1955 Yankee of the Past: Frank Baker

 HOME RUN BAKER WAS ENTITLED

He Batted .367 In Six World Series

"Baseball was paying a tribute long overdue when, finally, it beckoned J. Franklin Baker into its Hall of Fame in Cooperstown a few weeks ago. It was a special committee, authorized to memorialize old-timers which crooked a finger in the direction of Trappe, Md., and advised that town's most distinguished citizen he was wanted.

They could have enshrined Frank Baker among Cooperstown's immortals more than a decade before when another committee was arbitrarily blanketing into the Hall of Fame some of the more important figures of baseball. Some who made it in that manner had claims that were pale compared to Baker's.

For four consecutive years, nobody hit as many home runs as Home Run Baker. You could add up his homers over that four-year span and still get a total of only 39, which is not impressive by latter-day standards; in fact, it wouldn't lead the league in any year. But conditions, of course, were different in Baker's time.

If it is startling to recall that Baker led the A.L. in homers with nine in 1911, and with a mere eight in 1914, it is well to recall also that he had no souped-up ball to swing at it, and like other hitters of his era often was a pigeon for the doctored deliveries like the shine ball, the spitter and the emery ball.

For four straight years, and he was playing in a league that also boasted such as Cobb and Speaker and Crawford, nobody could dethrone Baker as home run king. It is a bit intriguing to remember that last season Stan Musial accumulated five homers in one day (double-header), more than half of Baker's total for a season. Yet Baker in his time was more famed as a home run hitter than Musial in his.

Paradoxically, the young man from Maryland's Eastern Shore was labeled Home Run Baker not because he led the league in homers, but because of two very special home runs he hit in the World Series of 1911 against the Giants. He picked the National League's most famous pitchers to hit them against, Rube Marquard and Christy Mathewson, on consecutive days.

It was the setting of Baker's homers in a World Series atmosphere that won him the name Home Run Baker. Others had hit World Series homers before him, even as others before Patrick Henry had exclaimed 'Give me liberty or give me death.' But if Baker and Patrick Henry weren't doing it first, they were doing it best in the sense of timing, and wound up being identified with their specialties.

Home Run Baker was the cross the late Jack Dunn of the Baltimore Orioles bore during most of his career. Dunn, the great prospector for talent, who divined greatness in such youngsters as Lefty Grove, George Earnshaw, Joe Boley and Max Bishop, fluffed miserably the chance to sign a boy from the Eastern Shore name of J. Franklin Baker. A scout brought him in from Ridgley, Md., where he was pitching for a semipro team, and Dunn, unimpressed with the gawky country kid, sent him home.

That was in 1906, and three years later the boy whom Dunn had scorned was the regular third baseman of the Philadelphia Athletics, a .305 hitter, and soon to be a member of the famed '$100,000 infield.' Nobody else played third base for Connie Mack from the day Baker arrived in Philadelphia until Mr. Mack decided to sell off his stars at the end of the 1914 season.

Baker demonstrated that he was a rugged individualist when he refused to report to the Yankees, to whom Mack had sold him. He didn't like the idea of being sold by Philadelphia, didn't like the salary the Yankees offered him, and stayed out of organized ball for a full year during which he contented himself with playing semipro ball in Upland, Pa. In 1916, he changed his mind and reported to the Yanks.

Unlike such as Ralph Kiner, whose claims to the Hall of Fame begin and end with his home run hitting that led the National League for many years, Home Run Baker could advance other weighty reasons. When he quit the majors in 1922, he could show an average of .305 for his 15-year career, and he had stolen as many as 40 bases in a season.

His World Series record also was heavily in his favor as a candidate for Cooperstown. He played in six World Series that added up to 25 games, and had a Series batting average of .367.

Home Run Baker might have qualified for the Hall of Fame as a scout as well as a ball player. It was following his retirement that he noted the skill of a young farmer playing semipro ball in neighboring Sudlersville, Md. He took the young man by the hand, escorted him to Shibe Park and personally delivered Jimmie Foxx to Connie Mack with the suggestion, 'I think you'd better sign him, Mr. Mack. You won't find his likes anywhere else.' "

-Shirley Povich, condensed from the Washington Post and Times Herald (Baseball Digest, April 1955)

BAKER HOMERED WITH 52-OUNCER!

Used Bat Half Again As Heavy As Moderns

"All that the post village of Trappe, Md., rates in the U.S. Postal Gazetteer are three lines ending with the almost embarrassing fact that the population is 272.

It also states that there are four churches and a high school.

But future editors of the publication had better bear in mind another fact for inclusion in the context.

That is that in a large, comfortable, yellow house near the end of the main street- not Main St., just the main street- lives Trappe's most illustrious citizen. His home has been the chief point of interest in Trappe for the past few weeks, for the owner is John Franklin Baker, one of the 1955 additions to Baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., and Philadelphia's dynamic baseball hero.

