Lon Warneke - Minor League Career (1928-1930)

Minor League Career (1928-1930)

After high school Warneke moved to Houston, Texas, where his older sister, Kate, and her husband lived. Warneke got a job delivering telegrams by bicycle for Western Union. In Spring 1928, Warneke approached the president of the Houston Buffaloes, a Texas League baseball team in the St. Louis Cardinals organization, and asked for a tryout as a first baseman. Rebuffed at first, Warneke offered to pay his own way to training camp. At camp, Buffaloes manager Frank "Pancho" Snyder (former catcher for the Cardinals and New York Giants) took a look at Warneke and told the nineteen year old that he had the arm of a pitcher. After Snyder's evaluation, Warneke was sent off to pitch for the Laurel Cardinals of the Cotton States League. Warneke impressed no one at Laurel and the Cardinals released him. Due to Warneke's ensuing major league success, the St. Louis Cardinals later instituted a policy such that "any decision to release a player who possesse even one major-league skill (speed, arm, defense, hitting, power) must be made by more than one person" of their organization. Warneke completed the year with another team in the Cotton States League, the Alexandria Reds, a team affiliated with Shreveport of the Texas League. One of Warneke's teammates on Alexandria was Ray Prim, with whom he would pitch for the Cubs in 1943 and 1945. As a converted pitcher in his first professional season, Warneke posted a 1928 combined record for Laurel and Alexandria of 6 wins, 14 losses, with a 5.32 ERA in 176 innings pitched.

Warneke returned to Alexandria for the 1929 season and posted a 16–10 record, with a 3.09 ERA in 245 innings pitched. Alexandria finished first under manager Pete Kilduff. Warneke's success attracted the Chicago Cubs, that year's National League pennant winner. On August 23, just before the Cotton States season closed, the Associated Press carried a story announcing that Warneke had been sold to the Cubs "for $10,000 or more", the highest price ever paid for a Cotton States League player. The sale was initially denied by the Shreveport organization but then confirmed by telegraph to the Alexandria Daily Town Talk a few days later by Kilduff, although he stated the sales price of Warneke was $7,500.

Whatever the figure, Lonnie "Country" Warneke reported to the Chicago Cubs spring training facilities on Santa Catalina Island, California in late-February 1930, a month before his twenty-first birthday. Warneke was at once involved in an on-field accident that sent him to the hospital. On February 24, while pitchers were taking batting practice, fellow rookie Bill McAfee, fresh out of the University of Michigan, was taking swings and lost his grip on his bat, sending it hurtling against the forehead of Warneke, who was standing near the batting cage. Warneke slumped to the ground but suffered no serious damage, although he did have to report to the hospital and receive a couple stitches.

Warneke made the regular season roster for the Cubs, although he appeared in only one game before being assigned to the Cubs Class-AA affiliate Reading Keystones on May 23. A week later Warneke pitched a complete game 6–2 victory over Newark, allowing eight hits and striking out five. Yet success largely escaped Warneke that year, as he compiled a 9–12 win-loss record with a 6.03 ERA. He allowed 236 hits in 185 innings for Reading, which finished under .500. Despite such numbers, Warneke would never appear in another minor league game; instead he played at the major league level for the next fourteen years.

Among his teammates on Reading was infielder Billy Jurges, who would play in the major leagues for seventeen years, including six seasons (1931–36) with Warneke as a Cub.