One night I was paging through the newly published Macmillan’s Baseball Encyclopedia by and my eyes fell on the name Van Lingle Mungo. “VAN LINGLE MUNGO” — the name scanned perfectly with a recurring melodic figure in my song, and I instantly sang it out loud. I knew then that the lyric would be only names­ not names of famous stars, but names that evoked my childhood memories and, incidentally, illuminated some fragments of forgotten baseball history. I dived into the book assembling names that scanned, rhymed and related loosely to those years, the years of my childhood passion for the game.

Within an hour or so I had a complete lyric. About a month later I recorded an album of my songs including “Mungo,” and that turned out to be the only track that got any airplay.

I was surprised. But I always felt the lyric wasn’t fin­ished, it wasn’t doing the job and I kept tinkering with it. In my opinion I improved the song. I took out certain names from the original lyric and replaced them with names from an earlier (wartime) era so that the nostalgic focus might be sharper.

Johnny Kucks and his rhyme mate Virgil Trucks had to go and were replaced by Lou Boudreau and Claude Passeau, whose names certainly sang better. The replace­ment of Roy Campanella’s conveniently rhyming name was necessary because he was too recent. So I changed it to Art Passarella (an umpire), and that seemed to do the job: Gardella, Passarella, and Estalella.

Then I learned that Bob Estalella’s name didn’t rhyme in the first place, because it was pronounced as in Spanish: Esta-leya. So the whole rhyme scheme should have been scrapped, starting with “Danny Gardella,” and now I stand forever humiliated in Baseball Songland. What did I know? I grew up in a minor league town and never heard Estalella’s name uttered, only saw it in print. Same goes for Johnny Gee, whose name I mangled on the record with a soft “g.” There may be other names I’m mispronouncing, but at this stage further corrections would only confuse me.

In my search for relevant names that scanned, “John Antonelli” was an unfortunate choice, and it’s annoying that he’s in the song, because there turns out to be two John Antonellis whose major league careers nearly overlapped. I was thinking of the third baseman who was up with the Cardinals and Phillies dur­ing the war; I had seen him play with Columbus. I wasn’t even aware of the more famous Johnny Antonelli, the left hander for the Giants. By the time Antonelli #2 came along I had already traded Duke Snider for Duke Ellington.

If you are keeping track, there are currently four surviving players from the Mungo song. I confirmed the dates of demise on a website called The Baseball Almanac, wherein biographical and statistical data claimed to be updated as of March 1, 2005. Of the original 37 names, the surviving Mungolians are: Joost, Pesky, and Basinski. I’m positive Eddie Basinski is still alive and well, because he lives here in Portland and enjoys consid­erable celebrity and adulation as a Portland Beaver immortal. I had occasion to meet him once, and I excit­edly told him how I used to watch him with the St. Paul Saints in 1946.

“You and Gene Mauch were a great double-play com­bination,” I blurted. Basinski frowned and said, “Mauch wasn’t much help.”

Then I told him, “You’re in my song, you know.” “Your song?”

“Yes, have you ever heard my song, ‘Van Lingle Mungo?'”

Basinski stepped back, stared at me as if I were from Mars, excused himself, and walked off to chat with someone else.

The only other guy from the song I ever met was Mungo himself, who arrived from Pageland, South Carolina, to be on the Dick Cavett Show and listen to me sing the song. This was 1969, when Cavett had a nightly show in New York. Backstage, Mungo asked me, “When do I get the first check?”

When he heard my explanation about how there was unlikely to be any remuneration for anyone connected with the song, least of all him, he was genuinely down­ cast. “But it’s my name,” he said.

I told him, “The only way you can get even is to go home and write a song called ‘Dave Frishberg.”‘

He laughed, and when we said goodbye he said, “I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna do it!” If he did it, The Baseball Almanac doesn’t mention it.

DAVE FRISHBERG, pianist, songwriter; and recording artist, grew up in St. Paul and was an avid follower of the St. Paul Saints during the 1940s. He hasn’t followed current baseball since then, but he is a member of SABR and a collector of antique baseball periodicals and books.

• Audio: Listen to Dave Frishberg’s song “Van Lingle Mungo” (YouTube)
• Related link: Click here to download the free e-book edition of SABR’s Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players (2013)

Born in the St. Louis suburb of Mount Pleasant (now Creve Coeur), the young Mueller learned hitting from his father, Walter “Heinie” Mueller, who played for four years in the 1920s with the Pittsburgh Pirates. “He taught me an awful lot,” said his son,

because he picked the minds of a lot of the good ballplayers, what made them good hitters. He showed me how to grip the bat, to use pressure on one hand or the other to hit where you want to hit. He also had me focus on the ball by pitching corn kernels that I would hit with a broomstick. Concentrating on such a small ob­ject improved my depth perception, so in comparison, the baseball would seem a large object.

Mueller played two years of American Legion baseball, against larger, older boys. “I realized I couldn’t overpower what those pitchers were throwing,” he recalled. “1 didn’t have the strength. Just naturally, I guess, l didn’t choke the bat, but just met the ball instead of trying to kill it.”

At Pattonville High School, he won a spot on the baseball team, batting left-handed and throwing right­ handed. As a junior he joined his older brother, Leroy, as athletes at the high school of Christian Brothers College in the St. Louis suburb of Richmond Heights. (Leroy would go on to a minor league stint with the Red Sox and Yankees in the mid-1940s.)

Developing into the caliber of a professional ball­ player while still in high school, Don received offers from several teams, including the Chicago Cubs, “ex­cept,” he said, “my dad didn’t like the contract they offered me.” Walter Mueller’s choice was the New York Giants, whose scout Gordon Maguire brought Mueller to Sportsman’s Park in 1944, when the Cardinals were playing the Giants. Manager Mel Ott, who had been Don’s favorite professional player, approved signing the 17-year-old for the Giants’ Triple A farm team in Jersey City, managed by the great Chicago Cubs catcher Gabby Hartnett. Mueller played three games that season, driving in three runs with one hit in seven at-bats. 1

The following year, as a high school senior, Mueller was invited to the Giants’ spring training, “with permis­sion from the CBC Brothers to have my lessons mailed to me.” Observers would later credit Mueller’s keen eye and excellent coordination for his hitting success. He credits his father’s tutelage with the corn kernels.

During those World War II years, transportation re­strictions confined spring workouts to the northern states. The Giants and Jersey City players practiced on the grounds of the John D. Rockefeller mansion in Lakewood, NJ. Even though the house was a distance from the ball field, the lanky Mueller smashed a hit through the front window, observed by astonished New York sportswriters. Reporting his feat, they predicted that the teenager would become a figure at the Polo Grounds.

He played only five games for Jersey City before join­ing the Merchant Marines.2 In the service for two years, during 30-day shore leaves he returned to the team. Expected to become a slugger, he instead developed a controlled swing, choking up on the bat a bit, and meet­ing the ball rather than trying for power.3

After his Merchant Marines discharge in mid-1946, Mueller battled .359 for Jersey City during the final weeks of the season. The next year Mueller hit .348 in a full season at Jacksonville, played in 99 games at Jersey City in 1948, then batted .358 in 36 major league games at the Polo Grounds. After a brief stay in Minneapolis, hitting .311, he was brought back to New York.4

Giants owners had replaced Ott as manager in 1948 with the fiercely competitive Leo Durocher. The offense under Ott had been known as the National League’s “lumberjacks,” for the number of big, slow power hitters. “The team did not have a good won-loss record,” Mueller explained. “Leo got rid of the home run hitters. He wanted base hits, with good pitching. I got the job because I was his kind of ballplayer: hit, advance the runner.”

Mueller became the regular right fielder for the 1950 season, after slugger Willard Marshall was traded to Boston. Durocher, who on his selection as manager had announced, “I come to win,” confidently predicted a pennant that year. Batting third in the lineup, Mueller’s job was to drive leadoff hitter Eddie Stanky home and Alvin Dark to third, so that, theoretically, the Giants would have scored a run, with two men on and none out, and sluggers Monte Irvin and Whitey Lockman coming to the plate.

Early in the season, however, the team played mediocre ball, with poor hitting and worse pitching. By June, Mueller was bat­ ting an anemic .185, causing Durocher to drop him to seventh in the order and then to bench him.5 But in early August as a pinch­ hitter, Mueller began lifting his average, with soft bounders and line drives. Returned to the lineup, he responded by hitting well over .300 during the final two months, as did Stanky, Irvin, Dark, Lockman, and Henry Thompson.6 Had the season lasted another week, the improved Giants might have swept past both the Phillies and the Dodgers to take the pennant.

Mueller ended the season with a .291 average, earning the reputation of a scrappy place hitter. Sports writers named him Mandrake the Magician for his ability to stroke the ball through holes in the defense.

His confidence restored, Durocher told reporters in the spring of 1951 that the Giants would “take it all.” Many agreed, including a writer for the Times:

For the first time since their last  pennant-winning days in ’36 and ’37, the Giants toe the mark a definite pennant contender. Durocher, in the face of severe criticism from all sides, does seem to have achieved the objective he had in mind when he dismantled the power-laden but other­ wise inept array that for so long failed to bring a pennant to the Polo Grounds. In its place he has developed a tal­ented, fine-spirited group of players. The Polo Grounders do look primed for a quick get-away this spring.7

Unfortunately, the Giants lost 11 games straight after opening with two wins in three games. After a paticularly bad loss, Durocher berated each of the players, surprising even veterans by his foul-language tirade.8 “It was a turning point,” recalled one teammate. “You could feel the tension and pressure of those first dismal two weeks lift-like breaking through the clouds into clear sky when you’re in an airplane. From the next day on we played fantastic baseball,” a winning stretch that would continue through the season, aided by the talent and enthusiasm of 20-year-old rookie Willie Mays.

Mueller, who had been among the slumping hitters, saw his average improve over the summer. Of his 65 careers home runs, five came in two consecutive games on September 1 and 2, 1951, against the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. “The count was one ball and no strikes,” he recalled of a memorable at-bat in the first game. “Monte Irvin was on deck. He shouted to me, ‘We got a call in the dugout. Your wife just had a baby boy.’ I hit the next pitch, out of the park,” for his second homer of the game. The new arrival was the first of three sons born to Don and Genevieve Babor Mueller, who had met as Pattonville High School and married in 1949.

The day following three home runs, Mueller was retired by big Don Newcombe in three consecutive at-bats. Then in both the sixth and eighth innings, Mueller hit the ball into the stands. Five homers in two games, tying a record achieved at that time only by Adrian Anson, Ty Cobb, Tony Lazzeri, and Ralph Kiner.9 Trailing the Dodgers by 13 ½ games in August, the Giants won 39 of their final 47 games to end the season in a first-place tie. With the Dodgers leading 4-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning of the third and final playoff game, leadoff Giant Alvin Dark singled off Newcombe. Mueller took the first pitch for a ball and noticed that Dark was being held close to the bag. The Magician hit the next pitch sharply to the left of first base, out of reach of first baseman Gil Hodges.

“I knew what I wanted to do,” Mueller said later. “If he would have been playing back and not holding Dark, I would have tried to go up the middle. I always favored the middle.” 10 On the single, Dark raced to third. Monte Irvin, representing the tying run, popped up for the first out. Then, with men on first and third, Whitey Lockman lined the ball into left field for a double. Dark crossed home plate, and Mueller, scrambling for third, slid past the bag and tore the tendons on both sides of his ankle. Writhing in pain, he was carried off the field on a stretcher into the clubhouse.

His roommate, Clint Hartung, called in as the pinch runner, was about to become a footnote to history. The Dodgers brought in Ralph Branca in relief of the tiring Newcombe. Bobby Thomson, a shy journeyman out­ fielder in the biggest spot of his career, stepped to the plate. Giants players and fans hoped for a single to tie the game, but Thomson delivered with a walk-off three-run homer into the left-field stands.11 “I played the whole game and got a big hit in the ninth inning,” Mueller recalled. “When Bobby Thomson hit his home run — The Shot Heard ‘Round the World — I was the only one in the clubhouse, listening to it on the radio.”

Mueller’s injury kept him from playing in the World Series, in which Casey Stengel’s Yankees won their third straight championship, four games to two. Some writers believe that had Mueller been in the lineup, the Giants might have won the Series. Indeed, his right-field replacement, Henry Thompson, hit only .143 in the four games and committed two errors.12

Giants fans anticipated another good year for 1952, with a 17-5 start. But they soon felt the loss of power hitter Mays, who left in May for military service, while Irvin was out with a broken ankle. The other hitters, including Mueller, felt pressure to attempt hitting for home runs. His ineffectiveness, however, caused Durocher to bench him for 28 games. Mueller also had to prove his ability in right field, vying with both Bobby Thomson and Hank Thompson, Hartung, and others, but played more games than any of them, ending the season with a .281 batting average.

In 1953, after being benched again for lack of home­ run power, he decided to forgo any attempts at power hitting. “My chance of hitting a single is very good,” he explained to a writer. “My chance of clouting a homer is very poor. It is certainly better for the team this way. If I am on base, I save a chance for Mays, Irvin, Thompson or somebody to knock me in.” 13

As proof of his theory, Mueller finished fifth in the National League with a .333 batting average. And, with only 13 strikeouts, he was the most difficult batter to fan that year. The team, however, finished in the second division.

In the first five games of 1954, Mueller found himself benched twice in favor of long-ball hitters. Then he hit a pinch single during an eighth-inning rally and played in every game for the rest of the season. 14

On May 2, he “stood in right field and watched five balls go over my head” at Busch Stadium when Stan Musial hit five homers in a Giants-Cardinals double­ header, all into the right-field seats. Although Mueller had hit five home runs in two consecutive games in 1951, Musial became the first player in baseball history with five in one day.

Mueller contributed to the Giants win in the second game, going five for five, including a double and a triple, producing two RBIs. “My five for five got exactly two lines in the paper the next day,” referring to the extensive coverage of Musial’s feat.

National League All-Star team manager Walter Alston, the Dodgers skipper, selected Mueller for the 1954 team. Pinch-hitting for pitcher Robin Roberts in a five-run fourth inning, Mueller came through with a clutch dou­ble, but the Nationals lost the game, 11-9.

Nearly all season, he made at least one hit per game, and on July 11, against four Pirates pitchers, he hit for the cycle: a double to left field, triple to right-center, and single to center. At his final at-bat, he sank one into the right-field seats off left-hander Paul LaPalme, his first homer of the season. As a left-handed batter, Mueller explained, “Normally, I didn’t try to pull left-handers. I took them the other way. But I was a situation hitter and this was a situation. So I pulled him over the right-field wall for the home run.” 15

The homer was one of four that Mueller hit that year. He was the first Giant to hit for the cycle since Harry Danning in 1940 and the only major leaguer to accom­plish the feat in 1954.

