Talk about a field of dreams for a couple of Milwaukee kids.  George “Butch” Blanchard and Ron Cardo were lucky enough to serve as Milwaukee Braves bat boys, Blanchard  during the glory years of the late 1950s when the Braves won a World Series, a pennant and a near-pennant (losing a playoff to the Dodgers in 1959) and Cardo in the early 1960s after growing up in Milwaukee listening to Braves radio announcer Earl Gillespie call the hits, homers, RBIs and even the flyouts, groundouts and strikeouts. “I can still hear Earl Gillespie’s voice,” said Cardo in an appearance at the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association Testimonial dinner in April.

Cardo calls Blanchard “the guru of batboys” who made sure the right lumber was ready for the slugging entourage in the Braves’ dugout, from Henry Aaron to Eddie Mathews to Joe Adcock. Blanchard was bat boy for the 1957 World Series champions.  “When they struck out, I got after them,” said Blanchard, six feet and 212 pounds at the time and later the head football coach at Brown Deer HS for 32 years.  They worked for $2.50 a game, which sounds okay until one realizes that the bat boys had to get the clubhouse ready for the game two hours ahead and put in another couple of hours afterwards to clean up the place. “I made more money on partial World Series shares than I did the whole year,” said Blanchard.

Blanchard recalled that the players did not get food after the game, unlike today when a full buffet is common in post-game clubhouses.  Infielder Felix Mantilla and pitcher Juan Pizarro used to order two hamburgers from a nearby diner at 35 cents apiece, costing each player 70 cents out of a dollar. They let Blanchard keep the change.

Ray Jackson’s restaurant used to give Braves players free barbecued ribs after games.  Miller Brewery gave players cases of beer if they hit a home run. All the while, Milwaukee had the most successful franchise in baseball 1953 to 1959 and drew two million fans a season that had a love affair with its team.

“The spirit that existed was unparalleled,” Blanchard said to the dinner audience. “It’ll never happen again.”

Blanchard literally had a hand in the Braves’ World Series victory when pinch hitter Vernal “Nippy” Jones batted for HOF pitcher Warren Spahn in Game 4  and claimed that a pitch hit him in the foot.  Manager Fred Haney asked for the ball and showed it to umpire Augie Donatelli, who noted a small speck of black shoe polish and awarded Jones first base. Mathews followed with a home run that gave Milwaukee a 7-5 victory, knotting the Series at two games apiece. Lew Burdette won Games Five and Seven with complete-game shutouts and the Braves were the best in baseball.

In 1959, Blanchard recalled seeing Pittsburgh Pirates lefthander Harvey Haddix hailing a cab after pitching 12 perfect innings at County Stadium and losing the game to Burdette in the 13th inning on Adcock’s double. “His eyes were all swelled up, he had been crying for a long time,” said Blanchard. “My guts were sinking there with Harvey Haddix and how he felt.”

Blanchard remembered that bat boys got other fringe benefits, like taking one road trip a year.  On a trip to Philadelphia, Blanchard met King & I  star  Yul Brynner and appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

Ron Cardo got some different kinds of thrills when he joined the club as a batboy in 1961. He was batboy in the visitors’ clubhouse at County Stadium and got to know all of the players in the National League.  Cardo started in junior high school and worked every home game for the next three years. Before he got the job, Cardo and his buddies used to wait for the visiting bus until it parked by the stadium gate and got broken bats and old baseball caps for their trouble.

One day, the Cubs came to town to play the Braves and Cardo told his friends, “I know Alvin Dark; he’ll get us into the game.”

“He got us tickets and told us to meet him at the ramp,” Cardo remembered. “He had a cap and ball for me and let me sit in the dugout for batting practice.” In 1961, Dark became manager of the San Francisco Giants and Cardo got a new job, too — as a Braves batboy. “Before I knew it, I was pushing a broom and shining shoes.”  Cardo learned an important lesson on the job: “Don’t approach a player when he strikes out.” He recalled one night when former Dodger first baseman Norm Larker struck out and “took all the bats in the bat rack and threw all of them out on the field.”  Once, Ernie Banks struck out and quietly told Cardo, “We’ll just have to get ’em next time.”  Banks’ HOF teammate third baseman Ron Santo gave Cardo a Wilson A2000 glvoe and some fielding instruction to go with it. As for Willie Mays, Cardo said humbly that, “Willie knew that if he needed something, he could look for me.”

 

 

 

“The expereience I had, I will never forget it,” said Cardo.

And who could? Players giving you baseballs, gloves, autographs and smiles?

“Butch” is right — Unparalleled, never to happen again.

 

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