The headline the day of Blue Moon’s home debut against Chattanooga read: BLUE MOON VOWS RICKWOOD WILL SEE A SHOW. He brashly told a reporter that he hadn’t seen a Southern League pitcher yet with “a fastball as good as mine.”
Given that he’d been in the league less than a week, his boast was about to be put to the test. His pitching opponent for the Lookouts would be Fergie Jenkins, currently leading the Southern League in strikeouts.
Blue Moon’s boast had raised eyebrows with two of his own teammates—Ron Tompkins and Paul Seitz—who didn’t believe he even threw harder than they did. Tompkins, who was second in the league behind Jenkins in strikeouts, was coming off a nifty four-hitter the previous night, boosting his record to 7–0 and putting his flop in front of KC’s general manager behind him.
Upon first meeting Blue Moon, Bob Phillips of the Birmingham Post-Herald described him this way:
The 19-year-old Negro has an easy smile and there is a touch of dimples in his face. His demeanor makes you wonder why he ever was dubbed Blue Moon.
Phillips asked Blue Moon what he liked to be called.
“Blue Moon or Moon, it don’t matter,” he replied.
Phillips let on that he knew Blue Moon had a girlfriend back in Macon. “What’s she call you?” he asked.
“Johnny.”
“How come you asked to wear number 13?” Phillips asked.
“That was my number in high school. I had good luck there, so why change?”
Blue Moon hadn’t adjusted yet to baseball player time—stay up late, get up late. Eager to atone for the poor showing in his first start, he was up at 8 a.m. The Barons had found him a room to rent in a modest house on West 1st Street, only a couple of blocks from Rickwood. The owner of the house, Mrs. Polk, a grandmotherly black woman, had already taken to treating him like a son. On this morning, she had bacon and eggs waiting for him on the kitchen table.
After inhaling breakfast, Blue Moon drove his new Ford Galaxy the two blocks to Rickwood, arriving ten hours before game time. General Manager Glynn West spotted him and told him to go home and rest, which was like ordering a lion to purr. He returned to the park at three o’clock, still two hours ahead of his teammates.
When he finally walked down to the bullpen to warm up, he received the same advice from Sullivan that managers had been handing out to pitchers since before Babe Ruth left the orphanage: Keep the ball down, get ahead of the hitters, and don’t rush yourself. Sullivan also had one more piece of advice:
“Don’t let Max Patkin distract you.”
Belcher surveyed the crowd. Paid attendance was 5,536, not as large as he’d hoped, but almost three times bigger than they’d been averaging. Unsuccessful in getting Patkin to change the date, he was at least glad he was paying him a set fee ($200) rather than a share of the gate.
Belcher spotted two gentlemen in houndstooth hats seated in the box seats behind the Barons’ dugout—Charlie Finley and Bear Bryant. This was already Finley’s fourth trip to Birmingham in 1964; Bryant had driven up from Tuscaloosa specifically to check out Blue Moon.
With the crowd cheering on every pitch, Blue Moon got off to a shaky start, unable to get his curve over. But a Campy-to-Hoss double play bailed him out in the first inning, and a great backhand stop by Rosario ended a Lookout threat in the second.
In the third, two walks and a single brought in a run for the Lookouts to tie the score, 1–1, and then in the fourth, another pair of walks and a single put Chattanooga in the lead, 2–1. After four innings, Blue Moon had given up five hits and four walks.
In the fifth, he walked the leadoff hitter. In the stands, Finley shifted uncomfortably. Sullivan hustled to the mound.
“Use your fastball more,” he instructed.
Blue Moon knew his fastball was his money pitch, but thought he needed to use his curveball more in the pros against better hitters than he’d faced at Ballard-Hudson High. Unfortunately, he was falling behind in the count to almost every hitter.
Heeding Sullivan’s advice, he started to settle down and rely on his fastball. Over the next five innings, he gave up no runs and only one hit and one walk. Meanwhile, the Barons were figuring out Jenkins. Led by Hoss’s three hits and four RBIs, they won the game 8–2, Blue Moon pitching a complete game for his first win as a pro, so focused that he barely noticed Patkin’s antics or the highest decibel level at Rickwood in years.
Finley gushed. “I’ve got to admit that I was a little shook last week when I saw Moon get roughed up pretty good in Macon,” he said. “But I feel a lot better now. I’m not worried about the 75K I gave him. In fact, if I see anybody else with an arm like that, I’ll write another check, same amount.”
Sullivan was impressed, too. “Blue might not have been as quick as he was against Macon, but he was a better pitcher,” he said. “Much better.”
The stats bore him out. Against Macon, Odom threw 124 pitches in only five innings. On this night he threw 118 in nine innings, with 56 fastballs and 18 curves for strikes. Fifteen of his outs came on ground balls. He struck out six.
“Don’t forget, this is just a kid,” added Sullivan. “He’s got things to learn, lots of them, but he’s got a good head on him. He’ll pick it up quickly. He’s going to make quite a pitcher. I think Charlie will get his money’s worth.”
Also adding praise was Patkin, a man who’d seen more than a thousand pitchers over the years. “If he keeps throwing like that, he’ll be plenty successful,” he said. “He’s got a bit of Satchel Paige in him. Colorful. It could make him a lot of extra money, and fans, too.”
And another voice joined the chorus. “He won, that’s what I like the most,” said Bear Bryant. “He looks like a winner. I like the way he pitched in the fourth quarter. After he got the lead, he got tougher. I’m not a baseball man, but I’ve got some ideas about folks who get tougher in fourth quarters.”
Probably the least impressed was Blue Moon. “My curve wasn’t behaving like it oughta,” he said. “But my fastball was all right. When it’s getting right, it tails off and drops. Batters don’t get to it fat.”
Later that night, his good fortune continued when he was pulled over by a burly Birmingham policeman, then let go with just a warning.
The next morning, he called his mom back in Macon. She listened to his account of the game, and then offered her two cents. “John,” she said, “I didn’t raise you to go getting yourself a big ol’ head.”