1950 Yankee of the Past: Lefty Gomez

NOT A FAT CHANCE
"Another Lefty Gomez story: when he first joined the New York Yankees, some friends told him:
'If you could add ten pounds to your skinny frame you'd make them forget Chesbro.'
Lefty went out and ate all the food in sight that winter. He put on ten pounds, but the added weight hampered instead of helped him. He wound up with an eleven and fifteen record.
'Forget Chesbro!' snorted Gomez. 'I almost made them forget Gomez!'"

-Al Abrams in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Baseball Digest, February 1950)

1950 Yankee of the Past: Dutch Ruether

DANGER SIGN
"Dutch Ruether is one of Charlie Grimm's favorite people and used to be a southpaw who was straight arsenic to the former Cub manager.
'I never could hit him at all,' Grimm recalled. 'He'd throw his arms around his head and then the ball'd be in on me. One day I decided to start swinging when he got his hand over his head and I hit a pop fly the third baseman caught near the box.
'Next time I came up Dutch walked off the mound and I thought he was going to talk to his catcher. Instead, he stopped in front of me and said, in his hoarse voice,
''Get ready to go down.'
''Me go down? What are you going to dust me for? I never got a hit off you in my life,' I answered.
''Yeah, but you're going to start hitting me,' Ruether muttered and walked back to the box.''"

-Francis J. Powers in the Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, February 1950)

1950 Yankee Coach of the Past: Red Corriden

EVERYBODY LIKES CORRIDEN Durocher's Balm-Badier Now On Own
"John 'Red' Corriden, the new Chicago White Sox manager, served under five big league pilots- Rogers Hornsby, Charlie Grimm and Gabby Hartnett with the Cubs; Leo Durocher of the Dodgers, and Bucky Harris of the Yankees. Looking back at their individual regimes, Red appraises them like this:
Hornsby: 'A driver, a harsh disciplinarian with a sound knowledge of baseball.'
Grimm: 'A diplomat, a smooth operator who relied on players to go along and do their best without too much prodding.'
Hartnett: 'A take-charge guy who was at his best as a playing manager and 'the man who won the flag for the Cubs in 1938, almost by himself.'
Of Harris, Corriden said: 'A great judge of playing ability and a manager who knew how to maintain discipline without raising his voice ... but when he did raise it, he could cut you down to peanut size with few words.'
Then there was Leo the Lip under whom Corriden was a Dodger coach for six years. 'A terrific driver,' Corriden described Durocher, 'who never spared himself or a player.
'He could leave a player stripped to the raw over a missed signal or the failure to hustle ... but he never bawled a guy out for fanning or making a mechanical error if he was on the ball.'
The entire Brooklyn team was at a luncheon some years ago at which Durocher was introducing the players and telling what each man did. He got to Corriden, hesitated a few seconds as though searching for the right phrase and then simply said: 'Everybody likes him.'
It was rather significant that Leo, who never claimed to be a 'nice guy' himself, should admit publicly that there was room on his club ... or any team for a man of that type and that Corriden, in addition to his duties as a smart observer and advisor to Durocher (along with Coach Chuck Dressen) also acted as a buffer between the Dodgers and the Messrs. Durocher and Dressen.
Canny Red worked a system, too, on his salving of open wounds left by an irascible Leo.
'I'd never go near the guy the same day that Durocher got on him,' said Corriden. 'It was simply too soon for him to want sympathy. But maybe a day or two later ... after he'd made a couple of good plays or got himself three for four ... I'd sort of sidle up to him and say:
'Hey, the boss really got on you that time, didn't he? ... He was really mad, I could see that ... but listen: he wants you to be a regular ... he wants you to stay in there because he knows you can play ball ... that's why he acted like he did ... he likes you ... If he ever gets to the point where he doesn't say anything at all, you are on your way out ...' and I'd slap the guy on the shoulders and leave it that way.'
Did Corriden have any ideas of, say, of discipline that he intended to put into effect?
The red-faced little guy smiled tolerantly and said: 'I heard Harris say once you can't change the stripes on a tiger ... but any manager can help a fellow to try and do the best he can ... and a manager can do his part to make it possible for every player to have the opportunity.'
When Corriden left the Yanks, along with Harris, at the end of the 1948 campaign, he called Durocher to see what about rejoining Leo with the Giants in '49. Leo told him succinctly: 'You're in.' So Red waited contentedly, only to learn that Horace Stoneham, Giant boss, had overruled Leo by insisting on Frank Frisch as one of the coaches ... because he wanted a former Giant 'name' on the coaching lines.
So Corriden turned elsewhere for a job, and who was waiting but Harris again, to take Red along to San Diego with him. At the close of last season, the reshuffling began anew. Harris went back to Washington. Bing Miller went to the A's and there was a White Sox coaching job open. That's how Corriden came to Chicago.
In the meantime, Frisch had quit the Giants to manage the Cubs, and so Chicago has the man who unwittingly cost Corriden a Giant job managing on the North Side and Red elevated to the top rung on the South Side as fate exercises her prerogative of moving in strange ways.
The ultimate would be, of course, if they ever met in a World Series ...!"

