1956 Yankee of the Past: Leo Durocher

WHY DUROCHER WAS FIRED

Insiders Say Leo Wanted To Stay On

"Leo Durocher quit a job he didn't have. No deal was proposed for 1956 by Owner Horace Stoneham of the Giants. The manager, who realized it was all over at the Polo Grounds, tossed in his hand.

'It was a face-saving solution all around,' explained a guy who is close to both of them.

Friends of Durocher insist he would come back to baseball if the price is right. He wanted to return to the Polo Grounds next year, they insisted.

Stoneham is a guy who is deeply loyal to his employees, but this time he played it cozily. He took Durocher to the Marciano-Moore fight but no mention was made of his manager's future. It was Stoheham's desire to force Durocher to make a move. They have never been close and a series of unrelated incidents precipitated Durocher's departure.

Stoneham doesn't like to bounce anyone who works for him. The reluctance of the Giant president to confer with his manager about 1956 before the last Saturday of the season should have convinced Durocher he was through. The result pleased Stoneham because no hostility appeared to mar the breakup. And Stoneham, a true baseball man, is fond of Bill Rigney who succeeds Durocher.

The parting appeared to be a cheerful one. No animosity was revealed at their last press conference. They praised one another, the club president and his unwanted manager. They publicly split, but Stoneham was relieved that he did not have to publicly can Durocher.

It is impossible to denounce Durocher as an incompetent manager. Few are his equal when he has a team that's up close to the leaders. But he becomes bored with a club that's drifting aimlessly. It is also wrong to blame him because the Giants, who won the World Series from the Indians in four straight games last year, folded up. Their ineffectuality didn't influence Stoneham.

Their first quarrel occurred over tickets. It was Stoneham's contention that Durocher's demand for a Brooklyn-Giant series was unreasonable. The situation was duplicated again before a World Series. Once more Stoneham insisted his manager's request was impossible. The manager didn't ask for passes but he wanted to buy more than were available.

Their first argument in the middle of the season infuriated Durocher. He raged out of the clubhouse when informed he couldn't have what he wanted. It is understandable because Durocher has been in baseball a long time and has a lot of acquaintances in many towns.

'I may not be here tomorrow,' Durocher said when a guy reminded him of an engagement for the next day.

It also irritated Durocher because he claims he wasn't consulted about player personnel.

The trip to Japan also caused concealed friction but there were no specific clashes.

'Durocher just didn't fit into Stoneham's idea of the Giant family,' is the way one guy described it.

There was an unfortunate incident which offended Stoneham. At a stag party in Hollywood, Danny Kaye, the comedian, gave an unflattering imitation of Stoneham. The act was reported in the Hollywood columns. It wasn't Durocher's idea.

In spring training there was more proof of Durocher's stubbornness. It has always been Stoneham's belief that Durocher functioned best when he coached third base. It surprised those who knew this to read that Herman Franks was stationed in the coach's box.

'I think Franks is as good a third base coach as Charlie Dressen,' Durocher told reporters when asked about this.

The sale of Sal Maglie to Cleveland was a business deal. Stoneham didn't think it was right when Durocher denounced Maglie as lazy shortly before the pitcher was sent to the American League club. It could have lowered Maglie's price but Stoneham was also concerned with the pitcher's dignity. It might be recollected that Stoneham didn't see Bobby Thomson hit the home run that won the 1951 playoff. He was on his way to the clubhouse to console Maglie who had been taken out of the game. It is the opinion of those associated with Stoneham that Maglie will return to the Giant organization when his playing career is over. Stoneham stands up for guys who put out for him.

The big mistake was bringing Durocher across the river from Brooklyn. Giant partisans loathe any Dodger manager. They expressed their dislike for Durocher by not buying tickets. Some of them refused to accept him although he won two pennants in the seven and half years he worked for Stoneham. They were wrong, as all prejudiced people are. He's a baseball man and this was the best job he could get.

