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For most of the 1964 season, the Arkansas Travelers were the best team in minor league baseball. Baseball historians consider the team the most talented roster ever assembled in Arkansas. The 1964 version of Little Rock’s venerable minor league franchise led all AAA minor league teams in wins, winning percentage, runs, batting average, and RBIs. The combined roster hit 196 home runs. On the sports pages, they became known as the “Boom Boom” Travelers. The star of that team was a powerful young first baseman with unlimited potential named Costen Shockley.
In a strange situation created by the turbulent baseball culture of the early 1960s, Little Rock’s minor league team played the 1964 season as a member of the Pacific Coast League. The Travelers had been members of the Southern Association since 1901, but resistance to integration and financial problems caused the traditional old league to fold in 1961.
There was no baseball in Little Rock in 1962, but a leadership group led by Ray Winder was determined to find a league in 1963. The Travelers played the 1963 season in the International League and moved to the Eastern Division of the Pacific Coast League in 1964. Both leagues were Class AAA, the highest level of minor league baseball. The opponents were unfamiliar, no traditional rivalries were part of the new league, and road games were played in cities hundreds of miles away.
The 1964 Travs won their division of the PCL by a comfortable seven-game margin, but the team never won the favor of a city with a tradition in the Southern Association. Little Rock drew just over 132,000 fans in the first year of PCL membership, fourth in a six-team division, and ninth in the entire twelve-team league. Although the team was successful, featuring a roster filled with many future big-league stars, the coming and going of players to the major-league Phillies was never acceptable in Little Rock.
Fortunately, power hitter Costen Shockley managed to be with the Travs for 134 games of a 156-game season. Shockley was one of those promising players sportswriters tabbed as a “sure-thing” major league prospect. His unexpectedly brief big-league career remains one of the most inexplicable lost stories in Arkansas baseball history.
Costen Shockley had been a highly regarded high school prospect in Delaware before a life-threatening bout with hepatitis cost him most of his senior season. Many of the big-league clubs that had been courting him as both pitcher and power hitter backed off from pursuing the once-promising teenager. The Philadelphia Phillies, however, remained among the major league teams still interested in Shockley and eventually signed the 18-year-old to a $50,000 bonus in July of 1960
Shockley’s ascension through the Phillies’ minor league system seemed to indicate he was exactly the “can’t miss” future major league star the Phillies had expected when they signed him after high school.
In his first pro campaign, Shockley hit .360 at Magic Valley in the Class C Pioneer League. The next season he was promoted to Class A Williamsport, where he batted .282 and was second on the team to Dick Allen in most power categories.
In 1963, he moved up to Chattanooga in the South Atlantic League. Shockley hit .335 with the AA Lookouts and led the team in RBIs. His next stop would be the 1964 Boom Boom Travelers.
Costen Shockley was the best player on what most baseball pundits agreed was the best team in AAA baseball. The 1964 Arkansas Travelers led minor league baseball in most offensive categories and posted the most victories in the Pacific Coast League. Despite missing 15 games during call-ups to the Phillies, Shockley hit 36 home runs and drove in 112 runs, league-leading totals in both categories. His next destination seemed certain to be Philadelphia, but behind the scenes, the Phillies may have decided Shockley was not their future first baseman.
The 1964 Travelers were the Phillies’ alternate roster, where a dozen or so major-league quality players were called up or sent down without regard to Little Rock’s pennant race. By playoff time, the comings and goings had reduced the “best team in minor league baseball” to a mix of leftovers. So desperate were the Travs that they called on an unproven starter named Ferguson Jenkins to start a playoff game.
In the hard-fought and lightly attended PCL Playoff, the San Diego Padres won the title four games to three. The almost unrecognizable Travelers had been decimated by callups when the playoff began in mid-September. Perhaps the surprise that Costen Shockley was still on the team was an indication that he was not in the Phillies’ future plans.
The first public indication that Shockley’s place in the Phillies lineup was not assured came on November 29, 1964, when Philadelphia traded promising young pitcher Dennis Bennett to the Boston Red Sox for veteran first baseman Dick Stuart. Trading for an experienced first baseman was a clear indication that Shockley was not in the Phillies’ plans. Predictably, he was traded to the California Angels a week later.
On the surface, it looked like a good move for Shockley. The Angels had traded for Shockley to replace aging first baseman Joe Adcock. Adcock did not get the message that he was not capable of being the Angels’ everyday first baseman. Forty games into the season, Adcock was hitting .286, and veteran Vic Power, a defensive wizard at first base, was playing the late innings as Adcock’s backup.
Shockley had gotten off to a miserable start. He had been given a 40-game trial and was hitting .187 when the Angels optioned him to AAA Seattle with the hope that in the minors, where he could play every day, Shockley would regain his hitting skills. Shockley refused to report to Seattle and announced that he was going back home to Delaware.
In bold headlines, the Arkansas Gazette announced the retirement of the Arkansas Travelers’ celebrated star of the 1964 PCL Division Championship team. Costen Shockley had led the Pacific Coast League in home runs and RBIs that historic season, and he seemed to be on the fast track to major-league stardom. The bizarre news that he was quitting baseball came 60 years ago on June 19, 1965. John Costen Shockley was only 23 years old. After his outstanding 1964 season, he played a total of 40 professional games.
Shockley said of his decision, “I never really adjusted to the big-league atmosphere. I wasn’t making any money then, only $1,000 a month. It cost me $600 to rent an apartment; I was using up my bonus money; the major-league minimum was only $6,000 . . . So, I quit. I took my family over baseball.”
By the end of the 1965 season, Little Rock’s experiment with AAA baseball was over. In 1966, the Travelers became a farm club of Arkansas’ beloved St. Louis Cardinals. The Travs remained a St. Louis affiliate until the Cardinals modified their minor league structure to a AAA farm team in Memphis and a AA team in Springfield, Missouri. The Travelers are currently the AA farm team of the Seattle Mariners.
Costen Shockley lived near his boyhood home in Delaware for the rest of his life. He stayed active in the local youth baseball programs and coached his son’s 1981 Senior Little League team to the World Senior Little League Championship. The home run king of the Boom Boom Travelers died on May 20, 2022.
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