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)
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Friday, December 23, 2016
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
Thursday, December 15, 2016
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.
'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)
Monday, December 12, 2016
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
Monday, December 5, 2016
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)
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