Life in the Minor Leagues

Former Minor League player, George Kell. Picture credits: Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Once upon a time, going on a hundred years ago, there were more than 50 minor leagues, ranging from Class D up to AAA, and six thousand youngsters dreaming of one day joining those 400 ballplayers on the 16 major league teams.

A few of those minor league teams traveled by train, but most of them rode buses, usually ancient school buses, lots of miles, sometimes all night, through mountains and deserts. The manager often drove the bus. And sometimes the bus broke down.

Goldie Holt

Goldie Holt racked up more bus miles as a minor league player and manager between 1925 and 1958 than an astronaut’s mileage log on a trip to the moon, In 1938 he was managing Ponca City, Oklahoma, in the Western Association. The team traveled in an antiquated bus with straw seats, and the players often had to get out and push it. One night it died – again – and they pushed it to the side of the road.

Holt had had enough. “We’ll fix this once and for all,” he said. “Get all the stuff out of the bus.”

The players emptied the bus, then drained gasoline from the fuel tank and poured it all over the bus. Holt lit a match.

Just then a Greyhound bus came along. The driver saw the fire and slammed on his brakes. He leaped out with a fire extinguisher, put out the fire and saved the bus.

As soon as he got back in his Greyhound and drove away, the determined Holt lit it again.

They got a new bus.

Class D Leagues

The lowest leagues, manned by young players away from home for the first time, often consisted of small towns close enough together to enable teams to go home after every road game. It was a time of life remembered fondly by many big leaguers.

Mel Parnell

I broke in at Centreville, Maryland, in the Class D Eastern Shore League. It was a friendly town.  Everybody knew everybody. We stayed at a boarding house. A local hardware man ran the club. We had a horse to cut the grass. No road trips.

We rode the bus home at night after every away game, had a ball holding amateur contests where everybody got up and took a turn doing something, maybe stop and raid a watermelon patch on the way.

"Those minor league days were the most fun I ever had in baseball." Picture credits: Image Shack

We were all young. No family responsibilities. Those minor league days were the most fun I ever had in baseball. Once you get up to the major leagues, it becomes more businesslike.

Jimmy Williams

My first team was Sheboygan in the Wisconsin State League. What stands out most is the bus rides, talking baseball for hours.  At night after a road game, we’d pass through these small towns in Wisconsin, and the manager, Joe Hauser, would say, ‘Let’s let them know we’re going through their town.’  So no matter how late it was, we all sang ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ every time we rode through a town.

But for wide-spread leagues like the Texas League, the bus rides were torturous. Ten- or 12-hour rides after a night game were routine. Players slept on the bus floor, the seats, the equipment bags – and had to play the next day.

For players who came out of colleges, where they had trainers, workout equipment, roomy locker rooms and hot showers, life in the lower minor leagues was a rude comedown: dugouts too small to stand up in, tiny ballparks, dim lights, cold showers and few of them.

George Kell

I was a freshman at Arkansas State when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed me in 1940. In 1941 at Newport in the Northeast Arkansas League, the ballpark lights were so dim we relied on automobile headlights during the games. I managed to hit .310. The next spring I reported to Durham for spring training. I was 5-foot-9 and weighed 175. The Brooklyn general manager, Larry MacPhail, thought I was too fat and ordered me released.

"I was a freshman at Arkansas State when the Brooklyn Dodgers signed me in 1940." Picture credits: Pic Click

There I was, nineteen years old, without a job. They didn’t pay your way home. I stayed in the hotel a few days, signing meal checks, while they kept trying to get me out of there. The Lancaster club of the Interstate League came to town for a game and somebody told me they needed a ballplayer. I signed with them, hit .299, and in 1943 led all baseball, batting .396.

Rex Barney

I broke in with the Durham Bulls in the Piedmont League in 1943. The dugout was tiny and there was one shower in the little clubhouse right behind it. The penetrating odor of tobacco curing hung over the place like a shroud. The smell of fresh tobacco was tolerable, but when they burned the discarded leaves and stalks, the stench was terrible. It seemed like every ballpark in the league smelled the same. 

The lights were maybe 100 watts strong – that’s for the entire ballpark, not for each bulb.

Getting enough to eat was a chronic problem for young players. Salaries were low. After paying for someplace to sleep, there wasn’t much left to satisfy the appetites of young athletes who were practicing, then playing a game or maybe a doubleheader, day after day, night after night.

There were some who bought the pizzas and others who mooched a few slices. They shared rooms, often with little or no furniture, to have money to eat. Or were lucky enough to find homes of local fans who offered them low-cost room and board.

Joe Carter

I remember one time I had to sell my boots to get some food. Two-hundred-dollar boots and I sold them for 40 bucks just so we could eat. That’s the way it was in the minor leagues. Everyone was broke. 

And sometimes an extra-inning game ran so late, every fast food joint was closed for the night.  One night the Class D Bluefield Orioles played a 27-inning game at Burlington, North Carolina, that lasted 8 hours 15 minutes, still the record for a continuous game.

Bluefield Coach Frank Klebe

Then we had to get on the bus to go home, a 3 ½-hour ride. There was nothing open anywhere to get something to eat. We stopped at an all-night gas station on the way and cleaned out whatever snacks and crackers they had.

Homesickness took a toll. The transition from playing two or three games a week in high school, surrounded at games by friends and family, to being far from home, playing before sometimes hostile crowds, day after day, was too much for some.

Others, who had been all-state hot shots in high school, thought they had it made. Working out, learning the fundamentals of hitting and playing a position, taking grounders for hours, learning new pitches – that was not for them.

Roger Clemens

In the minor leagues I passed a lot of kids who definitely had more talent than I did. But they never made it. Some of them couldn’t distinguish between the time to play and the time to do their work.

Wade Boggs

I needed six years to learn the game, learn what I was good at and not so good at.

The dreamers were many. Those for whom the dream came true were few.