I was talking to the beloved Mal Vincent recently and he was telling me about a former minor league team in North Carolina called the Roanoke Rapids Jays. I had never heard of the team so I looked them up. Turns out, they were a Class D minor league team that played, at least, from 1947 to 1952.
I had considered myself a pretty well-informed baseball fan but didn't know what the Class D designation meant.
Wikipedia explains it this way:
Until 1963, there were also Class B, C, and D leagues (and, for half a season, one E league). The Class D of that day would be equivalent to the Rookie level today. The other class designations disappeared because leagues of that level could not sustain operation during a large downturn in the financial fortunes of minor league baseball in the 1950s and 1960s caused by the rise of television broadcasts of major league sports across broad regions of the country. The impact of the Korean War in 1950 caused a player shortage in most cities in class D and C.
Fascinating. But then, looking through the Roanoke Rapids roster, I became interested in a player named Morrie Aderholt. Aderholt was a player-manager in Roanoke Rapids. Previously, he was a player-manager for a team just over the border, the Emporia Nats. Not only was Aderholt 10 or 15 years older than the guys he was playing with, he hit well over .300 and one year slammed 31 homers. By this time, Branch Rickey had already reportedly called him "the world's worst third baseman." He later became a scout and died at the age of 39.
I was thinking about all of this with the drastic changes to The Tides' roster in recent weeks. Oscar Salazar recently got the call to Baltimore. Salazar is one of the Tides oldest players and it's good to see him get another chance in the bigs. But the business of baseball has changed so much it; hard to ponder the kind of relationships minor leaguers had with a city like Emporia or Roanoke Rapids. I'm interested in this kind of stuff the same way I'm interested in Moonlight Graham.
Also:
- Can this be? Are they really making a sequel to "Old School?" Sad. Leave near-perfection alone.
- A great cover of the theme song to "Shaft" on ukelele. Don't you think I need a ukelele? I keep saying I'm going to buy one in an effort to prove I once had middling musical skill, but I never do.
- A remarkable number of similarities between "30 Rock" and the Muppets. "30 Rock" has certainly grown on me, but there's no Fozzie Bear on that show. Disappointing. A talking bear in a hat (telling jokes) always makes for great comedy.
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