Читать книгу Bad Boys, Bad Times. The Cleveland Indians and Baseball in the Prewar Years, 1937–1941 онлайн

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Ralston “Rollie” Hemsley was born on June 24, 1907, in Syracuse, Ohio, located in the southeast portion of the state. The small Meigs County mining town sat across the Ohio River from West Virginia. Local folklore claimed when the river reached a certain low point, anybody could wade across and visit the neighboring state.

Rollie’s father, Joe, had a keen interest in baseball. When not laboring in the coal mines, he played or watched games at the nearby King Field. Rollie and his brothers, Doug and Joe Jr., followed the head of the family to the mines, collecting six dollars a day for backbreaking work. Rollie would later remark, “Baseball’s a soft job compared to blasting your way through those hunks of coal.”

When Rollie reached his twelfth birthday, he began training to be a big-time catcher. Joe took him into the backyard and threw him curveballs by the hour. Before long Rollie played at King Field, catching for Joe’s semipro team. The ballpark had a grandstand, a dirt field, and a deep center field, complete with a wide area of cornstalks. Teams from the Ohio Valley League scheduled games at the ground, and occasionally a Major League club stopped by for an exhibition game.