Sp: You started out at Batavia in 1957…

JB: That's right. I was living in eastern Ohio and I was in college. I couldn't get a job that for the summer. So, I wasn't working and I was playing baseball at night, and one of the guys I played ball for said, "Since you don't have anything to do during the day, why don't you go to Cleveland for the tryout camp?" I said, "Oh, okay".

SP: I grew up in Cleveland. Is that where you were living?

JB: No, I lived in a town called Kinsman, Ohio, which from Cleveland is straight out route 87. It's the last township in Ohio before the Pennsylvania state line.

SP: I know the area. It's out past Amish country. Where was the Indians' tryout camp?

JB: At old League Park in Cleveland.

SP: Obviously, the tryout went well. Was Batavia rookie league at that time?

JB: No, it was in the old New York - Pennsylvania League. They were going to send me to rookie league, and then they changed their minds and said, "No, we could use a centerfielder in Batavia and you could play right away, so you're on your way".

SP: Did you play in college too?

JB: Oh yes, at Ohio University.

SP: You spent the entire season at Batavia?

JB:No, half a season. I didn't get there until the 1st of July.

SP: In 1958 you didn't play. Why?

JB: I was in the military. I had to go to basic training in the Air Force. I didn't have any choice: Either do that or be drafted. The Indians said, "That's fine, we understand", so off I went to military training.

SP: The Indians held a place for you?

JB: Yeah. The next year (1959), I went to spring training at Daytona Beach and ended up at Selma. Daytona Beach was the minor league training camp; the major leaguers were at Tucson.

SP: The 1959 Cloverleafs were a great team.

JB: The Indians sent a loaded team to Selma. Four guys made it to the big leagues from that team. Five guys on the team had major league experience. The manager, Johnny Lipon, had just come out of the majors and four other guys made it.

SP: That would be Max Alvis, Doc Edwards, Larry Brown, and Jerry Fosnow.

JB: That's right. Doc Edwards is still at it. He is managing again with the Sioux Falls Canaries in an independent league. He's just incredible! He's a "lifer".

SP: I guess so. Sioux Falls is a long way from managing the Indians! What did you think of living in Selma?

JB: I met my wife there. As soon as the 1959 season was over, I went to work in Cleveland, Ohio. We kept in touch, and we ended up getting married. We've been married 42 years and have three sons, so I go back to Selma frequently.

SP: Why did your baseball career end after 1959?

JB: Well, I went back to Ohio and got a good job. I was a graduate in engineering at that point. When the Indians sent a contract in 1960, I told them I needed to jump two leagues up to Class B ball, and if they didn't see fit to do that, then they should consider me retired. They wrote back and said, "You're retired". That was the end of it, but, I had planned to get married, and I thought if I got a jump of two leagues, that meant they thought enough of me to make it worthwhile, and if they didn't give me the jump, I was only kidding myself. I was 24 years old, and at that age you need to be above Class C (to make it). The Indians were going to send me to C ball, and I said, "Forget it".

SP: Where was the Class C franchise at that time?

JB: Minot, North Dakota.

SP: Not exactly enticing.

JB: I ended up living in Minneapolis for a couple years running a mining company, so I'm familiar with the cold springs up there. Even in June you couldn't drill in ground because it was still frozen. That's the way Minot would have been.

SP: Plus the long bus rides. Speaking of that how was the travel in the AFL?

JB :(Laughs) It was kind of like the military: You would do it once, but you wouldn't want to do it again. We had an old broken-down bus and Johnny Lipon was the driver. Sometimes, we wouldn't get home after a game until almost morning. Occasionally, Johnny would ask me to drive for him. He'd tell me, "Jack, I can't trust these young kids in the back to drive and I can't drive all the time. I've got to have somebody who will drive the bus and not drive me into trouble while I snooze ". We had to carry a 5 gallon bucket of water because the radiator would boil over. No air conditioning, of course, and the seats were velvet, which I hated, so I'd try to find a spot on the floor where I could stretch and lay down. It was quite an experience.

SP: Any towns stand out in your mind, good or bad?

JB:I always enjoyed Montgomery because they'd have good crowds. I didn't mind playing in Pensacola, but they had three lefthanders that were absolutely awesome: Bo Belinsky, Steve Barber, and Steve Dalkowski.

SP:Did you ever face Dalkowski?

