Sunday, August 17, 2025

1959 Yankee Farmhand of the Past: Mayo Smith

ADVERSITY MOLDED MAYO SMITH AS A PILOT
Illness, Losing Streak Aid Him
"Edward Mayo Smith, new manager of the Cincinnati Redlegs, believes a man learns more managing in adversity than when he is in the throes of success.
Smith, a rugged, balding man of 43, learned this through the harshest of experiences. What he went through was a living hell. He survived baseball fire and brimstone.
After six years of minor league managerial apprenticeship, in his twenty-third consecutive season of professional baseball, Mayo, then 40 years of age, was blessed suddenly with the opportunity to lead a big league team. The Phils' general manager, Roy Hamey, had plucked him out of the New York Yankees' farm system to manage the Philadelphia National League club.
This was in 1955. Mayo, who had played only a year in the majors himself, was taking over a club whose nucleus consisted principally of the same ball players who, as Whiz Kids five years earlier, had captured the pennant. They had gone through two managers since 1950, however, while finishing fifth, third and fourth in the post-pennant years.
Mayo enjoyed a pleasant spring period while getting acquainted with his major league charges, and had a so-so first week as the championship season began. Suddenly, everything went wrong. 'We started to lose and I just couldn't stop the slide,' Smith related to a visitor to his quarters during the World Series.
'We lost and lost and lost,' Mayo continued. 'We made terrible mistakes. Mental errors as well as physical errors. In seven of the 13 games we dropped, we led in the eighth or ninth innings. Then something would go wrong. Believe me it was an awful thing to live through.'
'What did you do about, Mayo?' the visitor asked.
'After every loss I'd go into the clubhouse ready to blow my top. Coming off the field, I'd tell myself I'm really going to let these guys have it. Then I'd look at at the clubhouse scene and I'd see my players were suffering as much as I was. They'd sit there in front of their lockers staring down or into space. Nobody was having any fun.
'I'd ask myself then, Mayo, if you blow your top now, with these men feeling this bad, what good could you possibly do?'
'Each time I'd have to admit it would do no good at all. I'd bite my tongue. The next day we would go over our mistakes of the day before calmly and hope to do better.'
Somehow Mayo's Phils contrived to find new ways to blow games- 13 of them in succession.
'Did you sleep well in that time, Mayo?'
'No, I liked to died, but suddenly it straightened itself out and we won a game or two. WE weren't hot or cold, but we got out of that awful streak.'
Then in late July or August, the club put together a winning streak of 11 games and began a climb toward the first division. The team that once stood last, 17 games below .500, finished all-square with a 77-77 record and fourth place.
Mayo won't quite say it this way, but it's obvious that it was that depressing period at the start of his major league managerial career that helped to mold him into a solid manager, who was able to stay with the Phils until July of last year when they parted company. Solid enough to get this second chance in Cincinnati.
Mayo's Cincinnati predecessor, Birdie Tebbetts, had told a story during the past summer about baseball sympathy. The details were repeated to manager Smith, who recalled the incident that involved him.
'Yes, right in the midst of the losing streak, we're in Cincinnati and one evening long before the game the Reds' clubhouse boy came into the visitors' clubhouse to say Birdie would like to see me in his office. I didn't know what to expect, but I went,' Mayo chuckled.
'Birdie was very nice about it. He said he knew what I was going through and advised me to keep my chin up. He said he was doing it because he had known some depressing periods in his first year himself and he had welcomed a kind word. I admitted my spirits were real low and I thanked him.
'Well, when we got into that winning streak later on Birdie brought the Reds into Philadelphia and you know what? We knocked 'em off five straight. They'd beaten us seven straight at one period. It was a miserable way to repay Tebbetts for his kindness but, as a result of that series, we finished fourth and the Reds finished fifth.'
'Yes,' a man said, 'and that taught Birdie a lesson, too. He said no matter how much he liked an opponent he would never commiserate with him again as long as he was on the opposite side. In baseball, you live by only one rule- and that is to win.'
The visitor's next question was a blunt one. 'Mayo, you must know that Jimmie Dykes finished the season as interim manager of the Reds with a great deal of success and public acclaim. There was a 'ground swell' in Cincinnati and other Redleg rooting points for Dykes to get the 1959 appointment. Do you feel this puts you on a hot seat right off the bat?'
'Yes, I've heard,' Mayo said. 'Dykes did a great job. I can understand the feeling for him. But I can't start out this new responsiblity worrying about the reaction of the fans to my appointment.
'One way to please the fans is by winning. That's the essence of this business. You have to win. I want to worry about improving the power and the pitching and whatever else we need to win,  and maybe go all the way. I think we've got the nucleus of a good ball club. My problem is to develop a winner. If I do, then the people will be on my side. If I lose, then I expect I'll have to take the consequences.'
'Seems to me,' general manager Gabe Paul spoke up, 'if there's any blame, I'm the guy, not Mayo, who should get it.'

