The Players

[Yankee4Life]

Jim Davenport

 

 

Davenport made his major league debut with the San Francisco Giants on April 15, 1958, taking the team's first at bat on the West Coast, striking out against Don Drysdale of the Los Angeles Dodgers at Seals Stadium. His best season was 1962, when he batted .297 with 14 home runs and 58 RBIs and made the All-Star team for the only time in his career. In the first of 1962's two MLB All-Star games, played July 10 at DC Stadium, Davenport took over for Ken Boyer as the National League's third baseman in the sixth inning with the Senior Circuit ahead, 2–1. In the eighth frame, his single off Dick Donovan set up Maury Wills' insurance run, as the Nationals ultimately won 3–1. Davenport played errorless ball in the field over the game's last four innings.

 

That same season, Davenport was critical to the Giants' winning their first pennant since moving to San Francisco five years before. After going four for nine (.444) in the first two games of the 1962 National League tie-breaker series against the Dodgers, including a home run off Sandy Koufax in Game 1, Davenport drew a bases-loaded walk off Stan Williams in the ninth inning of the decisive Game 3 to get credit for the game-winning RBI in the Giants' eventual 6–4 victory, which gained them their first NL title since 1954, when they played in New York City. In the 1962 World Series that followed, he started all seven games against the New York Yankees, but could muster only three hits in 22 at bats (.136), although he drew four more bases on balls. Defensively, he made three errors in 21 total chances at third base. The Giants lost the Series in seven games.

 

However, Davenport was known for his fielding, leading National League third basemen in fielding percentage each season from 1959–1961 and winning a Gold Glove at third base in 1962. Davenport played 97 consecutive errorless games at third base from July 26, 1966 to April 28, 1968, a record that stood until it was broken by John Wehner in the 1990s.

 

He had a career batting average of .258 with 77 home runs and 456 RBIs, with 1,142 career hits, also including 177 doubles and 37 triples, in 4,427 at bats. He played in 1,501 regular-season games in 13 years, the fourth-most in San Francisco Giants history after Willie McCovey (2,256), Willie Mays (2,095) and Barry Bonds (1,976). His 1,130 games played at third base are the most in Giants' history.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Rube Oldring

 

 

A prominent and popular member of the Philadelphia A’s dynasty of the Deadball Era, Rube Oldring patrolled the outfield grass of Columbia Field and Shibe Park for twelve seasons. He combined power, speed, and average for Connie Mack‘s championship teams of the 1910s, although frequent injuries limited his playing time. When healthy, Rube was described by Irwin Howe, the official statistician for the American League, as “a fast and reliable outfielder, good at laying down a bunt, and…a fast and intelligent baserunner.”

 

Rube hooked up with the Hoboken, New Jersey, club in 1905, when a scout for the Montgomery, Alabama, team of the Southern Association spotted the young right-hander and offered him a contract. Oldring played 67 games in the outfield and at shortstop, first base, and third base for Montgomery in 1905, batting .272 and stealing 23 bases. Connie Mack received a tip about Rube from Tom O’Brien, the Montgomery manager, and purchased Oldring’s contract near the end of the season.

 

During spring training in 1906, Rube battled several players for a starting position and was told he had earned the starting third base job. The same day he received this welcome news, Oldring broke his right ankle sliding into third base and missed the start of the season. He returned to action in June, playing in 59 games, primarily at third. Rube had a powerful arm, and often overthrew first base, resulting in 16 errors in 49 games at the hot corner. When Oldring received his contract for 1907 there was a letter from Mack enclosed. “From this day on you will be my center fielder,” Mack wrote. “You will have all the room you want and will not have to throw the ball over anybody’s head.”

 

For the next ten years, Rube patrolled the outfield for the A’s. He played primarily in center field, moving to left field later in his career. The A’s were beginning to assemble their championship team and finished a close second to Detroit in 1907 and again in 1909. They finally emerged as champions in 1910, well ahead of second place New York. Rube had the best year of his career that summer, finishing in the top ten in the American League in batting average (.308), slugging percentage (.430), hits (168), total bases (235), doubles (27), triples (14), and home runs (4).

 

To prepare his underdog team for the World Series against the Chicago Cubs, Mack arranged a series of exhibition games against an American League all-star team. Unfortunately for Rube, he sprained his knee trying to dodge a fly ball he had lost in the sun; Oldring did not contribute to the A’s surprising five game upset of the Chicago Cubs.

 

The A’s won the American League championship again in 1911, and Oldring had another fine season, batting .297 with 84 runs scored, 21 stolen bases, and 26 sacrifices. This time the A’s faced the New York Giants in the World Series and Rube got his biggest thrill in baseball when he hit a three-run home run off Rube Marquard in Game Five. The A’s repeated as world champions, beating the Giants in six games.

 

Philadelphia’s string of championships stopped in 1912 as they slipped to third, fifteen games behind the Red Sox. Oldring batted .301 in 99 games, but ended up suspended by Connie Mack on September 6 for being out of condition. His roommate for 10 years, Chief Bender, was suspended at the same time. As Rube later told the story, the two of them drove to New York from Washington, rather than traveling with the team, and stopped to visit some friends along the way. The Chief dropped Rube at home in New York at 3 a.m. and proceeded to the team hotel. It was not the first such incident, and the next day, Mack called Oldring as he entered the clubhouse. “Rubie, you go in and take off that uniform. You’re going home. And you’re going to stay there. You’re not going west with us. Just try getting to bed before three o’clock if you wanna play baseball.”

 

In 1913 the A’s and Oldring returned to their championship form. The A’s finished first by 6½ games and Rube batted .283 with 101 runs scored and 40 stolen bases. Rube shifted to left field in 1913, and also filled in at shortstop for a week while Jack Barry was hurt. The A’s took the World Series from the New York Giants, and Oldring contributed in Game Four with one of the finest catches of the Series. With runners on the corners and one out in the top of the fifth, Oldring snagged a sinking liner off the bat of pinch-hitter Moose McCormick, and then prevented the runner on third from tagging up on the play. The Athletics went on to win the game, 6-5, and the Series in five games. That year the Philadelphia fans honored Rube as the most popular baseball player in the city, and awarded him a new Cadillac.

 

The Philadelphia team won its fourth pennant in five years in 1914. Rube’s statistics slipped somewhat that year as he suffered several nagging injuries that cut his playing time to 119 games. In that year’s World Series against the Braves, Rube, like most of his teammates, had a horrendous series, collecting only one hit in 15 at-bats. Unlike his fellow Athletics, however, Rube had a unique excuse for his woes at the plate. Right before the World Series began, Rube announced that he was getting married. A woman who saw the news in the paper filed charges of non-support and desertion, claiming she was his common-law wife, Helen I. Oldring. The Boston Braves fans picked up on the story and razzed Rube continuously throughout the Series.

 

After the A’s stunning loss in the 1914 World Series, Connie Mack began dismantling his championship team. Rumors had Oldring ticketed for New York, but 1915 found Rube still with Philadelphia. The team went from first to last, winning only 43 games. Rube hit a career high six home runs–three times more than anyone else on the team–but his batting average slipped to .248 and he played in only 107 games. Rube and his wife had settled on a farm in New Jersey and he announced his retirement from baseball. However, Mack persuaded him to return to the A’s again for the 1916 season. Rube played in 40 games before being given his unconditional release on July 1. He returned to his farm, but was enticed to play for his hometown New York Yankees, due to injuries to their outfielders. Rube played in 43 games for New York, before the Yankees released him on September 9. Rube sat out the 1917 season to tend to his farm, but Connie Mack prevailed on him to return to the A’s one more time in 1918. Rube played in 34 games before hanging up his spikes for the final time in the major leagues. His batting average was a career worst .233. Due to his age, Rube was exempt from the War Department’s work-or-fight order, but he took a job playing baseball in the shipyards anyway.

 

Following the end of the war, Rube embarked on a peripatetic journey through the minor leagues. In 1919, Rube took a player/manager position with the Richmond Colts in the Virginia League, leading them to the pennant. Over the next six years, Oldring spent time playing and managing in Suffolk, Seattle, New Haven, Richmond again, and Wilson (NC), before finally rounding out his baseball career with a third stint in Richmond in 1926.

 

In 1,239 games over thirteen seasons, Oldring posted a .270 batting average with 616 runs, 205 doubles, 76 triples, 27 home runs, 471 RBI, 197 stolen bases and 206 bases on balls. He finished his career with a .959 fielding percentage.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Tony Lazzeri

 

 

Day after day at Salt Lake City, Utah in 1925, Bill Essick, a scout for the New York Yankees, watched a young infielder named Tony Lazzeri. Essick reported to Ed Barrow, the Yankees’ business manager (general manager) that Lazzeri was hitting the ball exceptionally well, batting .355 and hitting 60 home runs.

 

“But the air is thin out there,” Barrow told Essick.

 

“The air may be thin but this player is solid,” Essick responded.

 

Scouts from all the major leagues were watching Lazzeri. Most also felt that the altitude in Salt Lake City helped Lazzeri’s batting average. They were wary of signing him, knowing other recent players with impressive numbers playing in that altitude had not succeeded. But there was another reason the scouts shied away: Lazzeri was an epileptic.

 

But this was in Lazzeri’s future. In 1922, 18-year-old Tony Lazzeri joined Salt Lake City as a utility infielder, playing third and first. He was paid $250 a month. Lazzeri, who threw right-handed and batted from the right side, had difficulty hitting a curve ball and started his professional career poorly, hitting only .192 in 45 games. In 1923 Lazzeri was sent to Peoria, Illinois, of the Three-I League for more experience. He had a good first month but was then benched while the manager tried out two other players at second. Lazzeri sat on the bench for three weeks until he was called on to pinch hit in the ninth inning of a game against Terre Haute. With two men on the bases and two runs behind, Lazzeri hit a home run that won the game. After that big hit, he became the regular second baseman on the club, playing in 135 games, hitting 14 home runs, and batting .248. Lazzeri rejoined Salt Lake City that fall.

 

Returning to Salt Lake City in 1925, Lazzeri got his first real chance under the team’s new manager, Oscar Vitt. Lazzeri had a sensational season playing in 192 games (in those days the PCL played a 197-game schedule). He batted .355 with 252 hits, 52 doubles, 14 triples, 222 RBIs, and 60 home runs, the most ever hit in professional baseball. Lazzeri also scored 202 runs and stole 39 bases.

 

The New York Yankees took an interest in the young slugger. At that time the Salt Lake City club had a working arrangement with the Chicago Cubs. Knowing that Lazzeri had epileptic episodes off the field, the Cubs were afraid to buy him. The Cincinnati Reds also passed him up, and Garry Hermann, owner of the Reds, wrote to Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert and told him why his club had not bought Lazzeri.

 

Ed Barrow sent Ed Holly, another scout, to Salt Lake City to look at Lazzeri. Holly reported he was sensational. He also confirmed reports about Lazzeri’s medical disorder. Wanting to know more, Holly went on to San Francisco and looked into Lazzeri’s family history. Barrow, meanwhile, sent head scout Paul Krichell to Salt Lake City to watch Lazzeri. He also asked Bob Connery, president of the St. Paul Baseball Club of the American Association to see Lazzeri play.

 

Barrow received good reports. Holly found that no other members of his family were affected and that Lazzeri’s insurance company was willing to increase his policy. Connery reported that Lazzeri was great. Krichell also told Barrow that the stories about Lazzeri’s episodes, or fits as they were known, occurred only off the field.

 

“As long as he doesn’t take fits between three and six in the afternoon, that’s good enough for me,” said Barrow.

 

As it turned out, Lazzeri’s epilepsy never affected him on the playing field. The public never knew he had the disorder.

 

Ed Barrow purchased Lazzeri’s contract from Salt Lake City in the fall of 1925 for players Frank Zoeller and Mack Hillis and $50,000, a considerable amount of money at that time. Subsequently, Lazzeri signed a contract with the Yankees for $5,000 on March 30, 1926, and reported to Spring Training at St. Petersburg, Florida. Lazzeri was 22 years old.

 

Although Lazzeri played shortstop at Salt Lake City, Yankee manager Miller Huggins wanted him at second base. Huggins worked with him on switching positions and taught him to make the double play. Meanwhile, Huggins played another highly prized rookie, Mark Koenig, at short. With two rookies in the infield, the sportswriters felt that the Yankees could not contend for the pennant in 1926. They predicted that the team would finish the season in the second division for the second straight year.

 

But Koenig and Lazzeri played well together in the field and helped the Yankees win the pennant that season. Lazzeri played in all 155 games in 1926, hitting .275, with 162 hits, 28 doubles, 14 triples, 18 home runs, and 114 runs batted in. Lazzeri’s home run total (18) was third in the league behind Babe Ruth (47) and Al Simmons of the Athletics (19). Lazzeri’s runs-batted-in mark (114) tied George Burns of the Indians for second place behind Ruth (146). As a rookie, he also stole 16 bases, sixth best in the league.

 

The Strikeout: The 1926 World Series saw the Yankees play the St. Louis Cardinals. With the series tied at two games apiece, Herb Pennock and Bill Sherdel found themselves in a mound duel in St. Louis. With the score tied at two in the tenth, Lazzeri’s sacrifice fly gave the Yankees a 3 to 2 lead, which Pennock held in the bottom of the tenth. The victory gave the Yankees a 3 to 2 lead in the series. After returning to New York for Game Six, Grover Cleveland Alexander won his second game and tied the series at three games apiece, setting the stage for the seventh and final game.

 

The Cardinals led by a score of 3 to 2 in the seventh inning of the deciding game of the ’26 World Series. In the home half of that frame, however, the Yankees loaded the bases against St. Louis starter Jesse Haines. The knuckle-balling Haines, whose 13-4 win-loss record helped the Cards capture their first franchise pennant, had already shut out the Yanks in Game Three of the Series; that would not happen again to the Yankees for sixteen years.

 

What happened next is the stuff of history, legend, folklore, and fake lore. Cardinal second baseman-manager Rogers Hornsby, after a long conference with Haines and his infielders, summoned Grover Cleveland Alexander from the bullpen. Alex had beaten the Yankees the day before to even up the Series and had celebrated afterward. Depending on the account one chooses to believe, Alexander had been dozing or fast asleep in the bullpen, was still drunk or hung over or stone cold sober. Whatever his physical and mental state, Alexander had nowhere to put Lazzeri when he got down to business. Lazzeri took the first two pitches, a ball followed by a strike. He teed off on the third pitch and sent a shot down the left field line into the seats — ten feet foul. Alex followed up with one of his infamous low-and-away curves. Lazzeri swung and missed by at least eight inches.

 

Alexander stopped the Yankees in the eighth, surrendered a two-out walk to Babe Ruth in the ninth. Ruth ended the Series being thrown out trying to steal second, and the legend was born.

 

Nineteen twenty-seven was a historic year for the Yankees. Known as Murderers’ Row, the ’27 Yankees became a legend. Paced by the long-ball heroics of Ruth (60 home runs, 164 RBIs, .356 batting average) and Gehrig (47 home runs, 175 RBIs, .373), the Yankees won 110 and lost 44, winning the American League pennant by 19 games. Recovering from the Series to have an outstanding season, Lazzeri was a major contributor on that historic club with 18 home runs (third in the American League behind Ruth and Gehrig), 102 RBIs, and a batting average of .309. He was also the anchor of the infield. In addition to playing second base, Lazzeri also filled in at shortstop and third base due to the occasional injuries to Joe Dugan and Mark Koenig.

 

Popular with his teammates and respected by his opponents, Lazzeri was a leader, cool under pressure, quick thinking, and considered by many as one of the smartest men in the game. Even Miller Huggins acknowledged him to be the brains of the Yankee infield. Lazzeri took charge when events called for steady nerves.

 

Lazzeri was an excellent fielder, and for a smaller man compared to the likes of Ruth, Gehrig, and Meusel, he could hit the ball exceptionally far. He also had the knack of hitting with men on base, becoming one of the best “clutch” hitters in baseball.

 

Beloved by the Italian community, the New York Times even compared him to Christopher Columbus at a time when Lazzeri was playing shortstop. “He didn’t discover America,” wrote the Times, “but Columbus never went behind third for an overthrow to cut-off the tying run in the ninth inning.”

 

Lazzeri played second base for the Yankees through 1937. He batted a career-high .354 in 1929 and hit two home runs in the 1932 World Series, one a grand slam. (In 1932, the Baseball Writers Association named him the best second baseman in the game.) The next year, Lazzeri played in the first All-Star Game.

 

On May 24, 1936, Lazzeri set an American League single-game record with eleven RBIs by hitting a triple and three home runs (two of the home runs were with the bases filled) in Shibe Park. That same month, he set records for most home runs in three consecutive games (6) and four consecutive games (7).

 

After his conditional release by the Yankees on October 17, 1937, Lazzeri signed with the Chicago Cubs as a player-coach. Lazzeri played for the Chicago Cubs in 1938 and appeared in the fall classic against the Yankees. He finished his major league career with the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants in 1939.

 

Despite an outstanding career with the Yankees, the strikeout against Alexander in the 1926 World Series was never to be forgotten. Baseball fans talked about it for years. Lazzeri was always reminded of it. While Lazzeri was still an active ballplayer, Grover Cleveland Alexander went into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938. His plaque read: He won the 1926 world championship for the Cardinals by striking out   Lazzeri with the bases full in the final crisis.

 

For his part, Lazzeri had the distinction of being the only player to have his name on a bronze plaque while not being a member of the Hall of Fame.

 

A look back at his career with the Yankees showed that Tony Lazzeri helped the Yankees capture six American League pennants and five World Championships. During his twelve years with the Yankees, Lazzeri batted .293 with 1784 hits, 327 doubles, 115 triples, 169 home runs, and 1157 RBIs.

 

 

 

[Yankee4Life]

Carl Mays

 

 

Carl Mays is best remembered for throwing the pitch that led to the death of Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman in August of 1920. But he also had a career record of 207-126 and a 2.92 ERA over fifteen seasons, and remains one of the best pitchers not honored in the Hall of Fame. Throwing with a submarine motion so pronounced that he sometimes scraped his knuckles on the ground while delivering the ball, Mays looked “like a cross between an octopus and a bowler,” Baseball Magazine observed in 1918. “He shoots the ball in at the batter at such unexpected angles that his delivery is hard to find, generally, until along about 5 o’clock, when the hitters get accustomed to it — and when the game is about over.”

 

Perhaps the most disliked player of his era, Mays was once described by F.C. Lane as “a strange, cynical figure” who “aroused more ill will, more positive resentment than any other ballplayer on record.” A noted headhunter even before the Chapman beaning, Mays refused to apologize for how he pitched. “Any pitcher who permits a hitter to dig in on him is asking for trouble,” he once said. “I never deliberately tried to hit anyone in my life. I throw close just to keep the hitters loose up there.” One teammate said Mays had the disposition of a man with a permanent toothache. Throughout his professional career, Mays had trouble making friends — even on his own teams. “When I first broke into baseball, I discovered that there seemed to be a feeling against me, even from the players on own team,” Mays said after a few years in the big leagues. “I always have wondered why I have encountered this antipathy from so many people wherever I have been. And I have never been able to explain it, even to myself.”

 

In 1912, Mays signed with Boise, Idaho, in the Class D Western Tri-State League, for $90 a month; he finished the season 22-9 with a 2.08 ERA. He played the next season in Portland, Oregon, and in 1914 was drafted by the Providence Grays, a team the Detroit Tigers owned in the International League. During his stay with Providence, the Grays were sold to Red Sox owner Joe Lannin.

 

Mays’s 24 victories led Providence to the 1914 IL pennant; in the final month of the season, he was ably assisted by Babe Ruth, who had made his debut in Boston that summer. The two young men were called up for the final week of the Red Sox’s season, but Mays did not appear in any games.

 

Mays joined the Red Sox staff in 1915 and made his debut on April 15. During the Red Sox’s pennant-winning season, he was used mostly in relief, appearing in 38 games. He went 6-5, with a 2.60 ERA, and (though the statistic hadn’t been invented yet) led the league with seven saves. He did not appear in the World Series.

 

Mays’s abrasive personality grated on opponents. In his rookie season, Mays often sparred with Detroit’s cantankerous outfielder Ty Cobb. In one game, after Mays threw high and inside on Cobb, the Tiger laid down a bunt along the first base line for the sole purpose of spiking Mays and cutting his leg. Though bitter rivals — the Red Sox and Tigers battled for the American League pennant that season — the men held a grudging respect for each other’s single-minded pursuit of victory.

 

In 1916, Mays split his time between the rotation (24 starts) and bullpen (20 other appearances), winning 18 games and posting a 2.39 ERA. In that fall’s World Series against Brooklyn, Mays recorded a save in Game One — bailing out Ernie Shore by recording the final out with the bases loaded and the tying run on third — and was the losing pitcher in Game Three, the Red Sox’s only loss in the series.

 

In 1917, Mays became a star. His 1.74 ERA was the third-lowest in the major leagues, and he ranked among the top five in the American League in fewest walks and hits allowed per nine innings, and lowest opponents’ batting average and on-base percentage. But Mays also hit a league-high 14 batters and earned a reputation as a headhunter that dogged him for the rest of his life. “Mays is a low-ball pitcher,” one opponent noted. “How does it happen that when he puts a ball on the inside it generally comes near the batter’s head?”

 

Mays would often berate his fielders for making errors behind him. “I have been told I lack tact, which is probably true,” he said. “But that is no crime.” Late in his career, Mays praised another pitcher: “This fellow has no friends and doesn’t want any friends. That’s why he’s a great pitcher.” He could have easily been talking about himself.

 

Yankees infielder Roger Peckinpaugh said Mays threw “ a very ‘heavy’ ball. It sinks and when you catch it, it feels heavy enough to almost go through your glove.” Horace Ford, who batted against Mays in the National League, said that hitting Mays’s fastball “was like hitting a chuck of lead. It would go clunk and you’d beat it into the ground.”

 

Mays got an incredible amount of outs via ground balls, especially with the Red Sox. From 1916-18, he recorded 117, 118 and 122 assists, which remain the top three season totals in Red Sox history. In 1918, Mays, then 26 years old, was the ace of the Boston staff, winning 21 games with a 2.21 ERA. He tied Walter Johnson for the league lead with eight shutouts and tied Scott Perry for the lead with 30 complete games. He finished fifth in strikeouts and fifth in fewest hits allowed per nine innings. He also hit 11 batters, the second-highest total in the league.

 

But things went downhill for Mays in 1919. While he was at spring training, his farm house in Missouri burned to the ground; he suspected arson. During a Decoration Day series in Philadelphia, when Athletics fans were pounding on the roof of the visitors’ dugout, Mays threw a baseball into the stands, hitting a fan in the head. He also ran into a lengthy streak of bad luck on the mound, as the slumping Red Sox gave him almost no run support. Over a 15-day period in June, Mays lost three games by a combined score of 8-0. The last straw came on July 13, during a game against the White Sox. When Eddie Collins tried to steal second base, catcher Wally Schang’s throw hit Mays in the head. At the end of the inning, the pitcher stormed off the mound, left the team and headed back to Boston.

 

Mays told sportswriter Burt Whitman that he needed to make a fresh start with another team. “I’m convinced that it will be impossible for me to preserve my confidence in myself as a ballplayer and stay with the Red Sox as the team is now handled,” he said. “The entire team is up in the air and things have gone from bad to worse. The team cannot win with me pitching so I am getting out. … Maybe there will be a trade or a sale of my services. I do not care where I go.” On July 30, the Red Sox traded Mays to the New York Yankees for Allan Russell, Bob McGraw, and $40,000 in cash.

 

A fierce legal battle ensued, as enraged American League president Ban Johnson attempted to block the trade. Several days before Mays was dealt, Johnson had privately suspended Mays and issued a secret order to all eight American League clubs prohibiting them from acquiring the pitcher until his suspension had been served. Johnson feared that Mays’s actions could set a bad precedent for the league, by giving players the power to subvert the reserve clause and force trades simply by refusing to play for their clubs. “Baseball cannot tolerate such a breach of discipline,” Johnson said of Mays’s abandonment of the Red Sox. “It was up to the owners of the Boston club to suspend Carl Mays for breaking his contract and when they failed to do so, it is my duty as head of the American League to act.”

 

The league’s owners fractured over the matter, with five franchises (Cleveland, Detroit, Washington, St. Louis and Philadelphia) siding with Johnson, while three (New York, Chicago and Boston) defied him. Because the three “Insurrectionist” clubs held control over the league’s five-man board of directors, Johnson was forced to back down from his stance on the issue, particularly after the three clubs began holding meetings with the National League to discuss the formation of a new 12-team circuit. Mays reported to New York, and the incident marked the first time in his long tenure as AL president that Ban Johnson had been outmaneuvered on a major issue.

 

On August 16, 1920 — a dark, overcast day at the Polo Grounds — Mays hit Indians shortstop Ray Chapman in the temple with an inside fastball leading off the fifth inning. A loud crack resounded through the stadium, and Mays, thinking the pitch had hit Chapman’s bat, fielded the ball and threw it to first base. Chapman was helped off the field, but collapsed in the clubhouse; after a late-night operation on his fractured skull, he died early the following morning. As Chapman staggered off the field, Mays pointed out to the umpires a scuff mark on the baseball which he claimed had caused the pitch to sail inside. Later that day, Mays would also claim the ball was wet from the rain that had fallen earlier. A few hours after Mays was informed of Chapman’s death, he told a Manhattan District Attorney: “It was a little too close, and I saw Chapman duck his head in an effort to get out of the path of the ball. He was too late, however, and a second later he fell to the grounds. It was the most regrettable incident of my career, and I would give anything if I could undo what has happened.” Almost all other witnesses to the incident, however, reported that Chapman never moved an inch and probably never saw the ball.

 

Sorrow over Chapman quickly turned to anger against Mays. Several teams, including the Red Sox, Tigers and Browns, sent petitions to league president Ban Johnson, demanding Mays be thrown out of baseball. Mays spent a week in seclusion, then returned to the mound on August 23. Yankee fans were supportive — a clearly nervous Mays defeated Detroit 10-0 at the Polo Grounds — but there was an increase in calls for a boycott of any game pitched by Mays.

 

He made three starts in New York before his first appearance on the road, on September 3, in a relief stint at Fenway Park. He was greeted with a mixture of boos and cheers, but by the time he had pitched the second game of a doubleheader the following day, most of the crowd was on his side. He decided, however, to not accompany the Yankees on a road trip to Cleveland later that week.

 

In the 1921 World Series against the Giants, Mays pitched three complete games without allowing a walk, but he was charged with two losses as the Yankees lost the series. According to sportswriter Fred Lieb, there were suspicions Mays may have lost those two games on purpose. In The Pitch That Killed, Mike Sowell details the concern among several writers and Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis after Mays’s meltdown in Game Four. Sowell also quotes Yankees co-owner Cap Huston as saying many years later that Mays and others (possibly Joe Bush) had deliberately lost World Series games in both 1921 and 1922. Lieb believed the unanswered questions about those series were what really kept Mays out of the Hall of Fame.

 

The rumors also were a likely reason that, despite Mays’s 66 wins in three years, the Yankees tried to dump him before the 1923 season. That didn’t work, so manager Miller Huggins simply refused to use him. Mays appeared in only 23 games for the Yankees in 1923, and at the end of the season was sold to Cincinnati. He pitched for the Reds for five years — rebounding to a 20-9 record in 1924 — and ended his career in 1929 with the New York Giants.

 

In a fifteen-year career with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Cincinnati Reds, and New York Giants, Mays compiled a 207–126 record with 29 shutouts, 862 strikeouts and a 2.92 earned run average when the league average was 3.48. He won twenty or more games five times.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Lou Boudreau

 

 

In 1942, the Cleveland Indians chose their slow-footed, hard-hitting, slick-fielding 24-year-old shortstop Lou Boudreau to become player-manager of the ballclub. In his seventh season at the helm, he led the Indians to a World Series title. Perhaps the best shortstop of the 1940s and a great defensive player and batting champion, in that glorious season he also led by example, hitting .355 with 106 runs batted in. He did not have such a season again, but then again, not many people do.

