LABOR OF LOVE, Part III: KOM baseball rosters crowded with heroes

(Note: This is the third of a multi-part series. The next part is planned for Wednesday’s sports pages.)

For the previous 2,500 years — at least — humankind has flirted with the fascination of a fountain of youth — magic water that could biologically restore one to the springtime of their life.

Unfortunately — or, perhaps more appropriate, fortunately — the reservoir of this bewitching brew has never been discovered.

But, through his exhausting digging through Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri baseball league history (1946-52) — of which Bartlesville was a major part — John Hall uncovered an elixir that — without any legerdemain — has made grizzled old baseball warriors feel like prime-time stars.

Among the fruits of Hall’s labor of love have been the KOM Report, a regular publication that spotlights KOM history, the men who brought it life, fire and heart, obituaries, features and other items of interest.

More importantly, the reports helped former teammates and rivals reach out to make personal contact — one of the few joys, certainly, of the declining years of so many who have passed away.

In addition, for 13 years, from 1995 through 2008, Hall inspired the holding of annual reunions at the various cities that had been home to KOM Class D minor league teams — cities such as Bartlesville, Ponca City, Carthage (Mo.), Independence (Mo.), Iola (Kan.) and others.

“In writing the reports over the years, it was satisfying reuniting former teammates with one another and being told my doing so placed a finality to their time in baseball,” Hall said.

One of the former KOM products was Bill Virdon, who played for the Independence (Mo.) Yankees and later backed up Mickey Mantle with the New York Yankees and later managed the Pittsburgh Pirates and Houston Astros. He died in 2021 at age 90.

But, well before that, Virdon complimented the impact of Hall’s work.

“Bill Virdon … said finding the former (KOM) players and getting them together made it seem as though all the guys were young again, and to him it was the single greatest thing he had seen in his 50 yards in baseball,” Hall said.

Hall’s unswerving work has been to determine the number — and names — of the men who filled KOM rosters. After the league folded in 1952, the information available contained only about 57 percent of the total number of league players.

Hall discovered nearly 1,700 players who donned a KOM League uniform — and he has either met or been in touch with 1,400 of them. Among the other 300 (approximately), many had died and he was unable to make contact with the others. This was back in 1995.

“I determined their fate, and in many instances became friends with their family,” he said.

So, who were these men, these leathery roughhewn battlers or fuzz-faced youngsters?

Among their number were several that had felt some of their promise sapped away in the heat of World War II battle but still kept their pro baseball dreams alive.

“I could fill a book regarding the young men who went to war and came home with their baseball dreams intact,” Hall said. “There were a number of things mitigating against their ambitions of making it to the big leagues.”

These factors included advance age, rustiness in skills, mental and physical challenges and the need to provide for a wife and family. Many of these gritty heroes chose to leave baseball in order to make a decent living and begin a career.

But, there were exceptions.

One of them was “Fidgety Ike” Henderson, who pitched in 1946 for the Bartlesville Oilers (the team’s name later was changed to the Pirates).

Henderson had served as a tail-gunner for many bombing missions over Europe, Hall explained. In fact, 12 of the planes he served on were shot down — and he was the lone survivor for each of them. Fighting through the memories of the horrors of war — and a related insomnia condition — Henderson never missed his turn on the mound. After gritting through that season, Henderson went on to eventually find a calling as a Baptist evangelist.

David Cox, who played KOM ball for Pittsburg (Kan.), had served in the infantry in Europe. Any loud noise sent him diving to the dirt. Young boys used to throw firecrackers when Cox was in the batting circle just to see him go to the ground, Hall said.

Al Kluttz was another war hero. He had begun his pro career prior to the war. After the war, he eventually was sent down to Carthage in the KOM.

“The former Carthage players said that when Kulttz showered it revealed there wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t look like chopped beef from the shrapnel that he had acquired … in Europe,” Hall said.

A more tragic, but in some odd way perhaps triumphant, story of a former KOM player involved some serious mental issues. After coming home from war, he attempted to kill his parents with a life, but didn’t inflict permanent damage. After being institutionalized for a while, the athlete returned to pitch in KOM, spending part of his time in Bartlesville.

“I got to know this man pretty well before his death and he was a genuinely nice man,” Hall said.

Hall also shared a story of incredible poignancy related to his research.

It began in 1950 when a baseball team crowned a young lady as its queen. Presenting her with the tiara was the team captain. In a moment of impetuosity, he told the queen “if you do not marry me, I will never marry.”

The story picked up 44 years later when Hall located that team captain, with the help of the Catholic Church. The former captain had attended seminary and in 1994 had become pastor emeritus of a church in Kentucky. As a trade-off for providing information about his life, the former-KOMer-become priest asked Hall to find out what had become of the queen from 1950.

Hall looked into it and shared with the priest the queen’s whereabouts. This all took place in the summer of 1994.

“In a Christmas card that year I received a message from the queen,” Hall said. “She said that after 1950 she had neither seen or heard from the captain of that team.”

The queen’s message to Hall continued with a reference to angels and told Hall she thought he (Hall) was one of them.

“She went on to say that she had prayed for many years that if she could find out somehow whatever happened to the captain and if he was happy, she could die in peace,” Hall said. Additionally, she said her husband and four boys always knew about the captain and that special place in her life.”

Six months later, the former queen and the former captain met at a KOM reunion held in the town where they had lived all those years ago.

“Upon arriving for that reunion, the queen met me and asked that I stay put until she got back,” Hall said. “When she returned, a gentleman was by her side and immediately I said, ‘Nice to meet you Father Tom.’”

Even decades after it closed for business, the KOM was still working miracles in its players’ lives.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: John Hall helped spotlight courage in KOM baseball universe