As noted before, Mayo Smith played but one season in the big show- that was 1945. It was a season marked by sheer mediocrity at the plate; his batting average was .212. We wanted to know more about that season and how it was that a man with such limited experience eventually became a big league manager.
It developed that illness had something to do with it. Mayo had been a minor leaguer for 12 years- most of that time in Triple-A ball in Toronto and Buffalo in the International League. In 1944, playing for the Buffalo Bisons, he batted .340 and won the league batting championship.
That winter, at the annual baseball draft meeting, Smith was drafted by the Philadelphia Athletics as an outfielder at age 30, to play for Connie Mack in the 1945 season. Mr. Mack wrote him and said he would be given a chance to make the team.
But it was in that same winter that Mayo became seriously ill. Doctors diagnosed his case as rheumatic fever and prescribed long bed rest.
'I was on my back for three months,' Smith recalls. 'I figured I had blown my major league chance forever. In fact, the doctors told me not to consider playing ball again. Every ball player, I guess, thinks about managing some time, but I hadn't actually given the idea much serious thought. I had lots of time to think.
'I asked myself a question. 'Mayo, what are you going to do now? A minor leaguer is no kid at 30. If this game means as much to you as you've always thought, you'd better give some serious thought to a career as a manager.' That was the beginning.'
Strangely enough, Mayo did recover in time to spend about half the season with the A's, although he missed all of spring training. It was 1945; the war was still on; baseball was digging down to the bottom of the manpower barrel for talent.
The .212 batting average, however, was a bar to his future as a big leaguer. Mayo, who studied Connie Mack's managerial methods, now that he had decided inwardly to pursue a pilot's career, was sold to Portland of the Pacific Coast League the next winter.
At Portland, the manager was Jim Turner, former National League league pitcher, whom Smith had known as a rival player in the International League. Another Coast League manager was Casey Stengel,  who had the Oakland club.
Turner liked Smith from the start and began to give him little extra duties. They were together for three years and by the third season Smith had become an unofficial player-coach for the Portland Beavers.
At that time, the Yankees had a loose working agreement with Portland and actually had assigned Turner to the club as manager. It is part of the Yankee system to ask for recommendations among its farm managers for possible managerial talent among the players.
It was Turner, who advised George Weiss, general manager of the Yankees, that Mayo Smith had managerial promise. At the end of the 1948 season, Stengel was named manager of the Yankees and invited Turner to become his pitching coach.
The Yankees kept title to Mayo and asked him to become player-manager of the Amsterdam, New York, club of the Canadian-American League. His pilot's career was launched in 1949 at age 34.
During the World Series, a reporter sought out Turner and asked the basis of his recommdation of Mayo Smith as a manager.
'From the beginning,' said Jim, 'Mayo was a good listener. When Mayo talked, he asked the right kind of question. He knew about outfielding, but he wanted to know more about pitchers, catchers and infielders.'
In the winter time, Smith would go back to Buffalo on occasion since he had played there four years. Usually, he would find a way to visit the town's most famous baseball resident, Joe McCarthy, longtime manager of the Yankees, and consult with him about managing.
'Another managerial privilege,' Mayo recalls, 'was serving on the faculty of the Yankees' preseason school at Lake Wales, Florida. I got to study Stengel's methods closely.
On this phase, Turner adds a thought. 'When I saw him operate in our school,' Jim says, 'I kind of thought myself proud of having picked Mayo. My impression of him as a manager was that he knew what to do when the game was on. He thought situations out very well.'
Smith managed in the Yankee chain for six years, the last two for Birmingham in the Class AA Southern Association. After the 1954 season in which the Birmingham Barons finished third, he went to the Phils.
Now the Redlegs expect him to 'think situations out very well.' "

Si Burick, Dayton News (Baseball Digest, February 1959)

