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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 1, 2024 17:19:24 GMT -5
George “Twinkle Toes" Selkirk Yankees Outfielder,1939-1946, Minor League Manager 1946-1952
This article was written by Joseph Wancho, Edited by Clipper
Yankees OF George Selkirk
Babe Ruth is considered by many, if not most, baseball fans, as the greatest player ever. The Great Bambino is noted for his magnificent clouts and overwhelmingly charismatic personality. Before he became baseball’s home run king, he was a tremendous pitcher, winning 94 games in his career. His enormous appetite for everything that life had to offer made him a larger-than-life celebrity. He was cheered between the lines, and beloved outside of them. Still, Selkirk wondered why he was receiving a pass from the Bronx faithful. He was seldom booed for fielding mishaps or for not crushing mammoth home runs. Yankee center fielder Ben Chapman was quick with the answer. “They are too busy booing me to pay any attention to you.” George Alexander Selkirk was born on January 4,1908 in Huntsville, Ontario. He is 1 of 3 children born to George and Margaret (nee Dykes) Selkirk. The elder George Selkirk retired from the mortuary business and relocated his family to Rochester, New York. The younger George had attended Rochester Technical School, participating in all sports, excelling in wrestling and baseball. But it was his talent as a catcher at Rochester Tech that got him noticed by the scouts. Rochester of the International League had signed George to a contract in the spring of 1927, when he was just 18 years old.
But his stay in the Flour City was brief as the Cambridge (Maryland) Canners of the Eastern Shore League (Class D) were short on catchers and Selkirk was selected to fill the void. Selkirk arrived at the ballpark with his catching gear in tow and entered the wrong clubhouse. Cambridge’s opponent that day was the Crisfield (Maryland) Crabbers, who were not looking for a catcher. Crabbers Manager Dan Pasquelli said to Selkirk, “Hell, I don’t want a catcher, I want an outfielder.” Not realizing that he had entered the wrong clubhouse, Selkirk just wanted a chance to play and told Pasquelli that he could play the outfield just as well as he could catch. “I had to borrow a glove from one of the other players,” said Selkirk. “And I was shaking all over. But the breaks were with me. Not a single ball was batted into my field during the game. I got hold of a couple at the plate and everything was fine. At least so I thought. But it wasn’t. After the game there was hell-a-popping.”
Cambridge Manager Bill Johnson confronted Selkirk, asking him if he had been sent by Rochester. When Selkirk admitted that he had, Johnson remarked, “Well what a cluck you’ve turned out to be. You’re with the wrong team. You’re supposed to be with Cambridge, as a catcher. I just found out you are the guy. ” There were some heated exchanges between the 2 clubs as to who had the right to Selkirk. In the end, he would stay with Crisfield for the remainder of the season.
After a shifting of franchises within the International League, Selkirk would land in Jersey City, NJ. He would spend 4 seasons with the Skeeters, starting the last 3 in the outfield. He put up solid numbers both at the plate and in the field. His transformation from backstop to outfielder was complete.
That was not the only change for Selkirk, who also married the former Norma May Fox on June 23,1931. Norma May, a nurse and George were married for 55 years and they had 1 daughter, Betty.
The Yankees had purchased Selkirk and for the next couple years, he would shuttled between the following the AA clubs: Toronto Maple Leafs, Rochester Red Wings and Newark Bears of the International League and the Columbus Red Birds (Ohio) of the American Association. On July 24,1934, New York Left fielder Earle Combs crashed into the concrete wall in left field at Sportsman’s Park, St. Louis. Combs had broken his left shoulder and fractured his skull, sidelining the future Hall of Famer for the remainder of the 1934 AL season. Selkirk, who was hitting a robust .357 with the AA Newark Bears, when he was called up to the big leagues. The left-handed batting newcomer showed promise by hitting .313 and driving in 38 runs in 176 at-bats.
Selkirk had demonstrated his unique running style for the Yankee fans, which earned him the nickname, “Twinkletoes.” “When I was a kid, I had a lot of trouble with charley horses and stuff,” explained Selkirk. “A coach by the name of Spike Garnish told me if I would run on my toes, I might get over it. So, I did. Not only made me faster, but cleared up the leg trouble. Ernie Lanigan pinned the label on me when I was with Jersey City. The name stuck.” The Yankees would finish 2nd to Detroit in 1934 and again in 1935. Ruth had been released by the club and signed with the Boston Braves in February,1935.
In his 1st full season, Selkirk had batted .312 and totaled 11 HRs and 29 doubles. On August 19th, Selkirk achieved his MLB career high in hits with 5 in a Yankee 9-7 win over the Tigers at Navin Field. He would drive in 94 runs, 2nd on the team to Lou Gehrig, who had 120 RBIs. “Selkirk is our right fielder,” declared McCarthy. “He has shown me everything-punch, speed, defensive strength, enthusiasm. I know he can hit at least .330 against right-handed pitching. I also believe he can bat successfully against southpaws. I am going to afford him every opportunity to prove that he deserves to be out there every day.”
From 1936 to 1939, New York would win the American League pennant and won it without much difficulty. For Selkirk, his best years were 1936 and 1939, which were bookends for 2 years shortened by injuries (a broken right collarbone in 1937 and a sore right wrist in 1938). In both 1936 and 1939, Selkirk drove in more than 100 runs, hit over .300 and posted his high marks for walks, 94 and 103, as well as stolen bases, 13 and 12. New York set a record in 1936 when 5 players drove in more than 100 runs, including Joe DiMaggio (125), Lou Gehrig (152), Bill Dickey (107), Tony Lazzeri (109) and Selkirk. He led all AL right fielders in fielding percentage (.972) in 1936. Twinkletoes reached his career high for HRs in 1939 with 21. On May 27,1939, George smashed 2 HRs off of Philadelphia Athletics starter, Bob Joyce. The next day, Selkirk went yard twice. He had victimized Joyce again on both HRs, when the rookie entered the game as a reliever in the 4th inning. He was named to the AL All-Star team in both 1936 and 1939.
In 1935, Selkirk had discussed his hitting style: “For a time I tried to hit like Bill Terry. I always have admired his style more than that of any left-handed hitter. I couldn’t quite master the Terry idea, so I decided to shift to Frank O’Doul, another stylish hitter. But O’Doul also had me licked, so I decided to drop all heroes and models and devote myself to George Selkirk. The idea is to hit that ball consistently, and if I can do that I am satisfied.
“However, right now I am trying something new after all. Joe McCarthy wants me to pull the ball. He says my old way of hitting brought too many short flies to left. So, I have turned toward right field a bit and loosened up my left arm, and now I am pulling the ball as much as I can. That style should be especially effective in the Stadium.”
In 1936, the Yankees would face off against the New York Giants in the World Series. The headlines in the October 1st edition of the Sporting News left no doubt as to whom the editors thought would win the fall classic; “11 Series’ Vets Give Giants Edge in Experience.” However, the series was the playing debuts new Yankees: 3B Red Rolfe, Outfielders Jake Powell, DiMaggio and Selkirk.
After the Giants’ Carl Hubbell had mastered the Bombers in Game 1 by the score of 6-1; it seemed like the weekly paper was on to something. The lone run came via a HR off the bat of Selkirk in the 3rd inning, his 1st at-bat in a World Series game. He would hit a 2nd HR in Game 5 off of Hal Schumacher, a solo HR shot in the 2nd inning. The new Yankee kids would perform, admirably as an offensive force for the Yankees. DiMaggio hit .346, Rolfe .400, Powell .455. Selkirk batted .333, as he got a hit in each game. New York was victorious in 6 games.
The Yankees and Giants were hooked up again in 1937 with the same results. The Yankees won in 5 games, and Hubbell once again won the only game for the Giants. Selkirk’s 6 RBIs led the team. The Yankees would sweep, both the Chicago Cubs in 1938 and the Cincinnati Reds in 1939.
In 1938, Selkirk was moved to left field as newcomer Tommy Henrich took over in right field. Eventually, Charlie Keller became the starting left fielder as Selkirk was moved into a reserve outfield role. After the 1942 AL season, Selkirk, like many of his baseball brethren, had enlisted in the armed services in support of World War II. Selkirk would join the Navy. He was promoted to the rank of Ensign. George worked in instructing naval recruits in shooting. Upon his discharge from the Navy following the war, Selkirk was also released by the Yankees in 1946, before the beginning of spring training camp. In 9 seasons, all with the Yankees, Selkirk compiled a .290 batting average with 108 HRs and 576 RBIs. He had finished his MLB playing career with a fielding percentage of .977. George was a member of 6 pennant winners and 5 World Championship clubs.
George and Mickey Mantle 1951 Kansas City Blues Photo
Although, he was released from the varsity, Selkirk was still very much a part of the New York Yankees. He would move down to the Minor Leagues, managing for 3 different teams in their farm system, including the AAA Newark Bears of the International League (1946-1947), Class A Binghamton Triplets of the Eastern League (1948-1950) and the AAA Kansas City Blues of the American Association (1951-1952). Selkirk saw some of the future stars of the Yankees perform under his tutelage, including Catcher Yogi Berra, INF Bobby Brown, Pitcher Whitey Ford, Outfielders Mickey Mantle, Bob Cerv, Pitcher Joe Page and 1B Bill “Moose” Skowron.
Selkirk had a falling out with the front office in New York, when 3B Andy Carey and OF Bob Cerv were promoted to the big-league club. He had vehemently protested, arguing that they were not ready. He was released by the Yankees organization, after the 1952 minor league season had ended. From there George Selkirk would managed the Toledo Sox (1953-1955) and the Wichita Braves (1956,) both of the American Association and top farm teams of the Milwaukee Braves.
George Selkirk left the playing field for good, when he was hired as the Personnel Director of the Kansas City Athletics in 1957. It was a position that he would hold until 1961. One of the players to come through on his watch was Roger Maris, acquired from Cleveland Indians in 1958. Said Selkirk of Maris, “He could have used another season in a top minor league to get the experience he needs. But there is no telling how far he can go. He has all the tools to be great.” Kansas City A's Owner Charles Finley had cleaned house during the season. He had fired Farm Director Hank Peters, Manager Joe Gordon and General Manager Frank Lane. Selkirk had resigned in August, dismissing the idea that his decision was based on the ousting of Lane. Instead, he said that he wanted to get away from baseball for a while. However, Selkirk would finished out the year in Baltimore as Field Coordinator.
Baseball Executive George Selkirk
The Washington Senators would relocated to Minneapolis after the 1960 AL season. As part of major league baseball’s expansion plan, Washington was granted an expansion franchise, as was Los Angeles for the 1961 season. In 1962, the National League would grew by 2 franchises as well in Houston and New York. George Selkirk had replaced Ed Doherty as Washington’s General Manager in 1962.
The “new” Senators Manager was Mickey Vernon, one of the greatest players in Senators history. He had played 14 seasons in a Washington uniform and was adept with the lumber and the leather. He was a fan favorite and his hiring no doubt had a publicity twist to it. In each of his 1st 2 seasons at the helm, the Senators would dropped 100 and 101 games, respectively. Selkirk had hired Gil Hodges, the former Brooklyn Dodger great, to replace Vernon during the 1963 AL campaign.
The Nats would improve under Hodges, but they were still a 2nd division club. The Washington club was on a tight budget, using discarded players from other teams. Eventually, Hodges was lured back to New York in a trade made with the Senators involving a player and $100,000 in cash, with Gil taking over the Mets in 1968 and winning a world championship in 1969.
Selkirk had hired another former Senator player, former 1950’s HR slugger Jim Lemon, as his new Manager. They would finish in last place in 1968. When the team was sold to new owner Bob Short, who made enemies right away by not promising to keep the team in Washington, D. C. George Selkirk and Jim Lemon were both fired by Short before MLB spring training camp commenced in 1969.
George and Norma would retire to Florida, settling in Fort Lauderdale. He had spent much of his time pursuing his 2 interests other than baseball, golf and hunting. His performance as a baseball player was not forgotten; he was inducted into the International League Hall of Fame in 1958 and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983. On January 19,1987, George Selkirk would pass away at the age of 79 years old, after a long illness at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fl.
George Selkirk would make his MLB player debut on August 12,1934 at Fenway Park in Boston. The double dip was being billed as Babe Ruth’s last game played at Fenway.
A reported crowd of over 46,000 jammed the park that day, with another 20,000 being turned away. Selkirk was stationed in right field for both games, and Ruth got the start in left. In the nightcap, Ruth was replaced in the later innings by Sam Byrd. “There I was playing as a Yankee and that was thrill enough,” recalled Selkirk. “As I was going out to my position in the late part of the 2nd game, Ruth left the game. The crowd was clapping and cheering for the Babe. I just stood there and then I realized that I had taken off my cap and I was clapping my hands, just like those people in the stands. It was something that came from the heart. I felt a little ashamed of myself, thinking that I was just a busher, and then I looked around and there were the rest of the Yankee players and they were doing the same thing.”
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 3, 2024 20:51:46 GMT -5
Bill Essick: Long Time Yankees MLB Scout
1925-1950Article written by Daniel R. Levitt, Edited by Clipper
1917 Photo
After college Bill Essick had to choose between life as a musician and one in baseball. He chose baseball and left his native Illinois to begin his minor-league pitching career in Salt Lake City. After a brief promotion to the major leagues and roughly a dozen years as a successful Minor-League Manager, Essick would join the New York Yankees as an MLB scout. With New York, Essick joined a select lineup of scouts that helped build and sustain the Yankees record long dynasty during the middle of the 20th century. Essick played his part by landing 3 Hall of Famers, Joe DiMaggio, Lefty Gomez and Joe Gordon, significant star Frank Crosetti and several other notable contributors.
William Earl “Bill” Essick was born in Grand Ridge, Illinois, on December 18, 1880. Bill’s only sibling, brother Lyle, was born 7 years later. Essick’s father, John, came from Pennsylvania and his mother, Eliza, was born in Illinois. John’s family had been in Pennsylvania for at least 1 generation, while Eliza’s parents were born in Ireland. The family lived in Illinois, where John worked as a grocer.
Essick loved music and became a proficient piano player. To hone his talent, he had attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he majored in music. While at Knox he played and pitched for the school baseball team. Essick graduated in 1903 and played the piano at the commencement. Despite his musical talent, Essick decided to pursue a baseball career over a music career.
For 1904, he signed with Salt Lake City in the Pacific National League, a competitor of the Pacific Coast League. Essick moved right into the rotation and in 40 games, he finished with 13 wins and 23 losses, the latter the league-leading figure.
In 1905, Essick would join. AA Portland in the PCL, a league 1 level below the majors. He had signed for $1,600, a respectable salary for a young high-minor-league player. In Portland, Essick turned in a year highly similar to his previous season: he pitched often but with only moderate success and wound up with a record of 23-30. While in Portland Essick would meet Eula Rachel Bennett from Corvallis, Oregon. A grand-opera singer, Eula shared Essick’s love of music. The 2 were wed a couple of years later, and the marriage would last throughout Essick’s life.
For the 1906 season, the McCredies, Portland Owner William and Manager Walter, his nephew, cut Essick’s salary to $1,400. Essick balked but at that time a disgruntled ballplayer had little recourse. To compensate for his agreeing to the salary reduction, Essick managed to finagle a commitment from Walter that should he be sold to a major-league team that he would receive half the sale price. Based on his 1905 performance, Walter probably saw little risk in this promise.
In fact, Essick turned in 1 of the finest seasons of his career in 1906 and his solid pitching began to receive notice from major-league teams. With his record at 19-6, Portland had sold Essick and Larry McLean to Cincinnati for $2,500. Essick pitched capably for the Reds over the remainder of the 1906 NL season, and he finished his 1st partial major-league season at 2-2 with a 2.97 ERA in 39 innings. While in Cincinnati, the 5-foot-10, 175-pound Essick was given his lifelong nickname “Vinegar.” Essig in German means vinegar and Essick, playing in Cincinnati with its large population of German immigrants, was tagged with the nickname.
Unfortunately for his finances, Essick was apparently the victim of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire and the cheap dishonesty of shoestring minor-league ownership. Essick wrote to Reds Owner Garry Herrmann that the letter, he received from McCredie promising him a portion of his sale price was in his trunk, which burned in the fire. Without the letter, Essick wrote, the McCredies were not willing to honor the agreement and he hoped Herrmann would intervene on his behalf. No record of the eventual disposition of Essick’s plea exists, but it is highly unlikely he ever received a portion of the sale price.
Cincinnati Manager Ned Hanlon used Essick only sparingly at the start of the 1907 season and in June the team sent him to the AA St. Paul Saints in the American Association, another league just 1 level below the majors. Essick would struggle at St. Paul over the 2nd half of the season, finishing 5-13. He would never return to the major leagues as a player. Over the next few seasons, Essick bounced around the American Association. Kansas City had acquired him from St. Paul at midseason in 1908 and in 1910. Essick would move on to Toledo. While in the American Association, he was a useful hurler but no better: he held a regular spot in the rotation, but typically ended up with a record slightly below .500.
Essick was released by Toledo in April of 1911. He then signed on with the Minneapolis Millers. His stint in Minneapolis was short; notably, during his 1st start, he was relieved by future Hall of Famer Rube Waddell. In May, the Millers had traded Essick to South Bend of the Central League, a rung down in the minor-league hierarchy. Just 2 months into his tenure with the club, South Bend would relocate to Grand Rapids, Michigan. He would repeat at Grand Rapids in 1912; in both of Essick’s 2 years in the Central League, he had pitched respectably, hurling over 200 innings and finishing above .500.
In 1913, Essick acquired an ownership interest in the Grand Rapids franchise and assumed an Executive position, similar to today’s General Manager spot. And although pitcher Edward Smith was technically the Manager that season, Essick was intimately involved in the team on the field. In honor of Essick’s new position the team was nicknamed the Bill-eds, which stuck for 1 season. At the time minor-league franchises were constantly under-capitalized and teams used as little staff as possible. Today we would categorize Smith’s duties more as those of a field captain and Essick handled many of the tasks, that we now associate with a Manager. In his new role, Essick mostly conceded his playing aspirations and appeared in less than 10 games. He would not again play organized professional baseball.
The team that Essick had inherited would finish 9th in a 12-team league in 1912. For 1913, the league restructured down to a 6-team circuit. Led by future big-league star Jeff Pfeffer, Essick’s squad won the pennant by 15 games. That winter Eula gave birth to the couple’s 1st and only child, daughter Jane Elizabeth. Essick returned the next year, now with 2nd baseman George Hughes as the technical manager, but again effectively directing the club. Without Pfeffer, Essick could not repeat and the team slumped to 5th.
In 1915, Essick officially assumed the manager’s job as well, and the team, now nicknamed the Black Sox, rebounded to 2nd. In 1916, the league moved to a split season with the winner of the 1st half playing the winner of the 2nd for the pennant. Essick’s squad came in 2nd in both halves; thus, even though they ended up with the best overall record in the league, they were ineligible for the post season series. The circuit abandoned the split season format for 1917, and Essick led Grand Rapids to the championship. In July that year, the Three I League folded and league leader Peoria was absorbed by the Central League to take the place of struggling South Bend. After the season, Grand Rapids and Peoria faced off in a best-of-7 contest; Peoria won the 1st 3, but Grand Rapids came back to win the final 4 and the series.
On the heels of a last-place finish in the PCL in 1917, Vernon Tigers President Thomas Darmody concluded that he needed a new manager. To fill the post, he had hired Essick, who would have viewed moving to the Los Angeles area in the higher classification PCL as a promotion. Essick recognized the additional confusion inherent in trying to rebuild a team during wartime. Nevertheless, in February 1918, roughly a year after America’s entry into World War I, Essick set out on an extended trip back to the Midwest to scout his old stomping grounds for talent, meet with his old employer and friend Garry Herrmann in Cincinnati and travel to the East Coast to attend a National League meeting. In the end, Essick assembled a squad that was much improved over the 1917 version.
The 1918 season was prematurely ended in July by the league’s reaction to the US War Department’s “work or fight” order and other wartime restrictions. The “work or fight” edict created uncertainty around players’ military service status, and all the minor leagues (except the International) decided to shut down in midsummer. At the point in July that the PCL elected to close its season, Essick’s Tigers were in 1st place, 2-games ahead of the Los Angeles Angels. After the abrupt ending Vernon and Los Angeles agreed to face off in a postseason series to generate some extra funds. The Angels won the series 5 games to 2, creating a lingering dispute as to the rightful champion of the 1918 PCL season.
Soon after the termination of the season, Essick tangentially sparked one of the American League’s biggest boardroom controversies. Several major-league clubs began negotiating with Vernon Pitcher Jack Quinn to play out the remainder of the 1918 season. He had just agreed to terms with Chicago White Sox Owner Charles Comiskey, when Essick had informed him that he had been sold to the Yankees. At the time there was a rule (not particularly well articulated) that players from lapsed minor leagues were free agents until play resumed, at which point they again belonged to their former club.
An angry Quinn ignored Essick’s implied threat that he report to New York to avoid trouble and pitched for Chicago over the remainder of the 1918 season. After the season the National Commission, the governing body of baseball, apologetically ruled that Quinn rightfully belonged to the Yankees. Comiskey believed American League President Ban Johnson, first among equals on the commission, had purposely decided against him and the 2 became bitter enemies, with lasting implications for the future of the American League.
1919 Manager Photo for Vernon
When Darmody had acquired the Vernon franchise from Ed Maier in December 1916, he had agreed to pay roughly $65,000, but put little money down on his purchase. After struggling financially through 2 wartime years, he was ready to quit. Although at this distance it is difficult to determine exactly what occurred in the ownership ranks, it appears Darmody defaulted on his payments and Maier reassumed control of the club. In May 1919, Maier then gave movie comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle an option to purchase the club for $65,000, again for little money down. As a provision in this agreement, Arbuckle became the controlling executive of the franchise. A huge Hollywood celebrity at the time, Arbuckle was named Team President.
Vernon started slowly in 1919, losing 9 of its 1st 12 games. But Essick turned the team around with the help of Bob Meusel, who would later go on to star with the Yankees. Heading into the last weekend of the season, the Tigers and the Los Angeles Angels were tied for the pennant, with 3 games to play against each other: 1 on Saturday and a doubleheader on Sunday. Advertised as one of the league’s most exciting finishes, these final games drew huge crowds. Vernon won Saturday, setting up a Sunday matchup in which they had to win at least 1 of the 2 games.
Sunday’s doubleheader at Washington Park drew 22,000 fans and another 5,000 to 10,000 had to be turned away. The Los Angeles Times reported that this was the largest crowd ever to attend a minor-league baseball game, surpassing the 17,000 that once witnessed a game in Toledo against Columbus. Vernon won the 1st game to clinch the pennant. In the celebration after the game: “Lefty Flynn, former Yale gridiron giant, picked up Manager Bill Essick, tossed him across his shoulders and ran about the field.”
On the heels of their dramatic pennant, the Tigers faced the St. Paul Saints, champions of the American Association, in what was billed as the Western World’s Series Championship. This contentious series highlights the chaotic nature of minor-league baseball at the time and Essick’s aggressive style. For the Series, the Saints had traveled to Los Angeles for a best-of-9 set in Washington Park. A makeshift commission including Arbuckle and American Association President Thomas Hickey was established to oversee the Series and 2arbiters, Jimmy Toman from the PCL and James Murray from the American Association, were selected to umpire the contests.
Vernon won the 1st game relatively uneventfully, although Saints Manager Mike Kelley showed, he too had West Coast style by managing in shirt sleeves in a camp chair just outside the dugout. Kelley created further commotion before the start of the 2nd game, when he demanded that the teams switch benches, partly because it was his right (the teams alternated, which was technically the home team) and partly because he knew Essick and the Tigers preferred their traditional bench. Essick refused to move his club from their home bench, so Kelley brought the issue before the commission. When it ruled in Kelley’s favor, Essick leisurely removed his troops and equipment, causing a 10-minute delay in the start of the game. Whether due to the loss of their lucky bench or St. Paul’s fine pitching, Vernon lost the 2nd game, 5-0.
The 3rd game was marred by a near-riot, when Umpire Murray made what both the Los Angeles and St. Paul papers agreed was a horrible call at 1st base. In the 6th inning with 2 out and runners on 1st and 3rd, he called Vernon batter Hugh High out at 1st even though he beat the throw by at least a full step. With Essick in the lead, the entire Vernon team charged onto the field and ran at Murray. As they closed in, the Los Angeles Times described the scene: “The 1st wave of Tigers found a big Irishman … flailing away with both arms. He was lashing blindly at those nearest him. One of his swings missed [Zinn] Beck and Zinn stepped in with a beauty to the jaw. Murray continued fighting back, until the police came to his rescue.” When order was finally restored, Beck was ejected and fined $50. Murray received a police escort off the field at its conclusion, but the mood had lightened somewhat because Vernon won the game, 2-1.
Kelley and Essick continued to search for an advantage: Kelley complained that Essick watered down the area in front of home plate so that grounders triggered by Vernon’s spitball pitchers would not bounce for base hits. Kelley was later accused of instructing his batters to argue balls and strikes to delay the game and cause the pitcher to lose his rhythm. Vernon won a controversy-free Game 4 to take a 3-1 lead in the Series.
The peace could not last. In the 4th inning of Game 5, a brawl was barely averted when the Tigers accused a St. Paul runner of spiking their 1st baseman. With bases loaded in the 6th, St. Paul pinch-hitter Red Corriden objected to a strike call by Toman and a number of Saints surrounded the umpire. In the pushing and bumping that followed, Lute Boone yanked off Toman’s chest protector, breaking the straps. That Boone was not ejected testifies to the anarchy rampant in this Series.
When play resumed, Vernon relief pitcher Willie Mitchell beaned Corriden so badly that the ball ricocheted out to 2nd base, and Corriden remained unconscious for a time while a doctor was summoned from the stands. The beaning forced in what proved to be the winning run and St. Paul pulled to within 3 games to 2. In the clubhouse, after the game, the Tigers battled each other as well. Catcher Al DeVormer accused of starting pitcher Rex Dawson of being “yellow”; he felt that Dawson should have been brushing back more Saints batters because the Saints pitcher was knocking Vernon’s batters down. The 2 squared off and Dawson punched DeVormer in the jaw. DeVormer retaliated and more punches were thrown, before the other players finally broke it up.
The Saints tied the Series 3-3 by winning a relatively argument-free Game 6. More off-field controversy quickly developed before Game Seven, however. Essick petitioned the commission to replace the injured Hugh High with Scotty Alcock. The commission demurred and put the matter to St. Paul Manager Kelley, who agreed that Alcock could play. Essick then pushed his luck by requesting that he be allowed to use Los Angeles Angels 1st baseman Jack Fournier in place of injured 1st baseman Babe Borton.
To support his case Essick unveiled a telegram that contained the pre-Series permission for St. Paul to substitute Toledo’s Hyatt for Charley Dressen, who could not make the trip west and the stipulation that Vernon could do the same if necessary. The commission dithered, while Kelley objected. He pointed out that the Tigers had already substituted Mitchell for Borton and that Fournier was not on the list of potential replacement players. Eventually the commission ruled unanimously that Fournier was not eligible. Essick blatantly ignored the decision and sent Fournier out to 1st base to start the game. Kelley refused to play and after a delay Toman forfeited the game to St. Paul. As the fans began to file out to get their money back, Essick conferred with Owner Ed Maier and agreed to play without Fournier. Kelley, probably after some prodding from the commission, consented to relinquish his forfeit and play the game. In the event, Vernon won to close within 1 game of the championship.
Game 8 featured another outburst from a Vernon player. When Murray caught hurler Joe Finneran scuffing the baseball, he tossed Finneran a clean one and demanded the altered ball. Finneran threw the ball at the umpire and it hit him in the chest protector. He then charged Murray and threw his glove at him. He grabbed the umpire’s chest protector, threw it on the ground and stomped on it. Before the situation further deteriorated, Essick grabbed Finneran to hold him back and players from both teams intervened and restored order. Finneran was ejected and fined $100. St. Paul won the game to even the Series at 4 games apiece.
Vernon won the deciding game, 2-1 on a 2-out single by Wheezer Dell in the bottom of the 9th inning. The fans mobbed the field and carried Dell off in celebration. Even in their moment of victory, however, the Tigers could not escape controversy. As the throng was exiting the field, Tom Kennedy, a local celebrity and ex-boxer, tracked down Umpire Murray and beat him severely. Kennedy later claimed he had acted spontaneously in a fit of rage, but Murray disputed this account. He noted that earlier in the game Finneran, while leaning over the railing and talking to Kennedy, yelled to Murray that “you are going to get killed after the game.”
American Association President Hickey liked the idea of a postseason matchup with the PCL winner, but he was disgusted with Vernon’s conduct. While he recommended that a series with the PCL be scheduled annually, he proposed banning Vernon as long as it was owned by Maier and managed by Essick.
