Stateline 1207 Master Script

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WE’VE HEARD ABOUT OKLAHOMA’S BASEBALL GREATS ALL OUR LIVES:  THE COMMERCE COMET, DIZZY, SUPER CHIEF, PEPPER, WHITEY.  BUT WHAT OF WILL TONKA, THE CONVICTED MURDERER WHOSE EXECUTION WAS DELAYED FOR A PLAYOFF GAME, AND JOE MCGINNITY WHO

CLIMBED OUT OF SOUTHEASTERN OKLAHOMA’S MINES TO BECOME THE FATHER OF OKLAHOMA BASEBALL?

S303 9;49;10

BOB BURKE:  “HE ORGANIZED A TEAM IN KREBS; HE PUT TOGETHER A LEAGUE OF SEVERAL TOWNS AROUND THERE AND WAS KNOWN AS “MISTER BASEBALL” IN THE 1890S BEFORE HE GOES TO THE MAJOR LEAGUES JUST AS KIND OF AN AFTERTHOUGHT.

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AND THEN THERE WAS THE PITCHER FROM KINGFISHER WHO KILLED A BATTER WITH A BEANBALL AND USHERED IN THE ERA OF THE BATTER’S HELMET.

ON THIS STATELINE HISTORY SPECIAL, THE UNTOLD STORIES OF THE OLD BALL GAME.

An old rusty garage in Commerce, Oklahoma marks the spot where a legend was born, every dent marking a moment in history. Mutt Mantle had big dreams for his son.

Mickey Mantle

17:15:22

My Dad named me after a baseball player. By the time I was four years old he was working with me. He worked in the lead mines down in Commerce and Pitcher, and when he would get off at 4:00 he would come home and work with till dark every day. And I loved it.

They used the tin shed as a backstop. Mutt, his father, would pitch righty and Mickey's grandfather would pitch lefty while teaching in the fine art of switch-hitting. They made up games to add some fun to the batting practice. A ball below the window of the house was a single, above the window was a double, the roof a triple and over the house was a home run. Mickey was the only kid in town that didn't get in trouble for breaking a window.

Mickey Mantle

17:14:24

Growing up in Commerce, we didn't have an organized little league, what we did, we'd have about ten guys that would choose up sides and I'd play all day. You know, on Saturday's and Sunday's or in the summertime, ever' day...you know, sometimes I'd hit 100 times.

Mickey Mantle

17:14:16

I think probably the biggest break I've ever had was growing up in Oklahoma.

Bob Burke  

10:06:01      S-303

Baseball fans remember the old days, maybe more than any other sport. For example even a current fan of baseball, their eyes light up when you mention a Babe Ruth, a Lou Gehrig, but close to their Mickey Mantle. Part of that is his name…"The Mick"…"The Commerce Comet.”

Bob Burke

10:03:29      S-303

There's no question the Mickey Mantle was the greatest baseball player to ever come from Oklahoma.

Barry Trammel

14:49:57     S-403

If you were a scout and you went to a game, which they did. You didn't have to say “Which one is Mantle?” Well you could find him pretty easy.

Barry Trammel

14:48:46     S-403

Mutt died at an early age from working in the mines, but Mickey, the baseball let him avoid the mines. He had signed with the Yankees and Tom Green Wade signed Mickey at the Age of 18 out of Commerce High School. In two years, in 1951 he was in New York.

Barry Trammel

14:45:56     S-403

Greatest switch hitter of all time. You know he went to New York at the perfect time he got there in 1951 he was a rookie. That was right in the middle of this Yankees Run of five World Series. He played on the most winning teams of all time 51'-64'.

Bob Burke

10:04:52      S-303

He had God-given talent that most people who play major league baseball never had.

There was a greatness in Mantle’s ability that overrides training, playing with a power and grace that can’t be captured on a Wheeties box or baseball card.

Bob Burke

10:06:54      S-303

When that incredible swing sent a ball out of the park he didn't just stand there and watch it, he headed for the first base immediately and circled the base-paths and came back to a cheering throng of people in Yankee Stadium. And he will always be remembered in baseball lore is one of the two or three greatest baseball players ever played the game.

Bob Burke

10:13:19 S-303

Some of the interesting stories about baseball in Oklahoma are not about Mickey Mantle and Johnny Bench and the Waner brothers, but it's those guys who made it to the major leagues for only a moment. For example a guy named Cal Browning from Burns Flat and pitched two thirds of an inning in the major leagues, “Cat” Clanton from antlers struck out in his only major league at-bat.

