The Alabama Florida League Web Site

by Dick Thompson

Fibbing about one's age in baseball is a tried and true tradition. No player, to my knowledge however, has ever taken as many years off his true age than Bill Morrell, manager and pitcher for the Panama City team in the Alabama-Florida League in 1936 and 1937. Willard Blackmer (Bill) Morrell won eight big leagues game while pitching for the Washington Senators in 1926 and the New York Giants in 1930 and 1931. For many years the various baseball encyclopedias listed his birth date and place as April 9, 1900, in the Hyde Park section of Boston, Massachusetts. April 9 is correct, but the year was really 1893.

Morrell tossed his first professional pitch at age 31 and his last at age 48. Morrell came from an athletic family and two of his brothers were noted baseball and football players at Bowdoin College in Maine. Bill himself attended Bowdoin for a short time before putting his education on hold to join the service in World War I. He served with Battery E of the 55th Artillery Regiment, American Expeditionary Force, in France. Following the Armistice, Morrell resumed his education at Tufts University in Massachusetts where he enrolled in the class of 1923. On May 21, 1921, at the age of 28, Morrell pitched a perfect, no-hit, no-run game against the Mass. Aggies (now the University of Massachusetts).

Morrell began his professional career in 1924 in the Eastern League. His biggest seasons included a 17-win season for New Haven, Connecticut, in 1925; 15 and 14 wins for Birmingham, Alabama of the Southern League in 1928 and 1929; and 14 wins for Shreveport, Louisiana in the Texas League in 1930. Bill was a baseball vagabond. During the 1930s he pitched or managed in the Eastern League, American Association, International League, New York-Pennsylvania League, Northeastern League, Western Association, Alabama-Florida League, Southeastern League, and the Georgia-Florida League.

Morrell evidently enjoyed his time in Birmingham, and the guess here is that he, like generations of ballplayers before and after him, met his wife there. The Sporting News reported this odd line in February, 1930. "Pitcher Bill Morrell has cold-shouldered baseball, and is Alabama manager for an air college." Following the 1941 season, his last in baseball, and the outbreak of the Second World War, Morrell received a commission as a Captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He went overseas in March of 1942 and served in North Africa. Promoted to Major in 1943, he remained on active duty following the war and retired in 1958 with the rank of Lt. Colonel. He served in the Strategic Air Command. He returned to Birmingham following his military retirement and died there on August 5, 1975. Obituaries in both the Birmingham News and the Birmingham Post-Herald listed his military service but neglected to mention his baseball career. His age was listed at 83, much closer, he was actually 82, than his baseball-accepted age of 75.