 

Eight years prior in 1936, Boudreau entered the University of Illinois, where he majored in physical education and captained both the basketball and baseball teams. Boudreau led Illinois to the Big Ten basketball title in 1937, and was a 1938 All-American. Basketball took a huge toll on his ankles, eventually leading to arthritis. Lou had to tape them before every game of his baseball career. The ankles also earned him a 4-F classification during World War II.

 

As a college baseball player he averaged about .270 and .285. But all that practice with his dad fielding ground balls showed as he fielded his third base position excellently. The Cubs and Indians both pursued Boudreau and he also fielded offers to act in a movie and to play for $150 a game with Caesar’s All-Americans, a Hammond, Indiana, team in the National Basketball League, a forerunner of the NBA,. But Boudreau felt he owed his loyalty to Cleveland’s Cy Slapnicka, who had done his best to help him maintain his amateur status at Illinois.

 

The Indians assigned Boudreau in 1938 to a Class C club in the Western Association: he sat on the bench for a week and then was shipped to Cedar Rapids in the Class B Three-I League. After hitting .290 in 60 games, the third baseman was called up to the Indians. He sat on the bench observing Hal Trosky, Ken Keltner, Jeff Heath, Earl Averill, and a young pitcher named Bob Feller. Boudreau played first base and went to bat twice, grounding out and walking.

 

In 1939, Lou trained with the Indians in New Orleans. Manager Oscar Vitt advised Boudreau to move to the shortstop position, because young Ken Keltner looked to have a lock on third base. Ex-big leaguer Greg Mulleavy, the regular shortstop at Buffalo, was kind enough to take Boudreau under his wing and teach him the job. Lou batted .331 with 17 homers and 57 RBIs in 117 games , earning an August 7,recall to the parent club. Boudreau played 53 games at shortstop for the Indians in 1939, batting .258 with 19 runs batted in. Lou was now in the big leagues for good, but unfortunately lost his father that year. Lou Sr. never got to see his son play in the majors.

 

In 1941, Lou was back at shortstop under popular manager Roger Peckinpaugh. Despite the switch, neither the Indians nor Boudreau fared as well as in 1940. Lou’s average fell to .257 with 10 homers and 56 runs batted in, though he led the league with 45 doubles.

 

After just a single season, Peckinpaugh was promoted to general manager and while a search was underway for a new manager, Lou sent a letter requesting an interview. On November 24, Lou presented his case. Initially, the vote was 11-1 against him, but George Martin, president of Sherwin Williams Paint Company, felt that a young man would be more desirable at this point than the tried and true. The directors finally agreed on Boudreau, backing him up with a staff of older and more experienced coaches: Burt Shotton, Oscar Melillo and George Susce.

 

Bradley introduced Lou to the press as the new manager, and one wag wrote, “Great! The Indians get a Baby Snooks for a manager and ruin the best shortstop in baseball.” The general feeling around the city was that Boudreau would not be able to handle both being a ballplayer and a manager, but the press was generally kind.

 

Soon after Boudreau’s hiring, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Two days later Bob Feller joined the Navy, and Boudreau, like his counterparts on the other teams, spent the next four years not knowing who their players were going to be.

 

Not all of the Indians were happy with the new manager. During his first spring training, Boudreau had three players walk into his office (Ben Chapman, Gee Walker and Hal Trosky) to tell him they had asked for the job and could do a better job than he would. During some conferences on the mound, veteran pitchers would give Boudreau a variation of “Listen, college boy, you play shortstop and I’ll do the pitching.” Especially troublesome was Jim Bagby Jr., who Boudreau considered “the nastiest pitcher [I] ever played behind.” When Boudreau would boot a ball, he would hear razzing about going back to college to learn how to play shortstop.

 

Without Feller, the 1942 Indians went 75-79, 28 games behind the Yankees. Playing in 147 games, Boudreau batted .283, batting in 58 runs. Boudreau felt that the hardest part of his new job was having the sense of when to take a pitcher out. Though he was still learning, he proved able to manage the club and still play good ball at shortstop.

 

With all the stars now returned to baseball in 1946, the fans turned out en masse. As usual Ted Williams was tearing up the league. The Indians went into Boston on July 14, for a doubleheader. In the opening game Boudreau went 5-for-5 with four doubles and a homer. Williams went 4-for-5 with three homers, all to right field. The Tribe lost the game, 11-10. Between games Boudreau came up with the famous Williams shift. When Williams came to bat with the bases empty, Boudreau yelled, “Yo,” and all the fielders shifted to the right side of the field. Williams laughed, got back in the box, and promptly grounded out to Boudreau, playing in the second baseman’s position. It wasn’t the first time a shift had been employed, but against a star of Ted Williams’ magnitude, it captured attention.

 

The Indians went 68-86 in 1946. Boudreau hit .293, with 151 hits, six homers, and 62 runs batted in. On June 21, 1946, Bill Veeck became the principal owner of the Cleveland Indians, and vowed to make changes. The Tribe improved to 80-74 in 1947, and Boudreau batted .307, banging out 165 hits with four homers, and 67 RBIs. The nucleus was there and Bill Veeck turned loose his bloodhounds, sniffing out trades that would turn things around. First they acquired second baseman Joe Gordon from the Yankees, along with third baseman Eddie Bockman. The Indians added Gene Bearden to the pitching staff and Hal Peck to the outfield.

 

Boudreau was upbeat about the 1948 season but knew he had to produce a winner or his tenure as manager would be up. The Indians remained in or near first place all season, locked in a tight three-team race with the Yankees and Red Sox. They added a new pitcher in July by the name of Satchel Paige, an aged but legendary hurler from the Negro Leagues. J. Taylor Spink, in The Sporting News, accused Veeck of signing Paige only as a publicity stunt. But Paige proved his worth, and eventually Spink apologized to Veeck. Boudreau used Paige sparingly as a starter and a reliever, and he had a 6-1 mark in the heat of the pennant race.

 

Boudreau experienced some hard times during the ‘48 campaign. Veeck had brought Hank Greenberg into the Indians organization to serve as Veeck’s right-hand man and confidant. This dismayed Boudreau, who at best never had Veeck’s ear, and now had to go through another channel before conferring with him. Greenberg and Veeck were always questioning Boudreau’s moves. Every morning during home stands Boudreau had to trudge up to Veeck’s office, where Veeck and Greenberg would fire questions at him. Even on the road he could not escape the telephone constantly ringing with questions from his two bosses.

 

Nothing was going to stop Boudreau from driving his team to the 1948 American League pennant, not even the plethora of injuries that befell him. During a hard collision at second base, Lou sustained a shoulder contusion, a bruised right knee, a sore thumb, and a sprained ankle. Managing from the dugout while icing down his injuries during a doubleheader against the Yanks, he watched the Indians fall behind, 6-1. The Indians bounced back and scored three runs to make it 6-4. The Indians then loaded the bases, and Lou called time. After selecting his bat he announced himself as a pinch hitter. Injuries or no injuries, he was going to take matters into his own hands. Boudreau ripped a single between the legs of Joe Page, tying the game. The Indians went on to sweep the doubleheader, 8-6 and 2-1.

 

At the conclusion of the 1948 schedule the Indians and the Red Sox were tied for first place. Some critics said that Boudreau could have avoided the need for a playoff game had he used Paige more, but instead a single-game playoff at Fenway Park determined the American League champion. Boudreau selected Gene Bearden start the game. Bearden had been a sailor on the USS Helena when it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and had been catapulted overboard. For two years he was in a hospital where they put a steel plate into his head and a metal hinge on one of his knees. Fully recovered, in 1948 he pitched the most important game of his life. Many question the choice of a left-hander in Boston with its looming left-field wall, but Boudreau felt that a knuckleball pitcher had a better chance against Boston’s powerhouse team. Feller called the decision “a stroke of genius and a shock to all of us.”

 

Boudreau took matters into his own hands and had a 4-for-4 performance that included two homers. When the final out was made and the Indians triumphed 8-3, Boudreau on his gimpy ankles rushed over to his wife. Bearden was on the shoulders of his mates, and, Bill Veeck, another casualty of World War II, hobbled out at top speed on his prosthetic leg to join the joyous mob. During his incredible season, Boudreau had slammed out 199 hits, belted 18 homers, and drove in 106 runs with a .355 average, all while guiding his team as manager. Boudreau was voted the Most Valuable Player in the American League in 1948.

 

The Indians capped off their 1948 season beating the Boston Braves and winning the World Series in six games. Boudreau batted .273 in the series with three runs batted in and fielded flawlessly. Lou Boudreau remains the only manager to win a World Series and win the Most Valuable Player Award in the same season.

 

Bill Veeck tore up Boudreau’s old contract and gave him a raise to $62,000 a year. Still, when the Indians failed to repeat in 1949, Boudreau knew his time was coming to an end. He felt that Hank Greenberg had a lot to do with his fate as manager. Boudreau didn’t mind Greenberg’s second guessing, but was upset that Greenberg never gave him reasons for disagreeing. Veeck was distant with Boudreau in 1949, never having much to say to him. Lou, playing all four infield positions, batted .284, with four homers and 60 RBIs.

 

Lou’s last season in Cleveland was 1950. Playing in only 81 games, he batted .269, with just one homer. Ellis Ryan took over as principal owner from Bill Veeck and put Greenberg in charge. As expected, on November 10, the Indians released Boudreau after 12 years as a player and nine as manager. The Red Sox acquired him in 1951 as a utility infielder. Playing in 82 games, he batted .267, with five homers and 47 runs batted in. After the 1951 season, the Red Sox named Boudreau manager. He played four games for the club in 1952, but was a bench-manager for the rest of his career.

 

After being fired by the Red Sox in 1954, Boudreau got a job as manager of the Kansas City Athletics, a bad club recently transplanted from Philadelphia. He lasted three years at Kansas City; the team finished sixth once and eighth twice during his tenure.

 

Boudreau was fired in August 1957. Not long after, Jack Brickhouse approached Lou about being the color man for the Chicago Cubs broadcast team. He auditioned and got the job. Lou was no Demosthenes, and he stumbled over difficult names of players, but his knowledge of the game and his uncanny ability to anticipate what would happen in certain situations was noted. For over two years Boudreau was the Cubs color man, but by 1960, Lou was back into the managing business for the team, while Charlie Grimm was shifted from skipper to the radio booth.

 

Lou was a part of the Cubs broadcast team for 30 years. When the station chose not to pick up his contract for the 1988 season, Lou was 71 years old, and finally retired, after having been a player, manager, and broadcaster for 50 years.

 

On July 27, 1970, Lou was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Bowie Kuhn, the Commissioner of Baseball, introduced Boudreau: “There are hitters in the Hall of Fame with higher batting averages, but I do not believe there is in the Hall of Fame a baseball man who brought more use of intellect and advocation of mind to the game than Lou Boudreau.”

 

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by Yankee4Life

[Yankee4Life]

General Crowder

 

 

General Crowder was a durable right-handed pitcher who won more games (124) than any big-league pitcher other than the immortal Lefty Grove in a six-year span from 1928 to 1933.  A three-time 20-game winner, Crowder led the American League in victories in 1932 and 1933 as a member of the Washington Senators. “If you’d let him,” said Walter Johnson, who managed Crowder with the Senators, “he’d pitch every day. His arm is made of rubber, and he doesn’t know the meaning of fatigue.” After leading Washington to the World Series in 1933, Crowder appeared washed up in 1934, but a late-season waiver transaction took him to Detroit, where he briefly revived his career. Playing in his third consecutive World Series in 1935, Crowder notched his only postseason victory, a five-hitter over the Chicago Cubs in Game Four, to help the Tigers capture their first World Series championship.

 

Alvin Floyd Crowder was born on January 11, 1899, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to George and Emma (Munke) Crowder. Alvin, as his parents called him, grew up in Broadbay, about eight miles southeast of Winston-Salem in the heart of tobacco and cotton country. Though he continued playing amateur and semipro baseball, it wasn’t his passion. Limited by his education and restless from his prosaic surroundings, Crowder enlisted in the Army in 1919, hoping to travel the world.

 

Assigned to the 27th Infantry, Crowder was stationed in the Russian seaport of Vladivostok and Lake Baikal in Siberia. When his division was transferred to the Philippines in 1920, he reluctantly volunteered for the baseball team in order to avoid the menial, mundane tasks of an enlisted soldier. The team recognized that the hesitant ballplayer had a strong arm. They asked him to pitch, and his new career was born. By 1922, when Crowder was assigned to the Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco, he had already established his reputation as a hard-throwing right-hander. He supposedly won 19 consecutive games in a military league, and moonlighted with Bay Area semipro teams, making more money than he did in the service. When Crowder was discharged in June 1922, scouts from the Pacific Coast League were hot on his trail. Spike Hennessee, a freelance scout, signed him with the San Francisco Seals.

 

Released by the Seals in the offseason, Crowder signed with Bill Leard, manager of his hometown Winston-Salem Twins, of the Class C Piedmont League. He won 10 of 17 decisions and logged 146 innings in his first full professional season. He was purchased by the Rochester Tribe of the International League before the 1924 campaign. Described as a pitcher with “considerable promise,” Crowder was purchased by Birmingham of the Class A Southern Association.5 With the Barons in 1925, he proved to be a durable, rubber-armed pitcher, and led the league with 59 appearances, logged 226 innings, and won 13 times. Because he reported to service whenever called, teammates began calling him “General” after General Enoch Crowder, the provost marshal of the US Army who instituted the draft lottery during World War I.

 

The “General” got his chance to realize his dream when the Pittsburgh Pirates purchased his contract in the offseason. At to the Pirates’ spring training site in Paso Robles, California, in 1926, it appeared as though he would make the team. However, Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss unexpectedly returned Crowder to Birmingham when the two teams could not agree on the terms of his option price.

 

It did not take long for the 27-year-old to get another shot in the big leagues. After returning to Birmingham, Crowder showcased his talents as the “pitching ace of the Southern League,” winning 17 of 21 decisions and logging 178 innings in less than three months. The Washington Senators purchased his contract for an estimated $10,000 and sent two players (Curley Ogden and Emilio Palmero) to the Barons to complete the deal.

 

Crowder reported to the reigning American League pennant winners in mid-July with the team fighting to remain above .500. At 5-feet-10 and about 170 pounds, Crowder did not possess an intimidating presence on the mound (though his tattoo of a naked woman draped over his shoulders and arms was often described as risqué). On July 24 the General made his big-league debut, tossing a complete-game eight-hitter against the Tigers in Griffith Stadium. A victim of two infielder errors leading to two unearned runs, Crowder picked up the 3-2 loss. Five days later, he earned his first big-league win by pitching ten innings (and also walking a career-high 10 batters) against the White Sox at Comiskey Park.  Crowder hurled a career-high 11-inning complete game to defeat the eventual pennant-winning New York Yankees, 5-4, on August 11. He finished the season with 12 starts in 19 appearances, compiling a 7-4 record in 100 innings.

 

Crowder’s sophomore season was as disappointing as his rookie year was promising. Senators manager Bucky Harris praised the General as “one of the best minor-league prospects to join [the team] in years,” and The Sporting News raved about the pitcher’s speed and physical condition. However, Crowder’s spring training was interrupted by an “ulcerated stomach” and a sore right arm.After tossing a complete game to win his first start of the year, Crowder was rocked in his next three starts (all losses), after which he was relegated to the bullpen. His losing streak reached five games before he won three of four starts in June, including a pair of impressive shutouts (a three-hitter against the White Sox and a two-hitter against the Red Sox). Crowder was “not always reliable,” reported The Sporting News. His feast or famine approach to pitching frustrated Senators owner Clark Griffith, who, in a surprising waiver deal on July 7, traded him to the St. Louis Browns for workhorse Tom Zachary. Crowder struggled after the trade, posting a 5.01 ERA in 21 appearances for the seventh-place Browns. He won only one of his eight starts, but it was a dominating two-hit shutout of the Philadelphia Athletics.

 

In his first full season with the Browns, Crowder unexpectedly transformed from a reliever assigned to mop-up duty to the hottest and one of the best starters in the American League. Inconsistent and wild in three starts in April, he was relegated to the bullpen in May. In his first start in four weeks, Crowder tossed a five-hitter over 6⅓ innings and worked his way back into the rotation. Commencing with a complete-game win over the White Sox on May 30, Crowder reeled off ten consecutive wins (nine by complete game). Often pitching on short rest, the General improved his record to 11-1 with a ten-inning complete game against his former team at Griffith Stadium on July 16. Described as the “mound star of the league,” he derived his success from improved control.

 

Crowder and Sam Gray were the Browns’ workhorses for a second consecutive season in 1929. Crowder pitched better than his 17-15 record suggested. In ten of his losses, the Browns scored three runs or fewer (a total of 22 runs). The General pitched his best during the last two months of the season, completing 12 of his 14 starts (many on short rest) and logging 121 innings. In a six-week period, he tossed three complete-game victories over the eventual World Series champion Athletics (including a two- and a four-hitter) and shut out the second-place New York Yankees twice. The first shutout was a masterful two-hitter that took just 1:38 to play. Crowder amassed 266⅔ innings for the fourth-place Browns, completed 19 games for the second consecutive season, and led the junior circuit with four shutouts.

 

Two consecutive winning seasons gave fans of the perpetually cash-strapped Browns hope for 1930. However, in the season often remembered as the “Year of the Hitter,” when the AL hit a collective .288 and set numerous offensive records, the Browns hitters and pitchers struggled. Crowder lost six of his first seven starts (the only win was a six-hit shutout) and was shunted to the bullpen by new manager Killefer. But with no viable replacements (the team boasted a league-worst 5.07 ERA), Crowder regained his spot in the rotation and won two of three starts. Then, on June 13, in a startling move, Browns owner Phil Ball sent Crowder, along with outfielder and future Hall of Famer Heinie Manush, to the Washington Senators for another future Hall of Famer, outfielder Goose Goslin. The trade was universally considered a coup for Clark Griffith, who provided manager Walter Johnson with yet another arm for the most consistent and best staff in the AL. Given a new lease on life with a contender, Crowder responded by becoming the workhorse of the Senators staff. After the trade, he hurled nine consecutive complete games, winning six of them, while the Senators battled the Athletics for the lead. Philadelphia pulled away in late July and early August to win its second consecutive pennant, but Crowder proved to be a rubber-armed starter.

 

Contemporary sportswriters like Dan Daniel noted that Crowder had a pitching arsenal that included a fastball, a “corking change of pace,” a “baffling” curve, and a screwball, all of which made it difficult for hitters to predict what he would throw. From his lazy, slow, three-quarters-to-overhand delivery, his fastball had surprising movement (often called a “sneak”). He also possessed a deceptive throw to first base which discouraged base runners from taking large leads.

 

Named Opening Day starter in 1932, Crowder pitched a ten-inning, 1-0 shutout of the Red Sox. It set the tone for his career year, arguably the best season for a Senators pitcher not named Walter Johnson. On May 13 he tossed his seventh and final career two-hitter, shutting out the Tigers, 7-0. The General also went 2-for-3 at the plate with a triple, scored once, and knocked in a run. A capable hitter, Crowder batted .221 in 1932 and finished with a career .194 average (164-for-847). He followed his best start in the big leagues with one of his worst slumps, dropping 11 of his next 16 decisions. But after surrendering nine hits and six runs in an ugly five-inning loss to the lowly Browns on July 28, Crowder did not lose again all season. Typically starting on three days’ rest, he reeled off 15 consecutive victories, completed 10 of 15 starts, and proved to be the most durable pitcher in the major leagues, leading both leagues in wins (26), innings (327), and starts (39). Only teammate Firpo Marberry appeared in more games (54), though he relieved in 39 of them.

 

Despite winning more than 90 games for three consecutive seasons, Clark Griffith demanded more. Consequently, he made the controversial decision to replace manager Walter Johnson, the greatest player in the franchise’s history, with an unproven boy wonder, shortstop Joe Cronin. Just 26 years old, Cronin was a fiery, natural leader, who instilled confidence in his players. Once again the club’s Opening Day starter, Crowder held the Philadelphia Athletics to six hits over seven innings to earn the 4-1 win. It was his 16th consecutive victory to tie Smoky Joe Wood and Walter Johnson (both in 1912) and Lefty Grove (1931) for the longest winning streak in AL history, though the others accomplished the feat during one season. With the trade of rubber-armed Marberry for dependable lefty starter Earl Whitehill, Cronin relied on Crowder as a starter and regular reliever. The General led the majors with 52 appearances (35 starts).

 

Since the Senators’ two-year reign as the American League champions (1924-25), the Yankees and Athletics had captured every AL crown, and it appeared to be the same by June 1933. But the Senators overcame a six-game deficit to tie the Yankees behind Crowder’s tenth win in a slugfest against the White Sox on June 22. Washington went 62-30 after that to cruise to the pennant. Crowder and Whitehill formed the best pitching duo in the league. The General pitched consistently all season, won a league-high 24 games, and logged 299⅓ innings, second most in the league; Whitehill won a career-high 22 games.

 

Notwithstanding Crowder’s enormous success, he was the object of trade rumors throughout the offseason as owner Clark Griffith sought a solution to his mounting financial woes. Crowder appeared to be in good physical shape, but suffered through a dismal spring training. “His control has been off and he has not flashed the fastball he must have to make him a successful hurler,” said Griffith. Crowder began the season in the bullpen, was pummeled in his first start of the season, and never regained his form. Floundering in fifth place, well under .500, the Senators placed the General on waivers and ultimately sent him to Detroit on August 4. For the first-place Tigers, en route to their first pennant since 1909, Crowder transformed himself into a cagey veteran for player-manager Mickey Cochrane. Given extra time between outings, Crowder made nine starts and compiled a 5-1 record with a better-than-average 4.19 ERA.

 

At the age of 36 and preparing for what eventually turned out to be his tenth and final full season in the big leagues, Crowder in 1935 relied on his pitching instincts, sliders, sinkers, and offspeed pitches, as well as his “cunning and methodical precision” for his success. With Bridges, Rowe, and submariner Elden Auker, the General formed the “Big Four Staff,” which accounted for 74 of the Tigers’ 93 wins and logged almost 1,000 innings. The reigning pennant winners got off to a slow start, but Crowder supplied “inspirational” pitching by overcoming a stomach virus that sidelined him for the first half of May to toss three complete-game victories (two of them against the Yankees) in two weeks. He seemingly turned back the clock in June, winning five of eight starts to help keep the team in contention. On July 24 at Yankee Stadium, Crowder cemented his reputation as a “Yankee-Stopper” by blanking New York on four hits for the last of his 16 career shutouts. “My success against them,” said Crowder, “came from … studying the pitchers around the league. I tried to see what type of pitch each Yankee hit well, especially what they didn’t pull, and used it against them.”

 

In search of an elusive first win in the World Series, the General took the mound in Game Four against the Chicago Cubs on October 5. On a chilly, windy afternoon at Wrigley Field, Crowder tossed the most important game of his life, limiting the North Siders to just five hits and one run (on Gabby Hartnett’s home run) en route to a complete-game victory to give Detroit a commanding three-games-to-one lead in the series. Two days later, Goose Goslin knocked in Mickey Cochrane in the bottom of the ninth inning for a dramatic, series-clinching 4-3 victory.

 

Crowder’s big-league career came to a sudden and frustrating close in 1936. He developed ligament problems in his right shoulder in spring training and was a shell of his former self (8.39 ERA in 44 innings) in limited duty through June 22. Suffering from shoulder and stomach pain, Crowder was placed on the voluntarily retired list and returned to North Carolina and his ill wife in late June. She died several weeks later. Crowder was widely expected to return to the Tigers in 1937, but in the offseason he announced his intention to retire and was granted his unconditional release before spring training, signaling the end of his big-league career. He finished with a 167-115 record and 2,344⅓ innings.

 

 

 

[Yankee4Life]

Eddie Waitkus

 

 

A bio of the man who inspired the book The Natural by Bernard Malamud which was later made into a movie in 1984.

 

Eddie Waitkus was a slick-fielding first baseman who in an 11-year big-league career for three teams batted a solid .285 and struck out only 204 times in 4,681 plate appearances. Although a fine ballplayer, he would today likely be little remembered but for what happened to him on June 14, 1949, in a room at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. That evening a young, obsessed female fan named Ruth Steinhagen lured Waitkus to her hotel room with a cryptic note and then shot him in the chest, critically wounding him.

 

The Waitkus shooting is said to have inspired Bernard Malamud to write his iconic baseball novel, The Natural, which he published in 1952 and which was later immortalized in the Robert Redford movie by the same name in 1984.

 

Waitkus managed to survive the shooting after enduring four operations, and returned to the major leagues in 1950, playing a key role in the Philadelphia Philles Whiz Kids’ rush to the National League pennant. But the story does not have a happy ending. Waitkus was never really able to recover emotionally from the shooting, and his post-baseball career was particularly difficult. He battled depression and alcoholism and endured a nervous breakdown before succumbing to cancer just after his 53rd birthday.

 

Eddie’s life was to be full of hardships and the first occurred when he was only fourteen. His mother was hospitalized with pneumonia and died just days later.

 

Despite the tragedy, Waitkus went on to become an honor student at Cambridge Latin High, where he studied foreign languages, was a star debater, and graduated sixth in a class of 600. When he was a sophomore he walked into a baseball practice with his trusty first baseman’s mitt, only to be told by the coach that the team already had a first baseman. Eddie asked the coach to at least let him take a few grounders and after he scooped up everything hit his way, was told to grab a bat. Waitkus proceeded to smack line drives all over the park and all of a sudden Latin High had a new first baseman.

 

By the time Waitkus graduated, he was a legend on the baseball field as well as in the classroom. He hit .600 his senior year, including a prodigious home-run blast that landed on the top of a three-story apartment building beyond the right-field fence. He was named to every All-Scholastic team in the Boston area in 1937 and that summer played in the semipro Suburban Twilight League. He considered accepting a scholarship to play baseball at either Harvard, Holy Cross, or Duke but playing for the Worumbo Indians of Lisbon Falls, Maine, in the fast Maine League during the summer of 1938 changed any college plans.

 

Waitkus played exceptionally well and became the top prospect in New England that summer. His club won the Maine championship and qualified for the National Baseball Congress tournament in Wichita, Kansas, where it won two games before being eliminated. Waitkus hit over .500 in Wichita and fielded flawlessly. After the young first baseman was named by major-league scouts to an All American semipro team, Boston sportswriter Fred Barry proved prescient when he wrote, “These big league ‘wise men’ viewed the left-handed batting and throwing of 19-year-old Waitkus and termed him a ‘natural.’”

 

Ralph Wheeler, the high-school sports editor for the Boston Herald, had close ties with the Chicago Cubs and arranged for Waitkus to work out for Cubs manager Gabby Hartnett on Chicago’s last trip to Boston to play the Bees. That led to a contract and a $2,500 bonus from the Cubs, who assigned him to the Moline Plow Boys of the Class-B Three-I League for the 1939 season.

 

That performance earned Waitkus a promotion to the Tulsa Oilers of the Class-A Texas League for 1940. He adjusted to the faster league quite well, batting .303 in 162 games and leading the league in hits with 192. Dizzy Dean, who was trying to rehab a sore arm, spent much of the summer with the Oilers and roomed with Waitkus when the team was on the road. While it would seem that the 30-year-old Southern country boy Dean and the 20-year-old kid from Boston would have little in common, they became fast friends. In fact, Dean became one of Waitkus’s biggest supporters.

 

The Cubs assigned Waitkus to the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League for 1942. This time he didn’t miss a beat stepping up to tougher competition and in 175 games and 766 plate appearances he batted .336 to finish near the top of the league in batting average. In fact, he led the league with 235 hits for the season.

 

One would normally expect that Waitkus would be back in Catalina Island with the Cubs in 1943. World War II, however, intervened, as it did for so many, and Eddie spent that spring in Army basic training in Fort Devens, Massachusetts.

 

Waitkus finished the war with 10 meritorious service awards, including four bronze stars and four overseas bars.

 

Eddie was 26 years old when he reported to Catalina Island for the Cubs’ 1946 spring training after 34 months in the service. The only problem was that the Cubs had a first baseman, Phil Cavarretta, who was coming off a batting championship (.355) and a National League Most Valuable Player Award. When Waitkus arrived, manager Charlie Grimm, also a former slick-fielding first baseman, told him to go to first and take some groundballs. For a full 15 minutes Grimm futilely tried to smash a ball past Waitkus, but could not. Before long, the question was not whether Eddie would make the team, but when and where the team would move Cavarretta to make room for him at first base.