Barry Trammel

14:44:56     S-403

Baseball was the focus of Oklahomans in the first half of the twentieth century.

Pete Pierce

12:05:25 S-520

All the little towns, Northeast Oklahoma was really a Mecca for small baseball, town ball, all the little mining towns up there.

Bob Burke

00:09:39      S-303

Baseball came to Oklahoma in 1882 when the Coal mines were being dug in eastern Oklahoma in Pittsburg County around Krebs. So the first recorded baseball game was on July 4, 1882, the coal miners would come to Krebs from Ohio and Pennsylvania decided to have a baseball game. 300 people showed up on July 4 to see the first recorded baseball game.

Pete Pierce

12:48:09 S-520

Baseball was a really rough sport in 1880’s and 1890s. A lot of really tough characters, and it was a gambling and drinking crowd that went to the ballpark.

Barry Trammel

15:11:07     S-403

Well the ball park was not great, parks I mean not a really smooth infield a lot of bad hops, the locker rooms were nothing much more than just a room where you could change, the stands were usually rickety. The concessions were not much. But it was not a bad way to spend a summer afternoon.

Pete Pierce

11:47:28 S-520

Often there wasn't an outfield, there were no protective screens. The fans were really just right down the baselines, a lot of times people got hit.

Pete Pierce

11:49:25 S-520

They’ll be a lot of cigar smoking, beer drinking wasn't allowed in the stands. In fact there was a sign in one of the early Oklahoma City ballparks that said "No drinking, no profanity, no killing the umpire, no prostitution and wagons park free."

A man named “Iron” Joe McGinnity stepped out of the mines near Krebs and took the pitcher’s mound in 1889.

Bob Burke

09:49:10      S-303

He came to Krebs in 1889 to work in a iron mines, in fact he didn't go to the major leagues until he was 29 years old and then he had an incredible major-league career. He got his nick name not because he was the last pitcher in major league baseball to throw two ends of a doubleheader, but because he worked in the iron as an Iron-man in the mines around Krebs. But Joe McGinnity, before he went to the major leagues, Joe McGinnity organized baseball in eastern Oklahoma. He organized a team in Krebs; he put together a league of several towns around there and was known as “Mr. Baseball” in the 1890s before he goes to the major leagues just as kind of an afterthought.

Gus “Cannonball” Weyhing played for and managed the Tulsa Oilers before going up to the majors. In his 14 year pitching career he hit 286 men at bat. It’s a record that is unlikely to ever be broken.

Pete Pierce  

11:46:42 S-520

There was a territorial league, an Indian Territory league, and an Oklahoma league. They would, in 1895 they started having a championship, and they always played in the Oklahoma Territory because the Oklahoma Territory was wet, and the trains full of people from Indian Territory could come to the Oklahoma Territory and get a drink.

Bob Burke

09:54:08      S-303 

A number of Native Americans who learn to play baseball perhaps off at their Indian school brought the game back to Oklahoma. For example, even when Geronimo and the Apaches are captured in the last of the Plains Indian wars and they are imprisoned at Fort Sill. So in 1880s it was not uncommon for the guards to oversee the Apaches would been captured off the plains to be playing baseball.

Barry Trammel

14:32:28     S-403

Baseball was always a popular American Indian sport. Jim Thorpe in known for his Olympic feats and his national football league feats but he also played major league baseball. So it was very popular among the Indians.

Thorpe’s accomplishments are immortalized along with all the state’s baseball legends at the Oklahoma Sports Museum in Guthrie.

Richard Hendricks

13:59:37    S-206       C0004

Here is a bat of Jim Thorpe’s, a picture of him and another picture of him. A lot of people don't realize he played several years in the big leagues, in major League baseball.

Pete Pierce

11:52:27 S-520

The Choctaw Nation did have a team. In fact their star pitcher had been convicted him of murder and was sentenced to be shot, Will Tonka. But because they had a playoff game in Kansas City the sentence was deferred and they went up to Kansas City, he won the game, he came back ended up jumping ship and hooking up with Buffalo Bill. He traveled the world then he made the mistake of coming back, he was apprehended and he was taken to a tree with the Choctaw light horsemen guarding him and he was shocked to execute the sentence.

The first professional league lasted just one season. It wasn't until 1911 that Oklahoma would have professional baseball in small towns.

Barry Trammel

15:04:48     S-403

15 towns had legitimate professional minor league teams. Now you didn't make much money but they paid you to play baseball. People went and watched the games in ball parks and paid and it was a case where it was a legitimate minor league operation.

Pete Pierce

12:07:27 S-520

The rivalries were really strong, and they would boo the visiting team.

