Charles Harris, known as "Big Thunder" and a member of the Poplar Bluff Sports Hall of Fame, died Friday. He was 87.
Born in Naylor, Harris was a standout baseball player as a teenager and signed with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1958 before later becoming a longtime coach for multiple sports and age levels in Poplar Bluff, but his passion was always baseball.
"He coached in about everything we did when we were young," said Scott Harris, one of four children. "He was harder on us than anybody else, but he always treated all the other guys good and that is what we are hearing from a lot of the other guys that he coached, how much they enjoyed playing for him.
"He was really good to my kids, too," Scott Harris continued. "He followed my girls in everything they played. Him and mom didn't miss anything they could get to in every sport they played. As he got older, it got harder and harder to get around, but he just really enjoyed the kids playing sports. The last few years, he had one of those scooters. He would drag his scooter on the back of his truck and watch the girls play at McLane Park. He'd sit out at swim meets all day long in the heat."
Harris once pitched a 21-strikeout, no-hit, seven-inning game that he won only because the other team didn't come out for the eighth inning. He also once pitched 22 innings at New Madrid before the game was called tied at 2-all because of a 2 a.m curfew.
After signing with the Cardinals for a $3,000 bonus and a $450 monthly salary, Harris played in the minors and went 13-3 with a 3.08 ERA and a .313 batting average during one year at Billings, Montana.
He was invited to spring training with the Cardinals in 1960 when Stan Musial and Bob Gibson were still there, but Harris but never made it to the big leagues.
After returning to Poplar Bluff, Harris served as an AAU track official, was a member of the Park Department board for 10 years and was a president of the Westwood Hills Country Club. He was inducted into the Poplar Bluff Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.
"He was a father-like man to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of more kids over all the years that he coached. I guarantee you, you go back and ask anybody who played for Charlie Harris, they'll tell you the summer they played for him was the funnest summer they had in baseball," said Vice President of the Poplar Bluff Sports Hall of Fame Chris Rushin. "Growing up, if you went to (the city parks), in the summer Monday through Friday, you were likely to see him at that park every night of the week coaching a team. And he coached long after (his sons) were through with Park Department. Charlie's a great man. He was a good man. They don't get any better than him."
"Big Thunder" started playing baseball at 14 and was secretly making money playing by the age of 17.
"Anyone who would offer me $10, $15, $20 a game, I'd come pitch for them," Harris said in a 1986 interview, the same year he was inducted into the Southeast Missouri Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. "(Poplar Bluff Browns coach) Cluster (Williams) wouldn't let me pitch if he knew I had pitched for somebody else the night before, so I never told him.
"I was getting paid to play for Corning and Van Buren and nothing at Poplar Bluff, but Poplar Bluff was where I wanted to be."
His Legion team out of Fairdealing was 109-7 from 1953-55. It was a little known secret that the "Big Thunder" nickname had nothing to do with baseball.
"That's kind of a hidden secret back even in his playing days," Scott Harris said. "I'm assuming it was because he could pass gas as well as anybody. He'd like to say it was because he could throw harder than anybody, but I think it was the latter."
After signing for the Class C team at Billings under the direction of Whitey Kurowski, a third baseman on four Cardinals World Seris teams in the 1940s, The Sporting News called "Thunder" a virtual one-man show that year after Harris threw 7 2/3 innings of no-hit ball and knocked in seven of the team's 12 runs.
"I was the highest prospect in the Cards' organization that year," said Harris, who later played minor-league ball alongside future Cardinals Tim McCarver, Phil Gagliano, Dick Hughes and Mike Shannon.
Added Rushin, "Every time Mike Shannon talks about Poplar Bluff, he brings up "Big Thunder" Charlie Harris."
Along with Billings, Harris played in the Carolina League in Winston Salem, the Texas League in Tulsa, Okla., and in Mexico before finishing his career in Memphis.
Graveside services will be at 2 p.m. Monday at the Poplar Bluff City Cemetery. An obituary can be found on Page 6A.