1953 Yankee of the Past: Zack Taylor

HE WANTED TO BE A "FREE" AGENT
"Zack Taylor, who has joined the Chicago White Sox as manager of their Waterloo (Iowa) farm, had an audience for one of his remembrances of managing the St. Louis Browns.
'We had a guy on the club who was a real toughie,' said Zack. 'I was afraid he might make trouble, so I persuaded Bill DeWitt (president) to get rid of him. I didn't think he'd make the grade, anyway.
'Well, one day DeWitt got a letter from the gent, who had wound up in prison for life. He wanted us to send him a copy of his official release from the Browns ... so he could be free to demand a bonus to sign with somebody else when he got out.'"

-John P. Carmichael in the Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, February 1953)

HE SHOULD HAVE THROWN A SPITTER!
"Zack Taylor, former manager of the St. Louis Browns and now manager of Waterloo, was reminded of a story- as he almost always is.
'I was with Brooklyn in 1920 and we were fighting for the pennant,' he said. 'We went into St. Louis on the last swing and we had to win almost all of them. Jeff Pfeffer, the fellow who put a silver plate in Chick Fewster's head, was throwing for us and it began to rain hard in the last of the fifth, with the Cards at bat and us leading.
'Umpires like to get these important games completed, and Uncle Charley Moran, who coached the Centre football team, was behind the plate. Everybody had his fingers crossed as one batter went down and then another. Just one more hitter and just one more pitch. Wilbert Robinson, our manager, was sweating hard as Jeff leaned to get his sign.
'Then Pfeffer asked Moran for a dry ball. That was all the excuse needed and the umpire called the game on account of rain. I thought that Robinson would go crazy. He was that mad. So was everybody else on the club, but I guess that was a sort of pattern for the Brooklyn team of that day.'"

-Walter Stewart in the Memphis Commercial Appeal (Baseball Digest, June 1953)

1953 Yankee of the Past: George Selkirk

RUTHLESS MAJORS
"Major league bosses are an ungrateful lot at times. The front office of the New York Yankees, goaded by Casey Stengel, appointed Harry Craft, veteran outfielder,  to succeed George Selkirk as manager of the Kansas City Blues.
All Selkirk did last summer was to win the American Association pennant, carry his club to the seventh game before losing the Junior World Series and finish with a most respectable attendance total.
In return, he was fired because he was in Casey Stengel's doghouse. The Yankee pilot blasted minor league managers in general, but Selkirk in particular, for failure to a better job of developing talent.
Stengel was rebuked in no uncertain terms by Kansas City writers as well as others throughout the minor leagues.
Selkirk had been ailing throughout the first weeks of the 1952 season, but he gamely stuck to his post and got the best results possible even though his parent club was breaking up his lineup regularly."

-Charles Johnson in the Minneapolis Star (Baseball Digest, February 1953)

1953 Yankee of the Past: Muddy Ruel

"Muddy Ruel, farm director of the Detroit Tigers, explaining the team's newest splurge into the bonus-player market:
'We looked into the barrel and found that the bottom was closer to the top than we thought.'"

-Baseball Digest, September 1953

1953 Yankee of the Past: Johnny Neun

LIMITED ABILITY
"Johnny Neun likes to recall a conversation he heard in the stands back of the bench in Crosley Field one day while he was managing the Cincinnati Reds. 'Dot Neun!' said one Reds fan, 'vot's he effer done?' 'Vunce he make a unassisted dribble blay,' said the other. 'Ja, bud vot else can he do?'"

Baseball Digest, January 1953

1953 Yankee of the Past: Bill McKechnie

"When Bill McKechnie was a manager, he had a trick to catch players who were roughing it up on the night shift. McKechnie would accost the suspect in the lobby and ask for a match. The manager would examine the match folder with elaborate interest. More than once the cover advertised a night club. McKechnie made no comment. The offender was usually in the sack early the next night."

