When Minor League Baseball Almost Went Bust, produced by SABR’s Minor Leagues Committee and published in 2025, looks at the highs and lows of an era that was driven by new technology and the emergence of alternate ways for baseball fans to spend their leisure time. It was also a time when I discovered minor-league baseball and The Sporting News.

Interest in minor-league baseball was extremely high in the post-World War II United States and Canada. It seemed as if every town wanted to get into the game. In 1949 the minor leagues reached their zenith with 59 leagues, 448 teams, and an estimated 10,000 players. Just 14 years later, in 1963, minor-league baseball had shrunken to 18 leagues and 129 teams, and was on life support until rescued by the major leagues.

This book includes articles about the many leagues and teams that didn’t survive this era,and shows the grit of the owners and fans in these towns and cities who fought to keep baseball alive in their communities. Ultimately, most of the teams succumbed to forces beyond their control. The book captures some historic baseball events such as Jackie Robinson breaking the minor-league color barrier, joining the Montreal Royals in 1946, and the adoption of the major leagues’ 1963 Player Development Contract, which stabilized minor-league baseball.

A major issue for many minor-league teams in the late 1940s and 1950s was a lack of major-league support. In 1949 just 235 teams were affiliated with major-league organizations, while 213 were independently operated. Sufficient financing was always an issue for the independent teams, which had to recruit players. Their primary source of income came from selling their top prospects to major-league organizations. Very few independent teams ever made money. They survived year-to-year based on their attendance and the willingness of their local governments to support them, especially with the rental of their baseball facilities.

By the early 1950s minor-league baseball began a rapid decline. Clubs not affiliated with a major-league organization were the first to go out of business. Factors that fueled this decline included the growth of television and the affordability of home air conditioners, giving fans more incentives to stay at home and watch TV rather than go to games. Recreational sports like golf, tennis, and bowling offered additional outlets for fans to spend their free time. In addition, the steady growth of professional and college football, professional basketball, Little League baseball, and horse racing drew people away from ballparks.

By 1963 major-league owners realized that something had to be done to stem the downward spiral of the minor leagues. The minor-league system was too important to player development. The major leagues responded with the Player Development Contract, which gave the minors a new life as it began to cover minor-league affiliates’ operating expenses. This opened a new era for minor-league baseball that remains true to today.

It has been said that “it takes a village” to get the job done. And this book, which took almost three years to accomplish, wouldn’t have happened without the dedicated efforts of the 39 people who served as authors, editors, and fact-checkers. We came together as a team to complete the project.

This is the first publication of SABR’s Minor Leagues Research Committee in over 25 years and, hopefully, will the first of a series in the years ahead.

GEORGE PAWLUSH grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. In his career, he spent 43 years as a senior public-relations practitioner in health care and higher education institutions, first at his alma mater, Wilkes University, and then at Geisinger-Wyoming Valley Medical Center and other hospitals in Connecticut, including Yale-New Haven Hospital. Pawlush has published two books – Dawn and Dusk of the Colonial League, a post-World War II minor-league circuit that operated in Connecticut and New York, and Zeus and His Boys, about coach Rollie Schmidt and his Wilkes College football teams of the
late 1960s that produced a 32-game winning streak. Pawlush, who joined SABR in 1992, is chairman of the Minor Leagues Committee.

• Read more: Find all essays from When Minor League Baseball Almost Went Bust in the SABR Research Collection online
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John Galbreath, left, and his fellow Pittsburgh Pirate coowners, Frank McKinney and Thomas Johnson, shown in 1959, were adamant that minor-league baseball had to be stabilized. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

 

Prior to the complete overhaul in 2020, the biggest shakeup of the minor-league baseball structure came in 1963 with the introduction of the Player Development Plan. Considering the downward trend in the popularity and sustainability of minor-league teams throughout the 1950s, Commissioner Ford Frick assembled a committee of baseball minds to address the issue.1 What came from it was a lifeline thrown to minor-league baseball in the form of the Player Development Plan. The plan called for each major-league team to essentially take over much of the financial burden of five minor-league teams in order to save minor-league baseball.2 The minor leagues and the major leagues have had a longstanding relationship with one another and play an important role in each other’s success.

In 1901 the consensus across all the minor leagues was the necessity to unify and protect themselves from the feuding major leagues. The brand-new American League was attempting to join the major-league ranks, and was doing so by stealing players, including some of the game’s biggest stars, from the National League, using the promise of higher salaries and a more professional style of play.3 Minor-league owners, who had protection with the National League through the National Agreement, now feared that this feud would negatively affect them. On September 5, 1901, the Leland Hotel in Chicago hosted a meeting of minor-league presidents and executives who decided to unify as one solid organization, independent from the majors.4 The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (NAPBL) was thus born and provided a solid backing and voice for minor-league baseball.

The first major restructuring took effect for the 1946 season. Minor-league teams and leagues struggled throughout the first half of the 1940s due to World War II, but the end of the war in the summer of 1945 signaled a huge return for baseball as part of renewed nationwide interest in recreation and getting back to a sense of normalcy. In 1946 the AAA classification became the new highest level of the minors, with the A1 level essentially being renamed AA. Classes A through E remained in effect as well.7 Minor-league baseball reached its peak of popularity and success in 1949, with 59 leagues and 448 teams.8 But the 1950s proved to be a different story for minor-league baseball, with a sharp decline in attendance, leading to the rapid disappearance of teams and leagues. Many contributing factors are cited in the blame game for this sudden decline, including the introduction of television, home air-conditioning, the Korean War, and the improvement in transportation that saw the creation of the interstate highway system, as well as a shift from city life to the suburbs.

However, perhaps the simplest reason for the decline is that minor-league baseball arguably expanded too aggressively to be sustained. When soldiers returned home, league and team owners cashed in on the available players and the desire of fans to get out to the ballpark. This led to a plethora of teams in small towns that ultimately were unable to support a club for the long haul. As attendance across the minor-league landscape declined and operating costs rose, many teams and leagues simply folded, sometimes in midseason. Knowing the significance of the minors in the success of major-league baseball, Commissioner Frick knew that action needed to be taken to right the ship and get the minor leagues back on track. A Player Development Fund of up to $1 million was approved in 1959 as a temporary solution to saving the minor leagues.9 The majors sent payments to minor-league teams, ranging from $2,000 in the lower levels up to $20,000 in AAA, to help subsidize rising operating costs.10 Although this was a very welcome financial addition, it was clear that it wouldn’t be enough. Commissioner Frick then created what became known as the Major-Minor League Committee to find a more permanent solution.11

Often referred to as the “Save the Minors Committee,” it was led by Pittsburgh Pirates owner John Galbreath and consisted of three representatives from the American League, three from the National League, and six from the minor leagues, with one representative from each of the six class designations (AAA to D).12 This group of 12 men with decades of experience in baseball was given the task of stabilizing the minors with a comprehensive plan that would be mutually beneficial to all parties.

Some of the key points the committee addressed included creating a steady flow of prospects from the minors to the majors; a financial-stability blueprint for the minors to keep teams and leagues from folding; and an overall balanced and organized system of teams and leagues.

After more than a year of working on viable solutions for this overhaul of the minor-league structure, the Major-Minor League Committee met on Friday, April 20, 1962, in Chicago to finalize a report for Commissioner Frick. What became known as the Player Development Plan called for the complete overhaul of the minor-league baseball structure.13 The specifics still needed to be ironed out, but the initial outline of the plan was as follows: There would be a guaranteed operation of at least 100 minor-league clubs (five franchises for each of the 20 National League and American League teams). Classifications would be merged into AAA, AA, and A; this would eliminate B, C, D, and E classifications; the breakdowns would be 20 AAA teams, 20 AA teams, and 60 A teams. Further, each major-league team would be responsible for taking a larger financial burden of their minor-league affiliates, providing a full roster and paying most of their salaries. Minor-league owners would be responsible for the ballpark rental and some other financial responsibilities. Lastly, Player Development Fund payments to minor-league teams would end.14

 

 

Commissioner Frick gave his full support to the broad general plan presented to him by the committee and called a special meeting of major-league owners to share the details.15 The Player Development Plan was approved unanimously and was to begin with the 1963 season, with the full plan set to be in effect by 1965.16 The Major-Minor League Committee would continue to fine-tune the plan and fill in more specific detail for a smooth rollout. More than four months after the approval of the general plan, these specific details were added and scheduled to be voted on at the coming 1962 Winter Meetings:17

The Player Development Plan had the support from NAPBL President George Trautman, but it still needed to be voted on at the Minor League Winter Meetings, which were being held November 26 to 29 in Rochester, New York. Although some minor-league officials voiced concerns regarding this plan as a permanent solution, it was seen as at least a step in the right direction and a necessity to successfully operate a sound minor-league system. However, there were still a few details to be worked out before an approval vote, one of which was that the plan allowed for 20 AAA teams (one for each major-league team), but in 1962 there had been 22 AAA teams split between the three leagues. The Vancouver Mounties of the Pacific Coast League were dropped due to their inability to reach an agreement with a major-league club, leaving the league with seven teams. Meanwhile, the Omaha Dodgers folded, leaving the American Association with only five teams.

The PCL was ready to absorb Denver to round out to eight clubs, but that would leave the American Association with only four teams. From there, a plan emerged to combine the four-team American Association with the International League to create a 12-team league with two divisions. However, the International League rejected the proposal. With each minor league responsible for the expenses of travel, it would be unfavorable for either the PCL or International League to take on more than eight clubs and broaden the distance of travel.

Another plan thrown into discussion was shifting Salt Lake City to the American Association to give them and the Pacific Coast League each six teams. The PCL was understandably unwilling to lose one of its most successful franchises and downsize itself, so it was back to the drawing board. It took the full four days of the Winter Meetings, but with the promise of financial help from the major leagues to cover added transportation costs, the American Association was dissolved and the PCL and International League each became a 10-team league. From the American Association, the PCL took on Denver, Oklahoma City, and Dallas/Fort Worth, while the International League acquired Indianapolis and Little Rock. 18

With the AAA problem solved, the Minor League Winter Meetings concluded with approval of the Player Development Plan. The next and final step was getting a green light from the major leagues at their Winter Meetings, and since the plan had been initiated by the major leagues, it was no surprise that it passed unanimously. After many months of working out all the details for a restructured minor-league system, the Player Development Plan was finally enacted. It came at the expense of the American Association, but Commissioner Frick appointed its president, Jim Burris, to oversee the Player Development Program to ensure a smooth rollout for the 1963 season. A new chapter of baseball was opened.

The Player Development Plan of 1963 provided much-needed relief to the minors’ outdated structure. Although there was still some doubt and opposition to the plan, ultimately it proved to be an overall success. Minor-league teams now had full rosters of players, due to either signing a working Player Development Contract with a major-league team or, in a few cases, being owned outright by the big-league club. The restructuring organized the system and created a clear path for major-league teams to move their prospects up the ladder through the minors. Possibly the most important result of the Player Development Plan was the stability it brought to minor-league team owners and minor-league baseball as a whole. The big-league “parents” had now taken on a greater portion of the financial burden from their minor-league affiliates, which resulted in the success of leagues and clubs finishing out full seasons and avoiding crippling financial losses.

There were a couple leagues in organized baseball to note that fell outside the Player Development Plan. The Appalachian League, which had been a short-season Class D league, was given the new distinction of a Rookie League. The Appalachian League primarily only included players who had no prior experience in affiliated baseball and played a shorter 70-game season that began in late June. All teams in the Appalachian League were operated by major league clubs. Additionally, the Mexican League was granted admission to the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues in 1955 as a Class AA league and continued that designation through the 1963 restructuring. Although the Mexican League retained the Class AA status, it was not included as part of the Player Development Plan.

The Player Development Plan created a system that, with some fine-tuning over the years, remained in place until 2020 as a staple in the relationship between minor- and major-league baseball. The minors survived the dark days of low interest and sparse attendance and came out on the other side thriving, going on to unprecedented attendance numbers and popularity. Minor- and major-league baseball go hand in hand and are integral to each other’s success. Their relationship over the years has played an important role for communities across the country, connecting generations of families to America’s greatest game.

MICHAEL RINEHART JR. is a parks and recreation professional by day and an avid baseball historian by night. He was born into a family of Red Sox fans and pledges their allegiance for life but grew up in Arizona and adopted the Diamondbacks as another team to root for. He now lives in California. It was the minor-league scene that ignited his passion for the history of America’s pastime. His main areas of expertise and focus of historical research are on the California League and nineteenth-century baseball in California. Michael has been a member of SABR since 2015 and enjoys spending time with his wife, daughter, and two cats.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article was edited by Marshall Adesman and fact-checked by Mike Huber.

 

SOURCES

In addition to those listed in the Notes, information was provided by the following:

Cooper, J.J. “A Complete Working History of the Working Agreement Between Major and Minor Leagues,” https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/a-com-plete-history-of-the-working-agreement-between-major-and-minor-leagues/, October 18, 2019.

Kahan, Oscar. “22 Clubs, Only 20 Tieups, Add Up to Headache,” The Sporting News, December 8, 1962: 2.

Miller, Norman (United Press International). “Distressed American Association Gives Minors a Splitting Headache,” Passaic (New Jersey) Herald-News, November 29, 1962.

 

NOTES

1 “‘Save the Minors’ Committee Named; Cronin Included,” Boston Globe, August 3, 1956: 7.

2 Clifford Kachline, “Majors Pick Up $10 Million Tab in Minors,” The Sporting News, December 15, 1962: 5.

3 David Hill, “MLB History: American League Organizes as Major League,” Call to the Pen, January 28, 2017, found online at https://calltothepen.com/2017/o1/28/mlb-history-american-league-organizes-major-league/.

4 “Minor Leagues in Union: Baseball Organizations Combine for Protection,” Chicago Tribune, September 6, 1901: 6.

5 “Minor League Meeting Closed,” Buffalo Courier, October 27, 1901: 28.

6 Baseball-Reference.com, https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/league.cgi. “Major, Minor League Doings in a Nutshell,” Chicago Tribune, December 3, 1937: 27.

7 John Cronin, “Truth in the Minor League Class Restructure: The Case for the Reclassification of the Minors,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2013, found online at https://sabr.org/journal/article/truth-in-the-minor-league-class-structure-the-case-for-the-reclassification-of-the-minors/.

8 Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, 2nd edition (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, 1997), 347.

9 “Fund Set for Minor Program,” Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer, May 22, 1959: 19.

10 “Majors Vote In New Bonus Rule,” St. Lucie (Florida) News Tribune, December 3, 1961: 15.

11 “Frick to Call Player Development Meet,” Oakland Tribune, April 24, 1962: 41.

12 “Majors Earmark Million $ in ‘Save Minor’ Program,” New York Daily News, October 31, 1962: 42. The 12 members of the Major-Minor League Committee were John Galbreath (owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, chairman of the major-league half), Buzzie Bavasi (general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, key figure in integrating the minor leagues in the late 1940s), Chub Feeney (general manager of the San Francisco Giants, went on to be president of the National League, 1970-1986), George Medinger (vice president of the Cleveland Indians), Dick O’Connell (executive vice president of the Boston Red Sox), Ed Doherty (general manager of the Washington Senators, president of the American Association, 1953-1960), George Sisler Jr. (general manager of the Rochester Red Wings of the Class AAA International League, chairman of minor-league half), Dick Butler (president of the Class-AA Texas League), Sam Smith (president of the Class-A South Atlantic League), Jim Fleishman (president of the Class-B Northwest League), Herman White (president of the Class-C Northern League), and Herb Smith (president of the St. Petersburg Saints of the Class-D Florida State League).

13 “Frick to Call Player Development Meet.”

14 “Minor Loop Plan Okayed,” Tampa Tribune, May 19, 1962: 21.

15 Jack Hand (Associated Press), “Majors Vote Changes for Minor Loops,” Bangor (Maine) Daily News, May 19, 1962: 13.

16 Associated Press, “Three Class Minors Seen,” Fort Worth (Texas) StarTelegram, May 19, 1962: 16.

17 Chris Jones, “1962 Winter Meetings: Addition by Subtraction,” in Steve Weingarten and Bill Nowlin, eds., Baseball’s Business: The Winter Meetings: 1958-2016, Vol. 2, (SABR, 2017), found online at https://sabr.org/journal/article/1962-winter-meetings-addition-by-subtraction/.

18 “Leagues Absorb Old Association,” Edmonton (Alberta) Journal, December i, 1962: 43.

Many amusement parks had seen their fortunes intertwined with minor-league baseball, and both faced hard times in the post-World War II era. The amusement parks that had survived to the 1950s— many of which started life at the turn of the century as “trolley parks,” built at the end of a streetcar line— were starting to look old and shabby. Many were in urban areas, which made them not only landlocked for future development, but prone to decline as the cities themselves were being abandoned by residents for the suburbs.

New technologies also contributed to the decline of amusement parks and minor-league baseball in the postwar era. The trolley lines that transported revelers to the parks had gradually been replaced, first by buses and then by personal automobiles. And radio and television in postwar America were major factors that led to minor-league baseball’s decline, only halting after the market was effectively restructured with the 1963 Professional Baseball Agreement.

The 1950s were difficult times for both minor-league baseball and amusement parks. The New England League folded after the 1949 season, the Colonial League did the same after the 1950 season, and the Mid-Atlantic League, with franchises in Canton and Youngstown that played home games at amusement parks, folded after the 1951 season. Throughout the decade, leagues faltered and in some instances disappeared, victims of suburbanization, TV and radio broadcasts of the major leagues, and the minor leagues’ own over-extension.

Concurrently, many of the trolley parks that had survived the Great Depression fell victim to suburbanization and urban unrest in the 1950s and 1960s. Chicago’s Riverview Park, Palisades Park in New Jersey, and Euclid Beach in Cleveland all closed.

By the 1960s, many urban amusement parks and independent minor-league teams faced the same unappealing choice of fate: closure or conglomeration.

The rise of professional baseball in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with the rise of the amusement park.

In the era of horse-drawn streetcars, there might be a picnic ground at the end of the line, maybe including a bandstand and a dance pavilion. The parks were built to encourage ridership during off-peak hours.

But as those lines became electrified, many of the companies paid a flat rate for power, and started setting up large amusement parks at the end of the line, most of which included similar features like rides, games, and a dance hall.1

These trolley parks also in many instances had a field. When they hosted company picnics or gatherings of fraternal organizations, the fields might host a pickup baseball game. (In the Great Lakes region, it was not uncommon for a lot of factories to have an amateur baseball team— or an amateur basketball team; there are still NBA teams today that can trace their roots back to amateur company teams in the days before World War II.) The fields would also host barnstorming teams, both of major leaguers and of Negro League players, and in some instances, become the home field for independent minor-league teams.

The history of baseball at amusement parks goes back almost as far as the game itself. In 1885 John B. Day owned two teams under the auspices of the Metropolitan Exhibition Company. The Gothams (later Giants) were the more popular team, and after that season Day sold off the other team that called the Polo Grounds home. The new owner of the Metropolitans was Erastus Wiman, who moved the team to Staten Island’s St. George Grounds. Wiman had visions of a grand resort near a ferry/railroad terminal, but they did not come to pass, and the Metropolitans played at St. George Grounds for two years before being bought and merged with the Brooklyn Greys.

Because most trolley lines ended at the outskirts of a city or even outside the city limits, they were sometimes used by major-league teams to skirt local blue laws prohibiting Sunday baseball. In fact, the Cleveland Spiders played two games at Geauga Lake, a lakeside recreation area, in 1888,2 and Euclid Beach Park, an amusement park, in 1898.3 League Park— built for the Spiders but eventually home to the Indians as well— was built at its location at Lexington Avenue and East 66th Street because it was a trolley stop for a line owned by brothers Frank and Stanley Robison, who also owned the team.

Sometimes, the rides were added to the ballpark. Chris Von Der Ahe, owner of the St. Louis Brown Stockings, installed a shoot-the-chutes water slide in his ballpark, known variously as Sportsman’s Park, League Park, and finally Robison Field after Von Der Ahe went bankrupt and the team was bought by the Robison brothers.4

In 1903 the Los Angeles Angels made their debut in the new Pacific Coast League. Their initial home was Chutes Park, a trolley park that included a variety of rides as well as a ballfield and a wooden grandstand. Chutes Park was dismantled in 1910, and the Angels moved on to Washington Park.5 In 1906 a lake was filled in near Ponce de Leon amusement park, owned by the Georgia Railway and Electric Company, and a new wooden grandstand was built for the Atlanta Crackers, a minor-league team also owned by the railroad. Ponce de Leon Park was the Crackers’ home for the remainder of their existence, until the Braves relocated to Atlanta from Milwaukee in 1966. The amusement park had disappeared decades earlier.6

In 1913 the Federal League began play as a minor league. (The next year it signed some American and National League players in an ultimately quixotic effort to compete with the two leagues.) The first game in Federal League history occurred in Cleveland, as the Green Sox, managed by Cy Young, hosted the Covington Blue Sox at Luna Park, an amusement park on Cleveland’s East Side.7 Both the team and the park were owned by asphalt magnate M.F. “Fred” Bramley.8 He’d bought the park in 1910 from its founder, Frederick Ingersoll, and bought into the league to use a team as one more entertainment option for visitors.

By 1910, every city with a population of at least 20,000 had some kind of trolley park.9 But the seeds for their demise were already growing. That year, a total of 458,377 autos were on the road, a far cry from the 8,000 a decade earlier. Once viewed as playthings for the rich, autos had become consumer goods for working people, thanks largely to Henry Ford. Ford’s Model T also made the internal combustion engine the dominant power plant for autos, which to that point had also been powered by electric batteries or in some cases by steam boilers.10 The availability of autos and the ease and availability of gasoline suddenly made electric trolleys archaic, supplanted by gas-powered buses (which didn’t have to stay on tracks and could change routes more nimbly) or personal cars.

