Sport: The Bushes

Baseball, as played on the manicured, moneyed diamonds of the major leagues, is not generally considered a dangerous sport. But on the seedy ball fields of the bush leagues, the hazards of the game have always been considerable. Bush-leaguers get poisoned by carbon monoxide in the line of duty (while riding ancient buses between towns), break ribs and ankles with alarming frequency in outfield potholes, sometimes have to cadge money for food. Nowadays a fan might even get up one morning and find that his team has vanished altogether. Said Sam Bray, insurance salesman and owner of Tennessee’s Kingsport Cherokees: “Every year now a crowd of minor leagues folds up. But this is the worst year in history.”

And Then There Were Four. Owner Bray, a sad, gentle man, knows what he is talking about. In 1949 there were 59 recognized minor leagues and today there are only 35; most of the 250-odd baseball clubs playing in them are in financial trouble. Radio and TV have drastically thinned out the paying fans. This year several teams already have folded. By next season five of the leagues now operating will probably be gone.

Sam Bray’s Cherokees are in an economic position to last out the season, but the Class C Mountain States League, to which they belong, is bordering on collapse. At a meeting last week the poverty-stricken Lexington Colts were voted out of the league. That left just four teams competing of the eight that began the season.

To keep the Cherokees on the base paths, Bray has combined pinch-penny management with showmanship. On the road, his players are allowed only $2.50 a day for meals, must sleep two to a bed (one gets the mattress and floor, one the boxsprings and bedstead). But to attract customers, Sam has given away $1,000 bills at his park, once piled $1,200 in small change on home plate and let a fan take home as much of it as he could carry.

A month ago, disgusted because his team was in last place, Sam told a local sportswriter that he would give away the club and $3,000 to anybody who would keep the Cherokees in Kingsport. Sam was halfjoking, but when the Associated Press sent the story around the country, Bray got 100 phone calls and 160 letters—not a single offer from Kingsport, though. But the publicity did wonders. Attendance soared (Sam needs 500 cash customers at every home game to break even), and his ballplayers got so mad at the insult that within a week the Cherokees ran up an eight-game winning streak. Soon they were in third place. Last week, after Lexington’s departure, they were back in the cellar. Said Bray: “Every time we get on top of somebody, they quit.” Language Lesson. Nevertheless Bray is delighted with his rejuvenated team.

Two of the Cherokees are oldtimers, Leo (“Muscles”) Shoals, 38, and Nap Reyes, 35, the wartime N.Y. Giant who made headlines by jumping to the Mexican League in 1946. The other 14 on the roster are under 24, and six of them are Cubans who speak almost no English. The high-spirited Cubans used to heckle the league umpires vigorously in Spanish. But the umpires got wise, got a list of Spanish cuss words and, thus armed, one day sent all the Cubans to the showers.

Shoals gets $500 a month to play first base and manage the team. Reyes makes $275 at third. Many a Kingsport fan comes out to the ball game just to see Reyes lumber up to the plate, shift his cud of tobacco, wag his massive hindquarters at the crowd and growl at the catcher. The crowd likes the volatile Cubans, too; sometimes one of them steals a base, not because the situation warrants it, but simply because he is in the mood.

Five of the seven Cubans are Negroes, and although the Cherokees themselves are a friendly crowd, the Negroes often run into trouble on the road in hotels and restaurants and at the hands of some Southern fans. But the Cubans take it, apparently lumping such racial insults with the universal discomforts of the minors—the cold showers, cheap food, low pay and the rickety old bus the team travels in.

Riding the Blue Goose. More than anything else, the converted school bus is the symbol of the bush leagues. The Cherokees call theirs the “Blue Goose,” and it quivers like a gelatine salad over 50 m.p.h.

There is one steep climb on the way to Harlan, Ky. that the bus can make only by backing uphill, and often the Blue Goose runs out of gas when the gauge reads full and the players have to push her into the next town.

Owner Bray figures that if he does not cut corners sharply, the alternative is to fold up the club. He is not impressed by bush-league owners who operate with a more lavish hand. “They’re going after this thing like they were major-leaguers—chartering big buses, staying in good hotels, hiring a lot of help,” says he.

“Hell, all we’re trying to do is sneak by.”