-Jimmy Cannon in the New York Post (Baseball Digest, April 1953)

A HIT-AND-RUN YEAR?
"'I think big league baseball is coming back to a hit-and-run era,' Bill McKechnie, the Boston Red Sox coach and former big league manager, said this spring.
'I've heard a lot of talk about the difference between the National League and the American League, how the National League features curve ball pitching and scoring one run at a time while the American is supposed to depend on big, powerful fast ball pitchers and home run slugging.
'That was true when Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Harry Heilmann, Al Simmons, Hank Greenberg and Rudy York were playing. But Case Stengel has moved his Yankees into four straight pennants with hit-and-run baseball, base running and getting the important base hit when it is needed.
'Every manager would like to have a team of fellows who can hit the ball out of the park. But the emphasis now is on the fellow who can hit singles and doubles to opposite fields and on fast, alert base running. I think we'll see a lot of that kind of ball this year.'"

-Frank Yeutter in the Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, May 1953)

1953 Yankee of the Past: Bucky Harris

WELL, WHY NOT?
"A reader wants to know why Bucky Harris was not named manager of the year. We, too, have wondered. The title was bestowed on Casey Stengel.
Harris took a club of discards and supposed misfits that was an all but unanimous choice to finish last (see March and April predictions) and landed in fifth place, only one game out of fourth place and only three games out of third.
Consider the material he had to work with in Washington:
Mickey Grasso, a third- or fourth-rate catcher who batted .216.
Pete Runnels, shortstop and .285 hitter who batted in the number four slot.
Two long ball hitters: Mickey Vernon (.251) and Jackie Jensen (.280).
Jim Busby, an outfielder who batted .236, and another outfielder, the aging Gil Coan, whose speed has been greatly diminished by time.
A pitching staff that included three Pan-Americans- Conrado Marrero, Julio Moreno and Sandalio Consuegra; Bob Porterfield and Frank Shea, both Yankee castoffs; Walter Masterson, a Red Sox castoff,  and Lou Sleater, a recruit.
Considering the material at Stengel's command and the talent that Harris had to work with, any neutral observer would award the palm to Bucky. He did the finest job of managing in the major leagues."

-H.G. Salsinger in the Detroit News (Baseball Digest, February 1953)

"One of the favorite Bucky Harris anecdotes reverts to the time he caught Eddie Robinson coming in at 4 A.M. The next day Robby went four times for the collar at bat. In the clubhouse that night, Harris tapped him gently on the arm and said: 'It can't be done, Eddie. I've tried it.' That was all, but Robby caught on quickly."

-John P. Carmichael in the Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, May 1953)

"Bucky Harris is the most patient manager I've met- bar none. He's one of the few who welcome visits from newspapermen because he gets as much information from them as they get from him."

-Bob Addie, Washington Times-Herald (Baseball Digest, September 1953)

FAMOUS LAST WORDS
"Bucky Harris recently told these circumstances leading up to his dismissal by the Yankees in 1948:
Neither Frank Shea nor another pitcher, Bill Bevens, was showing much and both were being used infrequently. George Weiss was peeved.
One day in front of Del Webb and Dan Topping, the Yankee owners, Weiss addressed Harris and asked, 'Why can't you make him (Shea) behave?'
'Look, George, you had him in the farm system and should have taken care of that before he came up here,' Harris is alleged to have replied. 'I'm a manager, not a house detective.'
Harris was on the way out from that time.
That's the way the story was related to me."

-Sec Taylor in the Des Moines Register (Baseball Digest, October 1953)

"Bucky was called 'The Boy Wonder' in 1924 when at the age of 27 he was named manager of the Washington Senators. He had been playing in organized ball since 1916, and with Washington since the end of the 1919 season.
In 1929 he moved to Detroit as player-manager. He also managed the Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees. Bucky led his teams into the World Series in 1924, 1925 and 1947, with New York.
This is his third managerial assignment with Washington."

-1953 Bowman No. 46