Alabama Florida League – Bob Wellman

 
Bob Wellman
Thanks Jerry Windsor  & Lane Harris
             G  AB  R  H   2B 3B  HR  RBI 
BB  Avg  Obp Slg  SO HP Sac Sf HRfrq  TB   
RC    TA   SB   OBS
       1957 82 297 80 120  26  1  30 
113  62  404  503 801  21  0  0  
3 9.90   238  129.3 1.71   3  1304
            82 297 80 120  26  1  30  113 
62  404  503 801  21  0  0   3 9.90  
238  129.3 1.71   3  1304
Bob Wellman’s Triple Crown Season
Bob Wellman has a special place in Graceville Oiler and AFL history.  In 1957,
he accomplished the rare feat of leading the league in homers, RBIs, and batting
average:  The Triple Crown.  Unfortunately for Wellman, he was 10
at bats shy of the total needed to qualify for the batting title, which was awarded
to Bob Zuccarini of Panama City. Graceville fans lobbied for Wellman to
be awarded the title and many of them refused to acknowledge Zuccarini’s .352 average
as the « best in the league », but Zuccarini’s 403 at bats were well over
the 372 needed for eligibility and the batting title was his.  Wellman was
a popular Oiler and his long balls were the topic of conversation at Sportsman’s
Park that summer.  He wasn’t even at Graceville a full season, leaving
in late summer to play with Savannah in the Sally League, but he is likely remembered
as the team’s greatest power hitter ever.

Bob Wellman started
his professional career in Tallassee, Alabama, in 1946.  Back from the war,
Wellman started on the team that AFL stars Cotton Goodell, Forrest Austin, &
Steve Bysco had played for before the war. The Indians had switched leagues to
start the season, and now played in the Georgia-Florida League.  Wellman
was a star right from the start, batting .332 with 3 homers and 40 RBIs in his
rookie season, and earning a promotion to the Class C Martinsville Athletics in
the Carolina league for 1947.  Wellman improved at Martinsville, batting
.368 with 15 homers and 80 RBIs, and the parent Philadelphia A’s took notice. 
Wellman made it to the big leagues in 1948, seeing limited action with the
A’s.  He was not able to make an impression for Connie Mack’s team and found
himself sliding back down the ladder, spending most of 1948 with the Class
A Lincoln Athletics of the Western League.  Wellman again made it to Philly
in 1950, but only for the proverbial « cup of coffee ». He spent the next 6 years
playing for teams at various levels from Syracuse to Seattle, but he’d never
make it to  the big show again.  Wellman had not been a true power hitter
until 1953, when he banged out 26 homers for the Class B Yakima Packers.
Over the next seven seasons, Wellman hit 173 homers, averaging 24 per season.
It
was after a particularly strong 1956 season with the Moultrie Reds of the
Georgia-Florida League that the 

Oilers signed Wellman to lead the team.  Bob had been player-manager of the
Reds, and while they finished in the middle of the pack, Wellman’s contribution
offensively was outstanding.  He batted .347, finishing behind AFL favorite
Chase Riddle’s .353. Riddle won the batting & RBI titles, but Wellman lead the
league with 30 homers and 165 hits, while driving in a team-leading 124 runs
himself.
Graceville had signed a working agreement with the Cincinnati Reds
at the end of 1956, and Wellman was the type of seasoned professional needed
to develop young players and excite local fans.  Bob cast a big figure: standing
6’4″ and weighing in at 240 lbs.  Moreover, Wellman was not your stereotypical
Class D ball player:  He was a well-traveled, intelligent, observant
man.  He was a fan of classical music and a keen student of the game
of baseball.   He also had the « right stuff » to catch the imagination
of Graceville fans who had lost their biggest hero, Charlie Grant, to the Nashville
Vols the previous season.  Wellman’s presence was a critical part
of the campaign to keep the Oilers popular, and solvent.

Wellman proved
the right man for the job, and the Oilers were right in the thick of the
pennant race all summer, leading the league for most of the season while the Montgomery
Rebels and Fort Walton Beach Jets threatened the lead on occasion. Wellman
was on fire as a and by late July the Oilers were poised to leave the rest
of the league behind when Wellman got the news that he had been transferred to
Savannah in the Sally League.  This was good news for Wellman, but horrible
news for Graceville.
The team’s management was  fortunate to be able to fill in the gap that Wellman
would leave by bringing back home grown fan-favorite Charlie Grant. 
In Wellman’s last game as a Oiler, he hit his 30th homer of the season, only 10
shy of the all time AFL record of 40 set by Neb Wilson the season before. 
Given that Wellman only played 82 games, it’s safe to assume that the all time
record would have been his if he had stayed the season.  The night after
Wellman’s finale, Charlie Grant thrilled the crowd with a homer of his own against
rival Montgomery.  Grant’s presence at the helm was welcome and he batted
a respectable .279 with 7 homers, but the Oilers missed the power that Wellman
provided and the Rebels eventually caught and passed the Oilers to take the
pennant.  Wellman played out the rest of his career in Savannah and retired
from playing in 1959.  He accepted an invitation to coach in the Philadelphia
Phillies farm system and he remained there for 26 years.  As manager
of the Reading Phillies, Wellman won the 1975 Eastern League pennant and was
named manager of the all star team.  Wellman enjoyed a long and prosperous
baseball career, and surely his Triple Crown season in Graceville  stood
out as on of the high-points.
Virgil Trucks who jumped his contract at Andalusia in 1938 and had a brief cup of
coffee here in Concord, N. C. in the independent Carolina League that lasted only
3 years. He played under the name of Aitkins and Akers. I picked up the story
in the book about the Alabama-Florida League – The Last Rebel Yell and also
the local papers. I have written a book about the Carolina League titled: 
« The Independent Caroilna League, 1936-1938, Baseball Outlaws » . It was written as a social and cultural history of
the piedmont N. C. textile towns and it also has league statistics in the notes.

     
–  Hank Utley

note: Utley is an award-winning author who has received  national recognition
from the N. C. Society of Historians, SABR, & Elysian Fields.