Strange Details About Kurt Russell's Actor Father Are Catching Fans Off Guard

Clearly, a passion for acting is in the Russell blood. But that wasn’t all that fired up the family. Baseball was one of Bing — and Kurt’s — biggest loves, too. Even as a kid growing up in St Petersburg, Florida, Russell Senior was all about the game. As per website Newsner, every spring, the New York Yankees would visit the city for training, and young Bing always made sure to bag himself a front-row seat.

Yes, he became a sort of mascot for the Yankees; it led to hm making buddies of the likes of legends such as Joe DiMaggio. That in turn got the baseball-mad lad a gig running errands for the team when they played in New York or in other cities. Rumor has it, according to Newsner, that Bing even got Lou Gehrig’s bat after his final, triumphant home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1939.

“My grandfather would bring out that bat every time we had people over, and the conversation turned to baseball,” Kurt’s nephew and former major-league player, Matt Franco, told The Post Game website. “He’d pass it around the table, and he’d tell stories about all the guys on those teams,” recalled Franco. The beloved bat was later sold at auction for a whopping $400,000.

Such was Bing’s love for the game that he attended six World Series games, sitting among the players in the dugout. According to Newsner, Yankees legend Lefty Gomez once said, “Bing was the only person who took it harder than I did when I lost.” Kurt’s dad even tried to make it into the big leagues, getting as far as playing for the Carrollton Hornets in the Georgia-Alabama League.

A debilitating blow to the head from a wayward fastball though, sadly put paid to the youngster’s pro-baseball ambitions. But as a high school student, he had discovered another passion — acting. And so, Bing set his sights on a Hollywood movie career. A few uncredited film appearances followed, before he scored his first proper role in the 1956 western Cavalry Patrol.

Perhaps it was that part that helped to win him his most famous role — as Deputy Clem Foster in the classic TV western Bonanza. Bing starred in the hit show for over a decade between 1961 to 1972. He popped up in loads of other western TV shows too, including Rawhide with Clint Eastwood, and Gunsmoke. But ironically, the actor wasn’t much of a television fan.

“My dad, even though he was an actor, he didn’t really condone watching TV,” Kurt told GQ magazine in 2016. “It wasn’t a pastime that he thought was a good one,” said the star. But evidently, the Tombstone actor’s father had an affinity for TV roles, as he also appeared on some pretty high-profile series, including Little House On The Prairie and The Andy Griffith Show.

But the Bonanza star was definitely getting typecast — he was like the poster boy for westerns. Between all the TV shows and his part in the 1960 classic, The Magnificent Seven, Bing was getting gunned down more than he was surviving on-screen: hence all those deaths his son spoke about.

The well-respected actor appeared in a staggering number of TV shows. “He worked, worked, worked, worked, worked,” Kurt told the Dartmouth alumni magazine. “That’s how he put food on the table, put shoes on feet,” the star added. It seems though, that acting was more of a job than a passion for his famous father. Bing’s true love was always baseball.

Growing up with parents and three siblings in a Los Angeles suburb, Kurt remembers baseball being a huge part of their lives. “He loved passing on his knowledge of the game,” the Christmas Chronicles star recalled to the MILB website. “Baseball was what we were going to do. That was it,” he added.

The Big Trouble in Little China actor continued, “We had a batting cage in our backyard. In fact, that was our backyard. For my family, baseball was a year-round thing. Acting was a business for me like it was for my dad. I made money but I wanted to play baseball. That was the pursuit.”

And pursue it he did. Despite a flourishing acting career — he had appeared in TV shows including Gilligan’s Island and signed a ten-year contract with Disney while still in school — baseball was Kurt’s dream. As per Newsner, the rising star began playing second base in high school, before his talent saw him get picked in 1971 for the short season Class A Northwest League.

It was onwards and upwards from there, as Kurt secured a spot on the Class AA El Paso Sun Kings team in 1973. His star in baseball was rising fast. But then, in a spooky coincidence, he suffered a life-changing injury, just like his dad. “I was trying to turn a double play at second base and a runner came in high and hit me hard,” the Escape from New York star told the MILB website. “The pain in my right arm was pretty bad,” he said.