 

Once the season began, Bill Nicholson, the Cubs’ right fielder, continued his slump from the previous year, and on April 25 manager Grimm benched Nicholson, moved Cavarretta to right field, and inserted Waitkus at first base. Batting sixth, Waitkus singled twice, doubled, and drove in two runs in his first game as a starter. Thereafter the job was his. By mid-June he was hitting .310 and fielding flawlessly. On June 23 Eddie got into the major-league record book when fellow rookie Marv Rickert and he hit back-to-back inside-the-park home runs in the Polo Grounds against the Giants. They were the first duo ever to accomplish the feat.

 

Now entrenched as the Cubs’ first baseman, Waitkus battled injuries early in 1947, but when he was in there he still hit for a solid average, typically batting second in the batting order. He slumped in late May and early June, dropping to .244, but steadily improved his average the rest of the year. He had a big day at the plate on September 14 with a triple and two singles against the Boston Braves. For the season, he finished at .292 in 130 games, third best on a team that slipped to sixth place with a 69-85 record.

 

The Cubs continued their downward slide in 1948, finishing in the National League basement with a 64-90 record. It was hard to fault Waitkus, however, as he turned in another solid season, batting .295 in 139 games. After the season the Cubs were on the trade market to try to resurrect the franchise, and found a willing partner in the sixth-place Philadelphia Phillies, who under new ownership were eager to turn their team into a contender. At the winter meetings in December, the two clubs announced a blockbuster trade with the Cubs sending Waitkus and pitcher Hank Borowy to the Phillies in exchange for pitchers Dutch Leonard and Walt Dubiel.

 

Rogers Hornsby, the outspoken former Cubs manager, was not so thrilled. According to the Rajah, “The Cubs have two real ballplayers — Andy Pafko and Eddie Waitkus. They can’t trade the best first baseman in the business.” But of course they did and, as it turned out, the Phillies got a key component of their Whiz Kids club that would win the 1950 National League pennant.

 

The slick-fielding Waitkus had an immediate impact on the longtime doormat Phillies in ’49 as the club flirted with the first division for much of the early season. By the first week of May, he was batting third in the order and hitting over .300. His teammates tabbed him “the Fred Astaire of first basemen,” and manager Eddie Sawyer compared him to George Sisler and Joe Kuhel, two of the top glove men of all time at first.

 

Waitkus is shot:

 

Waitkus continued to enjoy the nightlife while with the Phillies, particularly with his old Cubs teammates Meyer and Nicholson, who was his roommate on the road. On June 14 the Phillies had just begun a 15-day road trip and had defeated the Cubs at Wrigley Field that afternoon, 9-2 behind Meyer’s complete-game pitching. Waitkus was enjoying his best year in the big leagues, hitting .306 and leading in the balloting for the All-Star Game.

 

That evening Waitkus went out for dinner and drinks with Nicholson and Meyer, Russ’s fiancée, Mary, and Meyer’s parents, visiting from nearby Peru, Illinois. After dinner, Nicholson and Waitkus took a cab separate from Meyer back to the Edgewater Beach Hotel, where the Phillies were staying.

 

When they arrived, Eddie suggested that Nicholson go down to the Beachwalk to find Meyer and ask him to join them for a nightcap. In the meantime, a bellhop approached Waitkus and told him that he had a note from a girl in his mailbox at the front desk. Eddie retrieved the note and read it while walking through the lobby. The writer identified herself as Ruth Anne Burns and gave her room number as 1297-A. She wrote, “It’s extremely important that I see you as soon as possible. We’re not acquainted but I have something of importance to speak to you about. I think it would be to your advantage to let me explain it to you.” The note concluded by saying, “Please come soon. I won’t take much of your time.”

 

Waitkus returned to the front desk and asked who was registered in room 1297-A. The clerk told him that the registration was to a Ruth Anne Burns from Portland Street in Boston. That information made Waitkus a little uneasy, as he had grown up on Portland Street in East Cambridge. Eddie decided that he should find Nicholson and Meyer for that drink and joined them at a small table at the back of the Beachwalk. He showed his teammates the strange note and finally decided he should call on Ruth Anne Burns, thinking she might be a family acquaintance who was in need of help.

 

He first called the room, and it seemed to him that Ruth Anne may have been asleep. But she urged him to come up and at about 11:30 he knocked on her room door. Ruth Ann opened the door and bade him come in. Waitkus entered the room and walked past her in the tiny room and sat down in a small armchair by the window.

 

The girl, who was in reality 19-year-old Ruth Ann Steinhagen of Chicago, appeared from behind the door brandishing a .22-caliber rifle and said, “I have a surprise for you. You are not going to bother me anymore.”

 

Waitkus stiffened immediately and said, “What goes on here? Is this some kind of joke? What have I done?”

 

She answered by shooting Waitkus once in the abdomen. As Eddie slumped down he said over and over, “Oh baby, why did you do that?”

Steinhagen at first wasn’t convinced she’d shot Waitkus, but eventually stepped over Eddie, returned the gun to the closet, and called the front desk, saying that she had just shot a man in her room.

 

That call probably saved Waitkus’s life. He was near death when he was taken to the Illinois Masonic Hospital. The bullet had pierced a lung and was lodged near his spine. He would undergo two operations at Masonic before being transferred to Billings Memorial Hospital on the University of Chicago campus, where he had a third operation. There he developed a persistent fever and it was determined that he needed a fourth operation to remove the bullet.

 

After being indicted for attempted murder, Ruth Ann Steinhagen was declared mentally ill and committed to the Kankakee State Hospital. She had been obsessed with Waitkus since she first saw him play for the Cubs in April of 1947. Although she had never met him, she attended all the Cubs games and would wait for him to pass by outside the clubhouse after the games. Her room was a virtual shrine to Waitkus and she ultimately decided that if she couldn’t have him, nobody could.

 

A rapid recovery:

 

Waitkus’s recovery was near miraculous. He spent a month in the hospital before returning to Philadelphia by air on July 17, where 500 fans braved the pouring rain to greet him. By early August the Phillies were in their worst slump of the season, having lost five games in a row and 10 of 13. Waitkus was restless convalescing in his Philadelphia apartment and, accompanied by Babe Alexander of the Phillies’ front office, flew to Pittsburgh, where the Phillies were playing the Pirates. He walked unannounced into the Phillies clubhouse, where his teammates were shocked at how much weight he had lost. But his visit must have helped because the Phillies beat the Pirates and began playing better.

 

On August 19 the club had a “Welcome, Eddie Waitkus” night at Shibe Park, where Waitkus was greeted with a standing ovation from nearly 20,000 fans. He wore his Phillies uniform, although his jersey hung loosely from his frame, and received a new Dodge convertible, a television set, golf clubs, a full wardrobe including about 10 suits, a two-week vacation to Atlantic City, and many other gifts. Dick Sisler, who had replaced Waitkus at first base, presented a tearful Eddie with a gift from the team, a bronzed first baseman’s glove and two silver baseballs mounted on a velvet-covered plaque. “You put me on the spot on June 14,” Sisler said, “so I hope you have a speedy recovery and come back and take the job away from me.”

 

Waitkus’s recovery, while long and arduous, was nothing short of miraculous. He was in the Whiz Kids’ Opening Day lineup in 1950, playing first base and batting third against the Brooklyn Dodgers. For the day in the Phillies’ 9-1 win, Eddie was 3-for-5 with a run batted in. He went on to start all 154 games at first as the Phillies nosed out the Dodgers for their first pennant in 35 years.

 

Waitkus played a key role in the Phillies’ pennant-clinching victory over the Dodgers in Ebbets Field on the last day of the season, hitting a Texas League single in the top of the 10th, eventually scoring the winning run on Dick Sisler’s three-run homer, and then squeezing the final out, a popup from Tommy Brown, in the bottom of the 10th to clinch the pennant.

 

For the season he went to the plate 702 times, scored 102 runs, and hit a solid .284. He even garnered some votes for Most Valuable Player, finishing 24th, and won the Associated Press’s Comeback Player of the Year Award in a landslide.

 

Phillies manager Steve O’Neill, who had replaced Eddie Sawyer in June of 1952, batted Waitkus eighth in the batting order after the All-Star break, in spite of his solid average.Then, in February of 1953 the Phillies acquired Earl Torgeson from the Boston Braves, another left-handed first baseman who had twice hit more than 20 home runs in a season. It was clear that the Phillies wanted more pop from first base, even at the expense of defense. As a result, Eddie played only 59 games at the position. He was also 7-for-20 as a pinch hitter and batted .291 for the season.

 

The Phillies mailed Waitkus a contract for 1954 that included a substantial pay cut. Waitkus wrote “N.S.F.” on the contract, for “not sufficient funds,” and mailed it back. After rejecting a second contract offer, Waitkus finally signed for 1954 and reported to Clearwater. Manager O’Neill, however, did not play Waitkus in a single exhibition game that spring, much to Eddie’s disgruntlement. When he finally demanded to know why from Carpenter, he was told that he just been sold to the Baltimore Orioles.

 

The 34-year-old Waitkus was sad to leave the Phillies but hopeful of being able to play every day again with the Orioles. His main competition at first base was power-hitting Dick Kryhoski. As luck would have it, Kryhoski broke his wrist when hit by a pitch in a spring-training game just after Waitkus was purchased. As a result, Waitkus started the season playing regularly. He got off to a poor start, however, and was hitting only .170 in early May, prompting manager Jimmy Dykes to insert Kryhoski into the lineup upon his return.

 

Although Waitkus rarely complained about it, he was increasingly bothered by lower-back spasms, apparently related to adhesions from the surgery to remove the bullet. He began the 1955 season on the disabled list and thereafter played sparingly, appearing in only 38 games by late July. The Orioles under new manager Paul Richards were headed into a youth movement and on July 25 gave Waitkus his unconditional release.

 

Five days later the Phillies signed Waitkus to spell struggling rookie Marv Blaylock at first base. Waitkus joined his old club in Cincinnati and smacked a pinch-hit single in his first game back. He went on to play in 33 games for the Phillies in the last two months of the season, batting .280. On September 20 in Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the 36-year-old Waitkus played his last major-league games as the Phillies lost a doubleheader to the Dodgers. In the fourth inning of the first game, Eddie smashed a home run over the billboards in right field off Don Newcombe to tie the score, 1-1. It was his second home run of the season and only the 24th of his career.

 

Life after baseball:

 

The Phillies released Waitkus in October and he decided to retire rather than try to hang on another year in the majors or play back in the Pacific Coast League. He obtained a job in marketing and sales with Eastern Freightways, a New Jersey-based trucking firm. He and his family, which now included daughter Ronni and son Ted, were soon relocated to Buffalo, New York. Without baseball, Waitkus’s drinking became more of a problem as did his depression, which he had battled since the shooting. Now he self-medicated his deepening depression with alcohol.

 

All of this took a toll on his family and in 1960 Carol took the kids and moved to Albany to be near her family. Eastern Freightways transferred him to Camden, New Jersey, and Waitkus continued his downward spiral. Finally, in late February 1961 he was admitted to the Veterans Hospital in Philadelphia with a nervous breakdown. He spent several days there, but apparently did not follow up on the prescribed counseling after his release.

 

Waitkus did not return to the trucking company, but instead took a job in sales at Wanamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia. One of baseball’s sharpest dressers was now selling men’s clothing. By the time of a Whiz Kids’ reunion in 1963 Waitkus had moved to Waltham, Massachusetts, to live with his sister Stella and work selling sporting goods at the Grover Cronin department store.

 

The one real positive of Waitkus’s later years began in 1967 when he started working during the summers as a baseball coach and counselor at the Ted Williams Baseball Camp in Lakeville, about 45 minutes south of Boston. Waitkus connected with the campers, many of whom didn’t even know that he was a former big leaguer.

 

In the fall of 1971, Waitkus fractured his hip when he fell while installing storm windows on the second story of the house where he rented a room. Although he had quit drinking, he continued to be a heavy smoker. According to his son Ted, who attended the Ted Williams camp with his dad in the summers, “His Benson and Hedges Menthol 100s never left his side.” Eddie walked with a pronounced limp and used a cane that summer at the baseball camp, but still taught kids how to hit.

 

He felt so poorly, however, that he left camp about a week early and drove back to Cambridge. Within days of returning home, he entered the VA Hospital in Jamaica Plain with pneumonia. He was soon diagnosed with esophageal cancer and would never leave the hospital. He died on September 16, 1972, and was just 53 years old.

 

Waitkus was a card-carrying member of what has become known as the Greatest Generation. But the horrors of his war experience and then his almost fatal shooting took a large toll on him. His drinking, depression, and anxiety issues would now be recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder and surely contributed to his early death. But he will always be remembered as a key member of the 1950 Whiz Kids and as one of the smoothest fielding first baseman of his or any time.

 

 

 

 

[Yankee4Life]

Joe Black

 

 

Joe Black helped lead the Brooklyn Dodgers to the 1952 pennant, going 15-4 with 15 saves, and a 2.15 ERA. He won the NL’s Rookie of the Year Award and became the first African American pitcher to win a World Series game. “Let’s put it this way,” Dodgers manager Chuck Dressen told reporters, “Where would we be without him?” Teammate Carl Erskine said, “He put us in the World Series. He was the main cause to get us there.”

 

During the middle of the 20th century, Black, along with Joe Page, Jim Konstanty, and Hoyt Wilhelm, helped define the importance of relief pitching as a specialty. Managers and fans began to recognize relievers’ value to teams rather than view them as failed starting pitchers.

 

Black was born on February 8, 1924 in Plainfield, New Jersey, an industrial and residential city of 30,000 people, 13 miles from Newark. He grew up in a racially mixed working class neighborhood with white friends in school and in the community, including in his athletic activities. Some Plainfield police officers provided Black and his friends with equipment and uniforms and taught them how to play team baseball. By the time he reached Plainfield High School (PHS), Black was an outstanding athlete and excellent student. He played on the football and basketball teams and played first base, third base, left field, and catcher for the baseball team, but did not pitch. He was named PHS’s outstanding athlete for the 1941-42 school year.

 

As he was nearing his high school graduation in 1942, his dream of playing in the majors was shattered.

 

“I was batting .400 when I was a senior in high school. The scouts were talking to other people, but they didn’t speak to me. I said, ‘Hey, I am the captain of the team. I out-hit them all — why don’t you sign me?’ A scout said, ‘Because you are colored, and they don’t play baseball in the big leagues.’” As Black recalled, “I got mad and hateful. I had a scrapbook of ballplayers, and I tore up all of their pictures — they were all white. The one picture that I didn’t tear was Hank Greenberg, my idol. He was big and hit home runs, and that’s what I wanted to do. My mother said, ‘Son, you can’t be mad.’ I said, ‘But mama, white people won’t let me play!’”

 

Black received a partial football scholarship at Morgan State College [now University], a historically black institution in Baltimore, beginning in September 1942. Growing up in Plainfield, Black had felt the stings of prejudice and discrimination, but moving to Baltimore, a legally segregated city, was a different experience.

 

As he recalled, “You would go into a store to try on a pair of shoes, and you couldn’t try them on. You couldn’t try a coat on. You bought stuff, but you couldn’t bring it back—whether it fits or not.”

 

In the summer of 1943, after his freshman year, Black and his college friend Cal Irvin (brother of future New York Giants star Monte Irvin) went to a Negro League game between the Baltimore Elite Giants and the Newark Eagles at Bugle Field. Vernon Green, the Elite Giants’ business manager, overheard Black boasting that he was as good or better than some of the players on the field. Green arranged for Black to try out for the team. He played several games at shortstop, hit poorly, and asked the manager to give him a chance to pitch.The official Negro League record book lists Black as having pitched in two games for the Elite Giants that season.

 

Black joined the Army Medical Corps on August 17, 1943. He served for 2 ½ years in the Army during World War 2, until March 1946. “Sixteen months after I was drafted before I touched a rifle. I pitched a lot,” he told Roger Kahn.

 

Black was 21 years old and still in the Army, when, in October 1945, Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson. ”I started dreaming,” Black recalled. “And that’s what happened to most of the guys in the Negro Leagues. You forgot your age. You said, ‘If Jackie makes it, I can make it.”’

 

In March 1948, he rejoined the Elite Giants and played with them each spring and summer until 1950. He pitched in the 1947, 1948, and 1950 All-Star East-West games at the Polo Grounds, Yankee Stadium, and Comiskey Park, respectively, and helped the Elite Giants win the 1949 Negro League National Championship.

 

After graduating in 1950, at 26, Black pitched for the Elite Giants during the summer, then joined a barnstorming team of Black players led by Luke Easter. In the fall, Black joined the Cienfuegos Elefantes in the integrated Cuban winter leagues. While in Cuba in 1950, Black met Fidel Castro, then a young lawyer and budding politician. Castro often attended winter league games. In addition, Black played a one-on-one basketball game with the future “jefe.” Castro corresponded with Black when Black was with the Dodgers in 1952.

 

In 1951, the Dodgers purchased his and Jim Gilliam’s contracts from the Elite Giants for $11,000. The Dodgers sent Black to their Triple-A teams in Montreal and St. Paul, where he posted a combined 11-12 record with a 3.28 ERA.

 

Black pitched 170 innings in the minors and another 163 innings in Cuba, so his arm was sore when he showed up at the Dodgers’ Vero Beach spring training camp in 1952. He didn’t tell anyone. He had neither a contract nor a place on the roster.

 

The team’s spring training facility, Dodgertown, was integrated. Black and white players slept, ate, and practiced together in the compound. It had its own swimming pool, basketball court, pool tables, and occasional movie nights. But the world immediately outside Dodgertown was segregated. Blacks couldn’t eat in the restaurants or get a haircut and were banned from Vero Beach’s beaches, movie theaters, and golf courses. Laundries wouldn’t take their clothing. When the Dodgers traveled to play exhibition games, black and white players had to stay in separate hotels.

 

The Dodgers assigned Black to room with Robinson. When Robinson walked into the room they were sharing in Vero Beach, he asked Black, “Can you fight?” “Yeah,” Black responded. “But we’re not going to fight,” Robinson said. He explained, “We can’t allow those crazy sons of bitches to bother us. We have the ability to play, and we’re going to show them that we’re in baseball to stay.” Robinson took the time to “impress upon me the psychological changes that must be endured by the black ballplayers,” Black recalled. Robinson had endured racial slurs from fans and opposing players, even years after he’d established himself as a star ballplayer. “I couldn’t have done it,” Black said.

 

Manager Chuck Dressen first put Black into a game on May 1 when he started the seventh inning against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. He struck out slugger Hank Sauer (that year’s NL MVP), struck out third baseman Randy Jackson, and got catcher Toby Atwell (who was leading the NL in batting) to ground out to second base. The game put the Dodgers in first place, ahead of the Giants, where they would remain for the rest of the season.

 

After his first seven appearances (14 innings), Black’s ERA stood at 0.00. At the All-Star break, Black was 3-0 with five saves in 38 2/3 innings, with a 1.63 ERA. Dressen relied on him more during the second half of the season. Black lifted up the Dodgers to help compensate for the loss of Don Newcombe (who was in the army) and for the injuries to the other pitching mainstays, including Preacher Roe, Carl Erskine, and Ralph Branca. Dressen used Black as a utility reliever. In his 54 relief appearances, he pitched less than two innings 22 times, two innings 17 times, three innings four times, four innings four times, five innings three times, six innings twice, seven innings once, and eight innings once. Eight of his 11 stints pitching four innings or more occurred down the stretch in August and September.

 

By the end of the season, he had appeared in 56 games with a 15-4 record and 15 saves. In 142 innings, he struck out 85 batters, walked only 41, and gave up just nine home runs. Black’s 2.15 ERA was the NL’s lowest, but he was eight innings short of the threshold for the title. The winner was another rookie reliever, the Giants’ Hoyt Wilhelm, with a 2.43 ERA in 159 innings.

 

Black, who stood 6’2” and 220 pounds, with broad shoulders, long arms, and big hands, had only two pitches — a powerful fastball and a “nickel curve,” which broke like a slider. He made up for his limited repertoire by having pinpoint control.

 

Black could intimidate opposing hitters by knocking them down with his fastball. “We’re professionals,” he explained. “If I send a guy into the dirt, it isn’t personal.” But at times he used the knock-down pitch as a weapon against racism. In one game, players on the all-white Cincinnati Reds (they did not integrate until 1954) began singing “Old Black Joe” from the opposing team’s dugout, trying to rattle Black on the mound. “I was seething,” Black recalled. He quickly knocked down several Reds hitters. After that, Black recalled, “The singing came to a halt.”

 

Dressen started Black in his two final games of the season, thinking that he might have to use him as a starter in the World Series. The World Series was between two New York City teams. They were scheduled to play seven games in seven days, with no travel days in between. That shaped Dressen’s decision to start Black in the first game, anticipating that he would pitch the fourth game and, if necessary, the seventh game.

 

Wrote AP sportswriter Gayle Talbot, “Never before in big league history has a champion of either circuit been forced to undertake such as desperate gamble.” New York Times writer John Debringer wrote that Black “found himself cast in as difficult a role as ever was assigned to a rookie.”

 

In the opening game, Black threw a six-hitter to beat Allie Reynolds 4-2, making him the first African American pitcher to win a World Series game.  Three days later, Black faced Reynolds again in the fourth game at Yankee Stadium. Black gave up only three hits and one run in seven innings. But Reynolds pitched a shutout and defeated the Dodgers 2-0. (Dodgers reliever John Rutherford gave up another run in the eighth inning). Strapped for pitching, Dressen called on Black to start the seventh game at Ebbets Field. “Brooklyn’s Hopes for Series Honors Ride on Trusty Arm of Joe Black Today,” read the New York Times headline that morning. Black pitched well for three innings, giving up no hits and no runs, but then, in his third start in seven days, he ran out of gas. In both the fourth and fifth innings he surrendered two hits and one run, including a homer by Gene Woodling. In the sixth inning, Black gave up a home run to Mickey Mantle and a single to Johnny Mize. Dressen brought in Roe to relieve Black. Four Yankee pitchers held the Dodgers to two runs for a 4-2 victory and the World Series championship.

 

Near the end of the baseball season, Dressen told Black that he might need him to become a starting pitcher and that he should add a new pitch to his repertoire. While pitching for Roy Campanella’s all-Black post-season barnstorming team, Black experimented trying to throw a knuckleball, without success. When Black got to Vero Beach for spring training, he tried to learn to pitch a forkball, a change-up, and a sinker, but he couldn’t grip the ball properly because of a deformity he had on his index finger. The Dodger coaches worked with Black to experiment on his stride on the mound, at times urging him to lengthen it and at other times to shorten it. Nothing worked, so Dressen told Black to go back to his former pitching style. But by then Black had forgotten what he’d done to achieve so much success in his rookie year. He couldn’t get his old form back, and each time he took the mound — during spring training and after the season started — he had lost his form and, with it, his confidence.

 

In his second season, Black was no longer the domineering pitcher he had been in 1952. He could still throw hard, but his control, timing, and pitching mechanics suffered. His teammates and even players on opposing teams offered advice, but it didn’t help. By July, Dressen no longer trusted Black as the closer. Black pitched in fewer games and clutch situations. Black recalled that “I was not a pitcher. I was a thrower, without control or confidence.” The Dodgers won the pennant, but Black’s contribution was nothing like his previous year’s record. He pitched in 34 games and only 71 innings. His W-L record was 6-3, but his ERA skyrocketed to 5.33. He had only five saves. He pitched only one inning during the Yankees-Dodgers six game World Series.

 

In 1954, the Dodgers’ new manager, Walter Alston, used Black sparingly. By May 26 he had pitched in five games and given up 11 hits, including three homers in seven innings, walked five batters, and struck out three, with a 11.57 ERA. On May 30 the Dodgers demoted him to their Montreal AAA team. Soon after arriving in Montreal, the team doctor discovered that Black had torn muscles in his right shoulder. This helped account for the loss of speed on his fastball. For the rest of the season, a doctor gave him weekly cortisone shots to ease the pain. His performance improved. He started 24 games and relieved in seven more. In 185 innings, he struck out 94 batters and walked 61, but allowed 181 hits. He won 12 games, lost 10 games, and finished with a 3.60 ERA.

 

On June 9, 1955 they traded him to the Cincinnati Reds for outfielder Bob Borkowski. That year the Dodgers would win their first World Series, but Black was no longer on the team. The Reds used him in as both a starter (11 games) and reliever (21 games). He pitched 102 innings, went 5-2, with a 4.22 ERA.

 

In 1956, manager Birdie Tebbetts used Black exclusively in relief. He accumulated a 3-2 record and 4.52 ERA in 32 outings, but his performance was uneven. He won his last major league game on June 24, going five and two-thirds innings without giving up a hit to beat the Dodgers in relief.

 

In January 1957, the Redlegs sold Black to the Seattle Raniers in the Pacific Coast League. During the Raniers’ spring training in San Bernardino, Black’s arm began hurting. A doctor at the local VA hospital did X-rays. They revealed bone chips in his right elbow and a small crack developing in his humerus, the bone from the shoulder to the elbow. Afraid of being let go, he didn’t tell anyone.

 

At the end of July of 1957, after serving as a part-time batting practice pitcher with the Dodgers, Black contacted Washington Senators manager Cookie Lavagetto, a former Dodger infielder, to ask for a chance. The Senators signed him as a free agent on August 1, making him the team’s first American-born black player. (The team had three black Cubans and one black Panamanian before hiring Black).

 

Black had lost the velocity on his fastball, and lost his confidence, and players teed off on him. He pitched seven games and 12 2/3 innings for the Senators, giving up 22 hits, losing one game, and ending the season with a 7.11 ERA. His last major league outing was on September 11, 1957 against the Tigers.

 

When he returned his Senators contract unsigned, the team gave him his unconditional release on November 25, 1957. He could not endure more cortisone shots to relieve his pain, but he was unwilling to undergo an operation. At 33, his professional baseball career was over.

 

In 1972, after Jackie Robinson had become partly blind and close to death from diabetes, Black pressured Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to honor Robinson for breaking baseball’s color barrier 25 years earlier. Kuhn invited Robinson to throw out the first ball before the second game of the World Series in Cincinnati on October 15. Robinson used the occasion to criticize baseball for its slow racial progress. After Robinson died nine days later, Black was one of the six pallbearers at his funeral.

 

Black died of prostate cancer at age 78 on May 17, 2002. He had a career record of 30 - 12 with a 3.91 earned run average.

 

 

 

[Yankee4Life]

Vic Raschi

 

 

In the Yankees’ unprecedented streak of five straight World Series titles between 1949 and 1953, Vic Raschi’s record was 92-40, an average of eighteen wins a season and a winning percentage of .697. From 1949, only his second full season in the majors, through 1951, Raschi won twenty-one games each year.

 

Victor John Angelo Raschi was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1919. His nickname, “The Springfield Rifle,” combined the speed of his fastball and the name of the neighboring city—the site of the U.S. Armory which had been producing army rifles since 1794.

 

A star in baseball, football, and basketball at Springfield Tech High School, Raschi attracted the attention of Yankees scout Gene McCann while still a freshman. In 1936 Raschi signed an agreement under which the Yankees would pay for his college education in return for getting the first chance to sign him when he graduated. He enrolled at the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1938, and by 1941 the Yankees decided it was time for Raschi to begin his professional career. After the ’41 college baseball season, Raschi was sent to upstate New York to pitch for the Amsterdam Rugmakers in the Class C Canadian-American League. He continued to attend classes at William and Mary in the off-season.

 

A 10-6 season at Amsterdam earned Raschi a promotion in 1942 to the Norfolk (Virginia) Tars, the Yankees’ affiliate in the Class B Piedmont League. His record at Norfolk was only 4-10, but he had an impressive 2.71 earned run average. World War II put both his career and education on hold.

 

The six-foot-one, 200-pound right-hander resumed his professional career in 1946 with the Binghamton (New York) Triplets in the Class A Eastern League. The Yankees called him up in September, following his 10-10 season for the Triplets and five games with the Newark Bears, the Yankees’ Class Triple-A affiliate.

