“Vinegar Bend” Mizell’s Minor League Debut

Image credits: Baseball History Comes Alive

There is a town named Vinegar Bend – population 192 -- in southwest Alabama, abutting the Mississippi border, but Wilmer Mizell never lived there…

He was born in 1930 and raised in Leakesville, Mississippi, just across the border.

But Vinegar Bend had something that Leakesville lacked: a post office. Any mail the Mizell family received bore the address RFD 1, Vinegar Bend AL. 

Sportswriters have a penchant for pinning fanciful nicknames on ballplayers, so when they learned of the rookie’s mailing address, they dubbed him Vinegar Bend Mizell. To his teammates he was always “Wil” or “Wilmer” or “Mizell.”

The Family Team

A natural left-hander, Wilmer was two when his father died. Raised mostly by his grandmother on a farm where they ran cattle and grew most of their food. He had an older brother and a slew of uncles and cousins, enough to field a family baseball team.

They had no money to buy a baseball, so they made their own, sometimes using a rock in the center, twine from the wrapping of packages bought at the general store, and covered it with whatever they could find. They nailed together an old broken bat.

Leakesville was too small to have a town team, and the local high school had no baseball team, so the family carved out a dirt infield in the pasture, built a mound, made bases and a home plate and pitching rubber out of blocks of white oak. There was no fence. 

Wil’s brother was the catcher. In the evenings, after the chores were done, they would play catch until dark. By the time he was 16, Wilmer was the hardest thrower in the family, so he became the pitcher. Wearing overalls and no shoes, and an old falling-apart right-handed glove, he began blowing away the opposition.

They played a few games against other pick-up teams, and gradually began to take on town teams in the area. By passing the hat, they raised enough money to buy uniforms and real bases from Sears Roebuck.

The Signing

Just before his high school senior year started, Wilmer saw a notice that the St. Louis Cardinals were holding a tryout camp in Biloxi on Labor Day weekend. Wilmer and his brother and some friends decided it would be fun. Late in the afternoon it was Wilmer’s turn to pitch. He struck out three batters on nine pitches.

The tryouts were supposed to last three days, but a hurricane was headed that way so that was the end of the tryouts.

A year later, on Mizell’s high school graduation day, the scout who had conducted the tryouts showed up at his home. When Wil’s brother got home from work, the scout asked Wilmer to throw for him. After a few minutes, the scout said, “You’re throwing harder now than a year ago.”

Wilmer Mizell was scouted by the St. Louis Cardinals. Image credits: Time Keeping Score

He offered Wilmer a contract with the Class D Albany, Georgia, club, for $275 a month. Wilmer didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure he was ready to leave home. Then the scout said, “When you get to Albany, I’ll see that they give you $500.”

That was more money than Wilmer – or a lot of folks around Leakesville – had ever seen, so after the graduation ceremony that night he got his uncle to sign for him. The scout took him to the railroad station and put him on a train to Albany.

Wilmer Mizell Picks Up the Story

I rode that train all night and most of the day.  A man named Walter Shannon from the Cardinals met me at the station. I got off the train wearing my best blue jeans and carrying a very light little bag. He asked me where was my glove. I said, “I really don’t have one.” Then he asked me where was my shoes. I said, “I got ‘em on.”

So he took me to a sporting goods store and picked me out a Mort Cooper glove. At that time, that was one of the really famous pitchers’ gloves. It was just about the prettiest thing I’d ever set my eyes on until I met my wife. He got me a pair of Riddell cleats made out of kangaroo hide and all the other paraphernalia a pitcher needed, Took me a while to learn how to wear all of it.

So we got to the ballpark. Now, I don’t remember this, but they told the story that when I was handed a white uniform and a gray one, I said I’d keep the white one and gave them the gray one back.

Anyway, I put the uniform on and went out on the field. It was still spring training for the Cards’ low minor league clubs and there was a bunch of pitchers out there and a big older pitcher was talking to them about the proper stance on the rubber and getting the sign and how to field the position and holding runners on base – and all of this was brand new to me. Nobody had ever carried me out to the mound and showed me all this.

Then the man in charge of the spring training came by and stopped at home plate with a fielder’s glove and wanted to see “the new kid” throw a few. He meant me.

So I threw him a few easy pitches. He said, “Kid, is that all you got?” And I thought, well maybe they warm ‘em up using fielder’s gloves here. So I wound up and cut that pitch loose, It hit that glove, stuck in the web and went right up on the backstop, and he dropped his hand and left the ballpark.

The Albany manager, an old pitcher, had the patience to bring me along. It was almost six weeks after I joined the club before I pitched. We were in Americus, Georgia, one night, getting beat, 15-0, in the sixth inning. The manager looked down the bench at me and said, “All right, Mizell, you can warm up.”

I grabbed that Mort Cooper glove and went down the left field foul line to warm up. With 2,500 people in that little ballpark, you couldn’t even see me. I had plenty of time to get ready, but when he waved me in from the mound, I knew something that he didn’t know. I’d only thrown four pitches in that bullpen because the catcher was having to run that ball down after every pitch.

It was the first time I ever pitched with fences all around the field and lights.

Hal Smith was the catcher. He goes behind the plate and catches all my warmup pitches with a little effort. The first hitter up was feeling cocky, leading 15-0. So he dug in about knee-deep, and Smitty goes down and gives me the sign: fastball. He and I know that’s the only pitch I had.

Needless to say, I was a little bit nervous. Nobody knew this but me: when I put my foot on the rubber, my foot would shake. It wasn’t fear at all, just that nervous tension when the adrenaline flows, and so I’d take it off the rubber. When I cut that first pitch loose, I threw it right over everything. Smitty came running out to the mound and said, “Mi-Mi-Mi-Nizell are you nervous?” And that hitter got way in the back of that batter’s box.

That next pitch was about a foot over and a foot behind his head.

Later, when Hal Smith and I were both with the Cardinals, he told me, “You know, I was as nervous as you were that night until I realized I was the safest man in that whole ballpark.” He said that’s the only time he ever looked behind him and saw people lying behind their seats.

This was my debut in professional baseball. They got hits; I hit some of them I walked some of them. And I made it a point to forget the final score of that game a long time ago.