By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

There was a minor league ballgame in 1950 in which hard-throwing left-hander Gerald Spencer Blackburn showed why the Cincinnati Reds handed a Kannapolis teenager a signing bonus of $35,000.
And keep in mind that $35,000 in 1950 could purchase what $350,000 will buy now.
In that 1950 Class A South Atlantic League game, the 19-year-old who was known as “Blackie” or “Jerry” to his teammates, was hurling for the Columbia Reds against the Jacksonville Tars.
The Tars, a New York Giants farm team, couldn’t touch him. Had a routine grounder in the fifth inning not struck a pebble and skipped over second baseman Johnny Temple’s shoulder for a bad-hop single, Blackburn would’ve thrown a professional no-hitter.
Blackburn entered the Cabarrus County Hall of Fame on Saturday, 61 years after he threw his last pitch in organized baseball and 11 years after his death.
Blackburn was part of the sixth Cabarrus Hall of Fame induction class. He’s not been forgotten because of the efforts of selection committee secretary Harry Mills and the extensive statistical research done on Blackburn’s career by Grey Clarke.
Mills and Clarke starred for the 1961 Kannapolis American Legion state champions. Blackburn was the pitching coach for that team piloted by Cabarrus Hall of Famer Bill Ford.
While his heyday in Kannapolis was long ago, it’s probable Blackburn had the liveliest arm ever to come out of the town. He was a lefty with a sharp curve, and that made his hopping fastball even more intimidating.
He played for J.W. Cannon High from 1947-1949, making his mark on the mound but also playing in the outfield when he didn’t pitch. He lost just two games in three seasons, winning 17 times and making two All-State teams.
High school games were nine innings then. As a junior in 1948, Blackburn had a 23-strikeout game, two games with 22 strikeouts, one with 21 Ks, and two more with 19 strikeouts. He fanned 131 that year in 55 innings — that’s more than two per inning — while allowing 16 hits.
As a senior, he struck out 26 Charlotte Central batters in a single game. He had a no-hitter that year, plus a one-hitter and four two-hitters.
Blackburn’s American Legion career was just one summer — 1947 — but it’s also legendary because he went 12-0 on the mound and led a 28-5 team to the state championship.
Blackburn beat Mocksville at a neutral site — Salisbury’s packed Newman Park — in the game that gave Kannapolis the Area III title, but Mocksville was so strong that Blackburn only struck out 12.
Blackburn also won the clinching game when Kannapolis beat Gastonia for the Western North Carolina championship.
In the state championship series against Durham, Kannapolis ran into a future Major League pitcher in Roger Craig and dropped the opening game
The key to taking that series was a relief appearance by Blackburn in Game 2. With Kannapolis down 4-0 in the first inning, Blackburn entered. He threw 8 1/3 shutout innings and struck out 16. That performance turned around the series.
In the regional tournament hosted by Kannapolis, Blackburn threw a two-hitter against Louisville. He struck out 19 and walked 10, but no one worried much about pitch counts then. A few days later, he struck out 14 Memphis batters to send Kannapolis to the double-elimination sectional tournament in Sumter, S.C.
It was in Sumter that Blackburn enjoyed his finest hours. He threw a no-hitter against Little Rock, Ark., and he struck out 15 in a 1-0 victory.
The sectional championship game came down to Kannapolis and Little Rock, and just two days after his no-hitter, Blackburn was handed the ball again. He shut out Little Rock until the seventh, but this time he couldn’t hang on, and Little Rock took advantage of errors and won in the ninth against the Kannapolis bullpen.
Kannapolis had come within one victory of going to the World Series in Los Angeles, but instead Little Rock made that trip. Little Rock was national runner-up to Cincinnati.
The contract with the Reds and minor league ball came for Blackburn shortly after he graduated from J.W. Cannon High in 1949.
It never quite clicked for him in the minor leagues. No one ever doubted the strength in his left arm, and while he was only 5-foot-11, he was powerfully built. But he was wild. At Columbia in 1950, he walked a staggering number of hitters — 184 in 131 innings. He also gave up a lot of hits because he constantly pitched behind in the count. He was 4-10, and his ERA of 7.21 was the worst among the league’s starting pitchers.
Playing, living and carousing with older teammates, he also picked up bad habits — like drinking bourbon straight.
Still, Columbia manager Walker Gee, who had a stellar big league career in the late 1930s, believed in Blackburn, and the Reds weren’t about to give up on him.
But then Blackburn’s number was called by Uncle Sam, and he spent 1951 and 1952 in the service. He wasn’t the same when he returned. His weight has climbed to nearly 250 pounds.
As a 23-year-old, the Reds sent him out to Iowa to pitch for the Class B Burlington Flints in the Three-I League (Indiana-Illinois-Iowa). His manager was Johnny Vander Meer, who had thrown back-to-back no-hit games in the big leagues, but Blackburn’s results weren’t good. He walked 147 in 138 innings, his ERA was 6.20, and his record was 4-12.
He pitched for three teams in 1954, including High Point-Thomasville, and then three more in 1955. His final pro pitches were thrown in Ogden, Utah, in the Class C Pioneer League when he was 25.
Blackburn came home and went to work for Cannon Mills, like most Kannapolis residents.
Blackburn had been a teammate of Ford’s on those 1950 Columbia Reds, and when Ford was named Kannapolis’ head Legion coach, he talked Blackburn into assisting him. Blackburn served in that capacity from 1960-64. He was a coach who fired wicked batting practice, and Mills swears Blackburn threw harder in BP than any hurler Kannapolis faced during its state championship season in 1961.
“I faced Barry Moore (a West Rowan product who made the majors) and Cherryville’s Ron Hovis, and I’m sure Gerald threw harder,” Mills said. “Gerald would say, ‘Can you hit this?’ If you said you could, he’d throw it even harder. He was strong.”
When Blackburn died on Nov. 3, 2005, he was 75 and been living at the Big Elm Nursing Center. His former players scattered his ashes on the pitcher’s mound of the old Kannapolis ballpark.
“We loved to ride his bus and cut up because he was like one of the guys,” Mills said. “He was a coach we listened to, but he was more than that. He was more like a teammate than a coach.”
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Blackburn’s brother, Ronald, who was five years younger, wasn’t as talented as Gerald, but he was a fine pitcher and outfielder. After helping the Kannapolis American Legion team win the 1952 state championship, he signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He won 84 games in the minor leagues and he won three more with Pittsburgh in the 1958-59 seasons.