1960-1964

Lou Clinton was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma on October 13, 1937. He attended the Ponca City schools, first Washington and then Ponca High.

Right after high school graduation, still 17 years old, he was signed by the Red Sox and sent to play for Bluefield, West Virginia (Class-D Appalachian League). He quickly showed he had the talent to advance. hitting .361 with 19 home runs, and near the end of the season was sent to Greensboro, North Carolina, to play for the Patriots.

In 1956 he spent most of the season with Greensboro, and played six games for Albany in the Class-A Eastern League. His entire 1957 season was with Albany, batting .253. His 1958 and 1959 seasons were both spent with the Minneapolis Millers, the Triple-A club of the Red Sox.

Lou hadn’t hit for a big average in the minors, but he was considered very good defensively, and at the very end of March was informed that he had made the big-league team. His big-league debut was in April 1960, in Washington and was 3-for-5, but he cooled down and in June, he was optioned back to Minneapolis. Then, Gary Geiger, who had taken over right-field duties for the Red Sox, suffered a collapsed right lung in July and Lou was called back up from Minneapolis and played out the rest of the season, but less successfully than in the first half. He wound up the year with a batting average of .228.

In 1961, he spent most of the season with the Seattle Rainiers (the Red Sox moved their Triple-A franchise from Minneapolis to Seattle). Come 1962, he was back in the big leagues to stay and was batting .294 at season’s end. 

He played nearly the whole 1963 season, hitting 22 homers, but his batting average dropped to .232, and he was benched for most of two weeks late in July. Then, over the winter, he revealed that he had played the whole season with a shoulder separation, which he didn’t know he had. He’d hurt his shoulder in Scottsdale, the previous March, and reinjured it hitting a home run in April, but played through the discomfort and/or pain.

In 1964, the Red Sox traded Lou to the Los Angeles Angels for Lee Thomas, a trade of a right-handed right fielder for a left-handed right fielder. Overall, Lou hadn’t hit as well with the Angels as he had with the Red Sox, but he had hit .311 over the last six weeks of the season.

In 1965 with the Angels, he had a .243 batting average, was placed on waivers and claimed by the Kansas City Athletics. The deal was nullified, however, because Kansas City’s claim had arrived after the 72-hour deadline, so the Cleveland Indians then acquired him. In 12 games, he drove in two runs for the Indians, batting .176.

In January 1966, Cleveland traded Lou to the New York Yankees. In 1966, he batted .220 and the Yankees finished the season in last place. He started the ’67 season with the Yankees, but fractured his right thumb during spring training. In May, when New York had to pare down to the 25-man limit, his contract was sold to the Philadelphia Phillies, who assigned it to their Triple-A team in San Diego. It was his last season in baseball, as he retired the following January.

Lou decided to devote full time to his part-time, profitable oil interests in Oklahoma and truly enjoyed the work. He had worked with his uncle for a few years and then branched out on his own, establishing himself as owner and operator of Clinton Production Inc. in Wichita, Kansas. The company today works with oil well machinery, equipment, and supplies.

After a two-month illness, Lou Clinton died on December 6, 1997, at 60 years old, in Wichita.