 

On September 23, 1946, at the age of twenty-seven, Raschi made his Major League debut before a tiny turnout of 2,475 at the Yankees’ home finale. Raschi, a “well-proportioned right-hander with burning speed,” pitched a complete-game 9–6 win against the Philadelphia Athletics. Six days later he won his second start, 2–1 over the A’s in the season’s final game.

 

Given that successful debut, Raschi was bitterly disappointed when the Yankees optioned him to the Portland Beavers of the Class Triple-A Pacific Coast League in May 1947. Initially he refused to report but finally relented. In Portland he benefited from the tutelage of manager Jim Turner, a former Yankees reliever who in 1949 would become the Yankees’ pitching coach and remain in that position for the rest of Raschi’s career.

 

Raschi compiled an 8-2 record with Portland, including nine complete games in eleven starts, and was called up to New York in July. The Yankees had won nine straight games, but on July 10, with starter Spud Chandler injured and Mel Queen sold to Pittsburgh, manager Bucky Harris telephoned Turner. Late that night, after a doubleheader in San Diego, Turner approached Raschi, who had won his fourth straight in the second game, and asked if he could be ready to pitch on Sunday, three days later. When Raschi said “Yes,” Turner told him he’d been recalled by the Yankees. Raschi showered and caught a plane to Portland before flying on to Chicago to join the Yankees.

 

Raschi did pitch that Sunday, in the second game of a doubleheader in Chicago, giving up three runs in 6 1/3 innings to earn a 6–4 win over the White Sox. It was the Yankees’ fourteenth straight victory. Five days later, Raschi gave up six hits in a complete-game 7–2 win over the Indians in Cleveland. It was the final win in the Yankees’ nineteen-game streak, putting their record at 58-26 with an 11 1/2-game lead over the Detroit Tigers.

 

By August 2 Raschi, a power pitcher who complemented his fastball with a slider and change-up, had won his first five starts. After a no-decision on August 8, he raised his record to 6-0 on August 13. (Wins two through five were all complete games.) Raschi’s first Major League loss was one of his best outings of the year. In an August 17 game at Yankee Stadium that according to the New York Times, had “all the thrill and excitement of World Series combat,” he shut out the defending American League champion Boston Red Sox on four hits for ten innings before giving up three runs in the eleventh.

 

Though the Yankees finished in third place in 1948, Raschi won 19 games and lost just eight. He was the winning pitcher in the All-Star Game and also drove in the winning run with a bases-loaded single. He finished 11th in the Most Valuable Player voting after the season. Then followed three consecutive seasons with 21 wins (21-10, 21-8, 21-10); he averaged 263 innings and 34 starts, leading the league in starts in both 1949 and 1951. His winning percentage of .724 in 1950 led the American League. In 1952 his win total fell to 16 (with six losses), but his 2.78 ERA was the lowest of his career.

 

In addition to his 92-40 record from 1949 to 1953, Raschi made 160 starts for the Yankees. What makes this stretch of endurance even more impressive is that a collision at home plate with Indians catcher Jim Hegan in August 1950 resulted in torn cartilage in Raschi’s right knee. Playing in pain, he found it difficult to run or to put all his weight on his right leg when he pushed off the pitching rubber. Raschi and the Yankees kept the injury to themselves to prevent other teams from taking advantage by bunting on him. Not until November 1951 did he undergo surgery to remove the cartilage.

 

In 1952 Raschi signed for a reported $40,000, making him at that time the highest-paid pitcher in Yankees history. But the signing came with a stern warning from general manager George Weiss: “Don’t you ever have a bad year.” Raschi’s 13-6 record in 1953 apparently was a bad year, according to Weiss, who offered Raschi a contract calling for a 25 percent cut in 1954. Refusing to sign, Raschi held out until spring training, one of twelve Yankee holdouts. When he got to training camp in St. Petersburg, Florida, he was informed by newspaper reporters, not by Weiss, that he had been sold to the St. Louis Cardinals. Raschi’s record in his eight years with the Yankees was 120-50, a .706 winning percentage.

 

Raschi spent his final two seasons with the Cardinals and the Kansas City Athletics, compiling a combined record of 12-16 before retiring in October 1955 at the age of thirty-six. In his ten-year career, he won 132 while losing only 66, with an earned-run average of 3.72. As of 2011, his win-loss percentage of .667 was tied for fourteenth best for any pitcher with at least 100 decisions. He finished seventh and eighth in the Most Valuable Player voting in 1950 and 1951 respectively, and he pitched in four All-Star games, starting in both 1950 and 1952.

 

In eight World Series starts, Raschi won five games (against three losses), including a two-hit shutout of the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1950 opener and two wins over the Dodgers in the 1952 Series. His World Series ERA, including his two relief appearances in 1947, is 2.24. But perhaps his most memorable game came on the final day of the 1949 season when the Yankees hosted the Red Sox with the pennant at stake. The Red Sox, who had trailed the Yankees by twelve games early in July but stormed back to take a one-game lead with two games left, needed to win only one of the two to take the flag. But the Yanks won the first game 5–4 to force the Red Sox into a do-or-die finale. Raschi, with a 20-10 record, was matched up against Ellis Kinder, who had won twenty-three (four against the Yankees) and lost five going into the game.

 

With 68,055 fans on hand, Raschi, given a 1–0 lead in the first, shut down the power-laden Red Sox on two hits over the first eight innings; the Yankees then took a 5–0 lead after scoring four in the eighth. But the Red Sox, who had been favored to win the pennant, wouldn’t go quietly, scoring three runs in the ninth with the tying run at the plate in Birdie Tebbetts. First baseman Tommy Henrich approached Raschi to offer some encouragement. But the glowering Raschi was in no mood for chit-chat and before Henrich could say a word he told him, “Give me the goddamned ball and get the hell out of here.” He then got Tebbetts to hit a foul pop that Henrich squeezed for the final out and the pennant.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Urban Schocker

 

 

Although the question about who is the best major league baseball team is quite subjective, the answer that is given on many occasions is the 1927 New York Yankees. The team that was dubbed “Murderers’ Row” included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Earle Combs, Tony Lazzeri, Herb Pennock and Waite Hoyt. All are members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. There are some who would argue that Bob Meusel could join them. Throw in stars Joe Dugan and Mark Koenig, plus catcher Pat Collins and you have the whole starting nine.

 

It almost seemed unfair that the Yankees obtained Urban Shocker from the St. Louis Browns. Shocker won 20 games four years in a row for the Browns, and now he was an added gun to the best team in baseball. Especially when one considers the Yankees were Shocker’s first major league club and they unloaded him to St. Louis in 1918. “There were a lot of things I had to find out, even about my own players,” said Miller Huggins, who had just taken over as manager of the Yankees in 1918. “So I poked around and found out as much as I could about them before the training season started. One of the things I was told was that I would do well to get rid of Shocker as quickly as possible because he was a trouble-maker. I later discovered that my information had done Shocker a grave injustice. Urban has never made trouble for anyone.” Huggins righted his wrong, reacquiring the St. Louis ace.

 

Shocker was able to fulfill the dream of most ballplayers; winning a World Championship. Shocker pitched that 1927 season on guts and guile. What was known to very few, and certainly not outside the Yankee organization, was that he was suffering from a heart disease that corroded one of his valves. But he battled through the pain on his way to 18 victories and a 2.84 ERA, the third-lowest in the league.

 

Shocker embarked on his baseball career in Michigan, joining semipro teams in both Michigan and Canada. A catcher, he signed with Windsor, Ontario, a Class D Independent team of the Border League in 1912. He alternated between catcher and pitcher, but a freak accident in 1913 moved Shocker permanently from behind home plate to the pitching mound. One day while catching, he stopped a baseball with the tip of the third finger on his pitching (right) hand. When the broken finger healed, it had a hook at the last joint. “That broken finger may not be pretty to look at,” said Shocker, “but it has been very useful to me. It hooks over a baseball just right so that I can get a break on my slow ball and that’s one of the best balls I throw. If the finger was perfectly straight, I couldn’t do this. As it is, I can get a slow ball to drop just like a spitter. Perhaps if I broke one of my other fingers, I could get the ball to roll over sideways or maybe jump in the air, but I am too easy-going to make the experiment.”

 

He moved on to Class B Ottawa of the Canadian League, where he established himself as a viable major league prospect with two breakout seasons. In 1914 Shocker won 20 games and followed that up with a 19-win season the following year. But as was the case at Windsor, it was his control that made him special. Shocker struck out 158 men in 1914 while walking 60. He was even better in 1915, racking up 186 K’s while opposing batters walked only 40 times. Shocker alluded to the fact that he was a “slow ball” pitcher, which enabled him to maintain pinpoint control. At the conclusion of the 1915 season, Shocker was drafted by the New York Yankees in the Rule 5 Draft. The Yanks coughed up $750 for the services of the young righty.

 

During a spring training game in 1916, a ball was hit down the line near first base, Shocker moved to cover the bag, but was spiked on the foot by the base runner. It turned out to be a minor setback, as Shocker pitched well enough to break camp and head north with the varsity. He made his major league debut on April 24, 1916, pitching three innings of relief in an 8-2 loss to Walter Johnson and the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium. With a surplus of pitching, the Yankees optioned Shocker to Toronto of the International League, with whom New York had a working agreement. Shocker reported to the Maple Leafs on May 15. At this point of the season, Toronto was a woeful 2-12. His first assignment was against the 12-1 Newark Indians, and Shocker toppled the league leaders with a 5-3 victory. On July 8, Shocker started a string of pitching four straight shutouts covering 36 scoreless innings. Not only was he on a hot streak, the Maple Leafs won 10 of 12 games during the stretch. On July 22, Shocker tossed an 11-inning no-hitter at Rochester. “He had his spitter snapping over the plate in such a way that it appeared to hypnotize the local batsmen,” noted the Rochester Sun.

 

New Yankee manager Miller Huggins was looking for stability at second base, as Luke Boone, Joe Gedeon and Fritz Maisel all took their shot at the keystone position. None provided the offense that Huggins desired. He set his sights on Del Pratt of the St. Louis Browns. With Wally Pipp at first, Pratt at second base, Roger Peckinpaugh at short and Frank “Home Run” Baker at the hot corner, the Yanks would have a tremendous infield. Pratt, who ended his 13-year career with a .292 batting average, had a down year in 1917 hitting .247. On January 22, 1918, Pratt and pitcher Eddie Plank were sent east for Gedeon, Maisel, catcher Les Nunamaker, and pitchers Nick Cullop and Shocker.The Browns also received $15,000 in the deal. But Plank decided to retire instead of reporting to the Yankees and a portion of the payment was refunded.

 

Shocker, who relied on the spitball in his repertoire of pitches, was facing adversity. A new rule banned pitchers from using a foreign substance on the baseball or scuffing it. The1920 season was to be a year of transition so that the spitball pitchers could wean themselves from throwing it. However, the players who relied on the spitball as their “money” pitch lobbied to be able to continue to use the pitch. Seventeen of them, including Shocker, were allowed to throw it until their careers ended. (Burleigh Grimes was the last legal spitball pitcher. He hurled until he was 41, his last stop being with Pittsburgh in 1934.)

 

The Browns needed pitching, and they may never have expected the return they received when they dealt for Urban Shocker. Shocker won 20 games in 1920. He was backed by Dixie Davis who won 18 games while leading the league in walks with 149. The Browns were one of the few teams that used a walk as a strategy, often issuing a free pass to the better hitters of the game, rather than risk a more damaging hit. The Browns frequently used this strategy against Babe Ruth, who was hitting home runs at a record pace in 1920. “If they won’t let me use base hits as a mode of transportation,” said the Babe,’ they ought to at least issue me a bicycle.” Shocker bucked this trend in the first game of a doubleheader against New York on July 13, 1920. He fanned a career-high 14 batters, whiffing the Babe three times in the 6-4 Browns victory. To prove it was not a fluke performance, Shocker scattered five hits in defeating his former mates 1-0 on July 28 at Sportsman’s Park. The Browns finished in fourth place in 1920, their highest finish since 1908. Shocker was 9-5 against the three clubs (Cleveland, Chicago, New York) that placed higher than the Browns.

 

Over the next three years, Shocker topped the 20-win mark in each season, leading the league in wins with 27 in 1921. But there was more to Shocker’s game then pitching. “Best fielding pitcher I ever saw,” said Browns third baseman Frank Ellerbe. “He could field that position, he’d leave that mound and jump on the ball like a cat. You’d see a slow one down the third base line, a bunt or sacrifice or anything, and if the runner from second would come, he’d jump on that ball and we’d cut him off at third…and if the man didn’t come he’d jump on the ball and we’d get him at first. He could really field his position.”

 

All signs pointed to 1922 being a banner year for the Browns. And Shocker was a main ingredient in the mix of talented ballplayers in St. Louis. General Manager Bob Quinn said “With another like him we’d win the championship. Even as we stand we’ve got a good chance.”7 Shocker led the staff with a 24-17 record and a 2.97 ERA. He also led the league in strikeouts with 149. Even more surprising was the fact that Shocker was second in the league in innings pitched with 348, considering he was sidelined from June 11 through July 4 with an injured leg. Vangilder won 19 games and Davis 14 . The real surprise was Ray Kolp, who at 28 , in his second major league season, posted a 14-4 record. The Browns were not a “one-man band” when it came to the starting rotation. Sisler batted .420 with 246 hits and 19 triples, all league highs. The Browns as a team hit .310 for the season.

 

On May 20, 1922 the Yankees held a two-game lead over St. Louis. As it would happen, the Yankees’ opponent that day was the Browns at the Polo Grounds. Shocker was on the hill, and breezed to his eighth win of the year, 8-2 . It was a dog fight between the two clubs the rest of the way. St. Louis trailed the Yanks by only half a game when the Yankees came calling for a three game series at Sportsman’s Park beginning September 16… . Bob Shawkey topped Shocker in the first game, 2-1. They split the next two, and the Yankees left town with a 1 ½ game lead. St. Louis lost two of three to the Senators in the next series to fall 3 ½ games back. Even though they won their next five of six contests, they could not overcome the deficit. They finished in second place by one game. “I also blame our club for not hustling more after the Yankees beat us, two out of three, in a September series” said Jacobson. “After the Yanks left town, we blew our next games to Washington, then a second division club. When we eventually lost the pennant only by a game, the importance of those Washington defeats may well be realized.”

 

Manager Lee Fohl had the horses, as he guided the Browns to a 93-61 record. The Browns dominated the rest of the league, but were 8-14 against the Yankees. Shocker accounted for half those wins, going 4-7 against New York.

 

Shocker was not one to follow the crowd. He did his own thing and was considered somewhat of a loner. While his teammates might gather for breakfast or a night on the town, Shocker chose to either go off by himself, or more likely stay in his room when the team was on the road. He loved newspapers, a voracious reader who subscribed to out- of-town papers as well. “I used the time reading the papers from the next city on our schedule,” Shocker explained, “and that way I could keep book on the streaky hitters. Gave me a little edge.”

 

Shocker’s record slipped to 16-13 in 1924, and his ERA ballooned to 4.20. His age (34) and his recent disagreements with management made him expendable. The Browns found a willing trade partner in the Yankees. Huggins coveted Shocker and jumped at the chance to snatch him up. On December 17, 1924, Shocker was sent to New York. St. Louis received pitchers “Bullet Joe” Bush, Milt Gaston and Joe Giard.

 

By 1927 Shocker was pitching with a lot of courage. He was fighting heart disease, although few people knew it. He told writer Bill Corum; “I’ve had a bum heart for some time. You’ve seen me sitting up late at night in my Pullman berth. I couldn’t lie down. Choked when I did.”

 

There was no drama in the 1927 American League race. New York trampled the opposition, besting second place Philadelphia by 19 games. Still, on a team that was loaded with pitching, including Waite Hoyt, Wilcy Moore, Dutch Ruether and Pennock, Shocker posted a record of 18-6 with a 2.84 ERA.

 

In the World Series, they swept Pittsburgh in four straight. Shocker did not appear in the World Series, as George Pipgras started in his place.

 

Ruth, Combs, Muesel, Pennock, and Shocker were all holdouts when the 1928 season rolled around. Ruth received a two-year $70,000 deal, which opened the floodgates for negotiating with the others. But Shocker announced in February that he was retiring. He had an interest in the radio business and aviation and planned to pursue a career in those fields. Although Huggins tried to get Shocker back in the Yankee fold, he was resigned to go onward. Huggins felt that Shocker was bluffing all along, and it turns out that Urban did change his mind and came to terms with the Yankees on a $15,000 deal just before the start of the regular season. “Just as soon as he shows me that he is fit and ready to take his turn, he will get a contract. But not before that. It wouldn’t be fair to the other players who went to training camp and worked hard were I to greet Shocker as the return prodigal and put him right on the payroll. He should have had his training when the training season was on.”

 

Shocker was battling a wrist injury, not to mention a dramatic loss of weight. When he was healthy he weighed 190, but it dropped significantly to 115 . He was also waiting to be reinstated by the Commissioner’s office as he was still on the voluntarily retirement list until he got into shape.

 

Shocker made his only appearance of the year in a Memorial Day matchup with the Senators. He pitched two innings of scoreless relief. Not long after, Shocker was pitching batting practice at Comiskey Park when he collapsed. He was given his release on July 6, 1928, citing poor health as the reason. “Shocker has gone because he could not get into shape to pitch. He ignored his big chance while we were down in Florida,” said Huggins. ”He is essentially a spring pitcher, and once behind in his work, he could not catch up. I wish him lots of luck.” His career record in the major leagues was 187-117 with a 3.17 ERA. He registered 983 strikeouts and 657 walks.

 

Shocker headed to Denver in an attempt to revive his career, and to seek medical attention for his heart. He pitched briefly for a semipro team in Denver, then was admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital in mid-August of 1928. Urban Shocker passed away from a combination of pneumonia and heart disease on September 9, 1928. He was survived by his wife, Irene.

 

As it happened, the Yankees were starting a series in St. Louis at the time of Shocker’s funeral at All Saints Church.. Over 1,000 mourners attended the service. Yankee teammates Hoyt, Gehrig, Combs, Mike Gazella, Gene Robertson, and Myles Thomas served as pallbearers. He is interred at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.

 

When the Yankees had reacquired Shocker, it was to the delight of Babe Ruth. “Shocker is a mighty smart hombre out there on the mound, believe me,” said Ruth. “Time was when he used to have a good assortment of stuff, too- but now, as he gets older, he’s losing a lot of the swift. And his hook doesn’t break any more, it just bends a little. But Shocker has two things that most pitchers lack. He has control-and he has a lot of knowledge up there under that old baseball cap of his. And the two get him over many a tough, tough spot, believe me.”

 

What was the secret to Urban Shocker’s success? It would seem pinpoint control, studying box scores, and a crooked middle finger was the recipe. Who knew?

 

[Yankee4Life]

Bob Meusel

 

 

Silent Bob Meusel played the outfield with Combs and Ruth for six years and was a key member of the legendary 1927 Yankees. He was also suspended (along with Ruth) for participating in a non-authorized barnstorming tour. These are three integral reasons why Meusel’s name will live on in the annals of baseball history.

 

Meusel spent ten seasons with the Ruthian Yankees from 1920-29. His last big league season was with Cincinnati in 1930. His career batting average was a solid .309. He hit a modest .225 in six World Series and slammed 156 career home runs. Meusel was a member of the champion Yankees of ’23, ’27 and ’28. He was only topped by three players in RBIs for the 1920s (Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Heilmann). Also, he was only topped by four players in home runs for the same decade (Ruth, Hornsby, Cy and Ken Williams). These rankings help to illustrate the greatness of Meusel as an offensive threat.

 

His value as a fielder was outstanding, too. Languid Bob (as writers sometimes called him) had one of the best outfield arms ever—in the same class as  Roberto Clemente, Carl Furillo, Willie Mays, and Ichiro Suzuki. He could whip the ball with lightning-fast speed and laser-beam accuracy, to any base or home plate. Meusel’s throws were usually caught on the fly, rather than on a bounce or two. He developed his arm strength as a kid by constantly throwing stones for long distances.

 

Meusel got the appropriate nickname Long Bob for his 6’ 3” lean frame. He is the only American Leaguer to thrice hit for the cycle. The first came against Walter “Big Train” Johnson on May 7, 1921. The second one was against two largely unknowns in the A’s Jim Sullivan and Charlie Eckert on July 3, 1922. (Neither of them ever won a big league game.) The hat trick was achieved by benefit of a twelve-inning game on July 26, 1928. He holds the all-time record by twice stealing home in the World Series. They came off twenty-game winners Art Nehf (1921) and Jesse Haines (1928).

 

His older brother was the Giants’ Emil “Irish” Meusel (of German descent), who four times drove in over 100 runs. One of their greatest thrills was opposing each other in three straight World Series from 1921-23. Their families during that time lived in the same apartment building in New York. The brothers had somewhat similar career statistics. For example, they both played eleven years, with one batting .310 and the other .309. They were the first siblings to combine for fifty home runs in the same season (1925). They were also the only brothers who both won RBI titles. Incidentally, Casey Stengel met his lifelong wife, Edna, through Mrs. Irish (Van) Meusel.

 

Long Bob hit .328 for the Yankees as a big league rookie in 1920. Another newcomer to the club that year was George Herman “Babe” Ruth. Despite their personality differences, they both enjoyed the nightlife and became friends. However, the flamboyant Bambino wasn’t part of any social group on the team and usually went his own way. On the other hand, Meusel was known for having an extremely quiet demeanor and nonchalant style of play. Manager Miller Huggins described him as only appearing to be indifferent. He showed the same emotion regardless of whether the team won or lost. Several players and writers described him as anti-social. Meusel’s conversations sometimes only included the words “Hello” and “Goodbye.” Still, he wasn’t the type to be easily irritated and disrupt team chemistry. Fans often mistook his skillful, effortless work for loafing. His long, loping strides in fielding the ball helped to give them that impression.

 

He helped the Yankees win consecutive pennants from 1921-23. They faced McGraw’s Giants in the post-season all three years. Meusel, Ruth and second-string pitcher Bill Piercy were suspended for going on a barnstorming tour after the 1921 World Series. This practice was prohibited back then for players who had just participated in a World Series. These three teammates were warned beforehand but still went ahead with their trip. (Carl Mays and Wally Schang took notice and backed out.) Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis had been in office for less than a year and felt that his authority was being challenged. Therefore, Landis came down fairly hard on the defiant players by ruling them ineligible until May 20, 1922. Executives, fan groups and others unsuccessfully attempted to have the penalties lessened.  The Yankees won their first Fall Classic in 1923. Meusel delivered an eventual game-winning two-run single in the decisive Game Six. It was their inaugural season at The House That Ruth (or Ruppert) Built.

 

One of the all-time greatest outfields was Combs, Meusel and Ruth, which reigned from 1924-29. Meusel and Ruth would alternate positions, depending upon the individual ballpark because Ruth wanted to avoid facing the glaring sun. For instance, Ruth played right field in Yankee Stadium, since the sun shone on left field. The situation was reversed at Fenway Park. Meusel won the American League home run (33) and RBI (138) titles in 1925. That was the year in which Ruth suffered The Bellyache Heard ’Round the World. It was likely caused by his excessive late-night carousing, rather than by downing too many hot dogs and soda pops. The distracted Yanks plummeted from second to seventh place in 1925. After that season, Meusel never again reached such lofty heights in home runs.

 

Meusel batted .339 and stole 24 bases (topped only by George Sisler in league play) with the fence-busting 1927 Yankees. His speed was exemplified by stealing second, third, and home in the third inning of a game on May 16. This team’s best hitters were known as Murderers’ Row. Gehrig, Lazzeri, Meusel and Ruth each had over 100 RBIs in 1927. Ruth, Gehrig, and Lazzeri were the league’s top three home run hitters. Combs led the league in hits and triples. Often overlooked was the Yanks’ pitching staff, which led both circuits in ERA. This well-rounded team from the lower Bronx is traditionally regarded as the finest ever. They capped off their fantastic season by sweeping Pittsburgh in the World Series. The Pirates’ top batsmen included Pie Traynor, Lloyd Waner, Paul Waner, and Glenn Wright. They also had nineteen-plus game winners in Carmen Hill, Ray Kremer, and Lee Meadows.

 

Meusel accumulated over 100 RBIs with the Yankees for a fifth time in 1928. Nine players from this team would eventually make the Hall of Fame. (Waite Hoyt strongly believed that Long Bob belonged there, too.) They won the pennant that year, and then swept St. Louis in the World Series. His numbers tailed off in 1929. Hence, he was waived to the Reds for a last hurrah on October 16, 1929. Meusel’s new teammates included future Hall of Famers Leo Durocher, Harry Heilmann, George Kelly and Eppa Rixey. He returned to the minors with Mike Kelley’s Minneapolis Millers (1931) and then the original Hollywood Stars (1932). The latter team played their home games at old Wrigley Field in Los Angeles until moving to San Diego for the 1936 season.

 

Meusel participated in the Lou Gehrig Day ceremonies of July 4, 1939. It was held between games of a doubleheader with Washington. The current and former Yankees lined up along their designated areas in the infield (also the visiting Senators). Meusel stood with the veteran guard of Benny Bengough, Earle Combs, Joe Dugan, Waite Hoyt, Mark  Koenig, Tony Lazzeri, Herb Pennock (his old road roommate), George Pipgras, Wally Pipp, Babe Ruth, Wally Schang, Everett Scott, and Bob Shawkey. The guest of honor received numerous gifts, ovations and tributes. And then the trembling Iron Horse gave his emotional speech. Its famous line: “Yet, today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

 

Silent Bob had cameo appearances in Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927), Alibi Ike (1935), Pride of the Yankees (1942) and The Babe Ruth Story (1948). His scenes in Pride of the Yankees included one with Gehrig alone inside the team’s locker room. Two well-dressed players (followed by others) suddenly walked in. Meusel is the tall one wearing a fedora hat and smoking a cigarette. Another scene was when Wally Pipp had to leave the game due to seeing double vision. Meusel is leaning directly behind Ruth in the dugout. Meusel moved from Los Angeles to the coastal city of Redondo Beach, California in 1940. He worked for many years as a security guard at the former U.S. Navy base in Long Beach.  He spoke about Babe Ruth at the Yankees’ Old Timers Day reunion in 1949.  Meusel said, “Someone may hit 61 home runs in a season, but there’ll never be another Ruth.” 

 

Meusel's major league career ended with a .309 batting average, 156 home runs, 1,071 runs batted in, 826 runs scored and 143 stolen bases.

 

 

 

[Yankee4Life]

Pee Wee Reese

 

 

Outside MCU Park in Coney Island, there stands a statue of two baseball players. Both are famed Brooklyn Dodgers. Both are Hall of Famers whose legends transcend batting averages and fielding percentages. One is a white Kentuckian. The other is an African-American from California. They are Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson.

 

The statue depicts a simple act that was extremely brave for its time: 1947, when America was a separate but unequal society and Robinson became the first of his race to play major-league ball in the 20th century. That May, according to legend, the Dodgers were battling the Reds at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field, located about a 90-minute drive from Louisville, Reese’s hometown. The crowd was mocking Jackie during infield practice. The opposing players were razzing him. The scene was growing uglier by the second. In a display of support for his teammate, Pee Wee calmly strode from his shortstop position toward Jackie on the right side of the infield and placed his left arm around the black man’s shoulder: an act that is commemorated by the statue.

 

This demonstration quieted the fans, and the Reds. It was a crucial moment in Robinson’s evolution from outsider to big leaguer. Just as significantly, it defined the character and career of Pee Wee Reese, the quietly forceful captain of the postwar Brooklyn Dodgers.

 

Reese always loved playing baseball—even though his size prevented him from earning a starting job on his Louisville Manual High School team; he admitted he got into only five games during his senior year. The youngster earned his nickname not for his diminutive size—he was five feet nine inches and weighed 140 pounds when he signed his first professional contract at the age of twenty, and added one inch and twenty pounds when fully grown. Instead, he was called Pee Wee because of his predilection for playing marbles. As a pre-teenager, he was runner-up in a Louisville Courier-Journal pee-wee marbles competition.In fact, in 1956, The Sporting News ran a 1934 photo of “a Louisville amateur team” that featured Pee Wee’s older brother, Carl, Jr., in uniform. Fifteen-year-old Pee Wee was in the shot, but was dressed in street clothes. He was the team’s batboy.

