Backroads and Ballplayers #10
Stories of the famous and not-so-famous men and women from the days when baseball was "Arkansas' Game." Always free and always short enough to finish in one cup of coffee.
My Thoughts on the Hogs, and Dreaming the Dream
Hog Washing
In another life, I coached high school and college basketball for about 15 years. Every year on the first day of practice I told my players that our season would probably end with a loss. That was true for every season except the one year when my team won one of those meaningless third-place games in a women’s college basketball regional. I doubt that my players were any more pleased to end our year with a “consolation win.” I know I didn’t feel very “consoled.”
They are playing the College World Series next week without the Razorbacks. I am sad about that. With that sadness comes the reality that if the history of college baseball is an indication of the present, Arkansas would not have won the NCAA Championship in Omaha. I am very proud of this season. I am sure some of you will disagree.
One of the SEC Network guys who has a good intern for researching such information, said Arkansas has the most wins in college baseball since 2017, so I am repeating it. I am going to take that trivia and add an opinion. The Arkansas Razorbacks are the best college baseball program in America, with one of the all-time best college baseball coaches, in a state with the best fanbase in college baseball. I don’t want to fire anyone, talk negatively about a 20-year-old who could have played better, or complain about our tough draw. I suspected this year would be an almost total rebuild and yet, Arkansas is the SEC Baseball Champion, and that fact will be recorded for all time. I expect next year to be another total rebuild and a repeat would be remarkable.
Razorback Baseball Roster Tracker:
Three regulars are out of eligibility and will not return:
John Bolton, Brady Slavens, Jared Wegner
The following regulars are eligible for the 2023 MLB Draft. Certainly, some will be drafted and sign, and some will stay:
Cody Adcock-P, Jace Bohrofen-OF, Caleb Cali-INF, Dyan Carter- P, Harold Coll-INF, Koty Frank-P, Nick Griffin-P, Hunter Grimes-INF/OF, Hunter Hollan-P, Peyton Holt-INF, Tavian Josenberger-OF, Will McEntire-P, Ben McLaughlin-INF, Zack Morris-P, Hudson Polk-C, Parker Rowland-C, Jaxon Wiggins-P
The following players who appeared in SEC Conference Games are not draft eligible:
Position Players: Kendall Diggs-OF/DH, Peyton Stovall-INF, Jayson Jones-INF, Reese Robinett-INF, Mason Neville-OF,
Pitchers: Brady Tygart, Hagen Smith, Gage Wood, Christian Foutch, Austin Ledbetter, Ben Bybee, Parker Coil
Once again, some will go and some will stay. In some cases, their decisions will be a surprise.
What about Arkansas’ No. 1 recruiting class? That is a wait and see…
Some of those signees will indeed be Razorbacks next spring, many could get drafted and sign, and some will end up playing elsewhere after fall practice. The choices for these young men are daunting. They have dreamed the major league dream since they put on their first uniform, but the journey to the “show” is tough.
Dreaming the Dream
So far in 2023, one Arkansas-born player has debuted in the major leagues. The last to arrive was Lake City’s Gavin Stone who pitched in three starts for the Dodgers before being sent down to get more work at Class AAA.
Former Razorback star, Dominic Fletcher arrived in the big leagues on April 30, and for his first two weeks with Arizona Diamond Backs, he was sensational. For those 14 games, he batted .404, with 2 home runs, 13 RBIs, and an OPS of 1.145. The phrase Rookie of the Year was included in one story about the new Arizona phenom. In his next 34 plate appearances, Fletcher batted .161, with one extra-base hit and no RBIs. He was optioned back to AAA Las Vegas on May 26. Getting to the majors is tough, staying there is just as difficult.
Getting called up for the first time is a once-in-lifetime exhilarating experience. Getting sent back down to the minors is another kind of significant moment. What happens from there varies.
Matt Reynolds Frequent Flyer
After being demoted from the big league club, some guys never make it back, and some have a career filled with “called ups” and “sent downs.” One of those who has seen both of those days many times is former Razorback Infielder Matt Reynolds. Reynolds is a baseball player, and, although he could choose to start a new life at age 32, he plays at minor league baseball’s highest level and waits for one more call.
Reynolds played three years for the Razorbacks from 2010-2012 where he started 141 games and hit .275 with 72 RBI, and he was a part of the 2012 College World Series team that advanced to the national semifinals. Reynolds was chosen that spring in the second round of the MLB Draft by the New York Mets.