In the 1930s, as lower-level minor-league teams shifted, many found quick places to put down roots at local amusement parks. After the Mid-Atlantic League team in Beckley, West Virginia, folded following the 1935 season, league operators drummed up enough interest in Canton, Ohio, which had minor-league teams off and on since the turn of the century. The newly renamed Terriers would begin play in Lakeside Park, a ballpark at Meyers Lake amusement park. Lakeside had been used in the early twentieth century as a minor-league venue but was more prominent in the preceding 15 years as a home for pro football, most notably Jim Thorpe and the Canton Bulldogs.11 And three years later, when the Johnstown Mid-Atlantic team moved to Youngstown, it found a welcome home at Idora Park, the amusement park on the city’s southern outskirts, already a frequent stop for barnstorming teams.12 Although both the Canton and Youngstown teams were able to start play reasonably quickly, both ballparks needed a lot of renovation.

Minor-league baseball reached its zenith in the postwar era, with 448 teams in 59 leagues in 1949, drawing 39.8 million fans.13 But within a decade, it had all collapsed. By 1960 there were just 22 minor leagues operating.14 Changes were attributable to major-league expansion and broadcasting games on television and radio.

But even years after many trolley parks met their demise (in 2010, it was estimated that just 11 trolley parks were still operating15), minor-league baseball and amusement parks remain inextricably linked. In 1997 a central Pennsylvania group began pursuit of a minor-league baseball team. A year later, ground was broken for a new ballpark, and in 1999 the Altoona Curve began play in the Eastern League, in a ballpark in the shadow of the Skyliner, a roller coaster at Lakemont Park, one of the few remaining trolley parks.16

In 1998 New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani lured a pair of New York-Penn League teams to the city, to begin play three years later. One, a Yankees affiliate named for its parent club, played on Staten Island. The other, a Mets affiliate, returned pro baseball to Brooklyn for the first time in 40 years. It was named by its fans, in honor of the Cyclone, a landmark roller coaster at Coney Island.

Its new field was nearby— on the former site of Steeplechase Park, at one point the most popular amusement park on Coney Island.17

VINCE GUERRIERI is a journalist and author in the Cleveland area. He’s the secretary/treasurer of the Jack Graney SABR Chapter, and has contributed to the SABR BioProject, the SABR Games Project, and several SABR anthologies. He’s written about baseball history for a variety of publications, including Ohio Magazine, Cleveland Magazine, Smithsonian, and Defector. He can be reached at vaguerrieri@gmail.com or found on Twitter @vinceguerrieri.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article was edited by Cathy Kreyche and fact-checked by Mike Huber.

 

NOTES

1 It should be noted that trolleys indirectly provided the namesake for a major-league team: The name Dodgers was shortened from “Trolley Dodgers,” from a task that residents in Brooklyn had to do in the late 1800. Further reading: https://gizmodo.com/the-la-dodgers-got-their-name-from-brooklyns-deadly-str-1687077696.

2 John Thorn, “Neutral Sites,” Our Game, July 1, 2016. Found online at https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/neutral-sites-6ecd92b9e375.

3 David Fleitz, Rowdy Patsy Tebeau and the Cleveland Spiders (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2017), 157.

4 The Robisons also owned the Spiders, but were more limited by Blue Laws in Cleveland. They took players from their Cleveland team to St. Louis, leaving the Spiders to put together the worst record in major-league history, 20-134 in 1899. The team was contracted by the National League after the season.

5 Ron Selter, “The Pacific Coast League Ballparks of Los Angeles,” The National Pastime, 2011. Found online at https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-pacific-coast-league-ballparks-of-los-angeles/.

6 Andrew Mearns, “Atlanta’s First Famous Baseball Park Was Also Home to a Giant Magnolia Tree in Center Field,” Cut4, May 23, 2018. Found online at https://www.mlb.com/cut4/history-of-ponce-de-leon-park-in-atlanta-c277672886.

7 At one point, there were dozens of amusement parks name Luna Park, many started or operated by Frederick Ingersoll. Luna Park’s stadium also hosted early NFL teams. “Luna Park: A Sliver of Coney Island in Cleveland,” Cleveland Historical. https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/259.

8 Robert Wiggins, The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2009), 9.

9 Katie Thornton, “How the Amusement Park Conquered America,” Bloomberg CityLab, July 9, 2022. Found online at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-07-09/the-american-amusement-park-s-wild-ride.

10 The main advantage electric cars had was that unlike the Model T, they didn’t have to be cranked to start the engine. But the electric starter was patented in 1911 and introduced the next year, ensuring that the internal combustion engine was here to stay.

11 William E. Akin, TheMiddle-Atlantic League, 1925-1952: A Baseball History (Jefferson, North Carolina: MacFarland & Company, 2015), 125.

12 Akin, 178.

13 https://milb.com/milb/history/presidents.jsp?mc=_trautman. Some sources have attendance over 41 million that season.

14 Steve Treder, “Dig the 1950s,” The Hardball Times. Found online at https://tht.fangraphs.com/dig_the_1950s/.

15 Beth J. Harpaz, “TrolleyPparks: Survivors of an Earlier Era,” NBCNews. com. Found online at https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna38349493.

16 Mark Leberfinger, “Baseball Stadium Project Commences,” Tyrone (Pennsylvania) Daily Herald, March 9, 1998:

17 Nicholas Dawidoff, “The House That Rudy Built,” New York Times Magazine. August 12, 2001: 40.

Advertisement for August 19, 1963 exhibition game featuring the New York Yankees against the International League All-Stars at Buffalo ’s War Memorial Stadium. (Buffalo Courier-Express, August 19, 1963)

 

Fans in Montreal and Toronto watched major-league baseball teams years before the Expos or Blue Jays came to town. Same thing with Milwaukee and the Braves or Brewers. For that matter, fans in relatively obscure outposts like Cranston, Rhode Island; Gloversville, New York; and Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, also got to see big leaguers take the field between 1946 and 1963.

The institution that made it happen was the in-season exhibition game. In the twenty-first century, these games are as extinct as the emery ball. But in decades past, major-league teams used offdays during the regular season to play minor-league teams, college teams, and even semipro and company-sponsored outfits. This article will focus exclusively on matchups between major-and minor-league teams—although the faceoffs between the St. Louis Browns and the Belleville Kiwanis, or the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Waterbury Brasscos, are worth exploring in some other setting.1

In-season exhibitions were played long before 1946—researchers have identified them as far back as 1871—and they continued long after 1963. Still, they merit discussion in a minor-league history of these years. They were a familiar aspect of the baseball calendar and a distinctive experience for fans outside major-league cities. Despite their noncompetitive nature, they were also, from time to time, the settings for interesting or noteworthy gameplay.

BY THE NUMBERS

Between 1946 and 1963, major-and minor-league teams faced off during the major-league season roughly 228 times, for an average of about 13 times per season.2 The majority of these games involved a single minor-league team—the Albany (New York) Senators, the Denver Bears, the Toronto Maple Leafs—though it also became common later in the period for big-league teams to face minor-league all-star squads.

Research led by SABR’s Walter LeConte, which identified 5,000 in-season exhibition games of all types from 1871 to 2012, found that the International League accounted for 467 of them—about 9 percent of the total,3 more than any other minor league. Since the IL traditionally operated at the highest level of the minors,4 this confirms that big-league teams were most likely to face off against their top minor-league affiliate. The Eastern League, which most frequently operated at the second-highest level of the minors,5 ranks second on LeConte’s list with 314 in-season exhibitions.

Did the minor leaguers—in theory, the inferior team in every matchup—ever win? A scan through the list of games indicates that the minor leaguers won about 70 games in this period, or about 30 percent of the time.

Of course, the big leaguers didn’t always play at 100 percent intensity, since no one wanted to get hurt in a game that didn’t count. It happened from time to time anyway. Milwaukee Braves catcher Paul Burris suffered a broken and dislocated elbow in a home-plate collision during a June 22, 1953, exhibition game against the Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Bears of the Class-C Northern League. Burris, who had last played a regular-season game on June 4, never appeared again in the big leagues, although he continued to play in the minors through the 1956 season.6

It was also typical for major-league managers to remove their starters after a few innings, sometimes with bitter results. In July 1948, disappointed Montreal Royals fans booed and threw seat cushions when the parent Brooklyn Dodgers pulled local hero Jackie Robinson out of the game after his first-inning at-bat.7 Robinson had been a Montreal fan favorite two seasons earlier, when he hit .349 for the pennant-and playoff-winning Royals of the Triple-A International League en route to integrating the White major leagues.

Major-league managers often used the games as warm-ups for players coming off injury, and as informal tryouts for minor-league players. To cite one example: On June 27, 1955, Baltimore Orioles manager Paul Richards started the injured Joe Coleman against the York (Pennsylvania) White Roses of the Class-B Piedmont League. When Coleman was ineffective, Richards replaced him with Jack Moreland, a semi-pro player on tryout, and then with Dick Fitzgerald, a barely 20-year-old rookie formerly of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. The White Roses stomped their parent club 13-1.8

Moreland got his picture in a local newspaper, wearing an Orioles uniform and talking to Richards on the bench, but that seems to have been the highlight of his career. A search of Baseball-Reference in December 2022 found no record that he ever played in a regular-season professional game. Fitzgerald pitched in six pro seasons, including three at Triple A, but never reached the majors.

Even if the big-leaguers were easing up on the throttle, the occasional minor-league victory provided a thrill and a source of pride to fans in those communities. The language used by a sportswriter in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1948 captures the sentiment: “The Scranton Miners turned giant killers at the Stadium last night where they defeated the Boston Red Sox, 2-1, before a near record attendance of 12,165. … Nine Boston scribes accompanied the team here and were mighty impressed with the local setup.”9

Fourteen seasons later, a sportswriter in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, sounded the same tone after the local Grays beat the Philadelphia Phillies: “The superb five-hit pitching of Ray Culp, Richie Allen’s three-run homer and the 12 hits the Grays collected off three Philadelphia pitchers presented Eastern League class at its best against the big leaguers last night at Bowman Field.”10

 

Wisconsin Rapids advertisement. (Wisconsin Daily Tribune, July 26, 1948)

 

THE WHYS AND WHENS

Major-league teams played in-season exhibitions for a number of reasons. Some have faded as the sport has changed, while others remain familiar today.

Big-league schedules included open days—often, but not always, on Mondays—that could be used for exhibitions.11 The All-Star break also offered an opportunity to squeeze in an exhibition or two, though the top star or stars from the major-league team might be absent. On July 10, 1951, while Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Richie Ashburn was making a dazzling catch at the All-Star Game at Detroit’s Briggs Stadium, his Phillies teammates were in Schenectady, New York, dropping a 2-1 decision to the Schenectady Blue Jays, their affiliate in the Class-A Eastern League.12

Unless rain kept the attendance down, exhibitions in minor-league towns served as major money-makers for the home team, often drawing the largest crowds of the season. Sometimes they were the largest in local history, as on July 9, 1951, when a city-record crowd of 10,077 in Ottawa, Ontario, watched the eventual NL champion New York Giants lose 4-1 to their Ottawa farmhands.13 Willie Mays and the Giants drew a crowd of 21,832 five years later to brand-new Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota; the Giants’ game against the Minneapolis Millers was, at the time, the largest baseball crowd in the history of the Upper Midwest.14

Rochester (New York) Community Baseball, the community ownership group of the Triple-A Red Wings, might have lost money in 1959 if not for an exhibition with the parent St. Louis Cardinals. According to the local newspaper, the Red Wings cleared more than $4,000 from the exhibition while posting a year-end profit of $3,935.15 The May 4 game drew 7,850 fans, and gate receipts were split evenly between the teams, with the Cardinals paying all their own expenses.16

The division of gate receipts mentioned above confirms that big-league teams benefited from exhibitions as well, collecting money from what otherwise would have been open dates. Another example: The New York Yankees collected $17,040 from a net gate of $42,601 in August 1963, when a local record crowd of 28,524 at Buffalo, New York’s War Memorial Stadium watched the IL All-Stars shut out the Yanks on two hits, 5-0.17

Big-league players, in contrast, are not known to have gained financially from in-season exhibitions on a regular basis. Players’ contracts typically required them to appear in games at the club’s discretion from Opening Day until the season’s end, in exchange for regular salary payments. Players received side benefits from in-season exhibitions—such as being wined and dined at banquets or receiving gifts, like the pair of pants and electric razor given to Washington Senators pitcher Dick Welteroth when he returned to Bridgeport, Connecticut, for a 1948 exhibition.18 But there’s no indication that they regularly received extra money for playing.19

(Exceptions existed. Connie Mack reportedly divided the Philadelphia A’s share of money from two July 1948 exhibition games among the team’s players. It was a generous act, and was greeted with incredulity by the newspaper that reported it.20)

The games also offered public-relations opportunities for the major-league team. Players mingled with starstruck fans and signed autographs—or risked a public chastising, like the tut-tutting Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford got from the Binghamton, New York, newspaper in June 1954 after making themselves scarce for signatures. “The Yankees may be world champions but to a lot of young Triple Cities fans they are far from that,” a scribe wrote.21

Sometimes, a pregame home-run-hitting contest gave the big leaguers a chance to flex their muscles in a risk-free setting for the minor-league fans. In June 1950 Scranton fans got to see Ted Williams and former local hero Walt Dropo tee off before the game—though their lighter-hitting teammates Bobby Doerr and Al Zarilla pulled off an upset tie for victory in the home-run derby.22

All the while, managers and front-office officials from the big-league team ingratiated themselves with the locals—thanking the fans for their support and praising the local facilities. Even the New York Giants’ vinegary Leo Durocher was on his best behavior during his team’s visit to Ottawa in 1951. “Yesterday, Durocher was the polished operator, the goodwill ambassador … affable, all smiles, co-operative, dapper,” one scribe in the Canadian capital reported.23

While it might seem surprising, the major-and minor-league teams that played these exhibitions were not always affiliated. As rumors of Milwaukee’s major-league future circulated in the summer of 1952, the minor-league Brewers hosted the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Browns, Chicago White Sox, and their parent Boston Braves—who made Milwaukee a major-league city for real when they moved there the following season.

Three years earlier, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Interstate League farm team in Allentown, Pennsylvania, hosted the Philadelphia Phillies, giving Allentown fans a chance to watch area native Curt Simmons pitch for the Phillies. That same season, the Montreal Royals hosted the New York Giants, crosstown rivals of their parent Dodgers, and beat them, 4-2.

And in 1947, the unaffiliated Waterbury (Connecticut) Timers of the Class-B Colonial League lured the New York Yankees and Phillies to town, both while traveling to series in Boston. The eventual World Series champion Yankees played in the rain to about 9,000 fans; the Phillies, to fewer than 1,000.24

Some exhibitions were about much more than making money for the home team or scoring public-relations points with local fans. One such game occurred in Rome, New York—population: about 40,000—on July 9, 1946, during that season’s All-Star break.25 Billy Southworth, son of the Boston Braves’ manager of the same name, had starred in the outfield for the Rome Colonels in 1939 before entering the military during World War II. After serving in Europe, the younger Southworth was killed in a plane crash in Flushing, New York, in February 1945. With the elder Southworth in attendance, the Colonels dedicated monuments to his son and two other former players who died in military service. The Braves then defeated the Colonels 15-7.26

Exhibition games have also sometimes raised money for worthy charitable causes. This noble tradition continued on June 26, 1952, when the Cincinnati Reds and the IL’s Buffalo Bisons—a Detroit Tigers farm club—played an exhibition to raise money for former St. Louis Cardinals infielder George “Specs” Toporcer. Toporcer, who had settled not far away in Rochester, was struggling with encroaching blindness; the game raised nearly $13,000 for his medical expenses.27 The Reds happened to be traveling from New York to Chicago that day, in between series with the Giants and Cubs.

As major-league baseball expanded in the early 1960s, the new franchises joined the exhibition parade. The Los Angeles Angels, second Washington Senators, Houston Colt .45s, and New York Mets all played minor-league exhibitions in their earliest years.

The Angels lost their first two ventures into the arena, being dropped 3-0 by the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1961 and 6-5 by a team of Pacific Coast League all-stars in 1962. Similarly, the Colts—in the telling of one Texas newspaper—got “drygulched” by a team of all-stars from the Double-A Texas League in 1963, losing 7-3.28 Outfielder Jim Beauchamp, then a Cardinals farmhand, hit a ninth-inning grand slam off Houston’s Dick Drott to win it. Perhaps not coincidentally, Houston traded for Beauchamp in the subsequent offseason, and he was a Colt in 1964.

 

Former St. Louis Cardinals player George “Specs” Toporcer was the beneficiary of proceeds to cover his medical expenses, from an exhibition game in Buffalo on June 26, 1952. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

 

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

In-season exhibitions involving major-and minor-league teams remained a part of professional baseball’s fabric after 1963. In fact, they became slightly more frequent for a time. LeConte’s research indicates that 169 exhibition games of this type were played from 1964 through 1974, or more than 15 per season.29

Several factors-some already at work in 1963—combined to bring an end to major-minor exhibitions, as well as other types of in-season exhibitions.

The longer 162-game season adopted in 1962 left fewer open dates on the schedule. Collectivebargaining agreements between players and owners also limited the number of in-season exhibitions to three in 1970, then reduced it to two for most teams in 1977.30 For context, the 1952 St. Louis Browns played five in-season exhibitions against minor-league teams—plus a sixth against a company-sponsored team—while the ‘53 Browns and 1952 Boston Braves each played four. 31

As relationships between major-league players and owners—once lopsided in favor of the latter—became more balanced, the players began to stick up for their preference of days off and rest during the season. And, as teams invested more money in players, they became more wary of injuries, and less willing to trot out their starters in Ottawa or Tacoma for games that didn’t count.

The list of in-season exhibitions compiled by LeConte—which runs through 2013—includes four major-minor games in 2001, three in 2002, and none since. The final major-minor matchup on the list took place in Buffalo on July 1, 2002, when the Indians beat the Bisons 4-3 in seven innings. The game fulfilled the terms of the teams’ then-current player-development contract, which called on the parent club to make a visit to Buffalo. “It was Cleveland’s first visit to Buffalo since 1996 and could be the last for a long time,” one newspaper reported presciently.33

In baseball and life, trends swing back and forth. (Consider the shifts in ballpark design from jewel boxes to symmetrical multi-use stadia, and then back to jewel box-influenced retro facilities.) With that in mind, it seems inadvisable to say firmly that minor-major exhibitions will never make a comeback.

At the time of this writing in 2024, the thrills of these exhibitions seemed particularly remote. A major-league team’s stop in a minor-league city no longer seems like a visit from distant gods, now that the Internet brings game highlights and athletes’ social media posts directly to fans. Also, minor-league teams have diversified their money-making approach, focusing on colorful merchandise and a full calendar of promotions rather than isolated big paydays.

KURT BLUMENAU grew up in the Rochester, New York, area, following the Mets and the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings. After a dozen years as a journalist, he now works in corporate communications in the Boston area. He has a strong interest in the minor leagues, particularly the New York-Penn League, and also enjoys watching college games.

 

AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is massively indebted to Walter LeConte, as well as to other SABR members who assisted him in compiling listings of in-season exhibition games involving major-league teams between 1879 and 2012. These lists, as well as an accompanying article by LeConte, were available as of fall 2022 in the Special Features section of the Retrosheet website.

While the lists are impressive, they might not be definitively complete. In researching this story, the author discovered an in-season minor-major exhibition that was not listed there—namely, the May 4, 1959, matchup between the St. Louis Cardinals and Rochester Red Wings. The author submitted this information to Retrosheet for consideration.

This article was edited by Thomas Rathkamp and fact-checked by George Pawlush.

 

SOURCES

In addition to the specific sources cited in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet websites for general player, team, and season data. Walter LeConte’s list of in-season exhibition games and accompanying article, mentioned above, was also a primary source.

 

NOTES

1 The Browns beat the Belleville (Illinois) Kiwanis 6-3 in Belleville on July 10, 1950. It took the Pirates 11 innings to beat the Waterbury (Connecticut) Brasscos 8-5 in Waterbury on July 29, 1946. While Waterbury had fielded a minor-league team called the Brasscos in the 1920s, the team that played the Pirates in 1946 was semipro. “Pirates Defeat Semi-Pros, 8-5,” Pittsburgh Press, July 30, 1946: 20.

2 A note on methodology: The author started with Retrosheet’s list of in-season exhibitions compiled by Walter LeConte and others (see Author’s Note.) The author cut and pasted all the games from 1946 through 1963 into a spreadsheet. He then deleted any games that involved two major-league teams; semipro teams; college teams; military teams; and teams backed by community organizations such as police and Kiwanis. The author also deleted several games in which the local team could not be identified as belonging to a specific league.

3 For clarity, the 5,000 number represents all in-season exhibition games, not just the ones pitting minor-and major-league teams against each other. The IL’s percentage of the total would be even higher if other types of exhibitions were filtered out.

4 Before 1946, Double A was the highest level of the minors; the IL operated at that level from 1912 to 1945. In 1946, the Triple-A level replaced Double A as the highest level of the minors, and the IL became a Triple-A circuit. Walter LeConte, “ISEG Update,” Retrosheet. Posted February 12, 2013; accessed September 23, 2022.

5 The Eastern League operated at Class A from 1919 through 1962, then moved to Double A in 1963.

6 “Milwaukee Takes 13-11 Decision Over Eau Claire,” Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Daily Telegram, June 23, 1953: 9; Jay Hurd, “Paul Burris,” SABR Biography Project, accessed September 23, 2022.

7 Dink Carroll, “17,809 Fans Denounce Dodger Club as Robinson Is Pulled Out of Game,”Montreal Gazette, July 13, 1948: 14. The Dodgers were jointly managed that night by coaches Clyde Sukeforth and Jake Pitler, as manager Leo Durocher was in St. Louis for the All-Star Game.

8 “Orioles Jolted by York Farmhands, 13-1,” York (Pennsylvania) Dispatch, June 28, 1955: 15.

