“We’ll win this thing,” boldly predicted Sullivan.
Back in Birmingham, News sports editor Benny Marshall was just as optimistic. In a column titled “A Vote for Sully and His Gang,” he labeled the Barons “the team that will not die” and marveled at how the pennant race had knocked the season start of Bear Bryant and the Alabama football team’s quest for a national championship out of the headlines:
The weary Barons will board the bus after the final game and make the long, ten-hour drive back to Birmingham, arriving at Rickwood at 9 a.m. as the Southern League champions of 1964. This story has been too good not to have a happy ending.
In all his years in baseball, Sullivan had never seen a hitter on such a slugging rampage as Reynolds. He could only remember witnessing two three-homer games—one each by Mantle and Ted Williams—so to have Reynolds accomplish the feat twice in a two-week span was mind-boggling. He’d also never seen anybody collect nine RBIs in one game. But it wasn’t just the numbers that impressed him… it was the way Reynolds had turned into a stone-cold fastball assassin, absolutely ripping the cover off the ball, and doing it when he knew there was a possibility that every pitch could be coming straight at his head.
Reynolds had quietly gone about his business all season—at least on the outside—but inside he’d felt the pressure, arriving in Birmingham with a steamer trunk full of high expectations. Not only was he supposed to be the Barons’ power hitter, but he was also supposed to be the model of how a black player was to comport himself in a hostile environment. The Latin players—Rosario, Huyke, and Campaneris—were instructed to stay calm, too, but they somehow didn’t educe the same level of racist vitriol that the black Americans did.
During the course of the season, no black player in the league had been targeted for more verbal abuse than Reynolds, especially in Lynchburg. He heard it every game when he trotted out to take his position in left field or when he waited in the on-deck circle. But it wasn’t just verbal abuse. He led the league in getting knocked down at the plate. It was as if the target that had been painted on the window of his Super Sport on his way to spring training had been a premonition of the season ahead.
“Get ready for one at your head, Monkey Man.”
He hadn’t heard those taunts in Birmingham. It wasn’t that Rickwood didn’t sell tickets to racists. It was just that the racists frequenting Rickwood took the attitude that the Barons’ black players were—to borrow Bull Connor’s phrase—“my nigguhs.” It was okay to hurl racial insults at black demonstrators, or children trying to integrate their schools, or even players on opposing teams, but the Baron players were off-limits. If “my nigguhs” could bring a championship to Birmingham, then they would be tolerated… as long as they stayed in their own neighborhood when the game was over.
As the Barons got dressed before the first game in Lynchburg, Sullivan pulled Reynolds aside.
“Tommie, I’ve got good news for you,” he said.
He’d just talked to farm director Hank Peters again, and the big-league team was calling up Reynolds and Larry Stahl.
“When?” asked Reynolds, knowing that the call-ups of Campy, Sanders, and Blue Moon had left a sour taste.
“As soon as the season is over,” Sullivan replied. “You and Larry will be leaving directly from here and joining the A’s in Baltimore.”
“Good,” replied Reynolds. “I want to stick around and beat these jerks.”
Trotting out to the field, Reynolds wondered if Manly Johnston’s first pitch would be at his rib cage.
“Hey, black boy,” greeted a fan. “I gave my slave the day off. Go get me a beer.”
Sullivan had his pitching rotation set for the series—Rich Allen in the opener against Johnston, and then Nicky Don Curtis in game two, and Lindblad in the last game. His batting order, however, was still not settled. With so many of his players banged and bruised, he’d wait until after batting practice and see what players seemed least injured. The roster looked like a MASH unit.
As a bit of a history buff, Sullivan saw his situation as analogous to that of another commanding officer who found himself in a similar plight ninety-nine years earlier—General Robert E. Lee. In the closing days of the Civil War, Union forces had chased renegade remnants of Lee’s army into Lynchburg, a city on the verge of chaos. Lee was running low on ammunition, and many among his combat ranks were lame and infirm. Seeing the end, he moved out of the town to a courthouse twenty miles down the road at Appomattox and surrendered.
