World War II Baseball: Minors in the Majors

“Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

That was the response heard often in 1944 whenever somebody complained about a shortage or the inferior quality of anything.

Major league baseball, depleted of stars and journeymen alike, fielded its product with a mix of graybeards reclaimed from the minor leagues, 4-F or deferred regulars, and teenagers still too young to be drafted – or to shave.

This is the story of three teenagers who set records that still stand as a result of their big league debuts. – Norman L. Macht

Tommy Brown

 In 1943 Brooklyn-born Tommy Brown was a fifteen-year-old high school dropout working on the New York docks and playing sandlot baseball on weekends.

One year later he became the youngest player ever to start a major league game and the following year the youngest to hit a home run.

He had a nine-year career 1944-1953 as a utility infielder and outfielder with the Dodgers, Phillies and Cubs, with one World Series appearance with the 1949 Dodgers.

I spoke to him by telephone from his home in Brentwood, Tennessee, in August 1994.

In 1943 a friend of mine was invited to a tryout at Ebbets Field and he asked me to go with him, so I went along.

They stuck a number on my back and I worked out. I guess I had a good day because they asked me to come back the next day.

I didn’t get a contract until December, when they invited me to spring training at Bear Mountain, New York, near West Point.

My bonus was a ferryboat ride up the Hudson River to West Point.

They sent me to Newport News in the Piedmont League. I was hitting but I had a scatter-arm.

One day in July the manager, Jake Pitler, got a call from [Brooklyn general manager] Branch Rickey.

Pitler told him, “I have a shortstop who can run and hit. But his throwing is so wild, some of the fans behind first base wear gloves to catch his overthrows.”

Rickey said, “How old is he?”

“Sixteen.”

“Put him on the next train.”

I didn’t really want to go. I was having fun in Newport News. 

[At the age of 16 years seven months twenty-seven days, Brown started both games of a doubleheader in Brooklyn (both losses) against the Cubs.

He had a hit in each game and scored a run, had one putout and one assist in his first game He also made one error, which he described.]

I was nervous. Our first baseman was 6-foot-6 Howie Schultz. The first ball hit to me I threw over his head way up in the stands. Leo Durocher called me “Buckshot.”

Other players called me “Barbasol” because I was the only player who didn’t have to shave.

Last spring my house burned down with all my scrapbooks and collection of autographed bats and balls.

Ralph “Putsy” Caballero

Putsy Caballero had a brief, undistinguished five-year big league career with the Phillies and would be little noted nor long remembered outside of his hometown but for one fact: at 16 years, 10 months and nine days, he was the youngest ever major league third baseman.

He made his debut on September 14, 1944, in a 12-1 Loss to the Giants in New York, sent in as a replacement for third baseman Glen Stewart in the bottom of the eighth.

He caught one fouled pop-up off the bat of Mel Ott and popped out to short in his first at bat.

World War II had stripped baseball of all but the over- and under-aged and 4-F. He told me his story at his home in New Orleans on January 24, 1993

I was born November 5, 1927. My father, a pharmacist, was Spanish, my mother French and Irish. I had three brothers.

Everybody in the family had a nickname. Mom and Dad just started calling me Putsy. That’s what I grew up with.

We’d always been an athletic family. I got interested in baseball in grammar school. A young priest, Fr. Dolan, gave us a bat and ball and we wore it out.

We played in Catholic leagues. I was an infielder. We were taught how to bunt, how to run bases. I read the box scores, followed Bill “Swish” Nicholson with the Cubs.

In the summer of 1944 I was playing American Legion ball. Scouts for the Giants, Cubs and Phillies were trailing us.

When the Legion season ended, I became eligible to sign. Ted McGrew of the Phils [then called the Blue Jays] offered me an $8,000 bonus,

I had a scholarship to LSU, but my father worked 16 hours a day and that was a lot of money, so I took it. I signed on September 9 and my father and I rode the bus to Philadelphia. Took 24 hours. 

I can still remember walking in the clubhouse at Shibe Park for the first time.

All these veteran players – guys on their way out – started riding me: “Man, I wish I had your money,” and stuff like that.  They were probably making half what I signed for to play a whole season. 

Joe Nuxhall

Joe Nuxhall was 50 days short of his sixteenth birthday when he became the youngest ballplayer to appear in a major league game.

A left-handed pitcher, he is the only one of our juvenile record-setters who had a lengthy career, compiling a 135-117 record over 15 years, mostly with the Cincinnati Reds.

In 1967 he retired and began a 32-year run as a member of the Reds’ radio play-by-play team. His story is based on a telephone interview in September 1994.

In the summer of 1943 the Cincinnati Reds, like every other team, were searching the sandlots for draft-proof bodies in baseball uniforms.

They had heard about a 34-year-old amateur pitcher named Orville Nuxhall in nearby Hamilton, Ohio. Two scouts went out one Sunday to look him over.

The field had several diamonds on it.

While looking for Orville, they noticed a left-handed kid pitching in another game. Inquiring as to the southpaw’s identity, they were told, “That’s Orville’s son, Joe. He’s only 14.”

Impressed, the scouts offered both father and son minor league contracts with Ogden, Utah, in the Class C Pioneer League.

The Nuxhalls were not interested. Orville preferred to stay home with his five children.

Joe did not want to lose his eligibility to play ninth grade basketball at Wilson Junior High.

Joe Nuxhall, the youngest ballplayer to appear in a major league game at just 15 years old

By 1944 the draft age had widened to 18 to 38. The Reds offered Joe a $500 bonus to sign a major league contract for $175 a month. He showed up on weekends and sat on the bench.

The Reds were in third place, thanks to decent pitching, led by Bucky Walters at 23-8 and Ed Heusser’s league-leading 2.38 ERA. Joe did not expect to get into a game.

On June 10, four days after D-Day, the first-place St. Louis Cardinals were bombarding the Reds, 13-0, after eight innings at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.

Few of the 3,510 fans remained in their seats when manager Bill McKechnie decided to send in the schoolboy to mop up.

Joe was 15 years 10 months and 11 days old when he faced his first big league hitter, second baseman George Fallon, and got him out on a ground ball to short.

He threw two quick strikes to the next batter, the pitcher Mort Cooper, then walked him. The next batter popped up. Two outs. Joe walked the next batter.

“I was throwing the ball all over everywhere.

About then I realized where I was. Probably three weeks prior to that I was pitching to junior high school kids and now I look up and Stan Musial is standing at the plate.”

Musial lined a single and after that the thrill of it all rapidly dissolved. Joe walked three more and gave up a two-run single before the merciful McKechnie paroled him. His line: 2/3 IP 5R 2H 5W.

The Reds sent him to Birmingham where he got into one game. His pitching experience did not bother him as much as being forced to sit on the sidelines for his next football and basketball seasons.

He became eligible again to play high school sports in his senior year.

Beginning in 1947, Nuxhall followed the usual development route through the minors, returning to the Reds in 1952. This time he lasted 15 years, winning 135 against 117 losses.

In 1967 he began a 31-year career on the Reds’ radio broadcasting team.