Minnesota Twins legend Wayne Hattaway gone, just like the game he loved

A Minnesota Twins legend Wayne Hattaway passed away on April 30, 2020 in Mobile, Alabama after a battle with cancer. Wayne was born in Mobile on February 24, 1940 to Fred and Margaret Hattaway and was the first of the five children, four of which were girls.

Wayne enjoyed baseball as a youngster growing up Mobile and often snuck away from school to catch a baseball game at Hartwell Field, the home park for the Mobile Bears who at that time were in the Southern Association as a AA affiliate of the the Brooklyn Dodgers. One thing led to another and in 1952 the team asked Wayne Hattaway (he was 12 at the time) if he wanted to be their batboy and of course he jumped at the opportunity. Little did Wayne know at the time that his career in baseball had begun.

In 1956 the Mobile Bears changed their affiliation to the American League Cleveland Indians and Wayne became their equipment manager. There the Big Fella became acquainted with future Twins players like Bill Dailey, Hank Izquierdo, and Dick Stigman. The league folded after the 1961 season and Wayne moved on in 1962 to become the equipment manager for the Dallas Rangers who were affiliated with the Los Angeles Angels and the Philadelphia Phillies as part of a split working agreement team. But then after the 1962 season the American Association also folded and the Dallas Rangers joined the Pacific Coast League and became affiliated with the Minnesota Twins, inheriting the players of the defunct Twins AAA Vancouver Mounties.

It was in 1963 that the Minnesota Twins and Wayne Hattaway first crossed paths when Minnesota offered him the equipment managers job with the Dallas-Ft. Worth Rangers who would become the Twins AAA team in the Pacific Coast League. There were a number of future Minnesota Twins on that roster but two names jump out at you that became life-time friends of the Big Fella. One is Tony Oliva who everyone knows and the other is Jim Rantz who never reached the major leagues as a pitcher but went on to work in the Twins front office in 1965 and served as Wayne’s “boss” as the Twins Farm director from 1986-2012. It is interesting to note that Tony O has been with the Twins since 1961, Rantz spent 53 years with the Twins organization and Wayne was part of the Twins family from 1963-2018. Both Oliva and Rantz are in the Twins Hall of Fame, Wayne Hattaway deserves to be there too, even if he is not around to see it.

From 1964-1972 Wayne found himself in AA ball with the Charlotte Hornets where he served as equipment manager and worked with managers like Al Evans, Harry Warner, Ralph Rowe, Johnny Goryl and Bob Sadowski. In 1972 the Twins for reasons unknown to me decided to have two minor league teams in Charlotte, the AA Charlotte Hornets and the A ball Charlotte Twins would play in the same ballpark, one team would be on the road and the other team would be at home. The Twins explained to Wayne that they wanted him to be the equipment manager for both teams and they would pay him a $1,000 more to do both jobs. Now you have to understand that a minor league equipment managers job back in the day was a job where you did everything yourself. You took care of the laundry, the uniforms, you shined the shoes, you rubbed up the baseballs, you set up the meals, you made travel arrangements, and you were probably the team trainer as well.  You were there long before the games started and long after games ended. Taking care of two teams with no days off almost drove the Big Fella to an early grave but he survived. 

1973-1974 had Wayne in Lynchburg, Virginia where the Twin had their A ball Lynchburg Twins. In 1975 Wayne was off to Reno where he spent one season with the A ball Reno Silver Sox which were a shared team fielded by the Minnesota Twins and the San Diego Padres. In 1976 he became the trainer for the AA Orlando Twins and there he worked with managers like Dick Phillips, Johnny Goryl, Roy McMillan, Tom Kelly, Phil Roof, Charlie Manual, George Mitterwald, Duane Gustavson, Ron Gardenhire, and Scott Ullger. Life wasn’t always easy with the Orlando Twins in the Southern League with the long bus rides and the hot weather but the Big Fella thrived and imparted his wisdom on everyone he met and he made sure that everyone on the bus knew, no matter what time it was, when the bus hit the Alabama borders. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In 1993 Wayne had a new home base and it was the A+ Ft. Myers Miracle and he would stay there through the 2001 season. In 2006 Wayne was diagnosed with breast cancer and after getting his clean bill health was back on the job long before his doctors and the team wanted him working. Wayne was also a diabetic and his eyesight was beginning to fail him but nothing stopped Wayne from his baseball duties. But Wayne was that kind of a guy, a hard worker that felt it was his duty to show up for work day in and day out no matter what. The man loved baseball and he loved the people that worked in and around baseball.

Ron Gardenhire took over at the Twins manager in 2002 and he asked to have Wayne Hattaway added to the big league staff and GM Terry Ryan made that happen. Wayne performed various duties as the clubhouse attendant with the Twins from 2002 through 2018 when his health finally forced him to retire after 60+ years of work in baseball.