'Leo's a bright fellow,' said one of his friends recently. 'He'll make a good living no matter what he does. But I'll bet he's not through with baseball.'

I agree with him."

-Jimmy Cannon, New York Post (Baseball Digest, November 1955)

1956 Yankee of the Past: Branch Rickey

THE MAHATMA BOWS OUT

Rickey's Career Ends On A Sad Note

"The sad part about the retirement of Branch Rickey as boss man of the Pittsburgh Pirates is that the Mahatma ended his brilliant baseball career on a note of failure. He wouldn't have failed on this occasion if he had had more time to get his long-range plans into operation. But time is a commodity that no one can sell to understandably impatient fans. He was estranging the customers and making the stockholders go for broke.

So Rickey has been carefully shunted away from the controls and into an 'advisory capacity'- whatever that is. The new general manager is a comparative stranger to so an exalted a post- Joe L. Brown, the son of Joe E. Brown of Hollywood fame. And he'll take over with certain advantages that were beyond the reach of the aging Mahatma.

Rickey was a visionary with a mind so imaginative and so keen that he could dream up the wildest dreams. And he explained those ideas- more or less- with thunderous flights of rhetoric. Make no mistake about him. Rickey ranks with William Jennings Bryan as one of the greatest orators this nation has produced.

The one Pirate official who supported the Mahatma to the end was John Galbreath, principal stockholder and president of the club. The other directors kept getting more and more disenchanted with Rickey's extravagances and his unfulfilled promises. They tell the story- maybe apocryphal- of the meeting at which Branch soared off into the wild, blue yonder with a glowing account of his stewardship. Bing Crosby, a director, arose and headed for the door.

'Where are you going?' someone asked.

'I'm going out to hire a string quartet,' airily answered Der Bingle, 'to accompany Branch in his song and dance act.'

To Rickey went the blame for ripping the Pirate team apart when he first took over in order to rebuild from the ground up. In the course of that operation he traded away Ralph Kiner, darling of the gallery gods. The fans never forgave him for it. Nor could they forgive him for bringing in a batch of beardless wonders who had only youth as a recommendation.

There were signs last season the Rickey program was beginning to bring results but the Mahatma had outworn his welcome too much for him to profit by it. He had run out of time. But the 37-year-old Brown will get a reprieve for the simple reason that the fans are willing to wait to see how clean the new broom sweeps.

One uncontrollable item that put the Mahatma over the barrel was the way the Army latched onto his teenagers. There even was a time when something like 400 Pirate fledglings were in Service.

'It's the biblical story of the widow's mite,' sonorously proclaimed Branch. 'They are taking from my poverty.'

But Dick Groat and the O'Brien twins returned to Pittsburgh last season, restoring some solidity and class to the team. Pirate pitching, oddly enough, was of 'championship caliber'- quoting the always quotable Rickey. Thus far, however, the sinking of almost three million dollars in Buccaneer 'futures' has not paid off.

Contrary to his widespread reputation as 'El Cheapo,' the Mahatma is an extravagant man. He built the St. Louis Cardinals from nothing by instituting the farm system, but he became too extravagant for canny Sam Breadon and left to join the Dodgers. There he not only brought the Negro into baseball but cornered the post-war talent market. Again he grew too expensive. Now Pittsburgh has discovered the same thing.

Failure was such a complete stranger to Branch, and his anxiety to conquer his latest challenge was so acute that he even sank $200,000 of his money into the Pirates. There were also stretches when he worked without salary. When it came to work he never spared himself, even at the age of 74. Coldly calculating though he was, he often had an air of unreality about him.

There was the time, for instance, when he was hopscotching all over the map by private plane as a time saver. The pilot informed Branch that the field ahead was closed in by fog. He couldn't land at his destination but would have to go elsewhere.

