Alabama Florida League – Doc Bowden

DB: No, I had played with
him at Dothan in 1950 and at Troy State Teacher�s College (now Troy State University). 
I was in another league when he was killed.

SP: You
guys were buddies?

DB: Yeah, we were good friends. We played baseball
together at Troy.  Ottis grew up in Evergreen, Alabama and I grew up in
Troy.   He was a great athlete:  he played football and baseball
there.  He was the right tackle for the football team.   He was
a hell of a guy, a real good guy.  It�s such a shame what happened to him.
You see, Ottis was an unsure  hitter.  That ball just came up and
in on him and he probably just didn�t see it at all.  We didn�t have the
head protection in those days except for those bands you could put in your hat,
but nobody would use them.   You used to get hit in those days. 
I used to get hit a lot on the arm, but when the ball was thrown at you up tight,
you really only had to move a little bit in one direction or the other to
get away from it.  I guess Ottis froze and didn�t move at all and it hit on
the side of his head.  It�s a sad story about Ottis.  He was a good
guy.  It�s really a shame he was killed.  He played tackle of the Troy
football team. Ottis and I played at Troy together and then went to Dothan together

SB: 
With you and Ottis on the Troy team, they must have
been pretty good…

DB: There were other good players on that team
that played in the league.  Blackie Connell was on that team too.  He
was Troy State�s first baseman. You remember Doc Wingard?  His son Ernie
Jr. played at Troy too.  Doc was from Prattville, Alabama.  As a kid,
I saw him play in the AFL.  That was back when Joe Dobson and Virgil Trucks
were playing in the league.   Chase Riddle also played football,
basketball, and baseball at Troy.  He was quite an athlete.  

SP
:Did you always want to be a ball player?

DB :Well, playing
baseball was something we all did.  It was part of your life. As I said,
when I was a kid, I used to go see the Troy (AFL)  team play.  
My dad was a big baseball fan and he would take me to the games.  As a
kid, I played sandlot ball and did pretty well, and I drew some interest, 
but I thought  about it but knew it was better for me to go to school at
that time, so I went to Troy State and played ball there.

SP: Once
you were out of school you decided to give pro ball a try…..

DB: A
guy named Sam Smith was coaching at Troy and he got me signed at Dothan. 
I had a pretty good year at Dothan, I batted over .300 and had 15 homers. 
I lead the league in homers that year.  Nowadays, players hit 15 in a month.

SP:
The official record shows you playing at Dothan and Tampa in
1951.

DB: No, I was sold to Tampa for the 1951 season.  That
was a league (Florida International League) where there were a lot of pros on their
way down.  It was Class B ball, and I didn�t do as well there. 
I batted about .240.   After that season, I managed to get signed into
the Cleveland Indians organization and played with their Class B team in Spartanburg
(South Carolina).  We would have all the minor leaguers in the Indians
farm system at the same camp in Daytona Beach.

SP:  What were
the fields like from your perspective as a shortstop?

DB: 
The fields were tough. Dothan had a pretty good one, but a lot of the infields
would be full of rocks. Nobody ever rolled an infield like they do now.  I
could play the infields they have now with my bare hands they�re so smooth. If
could play on the field they have now, that would be wonderful!  They�re
like rugs.  Many of the fields weren�t even as good as the field at 
Troy State. 

SP:  Troy State�s field sure is a nice one now.

DB: 
Named for Chase Riddle.  As I mentioned, Chase went
to Troy State when I was there.  Chase was one hell of a great football
player.  If he�d been at a bigger school, he�d have been an All-American. 
He was a good basketball player too. 

SP:  You were
an All Star in your first year at Dothan.

DB:  Yes.  I was
looking here at a box score from the 1950 All Star Game.  It was played
in Andalusia that year.  I was just seeing who was on those teams: 
The East team was Plarski, Me, Cobb, Clark.  That�s Glenn Clark, he was a
quick guy.

SP:  As was Don Plarski…

DB:  I don�t
really remember him.  Let�s see, after Clark there was Laney, Harper….I
don�t remember Harper either.

SP:  That was Joe Harper from
Headland.  He set the record for stolen bases that season with 76.

DB: 
Oh that�s right, I remember him now.  He was fast but couldn�t
hit his weight.  Let�s see, there was some guy named Davis at first.

SP:  
I think that�s Coy Davis from Enterprise.  I have
a scouting card on the web site for him that Ivy Griffen filled out.

