Steve, welcome to Sports Forgotten Heroes. Glad you could jump aboard. Thank you, Warren. It's great to be here. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's a great topic. My, my father grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. When they left, we all became New York Mets fans, despite the Washington Nationals. Top I have on here. Fair enough. I got the LA one going. There you go. But yeah, great topic. Jim Gilliam or Junior Gilliam, the Forgotten Dodger.
And I, I title, the Forgotten Dodger obviously fits right in with the title of this podcast, Sports Forgotten Heroes. Yeah. Let me ask you, what makes him forgotten? Yeah, you know, it's funny. So I, I, there are people that would say, oh, he's not forgotten. There are a number of people that I, I've networked with in different social media groups on Facebook that are part of, of Brooklyn Dodger nostalgia.
And they're like, they took offense to it, the title of it, because they're like, oh, we have never forgotten him, you know, and all that. But I think what makes him forgotten really, or maybe overlooked is perhaps a better, a better word is, you know, he played so many years in the Dodgers organization, 53 to 66. He was a coach after that until his death in 1978. So, I mean, he spent a quarter century in the Dodger organization, two years in the minors.
He is in the top 10 in many Dodger offensive categories of all time. Things like plate appearances, games played, walks, things like that. He played on seven World Series teams, won four World Series. He's the only Dodger to play in four World Series winning teams. Koufax was on the 55 team but didn't play. Johnny Padres was on the 65 team but didn't play. So they only got three each. Gilliam Zone, one of four. And he never got a vote for the hall of Fame, not one singular vote.
He was overlooked throughout his career in Brooklyn because of so many stars on that team. And then you get to Los Angeles and you've got Maury Wills, you've got Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale. You just have bigger personalities. And he kind of just kept going along in the background. As a Mets fan, I would liken his career somewhat to that of Ed Crane pool. I just thought about that. He was not hall of Fame worthy, but he was a Met for so long and he was just there.
And, and we'll get into this subject of trade rumors and all sorts of things. But yeah, as I think about it, a player like that, not a Derek Jeter who played his entire career with the Yankees and was A superstar. But Jim Gilliam, I mean, that guy was a Dodger through and through, like you said. Even after his playing days were over, he remained with the organization in a coaching capacity. So let's go back to the beginning.
How was he introduced to baseball and how quickly did he show that he had the skills to make it? Yeah, so he, he was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in segregated Nashville. Lived in the black part of downtown Nashville, attended Pearl High School, but never graduated. He dropped out after the 11th grade to play baseball. And he just, he gravitated, gravitated toward the game as a child there growing up playing on sandlots.
Spent a lot of time at Sulphur Dell park, which was the major baseball facility there. Played against some white kids. Wasn't just playing segregated baseball. This is the 1930s, early 1940s. But he was playing some integration in the sand lots and whatnot. And, you know, he, he got latched on to the Nashville Black Falls, which was part of the. The Negro Southern league. Played his 1945 season. So, I mean, that's his age, 16, 17 season. He is playing in the Negro Southern League.
Then the Nashville Black Falls. He. Nashville was the home of the Baltimore Eli Giants. For spring training, the Eli Giants brought him to the Negro American League. And so he became part of the Baltimore Eli giants at age 17 and didn't play a whole lot in 1946, but by 47, 48, 49, 50, he was a mainstay on those Eli Giants teams, traveling around, playing in the Negro Leagues, playing against Buck Leonard, playing against Satchel Page.
You know, he played against all of, the, all of the stars, Josh Gibson and, you know, that's really where he cut his teeth. That's where he learned how to play. And he gave a lot of credit over his life to George Scales, who was a fine Negro leagues player from the 1920s and 30s. Peewee Butts, who was his double play partner. Gilliam played second base. Butts was the shortstop. Taught him a lot about how to turn the double play and, you know, play up the infield and all that.
And so those are two players that really he credited throughout his life as just being the influence to how he learned to play baseball. Yeah, you, you, you speak about Scales a little more in depth in your book, I think. How important was he to the career and the development of Gilliam? Well, he was extremely important. So he was, at that point in time, he was kind of a player coach, more of a coach player. Probably didn't see the lineup that often, but he was Coaching with the Eli Giants.
He, he was the one that taught Gilliam basically how to switch it. So I mean he was watching Gilliam as a right handed batter, just couldn't hit the curveball and he, he actually, Scales actually gave him the nickname Junior, which you referenced earlier. And he, basically what he said is, hey Junior, this is the story goes, hey Junior, get over to the other side of the giver, other side of the plate and see if you can hit it there.
And so Gilliam went over to the other side in the left handed batter's box and started taking cuts and learned how to switch hit that way. But the nickname Junior stuck and it was probably appropriate. Scales was probably twice his age, so you know, it was probably an appropriate nickname for him. But he taught him that and he was the one that believed him.
You know, depending on what you read and kind of your sources you look at, Scales is the one that moved him from third base, which is where he played with the black Vols, to second base. And so Scales was extremely important, extremely influential in Gilliam's approach to the plate. The, another player on the Eli Giants, Henry Kimbrough, really was influential in helping him hit the ball as a line drive hitter. I mean he was in a, wasn't a power hitter, didn't hit a ton of home runs.
But you know, those are, those are the types of individuals that shaped his baseball career. Can you tell us a little bit about the Negro Leagues at that time and how they were structured? If I, if I understand correctly or if I follow the story correctly, Junior or Jim played in the Negro Southern League. Tell us about that league as well. Tell us about.
