In 1952, Carmen Cozza, who was a longtime football coach at Yale, played outfield for Fargo-Moorhead. He hit ..257 in 28 games with 2 home runs and 12 RBI and he had on OBP of .324.

-submitted by Bruce Norlander

Hank Majeski

In the book "We Played the Game", former Browns' catcher Les Moss talks about catching and former Eau Claire Bear Hank:

"I always tried to talk to batters and do anything to attract their attention. I wasn't trying to be friendly. I was a tough catcher. I wasn't adverse to calling knockdown pitches. My hand would be on my thigh and I'd shoot out my thumb. I think every catcher did it that way. There was no sign to hit a batter because we didn't try to hurt anyone. The only guy pitchers wouldn't throw at was Philadelphia's Hank Majeski because he'd freeze if the ball was at his head. Majeski had been beaned and no one wanted to do it again. There weren't batting helmets in those days."

Bob Turley

In the book "We Played the Game", he discussed his early pro years:

"I played with Belleville in the Illinois State League and went 9-3. Then in 1949, I went to Aberdeen, South Dakota, in the Northern League. We played only about 100 or 110 games and I went 25-3, struck out 200 batters and hit over .300. I set a record no one could break: I finished every game I started and every game I relived. At the end of the year I was called up to the Browns. The manager, Zack Taylor, didn't seem to have any interest in me and I didn't get into a game, but it was thrilling to sit in the dugout at Sportsman's Park and be on a major league team. The Browns were a lousy club, but I was awed by the players. As a kid, when I played everything from neighborhood pickup games to what was equivalent to of Little League, I never dreamed I'd make it to the majors."

Max Alvis

Max, a former Minot Mallard, was interviewed for the book "Yesterday's Heroes":

"A few weeks before the 1964 All-Star Game, Max suffered an attack of spinal meningitis, a serious if not career-ending illness. 'It happened so suddenly,' he recalls...'We had arrived in Boston to play the Red Sox, and it hit.'

"While it could have ended his career, Max responded well to medical care, and in fact surprised most observers by returning to the Indians' lineup in August... Not only was Max's return a surprise, but also he wound up with a respectable season, hitting eighteen home runs. The following year he played in his first of two All-Star Games, twice more did he better twenty home runs, and he led all the league's third basemen in putouts in 1965, 1966, and 1967. This, of course, was at a time when Brooks Robinson was coming off his MVP season in Baltimore.

"'Don't let the statistics fool you,' says Max. 'I really was never the same player after the illness. I was never as strong as before I got sick. But I'm happy there were not lasting effects, and I'm fine today [in 1988]. I weighed 185 as a player, and I weigh 187 today,' he says with a chuckle, pointing out that 'it's somewhat redistributed.'"

Jeoff Long

Tim McCarver told this story in "We Played the Game" which included references to former Winnipeg Goldeye Joeff:

"Joeff Long, a pitcher - and later an outfielder and first baseman - had signed for $85,000 and he and I were brought up by the Cardinals at the same time. We were called "The Gold Dust Twins." I was from Tennessee and he was from Kentucky and we were born a week apart, so we naturally hung around together. Although underage, Jeoff and I decided to go to the Grand Burlesque Theater in St. Louis and we saw our first strip show. One of the dancers was a woman named Kim Rivera. I couldn't believe this woman. She had better moves than the other dancers and was absolutely gorgeous. The next night at the park, all Jeoff and I could talk about was Kim Rivera. All the veterans were looking at us and laughing. A week later Don Blasingame called me at the George Washington Hotel and invited me and Jeoff over for dinner on a Saturday night. Blazer and Joe Cunningham, who were both single, had an apartment in Gaslight Square above a Greek restaurant called Smokey Joe's Café. Jeoff and I were thrilled to be invited to dinner by good major league ballplayers. In fact that year Cunningham batted .345, which was second in the league to Hank Aaron's .355. When we got there, I noticed that the table was set for five. A half hour later, Don goes into the bedroom and emerges with Kim Rivera! He was dating her! So Jeoff and I sat there at dinner with dumbfounded looks and our acne and crewcuts and $12 ban-lon shirts - which were top-of-the-line shirts in our wardrobes. And we dined with Kim Rivera! I never got over this. It was one of the greatest things that ever happened to me."

Don Mincher

Pedro Ramos was quoted in "We Played the Game" (with references to former Duluth Duke Don):

"When I arrived in Orlando [for the Senators' 1955 spring training] and checked into the Winter Haven Palmer House, were we used to stay, I knocked on the door of my room and Camilo Pasquel opened it. I had met Camilo in Havana before I was invited to spring training. He was surprised to see me. I didn't know anyone else on the team. We roomed together for a while. But Charlie Dressen wanted me to learn English, so he put me with Don Mincher, a powerful first baseman from the South. Don was a friendly guy. He liked Cuban music and every time we went back to the hotel he'd want me to play it."

Horace Clarke

A former Fargo-Moorhead and Yankees infielder, he discussed his career in "Yesterday's Heroes":

"Frequently the butt of criticism by frustrated sportswriters, Horace can smile softly thinking of them. 'It's true, they criticized me, some of them, but here I am [in 1988] living in the beautiful islands, and they are probably still up there pounding the beat.' Speaking in a gentle calypso accent, Clarke was a hero to young people in the Virgin Islands, and the government quickly employed him in the recreation area after he left baseball. More then a decade later, at forty-seven, he still enjoys working with youngsters.

"He told a writer not long ago, 'They used to say I couldn't make a double play, that I couldn't field. It hurt me for a long time. It made me think: Was I ever any good? Once I sent for my stats and compared them to other Yankee second basemen. I finally decided I wasn't that bad. I know that after I was gone, some of the sportswriters said I wasn't that bad.'

"His top salary was forty-two thousand dollars, a little more than half what his double-play partner Gene Michael [a former Grand Forks Chief] earned. In their major-league careers, Clarke hit .256; Michael, .229. 'He (Michael) was a good negotiator,' says Clarke with a chuckle. 'One year I asked for a loan to help me out in a real-estate opportunity I was offered. The Yankees told the newspapers that I was holding out for a million dollars. But that's okay. I suppose all is fair in negotiation. They got me for another forty thousand dollars.'"

Dave Nicholson

In "We Played the Game", Jim Landis talked about Dave (former Aberdeen Pheasant) and his 1963 season:

"I felt sorry for Dave Nicholson, who came to us with Hoyt Wilhelm and Ron Hansen for Luis Aparicio and Al Smith. He hit over 20 homers for us but set a major league record by striking out 175 times, including 7 times in one double header. He was a raw power and tried and tried to become a good hitter. He worked very hard but really struggled. He could hit one on the roof and then miss the ball for a week. It was a shame because he really wanted to do good. He wasn't a sulker, but he was mad and depressed."

More was written about Nicholson in the book "One Shining Season":

"Nicholson grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where his father had been a good semipro pitcher. Nicholson's first position was pitcher also. Physically, he matured early and by the time he was fourteen, he stood six-one and weighed 190 pounds. Even then, he recalls, he was being watched by major league scouts. 'They probably shouldn't have,' he said, 'but scouts were talking to me then. They probably thought I was a lot older than I was. Then when I was eighteen, playing in the Ban Johnson League over in Collinsville, IL, there were scouts from all teams at just about every game. There was a twenty-one year age limit in the league and most of the players were from colleges. The first year I played over there there were only two high school players, myself and a pitcher. It was a good league and we traveled, played about fifty games a season. We called it semipro, but there was no money involved. Anyway, I always pitched and only played outfield a year before I started pro ball.'

"That would have been after he signed the big bonus with Baltimore in 1958. Though many teams sought his services, some did not get involved in the bidding. One team that didn't thought the Orioles had made a bad investment and took the advice of the unnamed scout who told a wire service reporter, 'I don't like Nicholson at all. I tailed him in thirteen games and he had a blind spot around his chest. I saw pitchers I wouldn't look at strike him out fourteen or fifteen times. He's a bad outfielder and always will be. He's too slow.'

"Nicholson sharply disputes this assessment. 'The whole strikeout thing started after I got to the big leagues. I don't remember striking out a lot when I was younger. I was a power hitter and power hitters will always strike out more then your contact hitters. But it was never a big thing until after I came up here.'

"Even so, by 1959, with Aberdeen, while he was shocking monstrous home runs, he was striking out often. It was probably overlooked in light of his record, which included tying for the league home-run title with thirty-five and finishing second in runs batted in. His batting average also hovered around .290 - excellent for a power hitter. And he also took a few turns on the mound that season.

"Nicholson grins at the recollection. 'Hey, I pitched great. But they didn't really want me to pitch. Earl Weaver was the manager and he had some guys with sore arms. Earl was from St. Louis and I had known him. I kept kidding him. 'Give me the ball Earl, and I'll pitch.' He said 'You haven't pitched since high school.' I said, 'Well, that was only a couple years ago,' So one night I come to the clubhouse and the ball's in my locker. I'm the starting pitcher. And the first time I pitched in pro ball was for Earl and I won. Struck out fourteen guys. Four-five days later, won again, struck out about eleven, and then pitched in relief a few times and won a game in relief.'

"'One day in spring training, Paul Richards came up and said, 'How's your arm?' The day before we'd done a lot of throwing in the outfield and my arm was a little sore, and I said so. He said 'Oh, geez, if it was felling better, we'd let you pitch a couple innings.' And I always wished I'd said, 'It feels great.' Because this was at big league spring training. I always did pretty good pitching. But if you're a pitcher who can hit, they're gonna make a hitter out of you.' He mentions Babe Ruth, Stan Musial and Dave Winfield as examples.

"Nicholson may not remember many of the particulars of his career, his first base hit or his first home run, but 'I remember my first at bat and remember what I did. We were playing in Chicago. Richards pinch-hit me and I hit off Herb Score, who was one the biggest names in baseball. I hit an infield pop-up. I've always thought, who the heck did I hit my first hit or home-run off of? * I do know, though, that I was nineteen when I hit my first home run.'

"But of discussion of Dave Nicholson's baseball career keeps returning to 1963, because, he says 'I thought my career had turned a corner. I was hoping that in '64 I'd come back and have a heck of a year. But I just didn't get off to a good start. Just like a lot of situations for a manager, you're trying to win. We had good ball clubs those three years I was with Chicago and we finished second every year. So Lopez decides I was gonna play against left-handers and somebody else was going to play against right-handers and go with the percentages. I think the second year when I was platooned I hit thirteen, fourteen home runs and drove in somewhere in the forties.' (The record shows thirteen homers and thirty-nine RBI). Though he appeared in one ninety-seven games and had 280 times at bat, Nicholson was the third-leading home-run hitter on the Sox, with three of those blasts coming during a double header on May 6, 1964. One of them, during the first game, was the famous 573-foot shot, which Nicholson says he never saw.

"'I remember I had a real good day that day,' he said. 'It was a twi-night doubleheader and I hit it in the first game. There was always a controversy over whether or not it hit the roof. I only know I hit it a ton. The other two that day went into the upper deck. People ask me, did I see it? I didn't. As a ball player the ones you look at are the ones you don't think might make it and you're running and if it doesn't go out you're gonna end up with a double or triple. But the kind you really hit, you know it's a home run when it hits the bat, so you're not paying attention.'

