Excerpt



When the 1954 season rolled around, I was back in Kingsport. I dont guess there was ever any question about my coming back. I lived in Kingsport and, after the 1953 season, Sam Bray said see you next spring and I said OK. So much for binding and complicated contracts.

But everyone in the Mountain States League wondered how long they would have a job. The league wasnt on stable ground financially. As a matter of fact, the team in Newport, Tennessee _ the Canners _ dropped out of the league on the first day of the season. That left us with seven teams and nobody wanted that setup because it was too hard to schedule games. But league president Virgil Q. Wacks said the league would continue and it would continue with seven teams.

The snowball began to roll at this point. Morristown pulled out of the league just a few days later because Morristown president W.E. Hodge didnt like the seven-team league setup and just for the reason Ive already mentioned. Trying to run a club in that situation actually can cost a team more money because you end up with more traveling between towns.

We were down to six teams now, but a much better situation. The day after Morristown exited, the Cincinnati Reds, which operated Maryville-Alcoa, threatened to quit the league when only 68 fans turned out for a game in mid-May. So, here we go again. But Wacks met with Cincinnati officials and was able to convince the Reds to stay.

While all this was going on we were actually trying to play baseball. If one good thing came out of these clubs shutting down was that when Morristown folded, we ended up getting seven Cubans off that team. Bray signed outfielders Dagaberto Lopez and Orlando Leroux, infielders Aldo Salvent and Nap Reyes, who was also the Morristown manager, and pitchers Jorge Lopez, Lorenzo Onate and Pedro Ramos.

Ramos was a tough pitcher and when we got him I was real happy. The first game that Ramos pitched for us, he went the distance and pitched a seven-hitter in a win over Harlan.

However, when we signed the seven Cubans we had to release seven fellows on the Cherokees and one was my old friend Ned Jilton, which I hated to do. Jilton had gone 19-3 in 1953, but was struggling early in 1954. A few weeks later Ned signed with Johnson City in the Appalachian League, but would pitch in only four games.

I have to tell a story about Ned before I go on. Ned was pitching in the Southern Association and was pitching the first game of a July 4 doubleheader, there were close to 7,000 people in the stands according to Ned. Somewhere along about the fourth or fifth inning Ned wound up but got his foot caught on the rubber. As he threw the pitch he went every which way, but his foot didnt move and he ended up with a broken leg. Ned used to say that the broken leg didnt hurt half as much as the roar of laughter from the crowd.

Another fellow we got was Salvent who was leading the league in hitting at the time with a .429 average. Salvent had a potent bat and Ill have a lot to say about Salvent a little later. Salvent turned out to be the center of some ugly racism.

I felt like I had a good rapport with the players, even though I didnt communicate that well with the Latins. We got along great and I think that may have surprised a few folks in Kingsport who wasnt in favor of having Latin players on the club.

I never thought of myself as being prejudiced. Maybe I was in some ways. Then again, most folks from the south back then had some prejudiced in them, mainly from not understanding blacks and for not being around them.

I never played in a league with black players until the last four or five years of my career. In those days the blacks couldnt even go in the restaurants when the white players went in to eat. They had to stay on the bus and have food, usually sandwiches, brought to them. The Cubans couldnt understand that. I know when we made the trip to Knoxville, I made arrangements with old man Regas, who had the best restaurant in Knoxville, about serving our black players and Cubans. He had two dining rooms which he generally only opened on weekends when he had his biggest crowds. During the week, I would use the dining room that was idle and feed the blacks in real fashion. I tried to treat them as nice as I could and I believe they appreciated that.

I remember during the off season I got a package from Cuba and it had some Cuban cigars and brandy in it and a note from a couple of the players thanking me for what I did to help them. While segregation was part of the South in those days, Kingsport seemed different from other towns we played in. It seemed as if most people accepted the black players, but I know it wasnt easy for those guys.

For now, though, we were shuffling players in and out of Kingsport at a record rate. On May 21, we had three playersmyself, second baseman Jesus Gonzalez and pitcher Buck Collettewho had been on the roster at the start of the season. We had gone through close to 40 players during that time.