Recommended Reading: Nellie King
People will little note nor long remember what Steven Jackson did pitching in relief last season for the Pittsburgh Pirates. For that matter, not until now, were they likely to remember what Nellie King did pitching in relief for the Bucs in 1956.
Without both of these men, and all others like them, baseball would cease to exist.
2009 was an encouraging year for Jackson. Up from Indianapolis, he pitched 40 times for a total of 43 innings, 21 strikeouts, 22 walks, two wins, three losses, and a 3.14 ERA. This was the culmination of nearly six years along a heavily-guided, clearly-lit, little-left-to-chance route that began when Howard McCullough of the Diamondbacks started scouting him at Clemson in 2003. The next year, Arizona drafted him in the tenth round, and, despite the fact he was already 22, they started him in the instruction-focused Pioneer and Northwest Leagues. The Yankees were following him, too, and when they worked out a deal to return Randy Johnson to Arizona, Jackson was one of the pitchers they demanded. New York began to work Jackson in relief in ’07 and their instructors helped him find a new arm slot that turned a mediocre sinker into an out pitch. He was the third arm the Yankees called up from the minors last April, but they wasted his last option by letting him sit in the bullpen for a week without an appearance. When they tried to sneak him off the major league roster, the Pirates pounced and picked him up on waivers. Within weeks, he was a regular in the Pittsburgh bullpen.
This tortuous recital of the provenance of Steven Jackson – scouted, trained, guided, instructed, groomed (and paid around $275,000 in his first big league season) is provided to underscore a point about ex-Pirate reliever Nellie King’s wonderful new book Happiness Is Like A Cur Dog. In King’s first full season in the bigs, in 1956, he appeared 38 times in Pittsburgh, pitched 60 innings, won four and lost one, and finished with a 3.15 ERA (and earned about $6,000 – still just $47,000 in 2009 dollars). This was the culmination of eleven years of fighting to get anybody to notice him long enough to invite him to a mass tryout camp, then possibly to spring training, then possibly onto the roster of a minor league team like the New Iberia Cardinals of the Class-D Evangeline League.
Class D.
As he vividly recounts in this warm, understated memoir, Nellie King’s career began in a time when a ballplayer had at least three jobs: what he did during the actual season, what he did delivering packages or bailing hay during the off-season, and what he had to do 24 hours a day to make sure he didn’t get released with no more than ten days’ notice and not even a bus ticket home. It is almost unfathomable to consider the pioneer-like hacking through the woods of hidden opportunity that King so fondly recalls. A part-time Cardinals’ scout liked what he saw of him in a glorified summer high school league and invited him to a tryout. He got a uniform with a three digit number on it. Hooking on with a team in Louisiana he arrived there by bus in the middle of the night, clueless of who to contact or where to go. He was released twice before his 19th birthday, and made it back into organized ball only because that first scout had gone to work filling out the rosters of some independent clubs. And that only got him into the Pittsburgh system because the owner sold those obscure franchises to the Pirates.
And that’s when he got to begin his climb up the ladder in a Pirates’ farm system that was a little smaller than most – it only had about a dozen clubs. Having won 15 or more three separate times for Pirates’ farms (a feat which today would put him on the cover of The Baseball America Prospect Handbook) and having survived, unfazed, two years at Fort Dix during the Korean War, Nelson Joseph King finally got to the big leagues in 1954.
“It had taken me eight years, including two outright releases in 1946, plus two years in the Army, to get to this moment at Ebbets Field. I thought of all those innings and games I spent pitching in small, minor league towns such as Geneva, Ozark, Brewton, Troy, Dorhan, Greenville, Andalusia, and Enterprise, in the Class “D” Alabama State League during my first season in professional baseball. The contrast between Ebbets Field and those minor league towns and fields magnified the contrasts and the satisfaction I was feeling. Having viewed Ebbets Field only in black and white photos and on television in World Series games, I was now seeing it up close, in full color and from the center of the picture. In my eighth decade of life, the memory of that moment is so vivid I can still visualize Ebbets Field…”
Injuries would end King’s pitching career in 1957, and he went into radio – following the same steep staircase that described his playing days – through local markets in Western Pennsylvania. Finally, a decade after he stopped pitching for them, he rejoined the Pirates a decade later as an announcer, and the primary partner of the legendary Bob “The Gunner” Prince. Once again the reality of the business of today and that of an earlier time is underscored. As the third announcer of a major league team just 42 years ago, Nellie King was paid $13,000 – and even that only translates to $83,000 in today’s money.
