HERE'S WHO IS MAYO SMITH
He Wasn't Unkown To Phils' Brass
"This was in Baltimore's old Oriole Park, back in 1942, during the era of International League baseball in the Maryland city. The Buffalo Bisons were inflicting cruel punishment on the Orioles, and when the game reached the ho-hum stage the occupants of the press coop atop the rachitic grandstand began a fanning bee.
Present that day was Ben Sankey, once an infielder with Pittsburgh, who had just finished a long hitch in the International with Montreal. Ben remarked that he felt like an old fire horse that has been retired to pasture, and somebody asked him whether he'd like to return to the game as a manager.
'No,' Sankey replied. 'I don't have the touch. But down there,'- he pointed to a Buffalo player hefting a bat in the on-deck circle- 'is a fellow who has it. Some day he'll be managing in the majors.'
'You mean Mayo Smith?' a guy said. 'Migosh, Ben, he's a nice fellow and all that, and I guess he knows baseball. But manage in the majors? Why, he may not even get there as a player. He's been knocking around in this league for six years, and he's running out of time.'
Sankey was adamant. 'I don't care whether Mayo never plays a game in the majors,' he declared. 'He'll be managing up there, though. On a guess, I'd say in about ten years.'
As things turned out, Sankey was three years off with his forecast, but nevertheless qualified for a seat on the Delphic bandwagon. For Mayo Smith, after following a tortuous path through the boondocks, has arrived in the big time as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.
At 40, the big (six feet, 180 pounds), ruggedly handsome Smith can look back on a succession of experiences that read like the story line of a soap opera. Mayo was 30 when given his one and only whirl in the majors as a player. 'I lasted,' he says, 'only long enough to have a cup of coffee.' He was stricken by the rheumatic fever which first threatened his life, then seemed certain to take him out of baseball for keeps. He nearly lost his family in a flood. But despite these and other vicissitudes, he kept bouncing back with a resiliency which may stand him in good stead as boss of the Phillies.
It is baring no secret to state that a man who parks the back of his lap in the manager's chair in the Philadelphia clubhouse is occupying one of the hottest seats in baseball. Smith is the fourth to perch there since the beginning of the 1952 season. Eddie Sawyer, who led the Phillies to their first pennant in 35 years, got the heave-ho in June, 1952; his successor, Steve O'Neill, hung around until last July, and Terry Moore, the next in line, was unseated after the 1954 campaign. A story goes that when Moore took over, an unidentified member of the team declaimed: 'We got rid of Sawyer and O'Neill, and we'll get rid of this guy, too.'
Very likely, this quote is apocryphal, but there is no gainsaying that the Phillies present one of baseball's most enigmatic problems. Here's an outfit which, five years ago, was one of the National League's brightest young teams of recent memory. But instead of improving, as many a deep thinker figured it would, it faded. In almost any gathering place in Philadelphia, you can hear year-round discussions of the reasons for the team's recent decline; the one advanced most frequently is that the Phils are overpaid, overstuffed and have no respect for authority.
So you sit down with Mayo Smith and you put it to him. After all, he is a comparative unknown, stepping into a situation that stymied such former major league stars as O'Neill and Moore. In fact, when Smith's appointment was announced by the Phillies last October, practically every fan in Philadelphia asked the same question: 'Who's Mayo Smith?' You tell Smith these things, and you ask him how he intends to handle the club.
He makes no speech, recites no bromides. He simply looks you in the eye and says quietly: 'I'm going to run it.' He doesn't emphasize the first person pronoun, and his tone conveys no threat. But you come away with the impression that Smith, whose forte wherever he has gone as a player or manager has been his everlasting hustle, could be the man to restore the Phillies to the ranks of up-and-at-'em ball clubs.
The Phillies' top brass didn't just reach into a hat and come up with Smith. As long ago as 1949, Roy Hamey, who served in the New York Yankees' front office before his appointment as general of the Phils last spring, was impressed by Smith's work as a freshman manager in the Yankee farm system. Last season, when Mayo managed Birmingham of the Southern Association, Johnny Nee, the personnel director of the Phillies, observed him closely over a period of weeks. When the Phils decided not to renew Terry Moore's contract, Hamey, with the permission of George Weiss, the Yankee major domo, approached Smith.
