1959 Yankee of the Past: Bobo Newsom

PASSED BALL

"There was the afternoon in Washington a few years ago when Lewis Norman Newsom, an interant pitcher who called everybody Bobo and who answered to the same name, was working on a shutout for the Senators.

The first batter in the seventh opened with a single. It was a bunt situation and everybody knew it as Bobo's pitching opponent came up with a bat in his hands. The umpire was Red Jones.

As Newsom fired his fast ball, Eddie Yost broke in from third base and charged down the line. The batter took the pitch ... 'Stike One.'

Bobo fired another fast ball. Yost again broke for the plate, in expectation of making the play he made best- a barehanded pickup of a bunt. The batter also took this one ... 'Ball One,' called umpire Jones.

Bobo threw still another fast ball, his third in a row. Once again Yost tore in toward the plate.

Newsom suddenly called time and summoned Yost over to the mound.

'Cut that out,' he told Eddie.

'Cut what out?' puzzled Eddie.

'Cut out charging to the plate every time I throw my fast ball,' grunted Bobo.

'What's wrong with that?' countered his third basman.

'Old Bobo is a-throwin' that ball as hard as he can,' said Newsom. 'But you're getting to the plate faster than my pitch. What're you trying to do ... show me up?' "

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

THE HARD WAY

"It took a master of the art of alibi to talk him out of the spot in which Bobo Newsom once found himself. Hurling for the St. Browns against the Athletics one day, Newsom was sweating out a massacre. When the Browns came off the field in the seventh inning, the score had mounted to 15-0 in favor of the A's.

'Gosh, Bobo,' a teammate kidded, 'they're really cracking you up today.

'Aw, nuts!,' Newsom replied. 'How d'ya expect a pitcher to win games if his club don't get any runs?' "

-Baseball Digest, May 1959

1959 Yankee of the Past: Paul Waner

Paul Waner, one of the finest hitters the game ever knew:

"A good hitter doesn't permit his wrists to break. He lets them roll with the swing. No one can actually get much power from his wrists."

-Baseball Digest, April 1959

WANER'S FURIOUS STRETCH DRIVE

Ranking 32nd With .318 Near Midseason, He Won Title With .362

"Sitting across from each other in the St. Louis Cardinal clubhouse this spring were two of the greatest hitters in history, Paul Waner and Stan Musial.

Musial, in the autumn of a brilliant 18-season career, turned to a visitor and said:

'One could say you were looking at a couple of fellows who have over 6,000 hits between them.'

Waner, now a Cardinal batting coach, grinned and nodded. The former Pirate and Hall of Famer was stripped down to his shorts and baseball socks. The frame of his emaciated body, recently ravaged by an attack of tuberculosis, was accentuated by thin, bony arms and legs.

One who didn't know him would never know or guess that here sat one of the most skillful hitters the game has ever known.

'You're not far from passing me in hits, are you, Stan?' Waner asked.

'I don't really know,' Musial said. 'I'm not sure, but I think I have 3,116.'

'I don't even know how many I wound up with,' Paul added.

A statistically-minded reporter supplied the information. He said the figure was 3,152.

'That would leave you only 35 away from me,' Waner told Musial. 'It shouldn't take you long to get that many. I hope you go on to make a thousand more.'

'Thanks' Stan said. 'At my age getting those 35 is going to be hard.'

They both laughed at this.

Between them, someone said, Waner and Musial had made 6,268 hits. 'That's a lot of bingles,' whistled a Cardinal rookie.

'You wouldn't believe this,' Paul told his listeners, by now almost a dozen players and writers, 'but there was a time when I was playing when I got tired making so many hits.'

Everybody laughed at this. 'You mean there was ever a ball player who didn't like his base hits?' asked a credulous scribe.

'That's right,' Waner replied. 'I was getting so many 'three for four' and 'four for five' days one season I got tired of it.'

'The guy must be nuts,' a rookie whispered.

'I'd like to be as nuts and as great a hitter as he was,' said another.

'I only got tired of making a lot of hits one year,' Waner admitted with a laugh. 'The first time I went into a prolonged slump, I got over the idea in a hurry.'

Paul was all wound up conversationally by now. 'Then there was that year, 1934 I think, when I was hitting only about .318 at the end of June.

'You remember that, Stan? You were in the league for a couple of years then, weren't you, Old Man?'

Musial laughed and said he was about 13 years back in 1934.

'Anyway,' Paul continued, 'there I was hitting .318 and the rest of the Pirates were kidding me about 31 other players hitting better than that in the league.

'They burned me up with the ribbing, so one day I told 'em I'm taking all bets that I'm catching the field before the season ended. I must have made about $500 in bets.