Willie Mays, who had returned from two years of military service, hit 41 home runs to lead the Giants to the 1954 League championship. On the last day of the regular season he and Mueller were tied for the batting title. Mueller singled twice, but Mays, with three hits, won the crown with a mark of .345. Mueller, who throughout the season was close in average to Mays, finished at .342. Though runner-up in the batting race, Mueller accumulated 212 hits, most in the league that year, and 17 more than Mays.16

Entering the 1954 fall classic, the heavily favored Cleveland Indians, boasting four Hall of Fame pitchers and a then league-record 111 wins, had ended the New York Yankees’ five consecutive years as World Champions. But the Series was brief, with Durocher managing a four-game sweep. Mueller, described by a Time magazine reporter as “a quiet, conscientious com­petitor,” and “always a power at the plate,” played right field in each of the games and batted a composite .389. His team’s batting average totaled .254, while the Indians managed only .190. 17

Mueller surmised that the Indians’ quest for the American League win record hurt their chances in the Series. “They captured the pennant real early that year,

but manager Al Lopez continued playing all of the regulars seeking the win record.” 18 The 1954 Series was the most lucrative to that time, a record pool of $881,763.72, with full portions for each Giant of

$11,147.90. The attendance of 251,507 also set a four­ game Series record. 19

In early 1955, with the Giants playing the Reds, the two teams went 16 innings, combining for a record-tying 10 double plays. Mueller started a rally in the 16th, hitting an outside fourth-ball pitch for a pop single that led to a 2-1 Giants victory.

That summer Mueller was again selected for the National League All-Star team. Batting twice, he garnered a hit off Early Wynn, the Indians’ star right hander, in the fifth inning. The Braves’ Henry Aaron ran for Mueller, then replaced him in right field for the remainder of the game, as the Nationals won in 12 innings, 6-5.20

Mueller’s batting average began declining from .306 in 1955 to .269 in 1956 and .258 in 1957. The Giants finished third in 1955 and sixth in both 1956 and 1957. Mueller and his family looked forward to the Giants’ move to San Francisco in 1958, but in March the team sold him to the Chicago White Sox. He saw limited playing time that year, with 166 at-bats and hitting for a .253 average. The following year, suffering from gout and arthritis, the 32-year-old retired from baseball, with a lifetime .296 batting average.

An avid outdoorsman, in the off-seasons Mueller, his brother, and fellow players often spent time together fish­ing and hunting. After his playing days, Mueller raised cattle on the family farm and for a few years scouted for the Giants in Missouri and Illinois. Then he began a lengthy career as an insurance company investigator.

In 2001, he was elected to the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame. Why the Dodgers? “Well, the Giants didn’t have a Hall of Fame, and I guess the Dodgers were acknowl­edging that I was a pain in their butts.”

In St. Louis County, Mueller’s neighbors may be unaware that they reside near a two-time All-Star with a World Series ring, but they might notice the baseball bat he hangs in front of his home for first-time visitors. Occasionally attending Cardinals games at Busch Stadium, these days he and Genevieve prefer family ac­tivities. Their three grandsons attend college on athletic scholarships, while their granddaughter is a high school athlete in track and softball. When they were youngsters, Mueller taught each of them to hit corn kernels, with a wiffle-ball bat in place of the broomstick. 

J.A. PETTERCHAK, a Little League scorekeeper at age 13, was the director of the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield. He now researches and writes biographies as well as business and organization histories.

Notes

1. Tom Meany, The Incredible Giants. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1955, 93.

2. Meany, 93.

3. Bob Brian, ‘”Hitting’ the High Spots,” Scholastic Coach, March, 1965, 13.

4. Thomas Kiernan, The Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1975, 237.

5. Kiernan, 35.

6. Kiernan, 57.

7. Kiernan, 24.

8. Kiernan, 65-66.

9. Meany, 90; The Sporting News, May 10, 1961, 8.

10. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 3, 2001, B5.

11. David S. Neft and Richard M. Cohen. The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball. New York: St. Martin’s/Marek, 1985, 286.

12. Meany, 94.

13. Meany, 90.

14. Meany, 91.

15. John C. Skipper. Inside Pitch, A Closer Look at Classic Baseball Moments. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996, 77.

16. Neft and Cohen, 298-301.

17. Time, October 4, 1954, 71.

18. Skipper, 79.

19. The Sporting News, Official World Series Records, 1903-1978. St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1978, 199.

20. The New York Times Book of Baseball History, New York: Quadrangle, 1975, 182.

Over the course of his time in baseball he appeared in 173 major league games, compiled in three tours of duty with the Indians and one with the Red Sox. He had a modest .231 lifetime average, eight home runs, and 26 RBIs. At Triple A, where he spent most of his time, he was a productive hitter, usually hitting around .280 as well as being a slick fielder, at one time or another having played every position except pitcher and catcher. Kerby Farrell, who managed Harrell in 1953 with the Class A Reading Indians, then later at Cleveland in 1957, de­scribed him as having “such tremendous hands, he could play the infield without a glove.” Harrell’s .330 average and 84 RBIs with Reading in 1953 resulted in his win­ning the Eastern League MVP award.

All of this does not reflect the most lasting contribution he made to the teams he played for as well as to his teammates. Harrell is a remarkably unselfish, patient man who led and motivated teammates in his own very quiet but effective way.

These qualities are apparent when meeting Harrell for the first time. He still exudes a warmth in his personality and sense of humor that teammates enjoyed more than 40 years ago. An example of this is in Harrell’s reaction in September 2005, when he learned that the Reading franchise record of 170 base hits he set in 1953 had been broken by Chris Roberson (of the 2006 Philadelphia Phillies). Harrell immediately responded, “You tell Chris Roberson, ‘Congratulations.’ What was it anyway? Fifty­ two years? … I am surprised it held up that long.”

The Footsteps of Jackie Robinson

Harrell began his baseball career at a historic time, five years after Jackie Robinson had broken the color line. Racial equality was anything but the reality in base­ ball at the time when Harrell signed in 1952. African Americans had played only for Cleveland, Chicago, and the St. Louis Browns in the American League, and on only three teams in the National League. Spring training facilities were segregated as well as outright barring black players from certain minor league teams in the South. Harrell, like other black players entering the game at the time, would find his good nature and patience tested on a regular basis by such practices.

Like Robinson, an All-American in football as well a star in basketball and track during his collegiate career at UCLA, Harrell enjoyed a standout athletic career in col­lege: in his case, basketball. Named Honorable Mention All-American in his senior year at Siena University in Albany, NY, Harrell received offers to play profession­ ally from the Minneapolis Lakers and the Harlem Globetrotters after his graduation. Harrell’s impact on Siena basketball is apparent in the annual presentation of the “Billy Harrell Award” to the men’s team leader in rebounds. Also like Robinson, who played in the Negro Leagues with the Kansas City Monarchs before signing a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Harrell played briefly with the Negro League Birmingham Black Barons. Although his entry into baseball did not come with the fanfare that accompanied Robinson, Harrell was featured in a 1952 Ebony Magazine article titled “Future Jackie Robinsons: Amateur Teams will Supply Major Leagues With New Crop of Negro Stars” along with fu­ture African American major leaguers Earl Wilson, Dave and Dick Ricketts, and Johnny Lewis.

Harrell was assigned by the Indians to Cedar Rapids in the Three-I League (Illinois-Indiana-Iowa), so he was spared playing in the South. His wife was pregnant at the time, and he would have preferred to be playing closer to his home in Troy, NY. Florida was his first experience with institutionalized segregation. He recalled, “I had heard of drinking at ‘colored’ water fountains and those kinds of things, but when I came there and experienced them-it was so strange.” In Winter Garden, FL, a city ordinance forbidding black ballplayers playing with white players prevented Harrell and future major leaguer Brooks Lawrence, then members of the Reading Indians, from playing an exhibition with their team. Harrell found it to be “really a strange experience.”

Harrell also recalled the difficulty of having to deal with comments from the stands at certain stops in spring training. How he dealt with them is an indication of the strength of his character: “I heard them. It was a bad deal. But I just ignored it and tried to hit the ball. The guys on the team were behind me 100 per cent. You get base hits and that’s what I did. That’s how I handled it.”

After hitting .325 at Cedar Rapids in 1952, Harrell enjoyed his MVP season with the Reading Indians, then of the Class A Eastern League. The team was a remark­ able collection of future major league talent, winning a league-record 101 games. In addition to Harrell, there were 11 future major leaguers on the team, including Brooks Lawrence, Rocky Colavito, Herb Score, Rudy Regalado, Joe Caffie, Earl Averill Jr., Bud Daley, Joe Altobelli, Gordie Coleman, Doug Hansen, and Rod Graber. Reading manager Kerby Farrell went on to manage Cleveland in 1957.

Harrell still has special memories of that team: “When I won the MVP award the fellas on the team, they really, really congratulated me. There was no big problem. No jealousy. It was a great group.”

In 1954, Harrell was promoted to Triple A Indianapolis, where he hit .307, playing at shortstop, third base, and the outfield. Things looked promising for the next year, since Cleveland shortstop George Strickland hit only .213 that season. During spring training Cleveland man­ager Al Lopez had described Harrell as “a cinch to become a big league shortstop.” Nonetheless, Harrell was back in Indianapolis when the 1955 season started. After yet another solid season at Indianapolis (and after George Strickland’s average dropped to an even lower to .209), Harrell was promoted to Cleveland for the last month of the 1955 season, where he appeared to make the most of his opportunities, hitting .421, with a .500 on-base percentage in 13 games. Harrell humor­ously recounts the events of first big league at-bat on September 2, 1955:

I was sitting on the bench and [Manager Al] Lopez is calling my name. Except he’s calling, “Farrell” and I’m not paying any attention. I still hear, “Farrell, Farrell”­ so then they said — “Hey, Billy, that’s you.” So I went up to hit. Virgil Trucks was the pitcher, and after two strikes and butterflies — I hit the ball, but it went right back to Trucks — an “at ’em” ball.

He looked forward to the next season:

I was excited after the end of 1955. The next year­ George Strickland was having problems at shortstop­ they told me they thought things would be really great for me. I had my hopes up.

George Strickland’s Hot Spring

The Indians appeared to have other ideas than to give Harrell a full shot, as that off-season they traded Larry Doby to the White Sox for veteran shortstop Chico Carrasquel — an All-Star in four of the last five seasons. As if the team’s acquisition of an all-star shortstop didn’t create enough of a problem for Harrell’s advancement, George Strickland hit .372 in spring training in 1956, so Harrell was sent back to Indianapolis, disappointed but characteristically taking things in stride: “After George had his hot spring, I went back to Indianapolis and I said to myself, ‘Well you know, it’s part of the game, part of life.”‘ Despite hitting .279 at Triple A Indianapolis in 1956 and .276 at Triple A San Diego in 1957, Harrell did not get back to the Indians until late in the 1957 season, when he hit .263, playing three infield positions.

The failure of the Indians to advance Harrell after the successful years on Triple A distressed several of his teammates, including Jim “Mudcat ” Grant, who not only played with Harrell at Triple A San Diego in 1957 and with Cleveland in 1958, but also shared accommodations with him when they were housed together in a separate barracks facility for black players used by Cleveland over several spring training sessions. Grant, who pitched for seven teams in his 14-year major league career (number­ing among his accomplishments that he was the first African American pitcher to win 20 games in the American League) respected Harrell’s fielding ability­ recalling Harrell as “a talented man…[who] could really pick it.” His respect also reached to Harrell’s character and the way Harrell handled the Indians’ failure to advance him, remarking:

I’m sure [Billy] was disappointed about the situation, but he never showed it. People talked about that it was a shame [that the Indians continued to keep Harrell at AAA], but unlike a lot of players where although they wouldn’t talk about things in public, in private there would have been yelling and screaming, in private con­versation that wasn’t the case with Billy. He kept it to himself.

Grant, author of the recently published Thirteen Black Aces, described Harrell as quiet, but as a teammate “with a lot to offer.” He added, “If you came to Bill he would always give you good advice — ‘cool down’ kind of advice.” He also explained how Harrell helped young African American teammates deal with the racial dis­crimination that they encountered in the 1950s and early 1960s:

Coming out of the east like he did, there was a lot that [Harrell] didn’t understand [about discrimination suf­fered by African American players] but he still was very helpful at times whenever you had a problem and went to him.

Grant compared Harrell to other African American players who helped him at that time: ” Bill gave you advice to cool down — he was calming.” Grant described teammate Larry Doby as “hotter,” while he described Monte Irvin and Joe Black as “kind of in between.”

The 30-year-old Harrell played the entire 1958 season with the Indians but hit only .218 in a reserve role. He was then placed on waivers, where he was claimed by the Cardinals and assigned to their Triple A team in Rochester, where he played in 1959 and 1960. Clearly his most vivid memory of his time with the Red Wings or, for that matter, of his entire baseball career was a regular season International League game between the Red Wings and the Cuban Sugar Kings played in Havana on July 25, 1959, which ended in a tie early in the morn­ing on July 26, when stray gunshots fired by the crowd in celebration of the anniversary of Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution grazed two of the participants. (See sidebar below.)

In a unique set of events immediately following the “gunfire ” game in Havana, a few hours after the game ended, Harrell caught a plane from Havana to Toronto, where he played that night in the International League All-Star Game. The next day he flew back to Rochester in time for the July 27 regular season game that evening, resulting in Harrell playing in three games in three coun­tries in a space of two days.

“A Gentleman and a Scholar”

Before the 1961 season Harrell was acquired by Boston in the Rule V draft. He laughs about the transaction:

Maybe the Red Sox got me for $3 or $4 (under Rule V Draft rules at that time the price was considerably higher.) It’s funny, my wife and family were living in Troy, and we had another baby and I said, ‘Oh good, I’ m in Boston’ — it was pretty close by. I played one year (1961) in Boston, but then got sent out to Seattle (Rainiers, Boston’s Triple A Pacific Coast League team). I wasn’t close by anymore.

Harrell, now 34, assumed a role as a player-coach with Seattle, beyond the unofficial role of helpful team­ mate he had filled in prior years. One of his teammates on Seattle in 1962 was Dave Mann, also an African American, now sports editor of Seattle’s “The Facts Newspaper.” Mann’s career paralleled that of Harrell, in that both played for a number of years in the Cleveland organization before moving over to the Red Sox organi­zation. (Unlike Harrell, Mann never got to the majors despite occasionally hitting .300 or better and being among the league leaders in stolen bases in any league in which he played.) What impressed Mann most about Harrell was his attitude on returning to the minor leagues after having played for Boston the previous season:

Bill had been to the major leagues and now was down to show us how to go about getting there. On the field he was all baseball, all business. In the clubhouse he could have a lot of fun and laugh with the rest of us. Besides being a fine player, he was a teacher and instructor­ when he took infield practice he was very explicit as to what he thought the right things were to work on. And if you wanted to learn something, you were smart to see the way he went about things.

Mann added: “Billy was very unassuming, even though he had been to the major leagues. Not everyone that comes down is like that, I assure you.” Despite hit­ ting .294 with 17 home runs with Seattle in 1962, Harrell did not earn a return trip to Boston.