 

In 1937 the Louisville Colonels of the American Association signed him to a professional contract. He was given a $200 signing bonus, and his starting salary was $150 a month. In 1938, Reese hit a solid .277 and stole twenty-three of twenty-four bases. His fielding percentage was only .939, but he impressed with his steady play and maturity, and it was while playing in Louisville that Reese earned a second nickname: The Little Colonel.

 

At the time, the Colonels had no major-league affiliation. But in September Tom Yawkey, owner of the Boston Red Sox, was part of a group that purchased the team for $195,000. Reportedly, the deal was completed so that the Red Sox would be guaranteed the rights to Reese. According to The Sporting News, “the deal was guarded with such secrecy that some officials of the Louisville club actually did not know that [the Red Sox] were interested in the Colonels.”

 

Pee Wee might have become the Red Sox shortstop if not for the presence of Joe Cronin, the team’s player-manager. Cronin, who was to keep playing for another six seasons, showed no interest in relinquishing the shortstop position. So midway through the 1939 campaign, the Red Sox sold Reese to the Brooklyn Dodgers for $35,000 and four players to be named later, each of whom was valued at $10,000. Upon consummating the deal, it was decided that Reese would finish the season in Louisville and come to the Dodgers training camp the following spring.

 

At the time, Pee Wee was anxious to play in Boston and was disconsolate upon learning of the sale, which was consummated while he was in Kansas City, playing for the American Association All-Stars. When a newspaperman told him about the deal, he reportedly responded, “Oh, not Brooklyn!”9 Reese’s reasoning was that the Dodgers then had a well-earned reputation for on-field ineptitude. Their record the previous season was 69-80, good for seventh place. In 1937 they were a sixth-place club with an even worse record: 62-91. “I was crushed,” Reese recalled years later. But he readily admitted that the deal “turned out to be the greatest break of my life.”

 

It was in spring training 1940 in Clearwater, Florida, that player-manager Leo Durocher, the Dodgers’ incumbent shortstop, hit grounder after grounder to the baby-faced rookie. After one such session, an exhausted Durocher quipped, “He’ll do. I’ll be the bench manager.” Leo also mentored the young infielder. “Leo could be tough,” Reese recalled. “He fined me $50 one day for being out of position on a relay, but he taught me a lot, including to be myself, not try to be Leo Durocher.”

 

Pee Wee made his Dodgers debut on April 23, 1940. The Boston Bees (as the Braves were then called) were in Brooklyn, and Reese went 1-for-3 with a walk and a run batted in. He also made a throwing error.

 

Reese immediately distinguished himself as a slick fielder and first-class base runner. He was particularly adept at turning his back to home plate and scooting into left field to nab a popup, and dashing from his shortstop position to second base to scoop up a grounder headed toward center field and fire the ball to first for the out. However, due to injury, his rookie season proved to be tough going. On June 1, in a game against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, hurler Jake Mooty tossed Reese a high inside pitch. Pee Wee was temporarily blinded by the white-shirted fans in the center-field bleachers, and he froze. Mooty’s pitch hit Reese in the head. He was carted off to the Illinois Masonic Hospital, where he remained for two and a half weeks. Upon his return to the lineup, on June 21, Reese promptly singled, doubled, and tripled.

 

Then a broken heel bone, which he sustained while sliding into second base in Brooklyn on August 15, ended his season. These injuries kept Pee Wee out of all but eighty-four games, in which he hit a respectable .272. He began the 1941 campaign with a brace on his ankle, yet he still played in 152 games. His average, however, dropped to .229. Reese felt he contributed little to Brooklyn’s first National League pennant-winner since 1920.

 

Reese enlisted in the United States Navy and spent most of the next three years in the Pacific Theater with the Seabees, the Navy’s Construction Battalion.

 

Reese returned to the Dodgers for the 1946 season, during which he played in 152 games and hit a solid .284. The following year, he also hit .284 and walked 104 times, leading the National League. But his notoriety that season transcended these or any other stats.

 

At the outset of the 1947 season, the Dodgers promoted Jackie Robinson to the majors. Reese was well aware that some teammates and fans, neighbors and friends, and even family members vehemently opposed his playing with an African-American. The shortstop was, after all, a product of a segregated Southern culture, and he had never had a catch with an African-American, never had a close relationship with an African-American, and reportedly never had shaken the hand of one. But he was aware of racism American-style. In his youth, Pee Wee’s father reportedly had pointed out to him a tree with a long branch in Brandenburg that had been used for lynching black men, and implied that such actions were unjust. So a sense of fairness had been instilled in him and he was determined to accept his new teammate, no matter what. When several Brooklyn players began passing around a petition protesting Robinson’s presence on the Dodgers, Pee Wee rebuffed them, declining to sign it.

 

It was this expression of solidarity on that one May day in Cincinnati that is best remembered today. Robinson could not recall what Reese said to him—if he said anything. According to Ralph Branca, their teammate, Reese’s gesture communicated to the players in the opposing dugout, “Hey, he’s my friend. It says Brooklyn on my uniform and Brooklyn on his and I respect him.”16 Years later, he explained his action by telling Roger Kahn “I was just trying to make the world a little bit better. That’s what you’re supposed to do with your life, isn’t it?”

 

On the field, Robinson spent the 1947 season as the Dodgers’ first baseman. He then was switched to second base, where he and Reese developed into an outstanding double play combination. In 1949 Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ president and general manager, named Reese the team’s captain, telling Pee Wee, “You’re not only the logical choice, you are the only possible choice; the players all respect you.” Afterward, Reese’s teammates began referring to him by a third nickname: The Captain. One of his duties was to remain atop the Ebbets Field dugout steps prior to the beginning of each game and wave the starters onto the field.

 

As the 1950s progressed, a debate raged in New York over which of the city’s teams had the best players. Just as Brooklyn fans favored Duke Snider in center field, while Giants aficionados chose Willie Mays and Yankees rooters preferred Mickey Mantle, there were also endless debates comparing the prowess of Pee Wee versus the talents of Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto. Which one was the slicker fielder? Which one was the superior bunter? Which one was better in the clutch? Which one was the more inspirational team leader? Meanwhile, by 1953, Branch Rickey had left Brooklyn and was running the Pittsburgh Pirates. He attempted to trade for Reese, to captain the punchless Pirates. Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers’ new owner, flatly refused.

 

What was inarguable, however, was the Dodgers fans’ adoration of their shortstop. He was a special favorite in Brooklyn, with Pee Wee Reese fan clubs sprouting up across the borough. The ballplayer was particularly attentive toward youngsters. Unlike so many other major leaguers, he won a reputation for never brushing them off and for honestly and thoughtfully answering their questions.

 

On July 22, 1955, just before his thirty-seventh birthday, Pee Wee Reese Night was held at Ebbets Field. It was quite an event. A pregame ceremony took almost one hour to complete, during which Reese was presented with $20,000 worth of gifts, including a new Chevrolet, $3,000 worth of United States Savings Bonds, 200 pounds of food in a freezer, and honorary membership in the Teamsters Union. A hoarse-voiced Pee Wee told the crowd, “When I came to Brooklyn in 1940 I was a scared kid. To tell you the truth, I’m twice as scared right now.”24 After the top half of the fifth inning, two vast birthday cakes were wheeled onto the field. The ballyard’s lights were lowered, and the 33,000 fans on hand lit matches or turned on cigarette lighters and serenaded their shortstop with a hearty “Happy Birthday.”

 

That season, the Dodgers yet again made it to the World Series. And yet again, they faced the New York Yankees, who had defeated them all five previous times they had battled. Pee Wee had a solid series, scoring five runs and hitting .296. As usual, his contributions transcended what might be culled from a box score. In the bottom of the sixth inning of Game Seven, Billy Martin walked, Gil McDougald bunted safely, and Yogi Berra bashed the ball into the left-field corner. Surely, this would be an extra-base hit, and would net the Yankees a pair of runs. But left-fielder Sandy Amoros snared the ball before it hit the ground. Reese, meanwhile, ran out to short left field to take Amoros’ cutoff throw. He quickly spun around and fired a strike to Gil Hodges to double McDougald off first—and preserve the Dodgers’ shutout.

 

Appropriately, it was Reese who fielded the final ball hit by a Yankee in Game Seven. The date was October 4, 1955. The time was 3:43 P.M., and the Dodgers were beating the Bronx Bombers, 2-0. Pee Wee’s toss of Elston Howard’s ninth-inning, two-out grounder to Hodges closed out the Series, and the season. Finally, the Brooklyn Dodgers were the world champions.

 

Reese now was a veteran major leaguer, but he still was a first rate player. In its 1956 season preview, Sports Illustrated listed Reese as the team’s number-one “mainstay.”25 Regrettably, he twisted his back early in spring training, and there was some concern as to how this would impact his season. He ended up playing in 147 games, 136 at shortstop and twelve at third base.

 

The 1956 season, however, was Reese’s last as a regular. In 1957 he got into only 103 games, with his batting average shrinking to .224. He played shortstop in just twenty-three contests; most of the time, he patrolled third base. Twenty-five-year-old Charlie Neal, then being groomed as Pee Wee’s replacement at short, played the position in 100 games.

 

In 1958 the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn for Los Angeles. That season Reese got into only fifty-nine games. His .224 batting average was identical to his 1957 mark. His poor showing paralleled the fortunes of the Dodgers, who finished the year entrenched in seventh place.

 

From 1946 through 1956, the final year he was the team’s regular shortstop, Reese’s batting averaged generally was in the .270s or .280s. His highest home run total was sixteen, in 1949. That season, he led all National League shortstops with a .977 fielding percentage and topped the NL with 132 runs scored. His highest RBI total was eighty-four and his highest hit total was 176, both in 1951. In 1952 he topped the senior circuit with thirty stolen bases.

 

Reese’s lifetime batting average was .269. All told, he appeared in 2,166 games, had 2,170 hits, and is the Dodgers’ all-time leader with 1,338 runs scored and 1,210 walks. He hit .272 in forty-four World Series games. In the 1955 Fall Classic he established a mark for shortstops by taking part in seven double plays in a seven-game series, a record he equaled the following season.

 

These generally unspectacular statistics obscure Reese’s value to the Dodgers. Even though he hit .300 just once—in 1954 when, at age thirty-six, his average was .309, with a career-best slugging percentage of .455 and second-best on-base percentage of .404—he finished in the top ten in the National League MVP voting on eight occasions.

 

After spending the 1959 season as a Dodgers coach, Reese seguéd into a new career as a color man on televised baseball broadcasts. First he replaced Buddy Blattner as Dizzy Dean’s partner on CBS-TV’s Game of the Week. He worked at CBS from 1960 to 1965; during his final season there, he and Dean broadcast twenty-one New York Yankees home games on Yankee Baseball Game of the Week and the two were partnered on Sports with Dizzy Dean & Pee Wee Reese, a chat show.

 

In 1984 Reese’s uniform number—which, appropriately, was “1”—was retired by the Dodgers. That same year, the veterans committee elected him to the Baseball Hall of Fame. His Hall of Fame plaque reads: “Shortstop and captain of great Dodger teams of 1940’s and 50’s. Intangible qualities of subtle leadership on and off field. Competitive fire and professional pride complemented dependable glove, reliable base-running and clutch-hitting as significant factors in 7 Dodger pennants. Instrumental in easing acceptance of Jackie Robinson as baseball’s first black performer.”

 

[Yankee4Life]

Charlie Dressen

 

 

While common wisdom dictates that baseball games are won with bats, balls, and gloves, Charlie Dressen believed until his dying breath that any game could be won with brains. Well, any game could be won with his brains. And it’s not hard to see why. Few field leaders had the percentages figured better than Dressen, he believed, and no one could match the sheer volume of retrievable information he accumulated during his five decades in baseball.

 

The right-handed batting and throwing Dressen’s first Organized Baseball contract was a Minor League deal with the 1919 Moline (Illinois) Plowboys of the Class B Three-I League. He got in forty-two games with the Plowboys, playing mostly at second base. He returned to the Three-I League in 1920, this time as a member of the Peoria (Illinois) Tractors.

 

After the baseball season concluded Dressen returned to Decatur, where George Halas and Dutch Sternaman recruited him to play for the A.E. Staley Food Starch company football team. He appeared in four league games in 1920 for the Staleys, a precursor of the Chicago Bears.

 

Dressen made his big-league debut as a pinch-hitter on April 17, 1925, and had his first hit nine days later, against Wilbur Cooper of the Cubs. He saw action at second, third, and the outfield for the third-place Reds, batting .274 in seventy-six games. A month into the 1926 season, Dressen took over at third base. He batted .266 and led the National League in assists at third base.

 

Dressen had his finest big-league season in 1927, batting .292 and finishing among the league leaders in doubles, triples, and walks. But by 1929 his average had dipped to .244 and in 1930 he lost his starting job to young Tony Cuccinello. He split most of 1931 between the Minor League Baltimore Orioles and Minneapolis Millers. He knew he was nearing the end of the line; however, unlike most ballplayers, he was prepared.

 

In 1932 Dressen was essentially without a job. When he learned in June that the Nashville Volunteers of the Class A Southern Association were in need of a new manager, he borrowed train fare from a friend and made Vols owner Fay Murray an offer he couldn’t refuse. There were seventy-seven games left on the schedule—if Dressen failed to win more than half of the remaining contests, Murray wouldn’t owe him a dime.

 

On the final day of the season, Nashville’s record under Dressen stood at 38 and 38. Playing the Crackers in Atlanta, the Vols fell behind in the early innings. They rallied to win, so Dressen got paid. He also got a one-year deal to manage the club and play third base in 1933. It was as manager of the Vols that he earned a reputation for an encyclopedic knowledge of player tendencies and situational statistics.

 

In July of 1934 with the Reds twenty-nine games under .500, player-manager Bob O’Farrell was dealt to the Cubs. Dressen was offered the job. He quit his post at Nashville and took the managerial reins in Cincinnati. He didn’t do much better than O’Farrell, as the Reds finished in last place.

 

Dressen piloted Cincinnati to a sixth-place finish in 1935 and a fifth-place finish in 1936. In 1937 the Reds tumbled into the cellar again, and when Dressen demanded to know his status for 1938, he was let go with a month left in the season. Consequently, he returned to Nashville, now a Dodgers affiliate in ‘38, and guided the team to a second place finish. Larry MacPhail, former Reds general manager and now in a similar role in Brooklyn, added Dressen to Leo Durocher’s staff as a third-base coach for 1939.

 

The 1939 Dodgers were a ballclub on the rise. After a seventh-place finish in 1938, the 1939 team finished third, followed by a second-place finish in 1940. In 1941 the Dodgers outlasted the St. Louis Cardinals in a pennant race that went down to the wire. Durocher called the shots for this remarkable club, but rarely without input from Dressen.

 

Branch Rickey, who replaced MacPhail as Brooklyn’s president after the 1942 season, apparently did not appreciate Dressen’s fondness for horse racing. When Charlie refused to swear off gambling, Rickey fired him in November of 1942. In July 1943, with Dressen staying away from the track, Rickey rehired him and he remained with the Dodgers through the 1946 season.

 

One of Dressen’s special talents was his ability to steal opponents’ signs. From his vantage point on the coaching lines he was often able to make out how many fingers the catcher was putting down, and then inconspicuously relay this information to the batter as the pitcher began his windup. This could be risky to the batter if the batterymates became suspicious, particularly in the days before batting helmets. Once when Joe DiMaggio was at the plate, Dressen flashed the sign for a curve. The pitch was a fastball up and in; only DiMaggio’s catlike reflexes enabled him to avoid a beaning. He cursed Charlie after the at bat and ignored his signs thereafter.

 

The Bronx Bombers faltered in 1948, finishing behind the Indians and Red Sox. Dressen’s protector, Larry MacPhail, sold his share in the team, so it came as no surprise when Charlie was let go by general manager George Weiss, who never really considered him “Yankee material.” Harris was shown the door, too. The new hire was Casey Stengel, with Dressen grabbing the managing job Stengel left, with the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. Dressen guided the Oaks to a second-place finish in 1949 and a PCL pennant in 1950.

 

That winter the call came from Brooklyn again. This time the Dodgers wanted Dressen to be their manager. He inherited one of the most talented rosters in National League history, one that included Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Preacher Roe, and Carl Erskine.

 

Dressen did much of his managing from the third-base coaching box with 1951 Dodgers. Under his guidance the team held a double-digit lead over the second-place Giants in mid-August. Then things began to tighten up. The Giants came roaring back and, under pressure, the Dodgers dropped six of their last ten to finish the regular season in a first-place tie. A best-of-three playoff ensued, with a coin flip to determine who would get the rubber game if necessary. The Dodgers won and Dressen opted to play the opener in Ebbets Field, giving the Giants the next two at the Polo Grounds.

 

After the Giants won Game One, behind Jim Hearn’s five-hitter, the Dodgers came back to win Game Two, 10–0. The deciding game remains perhaps the most famous ever played. Newcombe held the Giants in check for eight innings and the Dodgers were up 4–1 with three outs to go. The Giants scored a run against Newcombe and had two men on when Dressen called coach Clyde Sukeforth in the bullpen. Branca and Erskine were warming up. Sukeforth reported that Erskine had just bounced a curve. Despite the fact that the batter, Bobby Thomson, had homered off Branca in Game One, Dressen chose him to close out the Giants. The rest is history.

 

Dressen had better luck in 1952 and 1953. The Dodgers won the pennant both seasons. The ’52 team won ninety-six games—exactly the number Dressen predicted prior to the start of the campaign. The ’53 team won 105 games and finished thirteen games ahead of the second-place Milwaukee Braves. The only smudges on Dressen’s record of achievement in 1952 and 1953 were World Series losses to the Yankees—in seven games the first year and in six the next.

 

Dressen had been working on one-year contracts with the Dodgers. During the off-season, he and Ruth composed a letter to Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley explaining why he deserved a three-year deal. O’Malley’s response was that the Dodgers had probably paid more people for not managing than any other club in baseball, so it was one year or forget about it. When Dressen did not back down, O’Malley called a press conference to announce the hiring of Walter Alston as the team’s new skipper.

 

Brick Laws, owner of the Oakland Oaks, snapped up Dressen to manage his club in 1954. He led Oakland to a third-place finish and in 1955 was hired to replace his old boss Bucky Harris as skipper of the Washington Senators. The Nats lost 101 games in 1955 and 95 in 1957. Twenty games into the 1957 season, Dressen was relieved of his duties and replaced by Cookie Lavagetto.

 

In 1958 Dressen returned to the Dodgers for a third go-round, this time as a member of Alston’s coaching staff. He helped preside over the move to Los Angeles, which resulted in a surprising World Series championship in 1959. Hot off this success, Dressen was hired by the Braves as their manager for the 1960 season. Milwaukee boasted two of baseball’s most productive sluggers in Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron, and an ageless pitching ace in Warren Spahn. But the supporting players who helped the Braves win pennants in 1957 and 1958 were fading, and the farm system had little to offer. Milwaukee finished second in 1960 under Charlie. In 1961, with the team out of the pennant race by September, he was replaced by Birdie Tebbetts.

 

During spring training in 1965, Dressen suffered a heart attack. Bob Swift took over the Tigers for forty-two games before Dressen felt well enough to return. Detroit finished fourth again. They got off to a 5-0 start in 1966, but a month into the season Dressen had a second heart attack. While recuperating he got a kidney infection and subsequently had a third, this time fatal, heart attack. He died on August 10, 1966.

 

Charlie Dressen’s overall record as a Major League manager with five teams was 1,008-973. He managed two pennant winners, played for a world champion with the 1933 Giants, and coached on World Series winners in 1947 with the Yankees and in 1959 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. As a player Charlie was active in seven big league seasons, was a regular for four years, and had a career batting mark of .272.

 

 

[Yankee4Life]

Clyde Milan

 

 

Milan was a left-handed hitter who batted .285 over the course of 16 seasons, and Clark Griffith called him Washington’s greatest centerfielder, claiming that he played the position more shallow than any man in baseball. Yet Clyde “Deerfoot” Milan achieved his greatest fame as a base stealer. After Milan supplanted Ty Cobb as the American League’s stolen-base leader by pilfering 88 bases in 1912 and 75 in 1913, F. C. Lane of Baseball Magazine called him “Milan the Marvel, the Flying Mercury of the diamond, the man who shattered the American League record, and the greatest base runner of the decade.” It was hyperbole, of course; Cobb re-claimed the AL record in 1915 by stealing 96 bases and went on to swipe far more bases over the decade than Milan, but Deerfoot stole a total of 481 during the Deadball Era, ranking third in the AL behind only Cobb (765) and Eddie Collins (564).

 

In 1906 he joined Wichita of the Western Association. “I felt none too sure that I could make good there, for the company was much faster,” Clyde recalled. That partial season in Wichita saw him hit just .211, but he returned in 1907 and batted .304 with 38 stolen bases in 114 games, attracting the attention of Washington manager Joe Cantillon, who had seen him in a spring exhibition. That summer Cantillon dispatched injured catcher Cliff Blankenship to Wichita with orders to purchase Milan’s contract, then go to Weiser, Idaho, to scout and possibly sign Walter Johnson. In later years Clyde loved to relate Blankenship’s remarks during his contract signing: “He told me that he was going out to Idaho to look over some young phenom. ‘It looks like a wild goose chase and probably a waste of train fare to look over that young punk,’ Blankenship said.” Milan cost the Nats $1,000, while Johnson was secured for a $100 bonus plus train fare.

 

Milan and Johnson had a lot in common: They were the same age, they both hailed from rural areas–Washington outfielder Bob Ganley started calling Milan “Zeb,” a common nickname for players from small towns–and they were both quiet, reserved, and humble. Naturally, they became hunting companions and inseparable friends, and eventually they became the two best players on the Senators team. “Take Milan and his roommate, Walter Johnson, away from Washington, and the town would about shut up shop, as far as base ball is concerned,” wrote a reporter in 1911.

 

But stardom was not immediate for Milan. After making his debut with the Senators on August 19, 1907, he played regularly in center field for the rest of the season and batted a respectable .279 in 48 games. In 1908, however, Milan batted just .239, and the following year he slumped to .200, with just 10 stolen bases in 130 games. Cantillon wanted to send him to the minors and purchase an outfielder who could hit, but the Senators were making so little money that they couldn’t afford a replacement. Fortunately for Washington, Jimmy McAleer took over as manager in 1910 and immediately recognized the young center fielder’s potential. Under McAleer’s tutelage, Milan bounced back to hit .279 with 44 steals, and in 1911 he became a full-fledged star by batting .315 with 58 steals.

 

Milan’s peak was from 1911 to 1913 when he played in every game but one, batted over .300 each season, and averaged almost 74 stolen bases per season. In 1912 he finished fourth in the Chalmers Award voting, and his American League record-breaking total of 88 steals would have been 91 if Washington’s game against St. Louis on August 9th hadn’t been rained out in the third inning. Running into Milan on a train that summer, Billy Evans, who had umpired Milan’s first game back in 1907, remarked on his wonderful improvement in every department of the game, base running in particular. “When I broke in, I thought all a man with speed had to do was get on in some way and then throw in the speed clutch,” Milan told the umpire. “I watched with disgust while other players much slower than me stole with ease on the same catcher who had thrown me out. It finally got through my cranium that a fellow had to do a lot of things besides run wild to be a good base runner. I used to have a habit of going down on the second pitch, but the catchers soon got wise to it and never failed to waste that second ball, much to my disadvantage. Now I try to fool the catcher by going down any old time. Changing my style of slide has also helped me steal many a base that would have otherwise resulted in an out. I used to go into the bag too straight, making it an easy matter for the fielder to put the ball on me, but I soon realized the value of the hook slide.”

 

In 1914 Milan suffered a broken jaw and missed six weeks of the season after colliding with right fielder Danny Moeller. He rebounded to play in at least 150 games in each of the next three seasons, 1915 to 1917, and he continued to play regularly through 1921, batting a career-high .322 in 1920. Griffith appointed Milan to manage the Nats in 1922 but the job didn’t agree with him; he suffered from ulcers as the club finished sixth, and he was fired after the season amidst reports that he was “too easy-going.”

 

That marked the end of his major-league playing career, but he continued to play in the minors in Minneapolis in 1923, while serving as player-manager at New Haven in 1924, and Memphis in 1925 and 1926. After retiring as an active player, Milan coached for Washington in 1928 and 1929 and managed Birmingham from 1930 to 1935 and Chattanooga from 1935 to 1937. He also scouted for Washington in 1937 and served as a coach for the Senators from 1938 through 1952.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Jack Bentley

 

 

Many players in this thread you have heard of but it is my intention to have you walk away with some new information about every one of these players featured here. Today’s is about one of the first two-way players who played during Babe Ruth’s time and if his luck would have been a little bit better he would not be so obscure today. I always learn something about all of these players no matter how famous they were. The history of baseball is a fascinating and wonderful thing to discover.

 

When the Los Angeles Angels signed Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, the baseball world has two-way players on the mind, yet the idea of the two-way player is far from a new one. Decades ago, it was not uncommon to find many a pitcher who handled the bat nearly as well as they performed on the mound. Few, however, truly excelled at both at the same time. One example from early in the 20th century was Jack Bentley.

 

John Needles Bentley was born on March 8th, 1885, in a Quaker farming community in Sandy Spring, Maryland, to an affluent family. Living so close to the Washington Senators, Bentley was an ardent fan of the team. Indeed, the Senators would play an important role in his development as a professional. Soon after departing home for the George School in Newtown, Pennsylvania, a Quaker day school, Bentley became an accomplished pitcher. He would leave the George School at age eighteen, already a major-league prospect. It is reported that Bentley threw “several” no-hitters while in high school.

 

Less than a year after becoming a student at the day school, Bentley was approached by Bert Conn, then manager of the Johnstown Johnnies in the Class B Tri-State League, a league which included teams in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. Conn offered him a contract to play the outfield at $75 a month, equivalent to slightly less than $1900 in current value, but the teenager turned him down.

 

It was a pivotal time for Bentley. His father was enduring health problems that would eventually overcome him, and the farm had to be tended as well. This is where Julian Gartrell entered the picture.

 

Gartrell, a doctor in the DC area, took notice of Bentley and mentioned him to his friend, Senators manager Clark Griffith. Bentley was playing for a county team by the time Dr. Gartrell found him, and after a particularly well-pitched game, the doctor suggested to Bentley that he go to Griffith Stadium to try out for the Senators. Bentley took that chance, and Griffith liked what he saw, though Bentley had no expectation that anything good would come of the tryout.

 

Bentley was put on the mound by Griffith to pitch batting practice. Senators catcher John Henry, at the time, expected little to come of the eighteen year-old's performance. And yet, batter after batter looked baffled against the young lefty.

 

After twenty minutes or so, Griffith had seen enough. He would offer Bentley a season-long contract for $600 ($100 per month). Bentley wouldn't accept it without first discussing it with his parents, who felt baseball wasn't a worthwhile vocation. The general atmosphere among professional ballplayers, where drinking, gambling, philandering, and generalized chicanery were commonplace, caused further hesitation in the minds of the Quaker family. After he gave his word that he would abstain from such activities, his parents gave their blessing.

 

Bentley, amazingly, went straight to the majors, making his MLB debut on September 6th, 1913, against the New York Yankees. He entered the game in the ninth in relief of Joe Engel, with the score 9-1, Senators. He retired right fielder Frank Gilhooley on a fly ball to center fielder Clyde Milan, shortstop Rollie Zeider lined out to center as well, and catcher Ed Sweeney grounded out to second baseman Frank LaPorte. It was a low-pressure appearance for Bentley, but Griffith wanted to see what he could do without throwing him to the wolves just yet.

 

Bentley made his first start for the Senators on October 1st against Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. Again, he pitched brilliantly, allowing four hits in eight innings to get the shutout and his first win in the majors. Appearing in relief three days later vs. the Red Sox, Bentley tossed two shutout innings while allowing only one hit.

