Two hours before Blue Moon’s debut, the grandstands at Macon’s Luther Williams Field were already filled, with black fans spilling into the segregated seats formerly occupied only by whites. In the Barons’ locker room, Blue Moon was sitting alone, a stranger still to his teammates.
The clubhouse door opened and in walked Charlie Finley, grinning like he’d just won the lottery. He headed straight for Blue Moon, shook his hand, wished him good luck, and then walked into Sullivan’s office.
Blue Moon’s heralded debut wasn’t the sole inspiration for Finley’s smile. He’d just garnered another of the top prospects that he’d vowed to sign—Jim Catfish Hunter—again shelling out $75,000, this time to a right-handed pitcher fresh out of high school. At Perquimans County High in Hertford, North Carolina, Hunter had won twenty-six games and lost only two, with five no-hitters and two perfect games. But his most remarkable performance was striking out twenty-nine in a twelve-inning game.
“He’s a real farm boy,” Finley told Sullivan. “A handsome kid and one of the most determined youngsters you’ll ever see.”
Hunter seemed a perfect complement to Blue Moon—two Southern fireballers with great nicknames and interesting backgrounds. Hunter got his nickname because he supposedly disappeared once when he was eight and had the whole town looking for him until they finally found him down by the riverbank, reeling in a big catfish.
Despite signing the big contract, Hunter would have to wait to start his pro career. Prior to his senior year, he and his older brother had gone hunting and the brother’s gun accidentally discharged, hitting Catfish in the foot. When the brother saw all the blood, he fainted. Catfish crawled to a pond, took off his shirt, wet it, and then crawled back to revive his brother, who then went for help. Doctors had to amputate Catfish’s big toe and part of his foot, but he was still able to blow away the hitters in his senior season.
Finley was sending him to the Mayo Clinic to have his foot reexamined, and then he would assign him to a minor-league team.
“Sully, I want him to start with you in Birmingham,” said Finley. “Wouldn’t that be great? A Blue Moon and a Catfish on the same team. You gotta love it.”
Sullivan had been in the game a dozen years, and he couldn’t remember a player starting his career with so much hype as Blue Moon, not even with his own career back in 1951 when he signed for a whopping $45,000 with the Red Sox.
The Macon Telegraph had run three front-page stories about Blue Moon’s debut, plus a wire-service photo of him during his visit to Kansas City sitting next to A’s manager Ed Lopat. During that week with the big-league team, Blue Moon had worked with Lopat on having his legs wider apart when he finished his follow-through, as well as coming more over the top in his curve. Lopat also had Odom do a lot of running, worried he wasn’t in baseball shape.
Blue Moon was confident. “I’ve seen the Peaches play this year,” he said in one of the front-page stories. “I can beat ’em.”
He’d returned to Macon only the previous day, and had spent the night with his mother. The only Baron name he knew for sure was Sullivan’s. He didn’t know that the Barons’ league lead was still at four over Lynchburg, either, following their wins in the first two games of the series against Macon. In the second game, Tompkins had rebounded from his disastrous start in front of Pat Friday and thrown a complete game, six-hit victory, improving his record to 6–0.
The crowd, predicted to be a record turnout, was even bigger than expected—7,005 fans cramming into a stadium with a capacity of 5,000. It was standing room only, fans lining the foul lines and spilling out into the outfield behind roped-off areas. And they were noisy. There were even fans sitting at the edge of the Barons’ dugout.
Initially, Finley went upstairs to the press box behind home plate, where he let the hyperbole ring. “Blue Moon will be the best athlete in the organization,” he said.
But after fidgeting in his seat for a couple of minutes, he left the press box for a seat along the third-base side, the only white face in an all-black section. If this was to be the most ballyhooed sports event in Macon’s history, white or black, he wanted to be in the middle of it.
Originally, Pat Friday was scheduled to join him, but the previous day Finley dispatched him to Massachusetts to dole out another $100,000 to Skip Lockwood, an outfield phenom just graduating from high school. Friday was supposed to make it to Macon in time for Blue Moon’s debut, but at the last minute Finley dispatched him back to Kansas City to fire Manager Ed Lopat and replace him with Mel McGaha, the manager of Kansas City’s AAA team in Dallas. Some speculated that Finley preferred Sullivan—McGaha had never played in the big leagues—but surmised that he had decided to let Sullivan finish the season in Birmingham in order to gain a full year’s experience before taking over the A’s.
Bigwigs had also shown up for the game, including the mayor of Macon, Southern League president Sam Smith, and Barons’ owner Albert Belcher. Extra security was also on hand. Macon had always had segregated baseball and segregated seating, and this would be the town’s first experience with a totally integrated crowd. More than half of the patrons were black. Normally, fewer than a hundred blacks showed up for Macon’s games.
Also in the stands were Blue Moon’s mother and his girlfriend, Perrie. Like everyone else, they fanned themselves to keep cool. The temperature at game time was ninety-one degrees, down from a sweltering ninety-six earlier in the day.
Waiting for the pre-game introductions, Blue Moon wiped the sweat from his forehead. Having played countless games in sweltering Southern heat, he was no stranger to the dripping humidity. But it had been three weeks since he had pitched in a game, and Finley shared Lopat’s concern that he wasn’t in baseball shape.
In the pre-game introductions, the stadium announcer made the call: “And pitching for the Barons, number 13, Johnny Blue Moon Odom.”
The stands shook so hard that several Baron players grabbed their gloves and retreated from the dugout steps. In the dugout, Tompkins held a fungo bat between his legs just in case. In the stands, fans held orange baseballs, a pre-game giveaway from Finley. (He owned a surplus of these orange balls, his proposal for using them in big-league games having been unanimously rejected by the other owners.)