9 Jimmy Calpin, “Miners Beat Red Sox in Ninth, 2-1, Before 12,165 Fans,” Scranton (Pennsylvania) Tribune, June 15, 1948: 17. The Miners were a Red Sox affiliate in the Class-A Eastern League.

10 “Ray Culp’s 5-Hitter Beats Phils, 5-1,” Williamsport (Pennsylvania) Sun-Gazette, August 1, 1962: 9. The Eastern League was a Class-A loop at that time. Culp pitched four seasons with the Phillies and made an All-Star appearance in his rookie year, 1963, placing third in National League Rookie of the Year voting. Allen went on to play parts of nine seasons with the Phillies, in which he made three All-Star appearances and won the 1964 NL Rookie of the Year Award.

11 Of the 228 major-vs.-minor exhibitions listed in LeConte’s spreadsheet, 124—or about 54 percent—took place on Mondays; 34 on Tuesdays; 19 on Wednesdays; 43 on Thursdays; 6 on Fridays; and 2 on Saturdays.

12 Phillies manager Eddie Sawyer was also in Detroit managing the National League team, an honor traditionally given to the manager of the league’s champion team in the preceding season. “Ashburn Leaping into Air to Spear Near-Homer in All-Star Game” (photo and caption), Philadelphia Inquirer, July 11, 1951: 34; Associated Press, “Phillies Lose, 2-1 to Schenectady,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 11, 1951: 34.

13 Jack Koffman, “Over 10,000 See Ottawa Giants Whip Durocher’s Gang, 4-1,” Ottawa (Ontario) Evening Citizen, July 10, 1951: 14.

14 T.S. Flynn, “June 7, 1956: Willie Mays Homers Twice in Giants’ Exhibition Win at Metropolitan Stadium,” SABR Games Project. Accessed online December 27, 2022.

15 George Beahon, “Wings Report Profit of $3,935 for 1959,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, November 21, 1959: 14.

16 George Beahon, “Cards Rally for 6 Runs in 12th Inning, Trip Wings, 10-4, Before 7,850 Fans,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, May 5, 1959: 32.

17 Cy Kritzer, “An Authentic Team of All-Stars Shocks Yankees Before 28,524,” Buffalo Evening News, August 20, 1963: 12.

18 The Senators played the Bridgeport Bees on August 23, 1948. Welteroth, a former Bridgeport player, received $100 from the Bees’ owners and an additional $50 from fans, as well as the pair of pants and electric razor donated by businesses. John Johansen, “Senators Connect for 17 Hits and Trounce Bees 15-5,” Bridgeport (Connecticut) Telegram, August 24, 1948: 12.

19 Postseason barnstorming tours offered players a chance to make extra money from exhibitions outside the regular season, as extensively detailed in SABR member Thomas Barthel’s Baseball Barnstorming and Exhibition Games, 1901-1962: A History of Off-Season Major League Play (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2007). However, player contracts strictly dictated the relationship between player and team during the season.

20 Al Cartwright, “A La Carte,” Wilmington (Delaware) Journal, July 14, 1948: 28. Cartwright’s words: “The heat must have Connie Mack. … He cut up the Athletics’ share from the exhibition games here Monday night and in Harrisburg last night among the players.” The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported that Mack shared some proceeds from an August 1948 exhibition in Meriden, Connecticut, with A’s players. That game is not mentioned in this article because the opposition was an independent squad of local players, not a minor-league team. Art Morrow, “Mack Feted with Team at Meriden,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 17, 1948: 24.

21 Charley Peet, “Some Yanks Were Really Tough (To Get Along With, That Is),” Binghamton (New York) Press, June 29, 1954: 19. The Yankees were in Binghamton to play their Eastern League affiliate, the Binghamton Triplets. The name Triple Cities (and Triplets) refers to the three neighboring communities of Binghamton, Endicott, and Johnson City, New York.

22 Jimmy Calpin, “Red Sox Outslug Scranton Before 9,342 Fans, 9 to 3,” Scranton Tribune, July 13, 1950: 17. Dropo had played for the Scranton team three seasons earlier, earning attention for his raw power.

23 Edward MacCabe, “The Sportspiel,” Ottawa (Ontario) Journal, July 10, 1951: 13.

24 Associated Press, “New London Bows to Stamford in Colonial League,” Meriden (Connecticut) Journal, August 8, 1947: 4; Associated Press, “Phillies Defeat Waterbury, 7 to 2,” Bridgeport (Connecticut) Telegram, September 4, 1947: 16. The Yankees’ strong turnout in Waterbury might have been owed, in part, to a pitching appearance by Spec Shea, a native of the nearby town of Naugatuck.

25 Rome’s population was measured at 34,224 in the 1940 US Census and 41,682 in the 1950 Census. The entire population of Rome could have just about fit into the Braves’ home park of Braves Field, which had a capacity of 37,746 in 1946, according to the Seamheads.com ballpark database, accessed October 23, 2022.

26 Associated Press, “Braves Win, 15-7, at Ceremony for Southworth’s Son,” Boston Globe, July 10, 1946: 11.

27 Cy Kritzer, “Herd May Obtain Kazak, Howell from Cincy Reds,” Buffalo Evening News, June 27, 1952: 35. The Reds won the game, 5-3, behind homers by Ted Kluszewski and Cal Abrams.

28 United Press International, “Texas Leaguers Drygulch Colts in Exhibition,” McAllen (Texas) Valley Evening Monitor, August 2, 1963: 13.

29 To prepare a list of major-minor exhibitions from 1964 through 1974, the author copied games from the LeConte list into a spreadsheet, and again deleted games not involving minor-league teams—such as those involving college or military teams. It should be noted that, while in-season exhibitions against minor-league teams became slightly more common during this period, other types of exhibitions – those against company-sponsored and semipro teams—disappeared from the major-league agenda.

30 Author’s review of 1970, 1976, and 1990-93 collective-bargaining agreements made available through SABR’s Business of Baseball site. Accessed October 28, 2022. The 1976 agreement allowed the president of each league to grant special permission for up to three additional in-season exhibitions; each team was limited to no more than two unless given permission for a third. By the 1990-93 agreement, the number of in-season exhibitions had been reduced still further, to no more than one unless a team was allowed a second by its league president.

31 In addition to their five exhibitions against minor-league teams, the 1952 Browns played against a team in Moraine, Ohio, sponsored by a business called Moraine Products, according to LeConte’s research and contemporary news accounts. Similarly, the ‘53 Browns also played semipro teams in Hartford, Connecticut, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, on top of their four games against minor-league teams. In still another example of a heavy exhibition workload, the 1948 Philadelphia A’s played minor-league teams three times, and also played in-season exhibitions against the Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies of the National League.

32 Bob Matthews, “Wings Should Ask the Orioles to Leave Belle Behind,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, June 24, 1999: 3D.

33 Bob Matthews, “Fans Selecting All-Star Starters a Hit,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, July 2, 2002: 2D.

Ted Kluszewski measures up Earl Averill Jr., 1961. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

 

R.C. Stevens of the 1960 Pirates made several stops in the minors and majors from 1952 through 1963. In an article in the Quad City Times, he remembered a homer against the Giants at Seals Stadium on May 5, 1958.1 He had also hit home runs at Seals Stadium as a member of the Hollywood Stars, for whom he played during the 1955, 1956, and 1957 seasons. The first of his homers at Seals Stadium came on April 24, 1955, and he also homered there on July 15, 1956, a year in which he hit 27 home runs, good for third in the Pacific Coast League.

More than 60 players, including five Hall of Famers, homered in the same ballpark in the minors and majors during the years from 1954 through 1962, as the number of teams, cities, and stadiums grew substantially.

Major-league baseball, as it was defined prior to 1953, was confined to 10 cities, but aging ballparks, dwindling crowds, and the moving of the country’s population resulted in owners looking to make changes. By 1962, franchise shifts and expansion resulted in a completely new major-league landscape, and five ballparks that had been minor-league venues were being used by major-league teams. They were Memorial Stadium (Baltimore), Roosevelt Stadium (Jersey City), Seals Stadium (San Francisco), Metropolitan Stadium (Minneapolis), and Wrigley Field (Los Angeles).

Brooklyn had won six of 10 National League pennants going into the 1957 season. They were drawing well at Ebbets Field, attracting 1,213,562 fans in 1956. But owner Walter O’Malley was determined to get a new facility. During 1956 and 1957, his Dodgers played 15 games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey. O’Malley set his sights farther west, and in Los Angeles he found his pot of gold. Our story first takes us to Roosevelt Stadium, where three players homered in both the minors and majors.

ROOSEVELT STADIUM

On April 18, 1946, Montreal played the Jersey City Giants before a crowd of more than 25,500 on Opening Day at Roosevelt Stadium,2 and Jackie Robinson played his first game in Organized Baseball.

He observed “that watching this minor league game would be more sports writers than would be watching any opening day major league game—sports writers present because they knew that unfolding here on this diamond was a story much bigger than baseball, a story as far-reaching in essence as the very idea of democracy and the equality of men.”3 After grounding out in the first inning, he came to bat in the third with runners on base. It was a bunting situation, but manager Clay Hopper ordered Robinson to swing away, and Robinson slammed a three-run homer over the leftfield fence. In 1956, Robinson was in his 10th year with Brooklyn, and seven games were played at Roosevelt Stadium. Robinson homered there on July 31, with his second-inning two-run blast putting the Dodgers ahead 2-1, as Brooklyn defeated the Braves, 3-2.

Hank Sauer was the third player to accomplish the “deed.” His first homer at Roosevelt Stadium came on May 20, 1946, when he hit one out in a 4-2 Syracuse win over Jersey City. In 1947 he hit 50 homers, including four at Roosevelt Stadium. He had the next-to-last major-league home run hit during the brief tenure of Roosevelt Stadium as a major-league site. Sauer had been acquired by the New York Giants in a trade with the Cardinals, and his Roosevelt Stadium home run came on August 7, 1957. With the Dodgers leading 5-3 in the top of the ninth, the Giants got the first two men on base. Sauer was called on to pinch-hit, and his three-run homer put the Giants in the lead in an 8-5 victory.

SEALS STADIUM AND WRIGLEY FIELD OF LOS ANGELES

In their championship year of 1954, the New York Giants’ home attendance was 1,155,067. From 1955 on, it went downhill, and owner Horace Stoneham was looking to move. His eyes were initially set on Minneapolis and the new ballpark in nearby Bloomington. However, Minneapolis wasn’t the destination for the Giants, and Metropolitan Stadium did not see major-league baseball until 1961. The Dodgers’ O’Malley encouraged Stoneham to set his eyes west, and San Francisco embraced the Giants with open arms. San Francisco had long been the home of the Seals in the Pacific Coast League, and they had been playing in Seals Stadium since 1931. For two years the Giants played at Seals Stadium, and in the 1958 season 1,272,625 fans came to see major-league baseball in the “City by the Bay.”

Los Angeles had two minor-league teams in 1957. The Hollywood Stars played at Gilmore Field and the Los Angeles Angels played at Wrigley Field, their home since it opened in 1925. Prior to the 1957 season, O’Malley bought Wrigley Field and affiliated with the Angels. But Wrigley Field, even as a temporary home, was too small for O’Malley in 1958, and the Dodgers played their first four seasons at the cavernous Los Angeles Coliseum. The seating capacity at the Coliseum exceeded 90,000. The Dodgers drew 1,845,556 fans in their first season, including 78,682 for their home opener. When the Dodgers advanced to the World Series in 1959, crowds exceeded 92.000 for each of the three games played in Los Angeles. Wrigley Field was unoccupied until 1961 when expansion delivered the big-league Angels to the facility. The Angels used Wrigley Field for one season before moving to Dodger Stadium.

Seals Stadium was not a home-run hitter’s paradise. The Seals homered in only 38 of the 84 games played at home in 1957, while the opposition homered in only 30 games. Eight players homered there in the minors and in the majors. Wrigley Field, with its power alleys being only 345 feet from home plate, was far more hospitable, and 242 homers were struck there in 1961.

On May 21, 1949, infielder Orestes “Minnie” Minoso was optioned by the Cleveland Indians to San Diego of the PCL. He had spent three years with the Negro League New York Cubans. Late in 1948 he was signed by the Indians and played 11 games for Dayton of the Class A Central League. He started 1949 with Cleveland, but the Indians wanted their new Cuban third baseman to learn to play the outfield, and he was sent to the PCL. In his first game with San Diego, he was charged with two errors. By the time he made it back to the majors, however, nobody questioned his ability in the outfield. He became the preeminent left fielder in the American League, leading the league in games played at that position for six consecutive seasons and earning three Gold Gloves.

In the second game of a PCL doubleheader on August 7, 1949, Minoso went 4-for-5 with a homer and five RBIs as the San Diego Padres defeated the homestanding Angels, 7-4. On May 1, 1951, he became the first player of color to play in Chicago for either major-league team. By the time major-league baseball came to Wrigley Field in 1961, Minoso was in the second year of his second go-round with the White Sox. On September 8, 1961, he homered at Wrigley Field.

Jackie Jensen was the Golden Boy, complete with as good a signing bonus as the Oakland Oaks could deliver in 1949. He started off slowly with Oakland, in the field and at the plate. When Oakland visited Wrigley Field on August 30, he homered in a 10-3 win over the Angels. For the season, Jensen batted .261. Jensen was then sold to the Yankees. He played with the Yankees and Senators before arriving in Boston in 1954 for his best years, highlighted by winning the American League MVP Award in 1958. With the Red Sox, he returned to Wrigley Field and homered on May 8, 1961.

In 1949 the Hollywood Stars won their first pennant since 1930. Their center fielder, Irv Noren, was chosen the league’s MVP. The Stars were not affiliated, and Noren was on loan from Brooklyn. He slugged 29 homers to go along with a .330 batting average. On April 22 the Stars played the second game of a series at Seals Stadium, and in the third inning Noren homered to give the Stars a 3-0 lead in a game they won, 6-4. His bat came alive with the Yankees in 1954. He had his best season, batting .319 and getting named to the All-Star team. By 1958, he was in the National League and returned to the West Coast to face the Giants as a member of the Cardinals, when he homered at Seals Stadium on July 6.

San Diego had an informal arrangement with Cleveland. The Indians were on the lookout for young Black talent, and Bill Veeck signed 20-year-old Al Smith off the roster of the Cleveland Buckeyes of the Negro American League in 1948. On April 8, 1950, with the Padres, Smith homered at Wrigley Field. In the majors, Smith’s best season for homers was 1961 with the White Sox. Of his 28 homers that year, three were hit at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, with the first coming on May 19.

Dale Long hit home runs in eight consecutive games for the Pirates in 1956. In 1944, at the age of 18, he signed with the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association. He spent the next seven years with no fewer than 11 minor-league teams before getting his first crack at the big time in 1951. It was a brief stay. After being selected off waivers by the St. Louis Browns and being subsequently released, Long signed on with the Seals, and found his stroke in Seals Stadium. The first of two 1951 Seals Stadium homers came on July 27, 1951, as the team shut out the Angels, 4-0.

In 1953, Long joined the Stars. Long’s first minor-league Wrigley Field blast came on May 28, 1953, and was followed by others on May 30 and May 31. On the Stars’ second trip to Wrigley, Long slammed four round-trippers in the eight-game series. He won both the home-run (35) and RBI (116) crowns. The first of his Seals Stadium minor-league homers with the Stars left the premises on June 12, 1953. He banged another two days later. He hit two more in July. In 1954, it was more of the same. Long hit another two homers at Wrigley Field and complemented these with a pair of two-homer games at Seals Stadium. Total minor-league damage: Wrigley Field—nine homers; Seals Stadium—10 homers.

With the Cubs on April 27, 1958, Long slugged the first of his Seals Stadium major-league homers. It came off Rubén Gómez as the Cubs defeated the Giants 5-4. He had three homers at Seals Stadium in 1958, and another one in 1959. With the expansion Washington Senators in 1961, he had three home runs at Wrigley Field, the first coming on May 21.

Earl Averill Jr. played for San Diego in 1957, blasting one out of LA’s Wrigley Field on May 29. In 1958 he batted .347 with 24 homers and 87 RBIs and was named the PCL Most Valuable Player. After the 1960 season, Averill was placed in the pool for the major-league expansion draft and was selected by the Angels. On April 27 the Angels played their home opener at Wrigley Field against the Twins. Angels manager Bill Rigney felt that Averill would hit well at Wrigley and put him in the starting lineup. In the bottom of the second inning, Averill hit a two-run homer, which was all the Angels would score in a 4-2 loss.4 It was the first Angels homer at Wrigley. Of his career-high 21 major-league home runs that year, 16 came at Wrigley Field.

Among those to accomplish the deed, however, none stands out more than the one-and-only Steve Bilko.

The LA legend hit 313 minor-league home runs, including 148 in three years (1955-57) with the PCL Angels, 97 of which were at Wrigley Field and four of which soared out of Seals Stadium. His first Wrigley blast came on April 20, 1955. His first Seals Stadium round-tripper came on May 21, 1955.

Bilko started 1950 with the Cardinals, but he was not ready for the big time. He was batting .182 when he was sent to Rochester in early May. By then the International League Orioles were playing in Memorial Stadium, and Bilko hit the first of his two minor-league Memorial Stadium home runs on June 23, 1950.

After three phenomenal PCL seasons (during which he slammed more than 50 home runs in both 1956 and 1957), Bilko returned to the majors in 1958 and hit homers at each of the three former minor-league venues. On June 9, 1958, with Cincinnati, he homered off Johnny Antonelli of the San Francisco Giants at Seals Stadium. On June 7, 1960, with Detroit, he homered off Hoyt Wilhelm at Memorial Stadium in a 5-2 Tigers win.

With the expansion Angels, Bilko hit 11 homers at Wrigley Field. The first came off Herb Score, who was then pitching for the White Sox, on May 19, 1961. The last of Bilko’s home runs at Wrigley was the last home run ever hit at the facility. It came on October 1, in the last inning of the last game played there. The solo homer came with two outs, but was too little, too late in an 8-5 loss.

Rocky Colavito was sent to San Diego of the PCL on June 25, 1956, and spent about five weeks with the Padres. During a July 4 doubleheader, there were 10 home runs, including three by Bilko. It was in the second game that Colavito slammed his first homer at Wrigley Field. On July 14, after hitting a total of 12 home runs and batting .368 in 35 games, he was recalled by Cleveland. In 1961, with Detroit, he returned to Wrigley Field and bashed the first of his Wrigley Field major-league homers on May 26. He had four home runs at Wrigley Field during the 1961 season.

Earl Battey spent the latter part of 1957 with the PCL Angels, going deep for the first time at Wrigley Field on August 13. On September 8 he sent three balls flying out of Wrigley, accounting for all three of his team’s runs in a 14-inning 3-2 win over Sacramento. Battey was traded to Washington prior to the 1960 season and moved with the team to the Twin Cities for the 1961 season. Returning to Los Angeles in 1961, he homered on April 27 in the first major-league game played at Wrigley Field. His three-run-homer in the sixth inning put the Twins in the lead as they spoiled the Angels’ home opener with a 4-2 win.

 

Dale Long, with catcher’s glove (SABR-Rucker Archive) 

 

MEMORIAL STADIUM

The St. Louis Browns had long been one of the doormats of the American League, and by 1953 it was clear that the franchise could not survive in St. Louis. In hopes of attracting major-league baseball, Baltimore had completely renovated a facility then known as Babe Ruth Field. Memorial Stadium saw its first action in 1950, and for four seasons the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, a Phillies affiliate, called Memorial Stadium home. Eleven ballplayers homered there in the minors and majors during the time-period of this story.5

The first was Andy Carey, playing for Syracuse on September 7, 1952, who homered with one on at Memorial Stadium in a 5-0 win over the Orioles. Carey’s third-inning homer put the Chiefs in front to stay. He played for the great Yankees teams of the 1950s, hitting 47 homers before being traded to Kansas City and finishing his career with the Dodgers. He became the first player to hit homers at the same ballpark in the minors and majors in the migration/ expansion era when, in his second full year with the Yankees, he homered on May 16, 1954, as the Yankees defeated Baltimore, 2-0. He homered four times at Memorial Stadium as a major leaguer.

METROPOLITAN STADIUM

Minneapolis, in pursuit of a major-league team, replaced its minor-league facility, Nicollet Field, with Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington in 1956. The ballpark was built to be expandable to major-league size when major-league ball came to the Twin Cities. The minor-league Minneapolis Millers occupied the facility for five years. The Washington Senators, perennially at or near the bottom of the American League standings, moved to Minneapolis in 1961, became the Minnesota Twins, and took up residence at Metropolitan Stadium. Of the 29 players who homered at this ballpark in the minors and majors, two future Hall of Famers stand out.6

Carl Yastrzemski signed with Boston in 1958. With the Millers in 1960, he was among the league leaders in batting all season. Toward the end of the season, he went on a 30-game hitting streak that raised his average to .339, good for second in the league. Early in his career, the homers came slowly. His first homer of 1960 did not come until June 5, and it was on the road at Indianapolis. He connected at home for the first time on June 11, once again victimizing Indianapolis. He joined the Red Sox in 1961, and he hit 18 at the Minnesota locale, the first coming on May 29, 1962.

Harmon Killebrew hit 246 homers at Metropolitan Stadium during his career. He signed with Washington and spent parts of the next five seasons in the nation’s capital from 1954 through 1958, hitting 11 homers with 30 RBIs. In 1958 the Senators shipped him out to Indianapolis in the American Association where, in 38 games, he hit two homers and batted .215. The second of those two homers came at Metropolitan Stadium, on June 15. In 1959 he banged out an American Leagueleading 42 homers. He went to Minnesota when the Senators became the Twins in 1961, and his first bigleague Metropolitan Stadium blast came on April 30, 1961.