 

By the time that Spring 1914 rolled around, Senators veteran Nick Altrock had taken a personal interest in Bentley's future. Bentley would spend the first two months with the big-league club, but despite posting a 5-7 record with a 2.37 ERA over 125 1/3 innings, Griffith still felt Bentley needed to spend a bit of time in the minors, sending him to the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association on June 12th. This was after he was given a new, $1800 contract for the 1915 season.

 

Much of Bentley's newly-developed difficulty on the mound had to do with the Senators attempting to change his delivery, making him pitch from the stretch exclusively. This caused him an unspecified arm injury, for which he sought treatment after his demotion to Minneapolis. Unfortunately, the man he saw to treat his arm was none other than “Bonesetter” Reese, who had gained a sort of notoriety for his (ahem) nuanced approach to the various ailments of the baseball player.

 

It was, perhaps, this series of events, as much as anything else, that set him on the path on which he found himself for much of the next four years. While Bentley would continue on the mound for Minneapolis in 1916, Baltimore Orioles owner Jack Dunn would acquire his services a little more than halfway into the season as part of a rebuilt roster that would become the best Orioles team since the 19th century.
 
Dunn was aware of the sort of offense that Bentley could provide; in 1915 with the Millers, Bentley was primarily a pitcher and still struggling with the aforementioned shoulder injury (7-4, 3.18), though he was a key member of the pitching staff. In 1916, Bentley's numbers on the mound were less than stellar (8-6, 4.15), but in 78 at-bats he batted .308 with six doubles and two triples.

 

As 1917 began, the Orioles got off to a hot start in the International League, with Bentley splitting time between the outfield and first base, batting .343 over 93 games. He added 17 doubles, 11 triples and five homers, but this would be far from his best season. He would take a hiatus in 1918 to join the war effort in Europe, being assigned to Camp Meade and making sergeant seemingly overnight. Initially, Bentley was expected to remain at Camp Meade, where he would be a drill sergeant, but fate would have other plans.

 

By June in that same year, Bentley had earned his commission. Now a second lieutenant, he would be deployed with the 313th Infantry, eventually commanding Company L, and would see action in the Argonne. He would be transferred to the 125th on Armistice Day. It was an experience that would remain with him for the rest of his life. Bentley would be cited twice for bravery during his time in the European Theatre, earning the Distinguished Service Medal. By the time his tour was ending, he was being considered for a promotion to captain.

 

Bentley would say that after he returned from the battlefield, he no longer held such fascination for opposing players as he did before. He had talked about how it sometimes filled him with awe that he was playing with and against the very same players he used to idolize. Now, they all just seemed like Regular Joes, to him. After the experience of seeing hundreds of men in life-or-death situations, his perspective changed dramatically.

 

Whether or not that played a role in his transformation from successful pitcher to top-tier hitter is debatable. The numbers speak for themselves: in 1919, Bentley would bat .324 with 24 doubles, 10 triples and 11 homers in only 92 games. The following season was even better, as he would bat .371 with 39 doubles, 12 triples and 20 homers. Bentley posted 231 hits in 145 games, that year.

 

But as good as he was then, the next season was nearly legendary. Leading the International League with an astounding .412 average, he also led in homers, hits and doubles, as well as slugging percentage (.665) and total bases (397). What made these numbers all the more impressive was the face that he also made 18 appearances on the mound, going 12-1 with a 2.34 ERA.

 

After the 1922 season, when Bentley batted .351 in 153 games and dropped his ERA to 1.73 while going 13-2 in 16 appearances on the mound, Dunn decided to strike when the iron was red-hot.

 

By that time, Bentley was ready to retire if he couldn't get back to the majors; the International League could keep players virtually as long as they wished, as they were not part of organized farm systems at that time. New York Giants manager John McGraw was desperate for left-handed pitching at the time, and even though a 22-year-old Lefty Grove was a teammate of Bentley's, the $100,000 price tag for Grove was just a bit too steep for the Giants.

 

Dunn would sell Bentley's contract to the Giants for $72,500.

 

Had the Giants kept Bentley either in the outfield or at first base, it's possible that he could have been far more useful to the team. However, George Kelly had him blocked at first, and the corner outfield spots belonged to Ross Youngs and Irish Meusel, with Casey Stengel as the primary 4th outfielder, Bentley was signed specifically to pitch full-time.

 

By this point, he had missed a great deal of developmental time on the hill switching from pitcher to outfield/first base, as well as time lost to the war, and he had never played a full season in the majors in any capacity. Going 13-8 with a 4.48 ERA in 31 appearances, at least his bat carried over to the big leagues with him, as he batted .427 in 94 plate appearances with nine extra-base hits.

 

His pitching stats improved in 1924 as he finished 16-5 with a 3.78 ERA in 28 appearances. His hitting tailed off (.265 average, 0 home runs and six RBI), but it would pick back up in 1925 (.303 average, three home runs, eighteen RBI) as his pitching totals spiraled downward (11-9, 5.04 ERA). Aside from modest totals in 1926 (.258 average with the Giants and Phillies), Bentley would spend the remainder of his pro career with various minor-league teams, where he would alternate between the field and the mound, still batting very well. However, his time on the mound was a poor contribution by comparison.

 

For his career Jack Bentley recorded a 138-90 record on the mound, with a 4.61 ERA. He had a lifetime average of .291 with 7 home runs and 71 runs batted in. His was not a common sort of career, but it was certainly not the only one in which a professional player found success on the mound and at the plate. It would have been very interesting to see how well he would have done had he been properly managed.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Roger Peckinpaugh

 

 

Roger Peckinpaugh was one of the finest defensive shortstops and on-field leaders of the Deadball Era. Like Honus Wagner, the 5’10”, 165-lb. “Peck” was rangy and bowlegged, with a big barrel chest, broad shoulders, large hands, and the best throwing arm of his generation. From 1916 to 1924, Peckinpaugh led American League shortstops in assists and double plays five times each. As Shirley Povich later reflected, “the spectacle of Peckinpaugh, slinging himself after ground balls, throwing from out of position and nailing his man by half a step was an American League commonplace.” The even-tempered Peckinpaugh was equally admired for his leadership, becoming the youngest manager in baseball history when he briefly took the reins of the New York Yankees in 1914. Described as the “calmest man in baseball,” Peckinpaugh’s steadying influence later helped the Washington Senators to their only world championship, and won him the 1925 Most Valuable Player Award, making him the first shortstop in baseball history to receive the honor.

 

From an early age, Roger took an interest in baseball, and probably received special instruction from his father, who had been a semipro ball player. When Roger was a boy his family moved to the east side of Cleveland, taking up residence in the same neighborhood as Napoleon Lajoie, the manager and biggest star of the Cleveland Naps. Roger grew up idolizing Lajoie, and matured into a fine all-around athlete, starring in football, basketball, and baseball at East High School. Lajoie noticed Peckinpaugh’s talent, and upon the youngster’s graduation from high school in 1909, offered him a $125 per month contract to play pro ball. Roger’s father was against his turning pro, so he asked his high school principal, Benjamin Rannels, for advice. Probably aware of Roger’s love for baseball, Rannels urged Peck to sign the contract, advising him to allow himself three years to make it to the majors. If he didn’t make it, then he should go to college. Peck was a regular in two years.

 

In 1910 the Naps sent Peckinpaugh to the New Haven Prairie Hens of the Connecticut State League for some seasoning before calling him up to the big league club in September. Peckinpaugh hit only .200 over 15 games in his first major league trial, and was farmed out the Pacific Coast League’s Portland Beavers for the entire 1911 season. Peck made the big club to stay in 1912, but the right hander only hit .212 in 70 games. Based on that poor showing, the Naps gave the starting shortstop job to another youngster, Ray Chapman, and in May 1913 traded Peck to the New York Yankees for Bill Stumpf and Jack Lelivelt. Yankees manager Frank Chance installed Peck at shortstop, where he would stay for the next eight and a half years.

 

Given a chance to play regularly, Peck hit a respectable .268 in 1913, as the Yankees finished seventh. In 1914, Peckinpaugh’s average dipped to .223, though he played all 157 games, swiped a career-high 38 bases, and displayed the strong arm and superior range that would soon win him plaudits as one of the league’s finest defensive shortstops. Though he was only 23 years old, Peckinpaugh also emerged as one of the steadying influences in a distracted clubhouse. “The Yankees were a joy club,” Roger later remembered. “Lots of joy and lots of losing. Nobody thought we could win and most of the time we didn’t. But it didn’t seem to bother the boys too much. They would start singing songs in the infield right in the middle of the game.” In recognition of his leadership abilities, Chance named Peckinpaugh captain of the team, and the young shortstop soon won the confidence of all the players. When Chance resigned with three weeks left in the season, the Yankees made Peck the manager for the rest of the season. He still holds the record as the youngest manager in major league history.

 

Jacob Ruppert and Cap Huston bought the New York franchise after the 1914 season and started turning the Yankees into winners. Ruppert hired Wild Bill Donovan to take the managerial reins but he kept Peck as captain. With the Federal League dangling big money in front of established stars, the Yankees signed Peck to a three-year contract at $6,000 per year for 1915 to 1917. While he continued to post pedestrian batting averages over that span–topping out at .260 with 63 runs scored in the final year of his contract–Peckinpaugh repaid the Yankees’ loyalty with his glove, leading the league in assists in 1916 and double plays the following year. To aid his fielding, Peck liked to chew Star plug tobacco, and then rub the juice into his glove. “[It] was licorice-flavored and it made my glove sticky,” he later said. He also used the tobacco to darken the ball, “and the pitchers liked that. The batters did not, but, what the hell, there was only one umpire.”

 

According to Tris Speaker, opponents were able to cut down on Peckinpaugh’s batting average by cheating to the left side, where the right-handed dead pull hitter found the vast majority of his base hits. “Peck usually hits a solid rap when he does connect with the ball,” Speaker explained to Baseball Magazine in 1918. “But he has the known tendency to hit toward left field. Consequently at least four men are laying for that tendency of his….A straightaway hitter whose tendency was unknown might hit safely to left field where the very same rap by Peckinpaugh would be easily caught.” But after hitting just .231 in 1918, Peck began hitting the ball with more power, posting a career-high .305 average in 1919 with seven home runs. He followed up that performance with back-to-back eight-homer seasons in the lively ball seasons of 1920 and 1921, drawing a career-high 84 walks in the latter season. As further evidence of his expanding offensive versatility, Peckinpaugh also laid down 33 sacrifices, fifth best in the league. Two years later, he would lead the league with 40 sacrifices, and would eventually finish his career with 314 sacrifices, eighth most in baseball history.

 

In his first World Series in 1921, Peckinpaugh played poorly in the Yankees’ eight game loss to the New York Giants, as he batted just .194 and his crucial error in the final game allowed the Giants to win 1-0 on an unearned run. In the off-season Babe Ruth complained about the managerial skills of Miller Huggins (not for the first or last time) and said the Yanks would be better off if Peck managed them. Probably to avoid more conflict, New York traded Peck and several teammates to the Red Sox for a package that included shortstop Everett Scott and pitcher Joe Bush. However, three weeks later, Senators owner Clark Griffith, sensing that his team was one shortstop away from contention, managed to engineer a three corner trade in which the Red Sox received Joe Dugan and Frank O’Rourke, Connie Mack‘s Athletics received three players and $50,000 cash, and the Senators received Peckinpaugh.

 

The veteran shortstop teamed with the young second baseman Bucky Harris to form one of the best double play combinations in the American League. Everything fell into place by the 1924 season when owner Griffith appointed Harris the manager. Harris considered Peck his assistant manager, and together they led the Senators to back-to-back pennants in 1924 and 1925. Peck was the hero of the 1924 World Series, .417 and slugging .583, including a game-winning, walk-off double in Game Two. However, while running to second base (unnecessarily) on that hit, Peckinpaugh strained a muscle in his left thigh, which sidelined him for most of Game Three and all of Games Four and Five. But in what Shirley Povich called “the gamest exhibition I ever saw on a baseball field,” Peckinpaugh took the field for Game Six with his leg heavily bandaged and went 2-for-2 with a walk before re-aggravating the injury making a brilliant, game-saving defensive play in the ninth inning. Although Peckinpaugh had to sit out Game Seven, he had already done more than his share to bring the Senators their first world championship.

 

Peckinpaugh came back strong in 1925 and had a fine season. He batted .294 (approximately the league average) as the Senators won their second straight pennant. In a testament to his fielding and leadership abilities, the sportswriters voted Peck the American League MVP in a narrow vote over future Hall of Famers Al Simmons, Joe Sewell, Harry Heilmann, and others. Despite his strong performance, Peck’s legs continued to give him trouble, and by the start of the World Series they needed to be heavily bandaged. After carrying the Senators in the 1924 World Series, Peckinpaugh sabotaged them in 1925, turning in one of the worst performances in Series history. He committed eight errors, a Series record that still stands, although Peckinpaugh later groused that “some of them were stinko calls by the scorer.” Three of Peck’s errors led directly to two Senators losses, including an eighth-inning miscue in Game Seven that allowed the Pirates to come from behind to capture the championship. Peckinpaugh’s two errors that day, however, were perhaps understandable, as the playing conditions were so wet that gasoline had to be burned on the infield to dry it off. Still, it was the second time (after 1921) that a World Series had been lost due to a Peckinpaugh error in the deciding game.

 

Peck’s legs were giving out, and he would only play two more years in the big leagues. After retiring from the game following the 1927 season, Peckinpaugh accepted the managerial post for the Cleveland Indians. In five and a half seasons with Cleveland, Roger guided the club to one seventh place finish, one third place finish and three consecutive fourth place finishes before being fired midway into the 1933 season. After stints managing Kansas City and New Orleans in the minor leagues, Peck returned to skipper the Indians again in 1941, finishing in fifth place before moving into the Cleveland front office, where he remained until he retired from organized baseball after the 1946 season.

 

Peckinpaugh retired with a .259 lifetime average, had 48 home runs and 740 runs batted in. His managerial record was 500 - 491.

 

[Yankee4Life]

Pete Gray

 

 

Baseball is a difficult game to play well for those with two good arms but Pete Gray did it with one. Gray played only one season in the major leagues, 1945, but that was enough to have a lasting positive influence on people with disabilities. His accomplishment enlightened those of us who are perfectly formed, too —and it redefined how we view people with disabilities. Gray’s feel-good story was cathartic to a war-torn country, especially to disabled servicemen returning from World War II. His achievement was due to his incredible focus and determination. Gray became famous, but he was also “manipulated by club owners as well as by the media, maligned by many of his teammates, and left to wonder just how good a player he really was.”  He deferred praise for his bravery to soldiers who had served on the battlefield. Gray spent his later years in obscurity and poverty and he would later say that he hadn’t done enough, given the opportunities he had, to help disabled people. There was one youth, however, Nelson Gary Jr., a 3-year-old, whom Gray met and befriended, and the two became forever linked by the coincidence of losing their right arms.

 

Gray was 6 years old when he lost his right arm in an accident while hitching a ride on the running board of a produce truck. The driver had to stop suddenly and Gray fell off and got his right arm caught and mangled in the spokes of a wheel. He was rushed to the hospital but his arm could not be saved and it was amputated above the elbow. Gray had been right-handed before the accident. He learned to use his left arm to do everything.

 

Gray’s family downplayed the loss of his arm and treated him like any other child his age so that he would learn to be independent. Gray shared the same dream as many other kids—to grow up and become a great baseball player one day… unlike most kids, he never gave up the dream. He worked incredibly hard and set off to accomplish what most people thought impossible.

 

Playing baseball was not just fun but the most popular way for immigrant children to assimilate into their new culture. Pete said he knew he had a better eye than most kids and just had to learn to hit left-handed. He practiced with a rock and a stick every day for hours to “develop a quick wrist.” Hitting was the easiest part of baseball for him. Fielding and throwing were more difficult because he had to perform four more steps than a two-armed player.

 

“I’d catch the ball in my glove and stick it under the stub of my right arm. Then I’d squeeze the ball out of my glove with my arm and it would roll across my chest and drop to my stomach. The ball would drop right into my hand and my small, crooked finger prevented it from bouncing away.” If Gray couldn’t execute these extra steps quickly and precisely than all would be for naught—he would be allowing runners time to take an extra base.

 

“Eventually he learned that by removing almost all the padding from his glove and wearing it on his fingertips with the little finger purposely extended outside of the mitt, he was able to catch the ball and get it to his throwing hand in one swift motion. He credits the success of the entire maneuver to his little finger, which was bent upwards at almost a right angle.”

 

At the age of 17, Gray hitchhiked from Nanticoke to Chicago to watch the 1932 World Series. He claimed to have experienced a personal turning point there when he witnessed Babe Ruth’s “called shot” home run. He figured that Ruth hit it because he had confidence in himself and that if he himself had the same degree of confidence that Ruth had, then he would play in the major leagues one day.

 

A friend gave Gray a letter of introduction to visit Connie Mack but Gray couldn’t get a tryout. “Son,” Mack said, “I’ve got men with two arms who can’t play this game.” According to a friend, scouts not only underestimated Gray’s physical abilities but also his heart.

 

In 1940 Gray left Pennsylvania for New York and a tryout with the legendary semipro club the Brooklyn Bushwicks. When owner/manager Max Rosner scoffed at his request for a tryout, Gray “handed him a $10 bill saying, ‘Keep it if I don’t make good.’” Rosner accepted the offer. Gray played in a game that day before 10,000 fans and had two hits, one a home run, and received $25 from Rosner. Crowds increased and Gray held out for more money. He received $350 per month—all for playing Sunday doubleheaders. Gray tried to enlist shortly after Pearl Harbor but was rejected because of his missing arm. Gray played for the Bushwicks for two seasons and compiled a .350 batting average. A scout for the Three Rivers (Quebec) club in the Canadian-American League who knew Gray from Pennsylvania wired his boss praising Gray.

 

The scout signed Gray but failed to tell his boss that Gray had only one arm. The owner almost fainted when he saw Gray but he had faith in his scout. Gray’s debut couldn’t have gone better if it were scripted in Hollywood. The crowd chanted for Gray the whole game. With Three Rivers trailing archrival Quebec 1-0 in the ninth and the bases loaded, Gray was called in to pinch-hit. With the count 2-and-1, Gray singled and everybody started throwing money at him. After he scooped it up he counted over $100.

 

Gray was doing well but opponents began making adjustments. They knew he could hit the fastball so they threw him off-speed pitches. Gray tweaked his batting stance to speed up his bat and generate more power. Runners began taking advantage of the time it took for Gray to get the ball into the infield. He made adjustments to his fielding by tossing the ball up in the air, discarding his glove, and returning the ball to the infield. He lost a third of the season with another broken collarbone but finished the season with a batting average of .381 in 160 at-bats.

 

The Canadian-American League canceled the 1943 season. Gray went to spring training with the Toronto Maple Leafs but was released before the season. Rumors that Toronto manager Burleigh Grimes didn’t take to him affected Gray’s chances to catch on with another team. However, Mickey O’Neill, Gray’s teammate at Three Rivers, worked to help him find a team and persuaded Doc Prothro, manager of the Memphis Chicks of the Southern Association to sign him.

 

Gray put on fine hitting displays and played aggressive baseball for the Chicks. The press dubbed him their “One-Armed Wonder.” Prothro liked Gray and admired his all-out style of play. Worried that Gray would injure himself Prothro tried to rest him, but Gray would hear none of it. He didn’t want to let down fans. Fans called the ballpark every day wanting to know if Gray would be playing. It was the same on the road. The Chicks were going nowhere in 1943 but Gray insisted on playing every inning. It took multiple injuries to get him out of the lineup. Prothro thought Gray had a wonderful sense of humor, too. His favorite story about Gray involved a motherly fan concerned about the outfielder’s missing arm.

 

“Pete was jogging for the locker room to take a cold shower when a lady fan reached over the runway and grabbed him by the shoulder.

 

“‘Oh, you poor boy,’ she said, ‘playing baseball with just one arm and running and throwing and swinging that bat so hard. It must be an awfully tough job for you.’

 

“She kept on running like that for three or four minutes. Pete was getting tired of waiting for his shower but stuck it out.

 

“‘And how did you lose your right arm you poor boy?’ she finally asked.

 

“‘A lady in Brooklyn talked it off, ma’am,’ Pete responded, and raced off to the showers.”

 

The Chicks finished last in the league, with a 56-81 mark, but the year was a tremendous success for Gray. He played in 126 games and batted .289. Philadelphia sportswriters honored him with their Most Courageous Athlete Award. Gray glossed over his own struggles and praised the country’s servicemen.

 

“Boys, I can’t fight. And so there is no courage about me. Courage belongs on the battlefield not on the baseball diamond. But if I could prove to any boy who has been physically handicapped that he, too, can compete with the best—well then, I’ve done my little bit.”
Gray was a shy person and did not feel he had done anything to warrant all of the attention he received, but he did his best to show his appreciation to the public and to veterans, especially wounded ones and amputees. He went on USO tours after the season and visited military hospitals and rehabilitation centers and spoke with veterans.

 

While Gray was playing for Memphis, the team was contacted by Nelson Gary from Van Nuys, California. His 6-year-old son, Nelson Jr., had lost his right arm at age 2 in an electrical accident and he wanted to meet his favorite ballplayer, Gray. The Memphis Commercial Appeal paid their way to come out and meet Gray. The two became friends and corresponded for a number of years. Gray visited Nelson each summer until he was 10 years old.

 

Gray returned to Memphis in 1944 and had an even better year than in 1943. Playing in 129 games, he batted .333. He stole 68 bases and had 35 extra-base hits, including five home runs, three of which cleared the fences. Scouts from almost every major-league team were following Gray by this time. In late September, the St. Louis Browns acquired his contract him for $20,000, the largest sum paid for a Southern League player to that date.

 

Despite their success in 1944—they won their first pennant ever —the Browns were not doing well financially and hoped to increase revenues by signing Gray. Manager Luke Sewell promised to treat Gray like any other player and said he would get a fair chance to make the team and earn his playing time. But Sewell knew the fans would demand to see him play.

 

Gray played his first game on April 17, 1945, starting in left field at home against the Detroit Tigers. He singled in four at-bats in a 7-1 Browns victory. But after getting just three hits in 21 at-bats, he was benched and played just one game in 16 days. Then he played for about a week but after that his playing time got sporadic.

 

“Browns teammate Ellis Clary remembered Gray ‘as being ornery as hell. The first time you met him you felt sorry for him, but two hours later, you hated his guts. He was all right, I guess. But he was a strange guy. He didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him.’”

 

Gray was a Yankees fan growing up, and playing against his favorite team meant something special to him. The Browns’ first series against the Yankees, May 18-20 in St. Louis, resulted in a four-game sweep by St. Louis. Gray contributed five hits, all singles, in 15 at-bats, walked three times, had two stolen bases (he was caught stealing once), had three RBIs, and scored three runs. He had a dozen putouts in left field. In the first game of a Sunday doubleheader on May 20, played before a home crowd of 20,507, Gray got three hits in five trips to the plate and played flawless defense in the Browns’ 10-1 win. In the series he raised his batting average from .179 to .225.

 

Gray always dreamed of playing in Yankee Stadium and he received his chance a week later. He didn’t start in any of the three games, all losses, but he did deliver a pinch-hit single with his parents and a busload of friends from Nanticoke in attendance, and this game meant more to him than any other one in his career. But his playing time then began to diminish.

 

Gray’s average continued to decline and he played sporadically. In the second week of June Sewell started playing him in center field instead of his usual position in left field. This didn’t sit well with regular center fielder Mike Kreevich, who was struggling, hitting just .237. “An established player—he hit .301 the season before—Kreevich expressed his dissatisfaction. ‘It didn’t suit Mike at all,’ Don Gutteridge recalled. To keep the peace the Browns asked waivers on Kreevich, and on August 8, sold him to the Washington Senators.”

 

As Gray’s average plummeted, so did his patience, and he began to argue with umpires. Pitchers realized his vulnerability and changed their approach to pitching to him: They fed him a steady diet of breaking balls or low outside pitches and tight inside ones. He simply couldn’t get his bat around fast enough or stop it once he had committed to a pitch, and they exploited him for it. Runners, especially the faster ones in the league, began to take an extra base on the split-second longer it took for Gray to get the ball back into the infield. The writing was on the wall, his limitations were exposed. Still, Gray had some very good games, and even a modest hitting streak. The seven-game streak, from June 27 through July 5, raised his batting average from .223 to a respectable .260. On August 19 Gray went 4-for-7 with three singles and a double, against the Boston Red Sox in a 13-inning Red Sox victory. He went 3-for-5 against the Yankees on September 15. Altogether Gray played in 77 games and hit .218.

 

“[Teammate Ellis] Clary also revealed that some of Gray’s teammates, particularly pitchers Sig Jakucki and Nelson Potter, were constantly ragging him. Jakucki once put a dead fish in the pocket of Gray’s new sports coat and Gray knocked him down with one punch. ‘We had to separate them,’ Clary said. ‘He was a tough guy, always ready to fight. He didn’t take any guff from anybody.’”

 

Some blamed Gray for the Browns falling out of pennant contention in 1945. They claim that Gray played later in the season when he was not hitting well. That does not entirely make sense. The Browns had a better record when Gray was in the lineup: 33-21 in games Gray started, a .611 winning percentage, compared with their overall winning percentage of .536. During the Browns’ longest losing streak, six games from September 6 to September 9 (including two doubleheaders), Gray was used exclusively as a pinch-hitter and was 0-for-4. The Browns finished in third place with a record of 81-70, six games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers. The team compiled a .249 batting average, next-to-last in the league, while the team ERA was third-best in the league at 3.14. The only teams to post a winning record against the Browns were the Detroit Tigers, who dominated them, winning 15 of 21 games, and the Cleveland Indians, 11-10 against the Browns. For whatever it’s worth, Gray started only five games against the Tigers (the Browns won two) and had single at-bats in two other losses.

 

With many established major leaguers returning home from the service in 1946, Gray was sent down to the minor leagues. He played for the Browns’ top farm team, the Toledo Mud Hens, in 1946 and batted .250 but sat out 1947 in a salary dispute and was placed on baseball’s suspended list. He remained in Nanticoke and played in the Anthracite League under assumed names for his old Hanover Athletic Association team and two other teams. In 1948 he played for Elmira in the Eastern League and in 1949 for Dallas, mostly as a pinch-hitter. With Elmira he batted .290 in 82 games. He barnstormed with teams from 1949 until he retired from baseball in 1953.

 

Nelson Gary Jr., the boy whom Gray befriended, became a talented right fielder for Occidental College. His successful squeeze bunt drove in the winning run for the 1962 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Champions.

 

 

[laroquece]

6 hours ago, Yankee4Life said:

Pete Gray

 

 

Baseball is a difficult game to play well for those with two good arms but Pete Gray did it with one. Gray played only one season in the major leagues, 1945, but that was enough to have a lasting positive influence on people with disabilities. His accomplishment enlightened those of us who are perfectly formed, too —and it redefined how we view people with disabilities. Gray’s feel-good story was cathartic to a war-torn country, especially to disabled servicemen returning from World War II. His achievement was due to his incredible focus and determination. Gray became famous, but he was also “manipulated by club owners as well as by the media, maligned by many of his teammates, and left to wonder just how good a player he really was.”  He deferred praise for his bravery to soldiers who had served on the battlefield. Gray spent his later years in obscurity and poverty and he would later say that he hadn’t done enough, given the opportunities he had, to help disabled people. There was one youth, however, Nelson Gary Jr., a 3-year-old, whom Gray met and befriended, and the two became forever linked by the coincidence of losing their right arms.

 

Gray was 6 years old when he lost his right arm in an accident while hitching a ride on the running board of a produce truck. The driver had to stop suddenly and Gray fell off and got his right arm caught and mangled in the spokes of a wheel. He was rushed to the hospital but his arm could not be saved and it was amputated above the elbow. Gray had been right-handed before the accident. He learned to use his left arm to do everything.

 

Gray’s family downplayed the loss of his arm and treated him like any other child his age so that he would learn to be independent. Gray shared the same dream as many other kids—to grow up and become a great baseball player one day… unlike most kids, he never gave up the dream. He worked incredibly hard and set off to accomplish what most people thought impossible.

