Appalachian Figures
On the night of August 11, 1950, a right handed pitcher for the Boston Braves walked off the mound at Braves Field with his teammates crowding around him and Brooklyn Dodgers hitters shaking their heads. Vern Bickford had just thrown a no hitter against a lineup that included Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider. For a moment he was one of the brightest stars in the National League.
Box scores and card backs usually sum him up with a few short lines. Born in Hellier, Kentucky. All Star in 1949. No hitter in 1950. Career shortened by arm trouble. Died young from cancer. Yet behind those bare facts sits a story that runs from a Pike County coal camp to West Virginia company ballfields, wartime service teams in the Pacific, and small town Virginia car lots.
Today collectors know him through Bowman and Topps cards and Braves fans remember his single brilliant night, but in eastern Kentucky he belongs to a different memory stream. Local historians in Pike County call him “one of Hellier’s finest,” tying his name to the coal town at the mouth of Brushy Fork where he was born in 1920 and to the long line of mountain kids who chased a ball in between shifts and school.
Hellier Coal Camp Roots
Vernon Edgell Bickford entered the world on August 17, 1920, in Hellier, an unincorporated coal town on Marrowbone Creek in Pike County, Kentucky. Genealogical records list his parents as Elson Webster Bickford and Dovie Adelia Aldia Compton, part of a family that moved with the booms and busts of the coal and timber economy.
Hellier itself grew up around the Allegheny and Edgewater mines, a tight valley of company houses, boarding houses, coke ovens, and tipples tucked into the folds of the Cumberland Mountains. Old photographs from the Pike County Historical Society show coal trains, power plants, and long porches crowded with miners and their families. When Kiddle’s children’s encyclopedia explains Hellier today, it does so with a simple note that a future major league pitcher was born there, evidence of how thoroughly Bickford has become part of the town’s identity.
By the time Vern was school age the Bickfords had left eastern Kentucky for central Virginia. The family settled near New Canton in Buckingham County, a move that mirrored wider Appalachian migration patterns as families left crowded coal camps for mill towns and farm country in the upper South. SABR researcher Les Masterson notes that young Vern played multiple sports at New Canton High School and quickly developed a reputation as a hard nosed competitor who could hit as well as pitch.
Berwind Semipro Ball And A Shot At The Minors
After high school Bickford followed the work trail again, this time up into the Pocahontas coalfield around Berwind, West Virginia. Company teams there played serious semipro ball on summer evenings, and the right hander from New Canton soon found himself on the mound for a local Berwind club and then for the Welch Miners of the Class D Mountain State League in 1939.
Baseball Reference’s minor league register shows him bouncing through the low minors on small town clubs with names that sound like something from a coal camp sports page: the Welch Miners, the Jackson Senators in Mississippi’s Southeastern League, and the Hartford Chiefs in Connecticut. In those years he was not a can’t miss prospect. He walked too many hitters and was used as much in relief as in the starting rotation.
The physical picture that emerges from scouting notes and later card backs is of a six foot, roughly 180 pound right hander with a live arm and a stubborn streak that suited him well in the rough and tumble world of Depression era company ball.
World War II And A Working Slider
Like many Appalachian and Southern athletes of his generation, Bickford’s career paused for World War II. An Army enlistment record dated December 12, 1942, out of Charlottesville, Virginia, lists “Vernon E Bickford” as a selectee headed for service, with his civilian occupation coded in the category for athletes and sports instructors.
SABR’s biography and later interviews describe him spending three years in uniform, much of it overseas in the Pacific where baseball served as recreation and morale booster. He pitched for service teams such as the Leyte All Stars and the Manila Dodgers, working alongside or against big league players who had also been drafted. From them he learned how to refine his slider and change of pace, tools that would become his calling cards back in organized ball. After the war he told reporters that those years “helped” his career because he finally learned how to pitch, not just throw, a lesson that came at the price of long travel and the usual hardships of wartime service.
A Coin Flip And The Road To Boston
Bickford returned to the Braves farm system in 1946 and put in a solid season for Jackson, then spent 1947 with the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association. At that point his future almost veered in a different direction. When Indianapolis club owner Frank McKinney gained control of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Braves and Pirates had to sort out which players would follow the franchise shift.
Contemporary newspaper accounts, repeated in the SABR biography and later summaries, describe team executives meeting in a Florida bar and literally flipping a coin to divide up the roster. Braves president Lou Perini, mindful that Brooklyn general manager Branch Rickey had once tried to acquire Bickford, used the first toss to claim the right hander. The coin came up in the Braves’ favor, and with that simple toss Bickford stayed in the Boston organization instead of moving to the Pirates.
