How One Strike To Sisler Started Vance To Hall Of Fame
"It is legendary that the Dodgers bought Dazzy Vance, the first Brooklyn star to make the Hall of Fame, only because they had to take the Dazzler in order to buy Hank DeBerry, his catcher.
True or false, it is true that Larry Sutton, a Newark printer, and Charlie Ebbets, chief scout, preferred a New Orleans pitcher named Tom Phillips to Vance.
He bought Vance only after he learned Phillips was actually owned by Cleveland. DeBerry was also in the deal and Dazzy suspected the Dodgers never really wanted him.
'We were playing the Browns in Mobile en route home from spring training and I was pitching,' said Vance.
'With two strikes on the immortal George Sisler, I whipped over a curve and that great batter looked at it. Robbie (Manager Wilbert Robinson) also leaped out of the dugout shouting, 'What a curve! How that baby broke! Why didn't somebody tell me he could throw a curve?'
'Now here I had been bearing down in spring training every day, breaking off the best curves of my life, for my arm felt good, and the manager didn't know I threw a curve until we were on the way home. I always tell Sisler he put me in the big leagues.'
The Vance curve is called by some old-timers the best baseball ever saw. For his first seven years, Dazzy led the National League in strikeouts, whiffing a record 262 in 1924.
It is also legendary that Vance was nicknamed Dazzy because he dazzled the batters. Far from the truth. When he was very young, he had a cowboy friend who shouted: 'Ain't it a daisy? almost every time he saw anything. The cowboy pronounced daisy like dazzy. Young Vance imitated him, and hence the nickname.
Considering that only two years before his Brooklyn debut he soaked his elbow in an ice bucket between innings to ease the pain, the Vance cure was little short of a miracle. In 14 major league seasons, 11 of them with the Dodgers, the great Dazzy won 197 games and lost 140, reaching his peak in 1924 when he won 28 and lost six. He struck out 2,045 batters.
'That 2,000th strikeout was a real thrill,' said Daz. 'I'll never forget it. It was Wally Berger on a high fast ball in 1934. When I was 43 years old.'
Although he says he took it easy with the weak hitters, Dazzy probably believed in his heyday he could strike out a batter any time he liked.
On the day the 1925 season opened in Boston, he met Mickey O'Neill, a talkative Boston catcher, under the stands at Braves Field.
'You struck out 262 last year, but you didn't fan Old Mike once,' said O'Neill when they met.
'I didn't,' exclaimed Dazzy. 'Well, I'll take of that today.'
'So I struck him out the first two times up,' said Vance in reminiscing. 'Mickey was like a lot of hitters who pop off about hitting certain pitchers. They don't realize the pitcher is paying no attention to them.'
One day in Brooklyn, Vance met Fred Lane, a writer, just before a game. Mr. Lane was interviewing Rogers Hornsby.
'Raj tells me he has never struck out three times in a game,' Lane told Vance.
'Don't write your story until after today's game,' Vance advised. He struck out Hornsby the first three times up.
Vance, one of the great pitchers of all time, didn't make the majors until he was 31 years of age. True, the records say he came to Brooklyn when he was 29, but ol' Daz admits he shaved off two years in the days when he looked like he would never make it.
For all his years (11) in the minors, Vance had only three good seasons and each time he was sold to the majors. Twice he suffered gym accidents and beat himself even before he threw a ball. The third time he almost refused to go.
In 1914, at the age of 23, he won 26 games, 17 for Class D Hastings and nine for Class A St. Joseph, and struck out 302 batters. Pittsburgh bought him, but that fall he hurt his elbow wrestling.
He walked five men in three innings for the Pirates and was on the next train back to St. Joe. A 17-15 record in the Western League earned him a new trial with the Yankees.
That fall he twisted his elbow throwing a right hook at an opponent in a boxing bout. Farmed out to Columbus, Toledo, Memphis and Rochester for the next three years, the man who was later called the strikeout king of the majors had a difficult time tossing the ball as far as the plate.
The Yankees sent him to specialists around the country, including the famed 'Bonesetter' Reese. Only his own family physician, a country doctor, gave him any hope.
'He told me my arm would come back in five years if I didn't hurt it again,' said Daz. 'Since this was my only hope, I really protected that old wing. Finally, the Yankees cut ties to me in 1918 and I wound up in Sacramento in 1919.
'For three years I had been staying on the payroll by extending my arm and pitching a good game every time they were ready to let me go.'
Things were a little better and the arm a little stronger in 1920, which saw Vance post a 16-17 record at Memphis and New Orleans. Then, just as the doctor predicted, his arm came back after five years and in 1921 he won 21 and lost 11 for New Orleans.
'Now the Dodgers were buying me, but I didn't want to go to Brooklyn or any other place in the big leagues,' said Vance. 'I begged the New Orleans club to sell me to the Pacific because I suspected it was nothing more than a cover-up deal to prevent my being drafted.
'They insisted Brooklyn really wanted me, but they couldn't convince me. If it wasn't for an unexpected break toward the end of spring training, when Robbie leaped out of the dugout shouting, 'What a curve,' I am sure I would have sent back to New Orleans.' "
-Michael Gaven, New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, April 1955)
No comments:
Post a Comment