How Bellingham’s first MLB player got one of the strangest nicknames in sports: ‘Cuddles’

Thursday is the official Opening Day of the Major League Baseball season which, is the perfect chance to revisit the career of arguably Bellingham’s finest ballplayer, and undoubtedly the owner of its finest nickname, Clarence “Cuddles” Marshall.

Marshall, who was born in Bellingham in 1925, played for Bellingham High School, where he went an entire season without allowing a run.

He stayed in state after school, signing with the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League. The Rainiers shipped him off to the New York Yankees ahead of the 1945 season. Even after leaving, Marshall made a point to come back to his hometown, according to his daughter, Barbara Marshall Housel.

“He would go back to Bellingham on vacations quite a bit,” Marshall Housel said in a phone call with The Bellingham Herald. “He used to talk about Washington all the time. He loved Washington.”

How he got the name ‘Cuddles’

It was in New York where, after a year of minor league ball in Kansas City, he got his nickname.

There are a few versions of the story behind Marshall’s nickname, but all of them agree on one thing: it started with Marshall’s good looks.

“He was actually [early movie star] Tyrone Power’s double, in the sense that MGM wanted him to do a contract and be his double. My dad turned it down because he thought he had to give up baseball to do it,” Marshall Housel said.

The resemblance was so strong that it made its way into the newspapers, according to Marshall Housel.

“We actually have an article in his scrapbook, where it has a picture of my dad and Tyrone Powers side by side, profile,” Marshall Housel said. “And it says, ‘Pick the picture star and the pitcher star.’ You look at it and, unless you know my dad, people would have trouble figuring out who’s who. That’s how close they were.”

His movie-star looks got the attention of his teammates, reporters and single women around town.

“The girls used to always gather around him for pictures. People would say, ‘Oh, they just want to cuddle up to him.’ A sportswriter heard this and gave him the nickname Cuddles,” Marshall Housel said.

Eric Vickrey, an author who wrote an entry about Marshall for the Society for American Baseball Research, said it was his understanding that Yankees pitcher Joe Page coined the name.

“Another Yankees pitcher, Joe Page, had mentioned something about how the girls wanted to cuddle with Clarence,” Vickrey said. “He was a good-looking guy, and I guess he was pretty attractive to the ladies. In spring training of 1946 reporters started calling him Cuddles and the name stuck after that.”

Marshall Housel said that her father was embarrassed by the nickname at first, but grew to appreciate it over time.

Marshall’s name remains one of the most unique in baseball history, according to Vickrey, who will be in Bellingham in early June for a signing at Village Books.

“We’ve kind of lost that over time,” Vickrey said. “The nicknames today certainly aren’t as creative as the nicknames in the first part of the 20th century. But Cuddles is certainly one of the more unique that I’ve come across.”

Yankee Stadium history & a World Series

Marshall’s nickname wasn’t the only notable thing about his career, though. As a rookie, he was named the starter for the first ever night game at Yankee Stadium.

“Handing the ball to an inexperienced rookie was a pretty big decision that surprised a lot of people,” Vickrey said. “But Clarence had pitched the previous year in Kansas City for the Yankees’ farm team and had pitched some night games that year, so [he] had experience.”

Marshall was sent back to the minors after posting a 5.33 ERA across 23 appearances in his rookie season. But he made his way back to the majors in time for the Yankees 1949 World Series run. While Marshall didn’t pitch in the series itself, he contributed 49 innings for the world champions that year.

The team’s manager that year was Casey Stengel, who thought Marshall’s pitching was too inconsistent. But Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Berra came to the hard-throwing pitcher’s defense, according to Marshall Housel.

“Yogi sat down, because he was the first one in the dugout, and Casey goes to Yogi, ‘Yogi, I can’t stand him anymore, he’s driving me crazy, I’ve got to take him out.’ And Yogi says, ‘Nope. Nope.’ He takes his glove off and he shows Casey his hand from the mitt and it’s all red,” Marshall Housel said.

The following year, Stengel and the Yankees sent him to the St. Louis Browns, who would eventually relocated to Baltimore and changed their name to the Orioles. Marshall spent one season with the Browns before he was drafted to the army.

Clarence never made it back to the majors — after his term in the army ended, he bounced around the minors before a car accident effectively ended his career. Marshall and his wife moved to Southern California, where he lived until his death in 2007. Even with his career cut short, Marshall Housel said her father accomplished what he had set out to do since he was a kid.

“One day they were in the kitchen and he was helping with chores,” Marshall Housel said. “And he said to his mom, ’You know, mom, one day I’m going to play for the New York Yankees and I’m going to be in a World Series, and you and dad are going to be there.’”

This story was originally published March 28, 2024 at 8:40 AM.