Yeah, so the Negro Southern League was kind of a, I guess would be a step below perhaps the Negro American League and the Negro National League at that time, the year actually that he played in that 1945, there is very little information. William Platt wrote a wonderful book about the history of the Negro Southern League and he just can't find statistics, he can't find box scores. And it's just unfortunate that we don't know how he performed a lot in that.
You know, then he goes into the Negro American League and that was still the 1946 season. This is before Jackie Robinson had integrated baseball. And it was still the opportunity then to have a true Negro League World Series between the Negro League National League champ and the Negro American League champ. And the East West All Star Game was still this big thing where all the black stars came to Comiskey park or Yankee Stadium or someplace and played in the all star game during that summer.
But as blacks started to integrate major league baseball and you started to see the. The talent shift there, the negro leagues begin to have their cracks in their foundation. And, you know, by. By the end of the 1950s, of course, they're. They're no longer in existence. Right. Yeah. He was coming up, though. You mentioned Robinson. He was coming up during the time when Jackie Robinson and Larry Dobie were breaking down walls and, and crossing the color line.
What was the atmosphere like at that time for guys like Jim Gilliam? While it. It had to be encouraging for them to see a Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby, and by the way, there were a couple others that broke through at that time as well. Yeah, it still had the treatment that guys like Robinson withstood. How terrifying was it for guys like Gilliam to hear about this? And did they ever have any second thoughts about trying to make it in major league baseball?
Yeah, you know, I mean, there's a number of ways I want to try and try and answer your question there. I think for, for Gilliam, yeah, he always wanted to try and aspire to be that. He saw Jackie Robinson break the color barrier, and Jackie would actually become his first roommate in 1953 when he finally makes the Brooklyn Dodgers. And so it gave him some motivation. And he talked about that later in his career.
It's like, well, I saw Jackie do it, and I knew then that know I could do this as well. Gilliam was fortunate because of his age. He was still young. A player like peewee Butts, George Scales, they. Even Josh Gibson, you know, those. Those guys were unfortunately past their prime. They were not something that a major league team was going to take a chance on. And so, but it still took, even for.
For Gilliam, it still took until the end of the 1950 season for his contract to be purchased by the Brooklyn Dodgers. He had a tryout in March of 1950 with the Chicago Cubs. He went to Haines City, Florida, and the Cubs had had him and several other players try out, and the Cubs cut it. They kept Gene Baker instead, who would eventually help integrate the Cubs and played with Ernie Banks as kind of a middle infield combination there.
But they kept Gene Baker, who was a little bit older, a little bit more mature, didn't take a chance on Gilliam. And that would have been Gilliam's age. 21 season, 1950, he. So, you know, it was. It was a disappointment for him. He expressed he didn't understand why, and he was disappointed. Went back, played with the eli Giants throughout 1950. And then he and Joe Black had been roommates with the Eli Giants. And they're. They're kind of an interesting pairing.
Black was a pitcher who had gone to Morgan State, graduated from Morgan State in Baltimore, had a college degree and Gillian and was pretty outspoken, pretty, pretty gregarious. Gilliam was reserved and quiet, didn't have a college education, barely had, you know, made it through 11th grade. And they just hit it off and they became really fast friends. Gilliam eventually became godfather to Joe Black's son, Chico.
And Black encouraged him to read the newspaper and kind of, you know, stay up on events and become educated in that regard. So they wind up playing together in 1951 in Montreal, the Montreal Royals, same team that Jackie Robinson was with. And there was a story that I found in. Actually, it was in the archives of Roger Kahn's papers from the Baseball hall of Fame.
It was during the pandemic, and the Baseball hall of Fame was nice enough to scan a bunch of papers for me because people weren't going to those places at that point and send them to me. And it was a story that Roger did not include in Boys of Summer, which I thought was fascinating. But Black was talking about being called the N word and, you know, some race issues in a game they were playing in Buffalo. And Gilliam went to the mound and tried to calm him down.
And he said, I'm going to, you know, Black's cussing at it. I'm going to get this guy. I'm going to throw it. He's like, no, you're not. Gilliam's the one that called him down. He said, if you do that, we'll never get this chance. So even. And that was 1951. So that's four years after Jackie had integrated. And there was still that there. So a little bit more long winded response. But, you know, I think it helps kind of set what that was like for him.
Gilliam really followed in the footsteps of Robinson. He. Robinson was in the Negro Leagues. Gilliam was in the Negro Leagues. Robinson got signed by the Dodgers, went to Montreal. Gilliam got signed by the Dodgers, went to Montreal. They were both infielders. And we'll get into it later. Gilliam's relationship with the manager of the Royals at that time, the Montreal Royals, Walter Alston. Yep, it was, you know, a very fortunate relationship for Gilliam.
So Gilliam establishes himself with the Montreal Royals, and he's good enough to make it to Brooklyn to play with the Dodgers in 1953. And he had one heck of a rookie season. 278. He led the National League in triples with 17. He never approached that number again. Six home runs, 63. Ribby's 21 stolen bases. Tell us about his first season in Major League Baseball. And was he surprised that he actually won Rookie of the Year?
Yeah, you know, he was surprised, I think a little bit that he won Rookie of the Year. We came down between him and Harvey Haddock's pitcher that had an excellent season that year. And Gilliam felt like he, he would get it. But the issue there was, you know, Haddocks had pitched a lot in 1952 as well, but still hadn't been. Hadn't pitched the minimum, the maximum number of innings to still be considered a rookie.
