1949 Yankee Coach of the Past: Chuck Dressen

PICK ON A CRIPPLE? HERE'S WHEN There are times when hitting 3-0 is approved strategy
"'PICKING ON A CRIPPLE' isn't standard practice in pro ball. Traditionally, a three-and-nothing situation calls for waiting out the pitcher in the hope of getting a walk. The percentage is greatly in favor of conservative tactics.
But Oakland's Eddie Samcoff, with the blessing of Oakland Manager Chuck Dressen, swung at a fat pitch and knocked it into center field for a double one night this spring, scoring two runs which eventually allowed Oakland to nip Hollywood, 3-2.
Now, Samcoff is not a strong hitter. He was down in eighth place in the batting order. Pinky Woods, the Hollywood pitcher, had every reason to believe the routine strike he was forced to wheel in would go untouched, if only as a matter of courtesy.
In 100 years of baseball we daresay a three-and-nothing delivery goes unchallenged 99 per cent of the time. The refusal of batsmen to go for a lush strike can be exasperating to patrons in the stands.
Manager Dressen takes responsibility- or should we say pride?- for signaling Samcoff to swing. There is a great deal of responsibility incumbent on the manager. Suppose Samcoff had popped up? Oakland fans would have been on Dressen's neck.
'Sure I flashed Samcoff to take his cut if the fourth pitch were over the plate,' Dressen says. 'I don't ordinarily do this. Every game is different. You have to consider the circumstances.'
In the majors, picking on a cripple is not unknown, though rare, Dressen agrees.
Last season, when he was a baseline coach for the Yankees, Dressen and Manager Bucky Harris used to give the likes of DiMaggio, Henrich and Berra free reign in three-and-nothing situations.
'The Red Sox also did it with Ted Williams,' little Chuck offers. 'The privilege of swinging instead of waiting was reserved for certain batsmen who had a keen eye and the power to knock a fence ball. Or at least extra bases.
'I am not opposed to crossing up the pitcher, even though the percentage is against me. Down in Hollywood I had Don Padgett cutting at a three-and-nothing. He dribbled a single and we won that game.
'Twice this early in the season I gave Loyd Christopher his option to swing or wait. He waited. With me, the order is always optional. The strike has to be right down a batter's alley, otherwise no go. Some hitters like an outside pitch, some inside, some high, some low. There are various kinds of strikes.'"

-Will Connolly, condensed from the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, July 1949)

1949 Yankee Pitchers of the Past

GENE BEARDEN (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"Badly wounded in the torpedoing of the Helena during the war, doctors thought Gene might never walk again, much less pitch. However, last season with the World Champion Indians, he won 20, lost 7 and led the league in ERA with 2.43, and his won-lost percentage of .741 was second high. His twentieth win was the play-off game against Boston which won the pennant for Cleveland. Gene was the Indians' World Series hero."

-1949 Bowman No. 57

RANDY GUMPERT

"Randy started in Organized Ball with the Philadelphia A's in 1936, appearing in 22 games. He spent part of 1937 and 1938 with the A's. He shuttled around the minors until 1946, with 1943, '44 and '45 spent in military service.

After his discharge, Randy joined the Yankees and won 15 and lost 4 over two seasons. In 1948, with the Yanks and then White Sox, his record was 3-6."

-1949 Bowman No. 87

ERNIE BONHAM

"Ernie spent six full seasons with the New York Yankees and in 1942 led American League pitchers in winning percentage with .808 (21 wins and 5 losses) and shutouts with six. He also tied for the most complete games. He has been in three World Series.

Last season with the Bucs, Ernie had a record of 6 wins and 10 losses."

-1949 Bowman No. 77

HANK BOROWY

"Hank began in baseball with the Yankees' Newark farm club. 1942 was his first year in New York and he appeared in 25 games, winning 15 and losing 4. In the following three seasons his records were 14-9, 17-12 and 10-5.

In 1945 Hank was sold to the Chicago Cubs for $97,000. At the end of 1948 he was traded to the Phillies. He has been in three World Series, with a 3-2 record."

-1949 Bowman No. 134

RALPH  HAMNER (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"Ralph has been in Organized Ball since 1937 with the exception of three years of military service. With Akron in 1937 he broke his back diving for a low liner. He had a trial with the White Sox in 1946.

In 1947, Ralph had a 17-11 mark for Shreveport and the second-lowest ERA (2.04) in the Texas League. He had a 5-9 record for the Cubs in 1948."

-1949 Bowman No. 212

KARL DREWS

"Karl spent eight seasons in the minor leagues with nine different ball clubs before joining the Yankees at the end of the 1946 season after amassing a 14-9 record for Kansas City. He appeared in three games for the Yanks that year, winning none and dropping one.

The next season with the Bombers his record was 6-6. He went to the Browns in mid-season and wound up with a 5-5 record."

