Willard Nixon

Willard Lee Nixon

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 6' 2", Weight 195 lb.
• School Auburn University
• High School McHenry High School (Rome)
• Debut July 7, 1950
• Final Game July 4, 1958
• Born June 17, 1928 in Taylorsville, GA USA
• Died December 10, 2000 in Rome, GA USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Willard Nixon spent nine years with the Boston Red Sox, from 1950 to 1958, going 69-72 as a pitcher. His obituary said he was famed as a "Yankee Killer", due to a string of six consecutive victories against the New York Yankees in 1954 and 1955.

Nixon played semi-pro baseball against men many years his senior in the Northwest Georgia Textile League while a teenager living near Rome, GA. He turned down a contract offer from the Detroit Tigers upon graduation from high school in 1947 in order to accept a scholarship to attend the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University). He was a huge star in college, going 8-2 as a freshman in 1947, then had a 20-strikeout game and pitched a no-hitter against the University of Tennessee as a sophomore. He was also an outstanding hitter and was often regarded as one of the greatest college players ever. 14 of the 16 major league teams sent scouts to watch him in his final college game, seeing him finish the season with a 10-1 record and a .448 batting average. He turned down large bonus offers in order not to fall under the provisions of the bonus rule and instead decided to sign with the Red Sox represented by scout Mace Brown.

Nixon went 11-5, 2.52 in his first professional season with the Scranton Red Sox in 1948, then was promoted all the way to the Louisville Colonels of the American Association to begin 1949. He was not quite ready, going 0-3, 5.09 in 4 games and was sent down to the Birmingham Barons of the Southern Association. There he rebounded to the tune of a 14-7 record and a 3.41 ERA in 22 games. Back at Louisville in 1950, he went 11-2 in 13 games before earning a call-up to the majors in mid-year. He would not pitch again in the minors until 1959, after his nine-year major league career.

Widely expected to become a star in the major leagues because of his college and minor league success, Nixon settled into the role of an effective but not front-line pitcher. His best seasons were 1955, when he was 12-10, 4.07, and 1957, in which he was 12-13, 3.68. He also won 11 games in 1954, but his stint in the major leagues ended on a sour note when a sore arm saddled him with a terrible 1-7, 6.02 record in 1958. After missing the second half of that season, he tried a comeback with the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association in 1959. He did all right - 6-2, 3.58 in 26 games -, but decided to hang up his spikes at the end of the year. He finished his career with a major league record of 69-72, 4.39, with 616 strikeouts and 530 walks in 1234 innings. He was also a pretty good hitter, as he had been in college, carrying a very respectable batting line of .242/.305/.296 in the majors.

After baseball, he returned to Georgia to work as a purchasing agent for Pepperell Mills, the company for whose semi-pro team he had starred as a youngster, then as a court investigator, chief of police, and transportation director for a county school system. He retired in 1989. He was an avid amateur golfer. He was elected to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. Married for more than 50 years to wife Nancy, he had three children and passed away in 2000.

Notable Achievements

• 200 Innings Pitched Seasons: 1 (1955)

Further Reading

• Wynn Montgomery: "Georgia's 1948 Phenoms and the Bonus Rule", in The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 39, Number 1 (Summer 2010), pp. 72-82.
• Wynn Montgomery: "Willard Nixon", in Mark Armour and Bill Nowlin, eds.: Red Sox Baseball in the Days of Ike and Elvis: The Red Sox of the 1950s, SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2012, pp. 85-93. ISBN 978-1933599243

Related Sites

• Willard Nixon at the SABR Bio Project