DB:  
Boy, it�s been so long it�s hard to remember some of these guys. 
I remember hearing about Ivy Griffen.  Boy, those scouts would
sell you a bunch of B.S. I wasn�t that dumb though.  I saw that they didn�t
have any money invested in me and I was out-hitting most of  the guys they
had money in.  Those players moved right along and I didn�t.  Think
about this:  In Spartanburg,  I hit .300 in 1952 and in 1953, I hit
.293 with 23 home runs.  They took me up to Cleveland at the end of the year
and let me sit in the dugout, so I figured, hell, I�ve got it made, I�d at
least be in Indianapolis next season.  Birdie Tebbetts was manager at Indianapolis
then and he told me he wanted to bring me up.  I thought, �Great,
I�ll be on my way�.  Then one day I was sitting next to Al Lopez in the dugout
and the Indians were leading 9-2 or some score like that, and I said, �Hey
Al, how about letting me pinch hit?�.  He said, �Doc, we�re trying to win
this damn game�.  I thought, �You rotton SOB�.  I couldn�t even tell
my kids I had one at bat in the big leagues.  I did a lot in spring training
though.  I played with the Class B team and got to play against a lot
of the major leaguers, but not one official at bat in the majors!

SP:  Sal Campagna, from Greenville.

DB: 
He was their third baseman.  Then there�s Joe
Kohut.  I remember him, he was a shortstop for Brewton.  He was a fair
ball player. The other guys were Lerch, Sallis, Olsen.  Olsen was a pitcher,
a left-hander.

SP:  That�s Andy Olsen.  He became a
major league umpire.

DB:  Is that right?  Isn�t that something. 
You know, I just don�t remember anybody outstanding, except for me
of course (laughs).  I  was really just pretty ordinary. I did have a
good year in 1950 though.  I was hitting the hell out of it.  Dothan�s
sportswriter, Reuben Herring, wrote some good things about me and Mutt Hodge
said I was the spark of the club.  Kind of made my head swell up for a while.  
Tallahassee had a little guy at short named George Wehmeyer and
the papers in Dothan and Tallahassee were always comparing us. 

SP: 
Tell me about the guys you played with at Dothan.

DB: 
I was looking at my scrapbook a bit last night, remembering those teams:
Back then, it was unusual to find an outstanding guy in Class D.  There would
be a lot of good ballplayers, but not many outstanding ones.  . There
was a big tall kid at Dothan named Gene Clark.  He was a pitcher, and he
had a pretty good fastball and a fair curveball, he might have developed some but
he didn�t really care too much.  He was a local kid from just outside of
Dothan, playing for the local club.  We had a guy named John Beasley (by
the way, this is not the same John Beasley that I spent time with in Dothan- S.P.)
who played first base, a real good guy.  I played shortstop and was the
lead-off hitter.  We had a guy named Jim Colley at third.  Joe Laney
played second base.  He was a big time tobacco chewer.  Back then,
a lot of guys were chewers.  I never did.  Most guys chewed Beachnut
Tobacco.  Joe got hit one night right on the jaw, and that big chaw of tobacco
probably saved his life. He did swallow the tobacco though and that damn
near killed him.  He was so sick from it. We had Neal Cobb, who I see is in
your Hall Of Fame in the outfield.  Neal�s a good guy.  He�s from Crestview,
Florida, a real tobacco chewer, too.  He and I used to have a lot
of fun together.  Ottis Johnson was batting fifth in our lineup.  Junior
Mitchell was one of the pitchers. We had another guy named Rudy York. 
He was from Modesto, California. He was a good Class D pitcher.  There
was a skinny kid named Clint Burks played centerfield.  He wasn�t there very
long. We had Emory Lindsey catching.  He operated a pawnshop in Dothan
after he was finshed with baseball.  Emory was a fun guy, but he was a tough
sonofabitch. We were good friends and I kept up with him for a while after baseball. 
He was my protector on the field.  There was a guy named Frank
Martin that had been in the league and he and Emory would get into it all of
the time.  Martin thought he was a tough guy.

SP:  In those
days, there was more of the scuffling than there is now.

DB: 
Well, I guess so.  You did have to be tougher in those days.  You
had to put up with a bunch of B.S.  If you were at the plate with a 2-0 count,
most managers would have you thrown at.  I had played for Ben Chapman
later on, and I learned more about baseball in two months with Ben than I ever
did before that.  I played for him in Tampa.  I loved it.  I remember
Ben telling a pitcher, �That will cost you $50 for not knocking that batter
down on a 2-0 count�.
Of course, you were expected to knock down the
second baseman or shortstop on a double play ball.  From that standpoint,
it was a lot tougher.  As an infielder, you might get spiked, of course you
might throw one right down the baseline at a runner too!

SP: 
If you had a 2-0 count at stood at the very outside of the batters box, they�d
still plunk you?

DB:  Sure.  They didn�t try to hit you
in the head though.

SP:  Umpires never tossed a pitcher for that
stuff?