-1949 Bowman No. 188

1949 Yankee Team of the Past: 1927 Yankees

THE WINDOW BREAKERS
'These Yankees Are Better'n We Orioles Were'
"It is extremely doubtful if there is any spot around the major league circuit which has invited more baseball confidences than the shady lawns of the Hotel Schenley in Pittsburgh. Sprawled out on the rustic furniture of the green-carpeted lawn, well-fortified by a meal personally selected by Louis Stein, the hotel's maitre d', many a National League manager has taken his hair down and told the writers traveling with his club the truth. The ball park, just across the street, seems far, far away when dusk steals in over the hills of Oakland.
The lawn was extremely restful to Uncle Wilbert Robinson this September evening in 1927. His Dodgers had just taken another on the chin but that was far behind him now. The season would soon be over and he and 'Ma' could beat a retreat to his hunting lodge in Dover Hall, near Brunswick, Ga., far enough from Ebbets Field so the jeers couldn't carry.
Through one of those rare quirks of the schedule, the Giants were also in Pittsburgh that evening. They were to open with the Pirates, already pennant-bound, on the morrow, while the Dodgers would slip off to Cincinnati to do the best they could with the Reds of Jack Hendricks.
Seated alongside or Robbie was Bozeman Bulger, senior baseball writer of the now unhappily extinct New York Evening World, a confidant of John McGraw and a correspondent assigned to the Giants. Boze had frequently hunted with Robbie at Dover Hall, and the two men, nearly of an age, sat in silent, relaxed contemplation.
"How's your club going, Robbie?' asked Boze, as if he didn't know.
Robbie fanned himself with his Panama and puffed on his cigar before replying. His Dodgers were a comfortable sixth, had been a comfortable sixth the two years before and were to be a comfortable sixth for the next two years.
'Wot th' hell, Boze, you know how it is,' said the Brooklyn boss. 'The same as usual, win one, lose a couple.'
'What do you think of the Pirates,' continued Bulger, since the Pirates were in the process of winning their second pennant in three seasons.
'Helluva of a club,' said Robbie. 'Those Waner kids got eyes like cats. Good pitchers, too.'
'How do you think they'll go against the Yanks?' persisted Boze.
'The Yanks will murder'em,' said Robbie with no particular show of emotion. 'They've got the best club that was ever in baseball.'
'The best club in baseball?' repeated Bulger, very much alert by now. 'Do you mean to say you think they're better than the old Orioles?'
'The old Orioles?' and now it was Robbie's turn to be surprised. He thought of that old gang of his- McGraw, Hughie Jennings, Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Dan McGann, Jack Doyle, Sadie McMahon, Kid Gleason and all the others. And he made a decision.
'The was thirty years ago, Boze,' he said. 'These Yankees are better'n we were.'
It wasn't until the wire services carried Bulger's story to the Cincinnati papers next afternoon that Robbie realized the full enormity of his crime. His phone in the Havlin Hotel ran all night. Surviving members of his old club called up and told him what sort of double-dyed traitor they thought he was. Relatives of old Orioles who had since gone to Valhalla told him what they thought. And finally John A Heydler, president of the National League, called Robbie up to tell him what HE thought.
Robbie, in his amiable blundering way, had committed a double footfault against the protocol of baseball. First, by saying the Yankees would romp over the Pirates in the impending World Series, he had let down his own league. Second, he had profaned the temple by comparing a modern team to the supposedly incomparable Orioles.
In great perturbation, Robbie called the handful of writers who maintained the death watch with the Dodgers in those days. He sought counsel, advice and escape, especially escape.
'How can I get off the hook?' he asked forthrightly. 'Everybody's mad. Can I repudiate the story, like McGraw did with Sid Mercer and Governor Tener that time?'
'Did you tell Bulger that the Yanks would whale the Pirates in the World Series?' he was asked. 'Did you tell him that the Yanks were a better club than the Orioles?'
'Sure,' answered Robbie in surprise. 'You don't think Boze made those things up, do you?'
Robbie, whose position was made even more embarrassing by the fact that he was not only a National League manager but a club president and a member of the league's directorate as well, was looking for what he blithely termed 'a sort of compromise repudiation.' He didn't wish to make a liar out of his pal Bulger and at the same time he wanted to get out from under the avalanche of criticism which was engulfing him. He felt he had troubles enough with the Dodgers. Finally, he decided on the statement that, good as the Yankees seemed to be, he had every confidence that the Pirates would beat them in the World Series.
Robbie sincerely meant it when he called the 1927 Yankees the greatest team of all time. And he knew more about the Yankees than most National League managers did, because the Dodgers used to come North every spring on a barnstorming tour with the Yankees and for days on end were exposed to that pitiless bombardment. Once in a while, the Dodgers would win a game.
Edward Grant Barrow, who, man and boy, looked at a lot of great ball clubs, always picked the 1927 club as the best. Admitting that Ed could have been influenced more than slightly by the fact that this was a club which he had helped build and of which he was the general manager, his vote should carry some weight. It may be said of the 1927 Yankees, as an advertising copy writer said so long ago, 'Such popularity must be deserved.'
The Yankees of 1927 had that which every great ball club must have over and above sheer mechanical ability- sheer confidence in itself and pride in its work. Baseball came easily to these 1927 Yanks but they loved it none the less and played with the joyful gusto that marks your true champion. Baseball was not only something which they did superbly well but something they liked to do well. They carried themselves like champions off the field and on it.
'Murderers' Row' was an accepted sports page phrase when Ruth joined the Yankees and teamed up with Home Run Baker, Wally Pipp and Bob Meusel. It never was more applicable than when it was bestowed on Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Meusel and Tony Lazzeri when this quartet comprised the center of the 1927 batting array. Not only did each of the four bat in over 100 runs during the season but their grand total of runs batted in was 544!
What made the Yankees of 1927 great was that so many members, stars for a decade or more, picked that season to have the very best years of their lives. Ruth with his sixty home runs, Gehrig with his 175 runs batted in, Combs with his .356 average.
There was more to the Yanks than just slugging. They had a great pitching staff, perfectly rounded out and complemented by the addition of Wilcy Moore, a bald-headed Oklahoman who was about to quit the season before when apparently nobody noticed him after he had won thirty games and lost only four for Greenville in the Sally League. Barrow had noticed it, however, and sent Scout Bob Gilkes in pursuit of him. He was purchased for $4,500.
Wilcy, who was called Cy, was in fifty games for the Yankees in 1927 and was equally effective, either as a starter or a relief pitcher. He had a great sinkerball, the perfect equipment for a man who is called on to pitch with men already on the bases. Moore won nineteen and lost seven for the Yankees that season. It was his only good year in the majors. Poor Cy never had it again.
The second important factor of the 1927 Yanks was the coming of age of its keystone pair, Push-em-up Lazzeri and Mark Koenig. Miller Huggins had ripped his team apart after the debacle of 1925 and started the youngsters as his second baseman and shortstop in 1926. Lazzeri and Koenig helped bring the Yanks the pennant in 1926. Now, matured in the heat of pennant competition and World Series play, they were ready in 1927.
Moore, who was all of thirty when he joined the Yanks, came to a pretty good pitching staff: Waite Hoyt (22-7); Herb Pennock (19-8); Urban Shocker (18-6); George Pipgras (10-3) and Dutch Ruether (13-6). It was significant that Ruether, a crafty southpaw whom the Dodgers had given up on three years before, was able to come back again for the Yankees. It was the last good year for the old war horse but he was right in the swing of things while he lasted.
With Gehrig having his best year as a first baseman, his fielding remarkably improved, and Lazzeri, Koenig and Jumping Joe Dugan rounding out the infield, an outfield of Ruth, Combs and Meusel and the pitching enumerated above, the Yankees needed only catching to complete the perfect squad. While there were no all-time greats on the Yankee catching staff, its members were at least adequate.
The peppery Benny Bengough was bothered with a lame arm and Pat Collins did most of the work during the regular season, appearing in ninety-two games. Johnny Grabowski, who helped Pat split the work behind the plate, batted .277, two points more than the doughty Collins.
In 1927 Babe Ruth was still covering his share of ground in the outfield, still throwing accurately. He had remarkable vision and great coordination. Babe was a skilled bunter, could hit to the opposite field when it suited him. A generally overlooked point is that when Ruth first began hitting home runs he was hitting them with the old dead ball, against spitballs, shine balls and all the other freak deliveries, later banned when the owners brought in the jack rabbit ball and cleared the decks for the hitters.
This, of course, was the season in which Ruth hit his sixty home runs, a record which had been pushed but never passed. The manner of the hitting of his sixtieth homer gives an insight into his batting skill.
Facing Washington in Yankee Stadium, Ruth had tied his 1921 record of fifty-nine the day before and now was gunning for the new mark. Facing him was Tom Zachary, a left-hander of considerable skill and cunning.
Zachary started his pitch and Babe started his swing. As the ball neared the plate, it seemed that it would come about belt high and get a piece of the plate. And Ruth started his swing to meet it under those conditions. Then the ball broke sharply, coming in a good six inches inside the plate and low and the big fellow altered his swing, which was halfway completed, to meet the change of the path of the ball. When Ruth finally hit the ball, he golfed it off his shoetops and hit it into the right field bleachers for number sixty. It probably was as good a screwball as Zachary ever hit in his life.
All this, of course, happened in a split second, but try to realize and appreciate the reflexes of Ruth. He had started to swing at a ball which was coming over the inside corner, belt high, and then had to change his swing to hit a ball which was six inches inside the plate and ankle high. That he hit it at all was a sort of minor miracle. That he knocked it into the bleachers was proof that he was Babe Ruth!
It was Eddie Brannick, secretary of the Giants and a National League fan since he was able to walk, who christened the Yankees 'The Window Breakers.' They didn't, of course, actually break any windows around the Stadium because there are no Bronx residences within artillery range. Eddie's tribute was a throwback to his kid days on New York's West Side when the best hitter on the block always broke the most windows.
While the Yanks were window breakers, sure enough, in 1927 with 158 home runs, almost three times as many as the next American League team hit, they weren't just slow, clumsy sluggers. They stole ninety bases that season, which would be enough for any club to lead the league with these days. Meusel stole 24 of those.

Among other assets of the 1927 Yankees was what Branch Rickey is fond of referring to as 'a good bench.'  They had such able subs that a legend grew up about the two outfield replacements, Ben Paschal, a right-handed hitter, and Cedric Durst, a left-handed hitter. It was generally assumed that these flychasers would be stars in any other outfield in the American League but they couldn't break into the Ruth-Combs-Meusel picket line. Nobody ever found out whether there was any truth to this because by the time Paschal and Durst got the chance to play regularly they were too old to do themselves justice. There were three spare infielders, Mike Gazella, Julian Wera and Ray Morehart.

There was no pennant race to speak of in 1927, thanks to the Yankees. The annual Reach Baseball Guide, in notably restrained rhetoric, dismissed the American League race, and the Yankees, with the following comment:

'Of the 174 days of the season, New York was in first place on each and every day. During the first two weeks, there were eight days in which they shared first place with another club.

'The Yankees of 1927 were born in April with silver spoons in their mouths and they were still holding to those spoons when they were the adults of September.' "

-Tom Meany, extract from the book "Baseball's Greatest Teams" (Baseball Digest, July 1949)

1949 Yankee Catchers of the Past

BUDDY ROSAR

"Buddy went through the entire 1946 season without an error. Last year he caught 90 games, hit .255 and continued his superior fielding, leading American League backstoppers with a .997 average.

He spent five years in the minors, joining the Yankees in 1939. In 1942, he went to Cleveland and in 1945 was traded to the A's.

He's one of the top catchers in baseball."

-1949 Bowman No. 138

"The top catcher in the American League last season, Rosar committed only one error in 374 chances for a .997 average. He batted only .255.

Rosar holds two major league records, both set in 1947. He raised his number of consecutive errorless games to 147 and his number of consecutive errorless chances to 755."

-1949 Bowman No. 128

AARON ROBINSON

"1946 was Aaron Robinson's best year in the majors. Catching 100 games for the New York Yankees, he wound up with a .297 batting average and 64 runs batted in. 

The next season with the Yankees he led American League catchers in fielding with a percentage of .997. At the end of the season he was traded to the White Sox. He hit .252 in 98 games with the Chisox last year."

-1949 Bowman No. 133

ROLLIE HEMSLEY

TAKE-A-TETE
"Rollie Hemsley, the new Nashville manager, has this recollection of the very first game he caught in the major leagues. Johnny Gooch, it was, batting in a game at Brooklyn when Rollie was behind the plate for Pittsburgh and the austere Bill Klem was umpiring.
Hemsley questioned a pitch by Burleigh Grimes which Klem called a ball.
'Be quiet, you fresh busher,' Klem snapped.
'The ball was a perfect strike,' Hemsley said.
Klem called time.
'Mr. Gooch,' the dignified umpire spake, 'will you advise this young man that the pitch was inside at least six inches?'
'Make up your own alibis,' Gooch answered, straight-faced. 'I'm not going to cover up your mistakes any longer.'
And Klem didn't put Johnny out of the game."

