1957 Yankee of the Past: Truck Hannah

STONES IN THEIR SHOES

Truck Hannah Discourses On Catchers' Tricks, Ruth's Conversion 

"Harry (Truck) Hannah, baseball's answer to the Rock of Gibraltar back in the days when he played a single-handed game of squat tag behind home plate for the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angels, among others, dropped in the other day during the social hour.

After a saucer of cambric tea, the ex-Angel manager, catcher and one-man strong-arm squad retired to the bullpen to warm up a few touches. Clyde King, the new Hollywood field marshall, slid into the act while practicing base-stealing techniques and it was with a great deal of pleasure that I introduced him to Brother Hannah.

I explained that Truck was a scholar who believed in fair play, especially when it favored his team. I also felt duty bound to inform King that Hannah had long since retired from baseball and that it was no longer necessary to keep a sharp eye on him lest he steal the pants right off your hip pads. While on the field Truck was every other inch a gentleman, which is giving him a little of the best of it.

Among other things, Truck used to make a habit of squatting innocently behind the plate, reaching down and grabbing a handful dirt and assorted debris and pouring it inside the batter's shoes.

'I gave that up after a while,' confessed Truck. 'There got to be too many guys in the game from Arkansas and Oklahoma. I'd toss rocks and sand in their shoes, but since they hadn't worn any until they were at least old enough to vote, it sort of felt good to them to have something biting at the soles of their feet. It was just like being back home again and they got to hitting the ball a lot better than they did when there was nothing inside their shoes but feet.'

Hannah had a reputation in the diamond set for being able to tip a hitter's bat without the umpire ever suspecting he was tampering with the equipment of the man at the plate. Tipping the bat is the term used when the catcher knocks the stick out of alignment and prevents the hitter from getting an accurate swing at the ball. The penalty is an automatic trip to first base.

'I wouldn't dream of knowingly committing such an offense,' objected Truck. 'This would be unethical and I want no part of such practices. Of course, now and then, in my eagerness to catch the ball, I would reach out and my hand or glove would come in brief contact with the bat. This was probably due to the fact that I had large hands and the knuckles were a little stiff so that I could not bend my fingers and keep them out of the way. Hitters who misunderstood me used to get pretty put out by it all.

'I used to practice a form of distraction that was quite legal, however,' Truck went on. 'At least it was legal until Harry Williams, the Pacific Coast League president, issued a special ruling directed solely at me.

'In a tough situation with men on base and a rough guy at bat, I would pick up a handful of dirt and pebbles and just as the ball reached the plate I'd throw them at the hands and wrists of the batter. Didn't hurt him any, but the shock was enough to make him flinch and before he recovered he was walking back to the dugout wondering what happened.'

We got to talking about sharp-eyed coaches who could tell from the way a pitcher held the ball or through some mannerism he unwittingly committed precisely what his next pitch was going to be. By shouting a prearranged signal to the batter he could get set for whatever was being served him.

'Marty Krug, who was in the majors with the Red Sox and Cubs, was the best man at reading a pitcher's mind I ever saw,' Truck declared. 'There used to be a spitball pitcher named Harry Krause at Seattle who was a dazzler. Or he was until Marty finally nailed him. It turned out that he held the ball to his mouth on every pitch, but would only supply the saliva when the occasion suited him. Krug watched him closely and detected that every time the spitter was coming up Krause ducked his head ever so slightly. He was easy pickings after that.

'And speaking of getting to the pitchers, do you know why Babe Ruth left the mound and went to work as an outfielder?'

'I always thought it was because he was such a great hitter that they wanted him in the lineup every day,' I replied.

'He was a good hitter, all right, but was well on the road to becoming one of the all-time pitching greats. Pitched twenty-nine and two-thirds consecutive scoreless innings in World Series play, for one thing.

'But what actually sent him to the outfield is that suddenly the batters were getting to him. None of the men on his Boston Red Sox team could figure out why, since he had the same stuff that was virtually unhittable before.

'What happened was that a coach nailed him and the word got around. Every time he threw a curved ball he stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. It was a dead giveaway and all the batters had to do was dig in and swing from the sacroiliac, for they knew exactly what was coming.'