For the next four seasons, Harrell continued to play with Boston’s Triple A teams — at Seattle through 1964, then with Toronto in 1965 and 1966. Several of his younger teammates at Toronto in 1966 would go on to highly successful major league careers and, like Mudcat Grant, would later attribute a good deal of their success to Harrell’s guidance. One such teammate was Reggie Smith, who starred for the Red Sox, Cardinals, Dodgers, and Giants over the course of a 17-year career. Smith credits Harrell as providing a ” tremendous influence” on his development. He relates that Harrell “taught me how to become a professional in that he provided the sta­bility necessary that I needed as a young player. He taught me the ropes more or less.” He added,

At that time people thought I had a so-called chip on my shoulder — which I didn’t — it’s just that I was a fierce competitor. Billy taught me how to channel my energy, and had a very calming influence on me. He had always an anecdote or a story which managed to take a lot of tension out of certain situations. It really helped me keep things under control.

Notably, Smith won the International League batting crown the year Harrell worked with him.

In Harrell’s own recollections of the young Reggie Smith what impressed him most was Smith’s arm. Harrell remembers that, “[Smith] could fire it. Nobody ever had seen that kind of arm — he couldn’t play the in­ field — he threw the ball too hard at first base. They had to put Reggie in the outfield. He could hum it, I’m telling you.”  Harrell also remembers  how   he worked to calm down a rivalry that Smith had with yet another budding star on the 1966 Toronto team — future 1975 American League home run champion George “Boomer” Scott. Harrell remembers the raw talent of each player:

Scotty and Reggie both wanted to hit the most home runs, and they were in competition with each other. George would go off like a volcano and I’d cairn ’em both down, and I’d tell ’em we’re all part of the same team, and it would help. They had so much talent and I felt good for both of them.

Also at Toronto was Mike Andrews, who was a mem­ber of the American League champion 1967 “Impossible Dream” Red Sox, an All-Star with the White Sox, and member of the world champion 1973 Oakland A’s. (Andrews was the focus of a clubhouse mutiny staged during the World Series by his teammates after he was disabled by owner Charles O. Finley following two plays questionably designated as errors. The team rallied be­ hind Andrews and threatened to boycott the next game until Finley restored Andrews to the active roster.) Andrews has been the chairman of the immensely suc­cessful Boston-based Jimmy Fund cancer research foundation since 1979.

He recalls Harrell as being “like a father” to the younger players,” adding:

I personally learned so much from Bill — not only play­ing infield, but the way he carried himself off the field as well. He was a stabilizing influence with a young team plus he was the consummate pro and was always so positive. People would get upset at times, but Billy would just say, ‘Now don’t get excited.’ It would settle things down.

Andrews noted in particular that the “calming influ­ence” that Harrell brought with him not only benefited the players on the team, but at times helped calm the team’s manager, a young Dick Williams (who the next year would go on to manage Boston to the American League pennant, and later in his career would guide Oakland to two world championships and San Diego to a pennant). Andrews recalls Williams as “sometimes being pretty brash.” Andrews added: “Billy could still hit well too-even at that stage of his career.”

Reflecting his role as a “player-coach” with the vari­ous Triple A teams, Harrell laughed and said, “I was the team grand pop. I’ve always felt that the older fellows should be helping the younger guys. I was there to help the kids — I was there to set an example — keep them calm.” Mudcat Grant refers to Harrell with a term Grant says he reserves only for select individuals, explaining, “We used to have a term for a special kind of guy — the kind of guy Billy was — we called that kind of guy a ‘gentleman and a scholar.”‘

Helping the Kids: Part II

When he retired from baseball following the 1966 sea­ son at Toronto, the same qualities of unselfishness and a desire to help that led to his success with his baseball teammates led him to take a position with the New York Department of Corrections in Albany and begin a new ca­reer of “helping the kids,” and specializing in working with juveniles. For the next 25 years, Harrell worked with youth, trying to help them to participate in sports and other activities, seeing them in his office once a week, while also going out to see them in their homes. Harrell took special care to “see that they got into school.” He also worked to commence and administer an after care program, where he arranged to have baseball teams for boys in group homes.

Harrell was proud of the success achieved, recalling, “After they moved on, a number of them came back, and they played against the institution. The kids then saw they could play ball so they could get straightened up and get a chance.” Harrell saw baseball as a great vehicle to teach the youths assigned to him. In Harrell’s view, “Baseball is a team sport.” Teaching the young men he worked with the value of working on the team was something Harrell viewed as an important les­son and a key to success. He concluded his thoughts on the matter, saying, “I think I’ve always been that way with the way I played, and that’s the way I look at life, being part of a team — I call it ‘being responsible.”‘

Harrell and his wife Miriam live in Albany. He spends time working for his church, and bowls in his spare time. He has a son, three daughters, five grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. The year 2006 was a big year for recognition of Harrell’s accomplishments: Siena retired his jersey in January and he was inducted into the Reading Baseball Hall of Fame in July. Harrell enjoys seeing his children and counts his blessings: “I’m lucky. My children are spread out all over — Chicago, Las Vegas, and Rochester — so I always got places to go­ like a free vacation.”

BRIAN C. ENGELHARDT is a SABR member who lives in Reading, PA. His promising basketball career ended abruptly at age 13 when the collapse of the 1964 Phillies stunted his growth. He has written several articles for the Reading Phillies website, the Berks Barrister, and the Berks County Historical Review.

Acknowledgments

A special thank-you to Susan A. Washington of the Rochester Public Library for her assistance in researching the events of July 1959.

Sources

Books

Moffi, Larry & Jonathan Kronstadt. Crossing the Line. Iowa City, IA, University of Iowa Press, 1994.

Swank, Bill. Echoes from Lane Field: A History of the San Diego Padres 1936-1957, Paducah, KY; Turner Publishing, 1997.

Articles

Bennett, Brian A., “On a Silver Diamond,” Scottsville, NY, Triphammer Publishing, 1997.

Doyle, Pat, “Gunfire in the Ballpark,” Baseball Almanac, February, 2003. www.baseball-almanac.com/minor-1eague/minor2.shtml

“Future Jackie Robinsons’: Amateur Teams will Supply Major Leagues With New Crop of Negro Stars,” Ebony, vol. 7, issue 7, May 1952.

Pitoniak, Scott, “The night bullets replaced cigar smoke in the Cuban air,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 28, 1999.

“Wings Refuse to Play After Havana Gunfire; Shanghnessy Gives OK,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 26, 1959.

Interviews

Dave Mann, interview with the author, September 15, 2005.

James “Mudcat” Grant, interview with the author, January 8, 2006.

Mike Andrews, interview with the author, October 15, 2005.

Reggie Smith, interview with the author, January 12, 2006.

Billy Harrell interviews with the author, September 10, 2005; January 13, 2006; July 2, 2006.

“Game Called on Account of Gunfire”

One of the oddest occurrences in baseball began shortly after midnight on July 26, 1959, during an International League game between the Rochester Red Wings and the home Havana Sugar Kings. The game was called a tie due to gunfire from the crowd because a member of each team had been grazed by stray bullets. (Presumably the game was called a tie and not a forfeit because the umpires didn’t want to anger already excited heat-packing home fans.) The story that ran on the AP wire dryly noted that it was possibly the first time in baseball history that a game was called on account of gunfire.

The crowd that night was particularly excited be­ cause it was the eve of the sixth anniversary of the July 26, 1953, storming of the Moncada Barracks by Fidel Castro and a group of his followers. That event, although unsuccessful in achieving its goal at the time (Castro ended up in prison as a result of the skir­mish) marked the beginning of the “26th of July Movement,” the name of Castro’s revolutionary or­ganization that eventually took control of the country on December 31, 1958.

Despite the political change in Cuba, the Sugar Kings continued to play in the International league. They were stocked predominantly with players from the Cincinnati organization, who comprised an inter­esting mix of former major leaguers like Lou Skizas, Carlos Paula, Yo Yo Davalillo, and Raul Sanchez, plus a number of future major leaguers including Mike Cuellar, Cookie Rojas, Leo Cardenas, Tony Gonzalez, Jesse Gonder, and Elio Chacon. The Sugar Kings were managed by Preston Gomez, who would go on to manage in the major leagues with the Padres, Astros, and Cubs. The Red Wings roster included former major leaguers Billy Harrell, Luke Easter, B. G. Smith, and Gene Green, along with future prospects that included Duke Carmel and Charley James. They were managed by Ellis “Cot” Deal, who had as an assistant future Yankee coach Frank Verdi.

Harrell vividly remembers the excitement in the air that night at Havana’s La Gran Stadium, as he re­ called that not only was there a large crowd, but that Castro himself was expected at the game. As a result, events of the evening were held up until Castro’s ar­rival. Harrell also noted, with a laugh, that while everyone was waiting for Castro’s arrival, “Castro’s son was down in the [Red Wings] dugout with us.”

Following Castro’s late arrival, the start of the regular game was further delayed as Castro pitched in a short preliminary exhibition for an army team. In addition, an earlier suspended game between the Sugar Kings and the Red Wings was completed. With the late start of the regularly scheduled game, it was close to midnight when the game went to extra innings. In the top of the 11th inning, Harrell hit a home run giving the Red Wings the lead, but the game was tied in the bottom of the 11th on a disputed play where the Red Wings argued that Havana’s Jesse Gonder failed to touch a base. The ensuing argument resulted in the ejection of Red Wings manager Deal, which may have saved his life.

A few minutes later, at midnight, gunfire erupted both inside and outside the ballpark as soldiers car­rying tommy guns and civilians with private sidearms all began to fire into the air in celebration of the July 26 anniversary. As Harrell described the scene: “Everybody was yelling, ‘Cuba Libre!’ , and they were shooting guns and everything. It was pretty scary.” At that point, both Red Wings coach Frank Verdi, coaching at third base in place of the departed Deal, as well as Sugar Kings shortstop Leo Cardenas were grazed by stray bullets. The umpires immedi­ately took the teams off the field. Verdi, who was wearing a helmet liner, which caused the bullet to only graze his head, said to reporters at the time, “It felt like I got hit with a blackjack. I don’t know if I would be talking to you had the bullet hit squarely.” Speculation was that if Deal, who didn’t wear a hel­met liner under his cap, had been coaching instead of Verdi, the bullet would have caused serious injury. The bullet that hit Cardenas went through his uniform, but didn’t penetrate his skin.

An international incident ensued. The Red Wings refused to play in Havana for the remaining games of the series. Frank Horton, Red Wings president, called the United States ambassador to Cuba and arranged an immediate exit. The Cuban management called Rochester’s refusal to play “absurd.” Harrell related: “We had a tough time getting on the plane that night.” (Actually, it was the next morning.) After a few days, matters settled and all other games in Havana that season were played as scheduled. In fact, the Sugar Kings won the 1959 Minor League “Junior World Series.” The next season the International League again tried to play a schedule with a team in Havana, but on July 13, 1960, the Havana franchise was shifted to Jersey City due to the political climate at the time.

The bullets that flew during the 1959 anniversary celebration of the “July 26th Movement” certainly cause those events to take a place at or near the top of the list of bizarre circumstances that have ended base­ ball games. 

Joe E. Brown was a movie star: a wide-mouthed co­ median whose face was his fortune. The zenith of his popularity came in the 1930s, when he appeared in a se­ries of hit comedies produced by Warner Bros. Three of them-Fireman, Save My Child (1932), Elmer the Great (1933), and Alibi Ike (1935)-featured Joe E. as comical baseball players. Moreover, Brown was around the game all his life. He played baseball. He loved baseball. And he was a vigorous proponent of the game.

Joseph Evan Brown was born on July 28, 1892, in Holgate, a small town in northwestern Ohio. His parents were warm and loving but desperately poor, and young Joe E. was determined to abandon his roots and embrace a life of adventure. “I remember when I was a little guy going to school, stopping to look at a big 24-inch sheet announcing the arrival of the circus,” he recalled in 1963. “Another boy was with me. I pointed to the aerial act and said, ‘That’s what I’m gonna be.’ I remember it clearly. I didn’t say, ‘That’s what I want to be.’ I said, ‘That’s what I’m gonna be.”‘

And so, at the age of nine, Joe E. lived out what for other youngsters would be a storybook fantasy as he left home to join the circus. He became the junior member of The Five Marvelous Ashtons, an acrobatic act that toured the country performing under big tops and in vaudeville theaters. He earned $1.50 a week for the honor of being tossed through the air, and often being bloodied. As he grew into adolescence, Brown developed into a solidly proficient acrobat. While playing a date in San Francisco, he experienced firsthand the 1906 earthquake. It was around this time that he linked up with acrobats Tommy Bell and Frank Prevost and became the junior member of the Bell-Prevost Trio, a vaudeville act.

During this period Brown managed to play baseball whenever he could. He wrote in his autobiography, Laughter Is a Wonderful Thing, that his passion for the game “predates my first days at school, of that I’ m sure, so it probably began when I learned to walk.” In his youth, he explained, he

began haunting the knotholes around big league ball parks when 1 wasn’t on stage or practicing. And in the spring, after a season of sore ankles, skinned wrists, and broken legs, baseball as a career held more than a casual interest for me.

In 1908, Brown decided that he would seek summer employment as a ballplayer. Tim Flood, manager of the St. Paul Saints in the American Association, signed him as a second sacker, but his season ended abruptly when he broke his leg while sliding into third base. During the next few summers he played for various semipro teams in the Toledo, OH, area, including the Crowley All-Stars, Young Avondales, and Needham’s All-Stars. One of the many baseball-related photos printed in his autobiography features a serious-looking Brown, with arms folded, garbed in a Crowley All-Stars uniform and posing with a dozen teammates.

In 1911, when he was 19, Brown was offered a Boston Red Sox contract. At the time, he also had a lucrative offer to appear in a burlesque show. He already had spent a decade in show business, and realized that his best chance for long-term success was on the stage. So burlesque won out over baseball.

On Christmas Eve, 1915, Brown wed Kathryn Frances McGraw. The couple eventually became the parents of two sons and two adopted daughters. As Joe E. now had a family to support, his career choice was appropriate given his now-steady employment on the stage. By this time, he had morphed from acrobat to comic actor. On occasion, he even incorporated baseball into his stage act. The New York Times described one such routine, in which “a young pitcher [is] harried by batters, umpires and base runners.” Brown often quipped that he

once had a major league job. The manager wanted me to play third base. He said that ifT couldn’t reach the ball with my hands, I would open my mouth and catch it between my teeth. I tried it once and darn near swallowed the ball.

His Great White Way debut came in Jim Jam Jems (1920), and he spent the decade as a headliner appearing on Broadway and touring in stage shows. But he was not through playing baseball. In 1920, Brown worked out and appeared in exhibition games with the Red Sox.

Throughout his career, newspaper or magazine pro­ files of Brown invariably cited his love of baseball-and his talent for playing the game. As far back as March 1921, the Boston Globe reported that Brown “has recently received an offer from the New York Americans to play with the team this year.” The actor added,

At one time I played [semipro ball in Toledo], but an accident to my arm made it necessary for me to give it up. Since then I have received many offers to go back into baseball but it would be rather foolish alter I had started a successful career on the stage.

While a fine athlete — his athleticism is ever apparent in his baseball films, as he tosses balls and belts line drives without the aid of special effects or body dou­bles — it is debatable whether Brown possessed the talent to sustain a major league career. During a moment of candor in a 1937 interview, he even admitted, “[There] are a lot of stories about my baseball playing, but most of my big-league experiences happened in the imagina­tion of various writers.”