"...On that day, did he think he was in the groove, set to repeat or improve on his 1963 season? 'Well, yeah, but I didn't make those decisions. I still think if I had started good, had a good spring, I'd have had a good year.' If 1964 and playing part-time proved something of a disappointment, 1965 was a year that Nicholson would probably like to forget entirely. He was out of any sort of offensive groove that season, hitting only two home runs and driving in twelve runs in just eight-five at bats. His batting average was a career low, .153 and he fanned forty times. 'Mainly I only played a little defense and didn't get many at bats. No ballplayer likes that. You don't want to sit on the bench all year. I've never been able to understand how a guy like a third-string catcher can sit on the bench all year and not play. I let the White Sox know that if they weren't going to play me they should trade me. So I went to Houston and had a super spring, hit the ball great, played pretty regular the first half-season. I was hitting about .290 and then ended up going into a platoon system. We didn't have the greatest club at Houston and I guess I ended up the year hitting somewhere around .250. I hit a few long home runs there and everywhere I played.'

[In 1968 for AAA Richmond]"His thirty-four home runs had led the league, and he batted in eight-six runs. When Kansas City purchased his contract from the Braves, Nicholson though he was on his way back. 'But I had a real lousy spring and they sent me to Omaha in the American Association. I started hitting the ball real good there, though. Had a really good first half.' For the season, Nicholson hit fifteen home runs and drove in fifty runs, playing in only 75 games. 'Most of that was probably in the first fifty games. I was really hot. They called me into the office and said they were looking for a good right-handed-hitting outfielder and said if I stayed hot they'd call me up. And you know, that's the only year I ever got hurt. I had a hernia operation about midseason. Came back after five weeks off and they were using the designated hitter in the...league, so I tried that, but didn't get back into the swing of things after five weeks off.. The hernia didn't feel like it was healing either even during the winter. I do a lot of hunting and fishing in the off-season and I was doing that, but it didn't seem like it was getting better. I just decided than I wanted to go into business for myself - I'd been planning it for years - so I decided that was the end...I would have played some more if I was single. I quit when I was thirty. During those last two years in Triple A, I had four kids, three of them in school and they didn't like it much because I was taking them out of school and taking them to spring training and then wherever I played, they'd have to transfer schools and then after the season ended, we'd come back home and pull them out of school again.'

[As a post script], "In 1966, as his major league career appeared waning, Nicholson again tried pitching. He had endured a miserable '65 with Chicago and looked like he was going nowhere with the Houston Astros...So he pitched during the 1966 Instructional League winter season, forming a battery with a young catcher, Johnny Bench. 'But the next year I was sold again to the Braves and it just went by the wayside, ' he said. 'They wanted an outfielder. But I always thought I could be a pitcher.'"

*[His first MLB home run was on June 25, 1960, off Ken Johnson.]

Ken Kaiser

In his book "Planet of the Umps", Ken Kaiser, a former major league umpire, tells the following stories about his days in the Northern League:

"The most unusual partner I ever had was a man named Hips Hogan, who I worked with in 1967. At the end of my second season, the New-York Penn League did not renew my contract, which is much nicer than admitting they fired me. I wasn't fired, I just wasn't renewed. So I was out of baseball. My career was over. I was a has-been before I ever was. But, in July I got a phone call from a wonderful man named Barney Deary, who was the supervisor of minor league umpires. An umpire had quit in the Northern League and Barney needed a replacement immediately. Baseball wanted me. Baseball needed me. I accepted the job.

"The Northern League was in northern South Dakota. The only thing I knew about South Dakota was that it had to be south of North Dakota. I figured it would be easy to get there. So I flew to Chicago and then transferred to a small plane. A real small plane. Four seats. We landed in a field. It wasn't even an airport. It was a landing strip. There was one car waiting there and a man was sitting on the hood. The plane pulled up right next to him. 'Kaiser?' he assumed. 'Hips here. I'm your new partner.'

"I got my bag and, as I started to open the car door, I saw a German shepherd that I swear to God was as big as a tank sitting on the front passenger seat. 'He's all right.' hips said. 'He won't bother you if he knows what's good for him.' That was reassuring. It was a dog. What if he didn't know? Hips got into the car and grabbed the dog by the throat. The dog started choking. 'It's okay.' Hips said, 'I got him.' 'Maybe we could just put him in the back,' I suggested. Nah, don't worry about him, he'll be just fine.' I got in the car slowly. The dog was sitting between me and Hips. 'Just give him a little time to get used to you,' Hips suggested, 'till then, it'd probably be better if you didn't do anything to scare him, know what I mean?'

"When we got to the ballpark, Hips put a muzzle on the dog and left him in the car. He told me, 'I'll work the plate tonight 'cause it's your first night.' Fine with me. We walked out to the plate for the pregame meeting with the managers. One of them handed Hips his lineup card. Then a weird thing happened. Instead of looking directly at it, Hips held it up by the side of his head. He was facing the manager but reading the card he was holding by his ear. Hey, it looked pretty strange to me, but this was South Dakota.

"When the game started the first batter got a base hit, so I moved into my proper position behind second base. I was looking straight in at home plate and, as the first pitch came in, Hips turned his head and looked directly into the dugout. Ball one! What the...? The next pitch came in, he turned and once again he looked into the dugout. Striike. Throughout the whole game he didn't look at home plate once. He was looking in both dugouts, the stands, everywhere but straight ahead. Oh geeze, I thought, this is going to be a long year. But nobody complained, nobody argued.

"After the game we went back to our rooming house. The dog was still growling at me. 'Don't worry, ' Hips kept telling me, 'he'll get used to you.' Hips took the bed closest to the bathroom, the dog settled down on the floor between us, and I was in the bed nearest the window. Maybe three o'clock in the morning I had to go to the bathroom. I very quietly got out of bed and put one foot on the floor. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. 'Hips,' I said softly, 'I gotta go to the bathroom. Grab your dog.' Hips was fast asleep. I tried again, a little louder. Still, nothing. Finally I yelled, 'Hips, I got to go to the bathroom!' He grabbed the dog by the throat and put the muzzle on him.

"I turned on the light and started to get out of bed... and on the table an eye was looking right at me. 'What the hell...' I looked at Hips and I saw an empty eye socket. Oh my - geeze... Hips was blind in one eye! And his other eye didn't focus right - that's why he had to turn his head to see straight ahead. I was working with a half-blind umpire. He was the only active umpire I ever knew who was legally qualified to park in a handicapped parking space. But, I'll tell you what, Hips was a good man and a fine umpire. He'd be working in the field and there would be a close play at third base. He'd be looking right a first base and make the call. The people in that league knew him and respected him...

"The strangest place I ever stayed in was The Aberdeen Hotel, in Aberdeen, South Dakota. I'll never forget it. That hotel had to be a least a hundred years old. It was built before the Civil War. My partner was a good guy named Doug Kosie and when we check in two men were sitting in the lobby crewing tobacco, spitting into big brass spittoons. Then there were those two sausage dogs, dachshunds, running around. It was like the old west. After we checked in the clerk told us to take the elevator to the third floor. 'I'll be right with you,' he said. I figured he must operate the elevator.

"Doug and I got into the elevator. It was small, but as long as we didn't exhale at the same time we could both fit in. I'd never seen an elevator like this one. The clerk squeezed in and started pulling on a rope. The elevator was operated by a pulley. He pulled us up to the third floor. This was some hotel, I was thinking.

"I swear, our room was no bigger than five-by-five. It had a bed and a cot. A pile of rope was coiled up in the corner. 'What the hell is that?' I asked. 'That's the fire escape,' the clerk explained. 'It there's a fire you just throw it out the window and climb down.' I noticed that there was no lock on the door. 'Oh, nobody'll bother you here,' the clerk promised. 'Just put your bags in front of the door and you'll be fine.' This was the life of a minor league umpire. Believe me, to put up with all this you really had to love baseball - either that or you had to have absolutely no marketable skills.

"Sometime after midnight Doug told me, 'I'm thirsty, I'm going down in the lobby and get a soda.' The walls were so thin I could hear every sound. I heard Doug walking down all three flights of stairs. And then I heard him start screaming. Then I heard him running back up the stairs. Real fast. Turned out the two dogs were attack dachshunds. The lobby closed at midnight and the dogs were left there to guard the place. They did a great job. They bit Kosie on his little toe.

"The next morning I decided to write a letter to my mother. In one drawer I found two sheets of hotel stationary and an envelope. The stationary had a little drawing of a sausage dog on the top and right below was written, 'Stretch Them Hotel Dollars."

[Kaiser is obviously not an expert on geography and the accuracy of his facts is questionable, but he is a good story-teller.]

Andy Pafko

Hank Sauer talked about Andy (former Eau Claire Bear) and the 1949 Cubs in "We Played the Game":

"[Phil] Caverretta was the only leader among the players. He was a veteran, so he had no problems with [manager Frankie] Frisch and paid no attention to his insults of the entire team. I don't know how Andy Pafko felt. Andy had been with the Cubs since 1943 and had become a star when he lead the team to the title in 1945. He was too quiet to be a leader, but he was extremely popular with his teammates and adored by the fans. He was a nice, handsome guy, one of the Polacks of Chicago..."

Vada Pinson

Former Reds' pitcher Jim O'Toole made these comments about Vada (former Wausau player) in "We Played the Game":

"Vada Pinson was a great, great ballplayer. He was a terrific left-handed hitter who batted .300 with power. This was his first full season [1959] and he had over 200 hits, of which about 70 or 80 were for extra bases and he scored over 130 runs. He really could get around the bases. He led the league in several categories and some people were already saying he was going to be a Hall of Famer player. His trouble was that he was too laid back. I think if he had more heart, he could have been the best player in baseball."

Jim Brosnan also discussed Vada in the same book:

"...I wasn't around when and if [manager Fred] Hutchinson told [Pete] Rose not to pal around with Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson [in 1962]. If he did so, my guess is that he was following orders from above. Fred wasn't the type to pay any attention to anything a player did off the field that didn't affect his performance. And Rose played great.

"I also wasn't around in September when Vada Pinso punched sportswriter Earl Lawson. I though Lawson had a lot of guts. He was a little guy and he knew damn well when he wrote that Vada Pinson would hit .350 if he would only bunt once in a while instead of going for homers that Vada was going to resent the hell out of it. And when Vada said. 'I ought to punch you right in the face,' little Earl said, 'Well, just try it.' And he did. Pinson floored him. If it were up to Lawson, I don't think that story would have come out. He was a tough little guy."

Glen Hobbie

Glen, a former Superior Blues and Duluth-Superior White Sox hurler, was included in the book "Yesterday's Heroes":

"Like many ex-Cubs, Hobbie's heart is still in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field, natural grass and all. 'It was a great place to play,' he says. 'The fans always seemed to be a part of the game, being as close to the field as they were. It was a good old place to play baseball.'

"In a way, it helped curb a tendency Hobbie had to take his responsibilities somewhat loosely. 'It gave a player an opportunity to have, in essence, a nine-to-five job instead of getting home at two in the morning and sleeping until ten. By the time you wake up, the kids are off in school already.'

"Hobbie, who married in 1959, did have his best years in 1959 and 1960, winning thirty-two of his lifetime sixty-two victories. 'If I could start all over again,' he adds, 'I would definitely have been more serious in my approach to the game. I was only twenty-two when I came up...awfully young at the time. There was probably room for better effort.'