-Fred Russell in the Nashville Banner (Baseball Digest, February 1949)

HEMSLEY'S FATAL PARTY: Role of Mystery Host Held Back His Career as Pilot Nine Years
"Rollie Hemsley's appointment as manager of the Columbus, Ohio club brings that fascinating wanderer of baseball trails nearer to an old ambition.
I don't know when the glitter of authority first appealed to this hard-handed native of the Ohio coal country, but it must have been during the summer of 1940, when the Indians rebelled against Manager Ossie Vitt- and by doing so all but chased the fall of Paris off page one.
Hemsley was only of many Indians determined to play no more for the unhappy Oscar, but as the bitter months wore on, he came to be regarded among insiders as one of the ringleaders, possibly because Alva Bradley had appointed him, along with Bob Feller and Hal Trosky, on a committee set up to let the owner know, from time to time, how things were going on the club.
Hemsley, so far as is known, was not a candidate for Vitt's job after the directors decided not to renew old Oscar's contract. But Rollie did apply for the post a year later, when Roger Peckinpaugh was moved from the field to the office. He must have been seriously disappointed when Bradley passed him up in favor of 24-year-old Lou Boudreau.
Yet Hemsley was logical managerial timber that summer of 1940. He was one of the oldest of the players; he was popular with his teammates; he had caught for four clubs in the National League and two in the American; he had become a distinguished member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I suspect that he killed his chances the night he gave that party in Detroit.
That certainly was the most baffling incident of a season of deep mystery. It was the day the Tribe blew a key game of the series with the Tigers, when Vitt brought Feller in to protect Mel Harder's lead- and Bob didn't have a thing.
Late that evening, a half-dozen of us were having dinner with Vitt in the Book-Cadillac dining room. A waitress summoned a morning paper reporter to a table occupied by Hemsley, Al Milnar and Ken Keltner. The reporter talked with the players for a long time, then left the room and his dinner without returning to our table.
The rest of us met him later as he was getting off the elevator, his story in hand. Since he couldn't be scooped, he showed us the copy. The gist of the yarn was that the Indians had held another meeting and had decided that for the rest of the season they'd play a different brand of strategic baseball. Suppose Vitt didn't want to do this? In that case, the story said, the players would take matters into their own hands.
'It is the closest thing to open mutiny,' the story closed, 'in the history of major baseball.'
Well, the morning paper did not exactly underplay the story, and you may recall what the afternoon sheets did with it. Our own page one head, I remember, read: 'We Call Plays, Rebel Indians Tell Vitt.'
Rightly or wrongly- the reporter naturally wouldn't talk- Hemsley was identified in the minds of all concerned as responsible for the mutiny report. The repercussions probably killed the last spark of spirit the Tribe had kept alive through the harrowing weeks of the 'cry baby' treatment. Hemsley became an unpopular, lonely member of the cast.
Johnny Allen called me to protest and to demand the story be retracted. I invited him to write his own version of the meeting. He said he would, but that he'd get his wife to help him with the composition. Later, he decided to let the matter drop. He was afraid he'd be suspected of stirring up further trouble.
'But here's exactly what happened,' he assured me. 'In the clubhouse after the game, someone said that the team was too tense, that what we needed was for everybody to have a few drinks.
'Rollie laughed, and said that he wouldn't drink with us, but he'd be glad to set up the bar. He invited everyone to his room. I went up- and it was nothing but a nice party. Lou Boudreau and Ray Mack were there, and you know darned well that they're not in on any mutiny meetings. The setup was so nice, in fact, I went to my room and brought my wife and little boy back to the party. We talked baseball- naturally. But there was nothing remotely resembling a decision to call our own plays. And I know it didn't come up after I left, because I was the last to leave.'
Angry, bewildered and alone in a party of forty, Hemsley sat by himself in the dining car the day that story broke. He ordered one drink after another- soft drinks. Alcoholics Anonymous met and passed one of its sternest tests that day."

-Ed McAuley, condensed from the Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, November 1949)

CLYDE MCCULLOUGH (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"Clyde's first pro experience was with Lafayette of the Evangeline League. His first major league team was the Cubs and he joined them in 1940. However, he finished that season with Buffalo.

Clyde was returned to Chicago in 1941, and in 1942 had a .287 average, his best. He remained with the Cubs, spending two years in military service, until traded to the Pirates for the 1949 season."

-1949 Bowman No. 163

1949 Yankee Outfielders of the Past

TOMMY HOLMES (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"Meet the top hitter on last year's pennant-winning club. Tommy hit .325, including 35 doubles, and scored 85 runs. He hit only .183 in the World Series against Cleveland, but scored twice and drove in a run.

Tommy plays the Boston sun field (right) very capably. He was once property of the Yankees."

-1949 Leaf No. 133

HANK SAUER (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"One of the best sluggers in the National League. Hank has his sights on Babe Ruth's home run record.

He was with the Reds briefly in 1941 but was sent back to the minors. With Syracuse of the International League in 1947, Hank batted .336 and led in runs batted in with 141; most hits, 182; most runs, 130; most total bases, 362, and hit 50 homers. The climax came when he was voted the IL's Most Valuable Player.

Last season Hank hit .260, hit 35 homers and batted in 97 runs."

-1949 Bowman No. 5

"Hank set a terrific home run pace for the first half of the 1948 season, finally winding up with 35 round toppers and a .260 average. He drove in 97 runs. He placed eighth in the National League in slugging.

Hank is a dependable fielder who is equipped with a good throwing arm."

-1949 Leaf No. 20

HAL PECK

"Hal made the major leagues despite hunting accident injuries. Except for a pinch-hitting role for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1943, he didn't appear in the majors until the next season, although he had been in organized baseball since 1938. 

He spent two and a half seasons with the Athletics and then was traded to the Yankees, who in turn sent him to Cleveland. Hal hit .286 in 45 games in 1948."

-1949 Bowman No. 182

BOB SEEDS

STRAY SHEEPISH

"Bob Seeds, the one-time Cleveland Indian who now operates the Amarillo club in the West Texas-New Mexico League, says the present Tribesmen may steal second with the bases loaded, sacrifice with two out of pull any other of the classic boners, but he'll still claim the Cleveland championship for sheer embarrassment.

'We were playing the Yankees at League Park,' Bob recalled recently. 'Between innings, I was dying for a smoke. I didn't figure to bat that inning, so I went into the runway off the dugout to have a couple of drags.

'I really was relaxed when Charlie Jamieson stuck his head into the runway and yelled, 'Come on, Bob, we're out.' I stamped out the cigarette and started for left field with my head down, a bad habit I had formed early in my career.

'I was past the pitcher's box when umpire George Moriarty called time and grabbed me.

''What's the idea?' he asked.

'I stopped and looked around. We were still at bat with the bases filled, and that silly Jamieson was laughing so hard I thought he'd bust. Believe me, that walk back to the dugout was a thousand miles.'"

-Ed McAuley in the Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, November 1949)

1949 Yankee of the Past: Lefty Gomez

"Lefty Gomez met a friend who didn't know that Lefty's Binghamton team had ended the season in the Eastern League basement. 'How'd your club finish, Lefty?' asked the friend. 'With nine players,' answered the Goofy One."

-Baseball Digest, January 1948

THEY CAN'T DO THAT TO HIM!
"Vernon Lefty Gomez, the old Yankees' pitcher, now managing Binghamton in the Eastern League, recently was recalling the old days with Marse Joe McCarthy. Lefty recalled how infuriated McCarthy was when El Goofo, pitching against the New York Giants in the 1937 World Series, paused in his work and nonchalantly watched an airplane flying overhead. When the airplane disappeared, Gomez went back to work against Mel Ott, the Giants' batsman of the moment. Later, Lefty got a blast from McCarthy. 'You want to lose the game?' roared Joe. 'When you're not thinking like that, Ott might knock one out of the park.' 'Not,' answered Gomez, 'when I've got the ball in my hand. If that's the way these Giants play, hitting homers when I've got the ball in my hands, I'm getting out of baseball right now.'"

-Arch Ward in the Chicago Tribune (Baseball Digest, February 1948)

"When Lefty Gomez filled out a detailed application blank and questionnaire for a job recently, one line asked the question, 'What was your last employment?'
'Pitching baseball,' Gomez answered.
Then the next question: 'Why did you leave that employment?'
In complete honesty, Gomez wrote: 'Couldn't get the other side out.'"

-Fred Russell in the Nashville Banner (Baseball Digest, February 1949)

1948 Yankee of the Past: Babe Ruth

RUTH'S TOP HOMER
"Q.- (Asked of Babe Ruth)- What home run do you remember most fondly?
A.- I hit a lot of homers and I was fond of every one of them. But I guess the one I treasured most was that one I hit off Moses Grove in [1928]. That was the year the Yankees went on the road thirteen games ahead and came back half a game behind the Athletics. We had to win two out of three with the A's to take the pennant and when Grove had us 5 to 2 it looked like curtains. But that homer of mine won for us and we got into the World Series. It made a difference of $6,000 to every one of us."

-Prescott Sullivan in the San Francisco Examiner (Baseball Digest, January 1948)

BABE RUTH POINTS

Most Dramatic Home Run In World Series History

"There was a grim bitterness between the New York Yankees and the Chicago Cubs as they met in the 1932 World Series. The Yanks had taken the first two games.

