1957 Yankee of the Past: Jackie Jensen

JACKIE JENSEN: FENWAY PARK SPECIAL

An Excerpt From The Book "The Boston Red Sox"

"After his Philadelphia Eagles had defeated the Chicago Cardinals in snowswept Shibe Park on a December Sunday in 1948, Earle (Greasy) Neale was receiving congratulations from his friends. After a bitter disappointment the previous year, Greasy's Eagles had finally won the National Football League championship.

One of his friends, with a whimsical turn of mind, said, 'Well, all you have to do now to complete the cycle, Greasy, is to ride the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

That was a remark, even at a victory celebration, which took a bit of explaining. It developed that the friend was struck with the unusualness of Neale's achievements. As a college football coach, he had gone to the Rose Bowl with Washington and Jefferson to play a scoreless with the University of California on January 1, 1922. As a professional baseball player, he had starred for the Cincinnati Reds when they defeated the Chicago White Sox in the 1919 World Series.

Thus, Neale participated in three of the biggest sports events of the nation- World Series, Rose Bowl and professional football championship. It was a unique distinction until Jack Eugene Jensen came along. From the same University of California, Jensen played fullback in a Rose Bowl game, losing to Northwestern, 20-14; was named All-America, has been in a World Series and the baseball All-Star Game. Furthermore, he married an Olympic diving champion, the pretty Zoe Ann Olsen. It looks as though Jackie has Neale topped.

Jensen was signed, at a $75,000 bonus, by Brick Laws of the Oakland club in 1949 and then sold to the Yankees. The tag on Jackie then was that he was then 'a few years away.' His baseball experience was limited but all scouting reports agreed that the husky blond had all the potential. The Yankees, with a wealth of outfield material, couldn't wait for the arrival of Jensen and traded him to Washington for Irv Noren. It is a safe bet you couldn't have traded Noren for Jensen a few years later.

It has taken time but Jensen now seems to be living up to the original scouting reports on his power. In his three seasons at Boston, Jensen has become a great run producer and home run threat. His right-handed hitting talents were lost in the wide open spaces of Washington's Griffith Stadium but he finds the left field wall of Fenway Park inviting.

General Manager Joe Cronin was looking for home runs when he traded Maury McDermott and Tom Umphlett to the Senators for Jensen. A right-handed batter who can stroke the left field wall has been one of the Red Sox objectives. Some players for whom they traded, notably Junior Stephens, delivered but many were flops. They were so anxious to hit the fence, they couldn't even hit the ball.

Jensen definitely is not in the flop category. In his first three years with the Red Sox, he hit 71 home runs and batted in 330 runs, tying for the American League's top RBI total in 1955 with 116. Any player who averages almost 25 home runs a year and 100-plus RBIs is a big shot, even in these days of rock'n roll baseball. That Jensen finds Fenway Park tailor-made there is no doubt, but he was showing power with the Senators, power it was obvious that would be more impressive in a ball park of less ample proportions than Griffith Stadium.

Not many first-flight football players have made the grade in baseball. Fordham's Frank Frisch was one, but the majority, going all the way back to Jim Thorpe, have found baseball too difficult. The explanation used to be that it was some mysterious ailment called 'football legs' but actually it was far simpler than that. Some football players, Frisch, Sam Chapman, Riggs Stephenson and Jensen, for instance, could play baseball and others couldn't. The percentage of first-flight football players who failed in baseball is no greater than that of basketball of ping-pong players.

Jensen, just 30, can have several productive years in baseball yet. It is probable that when he retires from athletics, more people will refer to him as 'Jackie Jensen, the ex-Red Sox slugger' then as Jackie Jensen 'the former All-America football player.'

For the second time in his baseball career, Jensen finds himself a member of a distinguished outfield trio, lining up with Ted Williams and Jim Piersall with the Red Sox. On Opening Day, 1951, he played in the Yankee outfield with Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. It was Mickey's first major league game and it prompted one press box filbert to remark that the Yankee outfield 'had 17 years of major league experience, 16 of which belong to DiMaggio.' Even that was an oversimplification, for while it was the Yankee Clipper's 1,621st major league game and Mantle's first, it was only Jensen's 46th.

Jensen was sent down to the Yankee farm at Kansas City for part of that 1951 season and then shortly after the 1951 season was traded to Washington. It was with the Senators that Jackie got the chance to play every day, something he had been denied at New York. And he has been a regular ever since.

Whatever hangover from football Jensen bought into baseball, he didn't bring any 'football legs.' Jackie has good speed, both in the field and on the bases. He led the American League with 22 stolen bases in 1954, his first year with Boston.

One day at spring training at St. Petersburg in 1952, a photographer received a request from a national magazine to do a cover picture on Jackie and his wife and baby daughter, Jan. The picture was to be taken at the swimming pool of the Tides Hotel, out on the beach. Getting the time off from practice for Jensen took a bit of doing, for Manager Stengel was a stickler for punctuality at workouts.  And he had a reason to look with a jaundiced eye on any extracurricular picture-taking.