"Even three decades later, Hobbie can be an inspiration to struggling minor-league players. He was signed in 1955, and his first two minor-league seasons [including his two tours of duty in the Northern League] were plagued by a nagging back injury; he felt he was on the verge of getting released. Assigned to Memphis in 1957, the back pain suddenly cleared up, and he won fifteen games, earning a promotion to the majors at the end of the season. 'It was,' he says, 'my happiest year in pro ball.' "

Hal Woodeshick

"My mother was born in England. My father was born in America but was of German descent. And in 1932 I was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We lived there until I was 10 and then moved to Pittsburgh. My father, who was a coal miner, would take my younger brother and me out to play ball. I played hardball from the time I was 12, always in pickup games. Then I played in high school as a junior and senior, after being cut from the team as a sophomore. I was a pitcher from the beginning, a left-hander. In 1950 I realized I had a special talent when I pitched a perfect game against New Brighton, which had Tito Francona. The scouts saw me and the Phillies had me work out for them at Forbes Field. They signed me to a minor league contract for $125 a month. A few days later they put me on a Greyhound and I went to Carbondale, Pennsylvania, in class D. I was there only a month before I was released.

"After being released...by Carbondale..., I went home to Wilkes-Barre and pitched semipro ball with National Electric. I did well and Cleveland signed me. In 1951 I went to spring training with Cleveland's farm teams in Daytona Beach. Then I was assigned to Batavia and from there I went to Duluth in the Northern League. That was C ball. I was supposed to get a bonus if I stayed on the team for 60 days, but they cut me after 30 days. So I went home again.

"After returning home..., I was told by my dad that I just got a call from the general manager of the team in Oil City, PA, in the Mid-Atlantic League. So my dad drove me to Oil City and they signed me that afternoon. I pitched that night and got knocked out in the first or second inning and was released that night. So my dad drove me back home.

"In the winter of 1951, I went to work at a mill and saved some money. I saw an announcement in 'The Sporting News' about a tryout being held by the New York Giants in Melbourne, FL. So my buddy and I drove to Florida, knowing that we would get reimbursed if we signed a contract. We went down to the camp and there were about 400 guys there. They put numbers on our backs and we waited our turn to play. When my turn to pitch came, I struck out all 9 guys I faced. They called me into the office and said, 'We can't sign you.' I said, 'Why not?' 'You've been released three times,' they said. 'There's something wrong with you.' I said, 'Gimmie a break.' So they did and signed me for $125 a month. I was sent to their class D team in Kingsport, TN. I won 13 games and made the All Star team. I was expecting to move up the next year, but in January I was drafted into the army.

"I had spent two years in the service and pitched for the company team at Fort Bragg. I was now 23 and big - 6'3" and 200 pounds. The Giants assigned me to their class B team in Danville in the Carolina League. I was the top pitcher in the league. Afterward I should have been moved up to Triple A because of my army time. But the Giants put me on a double A roster - San Antonio - and I got drafted by Charleston, Detroit's Triple A team.

"The Detroit organization was interested in me because I had beaten their Durham team so many times when I pitched for Danville. Frank Skaff, the Durham manager, recommended that I be drafted from the Giants' organization, so I went to Charleston, WV, the Tigers' Triple A team. It was a big jump from B to Triple A. Charlie Metro was the manager and he didn't think I was worthy of pitching for him after so big a jump. We were playing Denver in the rarified air and they were clobbering us every game. I was laughing in the shower and Metro asked angrily what I thought was so funny. I said, 'What the hell can I cry about? I didn't pitch.' So he said, 'As soon as we get back to Charleston, you're pitching against Denver.' So I pitched against Denver and lost 1-0 on a ninth-inning homer. And instead of Metro saying, 'Nice game, ' he said, 'If you want to stay at Triple A, you have to pitch like that.' A couple of weeks later, Metro was let go. Frank Skaff became the manager and I was moved into the starting rotation with Jim Bunning, Duke Maas and Gene Host, a left hander.

"Bunning became my roommate. He was a great person. He had something about him and I could tell he was going to be successful in the majors... I won 13 games and made the All Star team, so the Tigers brought me up at the end of the season... The Tigers were a very close, very humble group. Ray Boone, Steve Gromek and Al Kaline were extremely kind to me and my fiancee."

Pete Whisenant

Jim Brosnan discussed former Eau Claire Bear Whisenant when he played with him in 1959:

"I wasn't in the bullpen the entire game. I was usually in the dugout bullshi**ing with Pete Whisenant. He'd beaver shoot and tell me what he saw. Crosley Field was a tiny ballpark and player didn't need binoculars. All Pete did was turn around and the women were right there in the box seats. Pete also would talk about Costa Rica, where he would eventually live. It's not that we weren't also playing attention to the game. One second, he could be talking about a woman or Costa Rica and the next he was yelling something to the batter, pitcher, catcher or umpire. He was a good cheerleader."

Quick Jabs (involving various former Northern League players and managers)

Tommy Lasorda: "Joaquin Andujar and a curveball at the plate are complete strangers."<IMG SRC="http://www.members.cox.net/hholtsb/Andujar.jpg">

Mark Belanger: "[Jim] Palmer has always begged off under pressure." On Earl Weaver: "His goal is to sleep on the bench and never have to manage."

Cliff Keane (broadcaster): "Mark Belanger is a hotdog-and-coke hitter. Every time he steps up to the plate, the fans all go for a hotdog and a coke."

Gene Mauch: "I wish I had ten pitchers with Bo Belinsky's stuff and none with his head."

Curt Flood: "Why are you trying to make me out as a bad guy? What I did will be remembered more by more people thanLou Brock getting three thousand hits."

Bill Lee: "They [an A's team] were emotionally mediocre, like Gates Brown sleeping on a rug."

Ernie Johnson: "The two best pitchers in the National League don't speak English - Fernando Valenzuela and Steve Carlton."

Joe Garagiola: "When I covered the Yankees in the 60's, they had players like Horace Clarke, Ross Moschitto, Jake Gibbs and Dooley Womack. It was like the first team missed the bus." On Dave Goltz: "He blends in with the furniture."

Glenn Dickey (columnist): "Charlie Fox...combined arrogance and stupidity in a measure seldom seen even in baseball managers."

Whitey Herzog: "I'm not going to second-guess Dallas Green...all I'm going to say is that Dallas Green traded his best pitcher for a sack of garbage." [after the Cub's GM traded Mike Krukow for three Phillies in 1982]

Dallas Green: "The Chicago press wouldn't know a ballplayer if they fell over one." "I'm sick and tired of the [bleeping] comments I see in the [bleeping] press. You [bleepers] think we've been in this game for twenty-five years and don't have a nickel's worth of [bleeping] pride. The [bleep] we don't...I'm sick and tired of you writing about how the [bleeping] ballplayers will quit on you unless you [bleeping] guys keep hammering it in their [bleeping] heads all the time. We're not a bunch of [bleeping] quitters."

Ray Sons (sportswriter): [When Dallas Green was hired as the Cubs' GM by new owners to clean house] "He undertook a task that would have given Hercules a hernia."

Lou Piniella: [After Geoff Zahn struck him out on a change-up} "It's like being bitten by a stuffed panda."

Peter Gammons: "Cleveland left-hander Ross Grimsley beat his own record and had a pitch timed at forty-two miles per hour. His old mark was forty-four mph."

Toby Harrah: [Regarding an Indians team] "Tomorrow's a new day. If we work hard, we can get back to mediocrity."

Tim McCarver: "Those washed-up old [bleeps], they're pathetic. They like to talk about the good old days, but it's a lot of [bleep]. The players today have just a much pride, just as much desire, and twice as much talent as the players twenty years ago. When I first joined the Cardinals, spring training was a joke. The veterans were so out of shape, they couldn't touch their toes until April. I got into a big hassle with Chuck Hiller, the Kansas City coach, in spring training. He said 'Hey, Tim, whose ass are you kissing to get a two-year contract?' I said 'Who the hell are you to be getting on me? We're the same age, and you've been retired for ten years. I'm still playing and earning every penny.' That shut the guy up."

Bob Uecker: "Larry Lintz steals second standing up. He slid, but he didn't have to." What was that???

Larry Bowa: [On Greg Luzinski} "If you took those two legs and barbecued them, you'd have enough to feed a family for a month."

Joe Timble (sportswriter): [On Roger Maris] "He doesn't take surly pills, he only acts that way."

Roger Maris: "Candlestick [Park] was built on the water. It should have been built under it."

Jose Martinez: "Hotels have maids, baseball teams have coaches."

Dennis McLain: [After Charlie Finley ordered the A's organist to play when McLain was on the mound] "I expected elephants to come marching from center field. I don't know if Finley wants to own a baseball team or a three-ring circus."

George Steinbrenner: "I've learned that at times Lou Piniella is not the brightest guy in the world. I've learned to live with him. [On re-hiring Gene Michael as a manager] "It's like a child doing something bad at the dinner table. You send him to bed without dinner, but he's back down for breakfast in the morning."

Charlie Fox: [Regarding his Giants' pitching staff] "Our earned run average looks like the national debt."

Fred Talbot: "Know something about Ray Oyler? He's the only guy on the club who's physically afraid of his wife."

Earl Weaver: [On Jim Palmer] "He's got to get rid of all this emotion he wastes on blaming other people for everything that goes wrong. He has to say 'That's by fault' or 'I can overcome that.' Now he's always pitying himself and taking himself out of games and asking for help. Many people grow up late. But Palmer still hasn't grown up...but he's getting closer."

Ray Miller: "Palmer had reached the stage of his career where he has to bite the bullet. I don't know if he's ever really had to. He can't keep putting Earl on the spot with all his antics."

Dock Ellis: "I call Palmer 'Cy' or 'Cry' because if he doesn't win the Cy Young every year he cries about it."

Earl Weaver: "Just look for the biggest, fattest guy with the biggest mouth, and that'll be [umpire Ron] Luciano." "His out signals looked like a spastic trying to hitch a ride on the LA freeway...Luciano just got caught with his thump up his butt too many times."

Jim Palmer: "Did you ever notice how Earl always goes to the highest spot on the mound when he comes out.... [After Weaver got a perm hairstyle] He used to look like Mickey Rooney. Now he looks like Little Orphan Annie...."The only thing I ever asked of Earl was that he treat me the way I would have treated him, that he just be fair and polite and compassionate. Of course, that's just not Earl.... Nobody's been more surprised than me that this team has averaged ninety wins the last four years without great overall ability. So it had to be Earl's doing. The only thing is, I don't know why....Everybody asks me about Earl and I tell 'em, 'I'm not going to knock Earl. He was a great manager. He was a winner.' But that doesn't seem to satisfy them. Good Lord, what do they want me to say, that I thought he was a great person?"

Ron Luciano: "Before the...game he came quietly up to home plate with this lineup. Earl is one of the managers who take this exchange seriously. Earl took the Three Stooges seriously."

Ted Williams: [To Lou Piniella] "You're a helluva hitter for a guy that knows nothing about hitting."

Rick Reuschel: {About sportswriters] "They can write what they want. Most of it is a lot of bull, anyway. If they can't find legitimate stories, they'll make one up. They write what they want to, no matter what you tell them."

Willie Stargell: [After he was told Dave Parker had called him his idol] "That's pretty good considering that Dave's previous idol was himself."

Joe Garagiola: "Chuck Tanner is the eternal optimist. If he were captain on the Titanic, he probably would've said, 'Don't worry folks. We're just going to pick up a little ice, and we'll be on our way again.'"

Joe Torre: [On Tommy Lasorda] "Tommy will eat anything - as long as you pay for it."

Wayne Twitchell: "There are a lot of problems in Montreal connected with playing baseball. There are political problems and language problems...Lets face it, baseball is really a third-rate sport in Montreal."

Bob Uecker: "It's true, I didn't get a lot of awards as a player. But they did have a Bob Uecker Day Off for me once in Philly.... The highlight of my career? Oh, I'd was that was in 1967 in St. Louis. I walked with the bases loaded to drive in the winning run in an intrasquad game in spring training.... The average age in Sun City is deceased. At the ballgames, the fans stand up for the National Anthem, and by the six inning, they're just sitting back down. If you live in Sun City, you have to wear a sign, I'M ALIVE, so they don't throw dirt on you...."

