Tall Tale or True: Was Elmer Valo a Four-Decades Major Leaguer?

Elmer Valo - a 4 decade player or ‘just’ the 3?

Baseball lore is full of tall stories.

Some were invented by imaginative press box humorists and have been repeated and accepted because they appeared in print (they didn’t call it fake news in those days}.

Some were passed down like tribal lore by players about other players they never saw.

And some were spun by the subjects of the stories themselves. This is one of them.—Norman L Macht

The most promising rookie at the Philadelphia Athletics’ 1942 spring training was Elmer Valo.

Elmer Valo: The Early Years

Born in Ribnik, Czechoslovakia, as Imrich Valo on March 5, 1921, he was six when his family arrived in Palmerton, Pennsylvania. His father worked in a zinc mill.

Elmer took to baseball and played high school and semipro ball. In 1938 a local teacher tipped off A’s manager Connie Mack about him. Earle Mack and scout Ira Thomas took a look at him and invited him to a tryout at Shibe Park.

“I was still in high school,” Valo said. “The teacher, Edgar Polsen, and my father went with me. Mr

Mack sat in the stands while Dave Keefe* pitched to me, then hit some balls to me in the outfield. Then we all went up to Mr. Mack’s office.

When I saw the polished wood floor in the office I started to take my cleats off, but he told me not to worry about it.”

Mack offered to pay Valo’s way through Duke University, but Elmer turned it down. He was ready to sign, but he wanted to play his last year of high school basketball. They didn’t talk about money.

Mack put a blank, undated Williamsport contract before Elmer’s father, who signed it. Connie Mack then “desked” it. 

According to league records, Mack apparently sent the contract – for 1939 – to the league in October 1938, followed by a notice optioning Valo to Federalsburg. 

In the spring of ‘39 Mack arranged for him to play on semipro teams in the city and work out with the A’s when they were home.

Life in Baseball post-graduation

After he graduated, Valo finished the season at Federalsburg, hitting .374. Recalled by Williamsport in October 1939, he was assigned to Wilmington for 1940, where he led the Inter-State League hitting .364. In the fall of ‘40, he was called up by the A’s and hit .348 in 8 games.

Mack optioned him to Wilmington again in 1941 and he had another good year, then batted .420 in 13 September games for the A’s.

Except for a few years in the army, Valo remained with the A’s, moving with them to Kansas City in 1954. He then played for seven other teams.

His last at bat was for the Phillies in 1961. He had thus played in three decades: the forties, fifties and sixties. Valo then became a scout.

The Athletics had also brought him up at the end of the 1939 season, but Valo did not get into a game then.

Or did he? Had he played in four decades?

Red Smith

In 1939 Red Smith was a sportswriter for the Philadelphia Record. More than thirty years later, on December 26, 1972, Smith wrote a letter to writer and book producer Jim Charlton, later a SABR publications director. Smith wrote:

“On the last day of the 1939 season in Philadelphia, Elmer was a kid from the country who had been getting a look-see from the Athletics. Connie sent him up as a pinch-batter and he walked, getting no official time at bat.

“When the official scorer learned that Connie Mack had used a player who was not under contract, he left the player’s name out of the official score – since he had no time at bat – in order that St. Cornelius escape a possible fine. This piece of perfidy came to light only last October when Elmer told me about it at the World Series. . .

“By the way, the official scorer who falsified the record in 1939 and forgot about it until last October, was Red Smith of the Philadelphia Record.”

Three years later, at the 1975 World Series in Cincinnati, Smith, now with the New York Times, described Lefty Gomez spinning some tall tales, then wrote this:

“In the group around Gomez was Elmer Valo , . . [who] can name, for example, three players who were active in the majors in four decades, the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s – Ted Williams, Mickey Vernon, and Early Wynn.

“‘There is another,’ he said now, ‘but you can’t prove it by the record books. In the last week of the 1939 season, Connie Mack had me in Philadelphia for a look, just a kid from the country. Late in the last game of the year, he sent me in as a pinch-hitter and I walked.

“‘Afterward the official scorer came and told me that Connie, without giving it a thought, had left himself open to a stiff fine for using a player who wasn’t under contract.

