Alabama Florida League – Books & Videos

 
Books & Videos
Long Gone:  A Novel by Paul Hemphill set in the AFL

Paul Hemphill is an author from  Birmingham, Alabama, who has written 
books focusing on both the the south and on baseball (The Nashville Sounds,
The Heart of the Game: The Education of a Minor League Ballplayer, among others).
Hemphill’s first novel, Long Gone, is raunchy, and kind of low brow, befitting
the characters in the book, but it is also a fun look at life in the deep
south in the fifties and life in the Alabama-Florida League. Being no book reviewer,
I’ll let the jacket’s liner notes tell you more:
    This raunchy Novel with a heart of gold is about love and loss of innocence at the
bottom of the most minor league in baseball – The Alabama-Florida League, Class
D, in the summer of 1956.  Specifically, it is the story of Cecil B. « Stud »
Cantrel, a 39 year old maverick sour with promise gone bad, once a rising
star with the Yankees and now, with shrapnel in one knee and a failing marriage
behind him, the hard-drinking, womanizing player-manager for the Graceville Oilers: 
a man, and a team, in last place, literally and figuratively.    
But then Stud’s path crosses that of Jamie Weeks, a teenage
second baseman who hitches from Birmingham into Graceville with nothing but his
bat, his glove, and his spikes, his hopes and dreams, and a prepared speech. 
More important, Stud meets a determined young woman with the improbable name
of Dixie Lee Box who refuses to be relegated to the status of Saturday-night
recreation and who surprises Stud – and the rest of us – by making him fall in
love with her. The disgraceful Oilers – partly through the efforts of Joe Louis
(Jose) Brown, a black catcher masquerading as a Venezuelan to avoid retaliation
by the Ku Klux Klan – begin, amazingly, to climb out of the cellar. The owner
of the Oilers, the Reverend Q. Talmadge Ramey – a homosexual sometime used-car
dealer, fertilizer czar, moonshine entrepreneur, and evangelist DJ for station
WGOD in Graceville – even stops threatening to cancel Stud’s contract. Suddenly
it appears that Stud has a chance at a kind of innocence and promise again,
until men and events conspire to show him that even this last chance is long gone.

Long Gone is long out of print, but you can get a hardbound copy for
a fair price ($10-$30) at  WWW.ABEBOOK.COM  Advanced Book Exchange search facility.  At the site, enter the search
for either Long Gone, or Paul Hemphill.  A listing of bookstores with copies
will be returned along with the price the store is going to charge. 
Complete the info and an email is sent to the store.  They will contact you
back with purchasing information.  I’ve bought many hard to find books here
and highly recommend the site!
The Last Rebel Yell by Ken Brooks
The Last Rebel Yell is a wonderful book about the Alabama-Florida League (it excludes
the Alabama State League years) that is a must for anyone interested in Class
D baseball.  This book is filled with anecdotes, photos, player profiles,
interviews, and stats.  Brooks made the book easy and fun to read, and
also a great book just to browse through. The focus here is on Panama City, but
there’s lots of coverage of the rest of the league too.  This book is very
hard to find, but some libraries have it in their reference sections. The Last
Rebel Yell is long out of print, but you can somtimes get a  copy for a
fair price ($10-$30) at the  ABEBOOK  Advanced Book Exchange search
facility mentioned above.  At the site, enter the search for either Last Rebel
Yell or Ken Brooks, but be aware that there is a civil war book by the same
title.  A listing of bookstores with copies will be returned along with
the price the store is going to charge.  Complete the info and an email is
sent to the store.  They will contact you back with purchasing information. 
I’ve bought many hard to find books here and highly recommend the site!
The Story Of Minor League Baseball, by Robert Finch, others:

This 700+ page book, covering the history of minor league baseball from 1901 through
1952 is a rare gem in that it is the first record book to cover the minor leagues
as a whole.   The are anecdotes, lists, and overviews of the 43
minor leagues that existed in 1952, including the AFL.  This book can also
be found at ABEBOOKS, but be prepared to spend $100 or more for a copy. 
My copy cost over $100 and was well worn! There are some interesting photos of
minor league executives, and a well-written history covers the beginnings of
the minors as well as the Bramham and Trautman tenures.
50 Years of Professional Baseball In Alabama
since 1900 by Zipp Newman and
Frank McGowen
More in the style of a souvenir program than a book, this soft cover book concentrated
on the Birmingham Barons, but also devoted ample coverage of the Alabama
State League and the Georgia – Alabama League’s Alabama entries.  Lots of
great photos, most of which are on this web page, and some interesting but fairly
light histories make this book/magazine a great find, plus there’s an interesting
profile of Rickwood Field. This book is very hard to find and will cost anywhere
from $40 to $100.  I’ve seen it on EBAY once, and the sale price was
over $50.. 
Long Gone:  VHS Video of the Lorimar/HBO movie

First of all, this is a fun movie, and it’s great to see Paul Hemphill’s book made
into a well-done baseball flick. I’d rank it in the top 7 or 8 all-time baseball
movies.  The movie stays pretty close to the book’s storyline, which is
a plus, and it’s a movie that has humor, players that look like they can actually
play baseball, and a decent feel for the AFL life…….Now, let me bitch
a while…..

I really hate it when a movie can’t make the effort to
add a little bit of realism.  Some of the fields used are far too nice, with
grass so smooth it looks like Astroturf.  Also, the modern vinyl padding
on some of the outfield walls and the fairly modern scoreboards just don’t fit. 
They went to the trouble of putting appropriate 1950’s cars in the scenes, 
why not use a field that would be somewhat representative of the average
AFL field? Viewers would have a cow if an SUV went cruising through the 1950’s
street scenes, so why is it okay to screw up the stadiums?  Not only
that, but what’s the use of changing the name of the Graceville Oilers to the mythical
Tampico Stogies, and moving Crestview Florida to Crestview Alabama? 
The Andalusia team is named the Rebels. Why not the Arrows?  Only the Dothan
Cardinals are named acurately, and that’s because it’s important to the storyline. 
I’m sure the Hollywood idiots have some « focus group » data that
says these details don’t matter, and to most folks, they probably don’t. So why
mess with it at all?? Why not try to be totally true to the book??  I guess
that’s why I’m not making movies…….

There, I feel better now.  Long Gone is well worth the $7.00 to $8.00 price
tag (used on EBAY, AMAZON, or HALF.COM) or you can get a new copy at AMAZON for
about $13.00 or so.  No DVD version has been released as of August, 2002.

I am a native of Langdale, Ala. in the upper Chattahoochee Valley, so I remember
my parents talking about attending Valley Rebels games in the old Georgia-Alabama
League. I have spent the last 10 years in Eufaula, where I have had the opportunity
to talk to a few former Millers, including the late Blackie Connell. Also,
as a graduate of Troy State University, I have watched the career of Coach
Chase Riddle with interest. In fact, my years on campus (79-81) were his first
as TSU coach. Since moving to Eufaula I have met a gentleman named Jimmy Sparks,
who went 11-16 one season for the old Rome Red Sox in the Georgia-Alabama League.
He is a good friend of mine and still an active athlete, as he is an avid
golfer and senior softball player. He still travels the country playing in an over-70
tournament team that competes on a national level

   
–  Tom Davis