'I had no idea that I was being considered for the job until Roy called me after the World Series,' Smith says. 'There wasn't anything particularly dramatic about it. Hamey asked me whether I'd consider managing the Phillies. I said yes. That's all there was to it.'
Mayo can't remember the time when he didn't want to be a ball player. But, despite the feelings of Ben Sankey and others who had played with or against him in the early phases of his minor league career that some day Smith would become a manager, Mayo himself gave little thought to piloting until he was nearing the end of the trail as a player.
'I was playing under Jim Turner (now the Yankee pitching coach) at Portland, in the Pacific Coast League, in 1947,' Smith recalls. 'One day Jim asked me whether I ever had thought of becoming a manager. I said no.
' 'Well,' Jim said, 'I think you ought to consider it.' I thought it over and decided that Jim had something there. From then on, I haunted Turner, trying to learn all I could about handling pitchers. Jim was a wonderful teacher. Also, he did more than teach me. When he left Portland after the 1948 season to go with the Yankees, he recommended me for a manager's job in the Yankee organization.'
By then, Smith was a veteran of 16 seasons in baseball, dating from the time when, as an 18-year-old, he signed with Toronto of the International League. Born Jan. 17, 1915, at New London, Mo., he was christened Edward Mayo Smith, but except for his signature on legal documents, never has used his first name.
The 'Mayo' derives from the fact that, just before his birth, his maternal grandparents had returned from undergoing checkups at the famous Mayo Brothers Clinic and were so high in its praises that it was decided the name be included in the new arrival's tag.
The only child of Frederick and Eva Lake Smith, Mayo lived his first 11 years in Missouri, and one of his earliest memories is that of playing baseball. Then Frederick Smith, a farmer, decided to move to Lake Worth, Fla., to become a butcher, and it was there that young Mayo began to blossom as an athlete. His father, who died a few years ago, encouraged him, and by the time Mayo entered high school he was a multi-sport performer.
At Lake Worth High he is remembered as a better than average student and an athlete good enough to have attracted several college scholarship offers. An end in football, a consistent scorer in basketball and a third baseman in baseball, Mayo reached the end of his high school career in 1933 with a problem.
Should he accept one of the scholarship offers and continue his education? Or should he sign a contract offered him by Toronto? Dan Howley, the former Cincinnati and St. Louis Browns' manager, who was skipper of the Maple Leafs, had been on Mayo's trail for nearly two years. Howley had been touted on Smith by a West Palm Beach resident named Jack Gorham, and when Dan himself dropped by for a look, he liked what he saw. Smith was a graceful 168-pounder who batted left-handed, threw right-handed and ran well.
Mayo talked the problem over with his parents, and out of the confab came the decision that, inasmuch as the youngster wanted more than anything else to be a major league ball player, he should lose no time setting out toward that goal. So Smith signed with Toronto.
'It was the day after my graduation,' he remembers. 'I was given a $500 bonus and a contract calling for $250 a month. By today's standards, that was peanuts. But, remember, this was in the heart of the depression. I considered myself a very fortunate young fellow.'
For the remainder of the season, Mayo gave the heat treatment to benches throughout the International League. It was Howley's contention that the boy would learn more from the Maple League dugout than by playing regularly in a league of lower classification. 'Next year,' he told Mayo, 'we'll send you out. But right now I want you to watch and learn. All told, Smith got into 13 games, mostly as a pinch hitter and a pinch runner, winding up with a batting average of .103.
The following spring Howley announced that thenceforth Smith would be an outfielder. The kid had trouble making the bunt play from third base, but he was fleet and could throw, and Howley decided that he should make capital of these assets. Dan turned Mayo over to Harry Rice, the veteran outfielder who had wound up his major league career at Cincinnati the previous season, and Mayo proved an apt pupil.
Farmed out to Wilmington, N.C., of the Piedmont League, Mayo batted .284 in 1934, upped his average to .315 the following year. He also covered center field like the well-known tent, and when he went to spring training with Toronto in 1936, he figured to stick.
