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SEVEN Mile High, Here We Come
- University of Nebraska Press
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seven Mile High, Here We Come When we left Vancouver after the 1959 season, we decided to move back to Montgomery. We still had our house there, which we had rented out to some nice people. I wasn’t sure where I’d be the next year, but I would go to the winter meetings and try to get another managerial job. We waited for the kids to have a break in their school year, and in the latter part of November we left Vancouver. We stopped first at Idaho Falls and then went on to Nebraska. My wife’s sister was married and living there. The plan was that I would go down to St. Petersburg for the winter meetings, then fly back to Nebraska and drive us the rest of the way to Montgomery. While I was at St. Petersburg, I found out that the Detroit Tigers knew all about me and that they had set up a working agreement in Denver. Of course, I knew all the Tigers officials, Rick Ferrell and Jim Campbell, and they said, “Charlie, there’s an opening in Denver. Why don’t you see Bob Howsam?” I went to Bob and convinced him that I was the man for the job. He asked me, “What are your standards?” I told him I was very demanding. I said, “Bob, my standards are higher than yours. If my standards ever get lower than yours, you can fire me.” He said, “Well, all right, you’ve got the job.” I told him about my family and everything, where they were, and that we had a home in Montgomery. He said, “Well, what are you going to do with that?” I said, “Well, I’ll probably sell it, or rent it. We’ve got it rented out now.” I called up my wife in Nebraska, and I said, “Hey, Babe, I got a job, guess where.” She said, “You better wait until I tell you that part of the house burned up bad last night.” The house in Montgomery had caught on fire, and our neighbors traced us to Nebraska and called to let us know the bad news. She said, “You better go to Montgomery and take a look.” I said, “OK.” So I went to Montgomery, and, oh gosh, what a sight!This had been a real nice ranch house we had rented for a while and then bought. 228 mile high, here we come It had cork floors and all this magnificent paneling. It was a nice home. We were crazy about it. But anyway, when I went back to take a look, I saw some pictures of the fire on television. The firemen were chopping holes through the roof and actually tried to save it and all of our stuff. The kids in the family we rented the house to had lit some papers in a fireplace, which really wasn’t for burning anything, and the woodwork and mahogany venetian blinds had caught on fire. The house was fully furnished with our furniture. Everything was there. We even left clothes. A lot of my baseball memorabilia burned up. I had gloves, autographed balls, caps from all the clubs I’d been with, a couple of uniform shirts. Also a lot of my hunting stuff burned up. I picked up the phone and called my wife. I said, “Babe, there’s no need of us coming back.” She said, “How bad?” I said. “All that stuff you had in that closet is gone, burned, the floors were warped up, and oh, gosh. What do you want to do?” She said, “Well, where are we going?” I hadn’t told her yet about Denver. I was going to surprise her. Finally I said, “We’re going to Denver.” “Denver?” she said. “Well, that’s right out here where we are.” I said, “Yeah, stay there and I’ll come.” So I went right out to Nebraska, and we stayed there a couple more days. Then we headed for Denver. There had been some talk in the late 1940s, right after my year at Bisbee, about my getting the job at Denver, when they were in the Western League. Now I was finally heading for Colorado. In Denver I received one of the worst introductions you could imagine. It was like Charlie “Who’s He?” Metro. They gave my playing record with Detroit, never mentioned Philadelphia, nor one thing about my record as a manager...