It is almost incredible that a lad 17 years old could ever have been found in this charmingly remote spot of Maryland's Eastern Shore- a lad who now says at 68 that 'I dreamed of being a ball player even when I was ten years old working in the fields on my father's farm.

'I could see myself in a big league uniform,' he said. 'I dreamed of playing before big crowds. I dreamed of being a hero. But never, never, never did I dream that I would ever be in the Hall of Fame.'

This John Franklin Baker, who became famous as 'Home Run' Baker by winning two games in the 1911 World Series for the Athletics, has aged gracefully. His hair is gray and his hands show the scars and knots of baseball injuries that followed hard farm work.

But he has tastefully dressed in a brown suit, worn green wool socks and moccasin type brown shoes. He had a brown striped shirt and a brown wool tie upon which were embroidered dogs' heads.

The living room was typical of any well appointed room in which people of good humor lived. There were family portraits, etchings of wild ducks in flight, a collection of classic and modern books, a piano, an antique grandfather's clock and a fireplace that had known many roaring fires.

Baker sat back comfortably at the end of the sofa. 'Yes,' he said. 'My family has been in these parts for many years. My grandfather's great-grandfather came here to settle more than 200 years ago.

'Ours was a big family. Some of the early Bakers went to Virginia, others settled in Baltimore, one of my father's grandfathers went to Texas, but most of us have been around Maryland.

'Then there was my mother's family. Her name was Mary Catherine Fitzhugh. The Fitzhughs came from Virginia and were related to General Robert E. Lee. One strain is English on father's side and Scottish on mother's.'

'Were there any athletes among the Baker ancestors?'

'Let me tell you about my father,' the home run sensation of the early 1900's went on.

'He never saw a trick in the circus he couldn't perform. I saw him one day when he was in his 60's bend over and pick up a 120-pound sack of wheat in his teeth and lift it onto a table. When he was 68 he turned handsprings right out there in the street. He cartwheeled the length of the street in front of our house and finished off by landing on his feet in an upright position.'

'Maybe that's where the home run prowess came from,' it was suggested.

'I was pretty husky,' Frank allowed, 'but there was something else. When I swung at a ball I knew it was where I wanted it to be. I waited until the last split-second before I swung. I wasn't one of those fellows who was always 'way out in front of a ball.

'And I used a man's-sized bat. Up until I got too old to get around on good fast ball pitching I used a 52-ounce bat. Honest! You had to hit that ball fair and square and with some weight and power back of it to make it go over a fence.

'I won't take anything away from present-day players. They're fine boys and play good baseball. But the ball is different.

'Why you know I've swung with all my might at a good fast ball, hit it fair and square and was lucky if it bounced against the fence. I hit the fence in Shibe Park- it's not Connie Mack Stadium to Baker- 38 times in one year. Eddie Collins told me if I had been hitting the ball Babe Ruth hit, every one of them would have gone over the fence.

'One day when I was at the ball game I saw Joe DiMaggio, using a 35-ounce bat, take just an easy swing and hit the ball over the fence in right-center field.'

'Were you, a left-handed batter, ever taken out of a ball game because a left-handed pitcher worked?'

For a moment, Baker was non-plussed.

'Indeed I wasn't,' he said with some choler. 'And I never moved around in the batter's box because one was pitching. I always stood with my left foot against the back line of the batter's box. I didn't hit outside pitches to the opposite field very often unless Connie Mack told me to. I swung pretty much straight away.

'What left-hander would I get out of the game for? I hit against Rube Waddell and he was still mighty fast. I hit Vean Gregg, a really great curve ball pitcher. And Doc White with the White Sox. I hit that home in 1911 that beat the Giants in the World Series off Rube Marquard, another fine left-hander. Why I would have fought Connie Mack if he had tried to take me out because we had to bat against a southpaw.

'But we didn't play that kind of baseball, then. There were some pretty good pinch hitters and there were some really pert relief pitchers. But we started with nine men and usually ended the game with nine men.

'Just look at how Ed Walsh could pitch year in and year out and win 40 games a year. Same way with Cy Young. Do you know, I believe if those big strong fellows of those days had taken the proper rest the way the pitchers do today they'd still be pitching.

'There was Walsh with the White Sox; George Mullin and Bill Donovan with Detroit; Jim Bagby and Addie Joss at Cleveland; Walter Johnson at Washington; Carl Mays, Eddie Cicotte and that awful man with the emery ball- Russ Ford.'

Did he hit his first major league home run off any of those pitchers of legend?

'No, I didn't,' he said. 'My first home run in the majors was what they now call 'a grand slam.' It was in the opening game of the 1909 season in Boston. We got men on second and third and the Boston pitcher was a fellow by the name of Frank Arellanes. He walked Danny Murphy to get to me.

