Marion Mets Athletics Newsletter – Issue 22
In addition to the Mets, I’ve been looking into Marion’s first minor league team, the Athletics.
In 1955, the Appalachian League’s Welch Miners were operating with a huge amount of debt and generating little interest at the ballpark. No one in the small West Virginia coal town, it seemed, wanted to spend a few hours and their hard-earn-dollars on watching bad baseball. By mid-July, Welch team officials had seen enough… and spent enough. After a long post-game meeting that ended around 2 in the morning, the team’s board decided to call it quits. An endeavoring group of people in Marion jumped in and brought the Miners to Marion for the remainder of the season, changing the club’s name to the Athletics, reflecting the affiliation with the major league’s Kansas City Athletics.
As I was researching the Athletics story, I tried tracking down some of the players who made the transition from Welch to Marion. I knew it would be a challenge, of course, because those guys, if they’re still with us, are into their late 80s and early 90s. But, I did reach one player, Art Oody, at his home in Harriman, Tennessee. Art was 89 when we talked on the phone on June 16, 2022. He didn’t remember much about the midsummer move out of Welch, but did recall being excited to play in Marion’s nice, new ballpark.
“It was a whole lot better than the conditions in Welch,” he said with a chuckle. “And, everything went all right as far as we knew, but of course, we didn’t know any better.”
Art and his teammates practically lived on the field or a bus – “You didn’t have time to look around [Marion] that much,” he said – playing every day and traveling from town to town. Back then, the Appalachian League had teams scattered throughout Southwest Virginia – Bristol, Bluefield, Pulaski, Salem and Wytheville – and a couple of squads in Northeast Tennessee – Johnson City and Kingsport.
Art signed with Welch after serving in the U.S. Army. A Kansas City A’s scout, along with his wife, visited Art and planned to watch him play in a game that night. However, rain intervened. No problem; the scout signed him anyway.
“He never did see me in a ballgame [that night], and I went to Chattanooga and worked out a little bit,” Art said. “That’s the only time he ever saw me play. It was exciting to get signed.”
Despite being on a bad team, Art performed well in Welch and Marion. The 6-foot, 180-pound lefty thrower and righty hitter played first base and smacked 14 home runs and 23 doubles, stole 14 bases and hit for a .335 average. For you statheads, Art had a .385 on-base percentage, slugged .533 and had a .918 OPS, according to Baseball-reference.com.
The Kansas City A’s organization promoted Art in the summer of 1956 and placed him with a couple of the team’s affiliates, the Class B Abilene (Texas) Blue Sox and Class C Crowley (Louisiana) Millers.
“I didn’t sign a contract for the third year,” Art told me. “My leg was giving me a little trouble, and I just didn’t sign a contract.”
Leg trouble, however, didn’t keep Art away from baseball for long. In 1964, he played for the Knoxville Prospectors team that won the AABC Stan Musial national championship in Michigan.
Art worked a couple years, he said, with the post office and then moved on to make his living with a utility company for several more years.
As we were about to say goodbye, Art told me to call him back anytime. I remembered that after I finished writing the article. It would be great, I thought, to send him a copy. So maybe, I should call and ask him how to best deliver it.
Before I called, I did a little more Googling. The heartbreaking reality of researching baseball players from the 50s and 60s is you have to spend some time searching for obituaries. Unfortunately, I found Art’s. He died February 28, 2023, seven months after we talked.
That’s all for now. If you have a story to share about the Marion Mets (or Athletics), 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.
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