In the late Teens, baseball was rife with gambling. The Black Sox scandal, in which several members of the Chicago White Sox agreed to throw the 1919 World Series, may be the most famous consequence, but the PCL was afflicted just as severely. By 1919 the situation had reached a critical stage. The often fractious, PCL owners had hired William McCarthy as League President with a mandate to clean up the gambling, often occurring openly in the league’s ballparks. The level of crookedness was such that McCarthy did not have to look far or wait long to uncover it. Early in the 1920 season, San Francisco had released 2 pitchers, Tom Seaton and Casey Smith for throwing games. That summer McCarthy also banned notorious game-fixer and 1-time major-league star, Hal Chase, then relegated to California’s outlaw leagues from PCL ballparks for trying to bribe players.
For Essick and Vernon the scandal erupted in August 1920. Vernon 1st baseman Babe Borton admitted he had bribed several opposing players to give less than their best in September 1919 against Vernon. Borton claimed that the bribe money came from a $2,000 fund whose creation was substantially coordinated by Essick. Each of the Tigers anted into the fund as did a number of interested fans. Borton further revealed that before an important series in late September against Salt Lake City, Essick approached him and “wanted to know if I could get any of the Salt Lake players to lay down so that we might win the pennant. I told him I would see what could be done.” Over the next several months, conclusive evidence emerged that at least a couple of opposing players had, in fact, had accepted bribes.
Not surprisingly, Essick and the Tigers vehemently denied any involvement in the bribery scandal. McCarthy, as well, exonerated the Vernon players. He concluded that a gambling ring fronted by Seattle Gambler Nate Raymond had been the source of Borton’s kitty. Essick declared, “As long as people listen to his [Borton’s] lies, he will tell them.” In response to Essick’s countercharges, Borton reportedly filed suit against him for $50,000. McCarthy moved to ban Borton and the few players against whom he had solid evidence. Several of the PCL magnates, despite their putative campaign against gambling, were reluctant to ban a couple of the more notable players caught up in the scandal. This hesitancy created a rift within the league between McCarthy and the pro-cleanup owners on the 1 side and those who wanted to more or less ignore the issue on the other side.
The public perception of the situation changed dramatically in September 1920, when the Chicago White Sox player fix of the 1919 World Series became public. It now became politically untenable to publicly overlook the gambling misdeeds of players. Furthermore, the Los Angeles District Attorney concluded that he needed to investigate the scandal and called for a grand jury investigation to begin in October. At the hearings all parties pretty much kept to their stories. Borton maintained that the money had come from Essick and the players; McCarthy, Essick and others provided evidence of a relationship between Borton, Raymond and other gamblers and suggested that Borton was blaming the players out of fear of retaliation from the gamblers.
On December 10th, the grand jury released its findings. It cleared Essick and the Vernon players of involvement in raising Borton’s slush fund. The grand jury did conclude, however, that Los Angeles would have won the 1919 pennant had the series against Salt Lake City been played honestly. It also returned indictments against Raymond, Borton and 2 Salt Lake City players, Harl Maggert and William Rummler, who had accepted bribes. I can find no record of the ultimate disposition of Borton’s $50,000 lawsuit against Essick; in light of the subsequent grand-jury findings I assume it was dropped, dismissed, or never filed. To conclude the story, 2 weeks later the judge dismissed the charges on the grounds that “conspiring to throw baseball games is not a criminal act.”
There was also a baseball season in 1920. At the end of the 1919 PCL season, Arbuckle decided he did not want the franchise badly enough to come up with the $65,000, Maier was now demanding cash after twice surrendering control for little money down. Arbuckle would let the option lapse and Maier reassumed control of the team. Essick was now working for his 3rd owner in 3 years. In one of his more significant moves, Essick had traded 3rd baseman Bob Meusel to the Yankees prior to the 1919 PCL season.
Although it is clearly difficult to reconstruct at this distance in time, it appears that the sale of Bob Meusel to the Yankees began (or at least materially enhanced) the relationship between Essick and New York. Upon Essick’s recommendation of his star 3rd baseman, the Yankees would send MLB scout Bob Connery to evaluate Meusel. In return, Essick demanded several players, including 1 who could not clear waivers. (Before a player could be traded from a major-league team to a minor-league team, he had to first be put on revocable waivers—the other 7 teams in the league had the opportunity to claim the player.) Despite this apparent stalemate, Essick sent a letter to New York Manager Miller Huggins further plugging his talents. Connery returned to the Coast and eventually worked out a deal of 4 players for Meusel, who would go on to a long successful playing career as a Yankees outfielder.
Essick would build and fielded a quality team for 1920. He partially filled the void at 3rd by acquiring Red Smith, a 1-time regular major leaguer from the Boston Braves. Essick experienced several headaches with his pitchers as Byron Houck and Wheezer Dell both missed time in salary disputes. Nonetheless, Essick managed the team to his 3rd consecutive pennant and 1st untainted one.
Debilitated by injuries, the Tigers could not make it a 4th straight in 1921 and the team fell all the way to 6th place. By 1922, the team had begun to turn over and included a number of ex-major leaguers and minor league veterans. Essick almost managed this squad to the pennant, they were tied for 1st as late as September 24th, but in the end, they would fall 4 games short. Jakie May, who had pitched the previous season with the St. Louis Cardinals, led the club at 35-9 with a 1.84 ERA. After his dominant season, May’s stock soared among the major leagues. Essick and Maier, who had cultivated a close relationship with the Yankees Owners and General Manager Ed Barrow, hoped to sell them May for a healthy price. They overreached, however, and could not come to an agreement.
This close association between the 2 franchises landed both in some hot water with Baseball Commissioner Landis. Shortstop Ray French and Pitcher Jess Doyle were technically the property of the Yankees and playing in Vernon under an optional assignment. Major-league teams were limited in the players they could place out on optional assignment, so they greatly valued these slots. To get around this limitation major-league teams occasionally reached gentleman’s agreements with minor-league teams that they would have 1st crack at a player even if his option period had expired, a not uncommon violation of the rules. After the 1922 season, the Yankees technically gave up their option and had released French and Doyle to Vernon. Barrow, however, indiscreetly made several inquiries that showed, he still believed he controlled the rights to these players. Upon learning of the illegal understanding, Landis declared the 2 players as free agents.
Vernon’s veteran squad slumped to last place in 1923. Maier and Essick concluded the team needed to rebuild and they unloaded several regulars. Despite the new faces, however, the team could climb no higher than 6th in 1924 and Maier was becoming increasingly frustrated. Essick again made a number of changes to his lineup and rotation for 1925 and touted several as future major leaguers, 2 in fact later turned in respectable major-league careers, but, overall, little improvement followed. Further complicating, Essick’s rebuilding effort that spring, Maier publicly announced he was looking to sell the franchise. Essick was now working on the final year of a 3-year contract and tensions were developing with Maier. The owner was unhappy with the team’s struggles on the field and focusing on either selling the franchise or shifting it to San Francisco. Essick, discouraged by Maier’s outside distractions, wanted a new challenge as well. On August 1st, Essick and Maier mutually agreed to part ways; after nearly 8 years at the Vernon helm, Essick was out of a job.
In December 1925, Essick would meet with the Yankees’ brain trust of Owner Jacob Ruppert and de facto General Manager Ed Barrow in New York. The 2 were in the process of rebuilding and expanding their scouting staff after a disappointing season. In the late Teens and early 1920s the Yankees acquired most of their top players by purchasing them from the Boston Red Sox. By the mid-1920s this source had dried up and, in the buoyant economic times of the Roaring Twenties, no other major-league team was looking to sell off its best players. The high minors had become a key source of talent: The rules of the time gave the minor leagues an unprecedented amount of control over these players, driving the acquisition cost up to unprecedented levels.
Top scouts of this era were generally required to identify useful players, often with the help of local bird-dogs and secure them at a reasonable price from the minor-league owner.
Along with Essick the Yankees had hired Eddie Herr, a former Detroit Tigers scout. With their 2 new hires, the Yankees would reorganize their MLB scouting staff. Essick would cover the West Coast and Herr was assigned to the Midwest. Holdovers Bob Gilks and Ed Holly were focused on the South and East respectively, while Paul Krichel wouldl principally targeted the colleges.
Shifting from a PCL Manager position to an MLB Scout would not necessarily have been regarded as a promotion. Nevertheless, the Yankees, even at this time, were the best capitalized, most aggressive and most prestigious team in the league. Furthermore, Essick would be able to stay in his adopted home of Los Angeles, while scouting the West Coast and living a relatively unstructured life.
Essick always felt he had an eye for talent. While in Grand Rapids, he sent a letter to his old boss, Cincinnati Owner Garry Herrmann, recommending a young outfielder at Evansville, future Hall of Famer Edd Roush. He also advocated with Herrmann on behalf of 2 of his own players: Pitchers Alvah Bowman (who never developed) and Jeff Pfeffer (who did). While managing Vernon, Essick also added his recommendation to the Yankees’ assessment of future Hall of Famer Tony Lazzeri. Salt Lake City was demanding a high price for its star shortstop and the Yankees had evaluated him extensively.
Once with the Yankees, however Essick’s 1st big-dollar acquisition flopped. During the middle of the 1927 season, he had recommended the purchase of shortstop Lyn Lary and 2nd baseman Jimmy Reese from AA Oakland, with Lary as the primary target. To acquire the 2 the Yankees paid $125,000; at the time the highest price ever paid in a single transaction for minor leaguers. As a condition of the sale, New York allowed the 2 to play 1 more season in Oakland. The Yankees also received an option to purchase 2 additional Oakland players. Lary and Reese never panned out as expected, both were traded by the team, eventually leading, Yankees Owner Jacob Ruppert to become disillusioned with this method of talent acquisition.
Over the next few years, the Yankees’ primary target continued to be talented up-and-coming high minor leaguers. Essick was at the forefront of this policy and recommended and received approval for several more high-priced Pacific Coast Leaguers. Some panned out better than others. Essick was the beneficiary of a bizarre superstition to secure a skillful hurler in August 1929. As sportswriter Abe Kemp remembered, before Essick had purchased future Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez from the San Francisco Seals for $45,000, Cleveland Indian Scout Cy Slapnicka had a 10-day option on him.
Kemp was with San Francisco Owner Charley Graham at the ballpark, when Slapnicka approached the owner. He had intended to sign Gomez, but he told Graham he wanted to first head down to the locker room. When he returned, Slapnicka informed a surprised Graham, he had decided not to buy Gomez. Graham naturally asked why. “Well, I’ll tell you, Charley,” Slapnicka responded, “I saw Gomez undressed in the clubhouse, and anybody who’s got as big a prick as he’s got can’t pitch winning ball in the major leagues.” Essick would later spend $50,000 of New York’s money to purchase shortstop Frank Crosetti from Graham.
Another large check landed Sacramento outfielder Myril Hoag. But in this instance Essick had to work much harder and the ultimate payoff was much less. After the 1929 season, Essick went duck hunting with his pal, Sacramento Manager Buddy Ryan. The 2 agreed that the Yankees could have an option to purchase Hoag at the end of the coming season for $25,000. To be enforceable these agreements had to be recorded with the commissioner’s office. Doing so, however, used up 1 of a team’s precious 40-man roster spots; thus, major-league teams often skirted the rules by relying on their relationships with the minor-league operators. In the event, Hoag had a terrific 1930 season and other teams tossed much higher numbers at the Solons. With the opportunity for a huge payoff, Sacramento’s owners had little interest in honoring the unenforceable agreement made by their Manager. In the end, Essick would succeed in holding Sacramento to its agreement, but he needed to up his offer to $45,000.
Around this same time, when Portland had released Manager Bill Rogers, Essick was rumored to be in line for the job. The Sporting News suggested he was unlikely to take the position because “(H)e is comfortably fixed in Los Angeles where he owns property.” Furthermore, Essick enjoyed the freedom of a scout’s life and had little interest in once again becoming a Minor-League Manager. In general, during the offseason, Essick would spend much of his time touring the West Coast visiting Yankee-controlled players and checking up on their health and training. He also oversaw a baseball school in the Los Angeles area.
In early 1930s, after several high-priced minor-league flops and changes to the rules governing the ownership of minor-league franchises by major-league teams, Ruppert would initiate a farm system. As the Yankees’ stable of minor-league affiliates grew, the focus of the Yankee scouts gradually shifted to amateur players to develop in their farm system.
But the Yankees did not suddenly stop tracking top minor-league talent. In 1934, Essick negotiated the acquisition of 1 of the all-time greats, center fielder Joe DiMaggio. After a monster season in 1933, DiMaggio hit .340 and led the PCL with 169 RBIs as an 18-year-old, all of the wealthy franchises were offering San Francisco Seals Owner Charley Graham huge amounts of money for his star. To Graham’s horror, however, DiMaggio had suffered a serious knee injury in 1934 and many teams would back off on him.
Essick, however, persevered. After the 1934 PCL season, he had persuaded Graham to give him a short-term option to acquire DiMaggio for $25,000 and 5 players controlled by the Yankees. Financially strapped by the Depression, Graham needed the money and the players to help restock his team. With the agreement in hand, Essick and Scouting Supervisor Joe Devine hauled DiMaggio to a Los Angeles doctor for a medical examination on his knee. The doctor advised the duo that he expected no lasting damage from the knee injury; when they had wired Yankees GM Ed Barrow with the results of the examination, he told them to close the deal.
Before the birth of their farm system in the early 1930s, the Yankees scouts may have concentrated principally on high minor leaguers, but they still had a 40-man roster to fill out with prospects. Shortly after joining the Yankees, Essick had scouted high-school pitcher Gordon Rhodes in Salt Lake City. As Rhodes remembered, Essick watched him lose a no-hit game 2-1, after which he signed an agreement that, he would join the Yankees, when he graduated. In 1929, Rhodes made the big leagues and played 8 years in the majors.
But it was in the mid-1930s, that Essick made his mark signing several amateur and semipro players, who would go on to have respectable major-league careers. Most importantly, over the 1935-1936 winter, he had signed future star 2nd baseman Joe Gordon from the University of Oregon. Shortly thereafter, he had landed Jerry Priddy, another amateur who would go on to a long major-league career as a 2nd baseman. Essick had signed Priddy out of Washington High School in Los Angeles.
The Yankees scout who signed a player played a key role in determining at which minor-league team and level the player would debut. In Gordon’s case, Essick anticipated starting him in a low minor league in Joplin, Missouri. Jess Orndorff of the National Baseball School in Los Angeles, where Gordon was training, convinced Essick that the relatively mature Gordon could start in AA Oakland (PCL), 1 step below the majors. Gordon had justified Orndorff’s and Essick’s confidence and would hit .300 in the PCL.
Essick secured several other future major leaguers as well. Johnny Sturm was hitting HRs in Missouri for several teams, including 1 in the Missouri-Illinois Trolley League. The Brooklyn Dodgers first approached him, but Sturm was advised to have Essick see him before committing. In the game in which Essick scouted Sturm, the big slugger hit 2 HRs and Essick signed him. Essick had plucked Johnny Lindell off a semipro team in Monrovia, California after he had spent a semester at the University of Southern California. Essick also signed outfielder Les Powers, while he was in college in the early 1930s. Powers’ short major-league career was cut down in 1939, when he suffered a pinched sciatic nerve and could not walk for 6 months.
In 1938, Essick had signed Ralph Houk, a multi-sport high school athlete in Lawrence, Kansas. Houk initially planned to enroll at either the University of Kansas or Baker University in Baldwin, Kansas. But Essick persuaded him to sign with the Yankees. Houk would debut in the majors after the war and carved out an MLB playing career by catching, a few games a year as a backup. He later gained a measure of fame as a successful manager for the Yankees, Tigers and the Red Sox.
Of course, some got away. Along with scouts from several other teams, Essick had tracked young Ted Williams through his final years of high school. When the time came to try to sign Williams, Essick had offered him the opportunity to play at Binghamton in the Class A Eastern League for $250 for the 1st month and $500 if he made the team. “He told me he wouldn’t be signing me unless he felt I could make the New York Yankees,” Williams recalled. “I suppose they say that to everybody. But they actually offered me the best deal of anybody.” In the end, Williams would decline the Yankees offer: His mother wanted him to stay closer to home and Williams himself was apprehensive about moving across the county. Furthermore, when Williams’s mother had asked for $1,000 for herself, Essick rightfully feared he was about to be subjected to a bidding war and refused the additional request.
Essick also barely missed Hall of Fame shortstop Arky Vaughan. Before heading to Fullerton, California, to try to sign him, Essick detoured to Long Beach to scout another player, who played only on Sundays. Meanwhile the Pirates were also scouting Fullerton and signed Vaughan just before Essick arrived. As a consolation for the trip, Essick had landed Catcher Willard Hershberger., who would later play in the MLB with the Reds.
By the late 1930s, Essick was nearing 60 years old, and his successes dwindled off. Although several signings eventually made it to the majors, none developed into dependable major-league regulars. He had signed 2-sport letterman Ferrell Anderson just before the star football guard and baseball catcher graduated from the University of Kansas. Essick had purchased Loyd Christopher from the AA Oakland Oaks of the PCL, but Christopher hurt his knee and never became more than a major-league bit player. In 1946, Essick had signed Harry Bright after high school in Kansas City. Bright was not a particularly sought-after prospect and Essick landed him for $800; he later quit baseball, and the Yankees sold him to a minor-league team in Oklahoma. Bright eventually returned to the game and made it to the majors with Pittsburgh in 1958.
In the 1940s, Essick’s nephew Doug, Lyle’s son, starred in football for the University of Southern California. Labeled an end at the time, Doug’s position resembled that of a modern-day tight end or wide receiver. After graduation in 1947, Doug would spend 2 years as a pitcher in minor-league baseball in the California League, but he had failed to advance.
After World War II, as prosperity returned to the country, amateur player signing bonuses shot up. Very few received more than $10,000 before the war, afterwards the dollars would increase dramatically. In the late 1940s, Essick signed pitcher-outfielder Tom Morgan, his last acquisition, out of high school in El Monte, California for a reported $20,000, a hefty bonus for the time. Morgan had offers from the Dodgers, Pirates, Browns and 3 other organizations and felt he could have received more from another. But he wanted to be a Yankee and “was most convinced by Essick’s arguments.”
Bill's Newspaper Obit 1951
Bill Essick would officially retire from the New York Yankees at the end of 1950 MLB season. His health would begin to fail in 1951 and at midyear, he was moved from La Crescent Sanitarium to California Hospital with a heart ailment. On October 12, 1951, Essick would pass away in his sleep from his heart problems. He would leave behind his wife and daughter. In Essick’s more than 45 years in baseball, he had held many positions, but it was as a MLB Scout for the New York Yankees that he made his most lasting mark.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 4, 2024 16:15:49 GMT -5
Bob Gilks Yankees MLB Scout 1915-1926
This article was written by Stephen V. Rice, Edited by Clipper
 Bob Gilks had devoted more than 40 years to professional baseball, as a player, manager and scout. As a player, his greatest strengths were his versatility and fielding ability. As a Minor-League Manager, he schooled youngsters in the right way to play the game. And as a MLB scout, he had recognized the potential of future stars like Roger Bresnahan, Addie Joss, Shoeless Joe Jackson and Dave Bancroft.
Robert James Gilks was born in Cincinnati on July 2,1864 or 1865, sources disagree. He was the 2nd oldest of the 6 children of Edwin and Mary Jane (Highland) Gilks. Edwin, from England, operated a profitable saloon in Cincinnati, Ohio; Mary Jane was from Ireland. As a teenager, Bob pursued his passion for baseball on the sandlots of Cumminsville, a Cincinnati neighborhood, now known as Northside.
A right-handed batter and thrower, he was able to play any position, Gilks would begin his professional baseball career in 1884 on the Hamilton team of the Ohio State League. The next year, he would play in the Southern League for the Chattanooga (TN) and Augusta (GA) clubs and in 1886, he would join the Binghamton (NY) team in the International League
In 1887, Gilks was a 3rd baseman and outfielder for Binghamton and batted .325 in 75 games. Bud Fowler, one of the leading Negro ballplayers of the era, played 2nd base on the team, but he left in late June, amid racial tension. On May 9th, Gilks and Fowler had combined for 7 hits in Binghamton’s 16-9 victory over Buffalo. On June 4th, Syracuse defeated Binghamton 10-4 in a game featuring 2 Negro pitchers, Robert Higgins for Syracuse and Renfroe for Binghamton. The game “proceeded harmoniously,” except when Gilks had disagreed with the umpire’s decisions; Gilks was fined $10 for calling him the “bummest umpire," who ever lived and for threatening to punch him. The Binghamton club would disband in late August, and Gilks was immediately picked up by the Cleveland Blues of the American Association. Several teams wanted him, but he chose the team for which his brother-in-law, Billy Crowell pitched. Gilks and Crowell grew up playing baseball in Cumminsville, Gilks married 1 of Crowell’s sisters.
In his MLB pitching debut on August 25,1887, Gilks went 0-for-5 and played 1st base in Cleveland’s 8-6 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics. The next day, he played center field and stroked his 1st MLB hit, a double off of Ed Seward of the Athletics. Short of pitchers, Cleveland Manager Jimmy Williams persuaded Gilks to pitch and on August 27th, he would hurl a complete game in a 16-9 victory over Philadelphia. He was hit hard, but he showed “lots of speed, a sharp and puzzling out-curve and good control of the ball.” He even picked a runner off 1st base. “With such an arm and head Bob ought to keep on pitching,” said the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
And he did. On August 31st, he tossed a 6-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles, but he lost 2-1. His best outing came on September 14th, when he threw a 5-hit shutout against the New York Metropolitans. At season end, his won-lost record was 7-5 in 108 innings with a batting average of .313. Despite Gilks’s sparkling performance, the Blues finished in last place with a 39-92 record. And 108 innings pitched in 6 weeks—a pace of more than 400 innings over a full season, was more than Gilks cared to bear. Thereafter, out of concern for his arm, he was willing to pitch only occasionally.
On June 6,1888, Gilks had played left field and went 4-for-6 at the plate, including a 3-run, inside-the-park homer off of Louisville pitcher Guy Hecker, the only HR of Gilks’s MLB playing career. Crowell, pitching for Cleveland was battered by the Louisville sluggers, but he clung to a 23-19 lead entering the bottom of the 9th. Gilks would rescued his brother-in-law by pitching the 9th and allowing no runs to close out the Cleveland victory.
Sporting Life praised Gilks for his “marvelous” work in left field during a mid-July series in Cincinnati and mentioned his remarkable catch of “a liner that all but kissed the ground from plate to outfield.” In August, he won a throwing contest sponsored by the Cincinnati Enquirer by hurling a baseball for a distance of 343 feet, 11 inches. But Gilks struggled at the plate during the 2nd half of the 1888 season; he had batted .281 through games of July 18th but only .193 after that.
In the offseason, Gilks resided in Cincinnati and stayed in shape by bird hunting in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. And he was a dandy about town. A Cincinnati newspaperman spotted him on a December day and reported that he looked like the son of a millionaire, “resplendent in a snuff-colored chinchilla overcoat, a stylish Derby and seated behind a 3-minute trotter in a fine rig.”
The Cleveland Blues would leave the American Association and joined the National League for the 1889 season, changing their name in the process to the Cleveland Spiders. Manager Tom Loftus would use Gilks as a utility man. He had appeared in only 53 games, filling in as needed in both the infield and outfield. In August his son, Robert E. Gilks was born.
The entire starting outfield of the 1889 Cleveland Spiders would jump to the Players League in 1890, opening a spot for Gilks in the starting lineup. On June 23rd, he made a game-saving catch in left field in a 4-2 Cleveland triumph over the Brooklyn Bridegrooms. On August 5th, he slugged 2 bases-loaded doubles and drove in 5 runs, yet the Spiders still lost 10-6 to the Chicago Colts. The next day, the Spiders trounced the Colts, 8-1 as Starter Cy Young spun a 3-hitter in his MLB pitching debut.
Gilks had batted .213 in 1890 with only 13 extra-base hits in 582 plate appearances that season and the Spiders would release him in the offseason. In May 1891, he would join the Rochester (NY) team of the Eastern Association. He would play in 71 games for Rochester, but he left the team in late August, after he and his teammates had gone 24 days without pay.
Playing minor-league baseball was an unstable occupation. In 1892, Gilks was a member of the Omaha Omahogs of the Western League until the league disbanded in mid-July. Then he would join the Mobile (AL) Blackbirds of the Southern Association, and even managed the team in 1893, but the Blackbirds disbanded in August of that year. He would return to the major leagues briefly, in September 1893, as an outfielder on the Baltimore Orioles.
Gilks enjoyed stability for the 8 years, that he had spent in Toledo, where he played from 1894-1895 and 1897-1902. (He played in Grand Rapids, MI, in 1896.) An outstanding defensive outfielder and a solid hitter, he served as captain of these Toledo teams. One of his responsibilities as captain was to find and recruit players for the team. In 1898, he had signed Roger Bresnahan, a Toledo teenager and the next year he would sign Addie Joss, both future Hall of Famers. The 20-year-old Joss pitched well for Toledo in 1900. He shut out Fort Wayne on May 2nd, but he lost to the Hoosiers on May 31st. In the latter contest, Gilks expressed his displeasure with the work of Umpire Bob Caruthers.
The Fort Wayne Sentinel reported that Gilks:
“commenced a tirade of undertone abuse from the bench, which Caruthers would not tolerate. The umpire after warning Gilks 2 or 3 times, finally assessed a $5 fine and threatened to put him off the grounds. Gilks said he would go off when carried off and Caruthers ordered him to leave and called for a policeman. The Toledo captain called Caruthers a ‘dirty drunkard’ and used language the most-foul. Caruthers assessed a fine of $25 against Gilks and Officer Spillner escorted him from the grounds. The disgraced player went to the back of the park and peeked over the fence 2 or 3 innings and once called to Caruthers to come outside and tackle him.
Gilks would reside in Toledo, Ohio and operated a profitable saloon. His wife died unexpectedly in November 1898, while he was away on a hunting trip. In September 1901, he would marry Rosa Amanda Frett; they would divorce about 12 years later. In February 1903, Gilks would move to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he served as Player-Manager of the Shreveport Pirates of the Southern Association for 4 seasons. From 1907-1908, he would manage the Gulfport (MS) Crabs of the Cotton States League. Though in his 40s, he played regularly for the team.
Gilks would begin the 1909 season as Player-Manager of the Savannah Indians of the South Atlantic League. The team got off to a poor start and he would resign under pressure on May 20th. He was quickly hired as Player-Manager of the Galveston Sand Crabs of the Texas League. After the season ended, he had accepted an offer to scout for the Cleveland Naps of the American League. Doubtless being a close friend and former teammate of Naps manager Deacon McGuire helped him land the job. It was during Gilks’s short time with the Savannah Indians that he got a close look at the team’s extraordinary 21-year-old outfielder, Shoeless Joe Jackson. The Philadelphia Athletics had owned the player rights to Jackson and had farmed him out to the New Orleans Pelicans in 1910. Gilks would watch Jackson play in New Orleans and strongly urged the Naps to acquire him. The Naps traded for him and when the Pelicans’ season ended, Gilks escorted the shy country boy to Cleveland. In 1911, Jackson was a sensation, hitting .408 as a rookie for the Naps. That same year, Dave Bancroft, a 20-year-old shortstop on the Superior (WI) Red Sox thoroughly impressed Gilks, but he could not persuade Naps Owner Charles Somers to draft him. Bancroft would go on to a Hall of Fame career in the National League.
Gilks was unlike other scouts of the time. Sporting Life would explained:
As a general rule the greatest secrecy prevails about the movements of a scout. . . . Bob Gilks follows a rule the direct opposite. . . . Bob probably enjoys a wider acquaintance among minor league people than any scout in the country. . . . Immediately after his arrival in a city Gilks presents himself at the club office. He then accompanies the Manager to the ball park, asks for a spare uniform, dons it and works out with the bushers. . . . He studies their dispositions and habits in addition to their native playing ability.
Gilks would scout for the Cleveland Naps from 1910-1913. The following year, he would manage the Montgomery (AL) Billikens of the Southern Association in 1914. He then he would resume scouting, this time for the New York Yankees from 1915-1926. Among his finds for the Yankees were Pitcher Urban Shocker, Infielder Aaron Ward and Catcher Muddy Ruel. In 1928 Gilks, in his mid-60s, would scout for the Boston Braves.
