Ray Fosse Remembers Growing Up in Marion, Illinois

Steve Wulf, ESPN Senior Writer

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As longtime Oakland A's broadcaster Ray Fosse sits in the visiting dugout at Fenway Park before a recent game, his mind is 1,200 miles away, in the town of Marion, Illinois.

"The first thing I think of is Pauline's Pies," he says. "Pauline was my mom, and she had this business, Pauline's Pies. The week before Thanksgiving, she would bake 80 to 100 pies, and her most popular pie was the Moon Apple, this big, juicy apple pie covered in glaze that would erupt like a volcano when you baked it.

"They had a day for me after the A's won the World Series in 1973, a parade and a presentation and a big dinner that night. The town basically shut down. They named the park after me, the same one where my brothers and I played. We'd ride our bikes there, gloves on our handlebars. But the best part of the day was when they gave my mother a new double-door oven so that she could bake two pies at once. More Moon Apples for everyone."

The fond feelings are mutual in Marion. Townspeople remember Fosse as a bespectacled three-sport athlete at Marion High. As the seventh pick in the very first major league draft exactly 50 years ago. As a two-time All-Star catcher in Cleveland, with two Gold Gloves. As a two-time World Series champion with Oakland. As the man who caught two Cy Young winners (Gaylord Perry, Cleveland '72; Catfish Hunter, Oakland '74), three 20-game winners in '73 (Hunter, Ken Holtzman and Vida Blue) and Dennis Eckersley's no-hitter for the Indians in '77. And as the Marion Mule, who played 12 seasons in the majors for four different teams before he became a fixture on A's broadcasts.

They're justifiably proud of Fosse in Marion, a big town (pop. 17,000) in sports-mad Little Egypt, the area at the bottom of Illinois above Cairo, right above where the Ohio River runs into the Mississippi, the way a baserunner runs into a catcher.

The way a runner ran into a catcher in the 12th inning of an All-Star Game held 45 years ago in Cincinnati, where the Midsummer Classic returns on Tuesday.

Fosse was in his first full season in the majors when Orioles manager Earl Weaver named him to the 1970 American League All-Star team. He was tearing the cover off the ball -- .312 with 16 homers and 45 RBIs before the break -- and gunning down baserunners unfamiliar with his arm.

"Imagine what a thrill that was for me," Fosse says. "Look at the names in that All-Star Game. Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Johnny Bench ... seems like half the Hall of Fame."

Indeed, there were 21 future inductees on the roster, players such as Rod Carew, Joe Morgan, Luis Aparicio, Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver. There could easily have been 22. Maybe 23.

When Fosse was named to the team, Marion sent its favorite son a congratulatory telegram with 1,713 names on it. At the top of the list was his mother, Pauline Fosse. The town also presented her with a dozen roses and bought her a round-trip ticket to Cincinnati so she could see Ray play. She was something of an All-Star herself in Marion, a cook at the local school who raised three boys five years apart after she divorced her husband when the oldest boy, Jerry, was 6.