John Joseph Podres arrived safe at home just in time for major league baseball post-season play, September 30, 1932. He was the first of four boys and a girl born to Joseph and Anna Podres of Witherbee, New York, a valley village between Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. His father mined iron in nearby Mineville, the source of the magnets used 100 years earlier in the invention of the electric motor by a Vermont blacksmith, Thomas Davenport. Joe Podres also threw baseballs.
His childhood was common to many small town kids, chores in the garden, chopping firewood for the winter, and listening to baseball games on the radio. He liked listening to Red Barber and Connie Desmond's play-by-play of Brooklyn's Boys of Summer.
As a kid, Johnny loved the Dodgers. He was a fan and dreamed of one day being a Dodger. From his earliest memory he wanted to be a pitcher, just like his dad. His father pitched on the town's semi-pro team, who many people thought was good enough to pitch in the majors. Johnny recalled his father having a great over-the-top curveball, that just dropped of the table.
One day while playing catch with his father, Johnny began to imitate all sorts of southpaw pitching motions. Youngster Benny Butinski, standing nearby, said, “There’s Elmer the Great.” For years wherever Johnny went—Witherbee, Mineville, Moriah or Port Henry—6,000 people within a six-mile radius called him Elmer.
They also affectionately called him “Honey Boy,” because of his lack of jealousy, his fairness and good sportsmanship as evidenced from early boyhood.
At the age of 12, Johnny decided to become a pole-vaulter, but used a tamping stick, employed by miners, in the absence of a regulation pole. Tamping sticks don’t have the girth of a real vaulting pole and Johnny’s snapped one day at an altitude of 11 feet. He landed flat on his back in pain. He nevertheless continued to vault and later did well in the event at Mineville High School. He was captain of the basketball team there, too.
As a high school hurler, beginning as a freshman, he lost only three games in four years. “Of course, we only played about eight games every spring because it was so cold, or snowy, or raining and the next thing you knew school got out,” he said. When he wasn’t pitching, he played the outfield and often hit home runs. During the summers, lacking any other organized ball in the area, Johnny pitched for a town team and recalls once pitching a game against his father but can’t remember who won.
Johnny credits four people with helping his early career—his father, Mineville High coach Steve Kazlo, Princeton University assistant baseball coach Matt Davidson, who spent summers in Witherbee, and Mineville principal William Dwyer, who knew several big-league scouts.
“Scouts from Brooklyn, Cincinnati, the Phillies, the Yankees, St. Louis Browns, Detroit and the Boston Red Sox looked at him,” Dwyer said. “We liked George Sisler’s approach. He was Brooklyn’s head scout. He was going to give his honest opinion as to whether Johnny should sign or go to college. He didn’t want him to be a baseball bum.” Before Sisler, until 2004 the all-time single season hit leader, got a look at him at Ebbets Field, Dodgers scout Alex Isabel gave Johnny a new glove and then watched as he threw a no-hitter for Mineville High. He came back a second time and Johnny threw another no-hitter.
The July after high school graduation Johnny pitched for Valley Field, Quebec, located a couple of hours north of Witherbee. In August he went across Lake Champlain to the Burlington, Vermont, Cardinals in the (old, independent Class D) Northern League, whose alumni also included the Phillies’ great pitchers Curt Simmons and Robin Roberts. Clary Anderson managed the Cardinals then and later had an outstanding career as a high school and college coach and wrote a good book of baseball instruction for youngsters. Both of Johnny’s teams that summer were the equivalent of today’s Single-A caliber. By the end of the summer of 1950 he had signed with the Dodgers.
Joseph Podres backed Johnny’s budding career. In 1950, he often drove his son over a Lake Champlain bridge to pitch for the Burlington Cardinals’ Vermont games. In 1952, when Johnny moved up to the Montreal Royals, the AAA Dodgers affiliate in the International League, his father watched from the stands because the Quebec ball park was only a couple of hours north of Witherbee. Both his father and mother attended big league games Johnny pitched at Ebbets Field and in the Polo Grounds.
Work and distance kept his dad home in Witherbee in 1951 when Johnny pitched for Newport News, Virginia, in the old Piedmont League and at Hazard, Kentucky, in the Mountain State League. At Newport News for only an unimpressive month, he was sent down to Hazard on May 15. By the beginning of September he compiled a record of 21-3, with 228 strikeouts in 200 innings and a 1.67 earned run average, tops in the league in all three categories. The mayor of the town presented him with a bronze plaque after that season, proclaiming Johnny an official “Duke of Hazard.” It still hangs on his family room wall. And the governor made him an honest-to-goodness “Kentucky Colonel.”
Johnny made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 17, 1953, against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. He ended his rookie season with a 9-4 record and a 4.23 ERA. The Dodgers lost the 1953 World Series to the Yankees four games to two.
Johnny married Joan Taylor of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, in 1966. They have two sons, Joseph and John.
