Growing Up Southern: October 24, 2017

My folks ran a grocery store six days a week, so I had few outings alone with my father. There was this one, however. Yeah, there was one.

Oh, he would take me with him on occasion when he drove around on Sunday afternoons to look at how the crops were doing. He would be looking though, and not in the mood for talking to me. But he might see a man he knew, and he would pull in and talk to him for an hour while I fidgeted in the car. Those were hardly father-son outings designed to “red-line the old fun meter.” I think they were generated by my sainted mother who needed a break.

This one time, though, wasn’t like that, not at all. He suddenly, late one afternoon, and it was on a weekday—a Thursday if I remember right—up and asked me if I’d like to go and see a baseball game. “A baseball game?” I said. “Boy hidee, yes I would!” I was eleven years old and life couldn’t have taken a better turn, absent meeting Roy Rogers in person, maybe.

Whatever possessed him I’ll never know, but it wasn’t long before he and I were headed uptown to Taylor Field, over on the East-side where the “Pine Bluff Judges” played.

See, back in those days, even small towns like ours, (population 37,162 when I graduated from high school and don’t ask why I remember that) had farm teams from the major leagues. Ours was, of course, associated with the St. Louis Cardinals. They played in what was called “The Cotton States League.”

We went that night and wouldn’t you know it, I don’t think we saw a play. Before we arrived, the manager, a man named Frank Lucchesi, was hit by a ball and the play was delayed. He recovered and later went on to a long career with the majors. Read about him here.

Anyway, it was going to be late before play resumed, so we missed the action.

It didn’t matter. The atmosphere was both electric and addictive. I was about as thrilled as a young boy could be, absent meeting Sky King’s Penny in person, maybe. Our entire family became fans and regulars. We knew all the players. My heroes were catcher Dan Gatta and first-baseman Cliff Mansfield. We could stand behind the fence and talk to them in the bullpen. Neither made it to “The Dance,” but Gatta let me try on his catcher’s mitt one time, and Mansfield gave me a baseball before a game. I think my brother traded it away for something while I was off at college.

It doesn’t take much to create lasting memories.

Our lives expanded in other ways. We began to take trips to other cities in the League on Sundays, including: Meridian, MS, Monroe, LA, and Hot Springs and El Dorado within our own state.

I can remember the hubbub as one of the teams in the League put the first African-American on its roster. The “Judges” did the same a little later and I remember the crowd that showed up for his first appearance, just to stare—stare—nothing more.

They created a special section for the African-American fans, who flocked to witness this small stirring of equality. This helped extend the life of the League, but, in 1954, it succumbed to changes in American lifestyles, particularly the proliferation of home TVs. Sadly, it shut down for good. I remember local efforts to garner contributions and save the team. There was even a big poster of a thermometer in the window display of a downtown store (Froug’s maybe) showing the rise in dollars contributed against dollars need.

The capillary representing the dollars donated never reached the top. Too bad.

But I’ll never forget the pride I felt, as a young boy watching a baseball game on TV narrated by Dizzy Dean. Filling in time between innings, he read off a list of teams in the Cardinal organization, and where they were playing that night.

Would you believe that great, that immortal, man stated on national television that the Pine Bluff Judges of the Cotton States League would be playing in my home town that night? A city couldn’t get better publicity than that, now could it? I ran to tell my dad about it and he was as proud as I was.