1950 Yankees of the Past: Clark Griffith and Joe McCarthy

CLARK GRIFFITH

GRIFF PULLS OFF A FULLER It's Brushoff Of The Year

"The most determined brushoff in baseball history apparently has paid off and it's just one more example of the fierce, fighting spirit of Clark C. Griffith, the eighty-one-year-old bantam.

Griffith made up his mind last Christmastide that he wasn't going to like John Jachym, who had just bought 40 per cent of the Washington Senators and had completely astounded the old-line organization which thought it was entirely secure.

Griff never forgave Jachym for the latter's method of going about buying the Senators. Actually, it was all above-board and if Griff had any complaint coming it should have been against the Richardson estate which had promised him the 'right of refusal.' That meant that if and when the Richardson stock was sold Griff had the first right to refuse. Conversely, that meant that Griff would have the first option if buying up the block.

So Jachym, in a sense, was the innocent victim of a vendetta. The young ex-Marine was entirely unaware he was stepping into something about as clannish as a mountain family. His attempts to be the nice, young man with eager eyes made about as much impression as a man trying to whittle away mountain with a nail file.

Jachym was rebuffed at the winter stockholders' meeting. He fully expected to be named general manager or perhaps treasurer. He came out of that meeting with no more prestige than any reporter who covers the club. In fact, you could say less.

Jachym's next try was in March when the Philadelphia Athletics played the Senators at West Palm Beach, Fla. Jachym had a place down the road at Del Ray Beach. He came up to see the Senators and was avoided like a poor relation looking for a touch. The rebuff wasn't lost on Jachym.

At dinner one night he said wistfully that he was sorry about the way things had turned out. Then he gave his first intimation that he would sell when he said: 'I might dispose of the stock at the right price.'

Up to that point, Jachym was a bit nettled himself and vowed he'd fight it out in cold war. There were those who said that if the Senators did a nose-dive, Griffith would be on the spot and the fans would be clamoring for a change in ownership.

This school of thought believed that all Jachym had to do was bide his time and popular opinion would force Griffith's hand. But the trouble was the Senators got off to a good start.

When the Senators started to go down, the feeling was that the old regime was going to have a tough time keeping Jachym out. An added factor was that the Senators, thus far, were 57,000 below their home attendance of last year. The total Washington attendance last year was 770,745, a drop of about 15,000 from the previous year. The Senators claimed they lost money on that figure- that is, counting only the baseball admissions and not including concessions and rental for various functions in addition to the Redskin pro football games.

Maybe Jachym just got tired of being pushed around. For a man who had spent over a half-million dollars, Jachym had less standing around Griffith Stadium than one of the batboys. Jachym was never really aware how intensely his intrusion was resented. He wasn't quite aware, either, of Griffith's salesmanship.

Griffith controlled 44 per cent but when the time came for the showdown the old gentleman had his friends who gave him the voting power. You can't fight tradition and friendship- not even with money.

As for the brand new owner of the floating stock, there's a suspicion that H. Gabriel Murphy, the ex-Georgetown University manager of athletics, has plenty of hometown backing- undoubtedly from some fellow-members of the city's leading lights.

But Gabe Murphy is already entirely acceptable to the inner sanctum. He's a great friend of Calvin Griffith, fellow vice president of the Senators, and he isn't likely to make it embarrassing for Uncle Clark.

With Gabe Murphy in there, it is an entirely home-grown operation. The Senators have that 'no trespassing' sign out for strangers. Griffith is still a tough man to beat in a rough and tumble fight."

-Bob Addie, condensed from the Washington Times-Herald (Baseball Digest, September 1950)

