Marvin: Well Keltys, that first year (of pro
ball in Andalusia) was 1934, no 1936.
Keltys: Yes,
1936. We played behind that grammar school over on Church Street.
Marvin:
Yeah, they built that old wood stadium there.
Keltys:
What was the manager’s name? Konneman?
Marvin:
Yes, Dutch Konneman.
Keltys:
You know, he was still foolin’ around with (baseball) later.
He was managing Eufaula.
Marvin: We had
us some real « major leaguers » out there (trying out for the team). There
was a guy named Byron Ash. He was a third baseman. He couldn’t catch,
and he’d get up to bat and hold the bat cross-handed.
Chick:
Ol’ Marvin here, every time we’d be out on a road trip, he’d give
us $1.25 meal money.
Marvin: That was enough for
you to eat on.
Jack: I don’t know whether we got
$1.25 at Enterprise or not, I’m guessing just a dollar.
Chick:
Of course, you could get a meal for 60 cents.
Keltys:
In 1947, I came out of Rice University and I came to Andalusia.
Marvin called me (about playing) and I told him I had to have a job in
the off season in order to play. Well Marvin talked to the superintendent
of education and they offered me a job teaching school. That worked out
just right: Teach school in the fall, winter, and spring, and play ball
in the summer. So I signed with the Andalusia ball club for $165 a month and with
the school board for $1650 a school year. It worked out that I made the
same amount all year long: $165 a month!
Jack: There sits
(Chick) the best umpire needler that ever put on a baseball hat. He’d ride
’em hard. One night He was sitting down at the end of the bench and talkin’
just barely loud enough for the umpire to hear. The umpire would
look over and try to detect who it was comin from. Finally, that ump had
had enough and he came over and said, « You’re outta here! », and Chick is saying,
« Who me? »
Chick: And it cost 25 bucks.
Keltys:
Used to be, they’d fine you $5, $10, or $25 .
We used to have an umpire named Andy Ware, remember him? He had half
of two fingers missing. When they’d fine you, they’d count off (showing five
fingers) how much you were getting fined. He was tossing a guy one time
and held out both hands and they said, « How much is that one, ten dollars? »,
and he said, « No, it’s $7.50, can’t you read? ».
SP:
Marvin, what were your official duties with the club?
Marvin:
Well, I was supposed to be the business manager. I’d do just
about everything (off the field). Of course, Modie (Cannon) was the top
guy and we had a treasurer. I had to look after all these guys, get them
off to where they were going, scout ball players when I could. I was always
at the games, road games too. I did that for two years (1947 and 1948).
Jack:
I remember old Major Modie (Cannon) was
always trying to conserve money. One time he had all these wet baseballs. . . .
Chick:
Yeah, he’d put them in the popcorn machine
to dry ’em out!
Jack: Yep, and he got the bright
idea that he’d get some white shoe polish and paint them and from a distance they
looked like brand new balls. He put them in the game and you know that
shoe polish, when it dries, is just as slick as glass. Well, I threw one
of them and Keltys was batting and it got right up there under his chin
and he thought I was trying to throw at him. Ol’ Modie thought he was doing
such a good job saving money and the umpire took a look at that ball and
made Modie throw every one of them out.
Marvin:
You know, it took us about 2,000 (fans per game) average to stay out of
the red, and if we didn’t own the concession stand, we wouldn’t have stayed in
the black. We might not have averaged 2,000, but we had the best crowd in
the league in 1947.
Keltys: Lead the league in attendance
that year.
Chick: I remember the first night you played,
Keltys. Greenville had a third baseman named Rucker (Bob Rucker).
Keltys hit one down to third base so hard it turned (Rucker) around, and they
gave him an error on that ball.
SP: Greenville had
Bob Purkey in 1948.
Keltys: Ol’ Jerky Purkey!
Jack:
They had another pitcher over there that was
pretty good too. A knuckleballer named Myers (John Myers).
SP:
John Kamphous won 20 the year Purkey won 19.
Keltys:
How many did (Max) Peterson win?
SP:
He was 27-12 in 1947.
Keltys:
Six of those twelve losses came against us.
Jack:
He didn’t have much movement on his ball. Not like (Greg) Maddox with the
Braves. Maddox is not fast, but he will put those balls right on the corners.
Chick:
I remember one Sunday night we were
playing up in Greenville. It was the last of the ninth with two on and two
out. Peterson was pitching and old Keltys hit one that hit on top of the
roof over where the shops were. From the time the ball cracked off the
bat, Peterson threw his glove up in the air because he knew it was gone.
Marvin:
The only other guy I remember ever hitting
that roof was Whitey Griffey.