In his retirement, Gilks would reside in Brunswick, Georgia. In 1929, he would marry 16-year-old Maude Strickland, the daughter of a local farmer. Bob and Maude had 2 daughters, Mary and Joe Ann. Bob would pass away at the age of 80 in Brunswick on August 20,1944.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 4, 2024 18:04:40 GMT -5
Bob Connery Yankees MLB Scout, Team Owner of St. Paul Saints
Written by Steve Steinberg, Edited by Clipper
 Over the course of 3 decades in the early 20th century, Robert Joseph Connery was a major-league scout and minor-league player, manager and owner. He was the closest friend of Hall of Fame Manager Miller Huggins, and was Huggins’s scout with both the St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees. Best known as the scout who “discovered” Rogers Hornsby, Connery bought the St. Paul Saints of the American Association in 1925. At that time, a local sportswriter called him Huggins’s “right-hand man,” though his hand “seldom appears on the surface.” He was, the St. Paul newspaper article continued, “One of the most shadowy and least known figures in baseball.”
Bob Connery was born in St. Louis on March 20 or March 28,1880. He was the youngest of 3 children of stonecutter Lawrence Connery, born in Ireland, and Mary (Grant) Connery, who was born in New Orleans shortly after her parents arrived from Ireland. A practicing Catholic all his life, Connery grew up in north St. Louis’s Kerry Patch, a tough Irish neighborhood that produced a number of major-league ballplayers in the early 20th century.
The 1900 census lists Connery as working in the St. Louis telegraph office with his sister, Marguaretta, with whom he lived. He had played baseball in the city’s Kerry Patch and Goose Hill areas, with the older Jimmy Burke and the younger Solly Hofman, Lefty Leifield, and Bobby Byrne – all of whom had meaningful major-league careers. Connery, who was a muscular man more than 6 feet tall, in 1903 advanced to the St. Louis Trolley League, all of whose towns could be reached by trolley, and which was also known as the Missouri-Illinois League. Connery and Hofman had played for the East St. Louis team that year; one preseason report called Connery “the best young 1st baseman in St. Louis.” He began his professional career in 1904 with the Des Moines Prohibitionists of the Western League.
Connery stayed in St. Louis the following year, when his mother died. He played for Henry Kulage’s White Seals and coached the Smith Academy high-school baseball team that year In 1906 he played for Dick Kinsella’s Springfield Senators of the Three-I League. Kinsella would go on to a scouting career, primarily for John McGraw’s New York Giants. In 1907 or 1908, Connery joined the Hartford Senators of the Connecticut State League. A career .241 hitter, he had his most productive seasons as a player in 1908 and 1909, when he hit .262 and .267, respectively. First base continued to be his regular position.
During the 1908 season, Bob became the club’s Manager as well, a position he would hold through 1912. He had replaced Tommy Dowd, who “could not resist the temptation of the flowing bowl,” according to one account. Wealthy Hartford businessman Mickey Lambert had recommended Bob to the team’s owner, Jim Clarkin. Connery and Lambert became lifelong friends.
While he was often described as reticent, shy, and retiring, Connery was suspended a few times as a manager for umpire-baiting. His Senators won the 1909 league pennant, on the strength of Ray Fisher’s 24-win season. He found time to coach the Trinity College (Hartford) baseball team in the spring of 1910. In June of that year, Connery was severely injured in an auto accident, which was expected to end his playing career. But after appearing in only 25 games in 1910, he returned to play in 119 the following year. He then played on Cardinals’ 1st baseman Ed Konetchy’s indoor baseball team in St. Louis after the 1911 season.
Connery was able to sell one of his 1912 stars, Hugh High (who had hit .327 for Hartford that season) to the Detroit Tigers for $3,000, a nice price for a “B” League to secure from a player sale. High later played for the New York Yankees, including his final games early in the 1918 AL season, after Bob had joined the New York club.
Connery continued to live in St. Louis in the offseason. He enjoyed hunting everything from bear to wild turkeys in the Ozarks. He was often referred to as “Tom” before 1913, and it is not clear why. “Tom J. Connery, alias Bob Connery, or Bob, alias Tom. In the East it is Tom; at home [St. Louis] it is Bob. Take your pick.”
When Miller Huggins became the Player-Manager of the St. Louis Cardinals after the 1912 NL season, he had hired Connery as his Scout, at almost twice his Hartford salary. The club’s former Scouts, Dick Kinsella and Bill Armour, had quit in the wake of the firing of Huggins’s predecessor, Roger Bresnahan. Connery had gained a reputation for developing players in Hartford, including pitcher Lefty Leverenz and outfielders High and Benny Kauff.
Mike Kelley, the manager of the St. Paul Saints and Huggins’s friend and manager there in 1902 and 1903, had recommended Connery to Huggins. Just when Connery and Kelley got to know each other is not known, but the 3 men – Connery, Kelley and Huggins – became close friends for the rest of their lives. Less than 2 years later, the 3 attempted to buy the AA Buffalo Bisons of the International League.
Shortly after Connery joined the Cardinals, he commented on his new profession. “Scouting for some of the clubs is nothing short of detective work. … Scouting on some of those Class D leagues is like scraping the back yard with a fine-tooth comb. … The principal thing I look for is nerve. … Is he a fighter?”
Two years later, in the spring of 1915, Connery came across a gangly young ballplayer who had that nerve –he called it “a world of pep” – playing for Denison, Texas, a Class D team. “I stayed away from the larger leagues,” Bob later explained, “and tried to find talent in the smaller circuits which were passed up by scouts from the more opulent clubs.” Connery and Huggins “worked wonders with the little cash they had at their disposal,” Fred Lieb wrote in his history of the Cardinals. The Cardinals would sign the youngster, Rogers Hornsby for only $600 later that year.
“I’ve got to be honest,” the Cards’ scout later explained, “I didn’t recognize his budding genius. … He was just a good prospect, a lad who had a chance.” Miller Huggins later stated that Connery “deserved all the credit” for discovering Hornsby.
Connery once explained that he “placed much importance on a player’s disposition; whether he was temperamental or easy to handle, and whether he loved to play baseball.” Huggins also spoke often of the importance of “disposition.” Ironically, their most famous “find” during their years in St. Louis, Rogers Hornsby, would gain a reputation for surliness.
Perhaps equally important for the emergence of Hornsby was the time Connery spent with his young recruit the following spring. Hornsby had been a “choke and crouch” hitter; Connery had him move away from the plate and swing from the end of the bat. Years later, the man whose career batting average of .358 is 2nd highest in baseball history, “No man ever worked harder with a youngster than Bob [Connery] did with me on that training trip.”
Another of Connery’s significant signings was the bespectacled pitcher Lee Meadows, acquired for $500. “Meadows possesses the meanest curve ball I have ever seen in a recruit,” Bob said. “He’s intensely ambitious, a student of baseball, well-behaved and wise.” Huggins was upset by the signing. “Can you imagine that Irish so and so! Buying me a pitcher with glasses. … Why, they may kill the guy and I’ll be held for murder,” he reportedly said. Hornsby and Meadows led the Cardinals to a surprise 3rd-place finish in 1917, Huggins’s 2nd such finish as manager of the club.
Connery also signed infielder Zinn Beck, who went on to a long scouting career of his own. When Beck died in 1981 at the age of 95, he was still an active scout, for the Washington Senators.
When the New York Yankees had hired Miller Huggins as Manager after the 1917 MLB season, he insisted on bringing Connery with him. Bob would joined Scouts Joe Kelley and Bob Gilks. Sporting News columnist John Sheridan credited Connery for “a lot of the harmony” on Huggins’s St. Louis club.
Two of Connery’s 1st scouting recommendations for the Yankees did not help the club, for very different reasons. He recommended that the Yankees sign a former top pitcher, Babe Adams. Star of the 1909 World Series (when he won 3 games for Pittsburgh), Adams had developed shoulder trouble and was released by the Pirates in 1916. He had won 20 games in the Western League in 1917 (for St. Joseph and Hutchinson) and went 14-3 for Kansas City the following year. The Yankees did not act on Connery’s advice, for an unknown reason. The Pirates would re-sign the 36-year-old, who went on to win another 81 games for Pittsburgh.
Bob was excited about another prospect the Yankees did sign who was being hailed as “a wonder by the experts.” He made his MLB player debut for the Yankees in early May 1919, but played his final game just 2 months later. The youngster hit only .091 for the 1919 Yankees and later made Chicagoans take notice. George Halas went on to a National Football League Hall of Fame career as player, coach, and owner of the Chicago Bears.
When Ed Barrow joined the Yankees as Business Manager after the 1920 AL season, he brought along his coach, Paul Krichell, who had joined the Yankees’ scouting staff and focused on the college ranks. Eventually, Krichell would rise to oversee the club’s Scouting Department for more than 30 years. But in the early 1920s, the Yankees’ scouts probably all reported directly to Barrow.
One collegian Krichell was impressed with played for Columbia University. Krichell saw him play against Rutgers in the spring of 1923 and was so impressed that he told Barrow, “I think I’ve just seen another Babe Ruth.” Krichell returned with Bob Connery a couple of days later for a Columbia-NYU game, in which Lou Gehrig hit a long HR. “Well, what are you waiting for?” Connery said to his fellow scout, and the Yankees soon signed Gehrig.
Connery played a key role in securing Bob Meusel for New York. The lanky future Yankee was playing for Vernon of the Pacific Coast League in the late Teens. The club was managed by Bill Essick, who would become a Yankees scout himself in 1926. Connery scouted and then signed Meusel for the Yankees in the summer of 1919, a season in which he hit .337 with 39 doubles and 14 triples. Connery later was instrumental in acquiring another starting outfielder for the Yankees, Earle Combs. After he hit .380 with 46 doubles and 15 triples for Louisville of the American Association in 1923, New York had purchased him for $50,000 and aging outfielder Elmer Smith, whose 1924 season (.334, 45 doubles, 28 HRs) was almost as good as that of Combs the previous year.
With a number of scouts, the Yankees had the luxury of getting more than one evaluation for a top (and costly) prospect. They could also get a scout to visit and, if need be, sign a man quickly. This team approach served them well; one writer called it “an elaborate system.”
Before the Yankees acquired Tony Lazzeri from Salt Lake City of the Pacific Coast League in the summer of 1925, Ed Barrow insisted that Connery check out the youngster, even though Bob was no longer working for the Yankees. (Sportswriter Dan Daniel wrote that Connery first told Barrow about Lazzeri when he was still a Yankees Scout, before Lazzeri’s breakout season of 1925.) His report back to Barrow was both succinct and dramatic. “I don’t care what he’s got. [The Yankees had recently learned that Lazzeri suffered from epilepsy.] He’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” The Yankees also paid $50,000 for Lazzeri (plus some players), during a season in which he hit .355 with 60 HRs for Salt Lake
One prospect who “got away” from Connery and the Yankees was Jimmy O’Connell, who hit .337 for the San Francisco Seals in 1921, the 1st season that Bob tried to sign him. Perhaps it was during Connery’s scouting trips out west that year that Seals part-owner Charlie Graham got to know the Yankees scout. When Graham retired as the club’s manager after that season, he offered the position to Connery at “a fancy salary.” Ironically, the Seals then hired Dots Miller, the Cardinals infielder and informal team leader for the Huggins teams of 1914-1917, as manager. Miller led the 1922 Seals to the PCL pennant, before dying of tuberculosis the following year.
Connery remained with the Yankees, where he handled spring-training duties, including managing some of their rookie squads. In spring of 1922, when the Yankees fined pitcher Carl Mays for violating club discipline, he declared that Miller Huggins was merely a “mouthpiece” for the team’s real manager, Bob Connery. Yet it was as a key member of the club’s “brain trust” that Bob quietly made his mark. That same spring, a Sporting News photo of Owner Jacob Ruppert, Barrow and Huggins pointedly noted that Connery was missing from the picture, “Too modest to sit in” and complete it.
On New Year’s Day 1925, newspapers in New York City and St. Paul, Minnesota, announced that Connery had purchased the St. Paul Saints from John W. Norton. He probably saw a financial opportunity and was tiring of the peripatetic life of a Scout. Connery said that he was severing all ties with the Yankees; he would become the President and public face of the club. If they wanted to buy a Saints player, he told the press, “They will have to give our club what we want, just the same as any other club.” Yet that very day, another St. Paul daily reported that the Yankees and the Saints would make an “alliance” that would be an “unbeatable combination.”
Connery was buying one of the best clubs in the minor leagues. The Saints had won the American Association pennant in 1919, 1920, 1922 and 1924. They had averaged more than 200,000 fans in each of the past 6 seasons. Two of their clubs (1920 and 1922) are ranked among the 100 greatest minor-league teams ever (as were the 1923 Saints, who won 111 games, but not the pennant). And Connery paid a premium for that recent success: he had purchased the team for between $175,000 and $200,000, the highest price ever paid for an American Association club up to that time. The purchase did not even include Lexington Park, which Norton retained; the team continued to play there through 1956.
Connery refused to name his partners in the ownership group; only one was reported in the press, St. Louis Banker Leo Daly. What was not disclosed – and would not become public knowledge until September 1929 that was that Yankees Manager Miller Huggins was a silent partner, a 1/3 owner of the Saints. There is confirmation of Huggins’s St. Paul stake: a January 8,1925, stock certificate conveying 50 shares in the Saints to him, signed by both Connery and Huggins. There is also a January 10, 925, letter from Huggins to Connery in which he explained his investment in the Saints. When the Yankees bought St. Paul players, Huggins benefited as a Saints Owner, regardless of whether the player performed well for the Yankees.
Did Huggins have a conflict of interest? When Ruppert wrote Connery, wishing him well in his new venture, he made no mention of Huggins. “I am very sorry to lose your services. … I have always considered you a most efficient and valued member of our organization and am very sorry indeed to lose you,” Ruppert wrote to his departing scout. “You may always look upon me as a friend.” Perhaps Huggins kept his role private to avoid the possible wrath of MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Landis, who probably would have vetoed the arrangement.
Because of his close relationship with Jacob Ruppert, Huggins probably informed the Colonel of his St. Paul stake, though there is no record he did so. An example of Huggins’s scruples in the teams’ relationship was revealed in the Yankees’ August 1928 purchase of Saints Pitcher Fred Heimach. The Yankees were reeling at the time and in need of pitching; their huge lead over the Philadelphia Athletics was evaporating.
Huggins insisted that Ruppert and Barrow send their scouts to St. Paul, rather than simply taking his recommendation. They did so, were impressed with Heimach and had purchased him for $20,000. He won 2 key games down the stretch for New York, as the Yankees held off the Philadelphia Athletics and won their 3rd straight pennant. Sportswriter Bill Slocum told this story after Huggins’s death. “Huggins’ high sense of propriety would not permit him to recommend a deal in which he might share financially, even with a pennant at stake,” Slocum wrote.
Huggins drew a much larger salary as Yankees Manager than Connery did as their Scout. How did Bob come up with the cash to make the purchase? He used to tell family members that Jacob Ruppert lent him the money, with the understanding that his Yankees would get the 1st shot at St. Paul prospects.
The 1st such prospect was shortstop Mark Koenig, who had starred in the 1924 Little World Series, in which the Saints beat the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles of the International league. He reportedly had drawn interest from 7 minor-league teams. The 1925 Yankees were floundering; middle infielders Everett Scott and Aaron Ward were not playing well. In mid-May Huggins and Ed Barrow went to St. Paul, to confer with Connery. Two weeks later the Yankees had acquired Koenig for $50,000 and 3 players, though they let him finish the season in St. Paul, where he hit .308. Koenig would be a starter for New York the next 4 seasons (he led AL shortstops in errors 2 of those years and was 2nd another year), but he never became the star his purchase price had suggested.
Players Transferred Between St. Paul Saints and New York Yankees
(StP is the St. Paul Saints, and NY-A is the New York Americans, the Yankees. DNP=Did Not Play)
PLAYER ST. PAUL N.Y. YANKEES NOTES
Walter Beall 1927 1924-1927
Ben Chapman 1929 1930-1936
Roy Chesterfield 1928 DNP in Majors
Pat Collins 1925 1926-28 8/30/25: Traded by St. Paul to NY-A for $25K, Wanninger & 2 players
Dusty Cooke 1929 1930-1932
Nick Cullop 1926 1926
Leo Durocher 1927 1925, 1928-1929
Curtis Fullerton 1925 DNP in Majors 10/9/25: Drafted by NY-A. 3/23/26: Sent to Salt Lake City in Lazzeri deal
Elias Funk 1927-1928 1929
Joe Giard 1928-1929 1927
John Grabowski 1930, 1927-1929
Fred Heimach 1927-1928,1934 1928-29 8/6/28: Traded by StP to NY-A for $20K & player
Fred Hofmann 1917, 1925-1926 1919-1925 5/29/25: Traded by NY-A to StP with Oscar Roettger, Ernie Johnson & $50K for Mark Koenig
Ernie Johnson DNP for StP 1923-1925 5/29/25: Sent to StP with Roettger, Hofmann & $50K in Koenig deal
Hank Johnson 1926 1925-1926, 1928-1932
Mark Koenig 1921-1922, 1924-1925 1925-1930 5/29/25: Sent to NY-A for Hofmann, Roettger, E. Johnson & $50K
Cliff Markle 1924-1925 1915-1916,1924 6/16/24: Traded by StP to NY-A for Roettger. 7/22/24: Purchased by StP from NY-A
Herb McQuaid 1924-1925, 1927-1928 1926 9/14/25: Traded by StP to NY-A for undisclosed players
Wilcy Moore 1930 1927-1929, 1932-1933 9/30/30: Drafted by Red Sox from StP
Ray Morehart 1928-1929 1927
Henie Odom 1925-1927 1925
Ben Paschal 1930-1933 1924-1929
George Pipgras 1926 1923-1924,1927-1933
Gene Robertson 1927 1928-1929 8/8/27: Traded by StP to NY-A for $20K & PTBNL
Oscar Roettger 1924-1931 1923-1924 6/16/24: Traded by NY-A to StP for Cliff Markle. 5/29/25: Traded by NY-A with Hofmann, E. Johnson & $50K to StP for Koenig
Jack Saltzgaver 1930-1931 1932, 1934-1937 6/27/31: Traded by StP with Johnny Murphy, 2 players & cash to NY-A for Jimmie Reese
Al Shealy 1927-1929 1928
Pee-Wee Wanninger 1926-1932 1925 12/16/25: Sent by NY-A to StP to complete 8/30/25 Pat Collins deal. NY sent Wanninger, 2 others & $25K for Collins
Jules Wera 1924, 1926, 1928 1927, 1929 12/21/26: Traded by StP to NY-A for $40K & 2 players
In the next few years, a steady stream of players made their way between the 2 teams. “Curiously, virtually all the ballplayers sold by St. Paul to the Yankees experienced only modest success – at best – in the majors. The same was true of almost all the players New York sent down to St. Paul for seasoning.” Historian Dan Levitt has calculated that the Yankees spent around $300,000 on St. Paul prospects, a relationship that “benefited Connery much more than the Yankees.”
Shortly after he bought the club, Connery re-signed the Saints’ 1924 manager, Nick Allen, who had played for the Saints since 1921. He took over as Player-Manager in 1923, when longtime manager Mike Kelley moved across the river and took over the Minneapolis Millers. Kelley would manage there through 1931. Minor-league historian Bill O’Neal has noted that “no sports rivalry was more bitterly contested over a longer period of time” than that between the clubs of the Twin Cities. Kelley and Connery, 2 close friends, faced off for years in that competition.
Connery was welcomed in St. Paul; the fans appreciated that their club had been purchased by an astute baseball man. He made St. Paul his home, but that home was – and would be, for the rest of his life – the St. Paul Athletic Club. He served for many years on the club’s Board of Directors.
For the 1929 season, Connery had decided that a managerial change was in order and brought in veteran National League Catcher Bubbles Hargrave to manage and catch for the Saints. (Hargrave had played for the club from 1918 to 1920.) Hargrave played so well – he hit .369 – that the Yankees called him up the following year. In his 1st 6 years as the Saints Owner and President, Connery did not win a single American Association pennant, though he did finish 2nd in 1929 and 1930.
On September 20, 1929, Connery’s close friend, Yankees Manager Miller Huggins, entered a New York City hospital with an infection under his eye. It quickly spread throughout his body, and Huggins slipped into unconsciousness. The New York Times reported that “in his delirium,” Huggins called out for Connery, who rushed to New York from the Midwest. When Huggins died on September 25th, Bob was at his bedside and he accompanied the body back to Huggins’s hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio where he was laid to rest.
In the aftermath of Huggins’s death, sportswriters discussed his ownership stake in the Saints, as if it were common knowledge, though that was not the case. St. Paul sportswriter Dick Meade put it this way: “It is well, though not widely known that Miller Huggins is the owner of 25 [sic] per cent of the stock of the Saints.”
When Jacob Ruppert and then Ed Barrow would conducted a search for a new manager. Connery’s name figured prominently in the speculation because of both his experience and the respect he commanded from the Yankees’ “leadership.” But as a writer for the New York Sun pointed out, Connery already had a good job and would probably be of more value to the Yankees in St. Paul, as a “discoverer and developer of new talent.” Yankees MLB Coach Art Fletcher and veteran Athletics 2nd baseman Eddie Collins had turned down the job and New York eventually hired their former Pitcher and MLB Pitching Coach, Bob Shawkey. One of Shawkey’s 1st moves as the new Manager was for him and Barrow to meet with Connery and review 2 Saints Outfield prospects: Ben Chapman (who hit .336 in 1929) and Dusty Cooke (.358 in 1929). Both were in the Yankees’ Opening Day lineup on April 15,1930.
No New York sportswriter, including Tom Meany and Frank Graham in the Yankee team histories they wrote in the 1940s, mentioned that Bob Connery had been offered the Yankees’ managerial position. Yet Bob’s close friend, Hartford businessman Mickey Lambert, who had been called “chief of the Saints board of strategy” and often spent time with the club each spring, gave such an account.
Lambert told a remarkable story to a Hartford reporter a few months after Shawkey was hired. He said that Connery had been offered the Yankees’ job; Jacob Ruppert had told him to fill in his salary figure in a contract and the Yankees would take the Saints off his hands. Connery turned down the offer, said Lambert, because he wanted to remain the “boss” and because he did not want to have to deal with Yankees star Babe Ruth or get into arguments with General Manager Ed Barrow.
Connery hired his boyhood friend and former Des Moines teammate of a quarter-century earlier, Lefty Leifield, to manage the Saints in 1930. In his 2nd season at the helm, Leifield rewarded Bob with his 1st (and what would be his only) American Association pennant in 1931. That year the club was also helped by the coaching and substitute catching of Frank Snyder, who had grown close to Bob when they were both with Huggins’s Cardinals.
Since 1925, Connery’s Saints had drawn an annual attendance of between 163,000 and 197,000 fans. Those numbers were respectable, but in 4 of the previous 5 seasons (1920 and 1924), the Saints had drawn more than 200,000 fans. And during Bob’s seven seasons in St. Paul, there were 15 “team seasons” with attendance of more than 200,000, including 5 above 300,000. But the revenue from player sales to the Yankees made the Saints a profitable venture. In the last major St. Paul deal with New York, on June 27,1931, the Yankees had acquired Pitcher Johnny Murphy and Outfielder Jack Saltzgaver.
After the 1931 season, Jacob Ruppert decided to embark on owning and running minor-league farm teams, following in the footsteps of Branch Rickey and the St. Louis Cardinals. Ruppert had become increasingly frustrated by the large sums of money he was spending on minor-league players who did not “pan out.” The purchase that most upset him had nothing to do with St. Paul. The Yankees had paid $125,000 to the AA Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League for 2 prospects: 2B Jimmie Reese and shortstop Lyn Lary. New York eventually gave up on Reese after the 1931 season, when they sent him to the Saints.
Ed Barrow recommended that the Yankees hire Connery to head the nascent farm system. “He is the perfect choice,” he told Ruppert. But the Owner demurred; he had apparently soured on Connery. As Barrow’s biographer Dan Levitt wrote, “The relationship [between the Yankees and the Saints] benefited Connery much more than the Yankees; New York paid him huge prices for his players and none became top stars.” Ruppert conducted his own search and eventually hired George Weiss, who had run the New Haven and Baltimore minor-league clubs.
Sometimes a Saints prospect did not work out because of bad breaks such as injuries. This was the case with Dusty Cooke, of whom Paul Krichell had said, “When I saw him, I knew he was the ballplayer I had been dreaming about. He had everything.” Cooke would hit .358 with 39 doubles and 33 HRs for Connery’s Saints in 1929. The Sporting News said the Yankees had sent Dusty to St. Paul for “seasoning under Bob Connery’s warm incubator of baseball embryos.” But a serious shoulder injury (torn ligaments) and a broken leg with the Yankees in 1931 would derail his MLB playing career.
In 1932, the Saints’ attendance collapsed to about 85,000. The nation’s economic depression was taking its toll, but a fall-off of 34 wins and a 70-97 record had an impact too. Bob often told his family that St. Paul fans turned against his Saints because the Yankees would always take their best players. Yet the reality was quite different. First, the Yankees rarely called up a player during the Saints’ season. And when a top prospect was not quite ready for the Yankees, they sent him to St. Paul for seasoning. Typical was Lefty Gomez, whom New York had bought from the AA San Francisco Seals (PCL) in 1929. He spent much of the 1930 season in St. Paul. (Baseball researcher Frank Phelps has credited Connery with the Yankees’ signing of Gomez.) Finally, starting in 1932, Connery no longer had the free-spending Yankees buying his players. They were now developing their own men and he had lost a prime source of income.
By 1934, Bob was desperate and explored moving the Saints to another city. By late spring, he had chosen Peoria, Illinois, as his club’s new home. He held off, The Sporting News reported, “with the promise of more cooperation on the part of the St. Paul citizens in supporting his club.” By the end of the season, with attendance less than 75,000 (fewer than 1,000 fans a game), a move was imminent. At the 11th hour, the St. Paul Pioneer Press put together a syndicate that bought the club from Connery. Veteran sports reporter Lou McKenna took over as Business Manager. Local refrigeration businessman Walter Seeger was the lead investor and eventually acquired a controlling interest. The club had hired Bob Connery for a couple of years as an adviser and began working closely with the Chicago White Sox.
A review of correspondence relating to the sale shows that Connery and his partners took a tremendous loss. In a December 1934 letter, Connery acknowledged that he was selling the club for $67,500, a team he had bought a decade earlier for $175,000. Byron Clark, a Wall Street lawyer who was the executor of Miller Huggins’s estate, agreed with the plan to sell. “It would take a considerable amount of time for values ever to come back,” he wrote Connery. That same day, Clark wrote to Myrtle Huggins, Miller’s sister, who had inherited his estate, “It is best for us to accept Bob’s judgment in the matter. Personally, I do not see much future for the club.”
In the months after Connery sold the Saints, there were stories he would resurface in a baseball position, as a White Sox Scout, Executive with the Yankees, or with the St. Louis Browns, when his friend Rogers Hornsby was managing. Connery never returned to work in baseball.
Bob spent his later years dabbling in the stock market, playing gin rummy at the St. Paul Athletic Club and hunting. He was a regular at Saints games. He also made twice-a-year trips to Mineral Wells, Texas, where he would enjoy the mineral baths. He always stopped in St. Louis to visit his sisters. In his later life, Bob would suffer from heart disease. He spent the last year of his life in Dallas, Texas, where he died of heart disease on January 28,1967. He is buried in St. Louis’s Calvary Cemetery, alongside his parents and spinster sister Margaret.
Shortly before Connery’s death, his family received a surprise phone call from a woman in Dallas, who identified herself as his daughter, a daughter they never knew or knew of. Kathleen Reynolds had 2 children of her own, Bob’s grandchildren. Whether Bob had been married is not known; he never spoke of a wife or children. The woman who had been in his life had passed away, a few years before he died, her daughter said.
Bob’s sister Mary, who was in her 90s, when he died, told her family that she had always suspected he had a woman and child. She recalled the cute married woman, who followed him everywhere in St. Louis decades earlier, but did not know if they had ever married. While Bob’s death certificate states he was widowed, this information was supplied by his daughter.
Over the course of his career, Bob Connery had established a reputation for honesty and integrity. “Bob’s spoken word was every bit as his penmanship,” The Sporting News wrote in 1928, “and small deals and those of moment could be closed over the coffee cup.”
Acknowledgments
The author wants to thank Tom Bourke of St. Petersburg, Florida, for his genealogical expertise and both Dan Levitt of Minneapolis and Irv Goldfarb of Union City, New Jersey, for their assistance in pulling newspaper articles. Also, Stew Thornley’s book, Baseball in Minnesota: A Definitive History (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006), provided an excellent overview of the Minnesota period of Connery’s baseball life.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 6, 2024 15:33:48 GMT -5
Jim Hegan MLB Catcher, Yankees MLB Coach 1960-1973
This article was written by Rick Balazs, Edited by Clipper
1956 Topps Baseball Card
The Cleveland Indians of the early 1950s, including the 1954 team, were well known for their Big 4 starting rotation, consisting of Bob Feller, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and Mike Garcia. But when asked which superstar pitcher was the best, Yankees Manager Casey Stengel said, “Give me that fella behind the plate. He’s what makes ’em.”