'But it turned out to be a jinx year' Smith says. 'I had a good spring, but Toronto was overstocked with outfielders, so I was shipped out again.' Back to the Piedmont League went Mayo- this time to Durham, N.C., where he batted close to .400 during the first six weeks. Then, diving for a sinking line drive one day, he broke his left shoulder. Sidelined for 11 weeks, he found it difficult to regain his timing at the plate, finished with a .217 batting mark.
Nevertheless, Toronto recalled him in 1937, and Mayo nailed down a steady job, which was his for three seasons. His best effort was the .293 average he compiled in 1937. In the winter of 1939-40, the Leafs traded him to Buffalo for an outfielder named Johnny Tyler. Steve O'Neill, who managed the Bisons at the time, still talks about that transaction.
'It was,' O'Neill has said, 'the best deal I made in my three years at Buffalo, and one of the best of my career.'
Before reporting to the Bison camp, Smith made another type of deal for himself. Since high school days in Lake Worth he had kept company with pretty Louise Otto; at this stage, he and Louise decided to make it permanent. They were married March 10, 1940, and now have two children, Judith Ann, 12, and Fred, 4.
It is doubtful whether Buffalo ever has had a more popular player than Smith proved to be. The customers liked his bear-down attitude and the seemingly effortless manner in which he patrolled his post. Bucky Harris, the Buffalo manager in 1944, probably best expressed local sentiment about Mayo's defensive ability.
'I just thought of a perfect game,' Harris remarked one night after the Bisons had won a loose contest. 'That would be one in which 27 balls were hit somewhere near Mayo in center field.'
Until that 1944 season, Mayo's top batting performance for the Bisons was his .279 average of 1942. Then, under Harris, Mayo suddenly became the hitter Dan Howley expected him to become ten years earlier. He started fast, endured two short-lived slumps in midseason, and wound up with a .340 average to win the International League batting championship.
Throughout the season, Mayo had trouble with his arches. He wears size 12 1/2 shoes, and when the arches on dogs of that size kick up, they really howl. Yet Mayo missed only four games all year. He would go home immediately after a game to soak his feet for hours in a pain-relieving solution. It is now a family joke that Mayo ate most of his meals with his feet in a tub of water. Now and then Louise would urge him to take a week's rest, lest the arches cave in altogether. But Mayo always replied: 'What's a little pain when you're hitting and the team is winning.'
In November, 1944, Smith got the break for which he had been striving. At the annual major league draft meeting, the Philadelphia Athletics selected Mayo, paying Buffalo $7,500 for him. But before he was able to report to the A's training camp the next spring, a blow fell.
On Feb. 5, 1945, Mayo was struck down by a rheumatic fever. It was no mere touch of the illness. It was the real thing, with all its malevolence, and for two weeks, as Smith lay helpless in a Buffalo hospital bed, it was touch and go. Then the crisis passed and Mayo, still a very sick man, began to talk of his future.
His doctors told him that it would be better if he never attempted to play ball again. When Mayo insisted that he wanted to remain in the game, the medicos relented slightly. Perhaps in 1946, they told him, he might test himself. But playing that year was out of the question.
Accordingly, Smith informed the A's that he desired to apply for voluntary retirement. There followed a correspondence in which the A's expressed the intention of keeping Mayo's name on their active roster, in the hope that he might see his way clear to joining the club at some time during the season.
The upshot was that Smith, after a long convalescence, dropped in at what then was Shibe Park early in June to talk things over with Connie Mack. He had made an astonishing physical comeback but was still a long way from the condition expected of a major league player. His doctors had okayed his return to baseball, with the proviso that he undergo daily medical checkups to guard against the recurrence of the disease.
'Looking back,' Mayo says, 'I realize I had no business trying to play that year. But Mr. Mack said he wanted me, and when I gave him the figure I'd expect for playing, he agreed to it. So I signed.'
On June 12, Mayo began working out, and four days later he was in the A's lineup. It would make a nice touch to be able to report that he became an overnight sensation, but he was something less than that. His vitality sapped by his illness, Smith limped through the remainder of the season, batting .212 in 73 games.