By 1948 he had pitched well enough at Milwaukee to earn a serious look in spring training. Manager Billy Southworth eventually shifted him from relief to the starting rotation. He made his major league debut on April 24, 1948, against the New York Giants, then picked up his first big league win less than a month later.
That season the Boston Braves came out of nowhere to win their first pennant since the Miracle Braves of 1914. Bickford’s rookie record of 11 wins and 5 losses, with a 3.27 earned run average, gave him the highest winning percentage in a staff that already featured stars Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain. Sportswriters at the time tweaked the famous “Spahn and Sain” rhyme to include him, insisting that for much of 1948 it was really “Bickford, Spahn and Sain and then we pray for rain.”
An Appalachian All Star
In 1949 Bickford followed his rookie success with a 16 and 11 season and a trip to the National League All Star Game. He tied for third in the league in games started and ranked among the leaders in complete games. For a pitcher born in a Pike County coal camp and raised in the shadow of West Virginia tipples, that midsummer afternoon represented a remarkable climb.
At the same time, his workload hinted at future trouble. The Braves leaned on him heavily, asking him to go deep into games in an era when starting pitchers routinely tried to finish what they began. Appalachian fans who had known him in high school and on semipro diamonds followed those box scores through the Pittsburgh Press and other regional papers, proud that someone from their part of the country stood alongside Spahn and Sain in the heart of the rotation.
August 11, 1950: No Hits For Brooklyn
The peak of Vern Bickford’s career came on a warm Friday night at Braves Field in 1950. The Brooklyn Dodgers arrived in Boston leading the pennant race, sending an intimidating lineup to the plate. On paper they outslugged the Braves at nearly every position.
Newspapers the next morning gave the full story. The Milwaukee Journal, the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Boston Post, and other papers ran headlines announcing that Bickford had hurled a seven to zero no hit shutout against the Dodgers. Retrosheet and Baseball Reference box scores confirm that he walked four batters and struck out three, facing thirty three hitters in all.
Accounts from the time dwell on how hard the Brooklyn hitters pressed and how calm Bickford seemed on the mound. The Boston Globe quoted him saying that he only started thinking seriously about the no hitter in the ninth inning, when the crowd grew louder and every ball in play felt like a potential heartbreak. Other stories noted that he credited the success to a new slider he had been working on since spring and to catcher Walker Cooper’s pitch calling.
Photographs from the celebration show teammates swarming him just off the mound, faces split by grins, the big “B” on their caps clear in the camera flash. For Braves fans the moment helped keep the team in the pennant conversation. For people in Hellier, Pikeville, and New Canton it demonstrated that someone from their world could shut down one of the most feared offenses in baseball.
It was also the only major league no hitter thrown in 1950 and one of only four ever pitched at Braves Field before the franchise moved to Milwaukee.
A Workhorse Arm And Mounting Injuries
The 1950 season took a heavy toll on Bickford’s body. He led the National League in games started, complete games, innings pitched, and batters faced while posting a 19 and 14 record with a 3.47 earned run average. Modern analysts looking back at those numbers see a classic workhorse season that probably asked more of his arm than it could sustain.
In 1951 he still managed an 11 and 9 record with an even lower earned run average, but a line drive broke a finger late in the year and he missed most of the final three months. He never fully recovered his earlier dominance. Over the next few seasons bone spurs and nerve trouble in his pitching arm limited his effectiveness. When the Braves shifted from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953, he came along but struggled, finishing that year with a losing record.
The following spring the Braves sold his contract to the Baltimore Orioles. He started one game for Baltimore on April 24, 1954, allowed four earned runs in four innings, and took the loss. A pinched nerve and later elbow surgery effectively ended his major league career. He made a brief comeback attempt with the Richmond Virginians in the International League in 1955, then retired from professional baseball.
New Canton, Cancer, And An Early Death
After baseball, Bickford tried on a series of jobs that will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the post career lives of mid century ballplayers. He worked as an automobile dealer, a traveling salesman, and a carpenter around New Canton and nearby Virginia communities. He remained a local sports figure, sometimes coaching and often appearing at banquets or minor league events.
In early 1960 doctors diagnosed him with stomach cancer. United Press International reported his illness and noted that the once strong pitcher had dropped to roughly 120 pounds but still expressed hope that he would beat the disease and return to the game as a coach. Instead his condition worsened. He died on May 6, 1960, at McGuire Veterans Administration Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, at just thirty nine years old.
Fold3’s memorial page and his Find A Grave entry both place his burial at Mount Zion Baptist Church Cemetery near New Canton in Buckingham County. The obituaries list a wife and three sons. For them, and for the communities that had claimed him over the years, he was not only the man who had once shut out Brooklyn. He was a local boy who had gone far, served in war, worked hard, and died too soon.
