Earl Wooten has earned
many nicknames in career

By ED NEST
The Index-Journal

WILLIAMSTON - Nicknames for Earl Wooten have been more overworked than the remote control.

But one for perhaps the greatest athlete ever produced by this state was forgotten - "Sneaky." He would dribble a basketball in the Textile League with his left hand, slap his right leg with his right hand and get the referee to whistle a foul on his defender.

During an important Textile League baseball game, years removed from the major and minor leagues, he convinced everyone a ball rolled under the center field fence.

As they glanced at the batting practice ball in the creek past the fence, he furiously pushed the real ball into a hole covered by four inches of grass.  The tying run that would've scored on the hit that bounced between Wooten's legs was sent back to third base. He never scored, and Wooten's team prevailed by one run.

   He played two years of Major League Baseball in 1947 and '48 with the Washington Senators. He never played in the majors again because of his sneakiness.

   Senators owner Clark Griffith wanted Wooten, who weighed 152 pounds, to gain weight following the 1948 season. So he offered Wooten $300 a month to not play Textile League basketball in the winter. Wooten signed "with good intentions," but he took the money while continuing to play under aliases, sometimes saying it was his brother out there. He regrets that today.

Griffith discovered this the following February and released Wooten, "outright and unconditionally," selling his contract to the Class AA Chattanooga Lookouts.

"I didn't have that bad of a year considering the team we had," Wooten said of 1948 when he batted .256. "I felt like I deserved a raise. But he gave me that raise not to play. I thought 'that's not right, either.'"

After playing in six games during 1947, he played in 88 games in 1948, mostly in the outfield. He also played first base and pitched two innings. He did all three in the minors.

"Maybe I'd have been a lot better off not playing basketball," said Wooten, who lives in Williamston. "I could've seen how long I could've gone in baseball. Back then, the big leagues didn't impress me that much.

 "The only difference was you'd only see a few good pitchers in the minors. You saw one just about every day in the majors."

A few months earlier, the Washington Capitols --1948 runners-up for the National Professional Basketball championship -- offered Wooten a handsome contract.  He declined because the contract forced him to choose one sport. He also wasn't fond of the big city.

He preferred being in Pelzer and Piedmont where he could play the game before crowds who considered him a hero.  His Textile League playing days began in 1941 at age 17 and continued until 1964.

 "The Earl of Pelzer" was inducted into the South Carolina Sports Hall of Fame for baseball and basketball in 1962.

 "Wooten Tooten'" was only 5-foot-10, but he dribbled the ball between his legs before it became standard.

"Wonder Boy" maneuvered himself around the big boys, sliding under elbows and swiping balls. "I didn't think any of them were better than me," he said, "but I didn't think I was much better." "The Mystic Marvel" waited for guys to grab defensive rebounds, knowing he couldn't get them. He would then immediately steal the ball and score two points.

"Mr. Basketball," who never graduated high school, might as well have been performing geometry tests on the court because he always knew the precise point where the ball would go. Where every player would go.

"He watched for all the tendencies," said Don Roper of Piedmont, who played with him for seven years. "If the guy went to his left, he'd guard him that way. If he went to his right, he'd guard him that way."

 "The Blonde Blizzard" was so fast he could fake a shot and draw easy fouls.

 "He liked to get on the refs," Roper said. "He once told a ref after getting four early fouls, 'No one came to see you foul me out. They came to see me play.' He never picked up that fifth foul." "Mr. Automatic" scored more than 20,000 career points without a jumpshot.

 "The Man of a Hundred Shots" really wasn't. He relied on two - his two-handed overhead set shot, frequently from half court, and his left-handed driving out hook.

 Stuffy double-teams couldn't stop "Shotgun" from shooting.

 "With his two-handed overhead, if you came up close to him, he was so quick he'd dribble around you," said former Clemson standout Vince Yockel of Greenwood, who played five years with him in the Textile Leagues.

 "He was short, but you couldn't knock away any of his shots."

 "The Pelzer Pistol" once made 21 straight free throws in a Southern Textile Basketball Tournament game.

 "Automatic Earl" also scored more than 100 points in five STBL tournaments and finished with 1,262 points in 45 tournament games.

Former Clemson coach "Rock" Norman once said, "if Wooten isn't in (former Boston Celtic great Bob) Cousy's Class, then Cousy isn't human."

As many as 5,000 would pack gyms to watch "The Man" and others play. Fans wanting in for these 8 p.m. games needed to be there by 6 or 6:30, sometimes even 5.

These teams often played colleges teams such as Clemson, Furman, Presbyterian, Newberry and Erskine. "The Scoring Machine" developed his shooting eye as a child. He nailed a goal without a backboard, now on a wall in his home, to a tree in his yard.

He led Pelzer High to Class B state basketball championships as an eighth- and ninth-grader. He also played football as a barefoot kicker. But the school didn't have a baseball team, so he could only play American Legion ball.

He worked at a local pool hall, and in return, the owner would lock Wooten in the town's gym for the afternoon so he could shoot the basketball by himself.

 "There was nothing else to do back then," he said.

His father, Eugene, was a part-time weaver and full-time alcoholic who left for weeks at a time. "That was tough on me," Wooten said.

His mother, Mabel, worked as a full-time spinner to support Wooten and his two older brothers. Wooten dropped out of school after playing basketball his senior year, saying, "everyone was doing it."

He went back years later, but immediately dropped out again.

"If he went to college, he would've been an All-American in basketball." Yockel said. But Wooten, who played hooky as well as he did basketball and baseball, wanted to work and play baseball.

From 1944-47 and 49-55, "Junior Wooten" bounced around the minor leagues every spring and summer. His career batting average was .325.

 "In 1952 with Atlanta, I batted .346," he said. "If someone bats .346, someone should draft you. I knew then no matter what I did, I wasn't going to move up. I got really disgusted in 1952." What occurred in 1950 didn't help.

Chattanooga sold him to Class AAA Kansas City. But he experienced back pains that spring training. Doctors at the hospital couldn't diagnose what was wrong.

 "Kansas City thought I didn't want to stay there, and really, I did," he said.

 Three days into the regular season it became so painful, he went to a chiropractor, who made a few adjustments and corrected his back. But soon after, he was back in Chattanooga.

Wooten, now 77, spends three to four days every week working in the pro shop at the Saluda Valley Country Club. He also plays three or four times a week. He does a lot of walking to maintain his health.

His father and two brothers died of heart attacks, and Wooten suffered one 20 years ago.

He had bypass heart surgery seven years ago, and surgery three years ago to unclog a potentially stroke-inflicting artery in his neck.

"A lot of things happened so long ago, I forget that stuff," he said about his playing days. He does remember one game when his team was playing for the Southern Textile Basketball Tournament title.

His team led by one point with three seconds remaining and had possession. But an inexplicably poor pass by a teammate led to a half-court shot that lost the game for Wooten's team.  "We won that game," he said.

In 1994, a highway was named after Wooten. "Earl Wooten Highway" begins at the intersection of S.C. Hwy. 20 and U.S. Hwy. 29 and continues up Hwy. 20 through Williamson, Pelzer and West Pelzer to the Greenville County Line.

Ed Nest writes for The Index-Journal, a daily newspaper located in Greenwood, S.C..