Remembering the 1958 Valdosta Tigers

Published 5:16 pm Monday, July 30, 2018

VALDOSTA — In Valdosta today, the most popular summer activity is marking days off the calendar in anticipation of football season beginning in August.

But 60 years ago, another pastime reigned in the South Georgia summer: America’s pastime, in the form of a minor league baseball team known as the Valdosta Tigers.

The Tigers were a Detroit Tigers affiliate that played in the Georgia-Florida League, a Class D league which existed from 1935-58 and consisted of teams all over South Georgia and northern Florida. After 1950, however, all of the league’s teams were located in Georgia. 

Since it was on the lowest level of minor league baseball, the teams were mostly made up of players from 18-20 years old getting some of their first experience in professional baseball.

The team played at Pendleton Park, located in what is now a parking lot at South Georgia Medical Center in Valdosta. There was a grandstand behind the plate with bleachers extending down the line, and Lynn Thomas, who attended many games there as a child, described it being painted the same “putrid green” color as Fenway Park.

“I’m sure there were hundreds of others throughout the country probably just like that, but this one was special because it was here,” Thomas said. “It was part of our lives.”

The players stayed with families around town during the season. For meals, pitcher Steve Kebler said the players ate at establishments like the Roosevelt Restaurant downtown and the Green Turtle, paying back the owners when they got paid every two weeks.

Most games took place at night, so the players occupied their time during the day by going to shows or shooting pool before reporting to the park around 4 or 4:30.

The Tigers were managed by Frank “Stubby” Overmire, who spent 10 years in the major leagues — mostly with the Detroit Tigers. A level-headed manager, Overmire had a way of getting the most of out the talent he had available.

“He taught us how to win,” Kebler said. “I don’t think we were the greatest team, but he taught us how to win.”

Kebler recalled just one time when his manager got strict with him. He had just surrendered a homer, and he asked the catcher why he had signaled for the pitch that had just been sent sailing over the fence.

“He told me, ‘Don’t ever second guess yourself,’ and he barked at me,” Kebler said. “That was over with. He talked to me after that just like nothing happened.”

Kebler credited this type of easygoing attitude with Overmire with keeping players from getting burnt out from constant criticism from their manager.

Clarence Long, the starting center fielder on the 1958 team that won the league title, said Overmire occasionally held picnics to help the players bond and have a little fun. With a team full of young players far from home, it wasn’t an easy task to make every player feel comfortable. But Overmire pulled it off.

“When Stubby was around, it wasn’t like he was a general in the army or something,” Long said. “He would go around the clubhouse, maybe stop by a locker and say, ‘How are you feeling today Clarence?’ Or ‘You feel OK from that hard slide at second base the day before?’ He just had a way of making you feel wanted.”

The team itself was filled of characters as well. There was first baseman Charlie Kimbrough, a mountain of a man built in the mold of today’s power hitters that seem to only strike out and hit home runs.

Shortstop was manned by Dick McAuliffe, who utilized a big leg kick and a violent swing that sent him spiraling into the ground like a corkscrew. Third baseman Don Wert had an excellent glove and eventually played, along with McAuliffe, on the 1968 World Series champion Detroit Tigers.

As is customary on any baseball team, the Tigers had their fair share of fun with their teammates. Long recalls an incident with a catcher from Brooklyn, New York, who unlike many of his teammates had never chewed chewing tobacco.

“They told this gentleman that you should try chewing tobacco sometime, but do not spit it out,” Long said. “You’ve got to swallow the juice. Well I’m out in center field and I’m looking in toward the dugout and all of a sudden, I see this guy running toward the clubhouse. It was the gentleman that, by mistake, swallowed the tobacco juice.”

But even though they came from all over the country, the Tigers were able to come together as a team once they arrived at Pendleton Park.

“We all lived in different areas of the city, but it seemed when we arrived at the ballpark at 4, 4:30 to prepare for the game, it was like we all were united again even though we separated after the game,” Long said.

Thomas remembered the crowds as being fairly good, especially in the summer when kids his age weren’t in school. He said one of the highlights of games for him was chasing down foul balls because any child that returned a foul ball was rewarded with a free snow cone.

Long said the most criticism about play came from airmen from Moody Air Force Base.There was also the rabid support of Billy West Dasher, who Thomas said constantly yelled at opposing players from the stands to get in their head.

At one particular game, an opposing player jumped into the stands to go after Dasher, prompting other Valdosta fans and even the players to come to his defense.

“He was heart and soul as far as cheering and caring,” Long said. “You surely are going to try to take care of one of your better fans, that’s for sure.”

The Billy West Dasher incident symbolizes the relationship between the city and its team. Even though football has always been king, Thomas said that back then baseball rivaled football, at least in some circles, in terms of its popularity.

“The baseball people treated us like we were major league players,” Kebler said. “The kids and everything looked up to us like we were something special, which I wasn’t anything special. But they looked up to us like we were something.”

Kebler remembered a retired city engineer who brought the players items such as chewing gum and chewing tobacco on a regular basis. Despite the town’s reputation as a football town, the city still embraced its baseball team.

With the league being a split-season league, Valdosta won the first half while the rival Albany Cardinals took home the second half. The two sides met in a five-game series for the 1958 championship, with the Tigers winning the series three games to one.

Thomas didn’t remember much of a celebration in town following the victory. He said the team likely knew that 1958 would be the last season for both them and the league. Kebler, however, said the players had no idea.

But the folding of the league didn’t totally erase the bond between the team and its city. Every time he saw a former Tiger playing in the major leagues, Thomas said he felt a sense of pride. He recalled meeting Wert before a Houston Astros old-timers game later and having a long conversation about Wert’s time in Valdosta.

As Wert came off the field during the game, he saw one of his first fans in the stands and tipped his cap.

“I almost keeled over,” Thomas said. “Seriously, it was like, ‘Holy mackerel.’ He is tipping his cap to me. Who’d have thought when I was 8 years old or whatever that this would ever happen?”

Kebler met his first wife at a pool party in Valdosta during the season, and he moved to Valdosta after his playing career was done. He spent some time coaching baseball at Lowndes High School. Long missed the last two weeks of the regular season due to having to report to army reserves training, but he received his championship ring the following spring training.

It’s now been 60 years since the Tigers took the field. Pendleton Park is now a parking lot, the Georgia-Florida League has long since been disbanded and many of the players from that team have passed away. Still, the players are left with the memories of playing in a place that was big enough to have a team, but small enough to bond with its players.

“The people just made me feel like, ‘Gee, this is a city but you feel like you’re in a small town,’” Long said. “You get to know people, they’re kind. They had something special there.”