"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)
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