JOB FOR TED WILLIAMS
"Joe Medwick was asking it. 'Did you ever hear the story of the guy who almost lost his job in baseball because he couldn't spit?'
We hadn't and the former St. Louis Cardinals star filled us in.
'It was Charlie Dressen,' he said, 'and it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Dressen coached for Leo Durocher at Brooklyn. Leo's signals at the time were built on a spit. One spit was one thing, two spits were something else, to the right was still something else.
'The only trouble was that Dressen literally couldn't spit. He tried everything except tobacco which he didn't like. Chewed gum, chewed grass, still couldn't do it. They finally had to substitute whistles and Charlie was so good at whistling that he's been using it ever since. But the spit signal was a total flop.' "
-Robert L. Burnes, St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Baseball Digest, November 1956)
When He Bunts, Says Chuck Dressen:
MANTLE WASTES TALENT!
"Chuck Dressen, pepper-pot manager of the Washington Senators, peered out of the dugout at a cluster of newsmen walking his way.
He grabbed a towel from the bench and waved it. 'I give up,' he called. 'You guys are ganging up on me.'
When everyone was settled, Dressen began parrying questions. 'Let's just talk about my team, fellows,' he begged. 'No controversies. You've got me in enough of them already.'
Trouble and Dressen have been running mates for years. That's because the 58-year-old little dynamo is one of baseball's more talkative citizens ... sort of the Frank Lane of the American League.
'What about your old club, the Dodgers?' somebody asked. 'Don't you think they're over the hill?'
'My Senators are the youngest team in the league,' he answered. 'I say we will more games this year than we did in 1956.'
'That's no headline,' somebody said in petulant style. 'You're slipping, Chuck.'
From the other side came this one. 'Everybody's picking you to finish in the basement. Don't you think you're better than Kansas City and Baltimore?'
'I got my ideas about that,' he answered as he started to rise to the baited hook. 'But we'll just wait and see what happens as the season goes along.'
The cat-and-mouse contest went on. A pointed question would be tossed. Dressen would catch it, toss it around, and then answer it.
'You can't get me riled up today,' he grinned after maybe a half hour. 'I decided this year nobody was going to get me popping off so guys on the other teams would get sore at me. I got enough trouble of my own right here without going looking for more of them.'
He got up then, stretched to his full five feet, five inches, and started to leave the dugout for the practice field.
'Okay, Chuck, you win,' yelled Joe Reichler of the Associated Press. 'From now on we'll have to ask you the silly jobs like the one if you think Mickey Mantle will beat Babe Ruth's home run record this year.'
Dressen had taken three steps toward the field when he heard that one. Suddenly he turned and came back to the top step of the dugout.
'He never will break it,' he snapped. 'Unless he stops that crazy stuff of showing off his bunting. What's he trying to prove? How many times have you seen him lay one down even when he has two strikes on him. That's nothing but showboat stuff ...
'Mantle wastes a lot of his talent,' Dressen went on. 'Take the Babe. Now there was a slugger. Why? Because he kept acting like a slugger.
'Sure, there's a place in baseball for a slugger to bunt. But not when he's up there with nobody on base. Yet that's when Mickey likes to lay one down. It's crazy. If he'd swung at the ball, he could knock it out of the park.
'Even if he only got a single, he has the speed to try for an extra base. But not Mickey.
'Mark my words,' Dressen stated as he waved a finger at the bench. 'If he keeps up that stuff, it's going to backfire on him and the Yankees one of these days.
'Guy with his eye, his speed and his power trying to show off by dropping a bunt when it doesn't mean anything. And then everybody keeps wondering if he will ever break the Babe's home run record. It's just stupid on his part.'
He left then and jogged out onto the field. Back in the dugout the reporters grinned at each other as they jotted notes in their books.
'That's our boy,' said Harry Paxton of the Saturday Evening Post. 'And he says he won't get drawn into any controversies this year.' "
-Lyall Smith, Detroit Free Press (Baseball Digest, June 1957)
DRESSEN WOULD TALK FOR THEM
"During spring training, Joe Cambria, a reformed laundryman who served as Washington's chief scout for years, reported to Charlie Dressen at Orlando that he had discovered a Cuban pitcher who could throw hard but could speak no English.
'Sign him!' ordered Dressen. 'I know plenty of guys who can speak perfect English but can't get their grandmothers out.' "
-H.G. Salsinger, the Detroit News (Baseball Digest, October 1957)
