First base

Johnny Mize—Demorest (172 points; 15 first-place votes)

Among all positions, first base clearly had the strongest contingent of quality candidates. Mize was selected as the All-Time Georgia-born All-Star first baseman by the slimmest margin of all positions. “The Big Cat,” who batted from the left side and was known for his power and quickness, played fifteen seasons in the major leagues, beginning with the Cardinals in 1936. During his time with the Cardinals (1936–1941), he led the National League in slugging percentage (SLG) and on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) for three consecutive seasons (1938–1940). Traded to the Giants after the 1941 season, Mize called the Polo Grounds home for five seasons (not including the three years he served in the military during World War II). In his first full season back (1947), Mize led the National League with 51 home runs, 138 RBI, and 137 runs scored. Sold to the Yankees in August 1949, Mize served as a part-time player for the Bronx Bombers through the 1953 season. He hit .312 for his career with 359 home runs, 1,337 RBI, and a .959 OPS.[fn]Some of the less-obvious acronyms utilized in this article and their meanings include: OBP = on-base percentage; SLG = slugging percentage; OPS = on-base percentage + slugging percentage; OPS+ = OPS relative to a player’s league average OPS during the course of his career. An OPS+ of 100 represents an OPS that is equal to the league’s overall OPS during a player’s career; an OPS+ of 125 means a player had an OPS that was 25 percent higher than the overall league OPS during his career. WHIP = number of walks and hits issued by a pitcher per inning pitched; ERA = earned-run average; ERA+ = ERA relative to a pitcher’s league average ERA during the course of his career. An ERA+ of 100 indicates a pitcher’s career ERA was equal to the league’s overall ERA during his career. An ERA+ of 125 means the pitcher’s career ERA was 25 percent better (i.e., lower) that the overall league ERA during that same time span.[/fn] He was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1973 and was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1981. He passed away in 1993 and is buried in Demorest, where Piedmont College maintains a small museum in his honor.

Frank Thomas—Columbus (170; 18) is the reserve first baseman, despite receiving more first-place votes than Mize. “The Big Hurt” was one of the most feared hitters in the American League for most of the 1990s; he hit for a high average with excellent power and a good feel for the strike zone. Many voters chose to discount Thomas as a first baseman, however, because of his many years as a designated hitter and his mediocre defense. Author’s note: If we had included the abomination that is the “designated hitter” on our all-time team, Thomas most certainly would have won the voting for that slot. But I’m writing this article and, therefore, we are not including a designated hitter.

Other first-base finalists receiving votes included Hall of Famer Bill Terry (Atlanta; 150; 10), James “Red” Moore (Atlanta; 8; 1), Ron Fairly (Macon; 7; 0), and Wally Joyner (Atlanta; 4; 0).

Second Base

Jackie Robinson—Cairo (190; 38)

The only surprise in the voting at this position is that Robinson was not a unanimous first choice, receiving just 38 of the 40 first-place votes cast. The two dissenting voters gave no explanation; we can only speculate that they may have penalized Jackie for the brief time he spent in Georgia before his family moved to California. The details of Jackie’s career have been well documented by others; in his 10 seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers, this courageous man hit .311 with a .409 on-base percentage while contributing a formidable mix of speed and power to the Dodger lineup. He was named Rookie of the Year in 1947 and the NL Most Valuable Player in 1949. He earned induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962 and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1998. He died in 1972 at the age of 53.

Tony Phillips—Atlanta (124; 0) is the reserve second baseman. Phillips enjoyed an 18-year major-league career and was one of the most versatile players in baseball during his time. In addition to second base, Phillips had considerable experience at short, third, and in the outfield. He was one of the better lead-off hitters of his time with some pop in his bat and good speed.

Other finalists receiving votes were Jeff Treadway (Columbus; 21; 1) and Roy Hartsfield (Chattahoochee; 13; 1).

Shortstop

Cecil Travis—Riverdale (199; 39)

Many people do not realize just how good Cecil Travis was. Prior to World War II, the Senators’ shortstop was a three-time All-Star with a .327 cumulative batting average and an OPS+ of 113. In 1941, his finest season, he hit .359, drove in 101 runs, posted an OPS of .930 (OPS+ = 150), and led the American League with 218 hits. Like so many of his peers, Travis sacrificed almost four full years of his life and career to serve his country during World War II. Returning to the Senators late in the 1945 season, Cecil was only a shell of his former self as a player. He hit just .241 in his three seasons after the war and retired after the 1947 season, finishing with an overall career batting average of .314. Many observers believe that the war cost Travis a place in the Hall of Fame (see his pre- and postwar statistics below) and blame his decline on the frostbite he suffered to his feet during the war, although he downplayed that excuse and blamed it instead on his inability to get his timing back after being away from the game for so long. He was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1975 and passed away in 2006. He is buried in Atlanta.

Cecil Travis’s Prewar and Postwar Splits

Bucky “Bleepin’” Dent—Savannah (100; 4) is the reserve shortstop. With the possible exceptions of Bobby Thomson and Bill Mazeroski, no player secured his place in baseball history as the result of one timely home run more so than Bucky Dent. The Red Sox Nation curses his name to this day (thus the nickname). The three-time All-Star was named World Series MVP in 1978.

Other finalists receiving votes included Negro Leaguer Pee Wee Butts (Sparta; 48; 0), Stephen Drew (Hahira; 17; 1), Desi Relaford (Valdosta; 8; 0), Ernest Riles (Cairo; 4; 0), and Adam Everett (Austell; 4; 0).

Third Base

Ray Knight—Albany (199; 35)

Third base is the weakest position for Georgia-born players. Our ballot contained a number of candidates but no Hall of Fame–caliber option. Ray Knight, our All-Time Georgia-born third baseman, had a solid if unspectacular career with five teams from 1974–1988. An average fielder, Knight was a career .271 hitter with modest power and no speed. He probably is best remembered for his role in helping the Mets win the 1986 World Series and being named series MVP. He was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1995 and is married to professional golf legend Nancy Lopez.

Chone Figgins (127; 7) from Leary, Georgia, is our reserve third baseman. Figgins, who is now with the Seattle Mariners, began his career with the Anaheim Angels. A versatile fielder with a good bat and excellent speed, Figgins is, in the eyes of many voters, on the verge of supplanting Knight as the All-Time Georgia-born All-Star third baseman.

Other finalists receiving votes included Russ Branyan (Warner Robins; 24; 0) and Willie Greene (Milledgeville; 8; 0).

Catcher

Josh Gibson—Buena Vista (199; 39)

Negro League legend Josh Gibson is our All-Time Georgia-born All-Star catcher. Many experts consider Gibson, a star with the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords, the most outstanding hitter in the history of the Negro Leagues. He matched prodigious power with an excellent eye at the plate and defensively was compared favorably to Yankee Hall of Famer Bill Dickey. He died of the effects of an untreated brain tumor in January 1947, just three months before Jackie Robinson took the field for the Dodgers. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.

Athens’s Brian McCann (129; 2), who was selected to the National League All-Star team in each of his first four full seasons, is the backup catcher. McCann is good for 20 home runs and 90 RBI a year and may exceed those numbers with more experience. His catching skills are adequate, although he struggles with pitches in the dirt and is working hard to improve his throwing.

Other finalists receiving votes included Negro League star Quincy Trouppe (Dublin; 81; 0), Ivey Wingo (Gainesville; 29; 0), Jody Davis (Gainesville; 26; 0), Michael Barrett (Atlanta; 10; 0), Negro Leaguer Joe Greene (Stone Mountain; 10; 0), Joe Tipton (McCaysville; 5; 1), and Bill Cash (Round Oak; 3; 0).

Outfield

Ty Cobb—Narrows (205; 41)

Moises Alou—Atlanta (119; 0)

Fred “Dixie” Walker—Villa Rica (100; 0)

Ty Cobb was the only unanimous selection for this team. He was the only player to be named on every ballot for a given position, and he was every voters’ first choice.

Cobb’s reputation as a fierce and combative competitor is well documented; he was arguably the game’s greatest player in the first 25 years of the modern era. A member of the inaugural class of inductees to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, he died in Atlanta in 1961 and is buried in Royston, Georgia. He was elected to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1964. A generous donation from Cobb after his playing days were over helped fund a hospital in Royston, and today the Ty Cobb Healthcare System operates the Ty Cobb Museum there.

Moises Alou was born in Atlanta in 1966, when his father, Felipe, played for the Braves. He played for his father early in his career when Felipe managed the Montreal Expos. Moises signed with the Florida Marlins as a free agent after the 1996 season and was a key contributor to the Marlins’ world championship that in 1997. Traded to Houston after the World Series in a salary purge by Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga, the six-time All-Star had a number of productive years with the Astros, Cubs, and Giants before finishing his career with the Mets in 2007–2008.

Dixie Walker, who finished third in the outfield voting, came from a baseball family. His father, Ewart (also known as “Dixie”), pitched briefly for the Senators during the deadball era, and his brother Harry “The Hat” Walker also enjoyed a distinguished major-league career. After stints with the Yankees, White Sox, and Tigers, Dixie developed a loyal fan base while playing for Brooklyn in the 1940s, when he was a five-time All-Star. Dubbed “The People’s Choice” by Brooklyn fans, Walker batted .311 in 1941 and led all NL outfielders in assists while leading the Dodgers to the NL pennant that year. He won the NL batting title in 1944 and led the league in RBI in 1945. One of the most vocal opponents of Branch Rickey’s plan to add Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers’ roster in 1947, Walker was traded to the Pirates after that season, but not before he recognized Robinson’s skill and contributions to the Dodgers’ success. He later managed the Atlanta Crackers to the 1950 Southern Association pennant. He passed away in 1982 in Birmingham, Alabama.

The reserve outfielders include Marquis Grissom (Atlanta; 51; 0) and Wally Moses (Uvalda; 48; 0). Grissom led the NL in stolen bases twice early in his career, and he has won four Gold Glove awards for his outfield play. Moses played for three different teams during a 17-year career in the AL. He batted over .300 in each of his first seven seasons, although he reached double figures in home runs just once (25 in 1937), the same year he established his single-season high in RBI (86). He also exhibited good speed on the bases. He was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1989 and passed away in 1990, just two days after his 80th birthday.

Other finalists receiving votes in the outer gardens included J. D. Drew (Valdosta[fn]At the time of the voting, various reference sources listed J.D. Drew’s birthplace as Valdosta, Georgia. That information has since been corrected to reflect his birth in Tallahassee, Florida.[/fn]; 20; 0), Mike Cameron (LaGrange; 7; 0), Harry “Suitcase” Simpson (Atlanta; 6; 0), Nick Markakis (Woodstock; 5; 0), Rondell White (Milledgeville; 4; 0), and Negro Leaguer Eddie Dwight (Dalton; 4; 0).

Starting Pitchers

Kevin Brown—Milledgeville (153; 20)

Tim Hudson—Columbus (102; 4)

Spud Chandler—Commerce (93; 6)

Dick Redding—Atlanta (77; 6)

Kenny Rogers—Savannah (68; 1)

A six-time All-Star, Kevin Brown holds down the number-one spot in our All-Time Georgia-born All-Star starting rotation. A product of Georgia Tech, Brown won 21 games for Texas in 1992 and went to the World Series with the Florida Marlins in 1997, although he did not pitch well in the Series. After leading the Padres to the World Series in 1998, he signed a controversial $105 million, seven-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1999. Over the next five seasons, Brown went 58–32 (.644), although the Dodgers failed to make the postseason during that time. Brown finished out his career in 2005 with a disappointing season for the New York Yankees. He was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.

In just his second year in the majors, Tim Hudson of the Oakland A’s led the AL with twenty wins in 2000 and finished second in the Cy Young voting. A product of Auburn University and a two-time All-Star with the A’s, Hudson was traded to the Atlanta Braves prior to the 2005 season. Although he has pitched well for the Braves, he has not quite lived up to expectations. Tommy John surgery sidelined him for the last half of the 2008 season and most of the 2009 campaign. A free agent after 2009, Hudson re-signed with the Braves for 2010 and is expected to compensate for the loss of starter Javier Vasquez, who was traded to the Yankees in the offseason. Relying on a sinking fastball and a splitter, Hudson’s .655 lifetime winning percentage through the 2009 season ranked fifth highest among active pitchers.

Spurgeon “Spud” Chandler, a University of Georgia alumnus, spent five years in the minor leagues after graduation and did not make his major-league debut until the age of 29. He pitched just 11 seasons in the major leagues, all for the New York Yankees. His .717 lifetime winning percentage is second all-time behind the nineteenth-century star Albert Spalding (.795) and just ahead of Dave Foutz’ and Whitey Ford’s mark of .690. He led the American League with a 20–4 record and 1.64 ERA (ERA+ = 197) in 1943, winning the AL MVP award in the process. He was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1969 and passed away in 1990 in Florida.

A tall (6’4?) right-hander, “Cannonball” Dick Redding was a pitching sensation for a number of teams in black baseball in the days before the establishment of organized black leagues. Using a no-windup delivery and relying primarily on a blazing fastball, he threw 30 no-hitters, although many of those masterpieces were against inferior clubs. Pitching for the Lincoln Stars in 1915, Redding won 20 straight games at one point and jumped to the Lincoln Giants late in the season, where he went 3–1 in the playoffs against the Chicago American Giants.[fn]See Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, 654.[/fn] After parts of two seasons in the military during World War I, Redding continued to pitch and manage various teams in the Negro leagues through the 1920s, although his effectiveness as a pitcher waned significantly as that decade unfolded. He died in New York in 1948.

Kenny Rogers pitched in the major leagues for twenty years, primarily in the American League. He threw a perfect game for the Rangers in 1994 and earned his first All-Star appearance in 1995 with a 17–7 record for Texas. Signing with the Yankees as a free agent in 1996, Rogers had two nondescript years with the Yankees, including a horrendous postseason in 1996. He suffered through another horrible postseason during a brief stay with the Mets in 1999 before returning to Texas for the 2000 season. He was selected to the American League All-Star team two more times (2004-5) while with the Rangers, and he was the starting pitcher in the 2006 All-Star game after he had moved to the Tigers. That same year, he won three games for the Tigers in postseason play. He finished his career with the Tigers in 2008.

Other finalists receiving votes included Nap Rucker (Crabapple; 16.5; 1), Bill Byrd (Canton; 11; 0), Jim Bagby Sr. (Barnett; 8.33; 0), Whitlow Wyatt (Kensington; 8.33; 0), John “Blue Moon” Odom (Macon; 6; 0), Jim Hearn (Atlanta; 5.33; 0), Erskine Mayer (Atlanta; 4; 0), Connie Johnson (Stone Mountain; 4; 0), Adam Wainwright (Brunswick; 3; 0), and Felix Evans (Atlanta; 2; 0), while Tom Cheney (Morgan) Phil Douglas (Cedartown), Willard Nixon (Taylorsville), Tully Sparks (Etna), and Roy Welmaker (Atlanta) each received one fifth-place vote. (The top five Georgia-born starters who were not selected to the starting rotation were included on the bullpen ballot.)

Bullpen

Todd Jones—Marietta (151; 21)

Hugh Casey—Atlanta (78; 5)

Nap Rucker—Crabapple (68; 6)

Jonathan Broxton—Augusta (50; 2)

Jim Bagby Sr.—Barnett (49; 2)

Todd Jones saved 319 games over the course of a 16-year career that came to a close with the Tigers in 2008. He was on an All-Star team for the only time in his career in 2000 and won the American League Rolaids Relief Award that year for posting 42 saves for Detroit.

Hugh Casey pitched for just nine seasons in the major leagues, mostly with Brooklyn during the 1940s. He was the unfortunate victim of Mickey Owen’s untimely passed ball on a third strike to Tommy Henrich with two outs in the ninth inning in Game 4 of the 1941 World Series. Henrich reached first and Casey collapsed, allowing the Yankees four runs and losing the game 7–4. A retroactive application of the saves criteria revealed that Casey led the NL in saves in 1942 and 1947 with 13 and 18, respectively. Casey developed a serious problem with alcohol and committed suicide in Atlanta in 1951, two years after his major-league career came to a close with the Yankees. He is buried in Atlanta and was elected to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.

Nap Rucker was a highly regarded southpaw who posted a career record of 134–134 over the course of ten seasons for a bad Brooklyn club during the deadball era. He pitched a no-hitter against the Boston Braves in 1908. By the time the Brooklyn club made its first World Series appearance in 1916, Rucker’s career was coming to a close. He appeared in just nine games that year and pitched two scoreless innings in the World Series, which was won by the Red Sox. He was elected to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1967 and was buried in Roswell, Georgia, after passing away in 1970.

Jonathan Broxton has established himself as a dominant closer after just five seasons in the major leagues. He has averaged almost 12 strikeouts per nine innings for his career. He was credited with 36 saves in 2009 while averaging an incredible 13.5 strikeouts per nine innings.

Jim Bagby Sr. won 31 games, including six in relief, for the world-champion Cleveland Indians in 1920. He was on the mound when Bill Wambsganss completed his historic unassisted triple play in the Indians’ win over Brooklyn in Game 5 of that year’s World Series. Bagby pitched just nine seasons in the major leagues and finished with an overall record of 127-89 (.588). He died in Marietta, Georgia, in 1954 and is buried in Atlanta’s Westview Cemetery.

Other bullpen finalists receiving votes included Rick Camp (Trion; 48; 0), Matt Capps (Douglasville; 28; 0), Whitlow Wyatt (Kensington; 28; 0), Bill Byrd (Canton; 23; 1), Jim Hearn (Atlanta; 22; 2), John Rocker (Statesboro; 22; 0), Connie Johnson (Stone Mountain; 7; 0), Chris Hammond (Atlanta; 7; 0), Dave Beard (Atlanta; 3; 0), and Willard Nixon (Taylorsville; 2; 0).

Manager

Bill Terry (Atlanta; 28 votes)

Although he missed election at first base, “Memphis Bill” Terry is the All-Time Georgia-born All-Star manager. He led the New York Giants to three pennants and one World Series title in 10 years as manager, amassing an overall record of 823–661, a winning percentage of .555. He was elected to the Hall of Fame (as a player) in 1954. He is the last National Leaguer to hit .400 (1930). He died in 1989 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Other managerial finalists receiving votes included George Stallings (8) and Ty Cobb (1).

All-Time Georgia-Born All-Star Roster

I thought it would be interesting to compile a hypothetical staring lineup from the first-place finishers at each position (see the accompanying table). This lineup has the potential to score a lot of runs. With the possible exception of Ray Knight in the eight hole, there is not a weak spot in the lineup. The trio of Cobb, Robinson, and Dixie Walker at the top of the lineup has a cumulative on-base percentage of over .400; moreover, Cobb and Robinson’s speed and daring on the bases undoubtedly would serve as a major distraction to opposing pitchers. While we can only speculate as to Josh Gibson’s success as a major-league hitter, the consensus of baseball historians, not to mention those who played with Josh or who saw him play, is that he had all the tools to be a major-league star had he been given the opportunity to showcase his skills. Gibson and Johnny Mize, who both hit for power and average, provide big bats in the middle of the lineup. Moises Alou, with his combination of good contact and decent power and speed, offers Mize some protection. Cecil Travis—especially the pre-war Travis—is a difficult out in the seventh spot. Ray Knight may not measure up to the others in this lineup, but neither is he an automatic out. He was a good, if not great, player.

The reserve roster combines decent hitting, good power, and considerable speed. Frank Thomas—“The Big Hurt”—is the only superstar; he offers a unique combination of power and high on-base percentage off the bench. Tony Phillips and Chone Figgins, in addition to being good offensive players with speed, provide considerable defensive flexibility as well, as both of them are capable of playing multiple positions, including the outfield. Either could fill in at third base for Ray Knight (as could both Jackie Robinson and Cecil Travis). Marquis Grissom and Wally Moses provide capable offense and speed as outfield alternatives. Brian McCann is one of the best hitters in the current generation of catchers. Bucky Dent is a good fielder with below-average offensive spark.

The starting rotation has a formidable track record. As a unit, Kevin Brown, Tim Hudson, Spud Chandler, and Kenny Rogers have a lifetime winning percentage of .620 (687–421). Rogers is the only southpaw in the rotation, however. The impact of Cannonball Dick Redding is, once again, left to the imagination. Redding’s reputation as one of the best pitchers in black baseball prior to the formation of formal league structures suggests that he could have certainly held his own against major-league hitters of his time.

The bullpen contains a combination of modern-day “closer” types and old-school relievers. With Jones and Broxton available to close, Hugh Casey falls into the role of “setup man.” They are joined by two pitchers from a generation long past: Jim Bagby Sr. and Nap Rucker spent most of their careers as starting pitchers, but they also worked in relief when necessary, and for our purposes they fall into the role of long relievers (with an occasional spot start).

The All-Time Georgia-born All-Star team is formidable. Including the manager, it contains five members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame (Cobb, Robinson, Gibson, Mize, and Terry) and twelve members of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame (Cobb, Robinson, Gibson, Mize, Travis, Knight, Moses, Brown, Chandler, Casey, Rucker, and Bagby). While many selections, such as Robinson, Travis, Cobb, and Gibson are not surprising, other positions offer plenty of room for debate. First base was a particularly close contest: the relative merits of Mize, Thomas, and Terry can be argued for hours. Such debate is what makes baseball—and SABR—so appealing.

TERRY W. SLOOPE has served as the Magnolia Chapter’s regional chair for more than ten years. He has been working on a biographical project about Cartersville’s Rudy York for longer than that.

References and Suggested Reading

Clark, Dick, and Larry Lester, eds. The Negro Leagues Book. Cleveland, Oh.: Society for American Baseball Research, 2004.

Creamer, Robert W. Baseball in ’41: A Celebration of the “Best Baseball Season Ever”—In the Year America Went to War. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Enders, Eric. “George Napoleon Rucker.” In Deadball Stars of the National League, ed. Tom Simon, 283–286. Dulles, Va.: Brasseys, 2006.

Ginsburg, Daniel. “Tyrus Raymond Cobb.” In Deadball Stars of the American League, ed. David Jones, 546–550. Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2006.

Hogan, Lawrence D., ed. Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2007.

Holway, John. Voices from the Great Black Baseball Leagues. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1992. See the chapters on Georgia natives William “Sug” Cornelius, James “Joe” Greene, and Tom “Pee Wee” Butts. These and many of the other chapters also contain a significant amount of information about Josh Gibson.

James, Bill. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. New York: The Free Press, 2001.

James, Bill, and Rob Neyer. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches. New York: Fireside Books, 2004.

Kavanaugh, Jack. “Dixie Walker—The Peepul’s Cherce.” Baseball Research Journal 22 (1993): 80.

Kirkpatrick, Rob. Cecil Travis of the Washington Senators: The War-Torn Career of an All-Star Shortstop. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.

Knight, Tom. “Uncle Robbie and Hugh Casey.” Baseball Research Journal 22 (1993): 105.

Kohout, Martin. “George Tweedy Stallings.” In Deadball Stars of the National League, ed. Tom Simon, 323–324. Dulles, Va.: Brasseys, 2004.

Pietrusza, David, Mathew Silverman, and Michael Gershman, eds. Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. Total Sports Illustrated, 2000.

Rampersand, Arnold. Jackie Robinson: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Ribowsky, Mark. A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884–1955. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1995.

——. The Power and the Darkness: The Life of Josh Gibson in the Shadows of the Game. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

Riley, James A. The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1994.

Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. Expanded ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

www.baseball-reference.com

SABR’s Bioproject website (http://sabr.org/bioproject) has biographical profiles of a number of Georgia natives, including:

• Jim Bagby Sr. by Stephen Constantelos
• Ty Cobb by Dan Ginsburg
• Wally Moses by Doug Skipper
• Jackie Robinson by Rick Swaine
• Nap Rucker by Eric Enders
• Bill Terry by Fred Stein
• Cecil Travis by Rob Kirkpatrick

As his star rose in the major leagues, theatrical producers began approaching Cobb and proposing that he enter vaudeville or tour in a play. As early as 1907, the media reported that the Detroit Tigers’ flychaser was regularly turning down such bids. Cobb himself explained that he had “often received offers to go before the footlights, but realizing that I am a ball player and not an actor, I declined all these propositions.” In contrast to his celebrated on-field ferociousness, he feared that a poorly received performance might make him a laughingstock. 

All this changed in the summer of 1911. Cobb would finish the season leading the American League with 248 hits, 47 doubles, 24 triples, 127 RBIs, 147 runs scored, a .621 slugging percentage, and a .420 batting average. But before the campaign’s end, he was approached by Vaughan Glaser, an actor-director who then was performing in and managing a Southern-based stock company. Glaser is one of countless long-forgotten theater professionals who toiled for decades on the fringes of the limelight, appearing in scores of stock productions. In 1938, he won fleeting mainstream notoriety when he originated the role of Mr. Bradley, a high school principal, in the Broadway production of What a Life — the Clifford Goldsmith comedy that introduced to the world a brash, awkward teenager by the name of Henry Aldrich. The following year, Glaser was cast as Bradley in the screen version of What a Life and reprised the part in Paramount’s subsequent Henry Aldrich film series. He also was seen in two Alfred Hitchcock features, Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1942), and had small roles in three baseball-related films: Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941), whose title character, played by Gary Cooper, is a lanky ex-bush league hurler; the Lou Gehrig biography The Pride of the Yankees (1942), also featuring Cooper; and Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), which opens with an Ebbets Field sequence that is a must-see for Brooklyn Dodgers aficionados. 