But it wasn’t just the regular baseball season that kept the Big Fella busy, with all his years serving the Twins minor league teams it meant that Wayne spent many a spring training in Melbourne, Florida which served as the Minnesota Twins minor league teams spring training site from 1964 to 1989 before moving to Terry Park Stadium in Ft. Myers for one season in 1990. They then moved to their current facility in the CenturyLink Sports Complex in Ft. Myers in 1991 along with their parent club Minnesota Twins. According to the Big Fella, saying that the facilities at Melbourne were substandard was a gross understatement. The clubhouse was miniscule and they had a very limited number of fields to practice on. With 180-200 players reporting every spring there was just no place to put everyone and there were not enough uniforms in the proper sizes to fit everyone so it was first come, first serve. Wayne always told me that when he passed away he knew he would go to heaven because he has already served his time in hell here on earth in Melbourne.

When the baseball season ended, the Big Fella’s work continued on in the Fall Instructional Leagues for a number of weeks so Wayne actually had a very short off-season that he spent in Mobile.

We should also mention that Wayne shared his many talents and stories with the Minnesota Twins Fantasy Camp for a number of years. This past January former Twins players that coached the fantasy campers and some of the fantasy camp members themselves loved and appreciated the Big Fella so much that they all chipped into a pot of money that was used to buy Wayne’s 1987 and 1991 World Series rings from him and then donated the rings to the Minnesota Twins organization so they could be proudly displayed at Target Field for everyone to see. Wayne was really excited about this and was hoping to see the rings on display at Target Field at the end of May when he was planning to visit Minnesota to take in Justin Morneau’s Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. This ceremony is now postponed but you know that Wayne will be watching from above when it does happen.

Wayne Hattaway was a baseball lifer and he loved the game but he also enjoyed other things that life had to offer. For instance, there was probably not a bigger Alabama football fan than Wayne and if you were smart, you did not interrupt him when Alabama football was on the air. The love of country music was probably number three on the Big Fella’s list of things to do. He often talked of his love of country music and how he enjoyed visiting various bars and honky-tonks and listen to his country tunes back in the day when he used to travel with his teams . What else would you expect from a guy that sat in the Twins dugout wearing a cowboy hat?

Many stories have been told about Wayne Hattaway since he was called and reassigned  to manage the big clubhouse in the sky so I am not going to spend time repeating them here. But I will share with you how I became friends with the one and only Big Fella. I have maintained a Minnesota Twins historical website for over ten years and one of the things I enjoyed doing for the site was interviewing former players, not necessarily the stars because there are plenty of those interviews around, but the everyday players that toiled sometime in obscurity and made the Minnesota Twins history so much fun and so interesting. I started with interviews by mail and eventually updated to doing interviews over the phone that I recorded and uploaded to the website.

Wayne Hattaway is a true baseball lifer and legend

One of my early interviews was with Frank Quilici and in early 2017 I was contacted by Frank’s wife Lila and she told me that Wayne Hattaway was at the Twins Fantasy Camp and he was looking to see if someone was interested in publishing some stories about his baseball career and life. It wasn’t until later in 2017 that Wayne and I hooked up and chatted about what he wanted and what I could do and we decided to do recorded interviews and post them on the site so that people could listen to them for years to come in his own voice and his style. Wayne and I became good friends and chatted about baseball a couple times a week and when Wayne was in the mood we recorded our talks about baseball. One thing that many of you did not know about Wayne Hattaway is that he loved cats and kittens. We actually spent quite a bit of time talking about our two kittens, a cat that lived in his complex and the cats that some dear friends of his in New York have that he enjoyed so much whenever he visited there.

The Big Fella was obviously “old school” and not a fan of all the changes that had occurred in baseball over the years. He believed that pitch counts were BS, that having no infielders between second and third was stupid and that those dang computers were were taking over baseball. Back in his day a baseball teams front office had a half dozen people and now the front office has dozens of employees all sitting around looking at their computers. What the hell does a computer know about hitting and pitching? There wasn’t a phone call between us that he didn’t tell me that “this isn’t real baseball anymore, people that watch it think it is, but it isn’t.”

A couple of times this Spring with COVID-19 running amok and spring training cancelled and the 2020 MLB season postponed, Wayne told me that he had dreams that his time here on earth was coming to an end because he was now retired and away from the game of baseball that he loved and maybe that also meant that baseball was going away too. I tried to reassure him that he had many years to go but maybe the Big Fella could see things we couldn’t. RIP my friend and I hope that all the changes that will happen in baseball won’t cause you too much angst. I will always miss those cowboy hats and that cookie-duster mustache. My condolences go out to the Hattaway family and all of Wayne’s friends and fans. You were indeed one of a kind and there will not be another like you.

It was always important to Wayne that he be remembered as a person and for his long career in baseball. I couldn’t agree more and I hope that the Minnesota Twins agree and put this wonderful baseball character and long-time Minnesota Twins employee into the Twins Hall of Fame because he truly was a one of a kind and a Minnesota Twins legend that Twins fans should never forget.

I am attaching a several other stories written about the Big Fella – 

Hattaway’s passing leaves Twins with heavy hearts.pdf

Reusse_ A fond farewell to the Twins’ ‘Big Fella’ – StarTribune.com.pdf

Remembering Wayne Hattaway, Twins’ one-of-a-kind ‘director of player morale’ – The Athletic.pdf