GOLDEN HOMER
"Hank Severeid, work-horse catcher for the St. Louis Browns from 1915 to 1925, recalls this as one of the big thrills of his baseball career:
'One day when Branch Rickey was manager of the Browns we were playing the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox held the lead in the last half of the ninth, 3-0. The Browns had three runners on the bases.
'When I stepped to the plate Rickey flashed the signal to hit the first ball pitched. I swung, and the ball happened to go up in the left field bleachers. How it happened I don't know, but it did. That blow I always remembered because it happened on a Saturday. Robert Lee Hedges, who owned the Browns, called me to the grandstand and said, 'Hank, come up to the office Monday morning. I want to give you a little present. The hit you made to win the ball game will increase my crowd tomorrow (Sunday) by at least 4,000.'
'I went up to the office expecting possibly a suit of clothes or a ten dollar bill. When I reached the office Mr. Hedges said, 'Hank, I got the ball that you hit over the fence, had it painted a gold color with my name on it, and I am presenting it to you.' "
-Willis Johnson in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
Friday, December 21, 2018
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Gus Niarhos
"This is Gus' first campaign with the Red Sox. Last season he was with the Pale Hose of Chicago and was in 66 games, batting .256.
Gus had his best average in 1950 (divided between the Yanks and White Sox) when he hit .324 in 42 games. He began in baseball with Akron in 1941."
-1952 Bowman No. 129
"During the winter, Gus was traded by the White Sox to the Browns who traded him to the Red Sox.
A good receiver, he was with the Yankees for part of the 1946 season and was recalled in 1948 after hitting .321 at Kansas City in '47. Used sparingly in '48, '49 and '50, he was sent to the White Sox in 1950 and hit .324 in 105 at-bats.
Gus is called 'Greek' by his teammates. He served in the armed forces for three years and attended Auburn University for one year."
-1952 Topps No. 121
MCGREW'S BOY: NIARHOS
Red Sox Scout Spotted Him for Bucs
"'There, gentlemen, is the best catcher in baseball.' The man making that positive statement was Ted McGrew, chief scout of the Boston Red Sox, who bears the reputation, gained after many years at the job, of being as good as there is. The ball player he was boasting about was Gus Niarhos.
There had been much discussion over the winter as to what the Red Sox were to do for catching this year. Sure, they had acquired Niarhos by trade from St. Louis, whither he had just been traded by Chicago. Not too much was known about Gus, except that he seemed like a little fellow and that Chicago had got rid of him because he appeared to be brittle.
McGrew's daring statement thus became interesting. Ted Williams' declaration a few weeks before that the Red Sox made their best deal in years when they had got Niarhos was remembered. So, McGrew was pumped for his thoughts about Gus.
'I made up my mind about Gus back in 1947 when he was with Kansas City,' McGrew said. 'I didn't care that he was having a big year (Niarhos caught in 87 games that year, batted .321 and was almost perfect in fielding, with .995). It was the way he caught that appealed to me. He was sure all the time, called for the correct pitches, was like a cat, and though he doesn't break down any fences in hitting, he is far from a pushover at bat.
'I was scouting for Pittsburgh and Frank McKinney then. Larry MacPhail, then boss of the New York Yankees, was a close friend of McKinney's and told him we could have a pitcher and catcher in the spring of 1948. McKinney sent me to the Yankee camp. They had seven catchers. I thought Niarhos was the best of them all, but the Yanks didn't agree with me, which was all right.
'We now had a chance to get Niarhos. The deal was ready to be closed until MacPhail got into an argument with McKinney one night and a close friendship came to an end. MacPhail then wouldn't sell us a batboy.
'I've talked about Niarhos since. When I first joined the Red Sox I told Joe Cronin what I thought, but Gus was going good for Chicago and we couldn't get him. But Joe remembered, kept on his trail, and finally got him. When that deal was made last fall, Joe phoned me and said, 'We finally got your boy.' '
Bill Wight and Randy Gumpert pitched to Niarhos at Kansas City with the Yanks, and then with the White Sox, and they agree with McGrew when pressed on the subject. 'Pitchers love to have him do their catching,' was their summation on Gus.
'I don't see how anybody could see me as brittle,' Niarhos says. 'All catchers are bound to get hurt, but I've only had a little of it. I caught in nearly ninety games for the Yanks in 1948 (it was eighty-three games) when Yogi Berra was playing the outfield and didn't get hurt until the end of the season when Vern Stephens fouled one off at Fenway Park which broke a bone in my hand- not a finger.
'I didn't get hurt again until last summer. A foul tip caught me on the palm back of the little finger in the third inning. I finished the game. The hand was sore, but that wasn't anything unusual. The next morning I knew something was wrong. Sure enough, there was another broken bone. I took the cast off the hand before I should have and started catching. That was the mistake.
'The White Sox had started to slip and I couldn't help them with my bad hand. That's just the way things go. Maybe it was all for the best.' "
-Jack Malaney, condensed from the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
Gus had his best average in 1950 (divided between the Yanks and White Sox) when he hit .324 in 42 games. He began in baseball with Akron in 1941."
-1952 Bowman No. 129
"During the winter, Gus was traded by the White Sox to the Browns who traded him to the Red Sox.
A good receiver, he was with the Yankees for part of the 1946 season and was recalled in 1948 after hitting .321 at Kansas City in '47. Used sparingly in '48, '49 and '50, he was sent to the White Sox in 1950 and hit .324 in 105 at-bats.
Gus is called 'Greek' by his teammates. He served in the armed forces for three years and attended Auburn University for one year."
-1952 Topps No. 121
MCGREW'S BOY: NIARHOS
Red Sox Scout Spotted Him for Bucs
"'There, gentlemen, is the best catcher in baseball.' The man making that positive statement was Ted McGrew, chief scout of the Boston Red Sox, who bears the reputation, gained after many years at the job, of being as good as there is. The ball player he was boasting about was Gus Niarhos.
There had been much discussion over the winter as to what the Red Sox were to do for catching this year. Sure, they had acquired Niarhos by trade from St. Louis, whither he had just been traded by Chicago. Not too much was known about Gus, except that he seemed like a little fellow and that Chicago had got rid of him because he appeared to be brittle.
McGrew's daring statement thus became interesting. Ted Williams' declaration a few weeks before that the Red Sox made their best deal in years when they had got Niarhos was remembered. So, McGrew was pumped for his thoughts about Gus.
'I made up my mind about Gus back in 1947 when he was with Kansas City,' McGrew said. 'I didn't care that he was having a big year (Niarhos caught in 87 games that year, batted .321 and was almost perfect in fielding, with .995). It was the way he caught that appealed to me. He was sure all the time, called for the correct pitches, was like a cat, and though he doesn't break down any fences in hitting, he is far from a pushover at bat.
'I was scouting for Pittsburgh and Frank McKinney then. Larry MacPhail, then boss of the New York Yankees, was a close friend of McKinney's and told him we could have a pitcher and catcher in the spring of 1948. McKinney sent me to the Yankee camp. They had seven catchers. I thought Niarhos was the best of them all, but the Yanks didn't agree with me, which was all right.
'We now had a chance to get Niarhos. The deal was ready to be closed until MacPhail got into an argument with McKinney one night and a close friendship came to an end. MacPhail then wouldn't sell us a batboy.
'I've talked about Niarhos since. When I first joined the Red Sox I told Joe Cronin what I thought, but Gus was going good for Chicago and we couldn't get him. But Joe remembered, kept on his trail, and finally got him. When that deal was made last fall, Joe phoned me and said, 'We finally got your boy.' '
Bill Wight and Randy Gumpert pitched to Niarhos at Kansas City with the Yanks, and then with the White Sox, and they agree with McGrew when pressed on the subject. 'Pitchers love to have him do their catching,' was their summation on Gus.
'I don't see how anybody could see me as brittle,' Niarhos says. 'All catchers are bound to get hurt, but I've only had a little of it. I caught in nearly ninety games for the Yanks in 1948 (it was eighty-three games) when Yogi Berra was playing the outfield and didn't get hurt until the end of the season when Vern Stephens fouled one off at Fenway Park which broke a bone in my hand- not a finger.
'I didn't get hurt again until last summer. A foul tip caught me on the palm back of the little finger in the third inning. I finished the game. The hand was sore, but that wasn't anything unusual. The next morning I knew something was wrong. Sure enough, there was another broken bone. I took the cast off the hand before I should have and started catching. That was the mistake.
'The White Sox had started to slip and I couldn't help them with my bad hand. That's just the way things go. Maybe it was all for the best.' "
-Jack Malaney, condensed from the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
1952 Yankee World Series of the Past: 1951
TOPS AND BOTTOMS IN THE SERIES
"Highlights of the World Series of 1951:
Biggest Thrill: Joe DiMaggio's home run in the fourth game. It was like an old actor putting a plaid coat and playing a dashing juvenile so well you couldn't tell the difference.
Most Underrated Player: Wes Westrum, the New York Giants' catcher, who drew raves from Bill Dickey, New York Yankee coach and backstopping great.
Best Pitcher: Ed Lopat, who allowed only one earned run in eighteen innings. The second run off Lopat was 'unearned' mentally. It stemmed from a rock-head throw by Gene Woodling to the wrong base in the fifth game.
Most Consistent Performer: Gil McDougald of the Yankees, who played second base or third base with equal skill and who developed into the most feared Yankee batsman.
Bust of the Series: Willie Mays, the Giants' young center fielder. He contributed nothing in the way of offense, grounding into three double plays in the fourth game.
Worst Fielder: Bobby Thomson, the Giants' third baseman. A reformed outfielder, the slugging Scot threw wild, manhandled ground balls, was a better hitter than historian [sic].
Best Fielder: Phil Rizzuto, Yankee shortstop, despite his nonchalant tag of Eddie Stanky at second base in the second game. Stanky kicked the ball out of Rizzuto's hand on a slide. With that exception, Rizzuto was terrific.
Best Game: The last, or sixth. The Giants were never really out of competition [sic]. They were so close in the ninth you could have given odds they would square the Series. They hit three tremendous blows off Bob Kuzava. Two were long, but easy outs. The third was a sensational catch by Hank Bauer.
Best All-Around Performance: Alvin Dark, shortstop and captain of the Giants, played a heroic game in the field and at the plate, with his straddle stance and his guardianship of the platter glaringly apparent.
Goat: Monte Irvin, despite his deeds with the willow, played a silly outfield. The Giants' ace man with the stick set up the Yankee triumph in the fifth game because he was against the bleacher wall in the Polo Grounds when Joe DiMaggio hit a pop fly to left that went for a single and paved the way for Gil McDougald's grand-slam homer. Irvin also played Hank Bauer's triple poorly in the sixth game.
Most Dangerous Batter: Monte Irvin, who, according to Allie Reynolds, 'guards the plate every minute.'
Best Strategy: That of Manager Casey Stengel of the Yankees in the daily juggling of the lineup. This must have been the best strategy. Casey won with it.
Worst Strategy: Stengel's decision to let Bauer hit, instead of Johnny Mize, in the eighth inning of the second game. The Yankees were five runs down. Bauer, notorious for his failures against right-handed curve ball pitchers, was to face Sheldon Jones. With Mize on the bench, Stengel went along with Bauer, who tapped out to the pitcher.
Best Prat Fall: By Hank Bauer as he caught Sal Yvars' liner for the final out of the sixth game.
Second Best Prat Fall: By the Giants, period.
Most Glaring Weakness in the Series: The Giants' bench, or array of substitutes.
Best Umpiring: No other World Series ever was marked by as few beefs. Bill Summers and Joe Paparella of the American League and Lee Ballanfant and Al Barlick of the National League were all remarkable. To them ... huzzahs!
Best Fielding Play: Gene Woodling's one-handed of Monte Irvin's long drive to left center in the fifth game."
-Franklin Lewis, condensed from the Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
"Biggest Break: That Sunday rainout that gave Allie Reynolds the extra day's rest he needed to come back at the Giants after his defeat in the opener. If Sunday's weather had been fair, Reynolds wouldn't have pitched- and maybe the Giants would be world champs today.
Best Footwork: Eddie Stanky's field goal with Scooter Rizzuto holding, in the third game.
Biggest Gamble: Casey Stengel's snap decision to call on Bob Kuzava, a southpaw, to face three dangerous right-handed batters in the final inning of the deciding game by which he saved the day and possibly the Series.
Toughest Break: The Giants' loss of right fielder Don Mueller in the playoffs. His hitting might have aided the club materially, although the Yankees also lost power when Mickey Mantle was injured in the second game.
Best Managerial Job: Casey Stengel, although Durocher left little to be desired. Leo's choice of Ray Noble, who looked at a third strike with three on and two out in the eighth inning of the final game was roundly booed by Giant fans, but who was left except Sal Yvars?"
-Dan Parker in the New York Mirror (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
"Highlights of the World Series of 1951:
Biggest Thrill: Joe DiMaggio's home run in the fourth game. It was like an old actor putting a plaid coat and playing a dashing juvenile so well you couldn't tell the difference.
Most Underrated Player: Wes Westrum, the New York Giants' catcher, who drew raves from Bill Dickey, New York Yankee coach and backstopping great.
Best Pitcher: Ed Lopat, who allowed only one earned run in eighteen innings. The second run off Lopat was 'unearned' mentally. It stemmed from a rock-head throw by Gene Woodling to the wrong base in the fifth game.
Most Consistent Performer: Gil McDougald of the Yankees, who played second base or third base with equal skill and who developed into the most feared Yankee batsman.
Bust of the Series: Willie Mays, the Giants' young center fielder. He contributed nothing in the way of offense, grounding into three double plays in the fourth game.
Worst Fielder: Bobby Thomson, the Giants' third baseman. A reformed outfielder, the slugging Scot threw wild, manhandled ground balls, was a better hitter than historian [sic].
Best Fielder: Phil Rizzuto, Yankee shortstop, despite his nonchalant tag of Eddie Stanky at second base in the second game. Stanky kicked the ball out of Rizzuto's hand on a slide. With that exception, Rizzuto was terrific.
Best Game: The last, or sixth. The Giants were never really out of competition [sic]. They were so close in the ninth you could have given odds they would square the Series. They hit three tremendous blows off Bob Kuzava. Two were long, but easy outs. The third was a sensational catch by Hank Bauer.
Best All-Around Performance: Alvin Dark, shortstop and captain of the Giants, played a heroic game in the field and at the plate, with his straddle stance and his guardianship of the platter glaringly apparent.
Goat: Monte Irvin, despite his deeds with the willow, played a silly outfield. The Giants' ace man with the stick set up the Yankee triumph in the fifth game because he was against the bleacher wall in the Polo Grounds when Joe DiMaggio hit a pop fly to left that went for a single and paved the way for Gil McDougald's grand-slam homer. Irvin also played Hank Bauer's triple poorly in the sixth game.
Most Dangerous Batter: Monte Irvin, who, according to Allie Reynolds, 'guards the plate every minute.'
Best Strategy: That of Manager Casey Stengel of the Yankees in the daily juggling of the lineup. This must have been the best strategy. Casey won with it.
Worst Strategy: Stengel's decision to let Bauer hit, instead of Johnny Mize, in the eighth inning of the second game. The Yankees were five runs down. Bauer, notorious for his failures against right-handed curve ball pitchers, was to face Sheldon Jones. With Mize on the bench, Stengel went along with Bauer, who tapped out to the pitcher.
Best Prat Fall: By Hank Bauer as he caught Sal Yvars' liner for the final out of the sixth game.
Second Best Prat Fall: By the Giants, period.
Most Glaring Weakness in the Series: The Giants' bench, or array of substitutes.
Best Umpiring: No other World Series ever was marked by as few beefs. Bill Summers and Joe Paparella of the American League and Lee Ballanfant and Al Barlick of the National League were all remarkable. To them ... huzzahs!
Best Fielding Play: Gene Woodling's one-handed of Monte Irvin's long drive to left center in the fifth game."
-Franklin Lewis, condensed from the Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
"Biggest Break: That Sunday rainout that gave Allie Reynolds the extra day's rest he needed to come back at the Giants after his defeat in the opener. If Sunday's weather had been fair, Reynolds wouldn't have pitched- and maybe the Giants would be world champs today.
Best Footwork: Eddie Stanky's field goal with Scooter Rizzuto holding, in the third game.
Biggest Gamble: Casey Stengel's snap decision to call on Bob Kuzava, a southpaw, to face three dangerous right-handed batters in the final inning of the deciding game by which he saved the day and possibly the Series.
Toughest Break: The Giants' loss of right fielder Don Mueller in the playoffs. His hitting might have aided the club materially, although the Yankees also lost power when Mickey Mantle was injured in the second game.
Best Managerial Job: Casey Stengel, although Durocher left little to be desired. Leo's choice of Ray Noble, who looked at a third strike with three on and two out in the eighth inning of the final game was roundly booed by Giant fans, but who was left except Sal Yvars?"
-Dan Parker in the New York Mirror (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Muddy Ruel
PITCHER'S WARM-UP NO TIPOFF
"Muddy Ruel, who has warmed up more starting pitchers, from Walter Johnson to Bob Feller, than any other catcher, says no one can determine a moundsman's probable effectiveness from his pre-game exercises.
'There's something about throwing from that hill, against real opponents, which makes all the difference,' Ruel, now Cleveland's farm director, explains. 'I've seen pitchers who knocked my glove off with their warm-up speed get belted out of the game in the first inning. I've seen pitchers who threw before the game as if they had sore arms go out and turn in no-hitters. There's just no way of telling in advance.'"
-Ed McAuley in the Cleveland Daily News (Baseball Digest, November 1951)
TIGERS UNDER NEW FARM RUEL
Muddy Moves On from Cleveland
"Herold Ruel, who has been 'Muddy' since early boyhood and who has been white-maned almost as long, has removed his quaint double talk, his delightful humor and his mortal class from Cleveland's Wigwam, and I find the operation thoroughly distressing. I wish he would have stuck around, if not as the ringmaster of the Indians' farm system, then in some other equally vital capacity, and I am not picking a spot. Instead, he has moved on to Detroit to supervise the Tigers' farm operation.
Of all the gentlemen I have met in sports, Ruel is as completely natural and companionable as you could desire. He is a complex individual, however. The most incongruous sight of all time in baseball was that of Muddy Ruel, licensed to practice law before the United States Supreme Court, warming up some ironheaded pitcher in a bullpen in Chicago or Cleveland while serving as a coach.
Certainly no other baseball personality has run a gamut of jobs in Ruel's distinctive lope. His new employment is just one more stop on the trail of the slight, sensitive St. Louis native who began professional baseball in 1915 at the age of nineteen. While catching for the St. Louis Browns, Memphis, the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Washington, Detroit and the Chicago White Sox, he studied law as well as curves. In each labor he achieved a high level of proficiency.
When he quit catching he went to coaching for the White Sox from 1935 through 1945, and then he became executive assistant to the recent commissioner, Happy Chandler. He returned to the pits as manager of the Browns in 1947 and, after one inglorious semester as such, he stepped over to the Indians as a coach under Louie Boudreau at a time Willie Veeck was hiring brains by the yard.
It seems strange that Ruel hasn't been able to light. Ruel has been a wandering character most of his life, even when he came upon his everlasting nickname. The owner professes an ignorance of its origin, but his late father said it stemmed from an incident of Herold's comparative infancy when he fell into a mud puddle of considerable depth. The submerged youngster was yanked to dry dirt as his father said, 'Look at Muddy over there.' And Muddy it has been.
No yardstick can be placed on Ruel's eleven-month term as boss the Tribe's farms. At best, a man requires five to eight years to build a system for juvenile ball players, and it may take double that long for the results to become apparent to the unpracticed eye.
Take the Yankees. It is no accident that they have been winning championships over the years with Rizzuto, Gordon, Raschi, McDougald, Bauer, Berra, et al. These are products of a Yankee farm system that was constructed over a long period, even as the chain gang of the St. Louis Cardinals was based upon years of patient shuffling of Branch Rickey's minor league talent. So we may never be able to tell much about Ruel's agricultural accomplishments in Cleveland, and this piece makes no attempt to evaluate Muddy on the basis of genius.
It took Ruel only ten years in the majors to catch 1,000 games despite his 145-pounds and banty bat. It took him only eleven months to leave Happy Chandler and only one year as a big-league manager to get fired. It took him less than one year as director of the Tribe farm system to leave an organization that didn't want him to go.
His new job with the Tigers is the same job he had with the Indians, which leads to speculation, to wit: the Tigers came up with more money, he was unhappy with the Indians, the future in Cleveland seemed dark, he didn't get along with fellow front-officers, the Tigers promised him something better to come, etc.
One thing sure it that Muddy's new job does not consist of squatting in the bullpen, carefully receiving the slants of wild-armed hurlers, while some of us in the sanctity of the stands get to wondering again what the United States Supreme Court would think of all this.
Maybe it would think that if a man loves his work, it's nobody's business."
-Franklin Lewis, condensed from the Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
"Muddy Ruel, who has warmed up more starting pitchers, from Walter Johnson to Bob Feller, than any other catcher, says no one can determine a moundsman's probable effectiveness from his pre-game exercises.
