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)
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