William Leland “Kelly” Wales (1901-1945): Professional Baseball Player & Petty Criminal

Kelly Wales and Family Gravemarker

Plot 51

William Leland “Kelly” Wales was a gifted baseball player of the 1920s whose promise on the diamond was eclipsed by personal misfortune and legal troubles during the Great Depression.

Born in 1901, Wales first gained attention as a standout athlete at Saint Mary’s College of California, where he patrolled left field and led the team with a .351 batting average during the 1922 season. His speed, determination, and hitting ability earned him a reputation as one of the college’s most reliable players.

Wales launched his professional career as a catcher with the Lincoln Links of the Western League in 1925, appearing in 99 games and recording 82 hits for a .254 average. A steady backstop and dependable contact hitter, he was traded the following year to Wichita in exchange for outfielder Eddie Moore, who would later join the Pittsburgh Pirates. Over the next several seasons, Wales appeared for clubs including the San Francisco Missions of the Pacific Coast League, part of the era’s lively semi-major circuit that produced some of the West Coast’s most colorful athletes.

Battery Mates with the Lincoln Links of Western League

By the mid-1930s, Wales had settled in the Bay Area, maintaining ties to the local baseball community. He was among the many former players and civic leaders who attended the 1935 Lake Merritt Hotel banquet welcoming Oscar “Ossie” Vitt as manager of the Oakland Oaks—a fitting connection, as both men now rest in Mountain View Cemetery along with numerous other notable baseball players. [Read about Ossie Vitt HERE]

Away from the field, however, Wales’s life grew increasingly turbulent. Despite reports that his father had served as a county sheriff, he fell repeatedly into financial and legal trouble. In 1933, he was convicted of grand theft in a Contra Costa County school-fund case, serving five months in jail and a year on probation. Six years later, he faced four counts of passing fictitious checks, totaling $160, in Alameda County taverns. Found guilty after a twenty-eight-minute trial, Wales was sentenced to two years in county jail. He told the court he was supporting his wife and two children and had been living on relief work through the WPA while bartending to make ends meet.

His wife, Marcella Wales, whom he had married in Wichita in 1925, filed for divorce during his incarceration. The decree, granted in April 1940, awarded her custody of their two children, Marilyn and Samuel, and $40 per month in support. The divorce and his convictions drew local newspaper attention, turning Wales’s private decline into public spectacle.

After his release, Wales lived quietly in or near Pleasanton, taking temporary work and renting a room behind a tavern on Main Street. On January 22, 1945, he was found dead in his bed at the age of 42. Authorities suspected a heart attack but made no formal determination.

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Sources:
Baseball-Reference.com (Player Register: William “Kelly” Wales); Oakland Tribune (Feb. 20 1935; Dec. 27 1939; Mar. 24 1940; Jan. 23 1945); Hayward Daily Review (Apr. 26 1940); Lincoln State Journal (Jan. 15 1926); Find a Grave Memorial #116382931.