You know, that whole process for him to get to the major leagues, you know, you draw the parallels there between him and. And Jackie Robinson. Robinson spent one year in Montreal, but Gilliam spent two. And you know, this is one of the themes that I had in the book was Gilliam was at these different, what I call gates of integration of baseball. I have that in here. Yeah, the first gate, the second gate.
Yeah. And so Gilliam's part of this second gate, which is, at what point in time are major league teams going to just get beyond integrating and saying, oh, we got a black player or we got two black players, when are we going to get to four or five and where the lineup is has a higher percentage of black players. And you can make a pretty strong case that Gilliam was ready for the major leagues in 1951 and certainly 1952 when he won the MVP in the International League.
And he probably could have helped the Dodgers, who were in the 52 World Series, lost it to the Yankees. They lost, of course, in 51 to the Giants on the Bobby Thompson home run. He probably would have help them. And by all accounts, he was better than the bench players that the Dodgers kept. Players like Rocky Bridges and Bobby Morgan and some of these other kind of journeymen that were the utility infielders. Gilliam was probably a better player than them.
He could switch hit, he could play multiple positions. But the Dodgers weren't ready to do that. They already had Campanella, they had Newcomb, they had Jackie Robinson, they had three. And the Sandy Amorous would come up right about the same time, a black Cuban. And it would take until 1954 before the Dodgers would start all five of them in the lineup. They became the first team to have a lineup that was greater than 50% black. And Gilliam helped break that down.
It wasn't until 1971 with the Pirates that they had a whole entire lineup of non white players. Yeah, yeah, I was going to get to the second gate, but we just sort of addressed it. No, no, hey, no problem. I mean, yeah, I mean, it was. Well, since we're there, why do you think the Dodgers pushed it but never crossed it? They never opened it? You know, I don't know. I mean, there. So there's a lot of documentation from the 1953 spring training.
Roger Kahn writes about this in his book Boys of Summer. There were other newspaper writers that were writing about. It was the fact that if Gilliam broke the lineup and moved Jackie Robinson off of second base, that meant that Billy Cox was going to the bench.
And it wasn't so much that they were upset that, you know, Jackie was going to take his position, but it was like there was a. There was a group of people on the Dodgers and it was, you know, individuals that were outspoken in Kahn's book were Preacher Rowe, who was from rural Arkansas, Missouri, border area, and Billy Cox. And, you know, they were expressing concern that a black player was taking Billy Cox's spot. And I think the Dodgers were very cognizant, like every other team was.
I mean, the giants, they had three black players. They didn't go to the fourth. The Indians had three black players. They didn'T go to the fourth. You know, so there was this kind of unspoken thing, but. But even in 1953, not every team had integrated. The Yankees hadn't integrated at that point in time. The Red Sox didn't integrate until the end of the decade. So, you know, there were still opportunities for black players.
Of course, the reserve clause at the time allowed the Dodgers to stockpile as much black talent as they wanted to. And there was no incentive for them really to bring Gilliam up. He was still young enough at that point. So I think the Dodgers were just kind of like, let's see, let's wait and see how this plays out. And you know, that's.
That was kind of, you know, Jackie was certainly having diminishing skills by 54, 55, and, you know, you know, certainly by 56, he was only playing, you know, kind of half the time. And the Dodgers were moving players around and whatnot. Look, Jim Gilliam played for 17 years and he had some very good years. But I went back and looked at his stats. I think there's an argument that can be made that his rookie year, 1953, which, by the way, he also walked 100 times.
The guy had this amazing eye at the plate. I think there's an argument to be made that 1953, his rookie year, just might have been his best season. What do you think? Yeah, you know, he had a really good year in 1963 as well. Got some MVP votes in both of those years. But it was pretty evident that if you go back and you compare the statistics at 53 was a really watershed year for him. You mentioned the triples earlier.
I mean, he never approached that number of triples ever in his career after that. You know, you mentioned 20, some odd stolen bases. He struggled a little bit. He got caught stealing a fair amount of time as well. 14 times. Yeah. Yeah. So he wasn't a great base stealer, but he was a smart base runner, knew how to take an extra base, those sorts of things. And he really transformed and ignited that Dodger lineup.
You know, that 53 team was famous for starting off 15, 0 or whatever it was that they started off and just kind of coasted all the way to the World Series. And they. They were loaded. I mean, that was Snider, Hodges, Campanello, Jackie, you know, Erskine, and, you know, everybody was just on top of their game in that year. So I do think that Peewee Reese. I can't forget about Pee Wee Reese, you know, another. Another hall of Famer there. I do think his 63 season was very impactful.
He helped the Dodgers immensely in the World Series by playing smart baseball, getting on base. He didn't hit very much, but he walked and got on base and created a little bit of havoc there. 65 was a. It was a monumental year for him, just simply because. Yeah, we'll get to that, too. Yeah, I look forward to. I mean, it was such a unexpected year for him. Yeah. But, you know, I think the one thing about those seasons is it looks like, you know, he kind of.53, he knew where he was going to play.
And Alston kept him in the lineup even through some slumps, and he still had. You might have the stats in front of you. I don't have him, but I think he had like close to 700 plate appearances that year. 710 plate appearances in 1953. Led. Led the National League there. In 62. He had over 700 as well, but. Oh, and in 56 as well, the guy. I mean. Yeah, 17 years. He had a heck of his career. When I watched years ago, the movie that starred Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson, obviously.
