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Trevor Farrell Doyle was a baseball and sports lifer. He was a boy who loved sports pretty much from his early days. He was born on October 28, 1913 in the small Ohio River town of East Liverpool, Ohio, just 40 miles from Pittsburgh.
East Liverpool was the center of America's pottery and ceramics industry. Doyle was the son of Irish and German immigrants, who moved there in order to obtain good, well-paying jobs.
Unlike many mill towns in western PA and OH, East Liverpool was thriving on this industry. Doyle played on mill teams starting just after the Great War and quickly became one of the most talented guys. He was a natural at catcher, and also took up the game of football, which had become very important in high school in these small towns as early as the 1920s.
He participated as a quarterback in the early era of high school football, where recruiting had not quite taken total hold. He was mostly looked at by small schools in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The University of Pittsburgh looked at him, but would only let him play baseball, not football. Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a smaller university at the time, would let him do both.
In Athens as a Bobcat, Doyle excelled, starring on the freshman football team in 1932 as the quarterback, but he eventually took a spot as a right halfback on the team. However, he could not get a spot in the starting lineup, and was mostly relegated to playing in blowout games and kicking duty (he excelled as a punter and kicker). The team went 8-0 in 1935.
On the baseball team though, he starred as the catcher, eventually becoming captain in his senior season, 1936. He got a couple of semi-pro looks, but never a pro team. He graduated, and went back to East Liverpool, getting a job at Ogilvie's Department Store. Doyle married a girl he met in Athens, a OU cheerleader.
Doyle worked at Ogilvie's until World War II started, when he enlisted in the Navy. Doyle was on a ship for 4 years, eventually becoming a Captain before his discharge after completing his service. When he moved back to East Liverpool a couple of months before the war ended, Doyle wanted to try something different.
He helped as a coach for his HS's baseball team, and felt like he had an innate ability to help to coach those players.
Doyle had always been a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, having lived just 40 miles away from Forbes Field, and had attended multiple games a year throughout the 1920s. He applied with the Pirates organization for a position as a scout during the middle of the 1945 season.
Doyle got the job, and began scouting players throughout Ohio and western Pennsylvania. This led to him getting the managerial job for the Tallahassee Pirates in 1946, where he guided them to a 60-66 record. This year he will manage the Charleston Rebels in A ball (South Atlantic League).
Below are the NL Gold Glove winners I missed.
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