FROM BALL FIELD TO FOOTLIGHTS 

Glaser had known Cobb for several years, during which he had been constantly bugging the ballplayer to appear in one of his productions. Now, at last, Cobb relented. According to the Atlanta Constitution, he acquiesced because Glaser’s wife “revealed to him that he possessed natural talents as an actor.” But he more likely agreed for a more practical — and altogether different — reason. At the time, Cobb was not a wealthy man. He had not yet amassed his fortune by investing in real estate, playing the financial markets, and accumulating Coca-Cola Company stock. But now he was married and starting a family, and he certainly could use the extra cash. So he agreed to tour in a Glaser-mounted stage production that would begin at the end of the baseball season. His salary for the tour reportedly was in the $10,000 range: certainly a handsome sum for 1911-12, and far more than Cobb ever could earn accepting the kind of working person’s job that many big leaguers then undertook during the off-season. 

In early July, Sporting Life reported that Cobb “was seriously considering an offer to go on stage next Winter. . . . Several prominent theatrical men and outfielder Jimmy Callahan are said to be interested in the venture.” The deal became official in August. The production Glaser handpicked for the ballplayer was The College Widow, a comedy written by George Ade, which had lasted 278 performances when it debuted on Broadway in 1904. The plot centers on Billy Bolton, a star footballer who is intent on playing for Bingham College. Jane Witherspoon, the resourceful daughter of the head man at Atwater College, Bingham’s archrival, schemes to convince Billy to join her school’s team. As the story progresses, romance blossoms between heroine and hero. 

Cobb had seen a production of The College Widow in Detroit three years before and believed that, given his public persona, the play was an appropriate choice. When the tour was in its planning stages, Glaser briefly considered transforming Billy Bolton into a flychaser but decided to maintain the original characterization. After a brief rehearsal period, the tour began in early November. Its first stop was the Taylor Opera House in Newark, New Jersey. Also cast in the production was another big-leaguer, albeit one who would transcend the fame of Jimmy Callahan. Glaser signed Shoeless Joe Jackson, who had just completed his first full season in the American League. Jackson was to appear in a supporting role, as a heavy, but his run was short-lived. “Just before the curtain was hoisted on the first night,” Sporting Life reported, “Joe got to thinking of old Greenville, South Carolina, where everybody knows him, and he decided to go there instead of upon the stage.” 

Unlike Jackson, Cobb was determined to stick with the show. Throughout its run, audiences regularly applauded him not so much for his acting ability as his mere presence. While no John Barrymore, Cobb did not embarrass himself onstage. One of the first reviews of the production, which appeared in the Trenton True American, typified most of those that followed. “Not content with grabbing the top-most twig of laurel in the baseball world,” the paper reported, “Ty Cobb . . . broke into the theatrical world last night . . . and, though he swung at some wild ones, managed to connect for a ‘Baker’ before the game ended . . . The ‘Georgia Peach’ isn’t attempting to elevate the stage. He is out for the money, but, be it said to his credit, he is no lemon when it comes to the histrionic.” Bert Cowan, who is alternately described as Cobb’s “business manager during that brief fling at acting” and one of the performers in Glaser’s company, noted that the ballplayer-turned-actor was “exceedingly sharp and quick. That was why he was able to handle the acting chore.” 

Several weeks into the tour, Cobb recalled, “Much to my surprise, I managed to get through my first night on the stage without that awful bugaboo, ‘stage fright,’ attacking my heart and dropping me in my tracks. But I had been warned so much regarding such an attack that I made every preparation to guard against it. It was just like figuring out what kind of a ball a pitcher was going to put over. I knew it was coming and waited for it.” Then he added, “A few appearances on the stage gave me reassurance and now I am perfectly at home. I find stage work wonderfully interesting and I like it.” 

One example of how Cobb maintained his stage presence was cited by Vaughan Glaser. In the middle of a performance, Glaser noticed that several sweaters used in the production were missing. He began questioning a stagehand, and his query was met with hostility. Cobb, who was waiting offstage for his cue, overheard the conversation and promptly stepped between Glaser and the stagehand. After knocking down the stagehand, he coolly strode onstage and flawlessly delivered his lines. 

Another incident involving Cobb’s swing-first-and-ask-questions-later behavior occurred during the show’s run at New York’s Lyceum Theater. Without his knowledge, the show’s publicist planted a phony police officer in Central Park, through which the ballplayer was motoring. In his autobiography, My Life in Baseball, Cobb recollected that he was driving at a “moderate pace” when the faux cop stopped him — and informed him that he was under arrest. When he resisted, and the policeman persisted, the Georgia Peach “made a little pugilistic history. When the smoke cleared, the man in blue was sans his helmet and coat and bleeding variously. Picking himself up, he vanished over the horizon.” Cobb was convinced that his action would land him in the clink. But then he spied a photographer lurking in a nearby bush, and he soon realized the incident was a stunt, fashioned to “grab off some Page One space.” 

TOURING ON HOME TURF 

Almost immediately after its premiere, The College Widow troupe headed below the Mason-Dixon Line. As Cobb and company traveled from venue to venue, he was treated like reigning royalty. In Asheville, North Carolina, the Georgia Peach was feted with a preperformance reception and post-performance banquet. The play was booked into two cities in Cobb’s home state: Augusta and Atlanta. The ballplayer then was living in Augusta and the local paper, the Augusta Chronicle, gave the tour maximum coverage. First the Chronicle extensively detailed Cobb’s reception in Newark. Then on November 11, the paper reported that his “friends in Augusta are preparing to give him a rousing reception upon his first appearance here as an actor. He will be at the Grand [Opera House] . . . next Saturday, matinee and night, and will be banqueted several times while in the city. He has friends in Augusta by the hundreds and there will be a fight to see which body of his friends will be able to do the most for him.” In the flurry of items that appeared in the paper during the following week, the tour was dubbed one of the “biggest local events in theatrical history.” The play was described as “Vaughan Glaser’s mammoth revival and artistic production,” “one of the most pleasant plays of the American stage,” and “a story of college life which will remain as long as the American drama exists.” 

Of his acting, the Chronicle gushed that, “without doubt, [Cobb] has been the dramatic find and surprise of the current season.” The paper further reported: 

Since his advent on the stage Cobb has been making a reputation for himself which is second only to [what] he has achieved on the diamond . . . the simple fact that Cobb really acts and acts in a manner which ranks him high in his new calling is very refreshing. . . . His various speeches were delivered in a manner which would have made actors much longer in the business than he, proud of themselves. . . . his natural ease and grace stood him in good stead at all times . . . it might well be said that he is a better ball player than any actor and a better actor than any ball player. 

The Chronicle also noted that, at each performance, “Ty Cobb’s friends turned out in large and enthusiastic numbers, and showed their cordial appreciation of him . . . by heartiest applause upon his every appearance and repeated curtain calls at the end of each act.” One of those in attendance was an American of note who had spent a goodly portion of his childhood in Augusta: Woodrow Wilson, current New Jersey governor and future United States president, who “joined a box party at the Grand” for one of the shows. 

On his arrival in Atlanta, Cobb was welcomed by members of the city’s Ad Men’s Club. A photo of the ballplayer being greeted by the club was printed in the Atlanta Constitution. He also was “the recipient of a great reception” at the Transportation Club, which was attended by 75 community leaders. The show was booked into the Atlanta Theater and, after one performance, the Atlanta Journal gushed that “Tyrus Raymond was compelled to respond to vociferous curtain calls, and his speech, which set everybody laughing, proved his honest appreciation of the welcome accorded him.” The paper added, “Entering the theatrical game without the least training for it Cobb has worked with a true Georgia Spirit.” In a rewording of the Augusta Chronicle reportage, the Atlanta Constitution noted that Cobb “has proven the dramatic find of the year, and it can be truthfully said that he is a better ball/player [sic] than any actor, a better actor than any ball/player [sic] and as good an actor as many who make it their life business.” 

The College Widow then moved on to Nashville’s Vendome Theater. The Nashville Banner reported that Cobb, “the greatest baseball player the world has ever seen . . . is the guest of Nashville [and] was given the royal reception by the people of the city.” During his stay in town, he was afforded the company of various prominent Tennesseans, starting with the state’s governor, Ben W. Hooper. Cobb also attended a couple of Vanderbilt University football scrimmages and, on his second visit, he donned a team uniform, practiced with the players — at one point, he reportedly punted a football for 50 yards “in the face of a brisk breeze” — and sat down for an interview that appeared in the school newspaper. Of his performance, the unidentified Banner writer opined, “On the stage Mr. Cobb is maintaining the same high average that has marked his work on the diamond.” 

Cobb met with similar receptions in other Southern cities — with one glaring exception. The story goes that Allen G. Johnson, sports editor and drama critic of the Birmingham News, instigated the hiring of Cobb as the paper’s sports editor while The College Widow was playing in the Alabama city. A black streamer across the paper’s sports page announced Cobb as the new editor. But the ballplayer’s job consisted of his dictating a statement in which he promised that his Tigers would cop the pennant during the upcoming campaign. 

Even though that day’s paper was a hot-seller, the News’s managing editor was not amused. He promptly ordered Johnson to not just review The College Widow but to offer an honest judgment of Cobb’s thespian abilities. While the ballplayer’s performance earned him a curtain call at the second-act finale, Johnson harshly criticized his acting prowess. Upon learning of the review, Cobb wrote Johnson a cutting missive in which he retorted, “Your criticism is beneath my notice, but I just want you to see what a few real critics say about my work.” Cobb included clippings of previously published critiques and added, “I am a better actor than you are, a better sports editor than you are, a better dramatic critic than you are. I make more money than you do, and I know I am a better ball player — so why should inferiors criticize superiors?” 

With tongue steadfastly planted in cheek, Johnson answered Cobb with a letter of his own in which he declared, “I admit that you are a better critic, actor, sports editor, and money maker than I am, Mr. Cobb, but I refuse to admit that you are a better ball player. I have seen you play ball and know what you can do, but you have never seen me in action on a diamond. Therefore I now challenge you to a game at Rickwood Field, the Birmingham Southern League ball ground, July 4, for the championship of the world. If you do not appear to play me I will claim the championship by forfeit.” Unsurprisingly, Cobb never responded to the challenge. 

HEADING NORTH 

After playing the various Southern cities, The College Widow troupe toured the Midwest. On December 5, the Pittsburgh Leader reported that Cobb’s “coolness, familiarity with the lines, clearness of enunciation and absence of stage fright elicited much applause” during a performance at the Lyceum Theater. However, during one of the Pittsburgh performances, the ballplayer-turned-actor forgot his lines. His wife Charlie and his two children had come to town from Detroit and were seated in an upper box. Upon his initial onstage appearance, Cobb became distracted when Ty Jr., his two-and-a-half-year-old son, blurted out, “Daddy! Daddy!” “I was so confused,” Cobb reported, “I couldn’t say anything, but in the applause that followed I managed to recover.” Several days after the incident, Cobb told the Toledo Times, “I am striving to do my best [onstage] and will continue to do so, just the same as I try to play baseball.” 

After a brief stay in Toledo, the troupe moved on to such venues as Toronto, Kalamazoo, and Detroit (where it followed Germany Schaefer’s vaudeville act into the Lyceum Theater). On the final day of the year, The College Widow entertained an audience in Chicago. By this time, however, Cobb was becoming fatigued by the grind of traveling, performing night after night, and meeting and greeting well-wishers and hangers-on. Additionally, he now was concerned that this routine might negatively impact on his ball playing during the upcoming season. The College Widow was supposed to tour the Eastern United States through March, ending right before the opening of spring training. But after some additional play dates, the last in Cleveland, Cobb ended the show’s run — in mid-January. Even then, the ballplayer and the tour still were earning positive press. “With Ty Cobb as star in a George Ade comedy,” reported the Cleveland Leader on January 9, “the [Cleveland] Lyceum is ‘knocking ‘em off the seats’ . . . the theater was packed last night from boxes to bleachers and ‘Ty’ kept his average well above .400 as Billy Bolton, Atwater College halfback.” 

Cobb explained his reasoning for cutting the tour short by declaring, “Here I am at the end of several months on the boards four pounds under my playing weight when under . . . more natural conditions I should be from five to ten pounds over that notch.” He added, “I am becoming nervous and I miss my regular sleep. It was my ambition . . . to become a good actor, but in attaining that object I see that my usefulness as a baseball player is bound to suffer and so I have decided to cut out the stage for the pastime which first made me the reputation I enjoy.” An anonymous writer in Baseball Magazine noted that, “according to Tyrus, the month of one-night stands which he played through the south was worse than facing Walter Johnson or Russ Ford 154 games in the season.” 

After quitting the show, Cobb returned to Detroit to spend time with his family and rest up for the new season. Overall, he spent ten weeks playing Billy Bolton. “I believe I was fairly successful for a beginner,” Cobb modestly declared afterwards. Decades later, he maintained that the stage actor’s life was tough and demanding. Life on the road “proved to me that actors of my day, more than ballplayers, had to be iron men.” 

Upon reclaiming his spot in the Detroit outfield, Cobb viewed his time in The College Widow as a one-shot experience. In a bylined article published in the New York Times in 1919, Christy Mathewson observed, “Cobb was pretty good as an actor, too. I saw him do it. But I don’t think Ty cared much for the job, from what he told me, and because he never went back after more, in spite of big offers.” 

FROM STAGE TO SCREEN 

Big Six only was partly correct. While Cobb never revisited stage acting, he made a foray into the then-burgeoning motion picture industry His old friend Vaughan Glaser again played a key role in introducing Cobb to the movies. The year was 1916, and Glaser now was the vice president of the Sunbeam Motion Picture Corporation, a newly-formed, New York City-based film production outfit. 

Sunbeam had been incorporated in March “to manufacture, sell, and deal in and with motion picture films of all kinds.” Its capitalization was listed at $2.5 million, and the company soon began running newspaper ads soliciting investors to purchase stock at $5 per share. One such ad in the July 12 issue of the Pittsburgh Gazette Times announced “Work on the first production of the Sunbeam Motion Picture Corporation is well under way in New York City . . . The production on its release will make Sunbeam’s first bow in the picture world. . . . When you see this picture you will congratulate yourself on your connection with this company.” 

Glaser viewed the project as tailor-made for Cobb. The title was Somewhere in Georgia, and it was based on a story by Georgia native Grantland Rice, then a New York Tribune columnist. At the helm would be George Ridgwell, an actor-writer who amassed over 70 screen directorial credits between 1914 and 1929. (In the Sunbeam stock solicitation ad, Ridgwell was quoted as promising that the film “will mean standing room only, wherever exhibited, and it will be a MARVEL of completeness and technique.”) The scenario would feature the ballplayer as “Ty Cobb,” a poor but upright bank clerk and part-time ballplayer who competes with a smarmy cashier for the affection of the boss’s daughter. Meanwhile, his ball playing is scrutinized by the Detroit Tigers and he is signed to a professional contract. After returning home to entertain the locals, he is momentarily foiled by some ruffians in the employ of his rival before winning both the climactic game and the girl.

Glaser assuaged Cobb’s fears of screen acting by explaining that shooting a film was entirely unlike touring in a play. There would be no traveling from city to city, no repeating his performance, no gladhanding and posing with well-wishers. Plus, he would walk away with what Cobb biographer Charles C. Alexander described as “at least as much as he got for his theatrical tour in 1911-12.” According to Al Stump, the Cobb biographer who also ghostwrote his autobiography, his Somewhere in Georgia salary far-surpassed $10,000. It was $25,000, plus expenses. 

In October 1916, Cobb was one of several dozen major leaguers who earned extra bucks by playing in a series of exhibition games. After one in New Haven, he headed to New York to star in Somewhere in Georgia. Despite its title, the movie was not filmed somewhere — or anywhere  —in Georgia. Given its status as a novice enterprise, Sunbeam wished to shoot the film as close to its West 42nd Street Manhattan headquarters as possible and in the shortest amount of time. 

The entire six-reel feature was filmed in two weeks and, by all reports, the shoot went smoothly. Alexander noted that the ballplayer “again took his work seriously. Director George Ridgwell commented on how studiously [sic] Cobb was, how he seemed to anticipate instructions. ‘I’ve never had to tell him more than once what I wanted done,’ Ridgwell said. The main problem had to do with Cobb’s love scenes with Elsie MacLeod, playing his love interest. Cobb was quite timid, reported Ridgwell, so much so that it had been necessary to direct those scenes with extreme delicacy.” 

Al Stump noted in his Cobb biography that, during the shoot, Douglas Fairbanks stopped by to say hello. According to Stump, the ballplayer and the actor, who then was cementing his status as a silent screen immortal, became friendly and Fairbanks “suggested that he direct a first-class movie on Cobb’s real life. Nothing ever came of it.” 

MARKETING THE PRODUCT 

Somewhere in Georgia was advertised as Sunbeam’s “initial offering to the Motion Picture Trade” in The Moving Picture World, an industry trade publication. In a puff piece which ran on November 11, 1916, the periodical reported that “Cobb has proved since he started to work on his first picture . . . that he is not only valuable because of his world-wide reputation, but because he is a natural born actor.” In the piece, Ridgwell declared, “I will never forget the first scene that Cobb worked in. He seemed to understand what he was to do the moment we set the camera. Well, I was so stunned that I instinctively yelled `Shoot!’ and started on the picture. Every move that Cobb made reminded me of a seasoned actor. And his facial expressions; it seemed that he could be happy and tragic at the same time.” 

Cobb’s onscreen presence clearly was the film’s selling point, and was the focus of its publicity campaign. The ad copy that promoted Somewhere in Georgia to exhibitors made the film sound like a cross between Field of Dreams and The Natural, circa 1916: 

You know Ty Cobb and you know that everyone, whether a baseball fan or not, will want to see him on the screen. 

The Greatest Star of the nation’s Favorite Sport, featured in the People’s Most Popular Amusement, ‘The Movies,’ with a story by Grantland Rice of the New York Tribune, America’s best known Sporting Writer. 

Can you see what that combination will mean at the box office? 

‘SOMEWHERE IN GEORGIA’ is not merely a vehicle for showing Ty Cobb to advantage. It is a big, vital, interesting story by and for red-blooded human beings; a story of love, ambition and the National Game. 

Without Ty Cobb and Grant Rice it would be a big feature. With them it will be a recordbreaker. Ty Cobb is not only the greatest ball player of all time but an accomplished actor as well. 

Somewhere in Georgia was marketed on a states rights basis, meaning that it did not have a national distributor. Instead, regional distributors purchased licenses from Sunbeam to show the film. The ad copy concluded, “We will release this picture on the open market. No territory has been sold in advance of this announcement, but hundreds of inquiries have been received. We therefore advise quick action.” 

Sadly, no footage from Somewhere in Georgia is known to survive. In fact, more than half of all films from this period are lost. Prints and master materials deteriorated because they were generated on nitrocellulose film stock. In some cases, they were abandoned or destroyed by producers who could not see their future value as commercial entities. Any of these scenarios might explain the fate of the Somewhere in Georgia prints. 

Additionally, very little paper material relating to the film exists. In its June 2009 catalog, Lelands.com, a sports auction house, listed what it described as a “never seen before item that will probably never [be] seen again” — a lot consisting of two Sunbeam Motion Picture Corporation stock certificates, dated 1916 and 1917; a Sunbeam brochure; several letters, including one pertaining to the selling of screening rights to Somewhere in Georgia in New England; and, most significantly, a set of eight double-sided eight-by-ten-inch lobby cards, seven of which pictured Cobb. The entire lot was offered for a $10,000 reserve. 

Given its states-rights distribution status, Somewhere in Georgia had no discernable release pattern; the film played in venues that were scattered across the country, and indications are that it earned the most limited release. In March 1917, the film first was seen in New York City. The New York Tribune cleverly referenced its six-reel running time by reporting that Somewhere in Georgia “is described as ‘a thrilling drama of love and baseball in six innings.’ It is all of that, and as an actor Ty Cobb is a huge success. In fact, he is so good that he shows all the others up.” In June, the film opened in Rochester, New York, and the Rochester Express labeled it a “good melodrama with comedy touches,” adding that “Cobb’s acting is almost as good as his ball playing.”

Inexplicably, no record exists of the film being screened in Cobb’s home state. “I don’t know if it played in Atlanta, but I doubt it,” reported Ron Cobb, a self-described “distant Georgia cousin” of the ballplayer. “I have been through the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution for the years Cobb played pretty carefully, and don’t remember seeing anything about it.” While the ballplayer’s College Widow tour earned saturation coverage in the Augusta Chronicle, there is no record in the paper that Somewhere in Georgia played in one of the city’s movie houses—or, for that matter, that the film even existed. Grantland Rice’s column, titled “The Sportlight,” was regularly appearing in the Chronicle. Around the time of the production and release of Somewhere in Georgia, Rice frequently wrote about Cobb, comparing his prowess to Tris Speaker and Shoeless Joe Jackson and making such observations as “Knowing Cobb as we do, we should say that the only element calculated to crush his ambition and break up his determination would be a pine box about seven feet long with the lid nailed over his remains.” But Rice, too, kept mum regarding Somewhere in Georgia. 

Not all reviewers were as enamored with Somewhere in Georgia as the critics in New York City and Rochester. The film was lambasted in the June 7, 1917, edition of WID’s, a journal that offered critical analysis and touted the box office appeal of new films. In a summary of the review’s content, the anonymous WID’s critic called Somewhere in Georgia a “very ordinary movie” Under the heading of “Direction,” the reviewer noted that the “atmosphere lacked class and overplaying made [the] entire offering seem ordinary.” The cinematography was “generally poor; occasionally acceptable.” The lighting was “not good.” Of Cobb, the critic observed: “As actor, good ball player, but better than [the supporting cast].” 

The WID’s scribe concluded the review by observing: 

If your fans are of the intelligent, discriminating community class I’d say that you cannot afford to play this, despite the fact that it would bring you some money. The production is crude from start to finish, the story is ordinary and there is nothing about it to make it entertaining. Naturally there is some interest in watching Ty Cobb trying to appear unconscious of the camera without succeeding very well. . . Even the boob fan will hardly consider this a good picture but they will overlook many of the shortcomings because of the fact that they all understand that the offering has been adjusted to fit the baseball hero’s acting limitations.

Additionally, one highly respected and influential show business figure positively loathed the film. Ward Morehouse, a Savannah native and the longtime Broadway theater critic and New York Sun columnist, labeled Somewhere in Georgia “simply awful” and “absolutely the worst movie I ever saw.” 

Variety, the most eminent of all motion picture industry trade publications, also reviewed Somewhere in Georgia. This critique, printed on June 8, was more flattering. While predicting that the film would “make a ten-strike with Young America,” the Variety scribe wrote that the “story holds interest to the extent that those familiar with baseball and Cobb’s life . . . will obtain a lot of fun in watching Tyrus enact the role of a photoplay hero. . . . The story doesn’t matter much. . . . It is one of those Frank Merriwell stories, with Ty doing the Merriwell stuff that catches the young folks.” The reviewer concluded by predicting, “Some sections will fall hard for the film while others won’t care much to have it hanging around. But it has a good, wholesome atmosphere and a real, live-blooded, clean-limbed [sic] athlete for a hero.” 

DISAPPOINTING RETURNS 

Apparently, not enough sections fell hard enough for Somewhere in Georgia to earn the film a profit. While the actual box office take has been lost in the annals of film history, the fact is that Somewhere in Georgia was the sole film produced by the Sunbeam Motion Picture Corporation. Sunbeam’s only additional involvement in the motion picture business came in 1921, when the company secured the distribution rights to and re-released Rip Van Winkle, a 1914 film originally produced by Rolfe Photoplays and distributed by the Alco Film Corporation. 

Given the low profile of Somewhere in Georgia within the realm of the history of the silent cinema, plenty of misinformation exists regarding the film. For example, in his Ty Cobb biography, Dan Holmes noted, “It was the first motion picture featuring an actual athlete as the star, and it was the first widely distributed baseball movie.” Don Rhodes, another Cobb chronicler, wrote, “The film is said to be the first movie starring a major sports figure.” Associated Press writer Larry Rosenthal stated that Cobb was “the first professional athlete to star in a commercial motion film.” The declaration that Cobb “became the first ball player to star in a movie” is listed as a factoid on The BaseballPage.com web site. The same claim is found on dozens of other Internet venues—including Cobb’s official web site. In truth, however, Somewhere in Georgia was not widely distributed. Additionally, before its release, a host of big-leaguers — starting with Christy Mathewson, Frank Chance, Home Run Baker, Hal Chase, and Wally Pipp — top-lined one and two-reel films. Right Off the Bat, a five-reeler starring Mike Donlin and featuring John McGraw, was released in September 1915 — before Somewhere in Georgia had gone into production. 

