Special Pearl Harbor Day Edition: Baseball in 1941, Pat Tobin, Mystery Photo, and Baseball and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, Part 5, (2000-2009), Torii Hunter

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A gift for the baseball history fan in your life?

Everyone is having a Black Friday sale. I have some of my books on hand. From now until Christmas, I will offer one of each for $28, signed and shipped to a single address.

Travel down almost any back road in Arkansas, and you will pass a relic of Arkansas’ baseball history. The dilapidated backstops and the remains of long-neglected dugouts are a disappearing visual image of a rural sports history long forgotten. Hard Times and Hardball and Backroads and Ballplayers save hundreds of lost stories from the days when baseball was Arkansas Game.

Ordering info: Backroadsballplayers.com

Checks, Venmo, Cash App. Questions, message below:

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Baseball in World War II

Backroads and Ballplayers Weekly usually appears in your email and on our Facebook page on Monday evening. This issue will arrive on Sunday, December 7, Pearl Harbor Day.

From my father-in-law’s journal that he kept daily while serving with the 206th Field Artillery in World War II:

“On our way to church, but we didn’t make it. The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. WAR!”

World War II had a profound impact on Major League Baseball, fundamentally altering the sport’s landscape for the duration of the conflict. With the United States’ entry into the war, hundreds of MLB players and thousands of minor league players enlisted or were drafted into the armed forces, severely depleting the talent pool.

This exodus forced teams to rely on older veterans, younger players previously considered unready, and athletes with physical exemptions. In some rare cases, playing on a military team was a ticket to the big leagues.

Pat Tobin, USS Arizona

Occasionally, pro players actually benefited from the exposure that playing on a military team provided. One of those players who got a big league “Cup of Coffee” after an impressive military-team career was a semi-pro pitcher from the Little Rock Twilight League. His brief pro baseball career may have saved his life.

On August 21, 1941, Pat Tobin realized his dream. In the bottom of the eighth inning in a meaningless game between two teams trying to avoid last place, he became the 31^st Arkansas-born pitcher to appear in a big-league game. Although he had been one of the most promising young pitchers in the Little Rock city leagues, his recent professional record did not indicate he was ready for the major leagues.

Demoted from the Pacific Coast League in the spring and released from a Class B minor league team in July, Tobin was a remarkably improbable major leaguer. Predictably, his big-league debut did not go well, but in hindsight, just being in a Philadelphia Athletics uniform that day represented the most significant good fortune in his life.

Marion Brooks Tobin was born in 1916 to Annie and Cleveland Tobin, who were raising three young sons operating Tobin Mercantile in the almost thriving little town of Hermitage, Arkansas. Hermitage had a train stop, a burgeoning timber industry, and a few Bradley County farmers were experimenting with tomato farms as a cash crop. The Tobin’s store occupied a new brick building in “downtown” Hermitage, and business was good.

All that changed in March of 1920, when Annie became a widow at age 27. The young single mother soon gave up Tobin Mercantile and left Hermitage for a house on Marshall Street in Little Rock. Annie enrolled in St. Vincent nursing school and became a registered nurse. The three Tobin sons, Louis Belin, Marion Brooks, and Daniel Harrison, grew up on the playgrounds and ball fields in Little Rock.

First Belin, and later Marion, became well known on the sandlots and gyms of Little Rock. YMCA basketball was the winter choice for the Tobins, but it was summer baseball where middle son Marion emerged as a local prodigy. Marion’s name could be found in local newspapers most summer mornings in the early 1930s, pitching for American Legion teams and simultaneously in several men’s semi-pro leagues. One independent team in the Twilight League, featuring brother Belin on the infield and Marion on the mound, was simply called the “Tobin Nine.”

On November 28, 1933, Marion Brooks Tobin was once again the subject of a sports page article in the Arkansas Gazette. This time, the Gazette announced his enlistment in the US Navy. Just as the move from rural South Arkansas had opened baseball opportunities for Tobin, a move to the West Coast would once again place him in the right place at the right time in baseball life.

Tobin was assigned to the USS Arizona, part of the American Fleet stationed in San Diego, California. Peacetime with the fleet left plenty of time for baseball. The games between ship teams were highly competitive and prominently featured on local sports pages. Marion Tobin, now known in the press as “Pat,” was a headliner in fleet games as a pitcher for the Arizona.

West Coast minor league teams liked what they saw in the young Arkansan, but there was a small matter of his commitment to the US Navy. Tobin was offered a contract by Sacramento in 1936, but his discharge request was denied. In April of 1938, he made another request and was granted an honorable discharge. Tobin signed with the Pacific Coast League San Diego Padres. A few months later, the Arizona was deployed to its final destination at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to defend the Pacific Fleet.

After a brief trial with the Padres, Tobin spent the 1937 season with the Wenatchee Chiefs in the Class B Western International League. As expected, Tobin looked like a big-league prospect in his first professional season. He posted an 11-7 record with the Chiefs and led the team in ERA. It would be his only winning season in professional baseball.