JOE MCCARTHY

MCCARTHY COULD MANAGE
"Joe McCarthy is too grim a fighter, too stubborn and too proud ever to quit under fire. Hence one almost has to accept as gospel truth the reasons of bad health that he offers for his sudden and unexpected resignation as the manager of the Boston Red Sox. There is little likelihood that he ever again will return to the game he loved and served with such distinction.
Marse Joe failed at Boston. It's unfortunate that his departure had to come on such a sour note because the small-minded men who don't know any better will derisively remark that he never could manage a ball club anyway and that it's good riddance. They'll even add that the records are false in proclaiming that the square-jawed Irishman from Buffalo won more pennants than John McGraw and Connie Mack.
They won't argue with the statistics but they are certain to revive the flippant crack that the needling Jimmie Dykes once tossed off thoughtlessly, never dreaming that it would gain a dubious sort of immortality. Jimmie only meant to be funny and to penetrate McCarthy's hide when he termed Marse Joe 'a push-button manager.' It sure penetrated and Joe never quite forgave him.
The inference, of course, was that the then Yankee skipper merely had to push a button and the belt-conveyer [sic] system instituted by Ed Barrow and George Weiss instantly would produce a Charlie Keller, a Joe DiMaggio, a Phil Rizzuto or some other great star from the minor league system.
Merely having good ball players isn't the sign of a good manager. He has to know what to do with them. It was there that McCarthy was so supreme that Barrow never hesitated when the time came for him to pick the greatest manager in his memoirs. He selected McCarthy. It should be kept in mind that Barrow is a blunt, outspoken citizen who says only what he thinks, let the chips fall where they may.
'In developing young ball players McCarthy never had an equal,' wrote Barrow. That is praise from Caesar.
It probably should be understood that Marse Joe never had the warm personality of either Bucky Harris or Casey Stengel. McCarthy they never loved. They admired and respected him tremendously but there was no depth of affection for the man. Sports writers who knew the three men intimately felt just about the same way.
Yet even today any Yankee player will tell you- preferably off the record so as not to hurt the feelings of Harris or Stengel- that McCarthy was the greatest of them all. Old ball players who have retired and have no ax to grind, such as Lefty Gomez, say the same thing.
Opinion is so unanimous that it just has to be believed. Perhaps it should be confessed that this reporter had an open mind on McCarthy's proper place in the managerial picture but finally was bowled over by the weight of evidence in his favor from those who know from actual experience far more than he does.
Marse Joe was never an easy man to know. He was a suspicious man with the press and it was only on the rarest occasions that he'd let down his guard and talk expansively. Yet even then he'd sometimes suddenly whip up his guard and begin sparring cautiously.
In Florida one day last spring he was sitting with three newspaper men he liked and trusted. Conversation was flowing easily when Marse Joe started to laugh.
'That reminds me of a story,' he chuckled. 'It's a very funny story. But- no. I guess I better not tell it.'
'Why?' asked Frank Graham.
'Because the fellow involved is still in baseball, 'and it might reflect on him. I know that you and Arthur and Red wouldn't write if I asked you not to. But it's so good that you'd tell it to someone else and he'd use it. Sorry, fellows, I'd better not.'
We never did hear that presumably hilarious tale. Yet is so typical of the man and his super caution. If someone asked him to compare Joe DiMaggio to Tris Speaker, particularly as to their abilities in going back for a fly ball, Marse Joe would clam up. Speaker played so shallow a center field that he was unequaled in going back for a catch. If McCarthy publicly admitted as much some writer might distort his words so that McCarthy would be saying Speaker was better than DiMadge.
Sounds silly, doesn't it? But that's the way he was, the toughest man in the world ever to interview. 'Let me worry about that,' was his now classic rejoinder to most questions.
When McCarthy quit as manager of the Yankees, the reason was obvious. He and Larry MacPhail were as insoluble as oil and water. Just before that, though, McCarthy's health began to fail. He was such a perfectionist that he died a thousand deaths with his wartime ball players and his now famed gallbladder attacks became more frequent. He even stepped out of character that year by giving Joe Page an unmerciful tongue-lashing in front of the other athletes. He'd never done anything like that before and it showed his jagged nerves.
But he was calmer and more like the old McCarthy when he took the Red Sox assignment before the 1948 season. Then he lost in a photo-finish playoff to Cleveland and on the final day of the campaign to the Yankees a year later. Perhaps he has now given up on the Fenway Millionaires just as everyone else has. This is the now-or-never year for the Red Sox, the last gasp for aging players before a complete retooling job is done.
McCarthy is too old at sixty-three to suffer through that. Besides, he has all the money he'll ever need. This isn't the most graceful way out but it almost had to come. Outwardly unemotional, he seethes inside. Another half season would have seen him consumed by his own inner fires, perhaps even killed him.
But don't let anyone tell you that McCarthy could never manage. The fellows who know more about it than anyone else, the impossible-to-fool baseball players, say he was the best. Suppose we let it go at that."

