For nearly 30 years, Kevin Shaw has been shaping the lives of young men as a coach and manager of the Milgram Mustangs of the Ban Johnson League.
He credits his success to one of the league’s and the city’s most popular and beloved ambassadors of the game.
“My fond memory would be the one of Mr. Motley telling me when I thought I wanted to play big league ball but wasn’t good enough, so my brother was good enough. He played minor league ball and I was pouting for lack of a better word, and he said son you’re going to be a coach someday,” said Shaw, reflecting on the words of one of his biggest mentors.
This marks the first year since the 1950’s that former Milgram manager Don Motley wasn’t part of the annual Ban Johnson All-Star game. “Mr. Motley,” as we all called him, passed away in November at the age of 89, but he left a legacy like no other, handing out sound advice on and off the field.
“Mr. Motley told me something I will never forget,” former player and Milgram third base coach Ryan Kinney recalled. “We were at Missouri 3&2 laying one day. We had a group of guys and we were talking about girls and all. Mr. Motley called us in a circle and said, ‘Hey you got it all wrong, you don’t get the girls first, you get the money and then you get the girls.’”
It was that type of interaction that everyone respected about Mr. Motley.
“If you ask any Milgrams player who he is, the coaches and the older players and 5th-year guys, they know a lot about him,” said pitching coach Dakota Graham. “They know he was a class act, someone you could always talk baseball with whenever you wanted.”