'When Murphy got down to first base, he said to Jake Stahl, 'That was a mistake walking me. That kid can hit the ball outta the park.'

'And on the first pitch to me, I hit it over the right field fence. When I got back to the bench Murphy said, 'Kid, you made Jake Stahl think I am the greatest prophet in baseball.' Then he told me what he had said.'

There are reams and reams of interesting recollections of the old A's in Baker's memory. How Doc Powers was his protecting guide; how he roomed with Stuffy McInnis; how Eddie Collins will always rate as the greatest of all second basemen in his mind even overshadowing Larry Lajoie; how he was almost scared to death as he took over third base from the great Jimmy Collins; how he was almost killed by a Walter Johnson pitch, and how Connie Mack wears more 'stars in his baseball crown than any man who ever lived.'

Ty Cobb, despite the famous spiking sprees, was never an enemy off the field; Eddie Plank was the finest left-hander he ever saw; Chief Bender, the 'dearest friend' anyone could ever have, and Christy Mathewson 'a wonderful pitcher and wonderful gentleman.'

Baker enjoyed chortling over a famous incident in the 1911 World Series. When Baker hit the home run off Marquard to win the second game, 3-1, Matty, writing a first-person narrative in a New York newspaper, took Rube to task for pitching Baker a high fast ball.

'Everyone knows Baker can't hit a low curve,' Matty pontificated.

'That's where I always got the laugh,' Frank recalled. 'It was the next day in New York Matty pitched against Jack Coombs. Matty had that wonderful fadeaway- the pitch they now throw a screwball. He got two strikes on me and instead of throwing the fadeaway he tried a low, outside curve ball. And I hit that one over the right field fence. The very pitch he said I couldn't hit and the pitch he thought Marquard should have thrown me.'

The day Baker received news of his election to the Hall of Fame was the happiest of his life, but the saddest was when he was sold to the Yankees.

'I've often thought of what Eddie Collins said when he was traded to the White Sox,' Baker recalled. 'Even though he became manager of the White Sox he said, 'They could take a lot of money off my contract if I could go back and play for Connie Mack.'

'And that's what I said when they told me I was being sent to New York.

' 'Just give me less money and let me play here,' was all I could think of saying.' "

-Frank Yuetter, Philadelphia Bulletin (Baseball Digest, May 1955)

1955 Yankee Farmhand of the Past: Mayo Smith

HERE'S WHO IS MAYO SMITH

He Wasn't Unkown To Phils' Brass

"This was in Baltimore's old Oriole Park, back in 1942, during the era of International League baseball in the Maryland city. The Buffalo Bisons were inflicting cruel punishment on the Orioles, and when the game reached the ho-hum stage the occupants of the press coop atop the rachitic grandstand began a fanning bee.

Present that day was Ben Sankey, once an infielder with Pittsburgh, who had just finished a long hitch in the International with Montreal. Ben remarked that he felt like an old fire horse that has been retired to pasture, and somebody asked him whether he'd like to return to the game as a manager.

'No,' Sankey replied. 'I don't have the touch. But down there,'- he pointed to a Buffalo player hefting a bat in the on-deck circle- 'is a fellow who has it. Some day he'll be managing in the majors.'

'You mean Mayo Smith?' a guy said. 'Migosh, Ben, he's a nice fellow and all that, and I guess he knows baseball. But manage in the majors? Why, he may not even get there as a player. He's been knocking around in this league for six years, and he's running out of time.'

Sankey was adamant. 'I don't care whether Mayo never plays a game in the majors,' he declared. 'He'll be managing up there, though. On a guess, I'd say in about ten years.'

As things turned out, Sankey was three years off with his forecast, but nevertheless qualified for a seat on the Delphic bandwagon. For Mayo Smith, after following a tortuous path through the boondocks, has arrived in the big time as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.

At 40, the big (six feet, 180 pounds), ruggedly handsome Smith can look back on a succession of experiences that read like the story line of a soap opera. Mayo was 30 when given his one and only whirl in the majors as a player. 'I lasted,' he says, 'only long enough to have a cup of coffee.' He was stricken by the rheumatic fever which first threatened his life, then seemed certain to take him out of baseball for keeps. He nearly lost his family in a flood. But despite these and other vicissitudes, he kept bouncing back with a resiliency which may stand him in good stead as boss of the Phillies.

It is baring no secret to state that a man who parks the back of his lap in the manager's chair in the Philadelphia clubhouse is occupying one of the hottest seats in baseball. Smith is the fourth to perch there since the beginning of the 1952 season. Eddie Sawyer, who led the Phillies to their first pennant in 35 years, got the heave-ho in June, 1952; his successor, Steve  O'Neill, hung around until last July, and Terry Moore, the next in line, was unseated after the 1954 campaign. A story goes that when Moore took over, an unidentified member of the team declaimed: 'We got rid of Sawyer and O'Neill, and we'll get rid of this guy, too.'

