LITTLE ROCK — Warren Spahn, the great left hander, might have busted the baseball salary barrier years ahead of anyone else if he had been willing to take a gamble 60 years ago.
Spahn had a 14-19 record for the seventh-place Boston Braves in 1952, although he had pitched as well statistically as he had while winning 20 games four times previously. Citing lousy attendance, the Braves wanted to cut his $25,000 salary.
(Spahn had a 22-14 record and 2.98 ERA in 1951. He exactly matched the 2.98 ERA in 1952 in spite of the 14-19 record.)
“We haggled and haggled,” Spahn said during a long-ago visit to Little Rock, “until finally [Braves General Manager] John Quinn offered me 10 cents on every ticket the club sold over 400,000.”
The Braves had drawn barely more than 300,000 in 1952. Spahn wasn’t interested in dimes. He held firm and signed for $25,000.
During spring training in 1953, the Braves received permission to move to Milwaukee. They drew 1.8 million spectators in their new surroundings.
“With the ‘dimes deal,’ I would have made nearly $190,000,” Spahn said.
To that point, only Ted Willams and Joe DiMaggio had made $100,000 in salary. Williams was believed to hold the record with $125,000.
Spahn (363-245) eventually had 13 seasons in which he won 20 or more games. Before retiring, he finally got his salary up to $87,000.
When the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame was chartered in 1958, Alva Odell “Bad News” Hale was prominent on the original list of possibilities. A few years later, his name was no longer there. The names of several other candidates also had disappeared.
Coach Wilson Matthews of Little Rock Central High football fame (and the Arkansas Razorbacks) rarely failed to air his pet peeve at meetings of the Hall of Fame members to elect new honorees. It went something like this:
“This guy was near the top of the list last year. Now he’s out of sight. What’s going on?” (Good question, and one rarely answered.)
Odell Hale, a Louisiana native, landed at El Dorado to play for a Lion Oil semipro team around 1928. He eventually spent 10 years in the majors, nine with the Cleveland Indians and batted .289 in 1,062 big league games. He enjoyed a solid career through the 1930s, although it seemed to be one that eluded most baseball fans. He died in El Dorado in 1980.
Hale’s “Bad News” nickname was more like a salute. Pitchers absorbed the bad news.
He played second base for Cleveland some seasons, third base in other years. He was at his peak from 1934-1937, appearing in 143, 150, 153 and 154 games while batting .302, .304, .316 and .312. He drove in 101 runs twice, 1934-35.
In 1938, Hale lost the regular third base job to rookie Ken Keltner, a gifted fielder and power hitter. Hale’s career ended in 1941, when he played 12 games with the Boston Red Sox and 41 with the New York Giants.
Hale’s name recently resurfaced when the Union County Sports Hall of Fame announced plans to honor him at its second induction ceremony at El Dorado on Aug. 4. Hale’s career statistics, especially hitting, aren’t bad at all. His records wouldn’t embarrass any of our various halls of fame.
Sports, Pages 16 on 05/22/2012