'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)
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