February 27th, 1947, was a day of dreams for Phillip Kennedy, of Brooklyn, New York. It was the day he made it into professional baseball, the day he made the news. “Spirit of Boy Canned by Phillies Gets Him New Chance”, declared the Wilkes-Barre Record. And this was not just local news. It was picked up by the Associated Press and the United Press, and it made it to print in newspapers as far away as South Dakota and California (though, in that slower era, some of them took weeks to share the story). Why did papers from coast to coast cover the signing of a totally unknown player to a minor league contract by the Phillies, a club that hadn’t finished better than 4th in the National League in 30 years?
Butter ‘em Up: An Odd Path to Prospecthood
