscal management was not merely a reflection of a robber baron mentality. It was well-grounded in the reality that the Louisville club was pitifully undercapitalized and operated by a group of owners that, while individually comfortable financially, did not possess personal wealth sufficient to build a contending squad.

The Colonels opened with six straight losses and ended the first road trip at 3-14. On the ensuing home stand things did improve. The 5-8 record included what would be the season’s longest winning streak, three games. The third win in the streak was also the last the club would experience for close to a month. Louisville was swept in Cincinnati and Columbus before boarding a train for Philadelphia. The Kentucky boys were due in Philly on June 3. However, they were a no-show. Likewise June 4. Nobody knew where they were. The papers derided the squad with a headline of “Lost Again.” Finally, they arrived in Philadelphia on June 5 as victims of the Johnstown Flood. It seems that the train carrying the team was stuck in high water in extreme western New York, and was unable to communicate with the outside world because the telegraph lines were down. Once in Philadelphia they returned to their losing ways, dropping four games in both Philadelphia and Brooklyn.

Back in Louisville, Davidson was busily trying to sell players or the franchise to survive the financial disaster that was building. He was unsuccessful in finding a local buyer for the club in Louisville and had been called on the carpet by the Association president for attempting to dismantle the squad. As part of his effort to save some cash, Davidson instituted a system of fines for various player misdeeds on the diamond. The players naturally rebelled at these measures and demanded the fines to be rescinded. Davidson refused. When threatened with the players’ refusal to take the field in Baltimore, he blithely instituted fines for refusing to play.

On June 14, 1889, the first major league players strike started. Six Louisville players declined to report to the park in Baltimore. They were pitcher Red Ehret, catcher Paul Cook, infielders Guy Hecker, Dan Shannon, and the Old Gladiator himself, Pete Browning. After some cajoling by Association leaders and assurances that the league would investigate the players’ grievances, the Louisville six returned to the field after missing one game.

On the field the team completed the 21-game road trip with a perfect 0-21 record and returned to the bluegrass with a 23-game losing streak intact. After dropping three more to St. Louis they scored an easy 7-3 victory over the Browns to end the horror at 26 games.

Unhappily, the remainder of the season was not any better. The Colonels finished with a 27-111-2 record for a measly .196 percentage. The offense had turned in a middle-of-the-pack record, but the fielding and pitching ranked among some of the worst ever. In July 1889, some of the local stockholders bought out Davidson. They released Hecker and Browning, and hired Jack Chapman as manager. Chapman was making a return trip to Louisville since he had been the manager of Louisville’s original entry in the National League in 1876.

No doubt about it, Chapman had his work cut out for him. Opportunely, help was on its way. Chapman used his extensive knowledge of the baseball world to sign newcomers Harry Taylor, Herb Goodall, Tim Shinnock, and Louisville native Charlie Hamburg. All would play key roles in the Colonels’ 1890 rise. Just as important was what was happening to the competition. The Players League signed over a quarter of the players on the American Association’s reserve lists. Hardest hit were St. Louis, Baltimore, and the Athletic Club of Philadelphia. Stars like Charlie Comiskey, Henry Larkin, and Lave Cross jumped to the new league. Louisville lost five players, but none had hit over .260 the previous season, and they didn’t figure to be much of a loss.

In addition to player movement, Louisville was helped by franchise movement. The National League, trying to shore up its ranks to compete with the Players League, induced Brooklyn and Cincinnati to jump from the AA to the NL. Brooklyn had won the AA pennant in 1889 and Cincinnati was one of the stronger contenders in the Association. So, by opening day 1890, Louisville found itself with a younger squad, new leadership, in a league that had lost its strongest clubs, and its competitors crippled by Players League raids.

Louisville, now nicknamed the Cyclones by the local press due to their fast start and a twister that swept through Louisville that spring, found themselves in first place after the first two weeks of the season. This rarefied atmosphere was so alien to the players that they slipped to 27-25 through June and were in fourth place, nine games behind the Athletics. A 20-game home stand to start July began with 12 straight wins, including three over the Athletics, and saw Louisville vault into first place by percentage points ahead of Philadelphia. Through August Louisville continued to play at .600 clip as teams fell out of the race. By late August they were seven games in front of second-place St. Louis. A 16-8 September led to an early October pennant-clinching victory over Columbus.

They had done it! Louisville became the first team to go from worst to first in a single season. The Cyclones finished with an 88-44 record, a 61-game improvement over the previous season. Certainly the unusual environment in the major leagues was a major contributor to the rise of the team, but they still had to win the games on the field. Louisville did so by improving every aspect of their game. They increased their run production by 28% while the Association as a whole declined 11%. They turned in a league- best batting average of .279, led by Chicken Wolf’s league-leading .363. On defense they cut their opposition runs to 588 from 1,091 the previous season. In 1889 they committed the most errors in the league and had the second-worst fielding percentage. In 1890 they were the best in both categories.

The worst-to-first story continued for the pitching staff, too. In 1890, Louisville won the most games, surrendered the least runs, and dropped their ERA over two runs a game. Walks declined 40%. Scott Stratton turned in a 34-14 season with an ERA of 2.36. He led the league in ERA and winning percentage. Red Ehret chipped in with a 25-14 record and trailed only Stratton with a 2.58 ERA.

By capturing the American Association pennant, Louisville earned a berth in the World Series against NL pennant winner (and 1899 AA pennant winner) Brooklyn.

The series opened in Louisville in wet, cold weather. When they moved on to Brooklyn it was worse. After seven games each team had three wins and a tie. Since the weather forecast called for snow in Brooklyn, the teams postponed the deciding game, with a vague agreement to settle things the next spring. When the Players League collapsed, tensions between the AA and NL heightened and the series was never completed.

In the ensuing season, Louisville quickly settled back into the second division, where they would reside for most of their remaining years in the big leagues. But there was that one shining season when the presence of a baseball war, new ownership, and career years by a group of overachieving players vaulted Louisville to the top of the baseball world.

A native Louisvillian, Louis “Pete” Browning was born June 17, 1861, in the first summer of America’s Civil War. One of eight children (four sons and four daughters) born to Samuel and Mary Jane Sheppard Browning, Pete grew up in the city’s near West End. The family was geographically well-rooted, for when Pete died, a bachelor, in the late summer of 1905, it was at the old family homestead at 1427 West Jefferson, where he had made his residence at the end with his old mother and two sisters.

The tragic aspects of the Browning story begin early in “The Gladiator’s” life and course through his days like dark threads in a once bright tapestry. As a boy and a young man who loved not only baseball but skating, marbles, and fishing, Pete was afflicted with ear and hearing maladies that made learning difficult. (In those youthful years, he did not learn to read or write.) The diagnosis was mastoiditis, and in the still primitive days of surgery, Browning had two operations for his condition, neither of lasting help.

He was to spend 13 seasons in major league baseball (1882- 1894), with an average above .300 for seven consecutive years. He topped out in 1887 at .402. Two years later, he spent two months on suspension for the alcohol problem that plagued him throughout his adult years.

Browning first achieved notice as a pitcher, but spent his time in the majors as a fielder, staying permanently in the outfield after 1885. As a fielder, writes Philip Von Borries, Browning was “atrocious” and “wielded hands of stone.” His elegant hours, of course, were to be spent at the plate, armed with one of his formidable bats. There, in the glory days with Louisville, he regularly electrified his fans. An editorialist for the Louisville Herald wrote:

“. . . when “Old Pete” Browning walked with easy grace to the plate with his bat under his arm, and rubbed his hands with dirt, all of us youngsters in the bleachers raised our voices in wild acclaim . . . . With breathless interest we watched him as he took his position, crouching panther-like over the plate, his keen eye watching for the pitcher . . . . And when “Pete” found one to his liking and let go at it for a fair hit, how we rose with the other exultant fans and shouted for the pure joy of shouting.”

