N.C. natives...
In The Hall of Fame



Gaylord Perry, p, b Sept. 15, 1938
 ...signed out of high school in 1958 for $73,000, the most the San Francisco Giants had ever paid for a rookie ... won 314 major league games, and was the first pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in both the National and American leagues.

Walter 'Buck' Leonard, 1b, b Sept. 8, 1907, Rocky Mount

..nicknamed the “black Lou Gehrig,”  Leonard was one of the greats of the old Negro Leagues ... played most of his pro career with the Homestead Grays, who won nine straight Negro National League pennants in the 1930s and ‘40s with Leonard and slugger Josh Gibson leading the way. No “official” records bear out Leonard’s feats. One publication - Total Baseball – credits Leonard with a lifetime batting average of .336. Another states that he averaged 34 home runs over eight seasons ...  died on Nov. 27, 1997 in Rocky Mount.

Enos Slaughter, of, b April 26, 1916 in Roxboro

...playing for the local textile mill, he caught the attention of scouts and was signed by the Cardinals in 1934 ...  played for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1938 through 1953, except for a two-year stint in the service ... later played for the Yankees, Kansas City Athletics and Milwaukee Braves ... twice led the National League in triples ... was a 10-time all-star ...  carried a lifetime batting average of .300 ... "mad dash" from first base to score the winning run to win the 1946 World Series was the defining play of his career ... also managed Raleigh's minor league team in 1961, and coached at Duke from 1971 through 1977 ... died on Aug. 12, 2002 in Durham.



 Hoyt Wilhelm, p, b July 26, 1922 in Huntersville
... learning the art of the knuckleball made him one of the most durable pitchers in the majors ...  signed to play for Mooresville before World War II, but it would be 1952 that he broke into the big leagues with the New York Giants ... went on to play 21 seasons, mostly as a relief pitcher ...  notched a record 124 wins as a reliever and was the first to save 200 games and the first to appear in 1,000 games ...  died on Aug. 23, 2002 in Sarasota, Fla.

Rick Ferrell, c, b Oct. 12, 1905 in Durham. 
...was the elder of the Ferrell brothers battery ... Brother Wes pitched in the majors ... Rick played for Guilford College before beginning his pro career in Columbus, Ohio, in 1927 ... went on to play for the St. Louis Browns, Boston Red Sox and Washington Senators from 1929 to 1947 ...  had a lifetime batting average of .281 and caught 1,806 games, an American League record that stood for more than 40 years ... died in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. in 1995.

Luke Appling, ss, b April 2, 1907, in High Point
...went to Oglethorpe College in Georgia and was signed by the White Sox in 1930 ...  played 20 seasons in the majors, batting over .300 in nine of those years ... died in Cumming, Ga., in 1991.

Jim 'Catfish' Hunter, p, b April 8, 1946, in Hertford
... was signed out of high school by the Kansas City Athletics in 1965 and was in the majors the same year ... made the first of his eight All-Star games the next seson ...  would have five 20-win seasons, including 1974, when he won 25 and won the Cy Young Award ...  died in Hertford in 1999.

 Baseball crazy
An overview of North Carolina's baseball history

           North Carolina never had a major league baseball team; there was never a metropolis here that the big leagues believed could draw enough fans.

            But baseball was always popular in the state. As a matter of fact, one could say that the state was absolutely baseball crazy, particularly during the periods just before and after World War II. Here’s a fact that supports that notion: More than 72 North Carolina towns and cities have been home to minor league teams. One year – 1948 –  there were 43 N.C. towns with minor league teams. Do the math; that’s a lot of players… and tickets.

            Here’s something else that’s noteworthy: During the course of my research on my book – A Place to Play – I came across a newspaper clipping from that year, 1948. In a column in early June, Dick Herbert, sports editor of The News & Observer of Raleigh, noted that on the previous Sunday, his staff had taken reports on 26 minor league games and 37 semipro games. And the N&O’s coverage area was just eastern North Carolina.

            Now, take all of those fans, and there was no major league park that could hold them; take the best of those players, and they’d have given the Yankees a run for their money.

 
Early years

 It is hard to tell exactly when baseball first got its legs in North Carolina. A drawing dated 1862 from the Town of Salisbury depicts Civil War prisoners playing in that town. It would be safe to say that the Civil War was a springboard for the game’s popularity across the nation.
    We know that baseball games of all sorts began popping up in North Carolina in the 1880s as the textile and furniture industries brought more people to the state. Towns, mills and factories began sponsoring teams during those years, just as the game was first producing major leagues in the big cities of the North. The University of North Carolina fielded the state's first college team in 1884.

By the turn of the century, North Carolina had its first true professional teams. In 1901, Charlotte, Raleigh, Tarboro and Wilmington were part of the Virginia-Carolina League. The early leagues struggled, but by 1908 and the formation of the Eastern Carolina League, pro baseball had a permanent home in North Carolina.

Along the way, folks in even smaller communities and towns were finding this nice little summer game, too. Through the 1920s and '30s the game grew by leaps and bounds, every town wanting to have their own team. Baseball was by then a big part of summer life in the state.

 
 The semipro game

            Baseball seemed to be a natural outgrowth of leisure time in rural North Carolina. A telling figure in the Herbert item above is the number of semipro games for which the N&O took stats during that June Sunday in 1948: 37.
          Semipro baseball was huge in the state from the 1930s right up until the 1960s. Driven by freewheeling personalities and town rivalries, semipro ball attracted some of the best ball players around. In the 1930s Connie Mack and Branch Rickey used the old Coastal Plain League and the Piedmont textile leagues as recruiting grounds. Herman Fink, Eric Tipton and Chubby Dean are among the state's players who went straight from the semipro ranks to the majors and ended up with long careers.
         And the semipro teams attracted fans. The tiny town of Angier, with fewer than 1,000 people, reported 2,000 at one playoff game in the 1930s, and it was nothing for mill towns such as Concord and Kannapolis to cram 2,000-5,000 in their parks for a big game.