A number of professional ballplayers have had lucrative careers as actors-entertainers-raconteurs. The list begins with Mike Donlin, Rube Marquard, Chuck Connors, Bob Uecker, John Beradino (who played in the majors as Johnny Berardino), and Joe Garagiola. Lou Gehrig acquitted himself nicely in Rawhide (1938), his lone screen appearance. Had he not died so young, he might have enjoyed a second career as a B-Western hero. Babe Ruth starred in the feature films Headin’ Home (1920) and Babe Comes Home (1927) and a short subject, Home Run on the Keys (1936); made a cameo appearance in the Harold Lloyd comedy Speedy (1927); played himself to fine reviews in The Pride of the Yankees; and appeared in a number of instructional films. His larger-than-life, overgrown teddy-bear persona registered well onscreen. If he had not been a ballplayer, he might have made an effective sidekick or foil for any number of screen comedians. 

One cannot picture Ty Cobb clowning with the Stooges, cutting it up with Harold Lloyd, or toting a six-shooter and besting Old West varmints in gun battles. After Somewhere in Georgia, he occasionally appeared onscreen in such documentary and instructional short subjects as The Baseball Revue of 1917, Cradle of Champions (1921), Ty Cobb and Grantland Rice Talk Things Over (1930), and Swing With Bing (1940). In the 1950s, he guested on television’s What’s My Line? and I’ve Got a Secret. Easily his most high-profile screen credit was his surprise cameo, along with Joe DiMaggio, Bing Crosby, and Tin Pan Alley songwriter Harry Ruby, in the first version of the baseball comedy-fantasy Angels in the Outfield (1951). 

Simply put, the Georgia Peach had neither the need nor the desire to emulate Donlin, Marquard, and the others. His appearances in The College Widow and Somewhere in Georgia were his lone forays into the world of stage and screen acting. 

ROB EDELMAN, author of more than ten books, including “The Great Baseball Films: From Right Off the Bat to A League of Their Own” (Carol, 1994) and “Baseball on the Web” (MIS Press, 1998), teaches film history at the University of Albany–SUNY.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Audrey Kupferberg; Ron Cobb; Tim Wiles, Jim Gates, and Freddy Berowski, National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum and Library; Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

SOURCES 

Books

Alexander, Charles C. Ty Cobb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. 

Cobb, Ty, with Al Stump. My Life in Baseball, the True Record. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961. 

Edelman, Rob. The Great Baseball Films: From Right Off the Bat to a League of Their Own. New York: Citadel Press, 1994. 

Hanson, Patricia King, ed. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1911–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. 

Holmes, Dan. Ty Cobb: A Biography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004. 

Laurie, Joe, Jr. Vaudeville: From the Honky Tonks to the Palace. New York: Henry Holt, 1953. 

McCallum, John D. Ty Cobb. New York: Praeger, 1975. 

Rhodes, Don. Ty Cobb: Safe at Home. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2008. 

Stump, Al. Cobb: A Biography. Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books, 1994.

Periodicals

Clarkson, James. “Ty Cobb May Demand $50,000, Talks of Three-Year Contract.” Chicago Examiner, 5 January 1912. 

E.A.B. “The Play Last Night.” Augusta Chronicle, 19 November 1911, 11. 

Edelman, Rob. “Baseball, Vaudeville, and Mike Donlin.” Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game 2, no. 1 (2008): 44–57. —–—. “The Baseball Film to 1920.” Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game 1, no. 1 (2007): 22–35. 

“Mark.” “Somewhere in Georgia.” Variety, 8 June 1917, 22. 

Mathewson, Christy. “Ball Player Must Avoid Diversions.” New York Times, 11 December 1919, 54. 

Rosenthal, Larry. “Life, Myth of the ‘Georgia Peach’ Examined in Play.” Associated Press, 18 March 1989.

Thomas, Ron. “Toronto Man Recalls Ty Cobb as an Actor.” Toronto Daily Star, 19 July 1961. 

“American League Notes.” Sporting Life, 1 July 1911, 13. 

“American League Notes.” Sporting Life, 25 November 1911, 13. 

Atlanta Journal, unheadlined article, 24 November 1911. 

“Avon Theater.” Rochester Express, 5 June 1917. 

“Baseball Players Fined.” New York Times, 9 December 1916, 8. 

“Cobb as Actor.” Sporting Life, 9 September 1911, 24. 

“Cobb Makes Debut in College Widow.” Augusta Chronicle, 6 November 1911, 9. 

“Crude Meller Poorly Played, Featuring Ty Cobb.” WID’s, 7 June 1917, 367. 

“Fans’ Applause Helps.” Los Angeles Examiner, 22 December 1911. 

“First Night on Stage Was Like a Nightmare.” Pittsburgh Leader, 3 December 1911. 

“Governor Woodrow Wilson Spent Yesterday in Home of Boyhood.” Augusta Chronicle, 19 November 1911, 4. 

“He Remembers When the Road Wandered On and On Forever.” New York Herald-Tribune, 10 July 1938. 

“Lyceum Theater.” Cleveland Leader, 9 January 1912. 

“Manhattan’s Ball Dope.” Augusta Chronicle, 18 December 1911, 6. 

Moving Picture World, advertisement, 28 October 1916: 504–5. 

New Incorporations.” New York Times, 23 March 1916, 19. 

Pittsburgh Gazette Times, advertisement, 12 July 1916. 

“Sidelights on Tyrus Cobb.” Baseball Magazine, March 1912, 53. 

“Ty Cobb, Actor and Ball Player, Surrounded By Members of Company.” Atlanta Constitution, 24 November 1911. 

“Ty Cobb An Actor.” Toledo Blade, 28 August 1911. 

“Ty Cobb Gives Views on Ticket Scalping As Well As Acting.” Toledo Times, 7 December 1911. 

“Ty Cobb in ‘The College Widow.’” Augusta Chronicle, 12 November 1911, 3. 

“Ty Cobb in ‘The College Widow.’” Augusta Chronicle, 14 November 1911, 8. 

“Ty Cobb in ‘The College Widow.’” Augusta Chronicle, 16 November 1911, 8. 

“Ty Cobb in ‘The College Widow.’” Augusta Chronicle, 17 November 1911, 9. 

“Ty Cobb, in ‘The College Widow,’ at the Grand Nov. 18.” Augusta Chronicle, 11 November 1911, 8. 

“Ty Cobb Is Going On Stage in New Version of ‘College Widow.’” New Jersey Review, 26 August 1911. 

“Ty Cobb Paying Before Camera.” Moving Picture World, 11 November 1916, 879. 

“Ty Cobb, Poor Actor, Good Ball Player.” New York Times, 13 June 1915, 83. 

“Ty Cobb Scores Hit.” Pittsburgh Leader, 5 December 1911. 

“Ty Cobb Suggests Plan to Give Talent a Chance.” Pittsburgh Leader, 1 December 1911. 

“Ty Cobb Today.” Augusta Chronicle, 18 November 1911, 3. 

“‘Ty’ Cobb Will Be Entertained.” Augusta Chronicle, 11 November 1911, 7. 

“Ty Cobb’s Horse-Sense.” Variety, 6 January 1912. 

“Ty Cobb’s Screen Hit Wins Game, Foiling Villain.” New York Tribune, 8 March 1917. 

“Tyrus Raymond Cobb.” Kalamazoo Telegraph, 9 December 1911. 

“Tyrus Raymond Cobb (At the Atlanta).” Atlanta Constitution, 19 November 1911. 

“When Ty Cobb Comes.” Augusta Chronicle, 13 November 1911, 6.

Internet

Baseballtips.com. http://baseballtips.com/tycobb.html. 

BBC.com. www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/a1118648. 

Internet Broadway Database. www.ibdb.com/index.php. 

Internet Movie Database. www.imdb.com. 

Lelands.com. https://www.lelands.com/bid.aspx?lot=331&auctionid=905. 

NCAA.com. www.ncaa.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/032608abj.html. 

The Baseball Page.com. www.thebaseballpage.com/players/cobbty01.php. 

The Official Web Site of Ty Cobb. www.cmgww.com/baseball/cobb/know.html. 

Ty Cobb Museum. www.tycobbmuseum.org.

In general, the evolution of spring training in the South took place in three stages. Spring training in its first and shortest-lived form was a series of exhibition games played by one team that began in a Southern city and worked its way north toward the team’s home city. This Southern jaunt was the norm for major league baseball’s earliest visits to the South in the nineteenth century. 

The second stage of development, coinciding with the turn of the century, was the move toward spending a longer period of time practicing in one location, including exhibition games on site, followed by more games on the way home. At first, these visits involved a couple of weeks of “warm-up” before the exhibition tour, but they soon evolved into longer, more focused training sessions. 

The final stage of spring-training development was the establishment of permanent locations for training, with contracted annual return visits and a schedule of local exhibition games. Spring training in Georgia encompassed the first two of these stages but failed to make the transition to semipermanent training sites, at least at the major-league level. This failure was not due to a lack of vision. Better weather and stronger local promotion—including the willingness to construct facilities at the host city’s expense—proved to be the successful mix that ultimately put Florida ahead of the Peach State. 

Professional baseball’s earliest visits to the South were not what we would consider today to be spring training. The Southern city was simply a starting point for an exhibition tour, not a location for any extended workouts. The team might be in the city a few days as players made their way there, and, once assembled, the club would kick off the exhibition schedule with a game against the local nine. While some exhibition tours passed through the state, Georgia was not a particular focus of these early trips. These tours were rarely if ever self-supporting, typically costing ownership more then they made in gate receipts. But as much as the owners might grumble about expenses, the perceived effectiveness of preseason practice made it essential. Working the team out in warmer weather was the focus of these swings through the South, with transportation and housing costs the price to be paid to get the team ready.[fn]In 1896, Baltimore reportedly spent $2,000 on hotels and railroad trips for the 25 players taking spring training. In 1910, the 16 major-league teams were spending a reported combined total of $150,000 in spring-training expenses; two years later this figure was up to $200,000 (roughly $4.4 million in 2009 dollars).[/fn] Teams did not carry a large number of bench players in these early days and did not generally hold large-scale competitions between rookies and established players for playing time. They played their exhibition games with pretty much the same lineup they would use in the regular season. Not all teams made Southern trips during this period; many would simply work out at home for a few days before the start of the regular season. 

Cap Anson has been widely credited as “inventing” the practice of spring training during his tenure as manager of the Chicago White Stockings. However, it might be better to characterize his influence as popularizing, rather than inventing, the “Southern tour.” Author Charles Fountain points out that Southern exhibition trips began before Anson made his first trip and even before baseball was organized into leagues. (The first such trip was by an amateur team from New York preparing for the 1869 season by playing an exhibition schedule starting off in New Orleans.)[fn]Fountain, Under the March Sun, 10–11.[/fn] Cap Anson was tremendously successful as a manager, winning five pennants between 1880 and 1886. His success in the later part of this period followed spring exhibition tours in the South, and by 1886 Anson was beginning each exhibition season with training in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Between training and touring, Anson appeared to be on to something. Baseball is nothing if not imitative of success; more teams looked South for the training edge they believed Anson had achieved.

Site selection was ever important. Anson most often took his squad to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and so did many other teams.[fn]At its height, Hot Springs would typically host four teams each spring— about as many as the entire state of Georgia did each year. In addition, many veterans would begin their training in Hot Springs before joining their teams in training camp elsewhere.[/fn] The attractiveness of the location was partly due to the amenities available in Hot Springs and, again in imitation, a suspicion that there might be something “in the water” of the resort town. Hot Springs held such a mystique that well into the first decades of the twentieth century veterans might be sent there to “boil out the poisons” before joining the rest of the team at a spring-training camp somewhere else. While Hot Springs was an early and popular spring-training site, New Orleans, Savannah, and Jacksonville were also regular starting points for Southern exhibition tours.

The change from simply beginning each spring with a Southern exhibition tour to a system where a team practiced in one place for a period of time before going North occurred during the last years of the nineteenth century. Fountain credits Ned Hanlon and his Baltimore Orioles for this shift. In 1892, playing for Pittsburg (spelled without the final h at that time), Hanlon suffered a serious tendon injury on opening day—the team had had no spring warm-up. In the spring of 1894, now managing Baltimore, Hanlon took the Orioles to Macon, Georgia, and imposed an eight-week, eight-hour-a-day training regimen. Practice included on-field drills and strategy instruction. This entirely new approach at the major league level was the true beginning of what we think of today as spring training. That season the Orioles won the pennant. Then they won it again. And again: three straight pennants from 1894 to 1896. As before, success bred imitation. John McGraw, the Orioles’ third baseman back in 1894, eagerly took all this in. When in 1902 he became manager of the Giants, he held the same type of intensive training. Fountain writes: “McGraw made spring training a spectacle. The players loved it; the press waxed poetic. All of baseball and no small number of southern towns and cities benefited, as America grew more intimate with spring training and the places that hosted it.”[fn]Fountain, Under the March Sun, 16–17. Wilbert Robinson and Hugh Jennings were also on Hanlon’s squad during this revolution in spring-training tactics.[/fn] More intimate, perhaps, though not necessarily better informed. One sporting magazine reported to its readers that Columbus, Georgia, was “almost on the Mississippi State line.”[fn]Sporting Life, 31 December 1898, 1. The state of Alabama is between Georgia and Mississippi.[/fn] 

Following Hanlon’s successes, teams no longer found it attractive to take spring training in the North nor to make a perfunctory Southern swing of exhibition games. In 1897, as New York contemplated holding practice that year in Lakewood, New Jersey, Sporting Life stated that “the idea of making the New Jersey health resort the training grounds is not a very happy one.”[fn]Sporting Life, 9 January 1897, 3. It’s hard to know to what extent it may be the reporter who is making the argument; the same reporter, after all, would be traveling with the team for spring training.[/fn] Hanlon had shown the way—success during the regular season was now contingent upon an intense series of warm-weather workouts. As a result, he also elevated Macon’s role in spring training as teams sought to replicate his methods, right down to the selection of a training location. 

A spring-training site had to meet several requirements. First, it had to be far enough south to provide warm weather. It also had to have convenient transportation. Thus, ports and cities well served by railroads were in the lead as host cities. Next, the site had to have accommodations for the players. A resort town, such as Thomasville, Georgia,[fn]In the late 19th century, Thomasville became a popular winter getaway for the well-to-do; in 1887, it was described by Harpers Magazine as “the best winter resort on three continents.”[/fn] or a larger urban area, such as Atlanta, was better able to house a team due to the greater availability of hotel rooms. Teams could, however, make alternate arrangements when other conditions were favorable. In 1902, the Boston (AL) players stayed in a YMCA in Augusta.[fn]Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, 20.[/fn] Next, obviously, the host city had to have a ball field. Most of the spring-training sites in Georgia were also home to a minor-league team and thus had at least one diamond available. Two Peach State towns that hosted spring-training visits didn’t have minor-league teams, but Athens and Milledgeville were home to colleges (the University of Georgia and the Georgia College and State University, respectively) with collegiate ball fields. As a final consideration, the site had to be convenient for practice games with other squads, either in town or nearby. Again, minor-league cities and college towns could provide a local opponent, and Georgia’s extensive railroad system provided ample travel options for the teams. 

The selection of spring-training sites was also becoming affected by the growing size of spring rosters. Twenty to twenty-five men—a typical number as early as the late nineteenth century—could reasonably be accommodated in most small Southern towns, but larger groups all reporting at once could present a problem. One way to deal with the increasing number of men in camp was to have the “yannigans” (rookies and nonroster players)[fn]The term yannigan, denoting a second-string player, reserve, or rookie was in general use by the late nineteenth century. See, for example, “All Hail Yannigans,” New York World, 4 April 1897, 8. In its time, the term could have the same positive or negative connotations that rookie has today, depending on context.[/fn] report to the spring-training site first, while veterans began at another location, such as the ever-popular Hot Springs. The arrival of the yannigans was the herald of spring for many Georgia cities in the Deadball Era. Some of the yannigans would be cut before the full team assembled on site. This crowding was also somewhat eased by sending pitchers and catchers to Hot Springs to limber up while the remainder of the team assembled in another city, or by having the batteries report earlier than the position players in order to get sufficient work—a practice that persists to the present day. 

Spring training was a very hectic time for the manager. In addition to evaluating talent, training the players, and monitoring injuries, the manager was often responsible for arranging the exhibition schedule, securing housing, and scheduling transportation for the team. Sometimes other distractions, such as contract holdouts or the loss of a player to other duties, added to these responsibilities. In 1896, for example, Hugh Jennings left Baltimore’s camp in Macon (with permission) to coach the University of Georgia team for two weeks, rejoining the Orioles when they came to Athens to play the college squad in an exhibition game.[fn]Jennings also coached the university team to its signature win against the University of Pennsylvania in 1897—the first such visit by a Northern college to face a Southern opponent. Since college baseball seasons ended with the coming of summer, many major leaguers had the opportunity to coach college ball before their own regular season began.[/fn] On top of all of this, the manager was usually a player as well and needed practice time himself. 

For the everyday players, spring training most often meant a combination of temptation and tedium. For men who spent each season playing in the larger cities of the North and Midwest, small Southern towns provided few recreational opportunities off of the diamond—except perhaps for gambling and drinking, something the players could ferret out whatever the size of the city. In 1903, while training in Macon, several Boston (AL) players took advantage of a local racetrack—as well as the hotel bar—and departed camp “for about a week to gamble and drink their way into condition.”[fn]Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, 26.[/fn] Ballplayers generally were held in low regard in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and a small town could be very unfriendly to them. Couple this public perception with the fact that most of these men came from cities above the Mason-Dixon line, and tensions often ran high. Fountain relates an incident from the 1890s as an example. Denied a practice site in Jacksonville, perhaps because of the players’ reputation, the Cubs went to Waycross, Georgia, for training. “The townspeople received the northern interlopers coolly and warily, and the players exacerbated the tension with untoward and persistent advances on the young women of Waycross.” Following an incident wherein one player disrupted a tightrope act, the team was “invited to leave Waycross, not, as it turned out, for the assault on the aerialist—circus performers and actors had no more standing than ballplayers, apparently—but because the hotel manager claimed that his wife had been insulted by the ballplayers.”[fn]Fountain, Under the March Sun, 14.[/fn] The team moved on to Savannah to begin its exhibition schedule. 

In these small towns, field conditions could be rough and living conditions even rougher. Team discipline often suffered. “In 1898, after [Jimmy] Ryan had resigned as [Chicago] Colts captain, old Tim [Donahue] led the team in a mutiny at their spring training camp. The Colts were staying at a Podunk hotel in Waycross, Georgia. There were only two bathtubs for 18 men . . . and the cuisine outraged the ballplayers. ‘The murmuring,’ the [Chicago] Tribune reported, ‘rose into a strenuous kick. Tim Donahue said that [first baseman Bill] Everett had barnacles in his stomach from the food. The men filed hungrily out of the dining room and held an indignation meeting.’”[fn]Bill Donahue, “Remembering Tim Donahue,” Elysian Fields Quarterly 14, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 84.[/fn] Adding to their frustration, players weren’t paid during spring training, though they were provided with housing, their travel costs were covered, and they received meals or a daily stipend. In 1919, the lack of pay was just one item in a growing laundry list of disagreements between Boston owner Harry Frazee and American League president Ban Johnson. Frazee in effect wanted to change the standard player contract, which stipulated that players were paid from opening day to the last day of the season. “[Frazee] wanted to pay the players during spring training, a plan the tight-fisted Johnson loathed. [The proposal] failed.”[fn]Stout and Johnson, Red Sox Century, 138.[/fn] Players wouldn’t regularly be paid for spring training until after World War II. 

Weather could be an issue in spring training. While teams came to the South for milder spring weather than they would have experienced in their home cities, March and April in Georgia can be stormy, and complaints about training time lost to rain were common. Teams sometimes changed location when the weather foreclosed any possibility of practice. In 1904, for example, both the Phillies and the Giants left their training grounds in Savannah early, chased away by rainy weather. The Phillies headed home; McGraw took his team to Birmingham, Alabama. In mid-1911, Connie Mack announced plans to take his next spring training in Texas, a decision based in part on the bad weather his team had experienced in Georgia that year. It certainly didn’t hurt that the good folks in San Antonio would build a facility for him, a portent of things to come.[fn]Sporting Life, 3 June 1911, 5. Mack also cited a desire to train his players away from the presence of reporters.[/fn]

Other options were available, however. Teams could usually find an indoor location, such as a local gym, in which to exercise and discuss strategy. At least one team refused to stop baseball practice when the rains arrived, choosing to take their practice game inside. Little known today, indoor baseball was once a very popular sport, using equipment and rules modified to indoor use. Modified, but still dangerous. In 1902, Boston’s George Prentiss lost his grip on the bat during an indoor game in Augusta, knocking out two of a female spectator’s front teeth. “The lady bled profusely, and she and several others present fainted.”[fn]Atlanta Constitution, 5 April 1902, 1.[/fn] Other sports could provide just as intense a workout and be safer for the audience. In Atlanta one year, the Washington Senators played football when the weather created field conditions that precluded baseball practice. 

Weather wasn’t the only outside influence that could affect spring training; sometimes conditions back home caused problems for a team. In 1911, the Washington squad was splitting practice time with the Atlanta team in Ponce de Leon Park. The Senators took the field each morning, and the Crackers followed in the afternoon. On March 17, the Senators’ home ballpark burned, prompting the team to extend its stay in Georgia. The fire destroyed the grandstand and bleachers, going on to damage a nearby hospital; within a few days the team contracted for a modern steel and concrete stadium to be built. Meanwhile, the Senators and Crackers were invited to a cookout in appreciation of the spring-training season just completed. The Atlanta Constitution reported: “Ball Players Are Barbecued.”[fn]Atlanta Constitution, 20 March 1911, 7.[/fn] Perhaps not the best headline to use for a team whose home field was a burned wreck. 

As training in the South became a regular activity in the first decades of the twentieth century, competition increased between Georgia cities to secure a team each spring. Clubs that liked their spring sites would attempt to secure the facilities for the next year even before the present year’s training was completed. Exhibition schedules began to be arranged and published in the winter, rather than simply a month or so before training began. Towns had come to realize the extent to which visiting teams could play into local efforts at business promotion, and thus they sought to attract specific clubs—or any professional nine—before a rival city won them over. Civic boosterism was growing in the South at the same time that the perceived disreputable character of ballplayers was on the wane. City councils had the responsibility to make the field ready for the visitors and the authority to approve the use of local facilities. Sometimes, however, a team might be prevented from getting its desired location. In the winter of 1913, the vice president of the Cleveland club traveled to Macon to secure a spring-training site for 1914. He met with local officials, newsmen, and hotel owners; together they finalized the team’s schedule for the following March. By the time he arrived back in Cleveland, a telegraph was waiting for him: Macon’s city council had voted to award its facilities to Boston (NL) for 1914. Working against Cleveland was the fact that the Boston club was managed by a well-known local—George Tweedy Stallings. 

George Stallings, the son of a Confederate officer, was a prominent man in Georgia.[fn]When George decided to change his principal crop from cotton to corn, peas, and hay, this was big enough news to be reported in the Atlanta Constitution, as was the time he gave up his drawing room in a railcar for President-Elect Taft. George Stallings’ father, William Henry Stallings, entered the war in 1861 as senior first lieutenant with Blodget’s Flying Artillery (later Milledge’s Battery). He later reenlisted as a private in a State Guard infantry unit in Augusta. National Archives, NARA M266.[/fn] Born in Augusta in 1867, Stallings graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1886 and enrolled at Johns Hopkins for further education. Baseball intervened, and George left medical school to begin what would be a successful 41-year career in professional baseball, including 13 years managing in the major leagues.[fn]Stallings managed the Philadelphia Phillies (1897–98), the Detroit Tigers (1901), the New York Highlanders (1909–10), and the Boston Braves (1913–20), the latter stint including riding herd on the 1914 “Miracle” Braves. He managed seven different minor-league teams (some more than once), winning Eastern League championships with the Buffalo Bisons in 1904 and 1906. Connie Mack and George Stallings are reportedly the only two major-league managers to have regularly worn street clothes on the bench.[/fn] From his earliest stint as a manager, with Augusta in 1893, Stallings scheduled spring training in his home state whenever possible. This practice certainly lessened his travel time; most advantageous for him was to hold his spring training in the middle part of the state. Twelve times he brought his teams to the Peach State, including four times to Macon and once each to Milledgeville and Haddock. His 3,600-acre plantation, the Meadows, was located in Haddock, about three dozen rail miles northeast of Macon. Milledgeville was just up the road to the east of Haddock, closer than Macon but with less convenient transportation connections. Assembling his players in the area, Stallings could have the team come to his house for practice or just for a cookout. In 1915, he would bring the Braves up from Macon once a week for what he termed a “frolic.”[fn]Kaese, The Boston Braves, 168.[/fn] In the 1920s, while managing the Detroit club, Ty Cobb borrowed a page from George’s book and had his Tigers take spring training in Augusta, where the Georgia Peach made his home. But even the great Cobb could not trump the convenience of holding spring-training workouts in your own backyard, which is what Stallings did with his 1924 Rochester team. 