Brown’s celebrity status, however, did allow him to maintain his insider access to major leaguers. On April 18, 1922, the Boston Globe reported, “The Red Sox and Yankees occupied boxes last night at ‘Greenwich Village Follies’ at the Shubert Theatre as guests of Joe E. Brown, the principal comedian in the show.” The item concluded by noting that Brown “was formerly a profes­sional baseball player.”

By this time Brown’s calling card was his face rather than his physical aptitude. A Boston Globe profile of the comic began: ‘”Did you ever see anything so funny as that man’s expression,’ exclaimed a woman in the audi­ence at the Wilbur Theatre… as she gazed upward at Joe E. Brown, comedian of’ Jim Jam Jems.”‘ The article continued, “He has a comic style particularly his own, and not the least part of his success is the expression of his countenance. He doesn’t have to say a word to get a laugh.”

Nevertheless, the nature of Brown’s comedy primarily was physical-and it was a wonder that he did not become a silent cinema comedian. His screen debut did not come until the dawn of the sound era, in Crooks Can’t Win (1928), an inauspicious melodrama. He quickly established himself, however, upon signing a Warner Bros. contract and appearing in a series of come­ dies in which he alternately played two character types, both of whom were rubes. One was self-centered, with a mouth that was figuratively and literally big. The other was more shy and naive.

Brown’s three baseball films were especially popular. The first was Fireman, Save My Child, in which he starred as “Smokey” Joe Grant, an absentminded, Rube Waddell­ like small-town firefighter whose pitching prowess earns him a spot with the St. Louis Cardinals. Just as he was starting his screen career, Brown had been cast in the road production of Elmer the Great, Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan’s stage comedy about a none-too­ bright hurler (originally played by Walter Huston) which opened on Broadway in 1928. Jack Oakie starred in the first screen version, titled Fast Company (1929). Brown was tapped for the remake, in which his character, Elmer Kane, is a small-town rube/home run hitter who plays for the Chicago Cubs and falls for a flighty actress. Finally, in Alibi Ike, Brown played Frank X. Farrell, a fireballing Cubs rookie right hander who is as brash and overconfident as he is talented.

When Warner Bros. decided to sign him to a contract, Brown asked the studio to provide him with his own baseball team. It was written into his contract that Warner Bros. would pay for the team’s uniforms, equip­ment, and travel expenses. The ball club was named Joe E. Brown’s First National All-Stars; it consisted of studio employees and former professional players, and was pitted against all-star, semipro, college, and Negro League nines up and down the Pacific Coast. Decades later, Brown described the contract as a “pip.”

As he settled into his Hollywood lifestyle, the come­dian was at the epicenter of Southern California baseball. In February 1932, he and Buster Keaton-another screen star whose love for baseball was legendary-were involved in an all-star fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Olympic games. Over 8,500 fans packed Wrigley Field to see the Joe E. Browns defeat the Buster Keatons, 10-3. Rogers Hornsby, Gabby Hartnett, Paul and Lloyd Waner, Sam Crawford, Billy Jurges, Stan Hack, Tris Speaker, Dave Bancroft, Carl Hubbell, Charlie Root, Pat Malone, Johnny Moore, and Pie Traynor were a few of the big leaguers who participated.

Brown also was instrumental in getting his baseball pals parts in movies. Frank Shellenback had a supporting role in Fireman, Save My Child; Shellenback and a roster full of ballplayers (Herman “Hi” Bell, Guy Cantrell, Dick Cox, Cedric Durst, Ray French, Mike Gazella, Wally Hebert, Wally Hood, Don Hurst, Smead Jolley, Lou Koupal, Wes Kingdon, Jim Levey, Bob Meusel, Wally Rehg, Jim Thorpe, and Ed Wells) appear as big leaguers in Alibi Ike.

In 1934, a Los Angeles Times reporter asked Brown, “You didn’t really ask Dizzy and Daffy Dean to accept a picture contract, did you?” His response:

Why not? They’re fine boys, interesting, natural, lovely characters. When I was sitting next to Dizzy in Detroit [during the World Series], with the fans swarming around him for autographs, he whispered, “Funny, isn’t it? Five years ago I didn’t even own a pair of shoes.” They’re not swell-headed. Besides, Warners wired me to ask them…

The Dean boys soon were starring in Dizzy and Daffy (1934), a Warner Bros. two-reel comedy short in which Shemp Howard (of the Three Stooges fame) remarks, “The only Dean I ever heard of is Gunga.”

Brown also reportedly-and inadvertently-played a more direct role in the ’34 series. According to the Los Angeles Times, Detroit hurler Schoolboy Rowe “caught part of his pitching hand in a door jamb…and subse­quently had the bruise aggravated by a hearty good-luck hand-shake from Joe E. Brown, the film comedian.”

From 1932 through 1935, Brown was a part owner of the American Association Kansas City Blues. In 1935, the rumor circulated that he was considering purchasing the Boston Braves, but this came to naught. Brown organized a semi pro basketball team whose roster was stocked with ex-UCLA Bruins. He owned racehorses, and often could be found at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, and other Southern California racetracks. His Beverly Hills home housed a trophy room for his rapidly growing collection of autographed baseballs, bats, caps, and other sports memorabilia. He accumulated hundreds of items, from lumber used by Babe Ruth and Nap Lajoie and a cap worn by Eddie Collins to a baseball autographed by England’s King George V, a football jersey worn by Red Grange, Gene Tunney’s and James J. Braddock’s boxing trunks, and a first-edition copy of Henry Chadwick’s 1868 book, The Game ofBase Ball, the initial hardcover baseball tome. Alas, most of the memorabilia was destroyed later in a house fire.

Decades later, Brown recalled that upon learning that Lou Gehrig was about to retire, he wrote the Iron Horse to request the ballplayer’s first baseman’s glove for his collection. “Lou wrote back, asking me to name anything but that, and I understood but I felt bad about having asked,” he explained.

Not long afterward, he retired. In the fall of that year [ 1939] I went to New York to see the Yankees play in the World Series. Just before gametime a batboy came up to me and asked me to come to the Yankees’ bench. Well-Lou was waiting there. He was very ill, by then, so thin and gaunt that I was startled at his appearance. But he smiled and held something out to me — it was his first baseman’s glove. “Here it is, pal,” he said.

By the late 1930s, Brown’s popularity was waning. He left Warner Bros., appeared in some independent movies, and concluded his starring career in a series of low­ budget Columbia Pictures comedies released in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

But Brown did not fade from the public eye. During World War II, he proved that his heart was as big as his mouth as he became one of the first Hollywood celebri­ties to volunteer to entertain the troops. Brown trekked to combat zones from North Africa to Italy, the Pacific is­ lands to Australia and New Zealand, bringing laughter to the Gls. He once estimated that he had traveled over 200,000 air miles during the war. Ever the jokester, he quipped, “When I opened my mouth in the South Pacific, 8,000 mosquitoes flew in.” Even though he was a civil­ian, Brown reportedly was allowed to pack a carbine and ride in a tank while on Luzon, the Philippine island.

For his tirelessness in entertaining the troops, Brown was given a Bronze Star as well as a special citation, voted by the Military Order of the Purple Heart, for his “meritorious service.” However, he and Kathryn person­ ally felt the brunt of the war. Their eldest son, Don Evan Brown, a captain in the Army Air Corps, died at age 25 in October 1942, when his plane crashed near Palm Springs during a training exercise.

In 1945, as the war wound down, Brown signed to tour as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey, Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy. He opened in Chicago and eventually appeared in the play well over 1,000 times on stages from Broadway to Australia. He also returned to the screen, and gave a highly regarded dramatic per­formance as a small-town minister in The Tender Years (1947). He was ideally cast as Cap’n Andy in the second remake of Show Boat ( 1951), and gave what easily is his best-remembered performance as a loony millionaire in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot ( 1959). Here, as he slyly winks at the camera, Brown ardently romances Jack Lemmon’s jazz musician-in-drag. His closing line­ “Nobody’s perfect”-is one of the more famous in film history.

Baseball, of course, remained an intrinsic part of his life. “Whenever he doesn’t have a matinee, he’s at some sports event,” noted sports columnist Braven Dyer in 1946, while Brown was performing Harvey in Chicago. From 1953 to 1964, he served as first president of the PONY League, comprising teams made up of 13- and 14-year-olds. Long a supporter of the UCLA Bruins baseball team, the school’s Westwood ballyard was named “Joe E. Brown Field.”

During the 1953 season, Brown conducted pre- and post-game interviews for the New York Yankees and did five innings of play-by-play-three on television, and two on the radio. Radio-television critic Warren Bennett wrote that Brown was “as relaxed before the cameras as an old shoe. Shy, diffident ball players loosen up for him as they never did for his predecessor, the illustrious Joe DiMaggio.” Brown told Bennett, “What I want to do is talk to the baseball fan who loves the game so much he stands in line to get a good seat.”

In l955, his 37-year-old son, Joe L. Brown, replaced Branch Rickey as general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. But Joe E. remained firmly rooted in Southern California-and as the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn for Los Angeles, he was well-suited to become a high-profile promoter of West Coast baseball. In October 1957, not long after the team played its final game at Ebbets Field, Brown was the master of ceremonies of a star-studded luncheon at Los Angeles’ Statler Hotel, held in honor of the team.

Brown was among the leaders in the battle for the “Yes” vote that would approve the Dodgers’ contract with the city of Los Angeles, and result in the construc­tion of Dodger Stadium. He became general chairman of the Taxpayers Committee on Yes for Baseball, and pre­dicted that the Dodgers would lure baseball fans from far across the region-particularly if they competed in a spanking-new ballyard. The actor clearly was jockeying for support when he observed, near the start of the 1958 season, “Dodger President Walter O’Malley hopes to admit 300,000 youngsters [free of charge] to Coliseum games this season, and will up the figure to 600,000 when the club builds its own stadium in Chavez Ravine.” He added, “The boy whose idol is Duke Snider or Junior Gilliam can’ t go very far wrong in his future life.”

Joe E. Brown quietly lived out the rest of his life. He died at age 81 on July 6, 1973, of pneumonia and heart failure. Kathryn, his wife of 58 years, survived him. Brown was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, which houses the remains of entertainment in­dustry legends from George Burns and Gracie Allen to Humphrey Bogart, James Stewart, and Spencer Tracy.

Brown’s life may be summed up by the title of a classic Hollywood film, albeit one in which he did not appear: It’s a Wonderful Life. “There’s been tragedy, when we lost our boy,” he recalled in 1963. “But l’ve had the chance given every other citizen in a free country of living my life as I wanted to live it and becoming what I wanted to become.” 

ROB EDELMAN most recently authored the box liner notes and an essay on early baseball films included on the DVD compilation Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899-1926. He also is an interviewee on several doc­umentaries included on the DVD re-release of The Natural.

Sources

Bibliography

Books

Bronner, Edwin J. The Encyclopedia of the American Theatre, 1900-1975.

New York: A.S. Barnes, 1980.

Brown, Joe E., as told to Ralph Hancock. Laugluer Is a Wonde,ful Thing.

New York: A.S. Barnes, 1956.

Edelman, Rob. Great Baseball Films. New York: Citadel Press, 1994.

Newspapers

Bennett, Warren. “Joe E. Brown Bobs Up As Baseball Commentator.” Washington Post, May 7, 1953.

Browning, Norma Lee. “Baseball ls Still the Big Love of Joe E. Brown.” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1966.

Davis, Jr., Charles. “Relives Baseball, Movies: Joe E. Brown Celebrates 1-lis 72nd Birthday as Past Meets Present.” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1963.

Dyer, Braven. “The Sports Parade.” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1946. Gould, Alan. “Dizzy Dean Pitches for Cards Today.” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1934.

Henry, Bill, “Hollywood in Sport: Joe E. Brown Most Beloved Sportsman.” Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1937.

Meagher, Ed. “Joe E. Brown Dies at Age of 81 at His Home in Brentwood.” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1973.

Millones, Peter. “Joe E. Brown, Comedian of Movies and Stage, Dies.” New York Times, July 7, 1973.

Redfield, Margaret. “Joe E. Brown-That’s Saying a Mouthful.” Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1966.

Remenih, Anton. “Joe E. Brown Adds New Zest to Radio Show.” Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1951.

Webb, Jr., Melville E. “Weather Man Plays Mean Trick on Boston Teams, Robbing Sox of Apparent Victory, Keeping Braves Idle.” Boston Globe, April 18, 1922.

Wolters, Larry. “Where to Dial Today.” Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1954. Zimmerman, Paul. “Joe E. Brown to MC Affair for Dodgers.” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1957.

“Art of Comic Facial Expression.” Boston Globe, March 6, 1921. “Dodger Youth Program Lauded by Joe E. Brown.” Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1958.

“Dodgers Will Bring Visitors from Far Away, Joe E. Brown Declares.” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1958.

“Does Filmdom Give Athletes Swelled Head?” Los Angeles Times, November 11, 1934.

“Durable comedian .Joe E. Brown dies.” Chicago Tribune, July 7, 1973. “Joe E. Brown Gets Citation.” New York Times, May 5, 1946.

“Joe E. Brown Loses Home and Mementoes.” Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1961.

“Joe E. Brown May Buy Interest in Braves.” Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1935.

“Joe E. Brown Nine Wins Olympic Benefit Tilt.” Los Angeles Times, February 29, 1932.

“Joe E. Brown Target of the Circus Saints.” New York Times, November 27, 1948.

There is another type of fame, however. Some players aren’t remembered for what they accomplished as much as for just being in the right place at the right time, becoming a footnote in history and the answer to a trivia question. As a SABR member and a hockey fan, one of my all-time favorite questions is this: Who is the only man to play in both the National Hockey League (NHL) and in Major League Baseball? His name is Jim Riley, and the unique combination of these two very dissimilar sports begs a closer look at his career. 1

James Norman Riley was born on May 25, 1895, in Bayfield, New Brunswick, to John Henry Riley and Margaret Byers. His father was American and his mother Canadian, both of English descent.2 Not much is known of his early life.

Like many young Canadian men of the era, hockey exerted a strong pull on Riley, and he traveled east to Alberta to seek his fame and fortune. After playing one season of amateur hockey with the Calgary Victorias of the Alberta Senior Hockey League in 1914-15, Riley was ready to turn pro. During this era professional hockey was dominated by two leagues. In the east was the National Hockey Association (NHA), a six-team circuit of Canadian clubs in Ontario and Quebec, while the west had the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA), a three-team league with member cities in British Columbia, Washington, and sometimes Oregon. Jim headed west, signing with the Victoria Aristocrats for the 1915-16 season.

In the summer following that first pro season, Riley picked up a bat and ball and got a tryout with the Tacoma Tigers of the Northwestern League, the earliest reference to his baseball career. At 5′ 11″ tall and 185 pounds Riley was a big man by the standards of the era, and while Tiger manager Russ Hall was impressed with his size, he felt the youngster needed a little more experience before making the move to professional ball, so it was back to the ice.

