Alabama Florida League – Lou Puma at Bloch Park

For me, though, I feel like I’ve already batted 1.000
on the trip because I got the chance to ride in a veritable « baseball time
machine ».  I got to experience again things I first did 40 years ago. God,
is that possible?  Forty years? They say time flies when you’re having fun. 
I’ve got news for you.  Time flies whether you’re having fun or
not.  

                                                                         
One
of
the
first
things
we
did in Birmingham was to take a look

                                                                         
at
some
prospective
fields. 
Two
of them, including one named
                                                                         
Willie
Mays
Park
proved
a
little crude. The third, however, was
                                                                         
a
gem,
a
green
cathedral
called Rickwood
Field, which
                                                                         
should
certainly
qualify
as
a
national baseball shrine.  

For one thing, it’s now the oldest remaining baseball
stadium in America.  It was the former home of the legendary Birmingham
Barons, one of the most famous minor league teams of all time, as well as the
Birmingham Black Barons of the old Negro American League. Of course, Willie Mays
played there at the age of 16.  So did Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, Satchel Paige
and Reggie Jackson and hundreds of others.  Mere words really can’t describe
the feeling one gets when you walk into a stadium like this, but I’ll try. 

Thanks to the filming of the movie « Cobb » there, Rickwood
Field is being restored to the way it looked back in the teens and 20’s. 
There are vintage advertising signs on the outfield walls, strategically recreated
by the film’s producers. Signs like « Coca Cola…..Prevents Fatigue » are all
over the place. So are the big warnings: « No Betting in this Park » that were
so prominently placed on stadium walls in the post Chicago Black Sox era. 
There’s an old fashioned scoreboard, where somebody drops down numbers instead
of the millions of flashing lights on the « jumbotron » scoreboards of today. 
There’s an old style press box, where you can just envision the sportswriters
of yesteryear, press credentials stuffed into their hat bands, pounding out
game stories and munching on hot dogs and sliding down a brew or two.  An
indescribable place. 

Allan and I thought, simultaneously, what
a great place to hold an All Star game or a league championship!  Eventually,
it happened.  We did arrange an NABA Birmingham All Star game that season
that proved to be something right out of « The Natural ».  Bottom of the
ninth, home team trailing, and a guy whacks a three-run homer to turn defeat
into victory, the stuff dreams are made of.  That wouldn’t hurt Birmingham’s
chances of establishing a lasting Adult Baseball league. 

So
gungho was Allan that he and his wife attended our National President’s Conference
in Phoenix later that year, and he arranged for a team from his league,
appropriately called the Birmingham Barons, to play in our Sunshine Classic tournament
in Florida.  I could tell you a lot more about Allan and the new league
we started in Birmingham, but that’s for another day. 

This
trip was a labor of love.  I left Birmingham early the next morning, a
little angry at myself for not having had a camera with me to take pictures of
Rickwood Field.  I bought one of those throwaway cameras so I would be dead
certain to get some pictures at the next stop.  Eventually, though, I did
get pictures of Rickwood when I revisited Birmingham after the last stop on
the trip, which covered a mere 900 miles or so.  It could have been a little
shorter, but I just HAD TO GO BACK TO RICKWOOD FIELD. 

My next
stop was to be in Montgomery, but at the Birmingham meeting, one of the prospective
players who attended, had mentioned that he was from Selma, Alabama and
played high school ball there…..AND that the old ball park was still there.
Since the meeting in Montgomery was not until the next night, I decided to take
a little side trip southwest to Selma, where I was a member of the Selma Cloverleafs
of the Alabama-Florida league way back in 1957.  I still can’t believe
it was forty years ago.  I couldn’t wait to get there and get a few pictures.   

The sign read « Dallas County » and it told
me I wasn’t far away.  Within a few minutes spent reminiscing about the
times I spent there, I finally arrived.  Selma, Alabama!!  Railroad tracks!! 
Is there a town in the South, even to this day, that doesn’t have
railroad tracks?  Back in ’57, they used to separate the « white » part of
town from the « colored » section, even ten years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s
color line, and it continued on into the 60’s.  No black players were
allowed in the Alabama-Florida league and the « coloreds », as they were called,
had their own sections of bleachers, their own rest rooms, their own drinking
fountains.  They weren’t allowed to eat in the same restaurants as we were. 
What a culture shock for a kid from the North like me.  I thought
to myself: « Was this America »?