'By Judas Priest!' exploded Rickey. 'I must keep that appointment.' He thought a moment and spoke up brightly. 'Try to land anyway. I'll take the responsibility.' He'd take the responsibility? It might have been funny except that the intense Mahatma was so deadly serious.

Branch leaves on the unhappy note of failure, a dismal finale for one of the great baseball figures of this generation. But young Brown may be able to build on the foundations the Mahatma left behind. Then it won't be such a failure after all."

-Arthur Daley, The New York Times (Baseball Digest, November 1955)

THIS FIGURES

"A few years ago when Branch Rickey was trying to peddle Danny O'Connell to the Braves for $200,000 cash plus players, he attacked the problem in a rather unusual manner.

Rickey first offered the Braves $250,000 CASH for Pitcher Gene Conley and later offered $150,000 CASH for Outfielder Hank Aaron. Rickey realized at that particular moment the Pirates didn't have a quarter in the bank (figuratively speaking) but he had a motive.

He wanted to establish big prices in the minds of the Braves, who had tremendous receipts and profits in Milwaukee.

Rickey wanted the Braves to see that he was offering $250,000 for Conley, who had yet to prove he was a major league pitcher, and $150,000 for Aaron, who was then in Class A.

So- when the Braves got interested in O'Connell, Rickey had them talking figures. His own."

-Les Biederman, Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, January 1956)

BRANCH'S WRONG BOW

"Ralph Kiner says he was amused at Branch Rickey's statement in his life story, 'Only a few years ago I gave Ralph Kiner a Pittsburgh contract calling for $90,000 and I was glad to do it.'

Kiner's comment: 'The first two years Mr. Rickey was in Pittsburgh I was playing under a two-year contract for $90,000 signed with John Galbreath, not Branch Rickey. The first time I negotiated with Mr. Rickey (1953) he cut me 22 per cent and then traded me less than two months after the season started.' "

-Les Biederman, Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, January 1956)

"They were recalling a spring when Branch Rickey, then general manager of the Cardinals, was having some difficulty signing Marty Marion to a contract.

'You go along with me,' said Rickey, 'and I'll take care of you.'

'You just give me what I want and I'll take care of myself,' replied Marion."

-John C. Hoffman, Chicago Sun-Times (Baseball Digest, May 1956)

HE PLAYED WRITE FIELD

"Among his other accomplishments, Branch Rickey also contributed to the University of Michigan's dominance of Western Conference baseball over the years. He recalls how he started as a baseball boss- at Michigan in 1910.

'I was in law school in Michigan. A baseball coach was being sought. So for about seven weeks I wrote a couple letters a day to Phil Bartelme (then athletic director) suggesting myself.

'One day he called me in and picked up a stack of envelopes, tied in a bundle. 'That's enough of this,' he told me. 'You stop writing letters and start coaching.' ' "

-Harry Stapler, Detroit News (Baseball Digest, August 1956)

1956 Yankee of the Past: Clark Griffith

AMONG GRIFF'S SOUVENIRS

Career Highlights Told By Desk Mementos

"Like most of us, the late Clark Griffith was a 'string-saver' who could never bear to part with the accumulation of trivia which came across his desk for more than 40 years.

You, of course, have seen a small boy empty his pockets. It was in the nature of such pocket-emptying that Calvin Griffith, the foster-son and new president of the Washington Senators, straightened his beloved master's desk recently.

Calvin was merely rummaging for some current contracts and papers pertaining to the present operation. He didn't touch a thing- in the sense that everything was put back as before and looked exactly like the uneventful evening of Sept. 27 when Clark Griffith unknowingly left his office for the last time. Exactly a month later he died, just three weeks before his 86th birthday.

Griff, of course, was not a somber man. He had what the French love to call 'joie de vivre'- joy of living. For instance, he was all set to pull a trick on one of his coaches, Joe Fitzgerald, who doubled as the old gentleman's chauffer when Griff went to spring training. Griff had a loaded golf ball all set for Fitz.