Although no Federal League teams would train in the Peach State in 1914, the league did provide some excitement during spring training. Going into their first year as a self-proclaimed major league, the Federals disrupted the National and American Leagues, waging a battle for players and ignoring certain contract provisions that the two older leagues felt protected them from the loss of their players. In late March, the manager of the Pittsburgh Feds, Doc Gessler, arrived in Macon to scout some Boston (NL) players. This was a surreptitious trip—Doc registered under a false name. Gessler phoned Boston players at their hotel and succeeded in enticing Braves pitcher Hub Perdue to come by for a visit.[fn]Perdue himself would be back for spring training in Georgia as a manager, bringing his Louisville Colonels (American Association) to Athens in 1917.[/fn] Whether tipped off by a friendly hotel clerk or by Perdue himself, Boston manager George Stallings got wind of what was going on. Just as his father had been called upon 50 years earlier, it was now Stallings’ turn to fight the Federals. George appeared in Gessler’s room with a deputy sheriff in tow and served papers on Doc, preventing him from his undercover mission.[fn]Labor law in Georgia at this time, written in part to strengthen the sharecropper system, made it illegal to offer a person employment when they were already under contract to someone else.[/fn] Stallings had been prepared for this eventuality, having earlier received a tip that the manager of the Kansas City Federals was coming to Macon to lure away some Boston players. That it was Gessler who showed up and not Kansas City’s Stovall didn’t make a bit of difference to the Georgia native. Stallings had armed himself with an injunction against any tampering by the Federals. Gessler left town that evening and traveled to Augusta in an attempt to contact some of the Brooklyn (NL) players who were in training there. Unfortunately for him, Stallings had already alerted the Augusta authorities, who served an injunction on Gessler upon his arrival. Doc’s visit to the state was ultimately unsuccessful. 

To sum up George Stallings’ 1914 spring-training experiences: he wrested the use of Macon’s facilities away from Cleveland for his own team, fought off a raid by the Federal League, and, in an exhibition game in Macon, was credited with saving the life of Newark’s George Smith. First baseman Smith collapsed on the field “with heart failure,” and Stallings revived him “by using artificial methods to induce circulation and breathing.” [fn]Sporting Life, 28 March 1914, 3. Perhaps that short time at Johns Hopkins paid off.[/fn] Should we be surprised that he led the “Miracle” Braves to the world championship that season?

A change was coming, however, that even George Stallings could not combat. A growing and obvious problem with the current situation would change everything: as roster sizes increased, taking spring training in a city with a single ball field became less practical. Having several fields available in one town was no improvement if they were not close to each other, since the manager could only be in one place at a time. Teams needed multiple fields in a single location. Even beyond the concept of multiple fields, team owners had an increasing interest in developing facilities that could host two or more major-league teams at once. On the other side of the equation, some cities were now considering making major investments in their local facilities in order to attract a team each spring. It is hard to overestimate the extent to which these cities valued the promotional value of seeing their town’s name in national stories filed from training camp. Local expenditures were nothing new, as towns were routinely responsible for the upkeep and condition of the playing field before the arrival of their spring visitors. What was new was the idea of having local governments build facilities in excess of what they would need during their own minor-league regular season. It was on this issue that Georgia just couldn’t (or wouldn’t) compete.

During training in 1911, the Boston (AL) and Cincinnati (NL) teams considered sharing a multifield facility in Georgia for spring training in 1912. Under this concept, the teams would be housed and served meals on site. President Taylor of the Boston club pushed this idea as a potential boost for a town, hoping to entice some municipality into constructing the facility.[fn]In the same vein, in late 1911, Hot Springs took steps to build more fields to attract more teams to the town.[/fn] No town stepped forward, and while both teams trained in Georgia in 1912, they did so on opposite sides of the state. Small towns in Georgia simply could not afford to construct such facilities. Nor was any help available from the major-league teams themselves. Already losing money each year funding spring training, they had no incentive to spend even more by building their own facilities. A city that could find the money to provide multifield facilities would win the contest to host spring training in the future. Georgia came tantalizingly close to making this transition, with a privately financed project that was conceived as a multiteam facility but ended up as something very different.

In January 1915, newspapers reported the potential sale of a plantation in the Brunswick area—a parcel centered on an existing structure called Dover Hall— to a group of baseball men. Ty Cobb, George Stallings, and Boston (NL) team president James Gaffney were said to be examining the site, and early reports indicated that they were considering construction of a spring-training facility that could house “no less than a half-dozen clubs, including two or three big league teams and as many Class A organizations as will train in this county.”[fn]“Dover Hall, Near Brunswick, May Soon Be Converted into Mammoth Training Grounds,” Atlanta Constitution, 15 January 1915.[/fn] Stallings was credited with the idea, something he had started working on two years earlier following a personal visit to Dover Hall. However, when the time came to put money on the line, the purchasers, now including many other team owners and league executives, elected to create a private lodge and hunting preserve on the site.[fn]For more information on this little-known but fascinating episode in Georgia’s baseball history, see Brian McKenna’s excellent article about Dover Hall on the SABR Biography Project Web site.[/fn]

Minor-league teams also traveled to Georgia to train. One of the most frequent early visitors was Buffalo (1906, 1910, and 1911 as Eastern League members, and again in 1912 as members of the International League). This fact should not come as a surprise; George Stallings was Buffalo’s manager for three of those four years. Prior to World War I, most minor-league team appearances in the state were sporadic, and not always in the same town for each visit (see table 2). Between the wars, only a couple of minor-league teams came to Georgia to train. Most minor-league teams that called Georgia home took spring practice on their own fields, sometimes in combination with big-league teams. This relationship benefited both parties: major-league teams had some local competition for their first exhibition games, while the minor-league players could mix with, observe, and learn from the big leaguers. The Atlanta Crackers, however, sometimes traveled to take training, including a two-week trip to Hot Springs in 1910 and stints in other Georgia cities in 1916 and 1917. 

With the approach of World War I and even after America’s entry into that conflict, Georgia continued to be a popular spring destination for major-league teams. Spring training in 1918 featured numerous patriotic displays by the teams, including military drills with marching players, each man carrying a bat on his shoulder in place of a rifle. With the conclusion of the war, however, Georgia saw fewer major-league spring visitors. Three teams arrived in 1919, and two came in 1920. Manager Ty Cobb held spring training for his Tigers in Augusta from 1922 through 1926. No other major-league teams came to the state for training in those years, and none at all arrived in 1927. New York (NL) made a trip to the state in 1928, and Boston (AL) had a “last hurrah” in Savannah in 1932. St. Louis (AL), training in Thomasville in 1953, was the last major league team to hold spring training in Georgia. With the Browns’ departure at the end of the spring season, the sun set on major-league spring training in the state. Minor-league training in Georgia, on the other hand, was about to enter its “‘golden age.”(See table 3.) 

While the traditional spring-training destination cities in Georgia couldn’t afford to construct the multiteam practice facilities needed to continue to attract spring tenants, the federal government certainly could. During World War II, the government built military bases and industrial facilities throughout the state. After the war, many of these sites were no longer needed and were made available for lease. Several were converted to baseball use, including an air base in Waycross, which became “Bravesville” (EDITORS’ NOTE: See Papillon/Young article); a Veterans Administration complex in Thomasville, which housed the Baltimore Orioles’ minor-league teams for 12 years; the Cardinals’ 75-acre training complex in Albany, in use for nine years; and another air base—this one in Douglas—now owned by South Georgia College but leased to the Cincinnati Reds organization in the postwar era. These camps represented the last stage in the evolution of spring training—semipermanent facilities that housed multiple teams—applied at the minor-league level.[fn]A necessary condition for the development of this practice was the growth of the “farm” system tying minor-league teams to major-league “parent” clubs. Prior to World War II, many of the minor-league teams were without any formal major-league affiliation and thus made spring-training plans on their own.[/fn] With barracks and a mess hall already on site, room and board was not an issue at these new camps. The teams added ball fields and did some landscaping, but each site required few other improvements. “Bravesville” could accommodate eight of the parent club’s farm teams on four diamonds; the Orioles, with five diamonds, could accommodate 10 farm teams in Thomasville. The Cardinals were able to handle 12 teams on seven diamonds at their camp, and the Reds could train eight teams in Douglas. Newspaper reports praised each of these operations for bringing an “assembly line” process to player instruction.[fn]Due in part to the rise in public relations as a way to boost attendance for the upcoming season, virtually every hometown newspaper for each of the minorleague teams in training camp ran articles praising the operations. Often these were “canned” reports repeated verbatim in several papers at once.[/fn] This heyday of minor-league camps, however, was not to last. 

He viewed Ty Cobb as a father figure, and Cobb in turn loved him like a son.

His steadfast loyalty, caring, and love pervaded all discussions of Cobb.

He vividly recalled specific incidents from 70 to 80 years ago.

Jimmy’s image of Ty Cobb differs from the common perception of the man, but I found Jimmy to be honest and forthright—not one to “sugarcoat” any situation. He would tell it as it was! He often said, “I can tell you five good things for every disparaging remark made about Mr. Cobb.” Jimmy shared many memories of Ty Cobb with me, and I want to share some of them with you—just as Jimmy told them to me.

____________________

I was born and raised at 2317 Kings Way in Augusta, Georgia. Ty Cobb lived at 2425 Williams Street, about a three-minute walk away, so we were almost next-door neighbors. When I was a little boy, I did not realize that Mr. Cobb (which I always called him) was a baseball player. I knew only that he was Herschel’s dad, and Herschel was my longtime playmate.

At the Cobb house, Mrs. Cobb would give Herschel and me a Ty Cobb candy bar, which was about the same as a Baby Ruth. She would also give us a little slice of cake. Then she would take us down to the baseball spring practice at Warren Park in Augusta.

HOW I GOT TO BE TY COBB’S BATBOY

I would often spend the night over at the Cobbs’, and we’d sit in the living room talking. Mr. Cobb knew of my love for baseball, and one night he said, “Jimmy m’boy”—Mr. Cobb always called me “Jimmy, m’boy,” from beginning to end—“how would you like to be my batboy this year?” I almost fainted. Mr. Cobb said, “Well, you ask your dad and mama if they’ll let you go up to Detroit.” I did, and they said “yes” but that I would have to live with the Cobbs. Of course, I was in school, so I could not go until June.

So instead of beginning my batboy duties in Detroit, I began in spring practice in Augusta. The streetcar went right by my school, so Herschel and I would ride down to Warren Park, where the streetcar terminated. My first job as a batboy was to go into the springtraining dressing rooms, which looked like an old army barracks, and put out little bars of soap and towels. Then I’d pick up the towels and count them after practice. I also would take a shower after the players had taken theirs. I wanted to be a professional player, so I would get up under the shower just as they did.

The team gave me a cap and a uniform that my mother had to alter because it was too big. I was paid five dollars a week out of Mr. Cobb’s pocket. Some of the other players would tip me at spring practice, and sometimes I got an extra quarter to clean Mr. Cobb’s bat. I did lots of special work for Mr. Cobb in spring training. I would take big bones and I’d bone-rub his bats, and then I’d shine them. The shine didn’t last long, you know, but the bats wouldn’t break. I didn’t like to do that work, but I had to; he wanted me to do it, and he hardly ever broke a bat.

The Tigers held spring training in Augusta for five years. When they were there, they did not stay in a hotel. Right across the river north of Augusta, there were some colonial homes in South Carolina. Mr. Cobb rented one of those huge homes and had it converted so the men could stay there and they would have home cooking. They did not eat in restaurants. They liked that. Also, they did not practice on Sundays. A lot of the players liked to play golf, so Mr. Cobb made arrangements for them to play at the Augusta Country Club. However, he did not let his pitchers go because he said that playing golf would tighten their shoulders.

After my school year ended, I worked all of Detroit’s home games during the regular season and a few of the away games—if I had a relative or guardian whom I could stay with. For example, I made a trip to Chicago, when Detroit was playing the White Sox, and stayed with my aunt. I went to Chicago with the team, and my aunt met me. Of course the players spent the night in a hotel, and after the game I went back to Detroit with my aunt on the train.

TY COBB’S TRAINING AND PREPARATION FOR A GAME

Mr. Cobb said that two things all ballplayers should do is drink a lot of water and get plenty of sleep. From my batboy’s vantage point, I would watch Mr. Cobb work out as a player (he was also player-manager) for hours at a time. He would set an example for the other players on the team by leading an unbelievably rigorous daily training and practice routine; the other players just could not keep up with him. He constantly said, “Practice, practice, practice!” Mr. Cobb would run several miles every day, run the bases “for time” over and over, and spend a couple of hours every day just bunting the ball. He had a way of drawing the bat back and hitting the ball into the ground so the ball would roll slowly. The third baseman could not get to it in time, and Mr. Cobb would be on first base.

He taught all his players how to bunt and hit. He taught Harry Heilmann how to hit, and later in Mr. Cobb’s career, Heilmann regularly beat him in hitting. He would tell his catchers over and over—hundreds of times—not to throw the ball to the fielder but instead to throw it to the bag so that the ball would be there before the runner.

TY COBB’S COMPETITIVE SPIRIT AND HIS ABILITY TO INFLUENCE THE OUTCOME OF A GAME

Mr. Cobb was a ferocious and fearless competitor! He always wanted to be number one in everything he did (and he almost was). The origin of this was his father’s telling him, when he left home to play baseball, that if he was not successful not to come home. This message was ingrained in him! Of all the players that I ever saw, no other player had the heightened level of competitive spirit that Mr. Cobb had from the first day I saw him play to the last day.

Because of Mr. Cobb’s ability to utilize his speed and base-stealing skills to intimidate the opposition, he was a constant threat to influence the outcome of any game. The opposing team knew that he was a fast and daring runner. When he was on a base, he would not hesitate to steal any base, including home. This not only put a tremendous amount of pressure on the pitcher worrying about him as a baserunner, but it also took the pitcher’s concentration off the batter. As you may know, in his major-league career, he stole 897 bases, including stealing home 50 times—a major league record. Mr. Cobb was a threat to steal any base in any situation regardless of the score, the pitch count, or the batter, so the intimidation factor was always prevalent.

I feel that I must address the commonly held rumor—written and spoken by many as fact—that Mr. Cobb sharpened his spikes. I am telling you as Mr. Cobb’s batboy who was there, it never happened. I cleaned his spikes every day, serviced his locker, and never saw a file or any indication that he sharpened his spikes. Moreover, I was in his home one day when several friends asked him if he sharpened his spikes, and he said he never did on any occasion. Although I never heard Mr. Cobb say so, I believe he used the “sharpening the spikes” rumor as an advantage, making the opposing players fearful of getting cut trying to tag him when he slid into a base.

MR. COBB’S VISITORS IN AUGUSTA

Some of the frequent visitors Mr. Cobb befriended were Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins, Lu Blue, Moe Berg, Joe Tinker, and Grantland Rice. They all came to visit Mr. Cobb’s home in Augusta, where I was a frequent diner and always sat at the right of Mr. Cobb, and Herschel would sit by my father.

Mr. Speaker was a very friendly man, but he was abrupt. Eddie Collins was very funny. Grantland Rice was very nice, and he liked to “kid” (joke around with) me.

Even though Mr. Cobb said he was not going to play anymore after 1926, he signed up with Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. Just prior to that, I asked, “Mr. Cobb, you’re not going to stop playing, are you?” and he said, “Jimmy m’boy, I think I am.” I could only reply, “Well then, I’ve lost my job.”

When Mr. Cobb went to Philadelphia in 1927, he joined Eddie Collins. The following year, he helped convince Connie Mack to hire Tris Speaker, bringing the three great Hall of Fame players together for one year.

RECOLLECTIONS OF BABE RUTH AND CONNIE MACK

I liked Babe Ruth because he could hit a lot of home runs. Mr. Ruth was very friendly, and he particularly liked children. His bat was very heavy and oversized. On a hot day, the Babe would put a cabbage leaf on top of his head; he said it kept him cool.

Mr. Cobb and Babe Ruth were very competitive on and off the field in a friendly way. I recall one occasion when Babe Ruth hit a tremendous home run, and when he was coming around third base, he yelled at Mr. Cobb, “Now do you want to tell me how to hit?!” Off the field, they competed against each other playing a lot of golf.

I met Connie Mack in Philadelphia when Mr. Cobb was playing for the Athletics. I was no longer a batboy, but Mr. Cobb had me and his son, Herschel, visit him in Philadelphia. Mr. Cobb said, “Herschel, take ‘Jimmy m’boy’ up to the office.” There I met Connie Mack, who was having his lunch—a sandwich and a glass of milk. He ordered the same thing for me, and we ate together and talked about baseball. Mr. Mack was very quiet and humble, and he never went down on the field before a game while the players were warming up.

FAVORABLE COMMENTS ABOUT TY COBB

Another inaccurate rumor about Mr. Cobb was that his teammates made negative comments about him behind his back. I had the run of the dressing room every day and always listened intently to what the players were saying. On no occasion did I ever hear any player make any derogatory comments about Mr. Cobb. Instead, I heard positive remarks and players talking to one another about getting him to help them with their playing skills.

One day, a foul ball by Detroit Tigers shortstop Jackie Tavener hit a woman who was sitting in the stands. Mr. Cobb went up to see if she was all right. She said that she was okay; however, Mr. Cobb told her to go and see a doctor and he would pay for whatever expenses she incurred.

One day when the Tigers were playing the Yankees, another foul ball gave Mr. Cobb a chance to show his gentler side. When one of the Yankees hit a foul ball down the leftfield line, a young boy ran onto the field and picked the ball up. But the umpire took the ball away from the boy. From his position in centerfield, Mr. Cobb saw what happened, and when he had the opportunity, he beckoned to the boy and gave him a new baseball.

Another incident involved a farm boy who had just been plowing the fields and did not look well. Mr. Cobb heard him ask for directions to Lynnwood, a veterans’ hospital in Augusta. A man told the boy how to get there on a streetcar, but Mr. Cobb said that he lived near there and would take him in his car. While they were riding, Mr. Cobb slipped the boy a twenty-dollar bill.

Mr. Cobb was accused of being a racist, but I never saw any evidence of such racism on or off the field. I saw black people who worked around the Cobb house treated with respect and friendliness. When the workers got sick, Mr. Cobb paid their medical expenses.

Mr. Cobb gave generously to many charities, including a retirement home and the hospital in Royston, Georgia, that now houses the Ty Cobb Museum. He also gave millions of dollars for the implementation of a scholarship fund for students who are residents of Georgia. Recipients did not have to be honor students, but their parents had to show a commitment to their children’s finishing their education.

MY FRIENDSHIP WITH MR. COBB AFTER HE RETIRED FROM BASEBALL

After Mr. Cobb’s playing days were over, he and I stayed in communication with each other and were close friends to the end. My office and home were in Atlanta. Mr. Cobb owned a lot of property in Augusta and still had many close ties there. Mr. Cobb made frequent trips to Atlanta; he would call me at my office, and we would meet for lunch at the Biltmore Hotel. On a typical visit, we would have a sandwich and eat in Mr. Cobb’s room because so many people recognized him that he was not able to eat his lunch downstairs in the restaurant. We would reminisce about “the good old days.”

On one occasion, I asked Mr. Cobb whom he would pick as his all-time all-star team. He told me that he would select only players he actually saw play. His all-star team was as follows:

Catcher: Mickey Cochrane

First Base: George Sisler

Second Base: Eddie Collins

Shortstop: Honus Wagner

Third Base: Pie Traynor

Left Field: Joe Jackson

Center Field: Tris Speaker

Right Field: Babe Ruth

He played with or against most of these players in the American League. Wagner and Traynor were National Leaguers whom Mr. Cobb saw when they played for Pittsburgh against Detroit in the 1909 World Series or in exhibition games.

THE LAST TIME I SAW MR. COBB

Now I want to tell you about the last time I saw Mr. Cobb. I learned that my longtime friend was in Emory Hospital (in Atlanta), where he had been very sick for several days. On July 15, 1961, I hurriedly went to the hospital to see him. When I asked the nurse on duty if I could go in and see Mr. Cobb, she said, “No. He wouldn’t recognize you.” So I called into the room in a low voice, asking members of Mr. Cobb’s family if I could come into the room to see him. They responded by telling the nurse that I was a very close friend of Mr. Cobb’s and to let me see him. I went slowly into the room toward the bed where Mr. Cobb was lying. He looked like he was asleep, but I bent over the bed and said, “Mr. Cobb, this is ‘Jimmy m’boy.’” I thought he responded by moving his mouth slightly. I like to think I heard him speak, but it might have been just my imagination. I then squeezed his hand very gently and said again, “Mr. Cobb, this is ‘Jimmy m’boy,’” and I thought he responded by squeezing my hand back. Again, I’m not sure he actually did react to me, but I like to believe he did. I knew it was time to leave, and when I got to the door, I saluted him and said, “Goodbye, Mr. Cobb.” That was the last time I ever saw him. Two days later (on July 17, 1961), Mr. Cobb died.

MILLARD FISHER writes and speaks on medicine and health issues. He is a consultant to the World Future Society, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes for Health.

COLLABORATOR’S NOTE: On February 13, 2010, my dear friend Mr. Jimmy Lanier, Ty Cobb’s former batboy, passed away peacefully in his sleep at age 93. He was a man of great character who exemplified all the good things in life. I shall miss our telephone conversations, lunches, and other visits—and all those wonderful discussions about baseball, with most of those focused on Ty Cobb. Just as Jimmy saluted Ty Cobb as he was dying at Emory Hospital, I salute Mr. Lanier and say, “Goodbye, my friend. Rest in peace; you played the game well.”

B is for BEDROSIAN, BLAUSER, and BREAM—
a reliever, a shortstop, and a slider supreme.

C is for COX, a manager for the ages,
and just as well known for his on-the-field rages.

D is for Dale—MURPHY, I mean,
a gentleman, a scholar, a hitting machine.

E is for EVANS, who guarded the hot corner,
and hit lots of homers—as did Bob HORNER.

F is for FRANCOEUR, FRANCO, FURCAL—
different in age, but good hitters all.

G is for GARBER and GRISSOM and GILES
and GALARRAGA, who could hit ’em for miles.

H is for HUBBARD, a scrapper and a gem,
and also for HUDSON, that pitcher named Tim.

I is for Inferno, ’cause our stadium was aflame
on the night that McGRIFF brought us his game.

J is for the JONES boys—Chipper and ’Druw—
and for David JUSTICE, a fine hitter, too.

K is for KLESKO, who swung for the fence,
and was known for his bat, not his defense.

L is for LOPEZ, LEMKE, and LUM,
and for LEMASTER, who made the ball hum. 

M is for MATHEWS and MAHLER and McCANN,
and let’s never forget little Felix MILLAN. 

N is for NIEKRO—“Knucksie” to all—
and for Otis NIXON, who oft climbed the wall.

O is for two catchers, OLSON and O’BRIEN,
and Ken OBERKFELL, who never quit tryin’.

P is for Terry PENDLETON, once MVP,
and Biff POCOROBA and Gerald PERRY.

Q is for QUINONEZ. While others played better,
none gave us this needed letter.

R is for two noted ROCKERs—a hurler named John
and Leo MAZZONE, who swayed on and on.

S is for John SCHUERHOLZ, a stellar G.M.,
and “Neon Deion” SANDERS; we all remember him! 

T is for TURNER—the Field bears his name.
He was a sailor, a mogul, and he managed one game. 

U is for Cecil UPSHAW and Bob UECKER, too,
and the bevy of umpires whom we love to boo.

V is for Vinnie with “CASTILLA” on his back;
hitting home runs was his special knack.

W is for WILHELM, WALK, and WOHLERS, as well,
and for a WASHINGTON whose name was Claudell.

X is for the many “times” the CARAYs (father and son)
made the game come alive—run after run.

Y is for Yunel—ESCOBAR, that is,
a Cuban refugee and a shortstopping whiz.

Z is for the Zeroes that seemed to abound
with GLAVINE, MADDUX, or SMOLTZ on the mound.

WYNN MONTGOMERY, author of the biography of Willard Nixon for SABR’s BioProject, has seen ballgames in every major-league city except Arlington, Texas, and in almost fifty minor-league parks. His article “Georgia’s 1948 Phenoms and the Bonus Rule” appears in the Summer 2010 issue of the Baseball Research Journal.