'By Labor Day, only Ducky Medwick was ahead of me by three points. That day he went one-for-ten and I got seven-for-nine. It was a breeze after that. I think I won the title with a .362 mark.' (Editor's note: He did.)

'How about the money?' someone asked.

 'I never collected a cent of it,' Waner laughed.

'I think I'll go out and do a little running in the outfield,' Musial said to break up the party.

'Take it easy, Old Man,' Waner kidded. 'You're not as young as you used to be.' "

-Al Abrams, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Baseball Digest, May 1959)

COULDN'T SEE HIM

"Paul Waner possessed extraordinary eyesight as well as remarkably supple wrists. For Pittsburghers, he and Honus Wagner will never be replaced as the greatest hitters of all time.

Chet Smith, sports editor of the Pittsburgh Press, remembers the day when a Brooklyn Dodger rookie southpaw named Harry Eisenstat came into the game and the left-handed Waner tripled on the first pitch.

'I don't mind the triple,' Eisenstat complained in the clubhouse, 'but he didn't have to insult me.'

His listeners asked exactly what he meant.

'Well, he never looked at me once going up to the plate, or even standing there. He didn't even know I was a left-hander. I thought he was asleep until the ball got right to the plate. Then his eyes popped open and that rifle shot.' "

-Fred Russell, Nashville Banner (Baseball Digest, September 1959)

1959 Yankee of the Past: Dazzy Vance

 LOOK OUT! NO GOOD CURVES AHEAD: VANCE

"Dazzy Vance, who had one of the sharpest-breaking curves in the business when he was at his peak with the Brooklyn Dodgers, can't understand why there are so few pitchers with a good curve ball in the major leagues today.

'You never or rarely see a good curve,' the old Dazzler said this spring. 'Every club has a pitching coach, which we didn't have in the old days, but what are these coaches doing? Are they afraid to tell a young pitcher that he doesn't know how to throw a curve? I know it can be done because I've worked with a lot of kid teams in Florida. I took one young fellow with a strong arm, very poor control and no curve at all and I got him where he could throw such a good curve that I sold him for a good figure to a big league club.'

Could he think of any good reason why the young pitchers didn't learn to throw curves?

'Well, I've noticed one trend that may have something to do with it,' Vance replied. 'I've heard coaches- pitching, infield and hitting- say very important like, 'Now we don't want to change any boy's natural style. We'll point out things he's doing wrong, but each man must find the style he likes best.' Maybe that's the trouble. Show a boy the right way to throw a curve and make him do it that way. He ain't old enough to have a natural style. So give him one. And give him the right one.'

Dazzy, who won 197 games between 1922 and 1935, recalled that George Sisler got him his big break in the major leagues. 'We moved into Mobile with an exhibition game with the Browns late in the training season,' Vance recalled. 'We'd been in training five or six weeks and old Robbie (the late Wilbert Robinson) hadn't given me a tumble. I hadn't had a starting assignment. I guess everyone else was tired, but anyhow Robbie accidentally put me in that game at Mobile. If I do say it myself, I had a pretty good curve in those days. I broke one off for Sisler, and George struck out. And as he passed Robbie he said, 'That was the doggondest curve I ever saw.' Robbie heard it and asked who threw the curve and somebody told him it was that big, new guy, Vance, and that's how he found out I was on the ball club.'

Vance's curve was the biggest this writer ever saw. Mike Haley, covering the Browns for another St. Louis paper, was sitting with us, directly behind the plate in the Mobile ball park. After one of Vance's pitches he turned and said, 'Did you see what I saw?' 'Yes,' we replied, 'but we don't believe it. That curve broke twice.'

It must have been a difficult task to catch old Dazzy and it was no wonder the Dodgers gave him a personal catcher in Hank DeBerry."

-J. Roy Stockton, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Baseball Digest, May 1959)

NO KNUCKLEHEAD, HE

"Back when Dazzy Vance was riding high on his sizzling fast one, he decided to augment it with a dipsy-do knuckleball pitch.

After a few weeks of experimenting, he was ready to test his knuckler and summoned Otto Miller to catch him. His very first pitch veered off to plunk Miller behind the ear. Exit Otto.

Eddie Ainsmith volunteered as a replacement. Dazzy's next knuckler blackened Eddie's eye. Exit Ainsmith. In came Bubbles Hargrave to pick up a catcher's mitt.

He came to when they poured a bucket of water over him, and, despite a lump on his head, went out that afternoon and poled five straight hits.

The next morning he walked up to Vance and handed Dazzy a ball. 'Hit me again,' he grinned."

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