It came as no surprise when the A's traded Smith and pitcher Steve Gerkin to Portland after the season for a pitcher named Wendell Mosser. Mayo played that 1946 season for the Beavers, batting .249. When Jim Turner took over as manager the next year, Smith took a new lease on his baseball life.
'Jim told me to disregard that .249 year,' Mayo says. ' 'This year,' he says, 'you're going to be a .300 hitter.' ' Smith must have taken the prediction seriously, for he finished with .311. He also kept an observer's eye on Turner's managerial methods, learning all he could about working with pitchers.
The 1948 season stands out in Smith's memory, not so much because it was his last as a player in the high minors, but because of a harrowing experience involving his wife and daughter. You may recall that on May 30, 1948, a flood swept over a vast residential section of Portland, wreaking death and destruction. The Smith home was in the affected area.
'The Beavers played in Seattle that day,' Mayo says, 'and immediately after the double-header, we flew back to Portland. When we landed at the Portland airport, I learned that Louise and Judith Ann, who was then five, had been reported missing. You can imagine the feeling of helplessness that overwhelms you at such a time.
'I jumped into a cab and told the driver to take me as close as he could to the flood area. On the way there, just on a hunch, I stopped for a moment at the home of a friend to learn what I could about the situation. And there were Louise and the little girl, all battered and cut and bruised. They had clung to a rooftop for hours until they were rescued. We lost our house, our car and our clothes, except those we were wearing, but the only thing that mattered was that Louise and Judith Ann were saved.'
After the 1948 campaign, Turner recommended Smith to the Yankees as a manager. Mayo asked for and drew his release from Portland and promptly was named to manage the Yankee farm club at Amsterdam, N.Y., in the Class B Canadian-American League. Doubling as pilot and outfielder, he brought Amsterdam home in fifth place in 1949, fourth in 1950. Coincidentally, Amsterdam was the first managerial post held by Eddie Sawyer en route to the job of bossing the Phillies.
In 1951, the Yankees assigned Smith to Norfolk, Va., of the Piedmont League. There, Mayo became a bench manager. Norfolk won the pennant that year, and again in 1952, causing the Yankees to mark him for advancement.
Assigned to handle Birmingham, Smith steered the Barons into fourth place in the Southern Association in 1953, got them up to third last year. Your agent can report that he overheard whisperings in pre-World Series bull sessions in New York last September to the effect that the Yankee brass looked upon Mayo as a possible successor to Casey Stengel when Ol' Case finally decided to retire. One thing was certain. The Yanks were pleased with Mayo's work.
'Anyone who can keep a smart and brainy baseball man like George Weiss happy over the years, as Smith did, has to be a good manager,' Wid Matthews, of the Chicago front office, has remarked.
Mayo and his family live in a pleasant home in Lake Worth during the off-seasons. The house is less than a chip shot from a golf course, which pleases Mayo considerably. His only hobby is golf. He shoots in the high 80's for the most part, although longtime golfing companions aver that it wouldn't take him long to get into the low 70's if he worked at it.
Until his appointment as boss of the Phils, Smith worked during the winter months as a carpet salesman in the Lake Worth area, did so well that he could have made a full-time job of it. 'But after the Phillies' job came along,' he says, 'I had to give it up. There were so many requests for me to make public appearances that I had little time to devote to the carpet business.'
An amiable, articulate man, Smith makes a fine impression at sports affairs. He has a light, deprecating way of talking about himself, as witness a remark at the banquet of Philadelphia sports writers.
'I enjoyed my meal here tonight,' Mayo said. 'The last time I was in Philadelphia, in 1945, I 'had a cup of coffee.' In ten years I seem to have made at least a little improvement.' "
-Edgar Williams, Baseball Digest, April 1955
"Mayo played in only 73 games during his major league career. But his ability to handle men and make the right decisions helped him become the Phillies' manager this year.
He managed Amsterdam for two years before leaving the active player list in 1950. He led Norfolk to the Piedmont League pennant in '51 and '52, then managed Birmingham the next two years."
-1955 Topps No. 130