Yeah. I mean, Robinson crosses the color line. There's a lot of animosity, a lot of awful things that happened. And there were some on the Dodgers at that time that weren't overly thrilled that. That Jackie Robinson was on the team as well. Gilliam comes up in 53 several years later. How did Gilliam and his teammates get along? I mean, I read in your book where you had to try really hard not to like this guy. I think that's true.
I mean, obviously, I never knew him, you know, but everybody seemed to really just get along with him. I mean, he was. He was a friend to everybody. It seemed like he wasn't very outspoken and anything like that.
You know, I think that the thing that people still maybe overlook a little bit about integration was, yes, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and then you wound up getting Larry Doby and Satchel Page and Willie Mays and Banks and Aaron and everybody else comes into baseball in the mid-1950s. But there was still a lot of segregation that occurred. They still went to St. Louis and had to stay in a different hotel when they would play with Cardinals.
The Dodgers shifted some of their spring training games down to Miami, and the blacks had to stay at a different hotel. And they loved that hotel. Loved it. Yeah. I mean, it was. It was the place to be in black culture. You know, all the entertainers were there. Everybody was. Was there. And so, you know, grand tricky was. Gonna get them out of there. No, leave us. We love it here. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Don't. Don't go spoil this for us, you know, and then. But even then, still in.
When the Dodgers were in Vero beach, you know, there was still segregation that occurred in Vero beach and that. And. And the team would have to go Sifford and, you know, the black players would have to go to the black part of town just to go to the barber or go to the movie theater or something like that. So they did deal with some of that Jim Crow, some of that segregation that existed, even though baseball, you know, they were.
They were in the lineups, and there weren't the threats that you from. From 42 and all that sort of thing. You said he wasn't very outspoken, and it's really interesting. Was he. Was he an introvert? Was he shy? I think so. You know, I talked to some people, you know, that were. That were players for him.
So I talked to, like Dusty Baker, for example, and Ron, say, players that were on the dodgers in the 70s, like that, and they all said, you know, he was just very quiet, very soft spoken, very thin, thoughtful about what he said so that when he did talk, you wanted to listen to what he was saying because he knew what he was doing. He knew he was, you know, he was trying to help you and, and become a better player.
You know, I think even Wes Parker even told me a story about how later in his career. Was it Wes Parker. I think it was Wes Parker later in his career, he was struggling to hit Bert Hooten's knuckleball, and Bert Hooten was pitching for the Chicago Cubs, and Gilliam helped coach him up to, to learn how to do that. You know, and Parker had been in the. He was in the majors in the 1960s, and so this was several years after that. So, you know, it was.
He. He was one of those individuals that wasn't like Jackie Robinson wasn't speaking out against, against integration or, you know, segregation. He wasn't. Willie or Maury Wills was very outspoken on a lot of issues and all that sort of thing. He unceremoniously, you know, got traded from the Dodgers because he refused to go on a trip across to Japan on a goodwill tour to Japan. And the Dodgers basically said, no, you're out.
Gilliam never did anything like that to try and draw attention to himself. Maybe that was because he never finished high school and maybe he was self conscious about that. That's one theory that, you know, has been advanced and that seems to, to resonate a little bit. You said he wasn't outspoken. I didn't. I use the term. He wasn't very outgoing. That might not be the right term. But he was the way you described Gilliam in your book. He was an introvert. He was shy.
But yet he was also very marketable. And I find that really interesting. He, he appeared in a lot of advertisements. So what made him so marketable? Well, you know, I do think that if you look at some of these photos, I mean, he's got a, he's got a pretty expressive face and expressive smile. I think he, you know, we markets that way. You know, I, I don't know if Jackie Robinson turned people off a little bit with his outspokenness or something.
I mean, the fact that a lot of these occurred while Gilliam was, was still. While the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. So I mean, you get, you got Madison Avenue, you got the New York City marketing and all that sort of thing. Campanella was, was in ads, Jackie was in ads. But Gilliam, for whatever reason, I mean, he was selling cigarettes, he was selling RC Cola, he was selling Crosley Te.
Um, but then you Know, then they moved to Los Angeles and he's one of the few players that really bridges both of those franchises. Right, Brooklyn and Los Angeles. You know, the. Yes, Gil Hodges and Duke Snyder and Peewee Reese played some games in Los Angeles, but they were kind of past their prime and didn't, didn't last long in, in the majors after they moved. Gilliam was still, you know, in the prime of his career during that period.
Koufax and Drysdale, while they debuted in Brooklyn, were not stars in Brooklyn, so they didn't have that marketability. They moved to Los Angeles and, and yeah, he's selling Packard Bell televisions at that point and you know, he did a lot of, of marketing and I was surprised by that. You know, Beechnut Chewing Gum was another one. I think we've, we've got a image of that in the book that he was in one of an ad for Beechnut Chewing gum. Let's get back to his game. What were his strengths?
Talk about his game. What kind of ball player was Jim Gilliam? So, I mean, I think he was without a doubt a really smart, high IQ baseball player. First and foremost. He knew situations, he knew where he needed to be defensively, he knew what he needed to do at the plate. He had a tremendous eye. You mentioned he walked over 100 times. I mean, I forget the exact ratio off the top of my head of walks to strikeouts, but it was something like four to one. Walks bore to strikeouts.