Rivalries

 The minor leagues had their share of passionate rivalries and talented players, too.
          The Class D Eastern Carolina League had the first red-hot pennant race. In 1909, Wilson, Wilmington, Fayetteville and Raleigh all finished within a game and a half of each other in the six-team league. Wilson (50-39) won the pennant and went on to claim the playoff title.
        In 1938 the Coastal Plain League featured another four-team pennant race between pennant winner Tarboro (66-41), New Bern, Snow Hill and Kinston. They all finished within three games of one another. Strangely enough, New Bern would roll though the playoffs, winning eight straight games and take the post-season title. That Bears team was managed by none other than Herbert “Doc” Smith of Angier, who is a featured figure in my book.
            And those hot August afternoons and nights brought plenty of fiery exchange between players, managers and, all too often, fans. One illustration was an August Tobacco State League game in 1946, when the Clinton Blues visited the Wilmington Pirates. A disputed call evolved into a fist fight between the two managers, which was enough provocation for the fans to rush the field and turn it into an outright melee that city police could barely control. In meting out a series of fines, National Association president, Judge William Bramham called the incident "one of the worst displays of rowdyism in the minor leagues in 20 years."              
       Incidents such as this, and other shenanigans down through the years, such as outlaw or ringer players, violation of salary limits, and fixing baseballs, simply illustrate teams’, towns’ and players' passion to win games.

Top teams

        North Carolina has had some of the best minor league teams in the history of the game. 
        One would first have to turn to the 1950 Winston-Salem Cardinals for the great teams in state history. The Cards, with names like Earl Weaver and the legendary Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell, tore through the Carolina League that year, posting a 106-47 record, a full 19 games ahead of runner-up Danville. They edged Reidsville, three games to two, before dispatching Burlington, four games to one, to win the post-season title. 
      Another one of the great teams in state history comes from the old Coastal Plain League. The 1941 Wilson Tobs posted a dazzling 87-30 record, up 23 1/2 games on Greenville. Managed by Coastal Plain League legend and North Carolina native Bill Herring, that Tobs team finished with the best league totals in six different categories, including batting average (.298),  runs (767),  doubles (247) and triples (59).
      A decade earlier, a team from Charlotte went down as one of North Carolina’s minor league greats. Few teams in the 1931 Class C Piedmont League could stay with the Charlotte Knights, who were managed by Guy Lacy, a former Cleveland Indians pitcher. Lacy led his Knights to a 100-37 mark, 13 1/2 games ahead of Raleigh.

 Top players

            There were plenty more great players on our state’s minor league diamonds. A number of Hall of Famers to start with; Rod Carew (Wilson, ’66), Hank Greenberg (Raleigh ’30), Harmon Killebrew (Charlottte, ’56), Early Wynn ( Charlotte, ’38-’40), and Carl Yastrzemski (Raleigh, ’59) are among them.
      In fact, every decade since the 1930s has had future or past major league stars on North Carolina diamonds. Johnny Mize started out in Greensboro in 1930-31; Heine Manuch was on the back end of a great career when he played for Rocky Mount and Greensboro in the early '40s; Eddie Mathews was just starting out when he played for High Point-Thomasville in 1949; Ducky Medwick found his way to Raleigh in 1951, after a long major league career; and Willie Stargell was tuning up as a slugger in Asheville in 1961.
            The list goes on. Ron Guidry, Tommy Lasorda, Sparky Lyle, Don Mattingly and Joe Morgan all had places in N.C. minor league lineups. So did the more contemporary Derek Jeter, Chipper Jones, Cal Ripkin Jr., Mareano Rivera, Curt Schilling, Sammy Sosa, Tim Wakefield and Steve Trachsel. 
            No doubt, the 10 minor league teams across the state will feature a number of future major league stars this season.  

 Bigger than life

      Other legendary names had connections with baseball in the state, too. Lawrence "Crash" Davis of Gastonia was pounding the basepaths in semipro and professional ranks in North Carolina long before his name was immortalized in the film “Bull Durham.” The great Olympian Jim Thorpe took money to play for the Rocky Mount Railroaders in 1909. It was why Thorpe would have his Olympic accomplishments scarred in controversy for years. "Moonlight" Graham of “Field of Dreams” fame was born in Fayetteville. And the great Babe Ruth not only hit his first home run as a professional in Fayetteville, but he would return to eastern North Carolina on hunting excursions for years.

Hall of Famers

 It seems strange that the seven Hall of Fame members actually born in North Carolina, saw limited playing time in the state. Luke Appling of High Point, Rick Ferrell of Durham, Jim “Catfish” Hunter of Hertford, Gaylord Perry of Williamston, Walter “Buck” Leonard of Rocky Mount, Enos “Country” Slaughter of Roxboro, and Hoyt Wilhelm of Huntersville, never stayed around home long, after the scouts got a look at them.
     
NC Baseball Museum
        For anyone interested in the rich history of baseball in our state, a stop at the North Carolina Baseball Museum in Wilson would be well worthwhile. The museum is chock full of jerseys, autographed baseballs, old baseball cards and other memoribilia from our state’s great players and teams. And just a couple of display cases down from where Gaylord Perry’s jersey resides, is my book – A Place to Play.

     Check out A.J. Carr's recent News & Observer story on the museum here.

    And take a look at my picture page on the museum.