After four years in the Mets minor league organization, he became a trivia question. When the Mets’ backup infielder Ruben Tejada was injured in the National League Division Series, Reynolds was promoted to the 2015 Mets postseason roster, becoming the first player (in modern history) to be added to a postseason roster in the middle of the series without having any MLB experience. TV cameras caught him in the Mets dugout often when broadcasters mentioned his unlikely distinction, but despite some degree of national fame, Reynolds did not get into a postseason game.
He started 2016 with the Mets Las Vegas affiliate in the Pacific Coast League, but he was called up to the Mets and sent down three times each during his first big league season.
In 2017, Reynolds would once again divide his time between the Mets and AAA Las Vegas. He spent 33 games at Las Vegas batting .320, but he struggled at the plate with the Mets, hitting .225 in 68 games with the big league club. In February 2018, the Mets sold him to the Washington Nationals.
Over the next five seasons, Matt Reynolds would sign with the Royals and get in three big league games in a Kansas City uniform. He would play a season for the Chicago AAA team in Charlotte, North Carolina, resign with the Mets in 2021, and get in one more big league game with his original team. The Cincinnati Reds picked him up off waivers in April 2022, and at age 31, he actually became a semi-regular, getting into 92 games for the Reds.
In 2023, Reynolds started the season with the Reds’ AAA affiliate, the Louisville Bats in the International League. Typically, in the baseball life of Matt Reynolds, the Reds sent for him on April 29, and he started the next day at third base against the As. Two days later he was credited with what would turn out to be the winning run when he scored as the “ghost runner” in the tenth inning of a 2—1 win over the Padres in San Diego.
On May 6, when the Reds returned to Cincinnati, Reynolds drove down to rejoin the Louisville Bats. His major league visit had lasted one week. On Saturday, June 10, he hit his 9th home run of the season and drove in three runs. Reynolds is currently batting .297 and waiting on his next phone call to report to the “show.”
Matt Reynolds has played in 287 major league games and earned 1.3 million dollars in big-league salary. Not too bad. One of Reynolds’ current teammates is probable Hall of Famer, Joey Votto, who is in Louisville on a rehab assignment. Votto’s salary for this year is 25 million.
We are pulling for you, Matt. You have made your Arkansas fans proud!
“Hit and Miss Man”
Sometimes when a player is sent down from the major leagues he never gets a second chance to play in the big leagues again. Occasionally, a potential star is lost.
Smead Jolley played his last professional baseball game more than 80 years ago, yet in a sport that loves its numbers; his name is still mentioned as possibly the greatest hitter in Arkansas baseball history. Conversely, his detractors can defend a claim that he was one of the worst defensive major leaguers of all time. The late Terry Turner, one of Arkansas’ most respected baseball historians, appropriately christened Jolley, “The Hit and Miss Man.”
Jolley had a lifetime major league batting average of .305 and a career minor league batting average of .369, lofty marks by any standard. In a professional career that included more than 2400 games in the majors and minors, Jolley hit more than 360 career home runs and had a lifetime batting average of .357 for all professional games.
Smead Powell Jolley was born in Union County, Arkansas in 1902, and grew up in the small community of Wesson. According to Jolley, he headed out on his own at about age 16, and by his late teens, he had found work in the oil fields in nearby El Dorado. The discovery of oil in 1921 had turned El Dorado from a quiet farming town into a bustling boom town. Jobs were plentiful but difficult. Young Jolley soon decided he would rather play baseball than work at hard labor. “I was a better pitcher than an oil worker,” stated Jolley.
Jolley broke into pro baseball in 1920, as a 20-year-old pitcher, with Greenville in the Cotton States League. He continued to pitch with only moderate success for this first three years in pro baseball but he never failed to hit .300. It soon became obvious that Jolley’s future was as an everyday player. By 1925, he was a regular outfielder with Corsicana in the Class D Texas Association, where he hit 26 homers and batted .362. At the end of the Corsicana season, he was sold to the San Francisco Seals of the AA Pacific Coast League
The Pacific Coast League was an attractive place to play. The league was considered a small step below major league quality. Playing in a temperate West Coast climate, the PCL often played schedules of 200+ games from late February into November. Salaries were comparable to the major leagues, and with no competition from the stars of the eastern cities, the players were celebrities.