The Padres carried Tobin on their roster the entire 1938 season but used him in only a few relief appearances. In 1939, a managerial change gave the young Arkansan his chance. New Padres’ manager, Cedric Durst, promised Tobin work, and he got it. He led the team with 45 appearances, mostly in relief. At age 23, he had reached minor league baseball’s highest level, but the young Arkansans’ success was short-lived.

The 1940 season started poorly for Tobin, and by July, he had been sent down to Class C Idaho Falls. His combined mark of 7-14 with the two clubs did not bode well for his future in baseball, prompting San Diego to finally give up on one of their most promising prospects, trading Tobin to Sacramento in January of 1941.

Tobin was farmed out by Sacramento before the season to the Decatur Commodores in the III League. He started the season in Decatur with some success until a foot injury in mid-June initiated a steep decline in his control. Tobin’s wildness woes included a game on June 25th that saw him walk 13 batters, prompting Decatur to release him in early July. Although it looked like his baseball career was over, Tobin would get one more implausible chance.

There was little in Pat Tobin’s credentials that merited a promotion to the major leagues, but he had once been a top prospect in the PCL. That was good enough for the Philadelphia Athletics, the American League’s worst team. On August 10, 1941, hard-luck Pat Tobin was signed by the legendary Philadelphia manager, Connie Mack.

Eleven days later, in the game with the Browns in St. Louis, Tobin would get his chance. Jack Knott, the A’s only starter with a winning record, had fallen behind 6-2 when Mack called for Tobin to pitch the 9th inning. Unfortunately, the looming shadow of Tobin’s control problems had followed him to the major leagues.

Philadelphia shortstop Al Brancato booted a ground ball to start the 9th. A single and a sacrifice bunt left runners on second and third with one out, when Tobin’s chronic wildness returned. He walked the next two batters to force in a run. Three consecutive singles put the game out of reach at 11-2. Mack obviously decided to let Tobin finish the hopeless cause. He retired the next two batters on a flyout and a foul pop-up to the catcher, mercifully ending Pat Tobin’s only major league inning.

When the 1941 season ended, Tobin returned to Little Rock. That December, he and millions of Americans received the shocking news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Tobin would later learn that his former battleship, the USS Arizona, had gone down that infamous day. Nearly 1,200 members of the Arizona crew lost their lives that day. Had it not been for his early discharge to play pro baseball, Tobin would have been on the Arizona on December 7, 1941.

Tobin continued to play in Arkansas’ semi-pro leagues throughout the 1940s before moving to Shreveport to become an insurance executive. He died of a heart attack in Shreveport in 1975, at age 58.

In 1955, on the occasion of his retirement as Central Arkansas Semi-pro League commissioner, Andrew Holland was asked to identify the outstanding players he had seen in Arkansas semi-pro baseball over the almost 20 years since the organization’s inception. While he mentioned an outstanding young infielder named Brooks Robinson was just getting started in the pros, Holland listed Marion “Pat” Tobin as the most outstanding player in Little Rock semi-pro baseball from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s.

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December 2025 Mystery Photo of the Month

Got an idea?

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Baseball and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame

Important note: This post marks the fifth of six weeks that I will review the baseball players and baseball leaders who have been inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame through 2025. If you do not want to miss these posts, you can subscribe or save the address to the Backroads and Ballplayers Facebook Page. Instructions below:

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The first induction in the 2000 -2009 decade was our old friend Bill Valentine. Bill was the go-to guy for Susan and my “date night” plans. Casa Bonita, free tickets, and Captain Dynamite and his descendants blowing themselves up at second base. Great memories.

Share your memories of the Bill Valentine days…

In addition to the ASHOF, Valentine was named Executive of the Year in the Texas League his first three seasons, and six times in all. He was inducted into the Arkansas Officials Association Hall of Fame, the Texas League Hall of Fame, and the North Little Rock Boys Club Hall of Fame.

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Torii Hunter and the Hall of Fame

The Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame selected Torii Hunter in 2008. Among Arkansas-born players, Hunter is first in career home runs (353), RBIs, and doubles. He is second in runs scored and fourth in hits (2,452).

This is Torii Hunter’s sixth year on the BBWAA Hall of Fame Ballot. Players on that ballot must get 5% of the vote to remain on the ballot. Torii received 5.1% in 2025. He is the last chance for an Arkansas-born guy to make the Hall for the foreseeable future. Torii is a long shot, but he has a chance.

None of the new additions to the BBWAA ballot seem to be Hall of Famers. Maybe that is good for Hunter. If he can start moving up from the 5% range where he has been hanging on, he could get enough notice to make a move up.

I am feeling better about his long-range chances. His career WAR is higher than every first-year ballot guy except Cole Hamels, and higher than four of the players who are repeaters on the ballot.

Hunter is one of 15 players in MLB history with 350 career home runs,150 stolen bases, 450 doubles, and at least 2400 hits. Ten are in the Hall of Fame. Among the five who are not enshrined are A-Rod, Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Carlos Beltran.

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If you missed the previous posts that featured Baseball in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, the links can be found below:

1959-1969 Backroads and Ballplayers #128

1970-1979 Backroads and Ballplayers #129

1980-1989 Backroads and Ballplayers #130

1990-1999 Backroads and Ballplayers #131