Backroads and Ballplayers #35
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.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year & Looking Back at the Old AIC
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We will not post on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day. The next Backroads and Ballplayers column will be January 8.
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Harding and Scott Goode
I want to deviate from my obsession with the past to recognize a historic event that occurred last Saturday. The Harding Bisons won the first NCAA national championship in program history with a 38-7 victory over Colorado School of Mines at McKinney ISD Stadium. An Arkansas team winning a national football title seems to happen about once a generation.
It was my first time to see Harding on TV. The team’s obvious esprit de corps represents a “Harding Brotherhood” that the Bisons carry as a badge of honor and responsibility. This team certainly met that goal. The entire state joins the Harding community in celebrating this team’s historic success.
Scott and Preacher
My friend and fellow Arkansas SABR member Scott Goode is Harding’s Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Information. The link below leads to Scott’s recap of the national title game. Link
Scott Goode is also a baseball historian and the ultimate authority on an Arkansas Sports Hall of Famer named Elwin Roe. The crafty lefty from Viola, universally known as “Preacher,” was a college baseball star at Harding when college baseball in Arkansas was almost non-existent.
The Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference was lukewarm on baseball. Members sometimes fielded a team but often dropped the non-revenue-producing sport played in cold and wet Arkansas springs.
Preacher Roe changed that perception drastically in April of 1937 when he struck out 26 Arkansas Tech batters in a thirteen-inning game. Scouts and sportswriters quickly found Harding College on the map, and Preacher Roe, the left-handed strikeout wizard, was national news from coast to coast. In a follow-up interview, Roe stated it was not his best strikeout game. The summer before in the Pope County League, he had fanned 19 London, Arkansas, hitters in a nine-inning game.
After Harding won the Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference title in the spring of 1938, Roe returned to semi-pro pitching and turned down numerous offers to turn pro. In late July, he finally relented, perhaps because the St. Louis Cardinals, North Arkansas’ beloved favorites, were now in the mix, or perhaps because the $5,000 bonus looked too good to turn down, Preacher Roe signed with the Cards on July 25, 1938. The Cardinals had won the signing battle for a pitching prospect the press called “the Bob Feller of college baseball.”
When I outlined my latest book Hard Times and Hardball, I knew I had left much unwritten about Preacher in my first book (Backroads and Ballplayers). Conspicuously missing were those almost obscure college years at Harding. The only person capable of the meticulous research necessary to record Preacher’s college career was Scott Goode. In Hard Times and Hardball (page 264), Scott meets that challenge. While Harding is on your mind, reread Scott’s chronicle of Preacher Roe’s “Harding Years.”
Baseball in the AIC
The Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference existed from 1928 to 1995. The AIC was affiliated with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Most of the four-year schools in Arkansas were members at one time, but during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the AIC usually consisted of five state schools and five private schools.
The state schools were Arkansas Tech University, the University of Central Arkansas, (UCA) the University of Arkansas at Monticello, (UAM), Henderson State University (HSU), and Southern Arkansas University. (SAU) The private schools that were AIC members were the University of the Ozarks, Harding University, Hendrix College, Ouachita Baptist University, and Lyon College.
For a complete history of the AIC read Arkansas Democrat Gazette Senior Editor Rex Nelson’s entry in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Link
In Preacher Roe’s Harding years college baseball was a fragile endeavor. From 1928 until 1939 only Harding and Arkansas State Teachers College (UCA) consistently fielded a team. During that period, ASTC won eight titles and Harding won three. Realistically, all that was required was beating each other.
Spring in Arkansas playing on dirt infields with frequent thunderstorms was frustrating. Just getting in a season required patience and persistence. By 1939, with World War II on the horizon, the league dropped baseball altogether and did not resume an official championship season until 1948.
The AIC does not have a Hall of Fame, but due to some hard work by a group that included Vance Strange, former coach and Athletic Director at the University of Central Arkansas, and Jacob Pumphrey, Director of Communications at Southern Arkansas University, a conference’s record book has been assembled. The AIC Record book is hosted on the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame website. Link
Preacher Roe was unquestionably the most successful graduate of AIC baseball, but in the 66-year history of the league, a dozen or so men who played in the old Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference reached the major leagues. Roe appears to have also been the first AIC alum to reach the big leagues.
Roe signed with the Cardinals in 1938, but it took him 10 years to become the All-Star pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Roe pitched in 333 big league games and retired with 127 wins and 84 losses. He was a four-time All-Star and he was fourth in the MVP vote in 1951, a year when he posted a 22-3 won-lost record.
The last former AIC baseball standout the reach the major leagues was Allen McDill of Arkansas Tech. McDill was an All-AIC pitcher for the 1992 conference champion Wonderboys. McDill was 5-2 with 71 strikeouts in 71 innings. He was drafted in the 20th round of the MLB draft by the New York Mets. McDill pitched in 38 major league games without a decision. He remains the Arkansas Tech baseball player with the most major league appearances.
In the late 1980s, Reggie Ritter, a right-handed pitcher from Bismark played in two big-league seasons after a successful college career at Henderson. Ritter had been an All-AIC selection before pitching in eight minor league seasons and 18 games for the Cleveland Indians in 1986 and 1987. Ritter posted a one-win, one-loss, major league record.
Wes Gardner of UCA was drafted in the 22nd round of the 1982 Major League draft after two consecutive years on the All-AIC team. He would pitch in 189 games over an eight-year career. His best season was in 1988 when Gardner won 8 and lost 6 in 149 innings of work for the American League East Champion Boston Red Sox. He finished his career in 1991 at age 30, having pitched in more games than any former AIC pitcher except Preacher Roe.
Chuck Daniel (University of the Ozarks) appeared in one major league game. On September 21, 1957, he pitched two and a third innings of relief for Detroit in a loss to Kansas City. He gave up a home run in his last inning of work and never pitched in another major league game. He made a comeback for the Southern Association Playoff Champion, Little Rock Travelers. His story is featured in both Backroads and Ballplayers and Hard Times and Hardball. In 2021, I wrote his remarkable story for Only in Arkansas. Link
Best Wishes from the Yeagers until 2024
The AIC, in my opinion, had the most unusual mascots in the nation. The normal ones were the Tigers of Ouachita and the UCA Bears and maybe the Harding Bison. After that consider The Wonderboys, Muleriders, Reddies and my favorite, the Boll Weevils. Once Harding won the championship last week, they should have invited the Orediggers to join.
Merry Christmas, Jim! Enjoy the holidays!