Blogging the Marion Mets
Welcome to the blog. This space is dedicated to nuggets of information about the Marion Mets that may not warrant a full newsletter story, at least not yet.
March 28, 2025
Blame the lights? Ummm, maybe
In the middle of the 1966 Appalachian League season, the New York Mets promoted their No. 1 draft pick from that year, Steve Chilcott, from Marion to Auburn of the New York-Penn League. One reason New York Mets Vice President Johnny Murphy cited was the poor lighting around Appy League ballparks.
Most of the league’s games, especially on weekdays, were played at night. Some started at 7:45 p.m.
“The visibility is tough,” Murphy told reporters as he spoke about Chilcott’s daytime batting practice performance versus after-sunset plate appearances.
“Batting practice in these games takes place before darkness,” Murphy explained. “At that time, Chilcott would pull the ball as if born to the task. He would rifle shots over the fence.”
However, when Chilcott strolled to the plate under the nightime lights, “his entire swing was out of kilter and he would be hitting bloopers in the opposite direction.”
Chilcott hit just .226 with two extra-base hits in 36 plate appearances in Marion, so it is easy to see why the parent organization would seek to place their prized pick under better lighting at a higher minor league level.
“The company might be tougher,” Murphy said of the New York-Penn League. “But, at least the lights were somewhat better.”
In 79 plate appearances at Aurburn, Chilcotte wilted further under better lighting, hitting just .188. But he did manage to smack one pitch over the fence. That’s one more than Marion fans watched him hit.
So maybe it wasn’t just the lights for Chilcott, who played seven minor league seasons, but none in the majors.
In all fairness to Chilcott, there are tons of stories from minor leaguers at that time struggling with poor lighting in ballparks all across the country, not just in Marion, Virginia. One former ballplayer told me one problem was the light stands just weren’t tall enough.
As a pitcher with the 1965 Marion Mets, Nolan Ryan told me a couple of years ago that lighting wasn’t an issue for him “because I came from a town where the lights were as bad as anybody has ever played under.
“I went to Marion and there didn’t seem to be any problem with the light as far as I was concerned,” he said with a chuckle, likely thinking about how he terrorized hitters with his wild, blazing fastball. “Maybe those college kids [in the Appalachian League] may have thought they [lights] were bad. I don’t know.”
March 25, 2025
Five happy words
Pappageorgas to Chapman to Fisher.
For the Elizabethton Twins on a mid-August night in 1976, those were the “saddest of possible words.”
OK, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue like Tinker to Evers to Chance, but Marion’s infield trio – Bob Pappageorgas, Kelvin Chapman and Curtis Fisher – were just as dynamic of a double-play-turnin’ machine for one night as the “bear cubs” Franklin Pierce Adams wrote about more than a decade ago in his 1910 poem “Baseball’s Saddest Lexicon.”
Were Pappageorgas, Chapman and Fisher a trio of Mets fleeter than birds?
Ummmm, maybe. We don’t know.
But, we do know the Marion’s Mets turned four double plays that Aug. 13 night in a tense contest at Elizabethton’s ballpark down by the river.
Ruthlessly pricking the Twins’ gonfalon bubble, I guess.*
Each double play began with Pappageorgas, the slick-fielding 18-year-old shortstop from Pebble Beach, California, gobbling groundballs, tossing them over to Chapman at second base, who zipped the ball to Fisher at first.
Making a Twin “hit into a double,” Adams might write.
Perhaps the most crucial Twin-killing happened in the bottom of the eighth inning when Elizabethton loaded the bases as the Mets clung to a slim advantage.
The Pappageorgas to Chapman to Fisher infield combination quickly silenced the threat – and the 500-plus fans there witnessing the action – and Marion went on to win 3-0.
In all, the fleet-footed Pappageorgas recorded 10 assists with no errors that night. The rare feat was reported in local media – but nowhere in a poem that I’m aware of – and it got the attention of The Sporting News, which was a big deal in 1976.
Pappageorgas to Chapman to Fisher.
“Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble.”
* To be accurate, there was no gonfalon bubble to be pricked between these two teams. Both were cellar-dwellers in their respective Appalachian League divisions, Marion in the North and Elizabethton in the South.
March 24, 2025
Whitey at Hungry Mother
As we continue celebrating Marion’s new baseball team, the Hungry Mothers, let’s look at what some former Marion Mets players and coaches have said about the state park the team is named for.