There was another golf ball in his desk which was stamped: 'Mr. Vice President.' It seems that the last time Griff attended the Washington Post and Times Herald National Celebrities tournament, he got out to the first tee without a golf ball. Vice President Nixon hastily obliged and Griff kept the ball for a souvenir after, of course, his exhibition drive had been retrieved.

There was a silver bullet presented by Griff's favorite cowboy character, The Lone Ranger, on the occasion of the old gentleman's last birthday last year.

There was a miniature furniture suite which had been hand-carved by a Negro employee of the ball park and presented to Griff as a birthday present.

There was a picture (in color, yet) from the 'special edition' of the New York Sunday American of May 5, 1907, showing 'The New York Yankees of the American League which will be led by Manager Clark Griffith.' In the picture with Griff were such familiar names as Willie Keeler, Hal Chase and Kid Elberfeld.

There was a small chunk of copper which Griff kept for 35 years when he abandoned his dream of ranching in Montana and sold his holdings to buy the Washington ball club in 1920. The copper came from Griff's ranch.

There were two tiny baseball bats, made from Griffs' house in Norman, Ill., which was torn down. There were religious tracts, many religious medals, honorary cards to various organizations, dozens of clippings, faded snapshots and a social security card.

There was the contract Griff on May 20, 1915, when he agreed to manage the Washington club for three years at $10,000 a year, the money to be paid in 14 semi-monthly installments at $714.28 per payment.

There was a schedule of the 1897 season when Griff pitched for the Chicago White Stockings and had an 18-18 record- the first time in four years he had failed to win better than 20 games. (He won 25 the next season, however.)

In Griff's neat handwriting were various comments on the games. There was one, in particular, which reflected the bantam's (Griff was five-foot-six-and-one-half and weighed 156 pounds) fighting spirit. He was thrown out of a game with Louisville and protested so vigorously that the game was forfeited,a common occurrence in those days. Griff's own comment was: 'Game forfeited because of umpire's failure.'

There were letters dating back to 1880 when Nicholas Young attempted to get Washington into the National League. There were autographed baseballs and, away down deep in the desk, a carefully preserved picture of Griff's first championship team of 1924.

Like a small boy, Griff's 'pockets' were bottomless."

-Bob Addie, Washington Post (Baseball Digest, January 1956)

A FINAL ECHO OF THE 1903 WAR

Giants' Move To Stadium Would Be Final "Surrender"

"The other day, after the New York Football Giants gave a farewell salute to the Polo Grounds, their home for 30 years, and announced they would move into Yankee Stadium, there was an admission by Owner Horace Stoneham that the baseball Giants were similarly minded.

Stoneham said he had been discussing, with Yankee Owner Dan Topping, the advantages of quitting the Polo Grounds, perhaps before his lease expires in 1962. Among the benefits would be a cheaper rental, what with the two teams sharing the maintenance of one park.

When that happens, as is now deemed probable, it will be the capstone to another of the monuments to the memory of the late Clark Griffith. The pity is that he could not have lived to see the baseball war he spearheaded in 1903 concluded in complete triumph for the infant American League over the hated and haughty Giants of that era.

It was the Giants who strived with every weapon, including professional goons, to keep the newly formed American League out of New York after the turn of the century and it was young Griffith who was storming the National League stronghold. For the A.L.'s first two seasons, 1901-2, there was no attempt to put a team in New York because the Giants were considered impregnable.

In fact, the Giants became even more strongly entrenched in 1902 because in July of that season the famed John McGraw jumped the Baltimore Orioles and joined the Giants as manager. The effect was two-fold. It not only brought the Giants another famous name but it was a blow to American League prestige, this inability to hold one of its managers in line. The Orioles' star battery of Iron Man McGinnity and Roger Bresnahan also jumped to the Giants with McGraw.

