Bob Caton passed away on
January 11, 2015, but the news only just made it to the Necrology sites. Caton was born in 1932, not 1936 as Baseball-Reference has it. He was a star in both baseball and football in high school and was drafted into the Army upon graduating. Upon discharge, he got a tryout with the Yankees, but a shoulder injury kept him from being signed. He returned home to the Pacific Northwest and attended Yakima Valley Community College, where we went 18 - 4 for the school's baseball team in 1952-53. He continued his education at Central Washington State. Caton became an educator, teaching physical ed and coaching football.
Before settling in Port Townsend (WA), however, where he would spend the majority of his teaching career, Bob had the opportunity to pitch for the Yakima Braves in what would be their championship season in 1959. Bob worked out of the pen and finished 0 - 2 over 10 games, but generally pitched better than that and had good strikeout totals. In the summer of 1961, he got another such opportunity, and pitched briefly for the Spokane Indians. In 6 innings, he surrendered 10 earned runs and that was the end of Bob's pro baseball career. Both professional stops demonstrate how baseball worked back then. There were hundreds of minor league clubs and they would fill out their rosters with local talent.
Bob got to coach all three of his sons in football (his daughter was a cheerleader). After he retired, he was a state champion in archery, taught scuba diving, and built and flew planes.
The pictures below are mostly ones that accompanied Bob's obituary. We have what I guess is a graduation or yearbook image, a high school football image, and a baseball image from the local Elks. The last image is Bob signing the contract with Spokane taken from the
July 1, 1961 Spokesman-Review (Bob is on the left, Dodgers scout Buck Bailey on the right, and Spokane Indians president Spencer Harris standing).