Wes Livengood

Wesley Amos Livengood

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 2", Weight 172 lb.
• Debut May 30, 1939
• Final Game July 2, 1939
• Born July 18, 1910 in Salisbury, NC USA
• Died September 2, 1996 in Winston-Salem, NC USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Wes Livengood was a pitcher 16 years (1932-1952), one in the Majors (1939) and 16 in the minors (1932;1935;1937--1943;1946-1952), losing two years to the Military and three years to inactivity.

He was born on Monday, 18 July 1910, in Salisbury, NC. Signed by the Cincinnati Reds, he played for Winston-Salem - Greensboro in the Piedmont League (1932); Leaksville in the Bi-State League (1935); Lexington - Thomasville in the North Carolina State League (1937); Bassett in the Bi-State League (1938); and the Durham Bulls in the Piedmont League (1939) when, at 28 years of age, he broke into the big leagues on 30 May 1939 with Cincinnati. His final MLB game was on 2 July 1939.

He returned to the minors with Knoxville in the Southern Association (SA) (1939); Durham in 1940; Portsmouth in the Piedmont League (1941-1942); and the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association (1943). He served in the U.S. Navy two years during World War II (1944-1945) (BN), where, among other things, he played baseball at Pearl Harbor.

He then returned to Milwaukee (1946-1947); and began sinking to Little Rock in the SA (1947-1948); Greenville in the Cotton States League (1948); Sumter in the Tri-State League (1949); Raleigh in the Carolina League (1950); Kinston in the Coastal Plain League (1951); and Goldsboro in the Coastal Plain League (1952) where he closed out his playing career at age 42.

His best year was with Bassett in 1938 when he was 21-9 with an ERA of 3.06. In 1943 with World War II in full stride, the Brewers captured first-place in the American Association under manager Charlie Grimm. Posting a 90-61 record, Grimm kept the Indianapolis Indians at bay by 5½ games. Joe Berry and Livengood came away with duplicate records of 18 wins, 10 losses (AA).

After his playing days were over, he managed in the minors and scouted for the Philadelphia Phillies (1952-1982), where he discovered and/or signed players such as Bob Conley, Don Cardwell, Jimmie Coker, Mickey Harrington, Bill Champion, Craig Robinson, John Poff, Dickie Noles and Jerry Reed.

He also owned and operated Carolinas Men's Shop and, later, the Livengood Furniture Company. He died at age 86 in the Forsyth Memorial Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC on 2 September 1996 and is buried at Salem Cemetery in Winston-Salem.

Sources

Principal sources for Wes Livengood include newspaper obituaries (OB), government Veteran records (VA,CM,CW), Stars & Stripes (S&S), Sporting Life (SL), The Sporting News (TSN), The Sports Encyclopedia:Baseball 2006 by David Neft & Richard Cohen (N&C), old Who's Who in Baseballs {{{WW}}} (WW), old Baseball Registers {{{BR}}} (BR) , old Daguerreotypes by TSN {{{DAG}}} (DAG), Stars&Stripes (S&S), The Baseball Necrology by Bill Lee (BN), Pat Doyle's Professional Ballplayer DataBase (PD), The Baseball Library (BL), Baseball in World War II Europe by Gary Bedingfield (GB) {{{MORE}}} and independent research by Walter Kephart (WK) and Frank Russo (FR) and others. including Rex Hamann in the American Association Almanac (AA).