-Arthur Daley, condensed from The New York Times (Baseball Digest, September 1950)

1950 Yankee Catchers of the Past

STEVE O'NEILL

O'NEILL - HARD BUT HUMANE

Unsinged by Many Firings

"During the opening day of the mid-winter minor league baseball meetings, the telephone in Joe Cronin's Baltimore hotel suite rang. Joe picked up the receiver half expecting a report on the long argued broadcasting regulations or a trade for the Scranton club. It was neither. Steve O'Neill was calling from his home in Cleveland. A broken foot had kept him from attending the baseball meeting, but it hadn't prevented him from being fired as a coach of the Cleveland Indians. Now he was looking for a job, any kind of job with the Boston Red Sox. Not a coaching job. He couldn't expect that because he wasn't an old Yankee or an old Cub and had no personal ties with Joe McCarthy.

Even the former Red Sox coaches under Cronin had gone when the new manager came in. Del Baker, who had won a pennant in the major leagues, went back to the minors. Larry Woodall had been named to a created job, super-sleuth in charge of quick looks at ball players. The head of the farm system was replaced by a McCarthy man, Johnny Murphy, the ex-Yankee pitcher. Even the trainer, the likeable Win Green, was shipped to the minors.

O'Neill knew he couldn't break in on a coaching setup such as this, so he didn't ask to be in the uniform-wearing department of the Red Sox. All he wanted was a job so he could stay in baseball.

The Red Sox general manager told Steve to sit tight and there would be a job for him somewhere, even if one had to be created. It was- Steve was named to scout the Midwest territory. Cronin knew, just as everyone around baseball knew, that Joe McCarthy was a well-heeled man of sixty-three years who might decide suddenly that he couldn't take it anymore. Two years earlier the Red Sox management had Del Baker for insurance in case McCarthy folded, but when Del Baker left, McCarthy's assistants were Earle Combs and Kiki Cuyler, neither of whom wanted to be a major league manager, having found that they couldn't take it with them when they departed.

Not every baseball man wants to be a major league manager. There are many coaches who have been offered big-paying jobs as managers but prefer coaching. Clyde Sukeforth, the man from Maine, refused the Dodger job despite the pleas of his players and his boss, Branch Rickey. Red Rolfe could have been a manager long before he decided to gamble on it. Some of the great players have refused to take the responsibility for producing a winning team. Bill Carrigan of Lewiston, Maine quit when he had perhaps twenty years of major league managing left in him. Bill knew that the money was good and the season was short, but he also knew that running a team from the sidelines is no life for a worrier. Take a look around the big time, even going back a few years, and you'll find that the only unscarred managers are Connie Mack, who owned the team he managed and couldn't be fired, Bucky Harris and Leo Durocher.

Most of the others are troubled by physical ailments induced by tension and constant internal turmoil. A few quit in time. Others, like Red Rolfe and Billy Meyer, keep charging on because they love the game more than they dread the pain.

McCarthy stewed and fretted and fumed inside, maintaining a cold, frozen look on the exterior to conceal the inner grumblings and growlings. Billy Southworth, although he looks calm and placid, is what is known among coaches as 'a bleeder,' but he controls his tension by working on the coaching lines.

O'Neill is not a worrier, not a pop-off. He has more animation than Burt Shotton, less nervous energy than Frankie Frisch. Steve found out long ago that today's bum is tomorrow's hero. He doesn't believe the ballyhoo when his team is winning and he doesn't believe the abuse when his team is losing. He has been fired often enough to know that the world doesn't end because of a personal failure. When he was fired, he didn't start blasting the owner or general manager who fired him. He just went out and started looking for another job.

At Detroit, Steve had his problems, among them Dick Wakefield. Steve was supposed to make a major league star out of Wakefield, who had been signed for a large handsome bonus and who was being carried year after year in an attempt to justify the management's original expenditure. Steve finally decided Wakefield was not his problem anymore. We sat with Steve in Lakeland, Fla. three years ago and asked him what he was going to do with Wakefield.

'I'm not going to do anything about Wakefield,' he answered, rubbing his chin. 'Wakefield is going to do something about Wakefield. He's a big boy now. I'm not a psychiatrist. I'll use only ball players who like the game.'

When Cuyler died just before the opening day of spring training this year, McCarthy, at the strong request of Yawkey and Cronin, hired as O'Neill as coach.

The portly one was not a natural choice for McCarthy. In fact, when the Boston Post's Jack Malaney wrote that O'Neill would probably replace the late Kiki Cuyler, the story was politely hooted by the baseball sharps. The Red Sox management hoped that McCarthy would give in on O'Neill, hoped that Joe would stop considering Steve the crown prince. McCarthy, naturally, didn't want to be nervously looking over his shoulder wondering when O'Neill would succeed him, but eventually, on March 1, okayed the proposition.

