Warren remembers Archie McMillion and his dedication to local youth and adult baseball | News, Sports, Jobs

Staff photo / Brian Yauger. Michael McMillion, center right, Warren Mayor Doug Franklin, entering left, and Warren city employees pose with signs at the recently opened Archie McMillion Field in Perkins Park. McMillion was a key figure in Warren baseball for nearly 60 years.

In the city of Warren, baseball has been inextricably linked with the name Archie McMillion for decades.

McMillion, who died in June at age 90, was involved in sports in one way or another for 57 years of his life. Whether it was coaching the freshman baseball team at Warren G. Harding High School, serving a 30-year term as president of Warren Little League, or simply fundraising, as it related to baseball in the city of Warren, the man they called “Monk” probably had his fingerprints all over it.

Born in the Deep South in 1933, McMillion worked from an early age. Despite his teacher’s request that he get an education, McMillion’s grandmother needed him to work and help put food on the table. His formal education stopped after the fourth grade, but just a few years later, McMillion had his own farm.

In his teens, McMillion and some friends boarded a bus to Chicago. They saved up their money to pay for their tickets, $17.71 each (about $225.41 adjusted to modern currency), and because of Jim Crow laws, they stood in the back of the bus for the entire 600-mile trip from Alabama to the Ohio border.

Shortly thereafter, McMillion ended up in Warren.

That love of baseball, born on the red clay soil of Luverne, Alabama, with a corn cob ball and a glove made of several fabrics sewn together, has never gone away.

In 1951, McMillion participated in a handful of baseball tryouts in the state, which put him on the radar of a handful of major league teams, most notably the St. Louis Cardinals. But when they offered him, McMillion turned them down after meeting his eventual wife of 72 years.

Although a career in baseball was not in the cards, he always kept the sport in his life.

When his son Michael took up baseball, it wasn’t long before McMillion returned to the sport. And coaching came naturally to McMillion, who often saw baseball as a way to improve himself.

Many people have said that baseball is like life. McMillion may have been the embodiment of that statement.

Michael has retained those lessons to this day.

“In a sense, baseball wasn’t over for him when we stopped coaching,” Michael said: “It was never over because he always saw an opportunity for someone else to improve. He saw an opportunity for them to become better people because the simple fact is that if you got respect in the sport, you would carry that over into your personal life. Sometimes it was unorthodox, but the fact is that if he told you to do something, he wanted you to do it, no matter what.

“One time we were playing and he gave me a signal to steal, and I didn’t do it. He called timeout and said, ‘I told you to steal, you should have stolen.’ The next pitch I stole, and it didn’t matter if the catcher knew it, the pitcher knew it, the whole team knew it. That was his team’s style, and (he wanted us to learn that) some things you have to do just because you have the opportunity to do them. It still carries with me in my life now.”

With little formal education himself, McMillion made sure that each of his five children received what he did not.

All five of McMillion’s children attended college, including Michael, who played football for Tennessee State.

And just as that heralded a new chapter in McMillion’s life, so too did this one.

Michael served as a recruiter and local ambassador for Tennessee State and was instrumental in securing athletic scholarships for 15 kids from the Mahoning Valley, including Harding graduate Monti Davis, who was selected by Philadelphia in the first round of the NBA Draft.

When someone has been active in the community for as long as McMillion has, lives cannot help but be touched.

One of them was Warren Mayor Doug Franklin.

Franklin had known McMillion since he was a child and had seen him in action many times. He saw his dedication to providing the younger generation with things he himself had never had.

“He was just a pioneer when you saw him play every day, especially on the baseball field, how he devoted seven decades of his life to youth, youth baseball, as an organizer, coach and fundraiser,” Franklin said, “The first time I went to Niagara Falls was on a trip that he organized, which was really cool because we were all from the projects and we hadn’t seen much outside of the city limits of Warren. But he wanted us to have what other young kids had. He did the legwork and raised all the money, put us all on a bus and we all went to Niagara Falls. That was an amazing experience at 10 years old.

“He did it all. And I always say he was the hardest working man I know, and the busiest adult I know. Not only did he give all those decades to organizing and coaching baseball, he owned McMillion’s car wash, he had a food truck, he worked part-time at a funeral home, and did all that and kept his family first. He lived a pretty phenomenal life, and our entire community benefited from that.”

In his honor, Field No. 5, one of the many fields that once made up Perkins Park, will forever bear his name.

“I do hundreds of them a year, but his contribution and impact on our community was so profound that I wanted to do something that was a little more meaningful and lasting, and something that would touch generations after me,” said Franklin. “By dedicating that baseball field at Perkins, and it’s one of the fields that’s still there — we made a conscious decision to dedicate Field No. 5, which will always be used for youth baseball and some adult baseball. We felt that was appropriate to reflect what he gave to us as a community.”

Those who knew McMillion could tell at least a million stories, all of which contained different lessons, but most of them would come back to the diamond.

Do you have an interesting story? Contact Brian Yauger by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @_brianyauger.

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