Riley remained in Washington that fall, joining the Seattle Metropolitans of the PCHA, and it was there that “Big” Jim really made a name for himself on the ice. Riley played seven seasons with the Metropolitans between 1916 and 1924, a run that included two league championships and four all-star team selections.3 He also finished second in the league goal-scoring race twice, lighting the lamp 23 times in 1920-21 and 16 times in 1921-22.

In the spring of 1917 the Metropolitans hosted the Montreal Canadiens of the NHA in the Stanley Cup finals, taking the series in four games to become the first American-based team to win hockey’s highest honor. Riley was kept off the score sheet in the series, though he did appear in all four games.

The 1917-18 PCHA season ended on March 13, 1918, and less than a month later Riley was married. He and his new wife, Myrtle Laura Riley, didn’t have much time for a honeymoon, however. They wed on April 12 and just three days later Jim traveled north to Vancouver to be sworn in to the Canadian Army, serving in England for a year as part of an engineering detachment and quickly being promoted to sergeant. While he couldn’t find an ice rink overseas, he did play baseball and quickly made a name for himself as one of the top third basemen among the military teams.

Riley’s baseball career really took off in 1921, open­ing the season at second base with the Vancouver Beavers of the Pacific Coast International League and terrorizing opposing pitchers. By late June he was draw­ing rave reviews in the press, including this mention in The Sporting News:

Jim Riley, the famous Seattle hockey star, is another slated for promotion. Riley is the Babe Ruth of the cir­cuit and let it be mentioned also that at the keystone bag he has no peer in this company, although only breaking in this season. Riley started the season batting just above the pitchers. Today he’s in the clean-up hole on the Vancouver squad and delivering all the time.4

His .303 average and nine homers in 56 games caught the attention of the scouts as well, and on June 28 the St. Louis Browns acquired his rights. Less than a week later the struggling Browns called him up.

His major league debut came on July 3, 1921, in St. Louis during a matchup with the Chicago White Sox, replacing Jimmy Austin late in the game. Austin started the game at shortstop, and when he came out second baseman Marty McManus moved to short and Riley took over at second. Big Jim failed to get a hit in his lone plate appearance and the Browns fell, 5-1.

Riley started at second in both ends of a July 4 double­ header against Detroit, going 0-for-6 at the plate and committing an error in the second game. The following day Tiger pitching again kept him off the bases and he picked up another error. In the wake of his hitless four-game performance Jim was sent back down to the minors, finishing out the season with the Terre Haute Tots of the Three-I League. He quickly got back on track, hitting .296 with the third-place Tots.

Fortunately for Riley, the hockey and baseball seasons did not overlap, so he still had a stable hockey career to fall back on while his baseball skills developed. In 1922, after finishing second in goal scoring in the PCHA, he reported back to Terre Haute and hit .313 over 114 games before being sent to Salt Lake City in the PCL, where he batted a respectable .268 against much stiffer competition.

In 1923, Jim got another shot at the majors. Though he was a right-handed fielder (he hit left), he was moved to first base while with the Shreveport Gassers of the Texas League. Though the Gassers finished at the bottom of the standings, Riley had a great year, batting .328 with 11 homers and 74 RBIs. His play again attracted the scouts, and this time it was the Washington Senators who came calling, sending two players to Shreveport for his rights. He was called up late in the year to fill in for an injured Joe Judge at first base, appearing in the last two games of the season and going 0-for-2 with a run scored and two errors. It was his last appearance in the majors.

At the close of the 1923-24 PCHA season Riley retired from professional hockey. While in Shreveport in 1923 he met a woman named Martha Baker, the widowed mother of the team’s batboy, whom he eventu­ally married sometime in late 1924 or early 1 925.5 It’s likely that this relationship was a factor in his choice to concentrate on baseball and not return north to play hockey. After another outstanding season in Shreveport (.312-26-127), Riley moved to the Southern Association to play with the Mobile Bears in 1925. His numbers in Mobile were almost identical to those he put up in Shreveport (.320-27-125) and his future looked bright.

In 1926, Riley was acquired by the Dallas Steers of the Texas League, replacing youngster Swede Lind at first base. He didn’t disappoint, hitting .329 in an impres­sive 626 at-bats, driving in 111 runs. The Steers were the class of the league, finishing atop the standings at 89-66 and eventually knocking off the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern League in the Dixie Series, four games to two (with one tie). It was Riley’s first baseball cham­pionship, and he now had a title in each sport.

Once the baseball season ended, Riley once again heard the call of the ice, lacing up his skates for a couple of ex­hibition games with a team called the Dallas Texans. The PCHA had folded in 1925 and its players were scattered throughout hockey, so it didn’t appear that Jim would have an opportunity to play professionally again.

When Riley played hockey in Seattle, the Metro­politans had been managed by Pete Muldoon. Muldoon was a sportsman through and through-a former profes­sional boxer and lacrosse player, he also was an accomplished skater who often amazed crowds by skating on stilts. Shortly after the demise of the PCHA, he moved to the NHL as the coach of its newest franchise, the Chicago Black Hawks. When Muldoon heard that one of the players from his 1917 Stanley Cup team was skating again, he came calling with a contract in hand.

Riley signed with the Black Hawks and made his NHL debut on January 19, 1927, against the Toronto Maple Leafs, a game won by Chicago in overtime, 4-3. He only lasted three games with the Black Hawks, but his return impressed one of his former teammates who was also coaching in the NHL, Frank Foyston. Foyston and Muldoon worked out a cash deal that sent Jim to the Detroit Cougars on January 3 I. In Detroit he was reunited with four of his former Seattle teammates and played in six games with the Cougars, picking up a pair of assists and 14 penalty minutes.

Riley retired from hockey again6 and spent the next three seasons in the Texas League, splitting time between Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio. He also played with Lincoln of the Nebraska State League in 1928 and 1929. His average and home run totals steadily diminished, and he was shipped off to Topeka of the Western League part­ way through the 1930 season. He sat out in 1931 before returning to the field with the Baton Rouge Senators of the Class D Cotton States League in 1932. There he had a bit of a resurgence, hitting .284 with the first-place Senators until the league folded on July 13, ending both his season and his professional baseball career.

With his playing days behind him, Riley and his family remained in the Dallas area, where he worked in a public relations capacity with a distillery. He was said to be a scratch golfer and remained so in his later years. The family moved to Seguin, TX, in the early l 960s, where they remained until Jim’s passing on May 25, 1969, his 74th birthday, of lung and stomach cancer. He is buried at Guadalupe Valley Memorial Park in New Braunfels, TX. His wife Martha passed away in 1973.

As is often the case, our sports heroes are not always recognized for their accomplishments while they are alive, and the same holds true for Jim Riley. In 2000, 31 years after his death, Riley was inducted into the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in the special “Sports Pioneer” cate­gory for his accomplishments on the ice and in the field, a fitting tribute to one of the first two-sport athletes.

JEFF OBERMEYER works as a Subrogation Operations Manager/or Farmers Insurance. During the offseason he does hockey research, and his book Hockey in Seattle was published by Arcadia in 2004.

Sources

Chicago Daily Tribune

Lost Hockey: www.losthockey.com

The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball

Seattle Hockey home page: www.seattlehockey.net

The Sporting News

Total Baseball, 8th Edition

Total Hockey, 2nd Edition

Washington Post

Notes

1. Andrew Kyle appeared in the major leagues in 1912 with Cincinnati and played professional hockey in the National Hockey Association (NHA) in 1917 with Toronto. While the NHL grew out of the NHA in 1918, the two leagues were not the same. The NHA folded prior to the creation of the NHL. The NHL does not recognize any statistics or records from the NHA period as being “official.”

2. This is per Riley’s description of their heritage during the 1930 census, taken while he was living in Texas. Riley listed his profession as “Ball Player.”

3. Riley was named a PCHA Second Team All-Star three times between 1920-22 and a First Team All-Star in 1923.

4. Garvey, A.P. “A Tale of Baseball Breaks,” The Sporting News, June 30, 1921.

5. The fate of Riley’s first marriage to Myrtle is unknown.

6. Riley appeared in a handful of hockey games in California with the Cal-Pro League in 1928-29.

Sometimes the game even had a hand in carrying on the family name.

“My father was a big baseball fan, and that’s how I got my name.” Roger McKee, actually Rogers Hornsby McKee, was born September 16, 1926, about the time the St. Louis Cardinals, managed by Rogers Hornsby, clinched the National League pennant and then beat the Yankees in the World Series. “Dad and a bunch of guys from the mill were listening to a game on the radio, and he told them he was gonna name his boy after Hornsby.”

Young McKee did the name proud, and at 16 was pitching the local Ame1ican Legion team into the 1943 state tournament semifinals. His battery mate was another future major leaguer, Smoky Burgess, and they batted third (Burgess) and fourth (McKee) in the lineup. “Smoky was a great catcher, but he was an even better hitter.” It was a five-game thriller against the Albemarle, NC, nine. McKee notched complete-game wins in the first and third contests, allowing one run in each game, and played the outfield in games two and four. ]n the fifth and deciding game at Shelby, he went the distance in 11 innings, but lost 7-4.

An older man made his way across the infield dirt and sought out the young man who had just given his arm and heart in a losing cause. He was a pitcher, too, from the rough-and-tumble days of the early 1900s. He came not to offer condolences. A big league scout has other things on his mind, and he wanted to talk with the kid about his future in baseball. They arranged to meet later that evening. McKee and his father walked downtown to the Hotel Charles and listened intently as Phillies scout Cy Morgan talked about the kid’s future in the majors. A contract signed, a token bonus offered (“Small enough that I don’t remember what it was”), and a handshake ended the evening.

“Oh, yeah,” Morgan called after them, “we want you in Philadelphia within the week.” It’s the stuff dreams are made of.

The Phillies would gradually fit him in, they said, throwing batting practice, warming up on the sidelines, pitching an occasional exhibition game. That lasted until August 18 and a split doubleheader at Shibe Park with the Cardinals. In the first game, McKee was in the bullpen with the rest of the relievers, eating candy and having a good time. Merv Shea, bullpen coach and former catcher, looked toward the dugout and saw the manager waving his arms.

“They want you, Lefty.”

“Me?” McKee wasn’t sure he heard right, but with help from Shea he warmed up quickly and headed to the mound in the sixth inning. Things happened fast enough that he didn’t have time to get scared, but still could give himself a pep talk.

“I thought back to my success in Legion and high school ball, and figured maybe I could get these guys out, too.” He completed his relief stint, gave up three hits (one a bunt single) and two walks (one to Cards star Stan Musial). Reminded of that, he grins.

“Yeah. I hate that. Would have been nice to strike him out.” It was a good outing, though the Phillies lost, 6-0, and a big thrill for the kid nearly a month shy of his 17th birthday.

By season’s end, the Phillies were destined for a seventh-place finish, a distant 41 games out of first. The final two games were at Forbes Field against the Pirates, still in a fight for fourth place and the money that went along with it. Manager Freddie Fitzsimmons laid out the plan to his rookie left-hander: if the Phillies took out Pittsburgh in the opener, McKee would start the second game; if the Bucs won the first and still had a chance at securing fourth place, Fitzsimmons would go with a regular starter. Philadelphia managed a 3-1 win behind Dick Barrett’s fine effort. The kid got the ball for game 2, October 3, 1943.

The first inning went okay, but in the second a streak of wildness produced three walks. A couple of hits resulted in three runs, but that was all the scoring the home team could muster. Even a line drive off the bat of Tony Ordenana slamming into his knee couldn’t derail the kid’s magic that day-a five-hit, 11-3 complete­ game win.

After a dismal strikeout in his first at-bat, McKee had an RBI single later in the game.

My teammates scolded me because I never took the bat off my shoulder. “Can’t hit it if you don’t swing, rookie!” Of course, their words were a little stronger than that. Then they came through with 11 runs for me, and it was unheard of for the Phillies to score that many in a game. Guess they thought the poor little skinny boy was gonna need ’em.

Rogers Hornsby McKee, some two weeks past his 17th birthday, became the youngest pitcher since 1900 to start and win a major league baseball game. He remains so to this day.’ Afterward, Pirates manager Frankie Frisch paid the young man a fine compliment, saying that he was one of the best looking young pitchers he’d seen come along in quite a while.

“Guess maybe I let him down, not sticking any longer than I did.” It was the only major league game McKee would ever win, a promising career cut short by a mysterious arm ailment.

The Phillies stayed close to home for 1944 spring training, opting for Wilmington, DE, due to war-time travel restrictions. Ice and snow covered the ground the first few weeks of February, and workouts took place in a local gym.

The first day we got outside, I threw quite a bit, and that might have been the finishing blow as far as the elasticity in my arm. From then on, any day I could go out and throw pretty good for a couple of innings; and then nothing.

The arm never hurt and he threw the same way, but the fastball just wasn’t there. McKee believes the trouble began in that 1943 American Legion series, with three complete games in a five-day span. “That’s a lot of stress on a young arm.”

After spring training, the Phillies left him in Wilmington to finish the season with their Class B affiliate of the InterState League. McKee played first base after the regular sacker suffered a career-ending beaning, and still pitched on occasion. Connie Mack brought his Athletics down for an exhibition game early in the season, and Lefty was slated to battle Carl Scheib, another 17-year-old hurler. Wilmington topped the A’s that day behind his complete-game effort, though he had not pitched for almost a month.

He did well enough to be called up at the end of the season, joining the last-place Phillies for two games. Pitching in one of those, he joined a line of relievers drubbed in a 15-0 loss to the Cubs at Shibe Park. And that was it-his last game in the Show.

Thinking back to when I was hit by that line drive in the only game I won, I understand why I fought so hard to stay in there. I started that game and didn’t want to come out, because I might not get back into another one. And really, I never did.

Tony Ordenana was part of the mystique of that game, too; In one game for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he had two hits in four at-bats, and never played another game in the majors.

The Navy made sure Lefty had little time to worry about his future in baseball, sending him a draft notice in December 1944. Boot camp was at Bainbridge, MD, and his assignment was in the Physical Instructor school. The base had a solid intramural program staffed by some good athletes-two barracks away from McKee was Stan Musial.

We played basketball against one another, and of course we tried out for the team when baseball season started. You pitched against some pretty good major league material when you played service ball.

Both he and Musial shipped out to Pearl Harbor in the spring of 1945. The war was over in Europe that April, and the final Allied push would be in the South Pacific. Lefty pitched some during those months, but always with the same results: a good three or four in­nings, then nothing in the arm. His mound appearances, though, produced two great memories if no victories. Shortly after arriving at Pearl, the ball team was working out when one of the base commanders stopped by, dom1ed the “tools of ignorance,” and crouched behind the plate. Bill Dickey, Yankee great and future Hall of Famer, took the young man’s offerings for about 15 minutes.

He’d stand up and throw a bullet back to me, and he was burning me up. I thought, “He’s throwing harder than I am!” Come to find out, our shortstop was covering second, waiting for Dickey’s throw down. That was part of his routine, but I didn’t know that. l ‘d snag those smoking fast balls and throw it back to him, still not realizing what he was trying to do. Everybody got a good laugh at my expense.

