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In the early summer of 1959 the phone rang at Herm Kaplan's home in Halifax. On the line was a familiar voice that Kaplan remembered from the 1951 season when his Dartmouth Arrows under coach Bob Decker played at the cosy harbour-side park nicknamed "Little Brooklyn". No longer associated with the league in an official capacity, Kaplan was surprised to find himself talking to Wilson Parsons who, as a teenager and still eligible to play juvenile baseball in Halifax, so impressed Yankee scout Decker that he was offered a chance to play for the Arrows and then signed to a contract to play for Norfolk of Piedmont League beginning in 1952. Through the early fifties Parsons and Johnny Kucks were generally regarded the top pitching prospects in the entire Yankee organization, doted on at every turn, and provided special instruction by such developers of pitching talent as Yankee great Bill Dickey and former Dodger star Mickey Owen. In 1954 Parsons jumped directly from Class B Norfolk to the Yankees' Triple-A club in Kansas City where he was expected to lead the club's pitching staff. On a cold and rainy night in Charleston, West Virginia, however, Parsons threw his elbow out in a single pitch. Although he rehabbed and continued to pitch at the AAA level for the Yankees through the 1958 season, he was never the same pitcher, getting by more on intelligence and experience than on raw talent. In 1959 Parsons started the season in the Baltimore Orioles chain at Triple-A Miami under manager Pepper Martin. Although he was the club's best reliever in May and June, winning his only two decisions, the Orioles instructed Martin to give more time to the club's young prospects. When Martin told him that he could stay with the club, but wouldn't get much playing time, Parsons decided to quit and return to his native Nova Scotia where he finished the season and his career.2
Parson's recalled his career in the following way, beginning with his initial tryout with Decker and the Arrows in 1951. "When I threw behind the stands for Bob Decker, he could see the arm that I had, and I really only had one year of pitching before I started playing professional ball. That was a big jump. And then to jump from B ball to AAA was a really big jump! Of course, in those days, whoever you talked to knew two of us had the town. Johnny Kucks and myself. We were the top two pitchers in the whole organization…1954 was the year I tore everything out of my elbow….One of my first games in AAA, I played against Toledo and they were loaded with Boston Braves. I mean old heads that were good ball players with major league ability but just did not really have the greatness of great ball players. I gave them one run in the very first game I pitched in AAA. Then it came my turn again. We were in Charleston, West Virginia. I was leading one to nothing at the end of four innings; they had a big gate, it started to rain, we thought we were going to lose the whole gate. We sat around for the best part of an hour. Ken Sylvestri, the pitching coach, who had been a catcher with the Yankees, was down in the bull pen with me to warm up. When I went in the game I was really tight and I walked the first two batters before striking out the next two batters. That strikeout pitch of the second batter was just like a gun going off. The catcher, he heard it, ran to the mound. By the time he got there that elbow was like a softball."3
Wilson Parsons (far right), from Sydney, NS, as a member of the New York Yankees.1954
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After quitting pro ball and contacting Kaplan, Parsons was put in touch with the playing-coach of the Arrows, Willie Wilhelm who doubled as baseball coach of Clemson University. Wilhelm had played against Parsons a few seasons earlier while catching for Atlanta and was delighted to sign him. Most of the players on Wilhelm's club were from Clemson or from other Atlantic Coast conference colleges. Among them was first-baseman-outfielder Ty Cline who would for years back up Willie Mays in San Francisco and later return to Canada as a member of the Montreal Expos. Parsons did well with the Arrows, winning seven of nine decisions during the regular schedule and later leading the Arrows to the league championship with three victories in the playoffs. "It was strictly experience, knowing what to do with the ball, even though I am sure there were a lot of pitchers in the league, say 75% of them, who could throw better than I," he recalls. "They just didn't know what to do with the ball."5
1959 was the final year of operation for the H&D League, and though there were a number of college prospects who would eventually graduate to the major leagues from the four-team circuit, Parsons noticed a definite decline in the quality of ball played since his initial stint in 1951. "I think the talent in the H&D League in the early days was superior. I remember when I was coming along that Stellarton had a tremendous ball club. But they had an awful lot of boys that went to pro ball. They had some great ball players", he observed, mentioning Gair Allie, Art Hoch and Joe Fulghum in particular. "You still had some individual stars [in 1959], but I'm not sure that the depth was there like it was in '51 or '52."Parsons might have mentioned other differences between the two eras. In 1951 the six-team league blended old vets and young prospects, drawing from college campuses and from the semi-pro and minor league talent pools that swelled with the collapse of some of the more competitive leagues within and outside of organized baseball. Beginning in 1957 the H&D League shrank to four teams, made up largely of collegians, and at the start of the 1958 season the league faced interference from the NCAA for the first time in its history. Beginning in 1958 the NCAA declared that only college seniors would be allowed to play in the H&D league and other summer circuits across North America. By that time there were only 35 clubs across the continent that operated within the good graces of American collegiate regulators, four of them in Nova Scotia. While this meant a continuing supply of prospects, the limitation upon signing players in their sophomore or junior years also meant there would be no continuity in club rosters from one year to the next. Each year's club would be stocked with completely new players. For a short-season league, this weakened fan allegiance and contributed to further declines in attendance. By the close of the 1959 season the end of the league was imminent.
