Tom Carson was a celebrity. Tom Carson never got farther than the A level of the minor league system, three levels below the majors. How could a man who never played for a professional sports team, whose name turns up a blank in that great bastion of collective knowledge, Google, be a celebrity? If you were around in the post-war Midwest though, this question is an easy one to answer. For Carson played in an era without television, without Sportscenter, when the minor leagues were major for millions of people outside of the Metropolitan centers.
Born in the same year that the Great Depression hit America, Carson’s early life was marked by losses. His dad, who owned the first car on 72nd street, died when he was young, and his mother was stricken with polio. “I had no dad, mother in a wheelchair,” said Carson, who had to work as a teenager to support his family. When the Brooklyn Dodgers Association contacted him about playing in the minor leagues, Carson didn’t think twice about taking the $3,000 dollar signing bonus, which he gave to his mom, along with every paycheck he earned. His mother was the one to sign for him, because at the time he was still a minor, 17 years old.
He first played in 1949 for the Wisconsin State League’s Appleton Papermakers, who were immortalized in Max Blue’s book “God is Alive and Playing Third Base for the Appleton Papermakers.” The team was a D level team, the lowest minor league class, but that didn’t diminish the following the team had in the city. Located 30 miles southwest of Green Bay, the city had the Papermakers as the major sporting attraction in an era without television beaming professional sports games into everyone’s living room. Carson remembers visiting the local hospital and churches for the team, where fans would ask for his autograph.
The game at the time lacked many of the comforts afforded today’s players. Carson got paid around $400 dollars a month, plus a $10 a day food allowance when the team was on the road. The team would pay for hotels, although some towns lacked proper hotels, and alternative sleeping arrangements were made, such as at local YMCA’s.
When asked what has improved in the game since he played, he said “Better gloves, better fields, better equipment.” Many of the minor league fields lacked light systems. The gloves required all catches to be done with both hands, which led to Carson breaking his right thumb seven times, and had a fingernail torn off by a foul ball. They also lacked catcher’s helmets at the time, which led to Carson taking a beaning to the head once that took him to the hospital.
Traveling was not easy either. Many teams used school buses to cart players around. The team would only stay at a hotel if they were traveling 100 miles or more, so some nights the team would come home at late hours.
Even though it was the minors, Carson played against and with some big names. He played against Mickey Mantle, who played shortstop for an Oklahoma town at the time. He served as catcher for Ryne Duren, who went on to win two World Series with the New York Yankees. Also a Yankee connection, he played with Frank Torre, brother of current Yankees’ manager Joe Torre.
Another highlight of his career was practicing with the New York Yankees in 1952. They gave him an honorary uniform, with a number on it not used by the major league teams of the time, and he worked out with Joe DiMaggio. Of the Yankees, he said that “they created you very nice.”
Of his own gameplay, Carson said that he “was a very good defensive catcher,” but lacked hitting skills. Although the catcher position was his best, he played a multitude of positions based on what the team needed at the time. He noted of the sluggers that “if you can hit a baseball, they’ll put you in any position.”
Carson went on to play for several more cities, including Three Rivers, Quebec, and Elmira, NY, where he reached his highest minor league level, the A class, However, by 1952, Carson had realized that his “bread and butter wasn’t in baseball,” and that there were too many players better than him, not to mention the lack of a paycheck during the winter months. Part of what prompted this change was a job offer from Bell, which he took and worked there until he retired at the age of 58. At Bell, he played on their industry league baseball team, and they put him through college studying at nights at Brooklyn College, graduating in 1956.
Carson’s exodus from baseball coincided with the general decline of the minor leagues. As Neil Sullivan pointed out in his book, The Minors, “In 1949, nearly 42 million people paid to watch teams compete in fifty-nine minor leagues. Ten years laters, attendance barely surpassed 12 million, and only twenty-one leagues operated.” Sullivan believes that the greed of the major leagues, who invaded many markets formerly dominated by minor league teams, led to the downfall of the minors. Television, which eroded both minor and major league attendance, also contributed. Carson believes that today, college baseball has occupied the role the minors once held.
Today, Carson lives with his wife, Joan, the kids and grandkids long out of the house. The tradition of baseball still runs through the family, with the grandkids playing the sport. One of them was even named Shea, after the Mets’ stadium. Carson himself lacks the energy to play, due to a fluid build-up in his brain preventing him from more than shuffling when he walks. He dresses in leather loafers with white socks, corduroy pants and a red sweater with the name of his hometown borough on it. He touches his lips when he thinks, otherwise they’re occupied by a cigar, which he does not smoke, just sucks on.
He believes that baseball, and “all sports is getting to be a rough game,” these days. He thinks that in the days he played, “it was fun, it was a game. Now it’s business.” He thinks that the ballparks, such as the new Yankees and Mets stadiums planned, distract people from the actual game. He also believes that the players were more dignified in his day; players dressed sloppily or using foul language were harshly reprimanded. “It was like the military,” he said.
Although he never made it to the majors, Carson still got valuable experience from baseball. From it, he learned to “respect people, socialize.” It also exposed him to a lot of poor people across the country, looking to the game as a distraction from life’s woes. “You become a human being, you try to help people,” said Carson.
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