1 Palestine Palestine is one of the most charming small towns in East Texas. Located in the Piney Woods region of the Lone Star State, the town has surrounding forests abundant in pine and hardwood trees, expansive lakes, and white-tailed deer. Regal Victorian mansions once inhabited by railroad executives and oil barons grace the resplendent streets of the historic district, which beams with Southern charm. Antique shops, quaint hotels, and Eilenberger''s, the oldest continually operating bakery in Texas, can still be found downtown. The stately Anderson County Courthouse, with its majestic silver dome, dominates center square, a reminder of a more prosperous time in the town''s history. Just outside the city limits is Davey Dogwood Park, 254 acres of emerald greenery where locals can hike and bike along the many trails and enjoy the picturesque scenery. Springtime is breathtaking, as the park erupts with Texas wildflowers, including Indian blankets, bluebonnets, and pink evening primrose. Beyond the pastoral beauty of the town and the surrounding countryside, Palestine is best defined by its residents.

There are townies, farmers, ranchers, and even a few colorful rapscallions. Some are wealthy. Others run the gamut of the middle class. Still others compose the working poor who survive from paycheck to pay- check. Regardless of their ilk, Palestinians are a social bunch. If they like you, they like you hard and tend to organize a get-together on the flimsiest of excuses. If they grew up together, their loyalty is unconditional. They hold no grudges if you leave town to pursue bigger and better things, but only if you remember where you came from and return often enough to show it.

Palestinians may have their political and cultural differences, but they all manage to coexist like one big family. It''s always been that way, kind of like a historical fact. Once the site of a frontier trading post, Palestine was founded in 1846 to serve as the seat for the newly established Anderson County. Legend holds that the town was named for Palestine, Illinois, by Daniel Parker, an elder of the Primitive Baptist Church. But the locals still debate that issue. Some claim that Micham Main, a Palestine, Illinois, migrant, chose the name when he was appointed by the Texas Legislature as one of three men to select a site for the Anderson County seat. Others insist that another legislative appointee, John Parker, also from Illinois''s Palestine, chose the name. What is certain is that by 1861 Palestine had grown to nearly two thousand residents and was connected to the rest of East Texas by a stagecoach that passed through the town every three weeks and serviced Huntsville, Crockett, and Nacogdoches as well.

Plans for the construction of the Metropolitan Railroad between Texarkana and Austin, passing through Palestine, were interrupted by the Civil War. But an emerging timber industry led to the International Railroad and Great Northern Railroad''s decision, in 1872, to build a line that connected Palestine to Longview, eighty-eight miles to the northeast. When International and Great Northern Railroad (ign) president Herbert M. Hoxie moved to Palestine in the mid-1870s, the town assumed a more important role in the railroad. A major depot was built in 1892 and a modern passenger coach shop in 1902. Between 1900 and 1909, the ign hired its own workforce and used convict labor to extend the railroad. Inmates collected the iron ore from the surrounding woods and then smelt the ore in a blast furnace at Rusk Penitentiary thirty miles away. The finished rails were then transported to various building sites, where ign employees laid and fastened the track.

The ign would eventually operate some 1,106 miles of track, and Palestine would become the center for the company''s main workshops, where locomotives and passenger cars were constructed, overhauled, and repaired. Regularly scheduled train service to Palestine began in 1909 and continued until 1924, when the line was leased to various companies, including the Missouri Pacific Railroad (MoPac). The town was a hub for the southern branch of MoPac, linking Houston to St. Louis. Four years later, oil was discovered at Boggy Creek, just east of town. Palestine became a center for supplying and servicing oil wells in other producing fields later discovered in Anderson County.6 But the railroad remained the biggest employer in Palestine. In fact, a county immigration society recruited railroad workers by publishing job advertisements in the Palestine Daily Herald and a dozen other newspapers across Texas.

Thousands of unemployed men read those circulars and flocked to the Anderson County seat in search of work.7 One of those men was Joe Hill Bradley. Bradley and his wife, Helen, arrived in Palestine in 1927. Joe was just eighteen years old and his new bride, sixteen. With no prospects in their hometown of Dodge, Joe took a job with the Missouri Pacific as a telegraph operator and settled into the life of a railroad worker.8 Life had not turned out the way he had planned. If Joe had had his druthers, he would be playing shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals.

But the Redbirds already had a shortstop, Rabbit Maranville, a future Hall of Famer, and Joe was only good enough to get a Class D contract. Money was the deciding factor. The railroad paid more than the Minors. Therefore, Joe worked for MoPac five days a week and played semipro ball on the weekends. When Bradley''s marriage ended in divorce a few years later, he turned to carousing and liquor. In fact, the only thing he swore off was marriage. That was until 1943, when he wed Mildred Pauline Rainey, the daughter of Omega Thomas Rainey, a carpenter, and his wife, Rosemary, who ran a Houston boardinghouse.10 Millie tried hard to make a sober and honest man of her husband.

But theirs was an attraction of opposites. Joe, who was fourteen years older, was a binge drinker who favored bourbon and whiskey. Millie was a teetotaler. Joe was a "rounder," or a philanderer, who "ran around" with other women. Millie, on the other hand, was a devout member of the First United Methodist Church and wholly committed to the marriage. Despite their differences, the couple somehow managed to coexist and raise a family that grew to include three children. William Calvin Bradley was the couple''s second child and eldest son. "Billy" was born on January 24, 1947, sandwiched between Rose May, who was four years older, and Ralph, who was four years younger.

Billy inherited not only his paternal grandfather''s name but also his father''s passion for baseball. He had no choice in either matter. Every toy in his crib was a ball. When he was two years old, Joe discovered that his son was ambidextrous and encouraged him to throw with both hands. Shortly after, he began taking his son to the ballpark, where he would seat the toddler on the grass behind the backstop to watch Joe play with the Palestine Pals, the local semipro team. At age four, Billy was spending his afternoons in the backyard tossing a ball of aluminum foil in the air and hitting long flies with a plastic bat. A few years later, Joe would join his son after work to teach him the finer points of the game. By the time Billy joined up for Little League at age eight, he not only knew how to bunt, field grounders, and hit the cutoff man but also switch-hit.

Under the demanding tutelage of his father, Billy became the stuff of legends. "Billy and I played Little League against each other," recalled David Dickey, a boyhood friend. "Once I tried to steal home after he threw a wild pitch. The catcher retrieved the ball and threw it to Billy who was covering home plate. He took the throw and put his glove right above the plate. He didn''t reach out to tag me. He just left the glove there and let me slide right into the tag. I remember thinking, Who taught him to do that?" Dickey would soon learn that Joe Hill Bradley taught his son everything he knew about baseball.

In fact, Billy became so good at such a young age that he served as an assistant coach whenever his father conducted summer baseball camps for the local Little Leaguers. "I was my dad''s guinea pig," recalled Bill. "Not only did he teach me the.