“Old Pete” stayed with the Louisville team through their disastrous 1889 season (27-111) and switched to the Players League and Cleveland in 1890, batting .373 that year. Before his career ended in 1894, he had done stints with Pittsburgh and four other National League clubs.

Browning maintained that he reformed and stopped drinking when he left Louisville. The New York Herald noted in 1891 that some reports had made a dupe of the real Browning, providing a “spin” that the Gladiator was ignorant and simple. “On the contrary,” the Herald reported, “he appeared to be decidedly sensible and well-read.” The columnist continued:

“Pete is one of the characters in professional baseball. He has figured in more scrapes and skirmishes with managers than practically any other ballplayer in the country. Two years ago he was a confirmed drunkard; now he is a reformer, sober, hard-working and respected.”

The transformed Mr. Browning visited Louisville during the “World Series” of 1890 between his native city and Brooklyn. He spoke of himself to the press inthe third person: “When Pete was here he wasn’t nobody. Now Pete comes back to town and everybody calls him Mr. Browning.. When he got with good people, he became good people himself.” Asked about the chances for a Louisville victory, the feisty old Gladiator replied: “All the Brooklyns might be killed in a wreck and then the Louisvilles would have to win.”

It was during the 1884 season playing with “the Louisvilles” that Browning cracked his bat, an event destined to become the Crack Heard ‘Round the World. For Pete turned to John Andrew “Bud” Hillerich, son of the owner of the J. F. Hillerich Co., purveyor of bed posts and butter churns, to create a round, barrel-shaped bat especially for him, and the Louisville Slugger tradition was born.

Browning was a man who was shot through with eccentricities—always stepping on third base with his left foot when he came off the field; pampering his “lamps” (eyes) and bushy eyebrows. But, foremost among his quirks was what might be called a “bat mysticism.” He named all his bats, often turning to the Bible as a source. He believed that each of his wood sluggers had just so many hits within them. When they were exhausted, they were given a respectful retirement in the basement of Pete’s mother’s home. Reportedly, over 200 ended up there in repose.

After his diamond career was completed, Browning returned to Louisville, where he kept a saloon (not the best of occupations for a man with his personal history) at the corner of 13th and Market streets. He also tried cigar sales for a time. But his health—both mental and physical—began to deteriorate significantly.

In the summer of 1905, he was committed by order of a local circuit court to the Central Kentucky Lunatic Asylum (Lakeland). After barely two weeks of residence there, he was removed by his sister. Within a month he was taken to City Hospital in Louisville and underwent surgeries on the ear and chest. He died at his mother’s home on September 10, 1905.

The Louisville papers next day could not resist puns in their obituary headlines: “Called Out For All Time On Life’s Field” read the morning Courier-Journal; and “Pete Browning ‘Out’ of Life’s Game” came from the evening Times. Old teammates—including John Reccius and Charles Pfeiffer—were among the pallbearers who brought “Old Pete” to his final resting place, Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery.

Pete Browning’s life, to all outward appearances, was a story of slow tragedy. His saga is one of great ability and performance that played itself out and finally wound down against a backdrop of ongoing incapacity, isolation, and misunderstanding.

Even in death, the tragedy has continued, for, despite outstanding achievement, Browning has never been inducted into the Hall of Fame. In his insightful study of Browning in Legends of Louisville, Philip Von Borries makes a studied and impassioned appeal that such an omission be remedied in the future. He writes of the failure of the Gladiator’s contemporaries and some later historians to recognize “the ravaging mastoidal condition that lay at the root of all his lifelong personal and professional problems.” Von Borries concludes:

“Today, nearly a century after he last played major league baseball, Browning is imprisoned by both that media-created legend and historical prejudice against American Association luminaries. When those shackles are finally broken, the way will be clear for Browning to enter Cooperstown.”

In the bottom of the first, Colonel left fielder-manager Fred Clarke and right fielder Tom Mccreery singled. Batting third against Washington’s James “Doc” McJames, the league’s strikeout leader that year, Wagner placed a bunt to the first base side of the mound and came close to beating it out. The successful sacrifice moved two runners into scoring position as part of a four-run first inning. Honus walked and struck out in his next two trips to the plate and, in the seventh inning, lined a single to right, driving in a run. On the day, he went 1 for 2 in the Colonels’ 6-2 win, collecting several big league firsts: single, run driven in, base on balls, sacrifice bunt, strikeout, stolen base, and outfield assist.

Only six hundred paying customers witnessed Wagner’s big league debut, but the Louisville Commercial called him “the main feature of the game” and referred to him as “Count Hans Von Wagner.” The paper noted that he “is a splendidly built man, cut on a generous pattern,” elaborating, “In fact his whole build is very much after the order of a one-story brick house.” Favorably impressed, the paper also maintained, “He throws like a shot . . . and is remarkably fast.” His baserunning aggressiveness also nearly cost the team a rally. With Clarke at third and Wagner at first, Wagner stole second, rounded the bag, and headed for third when the throw skipped a few feet away. Clarke, who was anchored to third, reacted to Wagner’s barreling toward him by setting out for home, where he narrowly avoided a tag at the plate.

The following day, Wagner made a sensational catch in center field and, over the next few games, secured many of his other career firsts. On July 21, in game one of a doubleheader, he scored his first run and hit his first double off Washington’s Lester German. German, coincidentally, had surrendered Napoleon “Larry” Lajoie’s first double less than a year earlier. In the second game of the doubleheader, Wagner had his first two-hit game and first triple, also off McJames (though he tried to stretch the triple into a home run and was thrown out at the plate). His first big league homer would come five weeks later, on August 27, when he drove a Jack Dunn pitch over the left field fence at Brooklyn’s Eastern Park. (Dunn is best remembered for being the minor league magnate-manager who, years later, would sign Babe Ruth, a young recruit out of the St. Ma1y’s Industrial School for Boys, to his first professional contract.)

Wagner was off to a flying start. He had at least one hit in each of his first nine games, totaling fourteen hits and giving him a .424 batting average. Within three weeks of his debut, The Sporting News touted his hitting prowess as well as the strength and accuracy of his throwing arm, calling him “a glittering success” and the “bright particular star of the Colonels just now.” The St. Louis-based sports weekly continued with, “Every day he gets cheers and verbal and typographical bouquets and his place in the affections of the rooters is disputed only by Fred Clarke.”

Within a month of his first game with Louisville, Wagner was already making himself the butt of a joke in describing his introduction to Cincinnati Reds’ center fielder William “Dummy” Hoy. Changing sides between innings, the two crossed paths, but Hoy gave no response to Wagner’s repeated requests for a chew. Honus confided to teammate Perry Werden that Hoy must be “the worst stuck-up guy I’ve ever seen.” In admitting his gaffe to others, Wagner quoted Werden’s reply, “Why, you slob, he’s deaf and dumb.” It was obvious that Wagner was already comfortable with his new surroundings, but then again, he never felt above telling one on himself.

Wagner’s agreeable combination of cheerful good nature and superior baseball ability helped pave the way to his acceptance and eventual popularity at the major league level. He confessed, “I was a green, awkward kid, unused to big league ways. . . . I kept my mouth shut, though, and went right along about my business. The one thing that saved me from a lot of extra joshing, I suppose, was [that] I could always slam the ball.”

Endeared, revered, admired and respected by other players, management, media and fans alike, Combs gained many appropriate nicknames: Colonel, The Kentucky Colonel, The Gentleman from Kentucky, The Kentucky Greyhound, The Mail Carrier, The Waiter, The Silver Eagle, The Modest Man, Prince Charming, Big Jim, SANGUWANOC (swift white hawk)—each a tale; each a story. But let us focus on Earle Combs—a Louisville Colonel.

