SP:Let me first ask you about your professional start in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
JC:Well,
in 1940, I signed with them after playing semi-pro
ball up in Erwinville, North Carolina. When our season ended, I signed
with Goldsboro and played about 30 games at the end of the 1940 season, and
then I played in ’41 with them too.
SP:You were primarily an outfielder
with Goldsboro, right?
JC:No, I’d been a pitcher up there but
I pulled a muscle in my shoulder, so they they told me not to pitch. For
about 3 or 4 years I hardly pitched at all.
SP:You did have a few starts
in 1941…
JC:Yes, I’d pitch an inning or two on the tail-end
of ball games. Usually the laughers, you know, a laugher one way or the other.
SP:Now
in 1941, you were among the league leaders in hitting.
JC:
I lead the league. There was an infielder with Wilson named
Earl Carnahan. We had quite a battle (for the batting title) for a while
there.
SP:Did you generate any interest from the higher leagues?
JC:Yeah,
they sold me to Richmond in the Piedmont League at the end of
that season. I belonged to them. Ben Chapman was the manager there
at Richmond, and he and I didn’t get along, so he sent me to Burlington
(North Carolina). I was hitting well over .300 when he farmed me out. I
pitched about 5 ball games in Burlington at the tale end of that season, one of
them was a no-hitter. I hit .302 there, I believe. In 1943, I came
back to Richmond.
SP:Was Chapman gone?
JC:Yeah, he wasn’t
manager anymore. I went back there and played about a month before it started
to look like I was going to have to go into the service. I went back
home to be close to my family and took a job in a shipyard. They got me
a deferment.
SP:That was St. John’s Shipyard in Jacksonville?
JC:Yes.
that’s where I started back pitching. When I went to Jacksonville,
they had a pretty good ball club there in the shipyard. Mercer Harris
was the manager. He was an old Cardinal farm hand. He’s dead now, but
he’s the one that got me started back pitching. My arm had come back real
good.
SP:After your time with the shipyard team, you played semi-pro
ball in Greenwood, South Carolina..
JC:I played at Greenwood, and
Thompson, Georgia. I played all summer with both of them. Those
teams were mostly college boys. Then in 1949, I came to Blakely, Georgia to manage
the semi-pro ball club and I’ve been living here ever since.
SP:
In 1951, you joined the Headland team in the Alabama-Florida
League. How did you get involved with the AFL?
JC:Well, I pitched
a bit in this semi-pro league that we were involved with here (in Blakely)
in 1949 and 1950. I held a job in Blakely, even when I went over (to Headland)
and pitched for them. They came looking for me. A friend of
mine who was a salesman, called on me several times in the past, was the one who
got me to go over there. Bubba Ball was the manager…. John McPherson,
he’s one of the best hitters I’ve seen in baseball…..
SP:He batted
over .400 for Headland in 1950…
JC:He was a terrific hitter.
SP:What
was it like playing for Headland? They were the smallest
city with a professional team at the time. What kind of crowds did they have?
JC:We’d
have 300-400 people there most every night. A lot
of regulars too. That’s not too bad for a league like that.
SP:How
was the travel?
JC:We went by bus. We never stayed overnight.
The furthest we had to go was 110 miles (to Panama City). Let’s see, there
was Ozark, Dothan, Headland, Panama City, Enterprise, and Tallahassee.
The travel wasn’t all that bad.
SP:Were you the number one starter for
Headland?
JC: Yes.
SP:Do you mind talking about
the Ottis Johnson incident?
JC:No…… Well, he just walked right
into the ball. I pitched him the way everybody pitched him: Either
kept the ball away from him, or you got it in high and tight. If he
could get extended on the ball, he could kill you. He was not particularly
a great hitter, but he was strong. He was a .300 Class D hitter, that’s
what he was, but he had a lot of power and if you’d get the ball out where he
could extend on it he’d get it. You either had to pitch him low and away
or high and tight. He really just walked into that ball…….
SP:It
seems like the Dothan owner blamed you, but nobody else did…
JC:He
wasn’t really a Dothan man, he was from Hartford. He had more money
than he had sense.
SP:Chase Riddle told me about the incident….
JC:Chase
can give you a good account of it. He and I weren’t
real close friends, but I respected his knowledge of the game. He and McPherson
can give a good account of the game.
SP:You must have felt
a lot of pressure. Dothan didn’t want you to play anymore.
JC:
Oh yeah, a tremendous amount of pressure. Shaughnessy came down here.
He was the commissioner and he was a baseball man. He understood that
it could happen to anybody. He got involved because it was fixin’ to break
up the league. (Note: I believe Clifton meant George Trautman, not
Frank Shaughnessy. Trautman was commissioner of minor league baseball
at the time).
SP:Five days after the incident, you threw a no-hitter..
JC:
Yep, the next start. I probably pitched better (after the
incident) than I did before, record-wise at least.
SP:
You also lead the league with 22 wins.
JC:Actually, I had 25.
I don’t know how the records got confused but I was 25-7 that season.
That’s counting play-offs.
SP:After the incident, did the league
tell you not to pitch, or just not to pitch against Dothan.
JC:No,
I took my regular turns. I played the outfield when I wasn’t pitching.
I didn’t miss any starts because of it. There was one ball game I didn’t
play in, the next night after (the incident). I just didn’t feel like
playing.
SP:When you would come to Dothan after that was there any
trouble from the fans?
JC: Well they gave me some trouble in the papers
and on the radio, but at the ballpark, no.
There was a lot of conversation
about it, a lot of publicity about it. That fellow Smith (Dothan owner,
Charles Smith) said a lot about what he was going to do, but he found out
he couldn’t run it (the team) like he was running a small town and it died down.
It was the media in Dothan that was making all the fuss about it.
They never talked to me at all. Everything they were talking was hearsay.
That made it that much worse.
SP:Just a short time later the
Chase Riddle incident almost caused the league to collapse again.
JC:You
know, Class D umpires weren’t necessarily the best, but you had to adjust
to it.. I reckon Chase just got fed up. He was kinda high-strung
and had played at higher levels. I guess he had been used to better umpires.
Chase was a good fellow, top-notch. Of all the players I played
with, he and John McPherson were my favorites.
SP:At the end of 1951,
you were one of the league’s best players. Why did you stop playing?
JC:I
just quit. That year took a toll on me. I just played
a little pick up ball here around here with friends. I had a job at Farmer’s
Gin Warehouse since 1949, and I worked there for 38 years. I
retired as Executive Vice-President in 1985.