An hour after the announcement had been made, McCarthy was sitting in his office in the dressing quarters at Sarasota talking about his days at Louisville and his days at Chicago when suddenly he thought of something.

'One thing you can always remember about O'Neill,' he said, 'is when he handled Bob Feller as well as any manager that was ever was in this game. No one could have done better, probably not as well. What Feller is today he owes in a big way to Steve. A lot of managers would have ruined the kid. Steve handled him right. He wasn't tough with the kid and he wasn't soft. Feller was big and strong, and Cleveland needed pitching help. He was a tremendous drawing card, too, and the front office wanted him used to help the box office.

'Steve could have followed orders and injured the kid's arm. But he didn't. He told the front office that he would use him every Sunday. One game in seven days. That would help the box office and save Feller's arm. He wouldn't use him for a midweek game to drag in extra money. For that, you've got to respect Steve. He made a hard decision and he made it the humane way.'

Now O'Neill, as McCarthy's mid-season successor as manager of the Red Sox, is again making the hard decisions- the humane way."

-Gerry Hern, condensed from the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, September 1950)

ROLLIE HEMSLEY

THE BOY FROM SYRACUSE
"The locale was Pomeroy, Ohio. Pomeroy was sadly in need of a catcher. The area in and 'round was combed for a backstop, but none could be found. Finally one of the more adventurous of the townsfolk heard of a youngster living in Syracuse, twelve miles away, who was highly praised.
When the young man appeared, the pitcher- fellow by the name of Grimm- refused to pitch him. 'Only fifteen,' Grimm scoffed. 'I'd break every bone in the kid's hand.'
After a prolonged discussion, the kid got into his pads and cage and caught Grimm amazingly well. Two years later, at seventeen, the kid was with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was Rollie Hemsley, new manager of the Columbus Red Birds."

-Russ Needham in the Columbus (O) Dispatch (Baseball Digest, June 1950)

AARON ROBINSON

"Aaron batted .269 in 110 games in 1949 and drove in 56 runs. He is one of the game's better fielding catchers.

He has been in organized baseball since 1937. He came into the majors with the Yankees in 1943 but finished that season with Newark. He spent 1944 in military service and rejoined the Yankees the following season. Aaron was property of the White Sox at one time."

-1950 Bowman No. 95

BUDDY ROSAR

"Buddy was traded by the A's to the Red Sox at the close of the 1949 season. He caught 32 games for Philadelphia in '49 and hit .200.

After five years in the minors, Buddy came to the Yankees in 1939. In 1942 he joined the Indians and in 1945 was traded to the A's. Buddy went through 1946 [117 games] without an error. In 1948 he caught 90 games, hit .255 and continued his superior fielding, leading American League catchers with a .997 average."

-1950 Bowman No. 136

CLYDE MCCULLOUGH (Yankee Prospect of the Past)

"Clyde hit .237 in 91 games for the 1949 Pirates.

Clyde's first pro experience was in 1935 with Lafayette of the Evangeline League. He hit the majors in 1940 with the Cubs but finished the season with Buffalo. He bounced to the Cubs in 1941 and remained with them until traded to the Pirates.

His highest batting average was .287 in 1942. He was in military service for three years."

