POUNDING A POINT HOME
"When Lefty O'Doul was with the New York Giants in 1934, his last year in the majors, he was getting portly and his batting eye was getting dim. A heckler in Pittsburgh informed him of these facts early in the season.
'When does the balloon go up, Lefty?' the fan wanted to know. This is baseballese for fat ball players.
O'Doul walked to the stands and picked out the fan. He pointed his bat at him.
'Would you like to meet me after the game?' Lefty inquired.
The fan stared back gravely, for he had several rows of seats between them.
'I'll fight you any time, Lefty,' he answered, 'only you've got to get your weight down to where it equals your batting average.'
'You win,' O'Doul grinned. 'I can't top that one.' "
-Frank Gibbons, Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, June 1955)
END OF HECKLE
"Lefty O'Doul, the new man on the Oakland beat, was trudging out of the ball park one night recently after blowing the duke to Los Angeles. He had maneuvered pitchers and pinch hitters in a brainy, but abortive attempt to clip the wings of the Angels. A fan ankled up to him and hissed, 'O'Doul, you are a bum. You managed tonight as though it was the first game of baseball you'd ever seen!'
O'Doul grimaced, then looked down upon his heckler.
'Pal,' said Lefty. 'How would you have played it? What moves would you have made that I didn't?'
'Well,' and the fan grinned sheepishly, 'I guess I'd have done the same things you did.'
'Oh?' said O'Doul. 'Then you can't be too smart. You'd have lost just like I did. By the way, your name isn't Marblehead, too, is it?' "
-Bob Stevens, San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, August 1955)
SHAMELESS STRIKEOUTS
Players' Nonchalance At Fanning Amazes O'Doul
"The other night Lefty O'Doul was decrying the number of strikeouts. Pitchers were fanning half a dozen batters per game all week and, in some games, the greater part of a baker's dozen.
'What bothers me is that the man at bat feels no sense of failure when he strikes out,' O'Doul put it. 'He simply tosses his bat away and picks up his glove. I don't want to burden young players with a sense of guilt. But they should recognize that striking out is the worst thing they can do.'
O'Doul, who is now managing the Oakland Oaks, himself didn't strike out every day of the week in his active career. He topped the National League twice in batsmanship with .398 and .368, so it follows he was no soft touch for a 'k,' which is the official scorer's symbol for going down swinging.
'It used to be a disgrace to strike out when I broke in,' O'Doul recalls from more than 30 years ago. 'You'd go back to the dugout and brood over it. Nowadays, a strikeout is considered routine. What slays me is the calm way they accept strikeouts.'
O'Doul was of a generation that was taught to get a piece of the ball, even if it meant following an outside curve into the dirt. The premium was on meeting the horsehide at all costs.
'The Pacific Coast League is about the same as the majors in this respect,' O'Doul says. 'Everybody is swinging for the fences- even the .205 hitters whose ambition shouldn't be to knock the ball out of the park. The public craves a long ball. So the order of the day is to take a toehold and swing from the grass roots.'
A contolled swing designed for a single behind the runner is more useful than an occasional home run, O'Doul argues, but it's awfully difficult to sell the public and the batting order on this modest virtue.
O'Doul should know. He deliberately manned his Oaks with short fly lofters into Oakland's right field bleachers. They've won a few games for his side, but mostly they strike out. The park is tailor-made for right field pullers, but still, the Oaks are going nowhere.
For the life of him, O'Doul cannot understand why so many batsmen go down swinging.
'Not to brag, but when I was in the American and National, I didn't strike out once in two weeks and neither did the other good hitters,' O'Doul offers. 'Long before that in Butchertown, a guy who struck out in the Native Sons' League felt bad about it. Today, they laugh it off.'
It began with Babe Ruth and the lively ball. The Bambino used to miss the third strike in the grand manner. Lesser batsmen tried to emulate him to no avail. The whole pattern of modern baseball was distorted by Ruth's genius. The hangover didn't do the game any good.
'Look at the figures,' O'Doul makes recourse to the book. 'Back in 1925 and 1927 Joe Sewell of Cleveland struck out only four times in a full schedule of 150 games. In the National, Charlie Hollocher of the Cubs (1922) whiffed five times. These men were regulars, and the pitching was tough.'
More recently, Vince DiMaggio of the Boston Braves (1938) established an ignoble record of 134 strikeouts. So V. DiMaggio wasn't representative? You'll accept Larry Doby of Cleveland as a pretty fair hitter. He struck out 121 times in 1953, for the next worse.
This is a far cry from the days when Sewell, Hollocher and Luke Appling endured a full season without going down on strikes more than half a dozen times. They contrived to nick a piece of the pitch.
Team-wise, the fewest strikeouts were achieved by Cincinnati in 1921 (308) and by the Philadelphia Athletics in 1927 (326). The Athletics were loaded with sluggers then of the Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons school.
Contrast these figures with the modern worst. That is, 767 'k's' suffered by the Chicago Cubs, season of 1950.
O'Doul is unable to understand why Coast Leaguers strike out so often.
'What puzzles me is how they miss the ball by six inches,' O'Doul grouses. 'They lunge at the pitch, hoping to knock it over the wall. Why can't they lower their sights and go for a single? The same in the majors. I've been up there. The poor choice isn't any different.'
The bats of O'Doul's primitive experience with the New York Yankees, soon after they abandoned the Highlander label, were thick and short.
'I broke in with a 38-ounce bat and reduced the weight to 32 ounces in order to bring it around against fast ball throwing,' says O'Doul.
'You should have seen the stick swung by Joe Jackson. It had a thick handle. Joe got handle hits close to his wrists that would break the 'necks' of current bats. In his day, the wood was better and the neck not so thin.
'These days, the bat is a buggy whip. You notice more bats are broken near the wrists. The pitching isn't any harder and the swinging isn't any more vigorous. It's easier to hit a fast ball than follow a curve.'
O'Doul's thought is that the old boys were better batsmen. They didn't strike out. A 'k' was a reflection on the family. Like failing to pay off a Morris Plan obligation. They'd rather be caught dead than miss a third strike.
Like Paul Waner. The number of times Waner missed a third strike in a month in the Pacific Coast and National Leagues, you could count on your figures."
-Will Connolly, San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, September 1955)
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