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Edsel Johnson Interview
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John Beasley, a former member of the Alabama legislature and a Dothan baseball expert,
spent a morning with me this summer visiting Headland and Dothan baseball sites. John knows many former players and folks tied to the AFL, including, Jack Clifton and Ottis Johnson’s nephew, Edsel Johnson, Jr. John arrainged for me to meet Edsel and his father Edsel Johnson, Sr, to talk about Ottis and the baseball in Brewton and Evergreen. Edsel Sr is a former AFL player himself, having played a season in Brewton. I hadn’t realized it, but Ottis’s |
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Edsel Johnson Sr, and Edsel Johnson Jr.
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John Beasley
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We started the morning looking at some old team pictures of the 1950 Dothan
Browns and news clippings. Jr: That’s just about the only pictures clipping picture), do you know? Sr: I cut it out of either the Dothan paper or the Evergreen Courier, I don’t remember which. |
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JB: (Looking at the team photo) I believe this is Smiley Fowler.
Do you remember him? Sr: No I don’t. JB: He wound up down in Graceville. He was from Graceville. Who is this, here? That’s not (Holt) Milner, is it? Sr: No, that’s Hodge, Mutt Hodge. JB: And that’s Leon Hilyer. Sr: He’s the president of a bank somewhere, I think in Troy. Or he was… JB: Yeah, he’s retired now. Sr: The majority of boys in the league were from Andalusia this way ( to Dothan), in the Wiregrass (region). Jr: (Looking through papers) This is from when we did a tribute to Ottis back in Evergreen, in April, 1995, and I bought Daddy over here to Dothan and John Johnson of the Dothan Eagle interviewed him about Ottis. We made some ball caps for the tribute that say « Dothan Browns » Sr: Now on this list (from the tribute), the oldest player is Tommy Lyles of Brewton (Lyles played for Andalusia in 1940). He goes way back in that league. Scotty Byrne is down there in Brewton too. He played for Enterprise. SP: I met Scotty Byrne at one of the reunions. Sr: I think everybody in the United States has met him! I know they have in Las Vegas. Jr: Scotty Byrne was the Sheriff of Escambia County for 30 years or so, and his son is the same age as I am. We grew up together in Brewton. Sr: All through high school, Scotty was playing for T.R. Miller High School and I was playing for Evergreen, so we were bumping heads together all the time. JB: (Looking at a team picture of a semi-pro Headland team). Scott and I were just talking to Felix Vann up in Headland this morning. He had a clothing store up there for years. He was telling about how this group of boys (in the picture) played for nothing, and these others we hired to come play with us. Sr: Did you ever play under a different name? JB: No, never had to. Sr :I’ve had a half-dozen different names. You couldn’t make a living without doing it. You’d only make $100 to $150 a month, so you’d play in the D league in the afternoon, then go play semi-pro at night under a different name. You could make as much there in one night as you could for the whole month in D league. SP: You must have crossed paths with a bunch of other players doing the same thing, didn’t you? Sr: Oh Yes! SP: Did you have to say, « Who are you today? » Sr: Yeah, they did take one picture, and the names of the players on that picture, well,….(laughs)…..different names. Jr: My momma didn’t know that. She didn’t go to the games.. Sr: Oh, she did a lot of times. She’d dump you up in those grandstand seats and watch. Jr: Then later I started traveling with him to games. Tell him about how you’d throw dirt in the players’ faces. Sr: Oh, I’d better not. Jr: Well, that’s the way y’all played. Sr: I never played a game that I didn’t have several rocks, a handful of rocks, that I kept in my one back pocket, and if I was sliding into second, I did this (throwing motion) a handful of rocks (at the man covering the base). We did all kinds of stuff. Really, it almost was self-defense. I’ve had a knife to my throat during a game. I was coaching third base, and of course, I was stealing the signals, and this lady walked up behind me and put a knife to my neck and she said, « You steal one more danged signal and I’m gonna cut your throat! ». SP: She came out of the stands?! Sr: Well, we played in different type stadiums, and I really don’t know where she came from, but she came out with that knife. I told her, « Lady, if you move that knife, I’ll go sit down ». And I did! Mr. Murphy, the manager, said, « What are you doing back here? », and I said, « That lady over yonder is trying to cut my throat. I think I’ll stay here! ». SP: There seems to have been a lot of things going in those games that you don’t see today. Sr: Well, you know the games that were played, I called them « money games » because men and women in the stands would be sitting there with a handful of money, just betting away. I was the third hitter (on a semi-pro team), Ottis was the fourth hitter, and Cliff Harper was the fifth place hitter. If I hit a home run, these fellas in the stands would start throwing out money. Then they’d be saying things like, « I’ll bet you $50 that Ottis hits a home run ». Then if he got one, then they’d bet on Cliff Harper. If we all got one, the hat was passed around and we’d split the pot. SP: Did this go on in the Class D games too? Sr: Let me tell you, the semi-pro was harder and faster ball. We had players that came out of the Southeastern League (Class B), out of Pensacola. I don’t remember and coming out of the Southern League, but there were several out of the Alabama-Florida League too. Mobile was a good one, you never knew who you would be playing when you played against Mobile! SP: Was Brewton a good place to play Class D ball? Sr: Oh yeah, it was. The only problem was that it was always wet. It rains down in Brewton when it don’t rain anywhere else. That’s one reason they couldn’t make a go of it, too many rainouts. SP: How many years were you there? Sr: Just the one season. I couldn’t afford to live on $150 a month. I was married with one child and another on the way. Then I got a job with Southern Bell and they allowed me to play baseball for Brewton and work. The only place I didn’t get to go was over to Dothan because I’d have to leave work too early. I played at Ozark, Andalusia, Enterprise, and there was no problem because I could leave work after 2:00pm and get there. JB: I played Legion ball over at Ozark. |