1959 Yankee Farmhand of the Past: Harry Craft

THE BREAK THAT MADE CRAFT A MANAGER
"When the Kansas City A's played the Reds this spring, Manager Harry Craft, one-time Cincinnati center fielder (there was never a better one defensively in a Red uniform), renewed acquaintances with Frank McCormick, his one-time roommate. McCormick works these days as an expert on televised Cincinnati games.
To a fellow who happened along as these old chums talked over old times, Craft said, 'I could never forget McCormick, even if I wanted to. He's the fellow responsible for my becoming a manager.'
Craft was traded to the Yankee organization by the Reds in 1942. (Remember the deal? Harry went with pitcher Jim Turner to the Yankees for two outfielders, Francis Kelleher and Eric Tipton.)
'In 1948, I'm with the Kansas City Blues when they are a farm club for the Yankees,' Craft recalled. 'We're playing a spring exhibition at Lake Wales, Florida, against the Boston Braves. Frank's playing first base for Boston. Well, Hank Bauer hits one down to first and McCormick rifles the ball into second to force me. I slide in there hard as I can to try to break up the double play and I feel some bones pop in my knee.
'They put me on a stretcher and send me John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Dr. Bennett takes one look at the knee and he says, 'Harry, if you want to stay in baseball, you'll have to find another medium. You're through as a player.' I finished the season as a player-coach; they used me to pinch-hit a few times, and the next season the Yanks hired me to manager their farm at Independence, Kansas.
'If McCormick had fumbled that ball Bauer hit to him, or if he hadn't gone for the double play, I'd have kept right on playing and I might have never had my chance to manage.' "

-Si Burick, Dayton News (Baseball Digest, June 1959)

1959 Yankee Prospect of the Past: Eddie Sawyer

HANDING HIM A LESSON
"Those who think Eddie Sawyer of the Phils is an easy-going individual might be interested in this story:
When he last bossed the Phils in 1952, the former Ithaca College professor (he also holds a Phi Beta Kappa key) admits he bore down on a certain player who was violating training rules.
'One night we had it out in the clubhouse after everybody had gone,' Sawyer relates. 'I whipped this fellow and whipped him good. All he could understand then was fear. I made him fearful.
'Nobody saw this fight except the player, myself and a clubhouse attendant. The man I had a fight with turned out to be a pretty good ball player.' "

-Les Biederman, The Pittsburgh Press (Baseball Digest, August 1959)

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

1959 Yankee Coach of the Past: Chuck Dressen

CALLS 1,000-TO-1 SHOT
"The transfer of pitcher Bob Porterfield from the Cubs back to the Pirates recalls the comment made recently by Don Gutteridge, the White Sox coach.
Don pointed out that after the 1955 season, Washington peddled two of its star pitchers- Porterfield to the Red Sox and Mickey McDermott to the Yankees. He added:
'Everyone said that they'd be terrific winners with the good clubs that they'd been sent to. Everyone, that is, except Charlie Dressen, who was managing Washington. He shrugged off the deals by saying that he'd kept one pitcher, Pedro Ramos, who'd win more than the two combined.
'He could have had 1,000-to-1 odds against it- but it turned out that he was right. Porterfield won three and McDermott won two the next season, while Ramos got 12 wins- six of them against Boston.' "

-Leo Fischer, Chicago American (Baseball Digest, August 1959)

1959 Yankee of the Past: Leo Durocher

Leo Durocher, on what it takes to be a good manager: "I'll say this from the standpoint of a guy who had good years and bad years, and who still gets a call now and then from a general manager who has a job open: The good manager can't manage scared. He has to manage boldly and stick to his decisions. He can't manage to please the newspapermen. He can't kowtow to his general manager. He can't let what the players think, or the fans think, affect his judgment.
"He also can't worry about whether the players like him or not. How can you possibly have all 25 men in a group like you? They don't have to like you, but they had all better respect you. If you don't have their respect, you're lost. You have to be able to needle your players a bit- and hurt 'em with what you say, if necessary, because you've got to get through to 'em."

Baseball Digest, July 1959

Tuesday, June 3, 2025

1959 Yankee of the Past: Bill McKechnie

"Bill McKechnie, manager of the Pirates the last time they won a World Series, in 1925, who is living in retirement in Florida, got a big bang out of the All-Star Game. Told he's looking remarkably fit for a man in his 70s, he quipped:
'I'm just waiting for the third big league to get started. I have it all figured out to do a comeback. Leo Durocher, Jimmie Dykes and I will come back together to play third base- three innings each.' "

-Harry Keck, Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph (Baseball Digest, September 1959)

1959 Yankee of the Past: Joe McCarthy

TECHNICAL K.O.
"Ball players who knew Joe McCarthy, the old Yankee manager, consider him the greatest in his line. Hank Greenberg recalls having a clubhouse boy who worked in the visiting clubhouse in Detroit. The kid eavesdropped on the opposition and reported the gossip to Greenberg.
'Somehow Joe found out about it,' says Greenberg. 'You know how sharp he was. He found out about everything. So one day he called a meeting and made me the chief topic of conversation. He told his club to knock Greenberg down. Keep knocking him down. Throw at him every time he comes up. Of course, he was only doing it so the kid would run to me with all he said. He did, too, and I was pretty uneasy at the plate all during the Yankee series.' "

-Jimmy Cannon, New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, May 1959)