Very likely, this quote is apocryphal, but there is no gainsaying that the Phillies present one of baseball's most enigmatic problems. Here's an outfit which, five years ago, was one of the National League's brightest young teams of recent memory. But instead of improving, as many a deep thinker figured it would, it faded. In almost any gathering place in Philadelphia, you can hear year-round discussions of the reasons for the team's recent decline; the one advanced most frequently is that the Phils are overpaid, overstuffed and have no respect for authority.

So you sit down with Mayo Smith and you put it to him. After all, he is a comparative unknown, stepping into a situation that stymied such former major league stars as O'Neill and Moore. In fact, when Smith's appointment was announced by the Phillies last October, practically every fan in Philadelphia asked the same question: 'Who's Mayo Smith?' You tell Smith these things, and you ask him how he intends to handle the club.

He makes no speech, recites no bromides. He simply looks you in the eye and says quietly: 'I'm going to run it.' He doesn't emphasize the first person pronoun, and his tone conveys no threat. But you come away with the impression that Smith, whose forte wherever he has gone as a player or manager has been his everlasting hustle, could be the man to restore the Phillies to the ranks of up-and-at-'em ball clubs.

The Phillies' top brass didn't just reach into a hat and come up with Smith. As long ago as 1949, Roy Hamey, who served in the New York Yankees' front office before his appointment as general of the Phils last spring, was impressed by Smith's work as a freshman manager in the Yankee farm system. Last season, when Mayo managed Birmingham of the Southern Association, Johnny Nee, the personnel director of the Phillies, observed him closely over a period of weeks. When the Phils decided not to renew Terry Moore's contract, Hamey, with the permission of George Weiss, the Yankee major domo, approached Smith.

'I had no idea that I was being considered for the job until Roy called me after the World Series,' Smith says. 'There wasn't anything particularly dramatic about it. Hamey asked me whether I'd consider managing the Phillies. I said yes. That's all there was to it.'

Mayo can't remember the time when he didn't want to be a ball player. But, despite the feelings of Ben Sankey and others who had played with or against him in the early phases of his minor league career that some day Smith would become a manager, Mayo himself gave little thought to piloting until he was nearing the end of the trail as a player.

'I was playing under Jim Turner (now the Yankee pitching coach) at Portland, in the Pacific Coast League, in 1947,' Smith recalls. 'One day Jim asked me whether I ever had thought of becoming a manager. I said no.

' 'Well,' Jim said, 'I think you ought to consider it.' I thought it over and decided that Jim had something there. From then on, I haunted Turner, trying to learn all I could about handling pitchers. Jim was a wonderful teacher. Also, he did more than teach me. When he left Portland after the 1948 season to go with the Yankees, he recommended me for a manager's job in the Yankee organization.'

By then, Smith was a veteran of 16 seasons in baseball, dating from the time when, as an 18-year-old, he signed with Toronto of the International League. Born Jan. 17, 1915, at New London, Mo., he was christened Edward Mayo Smith, but except for his signature on legal documents, never has used his first name.

The 'Mayo' derives from the fact that, just before his birth, his maternal grandparents had returned from undergoing checkups at the famous Mayo Brothers Clinic and were so high in its praises that it was decided the name be included in the new arrival's tag.

The only child of Frederick and Eva Lake Smith, Mayo lived his first 11 years in Missouri, and one of his earliest memories is that of playing baseball. Then Frederick Smith, a farmer, decided to move to Lake Worth, Fla., to become a butcher, and it was there that young Mayo began to blossom as an athlete. His father, who died a few years ago, encouraged him, and by the time Mayo entered high school he was a multi-sport performer.

At Lake Worth High he is remembered as a better than average student and an athlete good enough to have attracted several college scholarship offers. An end in football, a consistent scorer in basketball and a third baseman in baseball, Mayo reached the end of his high school career in 1933 with a problem.

Should he accept one of the scholarship offers and continue his education? Or should he sign a contract offered him by Toronto? Dan Howley, the former Cincinnati and St. Louis Browns' manager, who was skipper of the Maple Leafs, had been on Mayo's trail for nearly two years. Howley had been touted on Smith by a West Palm Beach resident named Jack Gorham, and when Dan himself dropped by for a look, he liked what he saw. Smith was a graceful 168-pounder who batted left-handed, threw right-handed and ran well.

Mayo talked the problem over with his parents, and out of the confab came the decision that, inasmuch as the youngster wanted more than anything else to be a major league ball player, he should lose no time setting out toward that goal. So Smith signed with Toronto.

