Ahead of the 1949 season, the Yankees hired Casey Stengel as manager. While he had managed in the majors before, in the years prior to his hiring, Stengel was in charge of the Oakland Oaks in the Pacific Coast League.
Presumably because of that, several players with PCL experience from the prior few seasons made their way through New York in 1949. None of them had quite as weird a trajectory as Ralph Buxton.
Buxton first shows up in minor league stats in 1934. The Canadian played for various minor league teams, including the PCL version of the Los Angeles Angels, before the Philadelphia Athletics picked him up October 1937.