Local newspaper spearheaded All-Star baseball tryout

by Ron Brocato

By Ron Brocato, Sports
Clarion Herald

As World War II was in its final stages, baseball was still “America’s Pastime,” particularly in New Orleans, where hardball and softball diamonds were strewn throughout several neighborhoods. During the 1940s, not only did New Orleans’ prep schools sweep the state rally championship games, but the runners-up were also Crescent City schools over that 10-year span.

The national interest in baseball was at a fever pitch.

The National Football League was, for the most part, an unknown entity until 1958, and pro basketball was in its infancy in 1946.

So when Esquire Magazine sponsored its first All-American Boys’ Baseball game in New York shortly after D-Day (1944), it was a big deal. New Orleans was one of 29 cities to send its best 16- and 17-year-old boys to the Polo Grounds to participate.

They were Frank Azzarello of S.J. Peters, who played the entire game as an outfielder for the 1944 winning East All-Stars, managed by Connie Mack; and Holy Cross catcher Ted Mace, who in 1945, led a ninth-inning rally to spearhead manager Babe Ruth’s East Stars to victory.

The 1946 game was played at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, and the richly talented Crescent City had to choose its most elite representatives. Leading the search was New Orleans Item sports editor Fred Digby, who invited daily newspapers from every Louisiana city to send their best player to a tryout at Pelican Stadium for a possible trip to Chicago.

Digby wrote that in the city, Azzarello and Mace were chosen by a vote conducted by The Item but added that players from other parts of the state might have been selected had they been given an opportunity to try out.

In a May 17 column, Digby spelled out the selection process: “To enable every boy in the state who has displayed exceptional talent to have such a tryout under competitive conditions, The Item (has) decided to stage an all-star game here on Sunday, June 2.”

The local candidates for the all-star game and tryouts were to be selected by coaches of the city’s seven Prep League schools (with the permission of league president O. Perry Walker), along with Hap Glaudi, prep sports expert of The Item.”

Digby went on to write, “All candidates will report at Pelican Stadium for a tryout on the morning of June 2, after which two teams will be formed for an all-star game in the afternoon. Two of the city’s outstanding baseball coaches will be invited to manage the rival groups of all-stars.”

Tickets were sold for the one-time-only game for 50 cents.

To sweeten the deal in exchange for Walker’s permission, Digby wrote to the league president, “As The Item has no desire to profit by or through the efforts of high school athletes, its publisher, Mr. Ralph Nicholson, has approved the suggestion that the net proceeds of the all-star game be given to the New Orleans Prep League for promotion of baseball and other sports.”

And because Pelicans general manager Charlie Hurth provided the stadium free of charge, expenses were minimal. The minor league team would receive concession rights.

G. Gernon Brown of Jesuit and George Digby of Redemptorist were chosen to manage the two teams. It was decided that a selection committee would choose three outstanding youngsters from the game to represent the city and that The Item would pick up the tab on their transportation to Chicago for the Aug. 10 game to be managed by major league greats Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner.

Following the morning tryouts, 18 players were selected to play the 2:30 p.m. all-star game before 3,674 spectators. The star of the game was of little surprise to anyone in the stadium.
Jesuit first baseman Harold “Tookie” Gilbert, whose hot bat led the prep league with a .695 average and sparked a 5-2 victory over St. Aloysius for the 1946 state championship a month earlier, was chosen as the No. 1 candidate for the Chicago trip at a banquet following the game at the St. Charles Hotel.

Gilbert, son of Pelicans manager Larry Gilbert Sr., hit a two-run homer in the third inning and added another RBI with a hard infield hit to pace the North’s 7-4 victory.

Jesuit shortstop Don Wenzel and Holy Cross pitcher Lenny Yochim were also chosen for the Esquire game. Yochim went on to pitch for the Pelicans and Pittsburgh Pirates, while Gilbert, a high school prodigy, spent just three years with the New York Giants in which he batted .203. After retirement from the game, he became civil sheriff of Orleans Parish but died of a heart attack at the age of 38.

The national All-Star game also had a short life because Esquire Magazine ended its sponsorship in late 1946.

But interest in baseball in New Orleans stood tall at the plate for several more years before youth programs like Babe Ruth Baseball for pre-high school-aged boys ended with the closure of its sponsor, the defunct Maison Blanche Department Store in 1982, and more recently, American Legion Baseball disappeared.

Those days are lost in time and little is heard or seen about the great spring and summer sport that once was the pride of the city. But one local website, Crescent City Sports, sponsors and publicizes limited summer baseball competitions.

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