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Graceville’s Boys Of Summer Part 2
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« Graceville’s Boys of Summer »
by Jesse Tullos Spring, 1977 issue of Grassroots South magazine. Page 2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For six and a half years, from 1952 through 1958, Graceville, Florida, was known
as the smallest town in professional baseball. This is the story of the Graceville Oilers – Graceville’s Boys of Summer But The Eagle sportswriter was wrong. Graceville took a tumble that year and finished the season in fifth place with a 50-69 won-loss record. The Oilers finished 22 games behind the pennant-winning Panama City Fliers. Still the year had its brighter moments. On August 8, Davis tossed a no-hitter against Dothan. Three Oilers were named to the league all-star team. They were: Ed Bolch, Cecil Issacs, and Lopez. Charles Watford, team scorer, was elected president of the AFL Scorers Association. Wes Hardy, a pitcher on the team and a graduate of Jacksonville State Teachers College, in Alabama, was named head coach at Graceville High School. Walt Zebrowski led the team in hitting with a .307 average while Isaacs led the mound staff with an 11-9 record. Oiler players were paid between $150 and $175 per month, depending on their experience. The club provided meal money for road trips but the players paid for their own meals while in town. Many stayed at boarding houses near the ballpark, which provided meals. Others gobbled down hamburgers at the Circle Grill. Club officials leased two station wagons for the season. The players would pile into the cars and ride to out-of-town games–not the most comfortable of traveling arrangements. Such was the life of a Class D ballplayer in the 1950s. Attendance troubles brought the loop to its knees in 1955. Every city in the circuit except Dothan and Graceville reported staggering losses at the gate. Bradford wrote, « Graceville is considered the smallest town in professional baseball but according to the attendance that the Oilers have displayed in the past, no one would believe it. » With the finance-troubled 1955 season behind them, the AFL looked forward to 1956 with renewed confidence. Smith, beginning his second year as league president, predicted the best season of baseball ever seen in the area and proclaimed the AFL the best class D league in the nation. Moseley, in an article in the Advertiser, prior to the 1956 season’s opener, wrote: »This may be the smallest town in professional baseball but it’s the largest town in the nation in spirit, cooperation and all-out support for baseball. That’s the story of Graceville and its Oilers, the recognized smallest town in pro baseball. » How could the Oilers miss when they had such fellows as G. W. Morrow, who operated the world’s largest peanut factory at the time. Mayor Neal Williams , Curry, Moore, Toole, and other leading citizens in the town supporting their team. Graceville had only 1,650 people listed in its official population but during the 1955 season, the team attracted 21,584 fans to home games, next to the largest in the league. Graceville was really an interesting little baseball town. Bill Moore, Mr. Baseball of the busy little city, would take time out most anytime to talk baseball with a local fan, a visitor, or any stranger. Graceville fans boasted they never had it so good. A gimmick to raise money for the team was to sell a Peddler’s Permit which was simply a small card, selling for a dollar, which enabled the bearer to « sell, trade, purvey, tell lies, shoot-the-bull, etc., to any and all retail stores and emporia in Graceville during the 1956 season. » No merchant supposedly would give a salesman an order unless he showed or bought a permit. Nor would any bona fide Oiler fan allow any political candidate to politick him unless the candidate had a permit or bought one. This was one way the Oiler fans paid for spring training costs for their team. Waylon Goza was named player-manager for the Oilers that year. Goza, formerly with the Panama City Fliers, played with Abilene in the Texas League in 1955. He came to Graceville with one of the most powerful teams in the AFL. 1956 looked good for Oiler fans and players alike. Much of the preseason optimism came because it was announced over the winter that Charles Grant, who had managed the Donalsonville entry into the AFL in 1955, would be joining the team. Grant got his start in professional baseball in 1941 with Dothan. He had 37 homeruns to lead the league the previous season. A native of Graceville, he was expected to provide the leadership and big bat that the Oilers needed. Al Garguilo was the only starter to return off the 1955 squad but the