Earle Combs’ rapid rise in organized baseball should not have surprised anyone who knew him. From the games played on diamonds in the fields of his family’s Owsley County (KY) farm with home-made bats and home-made balls to the games at recess with his pupils at the Ida Mae School, people knew he was good. In 1917, in his first “organized” game, a student-faculty pick-up game at Eastern Kentucky Normal School, Combs hit two home runs off Dr. Charles Keith (Dean of Men and one-time pretty fair pitcher). This drew cheers from the crowd and a lecture from Dr. Keith as to why Combs was not playing baseball for Eastern. Inspired by Dr. Keith’s interest, he joined the team.

In 1918, only four years before signing with the Colonels, Combs batted .596 and hit at least one home run in every game for Eastern. From 1919 to 1921 he played for the Pleasant Grove team, the Winchester (KY) Hustlers, the Mayham Coal Co. in High Splint (KY), the Harlan (KY) town team, and the Lexington (KY) Rea’s semipro team. Combs gave former major leaguer and Reo manager Jim Park credit for getting him into professional baseball by arranging a meeting with Cap Neal, business manager of the Louisville Colonels.

Combs signed with the Louisville club in the winter of 1922 and traveled with the team to spring training in Pensacola, Florida. As with any young person on the threshold of living their dream, Combs had mixed emotions: afraid he wouldn’t make the team; knowing he could make the team; convinced that every player on the team could hit better than he could; afraid he needed luck. But his hustle and eagerness to learn and his positive mental attitude about baseball life (he ate, slept and dreamt baseball) tipped the emotional scale.

He immediately impressed players and coaches with his batting, fielding, and speed to run down long flies. Plus, he could get rid of a ball exceptionally fast. Other attributes that impressed: he was modest and unassuming, sincere, level-headed and even-minded.

Play Ball!

Combs’ first plate appearance in an exhibition game in Pensacola was as a pinch hitter against the Dodgers’ Al Mamaux. The result was a home run. Both manager Joe McCarthy and Cap Neal felt Combs (dubbed “Big Jim” in spring training) was an outstanding player. In Combs’ first regular season game he got two hits, but also committed two fielding errors. It was a most miserable day for him. McCarthy told him, “Forget it. I told you today that you were my center fielder. You still are. Listen, if I can stand it, I guess you can.” Combs confided later that it was at that moment he became a baseball player. His .945 fielding average would have been better except for that first game and another game in which he committed three errors on one play.

Combs started strong and finished strong in his rookie season. Major league scouts began watching him long before the season was over. Although he could have been sold to the majors, through Combs’ asking and the Colonels’ own inclination, he was kept for another year in Louisville. And what a year it was.

Cap Neal was quoted in early March as saying, “Earle Combs is the most promising player who has broken into the game since Ty Cobb—he is the nearest approach to Cobb that we have seen. He is a natural sticker, and is constantly improving in the field and baserunning.”

Parkway Field, the Colonels’ new ballpark, held its inaugural game May 1, 1923. Combs caught the first out of the game, scored the first run of the game and went 1 for 3, hitting a double. Former major leaguer turned evangelist, Billy Sunday, was in attendance and wrote regarding Combs, “I want to meet that chap. They tell me he came up from the mountains and that last year was his first year in the big tent. Well, I’ll gamble they’ll sell him about next year for just about what the grandstand cost. He’s a real find. He may need this year’s seasoning, but he is one sweet ball player. He is big league caliber, believe me. And he is a fine hitter. There are only a few real free hitters in baseball today. He’ll make good, that fellow. He has the stuff and before many years, if he doesn’t get the swell-head, which I don’t think probable, he’ll be a major league sensation. Another Cobb? Well, strange things happen in baseball.” Ty Cobb was Combs’ baseball idol.

Combs’ stats in Louisville speak for themselves. But they don’t tell the whole story. One day’s performance (3 for 4, including a grand-slammer, driving in 7 runs; and running down a would-be gapper with the bases loaded, saving at least 2 or 3 runs) got this comment from a Columbus, Ohio sportswriter: “Combs is his name. He’s a tall, powerful, round shouldered, rustic-looking youth. He is in his second season of AA pastiming. Joe McCarthy, Louisville manager, picked him up from the wild and wooly downs of Upsquidink or Compahpah, Kentucky. He doesn’t look much like a ball player and he’s far from a thing of beauty and a joy forever as he lopes around in left field, with all the abandoned grace of a speeding giraffe, but he can run as fast as a scared rabbit, can judge fly balls like Tris Speaker, can bat like Ty Cobb and run bases like Bob Bescher in his palmiest days. Outside of that he isn’t much of a ball player.”

September 23, 1923 was “Earle Combs Day” at Parkway Field. Some 300 fans came by special train from Richmond and the surrounding area in Combs’ native eastern Kentucky to honor him and to see a doubleheader. They presented him with an automatic shot gun. The Colonel fans in Louisville, not to be outdone, presented him with a silver loving cup inscribed “Kentucky’s Greatest Ball Player.” The honoree gave a gift back in his first time at bat by hitting an inside-the-park home run.

At some time during Combs’ stay in Louisville his teammates accepted a bet from the Kansas City team as to which team’s fastest runner was really fastest. Combs won the home-to-first-base race with very little problem.

The Reds, Pirates, Giants and Dodgers from the senior circuit and the Indians, White Sox and Yankees from the junior circuit were all interested in Combs. On January 7, 1924, Combs became a member of the New York Yankees. Yet, it was not that simple. Before signing his 1923 Colonels contract Combs wanted to have included in writing that he would receive some monetery reimbursement from the club when he was sold to a major league team. The Louisville brain-trust assured him they would take care of him and nothing needed to be in writing. No “appreciative settlement” was received and Combs was more than a little upset, more because of the principle than the money.

Combs would not sign the Yankee contract until the Colonels completed their agreement with him. Combs stated, “I have nothing to be scared of. I am not a dumb animal to be browbeaten, cowed, lashed, coerced, or goaded into anything that I do not think is right. I am a human being and I intend to stay that way whether I play with the New York Yankees or not.” During the “holdout” Combs signed a contract to be an assistant baseball coach at Eastern and was building a new home in Richmond. Joe McCarthy entered the picture and was able to get Combs to agree to terms and report to the Yankees for spring training.

Speaking in later years about the Louisville-Combs-Yankee “deal”, Combs said, “They said it was a record in those days, I don’t know what they paid for me but I do know that I was cut in for $3,000 of it. And what’s more, I still got that $3,000 and I believe it’s doubled its value since then.”

Combs’ first year with the Yankees lasted only 24 games before he broke an ankle sliding into home on June 15. Babe Ruth was so impressed with the rookie that he said that injury cost the Yankees the loss of the pennant to Washington in 1924. Combs returned in 1925, and as they say, “The rest is history.”

Earle Bryan Combs was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1970.

Craig Combs gets batting tips from grandfather Earle, “the table setter” for Ruth and Gehrig with the New York Yankees. (Courtesy of Craig Combs)

The young boy ranged slightly to his left, and, with his left-gloved hand only partly extended, leaped and speared the line drive off the bat of his grandfather.

“Craig!” The older man exclaimed laughing, “We ought to start calling you Twinkletoes, because you looked just like George Selkirk! You didn’t have to jump for that ball at all!”

The boy’s two older brothers giggled, as brothers will, while the chagrined fielder pondered his explanation. They, of course, never made mistakes in these backyard pepper games.

“It didn’t go as high as I thought it would,” the boy mumbled lamely. He knew his grandfather was right, though.