It was the third inning of Game Three when mighty Babe Ruth stepped to the plate to face Charlie Root. Jeers and catcalls greeted the great Yankee home run king. Root whipped over the first ball and the Babe himself held up a finger for 'Strike One.' The second ball blazed over and Ruth held up two fingers for 'Strike Two.'

Then, with the huge crowd roaring, Ruth pointed toward the centerfield bleachers. Root wound up and threw-  and Ruth's bat met the ball with the sound of TNT exploding. It disappeared over the centerfield wall- almost exactly where Ruth had pointed."

-1948 Swell Sport Thrills No. 12

THE GREATEST

"It had to come sometime, of course. But Babe Ruth had seemingly acquired a cloak of immortality as if he were a demi-god who had sprung from Zeus. He was not an ordinary mortal even in life. Now in death he will assume still more grandiose proportions as an almost legendary figure. The Babe was a truly fabulous man, the best beloved and the best known person of our times, greater even than the sport which spawned him.
Here are two striking and most illustrative incidents. One Sunday morning last March the Babe was kneeling in church when a prim, bonneted old lady tapped him on the shoulder. 'Mr Ruth,' she whispered, 'I just want you to know that I pray for you every day.' Obviously she had never seen a baseball game in her life. Yet her imagination had been so captivated by the Bambino that she remembered him in her prayers. And that undoubtedly was multiplied of hundreds of thousands throughout the country.
The other incident happened during those grim days at Guadalcanal in the early stages of the Pacific war. The Americans and the Japanese had come to grips at long last in their fight to a finish. Among other things they exchanged were insults on hastily lettered placards. Important personages on each enemy side were vilified until our boys reached their supreme. 'Emperor Hirohito is a stinker,' the card said- except the last word was considerably stronger. Thereupon the Japs countered with their insult supreme. Their retaliatory card said: 'Babe Ruth is a stinker.'
Their choice is illuminating. It could have been Roosevelt or MacArthur. But the Nipponese mind seemed to sense that the Babe was a greater figure than either of them.
The hold that Ruth had on the public mind has never been matched by anyone in sport or out of it. He commanded it just by being himself, the most natural and unaffected man in this wide world. He lived a full and lusty life. He did incredible things, some of which have seen print and some which never will. In a way it is unfortunate that the entire story could never be told, because it would make the Babe a still more unbelievable person than he actually was.
The King of Swat was much more than a magnificent baseball player. Experts will argue themselves blue in the face as to whether Ruth or Ty Cobb was the greater performer. It doesn't particularly matter. The Babe was in a class by himself when it came to color. He teemed with it, vibrated with it and exuded it from every pore. He could strike out and excite a crowd infinitely more than Cobb hitting a grand slam home run with two out in the ninth.
As a left-handed pitcher at the beginning of his career he was one of the very best and his record for consecutive scoreless innings in the World Series still stands. As an outfielder he also was one of the very best, a beautiful thrower and a more than adequate ball hawk. As a batter he was superb. That was his forte. If he had concentrated on singles instead of homers, he would have left hitting marks which never would have been approached.
There can be no questioning the fact that he saved baseball when that structure was rocked to its very foundation by the Black Sox scandal of 1919. And along came Ruth with the distraction of his thunderous bat. The fans thronged to see him and the scandal was brushed aside. He hit more home runs and longer home runs than any man had ever fashioned before.
His appetites were prodigious. His physique was prodigious. His feats on and off the field were prodigious. He made money on a massive scale and he spent as faster or even faster than he made it.
His failures were also cut from the heroic mold, such as his .118 batting average in the 1922 World Series and his disastrous season of 1925 when he hit only .290 and lost his rebellion against the authority of Manager Miller Huggins. But his failures were so few that only his glorious successes will be remembered. Even the record book, ordinarily dull and statistical, takes on a certain enchantment and glamor where it lists the fifty-four marks the mighty Bambino left behind him.
His most extraordinary contribution to the game, however, rests in the fact that he alone changed its complexion and contour. It had been a game of 'inside baseball,' a tightly-played contest of single runs- stolen bases, squeeze plays, placement hitting. But the booming bat of the Babe demonstrated that runs could be gathered like bananas- in bunches. He soon had everyone swinging from his heels, shooting for the fences and trying to follow his lead.
Not only did he transform its strategical concepts, but he revitalized it in the box office, making new fans in untold numbers. He raised the general salary scale of all major leaguers until rookies now get higher wages than stars received before he brought his boisterous bat and boisterous personality on the scene.
Babe Ruth's records may all be broken someday, but the imprint he left on the game can never be erased. He was baseball's greatest figure and the sport never will see his like again."

-Arthur Daley, condensed from the New York Times (Baseball Digest, October 1948)

1948 Yankees of the Past: Earle Combs and Joe McCarthy

EARLE COMBS

THEY GOT THE BEES-NESS
"Earle Combs, who this season has rejoined his old Yankee boss, Joe McCarthy, on the coaching staff of the Red Sox, adds further proof that anything can, and usually does, happen in a ball game.
'I was playing center field for Louisville one day when I heard this noise behind me,' Combs said. 'Turning around I saw a cloud of bees swarming toward me. I shouted 'Time!' and ran for the clubhouse. When the other players saw what was happening, they all started running after me.
'The fans were getting a big laugh out of it until the bees headed for the grandstand,' Earle said. 'Then they began running for the exits, too. Not until the bees had disappeared over the top of the grandstand did we all return to the ball game.'"

-Ed Rumill in the Christian Science Monitor (Baseball Digest, July 1948)

JOE MCCARTHY

HE'S EYEING HIS EIGHTH WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP

"A one-time $6.50 a week 'head tender' in a Philadelphia woolen mill- a stoutish, sedate Irishman with gimlet brown eyes, an aggressive jaw and a usually-distressed look- Joseph Vincent McCarthy- is taking over the Boston Red Sox this spring to refurbish his reputation as baseball's most successful manager.

Though he never even got a chance to try on a major league uniform as a player, he has won seven World Series- a record, two more than Connie Mack, more than twice as many as John McGraw.

He is the only manager to win pennants in both leagues.

In twenty-eight years of piloting, twenty of them in the majors, he has finished out of the first division only once. He has wound up lower than third only three other times. He has won eleven pennants, nine of them in the majors. His big league teams have won .614 of their games.

He has weathered, with gentlemanly grace and dignity, dramatic showdowns with three of the game's greatest stars- Grover Alexander, Rogers Hornsby and Babe Ruth- winning two outright, gaining a moral triumph on the other occasion.

What, then, has the guy got on the ball?

To be sure, he has been fortunate in tying up with two- and now a third one- of baseball's wealthiest organizations. Certainly his task usually was somewhat less complex than that faced, say, by Zack Taylor with the Browns. The William Wrigley, Jr. millions gave him wide purchasing power with the Cubs, though he didn't make use of it as much as is generally believed. The Ruppert millions gave him the best scouting and perhaps the most intelligently operated farm system in the business. But millions long failed the Red Sox; the farm system wasn't a consistent winner for the Cardinals.

Diffident, even shy at times, McCarthy attributes his success to a self-effacing 'I've been pretty lucky all my life.' It's much more than that, of course. Primarily, it's that he knows how to pick men. He knows how to handle them. He instills in them a hustling, fighting spirit, preserves harmony, insists on team work in preference to individual honors. He is an astute handler of pitchers. He is a stickler for discipline, yet he knows when it is advisable to ease up on the reins in training matters.

As yet, some aren't quite ready to accept him as a great strategist, on a plane with Miller Huggins, for example. Yet he plays a sound game. He hasn't the flair for personal showmanship like a John McGraw or a Leo Durocher. He prefers the background. The credo of simplicity, which he inherited as a poor half-orphaned boy in Philadelphia's Germantown, has stuck with him.

He lets results speak for themselves. He took over the Cubs in the cellar and in four seasons not only led them to a championship, but made them the best Cub team in more than thirty years.

He took over the Yankees in 1931 and the next year they won the pennant. True, he did have Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey up there slugging for him, BUT- and get this- none of them was as individually effective in 1932, when they won under McCarthy, as in 1930, when they didn't win without him.

Don't believe it? Here's the proof. In 1932, Ruth hit eight fewer homers and batted eighteen percentage points less than he did in 1930. In 1932, too, Gehrig made seven fewer homers, hit thirty points lower and drove in twenty-three fewer runs than in 1930. And Dickey hit twenty-nine points less in 1932 than in 1930. Yet the Yankees, who finished only a few games above the second division without McCarthy in 1930, won the pennant under him in 1932 with 107 victories, three more than the runner up- and then swept through the Cubs in four straight in the World Series.

And he has been doing things like that ever since, interrupted only by his temporary retirement after quitting the Yanks the summer before last.

'I get a lot of letters saying I'm ruining baseball,' McCarthy remarked during his tenure with the Yanks. 'I'm ruining the league, they say. What kind of guy am I? Do I think I have to win 'em all and not give anybody a chance? Do I want to win them all?'

In a quiet voice, McCarthy answered himself.

'Well, who doesn't want to win them all?'

