WALKER, KELTYS POWELL,
JACK HORTON, CHICK EARLE
In June of 2000, I met Marvin
Walker, Chick Earle, Keltys Powell, and Jack Horton for lunch
in Andalusia, Alabama. Powell and Earle played for Andalusia
and Horton played for Ozark and Enterprise. Marvin Walker
didn’t play in the league, but he was the business manager for
Andalusia in the late forties. Marvin took me on a tour
of baseball related sites in Andalusia: The site of the original
stadium, Manny Russo’s old house, the little store where players
would hang out after games and where Marvin as a youngster first
met the local stars. Marvin then took his car off the road and
down what appeared to be a logging road through thick woods.
He stopped at a bend in the road and told me that we were in
the outfield of what was the old fairgrounds. The fairgrounds
were used for car and horse races, and in 1938, they were the
home of the Andalusia Rams and Virgil Trucks. The Fairgrounds
were torn down (or possibly burned down) shortly after that season
ended. In the 62 years since Trucks pitched here, nature had
wiped out any trace of this historical spot. Marvin was very
likely the only person still around who knew the location of
the field. These four old baseball men
are well known in the community and whenever they’re seen together,
locals know they’re spinning some baseball stories. If
the thought process seems to jump from one subject to another,
it’s because each comment seemed to trigger another memory for
them.
Marvin: Well Keltys, that first year (of pro ball in Andalusia)
was 1934, no 1936.
Keltys:
Yes, 1936. We played behind that grammar school over on
Church Street.
Marvin:
Yeah, they built that old wood stadium there.
Keltys:
What was the manager’s name? Konneman?
Marvin:
Yes, Dutch Konneman.
Keltys:
You know, he was still foolin’ around with (baseball) later.
He was managing Eufaula.
Marvin:
We had us some real « major leaguers » out there (trying
out for the team). There was a guy named Byron Ash.
He was a third baseman. He couldn’t catch, and he’d get
up to bat and hold the bat cross-handed.
Chick: Ol’
Marvin here, every time we’d be out on a road trip, he’d give
us $1.25 meal money.
Marvin:
That was enough for you to eat on.
Jack: I
don’t know whether we got $1.25 at Enterprise or not, I’m guessing
just a dollar.
Chick: Of
course, you could get a meal for 60 cents.
Keltys:
In 1947, I came out of Rice University and I came to Andalusia.
Marvin called me (about playing) and I told him I had to have
a job in the off season in order to play. Well Marvin talked
to the superintendent of education and they offered me a job
teaching school. That worked out just right: Teach
school in the fall, winter, and spring, and play ball in the
summer. So I signed with the Andalusia ball club for $165 a month
and with the school board for $1650 a school year. It worked
out that I made the same amount all year long: $165 a month!
Jack: There
sits (Chick) the best umpire needler that ever put on a baseball
hat. He’d ride ’em hard. One night He was sitting
down at the end of the bench and talkin’ just barely loud
enough for the umpire to hear. The umpire would look over
and try to detect who it was comin from. Finally, that
ump had had enough and he came over and said, « You’re outta
here! », and Chick is saying, « Who me? »
Chick: And
it cost 25 bucks.
Keltys:
Used to be, they’d fine you $5, $10, or $25 . We used to
have an umpire named Andy Ware, remember him? He had half
of two fingers missing. When they’d fine you, they’d count
off (showing five fingers) how much you were getting fined.
He was tossing a guy one time and held out both hands and they
said, « How much is that one, ten dollars? », and he
said, « No, it’s $7.50, can’t you read? ».
SP: Marvin,
what were your official duties with the club?
Marvin:
Well, I was supposed to be the business manager. I’d do
just about everything (off the field). Of course, Modie
(Cannon) was the top guy and we had a treasurer. I had
to look after all these guys, get them off to where they were
going, scout ball players when I could. I was always at
the games, road games too. I did that for two years (1947
and 1948).