The Bambino also stuck out his tongue when he swung a bat. But a fat lot of good that did the pitchers."

-Ned Cronin, Los Angeles Times (Baseball Digest, May 1957)

1957 Yankee of the Past: Nick Cullop

LOOK, MOM, NO FEET!

"Nick Cullop, the veteran minor league manager, tells this one about one of his five major league trials as a player.

'Back in the middle 1920's I hung on with the Yankees a while in the spring,' Nick says. 'We were going into St. Louis to play the Browns and a lot of folks from my home town, Weldon Springs, a little place about 35 miles from St. Louis, decided to come to one of the games and give me a present. They wrote Miller Huggins, the manager, about it and he started me that day.

'The first time up I doubled and slid into second. Then late in the game I was on base again, on second, and Bob Meusel singled and I slid into home to score.

'That night I went home with my mother and daddy to eat supper and I was struttin' pretty good after getting those hits. My mom, she knew nothin' about baseball, though; that was the first game she ever saw. I asked her how she liked it, if she didn't think I looked pretty good.

' 'You were all right, son,' she said, 'except for being so awkward, falling down those two times.' ' "

-Fred Russell, Nashville Banner (Baseball Digest, May 1957)

1957 Yankee of the Past: Bobo Newsom

Bobo Newsom: "People will probably think I'm lying when I say this, but Lefty Grove never beat me and I guess we hooked up 18 or 20 times. Sometimes Lefty or myself left early and neither of us got the win or loss, but he never beat me. Look it up."

-Baseball Digest, May 1957

Bobo Newsom, winner of 211 big league games (1929-53): "I wouldn't let a boy throw a curve until he was at least 17. Throwing curves is the reason these kids come up with a lot of sore arms. When I broke into the big league, I didn't throw eight curves all year. You look at most of your great pitchers and you'll find they've generally been fast-ballers- which is the reason they had few sore arms."

-Baseball Digest, July 1957

1957 Yankee of the Past: Paul Waner

FORE-FLUSH!

"Paul Waner, the Pittsburgh Pirates' Hall-of-Famer who now is batting coach for the Milwaukee Braves, was, and still is, quite a man with a golf club.

He recently recalled that when he played with the Pirates the club had a rule that the players were not allowed to play golf during the season. There was a $50 fine for offenders.

Manager Pie Traynor and Coach Jewel Ens enforced the rule stringently, but Waner always found a way to beat it.

'One day I went out to play a round at South Hills with some friends,' he reminisces.

'Just to assure that I wouldn't be caught, I had a friend call Traynor and tip him off that was playing golf at Fox Chapel.

'Traynor and Ens hurried out to Fox Chapel and went all over the course looking for me. They even went over to the Pittsburgh Field Club, thinking I might be there.

'The next day Ens told me about the 'tip' they got that I was out at Fox Chapel.

' 'Sure, I was out there,' I said.

' 'Well, we couldn't find you,' he said.

' 'Did you look in the bar?' I asked. When he said 'No,' I said, 'Well, that's where I was!' '

It might be that Traynor is learning what happened that day for the first time."

-Ray Kienzl, Pittsburgh Star-Telegraph (Baseball Digest, July 1957)

1957 Yankee World Series of the Past: 1956

WORLD SERIES - TOPS AND BOTTOMS

Highlights And Lowlights of 1956 Classic

"The BEST INFIELDER in the 1956 World Series: Billy Martin of the Yankees, who took charge of all fly balls, made sure-handed catches and got off accurate throws while off-balance or while being rolled off his feet by base runners.

BEST MANAGER: Casey Stengel, who won four games to three over Walter Alston. But Stengel won a game in Brooklyn, Alston didn't win one in New York.

BEST PITCHING PERFORMANCE: Don Larsen's in the fifth game, naturally, but Sal Maglie, Clem Labine and Bob Turley weren't far behind.

BEST CATCH: A choice of Mickey Mantle's running snag of Gil Hodges' long drive to left center in the Larsen game; or in that same game Duke Snider's diving, cross-handed grab of Yogi Berra's smash.