ALAN COHEN has been a SABR member since 2011. He chairs the BioProject fact-checking committee, serves as vice president treasurer of the Connecticut Smoky Joe Wood Chapter, and is a datacaster (MiLB stringer) with the Eastern League Hartford Yard Goats, the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. He also works with the Retrosheet Negro Leagues project and serves on SABR’s Negro League Committee. His biographies, game stories, and essays have appeared in more than 70 baseball-related publications. He has four children, nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild, and resides in Connecticut with wife Frances, their cats, Zoe and Ava, and their dog, Buddy.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article was edited by Marshall Adesman and fact checked by Carl Riechers.

 

SOURCES

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference. com, Retrosheet.org, and, for minor-league box scores, The Sporting News.

 

NOTES

1 Eric Page, “Davenport’s Stevens Made Big Splash in Majors Debut 50 Years Ago This Week,” Quad-City Times (Davenport, Iowa), April 13, 2008: Bi, B3.

2 Cy Kritzer, “Robinson Steals Int Show; Bears Off to Fast Getaway,” The Sporting News, April 25, 1946: 18.

3 Jackie Robinson (with Carl Rowan), Wait till Next Year: The Story of Jackie Robinson (New York: Random House, 1960), 151-152.

4 “Compact Wrigley Field Made to Order for LA’s Young Backstop, Earl Averill,” Bridgeport (Connecticut) Sunday Herald, May 14, 1961: 6.

5 The following players hit home runs at Memorial Stadium in the minors and majors:

Player	Minors	Majors
Andy Carey	9/7/1952 (Syracuse)	4—First on 5/16/1954 (w NYY) off Dave Koslo
Bill Tuttle	4/22/1953 (Buffalo)	3—first on 6/18/1955 (w DET) off Fritz Dorish
Harry Chiti	5/24/1952 (Springfield)	6/06/1958 (w KCA) off Connie Johnson
Steve Bilko	6/23/1950 (Rochester)	2—first on 6/7/1960 (w DET) off Hoyt Wilhelm
Tom Burgess	6/17/1953 (Rochester)	5/15/1961 (w LAA) off Milt Pappas
Smoky Burgess	5/22/1950 (Springfield)	6/26/1967 (w CHW) off Pete Rickert
Chico Fernández	7/17/1953 (Montreal)	7/23/1960 (w DET) off Hal Brown
Bubba Phillips	5/6/1952 (Buffalo)	2-first on 4/24/1961 (w CLE) off Milt Pappas
Vic Power	7/14/1951 (Syracuse)	3—first on 6/10/1956 (w KCA) off Fritz Dorish
Don Bollweg	4/20/1950 (Rochester)	8/4/1954 (w PHA) off Duane Pillette
Jim Brideweser	6/13/1953 (Syracuse)	5/24/1957 off Frank Sullivan (BOS)
Hank Foiles	9/08/1951 (Syracuse)	9/29/1961 off Warren Hacker (CHW)
Glenn Davis	9/4/1993 (Bowie)	3—first on 4/19/1991 off Kenny Rogers (TEX)

Henry Aaron hit his first Memorial Stadium home runs while with the Indianapolis Clowns on May 18, 1952. After spending the first 21 years of his major-league career in the National League, he returned to Memorial Stadium, as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers, and hit his first Memorial Stadium AL/NL major-league homer on May 19, 1976.

6 The following players hit home runs at Metropolitan Stadium in the minors and majors:

Player	Minors	Majors
Harmon Killebrew	6/15/1958 (Indianapolis)	246—first on 4/30/1961 off Bob Shaw (CHW)
Julio Becquer	6/26/1956 (Louisville)	3—first on 6/20/1961 off Jack Fisher (BAL)
Zoilo Versalles	6/26/1960 (Charleston)	57—first on 5/10/1961 off Dick Hall (BAL)
Sandy Valdespino	8/17/1960 (Charleston)	3—first on 4/13/1966 off Rollie Sheldon (KCA)
Johnny Goryl	8/06/1959 (Minneapolis)	2—first on 7/21/1963 off Don Rudolph (WSA)
Joe Altobelli	6/13/1958 (Indianapolis)	2—first on 9/11/1961 off Tom Morgan (LAA)
Marv Throneberry	6/27/1957 (Denver)	5/18/1961 (w KCA) off Jim Kaat
Johnny Callison	6/15/1958 (Indianapolis)	5/8/1972 (w NYY) off Bert Blyleven
Joe Koppe	7/28/1958 (Wichita)	6/24/1962 (w LAA) off Ray Moore
Willie Tasby	8/11/1958 (Louisville)	2—first on 4/22/1961 (w WSA) off Pedro Ramos
John Romano	6/22/1957 (Indianapolis)	11—first on 5/9/1962 (w CLE) off Jack Kralick
Lou Clinton	5/17/1958 (Minneapolis)	12—first on 8/17/1962 (w BOS) off Jack Kralick
Charley Lau	8/16/1957 (Charleston, WV)	5/08/1964 (w KCA) off Bill Dailey
Bob Schmidt	5/09/1957 (Minneapolis)	6/01/1962 (w WAS) off Jim Kaat
Eddie Bressoud	6/27/1957 (Minneapolis)	4—first on 8/17/1962 (w BOS) off Georges Maranda
Don Demeter	5/04/1957 (St. Paul)	7—first on 4/26/1964 (w DET) off Jim Kaat
Johnny Blanchard	6/26/1957 (Denver)	3—first on 6/24/1961 (w NYY) off Bert 9/Cueto
Woodie Held	5/27/1956 (Denver)	11—first on 5/22/1961 (w CLE) off Ed Palmquist
Willie Kirkland	4/25/1956 (Minneapolis)	2—first on 9/28/1961 (w CLE) off Don Lee
Bob Tillman	4/23/1960 (Minneapolis)	5—first on 5/29/1962 (w BOS) off Lee Strange
Steve Boros	5/25/1960 (Denver)	3—first on 5/23/1961 (w DET) off Ray Moore
Earl Wilson	5/28/1960 (Minneapolis)	8/17/1962 (w BOS) off Georges Maranda
Carl Yastrzemski	6/11/1960 (Minneapolis)	18—first on 5/29/1962 (w BOS) off Lee Strange
Ed Charles	7/31/1960 (Louisville)	2—first on 6/7/1966 (w KCA) off Jim Kaat
Chuck Schilling	7/07/1960 (Minneapolis)	4—first on 5/7/1961 (w BOS) off Camilo Pascual
Camilo Carreón	8/15/1959 (Indianapolis)	3—first on May 1, 1961 (w CHW) off Chuck Stobbs
Donald G. Leppert	4/26/1956 (Wichita)	8/18/1963 (w WSA) off Garry Roggenburk
Jim Gentile	5/30/1959 (St. Paul)	7—first on 5/9/1961 (w BAL) off Pedro Ramos
Jerry Kindall	9/29/1959 (Fort Worth)	5—first on 9/16/1962 (w CLE) off Camilo Pascual

Joe DiMaggio. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

 

Perhaps the Pacific Coast League never had a chance.

For decades, the PCL was baseball to fans along the Pacific Coast, the closest thing to the major leagues recognized in the East and Midwest. The league thrived before the age of air travel, but as modernization shrank the country, the PCL came into closer contact with the Eastern major leagues. To be sure, there were plenty of examples of players like Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, who made their way from California to the big cities of the East, but plenty more simply stayed and made careers out West. With the American League and National League jealously guarding their major-league status and the PCL increasingly defending what it had built, the Eastern establishment and the Western pretenders seemed destined to collide. Would the established major leagues claim the West Coast for themselves or would the PCL force the AL and NL to recognize the West Coast circuit as an equal?

The resolution to this question is key to understanding the structure of major-league baseball that emerged in the postwar era. Despite the efforts of the Western upstarts, they never really had a chance. Several factors conspired against the PCL’s pretensions to major-league status. First, the boom of postwar attendance may have heightened expectations about the size of the PCL fan base, but the subsequent inability to sustain the surge of fan interest held the league back. Second, most PCL cities lacked ballparks that would have provided a potential maj or-league foundation. Outside of a few league cities, the facilities were generally substandard and kept fans away. Third, the television age was beginning. Baseball had a new competitor for people’s leisure time, and the national and regional broadcasting of ballgames lessened the incentive to attend in person. Fourth, government officials, crucially in Los Angeles and San Francisco, made no mistake about their preference to lure major-league baseball rather than strengthen local PCL teams. Civic leaders were seduced by big-league ball from afar and made offers to strangers that were never extended to locals. Finally, the preceding factors left the PCL unable to take advantage of the Open classification it was granted in late 1951. Open classification suggested a path to major-league status, but the PCL proved unable to take advantage. Instead of growing into a major league, the PCL’s largest cities became colonized and co-opted into the existing major-league order.

The major leagues had seriously eyed the West Coast since 1941. The American League planned to vote on December 8, 1941, to approve the transfer of the St. Louis Browns to Los Angeles. The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7 drew the United States into World War II and scuppered any talk of relocation for the foreseeable future. After the war fans flocked to major-and minor-league games, and the PCL shared in the attendance increase. In 1945 the league broke its attendance record with almost 3 million fans. One year later, admissions exceeded 3.7 million, and the San Francisco Seals set a minor-league record with 670,563 patrons.1 The good times continued into 1947 as the PCL crossed the 4 million mark in attendance for the first time; five teams exceeded a half-million, with both San Francisco and Los Angeles drawing in excess of 600,000.2 In fact, every team in the league outdrew the American League’s “poor sister,” the St. Louis Browns.

 

 

Amid this business boom, PCL President Clarence “Pants” Rowland requested recognition from the American League and National League as a major league.3 The majors denied the initial request in 1946 and, although there was some thought to “going outlaw,” the PCL stayed within the system of Organized Baseball.4 Flagship clubs like the San Francisco Seals and Los Angeles Angels conducted business on a footing similar to major-league teams; moreover, the Angels had a direct connection to the majors as they were part of the Chicago Cubs system through owner Philip Wrigley. Their ballparks, Seals Stadium and Wrigley Field respectively, were among the best facilities on the West Coast but they were atypical of the league. In general, however, playing facilities played a significant role in holding back the league. Most ballparks were small and decrepit in comparison to major-league ballparks. When he made his push for major status, Rowland believed the ballparks could be brought to big-league standards within three years.5 That assessment was hopelessly optimistic.

Sales of television sets exploded after the war, and baseball provided programming potential. Just as the majors began taking advantage of the new medium, so did the PCL. While there was money to be made, there was a knock-on effect for in-person attendance. Los Angeles and the Hollywood Stars were early adapters to television, consistently airing games as early as 1947 (the Stars actually experimented with televising games in the prewar years),6 but as telecasts increased in 1948 and 1949, attendance figures declined. Plus, major-league teams started broadcasting games nationwide, cannibalizing their own gates but devastating minor-league teams with a better product available to fans without leaving their homes. By 1950, PCL attendance fell to around 3 million, a decline of more than 25 percent from just three years earlier.7 More exposure to major-league baseball undermined the PCL’s position; after all, “[i]f you could listen to the big boys on the box at home, why go out to the park to see the local Minor Leaguers play?”8 Even when clubs reduced the number of broadcasts, attendance failed to rebound.

In 1951 the PCL pressed again for major-league recognition, and this time the league appeared ready for a fight. The major-league draft was increasingly a point of contention. The draft, which allowed major-league teams to purchase the rights to a minor-league player, meant that major-league clubs could claim PCL players for a mere $10,000; clubs complained that they invested more to develop a player than they received in return. Seals owner Paul Fagan said, “I’m just convinced that San Francisco deserves baseball of the highest caliber, and that is impossible to acquire with the draft annually taking our best players and forcing us to sell others or suffer great financial loss.”9 The Seals proposed to go outlaw, but the league deadlocked on their motion.10 Fagan had reason to be concerned. In San Francisco alone, attendance fell with the Seals’ fortunes, with the gate slipping below 200,000 in 1951, just four years removed from their record-setting season.

The major leagues relented, but only to a point. With Congress taking an interest in the majors’ antitrust exemption amid television’s negative effect on the minors, the majors created the “Open” classification to appease the restless PCL. The new classification was intended to provide the league with room to grow toward major-league status but offered no guarantee.

With Open classification, the majors extended the period before which a player could be drafted from four years to five, and allowed PCL players to opt out of the draft. The price for players drafted out of the PCL jumped to $15,000. As Oakland Oaks owner Clarence “Brick” Laws noted, “Draft relief will be our first step toward becoming a major league. [With relief] we can reach major league standards in a few years.”11 At first, draft relief seemed to work. Ahead of the 1952 season, 19 of 20 draft-eligible PCL players opted for contracts that exempted them from being claimed.12 Fagan observed, “Now we no longer have to serve as a fish hatchery for the majors, by developing players for them.”13 Intending to establish its independence of operations, the PCL voted not to take optioned players starting with the 1953 season, and operating agreements with major-league clubs were restricted.

Attendance declined once again in 1952 despite a general decrease in the number of games broadcast both by PCL teams and from Eastern major-league cities.14 Fagan and Sacramento Solons owner Charles Graham believed fans remained more focused on major-league teams than local PCL clubs.15 Claims to major-league status were also undermined by the actions of the PCL’s own clubs. In January 1952 the Pittsburgh Pirates purchased a minority interest in the Hollywood Stars. Fagan protested, “The ‘Coast League must divorce itself 100 percent from the majors!”16 The deal was approved ultimately, and it proved a harbinger rather than an exception. In a few years, the Stars were effectively converted into a Pirates farm team, and more followed.

League attendance continued to plunge, with the 1953 gate almost 20 percent lower than the prior year, down to about 1.7 million, the lowest level since 1943. Rowland sought to tamp down rumors of a failing league, stating, “The financial structure of the league is sound as a bell of brass.”17 The decision to refrain from taking optioned players caused short-term pain as clubs scrambled to fill the talent gap while maintaining their purported major-league standard of play. Going their own way would require expansion of scouting operations, which squeezed already strained finances. With every club outside of Los Angeles and Hollywood supposedly losing large sums, several clubs planned to sell players to major-league clubs to stem the red ink. It was a turn from the potential of Open classification; instead of developing players free from major-league draft interference, clubs hawked those players to counter the losses caused by declining fan interest. The forbearance on optioned players was dropped after one season.

The big leagues began to remake their own map beginning in 1953. In the majors’ first franchise shift in a half-century, the Braves left Boston, their home since 1871, for Milwaukee. In 1954 the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore; the next year the Athletics departed Philadelphia for Kansas City. Expansion was now an additional outlet for the majors; each league had amended its constitution—the NL in 1947, the AL in 1953—to permit expansion to 10 clubs. Yankees co-owner Del Webb stated, “[Baseball] must study the fact that the Pacific Coast cannot be held off very much longer in its demand for major league baseball.” He specifically mentioned Los Angeles and San Francisco. The PCL promised to fight attempts to crowd them out of their own cities. Rowland asserted, “We merely demand the right to try life as a major league with the eight cities which now are in the Pacific Coast League.”18

The relocation era heightened a sense of the possible in the league’s largest cities, and their aspirations had nothing to do with the PCL. Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson formed a task force in 1953 dedicated to enticing an existing major-league team to move west, and local oilman Edwin Pauley agreed to fund a study into whether the Los Angeles Coliseum could be retrofitted for baseball.19 Pauley wrote to Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley to gauge his interest but the response was, “Nothing doing.”20 Francis McCarty, head of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, claimed, “San Francisco is a major league town. … If we have to spend money to bring it here, it will be money well spent. We have to get off the dime.”21 There was no interest in spending money to elevate the status of their local PCL teams.

Abandonment was now on the table for the owners of the two Bay Area PCL teams. Claiming losses of $500,000 over the previous eight years, Fagan sold the team and its players to the league for $100,000 on September 24, 1953. With the league’s blessing, Seals GM Damon Miller cobbled together the so-called Little Corporation of investors to maintain the team. The group was seriously undercapitalized and interest continued to swoon. Brick Laws considered the same strategy in Oakland; while he did not pull the trigger, his days at the decaying Emeryville Park were numbered. In November 1954 San Francisco voters approved a $5 million bond measure by more than 2 to 1 for a new ballpark as soon as the city acquired a major-league team. There was nothing for the Seals in that measure. Commissioner Ford Frick gloated to Curley Grieve, sports editor of San Francisco Examiner, “This vote of your people leaves no doubt as to how the citizens of San Francisco feel about big league baseball. They want it!”22

The PCL appeared to be resigning itself to a potential takeover at the league meetings in October 1953. Rowland appeared to be among the converted as he stated, “The Pacific Coast League has adapted itself to the inevitable.”23 Seattle Rainiers owner Emil Sick said, “Henceforth, the Coast League will welcome anyone with the courage and money to bring major league ball to any Coast League city—Seattle included.”24 Rowland somehow saw signs of an attendance rebound in 1954. He opined, “I feel the Coast League will have one whale of a year both attendance-wise and on the field,” and projected replicating the record-setting 1947 season.25 In the end, attendance fell short of 2 million once again, with a modest increase over 1953. In November 1954, Rowland resigned the league presidency in order to take the same title with the Chicago Cubs; he had left the Cubs in 1944 to take the helm of the PCL. He continued to believe the PCL could have been a major league in the 1940s. Although he questioned whether all eight cities could have supported major-league baseball, he explained, “My hope was that [major-league recognition] would be granted and then we could let nature take its course. Some would drop by the wayside and several cities from outside the territory could be substituted.”26 Perhaps a version of the PCL that involved other Western cities starved for big-league ball, such as Dallas, Denver, or Houston, could have made it.

The PCL named Claire Goodwin as its president on January 12, 1955. Recognized as a sportsman and business executive around Oakland, Goodwin arrived full of enthusiasm and ideas to reverse the league’s fortunes. He observed, “The horizon is unlimited. I don’t regard this job as an interim one until the majors come to the Coast. The PCL is here to stay.”27 He identified the issues of pressing concern, and targeted ballpark rehabilitation, admission prices, “hustle” to quicken game pace, and cooperation with the major leagues as primary initiatives. Goodwin also came out swinging about the conduct of the major leagues and its detrimental effect on the PCL: “When the majors leave us alone we’ll have the stability, confidence and security to get the right kind of ball parks and launch a broad, long range program for development of young talent.”28 He telegrammed complaints to NL President Warren Giles over information that the senior circuit had prepared a 10-team schedule for 1955 that included Los Angeles and San Francisco. Goodwin protested, “Your statements are extremely detrimental to baseball in the Pacific Coast, whose territory you are theoretically taking over.”29

Commissioner Frick stepped in to quell chatter about major-league teams muscling minor-league teams out of their home cities. In a memo sent to all 16 clubs in February 1955, Frick said, “[Minor league cities] are being definitely harmed by this loose talk on the part of their major league brothers.”30 Hollywood’s Bob Cobb complained, “The Coast league has been crucified by such talk. It creates dissension, destroys the loyalty of our fans.”31 Still, Goodwin and Cobb were among those voices that acknowledged the PCL needed to take care of its own issues. The condition of its ballparks was a paramount issue. Cobb referred to league stadiums as “old” and “dirty”;32 and indeed, many were. Cobb had his own eye on Chavez Ravine, where he believed the Hollywood Stars could draw one million fans in a modern, 30,000-seat ballpark.33 The San Diego Padres hoped to build a 20,000-seat ballpark—Lane Field could hold only 7,500 with a termite infestation condemning the bleachers section—and the league voted a $100,000 grant as seed money. The Portland Beavers planned a move of their own, with plans to trade the near-condemnation Vaughn Street Park for the larger but 30-year-old Multnomah Stadium. The latter’s 22,000 capacity had room for expansion to around 33,000.

PCL President Goodwin targeted 3 million fans for 1955, and there were auspicious signs in the early days of the season. Attendance figures were up and game times were down, but rain and cold weather arrived to conspire against Goodwin’s plans. After eight weeks, league attendance was down, with notable decreases in Hollywood, Oakland, and Sacramento. In San Francisco, the Little Corporation was on the verge of forfeiting the Seals to the league. The PCL amended its constitution to allow it to run the Seals, which happened after the collapse of a rescue bid from Hank Greenberg and the Cleveland Indians. Cobb labeled the Seals’ situation a “debacle,” noting that “[t] he people here (Los Angeles) and in San Francisco have shown they want baseball with a major league label.”34 The saga reached a conclusion in December 1955 with the announcement that the Boston Red Sox were acquiring the Seals for $150,000. Red Sox GM Joe Cronin promised that the Seals would not serve just as an appendage to the Boston farm system. Rather, Cronin noted, “This area is too big and too important to be represented by a farm club.”35 It was an embarrassing turnaround since 1947 for one of the PCL’s signature franchises. Goodwin, in office for less than a year, saw the handwriting on the wall for his tenure. He remarked, “There’s a gentlemanly way to do everything and all the Coast League has to do is tell me I’m through. I won’t even ask why.”36 The league accepted his resignation at its December meeting. Leslie O’Connor, counsel to the PCL for several years and a former aide to former Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, succeeded Goodwin.

PCL baseball was truly at a crossroads in the Bay Area. The Seals could not be run as an independent entity and now required a bailout by a major-league team in order to survive. As their status diminished, the Seals found they had the Bay Area to themselves. With the lease expiring on their ancient Emeryville Park home, the Oakland Oaks fled the country to Vancouver, British Columbia, to play the 1956 season as the Mounties. Any pretense toward independence was damaged by further dependence on the major leagues for players. In addition to the Seals’ integration into the Red Sox structure, and accounting for the existing Stars-Pirates and Angels-Cubs arrangements, four more PCL teams opted for working agreements with major-league teams. The Rainiers teamed up with the Reds, the Beavers with the Dodgers, the Padres with the Indians, and the Mounties with the Orioles. Only the Solons entered the 1956 season as a completely independent entity.

