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)
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