However, after the 1902 season, American League President Ban Johnson asked Griffith to make the attempt to plant a franchise in New York. Griffith, who helped found the American League two years before, was even then a considerable figure in the game. He had been an ace pitcher with the old Chicago Colts in the National League and in his first year in the American won a pennant with the White Sox as pitcher-manager.

The National League wasn't even recognizing the American as a major circuit. It wouldn't consent to a World Series in either 1901 or 1902 between its pennant-winner, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the White Sox and Athletics, who won the A.L. pennants. Griffith's task was doubly difficult because there was only one suitable park in New York, the Polo Grounds.

When Griffith announced that the American League would build a park at 166th and Broadway, John Brush, owner of the Giants, laughed broadly. Firstly, the subway stopped ten blocks short of that sight. Next, the Giants were certain Griffith could not get the permission of city authorities to cut through several streets, necessary for the construction. But Ban Johnson and Griffith had planned it smartly.

As a backer for the new team in New York, they had Frank Farrell, a big wheel in Tammany Hall politics. Farrell disposed of the street problem in City Hall. The blasting crews that removed the rock on the hilly park site looked suspiciously like City Hall employees. Griffith himself superintended the construction, and then learned that it was a historic site that he had picked for his park.

He watched workmen unearth ancient bullets, gun stocks, grapeshot, canister and bayonets and then discovered that the place had once been a battleground for George Washington's troops. Finally, a park seating 12,000 was erected, the team was called the Highlanders, and Griffith prepared to take the new American League entry to Atlanta for spring training.

But, alas, there were other problems. No New York newspaper would cover the spring training activities of Griffith's team. They jeered it and said Griffith was on a fool's mission in his attempt to invade the Giants' territory. In desperation, Griffith turned to an old friend, Jim Price, sports editor of the New York Press. The Press was not a fashionable newspaper; in fact it was second rate, but Griffith convinced Price the paper had nothing to lose by covering the Highlanders.

Griffith had to promise to pay the expense and toll charges of the Press baseball writer. He picked his own man, Jim Bagley, whom he remembered as a one-time brilliant writer but was then an unemployed Bowery character. He dressed Bagley in new clothes, took him to Atlanta and was rewarded. Bagley's stories on the Highlanders were so entertaining that the other Manhattan papers rushed reporters to their camp before training ended.

When the season opened, Griffith noted that his team was being heckled by the same gang of thugs sitting in the same seats every day. Tammany Man Farrell rounded up some henchmen of his own, gave John Brush's bums the bum's rush and got the confession that they were in the hire of Owner Brush of the Giants. The Highlanders ended the season in fourth place, but American League baseball had come to New York to stay. At the end of the season, the first World Series was played. Mr. Griffith would have liked to have lived to see the Giants respectfully requesting permission to play in the American League park."

-Shirley Povich, Washington Post (Baseball Digest, May 1956)

1956 Yankee of the Past: Duffy Lewis

A STRIKE DUFFY LEWIS HAD TO TAKE

"Duffy Lewis, the traveling secretary of the Milwaukee Braves, was a gifted outfielder of the Boston Red Sox team that won the World Series from the Phils in 1915 and because he did an outstanding job in that Series, he was booked on a vaudeville tour.

'I lived near San Francisco in those days and Gavvy Cravath, the star of the Phils, lived in Los Angeles,' Lewis related recently. 'There was great rivalry between these cities in those days and I figured when I played in a Los Angeles theater I'd be in for a little trouble.

'I told a few stories, then I asked if the people had any questions. One fellow got up and asked about the two catches I made on Cravath in the series that was played in Boston. I said they were long balls and mentioned that Cravath was a great hitter.

' 'You probably wouldn't have caught those two balls if the games had been played in Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, would you?' the fan asked.

' 'No, I don't think I would,' I told him. 'They probably would have been home runs.'

' 'I see,' the man replied. 'In other words, if Cravath had hit them in Philadelphia instead of Boston, he would have been up on that stage right now instead of you!' ' "

-Les Biederman, Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, August 1956)