The Forgotten Slugger

The career of minor league slugger Joe Bauman.

Joe Bauman was born on April 16^th, 1922 in Welsh, Oklahoma. As a kid, he and his family relocated to Oklahoma City, where Bauman first picked up a baseball. Born a right-hander, his father, Joe Sr., changed Bauman to become a lefty.

His career started off as a teenager, when in 1941, he signed with the Class D Newport team, which was part of the Northeast Arkansas League. Later in the season, he was called up to fill a void at first base for Little Rock of the Southern Association, which was the equivalent to what is now Double-A.

Bauman went 0-for-10 in limited time with Little Rock and finished the year with only three home runs while batting an abysmal .215. However, World War II was beginning and Bauman’s career would be put in limbo for the time being. He played semi-pro ball in 1942, before being sent out for duty in the United States Navy.

In the Navy, Bauman met Rip Radcliff, an American League veteran of over 1,000 games. Bauman constantly peppered Radcliff with questions about hitting and from  Radcliff Bauman learned how to recognize pitches, a valuable lesson for any hitter. Bauman left the Navy in 1945 and was ready to hit the diamond for at least one more season.

To his surprise, Bauman found himself listed with the Boston Braves, in need of bodies with many veterans still in the service. He reported to spring training but that was as close as he would ever get to the major leagues, sadly. With more and more regulars returning from the war, Bauman was sent down to Class C Amarillo, Texas where he suddenly developed some power.

Bauman ended the year with 48 home runs and became a favorite among the people in Amarillo. Bauman was often give money for a homer, as many players in Amarillo were, and at the end of the year he bought a Buick from all of the home runs he had hit. In addition to the 48 jacks, Bauman hit .301 and drove in an astonishing 158 runs.

Those numbers were good enough for a promotion, right? Well, so thought Bauman but the Braves thought otherwise, and in 1947, Bauman found himself back in Texas, but not for long. He hit .350 for Amarillo, while slugging 38 home runs. The next season, Bauman was moved up to Milwaukee then was called up to Hartford, which was one step from the show.

In Hartford, Bauman struggled. He hit .265 and six home runs at the midway point of the season and wasn’t as popular with the fans as he was in his other stops. When former big leaguer Ray Sanders came aboard, Bauman was relegated to bench duty. The Braves offered him a contract for the 1949 season but Bauman declined the peanuts he was being offered. Said Bauman: “I can make more money selling 27-inch shoelaces on the streets of Oklahoma City.”

So to Oklahoma he returned, and he played for three seasons with the Elk City team, a semi-pro club located on US 66. Known as “Joe” to the hometown fans, people from Oklahoma and northern Texas came to watch Joe hit magical shots over the red rock wall at Ackley Park. Aside from baseball, he and teammate Jack Riley opened a Texaco station in Elk City that was wildly successful. In 1951, though, the oil industry slumped, and so did his station and the Elk City club.

A scout with Artesia, New Mexico, of the Class C Longhorn League had seen the power performance of Joe and invited him down to play for his club. However, so did the Braves, who wanted him to play for their Class B team. Bauman, though, still bitter from his early departure with Boston, chose to go play in the Longhorn League.

The choice was a good one. In his first season in 1952, he posted a line of .375-50-157 and the next summer, he posted a .371-53-141, leading the latter two categories both seasons. In 1953, he even took over as manager for Artesia but he found the job too stressful and didn’t retake the job for the 1954 season.

In fact, Bauman never even returned to Artesia in 1954, instead getting his contract bought out by the Roswell Rockets. Bauman found Artesia too small and wanted to get back into the service station industry, something he didn’t think he could do in Artesia. He bought another Texaco station and renamed it after himself, and then followed that purchase up with another service station and a tire shop.

Nineteen fifty-four was magical. Bauman always said he was a slow starter but at the beginning of this season, the hits started coming, and so did the home runs. He surpassed the 50-home run mark early in August and soon he started to get press coverage outside of New Mexico, with the Associated Press even reporting on Bauman’s increasingly massive home runs.

Pressure began to get to him, as no man in professional baseball history had even hit 70 (the record at the time was 69). Four and five photographers snapped photos of his every move in the batters box, and a once realistic shot to hit 70 began to fade. That is until August 31^st, when he lit up the stadium, hitting four shots over the fence to bring him to 68 home runs with less then 10 games to play.

He hit number 69 off of Midland ace Ralph Atkinson a few days later to tie the professional record. The newspaper reported that you could hear the crowd’s cheer two miles away in downtown Roswell. With the record now tied, Bauman headed into the final day of the season, ironically in Artesia, one short of 70.

Manager Pat Stasey moved Bauman into the leadoff spot for the games in hopes of getting him more at-bats. In his first at-bat, Jose Gallardo, a 19-year-old Cuban starting for Artesia, tried to sneak an inside fastball in on Bauman. Bad idea. Bauman drove the pitch over the 394-foot sign in right field and was saluted by his former team’s fans. He would hit two more that day to finish the season with 72 big flies, a record not touched in pro baseball until Barry Bonds a few years ago.

Despite setting the record, no major league teams called. The San Francisco club in the Pacific Coast League did dial up Bauman’s number, but Bauman had a new second home in Roswell. He stayed and played for the same salary in 1955, batting .336 and hitting 46 home runs.

Nineteen fifty-six was his last season. He was ready to retire and the Longhorn and the West Texas-New Mexico leagues had merged into a new Class B league. He had also injured his ankle falling in a snowstorm and decided against surgery. However, many of his fans wanted Joe back, and he came back, temporarily. On June 12^th, Bauman officially called it quits, citing ankle problems and trouble seeing the ball. In his final year, Bauman hit .287 and hit 17 home runs in 52 games.

The gentleman first sacker, as he was described by newspaper writers, had retired with a very successful minor league career despite never cracking the bigs. Joe later said in an interview with Sports Illustrated, “I still have the question in my mind: Could I have done it or not?”

Despite never making the bigs, one season stands out in the mind of Bauman. “The memory of the summer of 1954 is sweet,” he said in the same interview, “It was just the minor leagues…Hell, it’s a record, it’s something.”