Here's 'Inside' On Amazing Bums' Rush
"Behind the amazing 'it-could-only-happen-in-Brooklyn' one-act managerial drama were the clash of two incompatible personalities, Walter O'Malley and Chuck Dressen, and the shadowy influence of Branch Rickey, Burt Shotton, Leo Durocher and Pee Wee Reese.
O'Malley, Dodgers' president, could have handled Dressen's peeve easily had he cared to retain Charlie. Instead, he seized almost gratefully on the 'long-contract or else' letter written by Mrs. Dressen. This missive put Chuck in the position of dictating to the front office- running the business- and O'Malley readily made it a case of 'or-else.'
The letter was the welcome peg on which to hang accumulated irritation of the front office by Dressen. In brief, Charlie talked too much about Charlie for O'Malley's taste.
The Dodgers' president is suave and tactful in his dealings and as a successful advertising executive, he has a keen sense of public presentation of a product. He has squirmed over the poor press baseball as a whole received in the Happy Chandler, player labor relations, and recent legal action episodes, largely because baseball did not care to make a clear and forceful statement of its own case.
Dressen made him writhe.
It began soon after Chuck took over in 1951 when he repeatedly criticized his predecessor, Shotton. It built up with such incidents as the castigation of Erv Palica, the magazine article that the Dodgers would not blow it again, the long-continued insistence that Chuck had wrong information from his coaches in pitching Ralph Branca to Bobby Thomson in the 1951 playoff defeat by the Giants. There was the 'Giants Is Dead' last September, which was perhaps not distasteful except as a part of the three-year pattern.
In addition, Dressen believed he was vitally important to the team, but the front office did not think so. O'Malley and associates feel the Dodgers are good enough to win under any competent manager. What they desperately need is a win over the Yankees. Otherwise, they are the best in a league by far, and yet in a desperate struggle to break even financially each year. Dressen's failure to appreciate the urgency of the World Series, his managing as if he were playing the Reds in June, burned the front office but was not the compelling reason for his ouster.
Chuck put himself on the spot, and while he has his pride, he might also have had his job if he requested, instead of demanded, a long contract.
The background on O'Malley-Dressen relations is fascinating. The president fired Shotton, after taking over the club from Rickey in bitter fighting late in 1950, on two admitted counts. One was the need for a more colorful figure than the 'old man' who would not wear a monkey suit. The other was the merciless crusade against Shotton by New York's largest newspaper. A third, not admitted, was the fact Shotton was Rickey's man.
O'Malley first indicated he made have made a mistake on Dressen about June 1951, when Chuck criticized Shotton in the western league cities. The president sent Fresco Thompson, veep, to interview several writers with the club, and to get Chuck's version first hand.
After the 1951 season, when Dressen blew to the Giants, as Shotton had to the Phils the year before, O'Malley was in a cul-de-sac. He did not want, as a baseball newcomer, to become known as a manager-a-year executive.
He got out gracefully by stating he had made mistake in firing Shotton, and that he would not make a similar mistake by firing Dressen. His point was that the organization should share the blame with the manager. Because of O'Malley's experience with Shotton, Dressen got a free ride which he held for two winning years.
All the while, through shifts from Durocher to Shotton to Durocher to Shotton to Dressen as manager, there was a little balance wheel on the Dodgers called Pee Wee Reese.
Through Durocher's screaming technique, through Shotton's brusqueness, through the 'I Am' regime of Dressen, Reese was the calming influence on a group of athletes which included highly temperamental members.
Whether naturally or by design, Reese gradually eased himself out of the cliques of MacPhail's time and took stature with the entire squad as the sort of senior statesman, or cracker-barrel philosopher of the clubhouse.
After any game, you would find players coming to Pee Wee with their squawks, or asking his advice, while he puffed on his pipe and made considered judgments. Jackie Robinson, most tempestuous of the Dodgers, will rave about Reese as 'a real captain, on the field, in the clubhouse, everywhere.'
Pee Wee is Leo Durocher's boy. It was The Lip who made Reese captain, pushed him into assuming responsibility, and taught him the shortstop trade, as Brooklyn manager under MacPhail. Reese to this day respects no one in baseball more than Durocher."
-Joe King, condensed from the San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, January 1954)
HE ASKED FOR IT!'
"Charlie Dressen, speaking at a dinner in Fresno, Cal., this spring, concluded his talk with a question-and-answer, audience-participation period. Everything went fine until one diner stood up and asked:
'Charlie, this season when you're thinking about taking a pitcher out- are you going to ask your wife?'
It took a corporal's guard to keep Dressen's coat on his back and keep him off the diner's."
-Newark News (Baseball Digest, May 1954)
"Charlie Dressen, speaking at a dinner in Fresno, Cal., this spring, concluded his talk with a question-and-answer, audience-participation period. Everything went fine until one diner stood up and asked:
'Charlie, this season when you're thinking about taking a pitcher out- are you going to ask your wife?'
It took a corporal's guard to keep Dressen's coat on his back and keep him off the diner's."
-Newark News (Baseball Digest, May 1954)
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