Football, basketball, boxing and baseball. My dad, Carl Armstrong, was good at every sport.
Newspaper Articles and Photos
1930s through 1941
Dad never talked much about the details of his athletic career, so I am just now piecing together the information from his news clippings. From what I can tell, he played all sports at Cartersville High School. In 1936, at age 16, he started playing baseball with his older brother Johnny on the Atco Village baseball team.
From the late 1930s until 1941, Dad played for the following teams, among others:
- G-Men in Gainsville, Florida;
- Tommies in Thomasville, South Carolina;
- Wahoos in Miami, Florida;
- Pioneers in Americas, Georgia; and
- Z-Cubs in Zanesville, Ohio.
The War Years
With the attack on the morning of December 7, 1941, Dad’s life took an unexpected turn, much like the lives of many young American men. Dad enlisted in the Army Air Force on December 11, 1941. He spent the war years in the states as a drill sergeant, playing baseball and basketball. From his scrapbook, I’ve discovered that he was stationed in San Marcos, at Tyndall Air Force Base and Keesler Air Force Base. He was discharged on December 10, 1945, from Maxwell Field in Alabama.
San Marcos Navigation School, 1944. (Carl Armstrong - back row, 2nd from left)
After the War
After the war, Dad continued to play baseball for the following teams:
- Smokers, Tampa, Florida
- Fliers, Pensacola, Florida
- Seaporters, Helena, Arkansas
- Tigers, Augusta, Georgia
- Clippers, Port Chester, New York
- Lakers, Lake Charles, Louisiana
Baseball Card
As a member of the Tampa Smokers in 1946, Dad played baseball in Cuba. Here’s his baseball card:
Carl Armstrong - Cuban Baseball Card - 1946 Propagandas Monteil Los Reyes del Deporte
More Information
- Carl Armstrong’s statistics at Baseball-Reference.com
- Cuban Baseball Cards
- Atco, Georgia – The Mill Village
About 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History
For the third year, Amy Coffin of the We Tree Genealogy Blog has created 52 weeks of prompts for genealogy bloggers. The theme for 2011 is 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History. These are shared on the Geneabloggers.com web site, hosted by Thomas MacEntee.
Week 15: Sports. Did you have a favorite sports team as a child? If so, which one and why. Did your parents follow the same teams? Do you still support the same teams?