'It was the day after my graduation,' he remembers. 'I was given a $500 bonus and a contract calling for $250 a month. By today's standards, that was peanuts. But, remember, this was in the heart of the depression. I considered myself a very fortunate young fellow.'

For the remainder of the season, Mayo gave the heat treatment to benches throughout the International League. It was Howley's contention that the boy would learn more from the Maple League dugout than by playing regularly in a league of lower classification. 'Next year,' he told Mayo, 'we'll send you out. But right now I want you to watch and learn. All told, Smith got into 13 games, mostly as a pinch hitter and a pinch runner, winding up with a batting average of .103.

The following spring Howley announced that thenceforth Smith would be an outfielder. The kid had trouble making the bunt play from third base, but he was fleet and could throw, and Howley decided that he should make capital of these assets. Dan turned Mayo over to Harry Rice, the veteran outfielder who had wound up his major league career at Cincinnati the previous season, and Mayo proved an apt pupil.

Farmed out to Wilmington, N.C., of the Piedmont League, Mayo batted .284 in 1934, upped his average to .315 the following year. He also covered center field like the well-known tent, and when he went to spring training with Toronto in 1936, he figured to stick.

'But it turned out to be a jinx year' Smith says. 'I had a good spring, but Toronto was overstocked with outfielders, so I was shipped out again.' Back to the Piedmont League went Mayo- this time to Durham, N.C., where he batted close to .400 during the first six weeks. Then, diving for a sinking line drive one day, he broke his left shoulder. Sidelined for 11 weeks, he found it difficult to regain his timing at the plate, finished with a .217 batting mark.

Nevertheless, Toronto recalled him in 1937, and Mayo nailed down a steady job, which was his for three seasons. His best effort was the .293 average he compiled in 1937. In the winter of 1939-40, the Leafs traded him to Buffalo for an outfielder named Johnny Tyler. Steve O'Neill, who managed the Bisons at the time, still talks about that transaction.

'It was,' O'Neill has said, 'the best deal I made in my three years at Buffalo, and one of the best of my career.'

Before reporting to the Bison camp, Smith made another type of deal for himself. Since high school days in Lake Worth he had kept company with pretty Louise Otto; at this stage, he and Louise decided to make it permanent. They were married March 10, 1940, and now have two children, Judith Ann, 12, and Fred, 4.

It is doubtful whether Buffalo ever has had a more popular player than Smith proved to be. The customers liked his bear-down attitude and the seemingly effortless manner in which he patrolled his post. Bucky Harris, the Buffalo manager in 1944, probably best expressed local sentiment about Mayo's defensive ability.

'I just thought of a perfect game,' Harris remarked one night after the Bisons had won a loose contest. 'That would be one in which 27 balls were hit somewhere near Mayo in center field.'

Until that 1944 season, Mayo's top batting performance for the Bisons was his .279 average of 1942. Then, under Harris, Mayo suddenly became the hitter Dan Howley expected him to become ten years earlier. He started fast, endured two short-lived slumps in midseason, and wound up with a .340 average to win the International League batting championship.

Throughout the season, Mayo had trouble with his arches. He wears size 12 1/2 shoes, and when the arches on dogs of that size kick up, they really howl. Yet Mayo missed only four games all year. He would go home immediately after a game to soak his feet for hours in a pain-relieving solution. It is now a family joke that Mayo ate most of his meals with his feet in a tub of water. Now and then Louise would urge him to take a week's rest, lest the arches cave in altogether. But Mayo always replied: 'What's a little pain when you're hitting and the team is winning.'

In November, 1944, Smith got the break for which he had been striving. At the annual major league draft meeting, the Philadelphia Athletics selected Mayo, paying Buffalo $7,500 for him. But before he was able to report to the A's training camp the next spring, a blow fell.

On Feb. 5, 1945, Mayo was struck down by a rheumatic fever. It was no mere touch of the illness. It was the real thing, with all its malevolence, and for two weeks, as Smith lay helpless in a Buffalo hospital bed, it was touch and go. Then the crisis passed and Mayo, still a very sick man, began to talk of his future.

His doctors told him that it would be better if he never attempted to play ball again. When Mayo insisted that he wanted to remain in the game, the medicos relented slightly. Perhaps in 1946, they told him, he might test himself. But playing that year was out of the question.

Accordingly, Smith informed the A's that he desired to apply for voluntary retirement. There followed a correspondence in which the A's expressed the intention of keeping Mayo's name on their active roster, in the hope that he might see his way clear to joining the club at some time during the season.

The upshot was that Smith, after a long convalescence, dropped in at what then was Shibe Park early in June to talk things over with Connie Mack. He had made an astonishing physical comeback but was still a long way from the condition expected of a major league player. His doctors had okayed his return to baseball, with the proviso that he undergo daily medical checkups to guard against the recurrence of the disease.

