Paul Johnston was done with baseball when he came back home to Salem.

Johnston had served his time in the minors, had his fill of working hard and not getting the promised rewards in those days of only 16 major-league teams and no free agency.

He was ready to start the rest of his life. Jack Crosswhite had other plans.

"Jack Crosswhite talked him into playing," Chuck Johnston, Paul's son, recalled on Thursday. "He wound up winning 20 games."

Paul Johnston, the last 20-game winner in Salem professional baseball history, died Tuesday. He was 81.

Crosswhite, a fellow Salem native, had been recruited by Jack Dame, Ralph Richardson and the Salem Sports Club to manage the new Salem Rebels baseball team in the Appalachian League.

Johnston was the ace up Crosswhite's sleeve.

Johnston already had seven years of pro baseball experience in 1955. He went 20-4 with a 3.11 ERA, throwing 16 complete games, as the Rebels won the league championship with an 84-38 record.

Future Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, then just a 17-year-old kid from Puerto Rico, lasted a month with the Rebels before returning home for his father's funeral.

Johnston was sympathetic.

"He was only 17, and he was kind of lost," Johnston told the Roanoke Times when Cepeda was inducted in 1999. "He was a good prospect, he just wasn't ready."

Johnston, who was inducted into the Salem-Roanoke Valley Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000, retired from baseball and spending the majority of his professional life as a salesman. He ran the Salem Golf Course from 1979-89, before Chuck Johnston took over.

Chuck Johnston said friends would come to the golf course just to listen to his dad tell stories.

"He made people feel good, and he made us feel good too," Chuck Johnston said. "He was a great dad."

Paul Johnston and his wife, Wilma, raised three children and have five grandchildren.

More than baseball, Paul Johnston and his son Chuck bonded on the golf course, sharing friendly competition.

"I got my first hole-in-one before he did," Chuck Johnston said. "It was in 1983. I was 21 years old. He was kind of happy for me, but at the same time, he'd been playing for 40-some years and hadn't gotten one yet.

"When he made his in 1988 or '89, he was like a kid in a candy store."

A funeral service will be held today at 11 a.m. at John M. Oakey & Son Funeral Home in Salem. Interment will follow at Sherwood Memorial Park.