“Yeah, old George really used to jump around,” the boy’s grandfather continued, preparing to hit again. “Here, Craig, try another one. Remember, don’t leave your feet unless you have to.”

Boys have been learning to love baseball through backyard pepper games with their father and grandfathers now for generations. My grandfather/teacher was a man who had patrolled center field for the New York Yankees for 12 years, and even at 10 I knew it was something special. whether it was listening to him discuss the fielding style of an old Yankee teammate or sitting on the front row (in front of Denny McLain) during his Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in 1970, being the grandson of Earle Combs had its advantages.

Of course, I really didn’t think of him as Earle Combs, ex-ballplayer and Baseball Hall of Fame member; he was simply “Pop” to me. He was never too busy to fool with my brothers and me, and when he could, he loved to come watch us play in our Little League games. As evidenced by his many years as a coach following his playing career, he was never critical of our play, even though we never attained his level of excellence. Many years later, when friends found out who my grandfather was, they would sometimes ask, politely, at what level my baseball career had stalled. I remember counting the sad fact that “my playing days ended when I graduated from high school, when the curve balls got a whole lot better!”

I grew up on a farm in central Kentucky, in southwestern Madison County to be exact. My father ran the farming operation for both our acreage as well as my grandparents’. Our property was separated from their land only by a long fence running along the lush ridges of our farm. From atop this fence I could look eastward and see the stately white-brick home of my grandparents, just a few hundred yards in the distance, among what seemed like fifty acres of manicured lawn surrounded by a white plank fence. Looking back to the west roughly the same distance I viewed the comforting sight of our own house and yard. If it was summertime, more often than not I could watch mom from a distance working on her peony bed or planting a new variety of tree which I’d never heard of. From this vantage point I might also see my father atop a tractor mowing or checking cattle.

When I was growing up I used to visit my grandparents’ house almost daily. Most of the time it was with my family, but sometimes I would just head off through the pastures and materialize unannounced at their back door. Like most grandparents, Pop and Mimi never minded my dropping in. Occasionally on these impromptu visits I’d notice an unfamiliar car in the driveway. This usually meant an old teammate or acquaintance from Pop’s days in baseball was in for a visit. If I promised not to be a bother, I sometimes got to sit and listen to the likes of Waite Hoyt or Joe Sewell talk about the old days with him.

In my grandparents’ house there was a back bedroom upstairs. When I would enter this room, it was if I had entered a holy place; there was a reverence I felt when I was there. It was the room that contained my grandfather’s baseball library and a good many of his scrapbooks and pictures. He even had an old Boston uniform he had worn as a coach for the Red Sox, stored in a white cardboard box bound with string. Pop told me the Red Sox were the only team he had been with that had ever given him anything like that. A narrow set of stairs off this back bedroom always drew me like a magnet towards the attic, where Pop had stored satchels and boxes containing old magazines and World Series programs. The attic of the old country home was well-suited for giving a youngster the creeps, what with the usual dark creakiness, cobwebs and all, but I never minded. I would lose myself in baseball’s Golden Age for hours up there.

In the summer of 1970 many of the baseball heroes I’d been reading about came to life for me. In February of that year Pop was notified that he would be enshrined in baseball’s Hall of Fame. I remember him saying at the time that he was as surprised by his being selected for the Hall as if he’d “been shot between the eyes.”

The news had a profound effect on me as well. I think I realized for perhaps the first time, that in addition to being a neat grandfather who fixed great chocolate sodas and had just happened to play major league baseball with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig — on perhaps the greatest team of all time — he was a real, live, honest-to-goodness hero too!  Just like the ones I’d read about. He received congratulatory notes from all over the country, even President Nixon. He was finally receiving the recognition which some thought was overdue. After all, he had finished his career with the same lifetime batting average, .325, as had his successor in the Yankee outfield, a fellow by the name of Joe DiMaggio. Pop and my dad had both always considered DiMaggio their definition of the perfect ball player, so this was a good enough yardstick for me as well.

To say I was a mighty excited 12 year old heading up to the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cooperstown that summer was, as Groucho Marx would say, simply evidence of the poverty of my vocabulary. The sense of anticipation and wonder I felt could probably be compared to Armstrong and Aldrin preparing to survey the surface of the moon, or perhaps Dorothy wandering into Oz.

During induction week in July 1970 the Hotel Otesaga on the banks of the Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, New York was the center of the baseball universe. All of the honorees and their families, along with all the current Hall of Fame members present, would be staying at the Otesaga. On the advice of Pop and my dad, I decided that that massive lobby of the old hotel would be the best location to meet the ball players. Little did I know that for an entire week none of us would be able to get on an elevator or eat breakfast or go get a paper without running into someone like Frankie Frisch or Luke Appling or Bill Terry.

Sometimes Pop would introduce me to and old teammate or rival. I recall cautiously approaching the still-imposing Lefty Grove while Pop exclaimed ruefully, “He’s the only pitcher I ever faced who actually knocked the bat out of my hands one time.”  From the look of approval on Grove’s face it was clear he enjoyed the memory. Still a pitcher versus a hitter after all those years!

Sometimes I had trouble when I went solo, though. During breakfast one day I walked past the hotel dining room and noticed a serious-looking Bob Feller, who was sitting alone and appeared to have just begun eating. I stopped, and tried to pretend not to stare, but by now he had noticed me also. Now what could I do?  I felt I had probably already disturbed his breakfast and was about to turn away when he motioned for me to come over to his table. Now I’ve done it, I thought. I wondered what a ninety-mile-an-hour coffee cup in the stomach would feel like. As I timidly approached the table, Feller, noticing the ball clutched in my right hand, smiled broadly and said, “Would you like me to sign your ball?”

Whew!  I’ll always remember Bob Feller fondly for that moment.

And so it went the entire time we were in Cooperstown. I shot pool with Bowie Kuhn’s kids. Our family had a private guided tour of the Hall of Fame museum one evening. We took a boat ride on Otsego Lake, and I learned more about James Fenimore Cooper than I ever thought I would. I was even among a group of autograph-seeking kids shooed out of a Hall of Fame “members only” cocktail party by Casey Stengel!

Although there would be many other special honors and sporting events for my family to attend together, Pop only got to enjoy the annual Hall of Fame induction ceremonies for a couple more years. Our travels to many of the various events he was asked to attended ended when he suffered a stroke in 1972. After a long illness he died from the effects of the disease in July 1976. A heartfelt eulogy appeared in Sports Illustrated, where writer E.J. Kahn, Jr. called my grandfather the greatest center fielder in Yankee history.

Even though he’s been gone for two decades, Pop’s legacy as a ball player lives on. I’ll see footage of an old World Series game that mentions him, or he’ll be referred to in a newspaper article. I occasionally get phone calls from baseball history enthusiasts simply wanting to talk about him. On vacation golfing excursions along the Atlantic Coast, I’ve even run into elderly gentlemen from the northeast who remember seeing him play.

More often, though, I’ll sit with my own two young sons and talk to them about their great-grandfather. I might tell them about spending the night with my Pop and Mimi and how they always fixed me these huge, crusty, wonderful pancakes for breakfast. Or about living close enough to them to run see them anytime I wanted to; and what a magical place their home was to me then. We might even discuss a certain backyard pepper game when their dad got teased just because he caught line drives like George Selkirk.

Performance over time is essential in choosing an all-star lineup, so in picking players for the all-time, all-Kentucky team only those were considered who had played five season or more as a regular — a regular, in this case, being one who (except for pitchers) played in 100 or more games at a starting position.

Our infield is made up of Dan McGann at first, Fred “Dande” Pfeffer on second, Pee Wee Reese at short and Ray Chapman at third.

