Naha

By Daniel Grey Taylor Jr.

My days of Carolina League enthrallment were uniquely intense, even after peeling off the 25 or 30 years of nostalgia covering them like onion layers. Anyone could be a mere fan. I was a Bedouin.

1972-'79 featured summers spent pouring over league averages from Sunday Winston Salem Journals, planning and executing vast road trips, and accumulating a wealth of first-hand knowledge which still profits me. I learned to avoid Ray's Kingburger in Kinston unless nothing else was open, never to lodge at the Omega Inn in Salem, how to deploy swear words between syllables and the Spanish translation of the Deadly Seven (vitally important when Latinos forgot themselves in battle and shrieked phrases for which mothers would've slapped them silly). Most useful of the practical lessons was that ballplayers gossiped, farted, belched and broke promises like the rest of us.

Not that a handful of guys weren't far enough above the norm to send me letters, received with the enthusiasm of unexpected Christmas presents. It would be nice to report the length of their careers matched the depth of their character, but it would also be untrue. Pitchers Steve Hardin (Wilson) and Steve Powers (Salem) never escaped A ball. Infielder Gil Passarella (Kinston) had an AA cup of coffee in 1973. Jim Minshall (Salem) made the Mariner relief corps in the late seventies. And Rocky Mount catcher Bill Nahorodny? He was the Golden Child.

A blocky guy with close-cropped hair, Naha was a dead-pull hitting typesetter's nightmare (N'h'r'dny C) built along the lines of a small barn door. He had a quick mind, good mechanics, fair arm, and hated great break balls unless his pitchers threw them. At our first meeting he was mischievous enough to offer a plug of chewing tobacco, yet his repentance of the act was real enough to ensure my wellness. Best of all, Bill never seemed to mind my endless string of questions. Throw in the facts that he introduced me to Phils roving minor league pitching coach Bobby Tiefenauer and played high school basketball against NBA star/coach Rudy Tomjanovich, and this was a fellow one could cheer lustily and often.

Rooting was gratified by the pop in his bat. Naha lined a double to left off the tin fence in Winston Salem in the manner that earned Boom Boom Beck his nickname, and in Rocky Mount he pulled a pistol shot 3 feet inside the third base line and almost 11 feet high that Red Sox farmhand Milt Jefferson barely sno-coned. If Miltie hadn't stopped the ball, it might have bounced off the moon.

Every year Bill hit double-figure taters (leading the International League in '75 with 19), and each successive spring training bought him more time behind big league bats. Former Whiz Kid and Phillies coach Andy Seminick liked him enough (both had Russian blood) to work hard polishing Naha's receiving form, and '76 and '77 were solid AAA seasons. Nothing could possibly keep him from a regular gig in the bigs except Bob Boone.

Boonie killed off almost as many catchers as Pee Wee Reese snuffed out shortstops, but Philadelphia's catcher-poorness and a White Sox farm dearth provided general manager Roland Hemond three life-enriching experiences: he snagged Jim Essian in 1976, Naha in '77, and developed a first-name relationship with the Phils switchboard operator.

Except at the plate (.236), Nahorodny's first full major league season was a howling success (Rookie All-Star Team), and I had to see him howl in person. Flying to the coast to meet my best friend (then finishing up a Ph.D at Stanford), we wound up at Oakland's Alameda County Coliseum to view a Sox-A's doubleheader. Upon arrival, the atmosphere was almost as if I'd stayed home, for that night Charley O. hosted almost as many bodies as Winston Salem with a good gate. It certainly was odd to hear Finley's dixieland combo wailing away in that near empty cavern, and odder still to discover Naha absent from the White Sox lineup.

Bill was benched due to some small injury and the Sox desire to see their new (and short lived) phenom, Marvis Foley, in action, but even the chill that swept the stadium after sunset couldn't dampen my enthusiasm. I dropped a note to the batboy, conversed with Chicago teenybopper darling Harry Chappas (Eddie Gaedel revisited), and met the rock group Nantucket (fronting for Boston the next night and based 20 miles from my North Carolina home). The Sox were in the process of sweeping, but as the second game wore down and I still hadn't talked to Naha, my chest had that sinking feeling reserved for doofuses who brag and can't back it up.

When the Sox closer completed Steve Stone's nitecap win, my mood was black indeed. Here I'd spent over 4 hundred dollars to fly out and Bill was too stuck up to speak to me. Worse, I figured my companions would give me down-the-road for dragging them to a ballgame instead of some bar. Our exit route took us by the White Sox dressing room, and as if by magic, NAHA WAS THERE!

We made introductions all around and boy-howdied for awhile, and then Bill asked the question that forevermore gave him a wall in my personal hall of fame and eventually prompted this piece:

"Why didn't you write me you were coming tonight? I'd have left tickets!"

If you're ever near Clearwater, say hello for me. Tell him if that 20 year old locked somewhere inside still wants to play ball for a living, my 17 year old alter ego wouldn't mind watching.

In 9 years with the Phils, White Sox, Braves, Indians, Tigers, and Mariners, Bill Nahorodny hit .241 with 25 home runs. His best season was 1982, finishing 4th in the American Association in batting average, and in no year was he a major league regular except 1978.