A very special Thank you to Robert Bennett who provided this short bio of Johnny's early years.
Source: Johnny Podres, Brooklyn's Yankee Killer by Robert Bennett, et al.
His childhood was common to many small town kids, chores in the garden, chopping firewood for the winter, and listening to baseball games on the radio. He liked listening to Red Barber and Connie Desmond's play-by-play of Brooklyn's Boys of Summer.
As a kid, Johnny loved the Dodgers. He was a fan and dreamed of one day being a Dodger. From his earliest memory he wanted to be a pitcher, just like his dad. His father pitched on the town's semi-pro team, who many people thought was good enough to pitch in the majors. Johnny recalled his father having a great over-the-top curveball, that just dropped of the table.
One day while playing catch with his father, Johnny began to imitate all sorts of southpaw pitching motions. Youngster Benny Butinski, standing nearby, said, “There’s Elmer the Great.” For years wherever Johnny went—Witherbee, Mineville, Moriah or Port Henry—6,000 people within a six-mile radius called him Elmer.
They also affectionately called him “Honey Boy,” because of his lack of jealousy, his fairness and good sportsmanship as evidenced from early boyhood.
At the age of 12, Johnny decided to become a pole-vaulter, but used a tamping stick, employed by miners, in the absence of a regulation pole. Tamping sticks don’t have the girth of a real vaulting pole and Johnny’s snapped one day at an altitude of 11 feet. He landed flat on his back in pain. He nevertheless continued to vault and later did well in the event at Mineville High School. He was captain of the basketball team there, too.
As a high school hurler, beginning as a freshman, he lost only three games in four years. “Of course, we only played about eight games every spring because it was so cold, or snowy, or raining and the next thing you knew school got out,” he said. When he wasn’t pitching, he played the outfield and often hit home runs. During the summers, lacking any other organized ball in the area, Johnny pitched for a town team and recalls once pitching a game against his father but can’t remember who won.
Johnny credits four people with helping his early career—his father, Mineville High coach Steve Kazlo, Princeton University assistant baseball coach Matt Davidson, who spent summers in Witherbee, and Mineville principal William Dwyer, who knew several big-league scouts.
“Scouts from Brooklyn, Cincinnati, the Phillies, the Yankees, St. Louis Browns, Detroit and the Boston Red Sox looked at him,” Dwyer said. “We liked George Sisler’s approach. He was Brooklyn’s head scout. He was going to give his honest opinion as to whether Johnny should sign or go to college. He didn’t want him to be a baseball bum.” Before Sisler, until 2004 the all-time single season hit leader, got a look at him at Ebbets Field, Dodgers scout Alex Isabel gave Johnny a new glove and then watched as he threw a no-hitter for Mineville High. He came back a second time and Johnny threw another no-hitter.
The July after high school graduation Johnny pitched for Valley Field, Quebec, located a couple of hours north of Witherbee. In August he went across Lake Champlain to the Burlington, Vermont, Cardinals in the (old, independent Class D) Northern League, whose alumni also included the Phillies’ great pitchers Curt Simmons and Robin Roberts. Clary Anderson managed the Cardinals then and later had an outstanding career as a high school and college coach and wrote a good book of baseball instruction for youngsters. Both of Johnny’s teams that summer were the equivalent of today’s Single-A caliber. By the end of the summer of 1950 he had signed with the Dodgers.
Joseph Podres backed Johnny’s budding career. In 1950, he often drove his son over a Lake Champlain bridge to pitch for the Burlington Cardinals’ Vermont games. In 1952, when Johnny moved up to the Montreal Royals, the AAA Dodgers affiliate in the International League, his father watched from the stands because the Quebec ball park was only a couple of hours north of Witherbee. Both his father and mother attended big league games Johnny pitched at Ebbets Field and in the Polo Grounds.
Work and distance kept his dad home in Witherbee in 1951 when Johnny pitched for Newport News, Virginia, in the old Piedmont League and at Hazard, Kentucky, in the Mountain State League. At Newport News for only an unimpressive month, he was sent down to Hazard on May 15. By the beginning of September he compiled a record of 21-3, with 228 strikeouts in 200 innings and a 1.67 earned run average, tops in the league in all three categories. The mayor of the town presented him with a bronze plaque after that season, proclaiming Johnny an official “Duke of Hazard.” It still hangs on his family room wall. And the governor made him an honest-to-goodness “Kentucky Colonel.”
Johnny made his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 17, 1953, against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. He ended his rookie season with a 9-4 record and a 4.23 ERA. The Dodgers lost the 1953 World Series to the Yankees four games to two.
Johnny married Joan Taylor of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, in 1966. They have two sons, Joseph and John.
A very special Thank you to Robert Bennett who provided this short bio of Johnny's early years.
Source: Johnny Podres, Brooklyn's Yankee Killer by Robert Bennett, et al.
