Lindblad approached Hoss’s locker. “You look upset,” he said.
“Sort of.”
“Is it because your mother named you Lois? Are you wishing she’d named you Betty? That has a nice ring to it… Betty Bowlin. Can I call you Betty?”
Hoss ignored him. “Did you see the story in the paper today about Finley going to California to talk to that high school kid?”
Lindblad nodded.
“That’s hogshit,” said Hoss. “I couldn’t get the tightwads to pay for my cancer surgery last winter, and now they’re gonna give this kid more than our whole team makes in a year.”
Hoss was referring to Willie Crawford from Crenshaw High in LA. Finley called him the “next Willie Mays.” The News described the seventeen-year-old Crawford as a “strong-armed Negro boy who bats and throws left-handed, hits for power and runs the 100-yard dash in 9.4.” He was also quarterback and captain of the Crenshaw High football team, high-jumped six feet, four inches, and broke all his school’s records in basketball and football scoring.
Finley hadn’t spared the hyperbole in describing Crawford. “He has everything it takes—splendid coordination, strength and speed. I’ve never met a boy with greater determination,” he said. “The kid gets up every morning so he can work out an hour before he goes to school. He will knock your socks off. This is the most outstanding prospect in the country. And we’ll start him in Birmingham.”
Finley knew he was competing with every other team to sign Crawford, especially the Dodgers, but he figured he had an advantage because he was willing to spend more money, as well as the fact that Crawford’s parents were from Bessemer. Finley had the mayor, a judge, and an influential banker from Bessemer write letters to Crawford to plead his case and extol the virtues of Birmingham.
“It might as well be public knowledge,” said Finley. “Willie Crawford is just what I said he is, the most outstanding high school boy in the country.”
All this slobbering, of course, had the Barons rolling their eyes. Between them, Hoss and Lindblad had gotten $4,000 to sign. The bidding for Crawford was expected to start at $100,000.
With the end of the school year approaching, big-league teams, including the A’s, were burning high octane to arrange their priorities for signing new talent. There was greater urgency than in years past because starting in 1965, Major League Baseball was instituting an amateur draft. Young players would no longer be able to sign with the highest bidder—they would have to go with whatever team drafted them. No owner was more determined than Finley to go after the top amateur players.
“I’ll spend whatever it takes,” he said.
In addition to John Odom, Jim Hunter, and Rick Reichardt, his list included: Cotton Nash of Kentucky (also an All-American basketball player); Dock Ellis of Los Angeles; and Mike Epstein and Andy Messersmith of Cal. But nobody had Finley’s attention more than Crawford.
“Hoss, you didn’t think your cancer surgery was that important, did you?” said Lindblad.
Embarking on a road trip to Lynchburg and Charlotte, the Barons were now in first place. Lindblad was 3–0 and Ron Tompkins was 4–0, leading the league in strikeouts ahead of Chattanooga’s Fergie Jenkins and Lynchburg’s Manly Johnston. But Sullivan told reporters that he thought the key to the team’s improved play after its crummy start was his keystone combo—Campy and Hoss. It wasn’t just their excellent defensive play—Campy was now hitting a respectable .270, while Hoss was up to .230, and second on the team in RBIs.
The Birmingham press had fallen head-over-ink in love with them. Alf Van Hoose of the News called Hoss “gutsy,” “courageous,” and “possibly as good as any second baseman ever to wear a Baron uniform.”
Van Hoose was even more effusive about Campy:
Eye-catching.
Rifle for an arm.
The quickest feet and reflexes in baseball.
He hasn’t hit a double so far this year because his singles are so hard hit that he has to stop at first and anything that gets between the outfielders is a triple.
Surprising power packed into his little frame.
Hoss was up at the crack of nine in Lynchburg, climbing on the tour bus with his fellow tourists. Located in central Virginia, Lynchburg was nicknamed “Hill City” for the seven hills the town spread across. Hoss wore Sta-Prest trousers and a charcoal sweater he’d bought at his brother-in-law’s store back home.
The bus rolled along a short stretch of the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains near the Appalachian Trail, and then returned to town, crossing over the James River. Hoss learned that Lynchburg was the only Confederate town not to fall to Union forces, but even more interesting to him was that it was the birthplace of ChapStick and the first “disposable small-volume enema.”
What the tour guide neglected to mention to Hoss and the others was that Lynchburg was stubbornly resisting Brown vs. Board of Education’s mandate to integrate its school. With the support of Virginia senator Harry F. Byrd Sr., city and state leaders had created “segregation academies” as a form of massive resistance. This defiance spread even to the churches. An influential young minister in town, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, was preaching that segregation was the “Lord’s will.” He criticized Martin Luther King Jr., declaring that “preachers are not called to be politicians but to be soul winners,” a declaration bathed in irony given Falwell’s role in the culture wars looming on the political horizon.
The tour guide also neglected to tell Hoss and his new friends that Lynchburg’s fans were as verbally abusive as any in the Southern League and that they would make trips to their city a living hell for Tommie Reynolds.
In the Barons’ game that night, Hoss got two hits and drove in a run, just as he had after taking the bus tour of Asheville. “It’s my good-luck charm,” he proclaimed.
“I suppose it’s better than wearing the same pair of underpants just because you got a hit,” countered Lindblad.
Hoss called home after the Lynchburg game to talk with Madelyn. He told her about the Barons being in first place, his improved hitting, the nice grandma he met touring Lynchburg, and how he’d felt a little tired after a couple of recent games, but not bad enough to ask Sullivan to take him out of the lineup. In return, Madelyn told him how relieved she’d be to finally get her degree and to start looking for a teaching job for next year.
“God knows we can use the money,” she said.
Hoss listened as Madelyn told him that her dad had offered to fly her and Parrish to Birmingham in his Cessna. Hoss had never been one to dwell on the inequities of life—growing up on a tenant farm and spending long hours in the hot sun picking cotton didn’t afford him much time for wallowing in self-pity—and he wasn’t going to start now. Still, he couldn’t help but be aware of some of those inequities all around him, such as Finley dishing out six-figure bonuses to high school kids but not paying for his cancer surgery, or his father-in-law flying around the countryside in his Cessna when Hoss didn’t even have a car to get to and from Rickwood.
But as long as he kept hitting, none of that mattered.