O’Connor seemed realistic about the challenges facing the league. Like his predecessors, he praised the caliber of baseball, asserting that the PCL “is only a very minute step behind the majors insofar as quality of play is concerned.”37 But O’Connor also observed, “Merely putting a major league label on it won’t make it big league. It must have the revenue.”38 As O’Connor was trying to ensure the viability of PCL baseball, the league’s Open classification was under attack from International League President Frank Shaughnessy, who asserted that the PCL was in violation of criteria associated with the Open classification. With all but one club possessing a working agreement with a major-league team and PCL attendance slipping below expected standards, Shaughnessy argued that the PCL “is occupying open classification status under false pretenses”39 and said he expected National Association President George Trautman to do something about it. O’Connor defended his league and, despite perhaps most evidence to the contrary, maintained that the PCL had not surrendered its major-league dream. That dream, according to O’Connor, was “not dead at all. Several of our club owners are still actively thinking of it, but we all realize we have a harder row to hoe now.”40 That row looked even harder when attendance figures showed the PCL falling behind both the IL and American Association when the final numbers were counted. The PCL held onto the Open classification for the 1957 season, but it would be the last.

On February 21, 1957, O’Malley made his play for the Coast. Using proceeds from the sale of Ebbets Field just months before, he purchased the Angels and Wrigley Field from the Cubs, surrendering the Dodgers’ Texas League farm team in Fort Worth as part of the exchange. When the PCL considered approval of the purchase, O’Malley made no secret of his interest in securing territorial rights to Los Angeles should he move west, but he also claimed that the Angels would remain PCL members, albeit as a Dodgers farm club.41 (Hollywood had no territorial claim to the region, a condition of their 1938 relocation from the Mission District of San Francisco.) While he made no commitments about moving the Dodgers, O’Malley was not behaving like a man content with a new minor-league toy 3,000 miles from his home base. In March Poulson and other civic leaders called upon O’Malley at the Dodgers’ spring-training base in Vero Beach, Florida, and the Dodgers supremo knew the strength of his position. Poulson remarked, “One of our officials promised O’Malley the moon, and O’Malley asked for more.”42 In early May O’Malley spent several days in Los Angeles scouting potential stadium locations and meeting with local officials. Poulson proclaimed, “If the Dodgers come, it’ll be next year.”43 City and county leaders placed before O’Malley a substantial proposal to sell Chavez Ravine, buy Wrigley Field, and handle infrastructure projects like freeway access.

Poulson and San Francisco Mayor George Christopher teamed up their efforts to secure major-league baseball. Poulson declared, “We intend to petition the major leagues for franchises for our cities at their next meeting. … Yes, both leagues—the National and the American.”44 There had been a rumor, widely circulated in the San Francisco Chronicle, suggesting that the Red Sox would finance a new team in San Francisco and Yankees owner Del Webb would divest his interest in the Yankees in order to claim Los Angeles for the American League.45 Cronin also quashed discussion about the Red Sox pulling up their stakes for the Bay Area.46 After a three-game exhibition series at Seals Stadium in March 1957 between the Seals and Red Sox attracted 57,000 fans, Christopher’s argument was strengthened. He stated, “We are happy to join hands with Los Angeles. In my opinion, major league baseball is coming to both our cities.”47 There was no mention of the existing PCL teams. With the New York Giants assumed to be leaving Manhattan—originally for Minneapolis before San Francisco entered the picture—and the Dodgers clearly considering their options, the NL authorized the two teams to move together in a May 28 vote. The opportunity to transport their ancient interborough New York rivalry to rival California cities was very seductive. Giles explained, “They are free to carry on discussions and negotiations with the knowledge that they have the sanction of the league for such a shift.”48

On August 19 Giants owner Horace Stoneham confirmed plans to move to San Francisco, and the following day’s Chronicle hailed the news in large type: “Say Hey! They’re S.F. Giants Now.” Days later, Stoneham purchased the Seals, in effect swapping his Minneapolis farm team with the Red Sox to smooth his path to San Francisco. O’Malley’s move was held up briefly by politics within the Los Angeles City Council. Proponents of the city’s package struggled to muster the necessary two-thirds vote, but the additional votes were found and the Dodgers confirmed their relocation plans on October 8.

O’Connor continued to complain, saying, “Nobody has had the decency or courtesy to contact me or any of our independent owners.”52 Defending his league, he added, “[We] have five franchises owned by independent people, who are practically told to step down a few grades in their baseball business.”53 With the Dodgers and Giants coming and nothing to stop them, it was left to the league to pick up the pieces and strike its best deal for indemnification. Initially, it was unclear if there would be a PCL in 1958. There was ample talk of lawsuits. O’Connor asserted, “Some of the clubs in our league are mad enough to sue anybody.”54 The Pacific Northwest teams and San Diego faced the possibility of being geographically marooned. At the 1957 Winter Meetings, the remaining six teams ultimately settled for $900,000 to be paid by the invaders over three years, a comparatively paltry sum in light of the riches that awaited. With no option to stay in Los Angeles, Cobb sold the Stars to Utah oilman Nicholas Morgan, who moved the team to Salt Lake City. Stoneham would place a team in Phoenix, and Spokane planned to build a stadium for a Dodgers farm team to replace the Angels. The PCL surrendered its Open status to the inevitable, and reverted to Triple-A status for the 1958 season. The major-league dream was truly over.

JOHN BAUER resides with his wife and two children (although one is now at college) in Bedford, New Hampshire. By day, he is general counsel of an insurance group headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, with specialties in corporate and regulatory law. By night, he spends many spring and summer evenings staying up too late to watch the San Francisco Giants, and he is a year-round avid reader of baseball, history, and baseball history. He is a past and ongoing contributor to various SABR projects.

 

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Dobbins, Dick. The Grand Minor League (Emeryville, California: Woodford Press, 1999).

Raley, Dan. Pitchers of Beer: The Story of the Seattle Rainiers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011).

 

NOTES

1 Dennis Snelling, The Greatest Minor League: A History of the Pacific Coast League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012), 212.

2 Bill O’Neal, The Pacific Coast League: 1903-1988 (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1990), 92.

3 O’Neal, 89.

4 O’Neal, 96.

5 Dan Taylor, Lights, Camera, Fastball: How the Hollywood Stars Changed Baseball (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), 237.

6 Taylor, 250.

7 Snelling, 238.

8 Kevin Nelson, The Golden Game: The Story of California Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 315.

9 Snelling, 243.

10 Snelling, 243.

11 Taylor, 245.

12 Taylor, 256.

13 Jack McDonald, “Coasters Sizzling Over Lane’s Roasting,” The Sporting News, April 15, 1953: 13.

14 Richard Beverage, The Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League: A History, 1903-1957 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011), 160.

15 Jack McDonald, “Coast Slices Player Limit to 21, Views TV Picture,” The Sporting News, January 28, 1953: 12.

16 Taylor, 265.

17 Jack McDonald, “Find Buyer for Seals, Fagan Tells Rowland at Coasters’ Meeting,” The Sporting News, May 20, 1953: 15.

18 J.G. Taylor Spink, „Webb Sees K.C. as Major League Entry,” The Sporting News, July 22, 1953: I, 2.

19 Taylor, 281.

20 Dan Daniel, “Over the Fence,” The Sporting News, November 10, 1954: 10.

21 Walter Addiego, “Frisco Planning to Send ‘Envoy’ in Bid to Majors,” The Sporting News, July 29, 1953: 6.

22 “Frick Enthused Over ‘Frisco Approval of Major Stadium,” The Sporting News, November 17, 1954: 8.

23 John B. Old, “Coast League Reverses Its Policy, Agrees to Aid Move for Major Ball,” The Sporting News, November 4, 1953: 15.

24 “Coast League Reverses Its Policy, Agrees to Aid Move for Major Ball.”

25 Old, “Coast Officials See Four-Million Gate Total in ‘54,” The Sporting News, February 10, 1954: 26.

26 Edgar Munzel, “‘Slash’” Major Rosters To 21’—Rowland,” The Sporting News, December 29, 1954: I.

27 Jack McDonald, “PCL Picks Goodwin as President, Votes Budget of $100,025,” The Sporting News, January 19, 1955: 22.

28 “PCL Picks Goodwin as President.”

29 “PCL Prexy Protests Talk of Coast Move by Majors,” The Sporting News, February 9, 1955: 31.

30 Spink , “Coasters Given Shot in Arm by Invasion Curb,” The Sporting News, February 16, 1955: I, 4.

31 “Coasters Given Shot in Arm by Invasion Curb.”

32 “Coasters Given Shot in Arm by Invasion Curb.”

33 “Coasters Given Shot in Arm by Invasion Curb.”

34 Sid Ziff, “Bob Cobb Invites Majors to Coast—‘Doors Wide Open,’” The Sporting News, August 31, 1955: 4.

35 “‘Seals Won’t Be Riddled to Help Bosox’—Cronin,’” The Sporting News, December 21, 1955: 20.

36 Jack McDonald, “Goodwin Picks Up Hat as PCL Keeps Hunting Seal Buyer,” The Sporting News, November 23, 1955: 17.

37 Munzel, “O’Connor Sees Bright Era for Coast,” The Sporting News, December 28, 1955: I.

38 “O’Connor Sees Bright Era for Coast.”

39 Cy Kritzer, “Shaughnessy Hits Majors’ ‘Shipment’ of Players to Coast,” The Sporting News, June 6, 1956: 16.

40 Jack McDonald, “O’Connor Answers Shag, Insists PCL Not Guilty of Violating Agreement,” The Sporting News, September 19, 1956: 33.

41 P.J. Dragseth, The 1957 San Francisco Seals: End of an Era in the Pacific Coast League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013), 53.

42 Nelson, “The Golden Game,” 313.

43 Taylor, “Lights, Camera, Fastball,” 329.

44 “L.A., ‘Frisco Mayors Plan Joint Action in Major Bids,” The Sporting News, April 3, 1957: 2.

45 Dragseth, 48.

46 Dragseth, 137.

47 “L.A., ‘Frisco Mayors Plan Joint Action in Major Bids.”

48 Edgar Munzel, “Hurdles Looming for ‘58 Coast Shifts,” The Sporting News, June 5, 1957: 5.

49 “PCL to Ask for ‘Just Compensation,’” The Sporting News, June 5, 1957: 6.

50 “PCL to Ask for ‘Just Compensation.’”

51 Jack McDonald, “‘Throw Us a Life Preserver,’ PCL Plea to Majors,” The Sporting News, June 12, 1957: 6.

52 Harry Grayson, “Coast League Doing a Slow Burn on Shifts,” The Sporting News, 11, 1957: 10.

53 Grayson.

54 Jack McDonald, “Angry Coast Leaguers Talk of ‘Big Lawsuits,’” The Sporting News, September 18, 1957: 8.

 

The 1946 Montreal Royals of the International League have received much attention over the years because Jackie Robinson broke Organized Baseball’s historic and shameful color line by playing second base for the Royals.1 But little consideration has been given to that season’s MVP race, and the fact that Robinson did not win it, even though he had a truly exceptional season for one of the best minor-league teams in baseball history. Indeed, Robinson had such a tremendous season that several writers have incorrectly reported that Jackie did win the league Most Valuable Player Award.2

Those 1946 Royals were a juggernaut, winning 100 of 154 games and sweeping to the International League pennant by 18½ games. They dominated the league playoffs by defeating the fourth-place Newark Bears four games to two in the semifinals before dispatching the second-place Syracuse Chiefs in five games for the league championship. The Royals then defeated the Louisville Colonels, champions of the American Association, in six games to win the Little World Series.

The 27-year-old Jackie Robinson led the Royals, as he batted .349 to lead the league in batting average. Robinson’s slash line was .349/.468/.462/.930 but of course little attention was paid to anything but batting average and, to a lesser extent, slugging average in those days. His 113 runs scored tied for tops in the league and his fielding was superb as he led the league in fielding percentage for second basemen. He stole 40 bases, second in the league only to his teammate, the speedster Marv Rackley. Robinson hit .357 in the league playoffs, “fielding his position spectacular-ly.”3 In the Little World Series against the Louisville Colonels, he remained a force, batting .333 despite constant and virulent racial abuse in Louisville for the three games played there.4

THE MVP VOTING

Eddie Robinson was certainly a worthy MVP; he batted .318, smashed 34 home runs, and led the league with 121 RBIs in 143 games.8 Bobby Brown, dubbed the “Golden Boy” by the press,9 also had an impressive season in his first year in professional baseball, batting .341, second in the league behind Jackie Robinson, and tying for the most hits in the circuit with 174.10 Jackie’s Montreal teammate Tommy Tatum who finished third in the writers’ voting, batted .319 and was a jack-of-all-trades who played six different positions for the Royals.11

The obvious question is: How could Jackie Robinson have finished third and fifth in the voting for the two International League MVP Awards given his performance in 1946, which one writer has asserted was “perhaps the best single season of any player ever in the International League”?12 In the voting by the writers, Eddie Robinson was the runaway winner with 250 points. Second-place Brown had 135 points, followed closely by Tatum with 127 points, Joost with 120 points, and Jackie Robinson, in fifth place with 89 points.13 Thus, according to the writers, Robinson was not even the most valuable player on his own team.

The voting for The Sporting News version of the MVP was conducted by its eight league correspondents, one for each International League entry.14 That voting was tighter, with Eddie Robinson finishing on top with 51 votes, including three first-place votes, three seconds, and one third. Bobby Brown’s runner-up total was 42 points, including one first-place vote, while Jackie Robinson finished with 30 points and two first-place votes.15

Although Branch Rickey’s signing of Jackie Robinson and his season with the Royals have been well-documented,16 the paths to the International League and beyond of the other MVP candidates have not and provide interesting context to the 1946 MVP race. While Tatum’s subsequent big-league career was limited, both Eddie Robinson and Bobby Brown, who was in medical school at Tulane, had substantial major-league careers. Their routes to the International League, however, and then on to the major leagues differed significantly.

EDDIE ROBINSON

Eddie Robinson, from Paris, Texas, was 25 years old in 1946 and returning from three years of service in the Navy. While stationed in Hawaii he had undergone surgery to remove a bone tumor in his leg. The Navy surgeon, however, inadvertently damaged the peroneal nerve, which controls one’s ability to lift one’s foot. The damaged nerve threatened Robinson’s baseball career and necessitated a second operation by a specialist in Bethesda, Maryland, to repair the damage and enable the nerve to grow back.

Robinson had appeared in eight games for the Cleveland Indians at the end of the 1942 season before joining the military and upon his discharge from the Navy reported to the Indians’ 1946 spring training in Clearwater, Florida. When he reported he still had a brace on his leg and was not sure that his damaged leg would allow him to play. But the nerve had regenerated and grown over the previous six months, alleviating his drop foot and enabling him to discard the brace on the first day.17

After his long layoff from baseball, Robinson did not hit much during spring training, prompting the Indians to award the first-base job to Les Fleming and send Eddie to Baltimore so that he could play every day. But more hardship awaited Eddie when the season began. His daughter Robby Ann, who was born in late 1943, became seriously ill and was hospitalized at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore with an inoperable brain tumor. She lapsed into a coma while in intensive care and died before her third birthday. Eddie was understandably grief-stricken and missed several games before returning to the Orioles lineup.18

One of the highlights of Robinson’s 1946 season came against the Newark Bears in a game in Baltimore. The Orioles played their games in Baltimore Stadium, which was a football stadium, since Oriole Park, the team’s baseball park, had burned down during the 1944 season.19 The baseball field was configured like the Los Angeles Coliseum later was when the Dodgers moved to the West Coast, with a high fence at a very short left field and no fence at all in right, just the other end of the football field. Thus, the only way to hit a home run to straightaway right field was to run around the bases while the ball was in play.

As Bobby Brown remembered years later, Eddie Robinson hit a ball about 40 feet over the head of Bears right fielder Hal Douglas. The ball rolled all the way to the steps of a temporary clubhouse in deep, deep right field. Robinson was always a slow runner, made even slower due to his damaged leg, but he circled the bases and was sitting in the dugout by the time Douglas retrieved the ball.20

Led by Robinson and Howie Moss, who hit 38 homers and drove in 112 runs,21 the Orioles finished in a tie for third place in 1946 with an 80-73 record, 19 games behind Montreal, before losing to the second-place Syracuse Chiefs in six games in the first round of the playoffs.22

Robinson became the regular first baseman for the Cleveland Indians in 1947 until mid-August, when he fouled a pitch by Allie Reynolds off his ankle and fractured a bone, sidelining him for the season.23 But he was back at first for the Indians’ magical run to the pennant and World Series championship in 1948, batting .300 in the Series.

Robinson went on to play 13 big-league seasons with seven American League teams, making four All-Star teams, and playing in another World Series with the 1955 New York Yankees.24 After his playing career, he successfully made the transition to the front office, eventually serving as general manager of the Atlanta Braves and of the Texas Rangers.

BOBBY BROWN

The 21-year-old Bobby Brown also had a unique path to the International League, straight from the Tulane Medical School, where, as he put it, he was “the best hitter in his medical school class.”25 He had begun his collegiate career at Stanford but enlisted in the Navy’s wartime V12 program as a pre-med student when he turned 18. During his freshman year at Stanford, he hit .405 for the varsity26 and caught the eye of Ty Cobb, who sometimes attended Stanford games. When Brown was called to active duty on July 1, 1943, the Navy sent him to UCLA to finish his pre-med studies. Brown played on the UCLA Bruins baseball team, where Jackie Robinson had starred a few years earlier, during his year there and batted close to .500.

With his pre-med studies complete, the Navy sent Brown to Tulane for medical school. There, seemingly against all odds, he managed to play for Tulane’s baseball team during his first year in med school, again batting over .450.27 Thus, due to the vagaries caused by World War II, Brown played and starred for three universities in three years.28 He was later elected to the Sports Halls of Fame for all three schools.

With the war over, Brown was discharged from the Navy in January 1946. The Yankees then outbid several other teams and signed him to a record $52,000 bonus that spring while he was in his second year of medical school. The Tulane administration, after much deliberation, agreed to allow Brown to continue in medical school even after he signed a professional baseball contract.29

After signing, Brown reported to Yankees spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida, where the manager was Joe McCarthy. The 1946 camp was a very large one with all the war veteran players returning to baseball. Brown played exceptionally well, with one highlight a grand slam against the Norfolk minor-league outfit.

Near the end of camp, Yankees general manager George Weiss told Brown that he was going to start the season with the Binghamton (New York) Triplets of the Double-A Eastern League. Brown balked, however, and said he wanted to start at a higher classification and that he would not report to the Triplets. Weiss relented and said, “Okay, we will send you to Newark.”30

Brown knew that breaking in directly with the Yankees infield would be difficult, since they had Phil Rizzuto at shortstop, George Stirnweiss, who had won the 1945 American League batting title, at second, and Billy Johnson, who was returning from the service after a strong rookie year in 1943, at third base. Brown also had worked out in the Newark ballpark when he was 14 years old and living in New Jersey, and so was familiar with the surroundings.

Brown appeared in 148 games, all but a handful at shortstop, for the 1946 Bears while no other player played in more than 117 games for Newark. At the end of the International League campaign, the Yankees sent a late-season call for Brown, along with Yogi Berra, pitcher Vic Raschi, and outfielder Frank Colman. With New York, Brown batted .333 in eight games and 29 plate appearances.31 His minor-league days, like those of the two Robinsons, were at an end.

Brown continued to both attend medical school and play for the Yankees until he graduated in April 1950. He typically was not able to go to spring training and in at least two seasons showed up from Tulane on Opening Day. He showed his ability to come through in the clutch in the four World Series he played in with the Yankees, batting a cumulative .439 in 41 at-bats with five doubles, three triples, and nine runs batted in.

After the Korean Conflict broke out in 1950, the military began seeking doctors from the old V12 program who had gone to medical school during World War II but had not been deployed. Early in 1952, the now Dr. Brown was told that he had to reenlist as a medical officer or that he would be drafted as a private. He chose the Army, which required a two-year commitment, and on July 1, 1952, he reported to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, thus ending his season with the Yankees prematurely.

Brown was then deployed to Korea and arrived there on October 1, 1952, the day his Yankees opened the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. He served in a MASH unit and with a field artillery battalion for 10 months before being transferred to the US military hospital in Tokyo for the rest of his deployment.32

Dr. Brown was honorably discharged in April 1954, having missed more than half of the 1952 and all of the 1953 seasons. He had an internal medicine residency lined up to begin July 1, 1954, at Stanford but was able to play for the Yankees for a couple of months, appearing in 29 games. Then on June 30, Brown played his last major-league game, manning third base and going 2-for-4 against Willard Nixon in a 6-1 Yankees loss to the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park.33 After the game he boarded a red-eye flight to San Francisco so he could begin his residency on July 1.34 At 29 years of age, Brown walked away from baseball to pursue his medical career.

After his three-year residency program at Stanford, Brown returned to Tulane for a one-year cardiology fellowship. He then practiced cardiology for 25 years in Fort Worth before major-league baseball came calling again; he was named president of the American League, an office he filled from 1984 to 1994.35 Later Dr. Brown’s only regret would be that as a player he was not able to go to spring training and give baseball his undivided attention for a few years. But he had no regrets about becoming a doctor and practicing medicine.36

TOMMY TATUM

As mentioned, Tommy Tatum, who finished third in the writers’ voting for MVP, had a stellar year for Montreal in 1946. After growing up in Oklahoma City, he broke into professional baseball in 1938 at 18 and had an eight-game cup of coffee with the Dodgers in 1941. In 1946 he was coming off three years in the US Army Signal Corps and, at 26, had one of the best seasons of his 15-year playing career. In addition to his .319 batting average, he stole 28 bases and made the International League All-Star team. Tatum made the Dodgers roster out of spring training in 1947 but ran into a very crowded Brooklyn outfield. After appearing in just six games for the Dodgers, mostly as a pinch-hitter, he was sold to the Cincinnati Reds on May 13. With the Reds he hit .273 in 69 games in his major-league swan song before returning to the minor leagues. He served as player-manager for the Oklahoma City Indians in the Texas League from 1951 through 1955 before retiring from baseball.