It was 'tough sledding,' both literally and figuratively, for Joe McCarthy, the boy. He not only had humble beginnings, but an accident as a tot in Philadelphia's Germantown almost stopped his baseball career before it had begun.

His left kneecap was badly broken as his sled careened against a rock zooming down a steep hill in Germantown, where he was born April 21, 1887. It left him with a loose cartilage that slowed him up considerably. And, he allows, 'like most of us swaybacks, I wasn't very fast to start with.'

His contracting father was killed in a cave-in when Joe was only three, forcing him as a youth to help with odd jobs, such as carrying ice. The family situation prevented his attending high school. Instead, he worked in the cotton and woolen mills. His extra qualities were recognized early, however. Most of the boys in the mill got $5 a week. As a 'head-tender,' Joe got all of $6.50.

'In between jobs, I started playing sandlot ball, as almost all kids do,' he recalls, 'but it wasn't until I was fifteen that I played with my first regular team. That was the Chew A.A. It was named that because we played in a little park in Chew Woods, named after the famous Germantown family, whose mansion was Washington's headquarters during the revolution. I played the outfield and often got as much as a couple bucks a game.'

McCarthy was far from a natural ball player, the sort that is born with fast feet and big hands, who makes plays gracefully and instinctively. Instead, he belonged to the much larger class of built-up players who must develop the hard way by training and coaching.

However, he was good enough to catch on with the Germantown semipro team. Then his baseball ability won a scholarship at Niagara University. 'At that time Niagara was more of a preparatory school,' McCarthy explains, 'and so a high school education wasn't a requisite.' He played one spring with the Purple Eagles, outfield and shortstop, in 1906.

'Then I get a trial with Wilmington in the Class-B Tri-State League,' he recalls. 'I played exactly twelve games. I hit .175. In three weeks I was released. The next season- 1907- I went back with Franklin, which had in the meantime entered organized ball in the Inter-State League. I played the infield and hit .314- incidentally, one of two years of my fifteen as a player in which I hit over .300- and was sold to Toledo.

'In one of my first games with Toledo I struck out four times and thought surely I'd be released that night. I managed to last three full seasons and part of a fourth, however, though I never hit more than .250. I played third and the outfield.'

In the middle of the 1911 season, Toledo traded McCarthy to Indianapolis, where Jim Burke, who later was to become McCarthy's loyal lieutenant with the Cubs and Yankees, was manager. Burke released him to Wilkes-Barre at the end of the season- and inadvertently started McCarthy on his managing career.

When Darby Bill Clymer, Wilkes-Barre manager and half owner, signed to manage Buffalo in 1913, he asked McCarthy to succeed him as pilot of the Wilkes-Barre club. And thus, at the somewhat precocious age of twenty-five, McCarthy's managerial career was under way.

The closest Joe McCarthy, second baseman, ever came to the major leagues was the day the Yankees- yes, the same Yankees he later led to seven world titles- refused to pay $3,000 for him and the time the Federal League disbanded shortly after he jumped to the Brooklyn club.

Both incidents occurred during the winter of 1915-1916. Prior to that, in 1913, McCarthy led Wilkes-Barre to second in his first chance as a manager. He moved himself from third to second base and hit his lifetime high of .325, an average that caused Memphis to draft him that winter and Buffalo to buy him immediately from Memphis.

He played two seasons with the strong Bison team that included such familiar baseball stars as Joe Judge, Charley Jamieson, Fred Beebe, Frank Gilhooley and Jack Onslow. They won the International League pennant in '15.

That was the period of the Federal League turmoil. Ed Barrow, then president of the International League and later, by a curious turn of fate, president of those same Yankees McCarthy managed, endeavored to help his I.L. clubs sell some of their stars in an effort to get a war chest to fight Federal invasion of some of their cities.

He went to New York to try to sell outfielder Gilhooley and McCarthy to the Yanks for $16,000. The Yanks offered him $11,000 for the pair, then decided McCarthy wasn't worth $3,000 and purchased Gilhooley alone for $8,000.

Discouraged, McCarthy, who was getting only $2,000 a year at Buffalo, went for Federal League bait that winter. When the circuit broke up before the season opened, he was assigned to Louisville. In 1916, as a member of the famous infield that had Jay Kirke at first, Roxy Roach at short and Johnny (Red) Corriden at third, he helped win the American Association pennant. No member of that infield missed as much as a single time at bat in the full 168 game schedule.

McCarthy was to remain with Louisville for ten years. In 1919, when Pat Flaherty resigned as Pilot, owner Bill Knabelkamp made McCarthy playing-manager. He led the Colonels to pennants in 1921 and 1925 and in the former defeated the supposedly unbeatable Baltimore Orioles in the Little World Series.

Even at Louisville, his leadership caused him to be discussed in the New York office. Once when Paul Krichell, Yankee scout, and Barrow were discussing Miller Huggins' health, Krichell remarked: 'Keep that man McCarthy in mind. If anything should ever happen to Hug, he would make a good manager for the Yankees.'

He did.

The late Mordecai Brown was being asked about that famous Merkle game on a radio program a few years ago and Joe McCarthy, waiting to be interviewed next, couldn't resist. 'Don't forget to tell them, Brownie,' he broke in, 'that the only player who did any hitting for you that day was Frank Chance- and he got three.'

Brownie's bushy eyebrows jumped an inch at that. Even he, who had been very much there that day in 1908, couldn't recall that. But it was just another proof of the amazing memory that has helped McCarthy become the master of seven world champions.

He is a close student not only of the game, but dozens of box scores daily, mentally storing away a fact here and a fact there that will be of value next week, next year or next decade.

Disclaiming any master-minding, McCarthy just plays sound, orthodox baseball for the most part. His older players are allowed to do their own thinking, with either he or his coaches signaling the rookies until they have established themselves.

His chief variation in orthodoxy comes in his hunches. His brown eyes twinkle as he says it may be that he is psychic, that he gets messages from out of the air in the early hours of the morning, like the time he started the injured Monte Pearson in the 1936 World Series- and Pearson beat the Giants, 5 to 2.

'A message from thin air,' he explained the hunch.

'But how,' persisted a reporter, 'do you get them?'

'Prepaid,' laughed McCarthy, 'and that's the best part of them.'

Besides loyalty, his chief requisite in a player is hustle. He, himself, never lets up. The Cubs had the pennant assured in 1929 and were running wild in Boston when Judge Fuchs, then bench manager of the Braves, pleaded with McCarthy.

'Have a heart, Joe, you're killing baseball in Boston. Haven't you scored enough runs- why demand more runs from your players?'

'I'll let you know sometime,' McCarthy shrugged.

The next time McCarthy saw Judge Fuchs was when the latter went to the dressing room to offer his condolences after the Cubs blew the 8 to 0 lead to the Athletics in the 1929 World Series.

'Well you got it today, Judge,' yelled McCarthy over the heads of the crowd, 'the answer to that riddle you were asking me in Boston.'

One who never pops off, McCarthy never alibis, either. Injuries? 'Those things make no difference. A manager is supposed to win even if he has fifteen injured players.' Bad weather in the spring? 'Our team trained at Brockton, Mass. and Portland, Maine in 1915- and won the pennant.'

Cynics sometimes scoff that he prefers 'ready-made' players from the high minors instead of developing his own. He admits the charge, if a charge it is. 'You can get a team from B and C players,' he says, 'but not a championship team. When you have to replace a major leaguer, it is logical to get the man nearly matured, those who have a half dozen years of experience and played regularly in AA ball. Of course, you can occasionally pick up a Cobb or a Wilcy Moore from the low minors, but the percentages are all against you.'

He admits he is a worrier. 'I've never met anybody in this business who isn't,' he says. 'It's a mental strain- trying to win a pennant. And just as soon as you do win one, there's always next season to worry about.'

A visit to a McCarthy bench is not at all like a visit to the bench of many big league clubs, where hoopla, gaiety and repartee is the order of the day. Silence stifles the atmosphere. A McCarthy player comes out, picks up a bat, goes up to the plate for preliminary swings, with seldom as much as a howdy or a nod to his mates and the barest nod to visiting newspapermen.

'We do our talking with base hits, pitching and fielding,' explained Coach Art Fletcher, when he was with McCarthy and the Yankees. 'Business-like, I guess you'd call it.'

And so it's business-like that Joseph Vincent McCarthy this month starts his quest for an eighth world title in seventeen years- and you wouldn't want to bet he doesn't get it, would you?"

-Herbert Simons, Baseball Digest (April 1948)

HIS FIRST THOUGHT

"When Joe McCarthy took over the managerial reins of the Red Sox, his first official move was to call Collinsville, Illinois, the home of his famous right-hand man and third base coach, Art Fletcher.

The latter's health has not been good the past several years and he was out of baseball even before McCarthy left the Yankees. But Mac called him, and asked if Fletch wanted to rejoin him in Boston.

'I appreciate the offer,' Fletch said, 'but my health won't permit it.'

'I was afraid that would be your answer,' McCarthy responded, 'but I just wanted you to know that I thought of you first when I needed a coach.'"