'Looking back,' Mayo says, 'I realize I had no business trying to play that year. But Mr. Mack said he wanted me, and when I gave him the figure I'd expect for playing, he agreed to it. So I signed.'

On June 12, Mayo began working out, and four days later he was in the A's lineup. It would make a nice touch to be able to report that he became an overnight sensation, but he was something less than that. His vitality sapped by his illness, Smith limped through the remainder of the season, batting .212 in 73 games.

It came as no surprise when the A's traded Smith and pitcher Steve Gerkin to Portland after the season for a pitcher named Wendell Mosser. Mayo played that 1946 season for the Beavers, batting .249. When Jim Turner took over as manager the next year, Smith took a new lease on his baseball life.

'Jim told me to disregard that .249 year,' Mayo says. ' 'This year,' he says, 'you're going to be a .300 hitter.' ' Smith must have taken the prediction seriously, for he finished with .311. He also kept an observer's eye on Turner's managerial methods, learning all he could about working with pitchers.

The 1948 season stands out in Smith's memory, not so much because it was his last as a player in the high minors, but because of a harrowing experience involving his wife and daughter. You may recall that on May 30, 1948, a flood swept over a vast residential section of Portland, wreaking death and destruction. The Smith home was in the affected area.

'The Beavers played in Seattle that day,' Mayo says, 'and immediately after the double-header, we flew back to Portland. When we landed at the Portland airport, I learned that Louise and Judith Ann, who was then five, had been reported missing. You can imagine the feeling of helplessness that overwhelms you at such a time.

'I jumped into a cab and told the driver to take me as close as he could to the flood area. On the way there, just on a hunch, I stopped for a moment at the home of a friend to learn what I could about the situation. And there were Louise and the little girl, all battered and cut and bruised. They had clung to a rooftop for hours until they were rescued. We lost our house, our car and our clothes, except those we were wearing, but the only thing that mattered was that Louise and Judith Ann were saved.'

After the 1948 campaign, Turner recommended Smith to the Yankees as a manager. Mayo asked for and drew his release from Portland and promptly was named to manage the Yankee farm club at Amsterdam, N.Y., in the Class B Canadian-American League. Doubling as pilot and outfielder, he brought Amsterdam home in fifth place in 1949, fourth in 1950. Coincidentally, Amsterdam was the first managerial post held by Eddie Sawyer en route to the job of bossing the Phillies.

In 1951, the Yankees assigned Smith to Norfolk, Va., of the Piedmont League. There, Mayo became a bench manager. Norfolk won the pennant that year, and again in 1952, causing the Yankees to mark him for advancement.

Assigned to handle Birmingham, Smith steered the Barons into fourth place in the Southern Association in 1953, got them up to third last year. Your agent can report that he overheard whisperings in pre-World Series bull sessions in New York last September to the effect that the Yankee brass looked upon Mayo as a possible successor to Casey Stengel when Ol' Case finally decided to retire. One thing was certain. The Yanks were pleased with Mayo's work.

'Anyone who can keep a smart and brainy baseball man like George Weiss happy over the years, as Smith did, has to be a good manager,' Wid Matthews, of the Chicago front office, has remarked.

Mayo and his family live in a pleasant home in Lake Worth during the off-seasons. The house is less than a chip shot from a golf course, which pleases Mayo considerably. His only hobby is golf. He shoots in the high 80's for the most part, although longtime golfing companions aver that it wouldn't take him long to get into the low 70's if he worked at it.

Until his appointment as boss of the Phils, Smith worked during the winter months as a carpet salesman in the Lake Worth area, did so well that he could have made a full-time job of it. 'But after the Phillies' job came along,' he says, 'I had to give it up. There were so many requests for me to make public appearances that I had little time to devote to the carpet business.'

An amiable, articulate man, Smith makes a fine impression at sports affairs. He has a light, deprecating way of talking about himself, as witness a remark at the banquet of Philadelphia sports writers.

'I enjoyed my meal here tonight,' Mayo said. 'The last time I was in Philadelphia, in 1945, I 'had a cup of coffee.' In ten years I seem to have made at least a little improvement.' "

-Edgar Williams, Baseball Digest, April 1955

"Mayo played in only 73 games during his major league career. But his ability to handle men and make the right decisions helped him become the Phillies' manager this year.

He managed Amsterdam for two years before leaving the active player list in 1950. He led Norfolk to the Piedmont League pennant in '51 and '52, then managed Birmingham the next two years."

-1955 Topps No. 130

1955 Yankee of the Past: Muddy Ruel

 TRAINING TIME NEEDED BY TEAM VARIES

"General Manager Muddy Ruel of the Tigers allows as how he can't find much rhyme or reason in the baseball edict which states that players can't get on the spring training expense account until March 1.

Not that Muddy is anxious to expand the $80,000 it costs to transport a big-league team around the Southland, or even decrease it. Just that he thinks that each club should be able to set its own starting date.

