Fibbing about one’s age in baseball is a tried and true tradition. No player,
to my knowledge however, has ever taken as many years off his true age than
Bill Morrell, manager and pitcher for the Panama City team in the Alabama-Florida
League in 1936 and 1937. Willard Blackmer (Bill) Morrell won eight big leagues
game while pitching for the Washington Senators in 1926 and the New York Giants
in 1930 and 1931. For many years the various baseball encyclopedias listed
his birth date and place as April 9, 1900, in the Hyde Park section of Boston,
Massachusetts. April 9 is correct, but the year was really 1893.
Morrell
tossed his first professional pitch at age 31 and his last at age 48. Morrell
came from an athletic family and two of his brothers were noted baseball and
football players at Bowdoin College in Maine. Bill himself attended Bowdoin
for a short time before putting his education on hold to join the service in World
War I. He served with Battery E of the 55th Artillery Regiment, American Expeditionary
Force, in France. Following the Armistice, Morrell resumed his education
at Tufts University in Massachusetts where he enrolled in the class of 1923.
On May 21, 1921, at the age of 28, Morrell pitched a perfect, no-hit, no-run
game against the Mass. Aggies (now the University of Massachusetts).
Morrell
began his professional career in 1924 in the Eastern League. His biggest
seasons included a 17-win season for New Haven, Connecticut, in 1925; 15
and 14 wins for Birmingham, Alabama of the Southern League in 1928 and 1929; and
14 wins for Shreveport, Louisiana in the Texas League in 1930. Bill was a baseball
vagabond. During the 1930s he pitched or managed in the Eastern League, American
Association, International League, New York-Pennsylvania League, Northeastern
League, Western Association, Alabama-Florida League, Southeastern League,
and the Georgia-Florida League.
Morrell evidently enjoyed his time
in Birmingham, and the guess here is that he, like generations of ballplayers
before and after him, met his wife there. The Sporting News reported this odd
line in February, 1930. « Pitcher Bill Morrell has cold-shouldered baseball, and
is Alabama manager for an air college. » Following the 1941 season, his last in
baseball, and the outbreak of the Second World War, Morrell received a commission
as a Captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He went overseas in March of 1942
and served in North Africa. Promoted to Major in 1943, he remained on active duty
following the war and retired in 1958 with the rank of Lt. Colonel. He served
in the Strategic Air Command. He returned to Birmingham following his military
retirement and died there on August 5, 1975. Obituaries in both the Birmingham
News and the Birmingham Post-Herald listed his military service but neglected
to mention his baseball career. His age was listed at 83, much closer, he was
actually 82, than his baseball-accepted age of 75.