Getting Started

The Roberts family was close-knit, and although we did not have much when I was a kid, we never felt deprived or thought much about it. Dad was a Welsh coal miner who migrated to Springfield in 1921 with Mom and my oldest brother and sister in search of work in the coal mines of central Illinois. He had served in the British Infantry in World War I and had been at the terrible battle at Gallipoli, although he was not in the front wave of troops that suffered horrible casualties. I came along in 1926, the fifth of six children. My middle name, Evan, was after my dad's younger brother who was killed on the western front in World War I before his 18th birthday. Growing up in Springfield, I was called Evan by everyone but Dad, who for some reason called me by my first name, Robin. As child number five, I was after Tom, Nora, Joan, and John and before George. My oldest brother, Tom, was very talented mechanically, like our dad, but died in an accident on a submarine in 1942 when he was only 21.

My first sports memory is of playing in our backyard with my brothers. We would take my dad's Bull Durham tobacco sack and fill it full of grass. Dad had brought a cricket bat with him from Wales, and we used it to hit the Bull Durham sack. Dad loved to pitch horseshoes, so we pitched a lot of horseshoes. My brothers and I would play football in the yard. I do remember that we used to whack the daylights out of each other. I was a real pain if I lost. I wanted to win every time and had a terrible temper when it didn't work out that way. I could put on quite a show.

Through the fourth grade I played ball mostly with my brothers and neighborhood kids. One weekend when I was nine years old we were playing softball down at the little grade school. Tom, who was 15, was playing shortstop, and I was playing about 10 or 12 feet behind him. A guy smashed a hard line drive right at Tom and he ducked away. I reached up and caught it and flipped it to him. I don't think Tom could believe that his little brother could catch such a shot.

On the other hand, Tom and my dad were great with anything mechanical, and my brother John was a fine carpenter, but I just did not have any ability in those areas whatsoever. We had an old Model T Ford, but Dad didn't drive. Mom did all the driving, and one day while she was driving Dad to work, another car forced her off the road, knocking the car out of alignment. Dad paid $5 for a second Model T that didn't run. Tom and he combined the parts from both to end up with one running Model T. I stood and watched in amazement.

John helped Dad a tremendous amount in adding on to the house after Tom left to join the navy. They were always making improvements to the place — expanding the house, putting in indoor plumbing and the like.

Except for horseshoes, Dad had little experience playing sports. While my brothers and I were playing basketball in the yard one day, the ball rolled over to my father who was working in the garden. He kicked it back like a soccer player. My brothers and I never played soccer, but maybe that was Dad's other sport. I remember that the Bolton Wanderers of the English League was his favorite team. Dad tried to play baseball with us only one time. He picked up a bat and tried to hit fungoes to me. He took two swings and missed and called it a day, handing the bat back to my brother John.

People just have different skills and abilities and interests. I couldn't do anything with a motor or with a hammer and nails, but I could sure catch a ball, shoot a basket, or throw a football from a young age.

My first exposure to organized sports came when I entered fifth grade at our little two-room grade school, East Pleasant Hill. That was the year a new teacher, C. B. Lindsay, arrived. He had just graduated from Illinois Normal College (now Illinois State University) and was an energetic, enthusiastic young man and a gifted teacher. He made school interesting, both in and out of the classroom. He encouraged us to put on plays within the school and to participate in county dramatic and humorous readings and math contests. I enjoyed the county competitions and won blue ribbons in each area.

I took a particular liking to Rudyard Kipling, because I associated his poems with places like India where Dad had served in the military. I memorized "Gunga Din" and "East Is East and West Is West" in grade school and can still probably get through most of "Gunga Din" all these years later. At least I impressed Eddie Oswald, my catcher and roommate with the Wilmington Blue Rocks, a few years later with my Kipling recitations. After I had children of my own, we would ask the boys to read a favorite poem at dinner, and I would try to impress them with a few lines from Kipling. I don't think it worked.

The first time I had my picture in the paper, however, had nothing to do with academics, athletics, or poetry. One evening someone shot two people at a tavern near East Pleasant Hill School. The police chased the assailant right past the school. The morning paper reported that the gunman had thrown his gun away near the school. Tommy Fahrenbacher and I arrived at school early and decided to go look for the gun. The paper had suggested that the gun was thrown on the shoulder of the road, but we couldn't find it. Tommy decided that maybe the gun was up in the pasture. He climbed up the bank and over the fence and immediately spotted the .45 revolver.

Tommy put his red farmer handkerchief around the handle, and we carried it back to school. Mr. Lindsay took us to the Springfield police station right away. The police chief thanked us, and the Illinois State Register put our picture on the front page, the first time I hit the papers.

