Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 26, 1994 TAG: 9412270042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BUCHANAN LENGTH: Long
Toler Ransone's field of dreams is just a home-run shot away from the waters of the mighty James River.
But the 89-year-old, who some say is the greatest baseball catcher they've ever seen, is coming to grips with his diminishing skills.
"I'm living on borrowed time," he said.
Gone now are the stout legs that carried him swiftly around bases or allowed him to chase down a fleeing baserunner with ease.
The hands that nimbly handled 100 mph fastballs, and even caught Bob Feller's pitches in several exhibition games, won't close now because of arthritis.
The arm that gunned down would-be thieves on the basepaths is now used to steady his cane.
"You want to live every day you can," he says.
Those who know him best say he's been living his life to the fullest for a long time.
"I've seen ballplayers in college, in the service and at the professional level," recalls state Del. Lacey Putney of Bedford, who played with Ransone on a paper mill team in Big Island. "I never saw a better one than Toler Ransone. There is no question that he was as good as a lot of the major league catchers."
"He was a natural born ballplayer," says Junior Clark, 66, who learned baseball in part in the late 1940s under Ransone's watchful eye.
But Ransone has been much more than that.
He influenced the lives of hundreds of youngsters as he traveled the region recruiting ballplayers and teaching them how to compete against teams of other top amateurs throughout Southwest Virginia.
And he's been a member of the Buchanan Fire Department for 70 years. Last year, at age 88, he was recognized by the Virginia Senate as the oldest active firefighter in the nation, an award that was validated by a national firefighting magazine.
\ One of 14 children, Ransone built his strength pitching hay and tending about 500 acres of family-owned cattle farm land near Buchanan. His small, angular frame - 5-foot-8-inches, 160 pounds - belied his strength.
"I'm the toughest little man who ever was," he said.
That kind of brashness is what made others look up to him on the baseball field.
"I won every fight I had," he said. "It was mostly because of my endurance."
Ransone started honing his baseball skills as a catcher on the Buchanan High School team in the 1920s. When he was a teen-ager, his brother, Morris, took him to New York to see Babe Ruth play.
Ransone himself never made it to the major leagues. His sister, Annie Ransone, who now shares a house with him on Boyd Street, said he was "too bashful" to promote himself as a great player with major league potential.
"The main thing is that he didn't want to leave home," she said.
Ransone said major league baseball players in the 1920s and 1930s had to scramble to survive financially. Besides, he had a job.
"They weren't making enough to live," he said. "I was a farmer."
So, instead, he played in the Virginia Mountain League, which had teams from communities such as Buchanan, Big Island, Buena Vista and Lexington. He also played four years for a minor league team in Bassett. But a touch of homesickness and the lure of the farm drew him back to Buchanan, where he stayed until the outbreak of World War II sent him to the battlegrounds of Europe.
There, the determination he learned on the baseball field gave him a second lease on life. As Germany's artillery battered troops on Omaha Beach on D-Day, Ransone was knocked to the ground and wounded. His grit got him through. He was recognized for his service with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star.
He met and married a woman in Wales while in the service, but she never came to America with him and he never married again. They had one daughter, who lived with him in Buchanan for two years and then went back to England.
\ "There's no one who knew baseball better than Toler," said Clark, who played on Ransone's Buchanan team in the Virginia Mountain League. "I don't know anyone who could get more out of a pitcher than Toler. He could milk you to the last drop."
Sometimes, the lessons would come hard.
"He had an arm like a shotgun," Clark said. "He'd knock you off the mound if you didn't put the ball where he wanted it."
During games, Ransone was always prodding his teammates.
"He taught me to be a hard loser," Clark said. "He gave me more determination. It made me bear down."
Bearing down for Clark could have led him to the big time. With a fastball clocked at 103 mph, he was a minor-league prospect in the Cincinnati Reds organization until back pain from an automobile accident ended his career while he was still in his early 20s.
The tenacity that made Ransone such a good player was also evident when he coached amateur baseball teams made up of promising teen-agers from around the region.
"He was a good leader," Clark said. "He's also stubborn."
Ransone would always get the most out of Clark as a player.
Kidd Carr, who scouted players for the Pittsburgh Pirates for 25 years, remembers a time that Clark was knocked silly by a fastball thrown by an opposing pitcher. Ransone persuaded umpires to let him lay Clark down in right field while the game continued.
"The rules said you have to have nine players on the field," Carr said. "It didn't say whether they had to be standing up or lying down."
Buchanan won the game.
Putney remembered a time when Fred Vinson Jr., son of the chief justice of the United States, also was playing on the Big Island team.
Putney, who was a pitcher, looked down the bench to catch Chief Justice Fred Vinson cramming a chew of tobacco in his mouth as he exchanged baseball banter with the always enthusiastic Ransone
"We won a lot of games because of Toler's spirit," Putney said.
And that came when Ransone was in his 40s and most of his teammates were nearly half his age.
"He was a feisty son-of-a-gun," said Sen. Malfourd "Bo" Trumbo of Fincastle, whose brother played on an American Legion baseball team coached by Ransone. "He didn't let much get past him."
The fire in Ransone's belly was stoked by playing on teams where the love of the game was more important than money.
It was an obsession that has lasted a lifetime.
At 62, he was catching an old-timers game at Salem Municipal Field. "The day I was 65, I stole a base," Ransone said.
In February, he will be inducted into the Salem-Roanoke Valley Baseball Hall of Fame.
\ Ransone joined the Buchanan Fire Department at age 16, when he served as a member of the bucket brigade when firefighters were still responding to fires in horsedrawn wagons.
In 70 years of service, Ransone never wanted to be chief. He was proud of being the lead hoseman, which meant he was the one person who could get closest to the fire.
"He always plays the last inning as hard as the first," Clark said. "He isn't a quitter."
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