Pete Pierce

12:07:40 S-520

The fans were very vociferous about umpires. And then we didn't have canned soft drinks, or cups, it was all in glass bottles and they would throw those bottles at umpires.

A player’s life was a strange mix of poverty and celebrity. They worked regular jobs in the winter and spent spring, summer and fall living on the road.

Pete Pierce

11:55:03 S-520

The proverbial farm boy in bib overalls who pitched 90 miles an hour, you gave him a tryout, if after five days he worked out you put a uniform on and sign a contract for $25 a month. If it didn't work out you would send him back to the farm.

Pete Pierce

11:55:48 S-520

It was a vagabond’s life, they would come into the city in March, they would play, they would live in houses. My grandmother had a rooming house in Ardmore where a lot of baseball players stayed when I was growing up.

Pete Pierce

12:06:27 S-520

The players would ride around in old school buses; they get a little meal money on the road. Their day might begin at 10 in the morning, drive from Miami to Lola Kansas, spend the afternoon hanging around the courthouse square, suit up, play a game beginning at eight, they didn't have daylight savings time then. Going to about 11, and then hopping on the bus and getting back to Miami at two or three in the morning.

Barry Trammel

15:12:33     S-403

Break downs were frequent. It was a very difficult life on the road and teams tried to avoid it as much as possible.

Pete Pierce

12:08:12 S-520

If someone had a great player who hit a home run or something fans would put money through the fence, and there are players who made as much from these tips from the fans as they did from their salary.

Pete Pierce

11:59:08 S-520

Out of the oil fields there were the company teams, there were camp teams, all around Healdton, Dixie, Imperial Refinery. One of them made it to the majors, Bill Clowers, he ended up pitching a game for the Red Sox, but he came right out of the oil patch.

Pete Pierce

12:00:03 S-520

In fact the first semi pro World Series was between the Halliburton Cementers from Duncan and the Bismarck North Dakota Churchills, which was laced with stars from the Negro leagues. Satchel Paige, Jimmy Johnson…really Hall of Famer's, and they beat the Halliburton team in a best of nine series.

Bob Burke

10:09:34      S-303

Not only have Oklahomans excelled but unfortunately we are known with the dubious distinction of the only person ever to kill another player in a major league baseball game. In 1920 it was a day when batting helmets were not worn, and bean balls. Brushing them off was a very common part of it.

Bob Burke  

10:10:53      S-303

Because of Carl Mays of Kingfisher killing Ray Chapman in 1920 in the baseball game, the batting helmet was introduced in major league baseball.

In no sport are nicknames more pervasive than baseball, fans thrilled to the exploits of “Oil” Smith, “Deacon” White and “Eagle Eye” Beckley.

Barry Trammel

14:35:17     S-403

Some of the magic names in baseball history came from Oklahoma in the early days. One of the great negro pitchers of the day “Bullet” Joe Rogan. “Bullet” Joe was born in Oklahoma City right after the land run in 1889 and became perhaps the best pitcher ever in the Negro leagues.

Richard Hendricks

13:54:44    S-206   C0003

The Black Spiders and the Black Indians were a team in Oklahoma City. There were numerous sixteen or fifteen black teams in Oklahoma.

Richard Hendricks

13:55:28    S-206   C0003

The game itself was the same as except the Negro league players played a little bit more exciting and aggressive offensive game of running the bases and bunting the ball.

…

Bob Burke

09:57:21      S-303

Oklahomans had excelled in the All-Star games, Oklahoma history of baseball is written all over the All-Star game. The very first batter in the very first baseball All-Star game in, in 1933 was Pepper Martin. John Roosevelt “Wild-horse of the Osage,” …One of the great nicknames, Pepper Martin… But Pepper was a member of the “Gas house gang” of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Bob Burke

09:57:55      S-303

Perhaps the greatest performance in an All-Star baseball game was in 1934 when Carl Hubbell of Meeker and Prague struck out five future Hall of Famers in a row. Among those five the Carl Hubbell and his incredible screwball that he dazzled the few batters were Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Ruth and Gehrig played against and were good friends with two talented brothers from Harrah. Paul and Lloyd Waner were known as “Big Poison” and “Little Poison.”

Pauline Pryor

14:42:28 S-703

Someone from Brooklyn at a ballgame said "Look there's that…" he meant big person and little person, but the dialogue was" Big Poison" and" Little Poison." So that's how they get their nicknames "Big and Little Poison."

The Waners learned to hit by knocking corncobs over the barn, but they weren’t the best batters in the family.