JB:Oh my God, Yes! I was the lead-off hitter, so I was the first guy to face him. We went out to the ballpark that night and were in the dugout. We were supposed to get dressed for batting practice, and there's some guy out in front of their dugout pitching. Their catcher had the full set of equipment on, shin guards, chest protector, everything. About one third of the pitches would go clear back to the screen, and we're standing there with our mouths open because this guy is throwing like we've never seen before. He just throws and throws, and our manager finally says, "Go get dressed guys, it's our turn on the field!". We were saying, "Thank God we don't have to face this guy tonight. He's not only wild, but he throws it so hard it's unbelievable". Well, guess what, he started. At that time Paul Richards was the general manager of the Orioles and his idea was to have Dalkowski throw a lot before the game so that maybe he'd get a little tired and start finding the plate. So, you know, I went up there and I thought "Oh my God". The helmets in those days were almost optional and they didn't have any ear tabs. You didn't have as much protection as you do now. It was dark, he threw left-handed and I'm a left-handed hitter, and I couldn't figure out how to get far enough away from him to be safe. All I wanted to do was live!

I was up three times against him. I managed a walk and a fly ball off him and he struck me out once. I was so pleased to hit a fly ball off him. They say he threw the ball somewhere around 110 mph. That's the legend of Steve Dalkowski. There are all kinds of stories on the web about him. One time they tried to clock him. They used a big two-foot ring to measure pitching speed. You might have seen old films of Bobby Feller throwing through one of those rings. Well, Dalkowski threw for an hour and the story is he never got one through the ring! In later years, I learned that Dalkowski, who was a personable guy, had an IQ of only 65. He drank a lot and he always was the first guy at the bar. We all went to the same bar after the games, a place called the Town Pump in Pensacola. We'd get to the bar and Dalkowski would already be there with a couple of brews. If you'd sit and talk with him, he was just a regular guy. He just could never find home plate.

SP:Dalkowski had a horrible ERA. It was above 12.

JB: I understand he had one decent year under Earl Weaver, either in Class A or AA. I think he actually won more than he lost that season. The year we played against him, he was only there a part of the season. It's interesting, all three of those pitchers, Dalkowski, Barber, and Belinsky had losing seasons that year.

SP:Steve Barber's numbers weren't impressive, yet he made it to the big leagues next season.

JB:I think Belinsky did too. At that point in my career, I had no basis of comparison. I thought that if they were throwing that hard in Class D, I'd never make it to the majors. It kind of went to my head. I thought, "Forget it, I don't have a chance". I didn't realize that these guys were throwing as hard or harder than the guys in the majors, they just didn't have the same amount of control.

SP:1959 was a great year in the AFL for pitchers. Dick Egan of Montgomery made it to the big leagues too.

JB:Yeah, but I could hit him! Dalkowski was my nemesis. Fortunately, I only batted against him that one game. There were some good players in that league, I can't name them all, but Egan was certainly one of them. Montgomery had some good players. I don't think Legrant Scott made it to the majors, Egan might have been the only one from that team.

SP:No, Fernandez, the shortstop, made a brief appearance in the majors.

JB:They had a pretty good outfielder named Pete Walski. He was a clean-up hitter and a pretty stocky guy. Once, Dalkowski hit in him the thigh. Walski twisted to avoid getting hit, and he got hit so hard, that he cart-wheeled. It flipped him right over. He did a complete 360! One game we played, Dalkowski missed the catcher completely and hit the umpire square in the mask and knocked him out cold. It took tem minute with smelling salts to get him back on his feet. Dalkowski threw another pitch and wedged the ball in the chicken wire backstop. The backstop was a good 30 or 40 feet behind home plate. They had to go dig the ball out of the screen. He just threw incredibly hard. I met someone recently who said she was a real baseball fan. I said, "Then you must know about Steve Dalkowski". She said she'd never heard of him, and I told her, "Well, you're not a complete fan until you've read about Steve Dalkowski!".

SP:If you could put Dalkowski and Ryne Duren on the same team, you'd really have something!

JB:Duren couldn't see and Dalkowski could, but couldn't get the ball where he was looking.

SP:Duren might have been able to out drink Dalkowski.

JB:I don't know, Dalkowski was an alcoholic. Baseball tried to help him out but they just got tired of feeding him money because he'd just drink it all away.

SP:Do you know whatever became of him?

JB:Yeah, he became a short-order cook in Oregon at one time. Now I think he's absolutely homeless. He's a street person. It's a sad story.

SP:What was Bo Belinsky like?

JB:Oh, he was different! I had hit a triple against him just over the third base bag. He was a lefty, and he threw one outside and I just protected the plate. The next time up, he knocked me down twice. He just didn't like it. He didn't say anything, he just threw at my head and I went down, then he threw at my head again. He was real aggressive.

SP:What were the rooming conditions like?

JB:At one time seven of us had a place together in east Selma with no air conditioning. Jerry Fosnow had a place on Church Street that was air-conditioned. Ed Harrison and I had been rooming together in our house with the other guys, and eventually some of them got cut, so when we lost our critical mass, I moved out and moved in with Fosnow. We had a hand-to-mouth existence.