On the way to Bloch Park, I spotted
the Selma Visitors Bureau and decided to stop to see what kind of nostalgia I
would find.  A nice old gentleman greeted me and when I told him I had played
ball in Selma back in ’57, he found an old team picture of the Cloverleafs. 
Not from ’57, but ’58.  I did recognize one guy, a pitcher named Tommy
Kelleher, a wise cracking left handed pitcher from New York.  Tommy was
a 20 game winner in 1957, but his reward from the parent New York Giants turned
out to be another year in Class D in ’58. 

I spent a very
pleasant hour or so visiting, and while I
was there a gentleman named « Red »
stopped by.
His hair, by now, was more « white » than « red », so I
didn’t
recognize him at first.  He reminded me that he
used to own
a restaurant in downtown Selma called
the Selma Deli.  Since we were
only getting $1.50 a
day for meals, his Selma Deli was one of the few
places
we could afford.  And if we won, we got a
discount. 
I thought about asking him why he would
allow white boys like myself to
eat there, but wouldn’t
allow black folks.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought
I saw
a big change in this man, maybe even a little tear in the
corner
of his eye.  It was almost as if he couldn’t believe
he was
ever part of that era either.  I decided, eventually,
to leave it
alone.  After all, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther
King would eventually
help to change all of that. 

Next stop was the ball park. 
Finally, it was there.  Bloch Park.
  Actually, the field is
now called Terry Leach Field.  Terry pitched
with the Minnesota Twins,
who won a World Championship, and
he is one of Selma’s claims to fame. 
Selma was also the site of
a famous Civil War battle.  I stood
there looking at the park and
wondering–« was this really happening to
me »?. 

Last time I was here was in 1957, and it was almost the
way I had
pictured it would be.  What a strange park!  
Only 340 feet to center
field, 350 to left and 370 or so to left center. 
It was a Class D ball
park for sure.  I remember the night we
hit town after breaking
camp in Sanford, Florida.  Center field seemed
so short that I
bragged to my teammates that I could throw it over the
fence.  Eventually I tried, and came pretty close.  Then, again, in
forty years we tend to remember ourselves as bigger and stronger than we might
have actually been. 

I took a few pictures.  I had a little
chat with the stadium’s operations guy before deciding to head for my next
meeting in Montgomery by way of downtown Selma.      The
one thing that is missing at Bloch Park nowadays, is symbolic.  I remember
bleacher sections in left center and right center where you could ALMOST see
the game.  That’s where the « colored » people sat, and I remember thinking:
« Why would these folks come out to see us white boys play ball, when we won’t
even let THEM play »?  Thank God, some things have changed for the better. 

I aimed the camera and took a shot or two of the bridge where
Martin Luther King led the « freedom march » from Selma to Montgomery in the early
60’s.  As I looked up, a guy was trotting over toward me from across
the street.  « What part of Illinois are you from »?, he asked after seeing
the license plates on my rental car.  « That’s just a rental car », I replied. 
‘I’m actually from West Palm Beach, Florida and I came here because I
played ball in this town back in 1957’. 

He asked me what club
I played for, and when I told him it was the Selma Cloverleafs, you wouldn’t believe
his excited reaction.  « I was the visiting team’s bat boy », he told
me and then proceeded to rattle story after story about Selma, the teams we played,
the handful of guys who went on to the big show, what it was like in those
days and how different things are today.  This was more than I could have
imagined.  A guy who was thirteen years old back in ’57 and was a batboy
at Bloch Park, chatting about the Selma Cloverleafs after 40 years!  What
were the odds on that?  Manzel Driscoll is his name, and he even remembered
what a hotshot shortstop I was and he said he was disappointed when the ball
club wanted to send me off to the Nebraska State League to a place named Hastings. 
He thought, even at the age of 13, that I had the right stuff to become
a big league ball player.  Of course, time has proven us both to be wrong. 

I refused the Giants’ offer to go to Hastings.  I don’t
know what made me do it, but I asked my manager, Buddy Kerr (himself a good
field, no hit shortstop for the NY Giants) for my release.  He tried to
talk me out of it, but I wouldn’t listen.  He told me that as far as he was
concerned I could play for his ball club.  But, HE didn’t run the farm system. 
Carl Hubbell did.  I should add that the Giants owed me $250,
the second half of my HUGE $500 signing bonus.  The hitch was that I had
to stick with the club 30 days.  They told me I was going to Hastings on Day
29.  It couldn’t be that the Giants wanted me to go to Nebraska to save
$250, could it?  I didn’t realize it at the time, but getting released (even
though I had asked for it) was « Strike One » .         