He didn't strike out much at all. And so from, from that standpoint, he was, he was a good person to put in that second spot in the Dodger order in Los Angeles. Maury Wills gets on. Gilliam could take pitches, he could foul them off, give Maury Wills a chance to steal second. And then if it's a right handed pitcher and Gilliam's batting from the left side, he could certainly pull the ball the second or you know, poke it into the outfield.
But whatever he would needed to do, he would get Wills to third base and then let Tommy Davis or Willie Davis hit a sack fly and score. And that was, that was the offense. Defensively, he played all over the diamond. The only positions that he never played were pitcher, catcher and shortstop. Actually in a major league game played, played two innings at, at first base late in the game once and, and actually had a put out.
So he had one chance at first base, which is the only time I ever could find that he played first base. But you know, he was definitely. You alluded to Alston earlier, they got along Great. They. He was. He was the manager on the field for the dodgers during those 1960s years. Alston rarely went out to the mound, is my understanding. Pitcher needed to be calmed down. Gilliam's the one that walked over there and just said, hey, you know, you're doing this or you're doing that.
Yeah. His relationship. Let's talk about his relationship with Walter Alston in the minors and the majors. Austin said that Gilliam was the ultimate team player. Talk about that. What does the ultimate team player mean? And what did he do to earn such a compliment? He was. He was easily a company man. I mean, whatever the team needed, wherever he needed to play. I think one of the things to me that cemented the relationship between Alston and. And Gilliam was the fact that he start.
He. Gilliam started more opening days on the bench than he did at a position. Because the Dodgers, they were always bringing up some sort of phenom or some sort of minor league prospect. You know, maybe it was Charlie Neal while they were in Brooklyn. Then it was Pee Wee Oliver, Nate Oliver, and there was John Warhas and all these other guys that were supposed to move Gilliam off of his position. But then Gilliam had the ability to play third base. He had the ability to play second base.
He had the ability to play left field. He played some and right. He could play all over the diamond. He was a switch hitter, so you didn't have to sub him out for platoon purposes or anything like that. And he, again, Alston just trusted him. He was. He was. The story is that the first game that he played for Montreal, Alston was the manager. Gilliam's penciled in the lineup in second base and the leadoff hitter for Montreal.
They're on the road, playing left field, gets ejected, arguing balls and strikes, and Alston tells him to go play left field. Now, he's never played left field in his life. And the story is that the first ball gets hit to him and he drops it and makes an error, but he doesn't make an error, any errors after that. Right. But he had never played left field. The coach, the manager, says, hey, I need you to go play left field. He's like, okay, I'm there.
So he would do whatever it took to win a game. He would do whatever it took to make the team complete. He would do whatever the team needed him to do. 17 years, he plays for the Dodgers, you know, the first couple in Brooklyn. And the final years, actually more than the final. Probably about the final 12 years in Los Angeles. And yet at the start of every season, it was like he was on the trading block. He was. And that was a big theme in your book.
He was always the one involved in the trade rumors. They never traded him? No. Why was it always Jim Gilliam in the trade rumors? Why was he always on the trading block? So I think there's two ways to look at that. One, you can say, well, that's every other team recognizes his value and they want him to be a part of their team. I mean, he was rumored to be going to the Phillies or the Reds, places like that.
Some places like the Phillies hadn't integrated, and so they were looking to get a black player that was established that they could help integrate their team with. And so that was one of the impetuses there. The other thing is, is that historically, during that period, the Dodgers had a surplus of infielders. They had Don Zimmer, they had Charlie Neal, they had Bobby Morgan, as I mentioned earlier. So, you know, in the 50s in Brooklyn, there are a lot of those.
The 60s, you get Ken McMullen, you get John Warhast, Darrell Griffith, Nate Oliver, a lot of players bubbling up as infielders, but they didn't have a surplus of outfielders. And, you know, some of the rumored trades would involve Gilliam going to a team in exchange for an outfielder. One of them was Wally Post with the Cincinnati reds in the 1950s. And that makes baseball sense. You trade from a position of strength, infield, and you fill a need outfield. So that makes sense.
But, you know, Buzzy Bavasi, and I'm sure, you know, you picked up on this Buzzy with Ace, he always would say the same thing every spring. Why would we trade Gilly? He's four players in one. He can play the infield, the outfield, bat left, bat right. You know, all that, those. I mean, every year it was the same can quote. It seemed like that the newspaper writers were putting in there. He also slumped a little bit during his career. And I thought about this, and we're not going to go on.
I don't want to go into this part of the Jim Gilliam story. You wrote a terrific book. Jim Gilliam, the Forgotten Dodger. I encourage anyone watching or listening to pick up a copy of it because it also talks about he had troubles off the field. And I don't mean criminal problems. He had troubles. His home life. It was not. It was not a stable home life. And I'm not talking when he was a kid. I'm talking as an adult with his marriage and in children and all that.
So I'm sure that played a role in some of his slumps. But what about all the trade talk? Did, did he being on the cusp of possibly being traded, did that toy at all with his mental approach to the game? You know, it's an interesting question. I'm not entirely sure because by the time the season started, those trade rumors really were done. You know, they didn't come up during the season.
It was really only spring training, the beginning part of the season that those trade rumors were, were prevalent, the off season. So I don't know that if he got into a slump mid season that that was a part of it. You know, you alluded a little bit to his home life and yes, he did have a very public divorce with his first wife, Gloria, and they had gotten married when they were both very young. He was still with the Eli Giants.
