THE IMPORTANCE OF PROPER RESEARCH
WASHINGTON, D.C. Sept. 17, 2018 — In my column last week on the controversy surrounding the Andre Rodgers Baseball Stadium, I made a glaring mistake that persons familiar with the history of baseball in The Bahamas should have easily noticed. In mentioning some of the talented Bahamian players who aspired to follow in the footsteps of Andre Rodgers, the first Bahamian to make it to the Major League, I noted that Edmundo (Ed) Moxey, who died recently, was “a great catcher and after retiring from professional baseball, he opened a popular restaurant and bar called ‘The Dugout’ in the shopping plaza next door to the Nassau Guardian building.”
It is true that after he ended his quest to become a Major League player, Moxey opened a restaurant and bar called “The Dugout” near the Nassau Guardian, but I made an egregious mistake when I said “The Dugout” was one of my favourite hangouts when I was Editor of the Guardian, given the fact that I was Editor of the Guardian from 1997 to 2001, almost three decades after Moxey retired from baseball in 1969. However, “The Dugout” was indeed one of my favourite hangouts, but this was during the early 1970s.
It is the kind of mistake for which there is no excuse, and I still don’t understand why I did not notice it after checking my column several times before posting it in BAHAMAS CHRONICLE and on Facebook. I had planned to write my column last week on whether The Bahamas should consider replacing the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as our final Court of Appeal, but remarks reportedly made by Minister of Works Desmond Bannister about the high cost of the Andre Rodgers Baseball Stadium was a “hot topic” of discussion on Wendall Jones’ “Issues of the Day” talk show on LOVE-97.
Ordinarily, before writing a column, I generally do the necessary research on the topic about which I am about to write, and obviously I should have done so in this case; however, I am very familiar with the facts related to the development of baseball in The Bahamas as a result of my years as a sports reporter and President of the Bahamas Baseball Association (BBA) in the 1960s and 1970s, so I decided to rely on my memory to stress the importance of having a baseball stadium named after Andre Rodgers, the first Bahamian to sign a professional baseball contract in 1954 and make it to the Major League three years later, a remarkable accomplishment considering that baseball was a relatively new sport in The Bahamas when Andre decided to utilize the outstanding skills he possessed as a cricket player to pursue a career in professional baseball.
As I noted in last week’s column, Andre’s success “became the benchmark for gifted young players to emulate, and in the immediate years after his Major League debut, a number of talented Bahamian players were signed to professional contracts. Among those who also made it to the Major League were Tony Curry, Ed Armbrister, Wenty Ford and Wil Culmer, but with a little bit of luck – and in some cases, a better attitude – the number of Bahamians making it to the Major Leagues would be considerably higher.”
Ed Moxey was arguably the most talented catcher in The Bahamas when he signed a professional baseball contract in 1961, and I still don’t understand why he did not make it to the Majors. According to information gleaned from the Internet, “Moxey tore up lower levels in the minors, batting .356 for Class A Modesto in 1963 and winning promotion to Double-A. He hit .362 for Quincy of the Midwest League (also Class A) in 1964. He never made it beyond Double-A in the U.S., playing parts of four seasons at that level. In his last pro season, 1969, he played 26 games for Reynosa in the Mexican League, which is classified as Triple A. Over nine years as a pro, he hit .293 with 114 homers.”
What I did not mention in last week’s column was that there were literally scores of other very good baseball players in the country in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s who likewise had Major League potential, particularly on the island of Bimini, where they seemingly had a “human baseball factory.” Being so close to Miami, Bimini players honed their skills by regularly playing games against teams in Miami, resulting in a number of them attracting the interest of professional scouts.
The most successful of the Bimini players from that era was Randy Rolle, who played in the Atlanta Braves farm system and made it to AAA, but players like George Weech and Oriel Rolle also possessed the skills to make it to the Majors.
In the mid-1960s, when I was President of the BBA, one year we played regular season games simultaneously on weekends in New Providence, Grand Bahama and Bimini. The BBA used to charter a plane in Miami on Saturdays, and transport teams to the island where their games were scheduled. It was an expensive undertaking, but we managed to get through that season fairly well financially. One reason was that whenever Bimini played in New Providence, the ball park used to be filled to capacity. Additionally, as part of an agreement reached prior to the start of the season, Bimini players agreed to pay a portion of the charter flight expense.
For reasons that now serve no purpose to regurgitate, the quality of baseball played in The Bahamas steadily declined in the 1980s, but thanks to a new crop of committed and dedicated administrators, baseball is unquestionably headed in the right direction and there currently are scores of talented young Bahamian players in the “pipeline” headed towards the Major Leagues.
Clearly, this should be reason enough for the Government of The Bahamas to establish the completion of the Andre Rodgers Baseball Stadium as a top priority for aspiring young Bahamian professional players to hone their skills. What’s more, a progressive-thinking Minister of Sports should look into the possibility of attracting one of the Major League franchises to use the newly constructed stadium as their spring training base. Florida and Arizona are popular spring training states for Major League teams primarily because of their pleasant weather during the months prior to the start of the Major League season, but isn’t The Bahamas one of the world’s leading tourist destinations because of our year-round good weather?
This being the case, whether the stadium ever becomes financially viable should not even be a consideration, an issue that apparently was raised by Minister Bannister in an article published in The Tribune.