'There's something about throwing from that hill, against real opponents, which makes all the difference,' Ruel, now Cleveland's farm director, explains. 'I've seen pitchers who knocked my glove off with their warm-up speed get belted out of the game in the first inning. I've seen pitchers who threw before the game as if they had sore arms go out and turn in no-hitters. There's just no way of telling in advance.'"
-Ed McAuley in the Cleveland Daily News (Baseball Digest, November 1951)
TIGERS UNDER NEW FARM RUEL
Muddy Moves On from Cleveland
"Herold Ruel, who has been 'Muddy' since early boyhood and who has been white-maned almost as long, has removed his quaint double talk, his delightful humor and his mortal class from Cleveland's Wigwam, and I find the operation thoroughly distressing. I wish he would have stuck around, if not as the ringmaster of the Indians' farm system, then in some other equally vital capacity, and I am not picking a spot. Instead, he has moved on to Detroit to supervise the Tigers' farm operation.
Of all the gentlemen I have met in sports, Ruel is as completely natural and companionable as you could desire. He is a complex individual, however. The most incongruous sight of all time in baseball was that of Muddy Ruel, licensed to practice law before the United States Supreme Court, warming up some ironheaded pitcher in a bullpen in Chicago or Cleveland while serving as a coach.
Certainly no other baseball personality has run a gamut of jobs in Ruel's distinctive lope. His new employment is just one more stop on the trail of the slight, sensitive St. Louis native who began professional baseball in 1915 at the age of nineteen. While catching for the St. Louis Browns, Memphis, the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Washington, Detroit and the Chicago White Sox, he studied law as well as curves. In each labor he achieved a high level of proficiency.
When he quit catching he went to coaching for the White Sox from 1935 through 1945, and then he became executive assistant to the recent commissioner, Happy Chandler. He returned to the pits as manager of the Browns in 1947 and, after one inglorious semester as such, he stepped over to the Indians as a coach under Louie Boudreau at a time Willie Veeck was hiring brains by the yard.
It seems strange that Ruel hasn't been able to light. Ruel has been a wandering character most of his life, even when he came upon his everlasting nickname. The owner professes an ignorance of its origin, but his late father said it stemmed from an incident of Herold's comparative infancy when he fell into a mud puddle of considerable depth. The submerged youngster was yanked to dry dirt as his father said, 'Look at Muddy over there.' And Muddy it has been.
No yardstick can be placed on Ruel's eleven-month term as boss the Tribe's farms. At best, a man requires five to eight years to build a system for juvenile ball players, and it may take double that long for the results to become apparent to the unpracticed eye.
Take the Yankees. It is no accident that they have been winning championships over the years with Rizzuto, Gordon, Raschi, McDougald, Bauer, Berra, et al. These are products of a Yankee farm system that was constructed over a long period, even as the chain gang of the St. Louis Cardinals was based upon years of patient shuffling of Branch Rickey's minor league talent. So we may never be able to tell much about Ruel's agricultural accomplishments in Cleveland, and this piece makes no attempt to evaluate Muddy on the basis of genius.
It took Ruel only ten years in the majors to catch 1,000 games despite his 145-pounds and banty bat. It took him only eleven months to leave Happy Chandler and only one year as a big-league manager to get fired. It took him less than one year as director of the Tribe farm system to leave an organization that didn't want him to go.
His new job with the Tigers is the same job he had with the Indians, which leads to speculation, to wit: the Tigers came up with more money, he was unhappy with the Indians, the future in Cleveland seemed dark, he didn't get along with fellow front-officers, the Tigers promised him something better to come, etc.
One thing sure it that Muddy's new job does not consist of squatting in the bullpen, carefully receiving the slants of wild-armed hurlers, while some of us in the sanctity of the stands get to wondering again what the United States Supreme Court would think of all this.
Maybe it would think that if a man loves his work, it's nobody's business."
-Franklin Lewis, condensed from the Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
Monday, November 12, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Red Rolfe
ROLFE'S ONE SHORTCOMING
He Was A Yankee Perfectionist
"Once it was an exciting experience to watch Red Rolfe play third base for the New York Yankees. There may have been better third basemen than the solemn, studious New Englander but it is difficult to see how there could have been. The ball field was a laboratory to Rolfe. He could explain every move that was made and most of Red's were right. He could hit and run, bunt, slap the ball to every field and pull for the stands. It was a virtual impossibility to catch him flat-footed on a bunt when he was in the field and few opponents ever outsmarted him.
He played in a time when the Yankees terrorized the league and Red was their pennant-winning third baseman on six victorious teams during his nine active seasons. The last two of them were agony for Rolfe and he finally had to step out because a chronic colitis sapped his strength and made him a ball player forced to exist on a selective diet, while his teammates maintained themselves on steak. He might have gone on drawing a salary as a player but his sharpness as a performer was gone and he had been such a purist on the field that he could not abide mediocrity even in himself.
It is this same inability to accept anything but the best that made Rolfe a poor manager with the Detroit Tigers and consequently he was sacked, as Tommy Holmes, Rogers Hornsby and Eddie Sawyer were before him this season.
This had been the source of Red's difficulties in Detroit and explains the compulsion that forced him openly to criticize the ability of his players and nag them meanly for not being the kind of players they did not have it in them to be. It is at once the answer to Detroit's dissension this year and a reflection of the Tigers' cellar position under Rolfe which must have seared Rolfe's stomach with pain. It is explained and reflected in the quote of one Tiger, who said:
'He's just a damn Yankee perfectionist.' And another who said, 'DiMaggio, Gehrig, Rizzuto and Keller played at the Yankee Stadium, not in Briggs Stadium, but in his heart Red never left New York.'
There is an analogy to Frankie Frisch's thwarted managerial career and the reputation as a clown that Casey Stengel built for himself in his second division days at Brooklyn and Boston. Only, where Frisch and Rolfe could not change, Stengel realized the futility of trying to fill a size 10 shoe with a size four foot, shrugged and tried for a laugh, instead of insisting it had to be done the way John McGraw did it.
Like Frisch and Stengel, Mel Ott was one of McGraw's products and I vividly recall a conversation with Ottey in a dining car leaving Greenville, Miss., on the spring trip north in 1942.
I had broken in as a baseball writer for the Yankees, a team that did everything right. After several seasons marveling at the mastery of DiMag, Tommy Henrich, Joe Gordon, and the others, the office suggested I see how the other half lived. In the middle of spring training I switched to the Giants. Mickey Witek was the Giant's second baseman then. He was a sincere, bear-down mediocrity. It struck me the Giants couldn't open the season with a second baseman who could not pivot and throw properly on the double play. I said as much to Ott.
'I know what Witek can do and can not do,' replied Ott, 'but your trouble is you've been looking at Joe Gordon too long.'
It was not only I who suffered from this perfectionist view but also such as Joe McCarthy, who must be considered among the best managers, although he had a personality that led one to assume he was a constant sufferer from gastritis.
A disconsolate, lonely [sic] man with small grace for conversation, the whimsies or vagaries of life, Joe regarded it as a personal affront when things went badly with his ball club. He'd take refuge in insolence or insulting remarks. When World War II dried up the Yankee talent, Joe took a powder.
In 1946, before the war-returned Yankee veterans could untangle themselves and still played like ordinary mortals, defeat and dyspepsia got Joe down, the dugout became as clammy as the cold ground for Marse Joe's men and many a time he spent riding them viciously.
A murky day in Cleveland, which was to be McCarthy's last actually directing the Yankees, was one of the worst and it is revealing in the fate that befell Bill Zuber because of his manager's aversion to anything less than the best.
Zuber threw a home run ball that lost the game to the Indians in the ninth that day. Because of it, Bill became the last pitcher to be employed by McCarthy with the Yankees and the first to be fired by Joe when he joined the Boston Red Sox as their manager.
Rolfe grew up under McCarthy in baseball. The things he knows, McCarthy taught him. The apple rarely falls far from the bough."
-Milton Gross, condensed from the New York Post (Baseball Digest, September 1952)
"Between his last active year as the Yankees' third baseman (1942) and becoming manager of the Tigers in 1949, Red was baseball and basketball coach at Yale (1943-45), a Yankee coach (1946) and farm team director of the Tigers (1947-48).
In professional ball since 1931, when he graduated from Dartmouth, he was a Yankee nine years (1934-42). The Major League Team All-Star Third Baseman [Sporting News] in 1937-38-39, Red hit .300 (1935), .319 (1946), .311 (1938) and .329 (1939). He was tops at third base in fielding in 1935 and '36."
-1952 Topps No. 296
He Was A Yankee Perfectionist
"Once it was an exciting experience to watch Red Rolfe play third base for the New York Yankees. There may have been better third basemen than the solemn, studious New Englander but it is difficult to see how there could have been. The ball field was a laboratory to Rolfe. He could explain every move that was made and most of Red's were right. He could hit and run, bunt, slap the ball to every field and pull for the stands. It was a virtual impossibility to catch him flat-footed on a bunt when he was in the field and few opponents ever outsmarted him.
He played in a time when the Yankees terrorized the league and Red was their pennant-winning third baseman on six victorious teams during his nine active seasons. The last two of them were agony for Rolfe and he finally had to step out because a chronic colitis sapped his strength and made him a ball player forced to exist on a selective diet, while his teammates maintained themselves on steak. He might have gone on drawing a salary as a player but his sharpness as a performer was gone and he had been such a purist on the field that he could not abide mediocrity even in himself.
It is this same inability to accept anything but the best that made Rolfe a poor manager with the Detroit Tigers and consequently he was sacked, as Tommy Holmes, Rogers Hornsby and Eddie Sawyer were before him this season.
This had been the source of Red's difficulties in Detroit and explains the compulsion that forced him openly to criticize the ability of his players and nag them meanly for not being the kind of players they did not have it in them to be. It is at once the answer to Detroit's dissension this year and a reflection of the Tigers' cellar position under Rolfe which must have seared Rolfe's stomach with pain. It is explained and reflected in the quote of one Tiger, who said:
'He's just a damn Yankee perfectionist.' And another who said, 'DiMaggio, Gehrig, Rizzuto and Keller played at the Yankee Stadium, not in Briggs Stadium, but in his heart Red never left New York.'
There is an analogy to Frankie Frisch's thwarted managerial career and the reputation as a clown that Casey Stengel built for himself in his second division days at Brooklyn and Boston. Only, where Frisch and Rolfe could not change, Stengel realized the futility of trying to fill a size 10 shoe with a size four foot, shrugged and tried for a laugh, instead of insisting it had to be done the way John McGraw did it.
Like Frisch and Stengel, Mel Ott was one of McGraw's products and I vividly recall a conversation with Ottey in a dining car leaving Greenville, Miss., on the spring trip north in 1942.
I had broken in as a baseball writer for the Yankees, a team that did everything right. After several seasons marveling at the mastery of DiMag, Tommy Henrich, Joe Gordon, and the others, the office suggested I see how the other half lived. In the middle of spring training I switched to the Giants. Mickey Witek was the Giant's second baseman then. He was a sincere, bear-down mediocrity. It struck me the Giants couldn't open the season with a second baseman who could not pivot and throw properly on the double play. I said as much to Ott.
'I know what Witek can do and can not do,' replied Ott, 'but your trouble is you've been looking at Joe Gordon too long.'
It was not only I who suffered from this perfectionist view but also such as Joe McCarthy, who must be considered among the best managers, although he had a personality that led one to assume he was a constant sufferer from gastritis.
A disconsolate, lonely [sic] man with small grace for conversation, the whimsies or vagaries of life, Joe regarded it as a personal affront when things went badly with his ball club. He'd take refuge in insolence or insulting remarks. When World War II dried up the Yankee talent, Joe took a powder.
In 1946, before the war-returned Yankee veterans could untangle themselves and still played like ordinary mortals, defeat and dyspepsia got Joe down, the dugout became as clammy as the cold ground for Marse Joe's men and many a time he spent riding them viciously.
A murky day in Cleveland, which was to be McCarthy's last actually directing the Yankees, was one of the worst and it is revealing in the fate that befell Bill Zuber because of his manager's aversion to anything less than the best.
Zuber threw a home run ball that lost the game to the Indians in the ninth that day. Because of it, Bill became the last pitcher to be employed by McCarthy with the Yankees and the first to be fired by Joe when he joined the Boston Red Sox as their manager.
Rolfe grew up under McCarthy in baseball. The things he knows, McCarthy taught him. The apple rarely falls far from the bough."
-Milton Gross, condensed from the New York Post (Baseball Digest, September 1952)
"Between his last active year as the Yankees' third baseman (1942) and becoming manager of the Tigers in 1949, Red was baseball and basketball coach at Yale (1943-45), a Yankee coach (1946) and farm team director of the Tigers (1947-48).
In professional ball since 1931, when he graduated from Dartmouth, he was a Yankee nine years (1934-42). The Major League Team All-Star Third Baseman [Sporting News] in 1937-38-39, Red hit .300 (1935), .319 (1946), .311 (1938) and .329 (1939). He was tops at third base in fielding in 1935 and '36."
-1952 Topps No. 296
Thursday, November 1, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Steve O'Neill
IT'D PUT FIGHTING LIFE IN HIM
"There was the famous evening when Cleveland's Larry Doby tried to steal home with the bases filled and Joe Page, of the New York Yankees, was well on his way to walking the hitter. Manager Steve O'Neill, coaching at third, took a terrific and unjustified booing.
'I never forget the way Steve looked that night,' said Lou Boudreau. 'Bill McKechnie and I made him sit between us on the bench for a few minutes after the game was over. Even then, when we went into the clubhouse, I asked George Susce to keep an eye on him. He was simply bursting to slug the first man who asked him why he sent Doby home. Believe it or not, I know a couple of fellows who did ask him. As if any coach in the game would do a trick like that.'
'I was in Dayton that night,' recalled [Ski] Melillo, 'but I heard the game by radio. I said to the guys who were with me: 'After that one, Steve O'Neill will never die. Just so somebody at his bedside, when it looks as if he's all washed up, remembers to whisper: 'Steve, did you tell Doby to steal home?' If I know Steve, he'll start swinging every time he hears that question.' "
-Ed McAuley in the Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
"There was the famous evening when Cleveland's Larry Doby tried to steal home with the bases filled and Joe Page, of the New York Yankees, was well on his way to walking the hitter. Manager Steve O'Neill, coaching at third, took a terrific and unjustified booing.
'I never forget the way Steve looked that night,' said Lou Boudreau. 'Bill McKechnie and I made him sit between us on the bench for a few minutes after the game was over. Even then, when we went into the clubhouse, I asked George Susce to keep an eye on him. He was simply bursting to slug the first man who asked him why he sent Doby home. Believe it or not, I know a couple of fellows who did ask him. As if any coach in the game would do a trick like that.'
'I was in Dayton that night,' recalled [Ski] Melillo, 'but I heard the game by radio. I said to the guys who were with me: 'After that one, Steve O'Neill will never die. Just so somebody at his bedside, when it looks as if he's all washed up, remembers to whisper: 'Steve, did you tell Doby to steal home?' If I know Steve, he'll start swinging every time he hears that question.' "
-Ed McAuley in the Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
Monday, October 29, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Bucky Harris
HIP-NOTIZING THE YANKS
When Bucky Harris Pocketed a Victory
"Red Ruffing and Bucky Harris, the old antagonists, sat in the shade of the Tinker Field dugout in Orlando, Fla., this spring and started cutting up old touches, as friendly as you like. They reached back twenty-seven years for their first 'do you remember when ... '
'I'll remember that pitch long after I've forgotten all the million others I ever threw,' said Ruffing. 'That's the day I wanted to kill you, Bucky.'
For Coach Clyde Milan, Harris filled in the details. 'I was managing Washington then, and trying to beat out New York for the pennant. Ruffing is pitching for Boston and we're tied up in extra innings and I'm going up there with two out and the bases full.
'I tell my fellows I couldn't hit Ruffing's stuff if I was swinging a park bench but I said if he throws one close to me, I'm going to get the ball game over even if I have to take it in the head.
'And that's what happened, almost. The pitch was just a little inside and I took it on the rump, forcing in the winning run. I was surprised when the umpire let me get away with it, but I guess he was anxious to get the ball game over.'
'No pitcher ever squawked more than I did, remember, Bucky?' said Ruffing. 'I wanted to pick up your bat and brain you before you got away from the plate. It would have been a strike if you hadn't jumped in the way of the pitch.'
That's when Ruffing learned a bit of baseball philosophy, he recalled. 'Steve O'Neill came up to me and said, 'Forget it, kid, that's baseball.' '
Harris, however, had a sequel to the episode that Ruffing never before had heard. 'You mean I never told you what happened after the game? Well, that was 1925, the year I was keeping company with Liz Sutherland, my bride-to-be. She was at the game that day and we were having dinner at her house with her father, the Senator from West Virginia.
'Liz wasn't much of a ball fan, but she knew I had a habit of getting hit by pitched balls and she said, 'Stanley, it looked to me as if you didn't try to get out of the way of that pitch.'
'Then the Senator, a wonderful gentleman, spoke up. 'Oh no, Elizabeth,' he said, 'Stanley wouldn't do anything unsportsmanlike as that.' '
Ruffing is now a troubleshooter for the Cleveland Indians, after a year as coach and after a year managing their Daytona Beach farm club. At Daytona, he was probably the only manager in Class D league history to drive a Cadillac, but that was understandable. When he had quit the Yankees, he had drawn more pay than any other pitcher in history.
'You kept winning ball games for eight years after you lost your stuff,' Harris said.
'That's right,' said Ruffing. 'I had to get cute. I had those fellows swinging at my motion. I gave'em the shoulder and all those fakes and threw everything at 'em but the ball, I guess.'
'The Yankees' Ed Lopat does it the same way,' said Harris. 'You sit on the bench and watch him pitch, and you can't wait for him to get up in the morning so you can start swinging at that junk he throws. Then when you get up to the plate you can't find anything good to hit at.'
'Hey, Bucky, how about the next time you faced me, in Boston, after you stole that game by getting hit in Washington?' Ruffing said.
'I remember, you threw the first pitch right at my head and I went down.'
'Yeah, Bill Carrigan was managing, and I didn't dare not to throw at you. It was a fifty dollar fine if you didn't dust a hitter off when he said to.'
'It's all right to take it out on a hitter who has hurt you,' said Harris, 'but I never could understand why they hold it against the next hitter, too.
'I was hitting behind Joe Judge against the Yankees one day, and Judge hit one right up in the seats off Bob Shawkey, and he throws the next four pitches at my head, just to get even with Joe Judge, he thinks.' "
-Shirley Povich, condensed from the Washington Post (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
"Bucky held down second base during most of his playing career. He was first a manager in 1924, when, as the 'boy wonder, ' he led the Senators to the American League pennant. In addition to the Senators, with whom he is back again for the third time, Bucky has piloted the Tigers, Red Sox, Phils and Yanks."
-1952 Bowman No. 158
When Bucky Harris Pocketed a Victory
"Red Ruffing and Bucky Harris, the old antagonists, sat in the shade of the Tinker Field dugout in Orlando, Fla., this spring and started cutting up old touches, as friendly as you like. They reached back twenty-seven years for their first 'do you remember when ... '
'I'll remember that pitch long after I've forgotten all the million others I ever threw,' said Ruffing. 'That's the day I wanted to kill you, Bucky.'
For Coach Clyde Milan, Harris filled in the details. 'I was managing Washington then, and trying to beat out New York for the pennant. Ruffing is pitching for Boston and we're tied up in extra innings and I'm going up there with two out and the bases full.
'I tell my fellows I couldn't hit Ruffing's stuff if I was swinging a park bench but I said if he throws one close to me, I'm going to get the ball game over even if I have to take it in the head.
'And that's what happened, almost. The pitch was just a little inside and I took it on the rump, forcing in the winning run. I was surprised when the umpire let me get away with it, but I guess he was anxious to get the ball game over.'
'No pitcher ever squawked more than I did, remember, Bucky?' said Ruffing. 'I wanted to pick up your bat and brain you before you got away from the plate. It would have been a strike if you hadn't jumped in the way of the pitch.'
That's when Ruffing learned a bit of baseball philosophy, he recalled. 'Steve O'Neill came up to me and said, 'Forget it, kid, that's baseball.' '
Harris, however, had a sequel to the episode that Ruffing never before had heard. 'You mean I never told you what happened after the game? Well, that was 1925, the year I was keeping company with Liz Sutherland, my bride-to-be. She was at the game that day and we were having dinner at her house with her father, the Senator from West Virginia.
'Liz wasn't much of a ball fan, but she knew I had a habit of getting hit by pitched balls and she said, 'Stanley, it looked to me as if you didn't try to get out of the way of that pitch.'
'Then the Senator, a wonderful gentleman, spoke up. 'Oh no, Elizabeth,' he said, 'Stanley wouldn't do anything unsportsmanlike as that.' '
Ruffing is now a troubleshooter for the Cleveland Indians, after a year as coach and after a year managing their Daytona Beach farm club. At Daytona, he was probably the only manager in Class D league history to drive a Cadillac, but that was understandable. When he had quit the Yankees, he had drawn more pay than any other pitcher in history.