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One felt crest commemorating the1952 Halifax District Baeball League All Star game.1952
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Ticket booklet for the Dartmouth Arrows1950
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There were nonetheless a number of particularly talented ballplayers who played in the league's twilight seasons. Third-baseman Jack Kubiszyn out of the University of Alabama capped a three year career in the league in 1957 leading the Kentville Wildcats to their first ever league championship. He later played 50 games in the major leagues with the Cleveland Indians. The following year saw two more Wildcats who would make it to the "show". Lee Elia eventually broke into the big leagues with the White Sox playing for manager Eddie Stanky. During spring training in 1966 Elia had been designated for assignment to the minors, but on the last day of the spring Stanky asked him to pinch hit against eventual Hall-of-Famer Bob Gibson. Elia clubbed the ball over the left-center field fence. After the game Stanky approached Elia and said, "you didn't quit on me, I'm taking you north with the club". Nicknamed "banty rooster" because of his determination and grit, Elia later made a name for himself as a major league manager, and is remembered in particular for an obscenity-laced tirade against Chicago Cub fans for booing their own ball club. Another player from the '58 Wildcats, Norm Gigon played briefly for Chicago as well, before joining former H&D leaguers such as Bill Brooks, Roger Rada, Bill Thurston, Joe Fulghum, Jack Stallings, and Moe Morhardt in collegiate coaching ranks.9
In the final years of the league's operation there were a number of players who graduated to the major leagues. Ralph Lumenti, the Truro fireballer, went directly from Truro to the majors at the end of the 1957 season, reminiscent of Moe Drabowsky the year before. Hal Stowe, who pitched for Halifax in 1958, had a cup of coffee with the New York Yankees, and Stellarton pitcher Jim Hannan of the same year eventually broke into the big time, appearing in over two hundred games between 1962 and 1969. Moe Morhardt who spent two seasons in Nova Scotia played briefly as a back-up to Ernie Banks in 1961. Players on 1959 league rosters who later toiled in the big leagues included Rollie Sheldon who starred for the Yankees in the early 1960s, pitcher Ed Connolly who went on to play for the Red Sox, and pitcher-outfielder Danny Murphy from the '59 Bearcats who broke in as an outfielder with the Chicago Cubs in 1960 and resurfaced for a second stint a few years later as a pitcher with the White Sox.In addition to the players named above, local boy Vern Handrahan from Charlottetown, PEI went on to play in the majors in the expansion era. After playing in Stellarton in 1958, he was signed by Milwaukee scout Jeff Jones, who sent the nineteen year old for a tryout with Wellsville of the New York- Penn (NYP) league. Later he would move to the Kansas City organization, breaking in with the Athletics in 1964. Handrahan played two years in the majors, mostly as a reliever, and held major-league batters to a combined .242 batting average. Handrahan is one of only two Prince Edward Islanders to ever play major league baseball.
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