-John P. Carmichael, condensed from the Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, August 1950)

1950 Yankee Infielders of the Past

LEO DUROCHER

"Leo started in 1925 as a shortstop with Hartford of the Eastern League. He played in the majors with the Yankees, Reds, Cardinals and Dodgers. His playing career came to a practical finish in 1941, but Leo took part in a few games in 1943 and 1945.

He was named manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939. He led the Flatbush team for eight and a half seasons, then was named manager of the Giants in July 1948."

-1950 Bowman No. 228

HOW THE DEAL WAS MADE Durocher Reveals Play-By-Play On Trade

"Leo Durocher didn't toy with his breakfast. One grapefruit, two eggs fried sunnyside up and a couple bottles of milk disappeared with neatness and dispatch. Then the manager of the New York Giants gathered his monogrammed, white-flannel robe a bit tighter around himself and relaxed in a deep-seated chair.

'Well, shoot,' he began ... and then went on: 'Save your breath. Haven't you heard about Alvin Dark and Eddie Stanky feuding? Did you know that we got the dirty end of the stick in that deal with the Braves? Do you realize that the deal may cost me my job as manager of the Giants?'

He hunched down and chuckled. 'Funny thing,' said Leo, 'but if one club makes a deal and gets what it wants and then gives up something that the other club can use, somebody's got to get gypped. Why? Isn't it just possible that each team can feel a little happy about the thing?'

Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, the Giant-Brave swap wasn't effected on the spur of the moment.

'You don't trade players of such ability at the snap of a finger,' Leo explained. 'We knew what we were doing. We made up our minds first and then sat down with Boston and said flatly: 'We want Dark.' The next move was up to them.'

The Braves countered with a demand for outfielder Willard Marshall. His name was written opposite that of Dark. 'But we also need a replacement at short,' said Billy Southworth and asked about Buddy Kerr. His name was listed under that of Marshall. So far so good.

'But the Braves felt that two for one ... for a kid like Dark ... wasn't enough,' Durocher went on, 'and Horace Stoneham and I more or less agreed.

'Who else did Boston want? Well, they named Sid Gordon. They wanted both a right-handed and left-handed hitting outfielder ... Gordon and Marshall.

'So that name was set down, too, but now the edge had swung against us. Three-one. We were in a position to demand more and Boston knew it. A pitcher? Yes, except that would have been hard to get. I knew who else I wanted. Stanky. Now the trade stood three-two. Then the shadow-boxing began.'

Boston, according to Durocher, wanted a fourth man 'just to make it look better from their side.' At this point, Durocher and Southworth withdrew and let Stoneham and Boston Owner Lou Perini do the talking.

Perini asked about pitcher Sam Webb. Stoneham was of a mind to let the whole thing drop ... to the devil with it.

'Horace asked me,' said Leo. 'I put it to him this way: 'Are you going to let a second-string pitcher stand in the way of a deal you want to otherwise make? ... I can go anywhere in the minors and get another flinger as good as Webb ... for $15,000. Why let him stop us?' So Boston got Webb, too ... and I still like our deal.'