He said that if it was all right with me, he was going to protect Connie by leaving me out of the official score, since I didn’t have an official time at bat, anyway. That’s why the records say I didn’t get to the majors until 1940.’

“Valo turned to me. ‘You were working in Philadelphia then,’ he said, ‘and you ought to remember. You were the official scorer.’”

About ten years later Red Smith was at a SABR meeting in New York and, according to a SABR member who was there, told the story to those sitting around him with a few embellishments; Smith said it was the last doubleheader of the season, Valo was sent in to pinch hit and walked, and a runner was put in for him.

When Commissioner Landis heard about it, he reprimanded Connie severely and said he’d be fined and suspended if it happened again.

Smith also repeated the story in an interview with William C. Wallace of the New York Times.

Is the story true?

For all his well-deserved honors, Red Smith was not above spinning made-up yarns, a long and honored sports-writing tradition. 

There are some problems with this one. First of all, the A’s were on the road the last week of the 1939 season, with a final weekend series at home against Washington.

The Sunday doubleheader was rained out after one inning, so the A’s last game was a single game on Saturday, September 30.

Connie Mack did not manage that day; he had been out sick for weeks and his son Earle was the manager. In any event, the A’s faced no fines or reprimands even if Valo did appear in the game.

The rules gave a club ten days to sign a player who had agreed to terms, and he was eligible to play in the meantime. Connie Mack had done that often in his rebuilding days when hundreds of youngsters wore an A’s uniform for a brief time.

Mack once neglected to sign one of his pitchers, Tom Ferrick, until three weeks into the 1941 season, with no consequences. If the player never signed, the only penalty was forfeiture of any games in which he had played.

Despite a lot of digging, I was unable to determine if Red Smith even did any official scoring in 1939. He was not a beat writer for the A’s, though he did fill in for Bill Dooly of the Record who was ill in September.

No box score in any paper in the world mentions Valo or a pinch runner. Chubby Dean had entered the game as a pinch hitter for starting pitcher Lynn Nelson and stayed in to pitch the rest of the way. 

Oddly, all the box scores show Washington pitcher Joe Haynes giving up only 2 walks. According to Retrosheet, Haynes walked 3: Al Brancato, Bob Johnson, and Chubby Dean. The only way the box score balances is with a third walk to the number nine hitter.

No play-by-play account has been found for that meaningless game between the sixth- and seventh-place teams, won by Washington, 9-5.

Some detective work was required

Piecing together bits from the brief game stories, I reconstructed the last three innings. The A’s scored 2 runs in the seventh; Dick Siebert, batting fifth, made the last out in the inning. Sam Chapman, batting sixth, led off the eighth with a home run.

That meant that the pitcher, Chubby Dean, had to bat in the eighth inning. In view of what happened in the ninth, he probably walked.

If Valo had pinch hit for him, a new pitcher would have pitched the ninth inning, something the official scorer could hardly conceal.

But Dean pitched the top of the ninth. In the bottom of the ninth with Washington leading, 9-4, two outs and nobody on base, the number 4 hitter, Frank Hayes, tripled.

If Valo had pinch hit and walked ahead of Hayes, he or a runner would have scored. They didn’t. Siebert singled Hayes home with the only run in the inning. Sam Chapman then made the last out. 

So, did Elmer Valo really pinch hit for somebody and walk? If so, for whom? If not, why was he still reportedly telling the story 36 years later?

It’s likely that the story of an obscure pinch-hitting appearance by an unknown rookie in a meaningless game wasn’t even worth talking about until 21 years later when Valo became what was still a rarity -- a three-decade player, in 1960.

Only then would the idea of making up a story become appealing. Whenever Smith’s story first appeared in print, had Valo confirmed it, or just gone along with it as a harmless tall tale – and now he was stuck with it?

In the pre-internet 1980s, when I began my research for a biography of Connie Mack, my first priority was to talk to as many men who had played for Mack as I could while they were still around.

In my haste, my preparation for those interviews was not what it should have been.

I was unaware of a Red Smith letter to a SABR publications director mentioning the Valo incident, or his 1975 story in the Times.