BIGGEST SURPRISE: Maglie's return to the mound in the fifth game and his excellent pitching that was as terrific as it had been in the opener he won in Ebbets Field. The 39-year-old interleague commuter came back after four days of rest and was, in the words of Yankee batters, better in defeat than he had been in triumph.

MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT: Gil McDougalds' batting. Gil collected only three hits in seven full games, but his fielding was sharp enough to offset this.

TOP THRILL: No contest. The closing minutes of Larsen's perfect game made strong men wince and dyed dames [sic] weep. Here was history being made before your eyes. Anybody who didn't get the chokes then didn't belong on earth.

WORST BATTER: Sandy Amoros, hero of the 1955 Series with his catch of Berra's fly, killed the Dodgers just past the middle of their batting order. The Cuban got only one hit, a single in the first game, in 19 times at bat.

WORST GAME: The second, a miserable exhibition all the way around. Mickey Mantle loafed on a ball, Tom Sturdivant made a silly pitch to a banjo-hitting pitcher, Larsen threw with half a heart and blew a six-run lead.

WORST STRATEGY: Stengel is the culprit here. In the second game in Brooklyn, when base hits were raining, Stengel had his leadoff batter, McDougald, sacrifice to move the tying run over to second base. Playing for a tying run in the other team's back yard, especially one that size, didn't make much sense.

BEST MILEAGE: The Yankees, out of Country Slaughter. The old boy (pushing 40) finally folded in the sixth game, but he was helpful until then. His three-run homer in the third game bought the Yankees back to life.

CHEAPEST COMMODITY: The home run. The Yankees' 12 set a record. The Bums hit three, all in their own park. Of the 15, only Mantle's in the first game, Berra's second blast in the second game and Jackie Robinson's in the opener were what could be called Grade A hits.

BIGGEST BUST: Don Newcombe once more. The fastballer can't keep the Yankees out, or can't keep them from hitting the long ball. He was chased in the second inning of the second game and in the fourth inning of the seventh game. For a 27-game winning, these humiliations were shocking.

BIGGEST BOOT: Joe Collins' misplay of a grounder in the second inning of the second game. This flub opened the doors to the Dodgers for six unearned runs and an eventual 13-7 victory. In fact, eight of these 13 runs resulted from Yankee errors, the first by Collins, the second by Hank Bauer.

BEST ALL-AROUND PERFORMANCE: Berra completely dominated both teams. He called the pitches in Larsen's perfect game as if he were following a script. He got three home runs and six other hits. He ran bases daringly. No other individual could carry his mask or his wig [sic].

HOTTEST SPOT: The one Dale Mitchell was on in the ninth inning of the Larsen game. With two out, he could have spoiled the epic; and with the Dodgers only two runs down it was his job to get on base and bring the tying run to the plate if possible. Had Mitchell got on base one way or another and he had wound up as the spoiler of the greatest pitching job in World Series history ... 

BEST DODGER: Gil Hodges, a classical first baseman. who made one of the finest plays in the fifth game when he snagged a shot by Mantle and turned it into a double play. Hodges was also Brooklyn's only .300 hitter."

-Franklin Lewis, Cleveland Press (Baseball Digest, November 1956)

1957 Yankee Coach of the Past: Chuck Dressen

JOB FOR TED WILLIAMS

"Joe Medwick was asking it. 'Did you ever hear the story of the guy who almost lost his job in baseball because he couldn't spit?'

We hadn't and the former St. Louis Cardinals star filled us in.

'It was Charlie Dressen,' he said, 'and it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Dressen coached for Leo Durocher at Brooklyn. Leo's signals at the time were built on a spit. One spit was one thing, two spits were something else, to the right was still something else.

'The only trouble was that Dressen literally couldn't spit. He tried everything except tobacco which he didn't like. Chewed gum, chewed grass, still couldn't do it. They finally had to substitute whistles and Charlie was so good at whistling that he's been using it ever since. But the spit signal was a total flop.' "

-Robert L. Burnes, St. Louis Globe-Democrat (Baseball Digest, November 1956)

When He Bunts, Says Chuck Dressen:

MANTLE WASTES TALENT!

"Chuck Dressen, pepper-pot manager of the Washington Senators, peered out of the dugout at a cluster of newsmen walking his way.