DB:  What do you mean, that was part of the game! 
You had to learn to slide uphill against the wind too!  It was an expected
part of the game.  They�d always pitch close to you.  Marcus Davis
threw one behind me once.  I played at Spartanburg after Dothan, and the
was a guy who played for Gastonia  named Zeb Eaton who had pitched with Detroit. 
One Sunday afternoon, the second pitch he threw I hit over the left
field fence.  He yelled to be, �You little bastard. The next time you come
to bat I�m gonna hit you in the head�.  Next time up, he threw at me twice. 
The next pitch I hit over the center field fence.  He swore at
me all the way around the bases.  The there was a big fight in the dugout. 
Some fan came into the dugout with a knife.  I guess he was a gambler
or something.  I reached over and picked up the fungo bat and I fully intended
to let him have it, but a policeman intercepted him before I could swing
at him.  That was a league where a lot of the fans were mill workers, real
blue collar guys.  There would be a lot of betting in the stands and that
would cause some arguements and things could go from there.

SP: 
Dothan and Headland had a pretty big rivalry when you were there.

DB: 
Yes they did.  They had Al Rivenbark.  He was a big, tall,
nice kid.  He went to school at Marion Military Academy which was a big
boys school.  Leon Hilyer was a Headland.  I played with Leon at Troy
State. 

SP:  What big leaguers did you play against or
with?

DB:  I remember a pitcher at Geneva named John  Grodzicki.
He had been a big league pitcher with the Cardinals before World War II
and he got shot.  He came back down in the minors to try to get started again.
He had a crazy screwball but I could hit him like I owned him.  When
I was in Tampa,  Jim Bagby  and Pat Seerey were teammates.  They�d
drink a case of beer after every game.  I asked Jim what it was like pitching
to Williams and Dimaggio,  and he said, �Well, Dimaggio doesn�t like
the ball up under his chin, so if I throw one up under his chin, then away from
him, I�ll get him out.  Now Williams was another story.  It wasn�t
a matter of whether he was gonna hit it, but how far�.  When Cleveland bought
my contract, they assigned me to Daytona.    Hank Greenberg,
Cleveland�s genreal manager, was there talking about this phenom from Lakeworth,
Florida, that was coming into camp. Greenberg was talking to this Class B
catcher named Vern Watercutter, and Greenberg tells Vern he wants him to catch
this kid and see what he�s got. So, the kid comes into camp and he�s as skinny
as a rail.  We all were watching him to see him warm up.  He started
throwing and I thought to myself, he�s throwing pretty hard for warming up. 
So, Greenberg  tells the kid to get on the mound if he was loose enough. 
He throws the first pitch and it bounces in front of Watercutter, who has
got not equiptment on,  and hits him in the shins.  Watercutter told
the kid to hold it, and he limped over to get his shin guards.  The next
pitch went through the mitt webbing and hits Vern in the chest.  Vern stops
things and goes over to get the chest protector. Before it was all over, Watercutter
had all his equiptment on.  That kid was Herb Score.  He couldn�t
throw it any around the plate at that point.  That was his debut. Another
guy that was there that you�d know was Roger Maris. Back then, in spring
training, you wore different color socks to designate what league you were assigned
to. They had all the minor league clubs there together and that�s how they
could quickly tell what Class you were in. I was wearing green socks which meant
I was Class A and he was wearing red socks which meant he was Class C. 
Roger was a very quiet guy but we all got to know him.  Nobody ever dreamed
he was going to be home run hitter, he was just another guy out there. 
He was a real good guy though.  My wife and I were also good friends with
Haywood Sullivan.  He�s from the Dothan area. He was a good catcher, not
a great hitter though.  He played at the University of Florida as a quarterback.
We used to see him a lot, a really nice man, one of the good guys. 
He married into the Yawkey family up there in Boston. Let�s see, I played against
a guy named Ryne Duren. You remember him?

SP:  Sure I do.
Fast, wild, reliever.  Wore big glasses.

DB:  Unfortunately,
he was a drunk.  He pitched for the Yankees.  When he�d be warming
up on the mound, he�d throw one into the net above the backstop, just for effect. 
One night, we were playing in Anderson, South Carolina, and the lights
there were not very good.  Ryne was a big, tall guy who could throw hard,
but he didn�t have even a sign of a curve ball.  His curve was what we�d
call a �spinner�.  It had no sharp break to it.   So, I go to bat
against him that night, and the second pitch comes up near me, and I turned
my head, and it whistled right by my ear.  The next pitch, I lined to center. 
Next time up, he sent one in on me again and I got my bat up and pool-cued 
off the end of the bat right between his legs.  Boy, he was swearing
at me!  Duren threw what we call a �heavy� ball.  The catchers
would all say his ball was real heavy.  You�d hear it pop in the mitt. 
Duren was about the size of Roger Clemens, a big guy.
Scott, how old a
guy are you?

SP:  I�m 47.

DB:  You�re just a kid! 
I�m well over 70.  Sometimes I think I could still hit some of these
guys! I wonder how it would have been if  I had played with the way things
are today. The trouble was when I came along, there weren�t enough big league
teams.  Today, there are too many teams; consequentially,  there
are a bunch of mediocre major leaguers.  I was just born 50 years too soon. 
Still, it was great fun.  I got to play ball and go to college, too.  
I had a successful business career and now I�m retired.  Now
I can do what I want to.