Columbus Merchants Baseball Team, 1945 to 1954

As we have noted before, Earl Dickey was the Manager, Coach of the first Junior AII-Star team in 1945. This young team played 16 games and were winners in 10 of them. They lost 6 games. The team was made up of just graduated Seniors from Columbus High School and Seniors to be, come September. The average age was approximately 17 years and 6 months. The players were in pretty good shape, what with the work sessions to actually build the field. Hardest for the group was manually cutting down, cutting up and disposing of several popular trees in center field. Even so, several of those trees remained. Attendance was a surprise, being good, and the hat that was passed in lieu of admission yielded adequate cash for game equipment and the umpires.

Lyie Carmichael (ss), Joe Henney (1b), Julian Piercefield (c), and Don Scheldt (3b), led hitters on this team. Kenneth Dickey (Earl's son) was the pitching mainstay as he Won 7 and Lost but 2 games. In his 65 innings of work he walked only 12 ! His control was his best tool, although he had a curve-drop that "fell of the table". He could use it with a full count with confidence. Not overpowering, he still struck out 68 during the year. Bob Welmer was probably the best arm on the team that year, and his pitching efforts netted 3 Wins and 2 Losses.

It was a good beginning.