Many Arkansas-born players had their best years in the coast league, and some of baseball’s all-time greats made their pro debut in the PCL. Yell County’s Bert Ellison was inducted into PCL Hall of Fame in 2006. Joe DiMaggio started his career in Oakland, as a 17-year-old baseball prodigy, and Ted Williams played his first game in 1936 for San Diego in the PCL.
Jolley would play nine seasons in the Pacific Coast League, five in the 1920s, and four seasons in the 1930s, separated by a four-year stint in the major leagues. He hit .388 for the San Francisco Seals during his first five years in the PCL, including a remarkable .404 batting mark in 1928. In 1929, Jolley’s .387 average in 200 games, earned him a trip to the American League Chicago White Sox. He left the PCL with a pre-established reputation as a “hit and miss man.” One California writer described Jolley’s efforts in the outfield as “…like a child chasing bubbles,”
Jolley played in the White Sox outfield for parts of three seasons, batting .314 over his time in Chicago, but failing to distance himself from the prevailing opinion that he was a liability in the field. Traded to Boston in the spring of 1932, he continued to be a consistent .300 hitter and a team leader in runs batted in. His batting marks, examined alone, indicated he would enjoy a long career in the big leagues, but his reputation as a poor outfielder clouded his profile and doomed his major league future.
Smead Jolley was not a good outfielder. Maybe “not a good outfielder” was an understatement to much of the late 1920s baseball community. The unflattering analysis of Jolley’s defensive skills could have also been a convenient exaggeration, unfairly attached to a somewhat limited outfielder, simply because it made a good story. Regardless of the accuracy of the description, Jolley was considered one of the most incompetent defensive players of his day. Baseball’s past is filled with colorful stories, and there is no shortage of tales about Smead Jolley’s adventures in the outfield.
One of the most questionable incidents had Jolley patrolling left field for the White Sox in a game at Philadelphia against the As, or some say it was in Cleveland against the Indians. Another possibility is this sadly humiliating event never happened at all but is a combination of plays and embellishments that creates a tale too good to refute. Regardless of its accuracy, the story began when a sharp single was hit Jolley’s way and rolled between his legs as he attempted to field it. He turned to play the ball after it hit the wall, and it rolled back between his legs. By that time, the runner was headed for third. Jolley ran down the ball and threw it into the home dugout. The runner scored, and Jolley had the dubious distinction of making three errors on the same play.
The fact that a box score with three errors charged to Jolley on the same day can’t be found, doesn’t deter the story’s defenders. They simply explain that the official scorer took pity on the befuddled young fellow and only charged him with one error.
Although at almost 6’4” and somewhere near 220 lbs., Jolley was certainly not a gazelle in the outfield. He did, however, lead the league in assists by an outfielder in 1930. He also pulled off an unusual fielding feat typically performed by speedy outfielders, when on May 27, 1930; he recorded an unassisted double play while playing right field. Despite this evidence in his favor, Jolley was subjectively branded by managers as a poor fielder, capable of costing his team more runs than his good hitting could produce.
With Boston in 1933, Jolley saw his playing time significantly reduced. He played in 118 games and had over 160 fewer at-bats. His home run total plummeted to nine and his RBIs fell from 99 to 65. Boston was giving up on him, and the pervasive idea that Jolley cost a team more runs with bad defense than he produced at bat had now become widely accepted.
December found Jolley part of a multi-team trade that ended with him being sold to Hollywood in the Pacific Coast League, where he picked up right where he left the PCL. Jolley hit .360 with 23 homers in 1934 and .372 with 29 home runs in 1935. The big country boy the fans knew as Smudge was a popular player for the Hollywood Stars, and his hillbilly charm made him something of a celebrity in a city of celebrities. Jolley even got a bit part in the baseball movie, Alibi Ike, with Joe E. Brown and Olivia De Havilland.
Smead Jolley would play seven more minor league seasons after his demotion from the major leagues. Most of those games would be played in his adopted baseball home in the Pacific Coast League. His batting average was above .300 in each of the seven summers in the twilight of his career.
Smead Powell Jolley was a phenomenal hitter. Perhaps he was one of the greatest hitters of all time and certainly one of the premier sluggers of his era. Although his name will never be found among the baseball greats enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Jolley was elected to the PCL Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Union County Hall of Fame in 2013.
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Coming in July…Hard Times and Hardball