She was a teenager, he was a teenager, you know, and so I think they were dealing with a lot of challenges there. And then he got remarried later and had a total of four kids, two with Gloria and two with Edwina. And he was much more stable, I think later in his career. Los Angeles, Edwina was regularly in the kind of the society pages almost as one of the best dressed Dodger wives.
The Los Angeles Sentinel or the black press in Los Angeles would cover, cover a lot of celebrity wives and things like that. And things seemed like they were okay there. It was really, you know, you alluded to the late 1950s when he was going through some problems in 56, 57, that time period. And yeah, I do think, you know, I don't know firsthand, I didn't talk to anybody that said, oh, yes, that, that was a situation.
But if you just look at his stats and when he slumped, the month that he slumped was when all this stuff was going on in the Pittsburgh Courier and the New York Amsterdam News. And it was, again, it was a very public thing that was covered by the black press. You know, Steve, someday I'm going to do a podcast or write or find more information, maybe even write a book, I don't know because I can't find a whole lot on it. Barnstorming.
Barnstorming was such a big deal in the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s. It was a way for baseball, for the players to bring the game to people in cities that didn't normally get to see baseball. It was also a way for the players to make a little more money during the off season because obviously back then they didn't get $765 million contracts like Juan Soto. Yep. No. Yeah. Gilliam was a big part of barnstorming, and he might have actually played for the greatest team in the history of baseball.
Tell us about the 1955 team and who was on it and how great was it. I think you said they never lost a game. That's true. And now you're. You're putting me on the spot because I don't remember everybody that was on that team, but it was. Well, you had Mays. Yeah. There. I mean, yeah, we had Willie Mays. You had Hank Aaron, you had Roy Campanella, you had Jim Gilliam. I mean, it was an amazing collection of black talent, without a doubt. And they went through the South.
They. I think that was the one where they went over to Hawaii. I'm trying to remember which barnstorming team it was. But they. They went. They at least went to Los Angeles and played a bunch of games out on the west coast, because at that time, you know, there's no baseball on the West Coast. But yeah, they. Those players, you know, they added a month to their. To their season because those things would start as soon as the World Series would end.
I mean, like two days after the World Series over with, these barnstorming teams would form and they would go on these tours of the. Often in the south because the weather was still kind of warm down in Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, those places. Texas, certainly, because there were no teams in Texas that was fertile ground for this. But, yeah, it's kind of amazing that you think about. And I think, to me, this is one of the things that is so unique about Gilliam's career.
He played in the Negro leagues with Satchel Page and Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell and Josh Gibson. And then he plays in the majors and he's on teams with Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, plus all the Dodgers that he played with Jackie Robinson to Sandy Koufax. He really was associated with the Titans of the game. Yeah, he was. I mean, he, like, look, he debuted in 53 and he played until 66. We could go through every year and talk about every year, but, you know, we don't.
We don't want to do that. But he debuted when he was 24, and I think mentally, all the changes in position, he's got to battle this new guy. He's got to battle that new guy. Like you said, he doesn't get to play in many opening day games. I think mentally he started to become exhausted and obviously he was getting older. And finally 1965 rolls around, he says, you know what? I've had enough. I'm going to retire. The Dodgers say, don't leave the club.
We got a spot for you right here on our coaching staff. So he becomes a coach for the Dodgers, and then they called him out of retirement. Yeah. Why did the Dodgers want him to come out of retirement, go back into the lineup, and just how well did he do? So, yeah, so it's really. It's kind of interesting. So 64 was arguably the. The worst season that he had statistically. I'll just read it off. He hit.228. He played in 116 games. I still had a good eye at the plate. 21 strikeouts, 42 walks.
So he doubled that. I hit two dingers, 27 ribbies. But, yeah, his. His ops wasn't all that great. It was only.600 and five. Yeah. No, so he. He had a. He had a poor year. The Dodgers had a poor year, frankly, in 64. And they were disappointment. They'd come off sweeping the Yankees in the 1963 World Series, four straight games. Gilliam had a great year in 63, was receiving MVP votes. And the Dodgers were looking to move on from Leo to Rocher as a base coach.
And so they made Gilliam, after the 1960 season, the first base coach for the Dodgers. And that was significant. And we'll get to him being activated, but it was significant because to me, that was that third gate. You know, we've talked about the first and the second. The third gate is he becomes the first black base coach. He's the first black to actually coach on the field.
Gene Baker, Buck O'Neill had both been bench coaches with major league teams prior to that, but they had not been one of those on the field player or coaches that was relaying signals and helping runners and all of that. But it was. It was interesting looking through newspaper archives because writers were immediately talking about the fact that, well, Gilliam's going to be a coach, but we don't really think he's going to be a coach. They're going to activate him at some point in time.
And sure enough, the catalyst for that was Tommy Davis sliding into second base in a game in May and breaking his ankle and being out for the season. And the Dodgers that they had had, the. The players they had assembled to replace Gilliam in the infield were not performing. They had made a trade, traded Ken.
Excuse me, Frank Howard to the Washington Senators and picked up Claude Osteen, and they got a guy named John Kennedy who was a all glove, no hit third baseman, but he was supposed to, you know, hold that down. But it turned out he was really no hit and he wasn't, you know, helping offensively. Daryl Griffith was injured and even though he had torn up aaa, John Warhass had kind of not performed the way that they expected. So they needed somebody.