The remarkable part of King’s story is that the struggle and the finances seem to have made every step, and every misstep, all the more satisfying. Nellie King’s story is a triumph of perseverance and contentment. Even the title comes from one of the odder of the aphorisms of the legendary Branch Rickey, for whom King worked in the Pittsburgh organization. Figures like Rickey, and Bill Mazeroski, and Roberto Clemente, and Willie Stargell, populate its pages, but Happiness Is Like A Cur Dog should not be mistaken for the kind of dramatic but sometimes self-important recent biographies of, say, Satchel Paige or George Steinbrenner. And though King goes into depth about the two epic Pirates’ World Championship years he covered, he does not seek to elevate either to world-changing status, such as a recent book on the 1912 Series does.
Nellie King has simply written a book about the backbone of baseball, a tale like that of 75 percent of the players in the game’s history. And in its own matter-of-fact style, it’s terrific. It’s available from the usual suspects like Amazon, but more directly (and economically) from the publisher, and Nellie and his family have also launched a blog for Cur.
CORRECTIONS AND NOTES:
In advocating for Danny Murtaugh’s Hall of Fame qualifications I gave him credit for one more NL East title than he deserved. I’d forgotten Murtaugh retired four times as Pittsburgh skipper, not three, and the 1972 crown belonged to Bill Virdon… And having composed this as MLB Network rolled out its World Series highlight films, these trivial observations about Yankee Stadium. The boxes remained in the “opera style” – no permanent seats, just as many hard wooden chairs as you needed or could fit in – through at least 1943. And the dirt stripe from the mound to the plate, most recently resurrected in Detroit and Phoenix, was in place in the Bronx through at least 1947 – but gone by 1949.
Baseball Nerd 
You really do have a way with words. Makes me want to read more… and now I want to read Nellie King’s book, also. Thank you.
I understand this part all too well: ‘The remarkable part of King’s story is that the struggle and the finances seem to have made every step, and every misstep, all the more satisfying. Nellie King’s story is a triumph of perseverance and contentment.”
I’ve spent the last twenty years or more dealing with a rare disorder that paralyzes me without much warning, and has made me incredibly weak for most of those years. Things have changed now (I won’t bore you with the details – suffice to say I found a minor miracle that ended most of the deep weakness), but the only reason I mention it is because living through that deep exhaustion made the good times seem that much better by comparison. I take very little for granted now… and just the feeling of walking without my feet dragging is amazing. I feel like I’ve been reborn. Little things like being able to climb a flight of stairs seem like miracles to me now.
So I understand the idea of being happy with what life brings, good or bad. Just being alive is something to be grateful for, and making it through the tough times can make you stronger, and yes – happier. It gives a person perspective on what’s really important.
I look at it this way – if you spend your whole life walking barefoot on soft carpet, or on soft cool grass, it’s no big deal. You don’t think twice about it – that’s just normal life, and you don’t really appreciate it. But if you spend most of your time walking on broken glass, or burning hot sand… a patch of cool green grass can feel like heaven by comparison. If things come too easily, all too often we don’t enjoy them. It’s the stuff you have to work for that feels valuable to you.
Yeah, I know you already understand all of this, but your writing inspired me to say it. 🙂 Thanks for all you do. I hope you have a great weekend!
Keith, thanks for your detailed review of that book, and thanks also for the links where to get it at a lower price. In this economy, every penny a person can save is important.
@olympictrees – Good to know that you were able to get help for your condition. It sounds like a very frightening, frustrating disorder, and I’m happy for you and your new lease on life.
…and Keith, it will take some rare photo from 1948 to discover if the dirt strip left after ’47 or ’48 because 1948 was the year of a rare cool green patch of grass larger than a postage stamp for my beloved Cleveland Indians. Thanks for the image @olympictrees and best of health to all!
