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)
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