C.B. also loved sports, and he organized school softball and basketball teams so that we could play against other schools. In basketball we had only an outdoor cinder court, so we played all of our games away. I was in school with C.B. for four years, fifth through eighth grade, and played softball and basketball every year. He stressed good sportsmanship and good, clean competition, and I never missed a game. I took to basketball right away and could play softball well, too, so it was pretty clear from then on that I had a knack for sports.

At home during those years, I followed Chicago Cubs games on the radio. My younger brother, George, and I would put the radio in the window and stand outside and play the game along with the Cubs. When the Cubs were in the field we would put our gloves on and play in the field. When they came to bat, we would grab our bats, which had plenty of nails and black tape, and be ready. If Stan Hack was hitting, we would bat left-handed; if Billy Herman or Gabby Hartnett was hitting, we would swing right-handed. We would be out there every day, playing the game along with our Cubs.

My mother became a big baseball fan as well and would listen to the Cubs games. She was serving the family dinner when Gabby Hartnett hit his famous "homer in the gloamin'" against Mace Brown of the Pirates to catapult the Cubs into first place at the tail end of the 1938 season. Mom got so excited that she dropped a dish of potatoes.

Even though I really enjoyed listening to Cubs games, I never gave a thought to becoming a major league ballplayer myself. To me, guys like Bill Nicholson, who was my favorite Cubs player, were in another world, totally beyond my grasp. (Ironically, Bill would later become my teammate on the Phillies.) And my attitude did not change all through grade school, high school, and college. I was always focused totally on the next day or the next game and never gave a thought to the future. I just wanted to play the sport that was in season.

In addition to rooting for the Cubs, as a youngster I really admired Lou Gehrig and Byron "Whizzer" White, the star running back for the University of Colorado who was a Rhodes Scholar and was later appointed to the United States Supreme Court. A little later Otto Graham, who starred in three sports and played in the band at Northwestern, captured my attention. I think I was drawn to those people because of how they conducted themselves off the field as much as by their athletic success. They were all terrific role models.

Beginning when I was 12, I spent the summer playing baseball in a league that we kids organized and ran. There were two teams, four kids on a team. The most valuable player was Doris Koons; she was a five-tool player. We kept statistics in an "official" score book all summer. After every game we would figure our batting averages.

Later on I played basketball for Ferguson's Market. Our practices were at Kumler Gym, where the cost was a dollar an hour. We had 10 players so we each brought a dime. We just found a way to play. Our parents weren't involved, but my folks did enjoy watching me play.

In eighth grade, C.B. organized a sports banquet near the end of the school year. Grover Cleveland Alexander, the great former Phillies pitcher, was down on his luck and staying at the St. Nicholas Hotel in Springfield. The hotel was owned by a man named John Connor, who was really just looking after Alexander. C.B. knew about Alexander and asked "Ol' Pete" to speak at our banquet. Most people there did not know that Alexander was one of the greatest pitchers ever to throw a baseball, but I did know something about him because I was already following baseball.

Of course, Alexander won 373 games in his illustrious career, tied for third on the all-time list with Christy Mathewson and behind only Cy Young and Walter Johnson. He broke in with the Phillies in 1911 with perhaps the best rookie season ever, winning 28 games and losing only 13. He won 30 or more games for the Phillies for three consecutive seasons, including their pennant-winning 1915 season. That year he threw four one-hitters and compiled a minuscule 1.22 earned run average.

Alexander suffered from epilepsy and alcoholism that plagued him his entire life. In 1926, at age 40, he became the hero for the St. Louis Cardinals in their seven-game World Series victory over the New York Yankees, pitching complete game wins in Games 2 and 6 and then saving Game 7. Popular lore has it that Ol' Pete had celebrated his win in Game 6 in his normal way, thinking his duties in the Series were complete, and was significantly hung over for Game 7 when manager Rogers Hornsby called him from the bullpen to face Tony Lazzeri and protect a one-run lead with two out and the bases loaded in the seventh inning. After taking a strike, Lazzeri smashed a line drive down the left-field line that was foul by less than a foot. Alexander then struck out Lazzeri swinging and retired the Yanks in the next two innings to save the Series.

After the meal, C.B. introduced Alexander and you could have heard a pin drop, the room was so quiet. He got up and said, "Boys, I hope you enjoy sports, they are a wonderful thing. But I will warn you about one thing: don't take to drink, because look what it has done to me." Then he sat down. That was all he said, but I have never forgotten it.

Sitting at the banquet that night, I had no idea about the irony of my hearing Alexander's brief speech or how my baseball career would track his in many ways. In about 12 years or so, I would become the Phillies' first 20-game winner since Alex. That same year I would help pitch the Phillies to their first pennant since 1915 when Alex won 31 games. In 1958 I would win my 191st game in a Phillies uniform, breaking Alex's club record. I remember thinking back at that time to that eighth-grade banquet at East Pleasant Hill when Alexander had made his brief remarks. Finally, in 1976, I would become the second Phillies pitcher elected to the Hall of Fame, following Ol' Pete.