Keltys: You traded
Charley Kraniztsky to Greenville for him, didn’t you?
Marvin:
That’s right. It seemed like Charley always hit a home
run to beat Andalusia.
Marvin: Anybody we’d
trade to Greenville would come back to beat us.
Keltys:
And Greenville also had Pershing Flowers.
Chick:
Every time he’d pitch against us he’d hit (Manny) Russo.
Marvin:
I remember the night that a fan was sitting up in the
first base stands in Troy’s stadium and called Russo a (expletive). Russo
bounded over that little wall and started after him and that fan took off over
the fence (behind the stands). Russo grew up in Birmingham and had eight
brothers. He was missing two fingers. He lost them in World War II
when he killed a Japanese soldier in a foxhole.
SP:
Troy’s stadium is named Riddle-Pace Field. Is that « Riddle » Chase
Riddle?
Marvin: Yes, Chase is still living up there
in Troy.
Jack: You know who’s still livin’ up
there near Troy? « Boney » Lee.
Keltys:
Boney pitched against us once and pitched a twelve-inning no-hitter and struck
out 21. Chase Riddle hit the hardest ball ever hit in Andalusia stadium.
He hit one over that left field fence on the fly.
Chick:
That left field was 420 feet.
Jack:
What year did they move down to that stadium? I know that
there was a team from Ozark that was named the Dodgers and they moved them over
to Andalusia.
Keltys: That’s when things were
just winding up (1949-50). That was that black team they called the Dodgers.
They paid $75 for 41 uniforms which said « Dodgers ». That was around
the time they had the meeting to try to determine whether to take over the
(Andalusia) franchise. The only three that voted against it got named the
officers of the club!
Jack: That was around the
time Andy Olsen played first base for Andalusia. You know he was a major
league umpire for 21 years. He was the only man I ever saw get a man
into a rundown between home and first.
Chick: I
went down to spring training one year and they were announcing the umpires and
they called out « Andy Olsen », and I wondered if he was they same guy, so when the
game was over I went by where they had to come out. I was standing right
there and Andy and the other two umpires came out, and Andy looked over and
said « Chick Earle! ».
Keltys: Old Jack here was quite
a knuckballer. I remember one sunday night we were at Enterprise, and
the air was real damp and heavy and there was quite a wind. Jack was throwing
that knuckleball at us and he struck out 18. He got some of us 3 or
4 times apiece.
Chick: Keltys bunted the 4th time.
He said he wasn’t gonna strike out 4 times in a row.
Keltys:
That wind and air were just the thing. The umpire had one
of those old windbag chest protectors on and Jack hit that thing more often
than (Morrie) Higginbotham’s mitt. Of course, the next time we went to Enterprise,
we scored 7 runs off Jack and he never got a man out. You know,
sometimes it got pretty tiresome (playing in the league). You might have
a doubleheader in one town on Saturday night and a day game in another town the
next day. Pitchers would have to get in the habit of pitching nine innings
then relieving the next day. We’d drive (to games) all the time.
We never did spend a night in another town.
SP:
So if you played in Ozark on Friday and Dothan on Saturday (Ozark’s only 20+ miles
from Dothan) you have to go home and come back?
Chick:
Yep, back and forth every time.
Keltys:
In 1947 we lost out of the playoffs by half a game. We played
a doubleheader in Dothan Saturday night, then came back to Andalusia, then
had an afternoon game in Troy the next day. We blew a ten-run lead that
day and wound up in fifth place.
Chick: Troy had
a three fast outfielders that year: (Bob) Sprentall, (Jim) Gilbert, and (Emil)
Bozich. We were playing one night at Troy and they had a runner on
first. Well that runner broke and the batter hit a low line drive and I came
charging in for it and I knew I couldn’t catch it so I figured I’d have to
trap it. So, I trapped it and that runner kept going, and I tried to pick
it up but came up with sand. I tried again, sand again, and Robert O’Neill
hollered: « Hey Earle, pick up a stick and kill it ».
Marvin:
And you could hear it everywhere. There was that pitcher
(Darwin) Cobb. He cut those shirts sleeves so that when he’d pitch they’d
waive like a flag. He come off the mound and that thing would be waiving
white. They wrote to the league and finally stopped him from doing that.
SP:
How did Geneva and Headland and some of these
other small towns ever manage to support a team?
Marvin:
You had these guys (in every town) who’d walk up to the ticket office
and plop down $100 just to help the team out.
Jack:
The Johnson brothers up in Geneva owned cotton mills. They were the financiers
there.
Keltys: Every town would have local
contributors. We had about ten men here (in Andalusia).
Marvin:
Euclid Cook was one of ’em. Euclid was quiet, but
loved baseball.