-Robert L. Burnes in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Baseball Digest, May 1948)

1948 Yankees of the Past: Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock

WAITE HOYT

A SUIT THAT WAS TRUMP

"They tell about the time Waite Hoyt was pitching for the Pirates against the Cubs, who had quit to the Yankees in a World Series. The Chicago bench was abusing him. Hoyt called time and sauntered over to the Cubs' dugout.

'If you guys don't shut up,' Waite said, 'I'll put on a Yankee uniform and frighten you to death.'

They shut up."

-Jimmy Cannon in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, June 1948)

THIS HOYT!

"Umpires are continual targets for the jockeys, although they have the last word in that they can thumb all offenders out of the game. However, an arbiter with a sense of humor- such as Billy Evans was- occasionally will let an athlete get away with more than he's entitled to. Billy loves to tell one story on himself.

Waite Hoyt was pitching, and he always had a mind as sharp as his curve. Hoyt continually shaded the plate, firing at the corners and making it very tough on the umpires. Evans called too many of the close ones balls instead of strikes to Waite's growing wrath. At the end of one inning he asked Evans in an unnecessarily loud voice: 'How many do you umpires miss in a game and still consider it a good day?'

Feeling very smug and superior, Billy swallowed the bait and replied just as loudly: 'With the limited stuff you have, Mr. Hoyt, we shouldn't miss over a dozen.'

To the vast chagrin of Evans, the quick-witted hurler then bellowed: 'You've already taken three times your limit today and we've only played five innings.'

The crowd roared. Hoyt grinned mischievously. And, believe it or not, Billy himself joined in the laughter.'

-Arthur Daley in the New York Times (Baseball Digest, October 1948)

HERB PENNOCK

BASEBALL MOURNS THE MAN WHO LOOKED EASY TO HIT - BUT SOMEHOW NEVER WAS

"Bennie Bengough was warming up Herb Pennock one day when the Yankees were playing the Indians in old League Park in Cleveland and a fan sitting in a box directly in a line with them called out to Bennie:

'Hey!' he said. 'Hey! Can I ask you a question?" Bennie walked back to the box.

'Sure,' he said. 'What is it?'

The fan nodded toward Pennock.

'How does he do it?' he asked.

'How does he do what?'

'How does he get anybody out?'

'What's the gag?' Bennie asked.

'No gag,' the fan said. 'From here it looks as though I could take a bat and go up there and hit him myself.'

'Wait,' Bennie said. 'I'll get you a bat and you can try it.'

'Oh, no!' the fan said. 'I'm too smart for that. But, as I was saying, he looks easy to hit from here.'

'Talk to some of the hitters,' Bennie said. 'He looks easy to hit from where they stand. But he ain't.'

The Yankees were going into St. Louis for an important series and Pennock got up on the train in the morning to find that he couldn't raise his left arm as high as his shoulder.

'You'll have to help me, Bob,' he said to Bob Meusel, who was his roommate and, with Waite Hoyt and Joe Dugan, one of his great companions.

'Help you,' Bob asked. 'Help you do what?'

'Comb my hair,' Herb said. 'Button the collar of my shirt. Tie my tie.'

'What's the matter with you?'

'My left arm hurts when I try to lift it and you know I'm no good with my right.'

Meusel was scared.

'What happened to your arm?'

'Muscular cold, I guess,' Pennock said. 'Come on. Get busy.'

It was Pennock's turn to pitch that afternoon, so he said nothing about the condition of his arm to Miller Huggins. He would make a stab at pitching and, if he failed- well, there was always Wilcy Moore to come in to check the Browns. And the Babe, Lou Gehrig, Meusel and Tony Lazzeri to get back the runs he might yield.

Pennock had sidearm curves, and- maybe his best pitch- an overhand curve. He teased the Browns with his sidearm curves. One this big, one a little bigger, one not quite so big. They went for them, missed them, topped them and went down on called strikes. They were waiting for that overhand curve with the zip on it. They were still waiting for it when the game was over. Pennock had yielded about five scattered hits and one run. The Yankees had made seven.

As a kid right up from Atlanta with the White Sox, Blondy Ryan went to bat for the first time against Pennock and hit a home run.

'It was the first and last hit I ever got off him as long as I was in the league,' Blondy said. 'I wasn't in the league very long, but if I had been in it for fifty years I never would have got another hit off him. All he needed was one look at me.'

One of Pennock's greatest admirers was Stanley Harris, who was managing the Senators when Pennock was at his peak.

'Nicest fellow in the world,' Stanley would say. 'Off the field, that is. On the field, he just stands there and looks at you ... and tugs on the bill of his cap ... and winds up and lets go. The ball never is where you think it's going to be. It was- just a split second before. But when you swing at it, the best you get is a piece of it. You fuss and fume and sweat and holler and he stands out there and looks at you ... and tugs on the bill of his cap and- aw, what's the use?'

The Tigers had a big right-handed-hitting outfielder named Bob Fothergill who was no gazelle in the field, but could hit the ball a mile.

'Left-handers,' he said, 'are milk on the cat's saucer for me.'

The first game in which he faced Pennock he struck out a couple of times and didn't hit a ball out the infield in four trips to the plate. That night he was disconsolate.

'Four-for-O for me against a left-hander,' he said to Harry Heilmann, his roommate- and one of the greatest right-handed hitters of all time. 'A left-hander doing that to me.'

'He's done it to me, too, Bob,' Harry said. 'That wasn't just another left-hander. That was Herb Pennock.'

In the World Series of 1927, the Yankees moved in against a Pirate team that had slaughtered all the left-handers in the National League. Pennock held them to three hits.

'I thought you said,' Meusel growled at a reporter in the clubhouse after the game, 'that no left-hander could beat the Pirates.'

'I didn't say that,' the reporter said. 'I said no left-hander in the National League could beat the Pirates. But they don't have a left-hander like Pennock in the National League.'

Pennock, to a greater degree than perhaps any other pitcher who ever lived, made a science of pitching. He didn't do it easily. As a kid breaking in with the Athletics, he was so wild that he seriously considered quitting baseball. Reconsidering, he made up his mind that, no matter how much of an effort it required, he would make a pitcher of himself. And so, the hard way, he learned control. Learned to pace himself. Learned to relax during the most critical ball game. Learned, from watching the top pitchers on other teams, how to pitch to enemy hitters. Connie Mack traded him to the Red Sox before he became a pitcher, and it was not until he joined the Yankees in 1923 that he became a great pitcher.

He was a great pitcher, a great competitor- and my friend. The news of his death was shocking."

-Frank Graham, condensed from the New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, April 1948)

1948 Yankees of the Past: Hank Majeski and Nick Etten

HANK MAJESKI

MAJESTIC MAJESKI
He's One of the Bigger A's
"Connie Mack's Athletics had given Joe Dobson a rough time the previous day and the Boston Red Sox right-hander was saying: 'What a pest that Majeski is. I pitched him three different ways in three different innings and he hit me each time.'
'Yeh, but he's a streak hitter, Joe,' a Red Sox teammate remarked.
'Maybe so,' Dobson replied, 'but his streaks are coming closer together these days.'
Which, of course, they are. Chunky little Hank Majeski, third baseman of the Mackmen, is a pretty good hitter, with more power than a lot of hitters almost twice his size.
'His power is in his wrists,' Al Simmons, Philadelphia coach, explained. 'He snaps that bat pretty quick.'
Ever since Pinky Higgins was sold to the Red Sox, Connie Mack has been searching for a 154-game third sacker. The list of those who tried to fill Pinky's shoes reads like a Who's Who for the minor leagues. But then Hank arrived on the scene and Connie's far turn troubles were over.
A long-ball hitter, Majeski last season helped make the Athletics one of the surprise clubs of the American League, hitting a good .280, with thirty-nine of his hits going for extra bases. Not only that, he paced all regular American League third sackers in fielding, handling 428 chances with only five errors. This season he already is playing a vital role in another Mackman outfit that started the campaign raising havoc among the preseason favorites in the Will Harridge circuit.
From the stands, Majeski appears as nervous as a cat around third base, taking a step from side to side, or in and out, with each delivery by the Philadelphia pitcher. But, actually, he is as cool as the well-known cucumber. He keeps on the move out there only because he plays the game up to the hilt, and the more action the better.
'I really love third base and no kidding,' Hank said. 'There's always something doing out there. You're in the game every minute because you never know when somebody is going to slash one at you.'
The five-foot-nine, 180-pound Mackman wasn't always a third baseman. Casey Stengel changed him in 1939 with the Boston Braves and Hank has played there ever since.
'I was a second baseman until I joined the Braves,' Hank told me. 'But Stengel had Tony Cuccinello at second, so I moved over to third.'
Majeski figures Stengel did him a big favor.
'I probably could have played fast minor league ball at second base for the rest of my life, but might never have made the grade in the majors at that spot,' Hank said.
Credit for the boy's improvement at the plate goes to Earle Brucker. 'He talked to me in the spring of '46, just after the A's had bought me from the Yankees,' Hank said. 'He pointed out that I was going through a lot of unnecessary motion at bat before the ball was delivered. He advised me not to wag the stick so much. And it made a better hitter out of me.'
When handing out credit for what success he has had in baseball, however, Majeski speaks first of Harry O'Brien, his coach at Curtis High School, at Staten Island, N.Y.
'When I was a kid in high school, I was only about five-four or five-five in height, too small to play anything except baseball,' Hank said. 'And most of the kids out for the nine were six foot or close to it. So it didn't look as though I had a chance.
'But Harry O'Brien felt I had the stuff to play on the team and his confidence in me got me started,' he continued. 'He took a personal interest in me and helped me plenty. He's one of the best handlers of youngsters I've ever seen and still coaches every sport except football at Curtis High.'
Majeski played on the Curtis varsity for three years. In his spare time he played second base for the Staten Island team in New York's popular Police Athletic League. Jack Daly, who handled semi-pro clubs in the neighborhood, got Majeski on the road to organized ball. He arranged a letter for Hank to take to Charlotte, N.C., in the Piedmont League.
The first fellow young Hank met at Charlotte was the late Herb Pennock, then in charge of the Red Sox minor league interests, Charlotte being a Sox farm club. The kid second sacker worked out for a few days, then was shipped to Eau Claire, Wis, of the Northern League, where he signed his first pro contract. Also breaking at Eau Claire that year, 1935, was Stan Spence.
The following year the Eau Claire option was dropped by the Red Sox and picked up by the Chicago Cubs, so Majeski went to Catalina Island for spring training in '37. Sent to Moline of the Three-I League, he had a good year and was sold to Birmingham. Indianapolis drafted him from the Barons at the end of the 1938 season and the Braves bought him a few days later.
Hank commuted between Boston and Newark during the next three years, being cut loose by the  Braves in '41. He was ready for another chance at fast company by '43 but entered the Coast Guard in January of that year. Out in November, '45, he went to spring training with the Yankees in '46, the Bears being a Yank farm. It was during that '46 campaign that he was sold to the Athletics.
Majeski still lives in Staten Island, but in the summer of '46 moved into a new home with his wife, Margaret. His chief off-season pastime is puttering around the house or sitting beside a new television set, following football, basketball or hockey games.
'I'm anchored beside that set most of the winter,' Hank said, grinning.
During the spring, summer and early fall, Connie Mack uses the anchor- to anchor Majeski at third base."