Many baseball fans know Whitey Herzog from his days managing the St. Louis Cardinals to three World Series appearances in the 80s and a championship in ’82. But, many years before his success with the likes of Ozzie Smith, Keith Hernandez, Joaquin Andujar and Bruce Sutter in St. Louis, Whitey served as the director of player development for the New York Mets from 1966 to 1972. During that time, he often visited Marion throughout the summer to evaluate players, and he always stayed in a cabin at Hungry Mother State Park. Here’s Whitey in 2022 talking about the park:
“We really enjoyed Marion as a family. I used to like to reserve a cabin at Hungry Mother State Park. My wife and kids enjoyed it there. We’d go paddle-boat riding. We’d eat lunch there.
Hungry Mother had a wonderful restaurant, and there was so much for the kids to do, like the paddle boats on the lake. I had two boys and a girl [Jim, David and Debbie].
They turned out the lights at night at 10 o’clock, it got dark. There was no air conditioning. You’d open the windows to sleep, and it was just a wonderful place to stay. There were a lot of guests from throughout the state that would rent the cabins, stay a week and go back to their homes in other places in Virginia.”
March 21, 2025
Wild and crazy Bat Night in Marion
This photo ran in the July 21, 1966 edition of the Smyth County News, soon after the Marion Mets held their first booster night of the season on July 15. Marion Baseball gave away 500 Little League bats to kids that night as they walked through the ticket gate.
The threat of rain that evening likely kept many people away, but still, the event attracted 1,152 paying customers. “The weather did have some effect on our attendance,” admitted team president Bob Garnett.
Those who did make it to the park were treated to a wild slugfest. Marion outlasted the Johnson City (Tenn.) Yankees 19-17 in a contest that ended around midnight. The score tells us that it wasn’t a great night for pitchers, but it doesn’t reveal the entire gruesome mess that took place between the pitcher’s mound and home plate.
Marion and Johnson City hurlers combined for – are you sitting down? – 32 walks, eight wild pitches and five hit batsmen. The pitchers were so wild that youngsters in the stands hid their complementary bats in fear of getting hit. I kid, of course.
Marion superstar first baseman Mike Jorgensen was 3-for-6 at the plate with a home run and five RBIs. Jerry Morales was hitless, but walked three times with the bases loaded.
March 18, 2025
‘Where the stars of tomorrow…’
I’m working on a story about Carl Gentile, an outfielder on the Marion Mets’ 1966 Appalachian League championship team. Carl played one season of pro baseball here in Marion, decided it wasn’t for him, moved on to play pro soccer in his hometown St. Louis for a couple of years, and then kicked his way onto the taxi squad of the NFL’s Houston Oilers.
I reached out to Carl through one of his friends, and we played a brief game of phone tag before eventually connecting. The very first voicemail he left on my phone started like this: “Chad, it’s Carl Gentile of the old Marion Mets… where the stars of tomorrow shine tonight!"
You may know those words to be part of PA announcer Bob Garnett’s opening line before each Marion Mets home game. In full, Garnett warmly greeted fans to the ballpark by saying: “Welcome to Marion Stadium, home of the Mets, where the stars of tomorrow shine tonight.”
Gentile isn’t alone in remembering this notable line. Several other players have brought it up in conversations. “As a player out there, you get all puffed up when you hear that,” recalled Jim McGregor, a member of the ’67 Marion Mets. “Oh, gosh, yeah! That’s so cool!”
Writer Robert Lipsyte mentioned it in his 1966 New York Times story about the Marion Mets.
“I think everybody in Marion took that to heart, which was lovely,” Lipsyte told me a couple of years ago. “The whole thing was really fun.”
March 4, 2025
Just for fun, here’s your Marion Mets, 1971 edition. If you recognize yourself, or anyone else, send me a note at chadoz97@gmail.com.
February 28, 2025
In 1966, a Look Magazine writer and photographer followed New York Mets minor league prospect Byron Von Hoff through his first season as a pro ball player. His journey began in Marion that summer and later included stops in Auburn, New York, and St. Petersburg, Florida. '
New York selected Von Hoff in round two of the ’66 amateur draft, less than a month after his 18th birthday and graduation from Batavia High School in Illinois, where he was a star pitcher. In Marion, Look reported, Von Hoff’s “fastball blazed while enemy bats froze.” I’d love to know where the Look photographer took this shot of Von Hoff walking through a cow field in full Marion Mets uniform.
February 26, 2025
Tommy Moore was the ‘66 MVP, fans said
Tommy Moore, right, is congratulated by a member of the local Jaycees for being selected by Marion Mets fans as the team’s MVP for the 1967 season. Moore, a then 18-year-old from California, hit .290, three home runs and 28 RBIs for Marion. Fans voted on the player they thought was most deserving of the award during a contest against the Covington Astros the night before at Marion Stadium. The New York Mets drafted Moore as an outfielder, but he later made it to the major leagues as a pitcher. Moore spent parts of four seasons in the early- and mid-1970s with the big-league Mets, Texas Rangers, St. Louis Cardinals and Seattle Mariners.