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

1959 Yankee of the Past: Branch Rickey

CREW FOR RICKEY'S SALESMAN-SHIP
"Bob Cobb, former owner of the Hollywood Stars, contributes another reason for Branch Rickey's success in baseball.
'When we were part of the Dodgers' great farm system,' says Cobb, 'Rickey would assemble his scouts in a room and ask them: 'Whom can we sell that won't hurt us?' Rickey would write the names on a blackboard as the scouts mentioned players. Then he would start with the top name and inquire: 'We're going to sell this player to what team that can't  hurt us?' If that player was a pitcher, and Rickey knew the Cardinals or Cubs could be annoying with more pitching, he eliminated them as possible purchasers.' "

-David Condon, Chicago Tribune (Baseball Digest, March 1959)

Branch Rickey, Pittsburgh's elder statesman: "I would rather have errors of enthusiasm than the indifference of wisdom."

-Baseball Digest, June 1959

Branch Rickey, asked what the format for the World Series would be if his plan for a third major league were adopted: "The three teams would play a round robin. A team would be eliminated upon losing its fourth game. In such a plan, it is conceivable that a Series would end in eight games, but that would be the minimum and most unlikely. At the same time, it would not be possible for the Series to run beyond 11 games, at which time two of the teams would each have had four defeats. There would be more tension and drama in such a playdown. It would test the tactical gifts of the managers to the limit, and it would be more profitable to players and club owners."

-Baseball Digest, July 1959

Monday, April 7, 2025

1959 Yankee of the Past: Clark Griffith

COMPOUND INJURY
"Once when he unloaded a weak hitting outfielder for a pitcher who had won only four games, the late Clark Griffith agreed it was a minor deal. Both players slid out of the majors before the year was out and Griffith was philosophical when the trade was recalled to him. He said, 'It was an even swap- both clubs were hurt.' "

-Shirley Povich, Washington Post (Baseball Digest, April 1959)

FAVOR-ITE TRICK
"That an umpire is obstinate about returning a favor was best demonstrated in the early years of Clark Griffith on a day when he was pitching for the Chicago White Sox and John McGraw was playing for the Orioles. Joe Cantillon, the game's lone umpire, who in the custom of the times called balls and strikes from behind the pitcher, was furious with McGraw's constant wrangling with his decisions.
When McGraw drew a walk and Pitcher Griffith started to work on the next batter, Griffith could hardly believe his ears when he heard Umpire Cantillon whispering, 'Pick McGraw off first.' Given that astonishing authority, Griffith lured McGraw off the base with a palpable balk motion and threw to first. 'Yer Out!' Cantillon told McGraw.
McGraw screamed 'Balk!' in protest but got no satisfaction from Cantillon, and when the next batter singled, Griffith picked him, too, off first with the same balk motion he had used on McGraw. Griffith was surprised when the umpire ruled 'balk' and waved the runner to second base. He protested to Cantillon that he had done nothing differently.'
'Yeah, I know,' the umpire said, 'but when you picked off McGraw, it was a favor to me. If you're gonna pick anyone else off, you gotta obey the rules.' "

-Shirley Povich, Washington Post (Baseball Digest, May 1959)