Then there was Ted Williams. A Marine pilot, he flew into the naval station, and of course was asked to play ball. A member of the opposition that day, McKee went to warm up in the fifth inning; the makeshift bullpen was along the left-field foul line, a few yards from where Teddy Ballgame was playing.

“He watched every move I made, the way I threw, what I had. Lucky nobody hit anything his way. I went in to pitch the sixth inning, and he happens to come up.” In the batter’s box, Williams eyed the short porch in right field (only 220 feet away) topped by a high screen. Pacing on the mound, McKee had some disturb­ing thoughts.

“The greatest hitter in baseball already knew every­ thing about my delivery and pitch selection, and I sure as heck couldn’t fool him with anything. Figured I’d throw it as hard as I could, and see how far he could hit it.” Williams jerked the ball down the right-field line, nearly taking the first baseman’s glove and hand off. He recovered and tossed to Lefty for the out. Military personnel in the packed stands let out a collective, though good-natured, boo.

“Guess they wanted to see him hit, just like I did.” With victory in the Pacific secure in August 1945, men and women of the armed forces finished up tours of duty and came home. McKee went back to Philadelphia in early 1946, stayed a couple of weeks, and was in­ formed by Phillies manager Ben Chapman to report to Terre Haute, IN, of the Class B Three-I League. Lefty never made his way back to the majors.

“They tried to pitch me one more time at Terre Haute, but I couldn’t keep the ball in the park. I was fortunate to hit pretty well, and was given a chance to play first base and outfield for the rest of the year.”

The switch began a solid minor league career that would take him from Terre Haute to Baton Rouge, LA, from Charlotte, NC, to Topeka, KS, with a lot of stops in between.

“Seems like I played ball in every city east of the Mississippi River. I had a good time, and enjoyed myself, but I don’t think I realized fully that those days were the happiest of my life.”

Some of those good times occurred during his stay with Baton Rouge of the Evangeline League. He did well enough in 1953, hitting .357 in 94 games (he had too few plate appearances to qualify for the batting title), but the next year he fashioned a true all-star season. In 140 games he hit .321 (with a .462 on-base average), had 12 triples, and stroked 33 home runs. Returning in 1956, he hit .307 in 75 games, and in 1957 posted .295 in 54 games before the team folded.

“Always liked the Evangeline League,” he smiled.

After three games with Topeka of the Western League late in the 1957 season, he said good-bye to the nomadic life of a ballplayer.

“I remember it rained a lot right after I got there. Sitting in a hotel room while the rain beat against the window, I told myself I could be home with my family instead of sitting here alone in Topeka.”

McKee put up solid numbers during his 12-year, 1,118 game minor league career: 1,115 hits, a .290 batting average, 115 home runs, and 702 RBis.2 He was one pitcher-turned-everyday player who knew how to hit.

From sandlot days on the cotton mill village to high school and American Legion ball, from triumph and heartbreak of a short major league career to hard-earned success in the minors, his life was a baseball journey.

“I lived the dream of about a million kids, being a major leaguer and all.”

After his playing days ended, he settled down to a career with the U.S. Postal Service. And he found time to coach high school and American Legion teams with his good friend and former teammate Gene Kirkpatrick. It was a chance to give back, to pass on his deep love for the game, to help shape the lives of the young men who played for him.

“Some of the kids have told me years later that I helped them in some way, and I get a bigger kick out of that than I do anything.”

He and his beloved wife of 60 years, Denice, never thought of leaving the familiar territory around Shelby, and joke that they never had enough money to get out of town, anyway. But after all the travels, all the places they have seen, and all the people they have come to know, there was just never anyplace better than home.

“It’s all been so wonderful. I’ve been so fortunate in my life, and I’ve always felt lucky to have baseball.” For Rogers Hornsby McKee, once around the horn has been a gracious plenty.

THOMAS K. PERRY has been a SABR member since 1985. His most recently published book is a novel whose narrator, Katie Jackson, is Shoeless Joe’s wife.

Notes

1. Documentation of this accomplishment is important enough to have independent verification. Jeff Chernow, Baseball Operations Manager of STATS, Inc., confirms that their research has shown Rogers Hornsby McKee to have been (and to this day, remains) the youngest pitcher since 1900 to have started and won a major league baseball game.

2. Mr. McKee’s minor league statistics courtesy of Patric J. Doyle, Old-Time Data.

1. Cooney, Boston, .319
2. Mize, St. Louis, .318
3. Hack, Chicago, .317
4. Gleeson, Chicago, .316
5. Lombardi, Cincinnati, .316

This list contained several familiar names. Stan Hack was a solid .300 hitter. Ernie Lombardi led the league in 1938, and Johnny Mize, the 1939 batting leader was not only one hit away from the lead in average, but with 41 home runs and 120 runs batted in he was positioned to win the Triple Crown. Mize’s hope to achieve the Triple Crown and the others’ chances to win the batting title would be dashed the next day by the appearance of Pittsburgh Pirate third baseman-outfielder Debs Garms at the top of the list with a lead of more than 60 points.2 Except for the fact that Garms is the answer to a few trivia questions such as “Who broke up Johnny Vander Meer’s string of hitless innings?” or “Who won the 1940 National League batting title?” his name today is fairly obscure to all but a few baseball historians.

There are several reasons for his anonymity. Garms was a journeyman ballplayer in an era sporting the likes of Foxx, Musial, and Ruth. He never made an All-Star team or exhibited the charisma of players like Dean or Reiser. Despite a seemingly undistinguished reputation, however, teams always sought him for the attitude and hustle he brought to their roster. Of the teams Garms played for, his most notable years were with the Pitts­ burgh Pirates, where in 1940 he won the batting title.

The Pirates purchased Garms from the Boston Bees in 1940 as they attempted to rebuild their team after finishing sixth, a finish that cost manager Pie Traynor his job. 3 Frankie Frisch, hired to replace Traynor, inherited a team with poor morale, a team still fixated on the effects of losing the pennant during the last week of the 193 8 season.

Frisch, who had managed the Gashouse Gang St. Louis Cardinals to the world championship in 1934, was an intense individual who hated the thought of losing and was considered an ideal hire to improve the Pirates’ outlook. Prior to being hired by the Pirates, Frisch had broadcast games for the Boston Bees in 1939 and became particularly aware of the playing potential­ and attitude various Bees possessed.

Early in January, Charles “Chilly” Doyle, a baseball writer with the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegram, interviewed Frisch about the Pirates’ chances for 1940.4 Frisch made it clear that he wanted to redesign the team with an emphasis on fight and hustle. Left W1said was his suspi­cion that several Pirates, including Lloyd and Paul Waner, would have to improve their attitude or be replaced. Doyle noted that Frisch had made a few purchases from the Bees but was still looking to make other transactions to change the demeanor of the club. At the end of February, when spring training began, Frisch was still looking to make deals.

During the first week of March 1940, Garms drove his family from Texas to Bradenton, FL, for the Bees’ spring training. Upon arrival, he was informed the Pirates had purchased his contract. The Pirates were holding spring training in San Bernardino, CA, clear across the continent. After spending a few hours resting, Garms packed his family back in the car and drove them to Texas, subsequently boarding a train for California to join his new team.5

Frisch had been impressed by Garms while broadcast­ ing for the Bees and purchased his contract even though he did not have a particular spot in the lineup for Garms. Frisch told Doyle, “Garms will be available for infield and outfield duty. I like his style, especially his spirit.” 6 In a series of articles written during spring training Doyle noted the positive attitude Garms would bring to the Pirates through his competitive play.

Garms hustled through spring training and hit .472. He would later recall, “That whole year, [ 1940] the baseball looked as big as a grapefruit coming up to the plate.”7 Based on his hitting, Garms was named starting right fielder replacing Paul Waner. The future Hall of Famer’s diminishing skills at age 37, alleged drinking problems, and casual approach to preparing for the game irked Frisch.8 Waner never got back into the lineup on a regular basis, playing in just 89 games before being released the following December.

Subsequent assessments of Garms’ play during the 1940 season usually described him as a utility player, disregarding the fact that he had been a full-time player with the Bees. While Frisch experimented with various platoon options in the early stages of the 1940 season, Garms appeared in most of the early season games. Garms did go out of the lineup in early May, for the better part of two months, not because he was benched, but because of a knee injury he suffered in Boston.9 He returned to the lineup in a game against the Giants on June 16 and got three hits, only to reinjure his knee the next day in Boston for a second time. Occasionally pinch-hitting the next several weeks, his injury gradually healed, allowing him to begin playing on a regular basis starting July 20.

By then the Pirates were halfway through the season in sixth place with a record of 33-44. Frisch, discon­certed because of indifferent play, made several changes to the lineup, including the replacement of Lee Handley at third with Garms. Making the most of his opportunity that day, Garms had four hits to drive in five runs as the Pirates beat the Bees. Garms would be particularly effective against his former teammates that year, hitting .481, a performance based in part on how he was pitched to by the Bee staff.

Garms recalled in a conversation with his son that the Bees consistently pitched him low and away all season. He was mystified that they would continue pitching to his strength as an opposite-field hitter until he was approached one day by a Bee pitcher whom Garms had singled off the day before. He asked Garms the location of the pitch he had hit. Garms replied, “Low and away.” The pitcher then told him that Bees manager Casey Stengel had jumped on him for not pitching low and away. Why Stengel persisted in making pitchers work toward Garms’ strength seemed odd. Perhaps it was to prove a point. Stengel was apparently not happy that Bees general manager Bob Quinn had sold Garms to the Pirates in March. 10

Garms continued his hot hitting the next several weeks, hitting .400 for July, and raised his average up to .345 by the end of the month as the Pirates began climbing out of the second division. Little notice was made at the time that Garms’ average had passed that of Giants catcher Harry Danning, listed in newspapers as the league batting leader. At the beginning of August the Pirates dropped a doubleheader on August 1, then ran up an eight-game winning streak, moving into fourth place. Garms continued his hot pace, hitting .480 during this streak.

On August 21, Doyle noted that while Garms had the highest average in the league, he would have to amass 400 at-bats to win the title. It was the first time he was mentioned in connection with the batting race. At this point Frisch, thinking Garms needed 400 at-bats to qualify for the title, moved him up to leadoff in the batting order.

On August 31, Barna Rowell of the Bees was leading the league with a .328 average. Garms was hitting .369. Over the next several weeks Garms’ average continued to improve as the listed leaders’ average kept slipping. By September 11, Dixie Walker of the Dodgers led with a average with Garms at .384. Although the lead would change almost daily between Jimmy Gleeson, Johnny Cooney, Lombardi, and Walker, none of them could push their average above .320, which at that time was the lowest average to ever lead the National League.11 Observers of the game began to comment on the situation. Peter Hinkle, in a letter to the New York Times, observed:

The way the percentages of the leaders are running now it appears that the man who eventually succeeds in hitting .325 will win the title. Normally it takes a mark of .350 or better to win the individual batting champ­ ionship.12

In an interview appearing in the Washington Post on September 18, Dizzy Dean sounded off on various sub­ jects including the National League batting race. Dean pointed out that Johnny Cooney, “an old converted pitcher is right up there for the batting title with .31 7 whereas back in the old days Frankie Frisch or Jim Bottomley would hit .350 and finish sixth.” 13 The Sporting News also noted the low batting percentages, observing that Lombardi was leading the league with only a .319 average. “Not since 1919, when Edd Roush led with a .321 mark has the National League’s top batter turned in a figure as low as that owned by Ernie Lombardi…”14 Garms’ performance continued to contrast sharply with the low average leading the league. On the day Hinkle’s letter was written, Garms average reached a season-high .38 7. He was now 67 points ahead of Walker. Doyle’s arguments in August about Garms deserving the title had made little impression at the time. Now others were beginning to appreciate Doyle’s perspective. John Lardner wrote a column in the San Francisco Chronicle that argued Garms should be declared the champion. After noting that Walker was then leading the league at a .319 average Lardner asked, “So what would you say to a fellow in that same league, who is hitting .388? (sic)” Lardner extolled Garms’ accomplishments, arguing that a near 70-point advantage “is too much difference.” 15

When the Reds were in New York a few days later, their manager, Bill McKechnie, who had managed Garms as a Bee in 1937, was asked if Garms was as good as his av­erage reflected. While McKechnie observed Garms had not performed that well while playing for him, he con­ ceded that Garms’ high average “must account for something.” McKechnie then asked, “What’s this I hear about a batter having to be at bat 400 times to be eligible for the championship?” A reporter replied that this was erroneous. “That’s all wrong. I asked Ford Frick [presi­dent of the National League] about that and he said that so far as he knows that is an American League rule and has not been adopted by the National League.” 16

On September 16 the Times began to list Garms as the leader. Garms at .382 was 63 points ahead of Lombardi. These observations culminated with an announcement released by the National League on September 19 that all Garms had to do was play 100 games to win the title. Frick, formally confirming what he had told reporters a few days before, stated there were no rules governing qualifications for the title. “The batting title is simply unofficial and never has been subject for league legisla­tion.” The article goes on to note, “It is apparent the whole batting championship situation is in a state of con­ fusion and that Garms, with the only respectable average in the league, has a chance to be considered.”17 Bill Brandt, spokesperson for Frick said that while there were no rules governing qualifications, “he thought 100 games would be a sufficient prerequisite for the championship.”

At the time of this announcement 11 games remained on the schedule and Garms needed to play in only seven. In a rather prescient comment, another article mentioned, “His [Garms] mark is so much better than any of the others it doesn’ t make much difference whether he gets a hit or not.” 18 Virtually every comment on the subject noted the confusion about the requirement to attain 400 at-bats dated from the time the American League gave $500 to the batting leader based on a minimum of 400 at­ bats. Not only did league presidents, managers and sportswriters chime in, but fans added their comments on the subject as well. Another reader wrote to the New York Times stating Garms should be declared winner be­ cause he “will lead the batters by a wide margin.” 19

Frick’s opinion appeared in the news throughout the country on September 19. On the 21st Pittsburgh played the Reds. In the second game of a doubleheader, the Pirates filled the bases with two out in the bottom of the 10th inning. Garms came to bat and singled to drive in the winning run with his fifth hit of the game.

That game-winning blow was his last hit of the season as he went into a 0-for-23 slump. Garms ended the sea­ son playing 103 games with 127 hits in 358 at-bats finishing at .355, 36 points ahead of Lombardi and 38 points ahead of Chicago’s Stan Hack, who played in 149 games. Garms’ average also led the majors, as Yankee Joe DiMaggio led the American League with a .352 mark. Despite being considered a singles hitter, Garms finished sixth in the league with a .500 slugging average and struck out only six times the entire campaign to achieve a superlative ratio of one stiikeout per 60 at-bats. The Pirates finished the second half with a 45- 32 record, 78-76 overall to finish fourth.

While the season ended, controversy over Frick’s decision continued. Though The Sporting News sup­ ported Ganns as champion, it suggested qualifications for batting titles be made uniform throughout baseball. Specifically referring to Garms, they made note of the wide margin he enjoyed over his rivals despite being asked to play various positions.

