First baseman Chuck Connors never achieved his major league ambitions, but after being sent down to the Pacific Coast League's Hollywood Stars, he literally became a Hollywood star, most prominently in the 1950's television series, "The Rifleman".
Connors also played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Boston Celtics, was a contentious member of the Doders organization, always battling with Brooklyn management over his salary. Once Chuck wrote in red ink to Dodger executive Buzzy Bavasi: "You want my blood, please send contract with more money as you can see I am running out of bl----"
His problem wasn't with Bavasi, however, but with Bavasi's boss, Branch Rickey (the Cardinals' connection), Connors observed, "It was easy to figure out Mr. Rickey's thinking about contracts. He had players and money and he just didn't like to mix the two of them."
After only one at bat with Dodgers, Connors was traded to the Cubs. He retired as a ballplayer when he became a bit player in the 1952 film Pat and Mike. After "the Rifleman" he starred in another TV series, "Branded", and also had a featured role in the groundbreaking miniseries "Roots"
The Rifleman TV Series
In an unsual twist on the standard Western, widower Lucas McCain struggles to successfully homestead his ranch in North Fork, New Mexico while raising his son Mark. Unfortunately, the Marshall of North Fork has a difficult time handling the weekly "bad guys," and Lucas must repeatedly get out his Winchester Rifle to protect himself, his son, and his neighbors.
Show Information
First Aired September 1958
Last Aired July 1963
Running Time 30 min
Country United States
Network ABC
Show Stars
Patricia Blair - Lou Mallory
Edgar Buchanan - Dr. Jay Burrage
Chuck Connors - Lucas McCain
Johnny Crawford - Mark McCain
Paul Fix - Marshal Micah Torrance
Joe Higgins - Nils Svenson, Blacksmith
Asa Maynor - Molly
Bill Quinn - Sweeney
Hope Summers - Hattie Denton
Joan Taylor - Millie Scott
Major League Baseball stats
Major League Debut 5/1/49 with the Brooklyn Dodgers
G AB R H HR RBI OBP SLG AVG
67 202 16 48 2 18 .280 .302 .238
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Chuck Connors attended Seton Hall University before embarking on a career in professional sports. He first played basketball with the Boston Celtics, then baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. Hardly a spectacular player -- while with the Cubbies, he hit .233 in 70 games -- Connors was eventually shipped off to Chicago's Pacific Coast League farm team, the L.A. Angels. Here his reputation rested more on his cut-up antics than his ball-playing prowess. While going through his usual routine of performing cartwheels while rounding the bases, Connors was spotted by a Hollywood director, who arranged for Connors to play a one-line bit as a highway patrolman in the 1952 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike. Finding acting an agreeable and comparatively less strenuous way to make a living, Connors gave up baseball for films and television. One of his first roles of consequence was as a comic hillbilly on the memorable Superman TV episode "Flight to the North." In films, Connors played a variety of heavies, including raspy-voiced gangster Johnny O in Designing Woman (1957) and swaggering bully Buck Hannassy in The Big Country (1958). He switched to the Good Guys in 1958, when he was cast as frontiersman-family man Lucas McCain on the popular TV Western series The Rifleman. During the series' five-year run, he managed to make several worthwhile starring appearances in films: he was seen in the title role of Geronimo (1962), which also featured his second wife, Kamala Devi, and originated the role of Porter Ricks in the 1963 film version of Flipper. After Rifleman folded, Connors co-starred with Ben Gazzara in the one-season dramatic series Arrest and Trial (1963), a 90-minute precursor to Law and Order. He enjoyed a longer run as Jason McCord, an ex-Army officer falsely accused of cowardice on the weekly Branded (1965-1966). His next TV project, Cowboy in Africa, never got past 13 episodes. In 1972, Connors acted as host/narrator of Thrill Seekers, a 52-week syndicated TV documentary. Then followed a great many TV guest-star roles and B-pictures of the Tourist Trap (1980) variety. He was never more delightfully over the top than as the curiously accented 2,000-year-old lycanthrope Janos Skorzeny in the Fox Network's Werewolf (1987). Shortly before his death from lung cancer at age 71, Chuck Connors revived his Rifleman character Lucas McCain for the star-studded made-for-TV Western The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1993). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
A Connor's baseball story
by Carl Erskine
The Dodgertown baseball complex was opened in 1948, right after World War II. Branch Rickey leased the Naval Air Station facility in Vero Beach, Florida, for $1 per year and converted it to a spring-training site. Some 790 signed players in the Dodger organization-both major leaguers and minor leaguers-passed through there each spring, from mid-February to the end of April, representing rosters of 26 farm teams, as well as the big-league club.
There was a lot of evening time to spend, with only one Ping-Pong table, a pool table, and a jukebox available for entertainment. Fortunately, we had a true showman among us, minor league first baseman Chuck Connors. Chuck would entertain us nightly with card tricks, poems, jokes, or debates. He was also one of several Dodger first basemen who stayed in the minors, because Gil Hodges was a fixture on the big club.
Once, Dodgers president Branch Rickey called Chuck into his office for a conference, a routine invitation for all of his players, sooner or later. Mr. Rickey always stressed the moral and spiritual discipline needed in life, especially in the pressure-packed arena of professional baseball.
Connors related his conversation with Mr. Rickey. "Son, do you smoke?" "No sir, Mr. Rickey." "Chuck, do you run around with fast women?" "No, sir." "Do you drink hard liquor?" Chuck swears he answered, "Mr. Rickey, if I have to drink to play for you, I want to be traded." Later he was traded to the Cubs, then optioned to their Triple A team in Hollywood before becoming, of course, a famous TV star known as "The Rifleman."