“These people are nuts,” observed Hoss. “I’m not sure giving them orange balls was such a good idea.”
With the count one ball and two strikes on Teo Acosta, Macon’s leadoff hitter, Blue Moon snapped off a hard-breaking curve, freezing Acosta in his spikes. “Steeeerike!” bellowed the ump.
The crowd went completely and totally nuts, stomping, screaming, whistling.
Blue Moon didn’t smile, he didn’t pump his fist… he just bent down, picked up the resin bag, and waited for the next hitter to step in. Wasn’t this why he got all that money?
The next hitter, second baseman Bill Oplinger, lined a single to left. The crowd groaned.
The third hitter, Len Boehmer, one of the best contact hitters in the league and currently second in the league in batting average, worked the count to two and two, and then Blue Moon, working from the stretch, struck him out with a sinking fastball.
If the first strikeout brought thunder from the stands, this one brought delirium, with black fans yelling in celebration as if Ty Cobb himself had gone down swinging. It was so loud that players in the Barons’ dugout covered their ears.
Facing Macon’s cleanup hitter, Jerry Kushner, Blue Moon quickly got ahead of the count, no balls, two strikes. Baseball wisdom, he knew, said that the pitcher should not give the hitter anything too good to hit in this situation, but with his adrenaline running wild, and with the crowd going bananas, he fired a fastball low and away. Kushner swung… and missed.
Blue Moon Odom, the richest bonus baby in Georgia history, had just struck out the side in his very first inning.
The fans went stark, raving bonkers, his girlfriend, Perrie, jumping up and down, hugging Blue Moon’s mom. Sullivan stood on the top step of the dugout, congratulating Blue Moon as he walked off the field. Players on the bench shook their heads in disbelief. Blue Moon issued only the slightest hint of a smile.
In the stands, Finley stood shoulder-to-shoulder with black fans, whistling, applauding, and beaming. For him, it was a moment of vindication and validation. His recent spending spree—over half a million dollars—on untried young players had raised eyebrows throughout the baseball world, with accusations that he was trying to use his money to change the baseball landscape, accusations he scoffed at.
He had made Blue Moon a rich young man… and now Blue Moon had just made him the happiest man in baseball.
In the bottom of the second, Blue Moon gave up a line single to Lee May sandwiched between two walks. With the bases loaded and two outs, he struck out the next batter, sending the crowd into another frenzy.
And if the crowd weren’t delirious enough, he jacked them even higher when he came to bat in the third inning and laid down a perfect bunt for a base hit, beating the throw by two strides. The Barons scored two in the inning, taking a 2–0 lead.
Standing on first base after a hit to drive in a run, Tommie Reynolds turned to Macon first baseman Lee May and gestured to the screaming crowd. “These people are crazy,” he said.
“If they decide to rush the field, I’ve got my exit all picked out,” replied May.
“I’m right behind you,” said Reynolds.
In the bottom of the third, the Grand Debut began to unravel a bit. Blue Moon gave up three singles, a wild pitch, and a balk as the Peaches tied the score. He breezed through the fourth, but then in the fifth, with the Barons back on top 4–2, he gave up two more runs, one of them on a wild pitch. Sullivan sent Hoss to the mound to calm him down and to get him to take more time between pitches.
“When I got to the mound, all I could see were the whites of his eyes,” Hoss recalled after the game. “He was so amped up.”
In the bottom of the sixth, Blue Moon came all the way unraveled, giving up four runs, hurting himself with three walks, one of them with the bases loaded. He also hit a batter and wild-pitched in another run. Finally, mercifully, Sullivan came and pulled him from the game. His totals for the evening: five and a third innings pitched, seven hits, eight earned runs, seven walks, and seven strikeouts.
As Blue Moon dejectedly made his way to the dugout, the black fans stood and cheered, not the deafening roar from before, but still plenty loud. Then they turned and headed for the exits en masse, with three innings still left in the game.
The post-game analysis was mixed. A headline in the Birmingham News read: MOON SHOT FIZZLES OUT. But the Macon Telegraph declared: ODOM LOOKS IMPRESSIVE. Finley had come down from his earlier exaltation to tell a reporter: “I was very impressed with Blue Moon’s performance, considering the tremendous pressure he was under and the fact that he was not in top physical condition. He might be in good shape for a high school kid, but he still needs a lot of conditioning for pro ball. I’m not worried. He will help us win a lot after he gains some experience.”
Sullivan also expressed satisfaction with Blue Moon’s first game: “Johnny has a good, moving fastball and his curve will come around. He threw a lot of pitches—124 in only five innings—and that tired him out a bit.”
For his part, Blue Moon showed his inexperience in dealing with the media and that he still needed to learn how not to give the opposition quotes for the bulletin board. “I really don’t think there is a lot of difference between pitching in high school and pitching in the Southern League,” he said. “Maybe the players are a little better and don’t swing at many bad balls, but I’m not worried. I’ll do all right in this league.”
After the game, as the Barons boarded the bus for the four-hour drive back to Birmingham, Blue Moon stood off to the side, trying to console his seventeen-year-old girlfriend, tears streaming down Perrie’s cheeks. It wasn’t the eight earned runs he’d given up that had her so upset.
“I don’t want you to go, Johnny,” she said, loud enough for others to hear. “I know you’re gonna meet somebody…”
Worried that his new teammates were watching this tearful farewell, he gave her a quick kiss and then turned and boarded the bus, leaving her crying in the parking lot as Iron Lung pulled out into the warm Georgia night.