On March 18, 1953, the Boston Braves did something no club had managed to do since 1903, when the Orioles fled Baltimore to become the New York Highlanders. They moved. To Milwaukee. Among the goods and chattels they brought along was a newly acquired minor-league spring-training facility located beside the Okefenokee Swamp on the outskirts of Waycross, Georgia.

We have a particular affection for Waycross. As natives of Quebec City, our baseball interests tend naturally toward the game’s history in Quebec Province, and part of that story includes Waycross. From 1951 to 1955, Quebec’s entry in the Provincial League (Class C) served as a farm team for the big-league Braves, and from 1953 until our league folded in early 1956, our Braves trained in Waycross.

In those days, spring training was thoroughly covered by our local newspapers—the French-language Le Soleil and L’Evenement and the English Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, founded in 1764 and considered North America’s oldest newspaper. Senior columnists filed lush, daily reports under the Waycross dateline, highlighting the happenings of baseball’s early spring. Their stories were rife with images of summer games and summer splendor—and provided welcomed refuge from the next blizzard (there was always a next blizzard). Over time, Waycross acquired an aura of mystery and exoticism out of all proportion to reality. This article is our opportunity to restore that balance.

*****

Waycross (the camp) was always about the minor leagues, specifically the lower minors, Class A to Class D. While the Braves’ major-league team and higher affiliates utilized different spring-training venues, including Bradenton, Jacksonville, Kissimmee, and later West Palm Beach, Florida, Waycross remained primarily a “rookie factory,”1 the preserve of the novice.

The Braves first introduced separate training for their farm affiliates2 in 1949, at a camp built on a former Army air base in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. When the military wanted the base back four years later, the club relocated to the Waycross area, where it remained throughout the 13-year history of the Milwaukee Braves (1953–65) and one year beyond.3

In the beginning, teams came from such cities as Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Evansville, Indiana; Jacksonville, Florida; Lawton, Oklahoma; Quebec City, Quebec; and Wellsville, New York.4 Farm director John Mullen believed that by gathering together young players and subjecting them to scrutiny by as many managers and scouts as possible, the Braves might cut a year or more off the time it would take the youth to reach the big club.5 Indeed, by 1955, 11 such recruits had made it onto the Milwaukee Braves roster. It was a mass-production approach to be sure, but it delivered.

Following the Braves’ migration to Atlanta in 1966, team president John McHale negotiated a deal with authorities in West Palm Beach, the major-league club’s spring-training home since 1963, “to expand the operation to include the entire Braves’ farm system.”6 In no time the Waycross camp was shuttered, and a new chapter had begun.

In 1997, the Braves moved again, this time to Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Kissimmee, Florida. Today, the minor-league setup occupies an expansive area called the Quadraplex. It includes four practice fields positioned directly behind Champion Stadium and four others set aside for amateur teams. The operation is state of the art in every way—and a very far cry from the red clay of Waycross.

Waycross “Bravesville,” as it appeared circa 1960. (COLLECTION OF DANIEL PAPILLON)

SPRING TRAINING AT WAYCROSS

The city of Waycross sits in the heart of southeastern Georgia, at the northern tip of the Okefenokee Swamp, once home to Pogo of the daily comics7 and more formally called the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.

Set midway between Interstates I-95 and I-75, Waycross occupies a spot where road and rail naturally intersect. In other words, Waycross truly is the place where the ways cross. Today, surrounded by a regional population of 15,000, Waycross serves as the county seat for Ware County and is regarded as something of a tourist destination.

Long before the Braves arrived in Waycross, the town had crafted its own baseball history. In 1898, the Chicago Colts, the forerunners of the Cubs, set up spring training there, only to discover that Waycross was “a temperance town with few amenities”8 and that the team would be lodged at a “Podunk hotel with only two bathtubs for 18 men, the infields were weedy patches of sand, and the cuisine outraged the ballplayers.”9 In 1906, the town hosted the Machinists, a professional team in the Class D Georgia State League. Both team and league disbanded after one season. The same fate struck the Waycross Blowhards of the short-lived Empire State League in 1913.10 Efforts to reestablish baseball in the area in 1914 fared a little better but were abandoned in less than two years.11

During the mid-1920s, a tarnished Shoeless Joe Jackson, by then banished forever to the shadowy world of semiprofessional baseball, played for and managed the Waycross Coast Liners, guiding them to the state championship in 1924.12 Fifteen years later, the Waycross Bears joined the Class D Georgia-Florida League and in 1940 captured their first pennant. Milwaukee acquired the Bears as an affiliate in 1956, and the team (renamed the Braves) survived until the league shut down in 1958.13 In 1962, the Georgia-Florida League reappeared for one year as a Class D circuit and became Class A in 1963 when the minor leagues eliminated the lower classifications. Waycross fielded a team, again called the Braves, in that second and final season.

In 1954, the Bears signed two local Negro players, Silas Harmon and Perry Bellamy. While neither lasted more than a few games, they were, according to the St. Petersburg Times, “the first of their race to appear in the Class D Georgia-Florida Baseball League.”14 However, Lew Jones, a Milwaukee signee, also claimed this honor. That same year he put in six games with the Bears before leaving baseball altogether.15 All three names appear on the Bears’ 1954 roster although none played more than a handful of games.16

*****

The April 23, 1954, edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sunday supplement includes a charming photo spread featuring the Braves’ Waycross minor-league spring training camp. One caption declares that “the road to the major leagues is long and dusty more often than not. Along the way most boys must make several stops for seasoning in the ‘bush’ leagues.”17 Facile, perhaps, but appropriate. For in 1954, all roads around the Waycross camp were indeed surrounded by bush—slash pines and sawgrass—and were nothing if not “long and dusty.”

To a first-time visitor, the Waycross camp must have seemed remote and forbidding.18 Lurking well beyond the town along the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, the camp’s only link to the outside world was a “thin tar road…that eventually snaked through the swamp to the highway that led to Waycross ten miles away.”19 Hank Aaron, who attended in 1953, said it was so “isolated from the main part of town [that] a team bus took the players into town once a week to do laundry and other needful things.”20 Aspiring pitcher Pat Jordan first arrived in the early morning and was enveloped by the “low-lying mist [stretching] to the line of trees that marked the beginning of the swamp 100 yards away.”21

The training facility actually sat on the site of the former Waycross Air Force Base of World War II vintage, on a piece of land, mostly red clay, one half-mile square and completely surrounded by swamp. Built from scratch, it could accommodate 150 to 300 players.22 While comfortable, it gave lie “to the theory that modern baseball, at least in the minors, is like living at a country club.”23 However, it was spacious and well removed from town, with little around to disturb or distract.24

Braves scout Hugh Wise, a civil engineer from Purdue who would become the camp’s first director, was in charge, assisted by his wife and “the glib, joke-telling Doc Gautreau,”25 a former Braves player from the 1920s. Of French-Canadian ancestry, Walter “Doc” Gautreau had spent five years with the Montreal Royals at the end of his career and was still conversant in French. Gautreau was a legendary figure at Waycross, acknowledged as an expert in the scouting and training of young hopefuls and famed for his good nature and generosity. As the unofficial host of the camp—they called him the “Greeter”—he oversaw the hospitality room and welcomed a steady stream of visitors to camp, often representatives from sportinggoods companies, who never missed a chance to visit. “Everybody loved to see Doc,” Roland Hemond, the Braves assistant farm director throughout the 1950s, remembers fondly.26

Hemond married Margo Quinn, the daughter of Braves general manager John Quinn, in 1958 and, until he moved to the Angels in 1961, the young married couple spent spring training at Waycross. One year their quarters were next door to Gautreau’s hospitality room. “It was noisy,” recalls Hemond—“their room; not ours!” The following season, the club provided the couple with a trailer on the site.27 In many ways, Hemond was the heart and soul of Waycross although, according to Jordan, Margo “was equally appreciated, as she was one of the few women who would occasionally visit the camp.”28

That first year, Wise successfully fashioned “four diamonds out of marshland, an engineering feat regarded with respect by many experts.”29 The diamonds were laid out in cloverleaf fashion around a two-story, cylindrical, tower-like brick rotunda. Home plate on each diamond sat about 30 yards from the rotunda, from whose top scouts and managers could watch any player in any game. The outfield fences marked the beginning of the swamp,30 although in the early years there were just “dirt piles out there that served as fences.”31 Says Hemond, “It was an outstanding facility. There was nothing else like it, except perhaps at Vero Beach. Hugh did a wonderful job of preparing excellent playing fields.”32

Beyond the diamonds, set back in the woods, were nine wooden buildings, all of World War II vintage. The large one to the north was the clubhouse; another nearby served both as private office space for scouts, coaches, managers, and front-office personnel and as the recreation room. With a television set in the corner, tattered and faded armchairs throughout, and a card table where the veterans played bridge, the recreation room was the principal gathering place. Activities included “movies three nights a week, ping pong, shuffleboard, horse shoe pits, and a juke box.”33 Curfew was set at 11:00 P.M. Pat Jordan, in his autobiographical A False Spring, describes the spring of 1960, which he spent at Waycross. “No matter how early, someone was always playing a fierce game of Ping-Pong.”34

A False Spring provides many of the details offered in this article regarding the Waycross camp in the 1960s.35 Jordan was a promising 18-year-old pitcher within the Braves’ system. He had begun the 1960 campaign at Bradenton, Florida, with the Louisville Colonels of the Triple-A American Association. When the Braves made their first roster cuts, he was sent down to Waycross, reflecting the team policy of giving “their young prospects a taste of life at the top . . . during at least one spring training, so that upon seeing such minor league camps as Waycross they would be inspired to a level of play that would guarantee their never returning.”36

Milwaukee personnel at Bradenton in the early 1950s. Roland Hemond is in the front, second from left, and Doc Gautreau is in the second row over Roland’s left shoulder. (COURTESY OF DANIEL PAPILLON)

At Waycross, everyone slept in one of six identical long and narrow army barracks—precociously called “teepees”37—set 50 yards or so to the north of the administration building. Each building was supervised by a manager and a scout. Lou Fusk of the Quebec Chronicle -Telegraph, a scribe prone to overstatement, called these accommodations “the last word in comfort.” 38

In the first years, beds were double bunks, placed against the walls, just feet apart and facing each other across a central corridor. Doors at both ends of the building led either to the cafeteria or to basic bathroom facilities—a few sinks, a long stained urinal, and three open-stalled toilets. Because nights could become cold, the barracks were equipped with gas heaters. Some feared that a malfunction could asphyxiate half the rookie crop. “But this could never happen,” says Hemond. “The buildings were of war-time construction and so full of cracks that when the wind blew it went right through the walls, providing excellent ventilation. There was nothing to worry about.”39

The cafeteria-like mess hall, owned and operated by the Braves, was further north and near the swamp. This simple square room equipped with trestle-style picnic tables and benches, and an open kitchen provided three meals a day. Players tended to eat lunch—typically consommé in paper cups, milk, a Hershey bar, an apple, and an orange—outside so they could quickly get back to their baseball duties. To Fusk, the dining arrangements were “splendid” and the “food dished out . . . ample and tasty.”40

Don C. Trenary of the Milwaukee Journal wrote that the food was so good “that in eight years [sic] there has been only one complaint.”41 Jim Fanning, assistant general manager of the Braves before following John McHale to the Montreal Expos in 1969, oversaw camp operations in the mid-1960s and asserted “the food was fantastic.”42

*****

Braves general manager John Quinn was justifiably proud of the Waycross facility. “We have built four fine practice diamonds at Waycross and our housing for the kids sent there to work out is one of the finest anywhere.” 43 Willie O’Ree, a young black man from Canada who earned a brief tryout at Waycross before ultimately making his mark in hockey, concurred. “They had pits in which you could practice sliding,” he wrote. “They had pitching pits, and they had great equipment.”44 Aaron noted that with batting practice and intrasquad games going on at the same time, “I got almost as much [hitting] as I wanted.”45 Of course it helped that he had been tagged as a sure-fire prospect. John Ambrose, who briefly was Aaron’s teammate at Jacksonville and who spent the summer with the Quebec Braves, remembers that whenever Aaron came to bat at Waycross on any of the diamonds, the scouts on the tower would automatically shift their attention to him. “Back then he couldn’t have weighed more than 150 pounds,” said Ambrose recently, “but could he hit home runs, especially to the opposite field.”46

To Lou Fusk, Waycross possessed “every facility possible for the development of young talent.” Commenting in 1955, he called the camp “one of the most efficient in baseball, with any number of former players and coaches on hand to lecture on and teach such fundamentals as sliding, base running, and batting practices with mechanical pitching machines.”47 To another Quebec writer it was simply “magnifique.”48

It was also expensive. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the Braves’ 1957 annual budget designated $150,000 for the Waycross camp, with $60,000 targeted for the camp and $90,000 for spring training.49

By 1959, Waycross was hosting upward of 380 young men, with an average age of 20 years, and the number of clubs training there had risen to eight.50 Of the 30 players on the 1957 Milwaukee Braves roster, more than half had come through “this camp or its predecessor at Myrtle Beach, S.C.”51

The Braves gave the camp a thorough overhaul in 1960, beginning with a name change. They replaced the cumbersome “Waycross farm system spring training camp” with a sharper “Bravesville.” They installed a public-address system that could “be heard on all five diamonds and other training areas,”52 put up portable outfield fences around the diamonds, built a road from the playing areas to the dorms, added a press box and sun deck atop the rotunda, upgraded the clubhouse by adding lockers, and installed new kitchen equipment in the cafeteria.53

Although camp activity was centered on spring training, other short-term player-evaluation programs kept the place busy much of the year. One of these programs was the Braves’ Silver Slugger Schools for youngsters ages 16–21 directed by scouts such as Doc Gautreau. Top achievers were then sent to Waycross, where they received “additional major-league training” and the possibility of a minor-league contract.54

*****

On arrival at camp, players faced the task of registering, sorting out accommodations and meals, and so on—“stuff that anyone who has ever gone to college well understands.”55 In the early years, each farm club brought its own uniforms, leading to a considerable duplication of numbers and much confusion for managers and camp directors. Vern Handrahan of Prince Edward Island, who pitched briefly for the Kansas City Athletics, attended Waycross in 1959. As he recalls it, “there were about 400 [sic] of us trying out, and everybody had a big white number on his cap so the coaches could tell who you were. I was about number 340.”56

Eventually the organization decided to issue standard gray practice uniforms to all players. Players were assigned numbers at registration and then required to sew them on. “There was something quite humbling about wearing a shirt with 299 on its back,” said Jordan.57

The real work started after breakfast. Upward of 300 players would suit up in the dark and cold dressing area, with its concrete walls and floors smelling of sweat and mildew and floors “littered with chunks of red clay dislodged from hundreds of spikes.”58 Everybody “dressed quickly and went outside where we could draw a deep breath, and the hot sun could begin to dry our wet uniforms.”59

Morning workouts consisted of light calisthenics, infield and outfield drills, and batting practice held on every diamond. During the first three weeks, the routine included afternoon in-house games or occasional games against teams from other organizations training in Georgia. Later on, morning games were added. There were no workouts on Sunday morning so personnel could attend religious services.60

Instructors were plentiful, says Roland Hemond, “experienced men of quality, men like Johnny Mize, Paul Waner, Billy Southworth, Quebec Braves manager George McQuinn, Roland Gladu, and Walter (Doc) Gautreau.”61 They saw their participation as a chance to give back to the game while enjoying a warm Georgia sun. In the mid-1950s, these men were joined by a woman. Alice Richardson was a University of Wisconsin professor specializing in improving the speed and accuracy of human vision. The Braves hired her to train minor-league players “for such useful chores as fielding the ball while men are running the bases.”62

Throughout the spring, team lineups changed on a daily basis, and individuals regularly moved from squad to squad. Players learned their assignments in the morning from sheets of colored paper pinned to the barracks’ bulletin boards. There was a sheet for each of the camp’s minor-league managers, listing the players assigned to him that day. The distribution kept changing, right up until the last game, when the “manager under whose name you appeared would be the manager with whom you would begin the season.”63 It was chaotic. “You had hundreds of guys in camp,” recalled Aaron, “guys with numbers on their back like 195F—and nobody knew where they were headed.”64

Nobody, that is, except for those whose names appeared on the dreaded pink sheet, the one cryptically headed, “Will the players listed below please report to [named executive’s] office before nine o’clock this morning.”65 These players were about to receive their unconditional release. Or, as Willie O’Ree put it: “If your name appeared on this list, it meant you were being sent home.”66 Decisions to keep or release a player were made at the end of the day by managers and scouts who evaluated each player.67

The camp, already a beehive of activity, was made more so by the steady flow of visitors intent on chatting with players and watching them work out. Family, friends, writers, scouts, and general hangers-on all added to the hustle and bustle of the day. Girls from the local high school and other young women, drawn by the mystery of burnished strangers from afar, were regulars as well. Their presence sounded echoes of an earlier time, when airmen on their way to war passed through Waycross.

Nevertheless, regardless of what was happening, or when, or where, there was always someone watching—usually from the top of the rotunda. It was here that the most influential decision makers (general manager John Quinn, John Mullen, and his assistant Roland Hemond) took in practice drills and games. “I realized,” wrote Jordan, “that not only would I be noticed but my every move would be watched.”68

George McQuinn and Sibby Sisti experience the Carnaval de Québec with Bonhomme Carnaval, circa 1955. McQuinn managed the Quebec Braves from 1950 through 1954; Sisti managed in 1955. (COURTESY OF DANIEL PAPILLON)

WAYCROSS: AN INCIDENTAL MELTING POT

Although Jackie Robinson had broken through baseball’s color barrier in 1946 with the Montreal Royals, most clubs were still wrestling with this new reality a decade later. A few, notably the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Indians, saw it as a boon. And so too did the Braves.

In 1950, Boston signed Negro Leagues veteran Sam Jethroe to a major-league contract, and he won the NL Rookie of the Year Award.69 African American players Buzz Clarkson and George Crowe and Puerto Rican Luis Marquez followed, and the precedent was set. The newly minted Milwaukee Braves added Bill Bruton and Jim Pendleton in 1953, Hank Aaron and catcher Charlie White in 1954, and Panamanian pitcher Humberto Robinson, who had played in Quebec, the following year. 70 Along the way the club continued to invite young black and Hispanic players to spring training, most of whom started at Waycross. Racial integration had begun to make inroads throughout the Braves organization.71

Hank Aaron was a member of the first Waycross class in 1953, as were Felix Mantilla of Puerto Rico and Horace Garner, once an Indianapolis Clown. Other minority players in camp that year included Humberto Robinson, Ike Quarterman, and John Charles, the brother of future Mets third baseman Ed Charles, who was serving his military call-up at the time. Both brothers played in Quebec, though during different years.

The experiences of these early players—indeed of all the minority players who passed through Waycross— tell us something about the camp, the Braves organization, and race relations within the state of Georgia. In the Deep South, attitudes had changed little since the end of the Civil War almost 90 years before. Segregation was a fact. Social order rested on a precariously delicate and illusory balance. The customs and the laws of the state had to be respected, as when Aaron was being driven through the Okefenokee on his way to the Waycross facility for the first time. “The only reason [the mosquitoes]72 didn’t get me was that I had to stay in the car,” he said. “The other guys brought sandwiches out to me, and I ate in the back seat.”73 He was forbidden entry to the eatery.

On the other hand, the Braves were intent on building winning teams—championship teams—where black and white, English-speaking and non-English-speaking players could achieve success by working together. It was a fine line, but one the Braves managed to walk with some considerable success. After finishing second in 1955 and 1956, the team made two straight trips to the World Series, winning it all in 1957. Throughout, their rosters reflected a definite multicultural flavor, such that by 1961 executive vice-president Birdie Tebbetts could say, “Half our club is colored and a player, white or Negro, has an equal chance to make the club and to make a living.”74

If the Braves had a philosophy regarding race, it was probably weighted toward the minimal—respecting community norms without losing sight of the goal of winning ballgames. When, for example, infielder Edwin Charles attended spring training in Bradenton, where players were then housed in local hotels, his roommate was Jack Litrell, a white man.75

Similarly, when Aaron played his first year of integrated baseball (which was also his introduction to organized ball) in 1952 with Eau Claire, Wisconsin, of the Northern League, he was named the league’s Rookie of the Year. Aaron regarded this recognition as a remarkable distinction, not so much because he was “the third straight Eau Claire player to win the award— after (Bill) Bruton and (Horace) Garner—but that I was the third straight member of my race to win it.”76

Within the Waycross camp, issues with overtones of segregation most often related to sleeping accommodations. Here again, decisions tended to reflect community standards. In Aaron’s time, camp “was great . . . we slept in barracks, blacks and whites in the same long room.”77 Aaron considered this a “pretty bold thing for that day and age” and attributed it in part to the fact that “the camp was far enough from town that none of the local people paid much attention to us.”78 John Ambrose recalled that the players did everything together. “The Braves were good that way,” he mused, “they never struck me as prejudiced.”79

Such was Roland Hemond’s recollection as well. Because the Braves were the sole occupants of the camp, “the atmosphere was more relaxed than perhaps in a different kind of facility. One of our strengths was that we all got along pretty well. If the barracks were divided I doubt it was something highly structured. Frankly, I can’t recall any incidents that might contradict that view.”80

Hemond regards the Braves of the 1950s and the camp at Waycross as something special. “We were a small organization, we had great camaraderie, and we worked closely together—everybody pitched in. It was a time of real personalities,” he adds, “personalities such as Doc Gautreau and Donald Davidson, the Braves travelling secretary.”81

However, by the time Willie O’Ree was flown down from Canada in 1956 to show his stuff, the barracks had become segregated. “I was assigned to a dorm with eight to ten other ballplayers, guys from the Dominican Republic, the West Indies, and Cuba,” he wrote. “Black guys like me. I was getting the picture all too well.”82

History professor Ken Fenster of SABR’s Magnolia Chapter suggests that “this change is not surprising because of the Brown [Brown v. Board of Education] decision in 1954, [prohibiting racial discrimination in schools.] What whites were willing to countenance before Brown, integrated sleeping arrangements, eating arrangements, etc, they were not willing to accept after Brown.”83 According to Fenster, the Brown decision “undermined the social fabric of the South. . . . Southerners rejected integration and wanted to rescind earlier efforts at integration.”84

Bill Lucas’s story of barracks life suggests a darker side. An African American, he was a rookie infielder at Waycross in 1957. As recounted in his obituary, “there were old army [sic] barracks. . . . One was for blacks, the other for whites. At night, they would lock the blacks inside. All the blacks, that is, except Lucas. ‘There was no way they were going to lock me in that fire trap. No way at all,’ Bill said, and he told that to the coaches.”85

*****

Regardless what went on within camp, the organization was limited in what it could do to acclimatize nonwhite or foreign players to the broader, changing world beyond—and in the South that meant dealing with the intransigence of Jim Crow politics. At the personal level, offers of help usually came informally from caring individuals in a position to make a difference.

A case in point is Ben Geraghty, manager of the Jacksonville Braves. “In all the years I played baseball,” wrote Hank Aaron, “I never had a manager who cared more for his players or knew more about the game.”86 Jacksonville was part of the Sally League, a baseball icon revered in the Deep South. Unfortunately, the Deep South, as Willie O’Ree observed, “was not the most pleasant place for a black man to be.”87

Aaron’s writing colleague Lonnie Wheeler was even more direct. “Placing a black player in the South,” he wrote, “was dangerous, at worst, and, at best, scandalous.”88 Yet in 1953, here were the Braves sending the trio of Aaron, Mantilla, and Garner to the Sally League, in Jacksonville. And to make the experience even more frightening, they would become not only the first black players on their team but in the league as well.89 It fell to Geraghty to help them make it through.90

“Wherever we stayed,” Aaron wrote, “Ben Geraghty would always make it a point to come over and see us . . . it meant a lot to us that the manger would go out of his way to make us feel like part of the team.”91

Cito Gaston remembers that when he first signed with the Braves, ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, “there were places we had to stay in black hotels in the woods.” He adds, “Sometimes, you couldn’t get off the bus at restaurants and the white guys would bring us food.” Once, when manager Andy Pafko discovered that a particular restaurant didn’t serve blacks, says Gaston, “he told us: ‘Okay, nobody goes there.’ But some of the white guys went, anyway. Sometimes, it was hard to figure out who had your back and who was trying to put a knife into it.”92

At times there was no one to break the ice. Lew Jones was a black first baseman from Florida who attended Waycross in 1954. He began the season with Eau Claire but was transferred back to Georgia to play with the Braves’ Waycross affiliate in the Georgia- Florida League. It was not a pleasant experience. The Bears already had a first baseman, and Jones was struggling at the plate. Internet journalist Kevin T. Czerwinski wrote that “there were cities on the circuit that wouldn’t host an opponent if one of the team members was black, so Jones was left behind.”