Jack: I
remember old Major Modie (Cannon) was always trying to conserve
money. One time he had all these wet baseballs. . . .
Chick: Yeah,
he’d put them in the popcorn machine to dry ’em out!
Jack: Yep,
and he got the bright idea that he’d get some white shoe polish
and paint them and from a distance they looked like brand new
balls. He put them in the game and you know that shoe polish,
when it dries, is just as slick as glass. Well, I threw
one of them and Keltys was batting and it got right up
there under his chin and he thought I was trying to throw at
him. Ol’ Modie thought he was doing such a good job saving
money and the umpire took a look at that ball and made
Modie throw every one of them out.
Marvin:
You know, it took us about 2,000 (fans per game) average to stay
out of the red, and if we didn’t own the concession stand, we
wouldn’t have stayed in the black. We might not have averaged
2,000, but we had the best crowd in the league in 1947.
Keltys:
Lead the league in attendance that year.
Chick: I remember the
first night you played, Keltys. Greenville had a third
baseman named Rucker (Bob Rucker). Keltys hit one down
to third base so hard it turned (Rucker) around, and they gave
him an error on that ball.
SP: Greenville
had Bob Purkey in 1948.
Keltys:
Ol’ Jerky Purkey!
Jack: They
had another pitcher over there that was pretty good too.
A knuckleballer named Myers (John Myers).
SP: John
Kamphous won 20 the year Purkey won 19.
Keltys:
How many did (Max) Peterson win?
SP: He was
27-12 in 1947.
Keltys:
Six of those twelve losses came against us.
Jack: He
didn’t have much movement on his ball. Not like (Greg)
Maddox with the Braves. Maddox is not fast, but he will
put those balls right on the corners.
Chick: I
remember one Sunday night we were playing up in Greenville.
It was the last of the ninth with two on and two out. Peterson
was pitching and old Keltys hit one that hit on top of the roof
over where the shops were. From the time the ball cracked
off the bat, Peterson threw his glove up in the air because he
knew it was gone.
Marvin:
The only other guy I remember ever hitting that roof was Whitey
Griffey.
Keltys:
You traded Charley Kraniztsky to Greenville for him, didn’t you?
Marvin:
That’s right.
Keltys:
It seemed like Charley always hit a home run to beat Andalusia.
Marvin:
Anybody we’d trade to Greenville would come back to beat us.
Keltys:
And Greenville also had Pershing Flowers.
Chick:
Every time he’d pitch against us he’d hit (Manny) Russo.
Marvin:
I remember the night that a fan was sitting up in the first base
stands in Troy’s stadium and called Russo a (expletive).
Russo bounded over that little wall and started after him and
that fan took off over the fence (behind the stands). Russo
grew up in Birmingham and had eight brothers. He was missing
two fingers. He lost them in World War II when he killed
a Japanese soldier in a foxhole.
SP: Troy’s
stadium is named Riddle-Pace Field. Is that « Riddle »
Chase Riddle?
Marvin:
Yes, Chase is still living up there in Troy.
Jack: You
know who’s still livin’ up there near Troy? « Boney »
Lee.
Keltys:
Boney pitched against us once and pitched a twelve-inning no-hitter
and struck out 21.
Keltys:
Chase Riddle hit the hardest ball ever hit in Andalusia stadium.
He hit one over that left field fence on the fly.
Chick: That
left field was 420 feet.
Jack:
What year did they move down to that stadium? I know
that there was a team from Ozark that was named the Dodgers and
they moved them over to Andalusia.
Keltys:
That’s when things were just winding up (1949-50). That
was that black team they called the Dodgers. They paid
$75 for 41 uniforms which said « Dodgers ». That
was around the time they had the meeting to try to determine
whether to take over the (Andalusia) franchise. The only
three that voted against it got named the officers of the club!
Jack: That
was around the time Andy Olsen played first base for Andalusia.