In his brief time with the 1947 Dodgers, Tatum did have a moment important for the annals of baseball history. On April 18 he had his only start for Brooklyn, batting third between Jackie Robinson, who was second in the lineup, and Dixie Walker against the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds. In the top of the third inning, Robinson led off with a home run to deep left field off Dave Koslo and was greeted with outstretched arms at home plate by Tatum. A photo taken at that moment captured the racial integration of the major leagues and was published in newspapers throughout the country. 37

JACKIE ROBINSON

In his first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947, Jackie Robinson faced a torrent of racism and vitriol.38 He somehow persevered as he batted .297 while playing first base, another new position, helping lead Brooklyn to the pennant. He went on to a storied 10year Hall of Fame career for the Dodgers, who won six pennants and one World Series championship during his tenure.

Robinson’s difficult rookie year with the Dodgers has rightfully received much attention.39 However, Robinson’s first major challenge, with his wife, Rachel, by his side, was to survive a month of spring training in 1946 with the Montreal Royals in the Jim Crow South.40 The Royals were supposed to train in Sanford, Florida, but were forced to move their camp to Daytona Beach, near the parent Dodgers, because of threatened mob violence in Sanford.41 The Royals also had to cancel games in Jacksonville, where the local authorities padlocked the field,42 and Deland because of local segregation laws forbidding Whites from playing against Blacks.43

Robinson and fellow African American Johnny Wright were also subject to constant racial abuse when the Royals did play spring-training games. Robinson, who had relatively little baseball-playing experience,44 struggled hitting against the curveball. He was also troubled by a sore arm,45 necessitating a shift from shortstop, his former position, to second base.46

He also faced challenges from the opposition, such as the time in an exhibition game against Indianapolis when veteran pitcher Paul Derringer knocked Robinson down not once, but twice. Robinson then smashed the next pitch past third for a hit. Later in the game, Derringer again threw at Robinson’s head. This time Robinson retaliated by smashing a triple to deep left field.47

Robinson’s less-than-stellar spring training created some skepticism in Montreal about the impact he would have on the playing field. Some believed that the much more experienced Johnny Wright was the more likely of the two to eventually crack the Brooklyn Dodgers lineup.48

It didn’t take long for Robinson to dispel that doubt as he had a spectacular debut on April 18 against the Jersey City Giants in their Roosevelt Stadium. After grounding out to shortstop in his first at-bat, Robinson came up again in the third inning with two men on base and nobody out. He smashed the first pitch from Jersey City’s Warren Sandel over the left-field fence for a three-run home run.49 He finished a memorable first game with four hits, two on bunts, three RBIs, and two stolen bases. For the day he also scored four runs, two improbably on balks he induced when dancing off third base.50 The Royals won 14-1 to start the season with a bang. By the time of the Royals’ home opener two weeks later, Robinson was hitting .362 with no sign of slowing down.

The season was not without its travails, however. Robinson missed some games in June with a leg issue. Later in the summer when he slumped and grew visibly tired and listless, a doctor ordered him to take 10 days off to relax and recharge his batteries. He did spend four days away from the team and the respite did indeed help get him back on track.51

For the most part, Robinson was treated well by the fans at home and away. The Montreal fans loved him, but he did encounter some racial taunting during his first trip to Baltimore.52 Also, Syracuse Chiefs fans and players hurled invective at him early in the season.53

The worst treatment, however, occurred in Louisville in the Little World Series, which pitted the champions of the International League against the champions of the American Association, the Louisville Colonels. The first three games of the series were in Louisville and the verbal barrage from the fans there was abusive and constant. Robinson was only 1-for-10 as Louisville won two of the three games.

When the series moved to Montreal, the Royals fans showed their displeasure with the way Louisville had treated Robinson and, starting with leadoff man Johnny Welaj, booed every move a Colonels player made.54 Once before hometown fans, Robinson quickly regained his form, driving in the winning run in the 10th inning of game four with a two-out line single to left. In the fifth game, he doubled, tripled, and had a key bunt single to drive in the decisive run, while in the final game he had two more hits and made several key plays in the field as the Royals beat Louisville 2-0 to wrap up the series.55

Robinson was 7-for-14 in the three games in Montreal and afterward was carried around the field by the jubilant fans, who chanted in French “[H]e has earned his stripes.”56 When he left the ballpark in his street clothes to rush to the airport to fly to Detroit, where he was to begin a barnstorming tour, he was again mobbed by thousands of fans, leading to the famous line about a White mob chasing a Black man out of love and not hatred.57

Robinson would describe the people of Montreal generally as being “warm and wonderful” to Rachel and himself. In fact, the citizenry was so attentive to them as a couple that he felt they had little privacy. But he would remember his time in Montreal with real fondness.58

Although Robinson was under intense scrutiny when he broke into the National League in 1947 with the Dodgers, he also played under tremendous pressure in 1946 with Montreal. It is difficult to underestimate the attention he drew. Robin Roberts, who was pitching in the semipro Northern League in Vermont that summer, remembered driving up to Montreal on an offday with a couple of teammates just to watch Robinson play. He came away very impressed; Robinson went 3-for-4 with a steal of home and played errorless ball at second base.59

Although Jackie Robinson did not win the International League MVP in 1946, he was named the National League Rookie of the Year the next year when he broke major-league baseball’s unofficial color ban. In 1949 the 30-year-old Robinson led the National League in hitting with a .342 average and was named Most Valuable Player by the baseball writers, outdistancing Stan Musial 264 points to 226.60

AN ANALYSIS OF THE VOTING

The question remains, however, whether the voting for the 1946 International League Most Valuable Player Awards was racially biased. Viewed in hindsight over three-quarters of a century later, it is difficult to know for certain, but one cannot help but be suspicious.

Although it is unclear if the voting was based only on the regular season and not the playoffs,61 either way Jackie Robinson’s performance was exceptional. At a minimum, Robinson was the best player on the best team in the league, indeed on one of the best teams in minor-league history. But Eddie Robinson and Bobby Brown also had outstanding years for first-division ballclubs. Certainly, actual MVP Eddie Robinson had the best combination of power and average, resulting in a .983 OPS, second to Montreal’s Lew Riggs, who appeared in only 90 games, and considerably better than Jackie’s OPS of .930. Of the statistics that were considered paramount at the time, Eddie’s 123 runs batted in, which led the league by a wide margin, coupled with his 34 home runs, certainly would have attracted widespread attention. His .578 slugging percentage, well above Jackie’s .462, also led the league and would have been considered a major plus factor. Thus, Eddie was most deserving of the MVP.

Bobby Brown, who finished second in the MVP voting with 135 points to Jackie Robinson’s 89-point total, had in many ways similar statistics to Jackie. Brown was second in hitting at .341 to Jackie’s .349 and neither hit many home runs.62 Robinson’s .930 OPS was higher than Brown’s .870. Both were very difficult to strike out; Robinson fanned 27 times in 553 plate appearances while Brown was even tougher, with only 19 punchouts in 597 times at the plate.63 And most impressively, both were playing their first seasons in Organized Baseball.

It is also worth noting that Jackie Robinson did not mention the International League MVP Award in either of his two autobiographies.64 Perhaps there is no reason that he should have, given that he did not win. However, he might well have mentioned it if he felt that he had been the victim of racial prejudice.65 He was certainly not shy about later alluding to the racial injustices that confronted him.

The fact, however, that Jackie finished fifth in the voting by the sportswriters, well behind Eddie Joost, strongly smacks of discrimination. The 30-year-old Joost, who spent 17 years in the big leagues, had a fine year as the shortstop for the seventh-place Rochester Red Wings, with 19 home runs and 101 runs batted in. He batted a pedestrian .276, however—73 points below Robinson—and did not come close to leading the league in any category. Yet he polled 120 points in the voting by the writers, well ahead of Jackie Robinson’s 89-point total.

CONCLUSION

Thus, there is certainly circumstantial evidence of bias in that long-ago MVP voting. If we just look at the first-place votes in the writers’ poll, Eddie Robinson received 16 of them, followed by Tommy Tatum with 10. Jackie Robinson garnered seven top votes while Jack Wallaesa of Toronto had the other.66 While the author could not locate the votes of the individual sportswriters, it is likely that some left Jackie off their ballots entirely, considering that even with seven first-place votes, his 89-point total was far behind the four in front of him.

Both Jackie and Eddie Robinson overcame significant obstacles to get to the International League and endured a great deal of hardship in 1946, albeit of a very different nature. Whether the absence of prejudice in the MVP voting would have swapped them and made Jackie the winner is unlikely given Eddie’s power numbers and .318 batting average. But it would certainly have made for a closer race and would have bumped Jackie Robinson well up from fifth place. How far up, we will never know.

C. PAUL ROGERS III is co-author or co-editor of several baseball books including The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant Race (Temple University Press, 1996) with boyhood hero Robin Roberts and Lucky Me: My 65 Years in Baseball (SMU Press, 2011) with Eddie Robinson. Paul is president of the Ernie Banks-Bobby Bragan DFW Chapter of SABR and a frequent contributor to the SABR BioProject, but his real job is as a law professor at the SMU Dedman School of Law, where he served as dean for nine years. He has also served as SMU’s faculty athletic representative for 37 years and counting.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article was edited by David Siegel and fact-checked by Laura Peebles.

 

NOTES

1 Jack Anderson, “A Great Leap Forward: Jackie Robinsson and the View from Montreal,” https://sabr.org/journal/article/a-great-leap-forward-jackie-robinson-and-the-view-from-montreal/.

2 Scott Simon, Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002), 97; David Falkner, Great Time Coming: The Life of Jackie Robinson from Baseball to Birmingham (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 138; Tommy Holmes, Dodger Daze and Knights (New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1953), 200.

3 “Robinson’s Bidding for Berths in Baseball Majors Next Spring,” Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Leader-Telegram, October 23, 1946: 10.

4 Jules Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 141-42; Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 156-157; Maury Allen, Jackie Robinson: A Life Remembered (New York: Franklin Watts, 1987), 83.

5 According to one historian, at the time some believed Jackie Robinson should have received the MVP Award. Bill O’Neal, The International League: A Baseball History 1884-1991 (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1992), 141.

6 “Robinson Most Valuable in International Loop,” Elmira (New York) StarGazette, October 17, 1946: 27.

7 “Robinson Third Oriole Honored in as Many Years,” The Sporting News, October 16, 1946: 13.

8 Eddie Robinson was the third Baltimore Oriole in a row to win the International League MVP, following Howie Moss in 1944 and Sherm Lollar in 1945. The streak was broken in 1947 when Hank Sauer of Syracuse won the award.

9 Tom Meany, The Magnificent Yankees (New York: A.S Barnes & Company, 1952), 153; Arthur Daley, “Baseball’s Golden Boy: Bobby Brown Keeps his Medical Career in Mind as He Hits Away for the Yanks,” Sportfolio Magazine, October 1948: 49.

10 Danny Murtaugh, future manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates World Series winner in 1960, also had 174 hits for the Rochester Red Wings.

11 “Eddie Robinson International League V-Man, Montreal Star, October 5, 1946: 24.

12 Simon, 97.

13 “Robinson of Baltimore Named Most Valuable Man,” North Bay (Ontario) Nugget, October 5, 1946:21.

14 “Robinson Third Oriole Honored in as Many Years,” The Sporting News, October 16, 1946: 13. It is quite likely that those eight scribes also voted in the writers’ balloting.

15 Montreal’s Tatum and Baltimore’s John Podgajny also received single first-place votes. Larry Berra of Newark, not yet referred to as Yogi by the baseball world, was far down the list with six total points. The Sporting News, October 16, 1946: 13. Berra had hit .314 in 77 games before his late season call-up to the Yankees.

16 Tygiel; Rampersad; Falkner.

17 Eddie Robinson with C. Paul Rogers III, Lucky Me — My Sixty-Five Years in Baseball (Dallas: SMU Press, 2011), 31-35.

18 Robinson with Rogers, 28-29.

19 O’Neal, 142.

20 Robinson with Rogers, xv.

21 After failed trials with the Indians and Cincinnati Reds late in 1946, the right-handed Moss returned to Baltimore for the 1947 season and took full advantage of the short-left field porch, smacking 53 homers to again lead the league. In all, “Howitzer Howie” led the International League in home runs four times, the only person in the history of the league to do so. O’Neal, 243. But in 76 major-league plate appearances over parts of three seasons, Moss failed to hit a home run, recorded no extra-base hits, and drove in only a single run.

22 The Orioles actually finished the regular season tied with the Newark Bears for third place, one game behind the second-place Chiefs. Baltimore then defeated Newark in a one-game playoff for third place, with the loser having to face first-place Montreal in the first round of the league playoffs.

23 Robinson with Rogers, 42.

24 Within months of his retirement as a player in 1957, Robinson’s foot-drop issue recurred, an issue he dealt with the rest of his life. https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Eddie-Robinson/.

25 William Clifford Roberts, MD, “Robert William (“Bobby”) Brown, MD, Cardiologist, Major League Baseball Player (New York Yankee) and American League President: A Conversation with the Editor,” American Journal of Cardiology (2008): 725.

26 Daley, 54.

27 According to Dr. Brown, if Tulane had an away game, typically against a service team, the Tulane team bus would wait for him outside his afternoon lab or class, and then leave. For home games, the Tulane coach would tell the opposition that “we can’t start the game until the shortstop arrives and he is in med school.” C. Paul Rogers III, “Wartime Baseball, Medicine, and the New York Yankees: A Conversation with Dr. Bobby Brown,” Elysian Fields Quarterly (vol. 16, no. 3, 1999): 62-63.

28 “Wartime Baseball, Medicine, and the New York Yankees: A Conversation with Dr. Bobby Brown,” Elysian Fields Quarterly (vol. 16, no. 3, 1999): 60-61.

29 Roberts, 725.

30 Roberts, 726.

31 In contrast, Yogi Berra batted .364 in 23 plate appearances.

32 Roberts, 733-734.

33 Eddie Robinson was Brown’s teammate with the Yankees in 1954 and appeared as a pinch-hitter in Brown’s last game.

34 Dr. Brown reported to the San Francisco County Hospital (which was part of the Stanford residency program) around noon on July I. According to Brown, “They said report July I. They didn’t say what time.” Rogers, 73.

35 Dr. Brown took a six-month hiatus from his practice in 1974 to serve as interim president of the Texas Rangers after Brad Corbett bought the team. Rogers, 74.

36 Rogers, 75.

37 https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Tommy-Tatum/.

38 Robin Roberts and C. Paul Rogers III, The Whiz Kids and the 1950 Pennant (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 48-52.

39 Red Barber, 1947 — When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982).

40 Chris Lamb, Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004),

41 Lamb, 83-90; William Brown, Baseball’s Fabulous Montreal Royals (Montreal: Robert Davies Publishing, 1996), 97.

42 Jackie Robinson as told to Wendell Smith, Jackie Robinson — My Own Story (New York: Greenberg Publishers, 1948), 79; Lamb, 135-136.

43 Kostya Kennedy, True—The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2022), 22.; Lamb, 140-141.

44 Robinson had played relatively few games at Pasadena Junior College and UCLA, where baseball was perhaps his fourth best sport while in college, had played 34 games with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League in 1945 and barnstormed in Venezuela briefly after that season. James W. Johnson, The Black Brums: The Remarkable Lives of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson, Woody Strode, Tom Bradley, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 56, 60, 103.

45 Lamb, 94-95.

46 Teammate Lou Rochelli, whose was also in line for the second base job, helped Robinson transition to second and taught him how to turn the double play, a gesture Robinson never forgot. Jackie Robinson, I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography (New York: Putnam, 1972), 44.

47 Kennedy, 17; Brown, 99.

48 This was especially true because the Dodgers were short on pitching but had Pee Wee Reese at shortstop and Eddie Stanky at second base, both front-line major leaguers. Kennedy, 29-30.

49 In two significant actions of acceptance, manager Clay Hopper, who was from Mississippi and was coaching third, slapped Robinson on the back as he crossed third base and the next batter, George Shuba, shook Robinson’s hand as he crossed the plate. Brown, 101-102; Kennedy, 32. George “Shotgun” Shuba, as told to Greg Gulas, My Memories as a Brooklyn Dodger (Youngstown, Ohio: City Printing Company, 2007), 32-34.

50 Kennedy, 32-33.

51 Robinson as told to Smith, Jackie Robinson — My Own Story, 105.

52 Robinson, I Never Had It Made, 46.

53 Robinson as told to Smith, Jackie Robinson — My Own Story, 106; Robinson, I Never Had It Made, 49.

54 Kennedy, 57.

55 Mark J. Steiner, “Jackie Robinson: History Made at the 1946 Junior World Series.” https://sabr.org/journal/article/jackie-robinson-history-made-at-the-1946-junior-world-series/

56 Tygiel, 143.

57 Brown, 111-112; Anderson; Steiner.

58 Robinson, I Never Had it Made, 47.

59 Roberts and Rogers, 48. Of course, Roberts would later become the ace of the Philadelphia Phillies and face Jackie Robinson many times in the National League, including his defeat of the Dodgers on the last day of the season in 1950 to clinch the pennant for the Whiz Kids.

60 Robinson received 12 of 24 first-place votes while Musial received 5.

61 The results of the sportswriters’ poll was announced at the sixth game of the Little World Series between Montreal and Louisville, after the International League playoffs had concluded. “Oriole’ First Sacker Voted Most Valuable,” Sault Star (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada), October 5, 1946: 13.

62 Brown hit five home runs while Robinson hit only three, including the three-run shot on Opening Day. But both were among the league leaders in doubles with 27 and 25 respectively.

63 Eddie Robinson was also very difficult to strike out, especially considering he was a power hitter. In 1946 he struck out only 47 times in 607 plate appearances.

64 Robinson, I Never Had It Made, Robinson as told to Smith, Jackie Robinson —My Own Story.

65 Rachel Robinson also did not allude to the 1946 MVP voting in her memoir about her life with Jackie. Rachel Robinson with Lee Daniels, Jackie Robinson — An Intimate Portrait (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1996).

66 The first-place vote for Wallaesa was indeed puzzling as he split the season between Toronto and the Philadelphia Athletics, batting .253 in 63 games for the sixth-place Maple Leafs.

A memorial program was conducted in Spokane in July to commemorate the eight Spokane players and the bus driver, who died on June 24, 1946, when their team bus careened off a narrow road in the Cascade Mountains. (Courtesy of David Eskenazi)

 

Blessedly, professional baseball has had very few terrible moments, incidents that end with loss of life, calamity, or great destruction, leaving behind indelible memories.

Serious fans almost everywhere know about these, as readily as they recall the feats of Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson, the durability of Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken, the shame of the Black Sox, or the recurring dominance of the New York Yankees.

As I discovered at my first SABR convention, fans also respond to mention of my home, Spokane, Washington, with questions about the bus accident that killed nine of that city’s players. Almost eight decades later, that 1946 catastrophe remained the worst of its kind in American professional sports. The second worst involved another minor-league team, the Duluth Dukes, and its bus in another league just two years later.

Those and a few less frightful events underline the perils of minor-league travel and team travel in general. Most known examples were a consequence of late-night bus rides. All baseball-related fatal accidents involved lower minor-league or college teams. In almost a century and a half, no major-league American sport has had a team-travel fatality.

Both deadly accidents took place in the aftermath of World War II. Nationwide, worn-out vehicles and parts shortages often left passenger equipment in precarious condition. Even in our own lives, deferred maintenance can take its toll.

Since then, with Major League Baseball wielding almost complete oversight of the professional game, standards are higher and the buses better. Nonetheless, in the lower minor leagues, where smaller cities may be separated by hundreds of miles, late-night bus rides remain the most affordable option. Not all notable bus accidents occurred long ago. Not all involved professionals. Only a few ended in death. Considering the number of trips over many decades, the national pastime should give thanks that the consequences haven’t been worse.

The second terrible accident involved a 1948 Northern League team, the Dukes from Duluth, Minnesota. This is not as well-remembered. Horrible things happened there, too. In two years, the profile of minor-league baseball had changed quite a bit. Most minor leagues had not operated since 1942. By war’s end, many experienced minor leaguers had played in fast company, some of it in the service. As a result, in 1946, pro ball was awash with talent. With the economy on the rise, and television not yet ubiquitous, fans flocked to ballparks in more than 300 markets. Three years later, the minors reached their peak with 59 leagues representing 438 cities.1 They employed close to 7,000 players. Today, the constricted minor leagues include only 120 teams. Each major-league franchise has four affiliates.

The Spokane and Duluth teams were typical of their year. Duluth’s players in Class C were much younger, averaging 21.5 years. Put simply, they had far less history. Few had gone to war. Few were married. Only five had prewar experience. In 1946 the Indians players averaged 26.1 years old. All of them had played before or during the war. A clear majority were married. All but three had been servicemen. The WIL was the second-best league in the West.2

Spokane, with no apparent weakness, was a logical pennant contender. Veterans, not just the military kind, clogged the roster. They had Bob Kinnaman, the best pitcher, and top outfielder Levi McCormack from the city’s 1940 and 1941 regular-season champions. Third baseman Jack Lohrke, on option from San Diego’s Pacific Coast League team, and first baseman Vic Picetti were considered top prospects. Several teammates were in the midst of, or near the end of, long careers.

Lohrke, 22, had been in the Army, where he had survived combat at the Battle of the Bulge. Then, after his discharge, he was bumped off a military flight, which subsequently crashed, killing everyone aboard.3 He would become known as “Lucky Lohrke,” a nickname he disliked. Picetti was a protégé of Oakland manager Dolph Camilli, the former National League MVP. In 1945 Picetti had gone directly from high school to the PCL, where Camilli, who later told me, “He was the greatest prospect I ever saw come straight out of high school,” benched himself so Picetti could replace him in the lineup.4

Five veteran right-handers led Spokane’s pitching staff. All of them had played before the war. Former Washington State College star Kinnaman, a 22-game winner for the 1941 Indians, belonged in the Coast League. But, like Picetti and outfielder Bob Paterson, he’d been crowded off Oakland’s roster by prewar regulars.

