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As the 1962 National League regular season moved into September, the pennant race between the San Francisco Giants and their bitter archenemy, the Los Angeles Dodgers, had become one of the most hotly-contested races in decades.
“When I came out of the clubhouse and walked on the field, I got a standing ovation. People were clapping and yelling. I tipped my hat and took a bow. When I got closer to the dugout, I could hear mumbling, then the fans started booing. My number was 14. Willie was 24.” – Carl Boles
During the back-and-forth battle for first place, the Giants promoted a rookie sensation from Howard County, Arkansas, who became a late-season phenomenon. Carl Boles hit line drives and chased down fly balls like his All-Star teammate Willie Mays. In late August, after less than 20 games in the big leagues, Boles was batting near .400 and making headlines almost as often as Mays.
When the Giants landed in San Francisco after an extended road trip to the East Coast, Carl Boles was the first player off the plane. Boles had two hits in a 10-inning victory over the New York Mets a few days earlier to move his batting average to a lofty .375. Sportswriters were gushing over the rookie from Arkansas who was playing like his future Hall of Fame teammate.
As soon as Boles reached the tarmac, he was surrounded by a throng of autograph seekers. The sudden unexpected attention was not because the rookie outfielder was playing like Willie Mays, but because the friendly mob thought he WAS Willie Mays.
While the fans were distracted, the rest of the Giants reached the safety of the terminal and boarded the bus for Candlestick Park. It was too late to catch up with the rest of the team, so the crowd around the rookie noticed that he was scribbling “Carl Boles” on the baseball card photo of Willie Mays. The brown-eyed-handsome man from Arkansas was an uncanny look-alike for the Say Hey Kid.
Carl Theodore Boles was born in Center Point, Arkansas, on October 31, 1934. Despite the hard work necessary on the family farm, young Carl was surrounded by family and enough friends to make a community baseball team. Later, Boles recalled that his team played the local white youngsters every weekend: “It was Blacks vs. whites until one Sunday when the opponents declared, ‘From now on we are choosing up.’ They were tired of getting beat.”
The Boles lived on the small Howard County community farm until his father moved the family to Kansas City looking for work. Carl Boles became a high school sports star at R. T. Coles High School. He briefly trialed college football at the University of Nebraska before baseball scouts spotted him in the Ban Johnson baseball league.
Boles signed with the New York Giants in 1954 and took the scenic route through the Giants’ minor league organization before an excellent year at Class AA El Paso caught the attention of San Francisco’s major league decision-makers. On Aug. 2, 1962, Carl Boles became the 160th Arkansas-born major leaguer.
To complete the intense drama of the 1962 National League pennant race, the end of the regular season found the Dodgers and Giants tied for the title. The Giants prevailed in a three-game playoff to meet the Yankees in the 1962 World Series. When the Giants posted their official roster for the series, Carl Boles of Howard County, Arkansas, had made the World Series team.
Boles did not see any action in the World Series, which the Yankees won in seven games, but his teammates voted their rookie outfielder part of the World Series player bonus. Carl Boles had proven himself in one of the toughest pennant races in baseball history. He had earned a spot in the Giants outfield but played his last big-league game.
In the second spring training game of 1963, Boles crashed into the right field wall while chasing a fly ball. The resulting broken ankle and subsequent complications cost him almost all of the 1963 season. The Giants sent him down to Tacoma in the Pacific Coast League for the 1964 season, but the injury and time away from baseball had taken its toll. Boles was not the same player. With little hope of a second chance in the Giants organization, Carl Boles found an exciting new opportunity.
From 1966 until 1971, Boles was a star in the Japan Pacific League. In his second season in Japan, he batted .305 and hit 31 home runs playing for the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes. He was named to the JPL All-Star team. Boles would play six seasons in Japan. In 577 games, he batted .265, hit 117 home runs, and drove in 294 runs.
That day in August 1962, when Boles was surprised by the crowd of admirers at the San Francisco airport, the incident did not happen by accident. The players, exhausted by the East Coast trip, had read the California newspaper stories about Boles’ physical resemblance to Willie Mays. The veterans had a plan. They hesitated on the plane, sending Boles down the tarmac alone. The crowd took the bait, and while the throng of admirers swarmed the Mays stand-in, the remaining Giants strolled to the bus without much attention.
Carl Boles and Willie Mays 1963 baseball cards
The story of mistaken identity remains a humorous part of the Boles story, but his baseball accomplishments in both the National League and Japan are exceptional. Carl Boles’ career batting average in big league baseball was .375, the highest career mark for an Arkansas-born major leaguer who batted at least 25 times.
Boles had met his wife on a trip back to Howard County. Mercedes Boles was a teacher in Arkansas before she and Carl moved to Japan. When Carl retired to become a scout in Florida, Mercedes resumed her teaching career. In his later years, Boles returned often to Howard County, where many of his relatives still live near his boyhood home in Center Point. Years after his baseball career, Carl Boles remained one of Howard County’s favorite sons.
On one of those visits, he stopped by the Nashville News to inquire about a press pass.
“One summer day, Carl Boles walked into the office and asked the editor if the News would give Boles a letter stating that he was our reporter. Boles said it would get him into games (he was living in California). The editor consented as long as Carl would let us interview him. So I wrote a story about Carl’s baseball life. He talked a lot about the Kansas City Monarchs and the control of the Japanese pitchers. He never brought up his “doppelganger’ photo. I took one of the best photos in my short newspaper career of Carl. I sure wish I would have kept a copy. – Dennis Ritchie, Nashville, Arkansas.
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