The Preacher

His playground was Ebbets Field, the long demolished ballfield at Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, and many of his legendary teammates and opponents fill the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown: Leo Durocher, Walter Alston, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Branch Rickey, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle. He is Elwin Charles “Preacher” Roe with whom I recently had the pleasure to meet and discuss his years as a pitcher in the National League during the Golden Age in Baseball.

Ebbets Field, the former Pigtown garbage dump, had 32,000 seats with many close to the field. There was Hilda Chester with her noisy cowbell, the Sym-PHONY band, Gladys Gooding at the organ ready to play “Three Blind Mice” as the umpires came out of the dugout, and a 3-foot by 30-foot sign in right center reading, “Hit Sign Win Suit – Abe Stark Clothier.” (It is believed that one hitter did get a suit.). That was the world of Preacher Roe in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

One Saturday morning in February we sat entranced for two hours as the Preacher recounted tale after tale of his early family and playing years in his slow Ozarkian drawl. It was instant baseball history as told by one who lived and loved it.

He was listed at 6’2” and 170 pounds when with the Dodgers, and at age 85 the tall, stately Roe still looks like he could throw a few innings. He is heavier now, of course, mentally sharp with a constant smile on his round face, a full and graying head of hair, and with the appearance of enjoying life to its fullest.

Elwin Charles Roe was born on February 26, 1915 in Ash Flat, Arkansas, a tiny Ozark town in the northern part of the state. Roe had five brothers and one sister. Their father was a doctor who taught and insisted on high moral standards in the family, and would not tolerate anything less than the truth. Everyone had to be at the breakfast table by five o’clock each morning where the previous and present day activities would be discussed. If one of the children came in at three in the morning, he or she was expected to be dressed and at the table when the early meal began.

Roe tells of one incident when one of his brothers disobeyed their father. Dr. Roe had informed the family that the horses had been used earlier that day, and were to be gently used if taken out any more that day. A brother and a neighbor boyfriend were going out courting that evening, and believed that Dr. Roe would be at home. He, however, was suddenly called away on a medical emergency, and as he walked down the street he happened to see his son and the boyfriend racing by on the family horses.

When the family gathered at breakfast the following morning the neighbor boy was also present. The father asked if anyone had run the horses last evening, and after everyone said no, Dr. Roe told the two boys to go out and bring back two switches off a tree. Later that day the father of the neighbor boy came by to thank Dr. Roe for whipping his son for lying.

No, although Elwin C. Roe is an excellent speaker, the nickname “Preacher” was not acquired due to his fine command of the English rhetoric. It happened at age three when an uncle picked up the youngster, and asked his name. When the boy wouldn’t tell, the uncle offered to give him a quarter. The young Elwin then immediately said, “Preacher.” The boy did get a nickel, and all went to a candy store and bought a long stick of candy that was broken up for everyone to enjoy. From then on Elwin C. has always been called “Preacher.”

The Preacher began playing sandlot baseball followed by some semi-pro with independent teams in north Arkansas with his dad as the manager. Roe got into pitching when Dr. Roe let his son pitch three innings in one game, then six the next game, and finally said, “Go at it.” Preacher went to Harding College in Searcy, Arkansas majoring in English and where he played ball averaging 18 strikeouts per game. He left school without a degree needing only two lab classes for graduation, and no, he has no intention of going back.

The Arkansas Hillbilly began his professional baseball career in 1938 with the St. Louis Cardinals. The left-handed pitcher (he bats right) was in one game with the Cards that year throwing two and two/thirds innings. He gave up six hits finishing his brief Major League season with a miserable 13.50 ERA, and then sent back to the minors until he returned to the big leagues in 1944 with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Preacher

We continue with the story of Elwin C. “Preacher” Roe who played Major League ball beside such legendary names as Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson during the Golden Years of Baseball.

After five years in the minors, 1939-1943, Roe returned to big leagues with the Pittsburgh Pirates where he soon became part of the regular pitching rotation. He finished his first full year with a record of 13 and 11 in 39 games, the most pitching chances he will ever have in one season during his 12-year career. Two of his teammates that year were centerfielder Vince DiMaggio, brother of Joe and Dominic, and pitcher Rip Sewell who threw the famed “blooper” or “eephus” pitch that came in slow and with an extremely high arc.

The Pirates finished second that year, 141/2 games behind the Cardinals, fourth the following year, and then began a slide into the National League cellar. Roe remembers one infielder who had a bad right knee and another infielder with a bad left leg. When the first player moved to his right the knee gave way as the ball bounced by, and when the other player ran to his left, down he would go as the leg buckled also unable to catch up to the easy infield grounder. The Preacher told us of one outfielder always stood in a spot about the size of a table where the grass had died. Once a flyball came that way and as he circled about looking for the ball, it fell smack in the middle of his own personal little piece of outfield. “The team was pretty bad,” stated the Preacher.

Roe did make note of two Hall of Famers who were in Pittsburgh at that time. Honus Wagner, a shortstop with Pittsburgh from 1900 thru 1917, was employed as a Pirate batting coach from 1933 until he finally retired in 1951 at age 77. In the Preacher’s final year in Pittsburgh Hank Greenberg closed out his splendid career in a Pittsburgh uniform after a 12-year run with the Detroit Tigers.

