Ulmont Baker

Ulmont W. Baker was born November 11, 1908 in Portsmouth, Kentucky and grew up across the Ohio River in Portsmouth, Ohio. As a youth he discovered a talent for the game of baseball and in 1928 he signed his first professional contract with Greensboro, NC of the Piedmont League. After two seasons with that club he moved on Alexandria, LA in the Cotton States League. At mid-season in 1930, that club folded so Baker joined Shreveport of the Texas League. In 1931 he played for Fort Worth in the same league and the 1932 season was split between Fort Worth and San Antonio. Next it was on to the Mid-Atlantic League where Baker wore the uniform of four different teams over two seasons: Huntington, Beckley, Dayton and Charleston. In 1935 he played only 27 games for Fort Wayne in the Three I League and was hitting .319, but decided to join a semi-pro industrial team in that same town. In 1936, Baker played with a semi-pro industrial team in or around St. Augustine, FL before playing 20 games for the St Augustine pro team in the Florida State League. In 1937, he spent the entire season playing semi-pro ball in St. Augustine.
Lured by the offer of a high salary, Baker signed on with Concord, NC the Carolina League for the 1938 season. Not a member of the National Association, the governing body of minor league baseball, the league was still considered professional in every sense of the word. Players came from around the country for the chance to make good money (more than they could for most minor league teams) and the opportunity to have a hard-to-come-by job during the off-season in the textile mills. The league folded after that season and Concord entered a new team in the Class D North Carolina State League. Baker signed on with that team and remained with them for three seasons, serving as manger in 1941. Baker's final games in professional baseball came in 1942, when he appeared in 22 games with Knoxville, TN before being drafted and joining the Navy Seabees.
Ulmont Baker's career reflected the ups and downs of players in baseball's minor leagues during the depression. Players were forced to go where the money was, which is how Baker ended up in Concord, North Carolina and became part of the story of the Carolina League.
This interview was conducted by Hank Utley in 1991.

"I played baseball year after year with players all around me that went to the big leagues and I didn't go. Another thing, I was feeling you're going backwards, you gotta get out of this. I should have played 5 years and got on out, but I loved it. I loved the game. I always thought next year I'll go to the top.

"That fellow, Judge Bramham, president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues. Let me tell you about him. That damn Judge Braham. You take 1928 to 1933, his ass weighed a ton. He would sit on you. Whatever he said, that was it. That ol' bastard ruled with a heavy hand. He wouldn't dicker with you. I finished the season of 1932 with San Antonio in the Texas League. It was during the Great Depression and I didn't get paid at the end of the season. They owed me $500-600 and I wrote that damn Judge Braham after I couldn't get the money. He wrote back and told me what to do and I had already done every thing he told me to do. I wrote and told him that. He wrote back and said, "If you know any other way to get it-get it." The ol' bastard, I didn't try to be ugly with him, I needed the money. But he ran the minor leagues. Whatever he said, that was it.

"And you know, I finally got the money. The St. Louis Browns took over the San Antonio team in 1933 and paid me just like that. I put it in the bank and four days later the bank busted-the Depression you know. That was a lot of money then. Oh my, I hated to lose that. I finally got about a dime on the dollar. I've wondered about that money many times-how aggravated and worried I was and then how pleased I was to get it and then it was gone again. In a weeks time I had the money and then I didn't have it.

"I wish I had never pulled such a stunt as jumping that contract. I was in Indiana. I was mad at the owners but I liked my teammates and that wasn't treating 'em right pulling a stunt like that. Everybody was going broke during the Great Depression. There was 20 ball players trying for every position on the team. Things were tough. And those semi-pros were paying good money with a possible job. I begin to feel like I was going backwards. In my mind, I was saying, "You gotta get out of this", but I loved the game. Lord, how I loved the game. That's how I ended up jumping that contract. After I left, maybe the owners were glad to see me leave and just turned in my outright release to that damn Judge Bramham. (Note: All of the players and family members I interviewed, every one of them, prefaced Judge Bramham's name with the word-"damn". I began to think that was part of his title.)

"I first met Bill Steineke at Fort Worth in 1932 when I was playing ball in the Texas League. Then I would see him all over the country. I'll tell you one thing, he never wanted a job. He was a hustler. He would play organize ball one year and then disappear and play in some semi-pro league, using a different name. Those semi-pros paid more money than some of the minor league teams, the Great Depression you know. But now I wish I had never met him. (When Baker said that, his wife Wilma, a high school teacher in Concord, N.C. in 1941 shouted from the kitchen, "If you had never met Bill Steineke, you would have never met me". Baker quickly added, "Well, some good did come out of that.")

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