The day before a television crew had 'borrowed' Billy Martin to make some slides into second base. The Yankee infielder was only too happy to oblige since the film was for his old friend, Joe DiMaggio, who was launching himself as a television commentator that year, after retiring from baseball.

Martin entered into the project with enthusiasm and made several hair-raising slides. The only trouble was that after the last of these slides, he didn't get up. A broken ankle was the result and he spent most of the rest of the training season and part of the regular season on crutches.

When the reporter from the magazine asked to have Jensen excused for the purpose of poolside pictures with his wife and daughter, Casey fixed him with a cold eye.

'Y'know what happened to that boy (Martin) yesterday, doncha?' asked Stengel, then proceeded to answer his own question. 'Broke his leg, that's what he did. Now, supposin' this boy goes and drowns? Is your magazine gonna give me someone to play the outfield in place of him? That spaghetti ain't sendin' me no second baseman.'

Stengel's last remark was rather baffling, as so many of his remarks are, but it developed, under cross-examination, that the television show of DiMaggio's was being sponsored by a macaroni company.

The reporter knew Casey long enough to know that if you waited him out, he'd be reasonable, however much he might grumble in the beginning. Reluctantly, Casey gave his permission.

'I'll tell you what though,' said Casey in parting. 'I want to stand by the side of the pool while they're taking the pictures. And if you see my fella (Jensen) having any difficulty like drowin' or anything like that, I want you to help out. I ain't askin' you to dive in, cause the water's probably cold no matter what the Chamber of Commerce tells you. But I do think the least you could do if he's in trouble is holler for help.'

The permission was granted and the photogenic family made a lovely cover for the magazine. The only hitch was by the time it was used, Jensen had been traded to Washington.

Jensen is articulate and mixes well but reservedly with the press, although he is by no means a publicity seeker. He has a quiet sense of humor which he demonstrated one night in 1955 at Yankee Stadium. It was in mid-August and the Bronx ballpark was packed with 61,628 fans, many of them from New England. Ted Williams was in the batting cage and Jensen was standing outside, chatting with Arthur Daley, sports columnist of the New York Times and Pulitzer prize winner.

Williams belted three balls practically out of sight into the right field stands and as he left the batting cage, the packed house gave him a thunderous ovation. Jensen went into the cage while the cheers for Ted continued. 'See, Arthur,' said Jackie to Daley, 'they still remember me.'

Jensen was seriously considering quitting baseball after the 1953 season with Washington. He felt that he wasn't making good and that he should protect his wife and family, a son Jon having been born to go along with daughter Jan. Jackie felt that he could land a good job in Oakland, that baseball wasn't his dish of tea.

Then it was that he got a call from Cronin. Joe told him the Red Sox had traded for him and were expecting him to help the club. Jensen didn't react immediately and Cronin had to use all of his Irish blarney to sell him. Cronin pointed out that Fenway Park was made to order for him, that this was his chance to cash in on his potential. He even added that there was to be a $1,000 boost over his Washington salary.

Still Jensen wasn't convinced. He talked it over with his wife and she told him, 'If you quit, I don't think you'll be proud of it later.' The upstart was that Jensen agreed to the Boston terms.

When the 1954 season opened, and for a long time after that, Jensen wasn't so sure he'd made the right decision. He was slow getting started and found batting behind Williams a strain. Ted was on base so often, with walks and base hits, that Jackie constantly found himself under pressure.

A friendship sprung up between Ted and Jackie. Williams gave him tips on batting and suddenly Jensen exploded. Ted was no longer being walked intentionally to get at Jensen because Jensen had suddenly become dynamite.

When the season was over, he was voted the most valuable player on the Red Sox and he also won the Ted Williams trophy. His disappointments with the Yankees and Washington were forgotten. There was no talk of quitting that winter. The All-America had it made.

'Even business in the restaurant picked up,' says Jackie. He and Boots Erb, who had played in the backfield with him for California, operate a 200-capacity dining room in Oakland, the Bow and Bells. As is the case with any restaurant operated by a ball player, the cash registers clink in direct proportion to his batting average. And the registers have been singing a merry tune ever since Jackie decided to accept the Red Sox offer."

-Tom Meany, Baseball Digest, June 1957

"Jackie really caught fire last spring to become the RBI king of the Red Sox squad. In addition, he was the A.L. top triple belter and swiped 11 bases. It was nothing new to Jackie to steal bases since he was No. 1 in that department in the American League in '54 with 22 pilfers.

At the University of California, he was a great All-American football back."

-1957  Topps No. 220

1957 Yankee Scout of the Past: Bill Essick

MOUTH-TRAPPED

"Casey Stengel relates how the late Bill Essick, who managed the Vernon club in the Pacific Coast League in the early '20s and later became a Yankee scout, had an infallible method of determining whether or not his pitchers were in shape. He'd stir up nickel and dime wagers among them to promote sprints. When they had finished their dashes, Essick would question them about the race and want explanations. If they gasped for breath and couldn't complete a sentence, he knew they were out of shape and he'd run them- and run them- and run them."

-Sid Gray, New York Herald Tribune (Baseball Digest, August 1957)

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)