WOULD YOU HAVE MADE THESE DEALS?
Here Are Some Senators Spruned, Says Dressen
"The ranking braintruster on Walt Alston's staff, Chuck Dressen, insists he is what he is- a coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers. But the feeling is strong that old Perpetual Motion is apt to bounce into the headlines at any time.
He could manage the Milwaukee Braves before the season is over. Or the Detroit Tigers. Or the Chicago White Sox. Or the Boston Red Sox. Or even the Dodgers. This is just a feeling. Dressen, himself, doesn't speculate.
'I'd still be with Washington if the old man had lived,' Chuck says instead. 'Clark Griffith was my kind of baseball man. Me and him would sit for hours, even after a night game when he was old and not feeling strong, and talk for hours.'
This is a man who has managed three different clubs- Cincinnati, Brooklyn and Washington, and no matter what anyone says, including Dressen himself, he'd grab a chance to manage again. You can make book on it. The man couldn't help himself.
'I liked Washington when I went there,' Chuck reminisces. That was in 1955, when he had implausibly left the Dodgers of 1953 of his own accord. 'Griff and me was going to make a lot of deals. We talked the same language. After Calvin (Griffith) took over, it was different, but I wanted to stay with the Senators because Cal was so sure he was going to move to Los Angeles.'
'Calvin was sure?'
Dressen chuckles. 'Remember one time the papers said that Calvin was trying to reach me on the coast to talk about a trade, only he couldn't find me? Shucks, I was hiding.
'I was out there checking on the transfer of Washington to Los Angeles. It was so secret I didn't even stay at a hotel. He wasn't trying to reach me. I was hiding on his orders.
'Washington had first crack at Los Angeles, ahead of Brooklyn. They booted it.'
Something like 18 games after the 1957 season began, Dressen was removed as field manager of the Senators. 'They gave me a title- assistant to the president- but, hell, what good was that title?' Chuck goes on. 'I could have stayed ... I had a two-year contract with Washington. You didn't know that, did you?
'I wasn't fired. I quit. They wasn't going to do nothing. Sherry Robertson was going to run the farm system, and he don't think like I do. And Calvin was going to run the Senators. What did that leave me to do? Nothing.
'I wanted to tear apart the Washington club. Who did Calvin get for Pete Runnells? Albie Pearson, mostly, and he's a nice kid, but once I had a chance to get five ball players from Cleveland for Runnels.
'That's the truth. Hank Greenberg, when he was general manager of Cleveland, gave me a list of ten players. I could have any five, except only one left-handed pitcher, for Runnels. Cal McLish was on the list. So were Gene Woodling and Bobby Avila.'
Needless to say, the trade didn't come off. 'Calvin said he couldn't give up Runnels because Pete had a good year,' Dressen remembers.
'When you got a bad club, the time to trade a ball player is when the man's up, when he's hitting. I wanted to trade Runnels, Eddie Yost and Roy Sievers. Not all at once ... just one of them so's we could begin building up the club.
'One day George Weiss of the Yankees told me he was looking for a left-handed hitter. 'Well, we don't have what you're looking for,' I told him. Then we got to talking about Sievers.
'Weiss offered me Billy Martin, Woodie Held, Bob Martyn and a pitcher I woulda insisted be Ralph Terry. I called Calvin.
' 'We can't trade Sievers,' he told me. 'The fans would run me out of town.'
'I told Calvin that's the way you have to go- give up a big man to rebuild. I said 'Calvin, I don't care how many home runs Sievers hits. We're still finishing last.' '
One other notable Dressen deal that wasn't made.
'Early in June 1956 the White Sox thought they were going to beat the Yankees. I talked to Chuck Comiskey and he was all excited. Chicago offered us Minnie Minoso, Jack Harshman, Walt Dropo, Sammy Esposito (a needed shortstop) and $75,000 for Sievers. Calvin was passing on trades at that time, although the Old Man was alive, and he turned it down.
'No, we didn't hit it off too good, me and Calvin. But you know, I like Calvin.' "
-Francis Stann, Washington (Baseball Digest, May 1959)
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)
Charlie Dressen, coach of the Dodgers: "If I had been managing the National League team in the second All-Star Game and that guy (Casey Stengel) had used all those left-handers, I'd have had a left-handed pitcher in there mighty quick. I might have let Don Drysdale pitch to only one or two batters, then changed. You play the game to win, don't you?"
-Baseball Digest, October 1959
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