1956 Yankee of the Past: Lefty O'Doul

FATE TURNS BACK ON O'DOUL, ONCE TOP MINOR PILOT

"So you're having troubles? Consider for a moment the plight of Frank Joseph O'Doul, the former ex-Mayor of Powell Street, San Francisco, U.S.A.

Here's a guy with a full mess kit full of sour K-rations.

Heading into August he was eighth, a poor eighth, in the Pacific Coast League. There are only eight clubs in the Pacific Coast League. How low can you get?

Well, F. Joseph is there, along with his Vancouver club, and it was only a comparatively few years ago that he was the highest paid, highest rolling, highest reaching minor league manager in baseball. During the campaigns of 1946-47-48 he won a pennant, tied for a pennant, and finished third.

The major leagues beckoned. But F. Lefty Joseph, the former big league batting champion, was going good, as they say in the confines of the clubhouse. He turned a high salaried and contented back upon the East, where the money was, but the security wasn't, and marched confidently towards what he thought would be an everlasting alliance with the old home town.

How wrong can you be? 

In 1949 he finished seventh, unfortunate victim of maneuverings in the front office. In 1950 much money was spent to recoup,  and the club missed fourth place by a single game.

The year 1951 was shattering to the man who three years before had been the most desired manager in the minors. He finished eighth with a club even the cat wouldn't drag in. That winter he was fired.

Then he went, on a sort of jilted romantic rebound, to San Diego in 1952. There he fashioned a fifth-place finish, a sixth in 1953, and a pennant, with a playoff with Hollywood, in 1954. It was the first full, clean, non-split season flag the San Diego baseball club had ever won.

He walked away from it last year, went to Oakland, wound up seventh and now he's with Vancouver- floundering.

Too bad, too, because the Pacific Coast League has never had a better manager, or a better man. The ball just bounced wrong too many times."

-Bob Stevens, San Francisco Chronicle (Baseball Digest, September 1956)