The woman at the concession stand
Plus: thief on the run
Marion Mets Newsletter – Issue 13
A few issues back in my Marion Mets newsletter, I mentioned former major leaguer Birdie Tebbetts coming to Marion in 1967 to manage the Mets. It was pretty big news for a star like Birdie to be in Marion and managing in the low-level Appalachian League, particularly when he had skippered the big-league Cleveland Indians the year before. Life Magazine sent writer David Wolf and a photographer to Marion to chronicle Birdie’s adventures, or as Life wrote: “A big leaguer in the boondocks.”
The photo above is one of a handful that appeared in the four-page spread of the September 1, 1967 issue. It was taken on a road trip to Covington, Virginia, just after the Mets played the Astros there. The picture shows Birdie at the Casey Field concession stand ordering “50 cheeseburgers” for his team, “after the town had closed down” for the night, the caption claimed.
Looking at the photo, I’m immediately struck by the woman working the concession stand. I wonder what she was thinking as Birdie talked. My guess is, “Seriously, 50 cheeseburgers AFTER the game when we all want to go home?”
[Remember what Whitey Herzog told Marion players about good nutrition?]
So, naturally, as any researcher would do, I sat out to identify the woman. The Life Magazine caption omitted her name.
I posted the photo on Facebook – that’s always a good place to start – and received several responses saying the woman looked familiar. Others passed along messages asking their friends if they knew the woman’s identity.
Finally, Cathy Shiflett of Covington chimed in. “She is my former mother-in-law. I knew right away it was her,” Cathy wrote. “She worked for a man who owned Dairy Queen [in Covington] back then. He also ran concession stands.”
The woman, Cathy told me, was Mary Pifer Siple, who passed away on March 21, 2015 at the age of 83.
I asked Cathy if Mary ever mentioned her photo appearing in Life magazine.
“I don’t remember her saying,” Cathy replied. “So, I am not sure she even knew, especially since she was not one to boast.”
As it turns out, Mary did know about the photo, her son, Mark Pifer, told me.
“She told us about it, but she never really made a big deal about it. My mom wasn’t really that kind of person,” Mark said. “But, I always thought it was pretty neat.”
Mark, a sports writer and current general manager of the Covington Lumberjacks, fondly remembers those days hanging with his mother at Casey Field, where, he confirmed, she “ran the concession stand for a number of years.”
It was a family effort, in a way.
When the photo was taken in ‘67, Mark was 4 years old. “A few years later, I started working there as a little kid. I’d go through the stands selling hot dogs and Cokes. Not officially working, just hanging out at the ballpark with mom.”
He and his brother have a few copies of the Life Magazine featuring their mother, he said.
“I don’t remember how we got them – it may have been in one of those mall kiosks, but I still have one. I think it’s in storage. I think I’ll go look for it in the near future because you just jogged my memory,” Mark said, referring to my initial email to him. “It was pretty cool that I opened my email today and saw that picture.”
Warning, thief on the run
There is a grainy black and white photo in the top left corner on page 16 of the Johnson City Press on Aug. 24, 1975. It’s three columns wide and it shows Marion Mets speedster Ed Hicks performing a belly-busting glide across the infield dirt. His arms are stretched way out in front of him, reaching for second base; his black shoes dragging the dirt, kicking up a trail of dust. If you isolate Hicks from the rest of the image in your mind he looks like Superman flying over Metropolis.
But the totality of the photo is important to the narrative. We see Johnson City Cardinals’ infielder Tommy Herr, four years before beginning a stellar big-league career in St. Louis, reaching for a ball thrown by the Johnson City catcher in hopes of tagging out Hicks. All of this is happening with the famous – or was it infamous? – then-Cardinal Park grassy outfield berm serving as a backdrop.
It’s easy to see in the picture that the ball is way too late to nab Hicks, who was swiping another bag for the Mets. It was one of two bases Hicks would steal in the game, and one of 40 bases he stole for the Marion club in ’75, then the second most in the history of the Appalachian League.
Hicks was hitless during the game, but as the team’s leadoff hitter, he still managed to get on base and collect two more stolen bases.
How’d that happen? It’s difficult to determine from the newspaper’s game story and limited box score, which, for example, does not list the players who received bases on balls.
Hicks reached first base at least once as a result of getting hit by a pitch from Cardinals hurler Ty Meyer. Did he steal third after he arrived at second? Did he get on base another time and thus swipe another base? Who knows? But, we do know he scored one run in the Mets’ 7-5 loss to the Cardinals. It was a game in which Marion had stormed out to a 5-0 after three and a half innings in front of 917 fans at Cardinal Park, and then blew it.
The New York Mets drafted the 20-year-old Hicks out of Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon, Georgia, in the fourth round of the 1974 January Draft-Regular Phase. Hicks played shortstop in college, but transitioned to the outfield when he arrived in Marion in 1974. He played 44 games for the Mets that year, hitting .234 with three home runs and 19 stolen bases.
Hicks returned to Marion in 1975, hit .240, walked 38 times, was hit by eight pitches – ouch – and more than doubled his base thefts. He got on base in nearly 36 percent of his plate appearances and was a nightmare for opposing pitchers and catchers who tried to keep him still on the base paths.
One of Hicks’ most memorable stolen bases happened during his rookie season one hot July night in Tennessee. Hicks, you might say, stole a game for Marion. Trailing the Kingsport Braves, 8-7, going into the top of the ninth inning, he scored one of the Mets’ three runs in the inning on what the Kingsport Times called “a daring theft of home.” That’s all the details we’re given, but thanks to Hicks’ heroics, Marion went on to win 10-7.
Hicks’ 1975 stolen bases record fell well short of Kingsport’s Steve Blomberg’s Appalachian League tally of 53 established two years earlier in 1973, but, with the Mets pulling out of Marion in 1976, he never relinquished the team record.
After leaving Marion following the ’75 season, Hicks played one more year in professional baseball, hitting a solid .272 and stealing 46 bases for the Wausau (Wisconsin) Mets in the Class A Midwestern League.
Before you go, this is my reminder that I’m always looking for stories about the Marion Mets. If you were a player, fan, ball boy, concession stand worker… anything… and have a story to share, I’d love to talk with you. You can reach me at chadoz97@gmail.com. Also, if you see something I missed or simply got wrong, send me a note.
And don’t forget to Connect with Marion Mets on Facebook.
Bonus photo
Here’s one more photo that did not make it into the Life Magazine story about Birdie Tebbetts’ and his time in Marion. This one shows the Tebbetts family playing horse shoes at, I think, Hungry Mother State Park.
