THEY CALLED HIM A BUSHER
How Quickly Can You Recognize This Man?
"They called him a 'busher' when he was announced as manager of a major league team.
He was almost 40. His baseball background was minor league. Half his life had been spent on dusty, clay-ribbed diamonds down in the sticks.
When he wasn't bouncing in buses, he was riding a day coach. He ate at greasy-spoon cafes in the tank towns. A night to remember was when a fan invited him and other players to a home-cooked meal.
He was a bush league player who kept waiting for the call to be brought up to the big time for the chance that seemed to come to everyone else but him.
He was recognized as just a good busher, one of thousands who had what it took for the sticks but not enough of it for the majors where Pullmans replaced buses, where steaks substituted for stew, where paychecks contained four digits and sometimes five instead of only two or three.
But he stuck it out as a cocky, determined little guy who was Irish in more ways than just his name. The big leagues finally noticed him. They made him a manager down on the farm.
He bounced around still more. He played for a while and managed at the same time. Then he stopped playing and just managed. Years went by and he still was minor league.
They weren't looking for his type in the majors. They wanted the boys with the big names and the fancy big league backgrounds for their big-time managers to go along with all the other ones with years of major league experience.
Finally he was given his chance. The man he succeeded had been one of the big-name managers with a long career, both as a player and a pilot.
His team had finished in the second division. The owners wanted a better ending for the new year. So they dipped down and picked up a man who never had played a major league game in his life.
His name rang no responsive chord when he was unveiled in the big time. Newspapers had to pick up the threads of his background and weave them into a story to let the fans know who he was.
It hadn't been necessary with the man who preceded him. Everybody knew of him, but not this new manager. He wasn't a complete unknown. But he was the next thing to it.
When he was brought in, he was told by his owners that he was to put some spark and hustle into a team that had shown flashes of greatness the previous year but had sagged when it counted.
He was hired under a 'get tough' policy. He put in new rules during spring training. He cracked down on some of the playboys. He rode herd on a couple of players who were front office favorites but hadn't produced.
He had jibes poked at him from training-camp dugouts when he popped out to argue with umpires. 'What's YOUR name,' they would holler. 'How are things down in the sticks?'
Some of the fans looked over their noses at him when the team had a poor exhibition season record and then lost the first game of the regular season.
'That's what we get for hiring a guy with no big league experience,' they grumbled. 'He's strictly bush ...'
But the little Irishman proved them wrong. He stuck around and proved that a 'busher' could be big league even though he was nearly forty when he hit the big time.
In fact, Joe McCarthy, who won nine championships and seven World Series, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer."
-Lyall Smith, Detroit Free Press (Baseball Digest, August 1957)
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