Thanks, unpaka and kman! 🙂
Unpaka, I was cheerful most of the time even when I was so exhausted, but it was a conscious decision. Now, I’m happy most of the time… just because!
Keith, I’d like to say “thank you” to you, as well. Countdown might be “just a job” to you – I don’t know. But for me, it was a place where I could find truth, humor, and joy. You have such an irrepressible spirit, and watching your show makes me happy. You don’t just read the news, you share a bit of yourself with us, and that’s beautiful.
Okay, fine… I’ll stop now. But as cheesy as it might sound, I mean every word. You’re a good man, doing a good show. And I’d still love to have you as a tour guide inside the Baseball Hall of Fame. That would be “like, you know, wicked awesome!”
Hi Keith,
Thanks for the great insight into history! It’s fascinating stuff and I appreciate it!
Now, I want to apologize in advance if this is inappropriate.
No doubt you are familiar with Dock Ellis of the Pirates, recently passed away and, of course, his (in)famous drug addled No-No in 1970 against the Padres (June 12, 1070).Recognizing the importance of keeping the game clean, especially in the wake of the recent Performance enhancing drug scandals, I submit this link to a remarkably funny and even poignant memoir of that No Hitter – the best part being that it’s in Dock Ellis’ OWN WORDS. I enjoyed it and I think you might, too.htt//www.youtube.comwatch?v=_vUhSYLRw14And again, I hope this isn’t inappropriate.
Hi Keith,
Thanks for the great insight into history! It’s fascinating stuff and I appreciate it!
Now, I want to apologize in advance if this is inappropriate.
No doubt you are familiar with Dock Ellis of the Pirates, recently passed away and, of course, his (in)famous drug addled No-No in 1970 against the Padres (June 12, 1070).Recognizing the importance of keeping the game clean, especially in the wake of the recent Performance enhancing drug scandals, I submit this link to a remarkably funny and even poignant memoir of that No Hitter – the best part being that it’s in Dock Ellis’ OWN WORDS. I enjoyed it and I think you might, too.htt//www.youtube.comwatch?v=_vUhSYLRw14And again, I hope this isn’t inappropriate.
Whoops – I’ll try again!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vUhSYLRw14
Please excuse the mess.
I know this is a baseball blog, so please forgive me if I go off topic. (Does it help any if I tell you that I watched a Bugs Bunny cartoon about baseball this morning, giggled while watching it and thought of you? There, a baseball reference…) 🙂
I was watching your segment on the health fair today, and wished I had seen more about it in other areas of the media. I know there is one coming up in Little Rock this Saturday… and I was thinking that maybe you could write about it sometime this week at that “other” blog. This would be a chance to focus attention on it, and we could post a link to it on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever. Let’s turn up the heat on Congress!
Damn but you’re a lot of fun. Baseball, Futurama, politics, ethics and moral force, Bugs Bunny… so many of the things I enjoy!
Back to baseball for a moment, I was watching Mythbusters the other day, and they talked about dirty cars and golf balls… how some things go faster, because of the change in the airflow around them, and it reminded me – wasn’t it you that said something about picking at the seams of a baseball? That popped into my head today… I’ll have to go look it up now.
Great show tonight- thanks!
I just wanted to send along a short thank you for recommending this book to your readers/viewers. With all the rain coming down this weekend, I turned off the radio and tv, sat in the quiet and read this book. And I absolutely loved it. How nice it is to see the names of baseball players I had so long ago forgotten about – especially Danny Murtaugh and Harvey Haddix. Nellie has such a gift for story telling. It was especially touching reading about his memories of Clemente, Stargell and Mazerowski. His recollections of growing up during the depression and his experiences in the minors was written with both eloquence and honesty. He’s one of those baseball players we all root for – a pitcher who made it to the big leagues with a great deal of tenacity, disappointment and hardships. A truly warm, wonderful book. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention. It’s one of those books that will stay with me for a long long time.
There’s something to be said for the character of the men and women from Nellie’s generation. Our parents’ generation. Here’s to them. They taught us a lot, simply by example.
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