The Sporting News editorial further noted, “There has never been a similar situation… when a player led the loop with such a high average and participated in a limited number of games…” This was not an accurate observation, as twice before batting titles were awarded to individuals with fewer at-bats than Garms. In 1926, Reds catcher Bubbles Hargrave was awarded the National League batting title despite having just 326 at-bats in 105 games, although his position as catcher probably worked in his favor in deciding whether he should be considered the leader. In 1914, Ty Cobb, who had been injured part of the year, was awarded the American League title de­ spite having 345 at-bats in 97 games. Given the level of Cobb’s sustained deeds over the years, there was little doubt he would have maintained his level of hitting over the full season. These instances were ignored in the con­troversy raised by Garms’ performance.

Most of the opposition to Frick’s decision centered on Garms not having the 400 at-bats required in the American League-that what was good for one league should be good for another. A good deal of the resentinent centered in Chicago, where Cub fans felt that Hack should have been declared champion based on his full-season perform­ance. Counter to that argument was an observation made by several, including columnist Bob Ray in the Los Angeles Times, that had Garms gone 0-for-42 and achieved the 400 at bats his “adjusted ” average at .318, still would have been one point higher than Hack.20

Under modern standards, which call for 3.1 plate appearances per game, Garms was 92 plate appearances short of the requirement. Based on this measurement Garms would have needed just 16 hits in 92 at-bats, a .174 average to beat Hack.

In retrospect, the controversy over Garms’ winning of the batting title was based on several factors. He was described as “coming out of nowhere ” or being “a surprise champion.” This is certainly justified by the man­ner in which he became eligible for consideration. Frick’s announcement came with only 10 days left in the season. A second factor was Garms himself. Although Garms’ prior performance with the Bees indicated he was a legit­imate .300 hitter, he had not solidified his reputation as a proven hitting star, as had batting title predecessors Johnny Mize, Ernie Lombardi, and Joe Medwick.

Garms also won because of peculiar circumstances that existed at the time. Observations of those familiar with the game were correct; batting averages were declining. The National League batting average for 1939 was .272. In 1940 it was .264. It would shrink further to .258 in 1941, and over the next 20 years would never rise above .266. This trend was reflected in the performance of top hitters. For the 1937-1939 seasons, 24 full-time players hit .320 or better. From 1940 to 1942 only one full-time player, Pete Reiser, hit over .320 (.343).

By mid-September 1940 no one in the National League was at .320, which from perspectives of the time were unsettling to those interested in the game. Contrasting sharply with this was Garms’ average then in the .380s range. The disparity between what was expected of a batting leader and what Garms was then hitting was too great to ignore.

One wonders whether Frick would have made the same ruling if Garms’ average was in the .320 -.330 range or if his hitting spree had occurred in the closing days of the season rather than early September. Garms’ early September performance may have been enhanced by his early season injuries. His past history suggested a declining performance the last month of the season. Perhaps the time he was out of the lineup early in the sea­ son may have delayed onset of the slump he experienced the last days of the season.

Controversy over Garms’ title did not immediately force a change in how batting championships were deter­mined. His title, however, proved a sign of things to come. Two years later Ernie Lombardi was awarded the National League title based on less playing time than Garms. Although his position as catcher probably helped in being considered for the title, it is worthy of note, the closest mark to Lombardi’s .330 leading average was Enos Slaughter’s .318. If Slaughter had been recognized as champion, his mark would have been the lowest to ever lead the National League up to that time. Rules for qualifications were subsequently changed, initially to 400 at-bats, then to the present-day requirement of 3.1 plate appearances per game.

When queried about his father’s attitude toward this controversy, David Garms related that he had an almost detached attitude about the matter. Aside from recalling that Frisch had moved Garms up to leadoff in the order to gain more at-bats the elder Garms said nothing about the controversy concerning his being awarded the championship. He seemed to be content to let others worry about the numbers while he concentrated on playing his game. Through it all, Garms was as calm as the center of a statistical hurricane, just hitting a ball that “looked as big as a grapefruit coming up to the plate.”

GREG ERION has a Master’s Degree in History from San Francisco State University and teaches history at Skyline College. He would like to thank David Garms, David W. Smith, Jules Tygiel and Mary Waters for their contributions to this article. Any errors are the author’s.

Notes

1. “Major League Leaders,” New York Times, September 15, 1941.
2. “Major League Leaders,” New York Times, September 16, 1941.
3. The Boston Braves were known as the Bees for the 1936-1940 seasons.
4. Charles J. Doyle, “Changes Already Made by F1isch Expected to Bolster Spirit,” The Sporting News, January 4, 1940.
5. Interviews with David Garms, August 29 & 30, 2006.
6. Charles J. Doyle, “Bue Nemesis Bought from Boston;’ Pittsburgh Sun-Telegram, March 4, 1940.
7. Pete Kendall, “Ex-Major Leaguer Debs Garms Dies in Glen Rose,” Cleburne Times-Review, December 17, 1984.
8. Parker, Clifton Big and Little Poison: Paul and Lloyd Waner, Baseball’s Brothers (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003).
9. Charles J. Doyle, various articles, Pittsburgh, Sun-Telegram, June 19, July 5, 6, 21, 25, August 1, 1940.
10. Garms, August 29 & 30, 2006.
11. “Major League Leaders,” New York Times, September 1-16, 1941. Larry Doyle led the league at .320 in 1915 and Tony Gwynn would subsequently lead the National League in batting in 1988 with a .313 average.
12. Peter Hinkle letter, “Low 1940 Batting Averages,” New York Times, September 14, 1940.
    
13. “Just a Joke,’ Says Dizzy Dean of N.L.,” Washington Post, September 18, 1940.
14. “Batting Slump Hits Both Majors,” The Sporting News, September 20, 1940.
15. John Lardner, “Who’s L.’s best hitter? Read on and be surprised,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 1940.
16. Harry Keck, “National League’s Times-at-Bat Myth Exploded by McKechnic’s Curiosity,” Pittsburg Sun-Telegram. September 21, 1940.
17. “Garms Given O.K. in Batting Race,” Washington Post, September 20, 1940.
18. “Hitting Crown: Garms May Beat Out Joe D’Mag,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 1940.
19. Ernest A. Kerstein, “Rule Which Denies Honors to Garms ls Hit by Reader,” New York Times, September 16, 1941.
20. Bob Ray, “The Sports X-Ray,” Los Angeles Times, December 30, 1940.

I was shocked. Freese had been one of the few posi­tive players on a last-place 1959 Phillies team that won just 64 games, their lowest total since 1947.

Freese had hit 23 homers in 1959, including three grand slams and five pinch-hit home runs. He took over third base from the failing Whiz Kid, Willie Jones, early in the season and proceeded to provide the only excite­ment for a truly awful team. True, Freese was a terrible third baseman. Despite playing in only 109 games at third he led all National League third sackers with 22 errors. My friends and I would try to buy seats behind first base, as you could almost count on Freese throwing a ball into the stands either in infield practice or during the game.

Who did the Phillies get for Freese? I wondered. In those pre-Internet, pre-ESPN days sports news was hard to come by. I finally ran down a copy of the Chicago Sun Times and discovered that they had gotten someone named John Callison in the deal. Being a committed National League fan, I had never heard of him. The Sun Times article gloated that the White Sox had pulled one over on the hapless Phillies. The 1959 American League champs had filled their one big hole at third base while giving up little in return.

Little did the Sun Times and I know that the Phillies’ new general manager, John Quinn, had pulled off a coup in his first trade. Quinn had taken a major step in dismantling the old Whiz Kid team that owner Bob Carpenter hadn’t the heart to break up.

John Wesley Callison was born in Oklahoma in 1939 and his family, like thousands of other Okies, migrated to California at the end of the Depression, in this case to Bakersfield. Callison was an outstanding high school athlete and was signed by the White Sox in 1957. In two years in the minors he showed signs of brilliance, hitting .340 in his first season in Bakersfield in the California League and then making the jump to Triple A Indian­apolis in the American Association the next season. There he led the league in homers with 29. He got his first taste of the majors in a brief call-up by the White Sox in late 1958.

Callison’s two sparkling minor league seasons earned him the label “the next Mickey Mantle” because of his power and great speed. It was a label that would haunt him for the rest of his career.

Callison was brought up to the pennant-winning White Sox in 1959 but got into just 49 games and hit a pathetic .173. Callison, who was always plagued with doubts, said he was “embarrassed” and “disgusted” to be a part of pennant-winning team and contribute so little. The White Sox soured on him. Their loss was the Phillies’ gain.

I first saw Callison in the spring of 1960. Quinn and newly hired manager Gene Mauch were trying to rebuild a team that had grown old. To me Callison, who was 5′ 10″ and about 175 pounds, looked small, timid at the plate, and tentative in the field. However, I soon began to follow him closely. Over the next few years he became my favorite player on a Phillies team that gradually won the hearts of the city’s fans.

Mauch played him in all three outfield positions in 1960, where he was part of an all left-handed platoon that consisted of youngsters Tony Curry and Tony Gonzalez. Callison proved a mediocre left-fielder but Mauch saw something that the fans and the always tough Philadelphia sportswriters missed and moved him to right field in 1961. He blossomed there and became one of the best right fielders in the National League, no mean feat when you consider the competition: Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson, and Hank Aaron.

From 1962 through 1965 Callison led all National League outfielders in assists, demonstrating a throwing arm that was both powerful and amazingly accurate. During those four seasons he totaled 91 assists. For comparison’s sake, Aaron had 43, Robinson 35, while Clemente had 59 in those four years. Even the best American League outfielders couldn’t come close to Callison’s figures. Al Kaline had 21 in those four seasons while the Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski totaled the most as­sists over that period, just 63.

Callison’s was one of the first of the new faces that Quinn and Mauch developed in the awful 1960 and 1961 seasons, when the Phillies finished in the cellar with the worst record in baseball, including an infamous 23-game losing streak in 1961. In 1962 Callison, along with new­ comers Gonzalez, catcher Clay Dalrymple, shortstop Ruben Amaro, second baseman Tony Taylor, and pitchers Jack Baldschun, Chris Short, and Art Mahaffey, pushed the Mauch-led Phillies over the .500 mark for the first time since 1953.

Callison was Mauch’s pet. He helped turn Callison into a dangerous hitter while carefully protecting his sen­ sitive ego. Mauch would tell anyone who would listen, knowing it would get back to Callison, about the right fielder’s skills. “He can run, throw, field and hit with power,” Mauch once bragged about Callison. “There’s nothing he can’t do well on the ball field.”

Mauch benched Callison during the last game of the 1962 season to salvage a .300 average for him. Callison’s 23 homers tied the record for any Phillies left-handed hit­ter in Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium. He broke that record each of the next three seasons, hitting 26, 31, and 32 homers. His 32 homers in the 1965 campaign was most any Phillie had hit since Stan Lopata clubbed that many in 1956 and the most of any Phillies left-handed hitter other than Hall of Famers Chuck Klein and Lefty O’Doul and Cy Williams up to that time. In fact, in the history of the Phillies only Ryan Howard, Jim Thome, Williams, and Klein have hit more homers left-handed than Callison in a season. His 185 homers is fourth highest of all Phillies left-handed hitters behind Klein, Williams and Bobby Abreu.

Callison’s speed also flourished in the big spaces of Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium. He reached double figures in triples for five consecutive seasons, 1961 through 1965, once leading the National League and once tying.

Callison’s greatest season was 1964, the “Year of Blue Snow” when the Phillies blew a seemingly impossible six-game lead by losing 10 consecutive games with only 12 games remaining.

After starting slowly — he was hitting only .206 early in May — Callison got hot and along with rookie sensa­tion Richie Allen and they provided the offense for a Phillies team that was picked to finish anywhere from fourth to sixth place. In July he won the All-Star game with a dramatic ninth-inning three run homer off Boston’s premier reliever, Dick “the Monster” Radatz. This was only the third walk-off homer in All-Star his­tory: the others were hit by two pretty good sluggers, Ted Williams and Stan Musial.

Callison said he didn’t run around the bases after that homer, he just floated. Later he was asked about the feat so many times he said he felt like Bill Murray reliving the same day over and over in the movie Groundhog Day.

By August 1964, Callison had his average around the .300 mark, and he hit nine homers in the last five weeks of the season, including a three-home run game during the Phillies’ losing streak. Handsome in a classic Holly­wood manner, he was the Cinderella Man of the Phillies. Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News both featured him on their cover. With the Phillies seemingly destined to win the pennant, to the surprise of everyone, Callison was the consensus choice for National League MVP But that was not to be. With a suddenness that was shocking, the Phillies’ season unraveled.

The stress of the pennant race was taking its toll on Callison. A constant worrier, he was smoking heavily and acting as if he expected the Phillies’ balloon soon would burst. By the end of September he had lost 10 pounds and came down with the flu. In a famous incident in a game in St. Louis toward the end of the losing streak, the sick Callison pinch-hit a single and then put on a warm-up jacket. He was so weak that the Cardinals first baseman, Bill White, had to button it for him.

Despite his illness Callison was one of the few posi­tive forces, along with Allen, on the Phillies during the losing streak. He hit four homers and drove in 10 runs during those games.

Callison had one more outstanding season for the Phillies. In 1965 he clubbed 32 homers and drove in 101 runs and was regarded at 26 as one of the dominant power hitters in the National League. Then suddenly everything turned sour. In 1966 he hit just 11 home runs, not hitting his fⁱrst until Memorial Day, and finished with only 55 RBIs. He led the National League in doubles with 40 but seemed to have lost his power stroke.

He also was feuding with Mauch, who was trying to unlock the key to a player he regarded as having all the tools for greatness but who seemed dogged by self­ doubt. Callison did an article for Sport magazine around that time whose title summed up his problem: “I am the greatest worrier in the world.”

As it turns out, after 1965 Callison was effectively finished as a great hitter. He never again hit 20 homers in a season or drove in 70 runs. It was said that he suffered from a series of nagging injuries, especially to his legs. He adopted the exercise regimen that had helped Carl Yastremski set records in 1967, but it didn’t help. He began to wear glasses, but that proved useless also. In 1969 the Phillies gave up on Callison and traded him and a player to be named to the Chicago Cubs for pitcher Dick Selma and outfielder Oscar Gamble. After a couple of seasons with the Cubs, Callison was sent to the Yankees, where he finished his career in 1973.

Callison’s post-baseball career was an unhappy one. He longed to get back to baseball in some capacity, especially with the Phillies, but never caught on with any team. He and his wife Diane and their two daughters continued to live in the Philadelphia area. Callison re­mained popular with the older generation of fans and in later years would often go to the Phillies fantasy camp to reminisce about his playing days.

His business investments turned sour and he turned to a series of unfulfilling jobs. In 1986 he was operated on for a bleeding ulcer and had a heart attack while in intensive care. He had to have a triple bypass. All this before the age of 50.

Callison died in October 2006 after a long bout with cancer. His career mirrored in many ways the fate of the team he was most associated with, the Phillies, especially the 1964 team. It was one of unfulfilled promise, a case of what could have been.