The star continued, “The doctor ran some tests, looked at me and he said, ‘Aren't you also an actor?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Well, you’re an actor all the time now.’ I sat there about ten minutes, not knowing what to do. I was just devastated.” Kurt never returned to playing for El Paso. But his baseball-playing-dreams weren’t dashed forever: dad Bing was about to step in with an inspired idea.

Bing, who had turned his back on full-time acting, invited his son to join his newly-formed baseball team. The retired actor saw an opportunity when the Portland Beavers left the league in 1973. He wanted to make sure that the city still had a team, so he put together the Portland Mavericks. That name said it all; this would be an independent team of rebels and misfits who never quite made the major league.

Bing Russell held open try-outs for the team, which saw a bunch of ragtag hopefuls show up looking to fulfill their pro-baseball-playing dreams. There were garbage-truck drivers, school teachers and guys of all sizes and ages. Kurt’s nephews, Maclain and Chapman Way, later told the story of the Mavericks in a critically-acclaimed 2014 Netflix documentary called The Battered Bastards of Baseball.

In an interview about the documentary, Chapman described the 1975 official Mavericks’ photo. And his comments summed up the kind of team it was to a tee. “They were all in a line and four of them had their shirts off and a few of them were drinking beers,” he recalled. “There was a dog running around in the photo. It was so different than any team photo I had seen.”

As per the website of newspaper The Oregonian, that dog became part of “the Mavs’” unconventional methods of distracting their opponents during games. The canine would be encouraged to run around the outfield in a deliberate ploy to throw off the opposition. It was one of a number of headline-making antics that Bing proudly called “dramaturgies.”

“Bing was a good guy,” Trebelhorn told the MILB website. “He loved baseball and he loved the Mavericks.” He went on, “I managed against Portland in the Northwest League. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. But he was a good promoter and liked to have fun. It was good for the game and a successful franchise.”

Maybe Kurt could identify with the rest of the Mavericks? After all, he had been cheated of achieving his baseball dreams because of an injury. So he gave all those other “rejects” — as former team manager Frank Peters called them — a shot at pro-ball glory. “The Mavs were the last-chance-saloon kind of thing,” player Rob Nelson told The Oregonian in 2022.

Nelson continued, “Most of us knew this was it for us in baseball. It was summer camp for us.” The Mavericks were a band of rebels who shared a passion for baseball. According to Peters, there was one team rule — “the dope-smokers had to sit in the back of the bus.” Basically, it seems, the coach ran a very relaxed ship.

He kept outfielder Reggie Thomas on the team for example, even though Thomas walked around armed with a gun and had been kicked out of numerous other squads. Retired sports writer for The Oregonian Nick Bertram recalled, “Reggie would get thrown out of the game on purpose so he could go in the locker room and rifle through everybody’s pants and steal their money.”

Reportedly — according to The Oregonian — there were rumors that Thomas was also an FBI informant, and the player mysteriously vanished in the 1980s. He wasn’t the only controversial team member welcomed by Bing, either. Former Major League player Jim Bouton was embraced by the Mavericks, despite being blackballed by other teams for his revelatory 1970 memoir Ball Four.

With that band of misfits, Bouton finally felt at home. According to The Oregonian, he once thought to himself as he looked around at his fellow team members, “You know, this is the first time baseball’s made sense to me.” Kurt, who also played for the Mavericks, loved the team too. “It was fun being around the club and to be a part of its existence,” he told MILB.

It wasn’t just the Mavericks that brought Kurt and Bing together professionally. The father and son also co-starred in the 1979 TV movie Elvis. Funnily enough, Bing played Elvis’ father Vernon Presley, while Kurt played “the King.” The latter had also appeared as a child with the “Blue Suede Shoes” singer himself, in the 1963 movie musical It Happened at the World's Fair.

In a video interview on the Campus Insiders website, the Tango and Cash star recounted how his father had accompanied him to that film set one day, when both fell starstruck in the presence of Elvis. But to their surprise, the rock ’n’ roll icon approached Bing and explained that he was a fan of his!