Durocher earlier talked to the Cubs, but 'you can't talk to Frank Frisch,' growled Leo. 'He sat right in this same room with me one day last fall and I thought for sure he had gone on the weed.

'You know what he wanted for Johnny Schmidtz? Only Dave Koslo, Buddy Kerr, Sheldon Jones and outfield [sic] Don Mueller ... and he had the nerve to tell me it would be the best trade I ever made.'

Leo thinks he has cured the Boston writers of trying to stir a Dark-Stanky feud. During his first trip to Boston this year a passel of scribes waited on him to find out what the fightin' was about. 'Sure,' rasped Durocher, 'they scrap all the time. Dark is a nitwit ... If I could get a club to take him, I wouldn't have him around. Stanky is a louse and a bum and isn't a quarter to anybody. I'm sorry I ever saw 'em.'

So ending his tirade, Durocher walked away. Some of the scribes followed him. 'But we can't print that!' they pleaded, 'it doesn't sound like it's true!'

'Isn't that what you wanted to hear,' countered the exasperated skipper. 'Well, go ahead and print it ... !'

However, as Leo remembers, nobody did ... and Alvin and Eddie still room together."

-John P. Carmichael, condensed from the Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, July 1950)

BILL MCKECHNIE

A SALUTE TO NO-HIT CATCHERS

"It was the good Bill McKechnie, then manager of the Cincinnati Reds, who taught me many years ago to have unlimited respect for catchers of ability. We were talking about Johnny Vander Meer, and I was saying what a fabulous pitcher he had been when he threw two no-hitters in succession, and thereupon the Deacon mildly taught me an unforgettable lesson. 'He was great, surely,' McKechnie said, 'but everybody forgets that Ernie Lombardi had to catch two perfect games if Vander Meer was to pitch them.'"

-Dave Egan in the Boston Record (Baseball Digest, July 1950)

HANK MAJESKI

"Hank was traded to the White Sox by the A's after the 1949 campaign. He hit .277 for the A's in 1949, driving in 67 runs.

He started in the majors with the Braves in 1939. He was sold to the Yankees in 1942 but entered military service before playing for them. He split 1946 between New York and the A's.

In 1947 Hank set a major league fielding record for third basemen with .988. He hit .310 for the A's in 1948."

-1950 Bowman No. 92

PETE SUDER (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"Pete has been in organized baseball since 1935, and with the A's since 1941. He spent two years in military service. In 1947 Pete led the league's second basemen in fielding at .984. In 1949 he hit .267 and drove in 75 runs.

He can play second, short or third, but second is his regular spot. A great fielder, Pete makes a difficult chance look easy."

-1950 Bowman No. 140

GERRY PRIDDY

"Gerry had a good year with the 1949 Browns but went in a trade to the Tigers at the end of the campaign. He was in 145 games, batting .290 and driving in 63 runs.

He came up through the minors to the Yankees in 1941. He was sent to the Senators for 1943.

Gerry was purchased by the Browns for $25,000 at the end of the 1947 season. He hit .296 in 151 games in 1948 and got 40 doubles, nine triples and eight homers."

-1950 Bowman No. 212

DICK KRYHOSKI

"Dick broke into organized ball in 1946 with the Yankees' Amsterdam farm. He later played for Kansas City and Binghamton.

He began 1949 with the Yankees, but they switched him to Oakland, Pacific Coast League, after 54 games.  He was recalled by the Yanks in December 1949 and traded to Detroit. Dick has proceeded to do a workmanlike job for the Tigers in 1950."

-1950 Bowman No. 242

1950 Yankee Prospect of the Past: Eddie Sawyer

"Eddie had never been in the majors until July 26, 1948, when he took over as manager of the Phillies. It wasn't long before the Whiz Kids were whizzing but good.

Eddie began his playing career in 1934. In 1939, as player-manager at Amsterdam, he led the league with a .369 batting average. He was managing the Toronto Maple Leafs when called to the Phils."

-1950 Bowman No. 225