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

1959 Yankee of the Past: Frank Baker

THEY CALLED HIM HOME RUN BAKER
"'Home Run' Baker they called him. He first glamorized the home run. He worked the third base corner of the famous $100,000 infield, representing the Philadelphia Athletics and including Jack Barry, Eddie Collins and Stuffy McInnis.
His name is etched in bronze in baseball's Hall of Fame. He has now seen 72 summers come and go. Every morning he's up at 6 a.m. and, as when he was a boy, he spends the day in the fields tilling the ground and working his farm near Trappe, Maryland.
A remarkable man in physique, in age, in mind and in heart. Long on character, modesty and sincerity.
'It was just 50 years ago, this past September, about the 18th or the 20th, that I arrived in Chicago from the Reading club to join Connie Mack and the Athletics,' he says with a smile. 'I went into the Lexington Hotel and walked right in the dining room where Connie Mack was eating.
'I said, 'I'm here, Mr. Mack.' And Connie looked at me and said, 'I see you are.' That afternoon I went to the park and who was warming up but Big Ed Walsh. He could break a spitball into a bucket from the mound. I fouled off a pitch, he threw me a ball and then I doubled over Fielder Jones' head in right field.'
That was the beginning of John Franklin Baker's 13-year career in the American League. He got another double over Jones' head in the same game. In the 1911 World Series, he hit home runs off Rube Marquard and Christy Mathewson and became an American idol.
It was then that they started referring to him as 'Home Run' Baker. He was in an era of the dead ball. 'I don't like to cast aspersions,' he says, 'but a Little Leaguer today can hit the modern ball as far as grown men could hit the ball we played with.'
Baker also had to swing at the spitter, the emery ball and paraffin ball- all doctored pitches which are outlawed today. 'Russ Ford of the Yankees had the emery ball down perfect. He had a hole in his glove with a little piece of emery hidden in the padding,' Baker readily recalls.
'One day Eddie Collins took three strikes and then complained. Tom Connolly was the umpire. He went out, inspected the glove and found the emery cloth.'
Pitchers in Baker's day also threw at hitters. Carl Mays accidentally killed a man, Ray Chapman, on August 17, 1920. Even Walter Johnson, a noble individual, once aimed at an opposing player. Baker was his target.
'I was told that Walter Johnson on his deathbed said I was the only man he ever threw at deliberately. I remember it. I fell to the ground twice on two straight pitches. Gabby Street was the catcher. He was laughing. He asked me why did I duck.
'I looked at him and said it was either 'duck or no dinner.' I used to have luck hitting Walter. It was only hearsay, but I heard that his teammates kept after him to throw at me. Not many pitchers in my time threw at hitters and not many do it today, either. There's just no place in baseball for something like that.'
While Baker took his living room guest down memory lane, he got up and went to a closet for some old equipment. He had autographed balls which were 40 years old, his original gloves and bats which Tris Speaker, Babe Ruth and he himself had used.
'I showed this glove to Joe DiMaggio at an Old Timers' Game in New York. He couldn't believe it. He said, 'No man alive has a right to make a catch in anything like this.' But we did and you can see that we had to catch the ball in the pocket because the fingers aren't tied together and there is no webbing.
'I remember in 1908 we used to carry our uniforms to the field in a roll. That was when all the players went to the park in a horse-drawn streetcar. The next year we had trunks for our uniforms. Really, the uniform hasn't changed too much. The caps are different. It used to be more of a skullcap. Today they have long peaks on them.'
Baker was asked how he had discovered Jimmie Foxx, another Maryland member of the Hall of Fame. 'It was in this very room,' he answered. 'Foxx's father brought the boy to see me when I managed the Easton team in 1924. I signed him. His first two swings in spring training, when we practiced up by the old schoolhouse, were over the outfielders' heads.
'That same year I sold him to the majors. I loved Connie Mack. But I didn't think it was fair to offer him to only one team. I waited until the Yankees came to Philadelphia. I went down in the dugout and Ruth and manager Miller Huggins were talking. I told them about Foxx and said he could be playing on their team next year. They laughed. Huggins said he wasn't interested.
'Then I walked over to the A's dugout and saw Mr. Mack. I told him the same. He said, 'I'll take him.' He gave us $2,500. The next year Jimmie was with the A's. He made the jump all the way from Class D. I got a letter in the draw in the other room from Mr. Mack which he later wrote and told me, 'Foxx is all you said he was and more.' '
Baker was asked to demonstrate his position at the plate. He obliged. He had an old bat in his hand which had been a gift from Cy Young.
With his feet about 18 inches apart and his stance closed, 'Home Run' Baker probably didn't look much different than he did 50 years ago.
'I hope I never do anything to hurt baseball,' he said with a sudden grimness to his voice. The words seemed to come from the depths of his soul. 'Home Run' Baker hurt baseball? Not in half a century. Not in a lifetime. It could never happen."

John F. Steadman, Baltimore News-Post, (Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959)

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

1959 Yankee of the Past: Lefty Gomez

QUICK RETURN MATCH
"You name it ... and Lefty Gomez will have a story to fit the occasion.
Recently he was asked whether he ever gave a manager an argument when he was being taken out of a game. The big southpaw, who helped the Yankees win six world championships a couple of decades ago, replied that he was usually so glad to escape a bombardment that he met the pilot halfway to the mound. He did, however, remember one pitcher who was ready to debate the issue. As usual, this fellow didn't want to leave. Turning to the manager he insisted:
'Gee, I can handle the next batter. I struck him out the first time I faced him, remember?'
The pilot turned his head sadly and replied: 
'Yeah- but that was this inning!' "

-Leo Fischer, Chicago American (Baseball Digest, December 1958-Jan. 1959)