'You kept winning ball games for eight years after you lost your stuff,' Harris said.
'That's right,' said Ruffing. 'I had to get cute. I had those fellows swinging at my motion. I gave'em the shoulder and all those fakes and threw everything at 'em but the ball, I guess.'
'The Yankees' Ed Lopat does it the same way,' said Harris. 'You sit on the bench and watch him pitch, and you can't wait for him to get up in the morning so you can start swinging at that junk he throws. Then when you get up to the plate you can't find anything good to hit at.'
'Hey, Bucky, how about the next time you faced me, in Boston, after you stole that game by getting hit in Washington?' Ruffing said.
'I remember, you threw the first pitch right at my head and I went down.'
'Yeah, Bill Carrigan was managing, and I didn't dare not to throw at you. It was a fifty dollar fine if you didn't dust a hitter off when he said to.'
'It's all right to take it out on a hitter who has hurt you,' said Harris, 'but I never could understand why they hold it against the next hitter, too.
'I was hitting behind Joe Judge against the Yankees one day, and Judge hit one right up in the seats off Bob Shawkey, and he throws the next four pitches at my head, just to get even with Joe Judge, he thinks.' "
-Shirley Povich, condensed from the Washington Post (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
"Bucky held down second base during most of his playing career. He was first a manager in 1924, when, as the 'boy wonder, ' he led the Senators to the American League pennant. In addition to the Senators, with whom he is back again for the third time, Bucky has piloted the Tigers, Red Sox, Phils and Yanks."
-1952 Bowman No. 158
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
1952 Yankee Scout of the Past: Joe Devine
DEVINE SPIRIT
"Paddy Cottrell, the new scout for the New York Yankees, was talking about 'Yankee spirit.'
'I had my most memorable lesson in Yankee spirit just before Joe Devine died,' Paddy recalled. 'I had been appointed assistant to Joe. A few days before he passed away he called me in. Despite his condition, he wanted me to take notes on the hitting style of Jim Rivera, the Seattle outfielder who had been bought in the last weeks of the season by the Chicago White Sox. Joe thought Rivera might be brought up and put into the lineup by the Sox, and would be dangerous for Yankee pitchers who were fighting for the pennant. As it happens, Rivera wasn't used, but I still have these notes he gave me. Joe Devine was thinking Yankee to the last."
-Art Rosenbaum in the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, March1952)
"Paddy Cottrell, the new scout for the New York Yankees, was talking about 'Yankee spirit.'
'I had my most memorable lesson in Yankee spirit just before Joe Devine died,' Paddy recalled. 'I had been appointed assistant to Joe. A few days before he passed away he called me in. Despite his condition, he wanted me to take notes on the hitting style of Jim Rivera, the Seattle outfielder who had been bought in the last weeks of the season by the Chicago White Sox. Joe thought Rivera might be brought up and put into the lineup by the Sox, and would be dangerous for Yankee pitchers who were fighting for the pennant. As it happens, Rivera wasn't used, but I still have these notes he gave me. Joe Devine was thinking Yankee to the last."
-Art Rosenbaum in the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, March1952)
Thursday, October 18, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Hank Borowy
HANK LEARNED A WORD FOR IT
"Hank Borowy, voted the most valuable player in the Greater Newark Tournament while at Bloomfield High in 1935, earned as a reward a trip around the International League circuit as a guest of the Newark Bears.
'What did you learn on the trip?' Borowy, who was destined to become a star hurler for the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs, was asked.
'I learned how to swear,' was his innocent reply."
-Paul Horowitz in the Newark News (Baseball Digest, September 1952)
"Hank Borowy, voted the most valuable player in the Greater Newark Tournament while at Bloomfield High in 1935, earned as a reward a trip around the International League circuit as a guest of the Newark Bears.
'What did you learn on the trip?' Borowy, who was destined to become a star hurler for the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs, was asked.
'I learned how to swear,' was his innocent reply."
-Paul Horowitz in the Newark News (Baseball Digest, September 1952)
Monday, October 1, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Lefty Gomez
GUY-DING SPIRIT
"There are more than statistics to the colorful career of Vernon (Lefty) Gomez. For instance, there's the story of the 'breaking in' of Red Rolfe, now manager of the Detroit Tigers, who came straight to the New York Yankees from Dartmouth. Gomez and his hurling mate, Red Ruffing, made a good team when it came to needling rookies, and both happened to be heroes in the eyes of Rolfe.
He gratefully heeded the pair when they volunteered advice that Manager Joe McCarthy liked spirit and 'holler' from his players. 'When I give you the sign,' Lefty kindly offered, 'give out with the old college yell. It'll make a hit with Joe.'
'EE-yah, atta boy,' Red yelled.
An inning later, a Yankee erred in the field. Again Lefty nudged Rolfe. The redhead imitated a Comanche on the warpath. When it happened the third time, McCarthy exploded.
'You crazy so-and-so,' he fumed. 'Get out of here and into your clothes. You make too much noise.' "
-Fred Russell in the Nashville Banner (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
THE GOINGS-ON OF GOMEZ
He Still Wins in the Big Laugh League
Almost a decade has elapsed since Vernon Louis (Lefty) Gomez pitched his last big league victory, but the anecdotes about him continue to pop up. Here are some more collector's items (Baseball Digest, March 1952):
"Dick Kryhoski, the St. Louis Browns' first baseman, tells of his apprenticeship in Binghamton, N.Y., under the tutelage of Lefty Gomez.
Gomez was coaching third base, Kryhoski was a base runner on first and Binghamton had another runner, a rookie, on second. On a hit to right field, everybody started at top speed.
The rookie rounded third, started for the plate, then paused to make sure he had correctly interpreted the coach's signal to keep going. He hesitated, glanced back at Gomez, wavered, saw a throw coming in, and slid back to third. At the same instant, Kryhoski, who had passed second at full stride, flung himself headlong in a beautiful slide and zoomed into third.
Gomez gazed morosely upon his two stalwarts occupying one base.
'Oh, what the hell,' he said resignedly. And he slid in to join them."
-Red Smith in the New York Herald-Tribune
"Another time Gomez tangled with another great southpaw of the American League, Lefty Grove. Grove shot three sizzling fast ones past the eccentric Yank hurler. Goofy didn't even see the pitches, but to the amazement of the umpire, he protested the third strike indignantly, insisting, 'The explosion of that one sounded low to me!' "
-Jack Strausberg, in the book 'Now I'll Tell One.'
"Gomez was pitching to Jimmie Foxx when the burly slugger was at his peak with the Philadelphia Athletics. Foxx was flexing his muscles and squeezing the sawdust out of his bat while Gomez shook off each sign catcher Bill Dickey gave. Dickey finally came out to the mound and demanded, 'Well, what do you want to throw?'
'Nothing,' admitted Goofy, with a shrug.
When Gomez first joined the New York Yankees he had a lot of trouble with his teeth. The club sent him to one of the best dentists in New York and paid the bills. But the dental work didn't improve his pitching and he was farmed to St. Paul.
A teammate, watching him pack, offered sympathy.
'Don't worry,' said Lefty. 'I'll be back. You don't think they'd turn me loose with $1,500 worth their teeth in my mouth, do you?' "
-Bob Wilson in the Knoxville News-Sentinel
"Signals didn't mean much when Gomez pitched. Bill Dickey was telling how he and Lefty worked signals out. 'It was simple,' said Dickey. 'I would hold my mitt on my knee. If I wanted a fastball, I'd cover my knee completely. If I exposed part of my knee, that would call for a curve. But it didn't make much difference. Lefty threw what he liked anyway.'
Dickey recalled a time when Lefty was getting hit hard.
'Lefty called me in for a confab. 'I think they're wise to our signals,' he said. 'Wise to our signals?' I replied. 'I don't know what you're going to throw. You don't know what you're going to throw. How do you figure they know?' ' "
-Bob Wilson in the Knoxville News-Sentinel
"Rosy Ryan, now Minneapolis general manager, recalls a Gomez episode of 1930. Rosy was pitching for Milwaukee and Gomez, who had been with the San Francisco Seals the year before, was pitching for St. Paul. When the Saints came to town he invited a couple of old acquaintances, Johnny Grabowski and Oscar Roettger, to accompany him to a lakeside place to dinner. John and Oscar brought Lefty along.
Said Ryan: 'We get out to the place and are enjoying the cold cuts and a couple of flagons of Milwaukee's finest prohibition product while waiting for the steaks, when we notice Gomez is missing. Then all of a sudden from the lake we hear a lot of whooping and splashing. The three of us rush over to the noise and there is Gomez thrashing about in the water.
'Grabby hollers, 'Blankety-blank, there's 150,000 bucks of Jake Ruppert's dough out there in that lake. If we lose him, nobody'll have a job. Let's get busy.'
'So we pull Lefty out and ask him what the deal is, and he just grins and says: 'Well, I came from the Seals, so I thought I ought to act like one.' ' "
-Bob Beebe in the Minneapolis Tribune
"Like everyone else, Joe DiMaggio used to get a laugh out of Lefty Gomez, the quick-witted pitching star when the two were teammates. Shortly after he joined the New York Yankees, DiMag was telling Gomez somewhat querulously:
'People are always coming up to me and asking where I get my power.'
'Listen, Joe,' advised Lefty. 'That's no cause for complaint. The time to get worried is when guys come up to you and ask you where your power WENT!' "
-Al Abrams in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Baseball Digest, April 1952)
MISSED TRAIN? NO STATION!
"Lefty Gomez dropped into Yankee Stadium and fell into reminiscing with his former teammate, Joe DiMaggio.
'I never missed a train,' insisted DiMaggio.
'I missed one,' Gomez admitted, 'and I believe it was the first year I was with the Yankees. We were leaving for Detroit and I went to the Pennsylvania Station instead of the Grand Central. By the time I discovered my mistake the train carrying the ball club was gone. When I finally reached Detroit, Joe McCarthy bawled me out something awful. He figured I stopped somewhere for a beer.
' 'How was I supposed to know there were two stations in New York?' I told him. 'We had only one station in my home town, Rodeo, California.' ' "
-Hy Goldberg in the Newark News (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
IN A JUG-ULAR VEIN
"Once during spring training the New York Yankees were scheduled for an exhibition game against a team whose first baseman was having alimony trouble with his former wife. Lefty Gomez was asked what he thought of the prospect that the first baseman might be in jail by the time the game started.
'Well,' he answered, 'it'll be an awful long throw for the shortstop.' "
-International News Service (Baseball Digest, October 1952)
THAT GOMEZ AGAIN
"Arky Vaughan, the former Pittsburgh Pirates star, was having one of his big years, and before the All-Star Game the American Leaguers, who were going over the best way to pitch to the National League batters, were deep in an argument as to the safest way to handle Arky. They had all sorts of opinions and were hot at it when Lefty Gomez, who hadn't been in on the conversation, spoke up.
'Why don't you stop wasting your time?' Lefty said. 'You've used up ten minutes trying to figure out something the National League hasn't been able to do in three months.' "
-Chester L. Smith in the Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, October 1952)
"There are more than statistics to the colorful career of Vernon (Lefty) Gomez. For instance, there's the story of the 'breaking in' of Red Rolfe, now manager of the Detroit Tigers, who came straight to the New York Yankees from Dartmouth. Gomez and his hurling mate, Red Ruffing, made a good team when it came to needling rookies, and both happened to be heroes in the eyes of Rolfe.
He gratefully heeded the pair when they volunteered advice that Manager Joe McCarthy liked spirit and 'holler' from his players. 'When I give you the sign,' Lefty kindly offered, 'give out with the old college yell. It'll make a hit with Joe.'
'EE-yah, atta boy,' Red yelled.
An inning later, a Yankee erred in the field. Again Lefty nudged Rolfe. The redhead imitated a Comanche on the warpath. When it happened the third time, McCarthy exploded.
'You crazy so-and-so,' he fumed. 'Get out of here and into your clothes. You make too much noise.' "
-Fred Russell in the Nashville Banner (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
THE GOINGS-ON OF GOMEZ
He Still Wins in the Big Laugh League
Almost a decade has elapsed since Vernon Louis (Lefty) Gomez pitched his last big league victory, but the anecdotes about him continue to pop up. Here are some more collector's items (Baseball Digest, March 1952):
"Dick Kryhoski, the St. Louis Browns' first baseman, tells of his apprenticeship in Binghamton, N.Y., under the tutelage of Lefty Gomez.
Gomez was coaching third base, Kryhoski was a base runner on first and Binghamton had another runner, a rookie, on second. On a hit to right field, everybody started at top speed.
The rookie rounded third, started for the plate, then paused to make sure he had correctly interpreted the coach's signal to keep going. He hesitated, glanced back at Gomez, wavered, saw a throw coming in, and slid back to third. At the same instant, Kryhoski, who had passed second at full stride, flung himself headlong in a beautiful slide and zoomed into third.
Gomez gazed morosely upon his two stalwarts occupying one base.
'Oh, what the hell,' he said resignedly. And he slid in to join them."
-Red Smith in the New York Herald-Tribune
"Another time Gomez tangled with another great southpaw of the American League, Lefty Grove. Grove shot three sizzling fast ones past the eccentric Yank hurler. Goofy didn't even see the pitches, but to the amazement of the umpire, he protested the third strike indignantly, insisting, 'The explosion of that one sounded low to me!' "
-Jack Strausberg, in the book 'Now I'll Tell One.'
"Gomez was pitching to Jimmie Foxx when the burly slugger was at his peak with the Philadelphia Athletics. Foxx was flexing his muscles and squeezing the sawdust out of his bat while Gomez shook off each sign catcher Bill Dickey gave. Dickey finally came out to the mound and demanded, 'Well, what do you want to throw?'
'Nothing,' admitted Goofy, with a shrug.
When Gomez first joined the New York Yankees he had a lot of trouble with his teeth. The club sent him to one of the best dentists in New York and paid the bills. But the dental work didn't improve his pitching and he was farmed to St. Paul.
A teammate, watching him pack, offered sympathy.
'Don't worry,' said Lefty. 'I'll be back. You don't think they'd turn me loose with $1,500 worth their teeth in my mouth, do you?' "
-Bob Wilson in the Knoxville News-Sentinel
"Signals didn't mean much when Gomez pitched. Bill Dickey was telling how he and Lefty worked signals out. 'It was simple,' said Dickey. 'I would hold my mitt on my knee. If I wanted a fastball, I'd cover my knee completely. If I exposed part of my knee, that would call for a curve. But it didn't make much difference. Lefty threw what he liked anyway.'
Dickey recalled a time when Lefty was getting hit hard.
'Lefty called me in for a confab. 'I think they're wise to our signals,' he said. 'Wise to our signals?' I replied. 'I don't know what you're going to throw. You don't know what you're going to throw. How do you figure they know?' ' "
-Bob Wilson in the Knoxville News-Sentinel
"Rosy Ryan, now Minneapolis general manager, recalls a Gomez episode of 1930. Rosy was pitching for Milwaukee and Gomez, who had been with the San Francisco Seals the year before, was pitching for St. Paul. When the Saints came to town he invited a couple of old acquaintances, Johnny Grabowski and Oscar Roettger, to accompany him to a lakeside place to dinner. John and Oscar brought Lefty along.
Said Ryan: 'We get out to the place and are enjoying the cold cuts and a couple of flagons of Milwaukee's finest prohibition product while waiting for the steaks, when we notice Gomez is missing. Then all of a sudden from the lake we hear a lot of whooping and splashing. The three of us rush over to the noise and there is Gomez thrashing about in the water.
'Grabby hollers, 'Blankety-blank, there's 150,000 bucks of Jake Ruppert's dough out there in that lake. If we lose him, nobody'll have a job. Let's get busy.'
'So we pull Lefty out and ask him what the deal is, and he just grins and says: 'Well, I came from the Seals, so I thought I ought to act like one.' ' "
-Bob Beebe in the Minneapolis Tribune
"Like everyone else, Joe DiMaggio used to get a laugh out of Lefty Gomez, the quick-witted pitching star when the two were teammates. Shortly after he joined the New York Yankees, DiMag was telling Gomez somewhat querulously:
'People are always coming up to me and asking where I get my power.'
'Listen, Joe,' advised Lefty. 'That's no cause for complaint. The time to get worried is when guys come up to you and ask you where your power WENT!' "
-Al Abrams in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Baseball Digest, April 1952)
MISSED TRAIN? NO STATION!
"Lefty Gomez dropped into Yankee Stadium and fell into reminiscing with his former teammate, Joe DiMaggio.
'I never missed a train,' insisted DiMaggio.
'I missed one,' Gomez admitted, 'and I believe it was the first year I was with the Yankees. We were leaving for Detroit and I went to the Pennsylvania Station instead of the Grand Central. By the time I discovered my mistake the train carrying the ball club was gone. When I finally reached Detroit, Joe McCarthy bawled me out something awful. He figured I stopped somewhere for a beer.
' 'How was I supposed to know there were two stations in New York?' I told him. 'We had only one station in my home town, Rodeo, California.' ' "
-Hy Goldberg in the Newark News (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
IN A JUG-ULAR VEIN
"Once during spring training the New York Yankees were scheduled for an exhibition game against a team whose first baseman was having alimony trouble with his former wife. Lefty Gomez was asked what he thought of the prospect that the first baseman might be in jail by the time the game started.
'Well,' he answered, 'it'll be an awful long throw for the shortstop.' "
-International News Service (Baseball Digest, October 1952)
THAT GOMEZ AGAIN
"Arky Vaughan, the former Pittsburgh Pirates star, was having one of his big years, and before the All-Star Game the American Leaguers, who were going over the best way to pitch to the National League batters, were deep in an argument as to the safest way to handle Arky. They had all sorts of opinions and were hot at it when Lefty Gomez, who hadn't been in on the conversation, spoke up.
'Why don't you stop wasting your time?' Lefty said. 'You've used up ten minutes trying to figure out something the National League hasn't been able to do in three months.' "
-Chester L. Smith in the Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, October 1952)
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
1952 Yankee Coach of the Past: Chuck Dressen
AUTOPSY IN BROOKLYN
Dressen Explains Pitching Moves Involved In Bums' Death Struggle
"The Fourth Floor at 216 Montague St. houses the offices of Brooklyn's ill-starred Dodgers.
A year has passed since Branch Rickey cleaned out his desk in the famous old executive office which has been occupied in the past by such Dodger tycoons as Charles H. Ebbets, Stephen W. McKeever, Larry MacPhail and now by Walter F. O'Malley, Rickey's successor to the club's presidency. Externally the offices have been completely renovated. The tiny waiting room with its old lithograph of an early ball game in Hoboken has been expanded into a modernistic and roomy lounge. The color scheme is cool green instead of early Twentieth Century imitation walnut.
But it's still the Dodger headquarters and the human beings who work there still function within the mystic circle that makes Dodger baseball the oddest in the land.
At the switchboard sat Grace Therkildsen who has transmitted messages to and from Dodgerland these many years. 'I'm just getting out of it,' she sighed. 'It's been awful ... answering all those questions, why we didn't win after we had that thirteen and a half game lead, why Ralph Branca let Bobby Thomson hit that home run. I was stunned for days afterward.'
It is a fact no one associated with the Dodgers smiled for at least ten days after Leo Durocher's Giants snatched the 1951 National League pennant from the Dodgers' grasp at the zero hour on October 3. Even when the wassail was flowing fastest at the Giants' World Series headquarters Dodger partisans could be recognized at a glance. They sat soberly, deadpanned, morose, like close relatives at the wake of a rich uncle.
A couple weeks later, in his spacious office sat Emil J. Bavasi, the quiet, pale, personable young man who assumed the task of directing the Dodger varsity business management one year ago, following Rickey's departure for Pittsburgh. To all baseball, Bavasi is simply 'Buzzy,' a corruption of his last name and also a symbol of his friends' easy familiarity with a sincere, hard-working young man.
He had a pat answer for the general question: 'What happened to the Dodgers?' He said: 'We didn't lose it. They won it. Any team that wins thirty-nine of its last forty-seven games, like the Giants did, must win the pennant.'
But there was more to it, wasn't there? 'Sure there was. All right we did lose it. You can't blame the players. They tried with everything they had. You can't blame Chuck. He did everything he could. When the team began to slip in those last ten games, there was nothing we could do. You can't change horses in the middle of the steam. You can't trade Eddie Waitkus to the Dodgers for Gil Hodges, even if the Phillies would have traded Waitkus, because Hodges is a better first baseman anyhow. You can't bench Duke Snider. We used the best players available and they are still the best in baseball.'
Into the room came Chuck, Charlie Dressen, the little manager who has borne the brunt of criticism for the Dodger debacle. Charlie spent a difficult year as master of Ebbets Field and was on the newspapers' griddle even when his team sat atop the league. He had smiled bravely in public during the Series but now, in the privacy of Dodger headquarters, his face expressed his real feelings. He had been on the defensive, had been given little opportunity to reply- and he wanted to talk.
'It's like this,' he began. 'We lost the pennant in those last ten games. All we had to do was to win five of them, play at a .500 pace and we'd been in.
