Eddie Neville of the Durham Bulls

For many fans in the 1940s and 1950s, it wasn’t the exploits of major leagues that made baseball so popular. It was the local minor league heroes—often lacking the talent or luck to make it to the majors—who dominated their thoughts of baseball.
One of these players was Eddie Neville. A gutsy, left-handed pitcher from the sandlots of Baltimore, Neville made his mark on the minor league towns he played in, particularly Durham, North Carolina, where he is still the winningest pitcher in the history of the Durham Bulls. His story is one of Class D pennant races and winters spent in the Canal Zone of Panama, all the time chasing the elusive dream to play in the big leagues. Blended in are looks at minor league personalities such as “Muscle” Shoals and “Turkey” Tyson and future major leaguers such as Tom Lasorda and Dick Groat.

Bill Kirkland has a long and varied newspaper career as owner, publisher, editor and reporter. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Bill Kirkland
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 230
Bibliographic Info: 30 photos, appendix, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2014 [1993]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7739-5
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments   vii
Prologue  xi
The Baltimore Kid  1
Pitching in Paradise  14
Welcome to Tarboro  24
The Boys of Winter  38
Striking Gold  50
The House of Outs  69
Mastering the Muscle Men  87
Holy Toledo!  104
Back in “Bull City”  121
Managing by Numbers  143
No More Tomorrows  153
Shattered Memories  174
Epilogue  187
Appendix: Neville’s Pitching Statistics  191
Bibliography  193
Index  199

“A book as joyous as the summer game itself and it is packed with the names and the heroics of the people who were the heroes of the Carolina League…Kirkland has made sure the game’s never over for those of us who know who Eddie Neville was”—News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.); “well written, balanced, and especially well researched”—The North Carolina Historical Review; “from the moment I sat down…I was hooked…uniformly well written from beginning to end…one of the finest books I have read on the minors. This book is a must for anyone who has written, or even vaguely contemplating writing about the minors. We all can learn something from this book…impeccably researched…should be in everybody’s baseball library”—SABR Minor League Committee Newsletter.