The Alabama Florida League Web Site

John McPherson, Headland's player-manager, finished the season with a .405 average, the highest league average to date, yet he wasn't selected for the all star team. He was batting .416 at the time.

Geneva had the league's worst attendance. Based on the 130 games schedule, the Red Birds average only 218 fans per game.

The Headland Dixie Runners needed extra fielding practice. They averaged 3 errors per game.

No future major leaguers played in the AFL during the 1950 season, but Andy Olsen, pitcher for Andalusia, became a major league umpire.

Three of the league's top six all-time stolen base marks were set in 1950. Joe Harper set the single season record of 76 followed his Headland teammate, Newell Pangburn (63) and Don Plarksi (63) of Enterprise.

ELSEWHERE IN 1950

Lou Fitzgerald (1957 Pensacola) leads the Big State League in runs (138).

Winston-Salem (Carolina League) wins 106 games (losing 47).

The eleventh AFL season was the last one for the Alabama State League. Team Transitions would mark a return to Florida in 1951 and the Alabama-Florida League name would be brought back. The last All-Alabama season was filled with great and unusual pitching performances. The Enterprise Boll Weevils participated in a rare back-to-back performance: Harry Pollock of the Boll Weevils threw a no-hitter on July 13th, beating the Ozark Eagles 14 to 0. The victory high of that game quickly sank to the lowest depths the next night as Harry Clark of Dothan pitched a perfect game, beating the very same Enterprise team, 2 to 0. Even more astonishing is the fact that this wasn't the only perfect game of the season: James Pomykala of Greenville hurled a perfect game on May 31st, beating Geneva, 12 to 0.

The excitement on the field help mend some of the damage caused by the loss of one of the leagues foundation franchises: Troy. The Trojans/Tigers had been in the league since the beginning, and Troy had been the site of most of the meetings which lead to the formation of the league in 1936. To replace this storied franchise, the league turned to a tiny town northwest of Dothan where semi-pro baseball had been a great success: Headland, Alabama. Headland had successful franchises in the South Alabama League and the Flint River League, and they now were ready to step up to Class D baseball, despite the fact that the town was home to barely over 1600 people. The team was named the Dixie Runners, a name that had been carried forth from the previous semi-pro teams. The curiosity of a professional baseball team in such a tiny environment caught the attention of the national baseball press, especially since one third of the town's population would have to attend every game to be considered reasonably successful. Against all odds, the Headland experiment worked and the Runners began what would be a short but successful run in the league.

The season belonged to the Enterprise Boll Weevils, a franchise in a constant state of financial turmoil. Year in and year out, the Weevils management struggled to stay afloat, rolling into season's end with an empty tank and gloomy prospects. Somehow, each season brought just enough money and interest to keep the team going. 1950 was different in that the Weevils had a good team and they managed to win 76 games, which kept them ahead of Dothan by just 4 games. Unfortunately, Enterprise followed the pattern of many former AFL champions by falling apart in the playoffs, losing a tightly fought first round series to the upstart Headland Dixie Runners, 4 to 3. The Dothan Browns, after their second-place finish, dispatched Greenville in 6 games, then beat the Dixie Runners easily, 4 games to 1, to win the playoff crown. Much of the credit for the season went to Clarence "Mutt" Hodge, the AFL legend and former Chicago White Sox pitcher who had been one of the league's original managers. Hodge, although absent from the league for 14 years, was a baseball man in every sense of the term, and his leadership and baseball know-how was the ingredient Dothan had been missing over the previous few seasons. Hodge had worked in various leagues in the southeast since his initial stint with the Enterprise Barons in 1936, and his return to the league marked the beginning of a relationship with the AFL that would take Hodge from the bench to the office of President of the league. Along the way, Hodge would become the chief umpire of the league and also be involved in various administrative jobs for both individual teams and the league. Hodge's influence on the league might have been one of the factors that kept the league alive during the tumultuous years that followed 1950. It was Hodge who emerged from the disasters that were to occur during the 1951 season as the stabilizing force that steadied the league leadership during the first have of the 1950's.