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
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