Still, for five or six years he was the most popular player on a developing Phillies team, an icon for victory­ starved Philadelphia fans. That’s not a bad epitaph.

JOHN ROSSI is a Professor of History at La Salle University in Philadelphia. His most recent baseball book is: The 1964 Phillies: The Story of Baseball ‘s Most Memorable Collapse, McFarland & Co., 2005.

When Negro Leagues great Ray Brown was inducted posthumously into baseball’s National Hall of Fame in 2006 as one of 17 individuals chosen for their essential contributions to “the history of blacks in the game,” he also became the first player with links to the Quebec Provincial League ever to receive such an honor.

Thought by many to be the equal of Satchel Paige, Brown was recognized principally for his outstanding achievements with the legendary Homestead Grays of the 1930s and 1940s, although his Hall of Fame plaque does acknowledge “several standout seasons pitching in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico.” It makes no mention of Quebec.

That is unfortunate, for in the years Brown spent north of the border the burly right-hander lined up with three teams in three different leagues and helped each to a league championship. Although pretty much forgotten now, his story, and the impact he had on La Belle Province, form an important part of his legacy, and tell us much about the history of baseball in Quebec at that time.

Brown was born in Alger, OH, in 1908. By the early 1930s he had emerged as the ace of the Pittsburgh-based Homestead Grays’ pitching staff, a role he maintained through 1945. The key to his success was always his un­canny ability to keep hitters off balance. “About the best pitcher in baseball at that time,” is how Negro Leagues veteran Charlie Biot once described him. “He had control; he had a number of pitches.”

Although primarily a curveballer, Brown’s repertoire included a deceptive fastball and both a slider and a sinker. Later in his career he added a knuckleball. He accumulated great pitching statistics in his years with Homestead — his lifetime winning percentage (.704) ranks second all-time-and throughout the Grays’ outstanding streak of eight pennants in nine years, he typically started a third or more of the team’s league games.

Stanley “Doc” Glenn, a catcher with the Quebec Braves in 1952 and 1953, who put in seven seasons with the Philadelphia Stars at the start of his career, remembers Brown well. Although they never faced each other in the Provincial League, Glenn still recalls the years he endured batting against Brown in the Negro National League.

“He was a great pitcher-not a good pitcher-a great pitcher,” said Glenn recently, speaking from his home in Pennsylvania. “He had all the tricks. He was number one for the Homestead Grays for a lot of years.” Glenn characterized Brown as “a complete ballplayer. When he wasn’t pitching he would play the outfield. I never knew him personally, only as a ballplayer, but he was a fine one.”

The former receiver considers Ray Brown’s Hall of Fame selection to be “great news, an honour well deserved.”

Josh Gibson Jr. played in the Provincial League him­ self in 1951, and he considers Brown to be one of the best pitchers he ever saw. “Number one is Satchel [Paige],” Gibson, the son of black baseball’s greatest hitter, told diarist Brent Kelley, “then Ray Brown. I watched Ray pitch as a kid, but I batted against Satchel. Damn, Ray Brown was good.”

But with time all things do change, and by the late 1940s, as the luster of black baseball had begun to fade, Brown discovered he was running out of places to play, especially with his own abilities now on the wane. He would have to seek out new and greener pastures. And he was all on his own. His extravagant marriage to the daughter of Grays’ owner Cum Posey — it took place at home plate on the Fourth of July, 1935 — had imploded some time before, done in by his hard drinking and the uncertainties that surround a life in baseball.

However, jobs were hard to find, especially for a black man who was pushing 40. Although baseball’s racial barrier had been shattered five or so years earlier, there were still many towns where non-white players were not welcome. And so Brown headed for the Mexican League and Tampico, where matters of race had never been a problem. After several good years there, the rambling urge once more kicked in, and by 1950 he had packed his suitcase and set out on the road again.

Ray Brown: Heading for Quebec

This time Brown gravitated in the opposite direction, toward Sherbrooke in Quebec’s Eastern Townships,where baseball was the summer game and the local entry in the Provincial League was one of the strongest in the circuit. He would have known about the league, la provinciale as it was called in French, from fellow travelers encoun­tered in winter ball and elsewhere; he would have been aware of its readiness to sign players of whatever race or nationality as long as they could play.

The Provincial League had existed in various forms for much of the century,mostly as an independent, some would say outlaw, organization. It had a long history of finding spots for talented players of color. Indeed,as far back as the late 1800s there were recorded accounts of black players on local teams. In 1929, the peripatetic Chappie Johnson had placed a unit composed solely of black players in a local league. According to Quebec baseball historian Christian Trudeau, black men were a constant presence in Quebec baseball from those days forward. Ted Page, Alphonso Lattimore, Alfred Wilson, Ormond Sampson, are just some of the names which appear regularly in accounts of that time.

When baseball finally blew open the doors of integra­tion in 1946 and six men of color inked contracts with clubs recognized by Organized Baseball, it was more than just a coincidence that four of the six played for Quebec-based teams in three different leagues, and one of them was Canadian-born.

By 1949, regarded by some as the golden year of Quebec baseball, the Provincial League had become famous (or infamous, depending on one’s point of view) as a refuge for baseball’s dispossessed. Former Negro League  players  [Terris  McDuffie,  Quincy  Trouppe], young Latinos [Vic Power, Roberto Vargas], displaced major leaguers from the war years [Walter Brown,Tex Shirley], local home-grown talent [Roland Gladu, Paul Calvert] — all were welcome.

So too were those major leaguers who had jumped to the Mexican League in 1946, and now suspended, had exhausted all their options. Or almost. They were still welcome in Quebec,and they came: Sal Maglie, Max Lanier, Danny Gardella. It is generally agreed that during this period, la provinciale provided some of the best baseball played anywhere in Canada. It was into this environment that Ray Brown stepped in 1950.

Normand Dussault, who still makes Sherbrooke his home,recalls this time with great affection.A two-sport athlete who spent his winters playing hockey, including several seasons with the fabled Montreal Canadiens, was the starting center fielder for the Sherbrooke Athletics, and he remembers Ray Brown well. “Sure, I knew Ray Brown,” Dussault said recently, “He was my teammate. He was from the States.”

When told that Brown had been selected for Cooperstown, Dussault chuckled.”Imagine. Ray Brown! In the Hall of Fame! Good for him!” He then added, “Ray was an old fellow by the time he came up here, about 42, I think. He couldn’t run, but he was still very good. We called him Poppa. He stayed around for at least four years, you know. He was a really good pitcher.”

In 1950, the Athletics were managed by Roland Gladu, a Quebec-born baseballer whose own story merits special treatment. Many consider that Gladu, more than anyone, was the driving force behind the early develop­ment of the Quebec game, to the point where it now produces the likes of an Eric Gagne and Russell Martin. A power-hitting first baseman, Gladu had played everywhere, and for everyone from the Montreal Royals to London, England, in the 1930s. He played with Quebec City, then for a cup of coffee with the Boston Braves in 1944, back to the Royals, off to the Mexican League and banishment from the game, to stardom in the Provincial League. When he retired, Gladu became a highly regarded scout for the Boston Braves. Some of his early signings included Claude Raymond, Georges Maranda, and Ron Piche.

As the 1950 season was winding down, the Sherbrooke club found itself fighting for first place, and looking for players to help make that final push. Since becoming manager of the Sherbrooke club in 1948, Gladu had im­ported a steady stream of performers from the winter leagues. He had already inked the likes of Claro Duany (the Puerto Rican Babe Ruth) and Silvio Garcia (“one of the best hitters who never played in the major leagues,” or so said Tommy Lasorda.) When Ray Brown appeared on the horizon, Gladu did not hesitate to sign him up.

The announcement in Sherbrooke’s La Tribune held a promise of great things to come. “Brown, a black player who stands more than six feet,” it read, “has been pitching in Mexico and in Venezuela, where he had an excellent record.” However, it took Brown the rest of the regular season to get untracked. He lost his first five decisions, and not until the very end of the campaign did he earn his sole victory, a 6-2 triumph over bitter rival St-Jean Braves. It was a “sensational performance,” ac­ cording to La Tribune. Brown even led the offense, driving home three of his team’s six runs, and, “for once, his team-mates gave him adequate support, managing 10 hits and committing only one error behind him.”

His timing was perfect: the playoffs were about to begin. It was here the lantern-jawed hurler truly showed his mettle. With Brown leading the way, the Athletics rolled over Drummondville in the semifinals and then took their nemesis, St-Jean, to seven games before collapsing in the last match of the championship series, 15-6. Although he was only one of four pitchers to work the game, Ray Brown took the loss, done in by fatigue and a couple of untimely errors behind him.

Nevertheless, the wily veteran with the bag of tricks had been the workhorse of the playoffs. He appeared in nine of the 13 games, recorded three victories against two losses, and at the plate, where he was often asked to pinch-hit, batted .353, with six hits in 17 at-bats, including one home run.

For some reason Brown’s pitching record does not show in the 1950 official league statistics, but an unofficial count puts it at one victory and five losses. He also occasionally played the outfield and pinch-hit, batting .250, with two home runs and seven RBIs.

In sum, Ray Brown had shown enough to warrant an invitation to return in 1951, one he happily accepted. He was about to embark on a streak of three championships in three years, all with different teams, all in Quebec.

Ray Brown: A Champion

The banner headline across the top of the sports page read, “Ray Brown reaches terms with Sherbrooke Athletics.”

It was March 20, 1951, and the Sherbrooke Record was confirming that last year’s source of inspiration for the team’s brilliant playoff run was coming back. A season of promise was at hand.

The veteran hurler compiled a solid 11-10 record and ERA of 3.31, while the team nailed down the pennant, though it took them until the final game of the season. They then went on to easily conquer both Drurnmondville and Quebec in the playoffs to claim the league title. While Brown had always been a career starting pitcher, he was called upon to fill any number of other roles as well. In fact, manager Gladu used him so much in relief that the Record took to calling him “Fireman” Brown. At other times he played the outfield or third base, and even stepped in for first baseman Gladu when the playing manager’s bad back kept him out of the lineup.

Brown was also the club’s go-to pinch-hitter. Although his batting average shows as a modest .193, including four home runs and six doubles, he always seemed to come up with the key hit when it was most needed. This was never more true than in the last game of the regular season.

With the Athletics down 4-0 to Granby in the sixth inning and needing a win to lock up first place, manager Gladu called on Brown to pinch-hit. The veteran did not disappoint, blasting a two-run home run over the right-field fence and completely shifting the momentum of the game, as the Athletics went on to a 7-4 victory and top spot. The playoffs were almost an anticlimax, and on September 19, playing at home, Sherbrooke was crowned champion with a convincing win over the Braves from Quebec.

But then fortunes changed. Only hours after the team had carted off the league trophy, a fire swept through old Sherbrooke Stadium, leaving the stands in smoldering ruins and the team without a home field. Town authori­ties first attempted to have a new grandstand ready for the following season, but when this proved impossible the club was forced to release its players and disband. Baseball did return to Sherbrooke in 1953, but never again could it recreate the elan and excitement that had embraced the 1951 season.

In the meantime, Brown was once more left without a team. Faced with a long winter of uncertainty, he elected to stay on in Sherbrooke and work at the huge Ingersoll-Rand plant in that city, trusting that better things would appear in the spring, as they did. On April 16, La Tribune announced that Roland Gladu had signed to manage the Thetford Mines Miners of the Quebec Senior League. Then, in an aside, it added that Brown, whose “wine-red Buick convertible” had been seen around town all winter, “will follow his old manager, as they have become great friends.”

It was a wise decision. The Quebec Senior League, and its companion Laurentian League, were similar in structure to the independent Provincial League of the 1940s. These sec­ondary loops had grown increasingly popular in Quebec, for, unlike the “new” Provincial League of Organized Baseball, where every club was soon to become affiliated with a major league team, they had not lost their local touch: they still had room for both homegrown talent and the displaced.

Composed of teams from four towns located south of the St. Lawrence River and east of Sherbrooke, the league was well salted with Provincial League veterans. The Plessisville Braves, now counting Brown’s old pal Norman Dussault in their midst, were considered the class of the circuit and expected to repeat as champions in 1952. But they had not counted on the surprising Miners. With  Gladu  leading the league in hitting­ his average flirted with the .400 mark for most of the season-and Brown chalking up a team-best 16 wins against five losses and batting over .300, Thetford walked away with first place.

Brown then added four more wins in the playoffs, bringing his total for the season to 20, as the club went on to take top laurels. “Four victories in as many matches is a feat to be celebrated,” gushed the weekly newspaper, La Canadien, “and here the honours go to our veteran pitcher, Ray Brown,” as it declared him the club’s MVP, “without a doubt.” So successful was the Thetford Mines baseball adventure that the town immediately sought and obtained a Provincial League franchise for the following year. Once again Ray Brown was left without a team. But not for long.

Early in 1953 the Lachine Indians of the Laurentian League began shopping around for a player-manager, and Brown leapt at the opportunity. With the omnipresent Normand Dussault now at his side, the veteran succeeded in leading the Indians to another championship­ Brown’s third in three years. The old pitcher opened the campaign with nine straight victories, finishing up at 13-5, and Dussault was dominant both at the plate and in center field.

After the final game of the season, local dignitaries held a celebration to honor the club. According to the Lachine Messenger,

Ray Brown acted as spokesman for the Indians in thank­ing the directorate [of the club] for the manner in which the players had been treated throughout the season just ended, and he hoped that the same team would next year again represent Lachine.

Sadly, this was not to be. The club became involved in a dispute with league authorities and elected to withdraw. All of its players were let go.

For Brown, one last hurrah still awaited. Following the Lachine success, he was called back to Thetford Mines, where the Miners, now in the Provincial League, were hoping to make the playoffs. As Le Canadien noted, “Even at his age, Ray still possesses the stuff our club needs to create momentum and regain the desired heights.”

And it worked. Columnist M. A. Simoneau affirmed, “Management could smile for having called on the services of [Brown] who helped to reduce the deficit, especially in the last weekend of the season.” Brown’s contribution enabled the Miners to eke out a fourth-place finish. But he was not in the lineup for the post-season. Because the team had signed Brown after the deadline by which its playoff roster needed to be deposited with the league, he was declared ineligible. The Miners were knocked out by Granby in the first round.

It is here that the trail of Ray Brown’s baseball career in Quebec fades away. He had married a local woman whom Jeannine Dussault, Normand’s wife, recalls was very good-looking. “She was a white woman, a French­ Canadian, from around Sherbrooke, I think. I’ m sorry, I can’t tell you her name.” Mme. Dussault recollects that at Lachine in 1954, “we would often sit together in the stands. She was very nice. But I never saw her again after that year.”

Brown did eventually return to his native Ohio, where he died in 1965. He was 57 years old. While it is true that his years in La Belle Province would have little influence on his Cooperstown selection, certainly his presence made a difference to the game in Quebec.

BILL YOUNG is a retired college dean and museum curator, and a founding member of the SABR-Quebec chapter. His main research interests pertain to the history of baseball in Quebec, especially the Quebec Provincial League and the Montreal Expos. He is the co-author (with Danny Gallagher) of the best-selling book, “Remembering the Montreal Expos.”