Milt Cadinha and Joe Faria were boyhood friends from Northern California’s East Bay area. Cadinha, already known to WIL fans, had twice won 13 games for Tacoma (in 1940 and 1941), and he was off to an 8-1 start.5 Darwin “Gus” Hallbourg and Dick Powers also came on option from San Diego. Hallbourg had 45 wins over three pro seasons. Powers, a seasoned East Bay semipro, had spent the last two years with Sacramento in the PCL.

Like Paterson, the other regular outfielders, Bob James and McCormack, could hit. McCormack, 33, a handsome Native American from the Nez Perce reservation, had starred for both Spokane title teams. George Risk, a former football and baseball standout at Oregon’s Pacific University, was the shortstop. He and infielder Fred Martinez, a Dodgers farmhand before the war, were batting well above .300. League veteran Mel Cole was set to be the catcher, but instead, plagued by injuries, he became the manager. Just before Opening Day, team owner Sam Collins fired Glenn Wright because the former National League infielder had disappeared on a drunk. When Wright managed Wenatchee’s first-place team in 1939, Cole had been his catcher.6

Recently, Collins had signed a pair of seasoned pros, each with a bit of big-league experience. Ben Geraghty succeeded Martinez at second base. Chris Hartje, a former Brooklyn Dodger who had been working out with Oakland, was going to step in for Cole.7

On Monday morning, June 24, 1946, Spokane players gathered outside Ferris Field, waiting to board the bus that would carry them almost 325 miles over land and sea. Ahead, with the season nearly half over, lay a weeklong series with Bremerton. Summer had begun, but it was wet and dreary. This would be a long, slow trip, maybe 12 hours, twice as long as it takes today.

The wooden ballpark, built as a 1936 WPA project, shared the former Spokane Interstate Fairground with a thoroughbred racetrack, three miles east of downtown, just north of Sprague Avenue, which intersects the city. In those days, Sprague doubled as a segment of US 10, stretching east toward the Idaho state line and west toward Seattle.

On Sunday, Spokane had divided a split doubleheader with Salem, winning the night game, 11-10, with the help of Lohrke’s four hits.8 The team picture, which became a collectible, was taken between games. Salem, after opening the season with a 13-game win streak, now clung to the lead, barely ahead of Wenatchee, with three teams crowded behind them. All five had winning records. Though the Indians were fifth, with a record of 32-26, 5*A games behind.9

Cole and 15 teammates boarded their Washington Motor Coach charter, a 20-passenger version of a school bus, a bit before 11:00 A.M. Glen Berg, young but experienced, had the wheel. Cadinha, Faria, and their wives had gone ahead in Faria’s prewar Buick.

With two-lane highways the norm, they would mostly follow the route that has since become Interstate 90, heading south to Ritzville, west through the Columbia Plateau—among the world’s largest deserts—and across the Columbia River, farther west to Ellensburg, then over Snoqualmie Pass to Seattle, where they would catch a ferry.

A couple of hours after the team left, business manager Dwight Aden, who had been the team’s prewar center fielder, received a call from San Diego. The Padres had recalled Lohrke, who was hitting .345 and had 28 extra-base hits. Long-distance phone lines were out of service in the middle of the state, so Aden asked the state patrol to get an Ellensburg officer to deliver the message when the Indians stopped to eat at Webster’s Café.10

The team arrived about 5 o’clock. While the players ate, Berg drove to the company’s local garage, hoping to replace the bus. Told he had a better vehicle than anything on the lot, he settled for minor repairs. When Berg rejoined the team, Lohrke grabbed his gear, said goodbye, hitchhiked back to Spokane and, after hearing the dreadful news, caught a train to San Diego.

The team continued west. As a holdover from the war, there was no daylight saving time, so the overcast was fading to dusk, and the drizzle had turned into mist, as the bus labored up and over Snoqualmie Summit. At about 8:00 P.M., it rounded Airplane Curve and started down the long straightaway. In those days, US 10, one lane in each direction, hugged the southern edge of the deep, narrow canyon. Stout wood posts, strung with cable, separated westbound traffic from the ravine.

Hallbourg told the Seattle Daily Times that he had seen the Snoqualmie River glistening far below. The view prompted him to twist in his front-row seat and tell Kinnaman, two rows back, “‘This would be a hell of a place to go over, wouldn’t it?’ I turned back, and we were going through the fence.”11

The Indians were almost three miles past the summit when, as Berg, McCormack, and Geraghty told investigators, a black, eastbound sedan came into view, crowding the center line. It may have clipped the bus. Berg swerved rather than applying the brakes, fearing he might lose traction on the slick road. But the right-side wheels slipped onto the shoulder. Though he nursed the front back onto the pavement, the rear duals ricocheted off the lip and slid the bus sideways into the cable, where it began clipping off posts. After 100 feet or so, it broke through. Tumbling down the rocky hillside, the bus struck a boulder, caught fire, bounced onto its left side, struck another big rock, then rolled again before stopping right side up, astride a log. It had fallen an estimated 350 feet, scattering men and equipment across the hillside. After moments of stunned silence, the gas tank exploded.

Six died at the scene. Cole, Risk, and Paterson, seated on the left side, burned to death. Fire or blunt force trauma killed Kinnaman, Martinez, and James, who sat right across the aisle. Picetti, spread-eagled on a boulder with terrible injuries, died on the way to Seattle’s Harborview Hospital. Reserve pitcher George Lyden died around noon the next day. Hartje, burned over most of his body, passed away on Wednesday. He and Lyden had been with the Indians less than a week.

Survivors ejected through one of the aluminum-framed windows were seriously injured. Geraghty, launched almost at once, struck a boulder that left him with a gaping scalp wound and a broken knee. Powers had a skull fracture, a broken neck, and a broken collarbone. Although McCormack, lame in one hip, walked away, his nose was smashed.

Those still on board escaped through window openings. Hallbourg struggled to free his hips and ended up with burns on his pitching arm. Pete Barisoff, the staff’s only left-hander, also crawled out. When he heard Irv Konopka crying for help, he dragged the backup catcher through the empty frame. Konopka, a former University of Idaho football player drafted by the Detroit Lions, had a broken shoulder, while Barisoff suffered a foot injury.

Berg, engulfed in flames, escaped through the battered doorway. He remained in Seattle’s Virginia Mason Hospital for almost four months, burned badly on his arms, legs, and head.12 Later, he became a truck driver, admired for his safety record.13

By the time rescue teams arrived, they worked in steady rain. The fire burned until dawn.

Professional baseball responded without precedent. The major leagues contributed $25,000 from All-Star Game receipts. PCL rivals Seattle and Oakland (managed by Casey Stengel) played a Ferris Field exhibition. Wenatchee hosted Sacramento, its parent club. Including donations from leagues, teams, and fans, the Spokane Baseball Benefit Fund raised $118,567.41, the equivalent of about $1.9 million in 2024 dollars.14 Supplemented by bus company insurance, distributions were prorated. Cole, Martinez, and Hartje left pregnant wives, and widows with children received larger shares.15

Collins had secretly planned to send Picetti, homesick for his widowed mother and fiancée, home for a few days, after the Bremerton series. Instead, the women escorted his body back to San Francisco and buried him with his wedding ring.16

With a lineup cobbled together from Western International League rivals, former professionals and a semipro or two, Spokane resumed its schedule on the Fourth of July. Although Cadinha, Faria, and Hallbourg anchored the pitching staff, the Indians were nearly inept at the plate and in the field. They finished with a 54-78 record. Glenn Wright stepped in as manager until Geraghty was able to take over.

Geraghty stayed on in 1947. Stocked with prospects from the Brooklyn Dodgers, his old organization, he guided the Indians to within one percentage point of the WIL title. He went on to become a legendary, pennant-winning minor-league manager, haunted by the accident, and a protector of developing players, particularly Henry Aaron. However, a heart attack killed him in June of 1963. He was only 50 years old.17

Powers recovered, but it took almost two years. He worked as a meat broker and a real estate agent. McCormack rejoined the Indians in 1947 and played well until his aching hip forced him into retirement. He became a mail carrier. The three active pitchers and Barisoff played in 1947, then moved on with their lives. Cadinha became an insurance agent. Faria ran an East Bay celebrity hangout. Hallbourg settled east of them, near Modesto, where he spent 37 years with Pacific Telephone.18

Barisoff and Konopka weren’t so fortunate. Barisoff died on November 12, 1949, trapped inside when fire swept through his Los Angeles County home. Konopka, who saw action with Boise’s Pioneer League team in 1949, died of cancer in 1970.19

Lohrke played with the San Diego Padres for the rest of the season and batted .303 with 8 home runs and 48 runs batted in. He went on to seven seasons in the National League (with the New York Giants and Philadelphia Phillies) and he ended his 15-year professional baseball career as player-manager with the Tri-City Braves of the Northwest League. Afterward, he worked as a security guard in San Diego.20

Today, as part of Interstate 90, the former US 10, cut further into the hillside, carries only eastbound Snoqualmie Pass traffic. Westbound vehicles follow a relatively new path on the north side of the canyon.

 

The bus, carrying members of the Duluth, Northern League team, is shown on July 24, 1948, after it collided with a truck that that had crossed the center line. Five Duluth players perished in the accident. (Jack Gillis, Minneapolis Star, July 24, 1948, Courtesy Minneapolis Star)

 

A SECOND DISASTER

Exactly 25 months after Spokane’s accident, right around noon on a sunny Saturday, July 24, 1948, Duluth Dukes manager George Treadwell and four of his players died north of St. Paul, when a truck loaded with dry ice veered across the center line and slammed into their team bus.21 The Minnesota-based Dukes, losers of two one-run games the night before in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, were headed north on Highway 36 just before its intersection with Dale Road. They were bound for St. Cloud, contenders with a 40-34 record.22

By contrast, most of the ongoing news coverage of this accident came from league cities and their neighbors. Probably, it was underreported. Except for immediate notice, it attracted little attention from the national media. There was no unusual setting. There were few complex backstories. There was surprisingly little drama. Most of it unfolded in less than two hours. But it was awful.

Minnesota Highway Department investigators determined that the washboard section of road thought to be the cause was more than 30 yards from the point of impact. Instead, they speculated that the truck’s worn steering mechanism may have failed, causing the driver, James Grealish, to lose control. Grealish, a Marine veteran with a wife and three daughters, and Treadwell, well known in the lower minor leagues, died instantly.

The truck had hit the 18-passenger former school bus on the left front corner, knocking it onto its right side. Their gas tanks ruptured and both vehicles burst into flames. A farmer named Frank Kurkowski, working nearby, heard the crash, ran to the scene, broke out the rear bus window and dragged five men to safety. Passing motorists rescued the rest.

Outfielder Gerald “Peanuts” Peterson, pitcher Don Schuchman, and outfielder Gil Krirdla, who played under the name Gil Trible, among the few Dukes with previous pro experience, also died on impact or burned to death. Second baseman Steve Lazar, his head split open, died two days later. Every survivor was injured to some degree. Many had burns. Some had inhaled toxic fumes. Several had fractures. Seven remained in critical condition for days.23

Pitcher Don Gilmore and all-star catcher Bernie Gerl were hurt the worst. In addition to burns, Gilmore was left with a broken left thigh and a mangled right ankle.24 Gerl, the last man rescued, had extensive burns and internal damage caused by the fire and its fumes. “My face looked like a breaded pork chop,” he recalled in 2013. “It made hamburger out of a lot of the guys. To describe some of the injuries, you couldn’t write it.”25

Duluth outfielder Chris “Bud” Dubia had a broken jaw, broken ankle, and broken ribs. Rookies Don Ritonya (broken arm, broken jaw, and broken leg) and John Vanderwier (fractured pelvis, deep wounds, and internal injuries), made the critical list though neither had pitched in a game. Shortstop Joe Becker, whose dad (also named Joe Becker) managed in the Western League, had lost skin on his left hand. He and pitcher Sam Paitich, his face badly burned, were hospitalized until the end of the year.26

The funeral service for Peterson, once a multisport star at Proctor High School, on Duluth’s rural outskirts, and the most popular player for the 1947 Dukes, attracted almost 2,000 people. Treadwell’s service, right across the state line in Superior, Wisconsin, drew an estimated 1,000.27

First baseman Mel McGaha and infielder Elmer Schoendienst, whose older brother Red was the second baseman and future manager of the parent Cardinals, were less injured. Both resumed their careers in 1949. McGaha, after years as a minor-league player-manager, managed the American League teams in Cleveland and Kansas City. Elmer Schoendienst spent a year in the Central League then gave it up and played semipro ball with another brother, Frank.28

Most of the others played only a year. Lou Branca, after pitching for the Dukes in 1949, coached the highschool team in Rochester, Minnesota, home of the Mayo Clinic, and ended up in the state coaches hall of fame. Recently married Eull Clark played in 1949. Dubia didn’t return to action until 1950, when he split 29 games between Duluth and Aberdeen. Then he rejoined the Army and retired, highly decorated, as a colonel. Vanderwier made a belated debut in 1950, posting an 8-6 record for Hamilton of the PONY League. Paitich, who was on the team but never got into a game, became a local tavern owner.29

Gilmore, also a pitcher, became a law officer and owned a security company. Beginning in 1969, he served six terms as a Republican state legislator in Ohio.30

“There are people who have been through things as horrible and terrifying as that was,” he told the Duluth Tribune/News at a 40th anniversary gathering in 1988. “But it’s been 50 years and I still dream about it twice a week.”31 Gilmore died on October 15, 2003, at the age of 75.

Only one other persisted. Gerl, who had lost 70 pounds during 40 days of hospitalization, underwent more than a year of intense recovery. After sitting out 1949, he batted .302 in 1950 for a St. Louis affiliate, Montgomery in the Southeastern League. After another year off, he rejoined Duluth, which needed a catcher, in 1952 and 1953. He liked to brag that, in his final season, he drove in more runs than Fargo-Moorhead’s hometown rookie hotshot, outfielder Roger Maris. Afterward, Gerl, a lifelong resident of Joliet, Illinois, went to work in his local Coca-Cola warehouse. He took charge five years later, and then became a regional Coke executive.32

Professional baseball and the public again responded generously. The league’s other seven teams loaned a dozen players. The Cardinals organization sent nine. The American Association’s Triple-A franchise in Minneapolis loaned another. Led by a fundraising effort highlighted by home-and-home Northern League benefit games and broadcast over radio stations in four states, more than $75,000 was raised and distributed to families of the victims.

Like Spokane, Duluth had a player who avoided possible death. St. Louis had promoted an 18-year-old right-hander named Sam Hunter, who missed the train that would have taken him from Chicago to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Instead, he caught a bus and, by the time he arrived, the team had gone.33

Duluth returned to action seven days after the accident, meeting Superior, its Northern League neighbor from across the Wisconsin state line. Ted Madjeski, in his third year as a player-manager at age 26, succeeded Treadwell as manager. The Dukes finished the season with 53 wins and 61 losses.

Surviving players held 30th and 40th reunions at the city’s Wade Stadium. Five teammates joined Gilmore and Gerl, who gathered on the 30th anniversary for a July 21, 1978, Duluth Herald photo. By the 50th anniversary. Gerl was the only one left. Nonetheless, he made the eight-hour drive for 15 straight years, a streak that didn’t end until 2010.34

Viewed from the distance of time, Gus Hallbourg and Bernie Gerl, each a last survivor, modeled gratitude and fulfillment while living many more productive decades.

“I am one of the great lucky guys alive,” Hallbourg said before the 50th anniversary of Spokane’s accident.35 He’d completed a fine career. He golfed. He gardened. He was popular in his community. He had a loving family. When he died on October 13, 2007, he was 87 years old.

Gerl also made the most of his remaining years. He, too, dreamed about his terrible day. But there he was, two years later, successfully back in uniform, married after a six-month postponement, using the insurance settlement to buy and furnish a home, and traveling the world for his employer. He had nine grandchildren and a fleet of great-grandchildren. In later years, he relished his time in the spotlight as the man who refused to let us forget his unfortunate teammates.36

Gerl, the last of the last survivors, died on November 7, 2020. He was 94 years old.

No other American professional teams in any sport have experienced fatalities.

Only one serious accident has affected a major-league team. That involved the California Angels. On May 21, 1992, the first of two team buses, headed to Baltimore from New York City, swerved off the New Jersey Turnpike at 1:50 A.M. and plunged into a grove of trees. The bus rolled onto its right side and left a dozen team members injured.37

Manager Bob “Buck” Rodgers, briefly trapped in the wreckage, was hurt the worst. The former Angels catcher suffered a crushed right elbow, a damaged left knee and a broken rib. He didn’t rejoin the team until August 28. The driver, who had had five speeding violations, was cited for careless driving.38

When it came to bus accidents, baseball’s other known multiple player deaths involved amateurs. Other minor-league incidents did not end in athlete death. The numbers are small. That may be a miracle.

JIM PRICE has been a SABR member since 1979. He received the Macmillan-SABR Award for “A Half Century of Pain,” marking the Spokane accident’s 50th anniversary, which appeared in the Spokane Spokesman-Review on June 24, 1996. A former beat writer, official scorer, and public-address announcer in three professional leagues, he got his first paid daily newspaper byline in 1952. A longtime Spokane resident, he has been a Spokane Indians publicist and play-by-play announcer, the track announcer and publicist at several thoroughbred racetracks, and the sports information director at Eastern Washington University. He retired from the Spokesman-Review in 2003. He has contributed to several books, including Rain Check, the 2006 SABR convention publication, and Drama and Pride in the Gateway City, the story of the 1964 St. Louis Cardinals, and to popular-music biographies.

 

SOURCES

In addition to the sources mentioned in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com.

Descriptions and details of the Spokane accident represent accumulations of information from the June 25-29, 1946, editions of the Spokesman-Review and Spokane Daily Chronicle, the Seattle Daily Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the Seattle Star, along with dispatches from the Associated Press and United Press, and the author’s telephone conversations with survivors and their families. Many of these details have been printed in his Spokesman-Review anniversary stories on June 22, 1986, June 24, 1996, June 18, 2006, and June 19, 2016.

 

NOTES

1 Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, 2nd Edition (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, Inc., 1997).

2 Baseball-reference.com provided rosters and player records for the 1946 Spokane and 1948 Duluth teams, supplemented by the author’s interviews.

3 Ron Fimrite, “O Lucky Man,” Sports Illustrated, November 14, 1994.

4 Author’s telephone interview with Camilli in June 1986, reported in the author’s article in the Spokesman-Review, June 24, 1986.

5 Cadinha went on to win 16 games (against seven losses) in 1946 for Spokane.

6 Conversations with Dwight Aden and various surviving players.

7 Various articles printed in the Spokane Spokesman-Review, June 17-20, 1946.

8 “Spokane Wins Salem Series, 4-3,” Spokane Spokesman-Review, June 24, 1946: 7.

9 “Spokane Wins Salem Series, 4-3.”

10 Author’s 1986 conversations with Aden and his phone conversation with Lohrke.

11 Hallbourg repeated this quote, frequently printed in the accident’s aftermath, to the author in their June 1986 telephone conversation.

12 This and other Glen Berg details came from the author’s several conversations with his daughter Debbie and were summarized in the author’s Berg obituary for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, November 2, 2003.

13 Berg had driven more than a million consecutive accident-free miles, according to a telephone conversation with Teamsters Local 690, Spokane, on October 31, 2003.

14 CPI Inflation Calculator, accessed October i, 2023, and updated April 16, 2024.

15 “Bus Crash Fund Totals $114,805,” Spokane Spokesman-Review, December 21, 1946: 10. Details updated in author’s telephone interview with Pat Lyden, June 2016.

16 Conversations with Dwight Aden in June 1986 supplemented in June 2006 during telephone interviews with Vic Picetti’s sister, Bev Schumann, and his former fiancée, Bety Evans King.

17 “Survivor of Smash Ben Geraghty Dies,” Spokane Chronicle, June 18, 1963: 13. Aaron’s admiration detailed in Kenny Kerr, “Kenny Kerr’s Korner,” Bristol (Tennessee) Herald Courier, October 10, 1974: 21.

18 From the author’s telephone conversations with Powers, Cadinha, Faria, and Hallbourg in June 1986.

19 “Survivor of 1946 Wreck Dies in Fire,” Spokane Spokesman-Review, November 15, 1949: 15. Konopka’s death was detailed in Mike Lynch and Alden Cross, “Baseball’s Darkest Night,” Spokane Spokesman-Review, June 20, 1971: 109-112.

20 See https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=lohrke001jac.

21 “Four Deaths, Injuries Riddle Dukes’ Roster,” Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Leader-Telegram, July 25, 1948: 10.

22 “5 Die, 14 Hurt in Bus-Truck Crash,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 25, 1948: i; Halsey Hall, “Northern League Continues; Help Promised Duluth,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 25, 1948: 31.

23 “5 Die, 14 Hurt in Bus-Truck Crash.”

24 “Eight Duluth Players Still Stick by Game,” Rap-id City (South Dakota) Journal, August 6, 1948: ii.

25 Jon Nowacki, Duluth News-Tribune, July 18, 2013 (page unknown).

26 “‘Duluth Fund’ Contributions Total $115,” Johnson City (Tennessee) Press, August 12, 1948: 32.

27 “Send 26 Players to Bolster Dukes,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, July 28, 1948: 17.

28 See https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=schoenooielm.

29 “Col. C.F Dubia dies at 66,” Columbus (Georgia) Ledger-Enquirer, July 31, 1990: 27.

30 H.R. 142, In Memory of Don Gilmore, Ohio House Journal, January 27, 2004.

31 Jon Nowacki, Duluth News-Tribune, July 12, 2008 (page unknown).

32 Author’s telephone conversation with Gerl in June 2016.

33 Joel Rippel, “The 1948 Duluth Dukes Bus Crash,” The National Pastime (Society for American Baseball Research), 2022.

34 Dave DeLand, “A Vivid Memory,” St. Cloud (Minnesota) Times, July 24, 2015: Ai, A2, A4.

35 Personal conversation with author, 1998.

36 Author’s telephone conversations with Gerl, June 2016.

37 “12 are injured as Angels’ team bus crashes,” Atlanta Journal, May 21, 1992: 85.