Two players deserve serious consideration at first base: McGann and Don Hurst. McGann, a native of Shelbyville, played in the pre-“rabbit ball” era, specifically 1895 to 1908, while Hurst, the pride of Maysville, competed when the likes of Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Hank Greenberg and Hack Wilson were hard at it.

McGann, a switch-hitter, was a regular for eleven seasons and hit .300 or better in five of them. He wore the uniform of eight major league teams. Only twice did he account for more than 200 runs in a season (counting runs scored and runs batted in) but he was a stolen base artist in an era when larceny on the bases was a key weapon. He holds the record among Kentuckians for the most heists in a career with 288 — 56 more than Reese, who played three years longer.

Hurst could be awesome. In 1932, he hit 24 home runs and led the league with 143 runs batted in, while scoring 109 himself and ending up with a .339 average. His 31 home runs in 1929 are the most by a Kentuckian in one season. He hit over .300 for four straight years (1929-1932) and had the highest slugging average (.547 in 1932) of any Kentuckian. But the following year his average plummeted 72 points and two seasons later he was no longer in a big league lineup. Our choice is McGann for longevity (13 seasons compared to seven for Hurst) and speed.

At second, Louisville’s Pfeffer, a regular for 14 of his 16 years (1882-1897), tying Reese for the longest big league career. Though his average for the half dozen teams he played with was only .255, he rapped out 1, 671 hits. He scored 1, 094 times while knocking in 859 runs. Pfeffer was one of 50 Kentuckians to play before the turn of the century, all but three of whom were pitchers.

Reese, of Ekron, at shortstop is one of three Kentucky players enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York. He was a whiz from the beginning, inspiring  a writer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press to write during his first professional season at Louisville:  “the Colonels’ 18-year-old shortstop . . . is all they said he would be.”

Never a power hitter, he could get a respectable share of doubles and triples and was always a threat to steal. He had guts, too, recovering from a hit in the head in his first big league season and going on to hit .269 during a 16-year career (1940-1958 with three seasons missed because of military service). He had the most hits of any Kentuckian in the big leagues (2,170) and scored the most runs (1, 338).

The only Kentuckian close to Reese as a big league shortstop was Chapman, who was fatally injured by a pitched ball at the height of his career in 1920. Like Reese, he was a master at covering ground, amassing as many as 528 assists in one season and leading the league in putouts twice.

A team player from the words “play ball,”  Chapman set a big league record for the most sacrifices in one season besides tying the mark for the most in one game. He hit over .300 four of his nine big league seasons and holds the Kentucky record for stolen bases with 52 in one year (1917). He played from 1912 to 1920 and because no other Kentuckian qualifies at third base, we have moved the Beaver Dam native to that position to complete our team.

Our utility infielder, Bill Sweeney, learned the various positions on the sandlots of Covington and, in 1907, at age 21, made the National League team in Chicago when the Cubs boasted of Tinker, Evers and Chance.

He had no chance of becoming a regular so, after one year, the Cubs sent him to the Boston Braves, where he took a turn at each infield slot. By 1911, he had settled down as a second baseman and seemed to be developing as a hitter, batting .314 that season and rising to .344 the following year. But then he skidded to .257 in 1913 and wound up his career the following season back in Chicago with a puny .218. Still, he finished with a career mark of .272.

Our outfield is a manager’s dream and a pitcher’s nightmare, with Earle Combs, Pete “The Gladiator” Browning and Bobby Veach.

Combs, the pride of Owsley County, and Kentucky’s first Hall of Famer, was a tremendously intelligent athlete. He had speed to burn and his ability to draw walks and hit line drives made him an ideal leadoff hitter in the days of the Yankees’ “Murderers Row.”  He was a true gentleman, never thrown out of a game, and his jokes and pranks contributed to the good spirits that permeated Yankee clubhouses during his career (1924-1935).

In eleven full seasons, he hit over .300 eight times including six years in a row, a Kentucky record. He would up with a lifetime .325 average. He also hit more triples (154) than any other Kentuckian. Teammate Babe Ruth, who played beside him for 10 years, said that as a fielder “he could do everything [Tris} Speaker could do, except possibly throw.”  Ty Cobb, that grizzled warrior without illusions, listed Combs as one of a half dozen great center fielders.

Browning, the only Kentuckian ever to win a big league batting title, ended his career with the highest average of any Kentuckian (.343). He won the batting title in 1882, 1885 and 1890, with marks of .382, .362 and .387 respectively, but he failed to win it in 1887, when he hit a career high of .402. This Louisvillian drilled 1,654 hits in 1,185 games from 1882 to 1894.

Veach, who hailed from McLean County, cavorted in a Detroit outfield that featured the immortal Cobb and another fellow who was almost as devastating with a bat, Harry Heilmann. In that company he etched a lifetime mark of .310. Cobb had one word to describe his teammate: “dependable.”

Veach was responsible for more runs scored and runs batted in than any Kentuckian except Reese (2,120). He was also second to Resse in hits (2,064) and the only other player from the state to notch more than 2,000 in his career. He played from 1912 to 1925 and led all Kentuckians in doubles (393).

Our utility outfielder is Arlington’s George Harper, who averaged .303 for eleven seasons between 1916 and 1929. Our designated hitter is Louisville’s Gus Bell, who led all Kentuckians in home runs with 206 between 1950 and 1964. Four times he drove in over 100 runs and finished with a career average of .281.

The hardest job in making up our all-Kentucky team was choosing a catcher, for no Kentuckian ever achieved at that position what any of those already named accomplished at theirs. Paducah’s Phil Roof played the longest — from 1961 to 1977 but batted only .215 during his career. Kid Baldwin of Newport and Bob Clark of Covington played seven years apiece during the late 1800s, but their statistics were little better. Covington’s Johnnie Heving had the best average of any catcher from Kentucky, .265 for eight years from 1920 to 1932. But that is only two points better than Earl Grace of Barlow, whose big league career also spanned eight seasons (1929-1937) but who appeared in 627 games to Heving’s 398. Grace was Pittsburgh’s number one receiver for three years and the Philadelphia Phillies’ for one. The nod goes to Grace.

In contrast to their potential battery mates, our pitchers are enough to make any manager envious. Our starting rotation includes Gus Weyhing, Carl Mays, Jim Bunning, Paul Derringer and Jesse Tannehill.

Weyhing, in 14 season, won 264 and lost 234 between 1887 and 1901. Though he weighed only 145 pounds, he won 20 or more games for seven straight seasons, including four in a row in which he reached or exceeded the magic number of 30. His 1, 665 strikeouts are second highest among Kentuckians.

Mays, who hailed from Liberty, won 20 or more games five times. His 208 wins and 126 losses gave him the best won-lost percentage of any Kentuckian (.623). In 1917, he not only notched a 22-9 record but also an earned run average of 1.74, the lowest any Kentuckian has ever achieved in the majors. He played from 1915 to 1929 and in 1921 led the American League in total games (49), total innings (336.2) and won/lost percentage (.750 with a record of 27-9). Twice he led the league in complete games (1918 and 1926). When in top form, his submarine delivery was invincible and, at his peak, the Yankees parted with two players and $40,000 to acquire him.

In 1996 Bunning became the third player from Kentucky to enter the Hall of Fame. He won 224 games and lost 184 between 1955 and 1971, and was the first player since Cy Young to win 100 games in both leagues. His 2,855 career strikeouts are tops among Kentuckians and rank 11th on the all-time major league list. The Southgate native, now a representative from Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, led the league in strikeouts in 1959, 1960 and 1967. He pitched a no-hit game in both leagues and posted 40 shutouts during his career.

Physically formidable at 6-foot-4, Springfield’s Paul Derringer was a master of control. He won 20 or more games four times between 1931 and 1945, no small accomplishment considering that for six straight years at the peak of this ability he led a team that never finished higher than fifth. Still, he achieved a career record of 223 wins and 212 losses. His best season was 1939, when his 25-7 record with Cincinnati gave him the best winning percentage in the National League. His record included 1,507 strikeouts and 32 shutouts.

