The Continental League by Russell D. Buhite

Author:Russell D. Buhite [Russell D. Buhite]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780803271906
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2014-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

4.

The Western Carolina League

In the fall of 1959, a delegation of prosperous businessmen in several western North Carolina cities came to visit John Moss in Kings Mountain. The group, all of them baseball enthusiasts with experience in the game, wanted to explore the feasibility of reviving the Western Carolina League, which had operated as a successful Class D circuit from 1948 through 1952. Because Moss had helped organize the league in 1948 and had been its president during that season, members of the delegation considered him the logical choice to assist in their efforts. Their decision was not only logical but wise.

John Moss was an important figure in the history of baseball, a leading light for the Minor League game for nearly half a century. Born in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, in 1918, he was the youngest child of a mother who died in childbirth; his grandparents raised him. His grandfather was a prominent member of the local community who had settled in Kings Mountain in 1870 and went on to become a subcontractor and builder of textile mills in the area. John got his interest in baseball and his ability to play the game from his father, who was an outstanding pitcher in Cleveland County, North Carolina.

Young Moss played baseball through high school in the midthirties, then as a light-hitting second baseman signed a Minor League contract with the Washington Senators. He went to spring training with other Senators’ Minor Leaguers but did not play professional baseball beyond that one spring. He returned to Kings Mountain and played semipro ball until World War II, when he served in the military. During the war he attended New York University for a time, majoring in business, but did not complete a degree. After the war he came back to his hometown to work and play more local baseball. He also became a leader in organizing a prominent, high-quality semipro league in the area.

The mid- to late 1940s were a halcyon time for Minor League professional baseball, with leagues proliferating across the country, until in 1949 at peak numerical strength, fifty-nine leagues became part of Organized Baseball. Nearly every town of a population approximating ten to fifteen thousand had a local ball club. Moss’s organizational skills, not to mention his affability and his uncommon common sense did not escape notice among baseball people in his area of North Carolina, and when sports-minded community leaders organized the Western Carolina League in 1948 they turned to him to become league president. He accepted the offer and at age twenty-nine became the youngest league president in Minor League history. The Western Carolina League, a Class D circuit, prospered under his direction in 1948, then went on to four more years of operation until it folded after the 1952 season.

In 1949 Moss received an offer of more money and a chance to run a ball club when the owner of the Rock Hill, South Carolina, franchise in the Class B Tri-State League asked him to take the position of business/general manager of the team.

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