Late Bloomers: Bob Johnson

If not for his older brother Roy being a pretty good ballplayer, Bob Johnson probably would have been a firefighter. In fact, he already had the job.

After being born on a reservation in Oklahoma in 1905, Johnson and his family moved to Tacoma, Washington. He later claimed that he left school after the fifth grade, and it appears that he ran away from home when he was still a teenager to join his brother who was playing ball in Southern California. Bob played there, too, but he married when he was still just eighteen and fathered two children, so he got a job as a pump engineer for the Glendale Fire Department to make money for his family.

Bob stayed in that job for several years, playing amateur ball on the side in an industrial league, and was still doing that when Roy Johnson started playing in the Pacific Coast League in 1926. He was pretty good right away, and kept improving until his contract was finally purchased by the Detroit Tigers before the 1929 season, a fact that convinced Bob he should try to play professional ball, too. “I was always better than Roy. When he stuck with Detroit, I knew I was good enough for the big leagues.”