He grabbed a towel from the bench and waved it. 'I give up,' he called. 'You guys are ganging up on me.'

When everyone was settled, Dressen began parrying questions. 'Let's just talk about my team, fellows,' he begged. 'No controversies. You've got me in enough of them already.'

Trouble and Dressen have been running mates for years. That's because the 58-year-old little dynamo is one of baseball's more talkative citizens ... sort of the Frank Lane of the American League.

'What about your old club, the Dodgers?' somebody asked. 'Don't you think they're over the hill?'

'My Senators are the youngest team in the league,' he answered. 'I say we will more games this year than we did in 1956.'

'That's no headline,' somebody said in petulant style. 'You're slipping, Chuck.'

From the other side came this one. 'Everybody's picking you to finish in the basement. Don't you think you're better than Kansas City and Baltimore?'

'I got my ideas about that,' he answered as he started to rise to the baited hook. 'But we'll just wait and see what happens as the season goes along.'

The cat-and-mouse contest went on. A pointed question would be tossed. Dressen would catch it, toss it around, and then answer it.

'You can't get me riled up today,' he grinned after maybe a half hour. 'I decided this year nobody was going to get me popping off so guys on the other teams would get sore at me. I got enough trouble of my own right here without going looking for more of them.'

He got up then, stretched to his full five feet, five inches, and started to leave the dugout for the practice field.

'Okay, Chuck, you win,' yelled Joe Reichler of the Associated Press. 'From now  on we'll have to ask you the silly jobs like the one if you think Mickey Mantle will beat Babe Ruth's home run record this year.'

Dressen had taken three steps toward the field when he heard that one. Suddenly he turned and came back to the top step of the dugout.

'He never will break it,' he snapped. 'Unless he stops that crazy stuff of showing off his bunting. What's he trying to prove? How many times have you seen him lay one down even when he has two strikes on him. That's nothing but showboat stuff ...

'Mantle wastes a lot of his talent,' Dressen went on. 'Take the Babe. Now there was a slugger. Why? Because he kept acting like a slugger.

'Sure, there's a place in baseball for a slugger to bunt. But not when he's up there with nobody on base. Yet that's when Mickey likes to lay one down. It's crazy. If he'd swung at the ball, he could knock it out of the park.

'Even if he only got a single, he has the speed to try for an extra base. But not Mickey.

'Mark my words,' Dressen stated as he waved a finger at the bench. 'If he keeps up that stuff, it's going to backfire on him and the Yankees one of these days.

'Guy with his eye, his speed and his power trying to show off by dropping a bunt when it doesn't mean anything. And then everybody keeps wondering if he will ever break the Babe's home run record. It's just stupid on his part.'

He left then and jogged out onto the field. Back in the dugout the reporters grinned at each other as they jotted notes in their books.

'That's our boy,' said Harry Paxton of the Saturday Evening Post. 'And he says he won't get drawn into any controversies this year.' "

-Lyall Smith, Detroit Free Press (Baseball Digest, June 1957)

DRESSEN WOULD TALK FOR THEM

"During spring training, Joe Cambria, a reformed laundryman who served as Washington's chief scout for years, reported to Charlie Dressen at Orlando that he had discovered a Cuban pitcher who could throw hard but could speak no English.

'Sign him!' ordered Dressen. 'I know plenty of guys who can speak perfect English but can't get their grandmothers out.' "

-H.G. Salsinger, the Detroit News (Baseball Digest, October 1957)

1957 Yankee of the Past: Leo Durocher

INSIDE STUFF

"Reported story on the reason Leo Durocher turned down the Cleveland job: According to people close to Leo, he is interested in returning to baseball but friends persuaded him the timing was bad on this one.

They felt it would be a tacit admission that he had flopped if he left his radio and television business after just one year. While his early performances were something less than scintillating, radio and television people still think he has a chance to go big in the business if they find the right vehicle for him.

His friends persuaded him that another year of experimentation in radio and television could help him, not hurt him. If he doesn't hit it big in the business, he's no worse off than he is now and can still return to baseball. They feel that he will be just as much in demand in baseball a year hence as he is now."

Baseball Digest, May 1957