Phil Piton

Phil Piton

• Born January 14, 1903
• Died January 23, 1983 in Columbus, OH USA

Biographical Information

Phil Piton, who held the reins of National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues President from 1964 until his retirement in 1971, had an intriguing resume. For 15 years, he served as a top aide to Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, where he became an authority on operations, rules and legal procedures within the professional baseball industry. He left that post for a time during World War II, but soon returned to baseball when George Trautman was elected as the National Association president in 1947. One of Trautman’s first acts was to hire Piton as his assistant. Piton added to his reputation as a top administrator in the game during his 16 years in the job. When Trautman died in June, 1963, Piton was the logical choice to succeed him and the membership voted him in at the Winter Meetings in San Diego that December.

Piton took over when Minor League Baseball was at a low ebb. The 1963 season ended with 18 leagues and 130 teams, the lowest totals (other than during the WWII shutdown) since the depths of the Depression. Total attendance had sagged under 10 million fans. When he retired following the 1971 season, Piton turned over 20 leagues and 155 teams to his successor, Henry (Hank) Peters.

As with his predecessors in the office of president, Piton had a war to contend with - this time in Vietnam. But it manifested itself in a different way. Instead of shutting down teams and leagues, it changed the way young manpower was available. Deferments from military service were available for college students, but only as long as they stayed in school. Major League Baseball teams encouraged their top prospects to stay in school and play baseball in the summer. Minor League Baseball’s answer was to create short-season leagues that would not begin play until school was out and would end around Labor Day. Some of this was accomplished by converting existing full-season leagues to an abbreviated calendar and some with a new creation - the complex leagues.

The complex leagues came into being in 1964 and 1965. The games were played at the spring training complexes of Major League teams. In 1964, the Cocoa Rookie League and the Sarasota Rookie League began with four teams based at each of the Florida sites. A year later, the Florida Rookie League operated with six teams in Sarasota and Bradenton, eventually growing into the widely spread Gulf Coast League of today.

With the need of sites for more advanced players, the Pioneer League switched to a summer-only schedule in 1964; the Northwest League followed suit in 1966; and then the New York-Penn League in 1967. They joined the Appalachian League, which had been operating on that kind of a schedule since 1957. The summer-only leagues remain an important part of early professional play to this day.