John Henry Moss: Baseball's Miracle Man (review)

Few people who are not devotees of the low-minor leagues will even recognize the name of John Henry Moss. Out of the national spotlight, he labored longer and harder to develop a prosperous minor-league system than anyone since World War II. No one in the history of the game spent more time organizing and running leagues in the low-minors than he did before his retirement in 2008. In recognition of his contribution and longevity (fifty years at the helm), the South Atlantic League actually retired number fifty for all league teams.

Moss's life mirrors the transformation of minor-league baseball over the past sixty years from a hardscrabble existence to a prosperous corporate enterprise. In 1948, Moss, then a thirty-year-old World War II veteran and concrete-block salesman, organized the Western Carolina League (WCL). There were no investors waiting to bid for a franchise. The first job of league presidents was to find backers. Moss, who grew up and lived most of his life in King's Mountain, North Carolina, found a car dealer, a furniture manufacturer, a superintendent of schools, a physician, and a former mayor willing to invest a few hundred dollars of their money in teams for their hometowns. His first league consisted of towns ranging in size from 6,500 to 18,000, all located so close to each other that teams had no overnight trips.

After forming his league, Moss left North Carolina for a decade to follow his own dream of climbing the baseball ladder as a general manager in the Detroit organization. The Western Carolina League did not survive long without Moss's leadership, and he languished far from the Carolina hill country. In 1959, Moss returned to King's Mountain and began to reorganize the Western Carolina League. In his ten years away, minor-league baseball had gone into a deep decline; attendance plummeted after 1951, major-league teams trimmed their farm systems, and the number of minor leagues reached an all-time low. Moss, not deterred by the odds, again found local backers, but they demanded working agreements with major-league teams. Every American and National League farm director rejected Moss's appeals. In a slight-of-hand that established Moss's reputation, he found backers in Branch Rickey's proposed Continental League. Each of the proposed Continental League teams actually adopted a Western Carolina League team. The infusion of dollars did not last the season, but it allowed Moss's league to get a running start.

After the Continental money ceased, the WCL nearly died, struggling along with just four teams in 1962. In order to sustain the league, Moss jettisoned the folksy local towns and expanded into three South Carolina cities. Then he managed to kidnap the South Atlantic League. When the venerable SALLY League changed its name to the Southern League—in order to replace the defunct Southern Association at the Class AA level and to shift franchises into large southern cities—Moss scooped up the name and claimed the history of the South Atlantic League (now known only as SAL). It mattered little to Moss that his league was designated "low-A" in baseball's revised classification system.

Under Moss's reign, the SAL morphed into a corporate powerhouse. Today, the SAL operates with sixteen teams playing in two divisions. The days when teams returned home after an away game are long gone. Geographically, the league ranges from Lakewood, New Jersey, to Eastlake, Ohio, to Savannah, Georgia. Back in 1962, Moss's entire WCL pulled in 77,379 fans. In 2008, the Greensboro, North Carolina, team alone attracted 440,787 customers, and the entire SAL drew 3.7 million to its games. When he started, Moss was happy to find someone who would take a franchise. Now the entrance fee is $3.5 million. League parks boast corporate names, sky boxes and luxury suites, picnic areas, mascots, restaurants, stores, websites, and radio networks. Making...