Wes Westrum: [On Don Bosch} "They told me they were sending me a center fielder, but instead they sent me a midget who can't catch the ball."

Vin Scully: [When bearded, long-haired Pat Zachary entered a game] "He looks like he got here on a raft'

Pete Reiser

Reiser, a former Superior Blues player, had his remembrances included in the book "Baseball When the Grass was Real":

"Over the winter of '47 I was invited to talk - for the fifth time - to the Missouri School for the Blind, in St. Louis. I was beginning to wonder about it. Every year they were getting me. So I said to the director, 'Look, I don't mind coming here, but why do you keep asking me?' 'You're our favorite player,' he said. 'But I'm from Brooklyn.' 'That makes no difference,' he said. 'Our children here always have problems with walls, and they hear that you have the same problem. They figure you're one of them.'

"Actually, you know, I only ran into the wall twice that I really hurt myself: in '42 and '47. Hell, any ballplayer worth his salt has run into a wall. More than once. I'm the guy who got hurt doing it, that's all. I remember somebody asking me one time how long I think I would have played and what my averages might have been if I hadn't played as hard as I did. If I hadn't played that way, I told him, I may never have got there to begin with. It was my style to playing, I didn't know any other way to play ball.

"Remember, when I was twelve years old, I was playing ball with guys five years older. My brother Mike use to bring me around to play on his team. The other guys would say, 'what's this kid doing here?' My brother said, 'He'll show you.' So maybe it started there, having to try hard, hard and harder, to prove to them, to live up to the expectations of somebody you admired the hell out of, and to keep on proving it. And I always felt I could do better than I was doing, that there was no limit. I couldn't wait from one day to the next to get out there and prove it.

"What kind of kid was I? Ornery. Mean. Nice. A nice mean kid. I had a bad temper. My grandfather, who I never knew, was a professional soldier; he fought in the Civil War. He was a cavalry officer, and we had his sword in the house. I'd get mad once in a while and chase my sisters and anybody else who was in the way with that sword. Just to scare 'em.

"I was a nut for the Cardinals, but when I was a kid, my favorite major league ballplayer wasn't a Cardinal, he was a New York Giant - Mel Ott. I don't know why; you just get attached to a guy I guess. Then, of course, later on I got to play against him. But idol or no idol, he came into me one time at third base with his spikes kind of high, and I dumped him on his ass.

"I was always a pretty good ballplayer, but the real ballplayer in the family was my older brother, Mike. He was five years older than I was, and he was my hero. Mike could do everything, and then some. But it wasn't meant to be. He died when he was seventeen - just after he'd signed with the Yankees. That was around the winter of 1931. Mike got scarlet fever. And I caught it from him. I wasn't supposed to go into his room, but I did, and I caught it. We ended up with throat infections, and the doctor lanced our throats. Operated on both of us right in the house. The doctor was more concerned about my condition than Mike's and he told my parents to watch me, that I could have a rough night. So I was the one everybody was worried about. About two o'clock in the morning my brother asked me how I was. I told him all right. 'Well,' he said, 'I've got something in my throat. I've got to get a drink,' And then coughed, and the blood just came rushing out. I screamed for my mother, and she came running in. It was terrible. She yelled for somebody to get a priest. I ran out of the house, in my bare feet. It was snowing out, I ran for twelve blocks. I got to the door of the rectory and pounded on it. When they opened the door, I said, 'My brother is dying.' Then I collapsed. I woke up the next morning in the hospital - not a damn thing wrong with me. My throat was almost healed. Perfect health. It was a miracle. It had to be. I was the one who was supposed to have the hemorrhage, not him. That's what the doctor said. We both should have been in the hospital, but there was no money for that. He was some kind of ballplayer, my brother Mike. But I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

"When I was fifteen, I went to a Cardinal tryout camp. It was held at Public School Stadium on Kings Highway Boulevard, off of St. Louis Avenue. About 800 kids showing up for it. It was supposed to be for sixteen-year-olds and up, but I lied about my age and went out there. I wanted to see how good the competition was. It was a Cardinal camp, but scouts from other clubs were there too. Just because the Cardinals had organized the tryout didn't give them exclusive rights.

"With so many kids on hand, you didn't get much chance to show your stuff. You ran a 100-yard dash, threw from center field to home plate, and got three swings. That was it. Then they weeded the kids out, asking the ones they liked to come back the next day. I was one of the ones they liked to come back the next day. I was one of the ones cut the first day. I went home, really feeling bad. I told my father, 'Well, Dad, I guess I'm not as good as I thought I was.' 'Don't worry about it,' he said,' 'You're only fifteen years old.'

"A couple of days later this big Buick pulls up in front of the house, and out comes Charley Barrett, the Cardinals' head scout. He knocks on the door and my father answers. 'Reiser residence?' Charley asks. My father says yes. Charley introduced himself and says, 'I want to talk to you about your son.' 'Well, I want to talk to you too,' Dad says. 'Why'd you cut him?' 'We didn't want anybody else to see him,' Charley says. 'That's why we didn't ask him to come back. We know who he is.' It turned out they'd been watching me play ball since grade school...

"So Charley Barrett signed me. My Dad was the happiest guy in the world, since he always wanted me to play ball, and especially with the Cardinals. He had to sign for me, of course, because I was underage. But contract or no contract, I still couldn't play for a while because you had to be a least sixteen years old, and I wasn't quite that yet. What they did was pay me $50 a month to go around with Charley Barrett that summer. Whenever he went out to scout different places, I went along. I was officially listed as his chauffeur, and every once in a while on an open road he'd let me take the wheel. We went all over the map, wherever the Cardinals had a club - and they had tones of them in those days. We went to Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas.

"Whenever we went into town, I'd work out with the club, take infield, batting practice. Then, when the game started, I'd have to get out of uniform. When Charley was ready to leave, the manger would say to him , 'He's only fifteen.' 'So what? We'll change his name.' 'Unh-unh,' Charley's say, and off we'd go again...

"Well, you know the story. I never got to play for the Cardinals. You see what happened, in those years the Cardinals were signing every young ballplayer who showed any promise. No bonuses. Just sign 'em. Then let the good ones prove who they were. In doing that, in having so many ballplayers, they had to do a lot of manipulating of contracts, and they broke a lot of organized baseball's rules. Sooner or later that bubble had to burst. The old judge was commissioner then, Landis; he was a sharp guy, and he had a pretty good idea of what the Cardinals were doing. In the spring of 1938 Landis turned loose about 100 of us. The 'slaves' from the Cardinal 'chain gang,' the papers called us. When that happened , the Dodgers signed me to a contract for a $100 bonus.

"The Dodgers sent me to Superior, Wisconsin. I was a shortstop at the time and a strictly right-handed hitter. Well, I could always run real good, but often I was just getting nipped at first base, and it would aggravate me. I said to myself, 'Hell, if I was on the left side of the plate, those would be base hits.' So, with the manager's permission, I started hitting left-handed. It took a little time, but gradually I began making contact, and I was beating out some of those grounders. I was the happiest guy in the world, believe me. It cost me some points on my batting average, but I didn't care about that - I'd learned how to hit left-handed..."

Roger Kahn, in his book "The Era 1947-1957" tells of Pete's last years:

"[In the late 40's], Reiser, a trim five foot eleven in his youth, began to drink heavily. He put on a round belly and flapping jowls. In 1952 he played thirty-five games for Cleveland. He stole one base and batted .136. Afterwards, coaching and managing in the minor leagues, Reiser was dominated by bitterness and drink. He lost his last bush league job, managing in St. Petersburg, for drunkenness. When they told him he was through, ol' Pete called a final team meeting.

"The young players rallied round, wondering what message the great Pete Reiser could offer to help them on with life. 'I just got one thing to tell you guys,' Reiser said. He paused and ran a finger along his teeth. 'None of you sonabitches is ever gonna make the major leagues.' The greatest prospect of his time died a forgotten man when he was sixty-two years old."

Don Larsen

In the book, "The Era 1947-1957", more was told about former Aberdeen Pheasant, Don Larsen, then his fans wanted to know:

"Larsen broke in with the St. Louis Browns in 1953, the year the Browns went bankrupt. The team underwent a kind of breech rebirth as the Baltimore Orioles, and the Yankees acquired Larsen in an eighteen-player trade with Baltimore in the winter of 1954. Larsen quickly established himself as a pretty good pitcher and free spirit.

"He demolished a car at four A.M. one predawn during spring training at St. Petersburg, driving into a pole. 'The pole was speeding,' Larsen told reporters. 'I hope Stengel don't fine me.' 'Fine him?' Stengel said, 'He oughta get an award, finding something to do in this town after midnight.'

"...On October 8 [1956], with the [World] Series tied at two games each, Larsen went out to pitch against the remarkable Mr. [Sal} Maglie. Larsen felt stressed. He had failed in this World Series. He had failed in the Series of 1955. He was having trouble making ends meet. His estranged wife, Vivian, twenty-nine, had obtained a court order requiring the Yankees, Larsen, and Commissioner Ford Frick to show cause why his World Series share should not be seized by the Bronx Supreme Court.

"'While this baseball hero is enjoying the luxuries of life and the plaudits of the public,' argued lawyer Harry Lipsig, 'he is subjecting his fourteen-month-old baby girl and his wife to the pleasures of starvation existence.' The night before the game, Larsen went out for drinks with a group that included the Yankee backup outfielder Bob Cerv. 'I am not going to say much,' Cerv told me, 'I left him at four A.M. 'I got no comment at all on that night,' Larsen says. 'I called his hotel in the morning.' Cerv says, 'to make sure he got out of bed. He said 'Nooooo.' At the ballpark, he took a whirlpool bath, a cold shower, and had a rub. You know what happened next.'... By nightfall, Larsen dispatched four hundred twenty dollars to the lawyer for his wife and daughter. 'This man is still no hero,' Harry Kipsig, the lawyer, said. 'In these proceedings, he has brazenly suggested when his daughter was born she immediately was to be given out for adoption.'"

Donn Clendenon

Former baseball executive Syd Thrift talked about his early scouting days in the book "The Game According to Syd":

"The first player I signed for the Pirates was Donn Clendenon [former Grand Forks Chief], a 6-4, 200 pound first baseman. Clendenon was one of some 80 players recommended by the organization's scouts and brought together in a tryout camp. We set up four teams of 20 players on a side; Clendenon was one of the players on my team.

"Clendenon struck out a lot, but he could run like a deer. We timed him at 6.5 in the 60-yard dash. In a scouting meeting that night I recommended we sign him to a contract. Because Clendenon had been on my team, [scouting superviror Rex] Bowen allowed me to sign him. Clendenon became a successful major leaguer with the Pirates and won the Most Valuable Player award in the 1969 World Series for the New York Mets."

Bob Uecker

Thrift also scouted Bob Uecker (ex- Eau Claire Bear]:

"Of the players I scouted that summer [1953], the one I liked the best was a catcher named Bob Uecker. He didn't hit much, but he was good defensively and had a strong throwing arm. Uecker decided to sign with the Milwaukee Braves, his hometown team, and went on to fame and fortune, though not for the skills I'd spotted."

Lou Piniella

Syd Thrift talked about Piniella's days with the Royals:

"...Ewing Kauffman asked Dr. Harrison [Dr. Bill Harrison, optometrist] to evaluate Lou Piniella [ex- Aberdeen player], who began his major league career with the Royals. Dr. Harrison discovered that, although Piniella had perfect eyesight in each eye, his brain was paying attention to one eye at a time. This had caused Piniella poor depth perception, so he had trouble reacting to changes of speed. Dr. Harrison had Piniella train his eyes with a vectogram and other apparatuses to help him redevelop this skill and soon afterward his eyes learned to work together."