'I've been panned for not using Clem Labine until the playoff. He came to us from St. Paul with a bad ankle. I started him and he won four straight. I sent him into the first of the crucial ten games and he was knocked out in the first inning. He rested the next day and then I put him in the bullpen.
'Meantime I had to win. I decided to use only my best pitchers, Preacher Roe, Don Newcombe, Branca and Carl Erskine-'
Bavasi called to Allen Roth, the club statistician, who occupies an enjoining office. 'How many games did Roe, Newk, Ralph and Erskine win for us last season?'
'Seventy-one,' replied Roth.
'There you are,' said Buzzy. 'If four men win seventy-one games, you surely expect they'll take six out of any ten. They didn't.'
Getting down to specific games, there was that night contest in Philadelphia on September 28. The Dodgers led 3-0 in the sixth when the Phillies scored a run off Erskine. A walk and a homer tied the score in the eighth. Chuck had permitted Erskine to bat for himself at the top of the ninth. Why?
'Why take him out?' retorted the manager. 'There was no one on base.' He glanced at the floor. 'I don't know why I didn't take him out.' He leaned forward. 'Look here, this season was the same as that time I was with the Dodgers and we won the last eight games but the Cards kept winning and we lost the flag to them. It was the Giants' keeping winning that beat us, like the Cardinals in 1942.'
But the fact was that Erskine yielded a hit, a sacrifice and another hit in the Phillies' ninth, and the Dodgers lost, 4-3.
What happened to Clyde King, who won fourteen games, mainly in relief. Why wasn't he used more in the fatal stretch drive?
'We used him when we needed him,' said Buzzy. 'He failed in that last game against the Phillies.'
And Branca? What happened to him? Why were Roe and Newcombe worked overtime while Ralph sat on the sidelines? 'He lost to Boston on the twenty-fifth- they scored six runs in the first inning.'
Mention of Ralph Branca's name immediately brought to mind the historic ninth-inning homer by Bobby Thomson in the final playoff game. 'Branca didn't lose to the Giants for three years,' said Buzzy. Chuck chimed in with: 'He held the Giants to five hits in the first playoff game, although two of them were homers by Thomson and Monte Irvin.'
'What's Ralph's record against the Giants?' called Buzzy.
'It's 14-10,' replied Statistician Roth.
'But at the beginning of the season ... ?'
'It was 12-6. '
'And two of his four losses were in the playoffs,' said Chuck.
'Take that 12-6 record,' Buzzy persisted. 'That's a two to one advantage, isn't it? Well, say Branca had a 66 per cent chance to win a game in the playoffs. That's what we figured.'
Getting to cases, why use Branca, a fast ball pitcher, in relief against Thomson who hits fastballs, after Newcombe weakened in that fatal ninth? The score was Brooklyn 4, New York 2, with two Giants on. Wouldn't a curve ball hurler have been the better choice as relief?
'Ralph throws a great curve,' said Chuck. 'His first pitch to Thomson was perfect- it broke in and was unhittable. The second got away from him, and Thomson pickled it.'
Perhaps a dispy-do slowballer, King, might have got Thomson out?
Chuck Dressen looked wistfully through the window overlooking Court Street. He did not reply.
'I give all the credit in the world to Leo Durocher and the Giants,' said Buzzy Bavasi.
Well, the pennant race is history now, along with the Battle of Waterloo. How about next season?
'We'd make a deal for a pitcher,' said Buzzy, 'if we could, but I don't think it's possible. The team is still the best in baseball, even if it lost out this year. You can trace some of our trouble to injuries ... Newcome and Branca came up with bad arms, Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson got hurt. But look up and down that lineup- where can you find better? At first, at the pivot, at third, in the outfield, catchers, pitchers? You can't.
'We could use another pitcher- who can't? No, we don't need another second-string catcher. Rube Walker could be first string for at least three clubs in the league- he's slow but he can hit and receive with the best. And show me another second-stringer as strong.
'We may look at our three best minor league catchers, Steve Lembo and Dick Teed, who were with St. Paul, and Charlie Thompson, who was with Mobile.
'We are not going to sell our best minor league prospects. The club sold eight players two years because it needed the money- financial troubles make you do things you don't want to do. We could have used Chico Carrasquel and Irv Noren. Carrasquel would have been the finest infield replacement in the game. And Noren, there's a great ball player, would have been our left fielder.
'We had a great minor league season. We had twenty clubs. Six won pennants. Seventeen were in the playoffs. We must have some valuable material there, and when the teams gather next spring we'll decide which boys should be advanced.
'Yes,' concluded Buzzy, 'the team's morale will not be affected by that licking. They don't feel sorry for themselves and we in the front office don't feel sorry for our selves. The Giants proved they were the better team ... in 1951.
'But I personally feel sorry for the folks in Brooklyn ... not the box holders who come to the game to spend an hour or two in the open air and cheer their favorites, but for the little guys who save up a few dollars and go to a game now and then. They took it hard.'
Buzzy Bavasi and Chuck Dressen sat silently thinking. A clock ticked. Faintly through the open window came the thin sound of chimes ringing noon in the tower of Borough Hall.
They were taking it hard, too."
-Charles Dexter, Baseball Digest, January 1952
SAME SITUATION, SAME STRATEGY
What Blew for Dressen Worked for Stengel
"Manager Chuck Dressen of the Brooklyn Dodgers had to make a decision. He made it and the New York Giants won the National League pennant.
They're still second-guessing Dressen because he told his pitcher to throw to Bobby Thomson in the ninth inning with the Giants trailing 4-2, one out, runners on third and second, and with first base wide open.
What Thomson did to that strategy has gone into the records as one of the greatest thrills in diamond history. He belted the ball into the stands for the three-run homer that gave the Giants a 5-4 triumph and shoved them into the 1951 World Series.
And the die-hard Brooklyn fans made Manager Dressen the goat for not walking Thomson to set up a game-ending double play.
The incident has such a parallel that it is difficult to believe. Yet, Casey Stengel of the New York Yankees had to make exactly the same decision. He took the identical course that was followed by Dressen. Now he is the manager of a World Series champion for the third time in his first three years with the club- a record.
It recurred exactly one week from the day from the final Giant-Dodgers playoff. The Yankees led the Giants this time. The score was the same, 4-2. The Giants already had scored one run in the ninth inning just as they had in the playoff thriller.
There were runners on second and third, just as there had been before. And the batter was the same Bobby Thomson, the string-bean Giant third baseman who had hit the dramatic home run that put the Giants into the Series.
Again first base was wide open. Again there was only one out. Once more there was the opportunity to walk the dangerous Thomson and take a chance that the next batter would hit into a double play made easier by the choice of a force play at any base.
But Stengel followed the same route which had made Dressen a defeated manager with horns. He ordered southpaw Bob Kuzava to pitch to Thomson. He did and Bobby's best was a fly ball for the second out.
One run scored after the catch but when Hank Bauer made his falling-down snare of pinch hitter Sal Yvars' sinking liner, the Series was ended and Stengel was the champion again while the second-guessers continued to take pot shots at Dressen."
by Lyall Smith, condensed from the Detroit Free Press (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
DRESSEN PUT WINNER ON FIVE TIMES IN '51 AND WON EACH TIME!
"Charlie Dressen, the despondent Brooklyn manager, was kicking himself long after the final out of the historic third game of the National League playoff for playing the game by the book. With first base open in the ninth inning, he did not have the Giants' Bobby Thomson intentionally passed with the winning run.
'I thought of it,' admitted the Brooklyn manager.
'Why I wouldn't think of it? I passed the winning run five times during the season and won every time. I passed Stan Musial three times with the winning run, with a left-handed hitter following him, because he is a solid .350 hitter and the other guy wasn't.'
Then why didn't he pass Thomson, Dressen was asked. For once the breezy bantam did not have a ready answer. He just shrugged.
Finally, he said, 'The next guy could have hit a home run, too.'
Scheduled to follow Thomson was Willie Mays, the Giants' gifted rookie who, although not impressive in the playoffs or in the World Series that followed, is certainly capable of hitting a home run.
He also might have hit a long double, scoring the fleet Thomson from first. He might have singled, putting Thomson on third with only one out.
Or Mays might have hit into a double play, as he had in the seventh inning, ending the game and giving the Dodgers the pennant instead of the horrors.
'Never walk the winning run- unless you have a Ruth, Greenberg or Musial hitting, and even then you ought to think three times,' say baseball tacticians.
But a Ruth, Greenberg or Musial was not hitting. It was only Thomson.
The real reason why Dressen did not purposely pass Thomson with the winning run, then, was that he underrated the Giants' third baseman. Thomson hit .383 during the forty-seven-game streak in which the Giants won thirty-nine games to steal the pennant. Nobody except his closest relatives thinks he is that kind of hitter.
As Thomson himself said during the post-game delirium, 'If I'd been a good hitter, I never would have hit it. It was a bad pitch.'
'Nobody talks about passing a winning run until something happens,' said Dressen bitterly. Managers play it both ways, of course, with good and bad results.
In the 1947 World Series at Brooklyn [when Dressen was a Yankee coach], Bucky Harris of the New York Yankees purposely passed winning run, and Cookie Lavagetto, now a Dodgers' coach, promptly doubled it home for a 3-2 win to ruin Bill Bevens' no-hitter."
by Harold Kaese, condensed from the Boston Globe (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
"During most of Charlie's playing career, which began in 1919, he held down third base. He hit the majors with Cincinnati in 1925. With them from 1925-30 and for a few games in 1931, he played briefly for the Giants in 1933.
Charlie has managed the Reds and coached the Dodgers and Yankees. He has been the Dodgers' pilot since 1951."
-1952 Bowman No. 188
"Though they lost the pennant to the Giants in 1951, Chuck's Dodger team won more ball games (97) than any Dodger team since 1942.
He started his playing career with Moline in 1919 and finished with the Giants in 1933. Chuck managed Nashville from 1932-34 and in 1938, Cincinnati from the end of '34 through 1937 and Oakland in 1949 and '50. He was on the Dodger coaching staff from 1939-46 and the Yankee staff in 1947 and '48."
1952 Topps No. 377
Dressen Explains Pitching Moves Involved In Bums' Death Struggle
"The Fourth Floor at 216 Montague St. houses the offices of Brooklyn's ill-starred Dodgers.
A year has passed since Branch Rickey cleaned out his desk in the famous old executive office which has been occupied in the past by such Dodger tycoons as Charles H. Ebbets, Stephen W. McKeever, Larry MacPhail and now by Walter F. O'Malley, Rickey's successor to the club's presidency. Externally the offices have been completely renovated. The tiny waiting room with its old lithograph of an early ball game in Hoboken has been expanded into a modernistic and roomy lounge. The color scheme is cool green instead of early Twentieth Century imitation walnut.
But it's still the Dodger headquarters and the human beings who work there still function within the mystic circle that makes Dodger baseball the oddest in the land.
At the switchboard sat Grace Therkildsen who has transmitted messages to and from Dodgerland these many years. 'I'm just getting out of it,' she sighed. 'It's been awful ... answering all those questions, why we didn't win after we had that thirteen and a half game lead, why Ralph Branca let Bobby Thomson hit that home run. I was stunned for days afterward.'
It is a fact no one associated with the Dodgers smiled for at least ten days after Leo Durocher's Giants snatched the 1951 National League pennant from the Dodgers' grasp at the zero hour on October 3. Even when the wassail was flowing fastest at the Giants' World Series headquarters Dodger partisans could be recognized at a glance. They sat soberly, deadpanned, morose, like close relatives at the wake of a rich uncle.
A couple weeks later, in his spacious office sat Emil J. Bavasi, the quiet, pale, personable young man who assumed the task of directing the Dodger varsity business management one year ago, following Rickey's departure for Pittsburgh. To all baseball, Bavasi is simply 'Buzzy,' a corruption of his last name and also a symbol of his friends' easy familiarity with a sincere, hard-working young man.
He had a pat answer for the general question: 'What happened to the Dodgers?' He said: 'We didn't lose it. They won it. Any team that wins thirty-nine of its last forty-seven games, like the Giants did, must win the pennant.'
But there was more to it, wasn't there? 'Sure there was. All right we did lose it. You can't blame the players. They tried with everything they had. You can't blame Chuck. He did everything he could. When the team began to slip in those last ten games, there was nothing we could do. You can't change horses in the middle of the steam. You can't trade Eddie Waitkus to the Dodgers for Gil Hodges, even if the Phillies would have traded Waitkus, because Hodges is a better first baseman anyhow. You can't bench Duke Snider. We used the best players available and they are still the best in baseball.'
Into the room came Chuck, Charlie Dressen, the little manager who has borne the brunt of criticism for the Dodger debacle. Charlie spent a difficult year as master of Ebbets Field and was on the newspapers' griddle even when his team sat atop the league. He had smiled bravely in public during the Series but now, in the privacy of Dodger headquarters, his face expressed his real feelings. He had been on the defensive, had been given little opportunity to reply- and he wanted to talk.
'It's like this,' he began. 'We lost the pennant in those last ten games. All we had to do was to win five of them, play at a .500 pace and we'd been in.
'I've been panned for not using Clem Labine until the playoff. He came to us from St. Paul with a bad ankle. I started him and he won four straight. I sent him into the first of the crucial ten games and he was knocked out in the first inning. He rested the next day and then I put him in the bullpen.
'Meantime I had to win. I decided to use only my best pitchers, Preacher Roe, Don Newcombe, Branca and Carl Erskine-'
Bavasi called to Allen Roth, the club statistician, who occupies an enjoining office. 'How many games did Roe, Newk, Ralph and Erskine win for us last season?'
'Seventy-one,' replied Roth.
'There you are,' said Buzzy. 'If four men win seventy-one games, you surely expect they'll take six out of any ten. They didn't.'
Getting down to specific games, there was that night contest in Philadelphia on September 28. The Dodgers led 3-0 in the sixth when the Phillies scored a run off Erskine. A walk and a homer tied the score in the eighth. Chuck had permitted Erskine to bat for himself at the top of the ninth. Why?
'Why take him out?' retorted the manager. 'There was no one on base.' He glanced at the floor. 'I don't know why I didn't take him out.' He leaned forward. 'Look here, this season was the same as that time I was with the Dodgers and we won the last eight games but the Cards kept winning and we lost the flag to them. It was the Giants' keeping winning that beat us, like the Cardinals in 1942.'
But the fact was that Erskine yielded a hit, a sacrifice and another hit in the Phillies' ninth, and the Dodgers lost, 4-3.
What happened to Clyde King, who won fourteen games, mainly in relief. Why wasn't he used more in the fatal stretch drive?
'We used him when we needed him,' said Buzzy. 'He failed in that last game against the Phillies.'
And Branca? What happened to him? Why were Roe and Newcombe worked overtime while Ralph sat on the sidelines? 'He lost to Boston on the twenty-fifth- they scored six runs in the first inning.'
Mention of Ralph Branca's name immediately brought to mind the historic ninth-inning homer by Bobby Thomson in the final playoff game. 'Branca didn't lose to the Giants for three years,' said Buzzy. Chuck chimed in with: 'He held the Giants to five hits in the first playoff game, although two of them were homers by Thomson and Monte Irvin.'
'What's Ralph's record against the Giants?' called Buzzy.
'It's 14-10,' replied Statistician Roth.
'But at the beginning of the season ... ?'
'It was 12-6. '
'And two of his four losses were in the playoffs,' said Chuck.
'Take that 12-6 record,' Buzzy persisted. 'That's a two to one advantage, isn't it? Well, say Branca had a 66 per cent chance to win a game in the playoffs. That's what we figured.'
Getting to cases, why use Branca, a fast ball pitcher, in relief against Thomson who hits fastballs, after Newcombe weakened in that fatal ninth? The score was Brooklyn 4, New York 2, with two Giants on. Wouldn't a curve ball hurler have been the better choice as relief?
'Ralph throws a great curve,' said Chuck. 'His first pitch to Thomson was perfect- it broke in and was unhittable. The second got away from him, and Thomson pickled it.'
Perhaps a dispy-do slowballer, King, might have got Thomson out?
Chuck Dressen looked wistfully through the window overlooking Court Street. He did not reply.
'I give all the credit in the world to Leo Durocher and the Giants,' said Buzzy Bavasi.
Well, the pennant race is history now, along with the Battle of Waterloo. How about next season?
'We'd make a deal for a pitcher,' said Buzzy, 'if we could, but I don't think it's possible. The team is still the best in baseball, even if it lost out this year. You can trace some of our trouble to injuries ... Newcome and Branca came up with bad arms, Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson got hurt. But look up and down that lineup- where can you find better? At first, at the pivot, at third, in the outfield, catchers, pitchers? You can't.
'We could use another pitcher- who can't? No, we don't need another second-string catcher. Rube Walker could be first string for at least three clubs in the league- he's slow but he can hit and receive with the best. And show me another second-stringer as strong.
'We may look at our three best minor league catchers, Steve Lembo and Dick Teed, who were with St. Paul, and Charlie Thompson, who was with Mobile.
'We are not going to sell our best minor league prospects. The club sold eight players two years because it needed the money- financial troubles make you do things you don't want to do. We could have used Chico Carrasquel and Irv Noren. Carrasquel would have been the finest infield replacement in the game. And Noren, there's a great ball player, would have been our left fielder.
'We had a great minor league season. We had twenty clubs. Six won pennants. Seventeen were in the playoffs. We must have some valuable material there, and when the teams gather next spring we'll decide which boys should be advanced.
'Yes,' concluded Buzzy, 'the team's morale will not be affected by that licking. They don't feel sorry for themselves and we in the front office don't feel sorry for our selves. The Giants proved they were the better team ... in 1951.
'But I personally feel sorry for the folks in Brooklyn ... not the box holders who come to the game to spend an hour or two in the open air and cheer their favorites, but for the little guys who save up a few dollars and go to a game now and then. They took it hard.'
Buzzy Bavasi and Chuck Dressen sat silently thinking. A clock ticked. Faintly through the open window came the thin sound of chimes ringing noon in the tower of Borough Hall.
They were taking it hard, too."
-Charles Dexter, Baseball Digest, January 1952
SAME SITUATION, SAME STRATEGY
What Blew for Dressen Worked for Stengel
"Manager Chuck Dressen of the Brooklyn Dodgers had to make a decision. He made it and the New York Giants won the National League pennant.
They're still second-guessing Dressen because he told his pitcher to throw to Bobby Thomson in the ninth inning with the Giants trailing 4-2, one out, runners on third and second, and with first base wide open.
What Thomson did to that strategy has gone into the records as one of the greatest thrills in diamond history. He belted the ball into the stands for the three-run homer that gave the Giants a 5-4 triumph and shoved them into the 1951 World Series.
And the die-hard Brooklyn fans made Manager Dressen the goat for not walking Thomson to set up a game-ending double play.
The incident has such a parallel that it is difficult to believe. Yet, Casey Stengel of the New York Yankees had to make exactly the same decision. He took the identical course that was followed by Dressen. Now he is the manager of a World Series champion for the third time in his first three years with the club- a record.
It recurred exactly one week from the day from the final Giant-Dodgers playoff. The Yankees led the Giants this time. The score was the same, 4-2. The Giants already had scored one run in the ninth inning just as they had in the playoff thriller.
There were runners on second and third, just as there had been before. And the batter was the same Bobby Thomson, the string-bean Giant third baseman who had hit the dramatic home run that put the Giants into the Series.
Again first base was wide open. Again there was only one out. Once more there was the opportunity to walk the dangerous Thomson and take a chance that the next batter would hit into a double play made easier by the choice of a force play at any base.
But Stengel followed the same route which had made Dressen a defeated manager with horns. He ordered southpaw Bob Kuzava to pitch to Thomson. He did and Bobby's best was a fly ball for the second out.
One run scored after the catch but when Hank Bauer made his falling-down snare of pinch hitter Sal Yvars' sinking liner, the Series was ended and Stengel was the champion again while the second-guessers continued to take pot shots at Dressen."
by Lyall Smith, condensed from the Detroit Free Press (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
DRESSEN PUT WINNER ON FIVE TIMES IN '51 AND WON EACH TIME!
"Charlie Dressen, the despondent Brooklyn manager, was kicking himself long after the final out of the historic third game of the National League playoff for playing the game by the book. With first base open in the ninth inning, he did not have the Giants' Bobby Thomson intentionally passed with the winning run.
'I thought of it,' admitted the Brooklyn manager.
'Why I wouldn't think of it? I passed the winning run five times during the season and won every time. I passed Stan Musial three times with the winning run, with a left-handed hitter following him, because he is a solid .350 hitter and the other guy wasn't.'
Then why didn't he pass Thomson, Dressen was asked. For once the breezy bantam did not have a ready answer. He just shrugged.
Finally, he said, 'The next guy could have hit a home run, too.'
Scheduled to follow Thomson was Willie Mays, the Giants' gifted rookie who, although not impressive in the playoffs or in the World Series that followed, is certainly capable of hitting a home run.
He also might have hit a long double, scoring the fleet Thomson from first. He might have singled, putting Thomson on third with only one out.
Or Mays might have hit into a double play, as he had in the seventh inning, ending the game and giving the Dodgers the pennant instead of the horrors.
