FULTON, Ill. (AP) - Walt Fields wasn’t thinking about his future, the fact that baseball didn’t pay much, or that he couldn’t play forever. He was only thinking about catching the baseball.
With the bases loaded and his Valdosta Dodgers an out away from eking out a victory, the cleanup hitter launched a fly ball tagged for beyond the right field fence. Walt, the centerfielder, read the ball off the bat, broke on a beeline for the fence, leapt and took away a grand slam.
“I had to save that game for my pitcher,” he said. “The pitchers loved me, and I loved baseball.”
Funny. He’d just gotten done asking his manager, William Welp, for his release from the Georgia ballclub. At that time, Walt was worried for his future.
“I was a poor guy, and I knew I needed to quit this screwing around,” he said. “But he said, ’No, I’m not going to release you.’”
Welp asked him a favor: Stick around so the Dodgers’ scouting director, Wid Mathews, could see him play. Fun fact: Mathews later would become general manager of the Chicago Cubs - the other team that courted Walt heavily as he served in the Navy in World War II.
When Mathews, once a fantastic outfielder in his own right, saw Walt make that game-saving grab?
“He said, ’Hey, kid, have you got your bag packed? We’re going to Daytona Beach, and you’re going to play every day,’” Walt said.
Thus began a series of instances in which he tried but failed to get out of sports, only to put his fingerprints on the annals of dozens of professional, college and high school teams.
Walt finished the season in Class D Daytona Beach, where he hit .302, a full 100 points higher than he hit in Valdosta. He struck out just four times in 106 at-bats, compared to fanning 17 times in 67 at-bats in Valdosta, a testament to his raw talent, not to mention how quickly he learned.
After all, he’d never had any coaching growing up, but he organized games for the 12 siblings on the family farm, where they used cow chips for bases.
They didn’t have baseball in high school, so he played hoops. He was a flat-out grinder who couldn’t shoot a lick, but he could jump over opponents for rebounds and beat everyone to loose balls.
So he’d never seen 90-mph fastballs until he returned from the Pacific and joined the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm system. He sure as heck had never seen any of the other junk pitchers threw, and back then, off-speed stuff was the bulk of a pitcher’s arsenal.
Even though in a few months he beefed up his average, all but eliminated his strikeouts, and carved out a reputation as a dynamo of a centerfielder, he made good on his pledge to himself. He went to college at Butler University, where he would play baseball and basketball.
The Dodgers sent him a contract in December of his freshman year, telling him to report to spring training. He never responded.
“Oh, was it hard, and I never told anybody at college,” he said. “I never stopped thinking about baseball. I just loved it. I often think, ’What if I’d stayed?’”
Eager to get on to the next chapter of his life, Walt graduated from Butler in 3 years with his physical education degree. Little did he know how good the next chapter would be.
He took a job teaching and coaching in Early Park, where he met a beautiful grade school teacher, Dorothy Abbott. They were married that year, and would have five children, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Walt taught and coached - with great success - in three school districts, setting up programs in all of them, before trying to get out again. A college buddy told him about new Catholic school that had opened in Indianapolis, Scecina Memorial High School, so he took a job there.
Then the mother of all opportunities came along: Marian College (today Marian University) needed an athletic director and coaches.
“Oooh . It was prestigious, and there was ego,” he said. “I figured I’d like to give it a try before I hang up my spikes. You want to make a contribution to society that’s worthwhile.”
He was there about 15 years and, after helping a community college in Ohio develop, he finally retired in 1978 after setting up a number of programs and the financial aid system at the school. Dorothy’s father had died, and left the house she grew up in along U.S. Route 30 between Morrison and Fulton, to her and one of her sisters - the same house Walt lives in today.
She wasn’t wild about moving back to the boondocks, but it was time to settle down and enjoy their family and the picturesque woods behind the house.
“Dorothy was so supportive, and she let me do what I wanted to do,” Walt said. He lost her 11 years ago.
Walt got to scratch the baseball itch again through a stint as a Major League Baseball scout. He still adores the game, as he should. He says it saved his life.
He grew up on a farm in Batesville, Indiana, where his dad, a WW I hero in the infantry, fell on hard times.
“He was a good man, but got to drinking,” Walt said. “It was a dysfunctional family. Actually, it was tough on us. Playing ball saved my life.”
Walt developed a stutter as a result of the dysfunction, and it actually helped get him in the door with the Chicago Cubs.
After he’d tried out with the Dodgers in Indy, he hitchhiked to the Cubs’ and White Sox’s spring training site in French Lick, Indiana.
Sox manager Jimmy Dykes, who’d been feuding with Cubs manager Jimmy Wilson, was being interviewed by reporters when Walt made his way through the scrum. Once he got Dykes’ attention, stuttering, he accidentally called him Jimmy Wilson. Dykes kicked him out of camp, but once Wilson heard about his nemesis’ reaction?
“He said, ’Get him a uniform,’” Walt said.
Colorful anecdotes aside, there are a handful of Halls of Fame that boast Walt’s name. Perhaps most notable, however, was an honor he received about a year ago, when a handful of former Marian students established the Walter Fields Scholarship for incoming freshmen.
“Only a smattering of those kids were really quality players,” he said. “but we built such a bond that those kids last year scrounged up $50,000 and created a scholarship in my name. That’s the best tribute you can ever get: that people have an appreciation for what you’ve done.”
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Source: The (Sterling) Daily Gazette, https://bit.ly/2eCfuqN
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Information from: The Daily Gazette, https://www.saukvalley.com
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