Stengel was referring to Jim Hegan, the Indians’ longtime catcher, who had a reputation for excellent defense. "When you can catch like Hegan, you don't have to hit." - Yankees Hall of Fame Catcher Bill Dickey
Hegan’s catching prowess and game-calling ability helped the Tribe have 1 of the game’s most dominant pitching staffs from 1947 to 1956. Beyond his success on the field, Hegan was one of the Indians’ most popular players, among both his teammates and the Cleveland fans. He spent 14 of his 17 major-league seasons with the Indians and never lacked for job security despite a MLB career batting average of just .228.
James Edward Hegan was born on August 3,1920 in Lynn, Massachusetts, a few miles north of Boston to John and Laura Hegan, a working-class Irish couple. His father was a policeman. Family was the focal point of the Hegans’ lives. John sang in a barbershop quartet, and any time they were all together after dinner, they would gather to sing in the living room. Emphasis on family and an affinity for barbershop quartets remained with Jim for the rest of his life.
The Hegan family – Jim had 2 sisters and 4 brothers – also possessed a substantial amount of athletic ability. Jim’s youngest brother, Larry, played basketball and pitched for his high-school baseball team despite having a deformed hand. His oldest brother, Ray, was a very good football player and received a scholarship to Dartmouth. Jim starred in baseball, basketball, and football in high school. He was the only one in his family to play a sport professionally.
“He was a tremendous, all-around athlete,” said Hegan’s son, Mike, who would followed his father into baseball, had a 12-year MLB career and has been a MLB play-by-play broadcaster for more than 3 decades. “He had quit playing football in his sophomore year because I think he knew he wanted to play baseball professionally. My mother and others have told me that he was an outstanding receiver in football.” Mike said his father was a center in basketball and played semipro in the offseasons in Boston for a forerunner of the Boston Celtics, before the NBA was created.
Hegan would meet his future wife, Clare at Lynn English High School. He was a senior and she was a sophomore. It took little time for them to realize that they wanted to get married and they were wed in 1941.
Jim and Clare had 3 children, Mike, Patrick, and Catharine. Mike was the oldest, born in 1942, 7 years before his brother, Patrick and 12 years before his sister, Cathy. Mike played for 3 teams during a 15-year playing career before becoming known to another generation of Indians fans as a TV and radio broadcaster for Indians games.
Like most young families, the Hegans had to work hard to make ends meet. Before moving from Boston to Cleveland, the family shared a house with Clare’s sister, across the street from Clare’s parents.
“My dad was very much a family man,” Mike said. “He puttered around the house. Even when he was semi-retired, he and my mom spent a lot of time together, shopped together, and vacationed together. He had good friends, but they were basically his family. Family was most important to him.
Jim Hegan broke into professional baseball in 1938, when the Indians had offered him a contract at the age of 17. He would play in the minor leagues with Springfield of the Class C Middle Atlantic League in 1938 and 1939, and then split the 1940 season between Oklahoma City of the Texas League and Wilkes-Barre of the Eastern League. He would played for the same 2 teams in 1941; he was promoted to the Indians in September. His MLB player debut with Cleveland, on September 9th against the Philadelphia Athletics, must have been a daunting event for Hegan; he was assigned to catch Bob Feller. But the rookie went 2-for-5 with a HR and drove in 3 runs as the Indians won, 13-7, as future Hall of Famer Feller earned his 23rd victory of the 1941 AL season.
After the game, Manager Roger Peckinpaugh told Hegan, “Nice game,” which Hegan later said was “like handing me $1 million Sportswriters were equally complimentary; the Cleveland Plain Dealer said that “although Feller is one of the most difficult pitchers in the major leagues to catch, Hegan handled him perfectly and performed like a veteran.”
Hegan’s player debut was a sign of a promising career to come, although the realization of that career took some time. In 1942, he would play in 68 games and batted only .194 in 170 at-bats as Otto Denning and Gene Desautels had handled the bulk of the catching. With the US fighting in World War II, Hegan was away serving in the Coast Guard from 1943 through 1945. He would return to the Indians in 1946 and batted .236 in 271 at-bats, while splitting the catching duties with Sherman Lollar and Frankie Hayes.
Hegan would become the starting catcher in 1947, though he was hobbled by Manager Lou Boudreau’s decision to call the pitches from his playing position at shortstop. That angered the Tribe pitchers and stung Hegan, though he had advised the pitchers not to rebel. The Indians went 80-74, but didn’t fulfill expectations. Team Owner Bill Veeck nearly fired Boudreau as Manager. Before the 1948 AL season, Boudreau told Hegan to forget about the previous season and gave him the duty of calling pitches. The Indians would post a team ERA of 3.22, leading the American League and proceeded to win the 1948 AL pennant and World Series. Perhaps Boudreau’s demonstration of confidence boosted Hegan’s offensive production; he had his best MLB season with the bat, hitting .248 with career highs in HRs (14), RBIs (61) and doubles (21). He had finished 19th in the American League Most Valuable Player voting, ahead of notable players like teammates Bob Feller, Larry Doby and fellow catcher Yogi Berra of the Yankees. (Lou Boudreau won the AL MVP award.)
After the Indians had defeated the Boston Braves in the World Series, Team Owner Veeck praised Hegan, saying, “There isn’t a better catcher in the league Judging from Indians pitchers’ performance during Hegan’s years as the everyday catcher, few could argue with Veeck.” From 1947 to 1956, the Indians had led the American League in ERA 6 times. In those 10 years, a Cleveland pitcher had won 20 games 17 times. Hegan had caught 3 no-hitters, 1 of only 14 catchers to do so, as he was the receiver for Don Black’s no-hitter in 1947, Bob Lemon’s in 1948 and Bob Feller’s 3rd in 1951. (1 of the 14, Jason Varitek, caught 4.)
The most spectacular pitching staff during Hegan’s tenure, of course, was the one from the 1954 team. That year, the Indians led the American League with a sparkling 2.78 ERA. With such a dominant staff leading the way to a 111-win season, losing the World Series in a 4-game sweep to the New York Giants was hard to take, particularly for Jim.
“The 1954 year might have been the most satisfying and the most frustrating for him, simply because they won 111 games but didn’t win it all,” Mike Hegan said. (The Indians were swept by the New York Giants in the World Series.) “They were not the best baseball team, yet they were. All those guys from that team just kind of shake their heads. It just might have been a quirk of fate, the way it worked out.”
The Hegans would relocate permanently to Cleveland in 1954, after spending offseasons in the Boston area. The family had moved to their new home in Lakewood, just west of the city and Hegan joined in a business venture with Cleveland Browns Quarterback Otto Graham. Eventually they opened a store, Hegan-Graham Appliance, on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland that sold sporting goods, luggage, and jewelry in addition to appliances, and urged customers to “Get the right pitch before you buy.”
Hegan made several noteworthy headlines during the 1954 AL season. One memorable day was September 12th, when the Indians had swept a doubleheader against the New York Yankees before a crowd of 86,563 fans at Cleveland Stadium. Hegan caught both games, a complete-game 4-1 victory for Bob Lemon and a complete-game 3-2 victory for Early Wynn. Six days later, he would hit a solo HR for what turned out to be the deciding run in the pennant-clinching victory in Detroit.
The headlines weren’t as favorable in Game 1 of the World Series against the Giants at the Polo Grounds in New York. In the 8th inning, with the score tied at 2-2 and 2 Indians on base, Willie Mays made his famous catch of Vic Wertz’s long drive to center. Most people say the catch took the wind out of the Indians’ sails. In reality, the Indians had a better chance to score 3 batters later, but the wind literally ruined their chance to score. Hegan came to bat with the bases loaded and 2 outs and hit a long fly to left, but the wind knocked down what might have been a grand slam HR.
“It looked like a homer, but the wind, blowing toward the right, pulled the ball in so that Monte Irvin was able to make the catch,” Indians Manager Al Lopez said after the game. Irvin said, “[The ball] was out of my sight. Gone. It missed the scoreboard by a fraction of an inch and fell into my glove.”
The same wind didn’t do the Indians any favors in the bottom of the 10th, when Dusty Rhodes’ short fly ball stayed fair down the right-field line for a 3-run HR, giving the Giants, a 5-2 victory and setting the stage for their sweep.
That 1954 AL season was one of Hegan’s best. He batted only .234, but he hit 11 HRs and a career-high 7 triples and led American League catchers in fielding percentage (.994). He would repeat the feat in 1955 (.997), while committing only 2 errors.
At 33, Jim was entering the latter stages of his career. He had 2 more seasons as the Indians’ regular catcher. In each of those seasons, the Indians had finished 2nd to the Yankees, just as they had done each season from 1951 to 1953. Hegan had established himself as one of the most popular players on the team. In 1953, he was honored with a Jim Hegan Night at Municipal Stadium. Little League catchers wore his uniform number,10, and when he switched to 4, they switched too.
Hegan was popular with his teammates too. Often, they would join him in barbershop quartets on train rides during road trips. Hall of Fame Pitcher Bob Lemon was his roommate and best friend. They roomed together for 17 years, starting in the minor leagues, when they were both 18. The 2 were complete opposites. Lemon was an avid socializer who loved to crack jokes and often came in late after having a few too many. Hegan was more reserved and was one of the few players, who didn’t drink.
“Lem was always so full of fun,” Clare Hegan once said. “He’d wear a fake arm and shake somebody’s hand and the arm would come off. Jim was quiet. He was dignified, even when he was young. He was almost embarrassed when people recognized him as being a major leaguer.”
“You couldn’t have 2 any more different personalities,” said Mike Hegan. “People used to say that they would invite Jim out with the guys after the ballgame because he would make sure they would get home. He was this day and age’s designated driver.”
With young catcher Russ Nixon waiting in the wings, the Indians had traded Hegan to Detroit Tigers before start of the 1958 AL season. After brief stints with the Tigers, Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants in 1958 and 1959. Hegan’s MLB playing career seemed to be over. He and Otto Graham had closed the appliance business after Graham went to the Coast Guard Academy to coach football. Hegan then went to work as a salesman for a trucking company. But in the spring of 1960, he got a call from his old Manager, Lou Boudreau, who was now managing the Chicago Cubs. One of the Cubs’ catchers, Dick Bertell was injured and Boudreau wanted Hegan to join the Cubs as a backup catcher. After discussing the opportunity with Clare, he would accept Boudreau’s offer. “I was a senior at St. Ignatius (in Cleveland) at the time, and the 2 of us would go up to Lakewood Park with a bag of balls,” Mike said. “I threw him batting practice every day for about a week. After the Cubs returned from a road trip, he joined the team.”
Hegan played his 1st game for the Chicago Cubs on May 28th and hit a HR in his 2nd at-bat. But he played sparingly and the Cubs would release him on July 27th. Hegan quickly signed with the Yankees as a Bullpen Coach to replace Bill Dickey, who was ill. Dickey had been a Hall of Fame catcher with the Yankees and had once famously said of Hegan, “When you catch like Hegan, you don’t have to hit.” Al Doyle, “Sustaining a Long Career: Despite weak hitting abilities, some catchers make an impact in the major leagues strictly on their defensive expertise,” (Baseball Digest, October 1996, pg. 57).
The New York Yankees had placed Hegan on their active roster on September 2,1960. Though he didn’t appear in a game, Manager Casey Stengel still thought highly of Hegan’s ability, telling the New York Times, “Hegan still is a very fine catcher, especially in moving around and getting under foul balls.”
1970 Yankees Spring Training Photo of Jim working with young catcher named Thurman Munson
After MLB Coach Ralph Houk had replaced Casey Stengel as Yankees Manager in October of 1960, Hegan would remain with the Yankees as member of Houk's 1961 MLB Coaching staff. He would coached with the team for 16 seasons, from 1960 to 1973 and in 1979-1980. As of 2012, he had the 3rd longest tenure among New York Yankees coaches, trailing only MLB 3B Coach Frank Crosetti (1946-1968) and Pitching Coach Jim Turner (1949-1959, 1966-1973). Mike Hegan had played for the New York Yankees in 1964, 1966, 1967 and in 1973-1974. During their time together, Jim almost joined Mike on the active roster. “There was 1 year, when somebody got hurt and there were some rumors of activating my dad,” Mike said. “But he didn’t want to do it and it wasn’t because I was on the team. Had that happened, we would have been the 1st father-and-son combination to play on the same team.” Ken Griffey, Jr. and his father, Ken Sr., became the 1st, playing together on the Seattle Mariners in 1990. Still, the Hegans’ achieved a couple of feats rare for father-son duos. Jim and Jim would be 1st father-and-son combination on the same team in 1964 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. They had each played on a World Series-winning team, with Jim playing for the 1948 Indians and Mike for the 1972 Oakland Athletics. They were the 1st father-and-son tandem to be chosen for the All-Star Game; Jim was picked 5 times and Mike once.
1973 Yankees Photo of Jim and Mike Hegan
“I was able to watch him in action and operate,” Mike said. “He was really Ralph Houk’s right-hand man. Everywhere Ralph went, he went. I would call him an assistant pitching coach more than anything else. That’s basically what he was.
Mike said he didn’t receive favorable treatment from his father while with the Yankees. “He was the same in his relationships with players, whether they were teammates or from a coaching perspective, or even a parenting perspective. He was always consistent.”
From 1974 to 1978, Jim would be a MLB Coach for the Detroit Tigers under Manager Ralph Houk.
Mike said his father’s personality and tall stature helped make him an effective coach. “For that age, he was kind of a big guy, 6-3 or 6-4 (he was 6-feet-2, according to Baseball-reference.com), so he had a commanding presence,” Mike said. “He didn’t say much, but when he did say something, you took the hint. That’s the way he was. If you were to talk to guys like Feller and Lemon over the years, that’s the way he was behind the plate as well. Everybody said that he was a very strong leader.”
Jim Hegan died at the age of 63 on June 17, 1984, after a heart attack. His legacy for defensive excellence at the catcher position remains well intact. His teammates marveled at his ability. “He was so good that if you crossed him up nobody knew it,” Herb Score recalled after Hegan died. “He had the best hands I ever saw. If I crossed him up, he might not tell me until 3 days later.” Mike Garcia once said of him, “If a foul ball went in the air and stayed in the ballpark it was an automatic out. He didn’t stagger around under it. He went right to the spot of the ball.”
Mike Hegan said his father took pride in his game-calling and defensive ability. “He took pride in that aspect of the game, knowing it was a strength,” Mike said. “He was a great athlete and that transferred behind the plate in his ability to catch the baseball, block balls, and have an outstanding throwing arm. People still say he never dropped a pop fly behind home plate. Bob Lemon shook him off once. The batter then hit a HR and Lemon never shook him off again.”
Hegan’s love of the game and his drive to succeed undoubtedly helped him achieve his success. “He loved baseball,” Clare once said. “He couldn’t believe people were paying him to play.”
“He was a perfectionist,” Mike said, and recalled when his father took up golf and joined Avon Oaks Country Club, west of Cleveland. “My dad started playing and gave it up because he grew frustrated that he couldn’t excel at it. If he couldn’t do something, he would walk away from it instead of being frustrated by it.”
Fortunately for Cleveland fans and Tribe pitchers, Jim Hegan loved baseball and perfected the art of catching. He continues to be and always will be remembered as one of the greatest and classiest players ever to wear a Cleveland Indians uniform.
This biography is included in the book "Pitching to the Pennant: The 1954 Cleveland Indians" (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), edited by Joseph Wancho.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 7, 2024 15:34:41 GMT -5
Former Yankees OF Prospect 1952-1959 Russ Snyder
This article was written by Monty Nielsen, Edited by Clipper  Russ Snyder Orioles Photo
Russ Snyder inked his 1st professional baseball contract with the New York Yankees in August 1952, just 3 months after graduating from high school. The next summer, he was the top hitter in the minors – compared at the plate, on the bases and in the outfield to Mickey Mantle, possibly a cross-pollination of Ted Williams and Ty Cobb.
McAlester (Oklahoma) News-Capital sports editor Hugh T. German saw superstar potential in Snyder and cast him as “another Mickey Mantle with a little more experience under his belt.” By comparison, German noted that “Russ runs like Mantle, handles himself well in the field and should take his place alongside Mickey in a few years.” Some saw him being there sooner, noting that “(a) kid named Mickey Mantle did it, and with a blazing bat and speed to match in the lower minors. … Snyder fills the bill on both counts.” Other Oklahoma sportswriters envisioned that Snyder’s “speed and eagle eye” could hasten him down “the path made by Mickey Mantle.”
But Snyder wasn’t a ballplayer of Mantle’s magnitude. Physically, like Mickey, he could drag a bunt, sprint, and beat the throw to 1st, but antithetical to the powerful slugger, he was not a HR hitter. Ultimately, what Snyder became was a versatile platoon player, a reserve outfielder for 5 teams over 12 major-league seasons (1959-1970). His best years were with the up-and-coming Orioles of the 1960s, and he was an important cog in Baltimore’s 1st World Series championship club in 1966.
Russell Henry Snyder was born on June 22, 1934, in Oak, Nebraska, population less than 100, in the south-central part of the state. He was the only child of William F. and Minnie Ruth (Hauser) Snyder, both of whom worked for the Chicago and Northwestern (C & NW) Railroad in Oak. William was a section head for 17 years, while Ruth was a caretaker for the train depot.
In a May 6, 2022, face-to-face interview at his home in Nelson, Nebraska, with the author, Snyder said that Stan Musial, whom he never met or saw play, was his baseball hero growing up. Snyder and baseball fans throughout Nebraska and the Midwest, prior to the great western expansion of major league baseball and well before routine television coverage, could cheer Musial’s St. Louis Cardinals over the local airwaves via the medium of radio, day and night all season long. They simply were winners and occasional champions, who became the “home team.”
He went on to describe how he played baseball with his boyhood buddies from Oak and surrounding communities, early on through Midget and Junior Legion levels for another town, Geneva, 30 miles to the north and east. The boys were under the guidance of Joe Bender. Geneva had several good players, and even beat teams from Omaha in Legion tournaments. Snyder was appreciative of the sacrifices made by his dad and mom at that time. During baseball season, they would drive 60 miles round-trip from Oak to Geneva twice a week, taking him to games and practices. They would watch all of his games. If he played well, they were supportive and if he didn’t, they still were supportive.
Snyder was a right-handed pitcher and 1st baseman, who always hit from the left side. In 1951, during a Legion tournament game at Duncan Field in Hastings, Nebraska, the 17-year-old Snyder “slammed a 448-foot HR to the foot of the flagpole.” That fall, he returned to the gridiron as a back for Nelson High School. At 6-feet-1, 165 pounds (190 as a big-leaguer), he was a 1st-team selection for the Hastings Daily Tribune’s All Big 8 Conference Team. Following basketball season, Snyder ran track and field. He also played the piano and sang in the choir. He would graduate with the Class of 1952. That summer, he narrowed his focus to playing baseball.
Snyder had been scouted as a high school player by Floyd Stickney, Player-Manager of the Superior Knights semipro team in the Nebraska Independent League (NIL). Stickney signed him for the summer of ’52 season. Inserted as a starter in center field on July 15th, he would bat leadoff and hit a single and double. In an August 25th NIL playoff game with Kearney (Nebraska), Snyder had 2 hits, scored 2 runs, and stole a base. Two days later, Yankees MLB Scout Joe McDermott signed the speedy 18-year-old to a contract with the McAlester (Oklahoma) Rockets of the Class D Sooner State League for 1953. The signing bonus was $1,000.
In the fall of 1952, Russ Snyder had attended the University of Nebraska, in Lincoln. He was there for 1 semester, but he never re-enrolled. If baseball hadn’t worked out, then he’d have returned to Nelson and gotten a job.
Snyder would toil in the New York Yankees minor-league system for a half-dozen seasons, while going to spring training with them 3 or 4 times. He would usually stay in MLB camp for about a month, but he would never leave camp with the big club. When asked if not getting the call to join the Yankees was frustrating, he said no, because he usually got promoted to higher levels each season and that was progress.
Upon arrival in McAlester, Snyder was an instant sensation. His 1st 50 at-bats produced 31 hits, for a stratospheric .620 batting average. The July 16th edition of the Nelson Gazette headlined his 27-game hitting streak. In late July, the Norman (Oklahoma) Transcript reported that Snyder “just isn’t being stopped” and still had a robust .461 average. Snyder would culminate his freshman campaign with a league-leading .432 mark – “the highest batting average in all the minors in 1953.” For that distinction, he was awarded the Hillerich & Bradsby Silver Bat, in addition to the A.G. Spalding & Bros. Trophy. His 240 hits and 74 stolen bases both topped the league and he compiled 310 total bases, 137 runs scored, and 84 RBIs. Fittingly, McAlester won the league championship and Snyder was tabbed the SSL’s All-Star center fielder.
Although Snyder hit only 2 HRs in ’1953, Rockets skipper Bill Cope said, “Russ doesn’t pull the ball yet the way he should. … When he really learns to get around more on the pitch, Russ will start dropping them over the fence consistently.”
In 1954, Snyder would report “to Ocala, Fla., for training with (the Yankees’) Class AA contingent” and continued his scorching .400-plus pace into the spring exhibition games schedule. He earned a starting spot with the Birmingham (Alabama) Barons of the Class A Southern Association. However, it was reported in April 1954, that Snyder’s contractual arrangement with Birmingham expired on May 8th. After appearing in just 3 games, he voluntarily opted to join the Quincy (Illinois) Gems of the Three-I League (Class B). Unfortunately, in mid-May, he had suffered a serious leg injury. When he returned to Quincy’s lineup on June 18th, he would reinjure the same leg. On Wednesday morning, July 21st, cartilage was taken from Snyder’s damaged right knee at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He had hit .324 in 28 contests with the Gems before his 2nd pro season was shut down prematurely.
On September 29, 1954, Russ’s father, William, had passed away in Superior, Nebraska, at the age of 57, after an extended illness.
In the offseason, as part of his rehab, Snyder walked extensively, which included co-management of a trapline with about 100 traps. He would report to the Binghamton (New York) Triplets of the Class A Eastern League in spring 1955 and joined a roster including future Yankees Johnny Blanchard and Jim Coates, under the managerial eye of former Yankees MLB Infielder Snuffy Stirnweiss. “I believe his knee is healed perfectly,” said Stirnweiss. “I’ve watched him closely for 2 weeks and he doesn’t favor it a bit. He’s the Richie Ashburn-type hitter -fast, uses his head and uncanny with drag bunts. … Russ doesn’t hit for power. … Russ is no Mel Ott … but he can sure handle that bat.”
The Ashburn comparison prompted Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer sports editor Dick Pierce to ask in a headline, “Do Yanks Own Second Ashburn?” Snyder would bat .261 in 93 games.
On Sunday, February 26, 1956, Snyder would marry Patricia Ann Greenwood in the Methodist church at Nelson. Known to all as Ann, she also was a 1952 graduate of Nelson High School.
Snyder would returned to Binghamton in 1956 under new skipper Freddie Fitzsimmons. He had played in 140 games and batted .286, fueled by 155 hits – 35 for extra bases, including 5 HRs.
The Nebraska native’s improved play resulted in a promotion in 1957. Snyder was assigned to the New Orleans Pelicans, under Player-Manager Peanuts Lowrey, in the Class AA Southern Association. He would hit .281 and despite smacking only 1 HR, had collected 50 RBIs. As an outfielder, he had handled 348 chances, with only 8 errors for a .977 fielding percentage.
Snyder would rejoined the Pelicans in 1958, piloted 1st by Player-Manager Former Yankees Catcher Charlie Silvera, who then was replaced on August 19th by Pitcher-Manager Ray Yochim. He would connected for 13 HRs – the only time in 18 professional seasons that his HR total reached double digits – with 67 RBIs, the 2nd-highest total of his career. On June 25th, one New Orleans newspaper said “(t)he promise being shown … by Jack Reed and Russ Snyder in the outfield assures Casey Stengel and the Yankees’ owners of some fine young talent by 1960 – maybe sooner.”
Snyder remained in spring training with the Yankees into early April 1959, before he was sent to the Richmond Virginians of the Triple-A International League. His apprenticeship, so far, consisted of 6-plus years in the Yankees’ farm system. Before appearing in any games, though, Snyder and former bonus baby INF Tom Carroll were swapped rather unexpectedly on April 12th by the Yankees to the Kansas City Athletics for OF Bob Martyn, INF Mike Baxes and cash.
1961 Topps Baseball Card
On April 18,1959, Snyder would make his MLB player debut at Cleveland Stadium. Pinch-hitting in the 5th inning of the Athletics’ 13-4 defeat, he had grounded back to Indians pitcher Don Ferrarese.
After 1 more hitless at-bat 2 weeks later, Kansas City would send Snyder to the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, where he hit a resounding .336 with a .790 OPS in 63 games with the Portland (Oregon) Beavers. In the outfield, he muffed only 3 of 165 chances for a .982 fielding percentage. After Kansas City outfielder Whitey Herzog got hurt, the Athletics brought Snyder up to Kansas City on July 10th.
Eager to play, Snyder, 25, quickly adapted to his role as a reserve. In addition to filling in for Herzog, he would spell center fielder Bill Tuttle, left fielder Bob Cerv and right fielder Roger Maris, when they were injured. Snyder anticipated more playing time against right-handed pitching based on Athletics’ Manager Harry Craft’s use of him to that point. “He hits well … he will be anywhere from .320 to .345,” Craft predicted. “He works hard, keeps to the rules and is always seeking improvement.” When asked what advice he would give Little League and Junior Legion players, Snyder said, “Keep hustling and work hard. …You must be willing to sacrifice to get ahead in the game.”
In 73 games (55 starts) in 1959, Snyder would hit .313 and fielded .986. He received 1 1st-place vote for American League Rookie of the Year honors, finishing 3rd behind Senators OF Bob Allison and Tribe Pitcher Jim Perry. Further acclaim came when Snyder “was named to the J.G. Taylor Spink and Sporting News Rookie All-Star team for 1959.” That off season, Snyder would return to his hometown, to accolades and gratitude. A “Russ Snyder Day” was held in Nelson on October 5th. At the banquet that evening, a group of locals presented a new shotgun to Snyder, a devoted wild-game hunter and avid sportsman in the offseason. Of his future in the major leagues, Yankees Scout McDermott said “Russ …will certainly get his licks from that burning desire to improve. … Russ will go far.”
When the Athletics had dealt veteran OF Bob Cerv back to the Yankees for veteran Infielder Andy Carey on May 19,1960, it appeared that Snyder might crack Kansas City’s regular lineup. He wasted no time in contributing that same day by driving in 4 runs in a 7-4 win over the Baltimore Orioles. In a mid-June interview with Hastings Daily Tribune sportswriter Doyle E. Smith, Snyder said “I get edgy when I’m on the bench … but I work hard at all times.” Smith concluded that Snyder is “one that more major-league teams should have in their organization.” But Snyder started only 64 of his 125 appearances with the A’s in 1960 and the spotlight that had shined brightly the previous season was dimmed somewhat when his batting average tapered to .260.
In December 1960, the Kansas City Athletics were purchased by Charlie Finley, an unconventional Owner fixated on change. Finley would hire veteranMLB executive Frank Lane as his new General Manager in January 1961, only to fire him that August. “Trader Frank” was a deal-maker extraordinaire, who had set about altering the Kansas City roster upon his arrival. He had talked to White Sox Owner Bill Veeck, who was interested in acquiring Snyder, but Veeck’s return offer was hollow. The relentless Lane’s 1st KC transaction came on January 24th, in a 7-player deal with the Baltimore Orioles. Outfielders Russ Snyder and Whitey Herzog were sent to the Birds by the A’s for P Jim Archer,1B Bob Boyd, INF Wayne Causey, Catcher Clint Courtney and OF Al Pilarcik. Lane was optimistic about Causey. In Baltimore, GM Lee MacPhail sought to deepen his outfield pool with the acquisition of Whitey Herzog and Russ Snyder, whom he had known since their days in the Yankees’ organization. MacPhail said he had “a great deal of respect for their ability and desire to play.” Snyder’s hometown Nelson Gazette said simply, “the trade moves Snyder from an 8th place club to a pennant contender.” In 1961, Snyder would hit a solid .292 in 115 games with the Orioles, stroking 12 more hits in 12 more at-bats than in 1960.
As spring training 1962 approached, Maryland sportswriter Dick Kelly recounted Snyder’s late-season surge in 1961 and touted his speed, which produced 24 infield hits, half of which were bunts. By June 17th, Snyder was batting .326 and going deep more frequently – “attacking the ball, snapping his wrists at impact.” No longer was he “lunging and sweeping at the ball”—instead, he was keeping his hands calm and trying “to put everything into the swing at one time.” In addition, he was “seeing the ball better.” Snyder was hitting more line drives but admitted having difficulty with left-handed pitching; he appreciated being platooned. He switched to a heavier bat and adapted a “killer instinct” at the plate. New Orioles skipper Billy Hitchcock wanted him swinging away and he was. Snyder would finish the 1962 AL season with a team-best .305 batting average, while achieving major-league personal highs in hits (127), HRs (9) and total bases (181).