Jack: You’d seem him at every game
they played in Andalusia, and some of them on the road.
Chick:
We were fixin’ to play one evening in Geneva and it had been raining
all day in Andalusia. It’s only about 45 miles away and they had this
guy there named George Kito. So we called and said, « How’s the weather doin’
of there George? ». He says, « It’s fine, just raining in spots you come
on over »……
Marvin: George was a pharmacist,
owned a drug store in Geneva.
Chick: That’s right. Anyway,
we went over there and it had been pouring all morning. I’ll tell
you something about Class D ball in those days: You know we had to have
the gate receipts so they try to play. If it rained and the field wasn’t
quite ready, they go buy some gasoline and pour it on the infield and let it
burn. Then about thirty minutes later we’d be playing.
Marvin:
Of course, we had a skin infield, no grass. It would be
like glass sometimes. You mentioned Virgil Trucks earlier. You know
he still lives up in Birmingham. He was about 17 when he came down here.
He came down here as an outfielder.
Jack:
You know, when Trucks was pitching, they’d always pair him up against (Francis)
Manheim. Trucks would pitch a one-hitter and beat Manheim 1-0. If
Manheim wasn’t on, he couldn’t get it across home plate if it was as wide as a
wall.
Marvin: But he had better stuff than Trucks.
He had an amazing curve ball, just couldn’t always control it.
You know, Trucks thinks he was sold to Detroit for $10,000, but it was only
$2500. He was sold to pay for the lights. In that book, « The last
rebel yell », Trucks says they sold him for $10,000 and he didn’t get any of it.
Jack:
When (Yam) Yaryan was managing, he would always catch
Trucks.
SP: Yaryan was about 45 years old at
that point.
Jack: When Trucks would throw a wild pitch over
Yaryan’s head and no one was on base, Yaryan wouldn’t even move, he’d just
reach back and let the umpire put a new ball in his mitt.
Marvin:
Virgil never did make many wild pitches, but if he did, it was
liable to hit the top of the stands.
Keltys:
Virgil went to Beaumont, Texas (Detroit farm team) after Andalusia.
Marvin:
That’s where that manager beat the stew
out of him under the stands and kind of straightened him up. Al Vincent was
that manager.
Keltys: There was some
controversy about who really owned him for a while there. They had to go
to the minor league commisioner.
You ever hear about Trucks skipping out
on the club here? He’d been sold to Detroit and he didn’t know he’d been
sold. There was a shoe company in Georgia that was trying to build a club
to win the national semi-pro championship and Luther Gunnells told Trucks to
go play there about mid-season. They had to go to Birmingham to get Trucks’
daddy to bring him back before he was « unsold » to Detroit.
Marvin:
You know, Emory Lindsey was the man Trucks struck out to break
the (all time strikeout) record. That scorebook’s supposed to be in
the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. If Trucks hadn’t gone and jumped the league
like he did there, he’d have broken the record sooner.
Keltys:
He would have had a couple more starts. He was gone
several days and nobody knew where he was. That shoe company did win the
championship that year. Ol’ Luther Gunnells was one of those professional
team-jumpers. He’d go where the money was. He and Claude Pittman,
better known as « Red » Pittman.
Jack: If he wanted
a warm up jacket he’d tell the manager he wouldn’t pitch that day unless he got
one.
Marvin: Someone would pay ol’ Red and he’d
make the prettiest error you ever saw. I think he got thrown out of professional
ball sometime later on for throwing a game.
Keltys:
When Pittman swung, you could tell when he was trying to miss it.
That was back in 1936. I could name you the starting line up for them
(1936 Andalusia): Hoyt Farmer was catching, Arthur Shanahan was at
third, Cook was at shortstop, Larry Mashburn was at second, Harry
Embray was at first, or was it (Girard) Corrado, Roy Humpries was in
left field, Claude Pittman in center, and I don’t know who was in right.
You know, we didn’t have helmets in those days. The first headgear
we saw was a fiber thing, just kind of fit inside a players hat.
The first one I ever saw worn was by a guy with Headland named (Al) Rivenbark.
He’d put this thing in his cap and everybody would rib him about it.
Jack: Remember old « Double-ugly » (Jim) Scott
from Enterprise?
Keltys: I remembered they called
Scott and asked him to play. He hadn’t swung a bat in over a year and
the first time he swung in a game he hit that ball over the left field fence.
Marvin:
And don’t leave « Popcicle » Collins out of this.
Hat sideways, ugliest lookin’ shortstop you ever did see…
Keltys:
Ugliest man to ever put on a uniform. He was uglier
than « Double ugly » Scott.