Backroads and Ballplayers #86
Stories of the famous and not-so-famous men and women from a time when baseball was "Arkansas' Game." Backroads and Ballplayers Weekly is always free and short enough to finish in one cup of coffee.
Happy New Year, Lost in the ’50s
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Wally Moon Replaces a Legend
The St. Louis Cardinals of seventy years ago were a confusing collection that looked much better on paper than they performed. Sound familiar? They had Stan Musial. “Stan the Man” batted .330. He hit 35 home runs and led the league in doubles. Musial also led the National League in runs scored, batted in 126 runs, and was named to his 11th All-Star Team.
Musial was joined on the 1954 National League All-Star team by third baseman Ray Jablonski, second baseman Red Schoendienst, and pitcher Harvey Haddix. The Cards led the National League in runs scored but managed to finish a distant sixth, 25 games out of first place.
The Redbirds also had the National League Rookie of the Year, Wallace Wade Moon, a college grad from Bay, Arkansas. Moon came to St. Louis with great expectations. The new outfielder was so promising that the Cards were willing to trade one of their all-time fan favorites, a World Series hero named Enos “Country” Slaughter.
My story of Moon’s cold reception from the St. Louis fans and the dramatic way he won them over is the feature story today in Only in Arkansas. The full story of the 1954 Rookie of the Year can be found at the link below. After you read the Moon story please return for another lost story from the 1950s.
Replacing a Legend Only in Arkansas
Mistaken Identity…
Bill Bradford’s Lost Story 1956
In April 1956, the Kansas City Athletics left spring training in West Palm Beach, Florida, and headed north without much optimism. The A’s had finished 6th in the American League in 1955, and the 1956 team bound for Kansas City that spring was virtually unchanged and unimproved. The unimpressive pitching staff was led by Art Ditmar and Bobby Shantz, two veterans who would have some good years ahead but only after being traded to the Yankees. Three promising young rookie pitchers gave some false hope for an improved staff. The rookies, Tommy Lasorda, Jack McMahan, and Troy Herriage, would make 77 combined appearances in 1956 and win one game between them. Surprisingly, another rookie, a 34-year-old from Arkansas, a few years past being described as promising, also made the opening day roster.
Perhaps the most amazed player on the train for Kansas City in the spring of 1956 was Bill Bradford. In an interview some years later, Bradford recalled his unexpected trip to the big leagues. “I went to spring training and they took me right on with ‘em on the team. I pitched 19 innings in spring training and gave up something like one run. Mickey Mantle hit a home run off me in an exhibition game. That was about the extent of it, and they took me to Kansas City. I really don’t know why...they knew they had bought an older fellow when they bought me.”
William D. Bradford was born in Choctaw, Arkansas in 1921. His ancestors were among the early settlers in Van Buren County, and the Bradfords had a noteworthy history in baseball as well. Bill’s uncle, Claud Bradford, was an outstanding pitcher in the minor leagues for more than twenty years in the 1920s and 1930s.
Van Buren County in Bradford’s youth was a hotbed for amateur baseball. The Greenbrier Baseball School opened in 1938, a few miles down the road from his home, and started graduating pro baseball players from the first year. A competitive local semi-pro league featured Greenbrier Baseball School alumni, college stars, and ex-major leaguers. Bradford matured to a rangy 6’2’ and 180 lb. teenager by the late 1930s and more than held his own against the high-level rural competition.
World War II did not come at a good time for Bradford. He was pitching semi-pro baseball when he was drafted and assigned to a Navy ordnance unit in Camden, Arkansas. He got some experience in 1945 pitching for the Camden Navy team managed by Arkansas legend, Lon Warneke, but he missed some years he could have been developing a minor league resume.
When the war ended, Bradford headed to California. He pitched well in the Sacramento Valley Semi-pro League a few summers before he decided to take a chance in pro baseball. According to Bradford, he simply walked into the San Francisco Seals training camp in 1949 and asked manager Lefty O’Doul for a tryout. He obviously impressed O’Doul. They signed him on the spot.
After two successful seasons with Yakima in the Class B Western International League, Bradford was promoted to Binghamton, New York, a Yankee farm club in the Class A Eastern League, for the 1951 season. At Binghamton, Bradford joined Yankee prospects Johnny Blanchard, Moose Skowron, and Bob Grim. Blanchard was 18 years old, Skowron was 20, and future American League Rookie of the Year, Grim, was 21. Bradford, who had gotten a late start in pro baseball, was already 29.
Back on the West Coast for the 1952 and 1953 seasons, Bradford was a starter for the San Francisco Seals, of the prestigious Pacific Coast League. Now in his sixth year of professional baseball, Bradford was averaging more than 200 innings per season and had never had a losing season. The PCL considered itself the equivalent of a third major league. The climate was good, and the salaries were almost major-league level.
Entering the 1954 season at 33 years old, Bill Bradford was resigned to the reality that he was unlikely to catch the attention of a major league team. When the Seals approached him about becoming a relief pitcher, Bradford did not object. He was 6-2 in 25 relief appearances in 1954 and 12-5, with a 3.09 ERA, in 43 bullpen calls in 1955. Bradford had become one of the best relief pitchers in the Pacific Coast League. With a starting staff that would need relief help often, the Kansas City Athletics paid $75,000 for the 34-year-old veteran in September of 1955. Bradford was, at last, the property of a major league team.
In 1956, the A’s got off to an improbable 4-2 start and were entertaining the Detroit Tigers in Kansas City on Tuesday, April 24th, when Bill Bradford was called on for his major league debut. The A’s had scored two in the bottom of the 7th to get back in the game. Trailing 5-3 in the top of the 8th inning, Manager Lou Boudreau summoned his 34-year-old rookie reliever. Ray Boone, the first of three generations of the Boone family to play in the majors, rudely greeted Bradford with a home run. Bradford settled down and retired catcher Frank House and 1956 all-star outfielder Charlie Maxwell. Part-time second baseman, Reno Bertoia, batting eighth in the Tiger lineup, added another home run to Bradford’s woes. It would be Bertoia’s only home run of a season that saw him bat an anemic .182. After giving up his second homer in the inning, Bradford proceeded to walk the opposing pitcher, Steve Gromek. Fortunately for Bradford, leadoff man Bill Tuttle grounded out to short for the third out. Bradford’s forgettable inning was over, as was his major league career.
The day of his debut was a special “school day game” at Municipal Stadium. Many of the 14,000 in attendance were high school students from neighboring schools. The next morning’s Kansas City Star featured a photo of a confused Bradford surrounded by dozens of high school students.
The following week Bradford was sent down to AAA Minneapolis. He got in 51 games for Minneapolis, but he was much less effective than the year before at San Francisco. Bradford would continue to bounce around the minors until 1958. He had surgery on his pitching arm in hopes of reviving his career, but he never approached the success he enjoyed in the PCL.
He pitched in only 21 games in 1957 and dropped off to 11 in 1958. The Little Rock Travelers were one of Bradford’s stops in his last two seasons. He made eleven appearances with the Travs in 1957 and two more in 1958. He was released by the Amarillo Gold Sox in June 1958.
Bradford returned to Van Buren County, Arkansas, and became a leader in the development of the planned city of Fairfield Bay on Greers Ferry Lake. Other than real estate development, he also worked in law enforcement, serving as Van Buren County Sheriff in the mid-seventies.
Bradford died in Conway, Arkansas, in 2000. He remains the obscure answer to a baseball trivia question. Bradford allowed two hits in his only major league appearance; both were home runs. He is the only pitcher in big league history with two or more hits allowed with that unfortunate distinction.
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