-Ed Rumill (Baseball Digest, July 1948)

NICK ETTEN

"Nick, who bats and throws left, started playing professional baseball in 1933. In 1944 when with the New York Yankees, he led the league in home runs and in 1945 led in runs batted in. He joined the Oaks in mid-season last year.

Born in Chicago in 1914 of German descent, Nick is 6' 2" and weighs 198 pounds. He likes to bowl, read and go to the movies."

-1948 Signal Gasoline Oakland Oaks

1948 Yankees of the Past: Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey

LOU GEHRIG'S FOUR HOMERS

"The name Lou Gehrig will be found on virtually every All-Time All-Star baseball team and one of his outstanding feats of slugging was accomplished against the Philadelphia Athletics on June 3, 1932. For it was on that day in Shibe Park that Gehrig blasted four baseballs out of Shibe Park for a quartet of home runs- the first time that had been accomplished since 1896.

Three times Big George Earnshaw was the victim of Gehrig's dynamite-laden bat. In the seventh, Larrupin' Lou teed off on LeRoy Mahaffey to tie the score at 10-10 and make American League history. The Yankees finally won the game, 20-13, in as weird and free-hitting a ball game as ever was played in the American League."

-1948 Swell Sport Thrills No. 14

BILL DICKEY'S LAST HOME RUN

"The St. Louis Cardinals had drubbed the Yankees 4 games to 1 in the 1942 World Series. Now, in 1943, the two teams met again. The Series stood at 3 games to 1 in favor of the Yankees. Another victory would reverse last year's defeat. But big Mort Cooper, who had beaten the Yanks for the Cardinals' sole victory thus far, was pitted against them.

For five innings Cooper was locked in a scoreless pitching duel with Spud Chandler. Two were out in the Yankee sixth. Charlie Keller was on first when Bill Dickey came to bat. Cooper reared back and pitched a high, fast one. Dickey swung his bat around and timed it perfectly.

It was a home run- Bill Dickey's last major league home run- and it won a World Series for the Yankees."

-1948 Swell Sport Thrills No. 6

1947 Yankee Minor Leaguers of the Past: Al Glossop and Xavier Rescigno

AL GLOSSOP (Yankee Farmhand of the Past)

"Al is one of those rare modern birds- a 'turn around' or 'switch' hitter. He is the 'handy' man on the Angels roster.

Alban Glossop was born in Christopher, Illinois, July 23, 1915. He attended high school in Belleville, Illinois, where he starred in baseball, football and basketball.

Al bats left and right- one of the few modern switch-hitters- and throws right. He is a great utility player and pinch hitter. He was with Los Angeles last year where he hit .250 in 93 games.

His hobbies are hunting and fishing."

-1947 Signal Gasoline

XAVIER RESCIGNO (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"His greatest baseball thrill was pitching and winning his first big league game and getting two hits. He is a graduate of Manhattan College (N.Y.) and has a B.A. degree. He is famous for his violent temper and his love of winning. His nickname 'X' is believed to be the shortest in baseball.

Xavier Frederick Rescigno was born in New York City, October 13, 1913, of Bohemian-Italian descent. He attended St. Ann's Academy, New York, N.Y., and graduated from Manhattan College, New York, N.Y. He holds a B.A. degree. X was captain of his baseball and basketball teams in high school and captain of his college baseball team.

His father is in the real estate business. Xavier's hobbies are golf, bowling and tennis. He was a member of Phi Rho Phi of Manhattan College."

-1947 Signal Gasoline

1947 Yankees of the Past: Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez

RED RUFFING
RUFF AND READY
"One day years ago the Yankees were playing at Comiskey Park and suddenly saw a sizeable lead melt away under a White Sox uprising. McCarthy began casting about for a relief hurler. He didn't have much success.
One kid had just pitched batting drill. Another had a bad arm. A third insisted he had a sore back.
Finally Joe spotted Charley Ruffing, whom he never used in relief, sitting back to one side. 'How do you feel, Red?' he barked. Ruffing recovered from his surprise, picked up a glove and replied, 'What difference does it make?' ... while preparing to start for the bullpen.
That was all McCarthy needed for a lecture. He rose majestically, struck a pose with finger pointing at Ruffing and began, 'There you are. All right, you rookies, there's a lesson for you.
'There's a man willing to go in, no matter how he feels. There's a big leaguer. Sore arms, sore backs ...' and Joe broke off right there for emphasis.
Did Ruffing go in? He did not! Joe motioned for him to sit down ... and took his choice from a quartet of sudden volunteers."

-John P. Carmichael in the Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, July 1947)


LEFTY  GOMEZ
MINOR OVERSIGHT
"Vernon (Lefty) Gomez, former pitching great for the Yankees, is managing the Yanks' Binghamton, NY club of the Eastern League.
One day last summer, Gomez' team went into the bottom of the ninth trailing by one run. When the first Binghamton batter singled, Gomez called in a pinch hitter for the pitcher and instructed him to sacrifice.
The batter tapped the first pitch directly to the pitcher who scooped up the ball, threw to second, forcing the runner. The man covering second whipped the ball to first, completing a double play. All this time, the hitter never left the batter's box. He was still standing at home plate when called out at first base.
Gomez yanked off his cap, pulled his hair and screamed, 'It's all my fault! It's all my fault!'
The base umpire, somewhat amazed, said, 'What do you mean it's your fault? It's that dumb batter's fault for not running out the bunt.'
'No, it's my fault,' moaned Gomez. 'I told the guy to bunt, but I forgot to tell him to run.'"

-George Barton in the Minneapolis Tribune (Baseball Digest, July 1947)

1947 Yankees of the Past: Joe Dugan and Lefty O'Doul

JOE DUGAN

DUGAN JUMPS BACK
"Through several seasons he used to run away from baseball, but now Jumpin' Joe Dugan is back in the game, manager of the Newburgh, N.Y., club in the Atlantic League.
Dugan came out of Holy Cross about a generation ago, going from the campus to third base in the Athletics' infield. One of the star college players of the era, he was also one of the best prospects in the majors.
As a player, Dugan was a greyhound in motion. Tall and lithe, he moved with sudden speed, pouncing on ground balls everywhere in the vicinity of third base.
His artistry as a fielder was never more vivid than in the World Series of 1927 when the Yankees took the Pirates in four games.
Dugan made a play in the series, which I have never forgotten, and which I always associate with his name.
The situation regarding how many, if any, were on base, the inning and the score I don't recall, but the bunt I remember was unexpected.
As the hitter choked the bat, Dugan leaped into action. It was a perfect bunt. The ball rolled close to the foul line, and obviously it would remain in fair territory.
At a full gallop, Dugan swooped and snatched the ball. At this point he was flying through the air, horizontally. Without looking and with a continuation of the same motion used in picking up the ball, he fired under his body and then sprawled in the dirt base path. The runner was out by a clear margin.
On a play like that, ball players say 'you do or you don't.' If there is only a slight deterrent the play is almost always missed.
Such deterrents can come from fear of missing the ball in the quick grab, or of missing the first baseman in the blind throw. There's no time for caution.
Dugan apparently never entertained thoughts of missing. If he did, he didn't seem to care. Occasionally, the ball did escape him or his throw was wide, but such misses never slowed his charge.
Chances are Dugan could see the first baseman as vividly as if looking at him. The location of the ball in relation to the foul line supplies the throwing angle.
It's good to recall an old-timer in one of his brightest moments."

