Posted: March 2, 2023
Art Oody: One of Marion’s first minor league baseball stars
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.
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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.
Marion Athletics?
Did you know the Mets were not the first professional baseball team to play in Marion? Ten years before the Mets arrived in our town, another team moved to Marion… in the middle of the season. In 1955, the Welch (W.Va.) Miners were struggling with attendance and finances. One night after a game in their home ballpark, the Miners’ board of directors met, debated past midnight and voted to end operations. Just like that, no more Miners baseball.
Folks in Marion had tried for years to get a minor league team, and quickly agreed to welcome the Welch club. In addition to changing geographic locations, they got a name change, too. For the rest of the season they were the Marion Athletics, reflecting the team’s affiliation with the major league Kansas City A’s. So, for a few months in the summer of ’55, Marion had minor league baseball. Check out this photo from the Bristol Herald Courier.
Before the first game in their new town, the A’s were treated to a welcome party near the lake at Hungry Mother State Park. In short notice of the team’s official arrival, a group of women gathered Wednesday morning, July 20, at the Marion Chamber of Commerce offices to plan the gathering. They spent that afternoon and Thursday morning spreading the word, hoping to get as many people as possible to attend the welcoming.
“We want them to know they are now members of our community,” an unidentified party organizer told the Smyth County News. “We did not have time to plan a big welcome party, as Thursday night is their only night off in the immediate future. So, we decided that a quick notice picnic would be our best way of welcoming them to town.”
About 100 people showed up for the picnic, and the players were delighted. “I’ve played a lot of baseball, but I’ve never seen a more wonderful town than this,” one of the players told a reporter. “Just look at all that food.”
The Marion Athletics played their first game in Marion on Sunday, July 24, 1955, beating Pulaski 10-9, in front of 1,062 fans. Leo Pilibosian hit a grand slam in the fifth inning for the A’s.
I’ll have a more in-depth story about the short-lived Marion Athletics on this site and in an upcoming edition of the Marion Mets Substack newsletter. By the way, if you have subscribed to the newsletter, do it now!
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