Hellier’s Pitcher In Memory And Material Culture
Although Bickford spent most of his life in Virginia and West Virginia after leaving Hellier, eastern Kentucky continues to claim him. The Pike County Historical Society’s “Sports and Athletes” section features a photograph captioned “Vern Bickford, One of Hellier’s Finest,” crediting the Elkhorn City Heritage Council for the image. Local social media posts and regional history pages point out his connection whenever discussions turn to mountain athletes who reached the major leagues.
Children’s reference works and online Kentucky encyclopedias now include him in lists of notable people from Pike County and from the coal town of Hellier, a reminder that even a short major league career can echo for generations in a small place.
Physical artifacts also keep his story alive. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds several Bowman and Topps baseball cards with color lithograph portraits of Bickford in a Braves cap, the reverse sides summarizing his birth in Hellier and his no hitter against Brooklyn. The National Baseball Hall of Fame preserves a Milwaukee Braves cap associated with him, cataloged under the object number B 94.2014, a small piece of the fabric he wore on the mound.
Together these cards, caps, photographs, and online profiles form a constellation of near primary sources for anyone who wants to trace the life of a Kentucky born pitcher who rose quickly and faded too soon.
Vern Bickford In The Larger Appalachian Story
In the big picture of baseball history Vern Bickford is sometimes overshadowed by flashier names. Jim Bunning, another Kentucky born pitcher, went on to throw no hitters in both leagues and serve in the United States Senate. Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain are the Braves pitchers most often remembered from the late 1940s. For Appalachian history, though, Bickford’s story carries its own weight.
His life touches several key themes. First is the movement of families from eastern Kentucky coal camps into other parts of the South and Mid Atlantic in the early twentieth century, chasing jobs and better prospects. Second is the link between company town sports and professional opportunity. Bickford’s path from Hellier to Berwind to Welch shows how coalfield teams served as informal scouting grounds. Third is the way World War II service shaped a generation of players by interrupting their careers and, paradoxically, giving them space to hone their skills on service diamonds.
Finally there is the question of memory. For decades his no hitter survived mainly in Braves record books and lists of no hit games against the Dodgers. In recent years, local historians in Pike County and Buckingham County have begun to reclaim him more deliberately as part of their own heritage, posting photographs, short profiles, and community stories that anchor his travels in particular hometowns.
For students of Appalachian sports history, Vern Bickford offers a case study in how a life can stretch from the coal camp to the big leagues and back to small town obscurity, leaving behind a no hit line in the box score, a handful of trading cards, and a memory that still matters in the hollows where he learned to throw.
Sources And Further Reading
This essay draws first on primary and near primary materials, including Bickford’s World War II Army enlistment index and related records on Fold3, which capture his December 1942 enlistment at Charlottesville, Virginia and list his civilian occupation in the category for athletes and sports instructors, as well as his burial information at Mount Zion Baptist Church Cemetery.Fold3+1
Baseball statistics and game details come chiefly from Baseball Reference’s major and minor league pages for Vern Bickford, the box score and play by play for the August 11, 1950 game against the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the 1948 Boston Braves team records.Baseball Reference+3Baseball Reference+3Baseball Reference+3 These are supplemented by Retrosheet data and by official lists of Braves no hitters and Braves Field no hit games.Wikipedia+1
Contemporary newspaper coverage of his no hitter and peak years, including stories from the Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, Boston Globe, and other regional papers, is synthesized through the SABR Games Project account of the August 11, 1950 game and through citations in the SABR biography.Society for American Baseball Research+1Obituary details, including the description of his cancer and his hopes of coaching, rely on the widely reprinted United Press International story “Vern Bickford, No Hit Hurler, Dies of Cancer,” as summarized in later reference works.Wikipedia+1
Genealogical and local history information about his birth, parents, and Pike County roots comes from Ancestry’s “Vernon Edgell Bickford” entry, Kiddle’s “Hellier, Kentucky” article, the Pike County Historical Society’s “Vern Bickford, One of Hellier’s Finest” and “Sports and Athletes” pages, and related regional history posts.Facebook+4Ancestry+4Kiddle+4
For broader narrative context and interpretive framing this article leans on Les Masterson’s SABR BioProject essay “Vern Bickford,” the Vern Bickford entry on English language and Kentucky focused reference sites, and on published summaries of Kentucky born pitchers who threw no hitters, including accounts of Jim Bunning’s career.Wikipedia+4Society for American Baseball Research+4Wikipedia+4