Following a major misunderstanding with his manager, Jones just walked away and out of baseball. He became a teacher, earning a master’s degree and Ph.D. along the way. “Baseball was a stepping stone for a great life,” he says today, perhaps ambiguously.93

*****

Among Hispanic and French-speaking Quebec players in camp, the need for comfort and guidance was equally great, for not only were they strangers to a system, but they were strangers to the language. Roland Hemond recalls that several Hispanic prospects found this mix too daunting and returned home, a malaise that probably touched certain Quebecois players as well.

Don C. Trenary tells a story of a young Puerto Rican who, during a nighttime power failure, couldn’t find his way to the washroom and panicked, his unintelligible cries creating havoc in his teepee. When things eventually got sorted out, “everybody laughed heartily and went back to bed. Except for the bewildered Puerto Rican. He had thought he was caught in a riot and it took a sedative to quiet him.”94

Aaron saw firsthand how this problem affected his Jacksonville teammate Felix Mantilla. Writing about racial taunts in the Sally League, Aaron said, “We [he and Horace Garner] were both accustomed to it, being from the South, but Felix never heard that sort of thing growing up in Puerto Rico. It wasn’t as easy for him to turn the other cheek.”95

In camp, among those offering support to Hispanic players was Bill Lucas, the same man who had once removed the locks at Waycross. Following his playing days, Lucas joined the Braves’ front office, eventually working his way “through the ranks to farm director and then general manager of the team in Atlanta—the highest position of any black in organized baseball.”96

His later efforts to bridge gaps between the black and white populations in Atlanta contributed immensely to the team’s acceptance by both communities.97 Lucas was an outgoing and friendly man and when he “just saw a need” to assist the Hispanic contingent at Bravesville, he acted. He explained: “How much harder it must be for the players coming from a different country and speaking another language . . . so I just step in and help.”98

One man he helped was Rico Carty, a native of the Dominican Republic. The two men first met at Waycross in 1960, when Carty was finding the going especially tough. At the time, Lucas spoke very little Spanish, and Carty had no English, but somehow the two men connected.

Carty says that when he first landed in Waycross, he “struck out 45 times. I mean without touching the ball. And when I saw those pitchers throwing the ball right by me, the first thing on my mind was, ‘Send me home because I don’t like it over here . . . it’s too cold. My English is no good. I strike out. I’d like to be home with my mother now.’ So I went to John Mullen and said, ‘Give me my release. I can’t play the game.’”

Mullen’s answer was, “If you want to go home, give me back my money.”

Carty replied, “If you want that money, go to my country and get it.” Mullen was adamant: “If I don’t get it, you’re not leaving.”

“I felt the tears start to roll from my eyes, remembers Carty, “and I walk away.”99

Fortunately, things changed. Coaches gave him another look; his confidence improved, as did his hitting, and soon Carty was on his way to a 15-year career as an outfielder in the major leagues.

In the early years, a number of Quebec ballplayers, all standouts in local baseball circles, also found their way to Waycross. The 1953 group included four— Georges Maranda and Jean-Marc Blais, holdovers from the 1952 Quebec Braves; Jean-Guy Hébert; and Claude Sénéchal. In 1954, a solid third baseman, André Pratte, showed “plenty of finesse at the hot corner and at bat, poling the pitches to the far corners of the field.”100 Others followed. For the most part, their English skills were minimal, and so they turned to folks like Doc Gautreau or Roland Gladu and especially to Roland Hemond for direction.

Today, Hemond is among the most respected administrators in the game; SABR presents an annual award for “lifetime achievement for long-term contributions to scouting and player development” in his honor. Back then, however, he was a young man just starting out. He had joined the Braves organization with Hartford in 1951, and after a brief stopover with the Boston club, he was appointed assistant farm director. In 1961 he became the scouting and farm director for the Los Angeles Angels.

“I can still speak French,” Hemond told Bill Nowlin for the SABR Baseball Biography Project. “French helped me earlier in my career with some of the young French players, like Claude Raymond and Georges Maranda and Ron Piché. They all made it to the major leagues. They were young pitchers attending their first spring training in the Milwaukee Braves organization in Waycross, Georgia, and they couldn’t speak English. They were thrilled when I greeted them, just like some of the Latin players appreciate it when some of the baseball people speak Spanish to them when they hit the country.”101

He believes his ability to help French-speaking players made a difference because it gave a more personal feel to their first professional baseball experience.102

Waycross provided Piché’s introduction to professional baseball, and with his limited English and the strangeness of the environment, he considers it perhaps the toughest of all his baseball challenges. It was here he learned the universal truth that confronts all non-natives: that to survive, one needs to be better than his counterparts. “I was the foreigner,” Piché recalls. “I was taking the place of an American kid.”103

Quebec lads at Waycross with Billy Southworth (1953). Jean-Marc Blais, Georges Maranda, Southworth, Claude Sénéchal, Jean-Guy Hébert. Signed by the Braves in 1951, Maranda broke into the major leagues with the San Francisco Giants in 1960. (COURTESY OF DANIEL PAPILLON)

In the larger world outside the camp and beyond the team, there was little the club could do to shield its players from the prejudices surrounding them. When Willie O’Ree tried out with the Braves in 1956, the local scout who signed him put him on an airplane to Atlanta, but from there O’Ree was on his own. He knew things would be different but was still not prepared for the “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” washrooms that greeted him in the airport. “I walked into the colored one,” he wrote. “I wasn’t going to cause a revolution during my first few minutes in town.”104

O’Ree spent two weeks at Waycross. On the first Sunday, he and several dormmates left camp for an all-black Baptist Church. Following the service, they stepped into a drugstore. “There were these white guys sitting at the soda fountain,” he recalls, “and sure enough, they started in with racial remarks and name-calling. We got out of there before there was any real trouble.”105

O’Ree was released a week later, but this time there was no flight home. This time he had to make the five-day, 2,000-mile trip by bus. For the first three days, he sat in the back. “I was only allowed to use the washroom or grab a sandwich at a rest stop. As we drove farther north I moved farther up the bus. By the time we got to the Canadian border I was sitting up front.”106

Henry Aaron’s introduction to Waycross beyond the camp gates was more than unpleasant or awkward; it was almost fatal. Shortly after arriving, he took the camp bus into town for a haircut. Somehow he missed the return trip, which meant making the long walk back to the barracks. By the time he reached the outer reaches of the camp, darkness had set in. Rather than follow the road, he tried a shortcut through the woods.

“I found my way,” Aaron wrote, “and when I came out, the guard spotted me. All he saw was a black kid sneaking up on the barracks, so without further ado, he opened fire.107 Bullets were flying past my ears. I could see my career ending right there in the red clay of Waycross, Georgia—to say nothing of my life.”108

Aaron did make it safely back to his bunk, and the next day, “John Mullen gave me a Bulova watch and told me not to miss the bus anymore.”109

*****

As the decade progressed, racial tensions in Georgia escalated and harder lines emerged. Distressed by the imposition of Brown v. Board of Education, state politicians became increasingly determined to entrench segregation by means of legislation. Versions of a bill— often called the “racial bill”—designed to prohibit integration in athletic competitions110 were introduced in both 1955 and 1956, without success.

However, the iteration of the bill brought forward in 1957 had a greater shelf life, and while it too ultimately failed, its echoes resonated for some time afterward. Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin had already made clear his position. Convinced that the South stood “at Armageddon: the battle is joined,”111 he had called for a ban “on contests with other teams where the races are mixed or where segregation is not required among spectators.”112

In early 1957, the Georgia State Senate unanimously adopted Bill 44, prohibiting “all athletic matches, physical games, social functions and entertainment events” that involved blacks and whites together, and sent it to the House of Representatives for approval. Sponsored by Senator Leon Butts of Lumpkin County, the bill identified professional baseball as its primary target.113 Butts explained that “many persons in his area refused to attend Sally League games in Columbus because Negroes played with whites.” He suggested doing away with baseball altogether “if they can’t get along without Negroes.”114

The Milwaukee Journal immediately understood the implications for Waycross. Adoption of the bill, said the Journal, would mean “that the Milwaukee Braves minor league training base in Waycross, Ga. is doomed.”115 John Mullen was equally unequivocal, insisting that should the bill pass “we would transfer our Negro players from Waycross to Jacksonville, Florida, and have them train with our Wichita and Atlanta clubs. Next year we would have to relocate the training center.”

General manager John Quinn was more cautious. “We have a contract at Waycross which we must fill this year,” he said, “but we may decide to move our rookie camp operations to another state a year from now.”116

Reactions elsewhere within the baseball community were similar. One newspaper opined that the bill “would force major league teams to move their minor league practice camps out of Georgia, where there has been much activity in towns such as Thomasville, Waycross, and Albany.”117

To the scholar Charles Betthauser, the issue was fundamental to the future of America. Writing some years later with reference to the Minnesota Twins, he claimed that for the country to be considered fully integrated, “baseball’s spring training camps needed to be integrated as well. If it could not do that, then America would have to face a harsh reality: that its past-time would be forever tainted by discrimination and bigotry towards its own citizens.”118

Bill 44 never did become law. That failure led Georgia’s legislature to take a different, nastier approach: a petition to the U.S. Congress. Entitled the 1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress,119 the document underscored Georgia’s “continuing battle for segregation” and, in language harsh and unfeeling, demanded the right to discriminate against racial minorities in public schools120 and everywhere else.

*****

By 1960, the Braves and the Orioles hosted the only minor-league training camps remaining in Georgia121 In Bravesville life went on, shaken somewhat, but comforted by the camp’s self-imposed isolation. “At Waycross, you really had no way of knowing you were even in the South,” says Jim Fanning, who joined the organization in 1963. “Segregation was not a factor. To my knowledge there was never a [racial] incident of any kind at spring training.”122

Nevertheless, it was some time before sleeping arrangements determined by rank or race were eliminated. In 1960, Jordan wrote “all the coaches, scouts, managers and front office people slept in the first barrack; the white American players slept in the next three; the Spanish-speaking players in the fifth; and the black players in the sixth barrack closest to the swamp.”123

Cito Gaston’s recollection was similar. When he entered professional baseball at Waycross as a 20-year-old, “we stayed in segregated army [sic] barracks, blacks and Latinos in one building, white players in another.” By his second year, however, “the barracks were integrated.”124 Fenster suggests this was undoubtedly a consequence of the events leading up to “the passage of the Civil Rights Act.”125

If, indeed, it took until 1964 for Bravesville to be fully integrated, this put them in arrears when measured against other organizations. According to Betthauser, by 1964 “teams, such as the Yankees, were enjoying integrated eating, housing and even theatres.” 126 The Cardinals had purchased a hotel of their own “to avoid such discriminatory problems.”127 To the Braves’ credit, however, they achieved a significant first in 1961, when they fully integrated their spring ballpark in Bradenton, Florida.

Bravesville soldiered on, doing what it did best: preparing professional ball players. However, following the 1963 reorganization of baseball’s league-classification system and the elimination of the B, C, and D classes—the result of significant league and team contraction128— its days grew numbered. When the now-Atlanta Braves began centralizing all spring-training operations at West Palm Beach, they built “a new clubhouse, lockers and three extra fields for Braves’ farm clubs”129 and incorporated the five teams and 125–150 players remaining at Bravesville. And then they shut it down.130

The Waycross camp experienced a bit of a “dead cat bounce” in the spring of 1967, when the Kansas City Athletics left their minor–league center in Daytona Beach and moved in.131 But when the A’s decamped for Oakland, the minor-league operation also headed west.

And with that, sans bang and drawing barely a whimper, an epoch drew to an end.

Trembling Earth Recreational Complex, some six miles from the site of Bravesville, is the hub of youth sports in today’s Waycross. Note that the layout retains elements of Hugh Wise’s original design, a fitting reminder of a time and place mostly forgotten. Trivia alert: The word for “trembling earth” in the language of the local Creek people is Okefenokee. (COURTESY OF JOE BALLENTINE)

Today, the Waycross camp is no more. After the baseballers moved out, local authorities converted the facility to a community recreational center. A concession stand went up where the rotunda once stood, a pool was installed, and the YMCA opened a summer day camp. Roger L. Williams says “that’s where I and many of my contemporaries learned to swim.”132

When the municipality replaced the center with a more modern facility some years later, the old Braves training grounds were incorporated into an expanding Waycross Ware County Industrial Park. The wooden Air Corps buildings were torn down, although the concrete changing room still stands; fences were removed; light standards disassembled; and the diamonds, still discernable beneath the unkempt grass, were left fallow. Little remains of once thriving Bravesville—except perhaps as a footnote in time.

Nevertheless, its legacy, the fruit of its many and varied accomplishments, will continue to ripen for years yet to come—and in the most unexpected ways. To Pat Jordan, “baseball was such an experience in my life that, ten years later, I have still not shaken it, will probably never shake it. I still think of myself, not as a writer who once pitched, but as a pitcher who happens to be a writer just now.”133

When you get right down to it, Jordan’s encomium pretty well sums up the Waycross experience. It was a story of temporary denizens on a small piece of land hidden beyond the Okefenokee Swamp, young men who, over a period of almost 15 years, learned how to be baseball players—and, in so doing, brought change and deeper meaning to their lives and to the lives of others, sometimes in spite of themselves.

DANIEL PAPILLON, a founding member of the SABR Quebec Chapter in 2005, works for Les Capitales de Québec of the CANAM League (Independent) on projects related to local baseball history.

BILL YOUNG is coauthor, with Danny Gallagher, of “Remembering the Montreal Expos” (Scoop Press, 2006) and author of several articles about minor-league baseball (particularly the Provincial League) in Quebec. He served as dean in the Quebec community-college system and is a founding member of SABR’s Quebec Chapter.

Notes

1. “Georgia Racial Bill Threatens Braves’ Base at Waycross,” Milwaukee
Sentinel, 14 February 1957, 15.

2. “11 Braves’ Players Polished at Kids Camp in Six Years,” The Sporting
News, 30 March, 1955, 21.

3. “Braves Shift Mass Farm Base,” The Sporting News, 3 March 1954, 22.

4. Ibid.

5. “11 Braves’ Players Polished at Kids Camp in Six Years.”

6. Palm Beach Post, 4 October 1966.

7. www.georgiaencyclopedia.org.

8. Lyle Spatz, Bad Bill Dahlen: The Rollicking Life and Times of an Early Baseball Star (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004), 53.

9. “The Old Ball Game,” ed. Bill Hicks, The Oregonian, 19 September 1994.

10. Peter Filichia, Professional Baseball Franchises from the Abbeville Athletics to the Zanesville Indians (New York: Facts on File, 1993), 248.

11. The Waycross entry in the Class D Georgia State League in 1914 was called the Grasshoppers and later the Moguls. The following year, the league changed its name on June 15 to the Florida–Alabama–Georgia League (FLAG). It disbanded on July 17. Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (Durham, N.C.: Baseball
America, 1993).

12. www.blackbetsy.com.

13. The manager of the renamed Waycross Braves was Mike Fandozzi. He is of interest to the authors because for seven years he played second base with the Quebec Braves and was perhaps the most popular player in the history of the club.

14. St. Petersburg Times, 30 June 1954, 23.

15. Kevin T. Czerwinski, “Class D Trailblazer Turned to Teaching,” MiLB.com.

16. http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/league.cgi?code=GAFL&class=A.

17. “Braves of Future May Be Home Grown,” Milwaukee Journal, 25 April 1954, 3.

18. Not that Waycross itself was especially inhospitable. During the 1950s, according to a Waycross city profile, the town introduced a unique outreach approach to tourists. It seems that local police would stop motorists with out-of-state license plates and escort them downtown (one can only imagine the dismay that gesture must have generated). There, the friendly Waycross Welcome World Committee would greet them and offer “overnight lodging, dinner, and a trip to the swamp.” The program was eventually discontinued after the Interstate highways were built.

19. Pat Jordan, A False Spring (New York: Bantam, 1973), 112.

20. “Hank Aaron Biography,” Oregon Post Magazine Online, www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3753.html.

21. Jordan, A False Spring, 114.

22. Guy Lemieux, “A l’entrainement des Braves,” L’Événement (Québec), 1953.

23. Don C. Trenary, “Braves Will Take $100,000 Gamble on Hopefuls in Rookie Spring Camp,” Milwaukee Journal, 3 March 1957, sect. 3, 3, 6.

24. Jordan, A False Spring, 114.

25. Trenary, “Braves Will Take $100,000 Gamble.”

26. Telephone conversation with Roland Hemond, 5 February 2010.

27. Ibid.

28. Jordan, A False Spring, 123.

29. “Hugh Wise, Braves’ Scout, Built Layout on Marshland,” The Sporting News, 21 March 1955, 21.

30. Jordan, A False Spring, 113.

31. Hank Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler, I Had a Hammer: The Hank Aaron Story (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 54.

32. Telephone conversation with Roland Hemond, 5 February 2010.

33. “11 Braves’ Players Polished at Kids Camp in Six Years,” 21.

34. Jordan, A False Spring, 124.

35. Ibid., 112–37.

36. Ibid., 115–16.

37. “11 Braves’ Players Polished at Kids Camp in Six Years,” 21.

38. Louis J. Fusk, Quebec Chronicle Telegraph, 15 April 1955.

39. Telephone conversation with Roland Hemond, 5 February 2010.

40. Louis J. Fusk, Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, 15 April 1955.

41. Trenary, “Braves Will Take $100,000 Gamble.”

42. Telephone Conversation with Jim Fanning, 3 February 2010.

43. “Georgia Racial Bill Threatens Braves’ Base at Waycross,” Milwaukee Sentinel, 14 February, 1957, 15.

44. Willie O’Ree with Michael McKinley, The Autobiography of Willie O’Ree: Hockey’s Black Pioneer (Toronto: Somerville House, 2000), 41.

45. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had A Hammer, 54.

46. Telephone conversation with John Ambrose, February 3, 2010.

47. Louis J. Fusk, Quebec Chronicle Telegraph, 15 April 1955.

48. Guy Lemieux, “A l’entrainement des Braves: rapports,” Le Soleil (newspaper), April 1953.

49. St. Petersburg Times, 27 March 1957.

50. They were Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Jacksonville, Florida; McCook, Nebraska; Midland, Texas; and Wellsville, New York.

51. Trenary, “Braves Will Take $100,000 Gamble.”

52. “Time Will Tell but No. 243 May Play for Braves in ’63,” Milwaukee Journal, 29 March, 1960, 15.

53. Ibid.

54. Milwaukee Sentinel, 28 July 1957, section C, 7.

55. Lemieux, “A l’entrainement des Braves.”

56. “Vern Handrahan, P.E.I. Pitcher, Struck Out 19 Batters in Game,” in Jim Shearon, Over the Fence Is Out: The Larry Walker Story and More of Canada’s Baseball Legends (Kanata: Malin Head Press, 2009), 153.

57. Jordan, A False Spring, 125.

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid., 126.

60. “11 Braves’ Players Polished at Kids Camp in Six Years,” 21.

61. Telephone conversation with Roland Hemond, 5 February 2010.

62. Milwaukee Sentinel, 6 March 1956, 1.

63. Jordan, A False Spring, 117.

64. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 55.

65. Jordan, A False Spring, 118.

66. O’Ree with McKinley, The Autobiography of Willie O’Ree.

67. “11 Braves’ Players Polished at Kids Camp in Six Years,” 21.

68. Jordan, A False Spring, 130.

69. Sam Jethroe was traded from the Montreal Royals of the Triple-A International League to the Boston Braves in 1949 and made his National League debut in 1950. He was the first African American to wear a Boston uniform for a major-league team. The Red Sox were the last major-league team to integrate, when Pumpsie Green took the field in 1959. Larry Moffi and Jonathan Kronstadt, Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947–1959 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994).

70. Ibid.

71. Shearon, Over the Fence Is Out, 153.

72. Okefenokee mosquitoes are not like other mosquitoes. According to one long-time Waycross resident, “they are not your regular mosquitoes; they are big and black, tiger mosquitoes, and when they swarm at night you don’t want to be anywhere near the swamp. They will suck you dry and haul you off like a vampire.”

73. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 53.

74. “Braves Seek Solution to Florida Segregation,” Milwaukee Journal, 9 February 1961, section 2, 14.

75. Jordan, A False Spring, 115.

76. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 46.

77. Ibid., 50.

78. Ibid., 54.

79. Telephone conversation with John Ambrose, 3 February 2010.

80. Telephone conversation with Roland Hemond, 5 February 2010.

81. Ibid.

82. O’Ree with McKinley, The Autobiography of Willie O’Ree, 41.

83. Ken Fenster, e-mail communication with coauthors.

84. Ibid.

85. Jimmy Smothers, “Tribute to the Passing of a Friend,” Gadsden Times, 10 May 1979, 19.

86. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 56.

87. O’Ree with McKinley, The Autobiography of Willie O’Ree, 41.

88. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 50.

89. The Savannah Indians in the Sally League also began the year with two black players on their roster. Ironically, Jacksonville opened the season against Savannah in Savannah. That game drew about 5,500 fans, the largest opening-day crowd in Savannah history. Ken Fenster, e-mail communication with co-authors.

90. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 55.

91. Ibid., 64.

92. Bill Lanchow, “Slam Sports,” 7 June 2009.

93. Czerwinski, “Class D trailblazer Turned to Teaching.”

94. Trenary, “Braves Will Take $100,000 Gamble.”

95. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 58.

96. Gadsden Times, 27 May 1967, 37.

97. Telephone conversation with Jim Fanning, 3 February 2010.

98. Gadsden Times, 27 May 1967, 37.

99. Pritt Vesilind, “Rico Carty Finally Makes It Big,” Baseball Digest, August 1970, 69.

100. Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, August 1954.

101. Bill Nowlin, “Roland Hemond,” in The Baseball Biography Project, SABR. http://bioproj.sabr.org.

102. Telephone conversation with Roland Hemond, 5 February 2010.

103. Ron Piché, presentation to SABR-Quebec meeting, 2009.

104. O’Ree with McKinley, The Autobiography of Willie O’Ree, 41.

105. Ibid., 42.

106. Ibid., 42–43.

107. Emphasis added.

108. Aaron with Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 55.

109. Ibid.

110. “Racial Ban Bill in Georgia,” The Sporting News, 1 February 1956, 30.

111. Gilbert Caldwell, “Sugar Bowl 1956: A Southern Armageddon,” American Renaissance 12, no. 12 (December 2001).

112. Ibid.

113. Daily Times-News (Burlington, N.C.), 14 February 57, 1.

114. Ohio News (Lima, Ohio), 23 January 1957.

115. Milwaukee Journal, 15 February 1957.

116. “Georgia Racial Bill Threatens Braves’ Base at Waycross.”

117. Ohio News (Lima, Ohio), 23 January 1957.

118. Charles Betthauser, “ ‘Bigotry Is Bad for Business’: The Desegregation of Spring Training Camps in the Minnesota Twins Organization, 1960–1964,” thesis, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, 2007, 2, http://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/23504.

119. “1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress,” Absolute Astronomy, 8 March 1957.

120. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957_Georgia_Memorial_to_Congress.

121. “Farm Camps Geared for Mass Production,” The Sporting News, 9 March 1960, 11.

122. Telephone conversation with Jim Fanning, 3 February 2010.

123. Jordan, A False Spring, 113.

124. Bob Elliott, “Slam Sports,” 16 February 2009.

125. Ken Fenster, e-mail communication with coauthors.

126. Betthauser, “ ‘Bigotry Is Bad for Business,’ ” 23.

127. Ibid.

128. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_league_baseball#Reorganization_of_1963.

129. “Perini Certain W. Palm Beach Will Build Park,” The Sporting News, 28 March 1962, 28 March 1962, 19.

130. Palm Beach Post, 4 October 1966.

131. Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 26 November 1966, 11.

132. Telephone conversation with Roger L. Williams, 9 February 2010.

133. Jordan, A False Spring, 10.

First Base

Fred McGriff (with Atlanta 1993–97; 195 points; 35 first-place votes)

McGriff, originally a product of the Yankee farm system, made his major-league debut with the Toronto Blue Jays in 1986 and established himself as a consistent power hitter before being traded to the Padres prior to the 1991 season. Obtained from the Padres in a July 1993 trade, “Crime Dog” helped the Braves capture the NL East flag in four of the five years he was with the team (the Braves were in second place when the player strike ended the 1994 season in August). He hit four home runs in the 1995 postseason, in which Atlanta won their only World Series that fall against Cleveland. Selected to the NL All-Star team three times as a Brave (1994–96), he was named MVP of the 1994 midsummer classic after hitting a game-tying, two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning. The National League went on to win the game 8–7 in ten innings. He later played for the Devil Rays, Cubs, and Dodgers and finished his career with 493 home runs. He received just 21.5 percent of the votes cast by the baseball writers in his first year of eligibility (2010) for the Hall of Fame. Only time will tell if falling just shy of the once magical 500 homer mark will cost him a place in the hallowed hall.