And so they activate Gilliam and he doesn't play right away. He starts off slow, just kind of as a pinch hitter. But by mid summer he is ensconced at third base, which is not the position that he came up playing, but he's, he is in third base. And the Dodgers wound up having this all switch hit infield of West, Parker Lever at second, Maury Wills at short. And then at third they had Gilliam and they helped stabilize the Dodgers.
They would go on to the World Series in 1965 and, and beat the Twins in seven games. And you know, Gilliam gets MVP votes again in 19. I think he, I think he was only like 30th, but he got some votes for MVP despite beginning the season as a retired coach. Yeah, he did. He finished the season 30th in MVP votes. I mean, it's crazy. He was out of the game, but they brought him back in and he was a catalyst for the team. I mean, he helped them win that World Series against the twins in 65.
And he says, okay, that's it, I'm retired. And once again, 1966, they call him back into action. However, it was different. He. He just, it didn't go as well. But why did they call him back and tell us a little bit about the 66 season? And by the way, I'll just get to it right now. They got swept by the Orioles in the World Series. That Orioles team and that pitching staff, I mean, Cuellar, McInally. Well, yeah, I mean, forget it. Yeah, no, no, they, yeah.
As good as Drysdale and Koufax were, the Orioles had quite a, quite a pitching staff. And the Dodgers were really, they, they were struggling offensively. Gilliam was not hitting. You know, this is his age, his age. 37, 38 season, something like that. And so he's, he's clearly diminished in skills, you know. And as they get into the World Series, Alston does start him in games one and two. He doesn't get a hit in either game.
Austin sits him on the bench for games three and four, so he never plays in those last two games. And you know, it's. In some ways it was kind of poetic, if you will. That he began his professional career in a lot of ways in Baltimore, and he ended it in Baltimore, you know, so it was an influential place for him. But, yeah, it just. It just didn't go the way that it would, the way that the Dodgers were hoping it would or had done in 1965.
But, yeah, he was still an integral part of that, you know, And I think one of the things that I found fascinating about this is he was one of a few players, Willie Davis, and I think there was one other that started all four of Koufax is no hitters. So Gilliam was in the lineup in 63, 64, 65, 66 for all four of Koufax's no hitters, which is kind of remarkable. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Well, he finally retired for good after the 1966 season.
He coached for the Dodgers from 67 until he passed away in 1978. Do you think. Did you hear. Can you take a guess? Do you think he ever had aspirations to be a manager? Because based off of what I read, the way the players respected him, his knowledge for the game, I think he could have been a good manager. Yeah, I think he could have been a good manager. The thing you asked about earlier aspirations, though, I don't know. I got conflicting kind of information about whether he wanted to do that.
His public comments were always, yes, I want a chance to manage, and I'm, you know, I'll wait for my chance, and, you know, I know I'll get that opportunity. He never did get the opportunity. He did manage one year in the Puerto Rican Winter League and did okay in San Juan with a team in the. In the Puerto Rican league, but he never really had another chance either in the. In the minor leagues or in the major leagues. Do I think he would have been a good manager?
Yes. But, you know, one of the things that. That always stuck with me was something that Dusty Baker said was he didn't think that Gilliam wanted that role because he didn't want to have to deal with the media and deal with all the other things that went with it. And, you know, Al Ferrara, who passed away recently, he told me he felt, and I agree with this 100%, that Gilliam would, in today's baseball, have been the best bench coach.
The person that is in the ear of the manager thinking, hey, three players, three batters later, you need to be thinking about doing this and, you know, kind of the. The baseball IQ person, you know, the guy hit it down this way last time. You need to move the defense, whatever it was, you know, kind of the. The analytics, before we got analytics. Right. I think that that would have been a great role that he would have filled and done a good job with when Tommy Lasorda did become the manager.
And, you know, I talked to players that had played with Lasorda in the minors, you know, a Ron say or a Bobby Valentine, and they all said that we all knew Lasorda, you know, that he was comfortable with all of us. Because Gilliam remembers in the majors, well, these guys are all in the minors, so they're not developing that rapport, that relationship. So. So they felt like, yeah, it was. It was a good move to make la, sort of that.
Lasorda then appointed Gilliam as hitting coach for the 77 season. And, you know, I. I think, you know, I asked Edwina, his widow, that question, did he ever want to be a manager? And her response was, he was just happy doing whatever the Dodgers wanted him to do. Yes, he would have liked a chance, but he would have done whatever they wanted him to do. He was a great ball player. I mean, for his career, he hit 266 over 17 seasons, 65 home runs, knocked in.625, stole 219 bases.
But his contribution was so much more than what he did at the plate. You know, before we get to that, though, I do have to ask. I skipped over this. Maury Wills. Yeah. Tell us about his relationship with Maury Wills. Gilliam was the perfect man to hit behind Wills. Why? Why was he the perfect guy to hit behind Wills? Yeah, he had such a great relationship until it wasn't. Yeah. Why did it sour?
You know, I. I think it soured because, you know, in a lot of ways, again, Wills was extremely outspoken, and Gilliam was not. And Wills would openly campaign after the Dodgers reacquired him in the early 70s. You know, they had sent him to Montreal or to Pittsburgh after, you know, Wills refused to go on the. The goodwill trip to Japan. They traded him away. They brought him back. And then Will starts immediately campaigning to replace Alston.
He wants to be a manager, and the Dodgers send him to Mexico, and they give him these opportunities to manage in the off season that Gilliam's just really not afforded. And Gilliam's not the one to go to the media and say, yeah, I'm going to be a manager one day. That was. But that's what Maury was. And there was. There was an incident. I Forget the exact year.