team was loaded with talent boosted by former AFL stars. The Oilers were picked to win all the marbles in 1956 with players like Grant, Goza, Tom Barton, Erskell Beck and ex-Auburn University stars Byrd Whigham and Tom McClendon on the squad. The power-laden Oilers and feared slugger Grant lived up to their advance billing in the season opener in Dothan. Grant drove in five runs on three hits, one a towering homer, to drop their opponents by a 16-8 score. Leading the league in June, the Oilers played host to the AFL all-stars and were soundly beaten, 14-1, before 1,742 fans who watched in dismay as three Oilers were pounded for no less than 16 hits. Clinton Hardwick managed three hits off the all-star pitchers. Grant and Whigham added one each to account for all the Graceville hits that night. The Oilers ended the season in first-place, just a half game ahead of Donalsonville, to capture their first pennant since their admittance to the AFL in 1952. Goza, although experiencing his worst year at the plate, hitting only .249, was one of the most valuable players on the team. He banged out 15 homeruns and drove in 70 runs. Grant had a great year. He hit .356 to win the league batting title, blasted 25 homeruns and collected 112 runs batted in. Infielder Joe Lee was a blue chip rookie find as he hit .301 with 12 homers and 89 runs batted in. Steady Dick Kennedy hit .285 and caught almost every game. He was a fixture behind the plate all season and could rap the long ball. Whigham hit .338 and stole 34 bases to lead the league although he only played in 78 games. The team batting average was a blistering .275, tops in the league. The pitching staff turned out to be the most underrated in the circuit. Headed by 1955 veteran Garguilo, the Oiler moundsmen were the most effective in the circuit during the last month of league play. Garguilo set a new Oiler pitching record by winning 17 games and Charlie Dobberstein posted a 13-6 record with 141 strike-outs. The Oilers ended the year with a fine 69-49 record but were ousted in the post-season playoffs by the Ft. Walton Beach Jets, who in turn, were eliminated by Donalsonville. Club officials for the 1956 banner year were–Mixon Cooper, Jr., president; Bill Moore, business manager; Glen Watford, first vice-president; E. D. Patterson, Sr., second vice-president; and O.C. Roberts, secretary-treasurer. On the team board of directors were Mayor Williams, Curry, Morrow, L. H. French, Toole, Robert F. McRae, and A. W. Miller, Jr. After the season ended, the Oilers signed a working agreement with the Cincinnati Reds for the following year. Already the word was out in Graceville: bring on the 1957 season. Bob Wellman was named to manage the Graceville squad in 1957. He was a long-ball hitter who came to Graceville fresh from a record-breaking performance in 1956 with Moultrie in the Georgia-Florida League where he hit 30 homeruns and drove in 124 runs as manager-player. Wellman was famous for preserving ball park fences in every league he played in. He simply lofted the ball over them. He was also the possessor of a well-versed personality that enabled him to discuss Brahms, Beethoven or Bach, as well as the fourth B, baseball. After the Georgia-Florida league ended its season in 1956, he played winter ball in Venezuela where he led the league in homers, runs batted in, and doubles. He stood 6’4″, weighed 220 pounds and swung a baseball bat like it was a toothpick. He was beginning his 11th year in pro ball which included two short stints in the major leagues with the Philadelphia Athletics. Graceville fans welcomed Wellman’s assignment to the Oilers. The star of the previous year’s championship team, Grant, had been sent to Nashville of the Southern Association and Wellman was expected to fill the void left by Graceville’s favorite son. The Oilers opened the 1957 season in Panama City and romped over the Fliers by the score of 11-2. However, the home opener on the following night was anything but a success. From the moment Mayor Williams threw out the first ball and missed the catcher, things looked bad for the Oilers. The home folks had little to cheer about and Panama City avenged the season opener loss by the identical score of 11-2. Wellman had the Oilers in first place through most of the season although Montgomery was breathing down their necks. Then, toward the end of July, with a month still left to play and the league title still in doubt, Wellman was transferred to Savannah of the South Atlantic League. Grant was returned to the Oilers and named manager in place of the big first baseman. In Wellman’s last game as Oiler manager, he rapped a three-run homer against Pensacola. Ironically, in Grant’s debut game the following night, the Graceville