You know he was a major league umpire for 21 years.
He was the only man I ever saw get a man into a rundown between
home and first.
Chick: I
went down to spring training one year and they were announcing
the umpires and they called out « Andy Olsen », and I
wondered if he was they same guy, so when the game was over I
went by where they had to come out. I was standing right
there and Andy and the other two umpires came out, and Andy looked
over and said « Chick Earle! ».
Keltys:
Old Jack here was quite a knuckballer. I remember one sunday
night we were at Enterprise, and the air was real damp and heavy
and there was quite a wind. Jack was throwing that knuckleball
at us and he struck out 18. He got some of us 3 or 4 times
apiece.
Chick: Keltys
bunted the 4th time. He said he wasn’t gonna strike out
4 times in a row.
Keltys:
That wind and air were just the thing. The umpire had one
of those old windbag chest protectors on and Jack hit that thing
more often than (Morrie) Higginbotham’s mitt.
Of course, the next time we went to Enterprise, we scored 7 runs
off Jack and he never got a man out.
Keltys:
You know, sometimes it got pretty tiresome (playing in the league).
You might have a doubleheader in one town on Saturday night and
a day game in another town the next day. Pitchers would
have to get in the habit of pitching nine innings then relieving
the next day. We’d drive (to games) all the time.
We never did spend a night in another town.
SP: So if
you played in Ozark on Friday and Dothan on Saturday (Ozark’s
only 20+ miles from Dothan) you have to go home and come back?
Chick:
Yep, back and forth every time.
Keltys:
In 1947 we lost out of the playoffs by half a game. We
played a doubleheader in Dothan Saturday night, then came
back to Andalusia, then had an afternoon game in Troy the next
day. We blew a ten-run lead that day and wound up in fifth
place.
Chick: Troy
had a three fast outfielders that year: (Bob) Sprentall, (Jim)
Gilbert, and (Emil) Bozich. We were playing one night
at Troy and they had a runner on first. Well that runner
broke and the batter hit a low line drive and I came charging
in for it and I knew I couldn’t catch it so I figured I’d have
to trap it. So, I trapped it and that runner kept going,
and I tried to pick it up but came up with sand. I tried
again, sand again, and Robert O’Neill hollered: « Hey
Earle, pick up a stick and kill it ».
Marvin:
And you could hear it everywhere.
Marvin:
There was that pitcher (Darwin) Cobb. He cut those shirts
sleeves so that when he’d pitch they’d waive like a flag.
He come off the mound and that thing would be waiving white.
They wrote to the league and finally stopped him from doing that.
SP: How
did Geneva and Headland and some of these other small towns ever
manage to support a team?
Marvin:
You had these guys (in every town) who’d walk up to the ticket
office and plop down $100 just to help the team out.
Jack: The
Johnson brothers up in Geneva owned cotton mills. They
were the financiers there.
Keltys:
Every town would have local contributors. We had about
ten men here (in Andalusia).
Marvin:
Euclid Cook was one of ’em. Euclid was quiet, but loved
baseball.
Jack: You’d
seem him at every game they played in Andalusia, and some of
them on the road.
Chick: We
were fixin’ to play one evening in Geneva and it had been raining
all day in Andalusia. It’s only about 45 miles away and
they had this guy there named George Kito. So we called
and said, « How’s the weather doin’ of there George? ».
He says, « It’s fine, just raining in spots you come on over »……
Marvin:
George was a pharmacist, owned a drug store in Geneva.
Chick: That’s right.
Anyway, we went over there and it had been pouring all morning.
I’ll tell you something about Class D ball in those days:
You know we had to have the gate receipts so they try to play.
If it rained and the field wasn’t quite ready, they go buy some
gasoline and pour it on the infield and let it burn. Then
about thirty minutes later we’d be playing.
Marvin:
Of course, we had a skin infield, no grass. It would be
like glass sometimes.