 

Playing baseball was not just fun but the most popular way for immigrant children to assimilate into their new culture. Pete said he knew he had a better eye than most kids and just had to learn to hit left-handed. He practiced with a rock and a stick every day for hours to “develop a quick wrist.” Hitting was the easiest part of baseball for him. Fielding and throwing were more difficult because he had to perform four more steps than a two-armed player.

 

“I’d catch the ball in my glove and stick it under the stub of my right arm. Then I’d squeeze the ball out of my glove with my arm and it would roll across my chest and drop to my stomach. The ball would drop right into my hand and my small, crooked finger prevented it from bouncing away.” If Gray couldn’t execute these extra steps quickly and precisely than all would be for naught—he would be allowing runners time to take an extra base.

 

“Eventually he learned that by removing almost all the padding from his glove and wearing it on his fingertips with the little finger purposely extended outside of the mitt, he was able to catch the ball and get it to his throwing hand in one swift motion. He credits the success of the entire maneuver to his little finger, which was bent upwards at almost a right angle.”

 

At the age of 17, Gray hitchhiked from Nanticoke to Chicago to watch the 1932 World Series. He claimed to have experienced a personal turning point there when he witnessed Babe Ruth’s “called shot” home run. He figured that Ruth hit it because he had confidence in himself and that if he himself had the same degree of confidence that Ruth had, then he would play in the major leagues one day.

 

A friend gave Gray a letter of introduction to visit Connie Mack but Gray couldn’t get a tryout. “Son,” Mack said, “I’ve got men with two arms who can’t play this game.” According to a friend, scouts not only underestimated Gray’s physical abilities but also his heart.

 

In 1940 Gray left Pennsylvania for New York and a tryout with the legendary semipro club the Brooklyn Bushwicks. When owner/manager Max Rosner scoffed at his request for a tryout, Gray “handed him a $10 bill saying, ‘Keep it if I don’t make good.’” Rosner accepted the offer. Gray played in a game that day before 10,000 fans and had two hits, one a home run, and received $25 from Rosner. Crowds increased and Gray held out for more money. He received $350 per month—all for playing Sunday doubleheaders. Gray tried to enlist shortly after Pearl Harbor but was rejected because of his missing arm. Gray played for the Bushwicks for two seasons and compiled a .350 batting average. A scout for the Three Rivers (Quebec) club in the Canadian-American League who knew Gray from Pennsylvania wired his boss praising Gray.

 

The scout signed Gray but failed to tell his boss that Gray had only one arm. The owner almost fainted when he saw Gray but he had faith in his scout. Gray’s debut couldn’t have gone better if it were scripted in Hollywood. The crowd chanted for Gray the whole game. With Three Rivers trailing archrival Quebec 1-0 in the ninth and the bases loaded, Gray was called in to pinch-hit. With the count 2-and-1, Gray singled and everybody started throwing money at him. After he scooped it up he counted over $100.

 

Gray was doing well but opponents began making adjustments. They knew he could hit the fastball so they threw him off-speed pitches. Gray tweaked his batting stance to speed up his bat and generate more power. Runners began taking advantage of the time it took for Gray to get the ball into the infield. He made adjustments to his fielding by tossing the ball up in the air, discarding his glove, and returning the ball to the infield. He lost a third of the season with another broken collarbone but finished the season with a batting average of .381 in 160 at-bats.

 

The Canadian-American League canceled the 1943 season. Gray went to spring training with the Toronto Maple Leafs but was released before the season. Rumors that Toronto manager Burleigh Grimes didn’t take to him affected Gray’s chances to catch on with another team. However, Mickey O’Neill, Gray’s teammate at Three Rivers, worked to help him find a team and persuaded Doc Prothro, manager of the Memphis Chicks of the Southern Association to sign him.

 

Gray put on fine hitting displays and played aggressive baseball for the Chicks. The press dubbed him their “One-Armed Wonder.” Prothro liked Gray and admired his all-out style of play. Worried that Gray would injure himself Prothro tried to rest him, but Gray would hear none of it. He didn’t want to let down fans. Fans called the ballpark every day wanting to know if Gray would be playing. It was the same on the road. The Chicks were going nowhere in 1943 but Gray insisted on playing every inning. It took multiple injuries to get him out of the lineup. Prothro thought Gray had a wonderful sense of humor, too. His favorite story about Gray involved a motherly fan concerned about the outfielder’s missing arm.

 

“Pete was jogging for the locker room to take a cold shower when a lady fan reached over the runway and grabbed him by the shoulder.

 

“‘Oh, you poor boy,’ she said, ‘playing baseball with just one arm and running and throwing and swinging that bat so hard. It must be an awfully tough job for you.’

 

“She kept on running like that for three or four minutes. Pete was getting tired of waiting for his shower but stuck it out.

 

“‘And how did you lose your right arm you poor boy?’ she finally asked.

 

“‘A lady in Brooklyn talked it off, ma’am,’ Pete responded, and raced off to the showers.”

 

The Chicks finished last in the league, with a 56-81 mark, but the year was a tremendous success for Gray. He played in 126 games and batted .289. Philadelphia sportswriters honored him with their Most Courageous Athlete Award. Gray glossed over his own struggles and praised the country’s servicemen.

 

“Boys, I can’t fight. And so there is no courage about me. Courage belongs on the battlefield not on the baseball diamond. But if I could prove to any boy who has been physically handicapped that he, too, can compete with the best—well then, I’ve done my little bit.”
Gray was a shy person and did not feel he had done anything to warrant all of the attention he received, but he did his best to show his appreciation to the public and to veterans, especially wounded ones and amputees. He went on USO tours after the season and visited military hospitals and rehabilitation centers and spoke with veterans.

 

While Gray was playing for Memphis, the team was contacted by Nelson Gary from Van Nuys, California. His 6-year-old son, Nelson Jr., had lost his right arm at age 2 in an electrical accident and he wanted to meet his favorite ballplayer, Gray. The Memphis Commercial Appeal paid their way to come out and meet Gray. The two became friends and corresponded for a number of years. Gray visited Nelson each summer until he was 10 years old.

 

Gray returned to Memphis in 1944 and had an even better year than in 1943. Playing in 129 games, he batted .333. He stole 68 bases and had 35 extra-base hits, including five home runs, three of which cleared the fences. Scouts from almost every major-league team were following Gray by this time. In late September, the St. Louis Browns acquired his contract him for $20,000, the largest sum paid for a Southern League player to that date.

 

Despite their success in 1944—they won their first pennant ever —the Browns were not doing well financially and hoped to increase revenues by signing Gray. Manager Luke Sewell promised to treat Gray like any other player and said he would get a fair chance to make the team and earn his playing time. But Sewell knew the fans would demand to see him play.

 

Gray played his first game on April 17, 1945, starting in left field at home against the Detroit Tigers. He singled in four at-bats in a 7-1 Browns victory. But after getting just three hits in 21 at-bats, he was benched and played just one game in 16 days. Then he played for about a week but after that his playing time got sporadic.

 

“Browns teammate Ellis Clary remembered Gray ‘as being ornery as hell. The first time you met him you felt sorry for him, but two hours later, you hated his guts. He was all right, I guess. But he was a strange guy. He didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him.’”

 

Gray was a Yankees fan growing up, and playing against his favorite team meant something special to him. The Browns’ first series against the Yankees, May 18-20 in St. Louis, resulted in a four-game sweep by St. Louis. Gray contributed five hits, all singles, in 15 at-bats, walked three times, had two stolen bases (he was caught stealing once), had three RBIs, and scored three runs. He had a dozen putouts in left field. In the first game of a Sunday doubleheader on May 20, played before a home crowd of 20,507, Gray got three hits in five trips to the plate and played flawless defense in the Browns’ 10-1 win. In the series he raised his batting average from .179 to .225.

 

Gray always dreamed of playing in Yankee Stadium and he received his chance a week later. He didn’t start in any of the three games, all losses, but he did deliver a pinch-hit single with his parents and a busload of friends from Nanticoke in attendance, and this game meant more to him than any other one in his career. But his playing time then began to diminish.

 

Gray’s average continued to decline and he played sporadically. In the second week of June Sewell started playing him in center field instead of his usual position in left field. This didn’t sit well with regular center fielder Mike Kreevich, who was struggling, hitting just .237. “An established player—he hit .301 the season before—Kreevich expressed his dissatisfaction. ‘It didn’t suit Mike at all,’ Don Gutteridge recalled. To keep the peace the Browns asked waivers on Kreevich, and on August 8, sold him to the Washington Senators.”

 

As Gray’s average plummeted, so did his patience, and he began to argue with umpires. Pitchers realized his vulnerability and changed their approach to pitching to him: They fed him a steady diet of breaking balls or low outside pitches and tight inside ones. He simply couldn’t get his bat around fast enough or stop it once he had committed to a pitch, and they exploited him for it. Runners, especially the faster ones in the league, began to take an extra base on the split-second longer it took for Gray to get the ball back into the infield. The writing was on the wall, his limitations were exposed. Still, Gray had some very good games, and even a modest hitting streak. The seven-game streak, from June 27 through July 5, raised his batting average from .223 to a respectable .260. On August 19 Gray went 4-for-7 with three singles and a double, against the Boston Red Sox in a 13-inning Red Sox victory. He went 3-for-5 against the Yankees on September 15. Altogether Gray played in 77 games and hit .218.

 

“[Teammate Ellis] Clary also revealed that some of Gray’s teammates, particularly pitchers Sig Jakucki and Nelson Potter, were constantly ragging him. Jakucki once put a dead fish in the pocket of Gray’s new sports coat and Gray knocked him down with one punch. ‘We had to separate them,’ Clary said. ‘He was a tough guy, always ready to fight. He didn’t take any guff from anybody.’”

 

Some blamed Gray for the Browns falling out of pennant contention in 1945. They claim that Gray played later in the season when he was not hitting well. That does not entirely make sense. The Browns had a better record when Gray was in the lineup: 33-21 in games Gray started, a .611 winning percentage, compared with their overall winning percentage of .536. During the Browns’ longest losing streak, six games from September 6 to September 9 (including two doubleheaders), Gray was used exclusively as a pinch-hitter and was 0-for-4. The Browns finished in third place with a record of 81-70, six games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers. The team compiled a .249 batting average, next-to-last in the league, while the team ERA was third-best in the league at 3.14. The only teams to post a winning record against the Browns were the Detroit Tigers, who dominated them, winning 15 of 21 games, and the Cleveland Indians, 11-10 against the Browns. For whatever it’s worth, Gray started only five games against the Tigers (the Browns won two) and had single at-bats in two other losses.

 

With many established major leaguers returning home from the service in 1946, Gray was sent down to the minor leagues. He played for the Browns’ top farm team, the Toledo Mud Hens, in 1946 and batted .250 but sat out 1947 in a salary dispute and was placed on baseball’s suspended list. He remained in Nanticoke and played in the Anthracite League under assumed names for his old Hanover Athletic Association team and two other teams. In 1948 he played for Elmira in the Eastern League and in 1949 for Dallas, mostly as a pinch-hitter. With Elmira he batted .290 in 82 games. He barnstormed with teams from 1949 until he retired from baseball in 1953.

 

Nelson Gary Jr., the boy whom Gray befriended, became a talented right fielder for Occidental College. His successful squeeze bunt drove in the winning run for the 1962 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Champions.

 

 

Wow, great story about this player. 

[Yankee4Life]

Don Mattingly

 

 

Talk of Don Mattingly’s worthiness for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame most often focuses on his offensive statistics. Perhaps not enough is said about his defense. Mattingly has one of the best career fielding percentages of any player – ever – at any position. His .9959 percentage means that every 1,000 times the ball came his way, he made only four errors. He won nine Gold Glove awards, the second most among first basemen. Not that his offense was to be sneered at: a .307 lifetime batting average, 222 home runs, and three straight seasons of more than 200 hits.

 

Still, in Mattingly’s 15 years on the baseball writers’ ballot, he was never favored by more than 28.2 percent of the voters; his percentage on the ballots for the 2014 and 2015 inductions was in the single digits, and he was removed from the baseball writers’ ballot. His hopes for election were entrusted to the Hall of Fame’s Modern Era Committee. The debate over Mattingly’s merits will continue.

 

At Reitz Memorial High School, Don stood out in three sports. He was the football team’s starting quarterback and the basketball squad’s star point guard. But it was one American Legion baseball game that convinced Don that he was a baseball player. In a 1976 game against the neighboring town of Owensboro, Kentucky, he faced a pitcher who was the Cincinnati Reds’ top draft pick that year. Don, a freshman, hit two doubles off the star. He soon had developed a name for himself. Scouts were occasionally seen at his games, and he began receiving letters offering college scholarships to play baseball. At one point Mattingly helped Reitz Memorial to a 59-game winning streak, with one of those wins coming in the Indiana state championship game in his junior season.

 

Along with his father, Mattingly said that his biggest influence with respect to his work ethic was his high-school baseball coach, Quentin Merkel, who was always pushing Mattingly to get better.

 

“Coach would say to me, if you are the best player in the region, you should try to become the best in the state,” Mattingly said. “If you are best in the state, then you start thinking about being the best in the country. That ethic, to always get better, helped me in the minor leagues when I was fighting for jobs.”

 

By 1979 Mattingly had become a hot prospect, even earning a brief write-up in Sports Illustrated for his exploits. Most teams avoided drafting the high-school star, however, because many expected that he would attend college. Taking a chance, the New York Yankees selected him in the 19th round of the 1979 amateur draft and subsequently signed him to a minor-league deal.

 

Mattingly enjoyed almost instant success in the minor leagues, hitting .349 with the Oneonta Yankees of the Class-A (short season) New York-Penn League in 53 games in 1979. The next year, he moved up to Greensboro (North Carolina) of the Class-A South Atlantic League, where he led the league with a .358 batting average. After a strong year for Double-A Nashville (Southern League) in 1981 (.315, 98 RBIs), Mattingly was promoted to Triple-A Columbus for 1982. He had another fine season, hitting .315 with 10 home runs and 75 RBIs, and winning accolades for his defensive play.

 

When major-league clubs expanded their rosters to 40 players in September, the Yankees called up Mattingly Years later, he fondly recalled his first trip to the House That Ruth Built. “I think the time that I really think about the most is just being called up and walking into Yankee Stadium for the first time, walking into the dugout and just seeing the left-field corner and the stands in that corner like the horseshoe there,” he said. “And at that point, just realizing the dream to get to the big leagues. So that is a moment that is always one of the freshest and just a great memory for me.”

 

Mattingly made his major-league debut on September 8, 1982, against the Baltimore Orioles in Yankee Stadium, as a ninth-inning defensive replacement for Dave Winfield in left field. Three days later Mattingly had his first major-league at-bat, against reliever Jim Slaton of the Milwaukee Brewers, and popped out to third base on the first pitch. It wasn’t until almost three weeks later that he managed his first major-league hit, an 11th-inning single off Boston’s Steve Crawford on October 1 in Yankee Stadium. In 12 major-league at-bats in 1982, he had two singles and one RBI.

 

Mattingly won a roster spot during spring training in 1983, but when the season began, he was used sparingly. Almost two weeks into the season, he had just seven at-bats and two hits, and on April 14, he was sent back down to Columbus. It was his last trip to the minor leagues.

 

In 43 games with Columbus, Mattingly hit better than .340 with 8 home runs and 37 RBIs. And when the Yankees’ Bobby Murcer announced his retirement on June 12, a roster spot and a reserve outfield position opened up in the Bronx, and Mattingly was called up to fill it. He spent the balance of the season as a spot starter, pinch-hitter, and defensive replacement in right field, left field, and first base. Mattingly also helped make some baseball history on August 18, 1983, when he played second base (as a left-handed thrower) in the finish of the George Brett “Pine Tar Game,” a contest that had begun almost a month earlier.

 

Mattingly got off to a hot start in ’84, a fact he attributed to having played winter ball in Puerto Rico. By midseason, he was hitting so well that some were beginning to compare him to the other young hitting star in New York City at the time, the Mets’ Darryl Strawberry. Among Mattingly’s biggest early supporters was Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who told reporters as early as June 1984 that “Mattingly is the best young talent in baseball. You can talk all you want about Strawberry. I’ll take Mattingly.” Steinbrenner had plenty of evidence to support his argument; at the time, Mattingly was outhitting Strawberry in every major offensive category.

 

The biggest surprise in Mattingly’s 1984 offensive game was his newly found power stroke. Although he had never hit more than 10 home runs in a season in the minor leagues, he had already hit 12 before the end of June that year. Lou Piniella, then the Yankees’ hitting coach, described that summer how he’d worked with Mattingly on his swing all year, urging the young hitter to keep his weight back and hold his body in balance throughout the entire swing. The slight shift in body weight that Piniella recommended led to more power.

 

In July Mattingly was named to his first All-Star Game, picked as a reserve by American League manager Joe Altobelli, who couldn’t ignore the Yankees first baseman’s .339 average and impressive power numbers. Mattingly got into the game with one out in the ninth inning as a pinch-hitter with the American League trailing 3-1. Batting against his former teammate, San Diego Padres closer Rich “Goose” Gossage, Mattingly flied out to left field.

 

As the second half of the 1984 season rolled on, teammates Mattingly and Winfield got into a heated race for the American League batting crown. Winfield hit like a demon during the first half of the season, and his average climbed to .377 in early July. In August, however, Winfield slipped a little, and Mattingly caught up to him. By the first of September, he was batting .352 to Winfield’s .351.

 

As the month wore on and the Yankees fell out of the divisional race, the competition for the batting title became the best running baseball story in New York City. The back pages of the city’s two tabloids, the Daily News and the Post, wrote about the race or ran full-page pictures of the contestants, almost every day. In a town that was always hungry for baseball success, the batting race took on the role of a surrogate pennant race for Yankees fans. The team’s owners loved the competition, because it kept fans coming to Yankee Stadium in droves, despite the fact that the Yankees were 15 games behind the Detroit Tigers. During the last two weeks of the season, the stadium scoreboard constantly displayed each player’s batting average, to the ninth digit, right up to the last at-bat. The excitement was justified; after all, no Yankee had won a batting crown since Mickey Mantle in 1956. And no two Yankees had ever finished 1-2 in hitting.

 

Going into the season’s final weekend, Mattingly led Winfield .342 to .341. When asked who he thought would prevail, Piniella predicted that Mattingly would win, but gave him the advantage only because the team was facing three right-handers in a row to close out the season, which favored the left-handed hitter. But Mattingly went just 1-for-7 on Friday and Saturday, and entered the last day of the season trailing Winfield .339 to .342. In the last game of the year, however, he managed four hits in five at-bats, while Winfield was just 1-for-4. After Mattingly got his last hit, Winfield hit a sharp grounder to the shortstop, who forced a sliding Mattingly out at second base. As the new batting champ walked toward the dugout, the fans roared in salute, and after a few moments in the dugout, he re-emerged and walked to first base. Mattingly and Winfield shook hands, and walked off the field together as the crowd cheered. Mattingly had won the race, .343 to .340.

 

In the offseason, George Steinbrenner acquired Rickey Henderson from the Oakland A’s in exchange for five players and cash. The Mattingly-Henderson combination worked just as Steinbrenner had hoped. By the All-Star break, Henderson was batting a league-leading .357, and his on-base percentage stood at .441. He’d stolen 41 bases, which meant that he was on base almost half the time, and when he was on, he usually managed to place himself in scoring position.

 

In some respects, Mattingly’s 1986 season was even more dominant than his MVP campaign the year before. He hit .352, with 238 hits, 53 doubles, 31 home runs, and 113 RBIs. He finished second to Roger Clemens that year in MVP voting. But once again, the Yankees stumbled. On August 15 they were within three games of the first-place Red Sox, and the Bronx seemed poised for an old-style Yankees-Red Sox pennant race. But the Yankees dropped 13 of their next 20 games, fell behind by 10 games and never made another serious run for the division crown. They did win a respectable 90 games, but when the playoffs began, the Yankees were once again on the outside looking in.

 

Mattingly began the 1987 season in a slump. While he had a tendency to start slow, this was worse than usual. After the first 33 games, he was hitting .240 with just three home runs. Then he hit his groove. Between May 14 and June 4, he raised his batting average to .311, and during that 20-game stretch knocked in 15 runs. Just as he was returning to form, however, Mattingly injured his lower back on June 4. Although the injury was not devastating, it did require Mattingly to spend five days in traction at NYU hospital. Doctors at the time described the injury as two protruding disks that wouldn’t require surgery, but would need a few weeks of rest. While Mattingly was on the shelf, he was replaced by a young up-and-coming left-handed slugger named Dan Pasqua. But Mattingly wouldn’t play the role of Wally Pipp to Pasqua’s Lou Gehrig, because when he returned three weeks later, he caught fire. In his first 13 games back, Mattingly hit .370 (20-for-54) and knocked home 12 runs. It was a nice prelude for what was to follow.

 

When he returned three weeks later, he caught fire. In his first 13 games back, Mattingly hit .370 (20-for-54) and knocked home 12 runs. It was a nice prelude for what was to follow. The streak began on July 8, 1987, in the bottom of the first inning at Yankee Stadium versus the Minnesota Twins, when Mattingly drove a Mike Smithson fastball over the right-field wall for a three-run homer. In Texas, Mattingly hit a Jose Guzman sinker in the fourth inning that cleared the 11-foot-high fence in left-center field. The ball traveled just beyond the leap of Pete Incaviglia, the left fielder, to tie the major-league mark for consecutive home runs.

 

Mattingly continued his All-Star-level play over the next two years. Even though he drove home only 88 runs in 1988, his two-year average for 1988-89 was a .307 average, 21 home runs, and 101 RBIs. Although Mattingly may have slowed down slightly since the mid-’80s, had he been able to maintain even this more modest pace, he looked like a future Hall of Famer. At least that is what a lot of knowledgeable baseball men said about Mattingly during the end of the 1980s.

 

Pitchers at the time felt that the only way to approach Mattingly was with a variety of pitches. “I usually throw my whole repertoire at him,” said Frank Viola, the Minnesota Twins’ left-hander, who was the Most Valuable Player in the World Series the previous year. Viola had good success against Mattingly, holding him to nine hits in 50 at-bats over the course of their careers. “You’ve got to mix it up and hope he’s not looking for that certain pitch.”

 

In the face of all this praise, Mattingly was humble, always preaching the workaday ethic. He described his approach to hitting as more of a mental struggle than a physical feat.

 

During his first six full seasons, Mattingly’s career batting average stood at .327, and he averaged 203 hits, 43 doubles, 27 home runs, 114 RBIs, and 97 runs scored. He also won five straight Gold Gloves and made six consecutive All-Star teams. Mattingly made it known that he wanted a new contract, or an extension of his existing deal that concluded at the end of the 1990 season. The Yankees responded by making him the highest-paid player in baseball history at the time.

 

In 1990 Mattingly’s two discs in his back began to act up again. Although he came back for a pain-filled 10-day stint from July 14 through July 24, the Yankees put Mattingly on the disabled list on July 26. Merrill said the first baseman could be out for the remainder of the season. Although the Yankees reinstated Mattingly from the DL on September 12, it was clear that the chronic back injury, which doctors had described as a congenital disk deformity.

 

During the offseason, Mattingly underwent a rigorous physical therapy regimen on his back. He rose at 6:00 A.M. four days a week at his home in Evansville to perform stretches and lifts that he’d learned the summer before while he was on the disabled list. By the time spring training rolled around, the first baseman sounded optimistic that he could regain his old form and on March 1, 1991, Mattingly was given even more motivation to get back on top, when he was named the captain of the Yankees.

 

Many credit Mattingly with making the adjustment to major-league life a little bit easier. One story has it that when Bernie Williams first came to the Yankees in 1991, teammate Mel Hall called him “Bambi” because, he said, Bernie’s big round eyeglasses made him look like a deer caught in the headlights. What started as fine, good-natured rookie ribbing soon went over the line, with Hall taking advantage of his veteran status to haze Williams mercilessly. For some reason, it was personal for Hall, who may have seen the talented young outfielder as a threat to his own job, and as young and vulnerable as Williams was at the time, it really got to him. Until Mattingly intervened. He was friendly with Hall, and told him to cool it. Then he took Williams under his wing for a while.

 

In 1995 Mattingly made his first and only post season appearance. Yankee fans were elated to see their team back in the postseason for the first time in 14 years. The first two games of the new best-of-five ALDS were played at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees won the first two games but Seattle took the series by winning the final three games.

 

Mattingly announced in the offseason that he wanted to sit out 1996, but did not formally retire, suggesting that he might like to play another year with a team closer to his home in Indiana but on January 22, 1997, after his one-year self-imposed rest, Mattingly announced his retirement during a press conference at Yankee Stadium.

 

Mattingly’s place in baseball history is an unusual one. For six years he was the game’s best player, averaging .327, 203 hits, 43 doubles, 27 home runs, 114 RBIs, and 97 runs scored. But the second half of his career was hampered by his congenitally bad back. Although he won four more Gold Gloves in the 1990s, his batting average dropped. His power numbers also declined to an average of just 10 home runs and 64 RBIs. But if one looks a little deeper into those numbers, it’s clear that Mattingly really only had one bad season, 1990. And while 1991 and 1992 were both mediocre, his 162-game averages over the last five years of his career were a .291 batting average, 13 home runs and 83 RBIs.

 

In time perhaps Mattingly may find his way into the Hall of Fame. Perhaps not. Either way, Don Mattingly will likely be remembered by baseball fans just as he once wished when he said, “When you think of me, think of me on the baseball field.”

 

 

 

[Yankee4Life]

Ray Schalk

 

 

In an era when the common impression of a baseball catcher was a sturdy player with bulging shoulders, a husky framework, and brute strength, the 5-foot-7 (many sources say 5-foot-9), 155-pound Ray Schalk did not convey an imposing figure behind the dish. But as John C. Ward wrote in Baseball Magazine in 1920, “Schalk is unquestionably the hardest working catcher in baseball as he is doubtless also the brainiest, the nerviest, the most competent. He presents the unique distinction of performing more work than any other catcher and at the same time performing it better. Both in quantity and in quality of service Ray Schalk is unquestionably the premier backstop in baseball.”

 

Raymond William Schalk was born in Harvel, a small village in central Illinois, on August 12, 1892, the fifth of six children of Herman and Sophia Schalk, German immigrants who had arrived in the United States in 1875. Ray was captain of the Litchfield basketball team, but left high school at the end of his second year to learn the printer’s trade. Two years later he traveled to Brooklyn, New York, to study how to operate the Linotype machine. In 1910, after mastering the intricacies of this noble mechanism, Schalk returned home, but found his desire to progress in his chosen field was not matched by career advancement. Rather, it was Schalk’s participation in local baseball games that soon earned him the promotion he was looking for.

 

First a member of the town team, he soon moved up to semipro ball for the sum of $2 a game. From there he quickly progressed to Taylorville (Illinois) in the Class D Illinois-Missouri League, where he caught 64 games, batted .387, and earned $65 a month. Later in the 1911 season, the 18-year-old moved up to the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association, and appeared in 31 games.

 

On August 11, 1912, the day before his 20th birthday, Ray Schalk saw his first major-league game – and he was the starting catcher in it. Arriving by streetcar minutes before the first game of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia Athletics, the rookie was told by manager Jimmy Callahan, “Young man, here’s your pitcher, Doc White. You’re the catcher.” In his first at-bat, Schalk grounded out to Frank Baker but did manage to get a hit later in the game against Chief Bender. Reflecting back on the experience nearly 50 years later, Schalk reminisced, “You think of no-hit games and playing in the World Series, but that first game was my greatest day.”

 

Schalk played in 23 games for the White Sox in 1912, batting a respectable .286. But it was his energy, willingness to learn, and outright desire that made the biggest impression on his coaches and teammates. The electric Schalk soon became the favorite of White Sox coach Kid Gleason, who helped the young backstop hone his skills. “We’d start a game at 3:00 P.M., but he’d have me out practicing at 9:30 in the morning. We’d work on catching the double steal, he had me chasing from behind the plate to field bunts, and running under pop flies. He taught me to crouch over and make myself a target on the throws from the outfield. He taught me to give, or yield with the catch, to never hold the ball high when making a throw – to cock my hand by my ear. He was a tireless worker.” And Schalk was undoubtedly an indefatigable student.