'Never walk the winning run- unless you have a Ruth, Greenberg or Musial hitting, and even then you ought to think three times,' say baseball tacticians.
But a Ruth, Greenberg or Musial was not hitting. It was only Thomson.
The real reason why Dressen did not purposely pass Thomson with the winning run, then, was that he underrated the Giants' third baseman. Thomson hit .383 during the forty-seven-game streak in which the Giants won thirty-nine games to steal the pennant. Nobody except his closest relatives thinks he is that kind of hitter.
As Thomson himself said during the post-game delirium, 'If I'd been a good hitter, I never would have hit it. It was a bad pitch.'
'Nobody talks about passing a winning run until something happens,' said Dressen bitterly. Managers play it both ways, of course, with good and bad results.
In the 1947 World Series at Brooklyn [when Dressen was a Yankee coach], Bucky Harris of the New York Yankees purposely passed winning run, and Cookie Lavagetto, now a Dodgers' coach, promptly doubled it home for a 3-2 win to ruin Bill Bevens' no-hitter."
by Harold Kaese, condensed from the Boston Globe (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
"During most of Charlie's playing career, which began in 1919, he held down third base. He hit the majors with Cincinnati in 1925. With them from 1925-30 and for a few games in 1931, he played briefly for the Giants in 1933.
Charlie has managed the Reds and coached the Dodgers and Yankees. He has been the Dodgers' pilot since 1951."
-1952 Bowman No. 188
"Though they lost the pennant to the Giants in 1951, Chuck's Dodger team won more ball games (97) than any Dodger team since 1942.
He started his playing career with Moline in 1919 and finished with the Giants in 1933. Chuck managed Nashville from 1932-34 and in 1938, Cincinnati from the end of '34 through 1937 and Oakland in 1949 and '50. He was on the Dodger coaching staff from 1939-46 and the Yankee staff in 1947 and '48."
1952 Topps No. 377
Saturday, September 1, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Leo Durocher
LEO DUROCHER: INSIDE STORY OF LOCKMAN SHIFT
Durocher Gambled Job on Move that Keyed Flag
"This is the story of Leo Durocher's greatest gamble. It is the story of how the New York Giants won their 'miracle' pennant. It is the story of Whitey Lockman and how he was shifted from the outfield to first base over the heated protests of Leo's employer, Horace Stoneham. It is the story of how Durocher staked his job on Lockman and won.
In the official analysis of the Giants' incredible climb to the top, there are three milestones: Lockman's shift to the infield with Monte Irvin moving to the outfield, the promotion of Willie Mays and the conversion of Bobby Thomson to third base. But the first was Lockman's, on May 21 in St. Louis, and Durocher gambled his future on the shift.
The inside story started last winter when the Giants, seemingly more for publicity purposes than any other, announced that Lockman had been sent a first baseman's glove and was asked to accustom himself to its feel. It could have been little more than publicity then because Lockman was used only briefly at first in spring training.
Strange at a new position, Whitey showed little feeling for the base. Irvin, at least, had familiarity with the post, even though observers at the Giants' St. Petersburg training camp could not classify him as a big league first sacker defensively, much less a pennant-winning one.
After a few days, Durocher announced the experiment ended.
'I know now Lockman can play the base if I need him, maybe even better than Irvin can,' Durocher said cryptically. 'But we'll be a better team with Whitey out and Monte in.'
What Leo did not say at the time was that he had proposed the exchange of positions to Stoneham but Horace, after taking a few looks at Whitey, was against it despite Lockman's poor outfield throwing.
So the Giants went into the season and into the start of their eleven-game losing streak that all but killed them off at the beginning with two men playing positions at which they could not do their best.
Several times Leo attempted to reopen a conversation with Stoneham concerning Lockman and Irvin. Monte, Stoneham conceded, could play the outfield, but Lockman would be lost at first base.
'Lockman's no first baseman,' Horace said adamantly. 'Maybe he'll be able to adapt himself after a while, but with what's happened to us so far we can't take the chance. I'm against the shift.'
Durocher was aware of what the downward trend of the Giants' season was doing to Stoneham. Pennantless since 1937, the Giant president, who as a boy had reveled in the pennant-winning teams John McGraw had led for his father, had caught the contagious enthusiasm of the Giants' training camp last spring.
But as April turned into May and the Giants trailed Brooklyn by a seemingly irretrievable margin of games, particularly in the losing column, Stoneham's spirits fell with his club. Leo later was to be rehired for 1952, but at that point he could not possibly know what was ahead.
Leo wanted to keep his job, but even more, he wanted to win the 1951 pennant. The collapse of the Giants had to reflect on him. After so many years of being one of baseball's focal figures, he still could not point to more than one winning year as a manager. In making him the manager of the Giants, Stoneham had risked alienating many of his old customers, who had patiently waited for The Year. This was to be it, but the Giants stumbled in the race, seemingly beaten by their bad start and unable to untrack themselves.
At few times in his life was Durocher required to make a more vital decision. He enlisted the aid of Chub Feeney, the capable and likeable vice president of the Giants, who is Stoneham's nephew.
Chub agreed to be Leo's courier to the boss. He pleaded Durocher's case for shifting Lockman to first and Irvin to the outfield.
Stoneham listened and then he said: 'Okay, tell Leo he can make it. I don't think it will work but tell him okay. Tell him if it doesn't work out, it's his neck.'
That was Feeney's message to Leo as the Giants were in the West and Durocher said: 'That's fair enough. It'll work out.'
On May 21 in St. Louis, Lockman played his first game of the season at first base. On October 3 the Giants won the flag in the most dramatic finish baseball has ever experienced. It was a complete vindication for Durocher. The first to tell him so was Horace Stoneham."
-Milton Gross, New York Post (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
PRESSURE? GIANTS DIDN'T, WON'T FEEL IT, SAYS DUROCHER
"The New York Giants, history-making champions of the National League, did not have a clubhouse meeting for over two months as they careened in victory madness down the stretch of the 1951's hysterical pennant race.
Leo Durocher, the boss himself, disclosed that fact in Minneapolis on one of his last banquet stops before spring training.
I had asked Leo if he thought there would any pressure attendant upon the champs this season as they stepped out, realizing they were champions, that not too many hostiles were fond of them and that the boom was ready to be lowered.
'Pressure?' Leo laughed. 'Let me tell you something. We were way behind last year. Remember? Then we started to go. I said to myself, what the heck, if we get close I've got only two men who ever played on a recent championship before- Eddie Stanky and Alvin Dark (both with the Boston Braves in 1948). They'll steady the boys.
'So we're going along knocking people off and the boys are singing in the clubhouse every day before the game. I see they're relaxed and I leave'em alone. Pressure? Nobody felt any. They just seemed to realize they were going to catch Brooklyn and, if they caught the Dodgers, they'd beat'em. Not a man felt the pressure.
'It was a miracle, I tell you. I've been on four championship clubs myself. I know when the race got tight and we caught somebody or somebody caught us, we felt it. How you feel it then. You're all tight and your hands are wet and you perspire and you give it all you got. But this gang? They were singing before games, I tell you.
'So how in the world is 1952, and whatever it may contain, going to affect them, make them tight? No sir, not this gang!' "
-Halsey Hall, Minneapolis Tribune (Baseball Digest, April 1952)
LEO DUROCHER- AN ALL-YEAR MANAGER NOW?
"The scene was the press room in one of the big league parks. Around the table were some of the nation's best informed baseball writers. The discussion of the moment centered on Leo Durocher and his managerial ability.
'The trouble with Leo,' spoke up one scribe, 'is that he's too much of a get-ready-quick guy. He's great whipping a team into shape- there's nobody better. By Opening Day he usually has his men, especially his pitchers, in midseason form. But no player can stay at his midseason peak from April through September. He burns out. Check the records and you'll see what I mean. You'll find that a Durocher team always starts strong- and finishes weak.'
In the same press room late last summer a similar group of writers again was weighing Durocher's managing acumen.
'He's strictly a second-half manager,' was the thread of this discourse this time. 'He experiments so much at the beginning of the season he messes up the ball club and it takes him half a year to straighten it out. You'd think spring training would give him a line on his club for the rest of the year, but no, he changes every time a guy goes into a slump.'
Conflicting though they might seem, both observations apparently were correct. The Early Durocher liked to lay up for a fast start. That was the non-wavering pattern of his entire managerial career through 1949, with the sole exception of his freshman year at the helm in 1939. Starting in 1940 and continuing through 1949 (you'll recall he sat out 1947 under suspension from Commissioner Chandler and divided 1948 between Brooklyn and the New York Giants), every one of his eight seasons showed a pronounced margin in favor of the first half.
His teams (Brooklyn, 1940-46; the New York Giants, 1949) usually played from forty and seventy-eight percentage points better ball during the first half of the season than they did from mid-July on. And one year, 1940, the difference was as much as 123 points! Measured by another yardstick, Durocher's 1940-49 teams averaged four more victories during the first half of the season than in the second half and once (1940) won ten more games before the halfway mark than they did afterwards.
Even in 1941, the first of his two championship seasons, Durocher was hardly an all-year manager. He had his Dodgers playing .675 ball in the first half of the season, but they tailed off to .623 in the second half- and .623 in itself wouldn't have been sufficient to win the National League pennant that year. If they had played all year the way they did in the second half, the Dodgers, instead of winning the flag, would have finished eleven percentage points behind the St. Louis Cardinals, who wound up with a .634 percentage.
It was in 1950 that Durocher suddenly reversed his field. When the Giants lost a double-header to the St. Louis Cardinals July 19, they were twelve games below .500 and twelve and a half games behind the Cards. Breaking the season exactly down the middle, after the seventy-seventh game as was done for all other seasons, the Giants had a 35-42-.455 first half and a 51-26-.662 second half. Breaking the season where Durocher and his men did, between the night of July 19 and the morning of July 20, they finished up with 50-20-.714 as against a 36-48-.429 start.
This, then, is the blueprint that carried over from 1950 for last year's whamdinger. Although the Giants didn't start cutting down Brooklyn's New York-to-California lead of thirteen and one-half games until well into August last year, the season can be bisected as were the others at the seventy-seven game point with noticeable results. The Giants played 42-35-.545 ball in the first half of the season, 56-24-.700 ball the second half.
Now, in 1952, Durocher has reverted to the Old Formula- for the break-from-the tape, at least. There certainly was nothing experimental about the Giants' lineups the first part of this season. He started with a pat batting order and, except for a mild revision of dropping Al Dark down a few notches in late April, kept playing that lineup day after day, injury substitutions excepted, of course.
What about the second half of 1952? Did Durocher bring along his team too fast this spring, allegedly his big shortcoming in his earlier years of managing, or did he pace them well and is thus destined to get a good second half out of it as he did the last two seasons?
If he does combine two good halves, Durocher then and only then will reach managerial maturity as an all-year manager."
-Fred Fichonne (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
HOW A 'BRAIN' DOES IT
HERE'S DUROCHER'S "INSIDE" ON THOMSON
"Last season the New York Giants succeeded in wiping out what appeared to be in August an ineradicable deficit. They won the National League pennant and Leo Durocher was hailed as a miracle manager. This year the Giants started off on a brisk pace. You heard from a rival pilot like Eddie Sawyer of the Philadelphia Phillies that from the start of the current campaign, he considered the Giants stronger than the Brooklyn Dodgers. So if Durocher finishes in front again he will be doing 'the expected.'
'So I was a genius last year,' Durocher was telling a small group of friends the other night. 'Well, let me tell you exactly what makes a genius. We were in St. Louis in midseason and the ball club was going bad. The batters weren't hitting and the pitching was erratic. We had lost two games to the St. Louis Cardinals and I was desperate.
'Only three of us were left in the clubhouse, Larry Jansen, myself and the trainer. I got to thinking out loud and I remarked that I'd trade any name on the club, especially Bobby Thomson. Everybody had been telling me that Thomson was great in 1947. Well, I was out of baseball in 1947 and I hadn't seen him. This was 1951 and up to now I had never seen him do anything great. How long was I supposed to wait for him to come back with another season like 1947?
'I turned to Jansen. 'Say, you were with the Giants in 1947. Can you tell me what made Thomson so good in 1947 and so bad now?' Larry acted as if he had been waiting for me to ask the question.
' 'Sure, I can tell what's wrong with Thomson,' he said. 'He stands differently. I wouldn't think of saying anything to Bobby because he might think it's none of my business, but I can tell you.'
'I jumped out of my chair and asked Jansen to show me the difference. We spread a piece of newspaper on the floor and used that for home plate. I handed Jansen a bat and told him to stand over the newspaper and demonstrate Thompson's batting stance- then and now. Bobby was standing up straight. In fact, he was almost leaning back. But in 1947, according to Jansen, he used to lean forward in a crouch that made him look like a right-handed Stan Musial.
'That was all I wanted to know. In the ball park the next day, the first time Thomson stepped up to the plate in batting practice, I asked him how he used to hit. He leaned forward. 'Why don't you hit that way now?' It seems that some one had been advising him to stand up straight. His friend was a fireman, or some one equally inexperienced from a baseball standpoint. 'Well, you try hitting from that crouch,' I told him.
'Henry Thompson had been playing third base for us and he had failed to get a hit in something like thirty times at bat. I had to get him out of the lineup, but I also had to have someone to take his place. Almost any man would have been an improvement at the plate, but not everyone would have been able to play third base.
'So I turned to Thomson again. He had played some in the infield and I asked him if he would care to try it again. He didn't mind. He had played third base in Jersey City before the Giants called him up to the National League. On the same day he was going to change positions and change his batting stance. What could he or the entire ball club lose? Things were pretty bad.
'I guess you all know what happened, although you may not remember that particular game. Thomson hit a home run that tied it up in the late innings and he hit another one to win it for us in extra innings. We went on from there and I was a genius.
'Go back to 1950 and consider the case of Sal Maglie. Our troubles in the spring were almost as numerous as they were the following year, although we didn't have an eleven-game losing streak. I used up all the pitching I had in a double-header during a Western trip and I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Maglie hadn't started a ball game, but I had no one else left, so I told him to go out there and see what he could do. He won the ball game. What would you do if you were the manager? You'd pitch him again. That's what I did. I had discovered that Maglie was a winning pitcher and I was a genius.'
The 1952 decision on Mr. Durocher as a genius is being held in abeyance pending the printing of the National League standings late in September."
-Hy Goldberg, condensed from the Newark News (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
"On August 13, 1951, Durocher's Dandies were 13 1/2 games out of first, yet they won the pennant in an exciting finish, beating the Dodgers in the third game of a playoff. The stretch drive included a 16-game winning streak. The Giants' skipper was hailed as the manager of the year."
-1952 Bowman No. 146
"Leo's long and exciting career as a player and manager reached its peak as 'Lippy' led his Giants to a never-to-be-forgotten pennant triumph over the Dodgers in 1951.
In 12 seasons as a manager he has won two pennants, finished second three times and third four times. In 1941 he led the Dodgers to their first pennant in 21 years.
He was a shortstop on the Yankees of the Ruthian era and was a famed member of the Cardinal Gas House Gang before coming to the Dodgers as a player-manager."
-1952 Topps No. 315
"Leo managed the Giants into the most exciting pennant won in the National League in 1951. One of the most knowledgeable of baseball men, Leo has been a manager since 1939.
Before coming to the Giants in 1948, Leo was the Brooklyn leader. As a player, he appeared in the majors with the Yankees, Reds, Cardinals and Dodgers.
A colorful personality."
-1952 Red Man No. NL-1
Durocher Gambled Job on Move that Keyed Flag
"This is the story of Leo Durocher's greatest gamble. It is the story of how the New York Giants won their 'miracle' pennant. It is the story of Whitey Lockman and how he was shifted from the outfield to first base over the heated protests of Leo's employer, Horace Stoneham. It is the story of how Durocher staked his job on Lockman and won.
In the official analysis of the Giants' incredible climb to the top, there are three milestones: Lockman's shift to the infield with Monte Irvin moving to the outfield, the promotion of Willie Mays and the conversion of Bobby Thomson to third base. But the first was Lockman's, on May 21 in St. Louis, and Durocher gambled his future on the shift.
The inside story started last winter when the Giants, seemingly more for publicity purposes than any other, announced that Lockman had been sent a first baseman's glove and was asked to accustom himself to its feel. It could have been little more than publicity then because Lockman was used only briefly at first in spring training.
Strange at a new position, Whitey showed little feeling for the base. Irvin, at least, had familiarity with the post, even though observers at the Giants' St. Petersburg training camp could not classify him as a big league first sacker defensively, much less a pennant-winning one.
After a few days, Durocher announced the experiment ended.
'I know now Lockman can play the base if I need him, maybe even better than Irvin can,' Durocher said cryptically. 'But we'll be a better team with Whitey out and Monte in.'
What Leo did not say at the time was that he had proposed the exchange of positions to Stoneham but Horace, after taking a few looks at Whitey, was against it despite Lockman's poor outfield throwing.
So the Giants went into the season and into the start of their eleven-game losing streak that all but killed them off at the beginning with two men playing positions at which they could not do their best.
Several times Leo attempted to reopen a conversation with Stoneham concerning Lockman and Irvin. Monte, Stoneham conceded, could play the outfield, but Lockman would be lost at first base.
'Lockman's no first baseman,' Horace said adamantly. 'Maybe he'll be able to adapt himself after a while, but with what's happened to us so far we can't take the chance. I'm against the shift.'
Durocher was aware of what the downward trend of the Giants' season was doing to Stoneham. Pennantless since 1937, the Giant president, who as a boy had reveled in the pennant-winning teams John McGraw had led for his father, had caught the contagious enthusiasm of the Giants' training camp last spring.
But as April turned into May and the Giants trailed Brooklyn by a seemingly irretrievable margin of games, particularly in the losing column, Stoneham's spirits fell with his club. Leo later was to be rehired for 1952, but at that point he could not possibly know what was ahead.
Leo wanted to keep his job, but even more, he wanted to win the 1951 pennant. The collapse of the Giants had to reflect on him. After so many years of being one of baseball's focal figures, he still could not point to more than one winning year as a manager. In making him the manager of the Giants, Stoneham had risked alienating many of his old customers, who had patiently waited for The Year. This was to be it, but the Giants stumbled in the race, seemingly beaten by their bad start and unable to untrack themselves.
At few times in his life was Durocher required to make a more vital decision. He enlisted the aid of Chub Feeney, the capable and likeable vice president of the Giants, who is Stoneham's nephew.
Chub agreed to be Leo's courier to the boss. He pleaded Durocher's case for shifting Lockman to first and Irvin to the outfield.
Stoneham listened and then he said: 'Okay, tell Leo he can make it. I don't think it will work but tell him okay. Tell him if it doesn't work out, it's his neck.'
That was Feeney's message to Leo as the Giants were in the West and Durocher said: 'That's fair enough. It'll work out.'
On May 21 in St. Louis, Lockman played his first game of the season at first base. On October 3 the Giants won the flag in the most dramatic finish baseball has ever experienced. It was a complete vindication for Durocher. The first to tell him so was Horace Stoneham."
-Milton Gross, New York Post (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
PRESSURE? GIANTS DIDN'T, WON'T FEEL IT, SAYS DUROCHER
"The New York Giants, history-making champions of the National League, did not have a clubhouse meeting for over two months as they careened in victory madness down the stretch of the 1951's hysterical pennant race.
Leo Durocher, the boss himself, disclosed that fact in Minneapolis on one of his last banquet stops before spring training.
I had asked Leo if he thought there would any pressure attendant upon the champs this season as they stepped out, realizing they were champions, that not too many hostiles were fond of them and that the boom was ready to be lowered.
'Pressure?' Leo laughed. 'Let me tell you something. We were way behind last year. Remember? Then we started to go. I said to myself, what the heck, if we get close I've got only two men who ever played on a recent championship before- Eddie Stanky and Alvin Dark (both with the Boston Braves in 1948). They'll steady the boys.
'So we're going along knocking people off and the boys are singing in the clubhouse every day before the game. I see they're relaxed and I leave'em alone. Pressure? Nobody felt any. They just seemed to realize they were going to catch Brooklyn and, if they caught the Dodgers, they'd beat'em. Not a man felt the pressure.
'It was a miracle, I tell you. I've been on four championship clubs myself. I know when the race got tight and we caught somebody or somebody caught us, we felt it. How you feel it then. You're all tight and your hands are wet and you perspire and you give it all you got. But this gang? They were singing before games, I tell you.
'So how in the world is 1952, and whatever it may contain, going to affect them, make them tight? No sir, not this gang!' "
-Halsey Hall, Minneapolis Tribune (Baseball Digest, April 1952)
LEO DUROCHER- AN ALL-YEAR MANAGER NOW?
"The scene was the press room in one of the big league parks. Around the table were some of the nation's best informed baseball writers. The discussion of the moment centered on Leo Durocher and his managerial ability.
'The trouble with Leo,' spoke up one scribe, 'is that he's too much of a get-ready-quick guy. He's great whipping a team into shape- there's nobody better. By Opening Day he usually has his men, especially his pitchers, in midseason form. But no player can stay at his midseason peak from April through September. He burns out. Check the records and you'll see what I mean. You'll find that a Durocher team always starts strong- and finishes weak.'
