(part 1)

The years roll by, and I am no longer a little boy. I grow up, and move away from home,  start and end a career, raise a family, watch them grow up and  move out.  I try never to  forget all the wonderful and sometimes sad things this game of baseball has taught me along the way.  It has become the nature of the things and people in my life.  It has become what holds life together and holds back the despair when human tragedies want to turn life dark.

So one day in the 85th year of my pops’ life I join him and some of his World War II pilot friends at one of their monthly luncheons.  Their war experiences were talked out years ago, so they speak of other things. For no apparent reason,  the bitter memory of Sam Jones non-no-hitter  comes to mind when I overhear one old pilot mention that he used to go to Dodger games at the LA Coliseum.  I turn to my dad and we try to  refresh each others memories about that time 50 years ago.  But what I remember has little context. I’m just not really sure how true any of it is.  Time and age can put a misty halo around those things.  They tend to make old guys like me overly sentimental and enamored with selective memory.  So I decide to do a little digging, to see what ever happened to Sam Jones. Where did he come from?  How did he get here?  What ever happened to him after that day.  Neither my dad nor I knew.  Was he as nice a guy as  I seemed to remember?   Was he really that good?

Fortunately, a gentleman by the name of Rory Costello had some serious questions himself.  Rory Costello, a man I know nothing about,  seems to be a very good writer with the Society for American Baseball Research,  with an eye for detail as well as the human side of baseball.. He has written at length on the life of Sam Jones.  You can read Rory’s wonderful biography of  Sam here.  For it was there that I received my answer.

It seems that in 1959 San Francisco, I am not the only 11 year old  who idolizes Sam Jones.  As Costello writes:

"Sam made a special friend that season: an 11-year-old boy named Johnny Bushman, who had moved from a reservation in Montana (his father was a Sioux) to San Francisco. Young Johnny faithfully attended all the Giants games at Seals Stadium, though he didn't always have the 90 cents to get a bleacher seat. The pitcher had noticed the lad, who wore leg braces as a result of polio, on the fringes of the crowd of kids who would gather around Willie Mays. In his quiet way, he made sure that Johnny got tickets and even admitted him to the clubhouse afterward"

Sam has one more good season left in him with the Giants, as age, injuries and workload begin to wear at him.  He is the Opening Day pitcher for the first ever game to be played at Candlestick.  Sam goes  on to defeat his old team, the St. Louis Cardinals 3 to 1, giving up only 2 hits to former Giant Bill White and 1 hit to former Giants teammate, Leon Wagner.  In his next start, coming on 3 days rest, he one-hit the Cubs. But about that time bad news arrived for Sam.  According to his biography:

Shortly thereafter, Sam found that his young friend Johnny Bushman was in San Francisco's Shriners Hospital after a leg operation. So he went often to see him and the other children on the ward, staying to play pool, sign autographs, and give away caps. "Said Sam, himself the father of two boys, 'He's a nice, well-mannered kid. I just like him.'" Eleven years later, these visits would have a poignant echo.

Sam eventually fades away from the Big Leagues, after being taken from the Giants by the Houston Colt 45s in the 1961 expansion draft.  He plays minor league and winter ball right up until 1967 when he is finally released by the Columbus Jets of the old International League.  It is an eventful 6 years since his glory days with the Giants. Lots of ups and downs, but mostly downs as his body starts to betray him.  In addition to the ever increasing damage he is doing to his elbow and shoulder, he has developed what turns out to be malignant tumors in his neck, yet he continues to pitch.  He is in two horrific automobile accidents and bounces back each time.

At some point -- it's not certain exactly when -- Sam's neck cancer returned and spread. He entered West Virginia University Hospital in Morgantown on June 1, 1971, and was there off and on for treatment over the next five months. In October, the news reached Johnny Bushman from San Francisco, by then a 23-year-old college student. While watching a Giants game, he heard that his old hero was gravely ill. That very night he dropped everything to fly east. Bushman said, "Sam had done so much for me when I was a boy that, in whatever small way I could, I wanted to repay him."

John Veasey -- who knew Sam well and took several photos for Dick Schaap's profile -- spotted Johnny in the hospital. He wrote a touching story that the Associated Press then made national. It was an emotional reunion for the two men in Sam's hospital room; both were moved to tears. Johnny planned to stay with the Jones family in Monongah "as long as they will put up with him."   Indeed, he was there when the end finally came on November 5.  "I brought back the ball he'd given me from his 20th win in 1959," says Bushman today. "But after Sam passed, then Mary gave it back to me again."

Sam Jones is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, in Fairmont, West Virginia. His modest headstone bears the inscription "'Sad' Sam 1925-1971." As of 2008, nearly four decades later, he had not received any other memorials in his hometown. Yet SABR member John Schwarz (who profiled the pitcher for the 2002 edition of The National Pastime) honored Sam's memory in a unique way. He commissioned artist Jennifer Ettinger of Vancouver, British Columbia, to paint a 40-by-30-inch portrait in acrylic. She may have captured the man's expression better than any photo -- down to his trademark toothpick.

Junior Gilliam, retires from Major League Baseball at the end of the 1966 season after spending his entire 14 year career as a Dodger.  It was Gilliam who hit the fateful ground ball to Andre Rogers on that long ago summer evening in 1959. He dies of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 8, 1978. This, just one day after the Dodgers clinch the pennant by beating the Phillies in Game 7 of the NLCS.  He, like Sam Jones, is in his 40s when he dies.

Andre Rogers is traded to the Milwaukee Braves at the end of the 1960 season in exchange for Al Dark.  Alvin Dark will manage the Giants to the NL pennant in 1962. Andre Rogers passes away peacefully in his sleep shortly before Christmas, 2004 in his native Bahamas at the age of 70

As it turns out, my memory didn’t betray me.  Sam Toothpick Jones, was a good man, a better man than I had any grown-up reason to expect.  He was also a very good and courageous pitcher and a great Giant. Sadly, I never really knew him. I wish I had.  I know I wanted to more than anything at the time, but it never worked out. He was so nice to my dad and to me and my brother.  He knew how much even the smallest kindness meant to little kids.  I guess that made him real special too.  I think thats part of the culture of baseball even if its not too visible to most fans.  The part that ballplayers grow up with from the time they themselves are kids.  They all know that if it wasn't an older player in front of them along the way reaching back to give them a hand, they would never have had any success at all. 

Some guys forget.  Especially when they are surrounded by folks who tell them how great they are even when they're not.  But a lot of guys are like Sam too.  And those are the ones I root for.

I don’t go much for memorabilia, or souvenirs.  Just more stuff to keep track of, and the more stuff you have, it seems the more that people want to take it from you.  But even so,  I still wish I had that ball.  I would have had something to remember him by.  At least I had it for awhile and I still have the memories. That’s more than most people get to have, so I have no complaints.  It was a great ride Sam.  I hope you enjoy meeting all your new friends here at the Cove. :D