Phillies owner Bob Carpenter invited Alexander to the 1950 World Series to commemorate Alex's role with the 1915 club. I never got to have a conversation with Alexander, but, in another irony, C. B. Lindsay bumped into Alex outside Yankee Stadium following the last game of the Series. C.B. introduced himself and reminded Alex of their previous acquaintance in Springfield. Ol' Pete died only about a month later in a motel room in Nebraska. He was 63 years of age.

I had a brush with another great pitcher during my youth in Springfield. In 1936, when I was not yet 10 years old, Bob Feller came to Springfield to throw out the first ball for the final game of the Illinois State Amateur Baseball Championship. Feller was only 17 himself but was already a phenom with the Cleveland Indians. I was in the stands and managed to meet him and get his autograph on a slip of paper before the game. Unfortunately, I somehow lost the piece of paper during the game and never got home with my precious autograph. Since then Bob has replaced it with an autographed baseball.

When my dad came over from Wales, he mortgaged two acres of land and a two-room house, which he had to move to the property. As the family grew larger, he added rooms with the help of my older brothers. They pitched in and helped with the carpentry, the plumbing, and the heating system. As I mentioned, I was not much good with my hands and I really did not have any interest in learning. Dad even accused me of breaking garden hoes on purpose. I did break a couple, but not on purpose.

Sometimes when we were working on the house or around the property as I got a little older, I would get an offer to go play sandlot baseball somewhere. I would ask Dad if I could go play ball, and my brother John would say, "Get him out of here. He's not any help anyhow." So off I would go. I guess it worked out OK because later on, when I signed a professional baseball contract, I was able to build my folks a new house with my bonus money.

In ninth grade, I started at Lanphier High School in Springfield where my brother John was a senior. John was a good athlete and played football, basketball, and baseball there. But my first day, the principal came and took me out of class and said, "Evan, you can't go to school here. They've moved the boundary and you'll have to go to Springfield High."

So even though my brother was a senior at Lanphier, I had to go to Springfield High, which was way on the other side of town. It meant that I had to take a long bus ride across town back and forth to school every day. I was pretty small, probably about 5'4" and 104 pounds, but I played on the ninth-grade football and basketball teams. There was no freshman baseball team.

My sophomore year I had grown to 5'6" and about 125 pounds and went out for varsity football. I practiced every day but never got to dress for a game. It was quite a hardship because after practice I would take a late bus and get home about 7:30. My mother would ask, "Why don't you quit?" because I was not even getting to dress for the games. For some reason, I just couldn't quit. I kept thinking I would get to dress for a game, but I ended up going the whole year without dressing. I would watch the games from the stands after practicing all week.

On Sundays I would show up in a pasture and play tackle football with adults. I was 14 years old, and we played without pads. Whoever showed up played. I couldn't wait for Sunday afternoons; I really enjoyed the competition.

I also went out for basketball and was cut from the team after the second practice. Later on that year I played on a team organized by a young man named Herschal Moore, sponsored by Ferguson's Market, and made it to the finals of the school intramural tournament. We played that final game before a varsity game, and I had a good game, scoring 22 points. After the game, Mark Peterman, the varsity basketball coach, came up to me and asked, "Why didn't you come out for varsity basketball?"

I said, "I did. You cut me the second day."

He was also the baseball coach, and I made the varsity baseball team, playing first base for most of the year. One of my teammates was Ogden Wise, who had a cup of coffee in 1944 with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

After my sophomore year, the school board changed the boundaries again, so I could attend Lanphier High. I switched right away because it was so much closer and more convenient. My father worked as a night watchman at Sangamo Electric Company directly across the street from Lanphier High School. When my mother picked him up she dropped me off at school. I also had grown to 5'10" and 165 pounds by my junior year and had the size to compete at the varsity level. I started on the football team, where I played end, the basketball team as a forward, and the baseball team as the third baseman. We won the city title in football, defeating all four of our city rivals and winning six of nine overall. The highlight of the fall was when we routed Cathedral High, the defending city champions, 26–0. I then made all-city in basketball along with our leading scorer, Rudy Favero.

By my senior year I was about 6'0" and 185 pounds. That fall, 1943, we had a very talented football team under Don Anderson, our terrific high school coach. We won our Central Conference and swept to our second straight city title, winning all our games but for a tie against Cathedral. We had a number of fine athletes, but Billy Stone at halfback was truly outstanding. Billy went on to star at Bradley Tech and then played for a number of years with the Chicago Bears.