'Look at it this way,' he pointed out between pipe puffs. 'The regular season starts around the second week of April. Everybody has to be ready to go by then. That's definite. I think that's all that needs to be definite ... the length of the training season should be flexible.'

Ruel's reasoning goes like this: The training demands of a major league club vary from year to year. Some seasons a club goes to camp with a team of veterans whose jobs are secure.

'All that these fellows need is ten days to get the kinks out of their system and then 12 to 15 exhibition games to get ready for the season,' Muddy insisted. 'That's a month at the most.'

A couple of years later that same team might be going through a rebuilding program with a flock of rookies fighting for a regular job. It might have a new manager who is getting his first look at his players.

'This type of team needs a longer training period,' said Ruel. 'Maybe six weeks, maybe seven. Maybe more. That's why I claim that a hard and fast starting date for spring drills doesn't make sense in baseball.' "

-Lyall Smith, Detroit Free Press (Baseball Digest, April 1955)

1955 Yankee of the Past: Steve O'Neill

X-RAY INTO THE PAST

"Now that old teammates Tris Speaker and Steve O'Neill are deskmates in the Cleveland Indians' front office, they have an opportunity for reminiscing. Said Speaker recently, 'Steve, you certainly knew how to block the plate. One reason I was glad to come to Cleveland from the Red Sox was to have you on my side.''That reminds me,' grinned Steve. 'Do you remember trying to slide home on a close play when you were with the Red Sox? I tagged you out. But I was out, too. You cut my hand and I had to get stitched up.'Speaker said he remembered the incident. 'Happened in 1914,' recalled Spoke.'Well, I never told you before,' said Steve, 'but my hand still hurts. I had an X-ray recently and they found you knocked a bone out of place.' "

-Hal Lebovitz, Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, April 1955)

1955 Yankee of the Past: George Stallings

HE SHOULD DROP DEAD ALREADY
"They tell this story on George Stallings, who managed the 'Miracle Braves' of 1914. Seems that he once used a third-string catcher who, fielding a bunt, struck a base runner on the head with his throw to first base. The runner continued to third after the ball caromed off his noggin and the catcher was fired. When the backstop complained to Stallings, 'Gee you can't fire me because of one bad throw,' the colorful manager replied, 'I'm not firing you because you hit the runner in the head, I'm canning you because he was able to go to third base. When a catcher of mine can't kill  a man with a peg on the head, he's finished.' "

-Francis Stann, the Washington Star (Baseball Digest, January-February 1955)

1955 Yankee of the Past: Bucky Harris

"After Washington lost a game by a score of 18-1, a cub reporter interviewed Bucky Harris and asked:
'To what do you attribute today's defeat?' "

-H.G. Salsinger in the Detroit News (Baseball Digest, November 1954)

SPIKE FINALLY LANDS PAL
"Bucky Harris' return to Detroit as manager of the Tigers as Freddie Hutchinson's successor was written in the club's 'future book' many years ago, when Walter O. (Spike) Briggs, Jr., was a wide-eyed youngster, thrilled by his association with the big men of his father's baseball team.
Spike was still in high school when Harris started his first term as Tiger manager in 1929. Presumably, the young heir had the run of the clubhouse and the field while the amiable, soft-spoken Bucky was in charge.
But in 1934 high-strung Mickey Cochrane succeeded Harris and the grapevine reported that the new chief took less kindly to the constant presence of the owner's son. According to a rumor current at the time, Cochrane finally quit his job at the height of an argument with Briggs, Sr., on this subject.
In any case, Spike never lost his boyhood admiration of Harris. As he grew older and was given a hand in the operation of the club, he kept watching for an opportunity to bring back Bucky.
He thought he saw it in 1945, when Jack Zeller retired as general manager.
'If I have anything to say about it,' spoke Spike, 'Bucky Harris will be our next general manager.'
The ink on the newsprint carrying this statement scarcely hardly had time to dry before Spike's father gave the front office job to George Trautman, now the head of all the minor leagues.
Spike was deeply wounded. But he didn't forget Harris. As soon as it was learned that Hutchinson had refused to accept a one-year contract with Detroit, insiders everywhere predicted that Bucky, freshly fired in Washington, would get the job."

-Ed McAuley, the Cleveland News (Baseball Digest, November 1954)

BUCKY HARRIS: "It's good to be back in Detroit with the Briggs family. Yes, the Tigers will have a hustling ball club this year. I wonder if I ever said that before."