Friday, February 14, 2025

1959 Yankee of the Past: Tony Lazzeri

TONY LAZZERI WAS LIKE THIS
Even As A Rookie, They Looked To Him When Going Was Tough
"Mae Lazzeri, widow of Tony, came in from San Francisco for the World Series last fall and seeing her again after so many years kicked up a lot of memories of her guy when he was one of the key figures on perhaps the greatest of all major league clubs.
Tony joined the Yankees at St. Petersburg in the spring of 1926. The year before they had finished seventh and few thought they would do much better for another year or so, but Miller Huggins said:
'If that kid at second base stands up we can win the pennant.'
It seemed a curious thing for him to say. Off the San Francisco sandlots and with only a couple of years in the minors behind him, Tony appeared ill-equipped to save Huggins with the responsibility the manager thus placed on him. Yet the season was but a month old when Tommy Connally, dean of the American League staff said:
'I shouldn't say this, being an umpire and all, but that young Eyetalian is a ball player. When things get tough out there, the others don't look to Ruth or any of the veterans. They look to him, and he never fails them.'
So the kid at second base stood up and the Yankees won the pennant. They lost the World Series with the Cardinals. The climax was reached in the seventh inning of the final game when Grover Cleveland Alexander came in to relieve Jesse Haines for the Cardinals. With two out, the bases filled, and Lazzeri at bat.
"Everybody remembers when I struck Lazzeri out,' Alex was to say many times thereafter. 'Nobody remembers that the second strike was a line drive into the left field stand that was foul by only about two feet.'
Tony was a handsome youth, square-shouldered and tremendously strong for one of his comparatively slender build, resulting from his having worked in a boiler factory with his father. He was thoughtful, shy and, even among his friends, had little to say. But he could be a hard man on the field when an opponent tried to take advantage of him, and no one ever challenged him to a fist fight.
During the 1927 World Series with the Pirates, George Grantham was on first base and a ground ball was hit to Lazzeri. He came up with it, tagged Grantham and threw to Lou Gehrig at first base for a double play. Then he advanced on Grantham, who had sought to knock the ball out of his hand and said:
'You try that again and I'll stick the ball down your throat.'
'I don't think he meant to do it, Tony,' the first base umpire said.
'Back off,' Tony said. 'This isn't your business.'
When Joe McCarthy was engaged to manage the Yankees, starting with the spring of 1931, his position was not an enviable one. Many of the players thought the Babe should have had the appointment as a reward for his services to the club over the years. Others, resentful in the beginning only because an outsider from the National League had been put in command of them, were restive under Joe's strict discipline. McCarthy cared little or nothing about how they felt. He knew he needed only the support of Lazzeri, their acknowledged leader. He gained it in an unexpected fashion.
Without meaning to do so, Tony walked in on McCarthy giving a merciless verbal raking to one of the younger players in an otherwise empty clubhouse. As the boy, close to tears, left for the field, Tony said to McCarthy, 'I didn't know what kind of guy you were, but I know now, and I want nothing to do with you.'
'Tony,' Joe said, 'I'm sorry you had to hear what I was saying to him but in a way I'm glad. He's a good kid and has all the ability he needs to make him a star, but he's running around with a bad crowd and I don't want to see him ruin himself. I've tried every other way I could think of to drive some sense into him, not because I need him, but only for his own good.'
'That's different,' Tony said. 'I'm on  your side, Joe.' "

-Frank Graham, New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, February 1959)

Sunday, February 9, 2025

1959 Yankee of the Past: Lou Gehrig

THE DAY GEHRIG ALMOST HIT FIVE IN A ROW
"Rocky Colavito is indebted to Connie Mack, deceased, for his recently acquired place in the record book (four successive home runs).
You might say Colavito got there before he was born ... which is somewhat better than par for the course.
With his A's trailing the Yankees by seven runs in the ninth inning, June 3, 1932, Connie Mack made a seemingly innocent defensive move.
He switched Al Simmons from left to center at Philadelphia's Shibe Park.
With what he later described as 'the greatest catch I ever made- I guess!' Simmons then proceeded to dash back to the center field wall to spectacularly pull down a line drive.
The catch probably cost Lou Gehrig his fifth consecutive home run of the contest. ('At least a triple,' Simmons confessed. 'And the velocity of that ball could well have given Gehrig an inside-the-park home run.')
That's how close young Colavito, born 14 months later, came to not joining Gehrig and charter member Bobby Lowe of Boston in the Four-in-a-Row record club.
Jimmie Foxx was in that ball game. When this agent saw him Foxx described Simmons' tremendous play as 'the catch of the year. Gehrig hit that ball a mile-a-minute.'
What was behind Mr. Mack's defensive move that put Simmons in center field for the ninth inning?
Foxx says, 'My recollection is that Doc Cramer played center that day, but was removed for a pinch hitter in the eighth inning. Mr. Mack sent Bing Miller into left field and moved Al (Simmons) to center.'
Gehrig had stroked George Earnshaw's pitches for three home runs and found Roy Mahaffey for a fourth (matching Lowe's 1894 record), before facing Ed Rommel in his fifth and final time at bat.
The Yanks won 20-13, the two teams totaled 77 bases (Ruth, Combs, Lazzeri, Cochrane and Foxx also homered) and Gehrig was of five straight homers by the long arm of Al Simmons.
Had the ball got past Simmons for even a triple, incidentally, it would have given Gehrig 19 total bases for the game.
In that event, Joe Adcock wouldn't have been in the record book, either, for his 18 bases (four homers, not successive, and a double) at Ebbets Field in 1954."