But I remembered reading the Valo 1939 story somewhere, maybe, I thought – (mistakenly, as it turned out) - in Fred Lieb’s 1945 biography of Mack.

Visiting Elmer Valo in 1988

 I hoped to get the true story when I went to see Elmer Valo at his home in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, on January 29, 1988.

We spent a very pleasant three hours together as he talked about his youth and his lengthy baseball career while my primitive tape recorder reeled on. When he talked about his rookie year 1939 at Federalsburg, here’s how it went:

Valo: I was fortunate. I was picked toward the end of the major league season. He brought me up temporarily just to be there and he paid me.”

Me: “At the end of the ‘39 season you were sitting on the bench in Philadelphia.”

Valo: “I sat on the bench, that’s right.”

Me: “You never got into any games.”

Valo: “Well, no. I got into some semipro games. Ah – I was (pause) I was in a position – but I can’t talk about it. I won’t talk about it, in other words. I can talk about it, but I won’t.”

Me: “That’s the story where you got into a game. . .

Valo: “I don’t want to talk about it. You know, it’s water over the dam.”

Me: “Yeah, I was going to ask you about it. I think I saw it in Fred Lieb’s book.”

Silence.

I was disappointed but went on to other matters. About an hour later I ventured to return to the subject.

Me: “I’m not sure where I read about the 1939 incident that you don’t want to talk about. It may be in Lieb’s book. If I call you sometime and read you what’s in the book where I read it, would you tell me if it’s true or not?”

He paused for several seconds, then said, “Well I could mention the fact that … [long pause] “there’s so many guys call me on that let’s just leave it go just to let well enough alone. That’s what I’ve been telling everybody else. I can’t make one exception then. I’m sorry about that.”

Me: “Are you aware of what’s in the book?”

Valo: “Probably. I probably know what it says. Probably it said something about Red Smith. That’s all I’ll admit to.”

Me: “Yeah I think it does. Supposedly the book that Lieb wrote was based to a great extent on conversations with Connie Mack.”

Valo: “What you can do is call me if you like and then see what he says and then I’ll just say leave well enough alone or – okay?”

Me:” Fair enough.”

When I checked and found that it wasn’t in Lieb’s book, I didn’t call Valo about it again. And I didn’t learn about the letter or the 1975 column Smith wrote until after Valo’s death ten years later.

I was left wondering: if Elmer Valo had so openly told the story to a group of former players and possibly other reporters at the 1975 World Series, as Smith wrote, why was he so evasive about it in the years that followed?

If it happened, why hesitate to confirm it almost fifty years later? If it didn’t happen, and Smith had made it up, maybe Valo had gone along with it for years because it was a good, harmless yarn, and he became uncomfortable with it when other writers began questioning him about it.

Maybe he thought if he now denied it, he would be tainting Red Smith’s reputation by calling him a liar, or at least a makeup artist.

A four-decade player or….

So, was Elmer Valo a four-decade player? I left the question hanging as I plowed on through the life and times of Mr. Mack.

Years later, I was editing and revising what had become volume 3 of a Mack trilogy when I came to this episode. It bothered me that it was still unresolved.

How could I find out if Red Smith was really the official scorer that day? Did anybody have such records? I tried MLB, the Hall of Fame, the BBWAA, Elias the official statisticians, The Sporting News. Nothing. 

Then, thanks to baseball historian Phil Wood’s efforts, I learned that Smith had in fact been one of the Philadelphia official scorers that year. But on that last Saturday? Nobody knew.

And then: serendipity. Looking for something else, I came across a September item in a later year that said Red Smith had left the baseball beat to cover college football.

Aha, says I, maybe he had been doing that in 1939. And with the aid of SABR member Ed Morton, my research eyes and legs in Philadelphia, we found it.

On Saturday, September 30, at the same time Elmer Valo was on the bench in Shibe Park, Red Smith was covering the Villanova-Muhlenberg football game – Villanova’s twenty-second straight game without a loss -- for the Record.

And there went another good story that never happened.

*A’s batting practice pitcher for 19 years 1932-1950