38 Helene Elliott, “13 Injured in Angel Bus Crash,” Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1992: C1.

A great quote sums up why most people—even dedicated baseball fans—have likely never heard of Pete Hughes.1 The sports editor of the Winnipeg News wrote about the right fielder for the local club in the legendary ManDak League in 1953:

“For our money, Hughes gives away more runs than he manufactures. He’s too slow afoot and almost has to hit a triple to get to first base. Then, in the field, he’s not a very sure catch when he does manage to get under a ball. If we were manager Ken Meyers, we wouldn’t get rid of Hughes, but we’d use him in a pinch hitting role, where he’d no doubt prove valuable to the club.”2

This was written after a game in which Hughes, at the advanced age of 38, dropped two fly balls (his first two errors of the season).3 But what Maurice Smith did was suggest turning the league’s most potent offensive force into a bench warmer.

For all Hughes did that season was set a league record for home runs (13) while leading the league in RBIs—finishing fifth in batting at .324—and leading the league in walks.4 Preliminary research indicates Hughes probably walked around 100 times in the 74 games he played,5 so his OBP probably was in the neighborhood of his career .530 average.

That’s right: A .530 OBP for an entire career—of 1,333 games. As you might suspect, that’s a record for anyone who played more than a handful of games in Organized Baseball.

In fact, Hughes ranks first or second—usually first—in the most important averages as far as assessing offensive value among minor-league players who played at least 1,000 games:

On-Base Percentage

• Hughes, .530
• Joe Bauman, .487
• Howard Weeks, .481

Slugging Average

• Bauman, .702
• Gordon Nell, .639
• Hughes, .637

OPS

• Bauman, 1.189
• Hughes, 1.167
• Pud Miller, 1.062

Secondary Average

• Hughes, .674
• Bauman, .652
• Joe Pactwa, .542

Run Average6

• Hughes, .592
• Bauman, .589
• Ray Perry, .485

Runs Created / Game7

• Hughes, 13.88
• Bauman, 12.78
• Buzz Clarkson, 10.83

Runs Created / Year8

• Hughes, 171
• Bauman, 163
• Rasty Wright, 144

Until steroids came along, Joe Bauman was the all-time record-holder for home runs in a season, at 72.9 No less of a media celebrity than Keith Olbermann wrote about him.10 As for Hughes, he got a brief back-of-the-book article by Tony Salin in Baseball’s Forgotten Heroes (Bauman got a full profile in the same book), and that’s pretty much it.11

Who was Pete Hughes? Good question. Little is known about his life before he broke into pro ball at the relatively advanced age of 22, and less is known about him after he left following that 1953 season. Hughes apparently got into baseball during high school in Los Angeles, and later on, he was a swimming pool technician.12 Along the way, he got married and had a son and daughter,13 but if a post-career profile, aside from Salin’s, was written about him, it remains to be discovered.

In the years from 1937 to 1953, however, and particularly after World War II, Hughes drew a fair amount of ink while dominating every league he played in. He never played more than 134 games in a season, so, aside from the walks, his season totals don’t look overly impressive. Here’s what Hughes did from 1946 to 1952:

 

 

Now here’s what Hughes’ average OB season after World War II was in a 162-game context:

 

 

That’s an average of 412 times on base per 162 games, without counting his HBPs. For context, the major-league record for one season is 379 in 153 games.

At this point, one might ask: Why didn’t this guy get even a sniff at the majors?

He didn’t fit the profile of what a good ballplayer was supposed to be. Because of two broken legs early in his career,14 Hughes didn’t have much speed, so he couldn’t cover a lot of ground in the field.

Also, his timing stunk. In 1941 Hughes hit .318 in the Class-B Western International League, with a league-leading 34 homers, 125 RBIs, a league-leading 139 runs, and, of course, a league-leading 156 walks. He appeared poised for a promotion, even to the Double-A Pacific Coast League.15

But Uncle Sam came calling, and Hughes instead served in the US Army Air Corps for the next four years.16 When he’d done his duty, Hughes was 31, and major-league ballclubs weren’t interested in a 31-year-old slow-footed rookie who hadn’t played higher than Class-B ball—no matter how many runs he put on the scoreboard.

Hughes put a ton of runs on the scoreboard. His teams, fans and sportswriters noticed. Hughes played on five championship teams and was an all-star eight times in 12 years.17

Times change, and there’s no doubt that had Hughes come along more recently, he not only might make the majors, but might have a career. It might not be an all-star career, but it would be enough for him to accumulate a few back-of-the-baseball-card highlights along the way.

WILL CHRISTENSEN is a former journalist, avid researcher, and certified minor-league baseball nut. He has been a member of SABR since 1986 and has been interested in minor-league baseball most of the time since then. His first game to watch was the Columbus Jets during the team’s final season in 1970.

Bill Thomas. (Minor League Stars, SABR, 1978)

 

This is the story of two of the greatest pitchers in the history of the minor leagues. One was a lean righthander, 6 feet tall, 175 pounds, who pitched from 1926 to 1952 for 24 different teams in 24 seasons, but he never pitched in the major leagues. He did not pitch professionally in 3½ seasons during that stretch. (More on that later.) Let’s call this player “W.C.”

The other was a short fella, a lefty who stood, by his own account, a fraction below 5-feet-8 and weighed about 160 pounds. He pitched from 1928 through 1953 but only for 23 seasons within that span because he lost three seasons to military service. Let’s call him “Little Tony.” Little Tony did pitch in the major leagues in five of those 23 seasons (1932-1936). However, when he was invited to return to the big leagues two years after he left, he respectfully declined.

“W.C.” is William Clinton “Bill” Thomas. Thomas was born in East Prairie, Missouri, on January 9, 1905 (or 1907 or 1908); little else is known about Thomas’s life before or after Organized Baseball.1 What is known is that W.C. set minor-league records for games pitched (1,016), innings (5,995), wins (383), losses (347), hits (6,721), and runs (3,098).

To put some of these numbers in perspective, as of this writing, only 13 pitchers appeared in more than 1,016 major-league games. Five of them—Mariano Rivera, Dennis Eckersley, Hoyt Wilhelm, Trevor Hoffman, and Lee Smith—are in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The only major-league pitchers who pitched more than 5,995 innings are Cy Young and Pud Galvin; and Cy Young and Walter Johnson are the only pitchers who had more than 383 big-league wins. Those pitchers are also in Cooperstown.

“Little Tony” is Antonio “Tony” Freitas Jr. (pronounced FRAY-tis), born on May 5, 1908 (some records say 1910), in Mill Valley, California. His parents Antonio and Maria, immigrants from Portugal, met and married in Mill Valley in 1903. Freitas was an unassuming man and a fan favorite. He liked fishing and hunting, playing locker-room pranks and the accordion, and fast cars.

Although Freitas’s minor-league statistics are not quite as rarefied as Thomas’s, he ranks fourth on the list of all-time winningest minor-league pitchers, after three right-handers: Oyster Joe Martina (1910-1931) is second behind Thomas with 349 wins and George Washington Payne (1913-1940) is third with 348, followed by Freitas with 342.2 Martina had seven 20-win seasons; Freitas had nine (as did Charles “Spider” Baum), the best mark of all minor-league pitchers.3 For his achievements, Freitas was voted by SABR members in 1984 as the best minor-league pitcher of all time.4

Thomas got his break at the age of 21 in 1926, when he played for the Hanover (Pennsylvania) Raiders in the Blue Ridge League (Class D). He finished with 15 wins—tops on his team—and he led the league with 35 games and 246 innings pitched. In 1927 he pitched 244 innings and picked up 16 wins for the Charleroi (Pennsylvania) Babes in the Middle Atlantic League (Class C); he appeared in a league-best 41 games. Thomas averaged 42 games, 250 innings, and 16 wins in the 24 seasons he played.

Freitas got his start when he signed with the Sacramento Senators of the Pacific Coast League in 1928 at age 20. It was classified as a AA league (commonly called Double A), which in Freitas’s day was the highest minor-league classification. Many have called the PCL “a third major league.” After some seasoning in the Arizona State League, Freitas became a regular in the Senators’ rotation and led the team in wins in both 1930 and 1931 (19 wins each time).

Driving fast was Freitas’s only vice. He received a number of speeding tickets through the years and one landed him in Marin County (California) jail for five days. It happened in the summer of 1931. When Freitas was sentenced, he and Buddy Ryan, his manager, pleaded with and persuaded the judge to allow Freitas—with a deputy escort—to go to San Francisco to pitch his scheduled start against the Missions. Ryan knew scouts would be there to see Freitas. After winning the game, Freitas was returned to his cozy confines behind bars.

Freitas’s automobile-related risk-taking may have been a reason to dissuade major-league teams from purchasing his contract in those early years. Or perhaps it was his short stature. Or maybe the lack of a good fastball was the reason. Freitas was a control pitcher and relied almost entirely on his curveball and changeup. But he just had to get a major-league team to take a chance on him. And he did.

On May 5, 1932, Freitas, the “Portuguese Portsider,”5 took the mound for Sacramento on his 24th birthday and pitched a no-hit, no-run game against the Oakland Oaks. The performance did not go unnoticed. Connie Mack, owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, needed rotation depth for his three-time reigning American League champions and traded Jimmie DeShong and cash to get Freitas.

Freitas debuted for the A’s on May 31, 1932, at Shibe Park against the Washington Senators and turned in a splendid performance. He pitched 10 innings and allowed three runs on seven hits when Mack handed the ball to veteran George Earnshaw in the top of the 11th inning. The A’s lost the game, 5-4, in the 12th.

Freitas played two seasons with the Athletics. He had a 12-5 record in 1932 but fell to 2-4 with one save6 in 1933 before he was optioned to Double-A Portland. In 1934 Freitas turned himself around with the St. Paul Saints in the Double-A American Association and he was traded to Cincinnati for Jim Lindsey, Ivey Shiver, and cash.7 He played three seasons for the Reds, starting with a 6-12 record and one save in 1934 and a 5-10 record with two saves in 1935.8

 

Tony Freitas. (Trading Card Database)

 

In the 1936 season, Freitas got off to a slow 0-2 start and the Reds sold him to the Columbus Red Birds, a Double-A St. Louis Cardinals affiliate. For a second time (counting the California judge as the first time), Freitas applied his charm. He persuaded the Cardinals’ general manager, Branch Rickey, to transfer him from Columbus to the Sacramento Solons9 in the PCL, also a St. Louis affiliate, so that he could be closer to home. Rickey arranged it to happen in 1937.

More than halfway across the country from Sacramento, Thomas made the rounds. He advanced quickly early in his career but then got stalled in the higher minors over the next nine years. From 1928 through 1936, Thomas was sold, traded, or otherwise transferred from West Virginia to Oklahoma to Indiana to Tennessee, back to Pennsylvania where he started, then Louisiana, with a couple of short stops in Texas and Wisconsin mixed in. It seemed that the road was his home.

With a record of 159-145 in 419 appearances from 1926 through 1936, the scouts undoubtedly were bird-dogging Thomas. Yet he never got the call. Major-league teams could not have had the same doubts about Thomas’s body type that they had with Freitas. Also, Thomas was a good fielder (so was Freitas) and a good hitter (Freitas was not).

Perhaps, instead, Thomas’s lack of a good fastball was the reason the scouts shied away from him. Like Freitas, Thomas was a curveball pitcher, with good control. His 3.71 career ERA was serviceable, not stellar.

As fate would have it, these two pitching giants—figuratively speaking, in Freitas’s case—turned up in the Pacific Coast League on the same day—Opening Day, April 3, 1937. In December 1936 the Seattle Indians traded an aging Ed Wells to get Thomas. Sacramento hosted Seattle on Opening Day. Freitas pitched and lost to the Indians, 6-4. The next day, Thomas pitched Seattle to a 7-3 win over Sacramento. The six years from 1937 through 1942 give statisticians a perfect lens through which to view and compare these two stars.

Thomas played for four PCL teams in 1937-1942: Seattle, Portland, San Diego, and Hollywood.10 In those seasons, he pitched 1,566 innings in 269 games with a won-lost record of 89-103.11 He turned 38 before the 1943 campaign began. Thomas was probably too old to jump to the big leagues at the time, even with the hundreds of vacancies created by the major leaguers who went off to war.

Meanwhile, happy to be home in Sacramento, Freitas ran off two consecutive 20-win seasons in 1937 and ‘38. Branch Rickey told Freitas that he would like to buy his contract to come back and play in the majors again. To Rickey’s astonishment, Freitas explained that he would prefer to remain in Sacramento. He had his reasons: Freitas liked the regularity of the PCL schedule; he disliked the weather away from California; and the opposing lineups were tougher in the big leagues. Besides, he had already experienced the triumph of being there. So, he stayed in Sacramento. From 1937 to 1942, Freitas pitched 1,839 innings in 244 games and won at least 20 games each season. His won-lost record was 133-88.

In 1943, at the height of his playing career and coming off a remarkable 1942 season when he helped the Solons win their first league championship with a save and a win in a doubleheader on the final day of the season, Freitas enlisted in the US Army Air Forces (renamed from the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1941.)

After the 1943 season, Thomas once again bounced around the country. The Hollywood Stars sold his contract to the Knoxville Smokies, a lower classified team (Class A1) in the Southern Association (which midway through the season moved and became the Mobile Bears). Three years later, Thomas landed in Houma, Louisiana, in the Class-D Evangeline League. At the age of 41, Thomas’s performance in 1946 was outstanding. He pitched 353 innings, won 35 games, and lost only seven.

The legendary Bill James says this about Thomas’s season: “Now granted, that wasn’t much of a league, but 35 wins are a bunch. No other pitcher, anywhere in organized baseball, at any age, has won 35 games in any other season since 1922.”12

The little information published about Thomas’s personal life and personality creates an impression that he was mysterious, or sullen, or ornery—or all three. One sportswriter called him “somewhat screwy.”13

Once when Thomas was in Portland playing for the Beavers, he and his batterymate, George Dickey (younger brother of New York Yankee Bill Dickey), exchanged punches in the dugout, accusing each other of costing the game they just lost.14 Another time, when Thomas played for the Houma Indians, he was suspended and fined $25 for “using profanity on the field.”15 In baseball, all players are competitive. Some are quietly competitive, like Tony Freitas. Some are less quiet, like Bill Thomas.

Much has been written about rampant gambling in the minor leagues during the post-World War II years. In 1947 the Houma team, which had won the 1946 league championship by a wide margin, was investigated on allegations that several players, including Thomas, were involved in throwing games during the prior year’s playoffs. One of the accusations against Thomas is explained in this way: After World War II, “the Brooklyn Dodgers engaged in a thorough housekeeping of the Mobile farm club” by assigning older players to Houma to make room for younger players in Mobile, and those assigned players “who were good enough for higher levels of ball, were willing to play in Class D for the benefits of dealing with the gamblers in Louisiana.”16

In January 1947, Houma’s manager and four players—Thomas and two others from Houma and one from Abbeville, Houma’s playoff opponent—were banned from baseball for life by the National Association, then the minor leagues’ governing body. Thomas and one other player successfully appealed and were reinstated 2½ years later.17

Thomas finished the 1949 season with Houma and then played the next years for whichever team would take him—all in the low minors. He pitched 728 innings after his 42nd birthday and accumulated 52 more wins. Thomas retired after the 1952 season at age 47.

When Freitas came out of the service in 1946, he was a little rusty but was still able to compete at the minor leagues’ highest level (AAA, or “Triple A,” under baseball’s new scheme) for four more seasons with Sacramento. He lost his string of 20-win seasons, but he collected 45 wins against 53 losses.

In the next four seasons, first with Modesto then with Stockton, in the Class-C California League, Freitas pitched 1,048 innings after his 42nd birthday. Like Thomas, Freitas too was able to put up good numbers against the younger minor leaguers—20, 25, 18, and 22 wins in 1950-1953 (in the second and fourth of those seasons, he led the league).

Before he retired as a player, he was the player-manager of Modesto and Stockton for one season each. After that he coached and then managed the Sacramento Solons in 1954 and 1955 before fully retiring from the game. Freitas said in various interviews that he might not have been cut out to be a manager, but that he had no regrets about his playing career.

It was a remarkable quarter-century in an interesting time in minor-league history for W.C. and Little Tony—men who were not so different in so many ways, but worlds apart in others.

That’s the long and short of it.

LEN PASCULLI is a retired lawyer and adjunct professor born in one of baseball’s alleged birthplaces, Hoboken, New Jersey. He has been a SABR member since 2001 and writes for SABR’s BioProject. Besides playing pickleball and pulling out what’s left of his curly hair while managing his Rotisserie League baseball teams, Len enjoys cooking, as well as traveling with his wife, Jan, and their children and grandchildren.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to SABR members Zak Ford and David Jerome for sharing their interest in and information on these two subjects deriving from their unpublished research, Ford on Freitas and Jerome on Thomas; to Tom Emerson and Frank Longo, SABR members and longtime friends, for their editorial assistance; and to Cassidy Lent, manager of reference services at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, for supplying copies of news clippings from the files in Cooperstown.

This article was edited by Thomas Rathkamp and fact-checked by Mike Huber.

 

NOTES

1 Very little personal information on Thomas has been found in the public domain at this time. The birth information cited here is from Thomas’s World War II draft card application available through Ancestry.com. The other birth dates appear elsewhere. The SABR site contains a collection of The Sporting News Player Contract Cards including one on Thomas. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum library has no file on Thomas. Two SABR researchers corroborated the absence of personal information about Thomas: George W. Hilton in the final paragraph of “The Evangeline League Scandal of 1946” (published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal in 1982) and David Jerome in an email to the author on January 12, 2024.

2 For purposes of this article, the statistics used for Thomas, Martina, Payne, and Freitas were those published in the SABR book Minor League Baseball Stars, vol. I (1978) [all three volumes are available online at https://profile.sabr.org/page/research-resources], which were later compiled in Lloyd Johnson, ed., The Minor League Register (First Edition) (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, Inc., 1994). The author compared the two sources and found that they were identical except where Johnson made one improvement: He included in Thomas’s statistics the one game he pitched (and lost) for the Wenatchee Chiefs on July 31, 1937, before William G. Bramham, the president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, disallowed the trade between the Seattle Indians and the Chiefs that included Thomas. The statistics published by baseball-reference.com for the four pitchers are different from those appearing in the SABR book and in the Register. The author contacted baseball-reference.com with some suggested improvements on the Freitas statistics and was advised that “[B-R’s] process for reviewing historical minor league data is to work through each leagueseason systemically. They have written up a summary of their working methods here, which may be of interest: https://www.chadwick-bureau.com/doc/historical/. This is a very active area of research, so coverage of this era should be much more complete over the coming few years.” (Aidan Jackson-Evans, Sports Reference, LLC, personal communications [via email], January 3, 2024.)

3 More about Martina and Payne, whose careers were done before World War II: Martina played only eight games in Class AA (the then highest level of minor leagues), but he did pitch in 24 games for the Washington Nationals in the American League in 1924—a 34-year-old rookie. (He managed a 6-and-8 record.) Payne pitched in more high-minors games than Martina did, but he appeared in only 12 major-league games. At age 31, he played for the 1920 Chicago White Sox with teammates who had not yet been banned from baseball, and he picked up one win and one loss. Payne’s final win came in 1940 with the Worthington (Minnesota) Cardinals, a Class-D affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals in the Western League, when he was 51 years old. It must be at least mentioned when looking at the closeness of the number of wins among Martina (349), Payne (348), and Freitas (342) that the bulk of Martina’s and Payne’s wins came in minor leagues classified below Double A, while Freitas’s wins were mostly in Double A/Triple A, and that neither pitcher lost time during his careers as Freitas did, although Martina did retire at 41, which was much younger than the age at which the other two retired.

4 Society for American Baseball Research, Minor League Baseball Stars, vol. II (1985), 9-14.

5 First use of this nickname for Tony Freitas first appeared in Pacific Coast News Service, “Tony Freitas of Oakland Sacs’ Hero,” The Oakland PostEnquirer, April 19, 1930: 23. It appeared in newspapers across the country after that.

6 Saves were not an official major-league statistic until 1969. Saves noted of pitchers before that were awarded retroactively by researchers.

7 This trade was so typical of the deal structure in which minor-league teams frequently engaged during this time period. Lindsey and Shiver were on the downside of their career; Freitas was a young prospect. And the often-struggling minor-league team always welcomed a cash component from the major-league team.

8 Freitas was good enough to be the starting pitcher on Opening Day on two occasions in the majors. He did it once in each league, a rarity: On April 12, 1933, he opened the season for the Athletics in the AL and on April 16, 1935, for the Reds in the NL. He lost both games.

9 The Sacramento Senators changed their name to the Solons after the Cardinals purchased the team in 1935. Sacramento is California’s state capital and Solon was an ancient Greek legislator; “solon” is also slang for a member of a legislative body.

10 Thomas played one game for the new Wenatchee (Washington) Chiefs in the Class-B Western International League on July 31, 1937. See Note 2 above.

11 In 1943, his final year in the PCL, Thomas played for Hollywood while Freitas was in the military, so his stats for that year are not included in the comparison between the two pitchers: Thomas pitched 249 innings in 52 games, but his record slipped to 11-21 before he was sold to Knoxville.

12 Bill James, The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: Villard Books, 1986), 198.

13 Tom Anderson, “From Up Close,” Knoxville Journal, April 30, 1944: 11.

14 Associated Press, “Pitcher, Catcher Fight in Dugout,” Nevada State Journal (Reno), August 23, 1938: 8.

15 “Thomas Fined $25, Suspended,” The Sporting News, June 5, 1946: 32.

16 George W. Hilton, “The Evangeline League Scandal of 1946,” Baseball Research Journal (SABR), 1982.

17 Thomas did not play professional baseball in 1930, for a reason that has not yet been determined. Taken together with the Evangeline incident, he lost a total of 3 1/2 years of pro ball.