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
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