SP:Who were the hitters that impressed you in the AFL?

JB:Legrant Scott was a good hitter, so was Walski. Dothan had a guy who was a hot dog named Teolinda Acosta. A good hitter, but a real hot dog. He ran well and had a decent arm.

Jim Bethea was a good hitter too. We had a guy I thought would make it: Jose Villar. He was impressive, physically. He was big and strong, ran well, hit line drives, and had a great arm. I think he only made it up to Class A ball. I really thought he'd have a chance. He had more tools than Doc Edwards. I'll tell you a funny story about Doc: Doc was managing the Denver Bears and I had been married and had kids. We were in Denver and I called him and said, "Hey Doc, I'd like to come down and see you and my kids would like to meet you, they've heard a lot about you". Doc said, "Fine, come on down to the game. I'll leave some tickets for you". So we met him down by the dugout and were talking about baseball, and my 11 year old said, "Mr. Edwards, can I ask you a question?" . Doc said, "Sure", and my kid says, "My Dad says you looked like you were pushing a wheelbarrow when you were running to first, you never hit a ball out of the ballpark, and your arm was only average, so how did you make it to the big leagues?!". Doc looked at me and I could have crawled under a rock. Doc says, "Well, let me tell you the difference between you dad and I: Your dad had a fancy college education. He was going to be an engineer and he could go do something else. My dad was a coal miner. If I didn't make it to the big leagues, I would be underground digging coal". 15 years later, Doc's managing the Cleveland Indians, and we're living near Anaheim, so I called him up, and we met at the park again. Now my kid's 26 years old and this is the year that the Indians lost over 100 games and the movie Major League came out, and my kid says, "Mr. Edwards, did you see that movie, Major League?". Doc looked at me and said, "Is this the same damn kid?".

Doc was a funny guy. When he came to Selma, he'd already had some college, been in the military for a stretch, had three or four kids, and he still claimed he was only 20 years old! We all looked at him and said, "Yeah, sure. You can't remember when you were 20!". He probably was my age (24) at the time, but in those days, they didn't have the records or the computers that they do now so everybody cheated on their age. Doc just cheated a little more than most guys.

SP:Selma had a pretty good hitter named Keith Williams. Did you think he could have made it to the majors?

JB:He probably could of with his bat. He ran pretty well, too. They had him playing first base at Selma, which was a natural position for him. He was about 6'1" or 6'2" and had long arms. He had a chance. I'll tell you who I was really impressed with was (second baseman) Joe Teague. No there's a guy that I thought had the glove and the arm, and he'd choke up on the bat and was a punch-hitter, but he got his bat on just about everything. What happened to him was we were in a double-play situation in the field, and the runner on first slid into second while Joe was making his pivot. Joe had his leg planted and took a throw from Larry Brown to the outfield side of the base, and the runner barreled in there and ruined Joe's knee. That pretty much ended Joe's year, but he was a spunky little infielder. He was tops. He was a feisty hitter and a real pain for the pitchers, I'll tell you.

SP:He managed to play for three more years, and managed to get to the Pacific Coast League before his career ended.

JB:I really thought he had a chance. In the infield, he had the best glove of all of them. Max Alvis was erratic. He had a strong arm, good wheels, not much discipline at the plate, and when he picked up the ball at third, it could go anywhere. He'd launch a few of them. He had considerable talent and tools, and the Indians stayed with him and it paid off. Larry Brown was a good one too. We really had a lot of talent at Selma that year.

SP:There was a lot of talent in the whole league that season. Pensacola not only had Barber and Belinsky, they had Cal Ripken behind the plate.

JB:That's right. He had to catch Dalkowski. He used to talk all the time behind the plate. I would just keep quiet. He told me, "You're different. You never talk to anybody". I thought to myself, "I'm just up here to hit, not to carry on a conversation". He was just trying to distract me.

SP:What did you think of playing in Fort Walton back then? It was a lot less developed in the 1950's than it is these days.

JB:We were playing in Fort Walton once and we had an absolute monsoon. It came in about the third inning and it rained so hard you could barely see the outline of the dugout from the field. Twenty minutes later, we were playing again. It rained buckets, but that field was all sandy soil and the water went right through it. I thought we'd have the rest of the night off, but the umps said to stick around and sure enough, the rain stopped and we were playing again.

SP:Do ever look back and think you could have played longer?

JB:I don't look back with any regrets. I had injured my wrist in a basketball game in high school. I was a natural right-handed hitter, but I didn't have good flexibility in the wrist, so I had to learn to bat left-handed. It hampered my throwing ability, so I was only an average outfield arm. I ran really well. I think I might have been the fastest guy in the Cleveland system at the time. If I had not had the bad wrist, I might have stuck with it.