71, 72, some 73. Somewhere in that time period where Will says to a Pittsburgh reporter that, you know, he just doesn't think Gilliam has what it takes to be a manager. And it struck me as it was a bit of a slap that Gilliam was coaching and instructing players and was, by all accounts, everybody else just revered him and appreciated what he said. And Wills, I think, was just posturing and positioning. And I reached out to Wills before he passed away. Kind of a funny story.
Somebody that knows him had given me his phone number, and I sent a text to it and the response explained what I wanted. And the response was, how did you get this number? And I never got any further than that. So unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to ask him. But in Wills wrote, to give you an idea of Will's ego a little bit on this, he wrote three autobiographies. It pays to steal on the run. You know, I forget stealing the pennant or, you know, whatever the.
It was always some play on the word running and stealing. But he wrote three different autobiographies throughout the 70s and early 80s. And in one of those, he talks about having a disagreement with Gilliam because there was miscommunication when Gilliam was at the plate, Wills was. At first, Wills thought he was going to try and do a hit and run. Gilliam was waiting for him to steal. And Gilliam took a called strike three. And, you know, we've talked about how good of an eye he had.
He hated to take a strike three. There was no way that he was. If he's going to strike out, he's going to go out swinging, not going to look at strike three. Took a strike three. And Gilliam was all. Apparently was disgruntled, went to the dugout, was all upset. They got into a little bit of. A little bit of a jawing match. And apparently Frank Howard stepped in and kind of separated the two. But I think they were perfect complements for one another in the lineup on the baseball thing.
But I'm not convinced that they got along real well outside of baseball. Yeah, it's a shame. As I was saying before, he had a really 17 year career, was solid at the plate, wasn't otherworldly at the plate, but he was, as Austin said, the ultimate team player. Did what it took to help the team. Played in 43 postseason games, which, you know, is an amazing number considering there were no playoffs.
When. When Jim Gilliam played, he played in seven World Series, won four of them, coached in three other World Series. Some of the greatest players ever for the Dodgers Duke Snyder, Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale. And the list goes on through the guys in the 70s, Garvey say, Lopez, Lopes, Russell to the guys today. Is Jim Gilliam on that list? What makes him one of the greatest Dodgers ever?
Yeah, you know, the greatest is, is, is a difficult thing to really, you know, quantify. I think, I think he is extremely overlooked or forgotten as the book was titled Dodger. I think today's fan of the Dodgers probably goes into Dodger Stadium and sees number 19 hanging on the wall, you know, on the facade and, and can go visit the 19 statue and things like that, because his numbers retired, but not understand who it is or why he, his number was retired.
You know, this was a, a bit of a controversy when they retired his number when he passed away right there in 1978. And at the time, only three Dodgers had their. Four Dodgers had their numbers retired. Alston, Koufax, Campanella and Robinson. That was it. And yeah, they were all in the hall of Fame or were going to be in the hall of Fame and Gilliam was not. And, and then the Dodgers kind of adopted a stance of, we're not going to retire a number for anybody that's not in the hall of Fame.
And so they didn't retire Gil Hodges as number 14 until he made the hall of Fame. But then, but then the Dodgers did acquiesce and they, they retired as, as they should. Fernando Valens as well as 34. And so now there are two dodgers that don't have their, that are not in the hall of Fame, that have their number retired.
But I just don't know that people going to Dodger Stadium, you know, the average 30 year old who was born, you know, the mid-90s or something like that, is going to have an appreciation for what he was like. I mean, you talked about the number of postseason games he played in when there weren't Division series and wild cards. I mean, he's still 11th. All time in bases on balls in the World Series. All time. All the players he's got, he's still ranked 11th.
You know, baseball Reference is great for all of these. He's walked 24 and again, only struck out nine. Only struck out nine in the world Series. Yeah, so, you know, I, I think so. I think one of the things that really was intriguing to me and really disappointing about baseball is, is he a Hall of Fame player? Probably not. Those stats are good. They're solid, they're consistent. But he never got a single vote for the hall of Fame. Not one.
And that, to me is where he is forgotten and overlooked is there's not one person that was going to say, put him 10th on their ballot just so he gets a vote. You know, I mean, that's ludicrous. I mean, he won the Rookie of the year in 1953. He was in MVP voting in several years. He is the only player in baseball history, the only player to hit a home run in the Negro League's East West All Star Game and the Major League All Star Game. Not Banks, not Aaron, not Maze, Jim Gilliam.
Now, you shouldn't put a Hall. You shouldn't put a person in a Hall of Fame just because they made that one thing. I get that. Right. But his overall body of work is certainly, I think, impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Ichiro wasn't on somebody's hall of Fame ballot. How is that even possible? I will never understand any of that. Yeah. As a Mets fan, how is Tom Seaver not a unanimous pick? Yeah, it's just. There's hall of Fame voting is. Is a crazy thing. Zero, but zero votes. I know. It's crazy.
It's crazy. Steve, I want to thank you so much for joining me on Sports Forgotten Heroes. This has been terrific. Hey, tell everybody where they can get a copy of your book. Thank you, Warren. I appreciate it. It's available from any major retailer, paperback or ebook, so go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's Bookshop. It's published by August Publications, so you can order it direct from the publisher's website as well. You know, it's. It came out this week.
February 4th was the day that it came out. So it's. It's really exciting and I really appreciate you having me on here to help promote it. You got it, man. Anytime. It was really fun talking with you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.