Tannehill, of Dayton, had six 20-game winning seasons in a 17-year career between 1894 and 1911, four in the National League and two in the American. His lifetime record of 195 wins and 120 losses included 34 shutouts. He led the National League in ERA in 1901 with 2.18; the following year it dropped to 1.95.

There is one more Kentuckian whose name is enshrined in the Hall of Fame, Albert B. “Happy” Chandler, who was commissioner of baseball from 1945 to 1951. He could throw out the first pitch for this all-Kentucky team!

The Kitty League was first formed in 1902 under the guiding hand of Frank Bassett, a young salesman from Hopkinsville, Kentucky. During his lengthy presidency of the league, Bassett studied medicine, became a doctor, and would later be elected county judge-executive of Christian County, Kentucky. When young Christian Countians decided to tie the knot Dr. Bassett administered the book test as well as the marriage service.

The first player Bassett signed to the league was a 20-year-old catcher he saw play on the sandlot fields around Huntsville, Alabama. The young receiver was tough and handled games like a seasoned catcher, and Bassett knew he had what it took to make Hopkinsville the anchor team in the new league. His name was Charles Evard Street and after his Kitty League days he would go on to have a long career with the Washington Senators. He caught Walter “Big Train” Johnson’s aspirin-like fastballs and became better known as Gabby Street. Although his big league career was stellar, he was lucky to collect his $35-a-month salary from the 1903 Hopkinsville Moguls.

Besides having a team in Hopkinsville, the first season of the Kitty League included teams in Paducah and Henderson in Kentucky, Clarksville and Jackson in Tennessee, and Cairo, Illinois. Financial records of the first year are not known to exist; however, two events indicate that it was successful. First, in what would become the most important barometer or success for the Kitty, it played ball the next season. Secondly, the owners met in the back room of a Cairo, Illinois saloon to divvy up the league’s profits. Witnesses recount the meeting stretching far into the night until it concluded in a fist fight among the team owners.

Although the first season seems to have been profitable, the following season must have been a bust because the league folded after the 1906 season. The die was cast, however. The league would come and go several more times, just like the west Kentucky summers it filled with entertainment, talent and competition. Earl Ruby, a long time sports columnist for the Louisville Courier-Journal, once wrote, “Born of a fight, it died with its boots on every time and came back swinging on each revival.”

In 1911, C.G. Gosnell, a native of Vincennes, Indiana reformed the Kitty League, this time including two teams from the Hoosier state. Fans in west Kentucky, hungry for professional baseball, launched door-to-door fund-raising campaigns to start local teams. Such efforts allowed Owensboro, Kentucky, which became one of the most successful franchises in the Kitty, to field its first team in the league for the 1913 season. Other cities were not as supportive as Owensboro, so the league dissolved because of dwindling profits and lack of interest. Dr. Bassett made another go of the league in 1916, but the looming presence of the war in Europe allowed only one season of life for the Kitty.

The league started to life again several years after World War I. In 1922, Mayfield, Kentucky opened its first season in the Kitty with adulation and fanfare. On opening day local businesses opened only for the morning, and special excursions were offered by the railroad so people could go to the Mayfield ball yard.

The team was called the Pant Makers because of the clothing mills in town, and they played their games at Cyclone Park, a wooden grandstand just north of town. A year before the city’s debut in the Kitty League, the citizens of Mayfield built the ballpark near the Illinois Central Railroad tracks. In March 1922 a tornado ripped the tin roof from the grandstand and smashed it to bits on the ground behind the ballpark. It was quickly repaired, but always known thereafter as Cyclone Park.

The fanfare did not last, and the Kitty used up its fourth life by 1924. Again, it seems to have been the lack of attendance that sent the league into another dormancy. Some might say that the people of the region were apathetic baseball fans, but it is likely to be something more significant than a disregard for the nation’s pastime. It is more likely to be a tangible shift in the social condition of the region.

Mayfield had been a farming community for almost a century. Tobacco and cotton farmers brought their crops to this rural Kentucky town to sell, bought the next season’s supplies, and then returned to their farms. In the summer, if their crops and farms were in order, they had time during the hottest part of the day to go to town and watch baseball. Mayfield had changed, however. Cotton and clothing mills had taken root in the once quiet town, and much more rigid working standards took hold. While small businesses and shopkeepers could turn their employees loose to watch an afternoon ballgame, the manufacturers could not afford to do so. Without adequate lighting systems for the ballparks, professional baseball disappeared from west Kentucky and Tennessee, and southern Illinois, which spelled doom for the Kitty League.

Baseball, however, flourished. Semipro and “Sunday leagues” sprang up in the Kitty League towns and the smaller towns of the region. In 1926 the Modern Woodmen of America fielded a team featuring several old Kitty League players and a curve-ball-throwing teenager named Jack Erwin. Erwin would later work his way up to the Detroit Tigers and would (many locals claim) strike out Babe Ruth during a spring training game.

Semipro baseball thrived. The teams usually played only on Sundays so fans could watch baseball after church. They also had no league rules regulating the kinds of players they had to have on the team, which allowed the Modern Woodmen team to use a teenage pitcher and other players that had played several seasons of professional baseball. The Kitty League, on the other hand, was a “developmental league” (also known as a Class D league) for the major league teams, so they had strict roster guidelines to follow. Each team was allowed six “veterans” on a 15-man roster, while the rest had to be playing in their first or second season of professional ball. The result was better play ing the semipro leagues in the region, which is why they outlasted the Kitty League.

In 1935, after an 11-year hiatus, the Kitty League came storming back, once again under the leadership of Frank Bassett. The old and practically forgotten league roared back to life and started into its golden age. The newly reformed league had teams in Portageville, Missouri, Paducah and Hopkinsville in Kentucky, and Union City, Jackson, and Lexington in Tennessee for its first season. In 1936 Henry Wise moved his Portageville Pirates team to Owensboro and named them the Oilers, and Mayfield and Fulton, Kentucky each put a team in the league. The Lexington, Tennessee team moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1929 and took the name Barons.

Several very fine ball players got their start in the league during the high tide of the Kitty. Vern Stephens played shortstop for the Mayfield Clothiers and led them to the 1937 league championship. He belted 30 homers while hitting .361, and drove in 123 runs for the Mayfield team. The St. Louis Cardinals’ Hall of Fame second baseman Red Schoendienst broke into the professional ranks with the Union City, Tennessee team. He was deft with the bat and foiled many batters with his prowess in the infield.

Over the next seven seasons the Kitty enjoyed increasing popularity as well as healthy returns at the ticket windows. Many teams were playing in new ballparks and under new lighting systems that afforded working class fans nightly trips to the ballpark. Everything looked promising for the Kitty, but Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 sealed the fate of the Kitty League. The war dried up the talent pool in all of baseball; minor leagues like the Class D leagues evaporated. The Kitty ceased operations on June 16, 1942 because of a lack of ball players.

Once the war was over, the Kitty League came swinging back to life in 1946. Soldiers returned home, and many baseball-players-turned-soldiers tried to resume their professional careers. Many spent four years playing in the army, so they were well-equipped for professional baseball. For a few years after World War II, Kitty fans were treated to a different kind of baseball player. They were bigger, stronger, and more experienced that the players of the pre-war era. Men like Barry Craig, a hard-throwing southpaw from Knoxville, Tennessee were assigned to teams such as Mayfield in the Kitty when they were in their mid-20s. The quality of play in all minor leagues was excellent. Fans appreciated that and pushed through the turnstiles in record numbers, and many leagues shattered attendance records in 1946, 1947 and 1948.

