The Alabama-Florida Baseball League – Bill Morrell

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.