The 1963 AL season resulted in more career highs for Snyder in the majors: games played (148), plate appearances (479), doubles (21), stolen bases (18) and walks (40). In 14 more outfield chances than in 1962, he committed 3 fewer errors. Although Snyder’s batting average dropped to .256, the Orioles led the American League as late as June 8th and finished 10 games over .500 in 4th place.
J. Suter Kegg of the Cumberland (Maryland) Evening Times suggested in April 1964 that Snyder’s middle initial H stood for “Hustle.” In Kegg’s opinion, “No … other big-league player put more into playing baseball than Snyder.” Yet, Kegg lamented, he was a utility outfielder, “who has to fight for a job every spring.” Kegg called Snyder “one of the majors’ top unsung heroes.” Snyder’s approach is that “he should give it everything he has.” He did. He ran daily wind sprints to build stamina, studied batting practice pitches the same as those during regular season at-bats, and avoided bad habits – he was always prepared. Manager Hank Bauer praised Snyder’s approach, saying he’s “the greatest hustler in the game today.”
After Baltimore 1st baseman Norm Siebern was injured, left fielder John “Boog” Powell shifted to 1st and Snyder took over in left. Batting 3rd in the order against the Tigers on May 27th, Snyder walked in his 1st plate appearance, then hit safely in his next 2 at-bats – the 2nd hit a bunt single that he beat out on a close play. However, he “jammed his foot on the first-base bag,” which resulted in a fractured fibula “several inches above his left ankle.” Snyder’s leg was placed in a cast and he was moved onto the disabled list. The Orioles would sign veteran OF Gino Cimoli to replace him on the roster. By July 1st his cast was removed and he began daily physical therapy in Baltimore.
On August 12th, the Orioles had sold outfielder Willie Kirkland to the Washington Senators and activated Snyder, whom Bauer felt confident was ready to return at full strength. Snyder would finish the 1964 campaign with a .290 average in 56 games. The Orioles enjoyed their best season since moving to Baltimore, holding a share of 1st place as late as September 18th before finishing 3rd behind the Yankees and White Sox with a 97-65-1 record. Bauer later cited Snyder’s leg injury “as the blow which prevented Baltimore from winning the 1964 American League pennant.”
The 1965 AL season saw the Orioles again finish 3rd with a 94-68 record, 8 games behind the AL champion Minnesota Twins. Snyder had compiled a .270/.323/.322 slash line in 132 games. He averaged .311 at home and .368 against the Cleveland Indians; his lone HR also came against the Tribe. Across all 3 outfield posts, Snyder was flawless – recording 188 putouts and 4 assists with a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage.
The 1966 Baltimore Orioles would feature a quartet of future Hall of Famers (Luis Aparicio, Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson). Snyder wasn’t destined for the same, yet nonetheless he proved invaluable in the franchise’s 1st championship. Snyder’s tie-breaking, 2-run HR off of Washington’s Dick Bosman on June 8th helped Baltimore sweep a doubleheader and move into 1st place to stay. From June 19th through July 9th, he assembled a 14-game hitting streak, including a 5-for-6 performance on June 26th in Anaheim against the Angels. He had 4 singles and a triple, scored 3 runs, and knocked in 1. Although, he didn’t have enough plate appearances to qualify officially, Snyder’s .347 average through July 9th was the American League’s highest. However, he said, “Frank (Robinson) is really leading the league. … I’m just a utility player.” (Robinson, the eventual Triple Crown winner and AL MVP, was batting .314.) In early September, sportswriter Doug Brown asked Snyder if lacking the required number of plate appearances was frustrating. Snyder didn’t deny that it was but said philosophically, “maybe they’re doing me a favor by platooning me. They might be prolonging my career.”
In Kansas City on September 22nd, playing center, “Snyder dove for Dick Green’s 9th-inning line drive – and speared the Orioles’ 1st American League pennant. … Snyder’s catch completed a 6-1 triumph over the Athletics … and made Baltimore a major-league title town for the 1st time since 1896.” Snyder had played in 117 games and posted a .306/.368/.413 slash line in 421 plate appearances, one nearly identical to his sparkling 1962 AL season. He equaled his major-league career highs in doubles and triples and established a new personal best with 41 RBIs.
The Orioles’ 4-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1966 World Series was the crowning glory to an outstanding campaign. In the bottom of the 2nd inning of Game 1 in Los Angeles, the Dodgers trailed, 4-1, but had men on 1st and 2nd with no one out. LA catcher John Roseboro hit a sinking line drive to right-center. Snyder sped to the ball, “dove and speared it to retire Roseboro and choke off a possible big inning.” Baltimore Sun sports editor Kent Baker labeled it a “turning point” as the Birds won the opener. Needless to say, 1966 was an MLB career year for Russ Snyder.
Previously, Snyder had platooned with Paul Blair in center field, but Blair – 10 years Snyder’s junior and an 8-time Gold Glover to be – won the job outright in 1967. In 108 games, Snyder’s batting average plummeted to .236. That fall, he pinpointed the start of his descent, telling The Sporting News, “It happened in that 19-inning game in Washington early in June. … I tore a muscle in my elbow, probably from overswinging. … My average was up to about .315 at the time, but from that point on, I went down. … I couldn’t grip a bat and I couldn’t throw.” The Orioles would finish 6th in the American League in 1967. On November 29,1967, Russ Snyder’s tenure in Baltimore ended. Russ Snyder, Luis Aparicio and John Matias were traded to the Chicago White Sox for INF Don Buford, Pitchers Bruce Howard and Roger Nelson.
The White Sox, with Eddie Stanky at the helm in 1968, was Snyder’s 4th major-league organization. Uncharacteristically, through his 1st 36 games, he was hitting .123 with no RBIs. But on June 11th, against the Yankees in New York, he drove in 5, aided by a grand slam HR – the 1st of his MLB career – in Chicago’s 9-5 win. Three days later, Snyder was traded to the Cleveland Indians for veteran outfielder Leon Wagner. The “real” Snyder re-emerged in Cleveland. In his 1st 14 games for the Tribe, he had batted .365. Following a 4-1 win over the Twins on July 1st, he attributed his improved play in Cleveland to a “better mental attitude,” feeling “more at ease,” and “playing for a manager like Alvin Dark.” The White Sox, he said, had wanted him to pull the ball; Snyder confessed that he “got all mixed up.” He wasn’t mixed up in Cleveland, where he hit .281, drove in 23 runs and scored 30 in 68 contests for the 3rd-place Indians. In the outfield, he had handled 111 chances with 1 error and he had played 1 errorless game at 1st base.
The 1969 Cleveland Indians were part of the newly formed, 6-team AL East division. They finished last at a league-worst 62-99. In 122 games, Snyder would hit .248, 11 points above the team average of .237.
During spring training in 1970 with the Indians in Tucson, Arizona, Snyder again prepared to compete for an outfield spot as he entered his 12th major-league campaign. However, as camp broke and teams went north, Snyder was traded for the 5th time in his MLB playing career. The expansion Seattle Pilots had moved to Milwaukee in 1970, after 1 bad season in Seattle and they moved and became the Milwaukee Brewers. On April 4th, Snyder and Max Alvis were shipped to the Brewers for Roy Foster, Frank Coggins, and cash. Snyder and Tito Francona – both 36 – were the oldest players on Milwaukee’s MLB roster. Entering a June 12th contest in Cleveland, the Brewers were on a 17-game road losing streak and Snyder was in a 1-for-24 slump. He hit his 2nd (and final) MLB Grand Slam HR that night to lead Milwaukee to a 4-1 victory. Overall, he saw action in 124 games for the 4th-place club and hit a MLB career low .232.
In late February 1971, Snyder reported to spring training with the Brewers in Tempe, Arizona. He homered in a 7-4 exhibition win over the Tokyo Lotte Orions on March 18. Nonetheless, the Brewers would release him on March 27,1971, ending his MLB baseball playing career after 18 professional seasons. In the majors, he produced a .271/.325/.363 slash line over 1,365 games. He had collected 984 base-hits – 221 for extra bases – with 42 HRs, 1,318 total bases and a .688 OPS. In the outfield, he had 1,942 chances, 1,856 putouts, and 49 assists, as he had committed 37 errors, recorded 13 double-plays, and fielded .981.
Prior to his release by the Brewers, Snyder had “bought a bar, and built a steakhouse beside it” in Nelson. Snyder had appeared before the Nelson City Council and said “if you will approve liquor by the drink, then I will build a steakhouse”—they did. The establishment was owned and operated by Russ and his wife and was called Russ and Ann’s Sportsman’s Corner. “He painted an infield on the dance floor, baselines included, and filled the place with his baseball treasures. Twelve years later the building was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.”
Snyder also worked “as a soil conservation technician, constructing terraces and dams for erosion-plagued farms” in south-central Nebraska for 18 years. He considered a return to big-league baseball as a hitting coach in the late 1970s, after receiving a verbal commitment from former O’s 3rd base Coach Billy Hunter. However, Hunter’s managerial circumstances with the Texas Rangers later changed, thus nullifying the potential role for Snyder.
Also, the infamous major-league baseball strike in 1994 and the negotiations that followed took a toll on his benefits package, resulting in the loss of his health insurance at the time. He had to independently find another carrier. Presumably, players who had played through 1970 were to retain such benefits—1970 was his final big-league season. Snyder repeatedly called the Commissioner’s Office for an explanation but didn’t receive one to his satisfaction.
On June 12, 1995, Russ’s mother, Ruth, 85, had passed away in Kearney, Nebraska.
Snyder is listed with a biography and pictorially presented in an attractive display in the Museum of Nebraska Major League Baseball, in St. Paul, Nebraska. He served as the museum’s Grand Marshal for its annual Grover Cleveland Alexander Day parade in July one summer. There is a Russ Snyder baseball museum located in his birthplace of Oak, but it is currently closed. In 1992, Snyder was inducted into the Nebraska Baseball Hall of Fame in Beatrice. He is also a member of the Nebraska High School Hall of Fame, inducted in 2008. His inscription, in part, reads that he would return to Nelson “to coach junior high basketball and referee high school basketball.” Also, following retirement, he coached “baseball and girls’ basketball in Lawrence/Nelson.”
In a 2013 interview with Mike Klingaman of the Baltimore Sun, Snyder spoke fondly of his years with the Orioles: “We were one happy family. … Our kids all played together. Our wives were friends. We spent our off days together. Nobody was left out. … That’s why we won as much as we did.” In 2016, Snyder had attended the 50-year reunion of the 1966 Baltimore Orioles championship team.
Looking back in 2022, Snyder named Camilo Pascual as the toughest right-handed pitcher he faced because the Cuban had a good curveball. He thinks Orioles 2nd baseman Davey Johnson was underrated. He has great respect for Whitey Herzog, Boog Powell and Brooks Robinson, among others; he speaks highly of all his Orioles teammates. He roomed with Luis Aparicio when they were on the road.
When asked what he was most proud of in his big-league career, he said, “I knew I could play baseball well, I wanted to show others I could, and I did. Not every player is willing to be a reserve—most want to start and don’t like it when they don’t. I was a utility player.” Snyder always was prepared to play as a reserve or a starter, and that contributed heavily to his big-league success.
Ann, Russ’s wife, succumbed to cancer in 2002. They were married for 47 years. The Snyder’s had 3 children, Pam, Sharon and Scott; 7 grandchildren; and 8 great-grandchildren. He said he had a small stroke in 2012, got a pacemaker and was doing fine. As of May 2022, Snyder, 87, continued to reside in Nelson.
Last revised: May 11, 2022
Author’s Note
The author first contacted Mr. Snyder by telephone in late 2021, and again in early 2022. During the latter conversation, he again declined to be interviewed in person, but thanked the author before ending the call. However, after some further discussion with Jodene Clabaugh (a friend), and Pam Snyder Wehrman (a daughter), then Sharon Snyder Feistner (another daughter) persuaded him to reconsider the interview request, which he did. The author interviewed Snyder in person at his home in Nelson on May 6, 2022, in the presence of Sharon and her husband, John Feistner. Thank you to them for their assistance.
Acknowledgments
This biography was reviewed by Malcolm Allen, Alan Cohen, Mike Eisenbath, and Rory Costello, and fact-checked by Don Zminda.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 8, 2024 17:28:45 GMT -5
Johnny Kucks Yankees Pitcher 1955-1959-The Kid from New Jersey
This article was written by Alan Cohen, Edited by Clipper  Johnny Kucks Yankees Photo
Everyone has his baseball dream when growing up, but few get the opportunity to realize that one special moment.
On October 12,1956, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers played the 7th game of the World Series. The Yankees had lost the 1st 2 games, but they had come back to win the next 3 before losing Game 6 to the Dodgers and Clem Labine. Manager Casey Stengel, after conferring with Catcher Yogi Berra, elected to go with Johnny Kucks in Game 7. The reasoning was that Kucks was superior to the other Yankees pitchers (Whitey Ford and Tom Sturdivant were also candidates for the start) in 1 specific area: He could, as Stengel liked to say, throw ground balls. In Yankee tradition, Frank Crosetti, the team’s 3rd-base coach, placed a baseball into one of Kucks’ shoes by his locker. Years later, Kucks said, “My 1st inclination was to put it in somebody else’s shoe.” It turned out to be the game of Johnny’s life. He would shut out the Dodgers, 9-0, and the Yankees were world champions for the 7th time in 10 years.
John Charles Kucks, Jr. (pronounced “Cooks”) grew up in Jersey City, right across the Hudson River from New York. He was born in nearby Hoboken on July 27,1932, the youngest of 7 children born to John and Millie Kucks. His father, a butcher by trade, was the foreman of the Cudahy Meat Packing Plant in Hoboken. Kucks pitched at William L. Dickinson High in Jersey City, where he went 32-9 with 5 1-hitters.
Through 1950, the New York Giants’ affiliate in the Triple-A International League played in Jersey City and Kucks grew up rooting for both the Jersey City Giants and the New York Giants. He had played sandlot ball for the Cloverdale A.C., Kucks was 1st recruited by the Philadelphia Phillies, but after they withdrew a bonus offer to him, he would signed with MLB Scouts Paul Krichell and Frank O’Rourke of the New York Yankees for a reported $13,000 on January 1,1952. (Some accounts have the figure at $18,000.) With the Norfolk Tars of the Class B Piedmont League, Kucks won 15 of his 1st 17 decisions, including 11 in a row, and he would finished 20-6 with a 2.55 ERA. He had 4 shutouts, led the league’s pitchers with 60 assists and paced his team with 118 strikeouts, as the Tars finished in 1st place. In the playoffs, he had posted another win, beating Richmond 5-3, but the Tars lost the series in 5 games. At the end of the season, Kucks was named to the Piedmont League’s All-Star team.
Kucks would spend the 1953 and 1954 seasons in the US Army. While in the service, he would pitched effectively for baseball teams squads at Fort Dix, New Jersey and in Germany, posting a 25-6 record. After his army discharge, Kucks was invited to the Yankee Instructional School in 1955, stayed around for the MLB spring training camp and pitched his way onto the team, perfecting his changeup with the help of Pitching Coach Jim Turner. He so impressed everyone in spring training that this verse, attributed to “Yankee Frankovic,” appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Yank pitching rook, one
Johnny Kucks
Is looking like one million
Bucks
And kindly let me hear no
More
If possible of one Herb Score
While this may have been a bit overstating the case (Score went on to win the Rookie of the Year award in 1955), Kucks did effectively jump directly from Class B to the major leagues with a sensational spring. When he joined the Yankees, his roommate was Pitcher Bob Grim, who had, like Kucks, flourished in the Yankees’ Instructional School, making the MLB squad in 1954. After serving in the Army for 2 years.
Yankees Manager Casey Stengel said of Johnny, “This here Kucks, with a natural sinker, and the ability to field well and hold men on bases, is justifying my decision not to ship him to Denver. I have great faith and confidence in this Kucks kid, and Ol’ Case ain’t wrong all the time. I have been known to make the right decisions very often.”
On April 23,1955, at Yankee Stadium in New York, Johnny Kucks made his 1st major-league start. Facing the Boston Red Sox, he had pitched into the 6th inning before being relieved by Tom Morgan.
The Yankees had staked Kucks to a 3-0 lead and he was credited with the win as the Yankees pulled away for a 7-2 victory. After failing to go the distance in his 1st 2 starts, Kucks gained his 1st complete-game win on May 21st, by defeating Baltimore Orioles 9-4 at Yankee Stadium. On June 1st, he limited Kansas City to 2 hits in 8 innings before being removed for a pinch hitter, as the Yankees would defeat the A’s 3-1 for Kucks’ 4th win of the 1955 AL season, against 1 loss.
However, Kucks was erratic in his next 10 appearances and he took a 6-4 record into his start at Kansas City on July 24th. For 8 innings, he and the A’s Arnie Portocarrero matched each other pitch for pitch and the game was scoreless. A double by Mickey Mantle and a HR by Yogi Berra gave the Yankees the lead in the top of the 9th inning and Kucks shut down the A’s in their half of the inning to gain his 1st major-league shutout.
In the 1955 World Series, Kucks would pitch in relief in the 3rd and 4th games (each lost by the Yankees) and was not involved in either decision. He was remembered many years later giving up a HR to Duke Snider in Game 4. Kucks had entered the game in the bottom of the 5th inning with none out and the Dodgers’ Jim Gilliam at 2nd base. The Dodgers had a 4-3 lead. A single by Pee Wee Reese and Snider’s 3-run-HR gave Brooklyn a 7-3 lead. The Dodgers went on to win the game, 8-5 and even the Series at 2 games apiece. The Dodgers would win the 1955 World Series in 7 games.
In his rookie pitching season, Kucks had pitch in 29 games, 13 as a starter and compiled an 8-7 record with a 3.41 ERA. In high school, he had met Barbara Daum, a cheerleader and they were married on October 6,1955. Shortly after the wedding, the couple would join the Yankees, as they visited Japan on a baseball good-will tour. Their honeymoon began in Honolulu en route to stops in Japan, Okinawa and Guam. Their marriage would continue for more than 50 years until Barbara died after a long illness in 2006. They had 2 daughters, Laura-Jean and Rebecca and 4 grandchildren, Kierstin, Kelly, Katie, and Jessica.
Kucks did find some time to pitch during the Yankees baseball trip to Japan as he posted a 3-0 record with a 0.33 ERA in his 3 games. He also found time to work on a slider.
In 1956, Kucks would surprise everyone. In spring training, he was not expected to be a part of the rotation, but after veteran starter Tommy Byrne became ill, Kucks became the No. 2 starter behind Whitey Ford and they kept the Yankees out in front, as they broke open the AL pennant race and won by 9 games over Cleveland Indians. He was at his best against the teams contending with the Yankees, defeating Cleveland 4 of the 1st 5 times that he had faced the Tribe. His 18-9 record had placed him 2nd on the team in victories, behind Whitey Ford. He had pitched 12 complete games and had 3 shutouts. Yankees Manager Casey Stengel had selected Kucks for the American League All-Star team, but he did not appear in the game.
By the end of May, Kucks had won 6 of his 1st 8 decisions with 4 complete games and the Yankees led the league by 6½ games. On June 10th, he would shut out Cleveland Indians and his 2 wins against the Tribe that month were key to the Yankees’ maintaining a 2-game lead over the Indians as the season entered the month of July.
In July, the Yankees would sprinted-away from the AL field. Kucks would win 4 straight games during the month, including a 4-0 shutout of the Detroit Tigers on July 17th. By the end of the month, his pitching record stood at 14-6 and the Yankees had a 9-game lead. Kucks’s best performance during the regular season came in his 17th win on August 24th, a 4-hit, 2-0 shutout of 3rd-place Chicago White Sox to keep the Yankees 8 games ahead.
It appeared a certainty that Kucks would win 20 games (he had 18 victories on September 3rd), but he developed a sore elbow and had lost his last 2 decisions. The injury cost him his place in the starting rotation, in during the 1st 2 games of the World Series, he would pitch in relief. Over the next 4 games, he was a spectator as Ford, Sturdivant, Don Larsen (the perfect game) and Bob Turley (losing 1-0) pitched complete games. When Game 7 came around, Kucks ended the season with his own complete game as the Yankees won, by the score of 9-0. It was, said Kucks, “my career season.” His side-arm sinker was so effective that 16 of the Dodgers’ outs, including the 1st 8 outs, came on ground-balls. Kucks also kept the Dodgers off-stride with his slider, a pitch that he had not used in September, because it aggravate the pain in his pitching arm’s elbow.
There was a tense moment in the bottom of the 1st inning. Pee Wee Reese had walked and Duke Snider singled and the Dodgers had runners on 1st and 2nd with 1 out. Kucks remembered, “I turned to get the rosin bag and I see (Whitey) Ford and Tom Sturdivant warming up in the bullpen. I thought, ‘They really have a lot of faith in the big guy.’” He would get Jackie Robinson to ground into a double play and from then on it was clear sailing. The game ended, when Jackie Robinson swung at a 3rd strike in his last major-league at-bat. It was Kucks’s only strikeout of the game.
Only 9 pitchers have hurled shutouts to win Game 7 of a World Series. Kucks’s gem did not get as much acclaim as some of the others because it came on the heels of Don Larsen’s perfect game in Game 5. Both men received bonus gifts. “Larsen got a car (after being chosen Series MVP),” Kucks told the Associated Press in 2000. “I got a fishing rod.” He was honored in Jersey City after the World Series and received several gifts, including a gold watch and a key to the city.
Kucks gained notice the following season – for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the evening of May 15,1957, he and his wife were part of a group of Yankees couples including Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, Hank Bauer and their wives, that was celebrating Billy Martin’s 29th birthday. After dinner at Danny’s Hideaway, the group went club-hopping and arrived at the Copacabana sometime after midnight. Accounts of what happened that evening are such that the facts did not get in the way of a good story. During Sammy Davis, Jr.’s act, an altercation broke out between the Yankees and a group of bowlers seated at an adjoining table. In the aftermath, Hank Bauer was accused of punching 1 of the bowlers, but the charges were eventually dropped. The Yankees players would maintain that a Copa bouncer had knocked out the bowler. Berra, Bauer, Mantle, Ford and Martin were fined $1,000 each by the Yankees front office, while Kucks, because he was earning far less than the established Yankee veterans, and, to quote the ever-quotable Yogi, “done nuthin’ to nobody,” was docked $500. Subsequently, the player fines were rescinded by Yankees Co-Owner Dan Topping, except for Billy Martin, who was now with the Kansas City A’s.
Kucks was never able to come close to duplicating his 1956 pitching form. In 1957, he went 8-10 with a 3.56 ERA and 2 saves in 37 games. In 1958, he was 8-8 with a 3.93 ERA and 4 saves in 34 games, including 15 starts. The highlight of the latter season came on June 3rd, when he shut out Chicago White Sox by the score of 13-0, allowing only 2 White Sox hits, to put his record at 4-1. In that year’s World Series, won by the Yankees in 7 games over the Milwaukee Braves, he had appeared twice in relief, but was not involved in any decisions.
In 1958, Virgil Trucks, then 41, joined the Yankees for a short while. An oft-told story has it that Manager Stengel at one point wanted Kucks to come in from the bullpen, but the Yankees bullpen coach had thought Pitching Coach Jim Turner said Trucks over the phone to the bullpen. Once Trucks’s name had been announced, he was ordered into the game by the Umpire. In 1969, Dave Frishberg used the names of the 2 players in the original version of his song “Van Lingle Mungo.”
On May 26, 1959, the Yankees would send Johnny Kucks (0-1. 8.49 ERA in 9 games), Pitcher Tom Sturdivant and Infielder Jerry Lumpe to Kansas City for 3rd baseman Hector Lopez and Pitcher Ralph Terry. In his time with the 1955-1959 Yankees, Johnny Kucks had gone 42-35 with 6 saves and an ERA of 3.82 in 143 games.
1959 Kansas City A's Player Photo
Kucks would remain with the Kansas City A’s through 1960 AL season, posting a combined 12-21 record. The highlight of his 1st season was a 2-1 win over the Yankees on August 1st in which, he had scattered 7 hits.
But in 1960, Kucks’s sinker failed him, as he would yield 22 HRs in 114 innings. He did not win his 1st game of the season until June 12th, when he won in relief. On July 26th, Kansas City Manager Bob Elliott gave him an opportunity to start and he had his best outing of the 1960 season, pitching a complete game, as the A’s defeated Baltimore Orioles, 2-1. He would remain in the starting rotation, but he did not fare well, winning only 1 of his remaining 11 starts and finishing the 1960 AL season at 4-10 with an ERA of 6.00. In his last appearance in the major leagues, was on September 25,1960, he had lasted only 4 innings and was not involved in the decision as the A’s lost to the Tigers. For his major-league pitching career, Kucks was 54-56 with a 4.10 ERA and 7 saves in 207 games.
After the season, Kucks was optioned by the A's to AAA Rochester Red Wings in the International League, where he posted a had posted a 10-14 record in 1961. At the end of that season, he was sold to the Baltimore Orioles and shortly thereafter on December 1, 1961, Johnny was traded by the Orioles to the St. Louis Cardinals for minor league player. He would spend 1962 season with the top Cardinals farm team, the AAA Atlanta Crackers, where he had posted a 14-7 record during the regular season and won 3 games and lost 2 in the playoffs. In the Junior World Series Opener, he would defeat Louisville, 5-1, allowing only 4 hits, but he was out-dueled, 2-1, in the 5th game of the series. Atlanta won the Junior Series in 7 games and over his last 27 innings in the playoffs, Kucks had allowed only 2 earned runs.
1963 New York Mets Spring Training Player Photo
Johnny Kucks had hoped that his pitching performance with Atlanta Crackers would entice a major-league club to draft him in the off-season, but he was not chosen. He was conditionally purchased by the New York Mets (managed by Casey Stengel) and assigned to their AAA club, the Buffalo Bisons roster on January 9,1963. Kucks attempted to make it back to the majors during the Mets 1963 spring training camp, but he did not make the club. He was sent back by the Mets to Atlanta. He got off to a 5-8 start with the Crackers, but he had won his last 8 decisions to finish at 14-9 with a 2.77 ERA and keep alive the hope of a return to the major leagues. On July 26th, he had his best performance of the season by shutting out Syracuse Chiefs 1-0. The game at Atlanta followed a 7-hour plane flight from Rochester and the heat was typical of Atlanta in late July. Commenting that he tended to perform better when tired, he said, “When I’m pretty well bushed, I don’t throw quite as hard and when I take a little off the pitch the sinker sinks better.”
Kucks won the opener of the 1st round of the International League playoffs by defeating the Toronto Maple Leafs by the score of 9-1. Atlanta would sweep Toronto in 4 games and moved on to meet Indianapolis for the league championship. Kucks lost twice as Indianapolis won the series in 5 games. In what was to be his final professional appearance, he pitched the final inning of the last game of the series and was not involved in the decision. The Cardinals had switched their Triple-A affiliation from Atlanta to Jacksonville, Fla. in 1964 and Kucks went to spring training with the AAA Jacksonville Suns. But that spring, he had tear a nerve in his pitching arm and he would did not return to the mound. He had accepted a position as a Roving Pitching Instructor and MLB Scout in the St. Louis Cardinals organization for the 1964 season.
In retirement, Kucks lived in Hillsdale, New Jersey. While still playing, he had begun training in the brokerage business and took correspondence courses with the New York School of Finance during his playing days in Kansas City. In 1964, after leaving the Cardinals organization, he had earned his broker’s license, went to work for Golkin, Bomback and Company and stayed with them through 1973, working out of the firm’s Jersey City office. For 20 years afterward, he was an account executive for several steamship companies. He also had managed the Jersey City team in the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League from 1967 through 1970.
In 1992, Johnny Kucks was inducted into the Hudson County (New Jersey) Hall of Fame. In his later years, he also provided care for his wife, Barbara, who died in 2006. Johnny Kucks would pass away from cancer on October 31, 2013.
This biography originally appeared in “Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players” (SABR, 2014), edited by Bill Nowlin.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 9, 2024 22:15:58 GMT -5
Harry Bright
Yankees Reserve INF 1962-1964This article was written by Charles F. Faber, Edited by Clipper  1964 Topps Baseball Card
During a professional baseball career of 20 years the much-traveled Harry Bright played in nearly 2,000 games. None of his exploits on the playing field, not even all of his 1,966 major and minor league hits, earned Harry Bright as much notoriety as 1 time at bat in the 1963 World Series.