Pauline Pryor

14:39:04 S-703

I think they spent most of the time out hitting corncobs with a hoe handle. (Laughs)

Pauline Pryor

14:39:30 S-703

Lloyd and Paul, the honor went to their sister, the first sister to get a corn cob with a hoe handle far enough to break the barn window.

Paul Waner made it to the majors by a fluke. A scout sent to Oklahoma spent the week drinking instead of at the ball park. He was getting on the train empty handed when the conductor asked “Did you see the Waner kid?" To save his own neck the scout convinced the San Francisco Seals to give Paul Waner a tryout without the scout actually ever seeing him play.

Pauline Pryor

14:48:23 S-703

They were small and they were fast, what's the saying? If Lloyd hit the ball in the air he was already at first base, they couldn't get him out.

Jim Knight

15:27:41       S-703

The best thing he ever did for baseball was to get his brother to play baseball. Lloyd would never have had a chance to play major league baseball if it hadn't been for Paul. And that was caused Paul basically convince the Pittsburgh guys, "Hey I just played in 26, I would've been rookie of the year if they had such a thing but they didn't," both of them would've been rookie of the year in 26 and 27,

Bob Burke

09:58:44      S-303

The only brother duo in the baseball Hall of Fame are Lloyd and Paul Waner.

Jim Knight

16:03:05       S-703

If you ever read Ted Williams book on the 100 best hitters he ever knew Paul Waner would not be in it, and the reason why is because Paul was hired as a batting instructor to teach Ted Williams to hit the ball in different places. And Ted hated him, he despised him, “How dare the hire someone to teach me how to hit?”

Jim Knight  

16:03:41       S-703

It really ticked him off that somebody…that the Boston Red Sox would hire a batting instructor to teach him how to bat.

Bob Burke  

10:14:48 S-303

At one time or another Oklahoma history 37 different towns have had a professional minor league club.

Pete Pierce

12:09:57 S-520

The Sooner State league was a Class D league, which was the last rung on minor league baseball. It was originally set up to be a very tight circuit; you had McAllister, Ada, Seminole, Ardmore, Duncan, and Lawton...a six team league.

When major league owners began buying minor league teams to develop players in the 40’s and 50’s the smaller town teams began to die out.

Pete Pierce

12:19:27 S-520

Television and air-conditioning really…spelled the death knell of small town minor league baseball. In 1955 the “Game of the Week” started being broadcast.

Pete Pierce

12:19:58 S-520

In Oklahoma it used to be a place to meet people and it would be: the evening, again the game started eight o'clock. But if you could stay indoors and watch a game on television why go out and be uncomfortable?

Durrell Herzog played in the class D leagues for the McAllister Rockets 1951 where he picked up a nickname.

Bob Burke

09:51:12      S-303

When the local radio announcer was asked one night… Because the newspapers always called him Darrell, and so Herzog asked Bill Skeeth, the radio announcer “Give me a nickname.” So he was toe-headed in that night and again in Ardmore, Bill Skeeth announced Durrell Herzog as “Whitey” Herzog, the name stuck and became one of the great nicknames of baseball history.

Barry Trammel

14:56:28     S-403

Pepper Martin “Wild Horse of the Osage.” Great, great player he is from the Macalister area. Another great section of Oklahoma history. He was the Star of the Gas house gang. In the 1934 World series he played outfield and third base. He was a base stealing phenomenon. “Dizzy” Dean and those guys played aggressive stolen bases. Bunts and beat it out they just tried to beat you in a lot of ways.

Dizzy

Dean

Oklahoma fans can still recall the immediate tingle in that instant of recognition when Dizzy Dean, Warren Spahn or Dan Demeter popped up in a pack of Topps bubble gum cards. Among the Oklahoma greats there is one player overlooked by the Hall of Fame.

Barry Trammel

14:41:07     S-403

Allie Reynolds you know we talk about the Indians Alley Reynolds is the greatest of all the Indian Players from Oklahoma. Alley was born in Bethany He went to High school in Oklahoma City at Capital Hill.

Bob Burke

09:52:16      S-303 

“Super Chief” in those days was a name of the train that ran but from Chicago to Los Angeles. It was a major passenger train. So often Allie Reynolds was compared with that because he threw the ball so fast, he was such an effective pitcher for the Yankees, was the best picture on the New York Yankees in the stretch between the 1940s and 50s when the Yankees won five world championships in a row.

In 1965 the Yankees drafted a player from Oklahoma City that they said was the next Mickey Mantle.