Jerry Nason, Boston Globe (Baseball Digest, September 1959)

"Mrs. Lou Gehrig confides that Lou's greatest thrill came out of All-Star Game. 'He hit a lot of homers (492),' she says. 'But the one he liked to recall was the one in the game at Washington in 1937.
'It came off Dizzy Dean and he hit the ball so hard that the imprint on the ball ... even down the lettering and signature of the league president ... still can be seen on the bat. I know. For I still have it back home in New York.' "

-Lyall Smith, Detroit Free Press (Baseball Digest, September 1959)

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

1959 Yankee of the Past: Babe Ruth

BABE RUTH WOULD HIT MORE THAN 60 NOW!
Expert Estimates Vary From 68 To 100
"The questions recur as insidiously as a wife's memory of her husband's past misdeeds ... 
How would Babe Ruth do today?
Or- How would Ernie Banks do in New York?
The consensus of opinion:
The Babe would do even better today.
The old-timers think that Babe would hit more than 60 home runs a year.
Ted Lyons, the old White Sox pitcher, thinks he'd be good for 68 or 70 homers a year.
George Hildebrand, for many years an American League umpire, says he'd be good for at least 100 a year.
But he may have to change his style.
Ruth was a 'muscleman' hitter; Banks is a 'wrist' hitter.
Ruth was almost 50 pounds heavier than Banks.
Ruth used a bat weighing from 11 ounces to a full pound more than the 31-ounce bat used by Banks.
All this adds up to a different style in slugging. Today we have the era of the slim slugger.
Ruth touched off the 'lively ball' era; he played when the ball was becoming so 'radioactive' that it almost went off in the pitcher's hand.
Banks came along in the 'lively bat' era; he gets his power through the speed- not the weight- of the bat.
'This new era has been developing for ten years,' says Ted Kluszewski, a muscleman who plays for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
'When I came into the league, the average weight of the bat was 35 or 36 ounces. Now, that's considered a heavy bat.
'Home runs today are not due so much to the lively ball as to the lively bat.'
The Babe, aside from his natural talent- had this advantage over Banks: an amiable fence in Yankee Stadium that snuggled comfortingly close to the plate.
The fence in Yankee Stadium was designed to be alluringly close to a left-handed batter like Ruth.
Along the right field foul line, it is only 296 feet. (If Banks pulls to his power field- left field- he has to clear a taller barrier some 355 feet from the plate.)
From home plate to right center in Yankee Stadium- where the Babe hit many of his homers- is about 367 feet.
The distance to left center in Wrigley Field- where Banks hits most of his homers- is about 375 feet.
They differed, too, in their personalities.
The Babe was a man on robust and gargantuan good cheer who was often getting into trouble. Banks is a quiet, reserved young man who goes home after a game.
But until we can transfer man in terms of time as well as space, the final answer will never be known"

-Bill Furlong, Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959)

RUTH'S TARGETS 232 FEET FURTHER
"Old George Hildebrand, venturing the guess that Babe Ruth would hit 100 home runs or more if he were batting under today's conditions, made much more of the fact that today's rules alone would enormously help the Babe in his output.
'Ruth batted in a tougher era,' he said, and he ought to know for he umpired in the American League all through the Babe's career. 'A ball that sailed out of the park fair but then curved foul while we could still see it we had to call foul. Under today's rules, that kind of ball would be fair. It makes no difference now what it does after it clears the fence. And the Babe hit plenty of those we called foul.'  (The rule was changed in 1931).
Probably as Hildebrand suggests, today's rules would be the greatest single factor in letting the Babe break his record of 60 in a season (1927). To me, though, the most intriguing thing about today's conditions, if not the most important, are the parks themselves- the shorter fences today's sluggers have to shoot at.
There isn't a park today, except Yankee Stadium, which hasn't undergone a face lifting of some kind since the Babe swung his mace. A little research by the American League office in Chicago has produced some interesting comparative measurements of the two eras. Yankee Stadium, with a left field foul line of 301 feet and a right field line of 296,  remains as it was in the Babe's day. But look at the others:

Left Field      Today     Babe's Day
Boston            315         320
Chicago           352         362
Cleveland      352         362
Detroit            340          340
New York       301          301
Philadelphia-
Kansas City     330        334
St. Louis-
Baltimore        309        360
Washington    350        358

Right Field      Today     Babe's Day
Boston              302         358
Chicago             352         362
Cleveland        320         290
Detroit               325         372
New York          296         296
Philadelphia-
Kansas City     353          331
St. Louis-
Baltimore          309        320
Washington     320         328