In the same press room late last summer a similar group of writers again was weighing Durocher's managing acumen.
'He's strictly a second-half manager,' was the thread of this discourse this time. 'He experiments so much at the beginning of the season he messes up the ball club and it takes him half a year to straighten it out. You'd think spring training would give him a line on his club for the rest of the year, but no, he changes every time a guy goes into a slump.'
Conflicting though they might seem, both observations apparently were correct. The Early Durocher liked to lay up for a fast start. That was the non-wavering pattern of his entire managerial career through 1949, with the sole exception of his freshman year at the helm in 1939. Starting in 1940 and continuing through 1949 (you'll recall he sat out 1947 under suspension from Commissioner Chandler and divided 1948 between Brooklyn and the New York Giants), every one of his eight seasons showed a pronounced margin in favor of the first half.
His teams (Brooklyn, 1940-46; the New York Giants, 1949) usually played from forty and seventy-eight percentage points better ball during the first half of the season than they did from mid-July on. And one year, 1940, the difference was as much as 123 points! Measured by another yardstick, Durocher's 1940-49 teams averaged four more victories during the first half of the season than in the second half and once (1940) won ten more games before the halfway mark than they did afterwards.
Even in 1941, the first of his two championship seasons, Durocher was hardly an all-year manager. He had his Dodgers playing .675 ball in the first half of the season, but they tailed off to .623 in the second half- and .623 in itself wouldn't have been sufficient to win the National League pennant that year. If they had played all year the way they did in the second half, the Dodgers, instead of winning the flag, would have finished eleven percentage points behind the St. Louis Cardinals, who wound up with a .634 percentage.
It was in 1950 that Durocher suddenly reversed his field. When the Giants lost a double-header to the St. Louis Cardinals July 19, they were twelve games below .500 and twelve and a half games behind the Cards. Breaking the season exactly down the middle, after the seventy-seventh game as was done for all other seasons, the Giants had a 35-42-.455 first half and a 51-26-.662 second half. Breaking the season where Durocher and his men did, between the night of July 19 and the morning of July 20, they finished up with 50-20-.714 as against a 36-48-.429 start.
This, then, is the blueprint that carried over from 1950 for last year's whamdinger. Although the Giants didn't start cutting down Brooklyn's New York-to-California lead of thirteen and one-half games until well into August last year, the season can be bisected as were the others at the seventy-seven game point with noticeable results. The Giants played 42-35-.545 ball in the first half of the season, 56-24-.700 ball the second half.
Now, in 1952, Durocher has reverted to the Old Formula- for the break-from-the tape, at least. There certainly was nothing experimental about the Giants' lineups the first part of this season. He started with a pat batting order and, except for a mild revision of dropping Al Dark down a few notches in late April, kept playing that lineup day after day, injury substitutions excepted, of course.
What about the second half of 1952? Did Durocher bring along his team too fast this spring, allegedly his big shortcoming in his earlier years of managing, or did he pace them well and is thus destined to get a good second half out of it as he did the last two seasons?
If he does combine two good halves, Durocher then and only then will reach managerial maturity as an all-year manager."
-Fred Fichonne (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
HOW A 'BRAIN' DOES IT
HERE'S DUROCHER'S "INSIDE" ON THOMSON
"Last season the New York Giants succeeded in wiping out what appeared to be in August an ineradicable deficit. They won the National League pennant and Leo Durocher was hailed as a miracle manager. This year the Giants started off on a brisk pace. You heard from a rival pilot like Eddie Sawyer of the Philadelphia Phillies that from the start of the current campaign, he considered the Giants stronger than the Brooklyn Dodgers. So if Durocher finishes in front again he will be doing 'the expected.'
'So I was a genius last year,' Durocher was telling a small group of friends the other night. 'Well, let me tell you exactly what makes a genius. We were in St. Louis in midseason and the ball club was going bad. The batters weren't hitting and the pitching was erratic. We had lost two games to the St. Louis Cardinals and I was desperate.
'Only three of us were left in the clubhouse, Larry Jansen, myself and the trainer. I got to thinking out loud and I remarked that I'd trade any name on the club, especially Bobby Thomson. Everybody had been telling me that Thomson was great in 1947. Well, I was out of baseball in 1947 and I hadn't seen him. This was 1951 and up to now I had never seen him do anything great. How long was I supposed to wait for him to come back with another season like 1947?
'I turned to Jansen. 'Say, you were with the Giants in 1947. Can you tell me what made Thomson so good in 1947 and so bad now?' Larry acted as if he had been waiting for me to ask the question.
' 'Sure, I can tell what's wrong with Thomson,' he said. 'He stands differently. I wouldn't think of saying anything to Bobby because he might think it's none of my business, but I can tell you.'
'I jumped out of my chair and asked Jansen to show me the difference. We spread a piece of newspaper on the floor and used that for home plate. I handed Jansen a bat and told him to stand over the newspaper and demonstrate Thompson's batting stance- then and now. Bobby was standing up straight. In fact, he was almost leaning back. But in 1947, according to Jansen, he used to lean forward in a crouch that made him look like a right-handed Stan Musial.
'That was all I wanted to know. In the ball park the next day, the first time Thomson stepped up to the plate in batting practice, I asked him how he used to hit. He leaned forward. 'Why don't you hit that way now?' It seems that some one had been advising him to stand up straight. His friend was a fireman, or some one equally inexperienced from a baseball standpoint. 'Well, you try hitting from that crouch,' I told him.
'Henry Thompson had been playing third base for us and he had failed to get a hit in something like thirty times at bat. I had to get him out of the lineup, but I also had to have someone to take his place. Almost any man would have been an improvement at the plate, but not everyone would have been able to play third base.
'So I turned to Thomson again. He had played some in the infield and I asked him if he would care to try it again. He didn't mind. He had played third base in Jersey City before the Giants called him up to the National League. On the same day he was going to change positions and change his batting stance. What could he or the entire ball club lose? Things were pretty bad.
'I guess you all know what happened, although you may not remember that particular game. Thomson hit a home run that tied it up in the late innings and he hit another one to win it for us in extra innings. We went on from there and I was a genius.
'Go back to 1950 and consider the case of Sal Maglie. Our troubles in the spring were almost as numerous as they were the following year, although we didn't have an eleven-game losing streak. I used up all the pitching I had in a double-header during a Western trip and I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Maglie hadn't started a ball game, but I had no one else left, so I told him to go out there and see what he could do. He won the ball game. What would you do if you were the manager? You'd pitch him again. That's what I did. I had discovered that Maglie was a winning pitcher and I was a genius.'
The 1952 decision on Mr. Durocher as a genius is being held in abeyance pending the printing of the National League standings late in September."
-Hy Goldberg, condensed from the Newark News (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
"On August 13, 1951, Durocher's Dandies were 13 1/2 games out of first, yet they won the pennant in an exciting finish, beating the Dodgers in the third game of a playoff. The stretch drive included a 16-game winning streak. The Giants' skipper was hailed as the manager of the year."
-1952 Bowman No. 146
"Leo's long and exciting career as a player and manager reached its peak as 'Lippy' led his Giants to a never-to-be-forgotten pennant triumph over the Dodgers in 1951.
In 12 seasons as a manager he has won two pennants, finished second three times and third four times. In 1941 he led the Dodgers to their first pennant in 21 years.
He was a shortstop on the Yankees of the Ruthian era and was a famed member of the Cardinal Gas House Gang before coming to the Dodgers as a player-manager."
-1952 Topps No. 315
"Leo managed the Giants into the most exciting pennant won in the National League in 1951. One of the most knowledgeable of baseball men, Leo has been a manager since 1939.
Before coming to the Giants in 1948, Leo was the Brooklyn leader. As a player, he appeared in the majors with the Yankees, Reds, Cardinals and Dodgers.
A colorful personality."
-1952 Red Man No. NL-1
Thursday, August 16, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Branch Rickey
BREAKFAST WITH RICKEY
"Fresco Thompson, an old second baseman who is now dignified by the title of vice-president and farm director of the Brooklyn Dodgers, is finding life much less complicated since Branch Rickey, long his boss at Brooklyn, moved his genius to Pittsburgh. At any rate, Fresco, a handsome burr-headed man of forty-eight, is getting more sleep.
'You'd go on a trip with Mr. Rickey,' says Fresco, 'and you'd see two, sometimes three ball games in one day.
'Then he'd want you to sit around and talk over prospects and things with him in his hotel room till maybe 2 A.M.
'Finally he'd say, 'Well, good night, gentlemen'- he usually had two or three of us along with him- and, before you could get out of the room, he'd be in bed sound asleep.
'Yes, sir, he had it fixed so he could unbutton one button- just one button- and he'd be ready for bed,' added Fresco, who doesn't mind exaggeration to emphasize a detail.
'He's an efficiency expert on everything. One button and his clothes would drop off, his bow tie would spin loose and his shoe laces would come untied.
'It's 2 A.M., but there are still some reports to fill out before I can go to bed.
'At 5:30 the phone rings. It's Mr. Rickey. 'Say, Fresco,' he says, 'did I promise George (Sisler, another Dodger underling) I'd phone him early this morning?'
'I tell him I don't know. 'Well, listen, Fresco,' says Mr. Rickey, 'will you call him and ask him, please? It would be kind of embarrassing for me, you know. See you at breakfast in half an hour.'
'So we'd meet him and he looked rested and refreshed and full of energy. And he'd say, 'Ah, good morning, gentlemen, I trust you had a good sleep.' "
-Bill Bryson in the Des Moines Tribune (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
A LEAF FROM RICKEY'S BOOK- WHEN A TREE TRUNK CROSSED UP BRANCH
" 'What is the difference,' Branch Rickey asked, 'between clubs which nestle perennially in the second division and the clubs invariably marked for the World Series?'
The difference, the Pittsburgh general manager explained, is not so much in ability as in individual desire. He was moving along like a limited with a clear track and green lights ahead as he told his story of a squatty, broad-shouldered outfielder named Hi Myers, who was a hustler from the dawn to the sunset of his career.
Myers then (1923) a veteran thirty-four years old with a dozen major league seasons in back of him, was playing center field in a spring training exhibition against Milwaukee. Rickey was the manager.
'We had the makings of a fine club (it won the pennant and World Series in 1926) with Rogers Hornsby on second,' said Rickey. 'We had Lester Bell and Jim Bottomley and in the outfield, Ray Blades in left and a rookie in right- Taylor Douthit- who was so nervous he shook like a leaf driven in the wind.
'No runs had been scored and it was the seventh inning, two out. Jimmy Cooney was the hitter and he struck the ball with great force. It flew over second- a low liner towards Myers in center.
' 'A single,' I said to myself. Myers came in fast as though determined to make the catch, thought better of it, pulled up and tried to block the ball. It got away from him. Myers turned and pursued it with all the speed he had left.
'A futile effort and I got off the bench shouting, 'You old fool; you haven't a chance.' '
The game was played in Bradenton, Fla., and Rickey had described the field- an orange grove in deep center and one lone palmetto tree not too distant.
'I can still Cooney turning second and the coach waving him in toward the plate, and I can see Myers and the ball.'
The ball took a turn on an early bounce, seemingly going out of its way to strike the Palmetto tree. It bounced back directly into Myers' hands. In his mind's eye, Hi knew where Hornsby would be. He turned instantly and threw a strike to Rogers, who whirled and whipped the ball to home plate. The catcher gathered it and, with plenty of courage, jumped toward Cooney's gleaming spikes. The runner was out.
It took Rickey ten minutes to describe the throws and the putout. His listeners were so quiet they could hear a cat walk.
'The next morning at a meeting with our players,' Rickey continued, 'I said to them: 'There was a play in yesterday's game that is well worth remembering. Can you tell me what it was?' Someone volunteered it was the tag on Cooney.
'Eddie Dyer (later Cards manager) was a young, intelligent rookie then. I asked him if he knew.
' 'I heard you yell, 'You old fool,' said Dyer. 'I thought Myers made the play of the game; in fact, the greatest play I ever saw.'
'Myers was in the back of the room, half-hidden by a locker. He poked out his head and said: 'I knew before it happened that it was going to happen. I knew it would hit the tree.'
'All we can do in a game,' Rickey concluded, 'is to be helpful, think constantly and crown effort and thought with great desire.' "
-Ed Pollack, condensed from the Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
PITCHED SELF OUT OF BAT SLUMP
"This is a story told by Branch Rickey about a boy he took out of college and put into an American League uniform, without benefit of minor league experience.
'This boy had everything in college,' Rickey relates, 'everything. I knew I was taking a chance shooting him into the majors, but I also knew he had the temperament, ability and determination to make good.
'He started out fine. Then he ran into his first slump. He began swinging at any pitch. He was nervous and indecisive. The payoff came the day Eddie Cicotte threw three pitches almost over this boy's head and he swung at all three.
'I took him out of the lineup and a few days later told him to go back to his pitching. He started the next few games as a pitcher and he was a good one, too.
'But one day as a pitcher, this boy hit a triple and two singles. I now knew he had his batting eye back and also his confidence and determination.
'The next day he was at first base, permanently. His name? George Sisler.' "
-Les Biederman in the Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
RICKEY'S PRIVATE WEATHER
"The rain was teeming down on Times Square. It was running down the windows of the waiting taxi in rivulets. A prospective fare ducked in out of the wet, wiped the moisture from his face and instructed the driver to take him to Ebbets Field.
The man at the wheel had a conscience and protested.
'No game today, sir,' he said and made no move to put down his flag. 'They would have to be ducks to play in this kind of storm.'
'Ebbets Field,' repeated the passenger wearily. 'It isn't raining in that section of Brooklyn, my man. Branch Rickey wouldn't allow it.'
The cabbie shrugged and decided he was driving a baseball lunatic. But by the time they had crossed the Brooklyn Bridge the deluge had subsided and in Flatbush the streets were dry and not a drop of rain had fallen on the sacred sod of Ebbets Field.
From that day forth the Mahatma had won himself a new disciple and it was 24 hours before the taxi clock returned to ticking normally again."
-Harold C. Burr in the Brooklyn Eagle (Baseball Digest, October1952)
"Fresco Thompson, an old second baseman who is now dignified by the title of vice-president and farm director of the Brooklyn Dodgers, is finding life much less complicated since Branch Rickey, long his boss at Brooklyn, moved his genius to Pittsburgh. At any rate, Fresco, a handsome burr-headed man of forty-eight, is getting more sleep.
'You'd go on a trip with Mr. Rickey,' says Fresco, 'and you'd see two, sometimes three ball games in one day.
'Then he'd want you to sit around and talk over prospects and things with him in his hotel room till maybe 2 A.M.
'Finally he'd say, 'Well, good night, gentlemen'- he usually had two or three of us along with him- and, before you could get out of the room, he'd be in bed sound asleep.
'Yes, sir, he had it fixed so he could unbutton one button- just one button- and he'd be ready for bed,' added Fresco, who doesn't mind exaggeration to emphasize a detail.
'He's an efficiency expert on everything. One button and his clothes would drop off, his bow tie would spin loose and his shoe laces would come untied.
'It's 2 A.M., but there are still some reports to fill out before I can go to bed.
'At 5:30 the phone rings. It's Mr. Rickey. 'Say, Fresco,' he says, 'did I promise George (Sisler, another Dodger underling) I'd phone him early this morning?'
'I tell him I don't know. 'Well, listen, Fresco,' says Mr. Rickey, 'will you call him and ask him, please? It would be kind of embarrassing for me, you know. See you at breakfast in half an hour.'
'So we'd meet him and he looked rested and refreshed and full of energy. And he'd say, 'Ah, good morning, gentlemen, I trust you had a good sleep.' "
-Bill Bryson in the Des Moines Tribune (Baseball Digest, January 1952)
A LEAF FROM RICKEY'S BOOK- WHEN A TREE TRUNK CROSSED UP BRANCH
" 'What is the difference,' Branch Rickey asked, 'between clubs which nestle perennially in the second division and the clubs invariably marked for the World Series?'
The difference, the Pittsburgh general manager explained, is not so much in ability as in individual desire. He was moving along like a limited with a clear track and green lights ahead as he told his story of a squatty, broad-shouldered outfielder named Hi Myers, who was a hustler from the dawn to the sunset of his career.
Myers then (1923) a veteran thirty-four years old with a dozen major league seasons in back of him, was playing center field in a spring training exhibition against Milwaukee. Rickey was the manager.
'We had the makings of a fine club (it won the pennant and World Series in 1926) with Rogers Hornsby on second,' said Rickey. 'We had Lester Bell and Jim Bottomley and in the outfield, Ray Blades in left and a rookie in right- Taylor Douthit- who was so nervous he shook like a leaf driven in the wind.
'No runs had been scored and it was the seventh inning, two out. Jimmy Cooney was the hitter and he struck the ball with great force. It flew over second- a low liner towards Myers in center.
' 'A single,' I said to myself. Myers came in fast as though determined to make the catch, thought better of it, pulled up and tried to block the ball. It got away from him. Myers turned and pursued it with all the speed he had left.
'A futile effort and I got off the bench shouting, 'You old fool; you haven't a chance.' '
The game was played in Bradenton, Fla., and Rickey had described the field- an orange grove in deep center and one lone palmetto tree not too distant.
'I can still Cooney turning second and the coach waving him in toward the plate, and I can see Myers and the ball.'
The ball took a turn on an early bounce, seemingly going out of its way to strike the Palmetto tree. It bounced back directly into Myers' hands. In his mind's eye, Hi knew where Hornsby would be. He turned instantly and threw a strike to Rogers, who whirled and whipped the ball to home plate. The catcher gathered it and, with plenty of courage, jumped toward Cooney's gleaming spikes. The runner was out.
It took Rickey ten minutes to describe the throws and the putout. His listeners were so quiet they could hear a cat walk.
'The next morning at a meeting with our players,' Rickey continued, 'I said to them: 'There was a play in yesterday's game that is well worth remembering. Can you tell me what it was?' Someone volunteered it was the tag on Cooney.
'Eddie Dyer (later Cards manager) was a young, intelligent rookie then. I asked him if he knew.
' 'I heard you yell, 'You old fool,' said Dyer. 'I thought Myers made the play of the game; in fact, the greatest play I ever saw.'
'Myers was in the back of the room, half-hidden by a locker. He poked out his head and said: 'I knew before it happened that it was going to happen. I knew it would hit the tree.'
'All we can do in a game,' Rickey concluded, 'is to be helpful, think constantly and crown effort and thought with great desire.' "
-Ed Pollack, condensed from the Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
PITCHED SELF OUT OF BAT SLUMP
"This is a story told by Branch Rickey about a boy he took out of college and put into an American League uniform, without benefit of minor league experience.
'This boy had everything in college,' Rickey relates, 'everything. I knew I was taking a chance shooting him into the majors, but I also knew he had the temperament, ability and determination to make good.
'He started out fine. Then he ran into his first slump. He began swinging at any pitch. He was nervous and indecisive. The payoff came the day Eddie Cicotte threw three pitches almost over this boy's head and he swung at all three.
'I took him out of the lineup and a few days later told him to go back to his pitching. He started the next few games as a pitcher and he was a good one, too.
'But one day as a pitcher, this boy hit a triple and two singles. I now knew he had his batting eye back and also his confidence and determination.
'The next day he was at first base, permanently. His name? George Sisler.' "
-Les Biederman in the Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
RICKEY'S PRIVATE WEATHER
"The rain was teeming down on Times Square. It was running down the windows of the waiting taxi in rivulets. A prospective fare ducked in out of the wet, wiped the moisture from his face and instructed the driver to take him to Ebbets Field.
The man at the wheel had a conscience and protested.
'No game today, sir,' he said and made no move to put down his flag. 'They would have to be ducks to play in this kind of storm.'
'Ebbets Field,' repeated the passenger wearily. 'It isn't raining in that section of Brooklyn, my man. Branch Rickey wouldn't allow it.'
The cabbie shrugged and decided he was driving a baseball lunatic. But by the time they had crossed the Brooklyn Bridge the deluge had subsided and in Flatbush the streets were dry and not a drop of rain had fallen on the sacred sod of Ebbets Field.
From that day forth the Mahatma had won himself a new disciple and it was 24 hours before the taxi clock returned to ticking normally again."
-Harold C. Burr in the Brooklyn Eagle (Baseball Digest, October1952)
Friday, July 27, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Lou Gehrig
TROUBLE WAS A-BRUIN
"Red Ruffing, the old New York Yankee pitcher who is now a traveling trouble-shooter for the Cleveland Indians, turned to another right smart hurler in his days- Ted Lyons- and said:
'Remember the year the Chicago Cubs got so hot- won twenty-three in a row, or something like that, and took the pennant with it. Well, Lou Gehrig was no dummy- don't get me wrong- but he wasn't one of those fellows who read the papers much.