Jim Palmer

In the book "Coming Apart at the Seams", the authors mention a prank that Jim Palmer was involved in:

"There was always a sense that the players from those years [70s-80s] were spirits in a material world, possessed of rare senses of humor. When Steve Stone was pitching his way toward the Cy Young Award in 1980, he was the center of considerable media attention. He liked to sit in front of his locker with books that impressed the Eastern media. His teammates, Mike Flanagan and Jim Palmer, would often change his bookmarks, and once even cut the book from its binding and substituted another one. Flanagan later noted, 'Stone never realized - but then, he never knew that his bookmarks were changed, either.'"

Jim Delsing

In the book "For The Love of The Game", Jim Delsing, an Eau Claire Bear in 1946, remembered his early baseball years:

"The reason I pursued baseball was this simple: I wanted to get off the farm. Making it to the major leagues was hard, maybe too hard, but it was something I had always dreamed of. We all played baseball in all of our spare time. Every kid in the country played baseball. It was just what you did. I was sixteen years old when I first played pro ball and I didn't realize that it would make me ineligible to play for my high school during my senior year. I had made all of seventy-five dollars a month.

"Boy, I was a real prospect! In those days, if you got the most hits you got to sleep on top of the luggage in the bus. I was sixteen years old, hitting .400, living in the YMCA, eating hot dogs, drinking malts, and sleeping on top of that luggage! That first year [1942] I played at Green Bay, Wisconsin, which was the home of the Green Bay Packers. We had our dressing room in the Packers' locker room and after every game we had a couple of cases of beer. I didn't drink beer then because I was just sixteen years old. On day after I had played a bad game, I was sitting in front of my locker with a soda. I was playing shortstop at the time, and everyone knew if I didn't kick the ball I was going to throw it away. Anyway, I was sitting there sipping that Coke and the coach, Red Smith, walked by. Well, he must have drop-kicked that soda fifty feet or so! He said, 'You want to play a man's game, kid, you better drink a man's drink.'

"My dad was a farmer but he always encouraged me. He never got mad if a broke a window when I was playing ball, though he would have skinned me alive if I'd done it when I was supposed to be working. I was scouted by Eddie Cotell. I went to the White Sox tryout camp and fared very, very badly. Eddie Cotell was the backfield couch for the Green Bay Packers and he was also a scout for the Cubs. So he signed me up. The first guy that scouted me hanged himself. No kidding, he looked at me for two days and went out and hanged himself. The thing about it was, I was waiting to hear from his to see how I'd done and when I went to talk to him I found out he had committed suicide! You have to love the game to keep playing after that.

"...[after he had reached the majors] We used to sit and wait for that contract to show up every year. Then we would write a letter back asking for an extra fire hundred or whatever and mail it back. The organization would just send it all back to you. No letter or anything. Just the same contract. Take it or leave it. That was the way baseball was. So, I guess we really did play for the love of the game."

Don Lenhardt

Don remembered the following (included in "For The Love of The Game"):

"We played some form of ball all the time when I was a little kid. It seemed it was the only thing that we did. There wasn't really organized ball, but there was a playground in my hometown of Alton, Illinois, that was close by, so during the summer we could play softball and baseball. It I didn't have anyone to play with, then I would hit rocks, but I was always swinging at something. Like many others I developed my skills without knowing what was going to come from it. We were training all of the time, not knowing it was training, but that was what it was.

"When I got into high school we didn't have a baseball team but there was a league sponsored by the local paper, the 'Alton Evening Telegraph'. So we got up our own team and got into that league. We played without uniforms, but we played. I also played on Sundays in the semi-pro leagues. There were a lot of older men playing and I was only about seventeen. I had it so that I was playing almost every day of the week.

"I started working then at the glass company in Alton and at Western Cartridge, which was an ammunition plant. The glass company had a team. They had a lot of industrial softball leagues at that time, and a scout from the Browns came up to watch me. He didn't really make any decisions then because it was a softball game, but then on a Sunday he was me play baseball and liked me. They wanted me to go to some backwater somewhere to play and I said, 'No a gentleman in Alton has gotten me a partial scholarship to Illinois University.' I thought I was going to eliminate all of those low minor leagues by going to college. Well, I went to college, but I didn't eliminate any minor leagues!

"World War II came along and I missed about five summers because of the war. But, I had been contacted in the meantime by the Browns. When I got out of the service my dad and I went down to St. Louis. I worked out with them one day and they signed me and I went to spring training with one of the Browns minor league teams in Farmington, Missouri.

"They sent me to Aberdeen, South Dakota, and I didn't make the Aberdeen club, which was Class C, so they sent me down to Pittsburgh, Kansas, which was Class D. By the time I arrived there I had nothing, not a penny in my pocket. Jimmy Crandell, our manager, loaned me enough money to eat and that same night I hit a home run and they passed the hat around the stands and I made a hundred dollars. That was a lot of money! More than I was making in salary in a month. I figured the key to success in that town was hitting home runs, because then they'd pass the hat! That was 1946, and I was twenty-three years old.

"I had a good year in Pittsburgh and in 1947 they sent me back to Aberdeen. Great place, Aberdeen! We had bus rides you would not believe. After a game we'd ride all night and all day and get there just in time to play. We'd play in places like Fargo, North Dakota, and Duluth. The league was spread all over.

"...I always thought of the pros as superstars. What changed my mind was one day in Class D ball when we played our Triple A ball club and they were not the supermen that I thought they were. That helped me a lot as far as thinking that I could bet there. But it is a thrill of a lifetime.

"...My nickname, Footsie, I got from Buddy Blattner [Browns' radio announcer]. I can't lie and say that it was because I was so fast. It's because I have a very narrow foot and I had a lot of trouble getting shoes to fit. My foot isn't really exceptionally big for my size or anything but it was very narrow and I'd have shoes made and half of them wouldn't fit. Buddy had a nickname for everybody.

"...I always worked in the off-season, always. I did everything from unloading boxcars, digging ditches, and cutting carpets to selling clothes. I worked every winter from then on, even after I quit playing ball. It was a necessity. The minimum baseball salary when I started was just five thousand and it just wasn't enough to live on all year. My first year, that good year I had with the twenty-two home runs, I couldn't get a twenty-five-hundred-dollar raise! And I was scared to death that somebody was going to take my place if I didn't sign the contract. It was not then who you were or how much money you got, it was simply that you had to be better than the other guy. If you weren't released.

"...A lot of ballplayers pursued their dream because it was the only skill they felt that they had. I could have worked at Owens, an Illinois glass company the rest of my life...or I could have taken the risk to play ball. I'm glad, really glad that I took the risk.'"

Zeke Bonura

Zeke, a manager of the 1953 Fargo-Moorhead Twins, was involved in a fight with Leo Durocher (as by Leo in "Nice Guys Finish Last"):

"...when I was with the Cards, Hal Schumacher of the Giants threw two pitches in a row behind me. Well, that's considered very bad form, because the same reflexes that normally would get you out of the way will tend to drop you right into the path of the pitch. When I lifted myself up out of the dirt that second time, I was mad - though not so mad that I couldn't remember all those stimulating conversations I'd had with Edd Roush [regarding pay back after being knocked down]. I hit a little weak ground ball to the shortstop - par for me - and as I was crossing first base I kicked out with my spikes and tried to do to Zeke Bunura what Roush had done to [Charlie] Grimm [cut his leg very badly with his spikes]. Instead, I barely caught his heel. That left Zeke mobile enough to wheel around and fire the ball at me. I turned around and - whoosh - the ball was whistling past my ear. Right behind the ball came Big Zeke himself, bearing down on me like a freight train. Boy, I took a lunge at him and held on for dear life so that all those calmer heads which are supposed to prevail could get a chance to do their job.

"I had nothing against Zeke. Fine follow. I had cut him and he was perfectly entitled to take whatever measure of reprisal seemed best to him. If I had met him outside the park that night, I'd have been happy to buy him a dinner. When the bell rang, everybody took their best hold, that's the way we played in those days. We fought and we yelled and we jockeyed. Everybody had a great time, and nobody ever squawked."

Bruce Froemming

Durocher also mentioned former Northern League umpire Bruce Froemming in his book:

"There's this little fat guy, Brucie Froemming. He turned into a very good umpire, I've got to admit, except that you couldn't talk to him. He was another of them that was going to be the big cheese. He was working the last series in Los Angeles after I had gone to Houston at the end of 1972, and two days in a row he's after me. The first day, when he was umpiring at first base, he came running over to the dugout screaming at me. I hadn't opened my mouth. Everybody on the club was hollering at him but I hadn't said a word. Even the plate umpire came over to defend me.

"The next night Froemming is behind the plate. I had gone out to talk to Augie Donatelli, the first-base umpire, between innings, and the first thing you know, Brucie had come a couple of steps up the line, real mad, screaming for me to get out of there. Donatelli just waved him back in disgust, as if to say, 'What are your making a federal case out of it for? Go on back and umpire, and he'll be on his way.'

"In the Los Angeles clubhouse, the umpires' shower is right next to the visiting manager's shower, with only a thin wall - and an open vent - in between. You could hear them as plainly as if they were in the same room. Little Brucie was all over Donatelli and screaming at him 'You embarrassed me, you dago. I got that one sonofabitch with that club (meaning Harry Walker, whom I had replaced), and I'll get this sonafabitch before the summer is out too.' 'What the hell are you talking about?' Donatelli was saying. 'We weren't even taking about you. It was a personal conversation.'"

More Howie Schultz

Durocher was a party to the Dodgers' negotiations to trade Schultz, the former Grand Forks Chief:

"In Brooklyn, I sat in on several meetings with him [Branch Rickey] when he dealt players, and what an education that was. During the war years we had a big, tall first-baseman, Howie Schultz, whom Rickey had bought from the minors for $52,000. He was exactly that, a wartime player. He was awkward and ungainly, but he could hit one every now and then and the thinking had been that he had to be more athletic than he looked because he had been a basketball player in college.

"Lou Perini wanted him up in Boston, where they were in dire need of a first-baseman. And I couldn't believe my ears. For three hours, Mr. Rickey undersold this boy to Perini and his general manager, John Quinn. I want to tell you, the tears were streaming down my eyes. It made you cry to listen to this man talk. He didn't want to stick Boston with him. The boy couldn't field, couldn't hit, couldn't get out of his own way. The more he ran Schultz down, the more Perini's tongue hung out. When finally he couldn't stand it any longer, he jumped up and said, 'Branch! Put a price on the man. I want him.'

"Mr Rickey bit down on his cigar and said, 'One hundred twenty-five thousand dollars.' Perini fell right back on the sofa. Ten minutes later they were out the door of the suite. Gone. I looked at Branch and I said, almost shocked, 'Branch...how could you do that? I know you want to get rid of the fellow. You know you wanted to sell him, What are you doing, Branch?' And he just bit down harder on his cigar and spat three words out" 'They'll be back.' They were. Howie was a wonderful kid, but he couldn't get all his coordination together."

Red Hardy

In 1951, Leo Durocher wanted to see a Giant farmhand play for the first time - Willie Mays. However, the Giants did not invite him to major league spring training. They did, however, arrange an inter-squad game between the two Giants' AAA farm teams:

"[Mays] made a couple of great catches in the outfield. He threw a guy out trying to go from first to third on a base hit into left center. A shot. Threw another guy out at the plate late in the game. A shot. Hit a bullet into right center for two his first time. Struck out on a sidearmed curve. Popped up. The last time he came up, Red Hardy, a good veteran pitcher [and former Eau Claire Bear], tried to get him with the sidearmed curve again, and Mays hit it over the clubhouse in left field, about 370 feet away."