-Baseball Digest, March 1955

1955 Yankee Coach of the Past: Chuck Dressen

TWO NEW BOSS SENATORS
"Charles Walter Dressen, an effervescent, gregarious, tireless little man, begins a new era at Washington's Griffith Stadium. A year ago, 10, 20 or 40 years ago, Dressen would have been taboo on two counts: (1) He is not a Senator alumnus and (2) his background is almost entirely National League. Clark Griffith never would have stood still for any such flaws in a man's character.
It is a new era because Dressen is not Clark Griffith's man but Calvin Griffith's man. The old man remains nominal head of the Washington baseball club, but when he felt a change in managers was advisable Griff delegated the responsibility to his adopted son and vice-president. Winking at the inhibitions, Calvin promptly selected Dressen. Obviously, when you start picking managers you are all but running the ball club.
It is ironic that Bucky Harris is being succeeded by one his own aides in Dressen, for they were a manager-coach combination for the Yankees in 1947-48. A good pair, too, Dressen providing the fire and hustle while Harris operated from the bench, playing percentages as few others can do."

-Francis Stann, the Washington Star (Baseball Digest, November-December 1954)

CHARLIE DRESSEN: "What was that question again? Yes, I usually act as my own pitching coach and I usually get pretty good results. You can see what I did in Brooklyn. I've been looking at this Washington pitching staff and I've been seeing a lot of things that I can do. I like to work with the young pitchers. Give me the young ones any time."

Baseball Digest, March 1955

THE PHANTOM OUT
"Charlie Dressen received a request from a schoolgirl who explained she was writing a character sketch of Washington's new manager. 'And also include the funniest experience you ever had in your baseball career,' the note read.
'This one is a toughie,' said Dressen. 'The funniest ones never seem funny at the time they are happening. Only when you look back on 'em are they funny.
'Like the time I'm managing Oakland and we're playing San Diego, and the thing happens. We get away with retiring the side with two outs, honest.
'I'm the manager and I'm always on top of the ball game, I think, and one thing I know I can do and that is keep count of the outs. But pretty soon I'm beginning to wonder about that.
'I don't know the inning, but San Diego has a man on first with one out, and then a ball is hit to our shortstop, Archie Wilson.
'This looks like the big double play that is going to get us out of trouble, and Wilson handles it good and makes a nice flip to Billy Martin, our second baseman, who is covering the bag.
'Now I figure we got the double play made because Martin is a cinch to relay the ball to first ahead of the batter, but that doesn't happen at all.
'Billy doesn't throw to first. He throws away his glove after the force play at second, and rolls the ball into the pitcher's box and starts off the field.
'Me? I'm thunderstruck. I don't believe it. But now all my club is heading for the bench and it looks like the inning is over all right.
'That silly Martin started a chain reaction. San Diego figures there's three out, too, and doesn't send another hitter up.
'Everybody is convinced by now that are three out, including me, who should have known better. They got me thinking maybe I was wrong. The scoreboard boys are fooled, too, and they hang up a zero for San Diego when they see the players are leaving the field. Maybe that's what impressed the umpires, too, because there's no squawk from them, and they let my team go to bat.
'Honest, that's the way it happened. Two out and the side is retired.' "

-Shirley Povich, the Washington Post and Times Herald (Baseball Digest, May 1955)

WHEN THE FOUL IN THE STANDS WAS OUT
"Charlie Dressen, the Washington manager, said there was one incident he'd never forget.
'This one is in Cincinnati and I'm managing the Reds. Frankie Frisch brings the Cardinal Gas House Gang up for a series and there are arguments as usual.
'This time there's even a dispute between the umpires. Old Bill Klem is working the bases, and Ziggy Sears, behind the plate, overrules Klem on one play and tells him: 'I'm the umpire-in-chief of this ball game.'
'Pretty soon, Ducky Medwick is on first, and Pepper Martin's up and two are out. Medwick is always running on anything, you know, and pretty soon Martin fouls one off and it goes into the stands.
'Medwick is running and sprinting around second.
'In the meantime, Gilly Campbell, our catcher, sticks his bare hand behind him like catchers do when they want another ball from the umpire, and Sears hands him one.
'Then Campbell, just for the fun of it, heaves the ball down to our third baseman, I forget who he was, and he tags Medwick coming into third, just for the fun of it.
'Then of all things, Sears is rushing down to cover the play, and he calls Medwick out, forgetting that the whole thing started on a foul ball and forgetting, too, that he had handed a new ball to Campbell.
'Naturally, Frisch raises a big fuss but Sears sticks to his decision and says Medwick is out. Finally, Frisch insists Zig at least confer with Klem about the play and he finally does.
'Sears asks Klem, 'Bill, what do you think of it?' and that's when Klem gets even with him. He tells Sears: 'You said you were the umpire-in-chief around here, now start acting like one, I didn't see the play.'
'Klem saw the play all right and knew about the foul ball, but he let Sears stew. That's the way it stood, and we got Medwick out on a foul ball hit back into the stands.' "

-Shirley Povich, the Washington Post and Times Herald (Baseball Digest, May 1955)