Post-war Kitty League fans were treated to several different future major league stars. Dusty Rhodes, who played for the Hopkinsville Hoppers in 1947, hit a pinch-hit homer in game one of the 1954 World Series for the New York Giants. In 1954 Tony Kubek played outfield and shortstop for the Owensboro Oilers at the tender age of 17.

The love affair with the Kitty League did not last. Throughout the first half of the 1950s attendance leveled off and then started to decline. Talent in the league remained good, and cities like Mayfield and Owensboro continued to improve their ballparks to comfort the fans. Ultimately, they could not compete with three new components that forever changed the face of southern popular culture — drive-in movie theaters, air conditioning and, most significantly, television.

The first, drive-in movies, eroded the support of young baseball fans. For whatever reasons, taking a date to a movie, and staying in one’s own automobile, had a greater attraction than a night spent at the ballpark!  The effect of the drive-in theater paled in comparison to the other two inventions. Air conditioning and television proved to be a lethal combination to the Kitty League. People were more  likely to remain in their air-conditioned homes and watch a whole new realm of entertainment on their televisions than to spend a hot evening at the ballpark. The Kitty finished its sixth and final life by 1955. Professional baseball has remained extinct in west Kentucky ever since.

I characterize the course of the minors as an “unparalleled renaissance” primarily because of the tremendous scope of new park construction and the huge investment in facilities. This is so much greater than anything in preceding decades. Clearly, the number of professional baseball leagues will never again flourish as they did in the late 1940s, when dozens of leagues developed and teams could be found playing in the smallest towns.

However, the teams of today, grouped in seventeen “organized” leagues, all members of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, have a sophistication of operation and a stability of management and governance of which the post-WWII leagues would never have even dreamed.

While the operation of today’s clubs is professional in a methodical fashion, for the fans the minors have managed to retain a special, almost rustic image, and conjure up in many minds a mystique right out of Field of Dreams. Anyone following daily media accounts is keenly aware that major league baseball is mainstream in American — yet larger than life; it is filled with stars and superstars; it is glitz and television; it is money and prime time; it is uptown and mega-seating. It fills a distinct function in our society — that need by some portion of our population to fantasize about rags-to-riches dreams come true.

However, our society is broad; it is not bound to one style of thing in any genre. Minor league baseball’s resurgence is due, in part, to its establishing of a very desirable, unchallenged, niche. It is charm; it is more “boys playing a sport”; it is not uptown, but hometown; it is not glitz, but grass roots; it is honest effort; it has crazy promotions and crowd involvement. It is something that many of us as adults think our society has nearly lost.

My love of minor league baseball is probably rooted in some wistful attachment to playing baseball myself as a youngster. Also, my emotion partly reflects some nostalgic feelings about the folklore of “old-time players” doing the unexpected, some bizarre thing that even today, when retold, are apt to capture anyone’s imagination. One might mistakenly dismiss the resurgence of the minors as some chasing of nostalgia, but the minors are not caught in any aura of yesteryear. The minors are thriving in the mood of the  present. A visit I made to Victory Field in Indianapolis this season made me quite aware of this. The park there is practically new, having opened on July 11, 1996. A sold-out crowd of roughly 12,000 enthusiastic Hoosiers flocked to it.

The stadium sits in the southwest corner of Indianapolis’ downtown, with a wide-open center field, foul pole to foul pole, which focuses your attention — especially during the setting sun — on the streamlined skyscrapers and glass-windowed hotels and offices of the downtown skyline. The friendly design of the  stadium is satisfying in every aspect of modern sport-facility architecture. Major or minor, it’s the best park in which I’ve ever watched a baseball game.

Minor league baseball is played in many wonderful towns like Indianapolis. Most of the minor league towns are smaller than Indy, but a common thread in so many of those ballparks is the discernable sense of community reflected in the attitudes of the fans who attend. Look at almost any minor league crowd. You find people who know each other. Generally, they’re “just folks.”  Often they have children in tow, sharing together, as a family, this traditional game. They can afford to bring the kids. They can closely follow the action, or they can pop in and out to concession and souvenir stands. There is a general sense of comfort in the air. After all, it is the fans who set the mood at a minor league game.

This is not to indicate that the minors are rural America. For decades the “minors” held a reputation of “bus leagues, bus leagues and mom and pop operations.”  Athletes reaching the majors looked back on their careers and laughed at their early years. But the minors are no longer the subject of that type of jesting. They are now viewed as an industry. But even in this, they are distinct from the majors. Though an industry by all accepted financial norms, minor league teams enjoy a “local” image, the pride of the city, something other industries wish they could duplicate.

The primary influence which has made the bush league description passe is the phenomenal surge in the construction of new ballparks. Today, women who never relished the thought of using public restrooms at a ballpark are finding lavatory facilities the equal of modern multiplex cinemas. Concession stands are no longer hot dog and popcorn shacks wedged in some tight, dark location. They are brightly lit, strategically placed, often overlooking the playing field, and more than likely, armed with closed circuit television monitors covering the game.

What’s more, the seats are no longer wood slat holdovers from pre-WWII; they are body-molded plastic for easy access and comfort. In the outfield there may be a spacious patio lawn surrounding the fence, where fans can spread blankets and picnic while watching both the game and their cavorting children. As for sight-lines, these smaller stadiums are so compact and streamlined it’s difficult not to have a great seat.

Field lights are no longer mounted on oversized telephone poles. The modern mercury or argon lights sit stop towering metal standards designed to sway in the wind. Nowadays, the average fan can’t distinguish the lighting at most minor league parks from the majors.

Perhaps the charm of the old scoreboard, with manually hung, painted numbers is lost, but the replacement is hard to fault — a bright scoreboard and message center, often with graphics capability and the launching pad for celebratory fireworks.

In the old days, the peak of any music in minor league game was the playing of the national anthem. Now, the modern sound systems rock their crowds into excitement. After the game, bright, bouncy music replays in your head long after you’ve left the parking lot.

If one were to single out an overriding aspect of attending a game anywhere in the minor league, I would venture to suggest that “stress-loss” is the most singular difference. One doesn’t have to park twelve blocks away to save money. Ballpark parking costs about the price of a hot dog. Parking is usually in supervised areas. Crime is so negligible that even petty vandalism is unexpected. It’s a nice feeling to have an easy walk both to and from the park and to be free to say hello to acquaintances. It’s a nice feeling to pay ticket prices that equate to parking prices. What a satisfaction to arrive or leave without having to worry about when the traffic is the worst. In general, it’s just nice to be able to relax completely. Certainly that helps make fans want to come back time and again.

Meanwhile, with all of these factors adorning the game, surrounding it, promoting it, none has changed the “game” itself. In fact, the game, as it is played between the line, is remarkably unchanged. Young athletes desperate to be a success, to become stars, are dreaming their dreams and playing to their fullest. They give heart and soul, and sometimes, body to win. They play with the zest of youth — and their zest becomes contagious to the fans.

In summary, minor league baseball has changed completely. Yet this industry is based on a game that has changed very little. The mix combines the best of tradition and revolution. In the middle of our modern, high-speed existence, I find that minor league baseball is more vibrant than ever, and I grin a big grin every time I hear of another new park springing to life. While it’s not the majors, for many of us it’s just exactly where we want to sink down into a seat and just enjoy listening to the crack of the bat.

BRANCH B. RICKEY is president of the American Association; grandson of legendary Branch Rickey.

Smith turned out to have just the right combination of guts and moxie to allow him to bring baseball back to Kentucky’s largest city in grand style. In the process, Smith’s American Association team and the leaders and baseball fans of Louisville touched off the biggest minor-league bonanza since the post-World War II 1940s.