Steve Brye

In his book "Sid!", Sid Hartman, a Minneapolis newspaper writer-legend, wrote of a situation involving former St. Cloud Rox' star, Steve:

"Frank Quilici had been managing the Twins. Frank is a wonderful person, but he had no clout with the front office. Calvin [Griffith] took advantage of him - didn't give Quilici a chance to win. For instance: The Twins had an outfielder name Steve Brye. He broke his hand. The doctor put a cast on Brye's hand, but Calvin would not put him on the disabled list. Quilici said, 'What am I going to do with Brye? He has a cast covering his whole hand. I can't play him.' Calvin said, 'Use him as a pinch-runner.'"

More Roger Maris

Hartman writes about Maris coming to Minnesota to play the Twins:

"When the Yankees were in town playing the Twins in the early sixties, Roger Maris's father Rudy would come down from Fargo, North Dakota, and we would have breakfast at the downtown Radisson Hotel.

"Breaking Babe Ruth's home run record in 1961 almost ruined Roger's health. Fans booed him unmercifully, simply for having the guts to hit sixty-one home runs. Maris was being booed at Met Stadium, and he made an obscene gesture. Afer the game, I went into the visiting clubhouse and walked over to Maris's locker and all the New York writers came running. He told them to get lost, then said to me, 'Sid, quote me as saying whatever you think I should say.' I thought he should apologize to the fans, so that's what Maris did the next day in my column.

"When Maris died of cancer, I went to the funeral in Fargo. I've never seen as many important sports people gathered together as there were for the Maris funeral. Maris was a good guy who was bum-rapped by a bunch of sportswriters who wanted to rip him and then get an interview. That doesn't work with many athletes, and it didn't work with Maris."

Hugh Alexander

The former Fargo-Moorhead Twin and long-time scout, talked about scouting in the book "Dollar Sign on the Muscle":

[During the years 1946-1965]"That's what you had to do [befriending the prospect and his family long before you offered any contract],"..."and it was good, because before you signed him you got a lot better idea than you do today of what kind of boy he really was. But it took work. I read Dale Carnigie's 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' four times. If I'd have been a scouting director, I'd have made all my scouts buy that book. Hell, I'd have bought it for 'em. Because I saw a lot of scouts that went into a boy's house real quick, and they didn't want to go into the details of their lives - they just wanted to throw down twenty thousand or what ever it was and sign the ballplayer. They usually got a rude awakening. The mother didn't know anything about that man, or that ballclub, and they'd just back right off...'We'd think about it and let you know.'

"To be a scout, or to be a baseball person, you have to have good memory. I wasn't blessed with much education, but I do have a great memory. You can name any player you want to, go back as far as you like, and immediately - now I'm not bragging - immediately I can see that player on the field. I can picture him at the plate, or at shortstop, or wherever. A pitcher, I'll tell you about his delivery."

He also discussed his early years in baseball:

Hugh's first scouting "instructor" was Cy Slapnicka who was known to violate most scouting rules. "Slapnicka even signed me illegally. He found me in a summer league just after I finished eleventh grade. Cleveland only had two farm clubs back then, and didn't always have places to put players, so it was supposed to look like I belonged to a minor league club while Cleveland really directed my progress. It was the same as the Tommy Henrich deal. And when I went to my first spring training in 1936, Tommy Henrich and I had lockers right beside one another. I've always thought this was a big turning point in my career, that Tommy kept saying, 'Hugh, you're in the same category I am, and you can get your free agency too.' And I thought I could, but I didn't want it. The commissioner finally ruled that Tommy's contract had been manipulated, and that Cleveland had to give him up, and he could sell himself to the highest bidder. A few days after that, Slapnicka called me to the office, and he said 'Hugh, are you thinking about doing the same thing Tommy Henrich did?'

"I said, 'No sir, Mr. Slap' - that's what I called him - you've been good to me, and I want to stay with you. I don't want my free agency.' He said, 'Oh, you're a fine boy, and here's what I'm going to do for you,' He opened a drawer and pulled out a thousand dollars in cash, and he said, 'I'm going to give this to you.' But then, instead of handing me the money, he wrote out a little agreement: I'd get one thousand dollars if and when I got called up to the majors. The next year, 1937, the Indians called me up late in the season. I still had that piece of paper in my wallet, and finally I got up enough nerve to go up to his office one morning. I said, 'Mr Slap, I think you owe me a thousand dollars.' And he had forgotten about it - he said, 'Oh no, no.' I said, 'I've got a little piece of paper here that you signed at spring training last year.' 'Oh yeah, ' he said, 'I remember that.' And then he started given' me the poor-mouth talk - and he could do it, like Branch Rickey - about how times were tough and the Indians' attendance was low and all that stuff. He finally said, 'I'll tell you what I'll do for you, Alex. I'll give you two hundred fifty now, and if you're still in this ballpark thirty days after the season opens next year, I'll give you the other seven hundred and fifty dollars.'

"What went through my mind was: well, I'm gonna be on the club; I'm a good young ballplayer and I can play and I'll just get my seven hundred and fifty next year. So he talked me into the two hundred and fifty, and we wrote up the new agreement. And at the end of the season I went home and that December I got my hand cut off [in a oil drilling accident]. About two weeks after the accident I walked out to the mailbox about a mile or so up the road from the farm and there was an envelope from the Cleveland Indians. But when I opened it up, it wasn't a letter. There was a check in there for seven hundred and fifty dollars. So Slapnicka remembered that he had beat me out of that money the year before.

"The accident didn't bother me as much as everybody thinks. See, I had been a good athlete, a great athlete, and I'd played ball with men when I was fourteen years old and went out to professional baseball at seventeen - and I had grown up fast. I wasn't prepared for it, of course, but it didn't bother me that much. It's like a physical exam I just took from Dr. Ginsburg in the clubhouse here. He used that big scope, you know, where they go up inside you and it hurts, right? Well, all the big Phillies' executives bitched and moaned about that exam and I told 'em; 'Hey, it's mind over matter. It can't hurt you, it really can't'...Because when I was working on an oil rig on that day in December 1937 and when my left hand got caught in the big gears and I was by myself - I went to a house up the road and borrowed a pillowcase to wrap it up in and then got in a pickup truck and drove fifteen miles to an Indian doctor and he gave me two drinks of whiskey and then cut my hand off, sawed it off with a saw - I said then, that day, nothing can ever hurt me the rest of my life. I'm talkin' about physically. Nothing can ever hurt me, I don't' care what it is...

"In the spring of 1938 I went to the Indians' training camp in New Orleans, and Slapnicka started me off as a scout. I sat with him in the ballpark for two weeks, and he would point out things, what to do. And I remember he said, before I left on my own, 'You cannot find a ballplayer in a bar. And you cannot find a ball player by driving up and down the highway. The only place you can find one is in a ballpark.' And all the years since then, whenever I broke in young scouts, I've told them the same thing...

"But when I started in to scout, at twenty years old, I ran with a pretty fast crowd. There weren't very many scouts in those days and they were all older people. They were all tough guys, you know - they drank a lot and they'd fight among themselves, and I kinda fit in with that crowd...Those guys are all dead now, and most of 'em were in their sixties and seventies then. But they took a liking to me and each one taught me individually.

"...I was kind of a loner, I think you have to be a certain breed to be a baseball scout, I really do. You couldn't take just anybody and put him out to it. It's a lonesome goddamn life, to begin with. And it ruins marriages. I know for sure how many it ruined of me - I've been married five times. And I have a daughter, she's married now with children of her own, and I never really got to know her. Sometimes a scout gets to a point where his wife just says, 'Hey, here it is. I'm gonna put the ultimation on you. You gotta get out of the scoutin' business and be a father, and stay home or I'm gonna pack my bags and leave.' And that becomes a hell of a decision for a baseball scout. I always said, 'Well, I've gotta stay in baseball'...

"Or sometimes we'd argue about money, because scouts have never been paid enough. I am now, and maybe six or seven others, but for most of my years I didn't make much - and I never, never in my whole lifetime, took an off-season job. I never believed in it... I'd make the rounds of the campuses in November or so and go in the dorms and talk to prospects."

Joaquin Andujar

In his book "No More Mr. Nice Guy", Dick Williams told a story about the former Sioux Falls Packer:

"We [the San Diego Padres] were in St. Louis, and [LaMarr] Hoyt was facing the Cardinals' Joaquin Andujar. He was having a hell of a first half and would have been certain to start the 1985 All-Star game in Minneapolis, except one person had done even better - Andujar. This all mattered to me because, as the pennant-winning manager the previous year, I would choose that starter.

"Hmm, I thought before that Friday nignt game. Hoyt versus Andujar, huh? What a good time to stir up a little shi*, and maybe get the Cardinals off balance. So I made an announcement: 'Whichever starting pitcher throws better in this game will start the All-Star game.' Yeah, I know, it was a bullshi* announcement. Andujar deserved to be the starter and probably would have been chosen no matter what happened. I just wanted to get this testy player from Dominican Republic a little upset, maybe give us a little edge. Well, 'a little edge' is putting it mildly. Andujar went crazy trying to beat Hoyt, and my guy threw a shutout. We won the game 2-0, and Hoyt started in Minneapolis because Andujar wouldn't show up."

Doug Bird

Williams also referred to a situation, when he managed the A's, involving former Winnipeg Goldeye Doug Bird:

[On May 18, 1973, newly acquired A's outfielder Bill] "North came to the plate in the eighth inning. The Royals pitcher was Dong Bird, just another reliever. Or so I thought. On Bird's first pitch North swung and missed and released the bat, lofting it next to the pitcher's mound. Losing the bat is a common, natural occurrence when a batter is fooled by and off-speed pitch. What happened next is not so common. Walking on the mound, just before he reached his bat, North stopped, turned, and nailed Bird with a right to the jaw. Bird dropped, but North didn't stop - he jumped on him and pounded him. I was watching this like it wasn't really happening, like it was some scene staged as a joke. What in the hell is Bill North doing pounding a guy after the guy throws him a strike?!

"North was thrown out of the game, which only made me spend the final couple of innings wondering. Did I have an insane man on my hands? I mean, more insane than the guys I already had? Firs thing I did when I got into the clubhouse afterward was call North to my office. Before I could even ask him what the hell happened, he told me. Three years earlier Bird had plunked North in the head with a fastball in a minor league game. It was no ordinary plunk, it cracked his skull. North, needless to say, hadn't forgotten. He apologized to me but claimed this was the first time he'd seen Bird since and he had no choice."

Charley Fox

When Williams was the Expos' manager in 1979 and his GM was Charley Fox (long-time St. Cloud Rox manager), there was a locker room brawl:

"One day before a game, while I was outside watching batting practice, Fox wandered through the clubhouse until reaching his prize acquistion Chris Speier. The shortstop had been struggling, so Charlie decide to hit him with a little old-time motivation. He told him, 'Swing that damn bat, would you? Get the damn bat off your shoulders.' They were old-time words that would have been no big deal to an old-time player. But Speier took offense. Charlie turned and walked away, seemingly toward the clubhouse door. But he took a detour into my office. There he heard Speier's voice saying, 'Fuc* you, Charlie.' Speier, like most players who trash their boss, never realized that Fox was in the area. Or had such good ears. Or such a bad temper. Fox took off like a tiger. He wheeled out of the office and around the corner, stormed up to Speier, and grabbed him by his uniform shirt with some more old-time words: 'What did you say, you little coc*sucker?'

