Nellie's Interview on Baseball Digest Live

Nellie did a very colorful interview today on Baseball Digest Live.

You can hear the broadcast in the program's archives.


Thanks to Jay Ferraro for making this happen!

Betting in the Bayou: Gambling in New Iberia, Louisiana

There's been a lot of news coverage lately about players behaving badly. Nellie is always sad to hear stories about the use of performance-enhancing drugs, which are nothing new in baseball. If you have not yet seen it, take a look at the late Dock Ellis' recollections of the use of amphetamines ("greenies")--and other substances!--in this animation about his unusual no-hitter in 1970:

While playing in Louisiana, one of his favorite places in the world, Nellie discovered the world of wagering on games. Here is an excerpt from his chapter on his Bayou baseball days:

During the summer of 1948 at New Iberia, I encountered another vice: Gambling. Wagering was and probably still is a part of life in the Bayou country. Young and naive about the dangers of gambling, I spent a lot of my daytime hours in the downtown pool hall. The owner, Tom Spiros, invited all the players to use the pool tables “on the house.” Along with the pool tables, constant poker games were being played for high stakes.

The index finger of Tom's right hand was amputated halfway to the knuckle. I never asked how or why, but it was no handicap to him. I took interest in watching him play poker, particularly his method d for counting silver dollars. Using the stub of the partially amputated right index finger, he would stack five silver dollars exactly, picking them up with his thumb and middle finger. He was never questioned by anyone at the table.

The pool hall’s main attraction for me was a Western Union ticker tape that kept an up-to-date score of every major league baseball game being played on a given day. With many games played in daytime then, I took delight in following the scores and, on occasion, posting them on a nearby blackboard as they came in over the wire. It was an entertaining place to spend the daytime hours. I never saw or knew of any players getting involved in gambling at the pool hall. The stakes were too high for players who were earning from $125 to $200 a month. 

However, as the weeks went by, I began to understand why Tom Spiros was so willing to have us frequent his place. The conversations at the pool hall usually got around to the New Iberia game of the night before and the one to be played that evening. The habitues' interest was not strictly that of a fan. Gamblers are always looking for a slight advantage, and we were naively providing it by talking casually about our team, its strengths and weaknesses, and its strategies.

Gamblers who bet on horses can’t have the same relationship they do with baseball players. Horses don’t talk. Following the final game of the 1948 season in New Iberia, Pete McGarry and I retired to our usual bar. As I was about to leave, I expressed my thanks to the bartender for the many memorable evenings spent there. I was amazed when he said, “You know, you cost me a lot of money this year.” With my “social lubricant” working, I loudly inquired of him, “I won 20 and lost only 13, and you're blaming me for costing you money?” As a parting shot, I said, “You gotta be the dumbest-assed gambler in town.

The fans in the Bayou Country, and particularly at New Iberia, loved to wager. They bet not only on the outcome of the game, but on whether a pitch would be a ball or strike, which created animosity against the umpires, and frequently resulted in foolish fan retaliation. The most drastic reprisal I recall was when disgruntled fans poured sand into the gas tank of an umpire's car. 

In Houma, one of the towns in the Evangeline League, two players on the team that 1948 season got into trouble for stealing money from a bookie joint that took wagers on horse racing. They managed to develop a friendly relationship with the bookie and then worked a scam for making winning bets. According to the story, one player would distract the bookie; the other would turn the bookie's clock back ten or fifteen minutes. With a direct line to the track where the races were being run, they would get the winner then place their bet with the bookie. Trusting and unaware of the scam, the bookie took the bet and paid off.

This went on for a while before someone got wise. The players were barred from baseball. They were lucky some guys with flat noses from Chicago didn't come to visit them. If this betting on horses warranted expulsion from baseball, there really is no defense for any player who bets on baseball games. Warnings against this violation were posted on every clubhouse door,  from Class “D” to the major leagues. Pete Rose saw them every day, knew the rules, and still failed to abide by them. He paid the price. The Black Sox Scandal in the 1919 World Series nearly destroyed fans’ loyalty to the game and ushered in the first strong commissioner of baseball, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis....

"Nellie King Memoir a Warmhearted Winner"

Jerry Milani, writing in The Baseball Digest on 6th January 2010, gives Nellie's book yet another fine review:

Proving that it doesn’t take a great – or even particularly famous – player to have a lot to say in a book, former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher and broadcaster Nellie Kingcollects some of his best stories from 30 years in the game in Happiness is Like a Cur Dog (AuthorHouse, $15.40), a breezy narrative that gives fans a look at his life and at baseball in a very different era.

Most fans outside of Pittsburgh – and even many young fans there today – are likely unfamiliar with King and his career. A tall, slender righthander, King logged more than 1000 innings for 10 years in various minor leagues in places as small as New Iberia, La., and Geneva, Ala. and as large as Denver and New Orleans before cracking the Pirates roster in 1954. His minor league career was not just full of success on the mound, as he won more than 15 games four times and had an excellent 2.80 ERA, but the stories gleaned from his experience in these years make up the bulk of the best parts of the book.

Those who know King from his days as a broadcaster on Pittsburgh area stations and on Pirates broadcasts following his career may have heard some of the stories before, but for the large majority of baseball fans who have never had the opportunity, Cur Dog has recollections of baseball figures as well-known as Branch Rickey – whose comparison of happiness to a pawing, mangy mutt inspired the title – to forgotten ones like Pete McGarry, a catcher whose once promising career had stalled in large part from five years of service and was now his teammate on a Class D team in New Iberia.

What makes the book so interesting and different from many other baseball memoirs is the detail King includes on the people and places on these various stops along the way. He also recalls his frustrations at not getting more of an opportunity at higher levels at certain points in his career, but without bitterness. One of the best stories involves his trip from Pittsburgh back to Hollywood, Calif., on his demotion in 1955. Instead of “reporting directly,” as the rules stipulated, King and his wife made a leisurely trip back west along Route 66, stopping at the Grand Canyon. Later, a winter ball term in Mazaltan, Mexico, gives a colorful look at what some fringe big leaguers did to get extra time on the field, and his culture shock (he even calls himself an “Ugly American”) provides some humorous moments.

Similarly, King doesn’t dwell much on the arm injury that ended his career, preferring to move on to the stories which highlighted his nine-year stint as Pirates radio and TV broadcaster. It is from these years that he gives his perspective on players like Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell and Bill Mazeroski, which are good but cover less new ground than his minor league and Pirates experiences.