Louisville had been without baseball since 1972, when then-Kentucky Governor Wendell Ford appeased seekers of a football stadium for the University of Louisville by spending $800,000 to erect a stationary 18,000-seat concrete and aluminum grandstand in what had been right field at Fairgrounds Stadium.

With no place to play, the Louisville Colonels said a bittersweet goodbye by winning an International League championship and moved on to Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Louisville was without baseball for nine dreary years until, during the major league player strike of 1981, a committee headed by banker Dan Ulmer and beer distributor Armin Willig raised $4.1 million to uproot the football grandstand and move it back far enough to open the way for the return of America’s pastime.

Ulmer, an avid fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, targeted Smith’s team in Springfield, Illinois, where it had attracted just 425,683 customers over the four season since it arrived from New Orleans. What Ulmer got along with Smith wa a team with just the right blend of veterans such as George Bjorkman, Glenn Brummer, Mike Calise, Joe DeSa, Jeff Doyle, Billy Lyons, Kelly Paris, David Green, Tito Landrum, Dyar Miller, Dan Morogiello, Eric Rasmussen, Gene Roof and Orlando Sanchez, and youngsters such as Ralph Citarella, John Fulgham, Jeff Keener, Ricky Horton, John Stuper, Mark Salas, Dave Kable, Rafael Santana and Willie McGee.

What Ulmer also got in Smith was a savvy baseball operator at the peak of his game.

Smith took a look at the stadium which was generally perceived as a white elephant, saw unlimited possibilities, and negotiated himself a far better lease than the one the financially strapped Colonels had had. He paid Springfield $500,000 to break his lease there, but that gamble was quickly repaid tenfold.

Smith said he would emphasize low ticket prices, a clean ballpark and fair concessions prices for quality products, and he kept his word. St. Louis provided a colorful, competitive ballclub managed by Joe Frazier, former skipper of the New York Mets. The combination was intoxicating.

McGee didn’t stick around long. He soon went to St. Louis and became National League Rookie of the Year. Other original Redbirds were to later enjoy at least brief big league careers, including Brummer, Green, Landrum, Miller, Rasmussen, Fulgham, Horton, Keener, Salas and Santana. Catcher Kevin Kennedy was released early in the season, ending his playing career, but he went on to become a major league manager.

Oh, how the fans loved them!  People from all walks of life converged on Cardinal Stadium to see the Redbirds play and enjoy the county fair-style atmosphere which included a Dixieland band and a wide, designer-decorated concourse concessions area.

In the Redbirds’ first season in Louisville, they smashed the all-time minor league attendance record of 670,563 held by San Francisco since 1946, ushering 868,418 through the turnstiles. In their second season, they became the first minor league team to break the one million barrier, drawing 1,052,438.

After the first season, Smith hired Jim Fregosi, the popular former star big league infielder who had been fired by the California Angels. Fregosi sharpened his managerial tools by winning two American Association championships for Smith, and in 1986 he departed to manage the Chicago White Sox. In 1993, he piloted the Philadelphia Phillies to a National League championship.

Smith had more than a little to do with Fregosi’s success in Louisville. Annually at midseason, Smith and Fregosi would assess the team’s problem areas. Smith would then ask St. Louis’ scouts for advice, and purchase himself a ballplayer such as slugger Gary Rajsich or pitcher Eric Rasmussen. The player would usually perform well, and at the end of the season Smith would sell the player to St. Louis for approximately what the signing had cost him.

That soon became illegal in minor league baseball, as did several other ploys with which Smith made it special to be a Redbird, including paying his players more meal money than any other Triple-A team, and booking his team in the finest hotels.

Just as the fans loved the Redbirds, they embraced Smith, too. One night early in the 1982 season, a new chant rose from a section of the crowd. It was indistinguishable at first, but soon it became clear: “A. Ray! A. Ray!”

Where else, except maybe in Bill Veeck’s heyday in Chicago, did fans every chant in appreciation for a club owner?  Smith was a combination of Santa Claus and the Pied Piper. On his call-in radio show, he took fans’ suggestions, and by noon the next day he would have acted on the most reasonable of them. He would walk through the stands and work the crowd, taking comments, complaints and compliments from the common man.

To see the 1982 Redbirds play, it cost $1 to park, $3.50 for reserved seats and $2.50 for general admission, with tickets for the young and elderly priced at even less.

“Isn’t that basic?” Smith asked. “Does it take a genius to keep a place Dutch clean?  Does it take a genius to figure if you get them to the park they might buy a hot dog?  There’s nothing new about any of that.”

Many things had to happen to create the Redbirds’ instant success, Smith said. “First is the facility. It’s a great one. Next, there was the professional way it has been brought to the attention of the fans by all of the media. It set off a startling chain reaction, fan to fan, church to church, and so on.

“Next, we had unbelievable support from the people, who contributed more than $4 million for renovation of the stadium. Next, I have a feeling we’re a product of the times. We’re offering something the ordinary man can afford. I call this the all-collar sport, in the truest sense of the word the only family sport in this country, and that’s not knocking any of the other sports in any way.

“Next, our staff has gotten the job done. Timing has been a big factor. It’s a fantasy that has fed on itself, person to person.”

Smith, who attended Oklahoma State and Indiana universities, was a lieutenant colonel in the Army Engineer Corps in World War II. After the war, he went to work for Texas oilman Clint Murchison, but when Murchison bought the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League, Smith shifted his attention to heavy construction and made his fortune.

Among Smith’s company’s major projects were the repairing of a fault that endangered the Panama Canal, the dredging of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the building of an $80-million tunnel in New York, the building of Barkley Dam in Kentucky and the construction of military installations in Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Lebanon.

Smith bought the Redbirds for $25,000 in 1960 in an attempt to save baseball for Tulsa, Oklahoma, his base of operations. In 1976, Smith was faced with a deteriorating stadium and no governmental help to repair it, so he moved the Redbirds to New Orleans. After one year in the Louisiana Superdome, which wasn’t designed for baseball, he moved the team to Springfield.

In Louisville, Smith not only loved to visit with fans int he stand, he would hold court nightly in the finely appointed Stadium Club. No subject was too small or too large for discussion, and anyone could join in. Smith’s open, hands-on method of operating the club, and the results that came of it, earned him national recognition as a business leader.

Smith’s methods are widely used in baseball today. Before the Buffalo Bisons opened their new downtown stadium in 1988 and began drawing a million annually, their executives studied the Redbirds’ operation carefully and put its principles to use on a larger scale.

The successes in Louisville and Buffalo led to a huge increase in the value of minor league franchises. In the 1990s, Triple-A teams fetched as much as $9 million, and in the American Association alone there were new stadia at Buffalo, Iowa, Indianapolis and New Orleans — and others were under construction. The going rate for an expansion Triple-A franchise in 1996 was $7.5 million, plus a $1 million indemnity to the Double-A club whose territory was taken, plus $500,000 or so to get a front-office staff up and running.

During the Redbirds’ heyday, Smith put together a group that included Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench and made a bid to buy the Cincinnati Reds. However, a contract clause provided that minority stockholders would be granted preference and Marge Schott exercised that option.

In 1983, Smith staged the Triple-A World Series, in which young pitcher Dwight Gooden sparkled for the victorious Tidewater Tides. Smith wanted to continue as host, but withdrew when no provision was made for an automatic berth for the home team.

In 1986, Smith sold the Redbirds for $4.2 million to Ulmer and a group of seven other Louisvillians, and they have continued the tradition, basing their operations on Smith’s theories and attracting more than 500,000 — the generally recognized benchmark for minor-league success — every season.

Smith worked for a time for a group trying to bring a big league ballclub to Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida, then retired to his ranch in Grove, Oklahoma. In 1995 he sold the ranch and moved to Oklahoma City.