Welcome to the Club: Chico Salmon

The partnership that had been in place for the previous two years between the Portland Beavers and Kansas City Athletics was not renewed after the 1963 season. It wasn't a great pairing, and both clubs seemed to be ready to move on from it. Going into the the 1964 season, Kansas City switched their PCL affiliation to Dallas, and Portland joined forces with the Cleveland Indians. The Portland/Cleveland partnership would end up lasting for the next six years, during which time many notable names would come through Portland. In 1964 alone, Beavers fans were treated to the likes of Luis Tiant, Tommy John, Sam McDowell, Tommie Agee, and today's featured player, Chico Salmon.

The Oregonian 4/14/64

Prior to joining the Portland club, Chico Salmon had spent the previous five years climbing up the minor league ladder. As mentioned in the article above, his previous stop had been in Denver, where his .325 batting average (though it says .324 in the article) had led the league in 1963. As also mentioned, his stop in Portland wasn't expected to be for very long, but as things ended up turning out, if it weren't for a case of spinal meningitis, he very likely would've wound up staying in Portland for all of '64.

Chico didn't start the season hitting anywhere near his .325 average from the previous season. In fact, after the first month, he was only hovering slightly above .200. Manager Johnny Lipon would later say that this was caused by Chico abandoning his strengths as a hitter, namely making contact, and instead focusing too much on trying to hit home runs over the short fence in PGE Park's left field.

Where to use him on the field became a small issue as well. He was error prone at 3rd base, and was moved to 2nd after George Banks arrived. He was also used in the outfield, but his lack of arm strength didn't do him, or anyone else, any favors (later on while in the majors, a reporter once asked Chico what his best position was, to which he replied, "batting").

Despite the fielding issues, and lower than expected batting average, Chico did come through with many timely hits, which resulted in multiple won games.

One of the things that made the partnership with Cleveland so successful, was that then Indians part owner and manager, Gabe Paul, let it be known from the start that players would only be called up when it was thought that they'd be able to help the parent club. Normally a guy whose slash line was .235/.282/.362 after 71 games would not likely be seeing himself called up to the bigs, and certainly wouldn't be one that a manager would expect to help a team, however, this is exactly what happened when Cleveland's Max Alvis went down with a case of spinal meningitis. Chico would be recalled on June 27th, and thanks to his versatility and bat control (he stopped swinging for the fences once he got to Cleveland), would never return to the minors.

I would be remiss too if I didn't also mention somewhere in here that it was while in Portland that Ken Wheeler wrote his short piece about Chico's fear of ghosts:

The Oregon Daily Journal 4/25/64

This article, or at least it's contents, became rather well known, and Chico was reportedly not happy with the pieces reception. He's on record as stating that his stint in the Army Reserve in 1965 cured him of his fears, but that didn't stop reporters from asking him about them many times over the following decades.