native blasted a two-run homer against Montgomery. However, as the season drew to a close, Montgomery continued to gain ground on the Oilers and during the first week in August, the Rebels took over first place. The season went down to the final game with the Oilers just one game behind Montgomery and the last match of the season pitted the Rebels against Graceville in Sportsman Park. But alas, what had the makings of an exciting finish to the season never materialized as Montgomery swamped Graceville, 8-0. Grant’s charges finished the season in second place with a 66-54 record. Wellman was making an assault on the AFL homerun record of 40, set by Donalsonville’s Neb Wilson in the 1956 campaign, when he was sent to Savannah. He ended the season with 30 round-trippers even though he only played in two-thirds of his club’s games. However, he still managed to get to bat enough to be eligible for the league batting title with a sparkling .404 batting average and nailed down the triple crown with 113 runs batted in and 30 homers. Al Jakubowski finished third in the league batting race with a .343 batting average, and pitcher Bill Kakuske led league pitchers with 19 wins, 205 strikeouts and a 2.26 earned run average. The 1958 season saw the admittance of Columbus, Georgia, to the league and a new Graceville manager–Mike Fandozzi. Fandozzi joined the AFL after hitting a towering .422 while managing the Waycross team in the Georgia-Florida League in 1957. Six performers were back from the previous year’s team including pitchers Maurice Cron and Sonny Hammonds; infielders Elmer Lott, Lou Marcano, and Dick Zona; and outfielder Jim Nieman. The team opened spring training that year in Laredo, Texas. Graceville had lost its working pact with Cincinnati but landed one with the Philadelphia Phillies. That was one of the few bright spots during the 1958 campaign as the Oilers fell to sixth place in the league with a 58-65 won-loss record. Selma won the league title that year. Fandozzi, after his great year in 1957, managed to hit a respectable .296 in 1958 although he played most of the season with a broken thumb. Gary DeMartini led the Oiler hitters with a .315 average and Paul Underwood led the pitchers’ parade with a 13-10 record, 215 strikeouts, and a 2.87 earned run average. Prior to the opening game of the 1959 season, league president Smith announced that he had accepted the position of president of the South Atlantic League. Moore, former Graceville banker and business manager for the Oilers, was named to succeed Smith as AFL president. Ironically, it was under Moore that Graceville’s venture into professional baseball ended. The Graceville native had played an instrumental role in shaping the fortunes of the Oilers financially. But when the end came for the Graceville Oilers–it was under Moore’s tenure as league president. Columbus, which had joined the loop the previous year, decided to rejoin the South Atlantic League. Efforts to find an eighth team for the AFL failed as the season drew nearer. In a vote of club officials, it was decided that the league would not operate as a seven-club circuit. As a result, Graceville, the smallest town in professional baseball–the town which kept the league from folding because of its gate draw in the mid-50s–was dropped from the loop. The Graceville Oilers were dissolved as a minor league ball club. The dropping of the Oilers was a bitter pill for the fans to swallow. They had followed their team faithfully since it entered the league in 1952, cheering their ballplayers through the thick of pennant races and supporting them when they were floundering around in the second division. In the seven years they had been a team in the league, the Oilers somehow had coalesced magnificently to become an annual contender when summer rolled around. Their fans supported them as no other team in the league was supported. From all over Northwest Florida people poured into Sportsman Park to scream the summer afternoons away. Yet when the end came it was swift. The sense of lost promise was overwhelming when the announcement was made that Graceville would not field an AFL team in 1959. Oiler hopefuls made the statement: « We can field two teams if they want an even number of clubs to operate this year. » Graceville knew they could support a team. They had proved it. Today, the field stands as a faded monument to the boys who played and fought in the clay diamond as Oilers. The memories of the players remain inside old Sportsman Park. The names like: Grant, Wellman, Quimby, Garguilo, Stagno, Milner, Rivenbark, Davis, Pacanowski, Odenheimer, Berg, Berbesia, Fincher, Underwood, and others still remain in the hearts of Oiler fans who remember their boys of summer. . |