It was the opening game of the fall classic between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Behind the pitching of Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers had taken a 3-2 lead into the 9th inning at Yankee Stadium. At the end of the 8th, a note on the scoreboard said that Koufax had tied the record for the most strikeouts in a World Series game. The 1st 2 outs in the 9th were routine putouts. With only 1 more chance for Koufax to break the record, Bright strode to the plate to pinch-hit for pitcher Steve Hamilton. He ran the count to 2 balls and 2 strikes before swinging and missing. Koufax had his record 15th strikeout, the crowd erupted, the Dodgers won the game, and Harry Bright became a footnote in the record books. “It’s a hell of a thing,” Bright said. “I wait 17 years to get into a World Series. Then when I finally get up there, and 69,000 people are yelling—yelling for me to strike out.”
Harry James Bright was born on September 22,1929, in Kansas City, Missouri, the 3rd of 5 children of Frank William Bright, a chauffeur, and Maude Lois (Hayward) Bright. At a very early age, the youngster earned a reputation for his baseball prowess on the playgrounds of Kansas City. When he was 16 years old, he was signed as a catching prospect by New York Yankees MLB Scout Bill Essick. The teenager threw and batted right-handed, stood 6 feet tall and weighed 175 pounds. (Later his frame filled out to a sturdy 190 pounds.) The minor leagues were just resuming play after a great scaled-back operation during World War II. Frank Lane, Director of the New York Yankees farm system, said the young catcher had a good arm and was a hitter. He assigned him to the Twin Falls (Idaho) Cowboys of the Class C Pioneer League. One spring day the umpires were late for arriving for a twin bill, so the 16-year-old rookie umpired behind the plate in the opener of the doubleheader. Bright did not hit well in Idaho and was demoted to Fond du Lac in the Class D Wisconsin State League, the 1st of many moves he was to make during his playing career. In a 12-year stretch from 1946 through 1957, he had played for 14 different minor league clubs.
As a Yankees farmhand, Harry Bright never lived up to his promise. By 1950, he was now the property of the Chicago Cubs. He was assigned to the Clovis Pioneers of the Class C West Texas-New Mexico League. In the rarified air of that semi-arid area, Harry hit his stride, leading the league with a sensational .413 batting average. He would hit 19 HRs in 95 games and compiled a .704 slugging percentage. Two years later, he was Playing-Manager for the Janesville Cubs in the Class D Wisconsin State League. At 22, he was the youngest manager in Organized Baseball that season and the youngest ever in the Wisconsin State League. He was no longer strictly a catcher. For Janesville, he managed, caught, played 3rd base and the outfield and drove the team bus. Such was life in the lower minors. He led the Cubs in hitting with a .325 average and led the league with a club-record 101 RBIs.
In 1953, Bright was acquired by the Chicago White Sox. He was assigned to their Memphis affiliate in the Double-A Southern Association, where he had a solid season, playing 2nd base, while hitting .295. By this time, he had played every position except pitcher. In December, the Detroit Tigers would secure him in the MLB Rule 5 Player Draft for $7,500. During spring training in 1954, he played well and was given an excellent chance to win the 2nd-base position. However, he would lose out to Frank Bolling and it was back to the minors-Little Rock, AAA Buffalo Bisons (IL) and the AAA Sacramento Solons PCL). Bright had 4 good years with the PCL AAA Solons, earning him another shot at the majors. In July 1958, the Pittsburgh Pirates had purchased his player contract. After 12 years in the minors, Bright finally made his major-league player debut at the age of 28 on July 25,1958, coming in as a late-inning defensive replacement for 3rd baseman Frank Thomas. For the remainder of 1958 and all of 1959 seasons, Bright was mainly a benchwarmer for the Pirates, pinch-hitting and getting into an occasion game at 2nd base, 3rd base, or the outfield.
1959 Topps Baseball Card
In the pennant-winning season of 1960, he played no games in the field and pinch-hit only 4 times, getting no hits in the entire season. Not surprisingly, he was left off the Pirates 1960 World Series player roster.
In December 1960, Bright was traded with pitcher Bennie Daniels and 1st baseman R.C. Stevens to the “new” Washington Senators for veteran Pitcher Bobby Shantz. Playing mostly 3rd base in 1961 and 1st base in 1962, Bright had his 2 best major league years with the Senators. In 1962, he had appeared in 113 games, batted .273, and hit 17 HRs. After the 1962 MLB season, he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds for 1st baseman Rogelio Alvarez. After playing only 1 game for the Reds, he was purchased by the New York Yankees. For the 1962 Yankees, he got into 60 games as 1st baseman, 3rd baseman, outfielder, or pinch hitter. In his 17th season in professional ball, he finally got in a World Series, famously striking out against Sandy Koufax in his 1st time at bat and repeating the act against Johnny Podres the next day in his only other World Series appearance.
In 1964, Bright played in only 4 games for the New York Yankees, spending most of the season with their Triple-A farm club in Richmond, Virginia. He was released by the team in September before getting a chance at World Series redemption. The Chicago Cubs had signed him as an MLB free agent the following spring. He would play his last MLB game on June 30,1965, before being sent to AAA Salt Lake City in the Pacific Coast League. In 1966, the Cubs had moved their AAA PCL franchise to Tacoma, where Bright played in 83 games. After not breaking into the major leagues until he was 28 years old, Bright had spent all or part of the next 8 years in the majors.
1965 Topps baseball Card
In 1967, the Cubs named Bright manager of their farm club in Quincy of the Class A Midwest League-15 years after he had 1st held the managerial reins in Janesville. During the next 9 years, Bright managed 7 clubs in 6 leagues. It seems he was on the move almost every year-San Antonio, Elmira, Coos Bay, Burlington, Binghamton, Sacramento, and Tucson between 1968 and 1976.
When he would manage the AAA Sacramento Solons (PCL), the club was an affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. After the 1975 season, the Brewers would drop their working agreement with the Solons in order to associate themselves with the new PCL club in Spokane. Bright indicated to the United Press International that he would like to quit the Brewers organization to stay in Sacramento. (El Paso Herald-Post, August 22, 1975.) However, the Texas Rangers, who took over the Solons, did not offer Bright a Managers contract.
In December, he accepted a position as Manager of the AAA Tucson Toros, an affiliate of the Oakland Athletics. The Toros did not play up to the expectations that were held for them and Bright was fired on July 30, 1976.
“I am now a scout and instructor,” Bright told sportswriter Steve Weston. “I am to do advance scouting for the big club and instruct in the spring.”
However, the A’s, under Team Owner Charlie Finley, were an organization in disarray in 1976 and Bright was not with them long. On December 7,1976, the United Press International reported that the Montreal Expos had hired him as an MLB Scout. Bright would remain with the Expos organization the rest of his baseball career. In 1985, he had a final managerial fling with the Durham Bulls of the Carolina League, an affiliate of the Atlanta Braves.
Greg Van Dusen, who was public relations director and a radio announcer for Sacramento, when Bright managed the Solons in 1975, said of Bright: “He was a colorful Runyonesque character. He had a passion for the game and for life.” As a Manager Bright became known for his dislike of umpires. Once during a minor-league game, he dropped his trousers and climbed a backstop to show his displeasure with a call. He carried his antipathy toward umpires into retirement. “I remember we were at an old-timers game and Harry saw former umpire Emmett Ashford across the lobby of the Sacramento Inn,” Van Dusen said. “The next thing you knew they were bumping midsections, and within 30 seconds they’re literally rolling around on the floor. People were laughing, but they weren’t kidding. They had to be separated.
For many years. Harry Bright would make his home in Sacramento with his wife, Agnes and his daughter, Linda. (He had established his residence in Sacramento and maintained a home there even when managing in other cities.) He had died of an apparent stroke in California’s capital city on March 13, 2000, at the age of 70. He was survived by Agnes, his wife of 50 years; a stepson, Larry Weaver, of Wellington, Kansas; and 2 grandchildren, Mildred and Heather Tibke of Sacramento. His Daughter Linda had died in 1996. There were no funeral services for Harry Bright.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 9, 2024 22:36:07 GMT -5
Dale Long Yankees Reserve 1B/PH 1960, 1962-1963, MLB Coach 1963This article was written by Gregory H. Wolf, Edited by Clipper
 Pirates Player Photo
Baseball fans love streaks. And though the number 8 is not as recognizable as 56 or 2,632, it is nonetheless a cherished part of the national pastime’s lore. After bouncing around the minor leagues for 11 seasons, 30-year-old Dale Long was the unlikely center of national media attention in 1956, his 2nd full season with the Pittsburgh Pirates. A powerful pull hitter, the left-handed slugger walloped a HR in 8 consecutive games, bettering the previous big-league record by 2. That accomplishment, later tied by the New York Yankees’ Don Mattingly in 1987 and the Seattle Mariners’ Ken Griffey Jr. in 1993, defined Long’s career and propelled him to fleeting stardom and baseball immortality.
Richard Dale Long was born on February 6, 1926, in Springfield, Missouri, to Elmer Euphrates and Mary (Lomax) Long. He was the 4th of 5 children (Lilian, Milton, Louise, and youngest sibling Janet) born between 1915 and 1931. Just months after Dale’s birth, the family relocated to Oshkosh, Wisconsin and then to Fond du Lac and later to Green Bay, where Dale had attended kindergarten, while the elder Long looked for employment in the unforgiving times of the Great Depression. When his parents separated, Dale moved with his father to Berkshire County, in Western Massachusetts, about 40 miles east of Albany, New York. Dale attended Cheshire elementary school and Williston Academy, a boarding school in East Hampton, and finally Adams High School, near the historical district of Farnams in the town of Cheshire, where the elder Long worked as manager of the US Gypsum plant. Always big for his age, Dale naturally gravitated to sports. Local newspapers, the Berkshire Eagle and the North Adams Transcript, regularly reported about his accomplishments on the gridiron, hardwood, and diamond as the seasons changed.
Dale left Massachusetts before his senior year and moved in with his mother in Green Bay. When he discovered that he was not eligible to play sports in Wisconsin, he made another abrupt decision: He quit school and enlisted in the US Navy in August 1943, during the height of World War II. Rising to the rank of seaman 2nd class, Long served on the USS PCS 1451, a patrol craft sweeper, which sought enemy submarines. A noncombat injury prematurely ended his stint in the military and in May 1944, he was honorably discharged. He subsequently moved in with his brother, Milton, in Green Bay. In an interview conducted by SABR’s Gerry Tomlinson in the 1980s, Long stated bluntly about his teenage years, “I didn’t really like baseball.” His preference was football, which dominated the sporting landscape in Green Bay. According to Long, the legendary Packers Coach Curly Lambeau offered the 18-year-old, a robust 6-foot-4, 200-pound fullback, a contract after a tryout, but his mother would not sign it on behalf of her still minor son to embark on a career in football.
Dale had a stroke of luck. Packers Assistant Coach Red Smith also coached baseball for the AAA Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association, he saw the teenager play in a local semipro league in Green Bay. Upon his recommendation, Brewers skipper Casey Stengel offered Long a player contract that his mother gladly accepted. Long played in just 1 game, going 0-for-4, before leaving the team and returning to Farnams to re-enroll in high school. Once again starring in football and basketball, Long left school in late March of 1945 to participate in the Brewers’ spring training.
Long’s decade-long odyssey to the big leagues is a study in dedication and persistence. He had stints with 13 minor-league teams before he finally secured a permanent job, with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1955. Along the way, he was the property of 6 big-league clubs; was thrice selected in the minor-league or MLB Rule 5 player draft; had a brief, but disastrous cup of coffee in the majors in 1951, but he would persevere, his mighty left-handed HR stroke always attracting interest.
Dale Long initially made his mark as a sturdy contact hitter, batting .306 and .330, with little pop (seven combined home runs), in Class D and C, respectively, in his 1st 2 full seasons in Organized Baseball, primarily in the Cincinnati Reds farm system. The 1st baseman-outfielder’s glaring weakness was his fielding, which was an albatross Long carried with him, until he hung up his spikes as a 38-year-old in 1964. Given his outright release by the Reds in 1947. He was signed by the Boston Red Sox, Long emerged as a slugging threat the following season with the Class-B Lynn (Massachusetts) Red Sox. An imposing presence at the plate, he paced the New England League in runs batted in (119) and tied for 2nd in HRs (18). He was chosen by the Detroit Tigers in the 1948 minor-league player draft and then by the New York Yankees in the 1949 draft. Long took a big leap forward in 1950, in his 2nd season in the Class-A Eastern League, pacing the circuit in round-trippers (27) and setting a new league record with 130 RBIs (in 133 games) with the Binghamton (New York) Triplets. Given the Yankees surfeit of sluggers, Long’s outstanding season barely registered on the franchise’s radar and he was selected by the Pirates on November 16th in the 1950 MLB Rule 5 player draft.
At the Pirates spring training in 1951, GM Branch Rickey made national headlines by deciding to convert the 25-year-old Long into a catcher. There had not been a regular left-handed-throwing starting catcher in the majors since Jack Clements in the late nineteenth century; and Jiggs Donahue who caught 45 games in 1900-1902, had been the last southpaw backstop. Even the lack of a left-handed catcher’s mitt did not derail the Mahatma’s plan. On March 20th, Long debuted wearing the tools of ignorance in an exhibition game against the AAA San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League. “I knelt down to give the sign to some new kid who could really blaze that ball,” recalled Long years later. “In my head, I called for a curve. But I put down 1 finger for the fastball instead. I’m squatting there, looking for the curve and, whoosh, here comes the fastball. The only thing I could do was reach out and catch it with my bare hand.” Long played in the field only once for the Pirates in 1951, at 1st base against the New York Giants and walloped a HR into the upper left-field deck in the Polo Grounds on May 5th. Rickey gave up on the project and released Long, whom the lowly St. Louis Browns signed on June 1st. Installed at 1st, Long saw action in 34 games (2 HRs, 11 RBIs, .238 batting average) before he was optioned to the AAA San Francisco Seals (PCL) in mid-July. He waited 3½ years to play in another big-league game. In the offseasons, Long lived in Farnams and Berkshire County, where he married local resident Dorothy Robak in 1946 and with whom he had 2 children, Dale Jr. and Johnny. Long also played semipro football and basketball in the late 1940s and refereed high-school and college football games.
One can only imagine what Long thought when the Pirates had purchased him after the 1951 season. Sportswriters commented that Rickey’s experiment with the player as a catcher set back his development by a year or more. Assigned to the New Orleans Pelicans of the Double-A Southern Association, Long teamed with future Pirates slugger Frank Thomas to finish 1-2 in round-trippers (33 and 35, respectively). Promoted to the AAA Hollywood Stars (Pacific Coast League) in 1953, Long enjoyed his best season in professional baseball, leading the PCL in HRs (35) and RBIs (116) and was named the league’s MVP. On September 11th, he had the novelty of playing all 9 positions.
Long must have felt as though his chance to make it back to the big stage was slipping away. He would play winter ball in 1953-1954 with Caguas, in Puerto Rico, and reported to the Pirates spring training in 1954, but was jettisoned well before camp ended. After another injury-riddled but productive (23-68-.280 in 410 at-bats) season with AAA Hollywood Stars, the 29-year-old Long was reluctantly back at the Bucs’ spring training in San Bernardino, California, but he wanted assurances from Pirates brass that he’d get a fair shake in what seemed like his last shot with the Bucs. Were it not for endless support of Stars skipper Bobby Bragan, whom Long considered the “finest thing [that] happened to me in baseball,” the ballplayer might have called it quits.
The Pirates, coming off their 3rd consecutive last-place finish, expected little from Long in 1955. Initially slated as Preston Ward’s backup at 1st, Long collected 4 hits in the 1st game of a twin bill against the Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium on April 24th and wrestled the job away from the veteran. Long, described as “the newest of [manager] Fred Haney’s rascals,” whacked 3 doubles and drove in a career-best 6 runs on May 5th against the Milwaukee Braves at Forbes Field and quietly emerged as the Pirates’ most feared slugger. Three hits against the Reds in the 1st game of a doubleheader at home on June 5th gave the slugger 17 safeties in his last 28 at-bats to push his average to .351. Three days later, he hit his 1st walk-off HR to give the Bucs a 2-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs. “Maybe my break will be an object lesson to others,” Long said when asked about his success. “A lesson for players never to give up; a lesson to owners to give a man a fair test.” Haney detected a difference in Long’s swing. “Pitchers used to take him out on a high, hard one inside,” said the skipper after Long belted 2 HRs for the 1st of 4 times in his career, and collected 4 hits in the 1st contest of a twin bill against the Reds at Crosley Field on June 19th. “They don’t anymore. He’s powering this pitch for distance.”
Al Abrams, sports editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, noted that Long helped give the Bucs “respectability” and took umbrage at the player’s snub from the MLB All-Star Game. The Bucs had finished in the cellar again, though they avoided the 100-loss collar for the 1st time since 1951. Long was consistent at the plate (16-79-.291), while slugging a team-high .513 and tying Willie Mays for the league lead with 13 triples. He also paced the circuit in errors at 1st base (13) for the 1 of 3 times (also in 1956, 1961).
Enthusiastically greeting the hiring of mentor Bragan as the new Bucs skipper in 1956, the 30-year-old Long got off to a torrid start. He was batting .384, when he arrived at Forbes Field on May 19th to play the Cubs in a game that set him on path to unimaginable, indeed career-defining, fame. Armed with his standard 35-inch, 35-ounce bat, Long belted a HR and drove in four runs, and secured the Pirates’ win with a game-ending unassisted twin killing with the tying run at the plate. The next day, the largest crowd (32,346) in 5 years at Forbes Field saw Long bash 2 more HRs and drive in 7 runs as the Pirates swept the Braves in a doubleheader. Three days later, he walloped a monstrous blast, widely described as one of the longest ever at Forbes Field, over the 436-foot sign in right-center field to extend his HR streak to 5 consecutive games. “I didn’t care what they threw up there or who was throwing it, I could hit it,” said Long, in the midst of an epic groove. Suddenly cast into the national spotlight, Long victimized the Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium to tie the MLB record of homering in his 6th consecutive game, held by High Pockets Kelly (1924), Walker Cooper (1947) and Willie Mays (1955). Long took sole possession of the record in his next game when he spanked a knuckleball from the Phillies’ Ben Flowers over the right-field wall. National and local media outlets wanted a piece of Long. When the Pirates’ next game was rained out, Long took a train from Philadelphia to New York to appear on the nationally televised Ed Sullivan Show. On the verge of exhaustion, mentally and physically, because of the media circus, he returned to Philadelphia, traveled with the club back to Pittsburgh to kick off a series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The largest crowd for a night game at Forbes Field in 6 years (32,221) watched Long blast a low inside curveball from Carl Erskine over the right-field wall to extend his HR streak to 8 games. Long’s accomplishment even reached the US government where Pennsylvania Senator James H. Duff (R) lauded him on the Senate floor. The Bucs’ 7th victory in their last 8 games pushed their record to 19-14, the 1st time the club had been 5 games over .500 since 1948 and just 1½ games off the NL lead. Long’s streak ended on May 29th, when the Dodgers’ Don Newcombe held him hitless in 4 at-bats. “I was just plain tired,” said Long. “I couldn’t get my bat around.”
Dale Long went 15-for-30 and drove in 19 runs during his epic streak and was sitting atop the leaderboards in HRs (14), RBIs (37, tied with Ken Boyer of the St. Louis Cardinals), and batting average (.411), when his glass slippers broke. On June 6th, he severely pulled a muscle in his left leg; he was further hampered by a bruised right shin from foul tips. “I tried to play hurt, and by doing that, everything went down the drain,” recalled Long. “I didn’t help myself of the club. I couldn’t turn my foot.” He hit a dismal .151 with just 1 HR in his next 27 games leading into the All-Star break. Chosen as starting 1st sacker in his only midsummer classic, Long had fanned twice. Little changed in the 2nd half for Long, whose slump continued while the Pirates crashed and burned, too, at 1 point losing 25 of 33 games, and finishing in 7th place (66-88). Long paced the club with 27 HRs and 91 RBIs, while batting .263.
Feted throughout the offseason, Long was presented awards by the Dapper Dan Club of Pittsburgh and the city’s chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America, and was a regular on the speakers’ circuit, giving at least 50 talks. At the Pirates spring training in Fort Myers, Long reflected on the stress following his HR feat. “ll of a sudden I’m famous. Maybe some people are built to handle all that. I’m not,” he said. “The outside pressure kept mounting until I was ready to explode.” While Long vowed to be a more consistent contact hitter, Pirates beat writer Les Biederman reported that the club was generally unhappy with his play. When Long had fanned 4 straight times in the 3rd game of the 1957 season, he would land in Bragan’s doghouse and was benched, much to the delight of the boo birds at Forbes Field. Pittsburgh sportswriter Al Abrams unapologetically called for his trade. On May 1st, Dale Long was the guest of honor at a testimonial dinner as the Pirates team MVP for the 1956 NL season, when Bragan informed him that he had been traded along with outfielder Lee Walls to the Chicago Cubs for 1st sacker Dee Fondy and utilityman Gene Baker.
1960 Topps Baseball Card
Coming off a last-place finish and trying to avoid their 11th straight losing season, the Cubs welcomed the slugger to join superstar Ernie Banks. Long blasted a HR in his 1st game as a North Sider in a loss to the Phillies in the City of Brotherly Love, and also whacked round-trippers in 1st two games as a Cub at Wrigley Field, both losses, the latter against his former teammates. After 13 games in blue, Long had 5 HRs and was slugging .625; however, his productive start was followed by 11 inconsistent weeks, during which he was benched often against left-handed pitchers and battled wrist injuries. After hitting .300 against southpaws in 1956, he managed a paltry .186 average in 1957. While the Cubs tied the Pirates for the NL’s worst record, Long unexpectedly emerged over the last 2 months of the season as one of the hottest hitters in baseball, batting .340 and slugging .541.
Dale Long (21-62-.305, as a Cub) teamed with Banks (43-102-.285) and Walt Moryn (19-88-.289) to form one of the most potent trios in the NL in 1957, yet the Cubs were so talent-poor that they had a major-league-low 33 players in spring training, in 1958. Touted as a potential 100-RBI man, the 32-year-old Long avoided the streaks, both hot and cold, that had characterized his big-league career thus far; however, he also battled chronic pain in his back, which he had injured sliding into the dugout attempting to make a catch in late May. In what proved to be his final full season as a starter, Long had batted .271-20-75 in 142 games. The Cubs led the majors with 182 round-trippers, yet even that lofty number did not translate into a winning season or a 1st-division finish. A level-headed, pragmatic player, Long scoffed at the notion that he was disinterested or lacked a burning fire to succeed, a critique that had dogged him in Pittsburgh. “A ballplayer is forced to pace himself at times so that he’s able to summon that extra reserve when the pressure’s on,” he said. “Some people interpret that as a lack of desire.” In the 1st game of a doubleheader against his former team on August 20th in the Windy City, Long might have had a fleeting nightmare about Branch Rickey and the Mahatma’s plan to make him a catcher. A series of events conspired to force Long to don the tools of ignorance, thus becoming the 1st southpaw backstop in the majors since 1902. The Cubs’ 5th option at catcher, Long moved from 1st base, kept the same mitt and secured the final 2 outs on 5 pitches to preserve the Cubs’ 4-2 win. A similar situation occurred again on September 21st in Los Angeles. Long caught the 9th, though the results weren’t as good: he was charged with a passed ball and dropped a 3rd strike, though he threw out the runner in a 2-1 defeat.
Dale Long was the odd man out with the Cubs fighting to play .500 ball in mid-July of 1959. Removed as the primary 1st baseman in favor of Jim Marshall, he made only 11 starts from July 14th through the end of the season, collecting just 9 hits in 60 at-bats, punctuated by a horrendous September (1-for-25). Described by Tribune sportswriter Richard Dozier as one of skipper Scheffing’s “dog house boys,” the disgruntled veteran was the subject of fruitless offseason efforts by the Cubs to unload him. At the end of spring training, GM John Holland found a taker and sold the 34-year-old to the San Francisco Giants on April 5,1960.
Yankees Player Photo
Long’s final 4 seasons in the big leagues probably evoked memories of his way up the ladder. He was traded, released, sold, or drafted 5 times, and wore the colors of 4 different teams. Managing just 9 hits in 54 at-bats for the Giants, Long was sold to the New York Yankees on August 21st. The Bronx Bombers, in a fierce 3-way pennant race with the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox, wanted a power-hitting left-handed pinch-hitter to take advantage of Yankee Stadium. Long would delivered. Playing for his 1st winning team as a big leaguer, he went 15-for-41 with 3 HRs, batted .366 and slugged .707. His final hit of the season was a walk-off 2-run HR off of Arnold Earley to give the pennant-winning Yankees a come-from-behind 8-7 victory over the Boston Red Sox in the Bronx. In the David versus Goliath World Series, the heavily favored Yankees faced the Pirates. Long made 3 pinch-hit appearances and connected for a single in the 9th inning of Game 7. He was eventually lifted for pinch-runner Gil McDougald, who scored the tying run. The game and the Series were decided in the bottom of the frame when Bill Mazeroski clouted his immortal HR to the amazement of the Forbes Field faithful.
The New York Yankees would make Dale Long available in the 1960 AL Team expansion player draft, Long was chosen by the “new” Washington Senators with the 28th overall pick. Counted on to be the club’s main source of power, Long got off to a slow start, hitting just .156 by the end of April. Defying expectations, the 35-year-old slugger found the fountain of youth. He tied his MLB career best with 3 runs and 4 hits, including a double and HR, on May 27th, kicking off a 13-game stretch in which he batted .360 and slugged .660. The Senators surprised baseball by playing .500 ball as late as June 15th before a 10-game skid revealed their true identity. Long, however, kept rolling, and emerged as one of the team’s most productive players along with Willie Tasby and Gene Green. After starting 77 of the club’s 1st 94 games and slugging a robust .500, Long was pulled from the order and made only 15 starts the rest of the season. While the press reported on rumors of Long’s imminent trade back to the Yankees, a look behind the scenes revealed Long’s dissatisfaction with losing and a troublesome relationship with skipper Mickey Vernon. By the end of August, Team Owner and President Elwood Quesada made national headlines by publicly chastising and fining Dale Long, Willie Tasby and Gene Green as malcontent loafers and disruptive to the team. Tasby and Green would be traded away by the team during the season.
Unable to unload Long in the offseason and with no other viable options at 1st, Washington brought the discontented veteran back in 1962. Like his team, Long would struggled and then was finally traded to the New York Yankees for Minor League Outfielder Don Lock on July 11th. “Long is the kind of player any contending club can use,” said 1st-year Yankees Manager Ralph Houk. “Dale is a powerful left-handed hitter and that’s good in our park.” On July 27th, Long blasted a solo shot off of reliever Turk Lown in the 12th inning to give the Yankees a dramatic 4-3 victory over the Chicago White Sox. Given its forgiving right-field wall (314 feet down the 1st-base line), Yankee Stadium was tailor-made for the pull-hitting Long. One can only wonder what he could have accomplished had he played his MLB career there. As a 36-year-old, he provided a punch, hitting .298 in 94 at-bats. The Bombers had repelled challenges from the Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Angels to capture their 3rd straight pennant and faced the Giants in the 1962 World Series.
In Game 1, Long had replaced Moose Skowron at 1st base to start the 7th, then in the bottom of that frame sent Billy O’Dell’s first pitch into right field to drive in Roger Maris and give the Yankees a 4-2 lead in their eventual victory. He would start Game 2 and went 0-for-3 ,while Jack Sanford shut out the Yankees on 3 hits. Long did not see action again in the Series, which the Yankees took in 7 games.Long appeared in his 3rd World Series in 1963, but not as a player. Released by the Yankees on August 2nd, he was signed on as a bullpen coach. New York’s sluggers ran into the buzzsaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers and were swept in 4 games. “Playing for a winner in the twilight of a mediocre career,” said Long 20 years after retiring, “it feels real good.”
Not yet ready to call it quits, Long attempted a comeback with the Chicago Cubs as a non-roster invitee in spring training camp in 1964. He subsequently had a brief stint with the AAA Jacksonville Suns in the International League. Homerless in 24 Triple-A games, Long was released, ending a professional baseball career that spanned parts of 21 seasons. He would finished with 132 HRs and 467 RBIs and batted .267 in 10 big-league seasons; he also walloped 166 round-trippers in the minors.
“It wasn’t easy,” said Long bluntly about his transition to life after baseball. Unable to find a coaching or managing job, he sold sporting equipment and pharmaceuticals, operated a tavern in North Adams, Massachusetts, and became a minor-league umpire for several years, beginning in 1965. He also served as a TV sports commentator in northeastern New York and operated the Dale Long baseball camp in Rexford, New York. “I love baseball,” said Long, “but it really keeps you down. Everything in my house is related to the game. But you have to forget.” By the mid-1970s Dale found steady work with General Dynamics in Saratoga Springs, New York, building nuclear submarines in the company’s Electric Boat Division and rose to the rank of supervisor. In the mid-1980s, he surprisingly returned to baseball and served as a field representative for the National Association, then the governing body of the minor leagues.
