Ellis Kinder
Played For
St. Louis Browns (1946-1947)
Boston Red Sox (1948-1955)
St. Louis Cardinals (1956)
Chicago White Sox (1956-1957)
Minor League Experience
Baseball historian Mike Emeigh offered this research on Kinder's minorleague career, in a December 2006 post to SABR-L:
In 1940 and 1941, Kinder pitched for Jackson (TN) in the Class D KittyLeague. He was acquired by Memphis in 1942, started the season there,
then was sent to Jackson (MS) in the Class B Southeastern League sometime in July, and pitched the rest of the season there. The next
bits of information that I was able to gather from TSN and the Newspaper Archive were that:
-- he was expected to "return to baseball" in Memphis in 1943, but
-- he was on the ineligible list, and not reactivated until 1944.
During the war years, a fairly good-sized number of minor league players left their minor league teams to work in defense jobs (usually in
shipyards, where they could play ball and contribute to the war effort). These decisions weren't always made for patriotic reasons, from what I can tell - there were serious concerns about the viability of minor league teams and leagues, and the shipyards were a reasonable
alternative offering a steady job and the chance to keep playing ball as well. In many cases, the teams involved then placed these players on the
inactive list - TSN is filled with references saying "so-and-so placed on inactive list, left team" during these years - but players who later
came back to the team were normally reactivated without incident.
As I take the context of the info about Kinder, I read it as indicating that he had a defense job, that he may have intended to report to Memphis in 1943 but changed his mind, and the Chicks, in keeping with the practice of the era, placed him on their inactive list.
Judge Bramham, the longtime minor league czar, apparently was not especially enamored of players who left their minor league teams for
defense jobs; there's one article in which he called a player who did so a "contract-jumper". That seems kind of odd, under the circumstances - to call out a player who has decided, for whatever reason, to make a direct contribution to the national defense.
Born
Ellis Raymond Kinder was born on July 26, 1914, in Atkins, AR.
Died
October 16, 1968, Jackson, TN
Batted: Right
Threw: Right
Primary Position: P
Primary Team: BOS
Major League Debut
April 30, 1946
Nine Other Players Who Debuted in 1946
Yogi Berra
Ralph Kiner
Alvin Dark
Carl Furillo
Bobby Thomson
Joe Garagiola
Ellis Kinder
Vic Raschi
Sherm Lollar
Nicknames
Old Folks
Pitching Feats
Learn More about Ellis Kinder
Search Amazon.com for Books about Ellis Kinder ⇒
Search for Ellis Kinder at Google ⇒
View a map of his hometown at Mapquest ⇒