 

The diminutive Schalk, weighing a scant 148 pounds in his first season, was thought at first too small to catch Chicago ace Ed Walsh’s sharply breaking spitball. But with the help of Gleason, he was soon handling Walsh better than Billy Sullivan, Bruno Block, or Red Kuhn did. Even more difficult than catching Walsh was backstopping Ed Cicotte, who had more pitches than a carnival barker. Said Schalk about Cicotte, “He had command of every type of pitch. That includes the knuckler, the fadeaway, the slider, the screwball, the spitter, and emery ball.”

 

But more important than handling the ball was Schalk’s ability to handle his pitchers. John Sheridan of The Sporting News wrote in 1923, “… Schalk at all times insists that his pitcher shall have and use his stuff, that he shall be able to control it, and that he should use it whenever the catcher calls for it. The manner in which Schalk handles his pitchers must be of inestimable value to his team. He, more than any catcher that I can remember, makes a pitcher work up to the mark all the time. No catcher that I have known made or makes the pitcher work right, stand right on the rubber and use a correct motion, hold runners close to base, better than said Schalk. As a manager of young pitchers, Schalk stands head and shoulders above the others of all time.”

 

Though it may be inferred that Schalk earned his nickname, “Cracker,” because he cracked the whip over his White Sox hurlers, the moniker may have been hung on him by White Sox outfielder Shano Collins. Apparently Collins saw a resemblance between Schalk’s physique when viewed from behind and a cracker box. Another version holds that it was probably someone in the White Sox clubhouse who spied Schalk on his first day with the team and asked, “Who’s the little cracker pants?” The nickname stayed with the popular Schalk long after his playing days ended.

 

Schalk played the catching position like a fifth infielder. He was one of the first catchers to regularly back up infield throws to first base and outfield throws to third. His speed, alertness, and prowess led to his claim of being the only major-league catcher to make a putout at every base. His first putout at second base occurred in 1918 against St. Louis in Chicago. On a hit-and-run, the Browns’ Ray Demmitt sped past second as Joe Jackson made a great catch in deep left off the bat of Joe Gedeon. Schalk, in the middle of the diamond, ran to second to take the relay from White Sox shortstop Swede Risberg and slapped the tag on Demmitt. Putouts at first were more common because Schalk would often follow runners to first on hits to right field. Chick Gandil, the first baseman, would then decoy himself away from the bag, drawing the runner into a wide turn at first. Right fielder Eddie Murphy would then peg the ball back to Schalk at first to tag out the unsuspecting runner.

 

Over his 18-year career (1,757 games with the White Sox and five with the New York Giants in 1929), Schalk participated in more double plays (222) than any other backstop in history, and his lifetime total of 1,811 assists ranks second all-time behind 19th-century backstop Deacon McGuire. Schalk led the American League in fielding percentage five times and in putouts nine times, the latter still a major-league record entering the 2015 season. He also arguably shares the record for career no-hitters caught with four (historians have since dismissed Jim Scott’s May 14, 1914, gem, as he lost his no-hitter in a losing effort in the 10th inning).

 

In 1916 Schalk established the single-season stolen-base record for catchers with 30, a mark not broken until 1982, when John Wathan swiped 36 bags. Though his lifetime batting average was just .253, the lowest of anyone elected to the Hall of Fame as a position player, Schalk was considered an excellent bunter, both for the base hit and the sacrifice. Cracker was a frequent selection to Baseball Magazine’s All-Star American League Team, and was named by both Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth to their own personal all-time all-star teams.

 

Schalk won his only World Series with the White Sox in 1917, a year in which he hit .226 with fewer than 20 extra-base hits in 140 games. But he caught all six games in the World Series and the New York Giants, who led the National League in stolen bases, attempted just six steals during the fall classic, getting caught twice. In the White Sox’ dramatic Game Five comeback, Schalk’s own skill on the basepaths paid off. In the seventh inning he drew a throw from his Giants counterpart, Bill Rariden, on the front end of a double steal with Chick Gandil that scored the tying run before the White Sox rallied for three runs in the bottom of the eighth to win, 8-5. They went on to capture the championship two days later in New York.

 

From 1913 to 1926, Schalk caught nearly 80 percent of the White Sox’ contests. His durability was legendary – broken fingers, deep spike lacerations, and sprained ankles did not sideline him. During one game against the Tigers in 1922, Schalk was knocked unconscious by a foul tip. Trainer William “Doc” Buckner of the White Sox resorted to artificial respiration and use of oxygen to revive him. Recounted Buckner, “As soon as he got his breath and collected his senses, he immediately wanted to get back behind the plate.”

 

Schalk’s best season was probably 1922, when he batted .281, one point below his career best of .282 (in 1919). In that 1922 campaign Schalk hit four of his 11 career home runs, stole 12 bases in 16 attempts, hit for the cycle on June 27 (the next White Soxer to do so was Jack Brohamer in 1977), and drove in 60 runs. He led the league in putouts and assists, while committing only eight errors, tying the American League record for fielding percentage at .989. He finished third in voting for the 1922 American League Most Valuable Player Award.

 

Ray Schalk’s silence regarding the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 and his status as one of the honest men of the Series (in which he batted .304) is well known. Schalk knew something was amiss when both Cicotte and Lefty Williams continually crossed him up on pitches. Regarding the penalties doled out to the conspirators, Schalk did not disagree with the banishment, but later portrayals of the eight as vicious criminals bothered him.

 

In a discussion with Ed Burns of the Chicago Tribune in 1940, Schalk conveyed his compassion: “As long as I live, I’ll never forget the day Charles A. Comiskey come into the clubhouse and told eight of the boys they had been exposed and were through forever. It was a shocking scene and my mixed emotions never have been straightened out since I watched several of the ruined athletes break down and cry like babies. I never have worried about the guys who were hard-boiled, but those tears got me.”

 

Pennant purgatory followed the White Sox after the revelation of the Series fix in late 1920. The dismissal of seven players (Gandil had retired after the 1919 fiasco) wore a large hole in the team that left the lineup talent-threadbare for years. But Schalk’s keen efforts on and off the diamond helped bring respectability to the club. In addition to his MVP-caliber year in 1922, Schalk was responsible for discovering future Hall of Famer Ted Lyons in March 1923 at Baylor College in Waco, Texas. Lyons joined the club later that year in St. Louis, and would collect a franchise-record 260 victories for the White Sox.

 

In 1955 Schalk was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee. Fittingly, he was inducted to the Hall on the same day as Ted Lyons, the man he “discovered” 32 years earlier. At the ceremony, Schalk thanked his strongest supporter, his wife, the former Lavinia Graham, saying, “Whatever I’ve accomplished, I owe to Mrs. Schalk.”

 

[Yankee4Life]

Mel Ott

 

 

Mel Ott’s life is a classic rags-to-riches story of a naive, unheralded, teenager from a small Southern town who rose to great heights in New York, the country’s largest and most forbidding city at the time. His baseball career could not happen today; no team could carry an inexperienced 17-year-old on a major league roster as an apprentice instead of sending him out for minor-league seasoning. It is also highly unlikely that such a diamond in the rough would be paid a minimal bonus and salary and, in today’s season-by-season money grab, that such a superstar would remain with his original team for 22 years.

 

Despite his short, stocky build, Mel was a gifted athlete in all sports. Mel’s high school team played two games a week. On other days he excelled as the lefthand-hitting catcher for a semi-pro team. It was a local custom to pass the hat when a player’s home run figured in a victory. Mel Ott was earning money with his bat at the age of 14.

 

He was turned down as “too small” by the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern Association, so 16-year-old Mel joined a lumber company’s semi-pro team in Patterson, Louisiana, about 90 miles from New Orleans. He was an immediate sensation. A few months later the owner of the company, millionaire Harry Williams, stopped in New York on his way to Europe and recommended that Giants manager John McGraw give the youngster a tryout. Mel did not take seriously Williams’s postcard instructing him to report to McGraw. An annoyed Williams, on his return home in August, bought the teenager a train ticket to New York.

 

The frightened youngster reported to McGraw for a tryout in early September 1925, impressing onlookers mightily on his first turn at practice. Giants’ second baseman Frankie Frisch recalled: “Mel stepped into the first few pitches and smashed them solidly through the infield. Then he hit several deep into the outfield, and finally he parked a number of fastballs and curves high against the advertising signs on the right field wall.” Later, with the sturdy little fellow out of earshot, an enthusiastic McGraw told a writer, “That kid is remarkable. He’s like a golfer; his body moves [including the distinctive cocked right leg action just before the pitch], but he keeps his head still with his eyes fixed on the ball. He’s got the most natural swing I’ve seen in years.” Then McGraw added, prophetically, “This lad is going to be one of the greatest lefthand hitters the National League has seen.”

 

After the young Louisianan’s eye-opening hitting, McGraw kept him with the Giants, but out of the public eye. McGraw gave Mel a $400 bonus and a contract in January 1926. During spring training, McGraw told the still-growing 5-foot-7-inch, 150-pounder that he was too small to be a catcher, so he would be tutored as an outfielder. Every batting technique, every outfielding trick, and every fine point were provided by McGraw himself, star right fielder Ross “Pep” Youngs, left fielder Emil “Irish” Meusel and coach Roger Bresnahan. Bernie Wefers, a respected track coach, schooled the young man in running properly to avoid charley horses and knotted leg muscles to which the still-growing Ott was susceptible.

 

McGraw had decided to keep his young prodigy rather than farm him out to be ruined by a minor league manager. And so Mel was brought along slowly, spending the next two years as a part-time player and, when he was not in the game, sitting uncomfortably on the bench listening to the profane McGraw’s intimidating lectures. After Ross Youngs died at 30 from a kidney disease in October 1927, Ott took over as the Giants’ regular right fielder at 19 in 1928.

 

I929 was Mel’s breakthrough season. He had career highs in doubles, home runs, RBIs, runs scored and slugging percentage. His 42 homers and 151 RBIs are the most ever for players who were 20 or younger when the season began. Mel proved that he was a great hitter on the road as well at the Polo Grounds; he set still-existing National League away-from-home records for runs scored (79) and RBI (87). Moreover, he hit more home runs on the road (22) than he hit in the Polo Grounds with its short, 257-foot right field line.

 

In addition to his emergence as a great hitter, Ott gained recognition as a premier right fielder. Expertly playing caroms off the tricky right field wall at the Polo Grounds, he had an impressive 26 outfield assists. He never again attained so many, because baserunners learned to advance very cautiously on balls hit to the rifle-armed Ott.

 

Ott played at the same high level during the 1930 through 1932 seasons, but the club could not produce another pennant for the physically and emotionally exhausted John McGraw. First baseman Bill Terry replaced McGraw as the Giants’ manager on June 3, 1932. But the club was unable to climb out of the second division despite powerful hitting by Terry and Ott, who tied Chuck Klein with a league-leading 38 home runs and also led the league in bases on balls. Terry made a number of trades, but the Giants were not considered a serious pennant contender in 1933, according to a pre-season Associated Press poll.

 

The National League used a deadened baseball in 1933 and pitchers dominated. The Giants defeated the Washington Senators in a five-game World Series. National League MVP Hubbell won two games without a loss and Ott led the Giants’ offense. He hit .389, went 4-for-4 in Hubbell’s first-game victory, and hit the Series- clinching home run in the tenth inning of the final game.

 

The Giants remained competitive during the next two seasons but were unable to repeat, despite stellar seasons by Ott and Hubbell. Both men carried the team as the Giants won pennants in 1936 and 1937, only to lose both World Series to overpowering Yankees teams.

 

Ott had one of his best years in 1938, leading the league in runs and home runs, and playing either third base or right field as Terry needed him. But the other Giants stars — Hubbell, Schumacher, Gus Mancuso, Joe Moore, Dick Bartell — showed their age and the Giants finished well off the pace. This losing pattern worsened through the next three seasons and Polo Grounds attendance fell.

 

Following the 1941 campaign, amid increasing concerns about the war in Europe and tension with Japan, Giants President Horace Stoneham and Bill Terry considered their next move during the winter League meetings in Jacksonville, Florida. Ott, the Giants’ field captain since 1939, traveled from his home near New Orleans to Jacksonville to meet with the Giants hierarchy on December 2. As he entered the Giants’ suite, his admirer Stoneham greeted him with a smile and an offer: “Hiya, manager. I have a new job for you, at more money.” It took several minutes for Stoneham and Terry to convince Mel that he was indeed the Giants’ new field boss. But the jubilation faded five days later when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

 

Mel Ott’s first managerial year was a success. His club was no match for the Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers, but the Giants managed a third-place finish, led by the powerful hitting of newly acquired first baseman Johnny Mize and playing manager Ott. Ott’s club improved over the next two years, finishing just short of the first division in both seasons. Mel regained some of his old form, although his best playing days clearly were behind him. In 1944, the popular little guy ranked second in home runs and third in slugging percentage. In 1945, his twentieth season, he hit his 500th home run on August 1 and was hitting well over .320 as late as Labor Day before finishing at .308 and tied for fourth in the league in home runs. After the season, Horace Stoneham again rewarded him with a multi-year contract and both men looked forward to better seasons now that the war was over.

 

Unfortunately for Stoneham and Ott, the first post-World War II season was a disaster from the start. During spring training, Ott and his coaches struggled to select a team from the large number of returning servicemen in camp. And then, just before the season opened, Mel was beaned in batting practice by one of his young, strong-armed pitchers. On Opening Day he hit his final homer, the 511th of his career. The next day, Mel dove for a fly ball, injured his knee, and played infrequently and ineffectively for the rest of the season, hitting a miniscule .074. The Giants suffered a serious blow when their star righthanded reliever, Ace Adams, jumped to the Mexican League. By June the club was mired in last place and stayed there.

 

When Ott retired as a player, he had 511 career home runs, over 200 more than any other National Leaguer, and a total exceeded only by Babe Ruth and Jimmie Foxx. Mel held National League career records in runs batted in, runs scored and bases on balls, all of them later surpassed. He also was considered the best National League right fielder for most of his career. But Ott would be remembered for more than his playing skills. He was one of the most popular men ever to play the game. In 1938, when he shifted between right field and third base, a cereal company ran a contest to determine the most popular major league player at each position. Mel received the most votes for both positions.

 

Mel’s 1947 club improved dramatically, finishing in fourth place on the strength of a record-breaking 221 homers, none, ironically, by the retired Ott. There was considerable discussion as to whether the widely loved and admired Ott should stay on as manager. Stoneham decided to retain Mel in 1948, but the story was the same during the first half of that season: decent hitting, barely adequate team speed, and woeful pitching. On July 16, 1948, with the Giants in fourth place and playing uninspired .500 ball, Ott stepped down to be replaced by Manager Leo Durocher of the arch-rival Dodgers. To the consternation of Giants fans, their long-time idol was replaced by a man they heartily despised.

 

Still under contract to the Giants through the 1950 season, Mel assisted his old friend Carl Hubbell in running the Giants’ farm system. Mel left the Giants to manage the Pacific Coast League Oakland Oaks in 1951-2, but without notable success. He was out of baseball the next two years but he missed it badly. Mel happily joined the Mutual Network’s “Game of the Day” team in 1955, recreating games on radio. He moved to a broadcasting job more to his liking in 1956, announcing Detroit Tigers games on radio and television with Van Patrick. Mel was a natural for the job with his keen knowledge of the game and his warm, friendly, down-to-earth style and soft-spoken Southern accent. He had moved into a new baseball career successfully.

 

Mel returned home to Metairie, Louisiana, after the 1958 season. The Otts were building a cottage in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, a few hours from Metairie. They were heading home on November 14 after inspecting the progress of construction and stopped for dinner to wait out a dense fog. The fog was still heavy when Mel continued the trip, piloting his station wagon slowly. Suddenly the Otts’ car was hit head-on by a car whose driver lost track of the middle of the road. Both Mel and his wife Mildred were seriously injured. Mel died a week later, on November 21.

 

A number of baseball figures, writers and fans told of their high regard for Ott as a man as well a player. The sportswriting stylist Arnold Hano summed up their thoughts: “When he died, he held fourteen baseball records, a little man with a bashful smile and a silken swing, baseball’s legendary nice guy.”

 

[Yankee4Life]

Chris Chambliss

 

 

On October 14, 1976, the Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees were locked in the winner-take-all fifth game of the American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium, going into the bottom of the ninth inning. The Royals had won Game Four the night before to force the deciding game. This evening, Royals third baseman George Brett had hit a three-run shot in the top of the eighth inning to tie the score at six, and the Royals seemed to be gaining momentum in their first-ever postseason series since joining the American League in 1969.

 

As the bottom of the ninth began, Yankee first baseman Chris Chambliss waited for Royals relief pitcher Mark Littell to finish his warm-up pitches, before stepping into the batter’s box. As Chambliss waited, Yankee public address announcer Bob Sheppard was cautioning the crowd of over 58,000 about throwing debris onto the playing field. The game had already been stopped several times for bottles, firecrackers, beer cans, and rolls of toilet paper being thrown from the stands. Behind Chambliss, Sandy Alomar settled into the on-deck circle, telling batboy Joe D’Ambrosio, “He’s gonna hit it out,” indicating Chambliss. “He’s got to hit one out, because if he doesn’t do it, I’m on deck.” Alomar, a steady defensive infielder, batted .239 that year.

 

“I was a little anxious,” Chambliss said, standing by the bat rack, annoyed by the delay. “It was cold, too. That was a trying little time there.” Littell was annoyed by the delay, too. With an 8-4 record, 16 saves, and a 2.08 ERA, the 23-year-old possessed a live fastball and a wicked slider. The delay prevented Littell from staying loose, and interfered with his rhythm.

 

Finally, at 11:13 PM, Chambliss stepped into the box, and home-plate umpire Art Frantz yelled “Play ball.” Chambliss was 10-for-20 with 7 RBIs in the playoffs. He narrowed his eyes. “I knew Littell was going to throw a fastball,” he said later.

 

Littell nodded at catcher Buck Martinez, and delivered a high inside fastball. Chambliss reared back, stepped into the pitch, and smashed it over the right field wall. Chambliss stood momentarily at home plate watching the flight of the ball carry through the autumn air, not sure if it would go.

 

“Sometimes you’ll see players drop their bats at home plate to admire the ball as it goes out of the park. They know they hit it so well, it’s a home run from the moment it leaves their bats. This wasn’t one of those. The ball I hit was more what you would call a towering drive with a lot of height, but I didn’t know if it had enough distance to make it out. When I hit the ball, it looked as if the Royals right fielder had a bead on it. He moved back as if he was going to catch it. But at the very last second, he backed into the wall and the ball cleared it.”

 

On the bench, Thurman Munson, in his catcher’s gear, leaped onto the field, tracking the ball into the bleachers. Chambliss then half-leaped to first base, unable to break into the home-run trot, as thousands of fans stormed the field, seemingly right at Chris.

 

As he rounded first base and headed to second, the base was ripped from its support by Yankee fans eager for some memorabilia. Chris ran by, touched the base with his right hand, and continued to run through the maze of humanity. Chambliss fell in the base path, accidentally knocking a body over, then he tagged third and headed home. “I gave him a pretty good forearm,” he said later, with a laugh. When fans tried to grab his helmet, Chambliss tucked it under his arm, like a football.

 

Like a fullback looking for a small hole at the line of scrimmage, Chambliss was spun completely around in a circle and powered his way through the throng. He was then escorted to the Yankee clubhouse by two policemen.

 

“Home plate was completely covered with people,” Chambliss said later. “I wasn’t sure if I tagged it or not. I came in the clubhouse and all the players were talking about whether I got it. I wasn’t sure, so I went back out.” Graig Nettles urged Chambliss to return to home plate to make it official. “I wanted to make sure there was no way we were going to lose it,” said Nettles.

 

Dressed in a police raincoat to avoid further harassment from the scores of fans still milling the field, Chambliss jogged out to home plate — found it had been dug up and removed, replaced by a hole — touched the hole before Frantz, and returned to the champagne party.

 

In a most historic and memorable fashion, Chris Chambliss delivered the first American League pennant to New York in the renovated Yankee Stadium, and the first one for the team since 1964, ending a 12-year drought. It was a dramatic victory for the Yankees, won by a player who prided himself on steady professionalism, not drama.

 

Carroll Christopher Chambliss was born December 26, 1948, in Dayton, Ohio. His father was a Navy Chaplain, so his family was frequently on the move, relocating across the country. Chris lived in Xenia, Ohio, St. Louis, Chicago, and finally in Oceanside, California, where Chris attended high school, playing both shortstop and first base on the varsity baseball team. Chambliss had been drafted in 1967 and 1968 by Cincinnati, but declined both times and enrolled at UCLA.

 

In the January 1970 draft, the Cleveland Indians picked Chris with the first pick in the first round and assigned him to their affiliate in Wichita of the American Association, Cleveland’s top farm team. Chris earned Rookie of the Year honors while at Wichita, becoming the first freshman to win the batting title, posting a .342 average. Chris also hit seven home runs and collected 52 RBIs. Because of conflicting military reserve commitments, Chambliss was not called up to the big leagues at the end of the season.

 

During spring training in 1971, the Indians had to make a decision on Chambliss’ future. Veteran Ken Harrelson was the incumbent first baseman, though returning from an injury, and Chambliss suffered a leg injury that was thought to be a pulled right thigh muscle. So the Tribe sent Chris back to Wichita at the start of the 1971 season so that he could get accustomed to playing the outfield. The Cleveland front office believed that Chris would be able to contribute faster by learning a new position, and at the same time keeping both bats in the lineup.

 

He made his his debut on May 28 in Chicago. Pinch-hitting for shortstop and future fellow Yankee teammate Fred Stanley in the eighth inning, Chambliss grounded out. By this time, however, Harrelson was struggling with the Tribe, hitting .209 at the time of Chambliss’ debut. Hawk would only play three more weeks before calling it quits in favor of a short-lived professional golf career, turning first base over to Chris.

 

Chambliss never looked back, hitting safely in 14 of his next 15 games, smacking 114 hits in 111 games in 1971, including 20 doubles, nine home runs, 48 RBIs, and a .275 batting average and was named American League Rookie of the Year by both the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and The Sporting News.

 

The Indians fared better in 1972 and behind Cy Young Award winner Gaylord Perry and a solid foundation of good, young talent, 1973 was shaping up to be quite a team. But third baseman Graig Nettles was dealt to the Yankees in the off-season, and catcher Ray Fosse was traded to Oakland during spring training.

 

On Friday, April 26, 1974, the Indians and Yankees completed a seven-player trade with pitchers Dick Tidrow, Cecil Upshaw, and Chambliss going to New York. In return, Cleveland received four pitchers; Fritz Peterson, Tom Buskey, Steve Kline and Fred Beene. Yankee players offered were less then thrilled at giving up four pitchers. “I can’t believe this trade,” said Yankee center fielder Bobby Murcer. “It means they don’t think we have a winning ball club.” Murcer paid a stiff price for his honesty. He was traded at season’s end to San Francisco.

 

The Yankees finished the 1974 season in second place, two games behind Baltimore, staying in the race until the final series, fans cheering them on to the end. Manager Bill Virdon was named Major League Manager of the Year by The Sporting News. These results were quite different for Chambliss and Tidrow, who had been teammates since their minor league days at Wichita, and were used to the Indians’ losing ways and empty stands.

 

Expectations ran high for the Yankees in 1975 and Chris hit .304 in 1975, as well as fielding at a .991 clip at first base, leading the league’s first basemen in games played (147) and innings (1,299.1), erasing fan doubts about his abilities.

 

The 1976 season would start a string of three straight American League pennants for the Yankees. Billy Martin inserted Chris into the cleanup position in the batting order. Chambliss responded by having his finest year to date, clubbing 17 home runs and 32 doubles, driving in 96 runs, and hitting .293. The World Series ended New York’s season with a loud thud. The Cincinnati Reds swept the physically and emotionally exhausted Yankees in four games, despite Martin’s promise to “get that Red Machine wheel by wheel, axle by axle, if we have to.”

 

In some ways, 1977 and 1978 mirrored themselves for the Yankees. For instance: each year they won the American League East with a slim margin, each year they had a Cy Young Award Winner (Sparky Lyle 1977 and Ron Guidry 1978), each year they bested the Royals in the League Championship Series, and toppled the Dodgers in the World Series both seasons, four games to two.

 

Yet through the incredible turmoil and strife that made the 1977 Yankee season distinctive and memorable, Chambliss was focused and steady. He batted .287, hit 17 home runs, and drove in 90 runs. He also maintained class.

 

The following season was rougher for the Yankees, though: the team suffered more dissension and injuries, with the Yankees falling to 14 games back of the Boston Red Sox. Chambliss continued to be a steady hitter in 1978, batting .274, with 12 home runs, and 90 RBIs. Chambliss won the Gold Glove Award in 1978 with a league-leading fielding percentage of .997, committing only four errors in 1,481 chances.

 

During the 1978 World Series, Chris suffered a broken bone in his right hand, causing him to miss three games in the Series. In spring training, he had a cast placed on his right wrist due to a strained tendon. In spite of stories that the Yankees were pursuing Rod Carew to play first base, Chris had his usual productive year (27 doubles, 18 home runs, .280 batting average and a .994 fielding average). But for the Yankees, 1979 would be a year of not only disappointment on the field, but tragedy and loss off the field as well due to the death of Thurman Munson on August 2nd.

 

During the offseason the Yankees were looking to find a capable catcher to replace Munson. On November 1, Chambliss was traded to Toronto but the Blue Jays already had John Mayberry playing first base, so one month later, on December 6, Chris was dealt with infielder Luis Gomez to the Atlanta Braves.

 

Neither Chambliss nor the rest of the Atlanta team disappointed manager Bobby Cox, or the Brave fans. After a last-place finish in 1979, the Braves finished 1980 in fourth place and a game over the .500 mark. Chambliss again clubbed 18 home runs, while hitting .282 and led the league with 1,626 putouts.

 

In 1982 the Braves topped the Dodgers by one game and the Giants by two games, to give the franchise only their second division title since moving to Atlanta in 1966. Chambliss smacked a career-high 20 home runs and drove in 86 runs for the season.

 

Over the next three years, Chris’ production and playing time decreased. Gerald Perry was a star in the Braves’ minor league system and replaced Chambliss the last month of the 1984 season, a season that saw Chris manage to hit only nine home runs after back-to-back 20-homer years.

 

“I can do everything I’ve been able to do throughout my career, even better,” said Chambliss in 1985 at spring training. “I’d really like the opportunity to play regularly. That’s the way I can be effective.” But Eddie Haas was the new Brave skipper, and management favored the youngster Gerald Perry, seen as a “can’t-miss” prospect. But Perry missed spectacularly, hitting .214 with three homers and 13 RBIs. Chambliss did little better at .235, three home runs and 21 RBIs. Bob Horner took over at first base, with a .267 average, 27 HRs, and 89 RBIs, but the Braves finished fifth with a 66-96 record.

 

Eddie Haas was replaced in late August by coach Bobby Wine. Bob Horner was now getting the most at-bats (483) while playing first base. Chambliss had only 170. In 1986, Chambliss played in 20 games at first base, but led the league with 20 pinch-hits.

 

Chambliss retired with a batting average of .279 and 185 home runs. He is among the career leaders for first baseman in games played (1,962), assists (1,351), putouts (17,771), double plays (1,687) and fielding percentage (.993).

 

 

[sabugo]

Not to hijack your thread, but this video belongs here 🙂

[Yankee4Life]

11 hours ago, sabugo said:

Not to hijack your thread, but this video belongs here 🙂

 

Thanks for the video. I think is a great addition here. And just to be clear this isn't my thread. Yeah I did start it back in 2005 but anyone can come in and contribute. Or, if you want you can request a player.

[laroquece]

On 3/13/2024 at 6:34 AM, Yankee4Life said:

Or, if you want you can request a player.

Hey Y4L, Could you do a review on Luis Aparicio, our only Venezuelan baseball player in the hall of fame, thanks in advance. (We are hopping for Miggy to be next)