'So we're standing in the lobby and Lou says, 'That Bruins must be a helluva pitcher. Every time I read the headlines I see, 'Another win for Bruins.' '
'So,' continued Ruffing, 'that broke up the session and we went out to the ball park and I suppose Lou hit a home run or a couple.' "
-Chester L. Smith in the Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, August 1952)
"Red Ruffing, the old New York Yankee pitcher who is now a traveling trouble-shooter for the Cleveland Indians, turned to another right smart hurler in his days- Ted Lyons- and said:
'Remember the year the Chicago Cubs got so hot- won twenty-three in a row, or something like that, and took the pennant with it. Well, Lou Gehrig was no dummy- don't get me wrong- but he wasn't one of those fellows who read the papers much.
'So we're standing in the lobby and Lou says, 'That Bruins must be a helluva pitcher. Every time I read the headlines I see, 'Another win for Bruins.' '
'So,' continued Ruffing, 'that broke up the session and we went out to the ball park and I suppose Lou hit a home run or a couple.' "
-Chester L. Smith in the Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, August 1952)
Friday, July 13, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Babe Ruth
RUTH'S LAST STRAW
"Pinky Whitney, who infielded for the Boston Braves and Philadelphia Phillies in the Thirties, was talking: 'I'll never forget a day in Boston in 1935,' he said. 'That was the day a big guy on our club belted three home runs in one day. But a couple of days later this same guy saw a fly ball sail over his head for extra bases. He should have caught the ball easily. When he came into the bench at the end of the inning, he sat down, wiped off his face with a towel and said, 'I'll never play another game of baseball.' Then turning to me he said, 'Here, you can have my bats.' I still have them, too. The guy was Babe Ruth.' "
-Dick Peebles in the San Antonio Express (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
MOVIE BONER
"It's a funny thing but I went to see the Babe Ruth movie and all during it I was bothered by something,' says Tim McAuliffe, the big cap king. 'I couldn't explain why Bill Bendix didn't resemble Babe Ruth to me. Then, finally, I discovered it. The one thing everyone forgot in getting the movie ready was that the Babe's cap was always different from all players except Lou Gehrig. Their visors stuck out straight from their forehead, in fact, almost tilted up. They wore a brace inside the front lining. I couldn't enjoy the movie after that.' "
-Gerry Hern in the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
BEST BET AGAINST RUTH
"Earl Whitehill, who won 217 games in the years after he came out of Cedar Rapids, Ia., mostly for second division ball clubs, was asked if he and his fellow American League pitchers ever evolved what might be termed a master plan for trying to get Babe Ruth out.
Perhaps it is not generally known, but pitchers are something of a clan apart. If one of their members discovers a certain batter's weakness, or anything resembling a weakness, the news gets around the league faster than a brush fire. Pitchers do not like batters, and the feeling is reciprocated with interest.
'Most of the boys thought the best idea was to pitch high and outside,' Whitehill recalled. 'That way he wasn't so likely to pull one into the right field seats on you. But there was never any general agreement on that fellow.
'The trouble with the Babe is that you'd give him a certain pitch and he would miss it by a foot. I mean by a foot, and you would think to yourself that you had something. A couple pitches later you would come in with it again and he would knock it out of the lot. Myself, I liked to curve him low and had better luck than some of the others.' "
-Gayle Talbot, Associated Press (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
RUTH- EVER THE BIG LEAGUER
"Eddie Stumpf is business director of the Cleveland Indians' farm system and runs the biggest training camp in baseball. At a guess, he's at least a $20,000 a year man. But in the old days when he was a shoestring sports promoter in Milwaukee- well, Eddie told the story when he said: 'One time a fellow said I offered a player twenty-five dollars and the man didn't get it. I told him that couldn't be true because I never offered a player more than seven-fifty.'
Once Christy Walsh bought Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to Milwaukee. Stumpf recruited two teams. Ruth played with one and Gehrig with the other. The deal was $1,500 plus 50 per cent, but canny Eddie had a clause in the contract which let him off for $100 if it rained.
'At about 1:30 it began to drizzle,' Stumpf reminisced. 'I've got $1,300 in the till and the best I think I can do is $1,500. So I called Walsh and said I would pay him the $100 and refund to the customers.
'Walsh says, 'Don't you like us?' '
'I said, 'I don't like you $800 worth.'
'Then Ruth took over. He said, 'Play the game, Eddie, and pay off all the kids (the players). If there's anything left, okay?'
'We played and I paid off $900. There was $1,100 left. Walsh said, 'How long did you work on this?' I told him two weeks. He said, 'Take a couple of hundred.'
'Then they came back for me the next year and the weather was good and we drew $11,000.' "
-R.G. Lynch in the Milwaukee Journal (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
"Pinky Whitney, who infielded for the Boston Braves and Philadelphia Phillies in the Thirties, was talking: 'I'll never forget a day in Boston in 1935,' he said. 'That was the day a big guy on our club belted three home runs in one day. But a couple of days later this same guy saw a fly ball sail over his head for extra bases. He should have caught the ball easily. When he came into the bench at the end of the inning, he sat down, wiped off his face with a towel and said, 'I'll never play another game of baseball.' Then turning to me he said, 'Here, you can have my bats.' I still have them, too. The guy was Babe Ruth.' "
-Dick Peebles in the San Antonio Express (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
MOVIE BONER
"It's a funny thing but I went to see the Babe Ruth movie and all during it I was bothered by something,' says Tim McAuliffe, the big cap king. 'I couldn't explain why Bill Bendix didn't resemble Babe Ruth to me. Then, finally, I discovered it. The one thing everyone forgot in getting the movie ready was that the Babe's cap was always different from all players except Lou Gehrig. Their visors stuck out straight from their forehead, in fact, almost tilted up. They wore a brace inside the front lining. I couldn't enjoy the movie after that.' "
-Gerry Hern in the Boston Post (Baseball Digest, March 1952)
BEST BET AGAINST RUTH
"Earl Whitehill, who won 217 games in the years after he came out of Cedar Rapids, Ia., mostly for second division ball clubs, was asked if he and his fellow American League pitchers ever evolved what might be termed a master plan for trying to get Babe Ruth out.
Perhaps it is not generally known, but pitchers are something of a clan apart. If one of their members discovers a certain batter's weakness, or anything resembling a weakness, the news gets around the league faster than a brush fire. Pitchers do not like batters, and the feeling is reciprocated with interest.
'Most of the boys thought the best idea was to pitch high and outside,' Whitehill recalled. 'That way he wasn't so likely to pull one into the right field seats on you. But there was never any general agreement on that fellow.
'The trouble with the Babe is that you'd give him a certain pitch and he would miss it by a foot. I mean by a foot, and you would think to yourself that you had something. A couple pitches later you would come in with it again and he would knock it out of the lot. Myself, I liked to curve him low and had better luck than some of the others.' "
-Gayle Talbot, Associated Press (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
RUTH- EVER THE BIG LEAGUER
"Eddie Stumpf is business director of the Cleveland Indians' farm system and runs the biggest training camp in baseball. At a guess, he's at least a $20,000 a year man. But in the old days when he was a shoestring sports promoter in Milwaukee- well, Eddie told the story when he said: 'One time a fellow said I offered a player twenty-five dollars and the man didn't get it. I told him that couldn't be true because I never offered a player more than seven-fifty.'
Once Christy Walsh bought Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to Milwaukee. Stumpf recruited two teams. Ruth played with one and Gehrig with the other. The deal was $1,500 plus 50 per cent, but canny Eddie had a clause in the contract which let him off for $100 if it rained.
'At about 1:30 it began to drizzle,' Stumpf reminisced. 'I've got $1,300 in the till and the best I think I can do is $1,500. So I called Walsh and said I would pay him the $100 and refund to the customers.
'Walsh says, 'Don't you like us?' '
'I said, 'I don't like you $800 worth.'
'Then Ruth took over. He said, 'Play the game, Eddie, and pay off all the kids (the players). If there's anything left, okay?'
'We played and I paid off $900. There was $1,100 left. Walsh said, 'How long did you work on this?' I told him two weeks. He said, 'Take a couple of hundred.'
'Then they came back for me the next year and the weather was good and we drew $11,000.' "
-R.G. Lynch in the Milwaukee Journal (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
Tuesday, June 19, 2018
1952 Yankee of the Past: Joe DiMaggio
DIMAGGIO JUST DOESN'T KNOW YET
He Won't Rush Decision About 1952
"Joe DiMaggio sipped sallow coffee from a cardboard container. 'Made up your mind yet?' I asked.
We were sitting on stools in front of his locker in the New York Yankees' clubhouse before the Boston Red Sox beat the Yanks, 4-2, in the Stadium one night toward the end of the season. It was not necessary for me to explain the question. In the spring of the year DiMaggio told the ball reporters 1951 might be his last year as a player.
'I still feel the same way,' he said. 'I don't know.'
He paused and took a long drag on the cigarette.
'I really don't know,' he said. 'The point is I don't have to make up my mind the day after the season ... the day after the Series. When does the gun go off? The season starts in the spring, doesn't it? I got time to think it over.'
Eddie Lopat came over and asked him to autograph a baseball.
'You were really cutting the pie out there tonight,' Lopat said. 'You were like a young back taking your cuts.'
'Cool weather,' DiMaggio said, 'a clean uniform, a shave and a haircut.'
Most athletes turn cranky when you ask them about the old age that attacks them in their robust prime, but DiMaggio talked about diminishing skills as though he were another ball player on another team.
'No one is going to rush my decision,' he said. 'It's my decision. I'm smart enough to know you don't go on in this game forever. Your time comes.'
It is what all of them know but seldom concede.
'At times I'm strictly lousy,' he said. 'Then I go off into a streak. I really don't know.'
There was no bitterness as he appraised himself with a cruel knowledge. DiMaggio understands what is happening to him. They all do, but few have admitted it with as much grace as the greatest ball player of his generation.
'I'm not fooling anyone,' he said. 'I'm not fooling myself. I'm going out there and play ball. I'm doing the best I can. I'm trying to get the best out of myself, hoping I break loose.'
It is clear to him his splendid skills have diminished, but there is in him the belief he may be able to play center field for the Yankees another year. There is also much doubt.
'I haven't given up on myself,' he explained. 'There's no set date when I have to say anything about it. I put no limit on myself, so I'm taking my time.'
It had been a bad season for him, but not once during our conversation did he complain. I mentioned the numerous sports section obits that had been written about him this year.
'I don't want any pity,' he said. 'I haven't asked anyone for anything. It's up to them what they write. I'm just up there taking my cuts as often as I can. As long as I'm hitting in the fourth slot, I'm going to do the best I can do. I have nothing to regret.'
DiMaggio tapped his right arm with his left. 'I couldn't lift it up early in the season,' he said.
It was no secret around the league.
'It's strong as a bull now,' he said. 'It came around. It's all right now. I threw a guy out at Cleveland and a guy out in Detroit.'
He stood up and pressed his right elbow against his side and made a delicate flipping motion with his wrist.
'I threw this way,' he said. 'I had to. I don't know what was wrong with it, but when I threw it felt like the bones were coming apart. I couldn't throw overhand. I felt like my arm was coming off. I had to keep the arm close and throw like an infielder.'
DiMaggio has always tried to be accurate when describing what he does. It was that way that night. The truth is important to him even when it defaces his talent.
'It's real strong,' he said, 'but who knows how it will be tomorrow.' It was all there in that sentence. He can't be sure anymore, but he has to be positive because this is the great crisis of his life.
The strain of the worthless arm probably affected his hitting, but he didn't use that as an excuse.
'I used to warm up with Yogi Berra and had him falling up and down,' he said. 'I couldn't even lob the ball right. I'd get a ball in the outfield and hope someone didn't take advantage of me and get away with it. They knew my arm was bad ... the guys on the other team. Casey Stengel knew it. He went along.'
He smiled at the recollection of one of his few good throws when the arm was aching.
'Couple of them tried to take advantage of me and they didn't get away with it,' he said.
It was time for the game to start. He threw the cigarette into the sandbox and picked up his glove.
'The old boy has to go to work,' he said.
He walked out, tall and slim, and not appearing old at all."
-Jimmy Cannon, condensed from the New York Post (Baseball Digest, November 1951)
PERSONAL TO DIMAGGIO: DON'T CHANGE YOUR MIND, JOE!
"Joe DiMaggio has received thousands of ovations in his thirteen seasons with the New York Yankees, but none more sincere, more touching, than the applause which beat accompaniment to his every jogging step as he returned to his position in the ninth inning of the last 1951 World Series game.
The tribute started, ironically enough, when DiMaggio was thrown out at third base to end the Yankees' half of the eighth, but that had nothing to do with the reaction of the fans. They simply wanted Joe to know what they thought of him on this, his last appearance in a big league uniform.
It may not have been his last, but the fans sensed that it was. The Old Pro had compiled quite a Series record after a bad start. He had collected six hits, including a home run, in his last twelve times at bat. He had fielded his position flawlessly. He was ahead. It would be a good time to quit. He seemed happier, more friendly, than he had appeared in months.
Some observers believe his strong finish in the Series will encourage him to try another season and thus use the loophole left in his retirement announcement after the Series, but his best friends hope he will hang'em up. By the old DiMaggio standard, he had a depressing year. He batted only .263, hit only twelve home runs, batted in only seventy runs. Three times in the season, opposing managers did what none ever had dared to do before. They walked the man ahead- because they believed Joe would be less dangerous.
On two of these occasions, DiMaggio responded with a base hit, but that was beyond the point. The fact remained that the Jolter wasn't frightening people anymore. He couldn't get his bat around with the old speed and power, and everyone in baseball knew it.
Early in the Series, the New York Giants crowed openly that they had discovered how to stop DiMaggio. They were pitching away from him. If that was a discovery, the Giants were the first to learn that the sun rises in the East. American League pitchers knew it all along. DiMaggio was dangerous only when an opposing pitcher couldn't throw his fastball where he wanted to throw it.
Joe turned 37, November 25. As baseball ages go, that's well beyond the average, even for a fellow who has not been plagued with serious injuries from his first year in the league. The game no longer can be fun for him. His attitude all season made this obvious.
If he tries to play again in 1952 he will do so for one reason only- money. I was surprised to learn in New York that DiMaggio actually was paid a salary pretty close to the $100,000 advertised. This made him tops among baseball's earners. No one in his right mind believes that Ted Williams got within $40,000 of the $125,000 rumored.
In any case, if that final Series game in Yankee Stadium marked the last appearance of his famous Number Five, he couldn't have had a warmer, or a more richly merited bon voyage from the fans. I hope he calls it a career while the cheers are still fresh in his memory."
-Ed McAuley (condensed from the Cleveland News, Baseball Digest, January 1952)
TWELVE HITS MAKE .300 HITTER
"'Hustle means running out those pop flies behind the pitcher's box,' said ex-Cleveland Manager Oscar Vitt in addressing a group of New York Yankee prospects. 'Don't throw your bat away in disgust and jog to first. Once in a while those sure outs are dropped.
'You know the difference between a .280 man and a .300 hitter? Only twelve base hits in a 154-game schedule. If you scramble for the extra twelve you can make the .300 circle. I never did myself. In my day the emphasis was on fielding.
'I'll take the plodding hustler. If I had to win one game on a certain day, I'd take Tommy Henrich over Ted Williams in the clutch.'
Vitt had an afterthought. 'They talk about DiMaggio's hitting,' he said. 'Why, Big Joe beat more clubs with his glove and his arm than he did with his bat,' and Vitt is no man to discount DiMaggio's power.
'Cleveland had a first baseman named Hal Trosky who could hit a long ball with the best of 'em,' Vitt recalled.
'One day in the big Cleveland park, Trosky cowtailed one out of sight with the bases loaded, two outs,' Vitt told the Yankee gathering. 'I waved out runners around. I challenged DiMaggio to get THAT one.
'He did. He retreated to the wall, 450 feet away and speared it one-handed. Okay. So DiMag can play deep.
'Next time up, Trosky took his usual toehold and DiMag was in deep center. But Trosky hit the ball on his fists for a blooper behind short. I challenged Joe to get THAT one.
'He did.'"
-Will Connolly, The San Francisco Examiner (Baseball Digest, April 1952)
HOW HARDER HELD DIMAGGIO TO .180
"Mel Harder, the pitcher who gave Joe DiMaggio the most trouble throughout his career by Joe's candid say-so, did it by wasting his famous curve and then fastballing him tight.
Harder is a big right-hander standing six feet one and weighing 200 pounds. He wears glasses in keeping with his professional status of coach of the Cleveland Indians under Manager Al Lopez. He has not worked a game since 1947, the year he retired after twenty seasons with Cleveland. His forty-two birthdays hang lightly on his shoulders.
We remember the October day in 1936 when DiMaggio came home to the family flat on Taylor Street near Lombard. Joe had just completed his freshman semester with the New York Yankees. He said then that the one pitcher up there who gave him fits was Harder. The Clevelander was a twenty-two-game-winner the year before and annoyed other batsmen than young Joe.
Sixteen years later, ol' Joe was asked the same question on the occasion of his retirement, and the answer was the same. Mel Harder consistently got in his hair the worst- not Bob Feller, not Lefty Grove, not Hal Newhouser.
What kind of stuff did Harder throw at DiMaggio that he didn't like? How did Harder work on DiMag? 'Come clean, now, Mel,' we urged recently. 'Both you guys are inactive.'
'Honest, there was no secret which other pitchers didn't know,' Harder said. 'I just happened to have the equipment that didn't mesh with DiMaggio's gears. I had the Indian sign on him the first year he came up from Frisco. Joe got off on the wrong foot against me. Ever after, I held an edge upstairs in the mind.'
Oh, come out of it, Melvin. DiMag wasn't one to be psychologized. He hit pitchers who were as good as you. What technical deliveries did you aim at him that he couldn't hit with a paddle?
'Well, I'll tell you,' Harder began. 'In the first place, DiMaggio took a flat-footed stance and didn't swing until the last fraction of a second. He looked over what you had to serve before committing himself.
'Consequently, you couldn't fool him with a curve. He murdered a breaking ball. It comes in slower than a straight one. I was known as a curve-ball man, so DiMaggio expected me to curve him.
'I never gave him my curve over the plate. I'd throw the curve and slider four and five inches outside the corner. Good enough to swing at but not good enough for DiMaggio to get the thick part of his bat on it.
'I wasted my curve on him, deliberately, as a threat. I wanted him to know I had it. Give him a look, as they say. It would be suicide to hang up a curve in DiMaggio's strike zone. He had it timed before it left your hand.'
Harder neutralized DiMag by pouring the fast one inside on his wrists. Ball players call it 'on the fists.'
From what Harder says, you had to weave an Oriental rug pattern to fool DiMaggio. Tease him outside with breaking stuff that he couldn't reach- and then whoosh one hard under his chin.
The worst day, among many, that DiMaggio suffered at the hand of Harder was in 1940 when Mel beat the Yankees, 5-4, at Cleveland. He fanned DiMag three times on eleven pitched balls.
'He was never easy for me,' Harder amends. 'I had to work like a dog to get him out. I guess I'll be famous in years to come as the pitcher who held DiMaggio to a .180 average.'"
by Will Connolly, San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
IN ABSENTIA
"After a New York Yankee defeat by Detroit, a fan bellowed: 'There's another game Joe DiMaggio lost.'
'What do you mean 'Joe DiMaggio lost'?' snapped Joe's roommate, Gentleman Georgie Solotaire.
'By not playing,' retorted the fan."
-Earl Wilson in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
THEN YOU'RE OVER THE HILL, BROTHER!
"Joe DiMaggio, now a TV commentator rather a New York Yankee flychaser, tells how a ball player knows when his youth is going.
'It's like this ... you're chasing a ball and your brain sends out commands to your body.
' 'Run forward,' your brain says.
'Then: 'Bend!' ... 'Scoop up the ball!' ... 'Peg it to the infield!' ... '
'Yes, and then what?' asked an eager friend.
' 'When,' said Joe, 'your body says, 'Who, me?' you know you haven't got it anymore.'"
-Baseball Digest, August 1952
MEMORY COURSE
"Lefty Gomez, who was Joe DiMaggio's roommate for six years, tells this story on the immortal DiMag:
'Joe wasn't with us too long before the papers began writing him up in glowing terms. 'DiMaggio is so good he'll make people forget Tris Speaker,' the columnists insisted. Joe got to believing it. So, like Speaker, he began playing a shallow center field. Used to drive me goofy. I complained, but DiMag would only grin and say, 'I'm the guy who is supposed to make people forget about Tris Speaker, remember?'
'Finally, we were in Detroit, and Rudy York, that Indian monster, was at bat. I looked around, and there was DiMag, only a few yards back of second base. I tried to wave him deep, but Joe persisted. Well, it happened. York unloaded a line drive that rattled around center for half an hour before Joe flagged it down.
'Riding back to the hotel after the game, I asked DiMag why he didn't smarten up and play deep when guys with muscles all over like York were hitting. 'I'm supposed to make people forget Speaker,' laughed Joe. 'Yeh,' I didn't laugh, 'but before you do that you'll make people forget Gomez!' ' "
-Bob Stevens in the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, September 1952)
He Won't Rush Decision About 1952
"Joe DiMaggio sipped sallow coffee from a cardboard container. 'Made up your mind yet?' I asked.
We were sitting on stools in front of his locker in the New York Yankees' clubhouse before the Boston Red Sox beat the Yanks, 4-2, in the Stadium one night toward the end of the season. It was not necessary for me to explain the question. In the spring of the year DiMaggio told the ball reporters 1951 might be his last year as a player.