Marvin:
You mentioned Virgil Trucks earlier. You know he still
lives up in Birmingham. He was about 17 when he came down
here. He came down here as an outfielder.
Jack: You
know, when Trucks was pitching, they’d always pair him up against
(Francis) Manheim. Trucks would pitch a one-hitter and
beat Manheim 1-0. If Manheim wasn’t on, he couldn’t get
it across home plate if it was as wide as a wall.
Marvin:
But he had better stuff than Trucks. He had an amazing
curve ball, just couldn’t always control it. You
know, Trucks thinks he was sold to Detroit for $10,000, but it
was only $2500. He was sold to pay for the lights.
In that book, « The last rebel yell », Trucks says they
sold him for $10,000 and he didn’t get any of it.
Jack: When (Yam)
Yaryan was managing, he would always catch Trucks.
SP: Yaryan
was about 45 years old at that point.
Jack:
When Trucks would throw a wild pitch over Yaryan’s head and no
one was on base, Yaryan wouldn’t even move, he’d just reach back
and let the umpire put a new ball in his mitt.
Marvin:
Virgil never did make many wild pitches, but if he did, it was
liable to hit the top of the stands.
Keltys:
Virgil went to Beaumont, Texas (Detroit farm team) after
Andalusia.
Marvin:
That’s where that manager beat the stew out of him under the
stands and kind of straightened him up. Al Vincent was
that manager.
Keltys:
There was some controversy about who really owned him for a while
there. They had to go to the minor league commisioner.
Keltys:
You ever hear about Trucks skipping out on the club here?
He’d been sold to Detroit and he didn’t know he’d been sold.
There was a shoe company in Georgia that was trying to build
a club to win the national semi-pro championship and Luther Gunnells
told Trucks to go play there about mid-season. They had
to go to Birmingham to get Trucks’ daddy to bring him back before
he was « unsold » to Detroit.
Marvin:
You know, Emory Lindsey was the man Trucks struck out to break
the (all time strikeout) record. That scorebook’s supposed
to be in the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. If Trucks hadn’t
gone and jumped the league like he did there, he’d have broken
the record sooner.
Keltys:
He would have had a couple more starts. He was gone
several days and nobody knew where he was. That shoe company
did win the championship that year.
Keltys:
Ol’ Luther Gunnells was one of those professional team-jumpers.
He’d go where the money was. He and Claude Pittman, better
known as « Red » Pittman.
Jack: If
he wanted a warm up jacket he’d tell the manager he wouldn’t
pitch that day unless he got one.
Marvin:
Someone would pay ol’ Red and he’d make the prettiest error you
ever saw. I think he got thrown out of professional ball
sometime later on for throwing a game.
Keltys:
When Pittman swung, you could tell when he was trying to miss
it. That was back in 1936. I could name you the starting
line up for them (1936 Andalusia): Hoyt Farmer was catching,
Arthur Shanahan was at third, Cook was at shortstop, Larry
Mashburn was at second, Harry Embray was at first,
or was it (Girard) Corrado, Roy Humpries was in left field,
Claude Pittman in center, and I don’t know who was in right.
Keltys:
You know, we didn’t have helmets in those days. The first
headgear we saw was a fiber thing, just kind of fit inside
a players hat. The first one I ever saw worn was by a guy
with Headland named (Al) Rivenbark. He’d put this
thing in his cap and everybody would rib him about it.
Jack: Remember old « Double-ugly »
(Jim) Scott from Enterprise?
Keltys:
I remembered they called Scott and asked him to play. He
hadn’t swung a bat in over a year and the first time he swung
in a game he hit that ball over the left field fence.
Marvin: And don’t
leave « Popcicle » Collins out of this. Hat sideways,
ugliest lookin’ shortstop you ever did see…
Keltys:
Ugliest man to ever put on a uniform. He was uglier than
« Double ugly » Scott.
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