-Ed Pollock, condensed from the Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, November 1946)

LEFTY O'DOUL

O'DOUL- FRISCO'S PRIDE AND PAL

"Back in 1931 a political crisis was developing in Europe that would lead, eventually, to World War II and one day the late Arthur Brisbane set out on a column about a mugg named Adolf Hitler and told what a menace the Austrian with the toothbrush mustache might become. But two-thirds of the way down the page he broke off into what undoubtedly had been in the back of his mind all the time. It seems the day before he had seen a ball game and had come away with a lively impression of one of the players in the game, and wrote, in part:

'Anybody named Lefty O'Doul could not possibly be commonplace or fail to make his mark in some direction.'

That, mind you, was in 1931. It is too bad that Brisbane could not be around San Francisco today to see Lefty O'Doul, because his prophecy has come true. Lefty O'Doul is the biggest guy in the town. As manager of the Seals, he won the Pacific Coast League pennant. He owns a bar on Powell St. that bears his name and, with a partner, Al Krug, has a place on 'Nob Hill' called appropriately enough, 'On The Hill.' Everybody in the town knows him- cops, firemen, bootblacks, newsboys, politicians, millionaires, cab drivers, newspapermen, of course. Everybody. He can't possibly know them all but anybody giving him a big hello gets a big hello in return and when they tell you that he could be the mayor of San Francisco, if he wanted to, you know they are telling the truth.

Big and wide shouldered, darkly handsome and trim as he was when he was playing ball- and the best dressed guy in town- he is not only the most conspicuous figure on the streets but the most energetic, and when you trail him for a few hours you wonder how he holds the pace. You wonder, among other things, when the guy sleeps. The Seals play their games at night except on Saturdays and Sundays, but every night after the ball game you could find him at 'On The Hill' and you were likely, coming out of the St. Francis after an early breakfast, to find him bustling through the crowd at Powell and Geary Sts. or whirling past in his big gray car, returning a traffic cop's salute or yelling to a friend.

At midnight one night he was busy straightening out a fellow who had got himself into a jam. The fellow had been in jams before and was not the kind of fellow you would go out of your way to help if you were not Lefty O'Doul. 'Why do you bother about a guy like that?' somebody asked. 'Why,' he said, 'the guy is in trouble.'

The spirit of  San Francisco is all wrapped up in Lefty O'Doul, whose roots are deep in the hills that rise above the bay that leads to the Golden Gate. As far back as he knows, his family, on both sides, were San Franciscans and his father, who died at the age of forty-six, must have been very much like him, for all around the town you find people who remember him and talk about him with unrestrained admiration.

Lefty left California in 1919 to join the Yankees as a pitcher and for sixteen years he bounced back and forth between the Coast and the major leagues and he bounced in the major leagues, too. The Yankees- the Red Sox- Salt Lake City- San Francisco- the Phillies- the Giants- the Dodgers. A lame arm took him out of the pitcher's box and sent him to the outfield. He never was any great shakes as an outfielder but he could powder the ball, especially in the pinches, and one year he led the National League in batting.

In 1935, he went back to San Francisco to stay and took over the management of the Seals.

'I became a great manager that year,' he says. 'You see, I had a fellow named Joe DiMaggio on by ball club and by overpowering the rest of the league in the bat and in the field, he made me a great manager. Ever since then, I've been trying to live up to the reputation he established for me.'

He was talking about his beginning as a ball player.

'It's funny,' he said. 'It's funny how small things shape a guy's life. I was crazy about baseball as a kid, and, if you'll pardon me for saying so, I was the best pitcher in the grammar school league around here. Then, for three years, I didn't play ball at all. I was stuck on a girl and every Sunday, when I might have been pitching for a semipro team, I used to take her to picnics at Petaluma. Meanwhile, at my father's urging, I joined the Native Sons of the Golden West and they had a baseball league and every Sunday my father would go to the game but I was too much interested in picnicking at Petaluma to go with him.

'Well, one Sunday my girl went on an outing for the business college she was attending and, of course, I couldn't go, so I went with my father to a ball game. The pitcher for my father's team didn't show up and I was sitting in the bleachers and they asked me if I could pitch.

' 'Pitch, heck,' I said. 'I haven't played for three years.'

'But they insisted and I pitched and struck out a lot of guys and wound up with a shutout and now I was interested in baseball again. I quit going to Petaluma on Sundays and lost my girl but I won the Native Sons League championship for our team and, that Fall, was signed by the Yankees.'

Everything came out all right. Lefty met another girl and married her- and went to the big leagues."

-Frank Graham, condensed from the New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, November 1946)

1946 Yankee of the Past: Tony Lazzeri

LAZZERI: PLAYER OF THE YEARS
"When the iceman cometh, it doesn't make a great deal of difference which route he takes, for the ultimate result is the same in any case. Nevertheless, there was something especially tragic in the way death came to Tony Lazzeri, finding him and leaving him all alone in a dark and silent house- a house which must, in that last moment, have seemed frighteningly silent to a man whose ears remembered the roar of a crowd the way Tony's did.
A man who knew the roar of a crowd? Shucks, Tony Lazzeri was the man who made the crowds and who made them roar. Frank Graham, in his absorbing history of the Yankees, tells about the coming of Lazzeri and about the crowds that trooped into the Stadium to see him, the noisy jubilant Italian-American crowds with their rallying cry of 'Poosh-'em up, Tony!'
'And now,' Frank wrote in effect, 'a new type of fan was coming to the stadium. A fan who didn't know where first base was. He came, and what he saw brought him back again and again until he not only knew where first base was, but second base as well.'
It was a shock to read, in the reports of Lazzeri's death, that he was not yet forty-two years old. There are at least a few right around that age still playing in the major leagues. One would have guessed Lazzeri's age a good deal higher because his name and fame are inextricably associated with an era which has already become a legend- the era that is always referred to as the time of 'the old Yankees.'
You can't think of Tony without thinking also of Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel and Herb Pennock and Waite Hoyt and Lou Gehrig and Mark Koenig and Benny Bengough and Wilcy Moore, all of whom have been gone from the playing fields for what seems like a long time.
And you think of Grover Cleveland Alexander, too, for it was Lazzeri's misfortune that although he was as great a ball player as ever lived, the most vivid memory he left in most minds concerned the day he failed.
That was, of course, in the seventh game of the 1926 World Series when the Yankees filled the bases against the leading Cardinals, drove Jess Haines from the hill and sent Rogers Hornsby from his position at second base out towards the Cardinals' bullpen where Alexander drowsed in the dusk.
Everyone knows the story, how the St. Louis manager walked out to take a look at Alexander's eyes, how he found them as clear as could be expected and sent Old Pete to save the world championship by striking out Lazzeri. Come to think of it, Alex wasn't a lot younger at that time than Lazzeri was when he died.
It was after that game that someone asked Alexander how he felt when Lazzeri struck out.
'How did I feel?' he snorted. 'Go ask Lazzeri how he felt.'
Tony never told how he felt. Not that it was necessary, anyway, but he wasn't one to be telling much, ever. He was a rookie when a baseball writer first used a line that has been worn to tatters since. 'Interviewing that guy,' the reporter grumbled, 'is like mining coal with a nail file.'
Silent and unsmiling though he was, Lazzeri wasn't entirely devoid of a taste for dugout humor. Babe Ruth, dressing in haste after one tardy arrival in the stadium, tried to pull a shoe out of his locker and found it wouldn't move. He didn't have to be told who nailed it to the floor.
When other players found cigarette butts in their foot gear or discovered their shirts tied in water-soaked knots or were unable to locate their shoelaces, they blamed only one man.
Lefty Gomez tells of the day, long after Lazzeri's experience in the 1926 World Series, when he lost control and filled the bases. Lazzeri trotted in from second base to talk to him. Lazzeri always was the man who took charge when trouble threatened the Yankees. Even in his first season when he was a rookie who'd never seen a big league game until he played in one, he was the steadying influence, the balance wheel. So after this incident, Gomez was asked what words Lazzeri had used to reassure him in the clutch.
'He said,' replied Lefty, who didn't necessarily expect to be believed, ''You put those runners on there. Now get out of the jam yourself.''
They chose Lazzeri 'Player of the Year' after one of his closing seasons. They could just as well have made it 'Player of the Years,' for in all his time with the Yankees there was no one whose hitting and fielding and hustle and fire and brilliantly swift thinking meant more to any team.
Other clubs tried to profit by those qualities of his when he was through. He went to the Cubs and the Dodgers and the Giants. None of those experiences was particularly happy; none endured for long. He managed Toronto for a while and then just before the war he went home to San Francisco. That was the last stop."

-Red Smith, condensed from the New York Herald-Tribune (Baseball Digest, October 1946)