From Castoff to Hero: Another Note on the Blues
In 1936, Alfred Lovell Dean, better known by his nickname Chubby, decided to take his baseball career into his own hands. He was all of 20 years old, a native of Mount Airy, North Carolina, and a valued pitcher on the Duke baseball team — until he quit, that is.
Maybe he left due to the lack of run support offered by his collegiate teammates — a 16-strikeout game in the 1935 season ended in a loss on his record. That same year, “renowned” baseball statistician J. Gaskill McDaniel rated Dean the most valuable player of the Coastal Plains League, which might have increased Dean’s perception that his talents were being wasted where he was. At any rate, in cold early days of the year, Dean packed up his things and headed north to find his fortune. His sights were aimed no lower than the New York Yankees.
But the New York Yankees didn’t see what J. Gaskill McDaniel saw. They saw a 20-year-old with a wild arm and limited hitting ability. These were the Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig, whose every season began with an expectation of a World Series title. So they turned Chubby Dean down. There was no place for him there.
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There was a place for him, though, a little to the southwest. Connie Mack was looking to bolster a last-place Philadelphia Athletics team that had been on a steady decline since their seven-game World Series loss to the Cardinals in 1931. He was willing to take a chance on almost anyone who showed talent. On February 10, Duke baseball coach John W. Coombs confirmed from his hospital bed in Palestine, North Carolina, that his erstwhile pitcher had signed with the A’s. Read the rest of this entry »