I was just a jock all the time. I enjoyed all sports but especially basketball and baseball. I played both well enough to excel. I never had it in my mind to be a professional athlete even with all the accomplishments. But that is getting ahead of my story.

I was born on November 10, 1930, in Muskogee, Oklahoma, a pretty good-sized town that had a minor league baseball team. What comes back is YMCA. All the free time I could get I would spend there. They had a little Sunday school, and if you attended you could get a free pass for Wednesday nights. You bet, I never missed Sunday school.

My father never played ball or took part in any kind of athletics, but he loved baseball. From the time I was nine years old, he would take me to the ball park to see our minor league team, the Muskogee Reds, a farm club of Cincinnati. We would sit in the bleachers. One time he told me: “There’s a kid playing tonight for the class-D Springfield Cardinals, Western Association ball. His name is Musial. He’s only about nineteen years old, but I am watching him because he is a real good hitter. He is hitting about .400 for Springfield.”

So I concentrated on Musial. He struck out at least twice that night. I turned to my father. “I don’t think that Musial is going to be that good.” Later on I wound up pitching against him for about seven years.

When I was about thirteen, we moved out to the West Coast to Richland, Washington. I was so busy playing all kinds of ball on my own that I did not give the major leagues too much thought. I went to Columbia High School. I was a sophomore when I started playing high school ball. I wasn’t that big then, but I started to grow real fast as a junior. I was 6'3". Then I was 6'6 1/2" as a senior. We had some real good basketball teams in my junior and senior years. We won the league championships of what they called the Yakima Valley. We even went to the state tournament in Seattle.

I also have a lot of good memories of high school baseball. Those were the real glory days for me. I was chosen from teams that made up the Yakima Valley League to pitch in the championship game. I started the game as an outfielder. I could pitch very well, and I was also a pretty good hitter. The starting pitcher needed help, and the coach called me in. I pitched three or four innings and struck out six or seven guys. I also hit the only home run ever hit by a high schooler out of Seattle Stadium. Our team won the Yakima Valley championships.

I was voted the outstanding player in the game and chosen to represent the state of Washington in an exhibition game at the Polo Grounds in New York City sponsored by the Hearst newspapers. It was New York City high school baseball all stars against all stars from all over the United States.

My dad put me on a train. One of the sportswriters from the Seattle Intelligencer went along with me to cover the game and do a story about me. That was a hell of a train ride. It took three or four days to get to New York City — all the way to the Roosevelt Hotel. I was about seventeen years old and quite thrilled to be there.

All of us from the United States team worked out at Yankee Stadium during the day and then watched the Yankees play the night before our game. The coaches for the United States team were Oscar Vitt and Max Carey, the old base stealer. I seem to remember that Rabbit Maranville was a coach for the New York club.

I was fortunate to be voted in as the captain of our team. I was the starting pitcher in the game against Frank Torre, Joe Torre’s brother. Frank was a left-handed pitcher. I pitched several innings, struck out four or five, and was credited with the win. I only batted once in the game and was runner-up for the Most Valuable Player award. There were about four or five, from that game that went on to the major leagues.

When it came time for me to graduate from high school, I had a lot of offers for baseball and basketball scholarships from all over the place. Hank Iba from Oklahoma and Adolph Rupp from Kentucky used to write me letters. But I wanted to go to a college that was big enough and close enough to home. I chose Washington State University.

It was a very good experience. The two years I was there we won the league championship in both basketball and baseball. I led the Pac-8 in scoring in my sophomore year and led the Cougs to the All Coast championship. I believe Bill Sharman led the Southern League in California. We went to the Coast play-offs against Johnny Wooden’s UCLA Bruins. They played both games in that old Westwood court with about a thousand people, mostly rooting for them. It was a downer — we were close, but they beat us in both games by a total of three points.

In baseball we won the Coast championship. I got a win against Stanford. That gave us a chance to go to the NCAA College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. I pitched against Frank Lary, who later became a Yankee-killer. I pitched a full game and beat him 9–0. All the scouts were after me. Then we went up against Texas in the championship game.

At the last minute our manager told me, “Gene, I’m going to fool them. I am going to start a left-hander against them and have you ready in the bullpen.” I was very disappointed. They got a couple of runs off the left-hander, and he stuck me in. We still lost, I think it was 2–0.

After the NCAA tournament, I played semipro ball out on the West Coast for a little money, $35 a game, just enough to keep the car going. Now I was 6'8", stronger, more confident, pitching against some good ball players. Now the scouts were really after me. There was Bill Marshall, who was the scout for Lou Perini's Braves. There were several scouts for the Yankees, including Carl Mays, who used to follow me around Washington. He came to my house and everything. There was a pitcher named Tommy Bridges, who had played for the Detroit Tigers.

I signed with the Braves for $6,000. They called it a bonus, but I was only allowed to make $2,700 because they were sending me to an A league in Hartford, Connecticut. I took some of the money and bought a cream and blue colored Pontiac Chieftain four-door car for cash. I thought I was the richest person in the world having my own car. I went to spring training with the Braves. One of my friends from high school drove the Pontiac to Hartford when I settled down.

I have a lot of wonderful memories of that time. It was my first year of pro ball. A ball was fast ball. I had just gotten married. Tommy Holmes was my first manager. He had played with the Braves.

I was going for my twentieth win at Hartford, and we were playing the Wilkes-Barre Bears who had players like Sam Jones, Frank Malzone, guys who had real talent and were soon going to be major league players. They called that night “Gene Conley Night.” The park was jammed. There were maybe about 5,000 people in the stands. I was pitching in the fifth inning when I heard the announcer say, “We are now passing around the bucket in the stands so we can draw some money for Gene Conley on his night.”

I thought, I better win this game. Sure enough, we won 2–0. That win gave me a 20–9 record for the season at Hartford. I was the Minor League Player of the Year for 1951.

Maybe more important than that was the $600 they collected for me on my night. That money helped a lot.

Making $500 a month in the minors, the money was gone pretty quick. I remember one year my wife, Katie, and I came back and stayed in a trailer in North Richland. I got a job as an iron worker making $1 an hour. One year, we had to stay with my wife’s folks in Spokane. It was tough going.

The Braves brought me up in 1952 and tried to force-feed me into their rotation. I was essentially a big strong guy but not a pitcher — a thrower. I was 0–3, and they sent me back down to the minors. That winter I played the last half of the season with the Boston Celtics. I made the connection through Bill Sharman from my college basketball days.

Playing professional baseball and basketball was hard both physically and mentally, because you never really get a rest. I did it because I needed the money. All professional athletes back then worked during the off-season to make ends meet.

In 1953, I pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers in triple-A and was the Minor League Player of the Year again. I was the only player ever to win the award twice.

I was back with Milwaukee again in 1954. But this time with the Braves. The Boston Braves had moved there. I won fourteen games and was third in the Rookie of the Year voting and went on to have a nice major league career.

Injuries cut into things, but I really have no regrets. I was the biggest guy in the minors and the majors for a long time.

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