Barry Trammel

15:00:39     S-403

You know the New York papers: they had a lot of News papers in those days. They had to sell papers and they said here is the new Mickey Mantle. New Yorkers were ready to embrace it. You know when he hit 27 homeruns instead of forty seven it was a disappointment.

Barry Trammel

14:59:04     S-403

The truth of the matter is that God quit making Mickey Mantles and Bobby Mercer was no Mickey mantle.

Barry

14:58:17     S-403

Bobby Mercer was an Excellent, Excellent baseball player.

Willie Stargell was called “Pops.” He played for the Pittsburg Pirates for 21 seasons, time enough for many tape-measure home runs, four into the upper deck at three rivers stadium, seven over the Forbes Field right field roof, and the only two balls ever hit out of Dodger Stadium.

Bob Burke

10:07:54      S-303

In the modern era, certainly no better catcher in baseball history the Johnny Bench, who was born in Oklahoma City, but of course, played baseball in Binger and at Binger high school.

Barry Trammel

15:02:11 S-403

He had these massive hands. He could hold eight baseballs in his hand at once. He had the quickest release. He was up in the big leagues by the late sixties at the age of twenty.

Barry

15:02:32     S-403

He was the National League MVP at the age of 22.

Bob Burke

10:08:34      S-303

Johnny Bench according to some of his teammates was one of the first ones to show up for practice and the last one to leave. A part of being a great catcher is being able to call pitches for the pitcher. And you can't just show up as a great athlete, you better do your homework. He was part of that big red machine when they had such great teams for Cincinnati. Johnny Bench was a smart guy, and he was able to know if Willie Stargell was batting for the Pirates, he knew Stargell's weaknesses so he was able to study the game, be a student of the game, and spend a lot of time on it and know what pitches to call.

A few Oklahomans played in the majors but found real fame far, far away…swatting homers in the Japanese Leagues.

Randy Bass

12:58:45     S-401

You know it was just something that I was pretty good at and of course when I grew up in Lawton I grew up on F Street had the rail road tracks it was a very poor side of town. The Baseball fields were right behind my house. So the railroad tracks and the ball park were right there. / We had a glove and a bat and a ball and I had a Labrador retriever dog and he could always find that ball in the weeds so we never lost our baseball.

Bass was 17 when he went to the minor leagues, he played six years in the major league. Then one day his life changed.

Randy Bass

12:48:26     S-401

You know it was funny I got a call from an agent I didn't even know his name was Allen Mersan and he said “Would you like to go play baseball in Japan?”

Bass put on the pinstripes of the Hanshin Tigers.

Randy Bass

12:49:33     S-401

It was nothing like here in America you know you might get a sold out crowd if you went to Boston or Yankees, San Diego; you know we probably didn't get that many. You know but every time you walked into Koshin you had 50,000 people there. That is a great feeling. I didn't know what they were saying but there was 50,000 people there.

Randy Bass

13:03:43     S-401

They have groups that come out with flags with your numbers on them. They uniforms they are wearing your uniforms. I mean they are into baseball.

Bass lead the Tigers to their first championship in 1985 and was called “The Babe Ruth of Japan.”

Randy Bass

12:54:08     S-401

I think I still have about seven records over there consecutive games homeruns. I don’t have the Homerun record, Sadaharu Oh has 55 I have 54.

Randy Bass

13:00:16     S-401

It was a big deal coming from a little boy from Lawton, Oklahoma, growing up on F Street.

Back in Commerce, the town is working to hold on to a rich legacy unique to Oklahoma. The local ballpark bears the Mantle name and the house where he grew up is being preserved, even the rusty old shed is getting some help.

Brian Waybright

15:32:12    S-404

They called him the Commerce Comet for a reason, and so anything that has to do with Mick keeps everything from the area alive.

Oklahoma fans will never forget their diamond heroes, just as they never forgot Oklahoma.

Mickey Mantle

17:18:43

I'd like to be remembered like Will Rodgers, you know, say that "Mickey came from Oklahoma." That's my roots and I love it.

TRT

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NO SINGLE TELEVISION PROGRAM COULD POSSIBLY COVER ALL OF OKLAHOMA’S BASEBALL LEGACY.

THIS LIST OF 236 MAJOR LEAGUERS BORN IN THE SOONER STATE IS BELIEVED TO BE COMPREHENSIVE, BUT IT DOESN’T INCLUDE THOSE PASSED THROUGH OKLAHOMA ON THEIR WAY TO THE MAJORS OR THOSE BORN ELSEWHERE WHO CAME TO OKLAHOMA TO PLAY THE OLD BALL GAME.