"Speier realized that the remark had been ill-timed and was quickly backing down when here came Steve Rogers [whom Williams and Fox really disliked], our player representative in baseball union matters. Rogers pushed Charlie and yelled, 'Get your hands off him!' Knowing Rogers had finally gotten himself in a jam where I couldn't help him out, Fox actually sort of smiled. Then he reared back and, to everyone's astonishment, slugged Rogers. Landed a beautiful right hook to his jaw. The pitcher staggered backward, and the clubhouse lit up. In all the commotion I couldn't tell whose side the players were on."

Grover Resinger

Dick Williams comments about Resinger who he hired as an A's coach:

"If you are going through life with a first name like Grover, you had better he tough. And so it was with Resinger, an old-time baseball man who never made the big league but had enough minor league years to appreciate what it took to get there and how you had to fight to stay. Grover lived on a farm in Iola, Missouri, where he spent the winter with his pet wolf. He was 15 years older than me, although he looked twice that, and behaved as if he use to room with a guy named Doubleday.

"You hate to lose? Not like Grover. Resinger hated to lose so much that he couldn't sleep nights. Several times during that 1975 season, after a late phone call with Norma, I'd step out of the hotel to buy the morning newspaper at 3 A.M. and see Resinger walking up and down the deserted city streets, his face shrouded in steam such as rises from manhole covers. I never knew the source of Resinger's steam, just as I never knew when he would erupt.

"How about the day in Chicago during another half-assed batting practice when Resinger scared even me by jumping out from behind the batting cage, throwing his fungo bat into the air and shouting, 'Get the fu*k off the field! You are embarrassing the game of baseball!'

"Or that day in Anaheim when Dave Collins, just a rookie in 1975, was trying to hit home runs during batting practice. Resinger yelled at him so loud and so long that Collins began crying. If that was overdoing it, you couldn't tell from Collin's career. Last I looked <in 1990>, he was still playing, and still saying that Resinger's speech was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

"Resinger was more me than me, which was a hell of an inspiration. Maybe this is why I walked into our Arizona clubhouse in the spring of 1975 and told my team, 'You will never finish last again.' This sounded so confident, so wildly optimistic, that people must have thought I'd been having some private soul lessons with Norman Vincent Peale. Sure, I'd eaten dinner with Peale once when I played with Brooklyn. He was right, I guess. But he was no Grover Resinger, the source of my inspired confidence, the guy who kept a wolf for a pet."

Ray Sadecki

Former Winnipeg Goldeye, Ray Sadecki, was identified by Hall of Famer, Billy Williams, as the toughest pitcher he ever faced:

"When Ray first came into the league with the Cardinals, I would get my hits off him when he threw hard stuff because I was an aggressive hitter; but when he started to learn to pitch it was tough, because he threw a lot of off-speed pitches and I just couldn't wait. It was a case of him knowing he could get me out."

Willie Stargell

Willie's choice for the toughest pitcher was Juan Marichal:

"Juan has a fastball, curve ball, slider and screwball - each pitch he threw at any time, in any situation, and at various speeds. On any day that could be a combination of 9 or 11 different pitches. The key to hitting is timing. When facing Juan sometimes there was no such thing as you getting your timing down."

Joe Pepitone

In Pepitone's book "Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud", he made a short statement regarding his year in the Northern League:

"In 1959, I was moved up to Class C ball, playing with Fargo-Moorhead in the Northern League, my first full season as a pro. I was disappointed in my batting average,.283, but I led the league in doubles with 35, had 12 triples and 14 home runs. I was satisfied."

Blackie Schwamb

In 1947, Blackie Schwamb was with the Aberdeen Pheasants for 2 � months. In 1948, he pitched in 12 games for the St. Louis Browns and by 1950 he was playing for the San Quentin Prison team. In the book "Wrong Side of the Wall", Eric Stone writes of his short time in the Northern League:

"[1947] Spring training began for the Browns in March. The major leaguers reported to the team in balmy and pleasant Miami, Florida, the minor leaguers to a rather more rudimentary camp in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where the March Temperatures average in the mid-50s. The Aberdeen team was going to pay Blackie $250 per month. That wasn't much but it was enough to support Nell [his wife] and the four-month-old Rich [his son] in an apartment in South Dakota. He left them in Los Angeles.

"He told Nell that he might be moving around from team to team, would certainly be on the road much of the time, and that they'd be better off staying put, where they had family and friends nearby. All of that was true enough but the 20-year-old Blackie didn't bother to add that a family was sure to cramp his style. 'Baseball was another door to the things I liked, to the bright lights.' he said. 'The girls are the same if you play in a D League or an A League. Just come out about eleven o'clock at night after you've showered and everything, and take your pick of the town belles. Just take your pick. It's easier to get a tab at a local restaurant or get a suit at the local shops - Oh I'll pay you when I can....Can we put in the paper that you bought your suit here?...Why certainly.'"

"Pine Bluff was a thriving little industrial town, forty-five miles south of Little Rock. It's a railhead and port on the Arkansas Rivers, which is navigable into Oklahoma to the northwest and 75 or so miles north of New Orleans. The city's major industries have long been paper and forestry products. In 1942 the government opened one of the country's two major chemical warfare plants at the Pine Bluff Arsenal on the outskirts of town. A lot of anthrax bombs were made there, then stockpiled when they weren't used. Nearby is the site of the first concrete highway in America. It was laid in 1913 and is 24 miles long.

"In 1947 colleges and other schools throughout the country were swelling with veterans. Housing construction was going through the roof. Pine Bluff's paper mills and sawmills were working overtime.

"Spring training was held at an old naval air training station on the edge of town. The playing fields were laid out between abandoned runways and war veterans shared the creaky old wooden barracks with the ballplayers . The Browns minor-league pitching coach was known for working his players hard. Every day he'd run them through the very soft plowed dirt in the fields nearby until some of them dropped from exhaustion.

"Blackie was the tallest of about 300 minor leaguers who showed up in Pine Bluff for spring training camp. He must have been among the least experienced. Jim Muhe recalled Ralph [Blackie] telling him that when he got to Pine Bluff he didn't even know how to put his uniform on. He'd always played ball in jeans and T-shirts and was confused by such exotica as 'sanitaries,' a specialized type of baseball sock that looks like a sort of jock strap for the foot.

"Roy Sievers, an outfielder who was also in camp that year, recalled that players were given a number when they arrived. 'Every day after breakfast you'd go over to a big board and find out where your were supposed to work out that day, or if you'd been cut [from the team] overnight or if maybe you were going to play in a game that night.' He remembers it as a lot of hard, tiring work and good camaraderie among the players. Blackie was known for being something of a cutup. 'One time he looked up the chimney of a fireplace,' recalled Sievers, 'turned around grinning and told us that he'd see us all on the 25^th.'

"Despite the long days and communal living, Blackie kept to a least some of his usual habits. Pine Bluff is the county seat of Jefferson County. While to this day about half of Arkansas' counties are dry, Jefferson isn't one of them. Though hardly regarded as a honky-tonk town, with its industrial base, the arsenal, and a lot of rail-and-ship workers passing through, the city has always had plenty of customers for its bars, liquor stores, a few nightclubs and brothels. Sneaking out of camp or disappearing on nights he wasn't pitching, Blackie got to know his way around town.

"By day though he pitched well enough, and began to develop a good curveball, so that when the team packed up for the move north to South Dakota for the regular season he was one of their starting pitchers.

"It was a little more then 1100 miles by rickety bus on small roads and rough highways through a largely featureless landscape to Aberdeen, an attractive little town in the Glacial Lakes Region of northeast South Dakota. It's a popular area for lake sport fishing, very near the Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge that several times a year is overrun with birds migrating south or north for the season.

"Throughout the year the town is smack in the middle of the major habitat of Chinese ringneck pheasant. The bird makes mighty fine eating. Hunters come from far and wide to flush it from cover and blast it out of the sky with their preferred twelve-gauge shotguns loaded with small four-to-six-size shot. During hunting season the days are regularly punctuated with small booms from the fields.

"The Ward Hotel, just a block from the rail depot, is a fine old late 1800's vintage brick edifice. It was once an example of Midwest elegance. It advertises that it will happily accommodate hunting dogs. The ballplayers couldn't afford to stay there, but in the late 1940's it was one of the few places in town that a drinking man could quench his thirst.

"Blackie's first month with the team was spent largely on the road. The Aberdeen Pheasants played a circuit that took them around the northern Midwest agricultural depots. They traveled on their beat-up old bus over crummy highways to Fargo, Duluth, Eau Claire, St. Cloud and other towns throughout the Dakotas., Wisconsin and Minnesota. Early in the season, they'd play in fierce cold, the balls and bats making their hands ring with pain. By summer they played on parched fields that were more dirt then grass, or on others where they were worn down by the heat and humidity. During night games they'd try to keep moving because when they stood still swarms of mosquitoes were intent on draining them of blood.

"Still, one of Ralph's teammates, Don Lenhardt, recalled playing for Aberdeen as a pretty good time. 'It was a great little town. The people treated us well, they were very good and we drew a lot of fans. We ate pheasant every way imaginable; they'd even pickle it in a jar. A lot of the ballplayers rented rooms in somebody's house. The only bad part was the bus trips. They were brutal. We'd ride all night after a game, eventually getting to the next town just in time for the next game.'

"Don Heffner drove the bus. He was also the team's manager. He'd fired the bus driver and split the savings with the underpaid ballplayers. The 36-year-old had played 11 years in the big leagues as an infielder, mostly with the Yankees and the Browns. He'd been on two Yankees World Champion teams. He was plainspoken and well liked. Sometimes, when players were getting rowdy on the bus, he'd yank the bus over to the side of the road and walk down the center aisle until the guys quieted down. He'd pull off his Yankee ring and watch, have the players pass them around and say, 'You can have these or you can collect tin ones in the C leagues all your life. Take your choice.'

"Heffner wasn't a teetotaler but he didn't much care for Blackie's alcoholic excesses. The young pitcher had a nasty habit of disappearing for all the days in between the games in which he appeared, then showing up scruffy and hung over to play. Heffner told him that he was good enough to make it to the majors, but that he was a bad influence on the team. If Blackie didn't straighten up he'd get rid of him, whether he was winning or not. For the start though, he was winning.

"The first minor-league game Blackie Schwamb pitched was in early May 1947. He beat Fargo-Moorhead six to one and gave up only three hits. He continued to pitch well for a month. By June first he'd won five, lost none, struck out more than his fair share of batters, and had a great ERA of 1.62. In one game against St. Cloud he struck out fourteen batters. Maybe he was a bad influence but he was happy, convivial, and had a well-appreciated quirky sense of humor. Lenhardt remembered him as 'a very eccentric and outgoing person who got along with everybody.' Then he stepped in a hole.

"The ball fields in the C leagues were never much good and they were worse in the Northern League than in most. They were unkempt, scraggly looking, and mined with potholes of all shapes and sizes. Blackie was on the field working out, took a wrong step, and tore up the ligaments in his right ankle. He was put on the disabled list and sat out games for the next month and a half.

"In early July, while he was taking up room on the bench, baseball held its annual All-Star Game. Bob Feller, the highest-paid pitcher in baseball, with an annual salary of $75,000, started the game for the American League. Big, mean Ewell Blackwell, a six-foot-five fireballing pitcher, who was paid about $10,000 a year, started the game for the National League.