Chris Chambliss (1980–86; 70; 2) won a close contest for the bench spot. Obtained in a trade with the Blue Jays in December 1979, Chambliss was a veteran presence on the Braves NL Western Division–winning team in 1982. He had a solid, if unspectacular, tenure with the Braves, hitting .272 with 80 home runs and a 110 OPS+ rating during his seven seasons with Atlanta.

Second Base

Glenn Hubbard (1978–87; 109; 15) was a fan favorite in Atlanta for years. Fans appreciated him for his defensive skill at second base and his tenacious approach to the game, which made up for his relatively small physical stature. He made his only All-Star appearance in 1983 and went 1 for 1 in the NL’s 13–3 loss at Comiskey Park. He signed with Oakland as a free agent in 1988 and played two seasons for the A’s, including his only World Series appearance in 1988. He is currently the Braves’ first-base coach, a position he has held for several seasons.

Mark Lemke (1988–97; 75; 7) narrowly won a spot on the roster as the reserve second baseman. He was another fan favorite who worked hard to maximize his limited physical gifts; his defensive skills compensated for his relatively weak bat. He is most fondly remembered for his spirited play in the 1991 World Series, when he hit .417 with three triples in the Braves’ dramatic, seven-game Series loss to the Minnesota Twins. His manager, Bobby Cox, loved his hard-nosed style of play. He played briefly with the Red Sox at the end of his career before becoming a radio broadcaster in Atlanta.

Shortstop

Rafael Furcal (2000–5; 142; 14)

In the closest balloting of all, Rafael Furcal was selected as our All-Time Atlanta Braves shortstop over Jeff Blauser, although Blauser actually received more first-place votes. Furcal was the NL Rookie of the Year in 2000. As the Braves’ lead-off hitter, he could bunt, had good speed on the bases, and could occasionally hit the long ball. His on-base percentage with the Braves was good (.348) but certainly not as high as a team would like from its leadoff hitter. As a shortstop he was prone to errors, particularly on easy plays, but he had above-average range and a rifle arm. His only All-Star appearance was in 2003. He signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a free agent following the 2005 season. A free agent again after the 2008 season, Furcal entered serious negotiations to return to the Braves, but re-signed with the Dodgers instead. That decision infuriated the Braves’ front-office personnel, who believed Furcal and his agent had reneged on a verbal acceptance of the Braves’ contract offer.

As a hitter, Jeff Blauser (1987–97; 140; 20) was better than the typical shortstop and exhibited some power, although he often frustrated fans with his inconsistency at the plate. He was never considered to be a defensive wizard, although his career fielding percentage and range factors were only slightly below league averages. He was named to the NL All-Star teams in 1993 and 1997; he also won the Silver Slugger Award at shortstop in 1997, his last season with the Braves. He signed with the Chicago Cubs as a free agent prior to the 1998 season but suffered through injuries and two nonproductive years before retiring as an active player. He managed briefly in the Braves minor-league system before leaving the game entirely.

Third Base

Larry “Chipper” Jones (1993, 1995–2010; 172; 32)

A six-time All-Star and 1999 NL MVP, Chipper Jones knocked in 100+ runs nine times, including eight straight seasons (1996–2003). He ranks as one of the best switch-hitters in the history of the game, behind only Mickey Mantle and Eddie Murray. Although injuries have affected his productivity late in his career, he managed to win the NL batting title in 2008 with a .364 average and has a .307 lifetime batting average through 2009. In the field, he is an average third baseman at best, with slightly below-average range. Many consider him to be a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame once his playing days are over.

Bob Horner (1978–86; 68; 0) finished a distant second in the third-base balloting. Joining the Braves directly out of Arizona State University in June 1978, he went .266–23–63 to win NL Rookie of the Year honors. He typically batted behind Dale Murphy in the Braves’ lineup, and his short, compact stroke was surprisingly powerful. He slugged four home runs in one game on July 6, 1986, driving in six runs, but the Braves lost the game to the Montreal Expos 11–8. Injuries curtailed his career after he spent the 1987 season in Japan and 1988 with the Cardinals.

Catcher

Javy Lopez (1992–2003; 157; 25) was the Braves’ primary catcher during most of their fourteen consecutive first-place division finishes. In his prime, when he played for the Braves, Lopez was a consistent hitter with good power (OPS = .839; OPS+ = 113). He was a three-time All-Star (1997, 1998, and 2003) and MVP of the NL Championship Series in 1996. In 2003, his last season with Atlanta, he hit .328 with 43 home runs and 109 RBI in just 129 games.

He finished out his career with the Orioles and Red Sox before retiring after the 2006 season.

Brian McCann (2005–9; 135; 7), who is the only member of the All-Time Georgia-born team to also make the All-Time Atlanta Braves All-Star roster, is one of the best hitters of the new generation of catchers. He has a .293 lifetime batting average through the 2009 season and has shown good power, leading all catchers in total home runs from 2006 through 2009. He was named to the NL All-Star team in each of his first four full seasons. He is an average fielder who has some trouble with balls in the dirt, particularly when they are off the plate. He also has been working to improve his throwing.

Outfield

Henry Aaron (1966–74; 176; 33)

Dale Murphy (1976–90; 143; 4)

Andruw Jones (1996–2007; 93; 1)

“The Hammer” Hank Aaron finished first in the outfield balloting, although he was not a unanimous selection. A handful of voters discounted Aaron’s candidacy on the grounds that his best days had passed by the time he moved with the Braves from Milwaukee to Atlanta. After breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home-run record in 1974, Aaron returned to Milwaukee for two seasons as the Brewers’ designated hitter and finished with 755 career home runs. Despite losing his home-run record to Barry Bonds in 2007, fan appreciation and respect for Hank’s accomplishments have grown in recent years due to the controversy surrounding Bonds’ suspected use of performance-enhancing drugs. Aaron was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1982, his first year of eligibility, and he now serves as a vice president in the Braves organization.

Dale Murphy won back-to-back NL MVP Awards in 1982–83 and is the all-time Atlanta Braves fan favorite. A modest, gentlemanly individual and devout Mormon, Murphy was the shining star of the franchise in the 1980s, when things were mostly bleak for the Braves. A seven-time All-Star, Murphy led the NL in homers in 1984 and 1985 and finished second in home runs in both of his MVP seasons. Murphy started out as a catcher and briefly tried first base before moving to center field in 1980, where he won five consecutive Gold Glove Awards from 1982 through 1986. He went to the Phillies in 1990 in a midseason trade and played briefly with the Rockies in 1993 before retiring just two home runs shy of 400.

Andruw Jones arrived on the scene late in the 1996 season and made a huge splash when, at the age of 19, he hit two home runs in Game One of the 1996 World Series. Andruw went on to become one of the best center fielders of his generation, winning ten consecutive NL Gold Glove Awards (1998–2007), and often was compared favorably to Willie Mays as one of the best center fielders of all time. A lean and powerful hitter with good speed when he first came up, Andruw’s home-run power quickly manifested itself, but he never developed the consistency at the plate that fans and Braves officials expected of him. After going .303–36–104 in 2000, his batting average dropped significantly in subsequent years, and he became a one-dimensional offensive threat. He signed as a free agent with the Dodgers in 2008 and suffered through an unproductive, injury-filled season. He partially redeemed himself with the Texas Rangers in 2009 and signed as a free agent with the Chicago White Sox for 2010.

David Justice (1989–96; 48; 0) and Rico Carty (1966–72; 40; 0) are the reserve outfielders. Justice had the unfortunate task of replacing a local idol—Dale Murphy—in right field after Murphy was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1990. He did so admirably. Justice was named the NL Rookie of the Year in 1990 and provided the Braves with good, but not consistently great, offensive production throughout his tenure with the team. He is best remembered for his solo home run in Game Six of the 1995 World Series, which produced the only run of the game and clinched Atlanta’s only World Championship. Carty won the NL batting title in 1970 with a .366 average but then suffered a devastating knee injury that cost him the entire 1971 season. It took two more years for him to fully recover, by which time he had moved to the American League, where he served primarily as a designated hitter.

Starting Rotation

Greg Maddux (1993–2003; 210; 30)

Phil Niekro (1966–83, 1987; 161; 5)

Tom Glavine (1987–2002, 2008; 157; 1)

John Smoltz (1988–99, 2001–8; 138; 1)

Kevin Millwood (1997–2002; 44; 0)

He was not big physically. He did not have an overpowering fastball. But Greg Maddux combined intelligence with unsurpassed consistency and pinpoint control on the mound en route to 355 wins in the major leagues (194 with the Braves). He won four consecutive Cy Young Awards (1992–95) and posted a career ERA of 3.16 (ERA+ = 132) in an age dominated by hitters and the long ball. In 1994 and 1995, he posted incredible league-leading ERAs of 1.56 and 1.63. (ERA+ = 271 and 262, respectively). He also was an excellent fielder, as witnessed by his eighteen Gold Glove Awards; a recent study (Knox 2009) ranked him as the second-best fielding pitcher of all time. Maddux began his career with the Cubs before joining the Braves in 1993; he returned to the Cubs as a free agent in 2004 and finished his career with short stints with the Dodgers and Padres, retiring after the 2008 season. He undoubtedly will be elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Phil Niekro won 318 games in the major leagues (268 with the Braves) throwing what many believe to be a “trick” pitch—the knuckleball. Few pitchers in major-league history have been able to exert such control over such a difficult pitch for so long. A five-time All-Star, Niekro won twenty games in a season three times and lost twenty games twice. Although he led the Braves to division championships in 1969 and 1982, his overall record of success is even more remarkable given the dismal state of the Braves during most of the 1970s. He also won five Gold Glove Awards. Leaving Atlanta after the 1983 season, he played briefly with the Yankees, Blue Jays, and Indians, returning to Atlanta for one game in 1987 before retiring. His relatively low career winning percentage (.537) was largely responsible for his belated induction into the Hall of Fame in 1997, four years after he first became eligible.

Tom Glavine won two Cy Young Awards with the Braves (1991 and 1998) and was the MVP of the 1995 World Series. A ten-time All-Star (eight times as a Brave), Glavine is another pitcher who was not blessed with overpowering speed but compensated for that deficiency with a very effective change-up and excellent control. His decision to sign as a free agent with the division rival Mets before the 2003 season left a bitter taste in many a Braves fan’s mouth; he pitched five seasons in New York and won his 300th career game in a Mets uniform. Glavine returned to the Braves in 2008 but suffered an arm injury in late May that resulted in his first stint ever on the disabled list and ultimately ended his season. After undergoing two surgeries, he attempted a comeback with the Braves in 2009, but the club unceremoniously released him after a minor-league rehab assignment, before he ever made it back to a major-league mound. He failed to catch on with another team and accepted a front-office position with the Braves prior to the 2010 season. A five-time 20-game winner, he won 305 games over the course of a 22-year career. He is another future Hall of Famer; many Braves fans salivate at the thought of Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux entering the Hall of Fame together.

John Smoltz was the dominating fireballer during the Braves’ stretch of 14 consecutive division championships. An eight-time All-Star, Smoltz is one of the few pitchers to make a successful transition from dominating starter to dominating closer. He won the NL Cy Young Award in 1996 as a starter and the NL Rolaids Relief Award in 2002 as a closer. He was the Braves closer for three-plus seasons (2001–4), saving 154 games. He may be the only pitcher who made a second transition back to dominating starter; he was 47–26 as a starter in his last four seasons with Atlanta. Smoltz signed with the Boston Red Sox as a free agent in 2009; he struggled during his brief stint there, however, and was released in midseason. He signed with the Cardinals for the rest of the 2009 season and pitched somewhat better, but he was not re-signed for 2010. Although he expressed a desire to pitch in 2010, he had yet to sign with a club as spring training approached. Most observers believe Smoltz will be the third Hall-of-Famer from the Braves’ pitching staff of the 1990s. If he fails to catch on with another club for 2010 he will become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration one year after Maddux and Glavine become eligible.

Kevin Millwood pitched for Atlanta for just six years (1997–2002), compiling a record of 75–46 (.620). His only appearance in an All-Star game came in 1999. He was sent to the Phillies before the 2003 season for financial reasons and later spent one year in Cleveland before moving on to the Texas Rangers. He was traded to the Baltimore Orioles prior to the 2010 season. Since leaving Atlanta, however, his overall record is just a few games over .500 (80–75).

Bullpen

Gene Garber (1978–87; 118; 13)

Mark Wohlers (1991–99; 92; 5)

Steve Bedrosian (1981–85; 68; 2)

John Rocker (1998–2001; 44; 1)

Rick Camp (1976–78, 1980–85; 40; 0)

Gene Garber earned 141 saves during his ten years (1978–87) with the Braves, including a career-high 30 saves in 1982, when the Braves won the NL West flag. He (along with Larry McWilliams and Dave Campbell) is best remembered for ending Pete Rose’s 44-game hitting streak in August 1978. He also played with Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Kansas City during his career.

Mark Wohlers was a hard-throwing right-hander with the Braves for nine seasons and served as the club’s closer from 1995 through 1997. He developed sudden, serious control problems in 1998, which limited him to 20 innings that season. He was traded to Cincinnati in April 1999 and later played one season each for the Yankees and Indians, but he never again regained his dominating form. He retired after the 2002 season.

Steve Bedrosian was primarily a relief pitcher with the Braves during his first four years in the major leagues (1981–84), including numerous appearances as the club’s closer. The Braves turned him into a starting pitcher in 1985, and he finished the season with a 7–15 record and 3.83 ERA for a woefully bad ball club. Traded to Philadelphia after the 1985 season, Bedrosian went back to the bullpen and saved 103 ballgames for the Phillies in his three-plus seasons there. He won the NL Cy Young Award in 1987 and made his only All-Star appearance that year. He returned to Atlanta in 1993 after stints in San Francisco and Minnesota and pitched for three more years, mostly in middle relief, before retiring.

John Rocker had a brief (1998–2001) but eventful tenure with the Braves. An intense, left-handed fireballer, he saved 83 games for the Braves, but his career began to unravel after the 1999 season, when he made a series of ill-advised, offensive remarks about New York City and its diverse population. Suspended for the first two weeks of the 2000 season, Rocker began to lose his effectiveness, and he was traded to the Indians in June 2001. His final major-league appearance was with Tampa Bay in 2003. A popular sport magazine later revealed that he had tested positive for human-growth hormone (HGH) in 2000.

Rick Camp played nine seasons in the major leagues, all with the Braves, and was used as both a starter and reliever. Overall, he posted a 56–49 record with a 3.37 ERA (ERA+ = 115). He is fondly remembered for hitting a home run (the only one of his career) in the bottom of the 18th inning on July 4 (actually, the early morning of July 5), 1985, which extended the game against the Mets another inning. The game ended at 3:30 a.m., when the Mets won in the 19th. He is the only retired member of this All-Atlanta Braves team who played his entire career with the Braves.

Manager

Bobby Cox (1978–81; 1990–2010; 35)

Bobby Cox, who has served two different stints as Braves manager, beat out Joe Torre2 (two first-place votes) quite easily as the All-Time Braves manager. Through 2009, Cox had led the Braves to five NL pennants (and 14 consecutive division flags) and one World Championship. Cox has a reputation as a players’ manager; he insists on a professional clubhouse and approach to the game and, at the same time, unfailingly supports his players in his dealings with the press, saving any criticism of their performance for closed-door conversations with the players themselves. Late in the 2009 season, he announced that 2010 would be his final year as Braves manager. He is a cinch for future induction into the Hall of Fame.

As I did for the All-Time Georgia-born team, I created a hypothetical lineup from the winners at each position (see accompanying table). This lineup would be Earl Weaver’s delight; it would generate plenty of runs via the long ball. Furcal is a good leadoff hitter with speed, although his on-base percentage is not as high as we might like. Chipper Jones in the second spot provides a combination of good contact and a good eye with very good power. He and Furcal also are both switch-hitters, which increases their value. Aaron, McGriff, Murphy, and Andruw Jones provide huge bats in the middle of the order, although Murphy and Jones certainly could be free swingers. Javy Lopez is a solid bat with power behind Jones. Glenn Hubbard in the eighth spot is the lineup’s only real weakness, although he is not an automatic out.

Overall, team speed is mediocre at best. Furcal is a threat to steal at the top of the lineup. Early in their careers, Dale Murphy and Andruw Jones had good speed on the bases for big men. Murphy’s stolen-base output dropped off significantly by the time he was 30, however. Andruw’s proclivity to steal a base diminished as he became heavier and turned into the one-dimensional offensive threat discussed earlier. There is little speed on the bench.

The starting outfield would be very good defensively. Murphy and Andruw Jones, in addition to being able to track down most fly balls hit their way, had excellent throwing abilities. Hank Aaron, despite winning three Gold Glove awards, never got the recognition he deserved for his defense in right-field, probably because he made everything look so easy. With the exception of the starting pitching and Hubbard at second base, the infield defense is average at best. Furcal has good range and a strong arm but is prone to make errors. Chipper Jones and McGriff are only average at the corners. Hubbard had an excellent defensive reputation. Javy Lopez is adequate, but hardly outstanding, behind the plate. The starting pitchers provide strong defense on the mound overall. Maddux, Glavine, and Niekro had excellent reputations as fielders, and John Smoltz was a good defensive player as well. Millwood is only average as a fielder, however.

The starting pitching on this team is excellent. Three pitchers—Maddux, Niekro and Glavine—won over 300 games each over the course of their careers, and Smoltz has won over 200 games. Collectively they won seven Cy Young Awards, all but one—Maddux in 1992—with the Braves. Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz were the linchpins in the Braves’ unprecedented string of division championships beginning in 1991. The bullpen is adequate if not outstanding. There are four viable options—Garber, Wohlers, Bedrosian, and Rocker—at the closer spot, and Bedrosian and Camp are available as long relievers and spot starters. One weakness in the pitching staff might be the lack of left-handers. The starting rotation and the bullpen each include only one southpaw.

Home-grown players dominate the All-Time Atlanta Braves team. Twenty of the 25 players on the team, including seven of the eight starting-position players and three of the starting pitchers, are products of the Braves’ scouting and farm system. The exceptions are McGriff, Chambliss, Maddux, Smoltz, and Garber, although Smoltz was with the Braves by the time he made his major-league debut. The other four were well established by the time they came to Atlanta.

Almost two-thirds (15) of the players on the team are players from the past 20 years, most of whom contributed significantly to the Braves’ stretch of division pennants. Chambliss, Horner, Hubbard, Murphy, Bedrosian, Camp, and Garber represent the Braves of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Only Aaron, Carty, and Niekro go back to the days when the Braves first moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta.

Magnolia SABR’s All-Time Atlanta Braves All-Star Team is impressive. It includes two current Hall of Famers (Aaron and Niekro) and a manager and at least three players (probably four) who will be admitted to the Hall in the future.3 Cox, Maddux, and Glavine are sure bets, as is Smoltz in all probability. Many people think Chipper Jones has already established his Hall of Fame credentials, and Fred McGriff will be an interesting but tough call. There is no doubt Dale Murphy would be in the Hall of Fame if the voting were limited to Atlanta fans, but he has failed to garner significant support among the BBWAA voters since he became eligible. Andruw Jones, had he not crashed and burned at the ripe old age of 31, might have been on his way to a Hall of Fame career as well. The rest of the roster provides capable support. I’m sure any manager, not to mention Bobby Cox, would be eager to lead this team into action.

TERRY W. SLOOPE has served as the Magnolia Chapter’s regional chair for more than ten years. He has been working on a biographical project about Cartersville’s Rudy York for longer than that.

Sources

Briley, Ron. “Russ Ortiz.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Cava, Peter J. “Kenny Lofton.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Evers, John L. “David Justice.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

James, Bill. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. New York: The Free Press, 2001.

Klapisch, Bob, and Pete Van Wieren. The Braves: An Illustrated History of America’s Team. Atlanta, Ga.: Turner Publishing Inc., 1995.

Knox, John A. “The 100 Top-Fielding MLB Pitchers, Circa 1900–2008.” The Baseball Research Journal 38, no. 1 (2009): 49–58.

Mondore, Scot E. “Andres Galarraga.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Olmsted, Frank J. “Deion Sanders.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

——. “Fred McGriff.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

——. “Gary Sheffield.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Pietrusza, David, Mathew Silverman, and Michael Gershman, eds. Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. Kingston, N.Y.: Total Sports Illustrated, 2000.

Riley, James A. “Andruw Jones.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

——. “Javy Lopez.” In Latino and African American Athletes Today: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. David L. Porter. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Stanton, Tom. Hank Aaron and the Home Run That Changed America. New York: William Morrow, 2004.

www.baseball-reference.com.

Notes

I will never forget the response the Braves received when they moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta. It was great. Before the Opening Day parade, the team had a caravan that went through Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Alabama. I went along as the new broadcaster and remember the unbelievable welcome. 

It wasn’t that the folks didn’t know baseball; the Atlanta Crackers had a very rich heritage for many years under Earl Mann. And the Birmingham Barons weren’t far away. There were a lot of minor-league towns in the South and a lot of mill towns where all the cotton mills had teams. Baseball was a big item, and the people were ready for big-league baseball. They welcomed us with open arms. 

I had been working for the Chicago White Sox, where I was Bob Elson’s sidekick. They told me I would get the number-one job because Elson was getting older, but I wondered how long I would have to wait, as Red Barber said, before getting into the “catbird seat.” 

I had known [Braves’ General Manager] John McHale since I worked for Davenport in the old Three-I League. In fact, he took me out to dinner on my honeymoon! I also knew Bill Bartholomay, part of the Braves ownership group and a former Chicago insurance executive who was close to the White Sox owners. But the key man for me was Jim Faszholz, whose brother pitched for the Cardinals in the ’50s. He had been an intern in the TV studio where I did the six and ten o’clock sports news during my two years in St. Louis. When he became director of broadcasting for the Braves, that helped make up my mind to go there.

The fans in Georgia already knew me; the White Sox had a big network, with more than 90 stations, including one in Atlanta. We had gone there to play an exhibition game in May 1965—the White Sox against the Milwaukee Braves. The move to Atlanta had already been announced, so it was a lame-duck year for the Braves. Before the game, they had a big luncheon, and I got a tremendous reception. McHale and Bartholomay were there and came up to me at the game that night. “You really got a great welcome here today,” they said. “Why don’t we talk about you moving south with us?” In August, Jim Faszhold followed up, and I knew I was going to go to Atlanta to be their first announcer. I had been on a year-to-year contract with the White Sox anyway. 

It was a good move for my family. They were all baseball fans, so that made it easy. Mark was ten, Patti Joy was 12, and Arlene was the team mother when Mark was in Little League. I started doing commercials and did about a thousand a year—more than all the players on the team combined. I had a clothing store, a car dealership, and a Sears store. Plus I was the voice of Delta Airlines. I did the six o’clock news before going to the ballpark. It was the first time I ever made any big-league money, so it worked out well for me. 

It also happened to be a very interesting season for the Braves. The team led the league with 207 home runs and would have been in contention with any pitching at all. Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews were still together and had a lot of firepower around them in the lineup; Rico Carty, Joe Torre, Gene Oliver, Mack Jones, and Felipe Alou hit a lot of home runs. 

Tony Cloninger, a Southern boy from Iron Station, North Carolina, had won 24 games for the lame-duck Milwaukee Braves in 1965 and was supposed to be the team’s number-one pitcher. He had earned the right to pitch the first game in Atlanta. Unfortunately for Cloninger, another Deep South native, Bob Veale, was announced as the Opening Night pitcher for Pittsburgh. Veale was a big lefty who was tough, so Cloninger knew he probably wasn’t going to get many runs of support. Sure enough, Veale was on his game. Torre hit a home run but the Pirates hit two [including the game-winner by Willie Stargell] and won, 3–2. It was a cold, rainy night, and Cloninger pitched the whole game—13 innings. He was never quite the same after that. Bobby Bragan, an Alabama native, had moved to Atlanta with the team and knew there was a lot of Southern pride involved in the outcome. But Pittsburgh won the opener. 

I participated in the opening ceremony and all the things that go with the glitter of a great grand opening, welcoming big-league baseball to the Deep South. It was exciting to be part of everything new—a new city for the Braves and the fact that other teams were coming there for the first time. 

I had been there several times at the end of spring training, when teams barnstormed north from Florida. The White Sox used to get on a train and stop in Savannah, Macon, and Atlanta en route to play their Triple-A team in Indianapolis. 

Even though the Braves were not a really great ballclub, the fans came out. They increased the team’s attendance by about a million more than they had drawn the year before. The fans knew Eddie Mathews, who had actually played for the Atlanta Crackers in Ponce de Leon Park. One of the great minor-league ballparks, it featured a magnolia tree in fair territory. Luke Appling started there, and Chuck Tanner played there. A lot of big-league ballplayers went through Atlanta on their way up. 

So did Ernie Harwell, who later became a Hall of Fame announcer. He was working for Earl Mann when the Dodgers came through town. Branch Rickey heard him and asked what it would take to sign him for Brooklyn. Earl Mann wound up getting a player for him: a catcher named Cliff Dapper. 