But waving a white flag wasn’t in Sullivan’s character. He would stay and fight, despite his team’s inventory of injuries, with its health resembling the hobbling legions of Lee’s remnant army: Stahl with a sprained ankle; Norton at half speed with a puffed knee; Meyer limping with a pulled muscle; Frulio dizzy and throwing up with the flu; Stutz and Huyke hurt with jammed fingers; and Hoss with all the strength of a moth.
“Let’s jump on Johnston early,” he instructed.
Leading off for the Barons in the first, Chavarria got on board when Johnston bobbled his slow roller back to the mound for an error.
“Choke!” screamed voices in the Barons’ dugout.
Sullivan flashed the hit-and-run sign, Hoss’s specialty. Johnston threw to first to keep Chavarria close.
“Balk!” hollered the ump.
“You’re choking, Manly,” screamed the dugout voices. “You can’t handle the pressure.”
Hoss lined the next pitch to right for a base hit. As Chavarria rounded third, Sullivan threw up the stop sign, not wanting him thrown out at the plate to kill a potential big first-inning explosion.
Thinking the throw was going home, Hoss put his head down and charged for second. But the first baseman cut off the relay and threw to second, hanging him out to dry, Chavarria anchored on third.
And then Johnston struck out Meyer and Huyke, ending Sullivan’s hope of jumping on Johnston early. Lynchburg’s biggest crowd of the year, 4,467, gave Johnston a standing ovation as he walked off the field.
In the Lynsox half of the first, Allen gave up two runs.
In the third, he gave up two more… and for the rest of the game the Barons anemically flailed away against Johnston. They lost, 8–1, Johnston picking up his twentieth victory.
The only Baron to do any damage was Reynolds, going 2 for 3 and driving in the Barons’ only run despite getting knocked down every trip to the plate. His boiling point, which had been miraculously held in check all season, was finally reached on a force play at second when the throw to first from the Lynsox’s shortstop clipped his jersey as he started his slide. He popped up and flung the shortstop to the ground as both benches sprinted onto the field, a seasonful of anger ready to explode. But somehow, in the shadow of Appomattox, flaring tempers surrendered to equanimity and no blows were struck, the teams retreating to their dugouts.
In a dispirited Barons’ locker room, Sullivan did the math. “It’s simple,” he said. “We have to win the last two games.”
For almost a month, the News had been tracking the Barons’ magic number. 17… 12… 10 and finally down to 4. But the headline following the opening game drubbing told of a different number: JOHNSTON’S MANLY MOUND JOB PUTS TRAGIC NUMBER AT 1.
The subtitle summed it up: END APPEARS NEAR FOR LIMPING BARONS.
But Sullivan wasn’t about to concede. In a brief pre-game meeting, he addressed the team. “No matter how this thing turns out, I’m proud of you,” he said. “You’ve battled your butts off all year. That’s all a manager can ask.”
There was no battle cry from the team, no clasping of hands in the middle… just a quiet determination as they headed for the field.
“Hey, Reynolds,” a fan hollered. “Bananas are on sale over at Piggly Wiggly. Better stock up.”
After retiring the side in order in the first, Nicky Curtis gave up a leadoff homer in the second to Lynchburg first baseman Deacon Jones. And then the roof caved in. By the time the inning was over, the Lynsox had scored eight runs off Curtis, and then a ninth when Jones crushed his second homer of the inning, this one off Lindblad, whom Sullivan had summoned in desperation out of the bullpen.
For the next seven innings, the Lynchburg fans shouted and stomped their approval as every Baron out brought the Lynsox closer to the pennant. There was even a smattering of applause when Reynolds, after getting low-bridged once again, walloped a tape-measure home run in the seventh inning that traveled well over 475 feet. So impressive was the blast that the players in the Lynchburg dugout, who’d been riding him unmercifully all season, stood and applauded as Reynolds circled the bases.
But it was too little, too late for the Barons, the Lynsox cruising to a 10–3 win… and the Southern League pennant.
The headline in the News the next day summed up the feelings of the Barons’ faithful: SHUCKS!