« Strike Two » came the next year when I signed
with the Chicago White Sox and they sent me to the Duluth-Superior White Sox
of the Class C Northern League.  it seemed like it was 25 degrees every
night in places like Duluth, Winnipeg, St.Cloud, Eau Claire, Minot, Grand Forks,
Aberdeen, and Fargo-Moorhead.  I had the misfortune of having an old home
run hitter named Joe Hauser for a manager.  He told me the curve ball and
a guy named Jimmy Fox were the reasons he never made the « show ».  Joe could
certainly hit the fast ball.  Being an infielder, I threw batting practice
a lot and when Joe came up in BP to give the old timers a thrill, if I ever
threw anything with a wrinkle on it he would come out to the mound and tell me
I’d be on the next train to Kokomo if I threw anything other than fast balls. 
By the way, I’m convinced that Joe didn’t know what 6-4-3 meant and as an
infielder that was my stock in trade.  On the other hand, I didn’t hit much
of any kind of pitch, my legs used to lock up in the cold, I didn’t hit my
hat size, and they released me.  It was « strike TWO and yer out » in those
days. 

I’ve tried my whole life, I guess, to make up for not going
to Nebraska and sticking with the Giants.  In fact, when the chance came
up to get into radio at KHAS in Hastings a couple of years later, I decided
that God must have wanted me to go there.  I did, and I’ve been in radio
and television ever since.  At least I can still get into ball games for free
with my media credentials.  But, I will NEVER forget there was a time
when I had the chance to live out a dream to be a big league ball player, and maybe
I blew it.             

      
What an incredible
day it had turned out to be in Selma, and the day wasn’t quite over 
yet. 
A little over an hour, and Montgomery would be waiting with just
as many memories.  They had a team there called the Montgomery Rebels back
in 1957, and that’s where I remember playing my first professional game. 
Patterson Field is one of the best minor league parks you’ll ever see. 
It’s been home to everything from Class D to AAA.  The difference between
Bloch Park in Selma and Patterson Field in Montgomery is the difference between
a roadside Stuckey’s and the Taj Mahal.  I took a bunch of pictures there,
and again let my imagination wander back to 1957. 

As I looked
around, I thought of my first game as a pro ball player at Patterson Field. 
I was the leadoff hitter for the Selma Cloverleafs, and my knees were knocking. 
When the public address announcer introduced a high school band to
play the national anthem, they started to play « Dixie », and a bunch of « Johnny
Rebs » were wandering around the field and the stands waving Confederate flags. 
I guess, for me,  that took the edge off.  I thought to myself,
« these people are still fighting the Civil War » and it loosened me right up. 
I got a base hit that night and played a real good game at short. 
As my eyes wandered around Patterson Field, I thought to myself–« it’s been forty
years and…I’ll be damned, the ball park’s still there ». 

There’s
a lot I’ve left out of this little treatise.  You’ve been patient
to read THIS much.  However, it’s a trip I will truly never forget. 
I thought about it again recently when I saw black players embracing white players
in Birmingham Barons’ uniforms at our recent Sunshine Classic Tournament in
Florida.  Just to see those young guys all playing the same game is reason
enough to believe that some things have changed for the better.   
My trip was not just an NABA recruiting trip.  It gave me a chance to
relive some of my youth, and to reflect on the great sociological changes that
many of us have lived through, but all too seldom think about. 

With
all of the changes, though, there is one constant.  Baseball is still
a great game—the best of them all–no matter how much greedy ball players
and even greedier owners try to screw it up. 

I’ve never forgotten
that old ball park in Selma, wonderful old Rickwood Field, and
Patterson
Field.  In one whirwind week, I got to see places only tucked away in
the recesses of my mind.  I’ve gotten to see how America has changed for
the better in 40 years, even though we still have a long way to go.  Thanks
to the NABA, I’ve had the chance to bring my love for the game to many others. 
Hopefully, my love and reverence for the game will rub off on them and
last a lifetime, just as it has for me. 

When I finally got back
home to Florida, my wife greeted me with: « How was the trip, honey »? 
I never hesitated in reponding.  « It was really unbelievable….and guess
what, honey?  The ball park’s still there ».