-1950 Bowman No. 124

1950 Yankee of the Past: Babe Ruth

"Most everybody remembers Babe Ruth as a moon-faced, barrel-chested hulk of a man with spindly legs. Indeed, Babe's rotund countenance was his trademark. There really were many different Ruths in physical appearance, but the round moon face was prominent in all of them, even to his death when it was lined and ravaged by illness. Babe was always outsize- he was called 'Big George' at St. Mary's when he was only fifteen.
Babe had a big head- physically that is. He customarily affected a cap, preferably a brown-camel-haired one, because hats looked silly on him. Once Ruth realized that his home runs gave him special privileges, that the rules of ordinary ball players weren't for him, the first thing he did was discard hats and take to a cap.
Much has been made of his pipe-stemmed legs which supported Ruth's Gargantuan body. Their thinness was accentuated by the bay window Ruth accumulated in later years. The longer Babe played, the more people went to see him and Ruth played until he was past forty. He was in his thirty-third year when he collected his record-breaking sixty home runs in 1927. As a consequence, there is a tendency to exaggerate his spindle-shanked qualities. Had Ruth bothered to keep his weight down to normal he wouldn't have looked so much like an egg balanced on two straws.
Ruth's batting style was as distinctive as his build. He took a batting style with his feet close together, his body swiveled slightly so that he was looking at the pitcher over his right shoulder. His feet were about four inches apart and his right foot was about an inch closer to home plate than his left. He stood to the rear of the batter's box but not especially deep, being almost on a line with the plate.
As is true with all good hitters, the Babe had exceptional reflexes and muscular co-ordination. He took a big stride forward with his right foot, planted his back leg firmly, swung forward on a level plane, snapping his wrists into the swing at the moment of impact and pulling the club head 'through' the ball. He held the bat long, the nob at the small end gripped in his right hand. The force of his follow-through often sent him sprawling when he missed the ball. There was grace and effortless power in his swing when he hit the ball.
Some say Ruth's swing was patterned after that of Shoeless Joe Jackson. The Babe admitted they swung alike and that, when he noticed that, he began to watch Jackson at every opportunity because of the great distance Joe got from his drives against the dead ball. Although Ruth had an instinct for baseball, it is safe to assume that at least 95 per cent of his talents were God-given, particularly his remarkable vision.
With all of his home runs, Ruth was a scientific batter as well as a swinger. He was a better than average bunter and when the defense overshifted against him, as the Cardinals did in the 1946 World Series against Ted Williams, Babe took advantage of the inviting gaps by shortening up and punching the ball to the opposite field. Most of the time the Babe swung from his heels but he could bunt, punch or drag a ball if the defense played him out of position.
Down in Georgia's Glynn County in the Dover Hill hunting camp of Uncle Robbie, Til Huston, George Stallings and other baseball figures, the prowess of  Ruth as a Nimrod was renowned. He was a phenomenal wing shot, a tireless hunter who could tramp in the pine woods for hours and a prodigious eater and drinker. And this was in a league where a normal eater and drinker would have been looked upon as a dilettante.
Moe Berg, the Princetonian who came into baseball in 1923 as a shortstop and remained on as a catcher and coach until Pearl Harbor when he entered the OSS, was a student of baseball as he is of life. Remarkably observant, Berg made the statement that Ruth was the only hitter he ever saw who didn't shorten his grip with two strikes against him. Taking the precaution of moving the hands up a little on the handle of the bat was the regular procedure for even the best of hitters, except Ruth.
'I never found out whether Babe didn't know he had two strikes on him,' remarked Moe, 'or whether he didn't care.'"

-Tom Meany, Baseball's Greatest Hitters (Baseball Digest, June 1950)


THE INDIANS WALKED KOENIG TO PITCH TO RUTH
And They Got Away With It!
"Tris Speaker, Cleveland Indian manager of the 1920's, asked if the writer ever heard of passing anyone intentionally to get at Babe Ruth.
'Certainly not,' was the answer. 'Speaking of things that never happened.'
'Don't be so sure,' laughed Spoke. 'Maybe it only happened once, but it sure happened. We were in the ninth inning one day, leading the Yankees by one run, but they had the tying run on second base.
'Mark Koenig was the batter and George Uhle the pitcher. Ruth was on deck. Out in center field, I didn't think anything unusual was going on when Uhle's first pitch was a low curve for a ball. But when the second was two feet outside, I decided it was time to have a talk with George.
'Are you nuts?' I asked him. 'Make this fellow hit the ball. Don't you know the gentleman who will be up next if you walk Koenig?'
''Uhle said, 'Tris, I'd rather pitch to Koenig any time. I thought I'd try to get Mark out on a bad pitch, but if I can walk him I'll still be all right. I can take care of the big fellow.'
''Okay,' I told him, 'but if that's the way you feel about it let's tell Ruth.' I walked toward home plate and motioned O'Neill out of the catcher's box. 'We're putting him on, Steve,' I said. 'George would rather pitch to Ruth.'
'The big fellow's neck turned purple and he really was cutting when he stepped to the plate. George gave him two curves on the inside and he fouled them over the stands in right. Then he worked the count to three and two. George broke off a beautiful curve. The Babe started to lunge at it, then tried to hold his swing, but it didn't make any difference. The umpire yelled strike three.
'In the clubhouse, everyone was slapping Uhle on the back and some of the boys even thought I must be a great manager for figuring out strategy like that. But when the room quieted down, I called Uhle over to my locker.
''George,' I said, 'that was terrific. But please do me a favor. Never try it again. I don't want to have a heart attack in center field. And I'll never come closer than I did while you were pitching to that big guy.'"

-Ed McAuley, Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, August 1950)