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Edsel Johnson Interview – Page 2
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Sr: They had those concrete stands. You know,
I enjoyed every minute of it, and I still do. We just got back from Connecticut a week ago. I’ve got a grandson playing league ball up there. He plays for the Manchester Silkworms. That league is all college players. Manchester’s right outside of Hartford. I saw two games up there, then a bunch of us chartered a bus and took it all the way up to Keane, New Hampshire, for a game on Saturday. The people really back the team. All the players have part-time jobs furnished by the towns, and the players live with the residents without any charge for rent. SP: Tell me how you got started playing ball. Sr: My daddy was a ballplayer, way back in the 20’s, I suppose, and he used to tell me about it. He rode a bicycle from where they lived, maybe 10 miles on a Sunday afternoon, to play. Every community had a baseball team back then, and he used to ride that bicycle around to these places to play ball. Even when I was growing up, he had a pretty good curve ball. Most folks remember him as being a pitcher, but I don’t remember him pitching, I remember him as an outfielder. There were no fences at the ball parks back then, and me and Ottis used to tease him that if he could hit one out into the piney woods, he might get to second base. He wasn’t very fast! He worked out at a Turpentine still in the rural area. He was the bookkeeper. Just about every Saturday afternoon, we’d go out in a field and shag fly balls all day long. I used to go with him to all these ball games on Sundays too. One Sunday, we went from Evergreen to Milton, Florida. I might have been 13 or so, and they only had 8 players, so I wound up in center field. I was just a youngster with his overalls cut off at the knees, barefooted, mind you, and I think I kind of fooled them when I got to bat. I got a base hit. I just started from there, I suppose. We all loved baseball, it was born in us. I played baseball ever since. Before we moved back to the old home place in Evergreen, we lived in Atmore, and the high school there didn’t have a baseball team. I was in 7th grade then, and the coach there decided to start a team. We all went about a block away from the school and took shovels, hoes, and rakes, built a backstop, got all the grass off the infield, made it all level. I didn’t get to play much because there were too many boys larger, older, heavier than I was. Then I moved to Evergreen and they didn’t have a team there. I’d still go out and play ball every afternoon after school. We’d go over to Georgiana, about 30 miles up the road, just us boys, no coach, no uniforms, and we’d play Georgiana. Then the school finally picked it up. Then around 1941-42, we had a team in town. We’d just pick up anybody that wanted to play. There was a manufacturing company there, made vehicles for the Army. Every Thursday afternoon, the businesses would close early, and we’d go up and play each other. Then in my senior year, I went to work at a service station, and the man who owned the service station was the manager of our baseball club. He wanted me to go to Birmingham and try out for Cincinnati at a baseball camp up there. I went there, it was a week long, and about the second or third day of the school, the man running the school called two of us over and set us down in the stands. I thought, « Oh boy, we’re gonna be sent home already ». I said to the other boy, « What did you do? », and he said, « I didn’t do nothing ». I said, « That might be what this is about, we didn’t do nothing worthwhile ». They told us to rest a while and that we’d done enough running, and that they knew we could run and field. Well, we stayed up there the week and we made the cut. We got to play against the Birmingham Barons that night, and afterwards they offered me a contract to play with some Class C club way up north of New York somewhere. I had two weeks before I’d be eighteen years old and the draft was coming, so I figured I’d be better getting drafted where they knew me, not way up there, so I joined the Navy back in Evergreen. Ottis was already in the Navy, and stationed in South Dakota. I played softball while in the Navy. We were overseas in England, just before the invasion of Omaha Beach, and we had a couple good softball teams there. Well, our ship got ready to come home, and one of the sub chasers was going to stay over there. They asked if I’d stay and play softball. They wouldn’t give me any duties, just play. I said, « Sorry, but I’m going home! ». You know, we never quit playing ball. I have never been hurt, even the least bit, in the whole time I played. I did try catching without a cup once, and that was a bad idea. I found out that don’t work. SP: Did Ottis play professionally first? Sr: I did. I didn’t go to college, I got that job with Southern Bell. After I came back from the war, it was December, and I didn’t have a job yet, so I went back to Southern Bell and they hired me back right away. Then we started playing semi-pro ball in Brewton, where I was working, and we had a pretty good team. Lots of pitching. One kid had pitched for University Of Alabama. Well, one day while I was doing phone repair work at this business, the manager said to me that the board of directors of the Brewton team wanted to talk with me about playing for them. I said, « I don’t know, I’m already getting off on Thursday afternoon to play and playing on Sundays, I don’t think the telephone company’s gonna go for that, but I will if you can convince them to let me ». A day or two later, they got an okay for me to play, so I told them that would suite me just fine to play for them. That was maybe three or four weeks into the season, and I played all that season. Oh, and I played under my right name, too! Some folks don’t think I did because they put out this book back then and they can’t find my name in it. The only proof I could show them was I got a lifetime membership in the baseball union that they have now. SP: Ottis was in school at Troy. Did he plan to make a career of baseball? Sr: I think so. He played for three years at Troy. JB: Where was he coaching when he was playing ball up there? Sr: His first year was in Lincoln, Alabama, near Birmingham. He coached there. Then he got a job up at Midland City. JB: I think he took Roy Knapp’s place over there. Sr: The night he got hit, Dad and I were planning on driving over from Evergreen to Headland to see him after the game, and just as we were leaving, they had called Louise (Ottis’ wife) and said they were taking him to the hospital. I’ll bet you the whole time I played baseball, I might have gotten hit three times, but Ottis was getting hit all the time. He stood in there, he was tough. He played football, you know. JB: They didn’t have bating helmets either. Sr: You know, about three weeks after that, we were playing in either Jacksonville, Alabama, or Thomasville, Alabama, and they had a pitcher from Mississippi Southern that had already signed a major contract. He could throw a fastball. That ball came right on up and brushed the bill of my cap. I struck out. I didn’t care where the pitches were, I was gonna swing and get outta there. I got my three strikes over with and got out. SP: Lot’s of players got hit playing ball. When did you realize that Ottis’ situation was something else? Sr: After he was in the hospital about a week. JB: If they had the health facilities, the equipment, and the know-how that they do now, he might of survived it. Jr: You know Sam (the doctor who cared for Johnson) operated on his brain… JB: Well Sam would try anything. Jr: We did not not know that until we were settling my grandmother’s estate and we had to go to Montgomery and get his death certificate… JB: And Sam signed it? Jr: Sam signed it saying that he operated on his brain. Sr: The surgery must have been pretty good because he (Ottis) hung on for a couple of days. They say he died of what we used to call « Wet Brain »: All the fluid going to the brain. JB: Yeah, that’s the body’s mechanism for protecting a brain injury for all the fluid to go up there. You’ve got to get that swelling down. Jr: I can remember when we pulled up in front of that hospital, and we couldn’t go in the hospital at that time, and Granny was with us. They had Ottis in that front room… Sr: Yeah, the front room on the right… Jr: We sat out on a swing out front of that hospital, and all I could here was that recessitator going up and down…
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The Moody Building today (left) is no longer used as a hospital.
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Ottis’ room |