'I still feel the same way,' he said. 'I don't know.'
He paused and took a long drag on the cigarette.
'I really don't know,' he said. 'The point is I don't have to make up my mind the day after the season ... the day after the Series. When does the gun go off? The season starts in the spring, doesn't it? I got time to think it over.'
Eddie Lopat came over and asked him to autograph a baseball.
'You were really cutting the pie out there tonight,' Lopat said. 'You were like a young back taking your cuts.'
'Cool weather,' DiMaggio said, 'a clean uniform, a shave and a haircut.'
Most athletes turn cranky when you ask them about the old age that attacks them in their robust prime, but DiMaggio talked about diminishing skills as though he were another ball player on another team.
'No one is going to rush my decision,' he said. 'It's my decision. I'm smart enough to know you don't go on in this game forever. Your time comes.'
It is what all of them know but seldom concede.
'At times I'm strictly lousy,' he said. 'Then I go off into a streak. I really don't know.'
There was no bitterness as he appraised himself with a cruel knowledge. DiMaggio understands what is happening to him. They all do, but few have admitted it with as much grace as the greatest ball player of his generation.
'I'm not fooling anyone,' he said. 'I'm not fooling myself. I'm going out there and play ball. I'm doing the best I can. I'm trying to get the best out of myself, hoping I break loose.'
It is clear to him his splendid skills have diminished, but there is in him the belief he may be able to play center field for the Yankees another year. There is also much doubt.
'I haven't given up on myself,' he explained. 'There's no set date when I have to say anything about it. I put no limit on myself, so I'm taking my time.'
It had been a bad season for him, but not once during our conversation did he complain. I mentioned the numerous sports section obits that had been written about him this year.
'I don't want any pity,' he said. 'I haven't asked anyone for anything. It's up to them what they write. I'm just up there taking my cuts as often as I can. As long as I'm hitting in the fourth slot, I'm going to do the best I can do. I have nothing to regret.'
DiMaggio tapped his right arm with his left. 'I couldn't lift it up early in the season,' he said.
It was no secret around the league.
'It's strong as a bull now,' he said. 'It came around. It's all right now. I threw a guy out at Cleveland and a guy out in Detroit.'
He stood up and pressed his right elbow against his side and made a delicate flipping motion with his wrist.
'I threw this way,' he said. 'I had to. I don't know what was wrong with it, but when I threw it felt like the bones were coming apart. I couldn't throw overhand. I felt like my arm was coming off. I had to keep the arm close and throw like an infielder.'
DiMaggio has always tried to be accurate when describing what he does. It was that way that night. The truth is important to him even when it defaces his talent.
'It's real strong,' he said, 'but who knows how it will be tomorrow.' It was all there in that sentence. He can't be sure anymore, but he has to be positive because this is the great crisis of his life.
The strain of the worthless arm probably affected his hitting, but he didn't use that as an excuse.
'I used to warm up with Yogi Berra and had him falling up and down,' he said. 'I couldn't even lob the ball right. I'd get a ball in the outfield and hope someone didn't take advantage of me and get away with it. They knew my arm was bad ... the guys on the other team. Casey Stengel knew it. He went along.'
He smiled at the recollection of one of his few good throws when the arm was aching.
'Couple of them tried to take advantage of me and they didn't get away with it,' he said.
It was time for the game to start. He threw the cigarette into the sandbox and picked up his glove.
'The old boy has to go to work,' he said.
He walked out, tall and slim, and not appearing old at all."
-Jimmy Cannon, condensed from the New York Post (Baseball Digest, November 1951)
PERSONAL TO DIMAGGIO: DON'T CHANGE YOUR MIND, JOE!
"Joe DiMaggio has received thousands of ovations in his thirteen seasons with the New York Yankees, but none more sincere, more touching, than the applause which beat accompaniment to his every jogging step as he returned to his position in the ninth inning of the last 1951 World Series game.
The tribute started, ironically enough, when DiMaggio was thrown out at third base to end the Yankees' half of the eighth, but that had nothing to do with the reaction of the fans. They simply wanted Joe to know what they thought of him on this, his last appearance in a big league uniform.
It may not have been his last, but the fans sensed that it was. The Old Pro had compiled quite a Series record after a bad start. He had collected six hits, including a home run, in his last twelve times at bat. He had fielded his position flawlessly. He was ahead. It would be a good time to quit. He seemed happier, more friendly, than he had appeared in months.
Some observers believe his strong finish in the Series will encourage him to try another season and thus use the loophole left in his retirement announcement after the Series, but his best friends hope he will hang'em up. By the old DiMaggio standard, he had a depressing year. He batted only .263, hit only twelve home runs, batted in only seventy runs. Three times in the season, opposing managers did what none ever had dared to do before. They walked the man ahead- because they believed Joe would be less dangerous.
On two of these occasions, DiMaggio responded with a base hit, but that was beyond the point. The fact remained that the Jolter wasn't frightening people anymore. He couldn't get his bat around with the old speed and power, and everyone in baseball knew it.
Early in the Series, the New York Giants crowed openly that they had discovered how to stop DiMaggio. They were pitching away from him. If that was a discovery, the Giants were the first to learn that the sun rises in the East. American League pitchers knew it all along. DiMaggio was dangerous only when an opposing pitcher couldn't throw his fastball where he wanted to throw it.
Joe turned 37, November 25. As baseball ages go, that's well beyond the average, even for a fellow who has not been plagued with serious injuries from his first year in the league. The game no longer can be fun for him. His attitude all season made this obvious.
If he tries to play again in 1952 he will do so for one reason only- money. I was surprised to learn in New York that DiMaggio actually was paid a salary pretty close to the $100,000 advertised. This made him tops among baseball's earners. No one in his right mind believes that Ted Williams got within $40,000 of the $125,000 rumored.
In any case, if that final Series game in Yankee Stadium marked the last appearance of his famous Number Five, he couldn't have had a warmer, or a more richly merited bon voyage from the fans. I hope he calls it a career while the cheers are still fresh in his memory."
-Ed McAuley (condensed from the Cleveland News, Baseball Digest, January 1952)
TWELVE HITS MAKE .300 HITTER
"'Hustle means running out those pop flies behind the pitcher's box,' said ex-Cleveland Manager Oscar Vitt in addressing a group of New York Yankee prospects. 'Don't throw your bat away in disgust and jog to first. Once in a while those sure outs are dropped.
'You know the difference between a .280 man and a .300 hitter? Only twelve base hits in a 154-game schedule. If you scramble for the extra twelve you can make the .300 circle. I never did myself. In my day the emphasis was on fielding.
'I'll take the plodding hustler. If I had to win one game on a certain day, I'd take Tommy Henrich over Ted Williams in the clutch.'
Vitt had an afterthought. 'They talk about DiMaggio's hitting,' he said. 'Why, Big Joe beat more clubs with his glove and his arm than he did with his bat,' and Vitt is no man to discount DiMaggio's power.
'Cleveland had a first baseman named Hal Trosky who could hit a long ball with the best of 'em,' Vitt recalled.
'One day in the big Cleveland park, Trosky cowtailed one out of sight with the bases loaded, two outs,' Vitt told the Yankee gathering. 'I waved out runners around. I challenged DiMaggio to get THAT one.
'He did. He retreated to the wall, 450 feet away and speared it one-handed. Okay. So DiMag can play deep.
'Next time up, Trosky took his usual toehold and DiMag was in deep center. But Trosky hit the ball on his fists for a blooper behind short. I challenged Joe to get THAT one.
'He did.'"
-Will Connolly, The San Francisco Examiner (Baseball Digest, April 1952)
HOW HARDER HELD DIMAGGIO TO .180
"Mel Harder, the pitcher who gave Joe DiMaggio the most trouble throughout his career by Joe's candid say-so, did it by wasting his famous curve and then fastballing him tight.
Harder is a big right-hander standing six feet one and weighing 200 pounds. He wears glasses in keeping with his professional status of coach of the Cleveland Indians under Manager Al Lopez. He has not worked a game since 1947, the year he retired after twenty seasons with Cleveland. His forty-two birthdays hang lightly on his shoulders.
We remember the October day in 1936 when DiMaggio came home to the family flat on Taylor Street near Lombard. Joe had just completed his freshman semester with the New York Yankees. He said then that the one pitcher up there who gave him fits was Harder. The Clevelander was a twenty-two-game-winner the year before and annoyed other batsmen than young Joe.
Sixteen years later, ol' Joe was asked the same question on the occasion of his retirement, and the answer was the same. Mel Harder consistently got in his hair the worst- not Bob Feller, not Lefty Grove, not Hal Newhouser.
What kind of stuff did Harder throw at DiMaggio that he didn't like? How did Harder work on DiMag? 'Come clean, now, Mel,' we urged recently. 'Both you guys are inactive.'
'Honest, there was no secret which other pitchers didn't know,' Harder said. 'I just happened to have the equipment that didn't mesh with DiMaggio's gears. I had the Indian sign on him the first year he came up from Frisco. Joe got off on the wrong foot against me. Ever after, I held an edge upstairs in the mind.'
Oh, come out of it, Melvin. DiMag wasn't one to be psychologized. He hit pitchers who were as good as you. What technical deliveries did you aim at him that he couldn't hit with a paddle?
'Well, I'll tell you,' Harder began. 'In the first place, DiMaggio took a flat-footed stance and didn't swing until the last fraction of a second. He looked over what you had to serve before committing himself.
'Consequently, you couldn't fool him with a curve. He murdered a breaking ball. It comes in slower than a straight one. I was known as a curve-ball man, so DiMaggio expected me to curve him.
'I never gave him my curve over the plate. I'd throw the curve and slider four and five inches outside the corner. Good enough to swing at but not good enough for DiMaggio to get the thick part of his bat on it.
'I wasted my curve on him, deliberately, as a threat. I wanted him to know I had it. Give him a look, as they say. It would be suicide to hang up a curve in DiMaggio's strike zone. He had it timed before it left your hand.'
Harder neutralized DiMag by pouring the fast one inside on his wrists. Ball players call it 'on the fists.'
From what Harder says, you had to weave an Oriental rug pattern to fool DiMaggio. Tease him outside with breaking stuff that he couldn't reach- and then whoosh one hard under his chin.
The worst day, among many, that DiMaggio suffered at the hand of Harder was in 1940 when Mel beat the Yankees, 5-4, at Cleveland. He fanned DiMag three times on eleven pitched balls.
'He was never easy for me,' Harder amends. 'I had to work like a dog to get him out. I guess I'll be famous in years to come as the pitcher who held DiMaggio to a .180 average.'"
by Will Connolly, San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
IN ABSENTIA
"After a New York Yankee defeat by Detroit, a fan bellowed: 'There's another game Joe DiMaggio lost.'
'What do you mean 'Joe DiMaggio lost'?' snapped Joe's roommate, Gentleman Georgie Solotaire.
'By not playing,' retorted the fan."
-Earl Wilson in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, July 1952)
THEN YOU'RE OVER THE HILL, BROTHER!
"Joe DiMaggio, now a TV commentator rather a New York Yankee flychaser, tells how a ball player knows when his youth is going.
'It's like this ... you're chasing a ball and your brain sends out commands to your body.
' 'Run forward,' your brain says.
'Then: 'Bend!' ... 'Scoop up the ball!' ... 'Peg it to the infield!' ... '
'Yes, and then what?' asked an eager friend.
' 'When,' said Joe, 'your body says, 'Who, me?' you know you haven't got it anymore.'"
-Baseball Digest, August 1952
MEMORY COURSE
"Lefty Gomez, who was Joe DiMaggio's roommate for six years, tells this story on the immortal DiMag:
'Joe wasn't with us too long before the papers began writing him up in glowing terms. 'DiMaggio is so good he'll make people forget Tris Speaker,' the columnists insisted. Joe got to believing it. So, like Speaker, he began playing a shallow center field. Used to drive me goofy. I complained, but DiMag would only grin and say, 'I'm the guy who is supposed to make people forget about Tris Speaker, remember?'
'Finally, we were in Detroit, and Rudy York, that Indian monster, was at bat. I looked around, and there was DiMag, only a few yards back of second base. I tried to wave him deep, but Joe persisted. Well, it happened. York unloaded a line drive that rattled around center for half an hour before Joe flagged it down.
'Riding back to the hotel after the game, I asked DiMag why he didn't smarten up and play deep when guys with muscles all over like York were hitting. 'I'm supposed to make people forget Speaker,' laughed Joe. 'Yeh,' I didn't laugh, 'but before you do that you'll make people forget Gomez!' ' "
-Bob Stevens in the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, September 1952)
Tuesday, June 5, 2018
1951 Yankees of the Past: Zack Taylor and Bill Wight
ZACK TAYLOR
"Zack entered baseball in 1915 and played through 1937. He made a brief comeback in 1940, catching four games for the Toledo Mud Hens. Clubs for which Zack played in the majors were the Dodgers, Braves, Giants, Cubs and Yankees.
He had his first experience as a manager with Allentown in 1935. He first piloted the Browns in 1946. A coach for the Pirates in 1947, Zack again took over the reins for St. Louis in 1948."
-1951 Bowman No. 315 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
BILL WIGHT
"Wight came to the Red Sox from the White Sox in a winter trade. He was in 30 games in 1950, winning 10 and losing 16, and had an earned run average of 3.58. In 1949, he won 15 while losing 13 and had an earned run average of 3.31.
Wight's luck has not been up to his pitching skill, but his win and lose total is apt to take a decided upward swing with the booming bats of the Red Sox backing his mound work."
-1951 Bowman No. 164 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
"Zack entered baseball in 1915 and played through 1937. He made a brief comeback in 1940, catching four games for the Toledo Mud Hens. Clubs for which Zack played in the majors were the Dodgers, Braves, Giants, Cubs and Yankees.
He had his first experience as a manager with Allentown in 1935. He first piloted the Browns in 1946. A coach for the Pirates in 1947, Zack again took over the reins for St. Louis in 1948."
-1951 Bowman No. 315 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
BILL WIGHT
"Wight came to the Red Sox from the White Sox in a winter trade. He was in 30 games in 1950, winning 10 and losing 16, and had an earned run average of 3.58. In 1949, he won 15 while losing 13 and had an earned run average of 3.31.
Wight's luck has not been up to his pitching skill, but his win and lose total is apt to take a decided upward swing with the booming bats of the Red Sox backing his mound work."
-1951 Bowman No. 164 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
1951 Yankee of the Past: George Stirnweiss
"From 1942 (his first year in the majors) until 1950, Snuffy was with the Yankees. He led the league in batting average and six other departments in 1945.
He began the 1950 season with the New Yorkers, but after seven games he was traded to St. Louis. In 93 games for the Brownies, his batting average for both clubs was .216.
Snuffy was traded from the Browns to the Indians just as this card was going to press."
-1951 Bowman No. 21 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
He began the 1950 season with the New Yorkers, but after seven games he was traded to St. Louis. In 93 games for the Brownies, his batting average for both clubs was .216.
Snuffy was traded from the Browns to the Indians just as this card was going to press."
-1951 Bowman No. 21 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
Thursday, May 24, 2018
1951 Yankee of the Past: Bud Stewart
"Eddie plays for the White Sox for the first time in 1951. He hit .267 in 118 games for the Washington Senators in 1950 and batted in 35 runs. He hit .284 for the Senators in 1949, driving 43 tallies across the plate.
Eddie's rookie year in the majors was 1948. He began the campaign with the Yankees, then was traded to the Senators after six games. He hit .278 in 124 games that season. His 113 hits were good for 178 bases, and he drove in 69 runs."
-1951 Bowman No. 159 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
Eddie's rookie year in the majors was 1948. He began the campaign with the Yankees, then was traded to the Senators after six games. He hit .278 in 124 games that season. His 113 hits were good for 178 bases, and he drove in 69 runs."
-1951 Bowman No. 159 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
1951 Yankees of the Past Alumni Team
Former Yankees on 1951 Spring Training Rosters
MGR - Eddie Sawyer (Philadelphia Phillies)
CH - Leo Durocher (New York Giants)
CH - Bucky Harris (Washington Senators)
CH - Billy Meyer (Pittsburgh Pirates)
C - Sherm Lollar (St. Louis Browns)
C - Gus Niarhos (Chicago White Sox)
C - Clyde McCullough (Pittsburgh Pirates)
1B - Jack Phillips (Pittsburgh Pirates)
2B - Jerry Priddy (Detroit Tigers)
2B - George Stirnweiss (St. Louis Browns)
3B - Hank Majeski (Philadelphia Athletics)
SS - Pete Suder (Philadelphia Athletics)
SS - Billy Hitchcock (Philadelphia Athletics) (2B-3B)
LF - Hank Sauer (Chicago Cubs)
CF - Jim Delsing (St. Louis Browns)
RF - Bud Stewart (Chicago White Sox)
OF - Allie Clark (Cleveland Indians)
PH - Charlie Keller (Detroit Tigers) (OF) (retroactive designated hitter)
P - Randy Gumpert (Chicago White Sox)
P - Ken Holcombe (Chicago White Sox)
P - Bill Wight (Boston Red Sox)
P - Mel Queen (Pittsburgh Pirates)
P - Dick Starr (St. Louis Browns)
P - Al Gettel (New York Giants)
RP - Ellis Kinder (Boston Red Sox)
RP - Monk Dubiel (Chicago Cubs)
RP - Hank Borowy (Detroit Tigers)
RP - Milo Candini (Philadelphia Phillies)
RP - Gene Bearden (Washington Senators)
MGR - Eddie Sawyer (Philadelphia Phillies)
CH - Leo Durocher (New York Giants)
CH - Bucky Harris (Washington Senators)
CH - Billy Meyer (Pittsburgh Pirates)
C - Sherm Lollar (St. Louis Browns)
C - Gus Niarhos (Chicago White Sox)
C - Clyde McCullough (Pittsburgh Pirates)
1B - Jack Phillips (Pittsburgh Pirates)
2B - Jerry Priddy (Detroit Tigers)
2B - George Stirnweiss (St. Louis Browns)
3B - Hank Majeski (Philadelphia Athletics)
SS - Pete Suder (Philadelphia Athletics)
SS - Billy Hitchcock (Philadelphia Athletics) (2B-3B)
LF - Hank Sauer (Chicago Cubs)
CF - Jim Delsing (St. Louis Browns)
RF - Bud Stewart (Chicago White Sox)
OF - Allie Clark (Cleveland Indians)
PH - Charlie Keller (Detroit Tigers) (OF) (retroactive designated hitter)
P - Randy Gumpert (Chicago White Sox)
P - Ken Holcombe (Chicago White Sox)
P - Bill Wight (Boston Red Sox)
P - Mel Queen (Pittsburgh Pirates)
P - Dick Starr (St. Louis Browns)
P - Al Gettel (New York Giants)
RP - Ellis Kinder (Boston Red Sox)
RP - Monk Dubiel (Chicago Cubs)
RP - Hank Borowy (Detroit Tigers)
RP - Milo Candini (Philadelphia Phillies)
RP - Gene Bearden (Washington Senators)
Friday, May 18, 2018
1951 Yankees of the Past: Ken Silvestri and Dick Starr
KEN SILVESTRI
"Ken caught 11 games in 1950 and hit .250. But Ken's great value to the Phils is through his work in helping to train the young pitchers.
He hit the majors with the White Sox in 1939 but finished the season with St. Paul. Back with the Sox in 1940, Ken was traded to the Yankees at the end of the campaign. In military service for the next four seasons, he played for the Yanks and their farm clubs on his return. Ken then went to the Phillies in 1949."
-1951 Bowman (Bowman Gum, Inc.) No. 256
DICK STARR
"Dick made 32 mound appearances in 1950. He won seven games and lost five.
He began in organized baseball with Butler of the Pennsylvania League in 1941 and compiled a 14-7 record. He won 18 and lost five for the same club in 1942, then spent the next three years in military service.
Dick returned to chalk up 19 wins against 10 losses for Augusta in 1946. With Newark in 1947, he was up to the Yankees at the end of the season, then to the Browns for the 1948 campaign."
-1951 Bowman No. 137 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
"Ken caught 11 games in 1950 and hit .250. But Ken's great value to the Phils is through his work in helping to train the young pitchers.
He hit the majors with the White Sox in 1939 but finished the season with St. Paul. Back with the Sox in 1940, Ken was traded to the Yankees at the end of the campaign. In military service for the next four seasons, he played for the Yanks and their farm clubs on his return. Ken then went to the Phillies in 1949."
-1951 Bowman (Bowman Gum, Inc.) No. 256
DICK STARR
"Dick made 32 mound appearances in 1950. He won seven games and lost five.
He began in organized baseball with Butler of the Pennsylvania League in 1941 and compiled a 14-7 record. He won 18 and lost five for the same club in 1942, then spent the next three years in military service.
Dick returned to chalk up 19 wins against 10 losses for Augusta in 1946. With Newark in 1947, he was up to the Yankees at the end of the season, then to the Browns for the 1948 campaign."
-1951 Bowman No. 137 (Bowman Gum, Inc.)
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