By coming south with the Braves, Mathews became the only man to play for the same team in three different cities. He had broken into the majors when the team was still based in Boston. In 1966, however, he was definitely on the downside of a great career. In fact, Bobby Bragan started platooning him, benching him against lefthanded pitchers. When Bobby got fired in the middle of the season, Billy Hitchcock put Mathews back into the lineup against lefties. In his very first game under Hitchcock, Mathews hit a home run to help Denny Lemaster beat Sandy Koufax, 2–1. That gave the ballclub a good feeling, and it responded to the new manager, posting a 33–18 mark.1

Later that year, Paul Richards traded Mathews to Houston—a situation that did not make Paul many friends. Eddie found out when a reporter called to get his reaction. And then the team spelled his name wrong in the official press release. That was no way to treat a Hall of Famer.

During their tenure as teammates (1954–66), Mathews and Aaron hit 863 home runs—a number not reached by Ruth and Gehrig, Mays and McCovey, Maris and Mantle, or any other tandem. I had known about them when they also had Joe Adcock and Wes Covington in the lineup up in Milwaukee. If you were a home-run hitter in that lineup, you always had a chance to get a ball to hit. There was always somebody behind you, so they couldn’t pitch around you. 

Aaron had been a pretty good home-run hitter before but had hit a lot of opposite-field home runs in Milwaukee. When he got to Atlanta and saw Fulton County Stadium, he became almost a dead-pull hitter. The ball just flew. But I don’t think anybody thought Hank could challenge Babe Ruth’s lifetime record until 1972, when he announced he was going for it. 

It’s funny how things work out sometimes; when the Braves announced they were moving from Milwaukee to Atlanta, Aaron said he didn’t want to go. But he adjusted pretty quickly. He was from Mobile, so his parents were able to come to a lot of games. His brother Tommie was in the organization too. And the welcome he received helped to change his attitude, even though he got some vicious hate mail when he went after Ruth’s record a few years later. 

Rico Carty, who often batted behind Henry that first year, was the best two-strike hitter I ever saw. He was even better than Aaron. If Rico got two strikes against him, you could bet in Vegas that the next pitch was going to go to right field. He could hit with power to all fields. And he hit some long home runs. It was always an adventure, though, when Rico was playing left field. Maybe that’s why Bobby Bragan tried to make him a catcher. Because he was such a good hitter, nobody noticed he wasn’t a very good catcher.#endnote2

Bragan loved versatility. Felipe Alou moved to first base from the outfield, Woody Woodward played second and short, and Mike de la Hoz played third, second, and short. Felipe Alou might have been the Player of the Year that first season in Atlanta. We always knew he was a doggone good ballplayer, but he put it all together that year. He hit 31 home runs, a career high for him, but he did it as the leadoff man because there were so many other sluggers on the team. He was a very popular player with a great smile, and he was always accessible. 

Despite all the sluggers on the team, the best singlegame performance came from a pitcher. On July 3, Tony Cloninger became the first National Leaguer—position player or pitcher—to hit two grand slams in one game. He also drove in another run for a nine-RBI performance when the Braves beat the Giants, 17–3. Nobody thought Tony would hit two—even when he came up a second time with the bases loaded. He was a good hitter, but we were hoping for a single or a fly ball. 

Not too long after that, the team decided to change managers. Bobby Bragan had lost the club, and John McHale felt it was time to make a change. So they hired a former Auburn star, Billy Hitchcock, to keep the manager’s seat in the Alabama family. He settled the ballclub down. He had been a pretty good ballplayer in his time, and the players felt he was the right guy for the job. The fact that he started Mathews in that first game against the left-handed Koufax gave the team a good feeling. 

Hitchcock’s biggest contribution came the next year when he brought Phil Niekro out of the bullpen as an emergency starter when Ken Johnson took ill in Philadelphia. Phil stayed in the rotation for the rest of his baseball life. I remember being at the booster luncheon when Hitchcock made the announcement. We couldn’t believe it, since Phil had made no starts in 1966 and had only two saves and a 4–3 record. 

When we first arrived in Atlanta, people kept asking me about the team’s chances. I thought to myself that they weren’t going anywhere unless they got some pitching help. We had been a little hopeful going into a new town, especially with Cloninger as the bell cow of the rotation, but who knew he would drop from 24 wins to 14? Three years later, when they got into the playoffs against the Mets, they had Ron Reed and Pat Jarvis to pair with Niekro. In 1966, Reed had just come out of the NBA, and Niekro was in the bullpen. They didn’t have a catcher who could handle his knuckleball until they traded Gene Oliver for Bob Uecker in ’67. 

Our pitching was pretty thin in ’66. We had a 40-year-old rookie named Chi Chi Olivo, an over-thehill closer named Ted Abernathy, and a former Rookie of the Year (Don Schwall) who never amounted to much after his first season. Ken Johnson turned out to be the ace with 14 wins, the same as Cloninger, but the only other pitcher in double digits was Lemaster (11). Wade Blasingame, a 16-game winner in ’65, hurt his arm, and Pat Jarvis and Dick Kelley were just coming up. Clay Carroll, the late reliever, led the team with 11 saves. 

As for me, I worked hard in 1966, too. I shared the broadcast booth with Larry Munson and Ernie Johnson. We went from booth to booth, changing in the middle innings, so I was doing both radio and TV. It was an interesting transition, to say the least. You could put it all under one banner—the newness kept the enthusiasm going. 

More importantly, bringing major-league baseball to the Deep South did wonders for race relations. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it.3 The advent of the Atlanta Braves also opened doors for other cities, including Dallas, Miami, and Tampa Bay. It expanded the game and created legions of new fans. I felt honored to be part of it. 

DAN SCHLOSSBERG, a former sportswriter for the Associated Press is author or coauthor of 35 books, including this year’s “The 300 Club: Have We Seen the Last of Baseball’s 300-Game Winners?” (Ascend Books, 2010). He is managing editor of the syndicated BallTalk Radio and the founder and president emeritus of the North American Travel Journalists Association.

Notes

1 That’s a .647 winning percentage; the winning percentage under Bragan had been .468.

2 Carty caught 17 games in 1966.

3 Just a few years before baseball came to town, segregation and discrimination had been almost universal, not just in Georgia but throughout the Southern states. The KKK had rallies not far from Atlanta. And let’s not forget that Hank Aaron had been reluctant to move from Milwaukee to Atlanta. Fortunately, it turned out to be a move made in baseball heaven for both him and the ballclub. The Braves had other black stars, including Felipe Alou, Rico Carty, and Mack Jones, who also helped prove that color didn’t matter.

Vin Scully began broadcasting Dodgers games in 1950, and Jaime Jarrin became the team’s Spanish play-by-play broadcaster in 1959. They have been together as the bilingual voices of the Dodgers for 51 years and are still going strong. Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner were Mets broadcasters together for 42 years, beginning in 1962. Murphy retired after the 2003 season. In 1960, Ernie Harwell and George Kell began a string of 36 years together as broadcasters for the Detroit Tigers. Harwell was primarily the radio voice; Kell worked the television side. And the radio team of Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall had a 32-year run as the voices of the Cincinnati Reds before Nuxhall retired. 

I didn’t know much about Skip when I first met him besides that he was Harry Caray’s son and the play-by-play voice of the Atlanta Hawks. But over the years, we got to know each other like brothers. So let me begin this remembrance with a brief biography. 

Skip grew up in suburban St. Louis and was a high school football star—an all-city lineman for Webster Groves High School. A torn-up knee forced him to forgo football when he entered the University of Missouri as a journalism major in the mid-1950s. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a sportscaster. 

He had done some broadcast work while still in high school, hosting a weekly radio show about high-school sports on KMOX in St. Louis. At Missouri, he worked part-time for a local Columbia station and helped his father on Missouri football broadcasts. After graduating from college, he took minor league baseball broadcasting jobs with the Tulsa Oilers and the Atlanta Crackers. His first opportunity to broadcast for a major-league team came in the mid-1960s,when he was named the play-by-play announcer for the NBA’s St. Louis Hawks. 

When the Hawks moved to Atlanta in 1968, Skip moved with them. He told me that he made that move partly to get out from under his father’s shadow. “St. Louis was always going to be ‘Dad’s town,’” he said. “I needed to go somewhere to establish my own identity.” That’s how Skip landed in Atlanta, and millions of Braves fans nationwide are glad he did. 

Skip’s irreverent style and sarcastic wit quickly became a trademark of the Braves broadcasts beginning in 1976. There was really no other broadcast style quite like it. When we received an audition tape from an aspiring broadcaster, we would often note how the announcer seemed to be trying to sound like Vin Scully or Al Michaels. But we never received a tape from someone trying to sound like Skip. No one could. Skip’s philosophy of broadcasting was short and simple. “Tell the truth . . . have some fun.” And that’s exactly how Skip proceeded. He was brutally honest. If he didn’t think an umpire got a call right, he’d say so. If he didn’t like it that the start of a game was being delayed to accommodate a television network, he’d let you know. When the Braves were playing poorly, he wouldn’t sugarcoat it. His honesty even extended to sponsors. 

One year, the Coca-Cola Company decided to unveil a new product, Vanilla Coke, on one of our telecasts. During the game, a sample of the new beverage was brought into the broadcast booth. Skip and Joe Simpson were supposed to try it and then pass along their recommendation to the viewer. After they had each taken a sip, Joe asked, “Well, Skip, what do you think?” “I don’t like it,” Skip replied, “too sweet.” After that exchange, few sponsors dared risk introducing a new product on our telecasts ever again. 

Skip had one of the quickest wits I’ve ever been around. Some of his lines became legendary to Braves followers: 

• Late in a blowout game: “If you promise to patronize our sponsors, you have my permission to walk the dog.” 
• Almost every game: “We go to the top of another fifth.” 
• If the situation warranted: “The bases are loaded and I sorta wish I was too.” 

And we can’t forget: “That foul ball was caught by a fan from Hahira, Georgia.” It was amazing how many times he was asked how he knew where every fan was from. 

He also loved to stir things up. In the late 1970s, the Atlanta Constitution ran a story about the lack of fan interest in the Braves. No one was attending the games, they said: no one was listening, no one was watching, and nobody cared. Skip took exception to the story and several times during the broadcast invited viewers and listeners to call the newspaper and tell them, “I’m watching the Braves.” He then gave out the newspaper’s telephone number. The response overloaded the Constitution’s switchboard. It took nearly a day to get it back to normal. Skip loved it. 

Sometimes his mischief extended beyond the ballpark. One night after a game, we were having a drink at our hotel in Houston. The bartender was an attractive girl from Czechoslovakia who told us she was going to take her U.S.-citizenship test the next day. “What sort of questions do they ask on a test like that?” Skip asked. She handed him a booklet covering the test’s subject matter, and Skip began quizzing her on some of the information she was supposed to know. How many states? How many senators? When he got to “Name the first five presidents of the United States,” she hit a roadblock. She knew Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, but she couldn’t think of the fourth. Skip gave her the name. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Says so right here,” Skip answered, holding up the booklet. 

For the rest of the night, Skip continued to go back to that question to make sure the young lady had it right. As we were about to leave, he asked her one final time. And she had the list down perfectly, just as Skip had taught her: “George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, ERNIE JOHNSON, and James Monroe.” “Always glad to help,” Skip said to me as we walked out. 

But behind this playful side of Skip was a dedicated broadcaster—although he would never have been a SABR member. While he understood the importance of the records, the numbers, and the history of the game, these were not his main areas of interest. All of that research was best left for someone else. 

What mattered to Skip was the game being played that day. What strategies would the managers use? How was the defense positioned? Who was playing well? And who wasn’t? Who was left on the bench? Each game was a story in itself, but he always remembered to connect it to the bigger picture as well. 

The game was always the important part of the day. All of the pre- and postgame shows that we broadcasters are obligated to do were a nuisance to him. 

We broadcast more than 5,000 games together, and every day was a new adventure. Whether the team was winning or losing, we always found something to laugh about. Our wives got to know each other. Our families became close. Our grandchildren began arriving just one day apart in 1997. We had a friendship that extended well beyond the broadcast booth.

It was tough watching this fun-loving partner of mine suffer from the myriad of health problems that came along in the last few years of his life. He reduced his travel schedule in 2007 and quit traveling with the team altogether in 2008. Fans noticed nights when he was a little slow or his speech was a little slurry, but that was primarily because of all the medications he was taking. Skip’s mind stayed sharp, but sometimes his body wasn’t willing to cooperate. 

When he died on August 3, 2008, it was like I’d lost a brother. And every Braves fan felt like they had lost a good friend. Skip was a tremendous broadcaster, one who eschewed the need for a signature call. “You can’t call every play the same way,” he would tell you, “and you can’t end every game with the same words. Every home run is different. Every game is different.” 

So Skip never had a trademark home-run call like Mel Allen’s “Going, going, gone!” And you never heard him end a game with a catchphrase like Marty Brennaman’s “This one belongs to the Reds” or Jack Buck’s “That’s a winner.” All you ever heard was Skip being Skip. Honest, witty, sometimes grumpy, always entertaining Skip.

And when those rare, unforgettable moments arose, he always delivered. Remember October 14, 1992, Game 7 of the NLCS versus Pittsburgh: 

“BRAVES WIN, BRAVES WIN, BRAVES WIN, BRAVES WIN . . . BRAVES WIN!” 

Who needs a catchphrase when those simple words, delivered by Skip, said it all?

PETE VAN WIEREN served 33 years as a sportscaster for the Atlanta Braves. He is author of “Of Mikes and Men: A Lifetime of Braves Baseball” (Triumph Books, 2010) and coauthor, with Bob Klapisch, of “The Braves: An Illustrated History of America’s Team” (Turner, 1995).

Upon the conclusion of the bitter and protracted legal proceedings that culminated in the Braves’ move from the upper Midwest to the South, further geographical expansion by the major leagues became the dominant storyline. Yet, if fans and reporters (or the owners of other major-league franchises) had been able to foresee in 1966 that an aggressive visionary named Ted Turner would assume control of the Atlanta franchise within a decade and transform the face of baseball broadcasting, the effects of a forthcoming revolution in the nature of electronic communications would have undoubtedly received much more attention from the media. 

The path that led to the Braves’ move from Milwaukee to Atlanta had been long and unpleasant for anyone with emotional or financial interests in the outcome of that highly contentious process. The Braves had enjoyed several successful years in Wisconsin after their arrival from Boston, but by 1962 the total attendance for home games had dropped to 766,921 (from a record 2,215,404 during the World Championship year of 1957), and the team was sold by Lou Perini to a business syndicate led by the Illinois insurance broker William Bartholomay. Local government officials in Milwaukee immediately grew suspicious that the syndicate planned to move the franchise to Atlanta in the near future, and the relationship between the team’s management and those officials was set on a hostile and irreconcilable course. Team president John McHale threatened to sue Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors chairman Eugene Grobschmidt for slander in 1964, and after the plans to move to Atlanta had been confirmed, Milwaukee city officials attempted to retain the franchise by filing lawsuits alleging antitrust violations, disregard of stadium lease agreements, and refusal to negotiate with prospective local buyers of the franchise. When the Braves ownership countersued, the county board rejected a cash settlement of $500,000 that would have allowed the franchise to move immediately to the Peach State. 

The 1965 baseball season was consequently played in Milwaukee under extremely unfavorable circumstances, as the team’s management and local government officials engaged in vigorous public disputes and courtroom struggles. Attendance continued to plummet; only 555,584 fans passed through the turnstiles during that tumultuous year. Needing to make a firm decision regarding the location of the franchise for the 1966 season, the club’s ownership opted to move to Atlanta and its inviting television market. However, there were still legal questions relating to antitrust issues to be resolved. The trial began on March 1, 1966, and, on the evening of April 13, Circuit Judge Elmer W. Roller determined that the Braves and the National League had violated Wisconsin’s antitrust statutes. He ordered that one of two steps be taken to rectify the injustice that had occurred: (1) Milwaukee was to be granted a franchise through expansion in 1967, or (2) the Braves were to be returned to Milwaukee by May 18, 1966. 

Acting upon an appeal filed by National League attorney Bowie Kuhn, the Wisconsin Supreme Court set aside Judge Roller’s decision and ruled that professional baseball had the authority to control franchise locations. The matter was then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which, on December 12, 1966, by a 4–3 vote with two abstentions, refused to review the decision of the state court. The Braves were finally in Atlanta legitimately. 

In certain ways, the fortunes of the Braves after their move to Atlanta echoed their earlier move to Milwaukee. From 1953 to 1960, the club had prospered in Wisconsin. Attendance rose to phenomenal levels, then declined as the team surrendered its consistent top-tier status and fell to the middle of the pack within the National League. Similarly, the number of paying customers in Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium was impressive starting from the team’s arrival in 1966 until the early 1970s, and the significant declines in attendance could be traced in large measure to poor performance on the field. The latter development would be especially significant because it created an opportunity for Ted Turner to gain fame, prominence within the baseball establishment, and substantial revenue by executing a series of masterful and risky business decisions. As he did so, he would prove—to the consternation of many baseball insiders but to the great entertainment of his admirers—to be every bit as difficult to corral as a Phil Niekro knuckleball.

Turner, who in the 1960s had transformed his family’s billboard company from a venture on the brink of extinction into a multimillion-dollar success, had purchased a low-powered and independent Atlanta UHF television station (WJRJ) in 1970, believing that he could revive it by adding spice to its existing programming menu of old movies and television reruns. After changing the call letters to WTCG—an acronym for Turner Communications Group—the bold entrepreneur was forced to play the role of a twentieth-century David against three Goliaths (the affiliates of ABC, CBS, and NBC) in a challenging business environment. Rather than using a mere stone as a weapon, Turner plucked the broadcasting rights to Braves games away from the Atlanta-based media giant Cox Enterprises and its prominent network affiliate WSB-TV by offering the club’s cash-strapped ownership group $600,000 for the right to broadcast sixty games for each of the following five years, beginning in 1974. Because Turner’s proposal tripled both the amount of the payment for broadcasting rights and the number of games to be telecast, his terms were accepted, even though at least one hundred thousand people in the Atlanta television market were unable to receive the relatively weak signal of Turner’s station. 

With this agreement in place, a heavily leveraged Turner was nevertheless able to employ microwave transmission and relays to send WTCG’s signal to cable-television operators across the Southeast, thereby creating a Braves television network, giving regional exposure to the team. Then, in 1975, he leased a channel on RCA’s SATCOM II communications satellite for the purpose of transmitting WTCG’s signal to cabletelevision stations throughout the United States. As the nation’s first “superstation,” the once anemic WTCG now reached approximately two million cable-television subscribers by 1976. Having fulfilled its owner’s expectation for growth, confidently proclaimed by its call letters, the station was rechristened WTBS (for Turner Broadcasting System) in 1979. 

However, while these positive and exciting communications developments were occurring, the baseball situation in Atlanta was deteriorating. Bartholomay and his partners with the Chicago-based AtlantaLaSalle Corporation were preparing to sell the Braves franchise to an interested party in either Toronto or Atlanta. Of course, given the serious complications that had been encountered a decade before in relocating the franchise, a sale to a buyer with loyalty to the Georgia city was clearly preferable to a transaction with a Canadian individual or group. 

Because the possible sale of the Braves threatened the security of a major programming component of his broadcasting enterprise, Turner had a strong incentive to purchase the baseball club. He was, however, daunted by the sale price of $10 million that had been proposed by Dan Donohue, the team’s president. After confessing to Donohue that he wished to buy the Braves but that he could not afford to pay cash, Turner offered a down payment of one million dollars and promised to pay the remaining nine—with interest—over a nine year period. The ownership group promptly accepted Turner’s terms, and the flashy 37-year-old’s purchase of the franchise was completed in January 1976. 

When Turner ascended to the dual status of television executive and major-league franchise owner, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and other powerful people within major-league baseball became more determined than ever to limit the ability of cable operators to broadcast games. The threat to other major- and minor-league markets, which had been feared in many quarters as early as 1979, was a concern among club owners and general managers. For example, the Cincinnati Reds contended that 423 baseball games appeared on television in the Cincinnati market in 1986 but that only 11 percent of those contests were telecast by the Reds’ network. 

Commissioner Kuhn consequently testified frequently at hearings before the U.S. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission in the late 1970s and early 1980s, arguing that regulations applying to the cable industry permitted inappropriate competition to baseball clubs across the country. Turner often appeared in those same formal settings to defend vigorously his rights as a businessman. 

Soon after Peter Ueberroth succeeded Kuhn as baseball’s commissioner in October 1984, he served notice that he would also address problems that were attributed to the emergence of superstations. Among those perceived problems were the saturation of most television markets with telecasts of certain teams, the infringement of territorial rights of individual clubs that were not affiliated with superstations, a reduction in the number of viewers for telecasts by the National Broadcasting Company and the American Broadcasting Company, significant increases in player salaries made possible by free-agent signings subsidized by revenue from cable television, and competitive imbalance potentially or actually resulting from those signings. On January 24, 1985, Ueberroth was able to convince Turner and the New York Yankees (whose games were televised on cable outlet WPIX) to pay an annual “superstation tax” into a central fund in amounts generally proportional to (1) the number of homes beyond their local markets receiving the signal from their respective cable channels and (2) the number of baseball games televised. In accordance with complicated and varying methods of calculation used to determine amounts to be paid by each club, Turner agreed to pay a total of $30 million over a five-year period, and the Yankees agreed to pay at the same rate, although the actual dollar amount was less because WPIX’s coverage reached fewer households outside the New York market. Then, between late January and May 22, 1985, the owners of three other clubs (the New York Mets, Texas Rangers, and Chicago Cubs) also agreed to deals under varying terms. Although the value of baseball broadcasting was certainly much more substantial to Turner and the owners of the other cable enterprises than the amounts paid into the fund, the “taxes” involved would likely increase annually as the reach of the superstations expanded. Furthermore, it was by no means insignificant that, as Ueberroth attempted to resolve a very persistent issue among major-league owners, revenue sharing had been used at an executive level within organized baseball to counter the effects of a new technology. 

The serious issues relating to the appropriate use of cable television that were forcefully presented by Ted Turner to two baseball commissioners and all major-league owners in the 1970s and 1980s were reminiscent of the concerns of previous generations of owners, concerns inspired by earlier stages of the communication industry’s evolution. Several owners had expressed grave concerns in the 1930s about the adverse effects upon attendance and concession sales that might result from the broadcasting of games on radio, and similar reservations were voiced in the early 1950s when games were initially televised in and near cities with major-league teams. But while the issues of basic over-the-air broadcasting and televising were controversial, the general environment surrounding cable television and the technical aspects involved in the cable process made the issues pushed to the forefront by Turner more complex and revolutionary, because the signal of his superstation—unlike the signals of local radio and television stations—invaded territories and advertising markets far removed from Atlanta. The financial stakes were also larger: a 13-game winning streak by the Braves at the beginning of the 1982 season, skilled players and exciting teams in the years that immediately followed, and well-liked announcers (especially Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson, and Pete Van Wieren) made WTBS an extremely popular commodity. Within five years of the landmark 1982 season, which concluded with a loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Championship Series, the number of subscribers to WTBS had doubled from 20 million to 40 million. 

The unique story of Ted Turner, his baseball team, and WTBS would continue for years. The Braves were promoted as “America’s Team,” and people in rural areas of the nation became familiar with the daily performances of rather ordinary players such as Glenn Hubbard and Bruce Benedict. When after three decades the close association of the baseball franchise and the cablevision entity came to an end in 2007, the club that Turner bought to serve essentially as extended television programming was estimated by Forbes to be worth slightly less than $400 million! 

To what extent did Turner’s superstation increase the value of his team? An endless debate could be waged over this question, but there can be no doubt that the widespread dissemination of the WTBS signal fostered drastic changes in the habits of television viewers in the final quarter of the twentieth century and, in the process, significantly enhanced the attractiveness of Braves merchandise and tickets. Furthermore, it is absolutely certain that neither professional baseball nor sports broadcasting has been the same since the creative Turner obtained the right to televise Atlanta baseball from his relatively obscure UHF station. 

FRANCIS KINLAW, a frequent contributor to SABR convention journals, has written extensively about baseball, football, and college basketball.

Sources

Ken Auletta. Media Man: Ted Turner’s Improbable Empire. New York: Norton, 2004). 

Baseball-Almanac.com. 

Mark Bowman. “Historic Braves-TBS Partnership to End.” MLB.com (26 August 2007). 

Broadcasting (3 April 1972, 20 May 1974, 30 June 1975). 

Bob Buege. The Milwaukee Braves: A Baseball Eulogy. Milwaukee: Douglas American Sports Publications, 1988. 

Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella. Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball Teams. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. 

Mike Fish. “Atlanta Businessman Might Buy Braves.” ESPN.com (15 March 2006). 

Gary Gillette (co-chair, Business of Baseball Committee, SABR). 24-7 Baseball, LLC. 

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