Greenberg was ready to retire after Detroit sent him to the Pennsylvania team in January of 1947 for $75,000, but according to the Preacher, the Pirate management urged Greenberg to reconsider and did stay when he received a contract that made him the first one-hundred thousand dollar man in the National League. Hank promised them 20 (meaning home runs), and as it turned out, the big firstbaseman was in all but 29 Pittsburgh lineups that year and smacked 25 baseballs out of the park although it did not keep the team from falling into the NL cellar.

In 1945 Roe led the team in innings pitched (235), and ended the season with a record of 14 and13. Later that same year he received a fractured skull in a fight when coaching a basketball game, and won only seven games the following two years. As the Pittsburgh team was having difficult times and the Preacher’s pitching performances were less than favorable - three wins in ’46 and four in ’47 - events were happening in Brooklyn that would drastically change the course of both Roe’s career and the world of baseball.

A brilliant baseball innovator, Branch Rickey had taken over control of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and had begun his plan of introducing black players into the Major Leagues. In doing so, Rickey built a team that became a Brooklyn baseball dynasty. Known as The Mahatma, Rickey was a genius at determining the precise time when the player’s ability would begin to decline. He also was able to perceive those hidden baseball qualities in a player that few others could detect.

Outfielder Dixie Walker had been with the Dodgers since 1940, and was called The People’s Cherce (that’s Brooklynese for choice) for good reason. But when the native of Georgia balked at playing beside a black man, the shrewd Rickey pulled off one of his best trades that became Pittsburgh’s worst. The Preacher explained that at the beginning of the 1947 season, Walker told Rickey that he wanted to be traded because of Jackie Robinson. Rickey agreed, but when the team won the pennant (they lost the World Series to the Yankees 4 games to 3), Dixie changed his mind and told Rickey that he wanted to stay in Brooklyn. In spite of the tremendous pressure heaped on Robinson as the first black player allowed to play in the majors in the century, he hit .297, led the league in stolen bases, sparked the team to the pennant, and the first to be named National League Rookie of the Year.

On December 8, 1947, however, Walker was traded to Pittsburgh in a five-player deal. The 37-year-old Walker took his .306 batting average and Series money to a last place team, and in return the Dodgers received Preacher Roe, just off a 4 and 15 record, and steady Billy Cox who would nail down third base for Brooklyn the next six years.

We continue with the story of Elwin Charles Roe who played Major League ball beside such legendary names as Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson during the Golden Years of Baseball.

Roger Kahn, Brooklyn-born top sports writer, published a book in 1972 he called The Boys of Summer, a narrative of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950’s. It was the story of a great baseball team that included Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, Andy Pafko, and, of course, the Preacher. They played a kid’s game in Ebbets Field, a place where there hasn’t been any baseball since 1957.

Preacher Roe had 12 years in the majors, seven of them with the Brooklyn Dodgers where his team never finished less than third, was in World Series three times (1949, 1952, 1953), lost the pennant by two games in 1950, and by only one in 1951. The Dodgers, often referred to as “dem bums”, were sailing through that ‘51 season with a comfortable 13 ½ cushion over the New York Giants by the middle of August. What developed was probably the greatest National League pennant race as Leo Durocher’s Giants caught up with Brooklyn forcing a three-game playoff. That was the year when the Preacher and his teammates had to watch the Giants’ Bobby Thomson hit the “home run heard ‘round the world”.

Although his team did lose the pennant, it was also the year of The Preacher when he had an incredible 22-3, a NL pitching record of a .880 winning percentage, and was selected by the The Sporting News as the Pitcher of the Year. During the years of 1951 through 1953 Roe won 44 games while losing only 8, a remarkable throwing effort.

Bring up the name of Preacher Roe in any baseball discussion, and you might hear, “Oh, yeah, the Dodger pitcher who publicly admitted that he threw a spitball”; or, “He’s the Dodger who pitched so well in the early 1950’s”; or, “He was a lousy hitter, but he did hit that one home run.” Roe’s 12-year career batting average was a meager .110, but good pitchers were not expected to be good hitters. So I asked the Preacher to tell us about his lonely homer:

“Billy Cox, my thirdbaseman, once said to me, ‘Preach, if you ever hit a home run, I’ll quit.’ Well, I did hit a home run (it was in 1953), and he did quit. I hit the ball off the Pirates’ Bob Hall who was sent down the next day. When I was circling the bases, I came to first base then jumped on it. I came to the next base, and then jumped on it, and the same the rest of the way around. As I was going around the bases, Hall was following me yelling, ‘You’ll never get another. You _____!’ You’ll never get another one off me!’

“My teammates had put out some towels to make a royal carpet for me as I went back to the dugout. And my home run set off all the whistles and church bells and sirens in New York. When I did get back to the mound, someone yelled over that nobody was on third. I looked back to the bench, and there was Billy sitting with his arms folded. I walked over and asked him to come out. He said that he would if I promised never to hit another home run. I promised so he went back to his third base. Of course, I never broke my promise as I never hit another home run.

