Bill Valentine by Michael Ceraolo

 Bill Valentine

I started in Class D at eighteen

just as many players did then,

and made it to the American League at thirty

A few weeks before the end of my sixth year

Cronin fired Al Salerno and me,

ostensibly for incompetence but actually

because we were trying to organize a union

Al was more of an activist than me, but I was involved too:

we needed a union; the National League umps,

who had one, made more money than we did

We filed a lawsuit and the League offered to settle;

part of the settlement was that we would

have to start back in the minors first

I was willing to do so but Al wasn't,

and they wouldn't settle with just one of us

We lost our suit and the unfair labor practice

I saw where a later book described me as a tragic figure

That's ridiculous; only a few years later

I landed the job as the Arkansas Travelers' GM,

had success, and kept that job for thirty-one years,

and even moved up to executive VP

for two years before retiring

My life was not the stuff of tragedy