"Scouts had been favorably comparing Blackie with Blackwell since they first took notice of him. Pitching coaches had been trying to get Ralph to copy the major leaguer's scary sidearm, almost underhand, pitching delivery. But Ralph naturally threw the ball straight overhand, or occasionally at a three-quarters angle. Throwing sidearm felt awkward to him; sometimes it even hurt. It was one of the reasons he never got along well with his coaches and managers.

"But there was more to it than that. Sometime during his stay in Aberdeen he met Pat _______ and fell for her. They started an affair and weren't too secretive about it. But for two things, that would have been perfectly acceptable, even expected in baseball circles where ballplayers, even married ones, often had girls in every town. It was a very small town and Pat was a high school senior, just sixteen or seventeen years old. She also had two older, protective brothers.

"Between his uncontrollable drinking and involvement in a simmering scandal that was threatening to boil over and possibly even turn violent, Heffner finally asked the Browns to take his best pitcher off of his hands. On July 16, the team released Blackie from Aberdeen and assigned him to the class C Globe-Miami Browns of the Arizona-Texas League.

" 'The league was the burial ground for all the lushes who couldn't make it,' Blackie said. 'I got on the train and went home.' "

Saint Cloud Rox

From the Feb. 19, 1996, "St. Cloud Times" [By Kevin Allenspach -Times Sports Writer]:

"With all the connections he's made in 75 years as a baseball fan, including time working in the front office of the St. Cloud Rox and through his travels as secretary of the Minnesota Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame and Minnesota Baseball Museum, you'd think Glenn Carlson's house must look like a little corner of Cooperstown.

"'I really don't have that much stuff,"" Carlson said, ""I just have a few mementoes from when I was business manager for the Rox.'

"Now, 50 years after the Rox first cam to St. Cloud and 25 years after they left, Carlson is eager to show off his collection of old paychecks. There is one to Jim Rantz, who managed the team in 1965 for a bi-weekly salary of $318, Rantz is now the scouting director for the Minnesota Twins.

"Other drafts include ones to George Mitterwald ($195), Mike Sadek ($137), Bob Gebhard ($2226), Jim Nettles ($198), Steve Brye ($193), Dave Goltz ($190), Charley Walters ($167), and one to a 10 year-old batboy who would go on to play football for the San Francisco 49ers, Keith Fahnhorst ($10).

"The checks, or at least the values printed on them, is a vivid reminder of how professional baseball has changed.

"'The thing of it was, we never thought we were low-paid,' said Walters, now a sports columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who pitched for the Rox in 1967. 'Whatever you were getting paid-$500 a month- it seemed fair. St. Cloud was a neat city and we were all pretty much single, young guys. What did we need a lot of money for? As long as we had a little to go out for a few beers, we were happy.'

"Today's low-level minor leaguers don't make that much more than their earlier Rox counterparts, but those players from days gone by are quick to assert that the game and attitudes around it have indeed changed.

"'Some of the same things are still going,' said Rantz, now a Minnesota Twins executive, whose players got roughly $6 a day in meal money with the Rox. 'We still have people at the lower levels that take kids in to live with them, but on the whole baseball is a faster paced game now. The facilities have to be better and there's a lot more money spent on the teams. Heck, I was the manager, trainer, pitching coach, hitting coach...you name it...all rolled into one.' The Northern League, which was basically a short-season summer league, provided a close alternative for the Twins to farm out their college-aged players. Rantz said that major league teams would still like to be close to their home market, but with only a few operations for each club, it's difficult to place that talent close to home.

"And, of course until the Washington Senators became the Twins in 1961, the Rox weren't exactly close to the Giants' home base.

"'The caliber of ball was much better then,' said Mike Augustin, a sportswriter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press who in the 1960s covered the Rox for the St. Cloud Times as a beat writer and later as sports editor. 'The teams were affiliated and you were always getting talent coming through, guys like Lou Brock. All of the players were full of pep and vinegar, not like today's (independent) Northern Leaguers who are basically just hanging on.'

"The Rox may have disappeared a quarter-century ago, but their legend lives on in the tales of those associated with the team."

David Trombley

When you see or hear a poor presentation by a professional, you sometimes say "I could do better". That was my thought when I attended Aberdeen Pheasants' baseball games in 1967 and continually heard poor P.A. announcing.

In the late spring of 1968, while I was between my junior and senior years at Northern State University, I called a member of the team's board of directors and asked for consideration as the replacement for the person who had done the poor P.A. work. His answer was "the person doing it last year wishes to continue and we have no reason not to let him". That was a surprise. In any case, before the season began, I was asked to be his back-up.

Twice during the early part of the season I was trained by the Main Voice. He explained the use of the 45 RPM record player, the microphone, the proper wording of the starting lineups, the "now batting..." announcements, the between-half- innings line score and substitutions. It all seemed rather straight forward and nothing a baseball fan would not understand.

Toward the middle of the season, I received a call asking that I do a game solo as the Main Voice was going to be celebrating his birthday. I agreed and, about an hour and a half before game time, I arrived at Municipal Ball Park and climbed the latter to the press box built on the roof of the grandstand behind home plate.. I selected a few 45 RPM records for the pre-game musical interlude from slim choices -- marches, Al Hirt hits or the national anthem. The record player was a single play model so every three minutes another record had to be queued.

Obviously, the most important item on the pre-game agenda was to get the starting lineups. At twenty minutes before game time the newspaper baseball beat writer, who had that information, had not arrived. But, other press box occupants began to appear. There was the scoreboard operator (for balls and strikes) and the Radio Voice who was on the phone with his station, as soon as he arrived, attempting to explain to an inexperienced person how to establish an audio connection to the ball park. Mr. Inexperienced was not getting the idea. The ball/strike guy said that Radio Voice would have the lineups, but it did not seem a good time to talk to him as he was getting more and more frustrated attempting to get the game on the air. Finally, by looking over his shoulder, I got the lineups from his score card.

They included some unfamiliar, unpronounceable (to me) Spanish surnames. I was hoping that Beat Writer could help me with those, but time was running short. Was I immediately going to make a fool of myself by pronouncing the names like a 20-year-old white guy (which I was)?

About ten minutes before game time, Beat Writer arrived and we attempted to come up with some idea of the proper Spanish pronunciations. My two years of high school Spanish may have been somewhat helpful - or not. When the time came for the starting lineups, I begin to read them -- slowly. Too slowly! About half way through the home team's, Beat Writer tapped me on the shoulder and told me to turn off the mike. Now what? He said I needed to start the national anthem record as soon as the Pheasants ran on to the field and the starting pitcher reached the mound. Why? Because Mr. Pitcher would get upset if there was a delay between the end of his warmups and the game's first pitch. So, I went back on the mike and told the audience that the anthem was about to play (they didn't need to be asked to stand in 1968). The record played without a skip and as soon as it finished I was back on the "air" with a rather hurried continuation of the home team's lineup. I finished. The pitcher ended his warmups and the first batter came to the plate. I made it over the first hump!

Everything seemed to go well through the first few innings. No one claimed that I could not be understood. Even reading the scorecard "lucky numbers" went well (typical prize was a 25 cent bag of pop corn). Before announcing the half-inning summation of runs, hits, errors and men left on base, I'd sometimes verify the totals with the ball/strike guy and Beat Writer who were also keeping score. In that era, this was important not only to the fans but to the kids waiting at the manual scoreboard, at the right field fence, so they could update the line score.

After one half-inning, my scorecard clearly indicated "one hit" and it was announced as such. The ball/strike guy said "Oh no, there were two hits!". Since I was the rookie in the booth and Beat Writer said nothing, I assumed that a correction should be made and announced "CORRECTION, THERE WERE TWO HITS". Within ten seconds, the original objector recanted saying "No, you were right, there was only one hit". With another shoulder tap, Beat Writer agreed. I could do only one thing now - before the next batter came up, I would have to make a correction to my correction. The announcement was something like: "CORRECTION, THERE WAS ONE HIT". Some gestures from the scoreboard kids were directed my way and there was an audible scratching sound coming from the grandstand made by the eraser ends of pencils. A collective shaking of heads was also evident.

The late innings were coming up. Can I get through this thing? After a play in the eighth inning, I was studying my scorecard when there was that familiar tap on my shoulder. Beat Writer wanted me to look at the plate umpire who was frantically waiving in our general direction while pointing at a player walking to the plate. I quick check of the scorecard provided the name of the pinch hitter albeit one of the longest Spanish names on record. The proper announcement was made (maybe the batter recognized his name) and Beat Writer chastised me for not paying attention.

Mercifully, the game ended and the only activities left were to put the mike and records away and call UPI with a summary of the game. Beat Writer grabbed the phone first and called AP with the game summary as he had done hundreds of times. He left. The ball/strike guy also left and I was in the booth with only Radio Voice who was on the phone again with his station yelling at someone regarding Mr. Inexperienced's handling of the pre-game hook-up process. He was not quiet about his complaints and showed no sign of ending his conversation quickly. Whatever... I had to call UPI with his irrate voice in the background. I was put on hold after connecting with them. Finally, a UPI guy came on the line and listened while I gave him the final line score and the winning/losing pitchers' names. Then he threw me for a loop, by asking "What was the storyline of this game?" What? That never happened when I was in training! What now? Remembering Beat Writer's comments to the AP, I did my best to repeat every word and UPI Guy finally said "OK". That night the AP and UPI had much the same game stories.

Radio Voice finally left and I put away the mike and records, but then heard foot steps coming up the steps to the press box. They belonged to two players from the visiting team who wanted me to change the official scoring of a play from an error to a hit. One of the players was very upset. Hey, the official scorer (Beat Writer) had left the building! I gave them that information and said I had nothing to do with scoring decisions. I often wondered if that player turned out to be "somebody".

Just as they left and I started to gather my things, a big voice from the field shouted "I want to go home. Turn off the lights up there and let's go!". Now the groundskeeper was mad. He had already shut off the field and grandstand lights and the press box was the only area left with illumination. Wishing to escape ASAP, I put my things together and turned off the lights which, of course, made everything very dark. Feeling my way slowly down the latter and grandstand steps, I hoped to find my way safely out of the park and not be locked in. My experiences that evening were ones that I intentionally never repeated..

Sources:

"We Played the Game" - edited by Danny Peary; pub: Hyperion
"Planet of the Umps" by Ken Kaiser and David Fisher; pub: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press

"One Shining Season" by Michael Fedo; pub: Pharos Books
"The Home Run Encyclopedia" (SABR) edited by Bob McConnell and David Vincent; pub: McMillan
"Yesterday's Heroes" by Marty Appel; pub:Morrow
"Baseball's Greatest Insults" compiled by Kevin Nelson; pub:Fireside
"Baseball When the Grass Was Real" by Donald Honig, pub: Simon and Schuster
"The Era 1947-1957" by Roger Kahn; pub:Ticknor & Fields
"The Game According to Syd" by Syd Thrift and Barry Shapiro; pub: Fireside Books
"Coming Apart at the Seams" by Jack Sands and Peter Gammons; pub: MacMillan

"For The Love of the Game" by Cynthia J. Wilber; pub:William Morrow and Co.
"Nice Guys Finish Last" by Leo Durocher with Ed Linn; pub: Simon and Schuster
"Sid!" by Sid Hartman with Patrick Reusse; pub: Voyager Press

"Dollar Sign on the Muscle" by Kevin Kerrane; pub: Fireside

"No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Dick William and Bill Plaschke; pub: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

"The Toughest I've Ever Faced" by William J. Guilfoile; printed in July 1995 "Baseball Digest"

"Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud" by Joe Pepitone; pub: Playboy Press.

"Wrong Side of the Wall" by Eric Stone [ www.ericstone.com ] ; pub: The Lyons Press

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