Page 251 - 1975 BoSox

KENNETH SMITH HARRELSON WAS born on September 4, 1941, in Woodru , South Carolina. In the sixth grade, he moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he and his older sister would grow up. Harrelson was the youngest child of a single mother, Jessie, who was his biggest supporter, closest con dante, and best friend. Jessie worked hard to support her son, and she held a di cult and poor-paying job as a secretary in order to provide for him. Fortunately, Ken had proved at a very young age that he was an extraordinary athlete, and when it came time for him to go to high school, the schools came to him, recruiting the athletic youngster by o ering jobs, money, and nancial support as incentives. Harrelson chose Benedictine Military School, because it was his mother’s rst choice. And despite Harrelson’s strong aversion to the school’s strict military code, he ourished as an athlete and obtained solid jobs through generous alumni. By the time he was 17, Kenneth had matured into a street-smart young man and become the fam- ily’s primary breadwinner.1 While he was still in high school, Harrelson met his rst wife, Betty Ann Paci , whom he would marry that year. Harrelson was an excellent baseball player who hit three home runs in the rst Little League game ever played in Savannah, but was by nature a competitor who also played football, basketball, and golf. Ironically, he regarded baseball as his worst sport.
Despite being an excellent baseball player and a Basketball Schoolboy All- American, Harrelson was fondest of football and he accepted a scholarship to play at the University of Georgia. His mother, making no more than $65.00 a week, asked him to reconsider, feeling that baseball would pay better, so her doting son decided instead to play base- ball professionally.2
e two teams o ering serious money were Kansas City and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Los Angeles promised a larger bonus, but Harrelson signed with the A’s because intrepid Kansas City scout Clyde Kluttz was able to convince him that he would be in the majors faster if he chose the Athletics.
Ken Harrelson and Hawk Harrelson are two very di erent sides of Kenneth Smith Harrelson, and, in a 2004 article for e State, the newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, Patrick Obely pinpointed the exact moment that the two sides met. It was a Gulf Coast Instructional League game in Florida in 1959, and one of Harrelson’s teammates, Dick Howser, had come up with a new name for him. Harrelson’s nose, which had been broken several times and had started to take on a distinctly beak-like aspect, was a point of great amusement for Harrelson’s teammates and childhood friends. Howser, who thought that Harrelson looked like a character in a popular comic strip, took to calling him “Henrietta Hawk” in a mocking manner.
Aggravating the matter was the fact that Harrelson, one of Kansas City’s most touted prospects, “wasn’t doing squat as far as hitting goes,”3 and the usually thick-skinned teenager from Savannah began to take o ense to Howser’s name calling, dubbing him “Slick” in retaliation. One day, after another especially disap- pointing e ort at the plate for Harrelson, Howser again poked fun at the frustrated rookie, causing the latter to lose his cool. “Hey Slick, why don’t you lay o ?”
“I’ll lay o ,” Howser retorted, “when you get a hit.”
Disgruntled but inspired, Harrelson took the eld the next day and hit two homers. “Okay,” said Howser, “I’ll drop the Henrietta.”4 e name “Hawk” stuck.
After two more or less average years in the minor leagues in 1959 and 1960,
Ken Harrelson
by Alexander edelman
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