On January 27, 1994, Dale Long had died at the age of 64 at Ormond Memorial Hospital, near his home in Palm Coast, Florida. He had been suffering from cancer. He was survived by his wife, Dorothy and his 2 sons. A service was held at Light’s funeral home in Schenectady and Long was buried at Cheshire cemetery, in Cheshire, Massachusetts.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 10, 2024 14:21:23 GMT -5
Clint "Scraps" Courtney 1951 Yankees Reserve Catcher Article written by Rory Costello, Edited by Clipper
 1951 New York Yankees Player Photo
Scrap Iron: the punchy, evocative nickname fit Phil Garner well in the 1970s and 1980s- but it fit catcher Clint Courtney even better a generation before. The punchy part was one reason. Journalist Bob Addie wrote in 1959, “Clint put his aggressive temperament to work several times and was involved in some notable fisticuffs during his early career.” Yet that was just one aspect of The Toy Bulldog’s toughness. Author John Daniel described him as “a man composed, according to my father, solely of bruises, knitted bones and sheer grit.”
In past eras, baseball had more “characters,” and Courtney exemplified the breed. Miles Wolff, who owned a string of minor-league ball clubs over 3 decades, had Clint as a Manager at Savannah in the early 1970s. Wolff said, “Everybody in baseball has their own story about ‘Scrap Iron’ Courtney, a squat, bespectacled catcher who was known to like a beer now and then.”
In Courtney’s best obituary, however, sportswriter Milton Richman gave a more fully rounded picture of his friend: “Clint Courtney was only tough on the outside. Inside, he was a soft, compassionate human being, more outspoken than he should’ve been at times perhaps, but with uncommon understanding and honest concern for others which always transcended the rough exterior he chose to show the world.” This empathy helped him become a successful minor-league manager. Had Clint not passed away so young- he was only 48 years old, he might have realized his ambition of managing in the majors.
As a player, Clint wasn’t elegant, but he got the job done, especially as a field general. At his best, he was a good line-drive hitter, though he never had a great deal of power. His 11 years in the big leagues also featured 2 intriguing positional footnotes. Clint gets credit (with an element of doubt) as the 1st receiver in the majors to wear glasses behind the plate. Nine years later, in 1960, he was the 1st to wear the giant mitt that Orioles Manager Paul Richards developed to help handle knuckleball pitchers.
Clinton Dawson Courtney was born on March 16,1927 in Hall Summit, Louisiana. This village’s population was just 264 as of 2000, and it was not much more when Clint was a boy. It is located in Red River Parish, in the northwestern part of the state, about 14 miles north of the parish seat, Coushatta, and roughly 40 miles southeast of Shreveport. Clint always spoke with a pronounced Southern drawl. St. Louis sportswriter Bob Broeg called it “a treble, singsong voice that is as deceptive as his mild appearance and smallish size.”
Clint’s father, C.D. Courtney (the initials did not stand for anything), was a tenant farmer. “Cotton picking, not baseball, was the first trade the youngster learned,” wrote journalist David Condon in a 1955 feature. C.D. separated from Clint’s mother, Ethel Murray Courtney, when the boy was only 3 or 4 years old. His sister Fleta went with Ethel, but Clint stayed with C.D., who married a woman named Gladys Woods and had 2 other daughters, Cecil and Jo. It was a hardscrabble life for the Courtney family. In 1958, Clint said, “I was so poor as a boy, my shoes were so bad that I could step on a dime and tell you if it was heads or tails.” In 2010, Clint’s sister Jo Lawson said “There was always plenty of food on the table, though. It may not have been exactly what we wanted, but we didn’t go hungry.”
Courtney went to school in Hall Summit for grades 1-5 and in the neighboring village of East Point for grades 6-8, but the family then moved to Arkansas. (Several sources indicate that they spent time in Alabama, but this is incorrect.) “We needed money,” said Jo, “so our daddy went to work in the oil fields. Clint graduated from Standard-Umstead High School in Smackover, Arkansas. I believe he was a member of the last class from that school. There were 11 grades, not 12.”
After graduating, young Clint would joined his father in the Smackover oil patch. He then went to work as a welder in a shipyard in Orange, Texas. Clint’s obituary in the New York Times said that he did not play baseball until he entered the U.S. Army, but this is one of several inaccuracies in that article. A Sporting News feature by L.A. McMaster in May 1952 noted that his introduction to the game came in the shipyard at age 17. That too is a misconception. It would seem most likely that an American country boy in those days played baseball growing up, and Jo (who idolized her big brother) confirmed that indeed he did. “He was often found playing on sandlots in Red River Parish.” Clint was short and did not appear athletic — “he could pass for the fellow working at a gas station.” Still, he was also an All-State basketball player in high school, though Jo points out, “It was probably the lowest class in the state, since Standard-Umstead was a small school.”
In 1944, Clint was drafted into the Army. His 1st duty stations were Camp Robinson and Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Fort Chaffee’s team played in the 1945 National Baseball Congress tournament in Wichita, Kansas. After that, he served in Korea, the Philippines and Japan, where he was a member of the Army of Occupation. Courtney was an outfielder at 1st, but then he went behind the plate. David Condon’s article further supported the idea that Clint had played ball before joining the Army. It said, “Along the route, Courtney had developed into a proficient ballplayer.”
Accounts also vary widely as to when Courtney began wearing glasses. The McMaster story said it was while he was in Korea, but Bob Broeg said it was later, in the minors. Jo Lawson’s family knowledge makes intuitive sense: the need arose from his welding job. At any rate, Clint found he had trouble with high twisting foul pop-ups. A vision check revealed that he had astigmatism, and so he also needed specs to play. There was precedent among catchers in college ball and the minor leagues, and (contrary to the accepted wisdom) a big-league catcher- possibly Mike González- may have worn glasses before Courtney. Clint’s lenses were shatter-proof and he taped the frame to the sides of his head. Even so, his collision-prone style led him to run through a dozen pairs by 1958.
Shortly after Courtney was discharged in 1947, the New York Yankees would sign the lefty-swinging catcher. The MLB Scout was Atley Donald, who stayed in the Yankee organization after pitching his last game in 1945. He had visited Clint on the family farm (C.D. had returned from Arkansas) and they worked out the deal. Clint would received an $850 bonus, “$250 of it cash and $600 contingent on an impressive showing. Courtney lost no time in making the impressive showing.”
At age 20, Courtney’s 1st assignment was Beaumont Explorers in the Double-A Texas League. After 4 games there, he went to Bisbee Yanks, Arizona in the Class C Arizona-Texas League, where he would hit .319 with 5 HRs in 114 games and was named to the league’s All-Star team. His Manager was Charlie Metro, who later became part of the “College of Coaches” for the Chicago Cubs in 1962 and managed the Kansas City Royals at the beginning of 1970. In his memoirs, Metro told an array of stories, including how he had to fine Clint - “the hardest-headed ballplayer I ever saw”-after the catcher started a fire in his hotel room. Courtney, who was still wearing his olive drab military underwear, was reluctant to fork over the discharge money he had not spent.
Growing up poor obviously affected Courtney. In 1952, he told Bob Broeg, “Hell, guys ought’a be tickled to death to play ball in the big leagues. They don’t know how good they got it. Those who complain ought’a try pickin’ cotton the way I did. That’d learn ’em. They’d come runnin’ back in a hurry.” Later, in 1954, American League sportswriters named him for “Best Business Sense” and being “Least Generous” on the Baltimore Orioles — as well as “Most Serious Minded,” “Most Serious on the Field,” and “Worst Dressed.”
Clint was something of a junior Ty Cobb: furiously competitive and fond of coming in with spikes high. The 1947 season was also notable for the genesis of his feud with an even more pugnacious player: Billy Martin, then with Phoenix. Martin remembered that Courtney slid into 2nd base, spiking the hand of Playing Manager Arky Biggs, who then broke his hand on Clint’s face. After that there was bad blood between Clint and Billy. “I was always waiting to get Courtney,” Martin told author Maury Allen.
After the 1947 summer season ended, Courtney enjoyed his 1st winter-ball experience in Mazatlán, Mexico. The opportunity came courtesy of Charlie Metro, who had also been invited. As Metro related, Clint successfully hustled the locals at ping-pong. Courtney would started the 1948 season with Beaumont again, but he was optioned to Augusta Tigers (Class A) in late April. Augusta then traded him to Norfolk Tars (Class B, Piedmont League) in late July. He didn’t hit much that year (.243 with just 1 HR overall) and so he remained in Class B during 1949. With Manchester Yankees and Norfolk Tars, he would picked up his hitting to .302 with 10 HRs.
In the winter of 1949-1950, Courtney led the Mexican Coast League in batting at .371 in 38 games. At age 22, he also got his 1st chance to be a Manager. He was 1 of 2 skippers for the Guaymas Ostioneros that season. The Oystermen dismissed José Luis Gómez after a poor 1st half of the season, and Clint turned the club around in the 2nd half.
For 1950, Courtney earned promotion to Beaumont once more. He was 1 of 2 unanimous choices for the league’s All-Star Game, hitting .263 with 4 HRs and 79 RBIs standing out as a leader. His Manager, Rogers Hornsby, took a liking to the hardnosed backstop. Clint also made an impression on Frank Lane, General Manager of the Chicago White Sox. Beaumont beat the White Sox in an exhibition game, led by “the cocky catcher’s chatter and spirit.” Lane told Hornsby, “That Courtney’s an old-time chew-tobacco type of player, like Nellie Fox and Burrhead Fain. There aren’t enough of ’em left in the majors. Too bad the little son-of-a-gun wears glasses.” Hornsby responded, “Glasses or not, Courtney’ll fight his way into the big leagues.”
Roger Hornsby would manage Clint again for the Ponce Leones in the Puerto Rican Winter League. Courtney was not among the league leaders in any category, but he made a tremendous impression on the fans of Puerto Rico. In the balloting for the 2 all-star teams, 1 made up of local players and the other of imports, the fiery catcher received more votes than anyone else, native or otherwise. According to Courtney’s family, Yankees General Manager George Weiss tried to talk Clint out of playing winter ball. Weiss proposed that he work instead for the team’s Co-Owner, Construction Magnate Del Webb, because the pay would be better. Clint responded that no General Manager ran his life. He would played in winter ball in Puerto Rica.
Courtney would advanced again in 1951. He did well in spring training-New York sportswriter Dan Daniel called him “an interesting newcomer” and “likely to stick.” In fact, he was on the big club’s roster as the season started. After just a couple of games, the Yankees would optioned him to their Triple-A team at Kansas City (American Association). As the starting catcher for the Blues, Clint had played and hit well again .294 with 8 HRs and 35 RBIs in 105 games. Among other things, in a June game against Milwaukee, he knocked out 2 of Johnny Logan’s front teeth in a “bump” at 2nd base. He also got into a scrap with future Phillies Manager Danny Ozark, after a play at the plate. Toward the end of the season there was a more unpleasant episode. During a game at Milwaukee on September 3rd, Courtney (according to American Association President Bruce Dudley) spat twice on Umpire John Fette and struck him with a bat. Courtney was ejected from the game, fined $100 and suspended indefinitely.
Nonetheless, the New York Yankees were still able to call Clint up later on that month. He would make his MLB player debut on September 29,1951 at Yankee Stadium in the 2nd game of a doubleheader against the Boston Red Sox. He went 0 for 2 and was hit by a Mickey McDermott pitch. Courtney did not lack confidence; he viewed himself as a legitimate contender for Yogi Berra’s job. Realistically, there was no opportunity for him in the Bronx. Yogi Berra was the 1951 AL Most Valuable Player; backup Catchers Ralph Houk (91 games, 8 years) and Charlie Silvera (201 games, 9 Years) saw very little action, while Yogi was in his prime. Also the Yankees had traded away several young catchers as well, including Sherman Lollar.
1953 Topps Baseball Card
Therefore, the Yankees would trade Catcher Clint Courtney to the St. Louis Browns for Pitcher Jim McDonald on November 23,1951. Rogers Hornsby, who had become the Browns’ Manager, recommended that the club to obtain Courtney. The Browns felt so confident in Courtney that 4 days later, they traded had away another fine catcher, former Yankee Sherman Lollar. Although the door had opened in the majors, Clint still resented his lack of opportunity with the New York Yankees.
Near the end of spring training in 1952, the St. Louis Browns’ new starting catcher got his “Scrap Iron” nickname. Teammate Pitcher Duane Pillette and Announcer Buddy Blattner have received credit for this label, which came about after a footrace against sportswriter Milton Richman in a railway yard near the end of spring training. Clint tumbled, sliced himself up all over on glass and rocks, but stayed in for the next day’s exhibition game, when Hornsby threatened him with a fine. “Bandaged up like King Tut,” as his sister Jo put it, he could barely hold the bat but still got 3 hits against veteran starter Early Wynn. According to Richman, Clint missed several weeks, but he was the Opening Day starter.
His 1st big-league hit came in the 4th game of the season; it was a bases-loaded triple off of hurler Bill Kennedy of the White Sox. His 1st HR in the majors came on May 6th at Shibe Park off of Philadelphia A’s Bob Hooper. Although he missed a couple of weeks in June,after a foul tip split a finger, Courtney would played in 119 games and batted .286 with 5 HRs and 50 RBIs. The Sporting News had named him its AL Rookie of the Year; in the Baseball Writers’ voting, Philadelphia Athletics Pitcher Harry Byrd got 9 votes, Clint 8 and Red Sox Catcher Sammy White 7.
When the St. Louis Browns Team Owner Bill Veeck had Manager fired Roger Hornsby in June 1952, Outfielder Jim Rivera and Courtney were the only men, who were sorry to see the Rajah go. Clint said, “He never spoke to me either but I understood him. Most of these fellows couldn’t play for him, but I could. He was tough but he was okay with me.” It was reported that the other Browns expressed their gratitude by giving Team Owner Veeck a trophy, but there is lingering suspicion that Veeck bought the trophy himself as another of his publicity stunts.
About a month later, on July 12th, Clint got into the 1st of his on-field fights with his old team, the New York Yankees and the noted sucker-punch specialist INF Billy Martin. Clint apparently had spiked Billy in the 2nd inning at Yankee Stadium. Then, “with 2 out in the 8th, Courtney tried to steal 2nd and was out by a wide margin as Martin applied a hard tag to Courtney’s face.” Clint followed Billy, who pivoted and slugged the catcher. A brawl ensued and Umpire Bill Summers was knocked flat. Clint drew a 3-game suspension from the AL Office and a $100 fine. As Milton Richman noted, “Courtney already had a reputation for belligerence when he first came up.” He described how the catcher “kayoed” and “flattened” 2 different teammates who were either not playing team ball or kibitzing card games in which Clint was losing.
Courtney most likely got his other monicker, “The Toy Bulldog,” in 1952 as well. He credited Browns broadcaster Dizzy Dean, though the new Manager Marty Marion adopted it as his pet name for the catcher.
During that 1952 AL season, Clint had developed a rapport with Satchel Paige. Bill Veeck told the story in his autobiography, "Veeck as in Wreck." Courtney “had served notice that he wouldn’t catch Satch. I liked Courtney because he was a rough, tough little man who played the game for all it was worth. I felt very strongly that this was a matter entirely of environment and upbringing. Once Clint got to know Satch, I was sure, he’d come around-even though I was perfectly aware that Satch would do nothing to appease him.”
That was how it worked out. Veeck later said, “One day. I noticed Clint was warming him up. I walked into a bar in Detroit called The Flame. There were Leroy and Clint having dinner together. Courtney told me, ‘My pap’s comin’ up tomorrow from Lou’siana and he’s gonna be mighty mad when he hears about us being friends. But Satch and me figure we can whup him together.’ ”Eventually Paige said, “There’s the meanest man I ever met, but I’m glad he’s on my side.
That summer, as a reward for learning to lay off high fastballs, Veeck gave Clint a white-faced Hereford calf for his ranch back in Coushatta. This was the catcher’s main off-season occupation for many years. “I aim to own my own land ‘n’ all the cattle I can git,” he said in 1953. He wound up with 200 good acres and rented up to 500 more at times. He also brought thoroughbred racehorses to Red River Parish and had a big greenhouse full of 10,000 tomato vines, eggplants, and peppers.
“Courtney was country to the core,” wrote Warren Corbett in his biography of Paul Richards. “He sometimes loaded his hunting dogs, and, allegedly, his smaller cows, into the backseat of his Cadillac, which was carpeted with empty beer cans. ‘I rode with Clint once,’ Pitcher Dick Hall said. ‘It was like being in a barn.’”
Part of the Courtney lore concerns how oblivious he was to pungent aromas. As he inspected cattle in the stockyards of Chicago and Kansas City, he would stomp around in manure and then head directly to the ballpark. When Early Wynn and Les Moss smeared Clint and his mitt with Limburger cheese as a practical joke, he wasn’t fazed a bit; umpire Jim Honochick was the one revolted. In fact, Charlie Metro remembered how Clint -“They called him a billy goat. . .I don’t think he ever took a shower” used his own hunk of cheese inside his mitt as a shock absorber until even he found it too rank.
In 1953, Courtney sought a 60%raise from $7,500 to $12,000 after his fine rookie year. Bill Veeck responded with an $11,000 contract. Courtney wrote back, “Dear Veeck: I changed my mind. I want $14,000, not $12,000. Clint.”
On April 28th, Scrap Iron would mixed it up with the New York Yankees again. In the 10th inning at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, he got riled. His old minor-league teammate Gil McDougald had jarred the ball loose on a play at the plate, which he always protected zealously. In response, he would rammed into Phil Rizzuto at 2nd base with spikes high in the bottom of the inning. The Yankee players came to the defense of their little shortstop and it turned into another free-for-all. Umpire John Stevens suffered a dislocated shoulder; fans heaved soda bottles on the field; action was halted for 17 minutes. AL President Will Harridge meted out a total of $850 in fines-including $250 on “instigator” Courtney for “violating all rules of sportsmanship.”
In retrospect, this brawl has been billed as a rematch between Courtney and Billy Martin. Newspaper accounts at the time, though, showed that Pitcher Allie Reynolds got the 1st shot in at Clint, not Billy. Reynolds later said, “Clint Courtney? Did Billy get the credit for that one? Heck, I was the one who K.O.’d Courtney.”
The 1953 AL season would also featured another dustup in July. This time Clint squared off with Johnny Bucha of Detroit, when the opposing catcher came in hard at the plate. Over the course of the year, he produced much less with the bat, driving in just 19 men on 4 HRs, while hitting .251 in 106 games. Broken fingers early in the season had hampered him.
In December 1953 Clint went back to Mexico, as the Ciudad Obregón Yaquis made him their Manager. On January 11,1954, he married a St. Louis woman, Dorothy Knelange. The wedding took place in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico. The newlyweds must have postponed their honeymoon, though-2 days, after they exchanged vows, Clint had appeared in the league’s All-Star game. They had 5 children: Wendell, Cynthia, Kathleen, Nancy and Stephen.
Scrap Iron was still 1st-string after the Browns franchise had shifted to Baltimore for the 1954 AL season. His HR off of Chicago’s Virgil Trucks on April 15th was the 1st in the big leagues at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. Clint would hit a respectable .270 with 4 HRs and 37 RBIs. Perhaps his most distinctive number at the plate, though, was his strikeout total: just 7 in 437 plate appearances, which remains a club record. Throughout his big-league career, Courtney fanned only once for every 22 times he came to the plate (4.5%).
On November 17th of that year, the Orioles had obtained catcher Gus Triandos (who had also been stuck behind Yogi Berra) in the 17-player deal with New York Yankees. A few weeks later, Clint became part of a 7-man swap with the Chicago White Sox. On December 6, 1954, Clint was raded by the Baltimore Orioles with INF Jim Brideweser and Pitcher Bob Chakales to the Chicago White Sox for Catcher Matt Batts, Pitchers Don Ferrarese, Don Johnson and Fred Marsh. “We wanted catching strength,” said Marty Marion (by then Chicago’s Manager), “and I think we got it. The Orioles were interested in pitching and in [Fred] Marsh.”
At the end of March 1955, Clint told United Press, “Gone soft, hell! I’m just as wild as I ever was. I still don’t take nuthin’ from nobody. They say I turned into a lamb just because I got fined for 1 of those fights, huh? Well, whoever says it is crazy.” He added, “This is a good club to be with-providin’ they gimme some work to do.”
Scraps would spend less than half a season in Chicago. He didn’t get off on the right foot there, holding out for a better contract from White Sox General Manager Frank Lane (whom he addressed as “Dear Lane” in his negotiating letter). On June 7,1955, Catcher Clint Courtney was traded by the Chicago White Sox with Pitcher Bob Chakales and OF Johnny Groth to the Washington Nationals for OF Jim Busby. Courtney would finished the year hitting .309 and he was at .300 in 1956. He was a semi-regular, getting roughly 300 plate appearances a year from 1955 through 1957. He would split time with Lou Berberet (who had been in the Yankees system at the same time as Clint) and Ed FitzGerald. In 1957, Courtney had suffered a broken hand on a foul tip, missing nearly all the month of May. Manager Charlie Dressen had fined him $200 for “insubordination.”
The Senators had a surplus of catchers in 1958 as Steve Korcheck returned from the Army. Courtney was the subject of trade talks in the early part of the season. Washington wound up trading Lou Berberet instead and Clint set a number of career highs: games played (134), plate appearances (515), HRs (8), and RBIs (62).
Courtney would split the Senators’ catching duties almost evenly with Hal Naragon in 1959. He had a heart-attack scare in February, but the ailment was later diagnosed as pleurisy. Then in the exhibition season, he had suffered a hairline fracture of the leg in a collision at the plate with Hal Smith. Expected to be out for a month to 6 weeks, he was back in action mere days later. However, mumps kept him out of the lineup from late April through early June. His batting fell off to .233 with 2HRs and 18 RBIs.
On April 3,1960, the Washington Senators would traded Scrap Iron back to the Baltimore Orioles, along with INF Ron Samford for INF Billy Gardner. “There was a lot of nose holding in Baltimore. Gardner had been one of the fans’ favorites and they didn’t think Courtney was the best the Orioles could get for him.” Gus Triandos had a sore thumb and went on the disabled list, though. As Clint drawled, “Ah got a hunch Ah’ll play more than a lot of people think. Ah can hit and Ah ain’t as bad a catcher as a lot of people think.”
Orioles Manager Paul Richards agreed. “You know, Courtney is about 3 times better a catcher than anyone has ever given him for being. He hops around out there, but he gets the job done. He’s one of the fellows who doesn’t mind winning.” A word about Courtney’s arm is in order, too. He played in a time when the stolen base was largely out of vogue, but throughout his MLB playing career, he nailed 41% of opposing runners (198 out of 478). In addition, he possessed another valuable skill as a receiver, being an expert “framer” of pitches.
What proved Clint’s prediction right in 1960 was Hoyt Wilhelm and his knuckleball. The butterfly had bedeviled starting Catcher Gus Triandos, who had surrendered 28 passed balls and 29 wild pitches in 1959. “The more I caught him, the worse I got,” said Triandos in 1984. During the early going in 1960, Gus and Baltimore’s other catcher, Joe Ginsberg gave up 11 more passed balls and 4 wild pitches, while Wilhelm was working. The O’s staff had another knuckleballer too, veteran hurler Hal “Skinny” Brown.
1960 Orioles Clint with Big Catchers Mitt designed by Manager Paul Richards
The innovative Richards, noting that there was no regulation governing the size of catcher’s mitts, came up with the model called “Big Bertha” or “the elephant ear.” He had 1st hatched the idea in the fall of 1959; in May 1960 he said, “with the situation no better, I sent [Orioles Pitching Coach] Harry Brecheen to Chicago to a factory.” The mitt was 42" in circumference and (even after 8 ounces of padding was removed to make it less unwieldy) weighed 30 ounces, vs. the standard 33-34 " and 27 ounces. Courtney got to break in the mitt on May 27th, when Wilhelm pitched against the New York Yankees. The Orioles won the game by the score of 3-2 and the game was free of passed balls. After the game, Clint said the glove was easy to handle. “I don’t know how many pitches would have jumped past me with a regular glove. This was the 1st time I ever caught [Wilhelm]. Boy is he rough to catch. I don’t see how anybody ever hits him.”
First baseman Jim Gentile said, “Clint was lower to the ground. Ol’ Scrap Iron, he’d get back there with that big glove on and he’d just pounce on it.” The costs as well as the benefits became visible on August 15th. Again, facing the Yankees, with Wilhelm on in relief, the Orioles were leading 3-2. After Héctor López walked, Courtney dropped a foul pop by his old Yankees teammate, Mickey Mantle. After the reprieve, Mickey then hit a game-winning 2-run HR. (Major League Baseball’s rules committee enacted a rule against the Big Berthas in December 1964, establishing a maximum circumference of 38" for catcher’s mitts.
The oddity of Courtney’s 1960 AL season was a bout with the yips. Various catchers (most notably Mackey Sasser) have found themselves unable to throw the ball back to the pitcher normally. Clint got around the mental block-which he may also have suffered at some point in the 1950s-either by throwing the ball to 3rd base or by walking partway to the mound. Fortunately, the malady did not last long, but it was ironic because Courtney had been known in the past for “burning” the ball back to his pitchers.
On January 24,1961, Clint was traded by the Baltimore Orioles along with Pitcher Jim Archer, 1B Bob Boyd, INF Wayne Causey and OF Al Pilarcik to the Kansas City Athletics for 2 Outfielders Whitey Herzog and Russ Snyder. Clint Courtney returned to original team on April 15,1961. Scraps had appeared in just 1 game for the A’s, however, before they would returned him to Baltimore on April 14th. Courtney’s last MLB appearance came on June 24,1961. On July 1st, the Orioles would sent him down to Triple-A Rochester Red Wings (International League), which needed a Catcher. Paul Richards said, “You don’t have to go back to the minors, if you don’t want to, but if you did you’d be doing the organization a big favor.”
In February 1962, the expansion Houston Colt .45s had signed Clint as a MLB free agent. Richards, who had left the Orioles, he had become the new Colts’ General Manager, kept the promise he had made the previous year: whatever club he was with, there would be a catching job for Courtney. Bill Giles, later principal owner of the Phillies, was then Houston’s Traveling Secretary. Giles later said, “His [Clint’s] role was really to be Richards’ valet, catering to his every whim and carrying his golf clubs”. Some of the many amusing Courtney anecdotes revolve around the golf course, with Scraps shagging balls for Richards on the driving range, getting one free throw per hole when he took the game up himself, and not being averse to improving his boss’s lie with a well-timed kick. Although the big club had cut the 35-year-old veteran in April 1962, he would played 3 games for AAA Oklahoma City 89ers, but then he would stepped down to the Durham Bulls, a Class B team. Lou Fitzgerald, another of Paul Richards’ men, had asked Richards if he could have an experienced catcher to help develop his young pitching prospects. At Durham, Clint would worked in particular with Wally Wolf, who would eventually pitch in 6 games for the California Angels in 1969 and 1970.
Clint would hang on in the minors for 2 more years as a Player-Coach. He got into 61 games in 1963 at Durham Bulls (which had become Class A) and San Antonio Bullets (AA). A 1997 retrospective in the San Antonio Express-News carried the headline, “Veteran backup catcher was heart of S.A. team,” with the subhead, “Courtney’s hard-working, simple style had an effect.” He had passed on his experience to 2 future big-league receivers, Dave Adlesh and Jerry Grote. Grote in particular was in the same mold as Scraps, a tough take-charge guy.
Clint would finished up behind the plate with 37 games for San Antonio in 1964. In November, he would rejoined Houston as a combination Bullpen Coach and Catcher. His feisty side was still on display in the 1965 season, as he got into a brief fistfight with teammate Lee Maye. As Courtney was hitting fungoes, a little kidding got out of hand. Clint got a bruise on his head and a minor finger injury.
After that season ended, Paul Richards had lost his GM job in Houston, and so did several of his coaches, including Clint. Yet as Richards moved on to Atlanta Braves as Farm Director, he found a spot for Courtney as a roving minor-league catching instructor. Clint also had joined the Braves for spring training 1967, where the catching drills were so rigorous that Gene Oliver nicknamed the camp “Stalag 17.” Joe Torre adjusted-Scraps said, “Joe is coming along pretty good; he’s not even complaining anymore.” But the aching Oliver moaned, “When I dream, all I can see are a bunch of baseballs coming at me and a voice yelling, ‘Git out ’are and git a-holt uv of that ball.’”