“The next time I was at bat I hit the ball right back at his head, and knocked his hat off. Hall started yelling at me again, and I shouted back at him, ‘I don’t know where the ball is going when I hit it!’”

Bob Hall was sent back to the minors the next day, and never played in another ML game. He was from Swissvale, a suburb of Pittsburgh, and after two years with the Boston Braves, ’49 and ’50, he finished his three-year ML stint with his hometown Pirates in 1953. The right-hander ruined his arm with a 21-inning contest in the Pacific Coast League, had a season record of 3-12 after Roe’s clout, and a total of 9 wins and 18 losses when he left the game. Hall died in 1983 at the age of 60.

On Jackie Robinson: “A great player. He disappeared after the game, never knew where he went, and never saw him again until it was time for the next game.

On Leo Durocher: “I always called him Mr. Durocher. He was tough, but fair and wanted a 100% effort.”

We continue with the story of Elwin Charles “Preacher” Roe who was a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team during the Jackie Robinson Era, 1948-1954.

In his seven-year tenure with Number 28 on his Dodger uniform, the Preacher had a total of five managers: Leo Durocher for the first 35 games of 1948, Ray Blades for one game only, then Burt Shotton, Chuck Dressen, and Walter Alston. Durocher, often called The Lip and that was only one of many epithets given to him, was a brazen and gritty fellow throughout his 17 years as a player and 24 as field manager. In our recent chat with the Preacher in his Arkansas hometown, he well recalls Durocher whom he always called “Mr. Durocher.”

“ Once when we were playing against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Mr. Durocher told Barney (Rex) to throw that ball with ‘mustard’ (fast) on it when Ralph Kiner was up at bat. Instead Barney threw a slow curve that Kiner hit far out of the park. Leo then began to dismantle the clubhouse, and destroyed everything. He jumped up and hit his head on the (dugout) roof. He called Barney a SOB plus other names, and after that I asked Leo if I could have a talk with him.

“I saw Durocher the next day, and told him that I did not want to be called a SOB, and would he not use the word. Several days later Leo told me that he really appreciated what I told him, and I never heard him use that word again.”

Would the Preacher comment on the well-known use of the spitter or spitball? Actually he called his wet ball “my dewball”.

“Whether or not I used it, the batters expected it. I did not throw my ‘dewball’ as often as the others thought I did, but they thought about it and it bothered their concentration. Once when I was on the mound between batters, the umpire walked up behind me and asked for the ball – it was clean, shiny clean. Danny Litwhiler was the batter, and after the game ended I saw Litwhiler was really giving it to the ump because he couldn’t find anything on what he thought was my dewball.”

Few pitchers ever discussed the use of the spitter, but after he retired Roe did admit to the use of the illegal pitch in a 1955 issue of Sports Illustrated, “The Outlawed Spitball Was My Money Pitch.” We asked the Preacher about the others in his pitching repertoire.

“I got three pitches: My change, my change off my change, and my change off my change off my change.”

In his 12 Major League playing years the Preacher was lucky enough to be in three World Series all as a Brooklyn Dodger, and all were subway series with the New York Yankees. In the 1949 Series Roe blanked the Yanks on six hits in Game Two giving the Dodgers their only win, again downed the Yanks in the ’52 classic on a six-hit complete game victory, but the following year he lost his only WS game when he gave up a winning two run homer to Mickey Mantle in the eighth.

The Preacher won 93 games for the Dodgers while losing only 37, a marvelous winning percentage of .715. He appeared in a total of 333 games, and 101 were complete games, a far cry compared to today when even the ace pitchers are expected to go seven innings before the bullpen takes over.

His record fell to 3 and 4 in 1954, and then retired and moved back to West Plains, Missouri where he and wife, Mozee, bought and operated a grocery store for 19 years. He and Mozee have several children, and although none went into baseball, the Preacher is a proud papa when he says that some are excellent golfers. The Preacher had five brothers and one sister, but they are all gone now.

When asked who was his toughest hitter, he answered, “Stan Musial of the Cardinals, and Monte Irvin, an outfielder for the New York Giants.” The Preacher remains in contact with his pitching colleague, Carl Erskine, but many of his other contemporaries are gone: Rex Barney in 1997, Leo Durocher in 1991, Jackie Robinson in 1972, Billy Cox in 1978, Pee Wee Reese last year, and Roy Campanella in 1993.

Roe said that he rarely hears from the Dodger organization and does not attend card shows, but the Preacher is not forgotten. He was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, and recently autographed 3500 baseball cards saying that after writing his name all day, he almost autographed a cracker when he stopped for a bowl of soup. He does not appreciate people driving by his home and coming to his door unannounced, but says that he gets a lot of mail and requests for pictures and autographs that he always signs and returns.

After saying goodbye to a Mr. Elwin Charles Roe and his lovely southern city, we just wouldn’t think of leaving town without a photo of the Preacher Roe Boulevard sign and a ride down his very own street.

Part 1

The Preacher

Chatter from the Dugout welcomes comments, and may be reached at: dugoutchatter@ejourney.com