Elvis apparently asked Bing, “I’ve seen you in a lot of Westerns, and I love the way you wear your hat. And I was just wondering, that if I ever do a Western, would it be okay if I wore my hat that way?” Now that’s a compliment! But it wasn’t the only time that the Bonanza star claimed to have met the legendary rock ’n’ roll singer.

As per The Oregonian, while he was still managing the Mavericks, Bing put about a story that he had been in discussion with Elvis about buying a Major League team — the Orioles or Chicago White Sox — and relocating them to Portland. The King had even agreed to perform the national anthem at some of their games as a crowd-puller. Was it true? Well, nobody knows for sure.

It wasn’t the only questionable claim regarding the rock ’n’ roll legend that Bing had made, either. He also insisted that Elvis wanted to actually play for the team! Former manager Peters explained, “This was during that period when Elvis was desperate for an activity to lose weight. He tried karate, so baseball was next.”

But writer Bertram had faith in Russell Senior’s supposed tall tales. “I don’t think Bing ever made stuff up,” he told The Oregonian. “He was a good enough conman that he didn’t need to make stuff up.” And former player Nelson backs up Bertram’s argument, as he remembers how devastated the team owner had been following Elvis’ sudden passing in 1977.

“It’s over,” Bing told Nelson. “Without Elvis it’s not going to happen.” And indeed it was over for Bing’s dream team. They had an outstanding record for an independent team, claiming four division titles and breaking records for league attendance. But Portland suddenly started to gain status as a sports city, with the rise of NBA champs The Blazers and Major League soccer team The Timbers.

It suddenly dawned on baseball execs that it had been a mistake to get rid of the Beavers. They made the decision to bring back the team — spelling the end for indie underdogs, the Mavericks. The Pacific Coast League offered Bing a pretty generous $20,000 to give up the fight for his team’s survival. But the Bonanza legend was having none of it.

Not only did he launch arbitration proceedings, but he testified too. Clearly the former TV star’s acting skills came in handy: as his lawyer and friend Jack Faust recalled, “He was Jimmy Stewart playing Mr Smith Goes to Washington.” As quoted by The Oregonian, Faust said, “This was not about money, Bing said, it was about ‘the soul of a city.’”

The retired lawyer continued, “The testimony ended with Major League Baseball’s lawyer answering ‘God, no,’ when he was asked, ‘Any more questions?’” Clearly Bing’s impassioned approach worked though, as he was awarded a hefty $206,000 at the end of the proceedings. He had won, but he had lost the Mavericks. And it was a blow that cut deep, according to Faust.

“Those were his happiest days, running that team,” Bing’s friend told The Oregonian. “He loved owning the Mavericks. It was a tragedy for him to lose the team.” The former TV star stayed in his beloved Portland though, and became a local celebrity. He hadn’t lost his love of acting either, and appeared in a local performance of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes in 1978.

Bing later directed a production of Beth Henley’s The Wake of Jamey Foster for the Portland Civic Theatre. And he trod the boards again in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. But the Bonanza star’s first love was still baseball. He made a point of attending almost every game in which his grandson Matt Franco played, as he worked his way up from the minors to the Major League.

There was a part of Bing though, according to The Oregonian, that was a little sad when Franco finally did make it to the big leagues. For the former Mavericks owner, the minors represented “baseball at the grass roots.” The Bonanza legend truly believed it was “all so pure” in the lower leagues. And there’s no doubting that he left a big imprint on the game.

After his dad’s passing in 2003 at the age of 76, Kurt discussed the legacy left by Bing on the NPR radio show Morning Edition. “The legacy is that sometimes there’s a diamond in the rough that you miss, and they deserve a chance again to show people what they can do,” said the star.

Kurt continued, “And four of them made it back to the big league off the Mavs and now there are lots of independent teams and independent leagues where guys have the opportunity to do what those four guys did.” Referencing the David-and-Goliath Bible story, the Hollywood A-lister added, “My dad was definitely David. He was the underdog, even though he never saw himself as one. He was.”