The Babe, a mighty man was he, indeed. In the aggregate, he swung at fences 232 feet farther from the plate than today's. The few instances where the fences were shorter in his day are plentifully offset by those longer now.
The Babe did have some advantages he wouldn't have today. Pitching repertoires, for instance, have improved, although he did have to hit against the spitter and a slightly 'deader' ball. And the rules did count a hit that bounced into the stands as a home run. (He hit about eight or ten of these 'bouncers' in his career, but none in his all-time record year of 1927.)
What occasional slight advantages he might have had, though, can never dim the luster of his record. One phase of it is particularly significant. In the year in which he hit his 60 homers, the entire American League hit only 439. This past season Mickey Mantle led the same league with 42- and the entire league hit 1,057.
Maybe the Babe wouldn't hit 100 today as Hildebrand thinks, but he'd certainly break his record of 60 and break it easily."

-Oliver E. Kuechle, Milwaukee Journal (Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959)


THE BABE STRUCK OUT, TOO
Like Mantle, He Sacrificed Average For Home Runs
"Mickey confesses that this past year his strikeouts mounted and his batting averages declined because of his eagerness to hit home runs. In other words, he was swinging with one eye on the ball and the other on the distant stands or fences. Other hitters have had the same trouble. Mickey is the only one sufficiently candid to admit it.
Babe Ruth had it. He always was well up in the numbers when it came to striking out. In the course of his career, he struck out more times than anybody. That means anybody since 1876, when the National League came into existence, and the keeping of major league records was begun. The Babe's awe-inspiring mark is 1,330. Of these, 1,306 of these were with the Yankees and Red Sox and 24 with the Boston Braves in his final, brief whirl in 1935. And when he struck out, it was a great show, almost as great a show as when he hit a ball over the hill and far away.
Striking out, though, never bothered him. He'd taken his cut and missed and to hell with it. In his best years, when he stood alone as a home run hitter and was rolling toward his strikeout record, his batting averages from .359 to .393.
That was one reason why he was the greatest home run hitter. Some day, perhaps, someone will equal or shatter his mark of 60 for one year, which he set in 1927. But you should live ... and be in good health ... long enough to see someone else hit 714.
There were other reasons. Among them were the sheer joy he derived from watching a ball he'd hit soar into the blue and the ease with which he bore the responsibility he owed to the fans. On both, this is what he said, unaware of the significance of what he was saying:
There was this day in Indianapolis, where the Yankees had stopped off for an exhibition game on their way to Chicago to open a Western tour. Before an overflow crowd in the old ball park down near the freight yards, he failed to hit a ball out the infield in three times at bat. When he walked to the plate for the fourth time, the fans were giving him the hoarse hoot. He responded with a smash high over the right field fence, and when last seen from the vantage point of a rickety press box on the roof of the wooden stand, the ball was bouncing from track to track, on the tops of the box cars.
He had delivered the blow in the top half of the ninth inning. When the game ended, shortly thereafter, and the Yankees, who had dressed at the old Hotel Claypool, were running for the waiting line of cabs, he said: 
'Well, I guess I showed those buzzards something!'
So he had. He showed them something they'd always remember. What they couldn't possibly have known was that at that moment it was just as important to him as though he'd hit it in a World Series.
Then there was this day, after he had retired and he and Frank Frisch were cutting up old touches, that he said:
'The way the other clubs used to play for me, with the infield and the outfield shifted to the right, with the second baseman on the grass near first base, the shortstop back of second base, and the third baseman playing shortstop, I could have hit .600 if I wanted to. All I had to do was bunt the ball past third base and walk down to first.'
Then, as the vision of what he could have done rose before his eyes, he said:
'Why, -------- it! With the left fielder almost in center field, I could have walked to second!'
'That's right,' Frisch said. 'Why didn't you?'
'Why didn't I?' the Babe roared. 'That wasn't what the fans paid to see! They paid to see me hit home runs!' "

-Frank Graham, New York Journal-American (Baseball Digest, December 1958-January 1959)


WRITING OFF A COUPLE OF INNINGS
"Waite Hoyt, Cincinnati broadcaster who was a star with the Yankees during Babe Ruth's heyday, always has a new story to tell about the Babe. This spring Hoyt was watching some kids besiege Roy Sievers for autographs and it reminded Waite of a Ruth story.
'Babe hated to play nine innings in an exhibition game,' Hoyt recalled with a chuckle. 'So, before the game, Babe would bribe some kid to come out on the field for autographs about the seventh inning. The one kid out there would open the floodgates and there'd be so many kids that the umpires had to hustle Babe out of there and he'd have a short day.' "

-Bob Addie, Washington Post, Baseball Digest (June 1959)