Paul Richards had cited Courtney’s influence in persuading him to draft Ralph “The Roadrunner” Garr out of Louisiana’s Grambling University in 1967, although another Louisianian, Mel Didier, is the MLB Scout of record. In the summer of 1967 with the Austin Braves, Courtney drove Ralph Garr and the 26th round pick, Dusty Baker to Texas League games in his pickup. Whoever, had the most hits the night before got to sit up front- a real incentive, given the likely state of the truck bed.
Courtney remained as an instructor through early 1970. He then became a Manager in US baseball for the 1st time, and he got to do it close to home in Louisiana. Clint took over the AA Shreveport Braves in early May after the team got off to a poor start under his good friend Lou Fitzgerald. It was originally supposed to be a temporary assignment that allowed him to visit his father and brother-in-law, who had both been ill, but it lasted for the rest of the 1970 season. Jo Lawson recalled, “That was my husband, Bobby. He and Daddy were already better and they all went fishing and quail hunting together, with the dogs. It sure was nice that Clint could come home at night.”
In 1971, Courtney was reassigned to the Greenwood, South Carolina, Braves of the Class A Western Carolina League. He led them to a league-best 85-38 record. Jim Joyce of the Greenwood Index-Journal wrote, “Clint ‘Scraps’ Courtney is a man, who means what he says and doesn’t beat around the bush getting the job done.” The following season Clint would stepped up to Savannah, the Braves’ Class AA affiliate in the Southern League. He stayed with the organization even after GM Paul Richards was pushed out in January 1973. Scrap Iron advanced to Atlanta’s top farm club, AAA Richmond Braves, that June. He had replaced Bobby Hofman, who gave up the job under doctor’s orders because of high blood pressure. The man who took over at Savannah was Hank Aaron’s younger brother Tommie. At the time, it was the highest level a black manager had reached in organized baseball.
As a Manager, Courtney would never ask a player to do anything he could not do. He stressed the importance of working together and getting along with each other. Echoing his own experience, he took up the cause of underdogs. One example was a little pitcher from the Bahamas named Wenty Ford. Ford was a junkballer, who was stuck in the Braves chain, but Scraps loved his craft and guile. Wenty pitched the best ball of his career at Richmond in 1973 and got his cup of coffee in the majors that September. In July 1974, Atlanta Braves had fired Eddie Mathews as Manager. The Braves narrowed their choices for successor down to 2: Clint and Clyde King. (Hank Aaron was miffed that neither he nor Tommie was considered.) Courtney wanted the job badly. Milton Richman asked him, “Do you want to manage in the big leagues that much?” Clint responded, “Does a goat have horns?” He also credited Richards and the new Braves GM Eddie Robinson, for teaching him “little things, inside baseball. . .how to win.”
Atlanta had hired King and Courtney would stayed at AAA Richmond. The team came in 2nd in the Southern Division of the International League in 1974 after a last-place finish the previous year. Charleston Gazette sports editor A.L. “Shorty” Hardman wrote, “If the Braves are improved, credit it to ‘Scrap Iron’- there’s one thing you can always be sure of, he’ll let you know where you stand with him.”
On Sunday, June 15,1975, Richmond had arrived in Rochester for a series. That night Scraps was playing table tennis and talking baseball with several of his players at the team hotel, the Colony East Motor Inn. Richmond Team Trainer Sam Ayoub said, “Courtney had played just 1 game of Ping Pong and he decided to rest for a while.” Courtney began talking with player Al Gallagher and “then he just keeled over and hit the floor,” Ayoub said. Stricken by a heart attack, Clint was pronounced dead on arrival at Genesee Hospital early on Monday morning. He was only 48 years old.
Although Clint had chewed tobacco, he was not a smoker, and he did not have a history of heart trouble. Jo Lawson said, “I am a nurse, and I remember that a few years before he came in short of breath with chest pains. But he was checked out and there were no signs of a problem.” Clint Courtney was buried in Mount Zion Cemetery in Hall Summit. Though neither of them is on his gravestone, 2 fitting epitaphs came from men who played for and with Scrap Iron. Clint’s friend with the Senators, pitcher and self-styled Cuban cowboy Pedro Ramos, said, “Clint Courtney. . .was a funny guy, who’d drink a lot of beer and talk about cows.” Jeff Geach, a minor-league utilityman at Greenwood, Savannah and Richmond, said, “On the field he gave you hell. . .off the field he treated you like one of the family.”
Grateful acknowledgment to Jo Lawson for input from her own biographical sketch, clippings, and personal memories (April 2010). Thanks also to SABR member Warren Corbett.
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Post by fwclipper51 on Mar 11, 2024 18:13:47 GMT -5
Atley Donald Yankees Pitcher and MLB Scout
Article was written by Thomas Van Hyning, Edited by Clipper
Swapy Donald Yankees Getty Photo
Soft-spoken Richard Atley Donald once threw 95-mile-per-hour fastballs for the 1939 New York Yankees, the 1st major league team to win 4 straight World Series. He had won 12 straight games for them, to set an American League mark for rookies. Atley was a star pitcher for the 1937 AA Newark Bears (International League), considered by many to be the best minor league team baseball team ever. His 29-year Yankees scouting career in Louisiana, his native Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and parts of Alabama, Tennessee and Oklahoma, was punctuated by his signing of Ron Guidry in 1971.
The Donalds came to Mississippi in a covered wagon midway through the 19th century from Sumter, South Carolina. This trek was made by 2 sisters, 2 brothers and their parents. The siblings, who included Atley’s Grandfather, eventually settled in Brandon, Durant, Goodman, Morton and Philadelphia, Mississippi. Atley Donald was born in Morton, Mississippi, August 19, 1910 to Joseph Hugh Donald, a farmer, and Mattie Jefcoat Donald. The 18-monthold Atley and 4 siblings, Huell, Maurice (aka “Lefty”), Mattye and Clyde would move to Downsville, Louisiana in February 1912. Much of that trip was made on a Mississippi River barge from Vicksburg, Mississippi. Elly May, Atley’s baby sister, became the only sibling born in Louisiana.
Atley walked each day to his country school in Downsville, a small north Louisiana community. His favorite baseball player as a kid was Babe Ruth. Once asked why, Atley said, “Babe Ruth was the only ballplayer one heard about in the Parish I lived in. As a kid, I played at all positions and didn’t know I would wind up as a pitcher.” A star high school basketball and baseball player, he scored the only touchdown in a 1-time contest against Farmerville, Downsville’s arch-rival. Basketball was Atley’s favorite high school sport. After high school graduation in 1929, he would attend Louisiana Tech in Ruston and earned 4 letters in baseball. A 1930 review of the freshman baseball team stated, “The most promising of the Bullpups is Atley Donald, a brother of the illustrious ‘Lefty,’ who throws the ball across the plate in a manner that makes him look good for the varsity now… a right-hander and has plenty of weight and height to make a good pitcher.” (Lagniappe, Freshman Team Review, 1930) Atley mainly pitched against small colleges such as Millsaps, Mississippi College, Birmingham Southern, and Centenary, but also against the University of Mississippi. Atley’s coach, L.J. Fox, wrote a 1933 letter of recommendation to Ed Barrow, the Yankees General Manager, but it was ignored. Atley’s lifelong ambition was to be a New York Yankee, according to Betty, his widow. In January 1934, Hugh Donald gave Atley $25, plus Lefty’s raincoat, so he could hitchhike to St. Petersburg, Florida, where the Yankees trained. Yankee Scout Johnny Nee, who had covered the South-had seen Atley pitch for Louisiana Tech, but he never signed him. Atley looked Nee up in St. Petersburg and was told to contact Yankee management, when spring training camp opened.
Betty Donald told me Atley made $12 a week at a St. Petersburg grocery store sacking sugar to make ends meet prior to spring training. Nee would introduce Atley to Yankee skipper Joe McCarthy, who gave Atley a uniform, and put him on the mound to face Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Earle Combs and Bill Dickey. McCarthy was quite impressed. “He looks like Lon Warneke out there,” remarked the Yankee Manager. Warneke was one of the National League’s elite pitchers, so this was a compliment for Donald. Betty Donald took pride in noting that Babe Ruth, in his final spring training, played a “bit of pepper with Atley.” She added, “And so did Lou Gehrig!” Ruth also played poker with Atley during March and April 1934 evenings. Betty recalled that Atley told her, “Ruth did not like to pay up.”
Atley would sign a Yankees minor league contract and was shipped to Wheeling, West Virginia, Class C. He would emerge as the ace for the last-place 1934 Stogies with an 11-10 mark. The Yankees would promote him to the Class B Norfolk Tars (Piedmont League) by season’s end and he would return to that team the next year. Atley’s league-leading 160 strikeouts in 1935 got noticed, but the Asheville Tourists had won the 1934 pennant. In 1936, Atley became a superb pitcher for the Binghamton Triplets in the Class A New York-Pennsylvania League, with a 19-9 record and a league-best 189 strikeouts. Atley’s 12 straight wins helped Binghamton win a NYPL title and he was promoted to the AA Newark Bears in the International League.
The 1937 Newark Bears had posted a 109-43 record that featured back-to-back 4-game sweeps of the Syracuse Chiefs and the Baltimore Orioles to win the 1937 International League title. Newark would come back from a 3 games-to-none deficit versus the Columbus Red Birds of the American Association to take the Little World Series, 4 games to 3. Atley was 19-2 for a club many classify as the best minor league team ever.
One of the Newark Bears’ and Atley’s biggest fans in 1937 and 1938 was Robert “Bobby” Brown, a junior high student, whose family had moved to New Jersey. Bobby Brown later starred in 4 World Series for the Yankees: 1947, 1949-1951; served his country in World War II and as a Doctor in Korea; he had earned his medical degree with off-season academic work; became Atley’s cardiologist in 1975; he was American League President, 1984-1994. Brown, in 1 of our phone conversations, recited the 1937 Newark Bears’ regulars, from the catching duo of Buddy Rosar and Willard Hershberger to the infield (George McQuinn, Joe Gordon, Babe Dahlgren, Nolen Richardson); outfield (Bob Seeds, Jimmy Gleeson, Charlie Keller) plus the top 4 starters: Joe Beggs, Atley Donald, Vito Tamulis and Steve Sundra.
Atley had eclipsed the Newark record of 12 straight wins, set by Don Brennan, 5 years earlier and ended with 14 in a row. His 3 post-season wins featured a complete-game triumph over Syracuse Chiefs and Johnny Vander Meer; a victory over the Baltimore Orioles in the league finals, saved by Spud Chandler; followed by a 1-0 gem in Game 5 of the Little World Series. Joe Gordon had singled in Willard Hershberger with the game’s only run. Atley had struck out 6 Red Birds, including Enos “Country” Slaughter 3 times. Spud Chandler recalled this mound performance as the key to the series. “Atley Donald deserves much credit for us winning the series, as he pitched the 5h game, beating Max Macon, 1-0.”
The 1938 New York Yankees would keep Atley on their MLB 25-man roster early in the season and gave him number 28, but they would send him back to AA Newark Bears after 2 subpar starts which featured 14 walks in 12 innings. Atley suffered from influenza that spring and he was not 100 percent going into the big-league season. He would produce a league-leading 133 strikeouts for Newark, 2 more than his Bears teammate Marius Russo. The 1938 Newark Bears had won 104 games, but they fell short in 7-game Little World Series against the AAA Kansas City Blues (American Association), also a Yankee farm club.
Atley’s close friends with the Yankees were catcher Bill Dickey, who mostly lived in Arkansas, but was born in Bastrop, Louisiana, near West Monroe, where Betty lives; hurler Spud Chandler, born in Commerce, Georgia; and 2 Californians: pitcher Vernon “Lefty” Gomez, and shortstop Frankie Crosetti. Atley corresponded with all of them long after their playing careers ended. Gomez shared his secrets of pitching success—“Clean living and a fast outfield” and “It’s better to be lucky than good” when Atley invited him to attend a baseball coaching clinic in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Atley fished and hunted with Bill Dickey in Louisiana and Arkansas numerous times. When Atley was in New York during the regular season or World Series, he would visit with Crosetti, the Yankee 3rd base coach for many seasons.
“Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig were also close friends of Atley’s; those Yankees were a great group,” said Betty. Gehrig once hit a long 3-run HR off of Atley in a 1937 spring training game. Atley still played pepper with Gehrig in the fateful spring of 1939, when Gehrig’s health was failing and assisted Gehrig in walking onto the field between games with the Washington Senators on July 4, 1939 to address 61,000 fans at Yankee Stadium in his famous speech: “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”
Atley’s best big-league season was his rookie one in 1939. He would lead the American League with a .813 winning percentage; set a league and team record of 12 straight wins to open a season; and was 1 of 7 Yankee pitchers to win 10+ games, finishing with a 13-3. Record. Atley’s 12-game win streak for the 1939 Yankees took place from May 23rd-July 25th and ended against Detroit before his 29th birthday in early August. Daniel M. Daniel, in the August 1939 issue of Baseball Magazine, penciled in his 14-player 1939 All-Rookie Team-with Ted Williams in right field; and 3 Yankees: Catcher Buddy Rosar, Outfielder Charlie Keller and Pitcher Atley Donald.
Daniel wrote: “The pitchers shout that we cannot overlook Atley Donald of the Yankees and Whitlow Wyatt of the Dodgers, who approached mid-season with grand winning streaks, yet unbeaten.”
The 6-foot-1, 186-pound Atley had this to say about win streaks: “You hit your stride and everything you do out there is right. You get the breaks. Line drives whiz into some fielder’s outstretched glove. Those long shots they hit into the stands off you are foul by a foot. Your teammates make runs. And you win.” Talent and ability also help. On August 30th, a primitive machine in Cleveland clocked Atley’s fastball at 94.7 miles per hour, significant because it put him in the “same league” with Bob Feller, albeit a tad faster than Feller at that moment. Atley was used sparingly the last 2 months, pitched below his normal standards and saw his ERA climb from 2.51 to 3.71. He did not appear in the 1939 World Series, but McCarthy simply had a lot of options.
Atley Donald 1939 Yankees Photo
Joe DiMaggio was baseball’s best player in 1939, with a batting title and MVP Award to go with the team’s 4th straight World Series win. The 1939 Yankees were stronger overall than the 1927 Bronx Bombers, according to many pundits as well as Ed Barrow, the team’s General Manager, who noted: “This [1939] Yankee club is better than the much-talked-about 1927 outfit. This club has great balance, brilliant youth, speed, pitching, everything.”
Atley liked to shag flies with DiMaggio, who in the early 1940s surprised Atley with this offer, when the pitcher remained in St. Petersburg due to an injury: “Here are the keys and gas card to my white convertible,” said DiMaggio. “You can return the car to me in New York City.” DiMaggio, a very private person, liked Atley, who also would keep to himself. Betty reminisced about the time when she and Atley, as newlyweds, shared dances in Florida with Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. Betty and 44-yearold Atley were married in Natchez, Mississippi, in a private ceremony on January 8,1955, at the Presbyterian Church. True to Atley’s nature, he insisted upon a private ceremony in Mississippi, because he didn’t want people “gawking at him” around Choudrant, Louisiana, where he lived.
Atley was plagued by a bad back in his early years with the New York Yankees. After much tinkering, a buckskin corset was prescribed. It temporarily worked, since the lameness went away. Roscoe McGowen of the New York Times wrote, in describing an intra-league, pre-season exhibition game at Ebbets Field, “….it may be said that the Dodgers descended into the depths of ignominy when they were shut out with 2 hits by a couple of fellows wearing corsets- Ernie “Tiny” Bonham and Atley Donald.”
Atley also suffered from poor vision in his left eye, which disqualified him from military service during World War II. Manager Joe McCarthy “raised Cain” when someone stole a base off him, so Atley carefully studied base runners in order to compensate for his vision challenge. This eye problem may have been the reason Atley was always a left-handed batter. Atley’s physical maladies kept him from making more than 20 starts in a season, even during the war years, when the pitching staff was depleted. But he was a team player.
Atley Donald Yankees Spring Training Camp Photo
The 1941 Yankees would rebound from a subpar 1940 season (a 3rd place finish) to win the AL pennant and World Series. Atley went 8-3 with a 3.03 ERA in 24 games in 1940 and 9-5 with 3.57 ERA in 22 games in 1941. He had started Game 4 of the 1941 Series against Brooklyn Dodgers, but he was relieved after giving up 4 runs in the 1st 4 innings. In the 9th, a passed ball on a 3rd strike by Mickey Owen, the Brooklyn catcher, propelled the Yankees to a 7-4 win. I conversed with Owen 50 years after this World Series, and he affirmed the Yankees were a strong, well-balanced team, with the best reliever of that era, Johnny Murphy; a deep pitching staff; the incomparable DiMaggio; a Hall of Fame Catcher, Bill Dickey; and the best double-play combination in the majors, 2B Joe “Flash” Gordon and rookie Shortstop Phil Rizzuto.
Atley’s final 4 seasons as a Yankee pitcher, 1942-1945, showed a combined 35-21 won-loss record. New York would win the 1942 and 1943 AL pennants and split the Fall Classic with St. Louis Cardinals-losing in 1942, but winning in 1943. Atley took the loss in Game 4 of the 1942 series and he did not pitch in the 1943 event, one which Spud Chandler had won Games 1 and 5.
Chandler and Atley developed a closer bond as the 1943 AL season wore on. Spud bragged on his college gridiron exploits for the 1929-1931 Georgia Bulldogs, who had defeated the Yale Bulldogs, 3 straight times and boasted that he grew up in the same Georgia County [Franklin] where Ty Cobb was raised. Atley countered with his 1928 high school touchdown run and hoop skills. The 82-yearold Spud Chandler was terminally ill by the fall of 1989, when Atley visited him 1 last time in Florida. As Betty put it, “Spud Chandler was dying and Atley was sad; Spud wanted us to stay…”
The Yankee post-World Series victory parties held in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s would featured the big band music of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians and Bob Hope as emcee. Lombardo met many of the Yankees from that era, when Atley was still a bachelor. Betty recalls a Florida dinner-club experience in the early 1960s, when Lombardo was playing and noticed the Donalds seated at a nearby table. Lombardo would stopped the music, walked over to Atley and shook his hand.
Some writers in the mid-1940s thought that Richard was his middle name. The June 1944 issue of Baseball Magazine had Atley’s photo on the inside front cover, with this inscription-Atley Richard Donald, the Yankees right hander, who was born in Mississippi. Atley had calcium spurs in his right shoulder by July 1945. He would pitch his last Yankee game on July 13th and had shoulder surgery performed at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. He couldn’t lift his right arm above his shoulder: “When it got to where it wasn’t any fun, I’d quit. And I did.” Bobby Brown, a 1946 International League all-star shortstop with AAA Newark Bears in his only minor league season, before joining the Yankees late in the 1946 season, told me the Atley’s pitching arm injury was a torn rotator cuff.
The Yankees had offered Atley a MLB scouting position with the Yankees in 1946, shortly after Atley and Betty met at a Ford dealership near Monroe, Louisiana, where Betty worked in the office. Atley spent the next 29 years as a Yankees MLB Scout, with Louisiana as a home base for southern Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, part of Oklahoma and Texas for 17 years. He would cover Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and parts of Tennessee in the 12 years, they would live in Florida. Atley had opportunities to scout players in Cuba and Puerto Rico, but he declined to do so, because he hated to fly.
One of Atley’s early Yankee signees was Catcher Clint “Scrap Iron” Courtney. Atley visited had Courtney on his family’s sweet potato farm in Coushatta, Louisiana and signed Courtney on the farm. Courtney was one of the 1st big league catchers to wear glasses in games. His 1 game for New York Yankees was on September 29, 1951, but then Rogers Hornsby, the St. Louis Browns Manager, had arranged a trade for him. Hornsby had managed Clint Courtney with the 1950 Beaumont Roughnecks, a Yankee AA farm club in the Texas League and the 1950-1951 Ponce Lions in Puerto Rico winter baseball league.
Betty would accompany Atley on many scouting road trips. One of her favorite signees was Jack Reed of Silver City, Mississippi. After Atley had scouted Reed at a semi-pro game, the boy’s mother treated Atley and Betty to a sumptuous meal. Jack Reed was an all-around athlete, who won the state high school title for the Gulf Coast Military Academy in the quarter mile; played in the January 1,1953, Sugar Bowl for Ole Miss at safety; and was a top-notch outfielder. “Atley used to come over and watch me [and my brother] play semi-pro ball,” said Reed. “Dad owned a lot of land a cotton plantation and I spent many hours helping him. Many years later, we would visit the Donalds at that big cattle ranch in Choudrant.”
Jack Reed is one of a few athletes to play in a Sugar Bowl and World Series game. The 1961 Yankees would face Cincinnati in the Fall Classic, just as Atley’s 1939 Yankees did against the Reds. Reed had backed up Mickey Mantle in 1961 and got more playing time in 1962-1963 due to Mantle’s injuries. Reed’s 1st minor league skipper with the 1953 AAA Kansas City Blues was Harry Craft, an ex-Mississippi College student, who had managed and developed Mickey Mantle with the 1950 Class C Joplin Miners of the Western Association. Craft knew Atley well from the 1939 World Series, when he played for the Cincinnati Reds. Harry Craft was born in Mississippi, but he grew up in Texas.
Jake Gibbs was a high school senior in Grenada, Mississippi, when Atley first scouted him in 1957. Atley, also had scouted Gibbs at Ole Miss, where he was an All-America Quarterback in 1960, the 1961 Sugar Bowl MVP and a 2-time All-America 3rd baseman, 1960-1961 with a .384 college batting average. Gibbs said, “Scouts from the Braves and Giants were looking at me, but I chose the Yankees. Atley did tremendous scouting work and was well-respected in his [scouting] territory…. [He] told me, ‘Go out there and show what you’re made of.’” All of Grenada, Mississippi, came out to cheer Jake Gibbs, when he signed with the New York Yankees in 1961. Gibbs later chatted with Atley at baseball coaching clinics in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and when Atley scouted Ole Miss players in Oxford, Mississippi, after Gibbs became the school’s Head Baseball Coach in 1972 following his 10-year MLB playing career with the Yankees.
Two more of Atley’s many signees were Ron Blomberg of Atlanta, the No.1 overall draft pick in 1967 and Ron Guidry, the pride of Lafayette, Louisiana in 1971. Blomberg’s name is etched in baseball lore as the 1st designated hitter to bat in American League history on April 6, 1973, when he had faced Luis Tiant of the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, a half-inning before Orlando Cepeda, the Red Sox DH. Betty Donald recalled Atley overnighted at an Atlanta hotel ,when he had scouted and signed Blomberg and that he took Blomberg and his parents out to eat the evening before Blomberg was drafted. Atley saw Blomberg’s 420-foot HR in a high school All-Star Game at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium (Blomberg). “Donald came through in his recommendation and the Yankees made me the top pick in the country,” said Blomberg. “The day after I graduated from high school, Atley Donald flew down to Atlanta and signed me in a hotel near the airport.” (Blomberg) Ron Blomberg, a lifelong Yankee fan just like Atley was, roomed with Catcher Thurman Munson-his best friend before a torn rotator cuff and other injuries curtailed his big-league career, which had ended in 1978.
Guidry’s 1978 MLB career year included a 25-3 mark, a franchise record 248 strikeouts and 13 straight wins, to break Atley’s team record of 12, set in 1939. Only Lefty Gomez, with 26 wins in 1934, had more wins for the Yankees since Atley 1st reported to spring training. Atley understood that if Guidry did not enroll in the spring 1971 semester at Southwestern Louisiana University, he would be eligible for the June 1st Amateur player draft. Guidry recalled, “I had been contacted by every major league organization, but 2-the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Yankees, from whom I didn’t get a letter or a postcard, nothing…. I was disappointed; knew they were looking for players like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, great stars.” (Guidry)
Atley did his homework and knew exactly what he was doing. Guidry said, “What I didn’t know at the time was that Atley Donald was the only scout, who was aware that I was eligible…knew I had dropped out of school, when everyone else still thought I was ineligible for the draft.” (Guidry) Atley saw something special in Ron Guidry despite his relatively small stature. Atley and Betty would visit the Guidry home in Lafayette, the day after the draft. Atley would leave the player contract with Ron Guidry, who told him to call back in 2 days. It was a done deal.
Dave “Boo” Ferriss, a Boston Red Sox rookie pitcher in 1945-Atley’s last Yankee season as a player-had the highest regard for Atley and enjoyed his friendship. Atley would watch Ferriss’s Delta State baseball teams in action from 1960-1974. Ferriss found Atley to be a likeable fellow and appreciated it when I brought Atley’s Mississippi connection to his attention-ancestry, birth and marriage. He would spend time with Atley at the Baton Rouge Baseball Clinics.
Atley became Dr. Bobby Brown’s patient in 1975, when he was having symptoms of coronary disease. Brown recommended that Dr. Manny Nazarian in Fort Worth, Texas, perform bypass graft surgery. It had sentimental value to Bobby Brown- he had saw Atley pitch the for Newark Bears in 1937-1938 and 1st met Atley in 1947, at the Yankees-Dodgers World Series, early in Atley’s MLB scouting career. When Atley came to New Orleans, where Bobby Brown was in medical school at Tulane University; they would visit, have dinner and occasionally attend horse races at the Fair Grounds. Bobby Brown took a deep personal interest in this biography of Atley Donald.
In retirement, Atley and Betty would live on a 500-plus acre cattle ranch in Choudrant. One visitor was Lee MacPhail-former Yankee Executive-who hoped Atley might return to the Yankees in a coaching capacity. Red Angus cattle were one of Atley’s specialties; he became an expert breeder of this variety. One day, Atley received a phone call from Terry Bradshaw, a Louisiana Tech alumnus, 4-time Super Bowl Champion quarterback with the Pittsburgh Steelers and like Atley, a member of the Louisiana Tech University Athletic Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Bradshaw had questions for Atley on breeding Red Angus, so he could make more informed decisions. Atley and Betty also owned 1,100 acres of prime hunting land in Louisiana’s Tensas and Madison Parishes.
Atley Donald had passed away at age 82, in West Monroe, Louisiana on October 19, 1992. He was interred at the Sibley Cemetery in Sibley, Louisiana. Betty, in one of our conversations, summarized Atley’s qualities: good sense of humor, never bragged, was religious and kept in touch with old friends.
The Mississippi Legislature, via Senate Concurrent Resolution Number 652, in March 2010, recognized and saluted the Sports Historical Legacy of the late Richard Atley Donald, the only major league baseball player born in Morton, Mississippi, in the centennial year of his birth.
Last revised: March 29, 2021 (ghw)
Sources
Research for this article included many phone conversations with Betty Donald, Atley Donald’s widow, plus a 2-hour visit to Betty’s home in West Monroe, Louisiana, February 15, 2010. Betty proofed article drafts and made suggestions, as did Dr. Bobby Brown, who corresponded with me via letters and by phone. There were January-February 2010 phone conversations with 2 of Atley’s cousins—Maxine Pierce, Jackson, Mississippi; and her brother, Richard Donald, Sr., Pearl, Mississippi. I conversed by phone with 2 Atley signees for the Yankees: Jack Reed of Silver City, Mississippi; and Jake Gibbs, a Grenada, Mississippi native. Dave “Boo” Ferriss, who knew Atley from his scouting work for the New York Yankees, furnished insights by phone/correspondence. There was communication with Ron Blomberg (mail) and Dan Schlossberg (e-mail). Other contacts were Ashley Mangrum, Senior Staff Assistant, Ole Miss Athletics; Malcolm Butler, Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations, Louisiana Tech University; Doug Ireland, Executive Director, Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame; O.K. Davis, Sportswriter, Ruston Leader; Alana Cooper [originally Alana Donald], Executive Director, and Scott Bruscato, Monroe – West Monroe Convention and Visitors Bureau. I e-mailed Ron Guidry, through his daughter, Jamie. My 1991 phone conversation with Mickey Owen focused on Owens’s role as Player-Manager for the 1953-1954 Caguas Criollos, Puerto Rico Winter League club, one with Hank Aaron on its roster. Caguas had won the 1954 Caribbean Series under Owen.
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Post by inger on Mar 12, 2024 12:29:01 GMT -5
This link looks suspect to me. I would urge everyone not to open it…
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Post by 1955nyyfan on Mar 12, 2024 12:50:43 GMT -5
This link looks suspect to me. I would urge everyone not to open it… Does the board get alot of spam like this? Seems to have been several lately. |
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Post by inger on Mar 12, 2024 12:54:56 GMT -5
This link looks suspect to me. I would urge everyone not to open it… Does the board get alot of spam like this? Seems to have been several lately. It’s been increasing lately…Oddly a lot of it pops up on threads that have been dormant for a long time… |
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Post by pippsheadache on Mar 12, 2024 12:58:26 GMT -5
Does the board get alot of spam like this? Seems to have been several lately. It’s been increasing lately…Oddly a lot of it pops up on threads that have been dormant for a long time… Yeah, since .ly is the country code top-level domain for Libya, it might be best to stay clear of that one. |
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