Sullivan was steaming. He’d just gotten a call from Hank Peters, the KC general manager, informing him that Blue Moon, after pitching in the critical series opener against Lynchburg, was to leave first thing in the morning for Kansas City.
With ten games left in the Barons’ season, Sully had charted his pitching rotation until the end of the season… and Blue Moon was penciled in for two more starts after this game, including the last game of the season against Lynchburg on the road. Calling up Moon now flew in the face of what Finley had promised… that Blue Moon would leave only after the Barons clinched the pennant.
Sullivan tried to compose himself. First Campy, then Sanders, and now Blue Moon. The heart of his team. These moves confirmed what Sullivan had suspected all along—that Finley had been lying when he pontificated about doing everything he could to help his beloved hometown. In the scale of disasters in the universe, Sullivan knew that this didn’t rank in the top twelve million; nor would a Baron Southern League championship lead the news with Walter Cronkite. But the team had been a positive force in the community all summer long. They’d shown the possibilities of an integrated future in the most unlikely setting.
With no other choice, Sullivan broke the news to Blue Moon thirty minutes before he took the mound against Lynchburg.
Heading to the mound, Blue Moon had the swagger of a young man knowing he was catching a plane to The Show in the morning. He hadn’t lost a game in more than a month, and after a rocky start to his pro career, he was living up to the hype and Finley’s big investment. He’d adjusted well to pro ball, a nineteen-year-old unwrapping the gift of a complex new world every day. His teammates had learned to enjoy his cocky demeanor, and he’d become an active participant in locker room banter, even though he was the richest guy on the team, and the possibility of resentment had been huge. But his “pleasant and refreshing personality,” as a sportswriter put it, and his considerable gifts, helped ease his transition.
In the first inning, Blue Moon struck out the first hitter. And then the nightmare began. By the time Sully summoned Stanley Jones from the bullpen—still in the first inning—Blue Moon had been rocked for eight runs on six hits and two walks, his worst outing as a pro by a factor of many… an embarrassing way to be escorted to the big leagues.
The Barons never recovered, losing 12–6, their lead over Lynchburg now down to two.
Sullivan arrived at the ballpark the next day surprised to find two motorcycle police officers stationed in front of the Baron clubhouse. Belcher had ordered extra security for the team’s final two games.
It wasn’t because the Barons and Lynsox hated each other—which they did—but because an uneasy tension had settled over Birmingham and the rest of the South. With the opening of school scheduled in a few days, school integration loomed as the big civil rights battleground, and Belcher was taking no chances on anything spilling over to Rickwood and spoiling what had been a historic five months.
During the game, the two police officers would be stationed at the ends of the Barons’ dugout.
For the start of the 1964–65 school year, as resistance to school desegregation slowly, painfully began to weaken across the South, it was anticipated that as many as five thousand blacks would attend previously segregated schools in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. But in Birmingham, despite court orders to accelerate the inclusion of black students, only a dozen were expected to enroll in previously all-white schools. These court orders had rekindled fears around the city of a repeat of last year’s ugly school integration battles that included KKK cross burnings, Governor Wallace calling out state troopers to prevent black students from entering classes, angry white parents screaming insults and throwing rocks, white students boycotting classes, and—when all of that didn’t satisfy the extremists—the dynamiting of the 16th Street church.
“Appreciate you being here,” said Sullivan, walking between the two cops.
Nervously, Sullivan watched Ron Tompkins complete his warm-up pitches prior to the start of the second game against Lynchburg. Tompkins’s first pitch was lined up the middle for a single. After striking out the second hitter, he walked the next man on four pitches. Sullivan had an uneasy feeling—Tompkins was steering the ball again rather than cutting loose as he had when he was the most dominant pitcher in the league.
The Lynsox cleanup hitter, Deacon Jones, lifted a routine fly to center. But as Wayne Norton circled under it, he slipped, and the ball landed behind him. By the time he recovered, the two runners had scored. After retrieving the ball, he threw to third in an effort to get Jones, but his throw missed the mark by the length of twelve police motorcycles and Jones waltzed home, too.
As had been the case the night before, the Barons never regrouped, and lost 7–4. It was Lynchburg’s eighth win in a row. The momentum was all on their side.
The Baron lead was now down to one… and the Lynchburg starting pitcher tomorrow night would be Manly Johnston, gunning for his nineteenth win.
“We sure need to win this last home game,” observed Sullivan, offering a managerial glimpse into the obvious.
The headline the next morning read: HAVE THEY BLOWN IT? According to Van Hoose, “The most popular conversation around town this week is whether the Barons will continue their slide and disappoint the Birmingham fans.”
The Barons had led the league since May 29—ninety-six days—and only ten days before had led by six games (with seventeen to go). Now they led by one (with eight to go). They’d lost seven of their last nine, their worst slump of the year, and the clubhouse, which had been loosey-goosey all year, now had the mood of a coffin sale at a nursing home.
“If they lose tonight,” wrote Van Hoose, “Flagville would be nowhere but uphill, and on the cruel road, too.”
For the final game, a crowd of 2,299 whooped, hollered, and cajoled as the Barons took a 2–0 lead over Johnston into the fifth inning. Rich Allen, the team’s hottest pitcher over the last three weeks, was tossing a nifty one-hitter. Hope lived.
After a leadoff single to start the fifth, Lynsox centerfielder Danny Murphy hit a high pop-up back of second.
“I got it,” yelled Hoss.
It was the proverbial can of corn, but as he circled under it, his feet got tangled—or exhaustion finally won out—and down he went, the ball landing a few feet away for a base hit, reminiscent of the ball that Norton had missed the previous night.
Unnerved, Allen walked the next hitter to load the bases. That brought up Manly Johnston, the pride of Auburn University, the winningest pitcher in the minor leagues, and the best-hitting pitcher since Babe Ruth.
He drilled a two-run single to tie the score.
And then Allen came completely unraveled. By the time Sullivan signaled for Shaky Joe in the bullpen, Allen had given up six runs on six hits. Grzenda arrived on the mound carrying a couple of cans of high-octane ugly, giving up four more runs in a third of an inning.
Hope died.
The pennant race was tied.
In the clubhouse, Sullivan reminded his downcast players that there was still a week left, and with their final three games against Lynchburg, the season was far from over.
“But it’s uphill from here,” he admitted, the first time all season that he had expressed anything but optimism.
It was 4 a.m. as Iron Lung chugged up an incline east of Spartanburg heading toward Charlotte and the final week of the season. The weary players were all curled up in their seats, asleep—no card games, no beer drinking, no visions of Hawaii dancing in their dreams. Also making this final trip was Albert Belcher. He, too, was asleep. But not Sullivan. Two weeks earlier he had been touted as a shoo-in for minor-league manager of the year. Now he was overseeing a sinking ship on the verge of one of the great collapses in minor-league history.
Prior to the series against Lynchburg, he’d predicted that if his team hit, they’d win. As it turned out, they did hit, averaging six runs and twelve hits in the three games. But the starting pitching that he’d counted on—Blue Moon, Tompkins, and Allen—had bombed miserably, giving up twenty-two runs and twenty-one hits in a combined total of only eleven innings.
He stared at the incline ahead.